Quote from: GeekyBugle on February 03, 2022, 08:56:58 PMIf you want to hunt monsters in a modern setting then you need to wait till I'm done with my take on it.

Or do Monster Hunter International.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on February 03, 2022, 08:57:44 PM

Quote from: GeekyBugle on February 03, 2022, 08:56:58 PMIf you want to hunt monsters in a modern setting then you need to wait till I'm done with my take on it.

Or do Monster Hunter International.

Ive heard good things of it. It's based of off Hero no?

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on February 03, 2022, 07:46:50 PM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on February 03, 2022, 06:55:37 PMWoD has always been political in all the worst.

Amen, amen, and a-frickin-men. WOD has always been only interesting by sloughing off the political stuff, and focusing on the leftovers as sort of a-political superheroics if that makes sense.

Sort of like separating the wheat from the chaff. The wheat is absolutely a product of the chaff, but if you don't take it super seriously, the end results are pretty fun. But that is in part working against the desires of the system. The system wants you to take it super serial.

And because WOD is a product of its politics, NOW its all about the support of the Technocracy. Because in modern times the politics is that the people are dumb and can't be trusted with their own opinions, the Technocratic control over others is now seen as the good guys.

Edit: And through its connections to WOD, Exalted is fundementally an obnoxiously infuriating game.

Yeah, I'm currently working on a systemless setting urban fantasy and I pretty much state outright that certain secret societies attract vigilante superheroes. It's an easy way to keep the PCs independently motivated.

I should probably make random generation tables for generating characters and NPCs.

Quote from: Cat the Bounty Smuggler on February 03, 2022, 08:40:22 PM

Quote from: palaeomerus on February 03, 2022, 07:54:05 PM
There was also Hunters were Billy Jake huffs meth and drives a baracuda and triple shot gun bowie knife dynamite arrows gas can them sunsabiches.

...which is why Hunter was objectively the best oWoD game, even though nobody would admit it at the time. Don't @ me.

Also Demon: The Edgelord which at least finally made Vampire's backstory fit with the rest.

Apparently H5 (or whatever) is going to essentially retrofit the premise from HtV. This is going to make the title nonsensical, as the Reckoning was a major in-game event, I guess.

Thankfully, I don't actually care about this shit. I'm not going to waste my time writing screeds about the company sucks and shit. I'm working on my own urban fantasy settings and it's so freeing to just make shit up as it comes to me without worrying how it all fits together.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on February 03, 2022, 08:40:57 PM

Quote from: Cat the Bounty Smuggler on February 03, 2022, 08:31:28 PMOh, god, have they actually brought old Mage back? I can't even imagine the tortured retcons and mental gymnastics you'd have to do to it to make it palatable to the target audience these days.

Here it is off the presses.

QuoteWelcome to the Future

As the third decade of the 21st century dawns, the Technocratic Union stands on the cutting edge of a future imperiled. As science and technology draw humanity closer than ever before, certain factions within the Masses display gross negligence, undermining the Union's work and endangering the world for shortsighted gains. Despite global telecommunications, new frontiers in virtually every field of study, and an understanding of the universe only dreamed of by earlier generations, humanity faces threats on all sides.

Can You Save It?

Climate change threatens to destroy life as we know it. Religious fundamentalism breeds terror around the globe. Diseases, once eradicated in the developed world through vaccination, have returned due to antivaxxer movements. Totalitarian, nationalist governments rise as the Masses succumb to fear of the other. The world stands on the brink of destruction, and it is up to the agents and operatives of the Technocratic Union to save it...or be its ultimate destruction.

Its difficult to root for rebels, when you are the authority.

The irony here is that since the game world operates on consensus reality, all those problems were created by the Union in the first place. I don't know how it's even supposed to make sense. This is an aspect of Mage that I've always despised as someone who is concerned with issues like pseudoscience and anti-intellectualism.

I got banned from a chatroom last year for arguing with a guy who kept promoting dangerous pseudoscience that a moment on Google would disprove. He kept saying stupid shit like "blood transfusions can transmit cancer" and "television screens produce UV rays that give you sunburn." But I was the one who got banned. I really know how to pick them, don't I?

