Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on February 23, 2021, 03:36:19 PM

Quote from: Doc Sammy on February 22, 2021, 10:01:04 PM

Quote from: BronzeDragon on February 22, 2021, 09:47:29 PM

Quote from: Doc Sammy on February 22, 2021, 08:27:24 PM
If I had the money, I'd probably buy White Wolf and do what I could to fix it.

Hell, I'm pretty sure you could probably buy New World of Darkness/Chronicles of Darkness for a very low price if you found a way to get in contact with the right people. Paradox outright stated they have zero interest in Requiem or any of the CofD IP's outside of collecting the licensing fee checks from Onyx Path.

Some things are better left dead.

Strange Aeons and all that jazz...

Possibly, but if I do get the means to acquire the New WoD/Chronicles of Darkness license or IP, I will do it come Hell or high water.

Incoming rant alert. Feel free to ignore if you don't like that sort of thing.

I don't understand why Paradox is even interested in the Classic/Old World of Darkness. It hit its peak in the 90s and has declined ever since. None of the video games have been commercial hits. Bloodlines 1 flopped on release and is only remembered because of Troika's writing rather than any strength of the IP. Earthblood was a flop. The IP isn't financially viable at this point.

World of Darkness is firmly stuck in the 90s counterculture movement and doesn't have any viability anymore, because what was counterculture then is pro-culture now. If the game was created from scratch today, then it probably wouldn't resemble what we got in this timeline. It would probably resemble what Chronicles of Darkness could have been if the writers weren't fixated on going out of their way to be different from their predecessors.

Werewolf: The Apocalypse in particular is so outdated. Most governments take climate change seriously. Zero-emissions by 2050 is standard planning now. Reparations for slavery are standard rhetoric now. The World Economic Forum openly discusses their plans to take over the world and institute a communist utopia. Transwomen are coddled on social media. The ACLU states that biological sex is a social construct. Words are considered violence. Blah blah blah. We are living in, or at least on a rapid path to, the world that the writers of Werewolf wanted to see thirty years ago.

New WoD/Chronicles reached its peak with Lost and Vigil. None of the others are interesting to me because they either go out of their way to avoid being too similar to their c/oWoD predecessors (e.g. Requiem not having vampire supremacists, Forsaken not touching real politics, Awakening not having personalized magical traditions, Lost only ever being human-born rather than fairies who adopted humanity), are overshadowed by parochial metaplot (e.g. the strix, father wolf, atlantis, god-machine, irem), and/or aren't anywhere near as creative as Lost and Vigil were. Oh, and the rules are basically garbage in any iteration due to a complete lack of universal rules for superpowers, 2e trying to ape the worst parts of FATE without understanding game design at all, etc.

Pretty much the only reason anybody cares about these games is because of their lore. Which doesn't interest me and I find it parochial anyway. The entire reason I liked the concepts of Lost and Vigil was because they didn't have lore, they had options. A changeling could be a genie, a mermaid, a selkie, a gnome, a goblin, an ogre, a troll, whatever and the rules for doing so were vastly simpler than the arbitrary nightmare of its preceding game. A hunter could be an amateur ghost hunter, an employee of a corporation that harvests monsters for pharmaceuticals, a member of a secret government taskforce, a half-human spawn of the literal Devil, a big game hunter who considers monsters the next logical step, etc.

With Vampire in either iteration, you're playing an Anne Rice knockoff with some superpowers loosely inspired by random works of fiction that may or may not have been about vampires. Unlike Lost or Vigil, you're never given the option to make up whatever concept suits your fancy using a simple set of universal rules. You can't just play a vamphyri with psychic powers and metamorphic flesh, you have to play a shameesay high school clique with all this weird baggage involving sabbaths, babytalk jargon arbitrary pulled from assorted Slavic languages, butchered Slavic folklore, soul eaters and shit.

I don't give a flying fuck about all that bullshit that Mark Asterisk Häagen-Dazs and friends pulled out of their asses thirty years ago. I just want to play a game about some vampires that eat people, have kewl powerz I guess if I don't prefer a straight superhero game, and maybe mope about their lost humanity or whatever the fuck makes them wake up in the evening.

I don't care about however the fuck many clans/bloodlines/high school cliques there are as of the latest editions. Unless you're an anal-retentive autist, then you can shorten the list to just 3 and not lose anything of value. That's how Red Embrace: Hollywood did it and I found the game way less irritating for that genius design choice... not that anybody plays that romance game for its vampire houses.

But whatever, YMMV.

If I do buy the rights to New World of Darkness/Chronicles of Darkness and reboot everything, I'll be sure to give you a shout-out in the Acknowledgements of the main corebook.

Quote from: Doc Sammy on February 23, 2021, 03:54:51 PM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on February 23, 2021, 03:36:19 PM

Quote from: Doc Sammy on February 22, 2021, 10:01:04 PM

Quote from: BronzeDragon on February 22, 2021, 09:47:29 PM

Quote from: Doc Sammy on February 22, 2021, 08:27:24 PM
If I had the money, I'd probably buy White Wolf and do what I could to fix it.

Hell, I'm pretty sure you could probably buy New World of Darkness/Chronicles of Darkness for a very low price if you found a way to get in contact with the right people. Paradox outright stated they have zero interest in Requiem or any of the CofD IP's outside of collecting the licensing fee checks from Onyx Path.

Some things are better left dead.

Strange Aeons and all that jazz...

Possibly, but if I do get the means to acquire the New WoD/Chronicles of Darkness license or IP, I will do it come Hell or high water.

Incoming rant alert. Feel free to ignore if you don't like that sort of thing.

