Quote from: san dee jota;946844Some good ideas, but I think it ignores the key draw of the WoD in the 90's: you play a super-powered monster beating up puny mortals, because you feel inadequate in your (real) life.

Well sure, but I think a game an retain that appeal of "I'm different because Im magic!" without needing to cater to the juvenile power fantasies that turned a high-concept horror RPG into "Poppy Z Brite does Highlander"

QuoteCan you separate the social metaphor from the horror?

Im not sure id want to, but the advantage of metaphor is that fantasy/horror can work on whatever level a person wants to read into it, and still retain its strength as entertainment, especially when there are multiple  layers of meaning. A vampire story can be enjoyed divorced of the rape analogy, just as The princess and the Frog can be entertaining without talking about how its about penises.

Quote from: Doc Sammy;946868But I want to abolish personal horror from my World of Darkness games, not redefine it. I prefer action horror and political intrigue instead. Trenchcoats and Katanas with politics and NO metaplot or personal horror whatsoever.

What is "action-horror"? Horror is an emotional reaction that is subjective, i.e. personal. I find very little in Vampire Hunter D horrific. It's just stylized action (which is fine - it's a great anime).

Are you talking about action with over-the-top gore? You cut someone and 60-ft scarlet rooster-tails of blood go shooting in the sky and rain down in a 200-yard radius? That kinda stuff?

Quote from: Simlasa;946875But do people want that? I think that part of the appeal of the zombie apocalypse stuff is that here is a horde of monsters that can be killed without any repercussions or suspicions of bad intentions... they've got no families, children, relationships, culture. We can be as violent as we want towards them... and not feel guilty. We can't show the good guys casually killing populations of the people we are REALLY worried about... but no one is going to stand up for the undead (except for the occasional crazy/confused person, as shown on The Walking Dead).

I guess it depends on the person, but the point of wod was casting the pcs in the role of the monsters. I used zombies to illustrate my  point, but personally I dont care for them at all mainly for the reasons you bring up. But to take that scenario and then twist it, making the invading Other the protagonist rather than cannon fodder, seems to me an interestingly modern update on the personal horror genre.

Quote from: Tristram Evans;946879I guess it depends on the person, but the point of wod was casting the pcs in the role of the monsters. I used zombies to illustrate my  point, but personally I dont care for them at all mainly for the reasons you bring up. But to take that scenario and then twist it, making the invading Other the protagonist rather than cannon fodder, seems to me an interestingly modern update on the personal horror genre.

The main problem I'm seeing is that the Other is typically a minority.  Someone without much in the way of power, trying to function at the whims of the majority.  But RPGs (at least the commercially successful ones people actually give a flip about) are about power trips and wish fulfillment.  You go look at the cWoD and it's all about hidden secret monsters and their fear of the masses of mortals, but then it turns around and gives you all sorts of incredible super powers to make mortals irrelevant.

So how do you make the Other into something for personal horror?

Quick and easy fix: the monsters are out in the open.  You still play a vampire, or a werewolf, or a mage, or whatever, but everybody knows who you are, what you are, and they have a rough idea of how to destroy you.  "But my kewl powerz!"  Fine, keep them.  By the time you get enough dots in your Disciplines (to use VtM terms) to not need to worry about mortals, the game is changing and humans are learning the deeper parts of your lore.  The horror isn't about overcoming their fear and your own hunger all while exposed to society.  Now the horror is about not going apeshit and getting the US military on your heels.  Because with great power comes great hunger.  Meanwhile, politicians are talking about rounding you all up in camps for the safety of others, samaritans try to pretend you -aren't- a flesh starved abomination as they fight for your rights (which ends badly for you and them both), and all around you the Jyhad keeps churning despite the world.

I mean, this has been done before (heck, I posted a version of it in this thread), but it's always been done through a "live and let live" kind of lens.  Here we're pushing for a more "we don't want you around, but we haven't figured out how best to round you all up".  Mark Rein*Hagen's "I Am Zombie" took the approach of being set about 15 days/minutes/weeks before the zombie apocalypse began with PCs as (mostly) hidden zombies.  I wonder if maybe that's what is needed here, with the monsters being out in the open, and the game set 15 minutes before the world leaders decide to start shipping them off to "protection camps".

