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Alright, it's no secret that I have mixed feelings about the World of Darkness setting by White Wolf. The setting has a LOT of great concepts, but the settings and their great concepts are often ruined by their themes, particularly the ever-pretentious and ever-present theme of "personal horror", which will often turn many a game into a pretentious wangst-fest only enjoyable to the most insufferable of Goths and Punks (or Emo kids, if you're younger), to say nothing of some of the more rotten people on the White Wolf/Onyx Path payroll (most notably Martin Ericsson, Satyros Brucato, Justin Achilli, and the dickhead responsible for the abomination that is Beast: The Primordial). Not to mention the fact that WoD (both Classic and New) has one of the most toxic fanbases in all of tabletop gaming.

But underneath the terrible themes and the awful fanbase there is some good to be found. Vampire: The Masquerade First Edition was awesome (and still is), had minimal metaplot (if any at all), and was a very good game that didn't try to railroad you into personal horror (though it did present personal horror as an option). The same goes for the First and Second editions of Werewolf and Mage, and Street Fighter: The Storytelling Game is still one of my favorite RPG's of all time. It really wasn't until Revised Edition came out did the metaplot go into overdrive and White Wolf adopted its "One True Way" mentality and started to cram personal horror down our throats.

I wanted to go back to the pre-Revised Edition White Wolf, a time before the fanbase was so toxic and dominated by Goths (well, the Goths were always kind of there, but the inmates didn't start running the asylum until Revised). I know that with the current WoD fanbase and the fact that Martin Ericsson is in charge of White Wolf now, I know that we'll never officially go back to those good ol' days.

So instead, it is our duty as Storytellers to invoke Rule Zero and make the World of Darkness great again! As Storyteller, you can eat the chicken and throw away the bone when it comes to WoD. Keep the good stuff about the setting and throw away the metaplot and the personal horror (but if you like personal horror for some reason, you could just keep playing the way WW tells you to), and change the personal horror into a more enjoyable form of horror, Action Horror. It is time we kicked personal horror to the curb and gave the finger to the Goth subculture once and for all!

But enough about my setting hacks, what are YOUR homebrews and changes you make to World of Darkness (both Classic and New)?

Start with whatever rule set you prefer, up to and including nWoD/CoD.

Now get A World of Darkness, 1st edition (http://www.drivethrurpg.com/m/product/340) and bask in its magnificent gonzo radiance.

Done and done. :)

Quote from: The Butcher;945575Start with whatever rule set you prefer, up to and including nWoD/CoD.

Now get A World of Darkness, 1st edition (http://www.drivethrurpg.com/m/product/340) and bask in its magnificent gonzo radiance.

Done and done. :)

A World of Darkness 1st Edition is awesome, I must admit.

Sorry, what's "personal horror"? Dealing with mental illness, depression and other "demons"?

Quote from: rgrove0172;945584Sorry, what's "personal horror"? Dealing with mental illness, depression and other "demons"?

Mostly pretending to feel bad about whatever inhuman things your nonhuman character might do, from what I can tell. Theoretically just those things which were harmful, but practically it would often include any inhuman things.

In a game where you have theoretically chosen to play an nonhuman creature for fun.

I want to take "Dudes of Legend" and "Over the Edge" and create a WoD mashup, with bad ass Katana wielding dudes in Trenchcoats.  
Vampire the Masquerade run as blood powered superheroes defending the night against others of their kind.
Take nWoD, Book of Spirits, and Second Sight and run a mortals game where the PCs hunt down spirits and steal powers from the spirits by binding them to themselves. Why are they doing it?  depends on the person, some want revenge on supernatural critters, others want to BE a supernatural critter, and this is as close as they can get, maybe they want super powers, maybe they want to learn what no one else can teach them.
Take all those game ideas that die hard fans get horribly offended by, and run them to be as fun as possible.