I don't understand why Paradox is even interested in the Classic/Old World of Darkness. It hit its peak in the 90s and has declined ever since. None of the video games have been commercial hits. Bloodlines 1 flopped on release and is only remembered because of Troika's writing rather than any strength of the IP. Earthblood was a flop. The IP isn't financially viable at this point.

World of Darkness is firmly stuck in the 90s counterculture movement and doesn't have any viability anymore, because what was counterculture then is pro-culture now. If the game was created from scratch today, then it probably wouldn't resemble what we got in this timeline. It would probably resemble what Chronicles of Darkness could have been if the writers weren't fixated on going out of their way to be different from their predecessors.

Werewolf: The Apocalypse in particular is so outdated. Most governments take climate change seriously. Zero-emissions by 2050 is standard planning now. Reparations for slavery are standard rhetoric now. The World Economic Forum openly discusses their plans to take over the world and institute a communist utopia. Transwomen are coddled on social media. The ACLU states that biological sex is a social construct. Words are considered violence. Blah blah blah. We are living in, or at least on a rapid path to, the world that the writers of Werewolf wanted to see thirty years ago.

New WoD/Chronicles reached its peak with Lost and Vigil. None of the others are interesting to me because they either go out of their way to avoid being too similar to their c/oWoD predecessors (e.g. Requiem not having vampire supremacists, Forsaken not touching real politics, Awakening not having personalized magical traditions, Lost only ever being human-born rather than fairies who adopted humanity), are overshadowed by parochial metaplot (e.g. the strix, father wolf, atlantis, god-machine, irem), and/or aren't anywhere near as creative as Lost and Vigil were. Oh, and the rules are basically garbage in any iteration due to a complete lack of universal rules for superpowers, 2e trying to ape the worst parts of FATE without understanding game design at all, etc.

Pretty much the only reason anybody cares about these games is because of their lore. Which doesn't interest me and I find it parochial anyway. The entire reason I liked the concepts of Lost and Vigil was because they didn't have lore, they had options. A changeling could be a genie, a mermaid, a selkie, a gnome, a goblin, an ogre, a troll, whatever and the rules for doing so were vastly simpler than the arbitrary nightmare of its preceding game. A hunter could be an amateur ghost hunter, an employee of a corporation that harvests monsters for pharmaceuticals, a member of a secret government taskforce, a half-human spawn of the literal Devil, a big game hunter who considers monsters the next logical step, etc.

With Vampire in either iteration, you're playing an Anne Rice knockoff with some superpowers loosely inspired by random works of fiction that may or may not have been about vampires. Unlike Lost or Vigil, you're never given the option to make up whatever concept suits your fancy using a simple set of universal rules. You can't just play a vamphyri with psychic powers and metamorphic flesh, you have to play a shameesay high school clique with all this weird baggage involving sabbaths, babytalk jargon arbitrary pulled from assorted Slavic languages, butchered Slavic folklore, soul eaters and shit.

I don't give a flying fuck about all that bullshit that Mark Asterisk Häagen-Dazs and friends pulled out of their asses thirty years ago. I just want to play a game about some vampires that eat people, have kewl powerz I guess if I don't prefer a straight superhero game, and maybe mope about their lost humanity or whatever the fuck makes them wake up in the evening.

I don't care about however the fuck many clans/bloodlines/high school cliques there are as of the latest editions. Unless you're an anal-retentive autist, then you can shorten the list to just 3 and not lose anything of value. That's how Red Embrace: Hollywood did it and I found the game way less irritating for that genius design choice... not that anybody plays that romance game for its vampire houses.

But whatever, YMMV.

If I do buy the rights to New World of Darkness/Chronicles of Darkness and reboot everything, I'll be sure to give you a shout-out in the Acknowledgements of the main corebook.

I have a thread on hacking the ST system in design and development forum. If you're interested, then I'd be happy to see you share your ideas for rebooting everything.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on February 23, 2021, 03:36:19 PM
Incoming rant alert. Feel free to ignore if you don't like that sort of thing.
...
But whatever, YMMV.

We get it. You hate the WoD and must share why every time its name is mentioned as if you're a Lovecraftian god being drawn to its true name being spoken aloud.

Personally, I like the fact that its 90's counter-culture basically makes the protagonists practically Right-Wing by today's standards.

Global corporations are evil and in bed with utterly corrupt governments who who foster endless wars to profit from and want to turn us all into slaves? Mainstream conservative.

Religion should be tolerated not stamped out by Godless atheists who unknowingly do the bidding of demons? The most popular line of the whole WoD is based on the notion that Judeo-Christian is RIGHT? Mainstream conservative.

Monsters try to exploit and keep people poor and vulnerable so they're easier to victimize? Mainstream conservative.

Over on the Onyx Path boards, their primary mod openly laments that playing the oWoD straight makes people who believe in the Deep State and Right-wingers the people who are right in the setting.

The biggest reason oWoD is a failure these days is NOT that it's stuck in the 90's... its that the current PTB keep insisting on adapting it into woke garbage in the same vein as the Star Wars Sequel Trilogy.

The easiest fix for the oWoD if someone not an SJW got ahold of the property would be to just embrace that... the villains are the Elders in working behind the scenes to keep the masses vulnerable to their predations; the godless socialist Technocracy who want to snuff out every spark of individuality in the name of a China-like managed economic system where everyone is a cog in the machine; where the Wyrm has taken over the environmental movement and now wields bad science (like windmills and solar panels are better for the environment than nuclear power) like a club to enrich themselves while selling rubes the idea that their paying through the nose for "green tech" is making the planet a better place... all the while replacing authentic Gaia worship with a false environmentalism that is really just subservience to the State.

