Quote from: Snowman0147;841207Most of the games of WoD happen to become stroke fests and cliche clubs.  It never gets into hard politics.  Then again I just avoid the shit and just focus on my campy side ideas.

My games focus less on what's happening here and more on what's going on there. Less politics, more investigative horror. I want to know who or what eats the bones of all those homeless people and why are all the victims bald?

Quote from: jan paparazzi;841183Two excellent posts by tenbones. Great advice in one and a good comparison between masquerade and dark ages.

Did you play requiem as well or requiem for Rome? How do you think that differs from masquerade/dark ages?

thanks!

I've played all of them. Like many - I prefer the NWoD system and I like the Cainite mythology of Classic WoD. I'm not as conflicted about the metaplot as others here because I do what best serves the game and whatever the metaplot is/is not is only there because as a GM I choose to use it.

Requiem is a strange bird to me. It's a wonderful book as is, but because Requiem writ-large is so bare-bones of metaplot I largely use it as a reference with the assumptions the Camarilla never fell in Rome. And rather it's the inspiration for what would become the later Camarilla in Classic.

I have my own syncretic mythology that ties Vampire, Mage and Werewolf lore loosely together. Fortunately with the new NWoD I can mechanically explain this all easier. But I keep the players in the dark about it all because most of them have so much history in playing WoD/NWoD - it's easier to keep them guessing.

It's shockingly easy to use what works from the CWoD in the NWoD. Yet I always see people complaining about it as if it's somehow difficult to port over those ideas. In fact I'd say 90% of the CWoD exists in some form (outside of Mage) in the NWoD. It's a matter of emphasis. Especially in Vampire.

The only tweaks you have to make are the Clans to Bloodlines, and the notion of Vampires losing their memories after torpor (that's all I can think of off the top of my head). Of course disciplines above 5 are a slight problem. But not that hard to use the old ones.

the key, of course, is consistency. I think that's something all GM's should strive for in their games. If you can keep a consistency of texture in your game, especially WoD - it's pure magic. But if you're new to it, it's hard to explore the big conceptual stuff without having waded through the lower-tier styles of play first.

Quote from: Snowman0147;841207Most of the games of WoD happen to become stroke fests and cliche clubs.  It never gets into hard politics.  Then again I just avoid the shit and just focus on my campy side ideas.

Maybe your last point is why you believe the first point? Vampire and most of the WoD games are political by nature. If you're into 'camp' - unless you have a good GM, it'll probably never be your cuppa. But I know a few players that are into campy shit, that had very successful runs in my games. One being a child Malkavian whose split personalities were those of various Marvel super-heroes - Punisher, Batman, and Daredevil. And his sidekick was his ten-year old neighbor he ghouled and had her believe she was Elektra. They'd sneak around the game wasting people or "bringing them to justice" as they called it. It was dark campy shit... hilarious too.

Of course they ended up getting killed by politics.

Quote from: tenbones;841730thanks!

Requiem is a strange bird to me. It's a wonderful book as is, but because Requiem writ-large is so bare-bones of metaplot I largely use it as a reference with the assumptions the Camarilla never fell in Rome. And rather it's the inspiration for what would become the later Camarilla in Classic.

It's shockingly easy to use what works from the CWoD in the NWoD. Yet I always see people complaining about it as if it's somehow difficult to port over those ideas. In fact I'd say 90% of the CWoD exists in some form (outside of Mage) in the NWoD. It's a matter of emphasis. Especially in Vampire.

I think the bare-bones nature of the game is why people find it difficult to port over ideas. Or actually you are more or less forced to port over ideas from other games, books or series or else it remains that bare-bones game. I get most of my inspiration from other sources and while it is easy to make that work within the nwod, I still find it something of a weakness if you always have to go look beyond the game to actually play or GM the game.

Quote from: jan paparazzi;841988I think the bare-bones nature of the game is why people find it difficult to port over ideas. Or actually you are more or less forced to port over ideas from other games, books or series or else it remains that bare-bones game. I get most of my inspiration from other sources and while it is easy to make that work within the nwod, I still find it something of a weakness if you always have to go look beyond the game to actually play or GM the game.

