Quote from: RPGPundit;1065595To be fair, Rein-Hagen's vision of the game was much more lame than the katana & trenchcoat thing.

If it is any consolation. He cant Kickstart a board game worth a fuck either.

Quote from: ShieldWife;1065634I don't like V:tM as a game about vampires feeling angst over their declining humanity nor do I necessarily like trench coats and katanas, though I admit it's fun to kick butt once in a while in RPG's.

The kind of V:tM game I like is about political intrigues. Different vampires scheming against each other within the context of Clan rivalries and within the Clans too. The Godfather with fangs, with 7+ Clans instead of five families. Humanity can play a role in this sort of game, but more as a general guideline for how moral a character is, but not as a straight jacket that dominates a players options. In fact, speaking of The Godfather, Michael Corleone does go through a Humanity decline that adds an interesting aspect to the story, but he doesn't fall into a permanent frenzy after settles all family business.

So I think morality is better role played than governed by rolls and numbers. When even the game designers thenselves completely reject their own mechanic, which is what introducing Paths is for Humanity, then you know it's flawed.

I think alot of people play it this way. The intrigues and dealings rather than the battles and angst. Though those come into play too. You especially see this in the LARP. Or at least all the ones I have seen so far have been predominantly intrigue driven.

I play it exactly like Bloodlines.

Lots and lots of urban fantasy questing in a single city.

I do agree with Box that the Storyteller system is awful.

Quote from: CTPhipps;1065939I've always been surprised at how Humanity offends some gamers.

Humanity mechanics which are only punitive offend me

Quote from: RPGPundit;1066381I do agree with Box that the Storyteller system is awful.

What about how good they think all those PbtA RPGs are?

Interesting which targets you picked in this situation.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1066381I do agree with Box that the Storyteller system is awful.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;1066392Humanity mechanics which are only punitive offend me



What about how good they think all those PbtA RPGs are?

Interesting which targets you picked in this situation.

In the hands of better designers I think the ST system could work, but Onyx Path doesn't fit the bill. Without going into philosophy of game design, I think that a game should have rules that promote the gameplay the designers wanted. The problem with the White Wolf games is that they wrote the ST system as essentially an 80s school of generic system (although you argue it doesn't work well), then bolted on personality mechanics that didn't mesh at all.

Personality mechanics are always an iffy thing, given the inherently difficulty of measuring abstract concepts like that. On one hand you don't want to force players to play a way that they don't want to, but on the other you want the mechanics to promote a particular kind of roleplaying. Light side/dark side mechanics are really the only time I have seen this done well, since it gets players invested a lot better than writing wishy-washy prose.

The biggest barrier is that, even if you can mesh the personality mechanics with the rules well, you still need the players to be invested in that inner conflict. A competent designer will realize that isn't always possible and plan accordingly, such as providing multiple kinds of different gameplay that the rules may easily support depending on how much they care about the light/dark side conflict. For example, you could run an angsty campaign in which characters are struggling against the dark side, a non-angsty campaign in which they gleefully descend into darkness, or a moderately angsty campaign in which they are trying to rise to the light side after a life of wickedness.

But calling it "storyteller/ing" is a huge misnomer since it has none of the storytelling mechanics indie games have introduced, like free-form traits. It falls neatly into the 80s school of game design except with a bunch of other stuff crudely tacked on depending on the edition, like personality mechanics and FATE-style aspects.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;1066392What about how good they think all those PbtA RPGs are?

Interesting which targets you picked in this situation.

I don't see the relevance of the question. Those games are awful too, though.