The up and coming generation are the most conservative in decades precisely because the best way to rebel against their parents and the establishment is to be a conservative.

So, welcome to the revolution where you start out as a newly turned vampire the Elders intended to use as a slave until you broke free and are now trying to chart your own path with your friends... you're a young Mage who's just awakened to the possibilities of changing the world, but fought every step of the way by a soulless Technocracy that wants you to bend the knee to their fascist whims... you're a newly turned werewolf who has to fight to reclaim true spiritualism from the false environmental virtue signalers who are exploiting man's desire to do the right thing to enrich themselves... you're a Changeling who struggles to create stories of true wonder and beauty while the banal woke activists of Hollywood seek to drain the wonder from everything and leave only ugliness in its wake.

Sure, tweak a few things here and there (definitely drop the Punk... but Gothic is timeless); maybe shift focus from "the end is nigh" to "you're the lights in a dark world"; but the core of a solid modern counter-culture game (because today Conservative Christian IS the counter-culture) is already in place.

Hell, frame it as "you're the weak who must band together against the strong" probably makes the unusual bedfellows of cross-splat player groups even more viable. Yeah, the young vampire isn't likely to find any allies among the corrupt elders who just want to use them... but that young mage whose dreams have just been crushed by the Technocrats might be able to help you and you him; banding together for mutual survival in a corrupt and fallen world.

Yes. I agree.
In fact I was planning on making own itteration of WOD (mix of oWOD and nWOD) based on more feudal principles, precisely because as right-winger I'm tired by all conspiracy freaks in our community, claiming there are some BIG THEM RUNNING THE WORLD, which aside of my personal dibelief I also consider kinda boring setting-wise.
So for me scattering and multipling supernatural communities both "good" and "evil" is fine - I'm generally hard into later retcon of Technocracy as much less powerful organisation as it seems - still very powerful but nowhere close to running the world (and definitely some good clash between their sects), Vampires divided into multiple political groups - both taken from Masquerade and Requiem, and so multiple cross-species groups.

World of Chaos that many would like to control, but it's just to big to be grasped by any single player.

That I suppose is neither really left- or right-wing counter-culture, but then what can I say - I'm feudalist

Quote from: Wicked Woodpecker of West on February 24, 2021, 05:44:51 PM
Yes. I agree.
In fact I was planning on making own itteration of WOD (mix of oWOD and nWOD) based on more feudal principles, precisely because as right-winger I'm tired by all conspiracy freaks in our community, claiming there are some BIG THEM RUNNING THE WORLD, which aside of my personal dibelief I also consider kinda boring setting-wise.
So for me scattering and multipling supernatural communities both "good" and "evil" is fine - I'm generally hard into later retcon of Technocracy as much less powerful organisation as it seems - still very powerful but nowhere close to running the world (and definitely some good clash between their sects), Vampires divided into multiple political groups - both taken from Masquerade and Requiem, and so multiple cross-species groups.

World of Chaos that many would like to control, but it's just to big to be grasped by any single player.

That I suppose is neither really left- or right-wing counter-culture, but then what can I say - I'm feudalist

Have you considered writing an original IP fulfilling your creative vision rather than copying WoD? It doesn't hold a monopoly on urban fantasy. And if you do an original IP, then you can sell RPG books for profit too.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on February 24, 2021, 05:57:39 PM

Quote from: Wicked Woodpecker of West on February 24, 2021, 05:44:51 PM
Yes. I agree.
In fact I was planning on making own itteration of WOD (mix of oWOD and nWOD) based on more feudal principles, precisely because as right-winger I'm tired by all conspiracy freaks in our community, claiming there are some BIG THEM RUNNING THE WORLD, which aside of my personal dibelief I also consider kinda boring setting-wise.
So for me scattering and multipling supernatural communities both "good" and "evil" is fine - I'm generally hard into later retcon of Technocracy as much less powerful organisation as it seems - still very powerful but nowhere close to running the world (and definitely some good clash between their sects), Vampires divided into multiple political groups - both taken from Masquerade and Requiem, and so multiple cross-species groups.

World of Chaos that many would like to control, but it's just to big to be grasped by any single player.

That I suppose is neither really left- or right-wing counter-culture, but then what can I say - I'm feudalist

Have you considered writing an original IP fulfilling your creative vision rather than copying WoD? It doesn't hold a monopoly on urban fantasy. And if you do an original IP, then you can sell RPG books for profit too.

I second that. Might as well make your own thing if you liked World of Darkness so much but hate the wokeness and other nonsense it became infested with over the years.

QuoteHave you considered writing an original IP fulfilling your creative vision rather than copying WoD? It doesn't hold a monopoly on urban fantasy. And if you do an original IP, then you can sell RPG books for profit too.

No. I suck at original creativity - and I love making my own puzzle from estabilished setting and franchises remodelling them as it suits me.
My creative vision is WOD trimmed and reshaped according to my vision :3

QuoteI second that. Might as well make your own thing if you liked World of Darkness so much but hate the wokeness and other nonsense it became infested with over the years.

Nah. It wouldn't be honest. I don't want new urban fantasy setting - I want WoD with my fixes.
If I tried to override it I'd get some pathetic parody of intelectual property like Daniel D. Fox - Zweihander (I mean rules are different enough) but pantheon of gods and Chaos powers is just pathethic.