on a side note, I will say that one of the most fun my friends and I have EVER had playing a World of Darkness game was when we ran a super hero campaign.
We built our characters using Freak Legion.  You know, that book from Black Dog Games that was all about how the 'people' created with that book were having their souls raped by multiple demons.
We had Man of Titanium/Titanium Man (the Superman of the comicverse his name and costume changed depending on which comic series was focusing on his adventures, except the comics were based off his adventures not the other way around) A man dedicated to destroying the evil werewolves. A man who could throw a city bus the length of a football field. A man who would regularly outsmarted by the pizza oven at work. (all mental stats were stuck at 1)
Phoenix with an F, the son of Titanium man, he could fly and had fire related powers, slightly smarter then his father, his mother was a werewolf, who apparently became that way after an accident caused by microwaving non-dairy creamer that merged her with the family dog.
Fantastico, the shapeshifter who could turn into anything so long as it was bird related. (Pigeon Power gave him flight, Corvus Claws gave him a claw attack, etc.)
and lastly, Anime-boy, the man ordered by Pentex to keep these 3 morons from killing themselves, and carrying around the recording equipment needed to chronicle their adventures so the writers could create the comics. (so named because he had bright blue hair, that made Cloud Strife's look normal, and was Japanese, the only non-canadian in the group)
Together they went on surreal adventures that made the events of the Tick cartoon, and Grant Morrison's Doom Patrol look sane.

Quote from: rgrove0172;945584Sorry, what's "personal horror"?

Teenage angst and self-hatred, including body horror and everything else that's a perfect analogy for puberty. Just as the Vampire clans were perfect stand-ins for 90s high school cliques, the focus on personal horror was a stroke of genius in audience targeting.

Quote from: remial;945588with bad ass Katana wielding dudes in Trenchcoats.  

Why has no one made a Highlander TV Series RPG?

Quote from: remial;945588I want to take "Dudes of Legend" and "Over the Edge" and create a WoD mashup, with bad ass Katana wielding dudes in Trenchcoats.  
Vampire the Masquerade run as blood powered superheroes defending the night against others of their kind.
Take nWoD, Book of Spirits, and Second Sight and run a mortals game where the PCs hunt down spirits and steal powers from the spirits by binding them to themselves. Why are they doing it?  depends on the person, some want revenge on supernatural critters, others want to BE a supernatural critter, and this is as close as they can get, maybe they want super powers, maybe they want to learn what no one else can teach them.
Take all those game ideas that die hard fans get horribly offended by, and run them to be as fun as possible.

I would so do this unironically

Quote from: Doc Sammy;945573But enough about my setting hacks, what are YOUR homebrews and changes you make to World of Darkness (both Classic and New)?

I like goth as a style, but I don't care for personal horror, and would rather use the Streetfigher manoeuvres, the vampire disciplines, the Changeling Arts and the Werewolf Gifts as magical spells and similar, along with simplified abilities that may allow things like bloodsucking or transformation, but they cost extra, and the chrinos is not towering, it's just an other hybrid form among several, sooo...
Want blood pool? Each point in excess of your own Health cost during Character creation.
Want Blood sucking? Also costs you.
Want to heal by using blood? Another cost.
Want a Werewolf Gift? Cost points.
Want Gnosis? Use  Blood or Ki instead, but may still cost extra.
Want to shapeshift? Each form is bought separately, if you want a Hispo Direwolf or a towering Chrinos, it'll cost more than a regular wolf- or hybrid-form.

In a way, the characters may be treated more like potential heroes, that are accepted or shunned depending on their looks and powers and the GM, being halfbreeds needing to handle rogue elements from other realms or even from the hidden parts of their own world, be it actual vampires and werewolves, vengeful fae, or creatures that looks like demons.

Oh, and no Mage-magic, as Disciplines, Arts and Gifts works far better as far as i'm concerned.

Also, I started to develop my own homebrew into my own game, but it's currently on ice. (See link below for unfinished pdf.)

That's what I'm talking about, so would I

Quote from: Tristram Evans;945590Why has no one made a Highlander TV Series RPG?

My guess would be that the owners of the license have an over-inflated sense of its worth. There is Katanas and Trenchcoats Episode 1: Welcome to Darkest Vancouver. It's a bit tongue in cheek, but also comes from a place of love.