Quote from: GeekyBugle on February 03, 2022, 08:56:58 PM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on February 03, 2022, 06:55:37 PM

Quote from: GeekyBugle on February 03, 2022, 04:17:27 PM
WoD and all it's associated IP has been infected beyond salvation.

WoD has always been political in all the worst ways.

Vampire has an obnoxious counterculture narrative where it's impossible to advance without literally cannibalizing your elders and the fan favorite Sabbat (an apocalypse cult that wants to enslave mankind) is characterized by doing this.

Werewolf has an obnoxious environmentalist message that says human civilization is fundamentally evil and we need a return to anarcho-primitivism under eugenicists who periodically cull the weak.

Mage operates under the premise that science is a lie created by The Man to enslave humanity and everything will be better if we start believing in pseudoscience and homeopathy instead.

Wraith is about fighting slavery in the afterlife, because for some reason the writers didn't think playing dead people with evil split personalities was harsh enough.

Changeling is about how modern civilization sucks, growing up sucks, everything sucks so you might as well retreat into a delusion while you still can until you eventually wither up and die inside.

All of those are political statements. It's an insane franchise that sucks up all the market share in the urban fantasy genre.

If you need vampires, theriantropes, etc as PCs then I have good news for you Actual Fucking Monsters by Grim Jim.

If you want to hunt monsters in a modern setting then you need to wait till I'm done with my take on it.

I have copies of AFM and the AFM Companion, thank you. It's not designed for campaigns tho. PCs are expected to die fairly quickly like the villains in a horror movie, because that's literally what they are.

That works when I'm in the mood for that. Sometimes I'm in the mood for stuff with a number of different character options, factions, etc.

I've checked out games like WitchCraft and Everlasting. I've come to the conclusion that I should make the setting I want on my own, with inspirations from those games I liked.

Quote from: GeekyBugle on February 03, 2022, 09:07:04 PMIve heard good things of it. It's based of off Hero no?

There are different systems that run the setting. The setting baed on a series of books: Monster Hunter International (MHI).
The main thesis of MHI is as follows:

• Guns = Good 100% of the time
• Monsters = Bad 99.9% of the time

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on February 03, 2022, 09:07:58 PM
The irony here is that since the game world operates on consensus reality, all those problems were created by the Union in the first place. I don't know how it's even supposed to make sense. This is an aspect of Mage that I've always despised as someone who is concerned with issues like pseudoscience and anti-intellectualism.

I got banned from a chatroom last year for arguing with a guy who kept promoting dangerous pseudoscience that a moment on Google would disprove. He kept saying stupid shit like "blood transfusions can transmit cancer" and "television screens produce UV rays that give you sunburn." But I was the one who got banned. I really know how to pick them, don't I?

Its also basic human psychology that if you try to censor people or try to disprove them aggressively or from a point of fear, you come off looking as unstable, and make the other person more entrenched in their position. Not that I believe that justifies you being banned. Im always for minimal bans.

Im more bothered by Science-worship, and intelectualism-elevation.

edit: Thinking about it, psuedo-science and intelectual elevation are pretty intrinsincly linked.

Quote from: Jaeger on February 03, 2022, 05:27:40 PM
IMHO, the RPG hobby was as its best when D&D was not as strong as it is now, and the #2 RPG was a different genre from D&D.

In the 90's there was D&D, then we had Vampire/Wod, Shadowrun, WFRP, CP2020, d6Starwars, 7thSea, L5R, Deadlands, MechWarrior, mektonZ, and CoC still banging around.

All talked about, all actively played, with dedicated fanbases. And all available on the shelves at your FLGS...

Now we just have D&D, and D&D's clone, with the flavor of the month rotating the other top three positions...

Not that we'll ever really get back to the swinging 90's... the d20 OGL has done it's work. But IMHO the hobby as a whole is better off when D&D is not the 80'000lb gorilla it is now taking all the air out of the room.

Was there ever actually a year in the 90s where Vampire/Wod, Shadowrun, WFRP, CP2020, d6Starwars, 7thSea, L5R, Deadlands, MechWarrior, mektonZ, and CoC seriously challenged DnD?

Its most likely just nostalgia.