Quote from: AgentBJ09 on February 24, 2021, 06:15:05 PM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on February 24, 2021, 05:57:39 PM

Quote from: Wicked Woodpecker of West on February 24, 2021, 05:44:51 PM
Yes. I agree.
In fact I was planning on making own itteration of WOD (mix of oWOD and nWOD) based on more feudal principles, precisely because as right-winger I'm tired by all conspiracy freaks in our community, claiming there are some BIG THEM RUNNING THE WORLD, which aside of my personal dibelief I also consider kinda boring setting-wise.
So for me scattering and multipling supernatural communities both "good" and "evil" is fine - I'm generally hard into later retcon of Technocracy as much less powerful organisation as it seems - still very powerful but nowhere close to running the world (and definitely some good clash between their sects), Vampires divided into multiple political groups - both taken from Masquerade and Requiem, and so multiple cross-species groups.

World of Chaos that many would like to control, but it's just to big to be grasped by any single player.

That I suppose is neither really left- or right-wing counter-culture, but then what can I say - I'm feudalist

Have you considered writing an original IP fulfilling your creative vision rather than copying WoD? It doesn't hold a monopoly on urban fantasy. And if you do an original IP, then you can sell RPG books for profit too.

I second that. Might as well make your own thing if you liked World of Darkness so much but hate the wokeness and other nonsense it became infested with over the years.

It also provides a fresh start to (re)develop ideas with the benefit of hindsight, the easy research provided by the internet, etc.

I find a lot of WoDisms to be pretty arbitrary.

For example, before Changeling: The Dreaming was released, somebody invented their own "Faerie: The Game Eternal." While it draws on the same folkloric roots, the execution was completely different. Rather than being killed by the stability of human society, these faeries rely on it to avoid deteriorating into beings of pure chaos.

Before Geist was released, somebody wrote their own nWraith that recycled concepts from cWoD but re-contextualized for the more local state of affairs presented in CoD1e. It is something of an exact opposite of its predecessor, as the the main political conflict introduced is a gang war between two competing factions of ghosts for haunted real estate because ghosts can harness these places as a fuel and materials source. Meanwhile, a third faction (there are several others) preaches resolving one's unfinished business, which would ultimately render said real estate useless.

And others wrote "Angel: The Rapture" and "Daemon" years before Demon: The Fallen. Or literal Anne Rice vampires: while similar to WoD vamps, there are key differences.

There's also plenty of heartbreakers like The Everlasting and WitchCraft.

There's tons of conceptual space to explore without wholesale copying WoD. Take inspiration, sure, but don't feel constrained by the choices of White Wolf in the 90s and 00s.

Quote from: Wicked Woodpecker of West on February 24, 2021, 06:32:53 PM

QuoteHave you considered writing an original IP fulfilling your creative vision rather than copying WoD? It doesn't hold a monopoly on urban fantasy. And if you do an original IP, then you can sell RPG books for profit too.

No. I suck at original creativity - and I love making my own puzzle from estabilished setting and franchises remodelling them as it suits me.
My creative vision is WOD trimmed and reshaped according to my vision :3

QuoteI second that. Might as well make your own thing if you liked World of Darkness so much but hate the wokeness and other nonsense it became infested with over the years.

Nah. It wouldn't be honest. I don't want new urban fantasy setting - I want WoD with my fixes.

A lot of original settings started as fanfiction.

While I entertained similar ideas many years ago, I ultimately found WoD/CoD too parochial and constraining. It also helps that I familiarized myself with fiction and games outside of the WoD/CoD bubble, which is how I realized it was so parochial in the first place.

For example, ghosts should be able to fly and teleport because this is a common property demonstrated in fiction featuring ghosts. They're spirits: they shouldn't be limited by distance and gravity the way that our bodies are. This would also explain why they can walk through walls but don't fall thru the floor. Guess what they aren't normally capable of in WoD?

Another example: why should vampire PCs all drink blood? Why can't we play energy vampires like in What We Do in the Shadows tv show? Or a succubus like in Lost Girl?

Also, WW games have always been shitty from a game design perspective, so that's another thing keeping me away. Again, I didn't realize how horrible it was until I familiarized myself with other games and game design principles in general.

You might not have a problem with that, but I find it suffocating. As I said, parochial.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on February 24, 2021, 05:57:39 PM
Have you considered writing an original IP fulfilling your creative vision rather than copying WoD? It doesn't hold a monopoly on urban fantasy. And if you do an original IP, then you can sell RPG books for profit too.

Not even a little.

A) Already did a top to bottom rewrite of the mechanics for what often call "White Book Mage" (due to my giving copies to my players using white binders) available here; https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8uzbbLvQJOLRWtSaVU4M3A5M0E/view?usp=sharing

B) I'm up to my neck in getting my fantasy setting finished so I can get it out the door.

C) I don't care enough about researching urban fantasy tropes to reinvent the wheel.

D) If I'm not using White Book Mage, the various 20th Anniversary Editions are good enough for my personal gaming purposes.

If you care enough to reinvent the wheel for a kitchen sink urban fantasy and convince people to play it... more power to you. As it stands, being able to put up "Looking for players for V20 or M20 campaign" on our local gaming meetup groups and not have to spend hours just explaining the setting and can just get right to char gen and playing is well worth any trivial issues I have with the setting.

Quote from: AgentBJ09 on February 24, 2021, 06:15:05 PM
I second that. Might as well make your own thing if you liked World of Darkness so much but hate the wokeness and other nonsense it became infested with over the years.

I fixed the wokeness of the oWoD in about a minute by just playing everything straight in the 2020s. The Brujah are still anti-establishment rebels stupidly working to support an elitist secret society... so they control Antifa now. The Ventrue still control big business so they're all over Crony Capitalism and predatory hedge funds that destroy small up and comers and put people out of work just to further enrich themselves. The Toreadors are still wannabe artistes obsessed with their visions of beauty so they mostly put out modern woke crap and films they call art. The Nos and the Gangrel are still social pariahs who mostly stick to the sewers or the woods. The Malks are still insane so you just play them as if they took Leftism seriously and you're gold.