To answer the thread: The only WoD games I have interest in running are Vampire and Mage.

1st Rule: No crossovers. Vampire is Vampire. Mage is Mage. Werewolf is Werewolf. Etc. That's not to say those types of creatures won't show up in a game; they just won't use their specific gameline fluff or powers. Example: In my last Ascension game, set in New Orleans, the players ran into a group of wererats and weregators loosely based off the Assassins and Thieves families in X-Men. They followed their own rules and had their own powers.

2nd Rule: Tracking morality is kind of dumb; players will do or not do horrible things of their own volition. I don't need a stat to track how horrible they are or to punish them. They'll fuck themselves up just fine by themselves.

3rd Rule: On my end, play it straight. The world of Vampire is a political one. The world of Mage is...well it's a lot, but generally not "Doctor Strange" heroics. If you want to do Superheroes with Fangs, feel free. It'll probably even work for a while as you get used up by someone smarter than you. Then you'll fuck up and the Justicars will stake you and leave you out to greet the Sun one last time.  Actions have consequences and I'm a referee, not a storyteller.

That's about it.

There was a pretty detailed fan hack out there called something like Immortal: The Gathering or Immortal: The Quickening.  I always thought the mythology fit pretty well, a secret race of beings who fight mostly amongst themselves and have in their legends a quickly approaching end of things scenario.  Almost tailor-made to plug into OWoD

I don't see the point using the system without the fugliness of "personal horror." Those pathos meters as an alternate lose condition to HP (or virtues for simply losing control), akin to CoC sanity, (e.g. humanity, banality, etc.) is the big reason I find to bother playing those games. The sliding-down-into-the-antlion's-jaws is the big selling point in casting Supers! widget powers in a new genre light.

Otherwise it's a pain in the ass rules light system with too many stats that loosely cross-combine -- until some janknard wants to fart out some bullshit exception-based squee power.

There's better rules light systems to run Supers! with way less overhead. And well, I also just don't get Supers!, too.

I wrote Dreadful & Obscure (http://livresdelours.blogspot.fr/2016/04/dreadful-obscure-osr-meets-vampire.html) because I was tired of the World of Darkness being seen as the "definitive vision" of Urban Horror Fantasy.

D&O is a joke but I'd really like to see something new, something that isn't just (bad) Anne Rice fan fiction. That's always how the WoD looked to me.

Quote from: Opaopajr;945633I don't see the point using the system without the fugliness of "personal horror." Those pathos meters as an alternate lose condition to HP (or virtues for simply losing control), akin to CoC sanity, (e.g. humanity, banality, etc.) is the big reason I find to bother playing those games. The sliding-down-into-the-antlion's-jaws is the big selling point in casting Supers! widget powers in a new genre light.

Otherwise it's a pain in the ass rules light system with too many stats that loosely cross-combine -- until some janknard wants to fart out some bullshit exception-based squee power.

There's better rules light systems to run Supers! with way less overhead. And well, I also just don't get Supers!, too.

This may just be me, but I don't find that the meters in WoD really push the personal horror aspect. Neither did I find that Limit and The Great Curse pushed the idea that Exalts can be really over-the-top horrible people in Exalted. Every time that kind of 'pathos'  has come up in a game I've played it's in spite of the mechanics, rather than because of it.

Maybe it's execution, because I don't have a problem with Sanity in CoC. Though it does play more like an alternate health resource than Humanity does in VtM, IMO.

Quote from: remial;945588Together they went on surreal adventures that made the events of the Tick cartoon, and Grant Morrison's Doom Patrol look sane.

I request, nay, demand you provide more details and access to your back issues on subscription to your newsletter.

Quote from: Tristram Evans;945590Why has no one made a Highlander TV Series RPG?

Because there can be only one.

Quote from: kobayashi;945645I wrote Dreadful & Obscure (http://livresdelours.blogspot.fr/2016/04/dreadful-obscure-osr-meets-vampire.html)

Huh, never heard of it.