This thread is a natural progression from the previous thread I started, titled; "From WOTC to Hasbro".

Yes, please do carry on....

Quote from: GeekyBugle on February 03, 2022, 09:07:04 PM

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on February 03, 2022, 08:57:44 PM

Quote from: GeekyBugle on February 03, 2022, 08:56:58 PMIf you want to hunt monsters in a modern setting then you need to wait till I'm done with my take on it.

Or do Monster Hunter International.

Ive heard good things of it. It's based of off Hero no?

There is more than one product but the one I have is Savage Worlds. The RPG & Employee handbook is HERO.

The premise is that monsters, ghosts, demons, old things, and other supernatural critters exist and and dangerous and the government pays bounties called PUFF if you kill them. This has led to mercenary groups that track and exterminate monsters, some of whom would pay someone a kickback for a good lead. Not ALL monsters are going to get you a bounty, some live on reservations as as long as they stay there or don't hurt anyone they tend to be left alone. Some just aren't worth that much and so aren't worth the trouble.

MHI follows one such group of a cursed family and their hired hands, some of whom are ex military who hunt monsters and split the bounty for a living and they use special equipment and training and allies to get this done. One of the guys running this business is a werewolf and his daughter and her husband became vampires and ran off.

The werewolf mostly stays in human form and is immune to being hunted because the government also recruits monsters for special forces and black ops teams and they can get you off the bounty list if you otherwise behave. The blackops groups are of course run by scum bags and the worst of the worst who claim they have to do what they do to keep humanity safe. One of the black ops guys is a Frankenstein's monster possessed by a demon who acts as an enforcer and a cleaner for the government.

There are several novels mostly written in first person from the point of view of an accountant who joined MHI after being attacked by a werewolf and accidentally killing it and thus getting a bounty for it along with recruitment offers. He cozies up to the bosses' granddaughter and is told at one point that the universe has plans for him that he probably will not be able to walk away from when it goes down. They fight lovecraft critters, and vampires, a Portugeuse sorcerer, get hired by a billionaire dragon whose hoard is a financial portfolio, and at one point they shake down some royalty redneck elves in a trailer park for answers bribing them with cigarettes and munchies. They get a real troll to do IT for them. They have a mysterious helicopter pilot. They bitch about the government, competitors, each other, the government, the dark forces at work in the world, dark secrets, and they talk about guns a lot. It's a little fast and loose and self-indulgent but usually engaging.

It's pretty fun.

Quote from: Shasarak on February 03, 2022, 11:24:52 PM

Quote from: Jaeger on February 03, 2022, 05:27:40 PM
IMHO, the RPG hobby was as its best when D&D was not as strong as it is now, and the #2 RPG was a different genre from D&D.

In the 90's there was D&D, then we had Vampire/Wod, Shadowrun, WFRP, CP2020, d6Starwars, 7thSea, L5R, Deadlands, MechWarrior, mektonZ, and CoC still banging around.

All talked about, all actively played, with dedicated fanbases. And all available on the shelves at your FLGS...

Now we just have D&D, and D&D's clone, with the flavor of the month rotating the other top three positions...

Not that we'll ever really get back to the swinging 90's... the d20 OGL has done it's work. But IMHO the hobby as a whole is better off when D&D is not the 80'000lb gorilla it is now taking all the air out of the room.

Was there ever actually a year in the 90s where Vampire/Wod, Shadowrun, WFRP, CP2020, d6Starwars, 7thSea, L5R, Deadlands, MechWarrior, mektonZ, and CoC seriously challenged DnD?

Its most likely just nostalgia.

From where do you get the "seriously challenged" part?

I don't see it in Jaeger's post.

Quote from: palaeomerus on February 04, 2022, 12:19:24 AM

Quote from: GeekyBugle on February 03, 2022, 09:07:04 PM

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on February 03, 2022, 08:57:44 PM

Quote from: GeekyBugle on February 03, 2022, 08:56:58 PMIf you want to hunt monsters in a modern setting then you need to wait till I'm done with my take on it.

Or do Monster Hunter International.

Ive heard good things of it. It's based of off Hero no?

There is more than one product but the one I have is Savage Worlds. The RPG & Employee handbook is HERO.

