Quote from: Ian AbsentiaPlease note, though, that people here are referring to 1st edition Vampire: the Masquerade, which existed before there was an oWoD.  Really, it was kind of a cool, neat little game before they got going on the whole proto-metaplot that eventually gave way to full-on metaplot.

!i!

Ah, I see. Well played. You win.

So we're talking pre-Werewolf, pre-everything, back when the Sabbat had one sentence in the back of the book and there were only 6 clans? Right. That shit was dope. Yea, that Vampire was better than Requiem, but Requiem is better than Revised. So we're all right in a sense. Revised is an older edition, so my claim still stands for me. Revised sucked.

The only problem with 1e Vampire is that it always reminds me of that friggin' Kindred TV show.

-=Grim=-

Quote from: jrientsFor what I personally want out of an RPG, I totally agree.  EPT provided a crazy great backdrop for cool fauxriental* pulp adventure.  Somewhere along the way the setting took over.

*Did I just make up that word?

I greatly prefer the "crazy cool game of dungeoneering" to "fantasy ethnography and linguistics". Unfortunately, the fanbase is in disagreement.

Quote from: GrimJestaAh, I see. Well played. You win.

In a perfect world, we both win.  Even now, I can recall buying the actual World of Darkness sourcebook for V:tM 1st ed, and feeling both excited that it was opening the world up to vampiric roleplaying, and feeling that they got so very much of it wrong.  To its credit, Requiem seems to have tried to recapture some of that feel from 1e, the sense that local politics are what really matter, not globe/era-spanning machinations.

QuoteThe only problem with 1e Vampire is that it always reminds me of that friggin' Kindred TV show.

Yeah, but so do Blade and Soul Man for me.

!i!

Requiem loses the "cold war" feel, that its earlier iteration had, where you couldn't really escape or defeat the system. There you have a plethora of factions, clans, bloodlines (I especially hate those- I hated the idea in VtM Rev. and I hate them now), which basically get along and you need a bunch of external threat (Like VII and Belials Brood) to make stories interesting again.
I like the cleaner system of the nWoD and I like the fact, that VtR is integrated closer into the rest of the WoD.
I even think VtR is maybe the better game, i.e. greater variety of adventures the players can have- just not the kind I am interested in.

And I agree earlier editions of Masquerade were waaaay better than Revised.
Same for Star Wars D6, Deadlands (compared to Deadlands D20- but than most of the early D20 conversions sucked), L5R 1st Edition, Changeling: the Dreaming 1st Edition...

Quote from: stu2000I'm torn on T&T. I like several things about 7th, but I keep a lot of 5th.

I know what you mean. 7th ed is, I think, a better system (wizardry points!), but 5th ed is a better read and a fun, playable game. Easier to navigate and play, I think.

Quote from: Ian AbsentiaPlease note, though, that people here are referring to 1st edition Vampire: the Masquerade, which existed before there was an oWoD.  Really, it was kind of a cool, neat little game before they got going on the whole proto-metaplot that eventually gave way to full-on metaplot.

I'm trying to count... There were three editions of V:TM, weren't there?

Quote from: Serious Paul3rd edition Shadowrun trumps fourth edition pretty easily in my book.

And 2nd trumps 3rd.

Quote from: MetrivusAnd 2nd trumps 3rd.

My players drug me kicking and screaming to third edition, so I have to be a good citizen and stand by it. Or they'll put the boots to me again.

Quote from: CabI'm trying to count... There were three editions of V:TM, weren't there?

Yes, but I'm told the 2nd didn't deviate so much from the 1st, as the 3rd did from the second (unless you count later sourcebooks, whee you were beginning to see the powercreep and metaplotty-weirdness that would plague 3rd).

Quote from: alexandroI like the cleaner system of the nWoD and I like the fact, that VtR is integrated closer into the rest of the WoD.
I even think VtR is maybe the better game, i.e. greater variety of adventures the players can have- just not the kind I am interested in.

And I agree earlier editions of Masquerade were waaaay better than Revised.

I feel strongly that Requiem is the game that the current guard wish they could put in the way-back machine and send to Mark Rein-Hagen back in 1990.  A cleaner system of mechanics, a more consistent backdrop, but with the innovative spark and energy the original edition had.

Can you tell that I was a big fan of the game for the first 5 years or so of it's publication history?

By the way, there were a total of three "editions" of Vampire: the Masquerade.  Second ed was more or less a cleaned-up and more professionally produced version of the 1st ed, and perhaps should have just been called "revised".  The 3rd edition was more genuinely a new edition in that it deviated in significant ways from its two predecessors, but they chose to call it "revised" instead of identifying it as a new edition.  Go figure.

!i!

I may be talking out of an inappropriate orifice* but comparing Talislanta 1/2e with Tal 4e, I think they made a mistake in altering the magic system from being based on spell lists to using an improvisational effects-based approach. Apparently the Tal community/creators/publishers agreed and decided to go back to spell lists, but 5e doesn't seem to be thriving, exactly.

Effects-based spells just tears the heart out of the explorational, gadget-filled feel of the game, particularly when it was accompanied by a meta-game explanation that spellcasters aren't really improvising magic, they just know so many spells that the players have to make them up on the spot. In other words: the system's a thin facade.

The rest of the changes from 2e to 4e I'm not so sure about, but the relative simplicity of archetype-based character advancement in 2e, even with HP-per-level, somehow appeals to me in spite of my general preference for skill-based games, which is what 4e is. Maybe it's because the world itself is so complex, and there's such a variety of starting character types, that it seems better to go with the stark simplicity and clearcut differentiation offered by the earlier rules.

*I've only read bits of 4e and my experience with 2e is just reading, not playing.

I liked Vampire's later editions corebook more than the previous incarnations...I didn't really get into the whole sourcebook race (I ran Hunter, Vampire and Mage from their revised corebooks alone and had an awesome time!). They just had more options and three-dimensional antagonists that the ealier editions just didn't have.

Quote from: MetrivusAnd 2nd trumps 3rd.

Look at the mess that is called "SR2 skill default chart" and compare it to the nice clean chart from SR3.

Then again, SR2 didn't hit me with the useless skill diversion between shotguns, rifles, assault rifles and what not...

I would now go in opposition to both of you and say SR4, but they tossed everything redeeming away (like pool management and a character creation that's actually fun to use), just to turn deckers and riggers into something playable...

I thought BESM 2nd was better than BESM 3rd (and SAS and Ex Machina, though I am not sure if they count).

This will be controversial, but I also liked Spycraft better than Spycraft 2.0.  The latter does have some stuff I like, but the first one felt more focused and was easier to get into.  2.0 tries to do too much.

Quote from: RezendevousI thought BESM 2nd was better than BESM 3rd (and SAS and Ex Machina, though I am not sure if they count).

This will be controversial, but I also liked Spycraft better than Spycraft 2.0.  The latter does have some stuff I like, but the first one felt more focused and was easier to get into.  2.0 tries to do too much.

And by the same token, I liked D20 Modern better than Spycraft.

Seriously, though, I think that BESM 2nd is pretty much perfection of the system- PMVs just made a mess of things, and I don't wanna even step in the direction of Tri-Stat dX, which made all the same mistakes that SAS did and horrifically neutered OBM on top of that.