Quote from: Opaopajr;946162You and me both.

I'll bring the Djarum clove ciggies, you bring the lager & cider for the snakebite. We'll wear mirror shades like Andrew Eldritch and blare out "This Corrosion" on our rest stop breaks. Road trip!

lol, that sounds awesome. And then write up our experiences Hunter S Thompson style.

Quote from: Voros;946161Yeah I never met a player of WoD who is this super serious stereotype. Most of them were the same nerds who played AD&D and wanted to try something different.

The Vampire players I knew are all up in Seattle now, wiccans, and raving SJWs on Facebook. They're dorks... but they're not into self-harm.

So I was doing more work on my Feed strains based on Nightlife and the 90s heartbreakers, and it occurred to me that werewolves and mages could be easily represented by the addiction metaphor in Feed. The rules are flexible enough and it places all the splats on an even playing field (I'm sick of hearing about the power tiers where mages and geists trump everyone because WW/OPP is stuck on unbalanced exception-based rules).

Quote from: Simlasa;946180The Vampire players I knew are all up in Seattle now, wiccans, and raving SJWs on Facebook. They're dorks... but they're not into self-harm.

So many seem to think FB exists as a way for them to rant and rave about their politics, both left and right. It is tiresome.

So, to return to the original stated purpose of the thread...

How I would Make World of Darkness "Great Again"

Step one: build a time machine and travel back to the 90s, when the zeitgeist was relevant.




OKay, that was sarcastic, but its meant to illustrate a point. The 90s WoD, just like The Xfiles, The Matrix, and other media of the 90s was focused on the notion of a secret war going on behind the doors of society.This was a product of the time. The economy was in good shape, the US was not by and large seen as having an external threat, and so fantasy turned inwards to create the threat. But theres a reason this notion isnt popular these days.

The world has changed. The threat people perceive is external, its the "Other". Its the reason that in every way the vampire was the posterchild monster of the 90s, the zombie now dominates the zeitgeist. It perfectly represents that external other: humans that are alien in thought, unreasonable, and unbelievably hostile. The don't want or aspire to any higher forms of civilization, they simply 'live' to devour and destroy society. They are the terrorists. The political extremists. The Othered human Threat of Orwellian nightmares.

So how does that translate into a World of Darkness setting? Well, for one I'd say ditch Anne Rice for Richard Matheson. The vampire apocalypse that inspired and started the zombie apocalypse genre. Ditch the notion of clans/tribes or supernatural social structures: monsters are numerous, violent, inhumanly aggressive, and incapable of reasoning. The supernaturals should be the foreign threat personified. The sudden explosions of barbaric violence in urban life.

So you're sort of suggesting this Tristram:

http://site.pelgranepress.com/index.php/nights-black-agents/

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;946318So you're sort of suggesting this Tristram:

http://site.pelgranepress.com/index.php/nights-black-agents/

Not familiar with the game, but from the description, that's one approach certainly.

Quote from: Voros;946304So many seem to think FB exists as a way for them to rant and rave about their politics, both left and right. It is tiresome.

Agreed, it is tiresome

Night's Black Agents is a good game imo.

Quote from: Tristram Evans;946313So how does that translate into a World of Darkness setting? Well, for one I'd say ditch Anne Rice for Richard Matheson. The vampire apocalypse that inspired and started the zombie apocalypse genre. Ditch the notion of clans/tribes or supernatural social structures: monsters are numerous, violent, inhumanly aggressive, and incapable of reasoning. The supernaturals should be the foreign threat personified. The sudden explosions of barbaric violence in urban life.

I imagine you've looked at the Strain book series by Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan (the books, not the TV series) ? It's very much along those lines (though the ending left me cold). Not great books by any stretch of the imagination but it puts the Vampire back in the role of a vicious predatory creature. 30 Days of Night had a cool vision of vampires as well. And concerning Zombies, the "updated" version of these monsters in Garth Ennis' Crossed is, imho, quite good (basically doing in 96 pages what The Walking Dead painfully tries to do across more than 2000 pages).

Crossed is quite good when Ennis writes it, terrible whenever someone else takes his place.

Quote from: Tristram Evans;946313So, to return to the original stated purpose of the thread...

How I would Make World of Darkness "Great Again"

Step one: build a time machine and travel back to the 90s, when the zeitgeist was relevant.

True.

On the other hand, the 90s are getting distant enough now to have some nostalgia value. I think one good way to enjoy oWoD games would be to just play them as a blast-from-the-past retro experience - turn up the adolescent angst to eleven, cram martial arts and laptops into everything, and have a laugh at all the things you thought were cool when you were that age (with a side of guilty pleasure from admitting to yourself that actually, you still think they're sort of cool, even though nowadays you realise how painfully dumb they were).

I'm not sure if that's making the World of Darkness "great again," mind you. "Fun again," on the other hand...

Quote from: Baeraad;946341True.

On the other hand, the 90s are getting distant enough now to have some nostalgia value. I think one good way to enjoy oWoD games would be to just play them as a blast-from-the-past retro experience - turn up the adolescent angst to eleven, cram martial arts and laptops into everything, and have a laugh at all the things you thought were cool when you were that age (with a side of guilty pleasure from admitting to yourself that actually, you still think they're sort of cool, even though nowadays you realise how painfully dumb they were).

I'm not sure if that's making the World of Darkness "great again," mind you. "Fun again," on the other hand...

I agree with this statement. As for zombies, I never cared for them, except for Resident Evil and High School of the Dead. I hate The Walking Dead with a burning passion.

You seem to hate many trivial things with a burning passion. You may want to pick your battles a bit more.

Quote from: Voros;946381You seem to hate many trivial things with a burning passion. You may want to pick your battles a bit more.

Point taken. Maybe I get too overworked at times.