In case you missed the memo... vampires are the villains and should be played the same way you would an evil-alignment D&D game. There's a reason I only play mortal hunters or dhampirs in VtM.

The Technocracy are still the bad guys because they think socialism/fascism is the best path forward for the world so any free thinkers pretty much have to end up at least tangentially associated with the Traditions. My last PC was a Roman Catholic Euthanatos whose mysticism manifested charisms gifted from God (deep dive into Euthanatos lore is that most of their magic works by union with god forms... Catholic mysticism is based on seeking spiritual union with God and sometimes results in the ability to work miracles) and had St. Michael in his role as the Angel of Death as their patron saint. House Ex Miscellanea is a great catch all for anything even remotely Hermetic in origin.

I've never liked Werewolf enough to even to read its core book entirely through... I don't use anything from it enough to need to fix any wokeness in it.

Basically, why waste my limited heartbeats on this earth on something that's never going to be commercially viable when I don't have to. If you want your Non-WoD urban fantasy game, do your own work for it. If you want my work... I linked to it above.

Quote from: Wicked Woodpecker of West on February 24, 2021, 06:32:53 PM

QuoteHave you considered writing an original IP fulfilling your creative vision rather than copying WoD? It doesn't hold a monopoly on urban fantasy. And if you do an original IP, then you can sell RPG books for profit too.

No. I suck at original creativity - and I love making my own puzzle from estabilished setting and franchises remodelling them as it suits me.
My creative vision is WOD trimmed and reshaped according to my vision :3

QuoteI second that. Might as well make your own thing if you liked World of Darkness so much but hate the wokeness and other nonsense it became infested with over the years.

Nah. It wouldn't be honest. I don't want new urban fantasy setting - I want WoD with my fixes.
If I tried to override it I'd get some pathetic parody of intelectual property like Daniel D. Fox - Zweihander (I mean rules are different enough) but pantheon of gods and Chaos powers is just pathethic.

Zweihander is only like that because the creator used the retro-clone idea on Warhammer Fantasy and added SJW trappings like gender into it. Not a smart move when 4th Edition Warhammer Fantasy is still around and fair to play.

You don't strike me as someone who would do that, but if you don't think creativity is your thing, it wasn't really mine either until, as BoxCrayonTales pointed out, I tried my hand at fanfiction. Moved away from it pretty quickly because the IP is heavily copyrighted but I found a new niche afterwards that I liked and stuck with it.

QuoteA) Already did a top to bottom rewrite of the mechanics for what often call "White Book Mage" (due to my giving copies to my players using white binders) available here; https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8uzbbLvQJOLRWtSaVU4M3A5M0E/view?usp=sharing

Interesting though I have to admit - I dislike sphere redesign

QuoteIt also provides a fresh start to (re)develop ideas with the benefit of hindsight, the easy research provided by the internet, etc.

I find a lot of WoDisms to be pretty arbitrary.

For example, before Changeling: The Dreaming was released, somebody invented their own "Faerie: The Game Eternal." While it draws on the same folkloric roots, the execution was completely different. Rather than being killed by the stability of human society, these faeries rely on it to avoid deteriorating into beings of pure chaos.

I'm generally quite willing to go with The Lost angle, not The Dreaming. Ancient mysterious terrors from Dream/Nightmare Dimension that ocassionaly kidnaps people.
Dreaming angle ultimately leaves me quite cold.
In terms of oWoD - nWoD - I rather prefer my Vampire and Mage more on o-side, and Changeling and Ghost on n-side.
Werewolves sort of leaves me cold on both sides, but if I had to choose I'll go with nWoD because zoophilia is just icky.

QuoteAnd others wrote "Angel: The Rapture" and "Daemon" years before Demon: The Fallen. Or literal Anne Rice vampires: while similar to WoD vamps, there are key differences.

There's also plenty of heartbreakers like The Everlasting and WitchCraft.

There's tons of conceptual space to explore without wholesale copying WoD. Take inspiration, sure, but don't feel constrained by the choices of White Wolf in the 90s and 00s.

From 3pp hacks of WoD my favourite is definitely Genius: The Transgression.

QuoteAnother example: why should vampire PCs all drink blood? Why can't we play energy vampires like in What We Do in the Shadows tv show? Or a succubus like in Lost Girl?

I'm all for energy vampires but as different being that is not really vampire in common sense. Sort of like Vampire Courts in Butcher books which are loose coalition of separate species of supernaturals - with psychic vampires being human+, and classic vampires being almost Lovecraftian spiritual energy mimicking psyche of freshly dead and converted corpses.
But that's sort of another problem - I like to have extra species, but also to have multi-clanned classic vamps with singular historical source of their existence.

QuoteAlso, WW games have always been shitty from a game design perspective, so that's another thing keeping me away. Again, I didn't realize how horrible it was until I familiarized myself with other games and game design principles in general.

You might not have a problem with that, but I find it suffocating. As I said, parochial.

I won't disagree.
Gameplay was never much interesting for me. Setting was - or rather aspects of it.

QuoteIf you care enough to reinvent the wheel for a kitchen sink urban fantasy and convince people to play it... more power to you. As it stands, being able to put up "Looking for players for V20 or M20 campaign" on our local gaming meetup groups and not have to spend hours just explaining the setting and can just get right to char gen and playing is well worth any trivial issues I have with the setting.

Yep. Besides why assume we don't know various tropes and just prefer overall outline of WoD?