Quote from: san dee jota;946905The main problem I'm seeing is that the Other is typically a minority.  Someone without much in the way of power, trying to function at the whims of the majority.  But RPGs (at least the commercially successful ones people actually give a flip about) are about power trips and wish fulfillment.  You go look at the cWoD and it's all about hidden secret monsters and their fear of the masses of mortals, but then it turns around and gives you all sorts of incredible super powers to make mortals irrelevant.

So how do you make the Other into something for personal horror?

Quick and easy fix: the monsters are out in the open.  You still play a vampire, or a werewolf, or a mage, or whatever, but everybody knows who you are, what you are, and they have a rough idea of how to destroy you.  "But my kewl powerz!"  Fine, keep them.  By the time you get enough dots in your Disciplines (to use VtM terms) to not need to worry about mortals, the game is changing and humans are learning the deeper parts of your lore.  The horror isn't about overcoming their fear and your own hunger all while exposed to society.  Now the horror is about not going apeshit and getting the US military on your heels.  Because with great power comes great hunger.  Meanwhile, politicians are talking about rounding you all up in camps for the safety of others, samaritans try to pretend you -aren't- a flesh starved abomination as they fight for your rights (which ends badly for you and them both), and all around you the Jyhad keeps churning despite the world.

I mean, this has been done before (heck, I posted a version of it in this thread), but it's always been done through a "live and let live" kind of lens.  Here we're pushing for a more "we don't want you around, but we haven't figured out how best to round you all up".  Mark Rein*Hagen's "I Am Zombie" took the approach of being set about 15 days/minutes/weeks before the zombie apocalypse began with PCs as (mostly) hidden zombies.  I wonder if maybe that's what is needed here, with the monsters being out in the open, and the game set 15 minutes before the world leaders decide to start shipping them off to "protection camps".

I like that idea. It could almost be set up as "V For Vendetta with Vampires".

Another approach might be to model this on I Am Legend. The vampire apocalypse has happened, and in the wake of it, while the supernaturals are trying to form  a society and establish their own civilizations, the remaining humans become the monsters, the bogeymen - savage creatures from another time that come out in the daytime and kill, seemingly without empathy or reason.

But this is by far not the only approach. Supernaturals could represent a culture foreign and feared by a civilization that wants to see them exploited and/or eradicated. Replace the Middle East with a Darkness Dimension that humanity accidentally opened a portal to. Imagine a modern-day Dune, replacing Dessert Worm-worshipping Fremen with enclaves of night-dwellers.

This is how I've always run the WoD.

The monsters are crazy powerful...but their weaknesses and presence are known to mortals in power. AKA, a bit like Suicide Squad or other comics where mortals of political power sometimes ally with the supers (good or bad) and sometimes hunt them down and sometimes sides with one faction vs. the other.

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Quote from: Spinachcat;946925This is how I've always run the WoD.

The monsters are crazy powerful...but their weaknesses and presence are known to mortals in power. AKA, a bit like Suicide Squad or other comics where mortals of political power sometimes ally with the supers (good or bad) and sometimes hunt them down and sometimes sides with one faction vs. the other.

Like myself... more like Dresden Files, Charmed, Witchcraft or Armageddon. Humanity isn't stupid and it isn't weak. And when we know what is up we're deadly when in groups no matter what. It's why even Mages hide even though they are right in the open. Their orders are right there but not right there given the first tier are sleepers. To understand anything you need to be at least a Second Sight type or sleepwalker(2nd tier). Sleeper Hunters just go insane and die without having a clue why they are dying. Just ugly. Think Blade but with 4-5 other super champions each with different specialties  at the low end. Humanity doesn't know the real deal because it will drive them insane at best and kill them straight up at worst.

Second Sight types aren't to be played with or disrespected and the vast majority are in the Six Orders. And the reason why the Orders can be in plain sight yet not at the same time.

They need an in..sleepwalker Hunters are VERY bad news for example. Basically Duadain like CtD but turned to 11. Humans with a goal/tools/weapons and fear/hatred of a specific group. All this without dealing with the groups that can deal with mages on THIER favored terms..... Banishers, Scelesti, Seers, The Mad... screw actually messing with the other supernatural groups unless they get a case of "the stupids". It's up to the sleepwalkers and Second Sight types to be that buffer because mages are curious and obsessed. When interested they are big trouble for any faction depending on the individual mage's goal or worse their cabal's goal.