Yeah. "Vampires" is a very narrow mythology. You have Bram Stoker, then Anne Rice, then you have White Wolf which pretty much absorbed everything from Rice, Stoker and everyone else... and that's it. Sure you can cite all the bazillions of vampire-themed content out there, True Blood, Vampire Diaries, Twilight, Underworld - but let's face it, they look like WoD games with a tweak (sometimes not even that).

So Requiem is just there without any real meat, and worse, centers around vampires free of deeper context. It's hard to develop content like that for new GM's...

That said... I think Brian Lumley is pretty unique with his take on Vampires (Necroscope series). I'd love to see a good system to go with that series.

My initial problem with Requiem is that the major threats of Requiem could basically be summed up as "boredom".  Seriously - the actual biggest threat is that as vampires age they need to resort to stranger and stranger shit to stay non-bored, which inevitably pulls younger vampries into a shitstorm of politics.  

Love Blood and Smoke though, fucking Strix are evil and nasty.  Gives the elders much more of a "fiddle while Rome burns" feel.  Which is really what was missing from the setting, V:tM was all about how the 300+ year old vampires had their head up their ass with their idiotic politics that you couldn't possibly avoid.  

It's so much more fun when the politics are deadly but you know that you have to play them to possibly get people to focus on the real issue for a little.

Blood & Smoke was the fix Requiem needed, certainly - no surprise they've renamed it V:tR 2nd Edition now. (Of course, it helps that now the WoD MMO is dead CCP don't really have a reason to say "No" to any of Onyx Path's plans for the line.)

I think a lot of the problems with 1st Edition Requiem came from the fact that on the one hand it needed to distinguish itself from The Masquerade and also set a pattern for how the New World of Darkness would treat its classic splats (because if it didn't feel at least somewhat different people would legitimately ask what the point of blowing up the old setting was), but on the other hand it couldn't depart too much from the Masquerade setting or the old way of doing things because as the replacement for V:tM it needed to scratch more or less the same sort of itch.

Ironically, resurrecting the OWoD lines in their anniversary editions might have been the best thing Onyx Path has done for the New World of Darkness, because it means that both in system terms (with the God-Machine update) and in setting terms they're free to really go to town and make something that has its own distinct feel separate from V:tM, because anyone who's really pining for the old-style setting is buying the V20 products now anyway.

This actually goes back to my problems running games without a core activity. One of the stated goals of WW for WoD 2 games (Demon the Descent, WtF 2, VtR 2, etc) (the redo-s based on god machine) is to ensure that there is a core theme/activity/enemy. Demon = conflict w/ God Machine. WtF 2 - hunting. Lots of the mechanics specifically connect to the theme.

I ran a Demon campaign and loved it. Games built like this are built for GM's - it's easy to run. Everything automatically connects to the theme, easy to figure out what happens next, etc.

Quote from: tenbones;841993Yeah. "Vampires" is a very narrow mythology. You have Bram Stoker, then Anne Rice, then you have White Wolf which pretty much absorbed everything from Rice, Stoker and everyone else... and that's it. Sure you can cite all the bazillions of vampire-themed content out there, True Blood, Vampire Diaries, Twilight, Underworld - but let's face it, they look like WoD games with a tweak (sometimes not even that).

So Requiem is just there without any real meat, and worse, centers around vampires free of deeper context. It's hard to develop content like that for new GM's...

That said... I think Brian Lumley is pretty unique with his take on Vampires (Necroscope series). I'd love to see a good system to go with that series.

Yep, to me it feels like it needs an additional setting book to make it work. A setting on a setting on a setting.

For example: Requiem the Plague in which vampire are slowly dying from a biblical plague. Or Requiem the Hunted in which vampire are being threatened by a group of hunters, turning every city into a battlefield and making it really difficult to keep the lit on it. Or Requiem the Parasite in which vampires are competing with parasitic bloodsuckers for the the same feeding grounds and they are losing.

I got a few more of these ideas for Hunter as well. I think a good setting needs a concept like these.