QuoteIn case you missed the memo... vampires are the villains and should be played the same way you would an evil-alignment D&D game. There's a reason I only play mortal hunters or dhampirs in VtM.

Should they? I mean vampirism is definitely icky and unholy in origin, but still you can carefuly keep your Humanity high and fight a good fight, I mean considering how many evil kindred are around, those vampires who does not want to surrender to vampirism are probably one of best weapon against them.
It's not like Buffy where it's corpse with caulliflower demon inside

QuoteThe Technocracy are still the bad guys because they think socialism/fascism is the best path forward for the world so any free thinkers pretty much have to end up at least tangentially associated with the Traditions

I have a hard time as European Catholic to align with free-thinker occultists over fascists
But then I play Technocracy as divided and not even close to omnipotent, because honestly this 90-ties vibe about how big bad powers will make world boring is really stupid.
Any wannabe big power knows rules of panem et circes.

QuoteZweihander is only like that because the creator used the retro-clone idea on Warhammer Fantasy and added SJW trappings like gender into it. Not a smart move when 4th Edition Warhammer Fantasy is still around and fair to play.

Well Zweihander is bit older than 4e IIRC.
TBH he also added aspects that makes world even more grimdark and violent than original, so it's not just SJwism.

QuoteYou don't strike me as someone who would do that, but if you don't think creativity is your thing, it wasn't really mine either until, as BoxCrayonTales pointed out, I tried my hand at fanfiction. Moved away from it pretty quickly because the IP is heavily copyrighted but I found a new niche afterwards that I liked and stuck with it.

So far I have no ambition of being RPG designer

Quote from: Wicked Woodpecker of West on February 24, 2021, 07:42:21 PM

QuoteA) Already did a top to bottom rewrite of the mechanics for what often call "White Book Mage" (due to my giving copies to my players using white binders) available here; https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8uzbbLvQJOLRWtSaVU4M3A5M0E/view?usp=sharing

Interesting though I have to admit - I dislike sphere redesign

I think Mage: The Awakening's arcana are an improvement. Though I still find both very lacking. I prefer something like the Dark Ages: Mage magic system where every magical tradition has its own set of magic skills.

If I was designing a game, then I'd let all splats have access to the magic system and then make some additional special rules just for the snowflake wizards to justify them being a distinct splat.

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QuoteIt also provides a fresh start to (re)develop ideas with the benefit of hindsight, the easy research provided by the internet, etc.

I find a lot of WoDisms to be pretty arbitrary.

For example, before Changeling: The Dreaming was released, somebody invented their own "Faerie: The Game Eternal." While it draws on the same folkloric roots, the execution was completely different. Rather than being killed by the stability of human society, these faeries rely on it to avoid deteriorating into beings of pure chaos.

I'm generally quite willing to go with The Lost angle, not The Dreaming. Ancient mysterious terrors from Dream/Nightmare Dimension that ocassionaly kidnaps people.
Dreaming angle ultimately leaves me quite cold.

I like Lost over Dreaming, too. Nonetheless, I recognize that some people don't like the whole "you were abused by fairies" angle. So I'd offer an olive branch by allowing "exile fey" as a PC option: they're fairies who decided to live in the human world and adopt human ways.

QuoteIn terms of oWoD - nWoD - I rather prefer my Vampire and Mage more on o-side, and Changeling and Ghost on n-side.
Werewolves sort of leaves me cold on both sides, but if I had to choose I'll go with nWoD because zoophilia is just icky.

This is why I prefer to invent my own setting rather than try and parse which iteration of the IP I find less offensive.

The whole zoophilia thing is just unnecessary and could have been replaced by humans having sex with wolf gods rather than literal wolves. Woman has sex with wolf god, she becomes pregnant with wolfblood. Man has sex with wolf goddess, she becomes pregnant with wereblood wolf.

Quote

QuoteAnd others wrote "Angel: The Rapture" and "Daemon" years before Demon: The Fallen. Or literal Anne Rice vampires: while similar to WoD vamps, there are key differences.

There's also plenty of heartbreakers like The Everlasting and WitchCraft.

There's tons of conceptual space to explore without wholesale copying WoD. Take inspiration, sure, but don't feel constrained by the choices of White Wolf in the 90s and 00s.

From 3pp hacks of WoD my favourite is definitely Genius: The Transgression.

I saw the author advertising it all over tvtropes years ago, but I never saw the appeal. You can hack Mage to do the same thing, as WW eventually did in Mage Chronicler's Guide.

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QuoteAnother example: why should vampire PCs all drink blood? Why can't we play energy vampires like in What We Do in the Shadows tv show? Or a succubus like in Lost Girl?

I'm all for energy vampires but as different being that is not really vampire in common sense. Sort of like Vampire Courts in Butcher books which are loose coalition of separate species of supernaturals - with psychic vampires being human+, and classic vampires being almost Lovecraftian spiritual energy mimicking psyche of freshly dead and converted corpses.
But that's sort of another problem - I like to have extra species, but also to have multi-clanned classic vamps with singular historical source of their existence.

I don't see the problem here. You can have a bazillion strains and sub-strains of vampires. What's stopping you?

The Everlasting offers an interesting variation. Progenitor vampires (the ones that found bloodlines) come into existence when a person commits really big atrocities, rather than all tracing back to a single progenitor in the middle east 10,000 years ago or whatever. Although they don't seem to share the same source (or maybe they do? it's unclear), they do follow the same rough Ricean-inspired template except that their strengths and weaknesses are slightly more diverse than WoD (though not as diverse as they could be). For example, they all drink human blood (youth-stealers and flesh-eaters are different splats for some reason) but some bloodlines lack fangs. Perhaps the most extreme divergence is that some bloodlines aren't harmed by sunlight.