Mage sight pings EVERTHING supernatural everything. So now you get why every mage is Harry Dresden from the moment they awaken?

Quote from: Marleycat;946956Like myself... more like Dresden Files, Charmed, Witchcraft or Armageddon. Humanity isn't stupid and it isn't weak. And when we know what is up we're deadly when in groups no matter what.

honestly, the most terrifying thing in the world to me is a group of humans motivated by base emotions.

Exactly. We are smart and deadly and hate being played as fools.

Quote from: san dee jota;946905But RPGs (at least the commercially successful ones people actually give a flip about) are about power trips and wish fulfillment.

A bit of a broken record on this but this isn't true of CoC and it is one of the biggest RPGs of all time (although it peaked in the 80s).

Quote from: Voros;946975A bit of a broken record on this but this isn't true of CoC and it is one of the biggest RPGs of all time (although it peaked in the 80s).

Okay, we're digressing, -but-....

CoC is all about exploring the dark alien occult nature of the world, and blowing it up with dynamite and guns.  It's taking a horror movie fan, and letting them act out how much smarter and better they'd be if -they- were the ones in the movie.  And then, just when your character is half-dead and half-mad, the game ends and you role up a new character for the next scenario (a.k.a. "1ed CoC didn't have rules for healing because it didn't expect anyone to survive*").

The power trip and wish fulfillment isn't as blatantly obvious as it is in Vampire (in part because they use different definitions of "power" and explore different "wishes"), nor is it one that's universally shared ("if I can't stop the stars from being right, I don't want to play"), but it's still there.

(*I don't know whether the omission was intentional or accidental, but some people have speculated it was -intentional- for that reason)

Depends how it's run a lot of CoC sessions I was in ended in TPK and no one felt cheated.

So I was thinking more on what a modern take on the cWoD might look like, and had a few thoughts.

*)  No cross-overs.  I admit I don't like them, but more to the point they promote thematic irrelevance.  You want a game that sucks you in as something more than "I have Five Dots in beating up people with magic", you need a strong theme.  You want horror, you need a strong theme.  You want Marvel's Midnight Sons, you need a different game.

*)  These are very much games about American/European political climates and prejudices, and the goal is to explore the whole "A Beast I Am, Lest A Beast I Become" from a new angle.    

*)  Vampire - Everybody knows about vampires, and they're starting to round them up.  Play up the recent fears of immigrants in growingly Nationalistic environments, except you're the immigrants.  Super powered, blood hungry "immigrants".  No more handwaving of the hunt, no more pretense that you roll a few dice and get X blood points.  You attack people for sustenance -and- power, and there's no avoiding the fact that you are a monster.  And -still- people try to protect your rights, shelter and hide you.  Even after the 3rd Generation wake up and start eating nations on the evening news.

*)  Werewolf - It's over.  Gaia is dead, she just hasn't been buried yet.  The Wyrm is taking its time, resting a bit, because Global Warming, population explosion, and mass extinctions are all unstoppable now.  And here you are stuck with your impotent rage.  And the Tribes -still- jockey for power and relevance, because that's all they know how to do.  And with the Umbra getting webbed off by the Weaver, you're stuck here with them.  So go home, try not to hit your spouse and kids (you love them, but you get -soooo- mad), take out your frustrations on that Nexus Crawler across town (it's almost like an affair now... for both of you), and don't think too much about how your life has lost all meaning.

*)  Mage - It was all a lie.  There was no Technocracy, no Nephandi.  Just people playing political games and arguing about bullshit by using big words to make their fights and themselves seem more important.  You knew you were right once, and that enlightenment powered such great things.  But really... you were arrogant and you were sick and now you're popping pills to keep the schizophrenia under control.  All of you are.  Oh sure you can bend reality to your will, but you're so mentally ill you're not sure if it was a Coincidence or a coincidence any more.  And your friends and enemies aren't much better; some of them are even worse off.  (in other words, it's Mage with characters having some sort of Madness Meters and more self-awareness)

There's a diceless PbtA storygame called Undying that just came out in hardcover.

This is how the evolution of the aging, boring 90's 'goth vampire' setting should go with a new World of Darkness:

[video=youtube;iXpxnxAL62A]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXpxnxAL62A&t[/youtube]


But for real, gimme a world set in Bret Easton Ellis's drug-addled, yuppie-centric, privileged world of The Informers, and I'd be pleased.