The premise is that monsters, ghosts, demons, old things, and other supernatural critters exist and and dangerous and the government pays bounties called PUFF if you kill them. This has led to mercenary groups that track and exterminate monsters, some of whom would pay someone a kickback for a good lead. Not ALL monsters are going to get you a bounty, some live on reservations as as long as they stay there or don't hurt anyone they tend to be left alone. Some just aren't worth that much and so aren't worth the trouble.

MHI follows one such group of a cursed family and their hired hands, some of whom are ex military who hunt monsters and split the bounty for a living and they use special equipment and training and allies to get this done. One of the guys running this business is a werewolf and his daughter and her husband became vampires and ran off.

The werewolf mostly stays in human form and is immune to being hunted because the government also recruits monsters for special forces and black ops teams and they can get you off the bounty list if you otherwise behave. The blackops groups are of course run by scum bags and the worst of the worst who claim they have to do what they do to keep humanity safe. One of the black ops guys is a Frankenstein's monster possessed by a demon who acts as an enforcer and a cleaner for the government.

There are several novels mostly written in first person from the point of view of an accountant who joined MHI after being attacked by a werewolf and accidentally killing it and thus getting a bounty for it along with recruitment offers. He cozies up to the bosses' granddaughter and is told at one point that the universe has plans for him that he probably will not be able to walk away from when it goes down. They fight lovecraft critters, and vampires, a Portugeuse sorcerer, get hired by a billionaire dragon whose hoard is a financial portfolio, and at one point they shake down some royalty redneck elves in a trailer park for answers bribing them with cigarettes and munchies. They get a real troll to do IT for them. They have a mysterious helicopter pilot. They bitch about the government, competitors, each other, the government, the dark forces at work in the world, dark secrets, and they talk about guns a lot. It's a little fast and loose and self-indulgent but usually engaging.

It's pretty fun.

I know the novels Larry Correia no?

But I only knew about the HERO based game.

Quote from: Shasarak on February 03, 2022, 11:24:52 PM
Was there ever actually a year in the 90s where Vampire/Wod, Shadowrun, WFRP, CP2020, d6Starwars, 7thSea, L5R, Deadlands, MechWarrior, mektonZ, and CoC seriously challenged DnD?[\B]

Seriously challenge D&D?

Hell no.

Although one could argue that at its peak VAMPIRE/WoD got within shouting distance.

But that's not my point.

My point was that D&D was less dominant over the hobby on the whole. Those other games were widely played and part of the general RPG conversation. And available at your local FLGS.

Whereas now days the general RPG conversation is all about 5e, the clone's upgrade, or the Kickstarter flavor of the month.

The hobby no longer has a solid 2nd tier of visible and relatively popular go-to games for those who might want to try something different from D&D.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on February 03, 2022, 06:55:37 PM
Vampire has an obnoxious counterculture narrative where it's impossible to advance without literally cannibalizing your elders and the fan favorite Sabbat (an apocalypse cult that wants to enslave mankind) is characterized by doing this.

Mage operates under the premise that science is a lie created by The Man to enslave humanity and everything will be better if we start believing in pseudoscience and homeopathy instead.

Wraith is about fighting slavery in the afterlife, because for some reason the writers didn't think playing dead people with evil split personalities was harsh enough.

All of those are political statements. It's an insane franchise that sucks up all the market share in the urban fantasy genre.

1: I have or had 1st ed Vampire and back then the Sabbat had not literally sucked all the fun out of the setting yet.

2: I have Mage 1st or 2nd and back then the Technocracy had not literally sucked the fun out of the setting yet.

3: I have Wraith 1st or 2nd and back then the er... whatever... had not literally sucked the fun out of the setting yet.

4: White Wolf went downhill sometime around the advent of the edition treadmill and 2e. And by 3e things were not so much downhill as leaping off a cliff.

x: I have Orpheus, WW RPG and the first installment is fine. Then the second installment... yep, you guessed it. Sucks all the life from the setting. I havent actually gotten to the third part of the set because the 2nd was so freaking depressing. And yeah its political as all hell as the government and law and media and everything else are turned against the PCs. It didnt even get a chance to go downhill. They skipped straight to CLIFF!

x2: Same with Aberrant. Trinity comes along and, yep, things somehow got actually bleaker and more political.