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QuoteIf you care enough to reinvent the wheel for a kitchen sink urban fantasy and convince people to play it... more power to you. As it stands, being able to put up "Looking for players for V20 or M20 campaign" on our local gaming meetup groups and not have to spend hours just explaining the setting and can just get right to char gen and playing is well worth any trivial issues I have with the setting.

Yep. Besides why assume we don't know various tropes and just prefer overall outline of WoD?

My issues with the setting and the rules are non-trivial. I'm not going to play a game I don't like because someone is trying to sell me something. WoD is a dying brand anyway, so there's never been a better time to invent your own setting.

It's not like anybody else has tried... outside of the urban fantasy fiction market, which is vastly larger than the tabletop market.

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QuoteIn case you missed the memo... vampires are the villains and should be played the same way you would an evil-alignment D&D game. There's a reason I only play mortal hunters or dhampirs in VtM.

Should they? I mean vampirism is definitely icky and unholy in origin, but still you can carefuly keep your Humanity high and fight a good fight, I mean considering how many evil kindred are around, those vampires who does not want to surrender to vampirism are probably one of best weapon against them.
It's not like Buffy where it's corpse with caulliflower demon inside

I never understood how you can maintain high humanity at the same time you accumulate a laundry list of superpowers. Wouldn't using the powers offered by vampirism make you more susceptible to its darkside? Why not play a superhero game and make a PC with vampire powers?

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QuoteThe Technocracy are still the bad guys because they think socialism/fascism is the best path forward for the world so any free thinkers pretty much have to end up at least tangentially associated with the Traditions

I have a hard time as European Catholic to align with free-thinker occultists over fascists
But then I play Technocracy as divided and not even close to omnipotent, because honestly this 90-ties vibe about how big bad powers will make world boring is really stupid.
Any wannabe big power knows rules of panem et circes.

I never got the appeal of the Technocracy. I vastly preferred Nephilim's secret societies in concept: normal human beings who know the supernatural exists and hunt down wizards to drain magic for their own gain. Not all secret societies were like that, but those were the ones most relevant as antagonists. (It was basically "Illuminati: The Conspiracy" if you're familiar with that old homebrew.)

Quote

QuoteYou don't strike me as someone who would do that, but if you don't think creativity is your thing, it wasn't really mine either until, as BoxCrayonTales pointed out, I tried my hand at fanfiction. Moved away from it pretty quickly because the IP is heavily copyrighted but I found a new niche afterwards that I liked and stuck with it.

So far I have no ambition of being RPG designer

You don't need to be. There's plenty of existing rules systems that you can make homebrew for, or even go for a systemless setting. You might be fine using a modified WoD/CoD setting/rules now, but that might change in the future. Particularly if you keep making changes and can't silence your niggling doubts about the game's fit for you.

If a mod thinks this is too tangential for the original purpose of the thread, then let us know.

Quote from: Wicked Woodpecker of West on February 24, 2021, 07:42:21 PM

QuoteA) Already did a top to bottom rewrite of the mechanics for what often call "White Book Mage" (due to my giving copies to my players using white binders) available here; https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8uzbbLvQJOLRWtSaVU4M3A5M0E/view?usp=sharing

Interesting though I have to admit - I dislike sphere redesign

Space is literally just name changes because I hate writing Correspondence when Space does just as well 90% of the time.

The rest came down to actual player utility over the course of the decade and a half my Mage campaign has been running... Prime was too un-distinct, basically the Mage equivalent of a feat tax to fuel certain effects of other spheres. Meanwhile, Entropy wasn't doing what a lot of players thought it would; its possibly the most useless sphere for actually being a necromancer (and all the actual tricks also opened up all manner of other tricks that basically made "magic related to the dead" just a small niche of their abilities... ex. animating a corpse was matter 3, prime 2... which also gives you the ability to spawn any sort of matter you wish from nothingness).

So Prime got merged into each of the spheres (with a few extra bits merged specifically into Spirit) and Entropy got renamed Fate (for pretty much the same reason I renamed Correspondence) and Death got added in to both make direct necromancy a thing and keep the number of spheres at nine.

A related reason for the change was also that I needed easy ways to represent other supernaturals, many of whom have much stronger ties to death, using the same mechanics as sphere magic because they've always shown up as NPCs in my Mage campaigns, but I wasn't about to rewrite all of the abilities of those games just for some NPCs.

QuoteSpace is literally just name changes because I hate writing Correspondence when Space does just as well 90% of the time.

Respect your syllables!!!

QuoteThe rest came down to actual player utility over the course of the decade and a half my Mage campaign has been running... Prime was too un-distinct, basically the Mage equivalent of a feat tax to fuel certain effects of other spheres. Meanwhile, Entropy wasn't doing what a lot of players thought it would; its possibly the most useless sphere for actually being a necromancer (and all the actual tricks also opened up all manner of other tricks that basically made "magic related to the dead" just a small niche of their abilities... ex. animating a corpse was matter 3, prime 2... which also gives you the ability to spawn any sort of matter you wish from nothingness).

So Prime got merged into each of the spheres (with a few extra bits merged specifically into Spirit) and Entropy got renamed Fate (for pretty much the same reason I renamed Correspondence) and Death got added in to both make direct necromancy a thing and keep the number of spheres at nine.