Quote from: Omega on February 04, 2022, 02:20:04 AM
x: I have Orpheus, WW RPG and the first installment is fine. Then the second installment... yep, you guessed it. Sucks all the life from the setting. I havent actually gotten to the third part of the set because the 2nd was so freaking depressing. And yeah its political as all hell as the government and law and media and everything else are turned against the PCs. It didnt even get a chance to go downhill. They skipped straight to CLIFF!

x2: Same with Aberrant. Trinity comes along and, yep, things somehow got actually bleaker and more political.

What sucks the life out of a setting seems difficult to argue - but this last is is objectively backwards. Trinity came out in 1997, two years *before* Aberrant. I briefly got into Aberrant - I liked the concept, but the execution was terrible from the start. (My old pages are here.)

Quote from: GeekyBugle on February 04, 2022, 12:20:36 AM

Quote from: Shasarak on February 03, 2022, 11:24:52 PM

Quote from: Jaeger on February 03, 2022, 05:27:40 PM
IMHO, the RPG hobby was as its best when D&D was not as strong as it is now, and the #2 RPG was a different genre from D&D.

In the 90's there was D&D, then we had Vampire/Wod, Shadowrun, WFRP, CP2020, d6Starwars, 7thSea, L5R, Deadlands, MechWarrior, mektonZ, and CoC still banging around.

All talked about, all actively played, with dedicated fanbases. And all available on the shelves at your FLGS...

Now we just have D&D, and D&D's clone, with the flavor of the month rotating the other top three positions...

Not that we'll ever really get back to the swinging 90's... the d20 OGL has done it's work. But IMHO the hobby as a whole is better off when D&D is not the 80'000lb gorilla it is now taking all the air out of the room.

Was there ever actually a year in the 90s where Vampire/Wod, Shadowrun, WFRP, CP2020, d6Starwars, 7thSea, L5R, Deadlands, MechWarrior, mektonZ, and CoC seriously challenged DnD?

Its most likely just nostalgia.

From where do you get the "seriously challenged" part?

I don't see it in Jaeger's post.

We always have had other games that are not DnD.

At some stage you just have to face the facts that games like Vampire target a niche audience.

Quote from: Shasarak on February 04, 2022, 04:16:14 AM
We always have had other games that are not DnD.

At some stage you just have to face the facts that games like Vampire target a niche audience.

   The difference is like the difference between a product holding 75-90% of the market--dominant, but with some room for other products to serve niches--and it holding 99% of the market, where it suffocates nearly everything else.

Quote from: Armchair Gamer on February 04, 2022, 09:43:05 AM

Quote from: Shasarak on February 04, 2022, 04:16:14 AM
We always have had other games that are not DnD.

At some stage you just have to face the facts that games like Vampire target a niche audience.

   The difference is like the difference between a product holding 75-90% of the market--dominant, but with some room for other products to serve niches--and it holding 99% of the market, where it suffocates nearly everything else.

Well, that and the scope and nature and economics of the niche side of the market is highly diluted compared to what it was, at least in market share.  It was easier for Vampire to hang onto a chunk because it had less competition for second place--less games out there really pushing for second place and far less games period. 

As cheap as it is to put a game out there now, that dilutes it even more.  Heck, for all I know, home brews may be taking a bigger share now. 

The main difference in my home brew stuff now compared to the late 80's or mid '90s (besides having more experience) is that I can put together the materials to do it a whole lost easier.  For my first try at a game in the late 80's, I had to do layout a character sheet very carefully by hand, type it, and then pay a dime a sheet to get it photocopied.  My current try has a character sheet that has evolved 6-8 times in 18 months, and when I want another one I print it for a fraction of a penny.  (And a dime was still actual money in the 80's for some of us, when it was a repeat thing.)  I'm not even published, but my home brew is taking about 20 gamers and growing out of the market for other games right now.  How many people are doing something similar, or maybe using an old rule set and then house ruling it in a similar way?  We don't really know, because they aren't buying, and they aren't playing on online platforms to be counted.