I understand it from perspective of game balance though I have to admit as with druids/warlocks/priest I prefer metaphisical distinction here rather than easy gameplay.
(Entropy as Fate is a good thing though - fits Nine Traditions much better). So in a way lack of Death, and speciality of fantasy necromancers is good thing for me - as honestly they never was a thing in real life till modern fantasy - I mean necromancer per se was a more educated version of Shaman that could talk with spirits, zombie was result of proto-NWO mind-fucking, other beings were unnatural cursed abominations not your regular sphere - more qlippothic in origin than anything.
So while Prime is sort of weird and not cool to use, I for Prime and anti-Death. (Not to mention lack of Death as one of vital elements of reality has nice monotheisitc taste to it ).

QuoteA related reason for the change was also that I needed easy ways to represent other supernaturals, many of whom have much stronger ties to death, using the same mechanics as sphere magic because they've always shown up as NPCs in my Mage campaigns, but I wasn't about to rewrite all of the abilities of those games just for some NPCs.

Ah, ok - I must say I'd just keep sups abilties to be distinctly different than those of mages.
I generally treat most of other races - especially vampires and werewolves in my vision as result of ancient very complex magic, so they are very... emergent to the Spheres per se, and cannot be reduced to Sphere effects as mages knows them.

QuoteI think Mage: The Awakening's arcana are an improvement. Though I still find both very lacking. I prefer something like the Dark Ages: Mage magic system where every magical tradition has its own set of magic skills.

I think description and clearness of Awakening is better. Metaphysical design, and 5 kinds of mages, not so much.
And universalism of magic is also definitely good thing - why would I want separate magic systems for all Traditions.

QuoteI like Lost over Dreaming, too. Nonetheless, I recognize that some people don't like the whole "you were abused by fairies" angle. So I'd offer an olive branch by allowing "exile fey" as a PC option: they're fairies who decided to live in the human world and adopt human ways.

Not bad. I'd go different way - not all Changelings are kidnapped victims. Some are more like refugees taken by more benevolent fae or something. As much as you can say about benevolence/malevolence among them. Anyway energies of Faerie Domain shall change anyone who wanders there. I think I prefer that over giving Faeries actual possibility to bred true with humans.

QuoteThis is why I prefer to invent my own setting rather than try and parse which iteration of the IP I find less offensive.

The whole zoophilia thing is just unnecessary and could have been replaced by humans having sex with wolf gods rather than literal wolves. Woman has sex with wolf god, she becomes pregnant with wolfblood. Man has sex with wolf goddess, she becomes pregnant with wereblood wolf.

As I said I prefer to rewrite things I don't like rather than whole setting.

QuoteI saw the author advertising it all over tvtropes years ago, but I never saw the appeal. You can hack Mage to do the same thing, as WW eventually did in Mage Chronicler's Guide.

In a way it is Son of Aether: The Game, but I like setting and its overall weirdness.

QuoteI don't see the problem here. You can have a bazillion strains and sub-strains of vampires. What's stopping you?

Well I like 13 clanes

QuoteMy issues with the setting and the rules are non-trivial. I'm not going to play a game I don't like because someone is trying to sell me something. WoD is a dying brand anyway, so there's never been a better time to invent your own setting.

Sure. Go for it. As I said I'm not setting creator.
I'm setting fixer, or setting Dr. Frankenstein if you prefer.

QuoteI never understood how you can maintain high humanity at the same time you accumulate a laundry list of superpowers. Wouldn't using the powers offered by vampirism make you more susceptible to its darkside? Why not play a superhero game and make a PC with vampire powers?

Depends what you eat and how you it, in my perspective tbh.
And sure you won't get them as fast and powerful as ruthless murderers but still you'd be more on equal footing than mortal.

QuoteI never got the appeal of the Technocracy. I vastly preferred Nephilim's secret societies in concept: normal human beings who know the supernatural exists and hunt down wizards to drain magic for their own gain. Not all secret societies were like that, but those were the ones most relevant as antagonists. (It was basically "Illuminati: The Conspiracy" if you're familiar with that old homebrew.)

I never really liked concept of draining magic - magic is craft, art, not some energy within

QuoteYou might be fine using a modified WoD/CoD setting/rules now, but that might change in the future. Particularly if you keep making changes and can't silence your niggling doubts about the game's fit for you.

I'm quite sure when I finish my shenanigans and try to run my hybrid - it's not gonna be even on Storyteller engine, nevertheless still WOD enough for it to be WOD-ish.

Quote from: Wicked Woodpecker of West on February 25, 2021, 04:43:13 AM

QuoteI like Lost over Dreaming, too. Nonetheless, I recognize that some people don't like the whole "you were abused by fairies" angle. So I'd offer an olive branch by allowing "exile fey" as a PC option: they're fairies who decided to live in the human world and adopt human ways.

Not bad. I'd go different way - not all Changelings are kidnapped victims. Some are more like refugees taken by more benevolent fae or something. As much as you can say about benevolence/malevolence among them. Anyway energies of Faerie Domain shall change anyone who wanders there. I think I prefer that over giving Faeries actual possibility to bred true with humans.

I remember that being discussed after Lost came out. IIRC the consensus was that if genuinely "benevolent" keepers did exist, then their guests would never want to leave. A fairy offering an escape to a fantasy world where all your wishes come true? What kind of person, in what kind of position, would accept that offer? How many of those who accept will ever want to leave? How long do you think it would take before they forgot they were ever human in the first place?

Remember Disney's Peter Pan? That's a perfect example of a "benevolent" keeper. Neverland tricks children into staying by providing them with endless adventures until they eventually forget they ever lived anywhere else.

In Spielberg's Hook, the situation is reversed. Peter Banning is a changeling who escaped Neverland, Captain Hook is the keeper trying desperately to win him back so they can keeping playing forever.

And now I'm remembering why I always thought Lost was the best game WW ever produced.