Quote from: rgrove0172;945584Sorry, what's "personal horror"? Dealing with mental illness, depression and other "demons"?

It's horror at yourself, what you've done or become.
I like it in horror movies and books... not sure I've seen it portrayed convincingly very often in RPGs. Everyone seems so focused on stats, such things are just pluses or minuses.
Like, we were playing Mazes and Minotaurs the other day. My character failed some checks and got a couple of 'blessings'... which changed her physically as well as giving her powers. I took it as a horrific shock, suddenly becoming a monster, and played it accordingly... to the point that she panicked and passed out. Meanwhile, everyone else in the group saw it as 'Free Powers' and ran over to do the same thing my PC had done that sent her mental. Because mechanically, those mutations buffed us up... with no mechanical down-side (AFAIK).

Quote from: Michael Gray;945647This may just be me, but I don't find that the meters in WoD really push the personal horror aspect. Neither did I find that Limit and The Great Curse pushed the idea that Exalts can be really over-the-top horrible people in Exalted. Every time that kind of 'pathos'  has come up in a game I've played it's in spite of the mechanics, rather than because of it.

Maybe it's execution, because I don't have a problem with Sanity in CoC. Though it does play more like an alternate health resource than Humanity does in VtM, IMO.

Well, after GMing WoD it's noticeable that there's so much flying Attribute+Ability combinations and exception-based powers it's easy to forget these meters. Also Sanity is more in your face, suffers more immediate attrition (because being larger than 10 can suffer quite a bit of damage), and is more structured / less vague than WoD Frenzy & Humanity(Path) Loss. Also more CoC modules tack encounters with quantifiable SAN loss and defined tripwires, whereas WoD adventure/campaign material is just as loosey-goosey with encounters as it is with seemingly everything else.

I'd be comfortable saying Chaosium does a better job presenting how to use CoC versus WW for its splats -- and BRPs/CoC is a simpler, receding, more robust chassis than Storyteller.

(I speak nothing about Exalted. Like Mage I find nothing interesting about those lines and thus don't follow them.)

Quote from: Tristram Evans;945590Why has no one made a Highlander TV Series RPG?

actually, the group that did the CCG also did an RPG.  Sorta.  I got to play a pre-release version of it at the first con I went to. (where I also played the CCG)
for those of you fortunate enough to have missed out on the CCG, your persona, or character or whatever had a 3x3 grid that you put defense cards in, then each round you would play attack cards that would strike 3 adjacent locations.  High attacks would hit the top 3 (and cut off your head, winning the game), there were also low attacks, left, right, diagonal, and center attacks.  If you were playing as one of the characters from the shows or movies, you could get special attacks that were specific to those characters.
Why am I bringing up the mechanics for a bad CCG, well that is because guess what the default combat system for the RPG was?
I don't really remember the CCG well, I played it once with a borrowed deck (the local game store refused to stock the game it was so bad).  there was a reason you couldn't just spam head attacks, but I'll be damned if I remember why.
Anyway, the CCG tanked very badly, and ended up costing the company everything they had sunk into the RPG (which also had an optional dice based combat system, but they wanted you to ignore that).

I hate to be 'that guy' but I have to ask this honestly, with no snark, but what made it great in the first place?

Quote from: Christopher Brady;945743I hate to be 'that guy' but I have to ask this honestly, with no snark, but what made it great in the first place?

Wait, are we talking about #America, or #TheWorldOfDarkness? I get confused here sometimes.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;945743I hate to be 'that guy' but I have to ask this honestly, with no snark, but what made it great in the first place?

It's easy to grok intro to chargen AND feel all warm, fuzzy special from the onset. That and d10s give false assurances that "the maths" are so simple, everyone can do it!

That's pretty much it.

It's a bean bag of a chassis. Which also implies it gets dated and outgrown just as fast as tastes mature, too. Expecting more from it seems unfair to me. Just enjoy the moment in time that it is for what it is, I say.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;945743I hate to be 'that guy' but I have to ask this honestly, with no snark, but what made it great in the first place?

It was a good conversation starter with hot goth chicks in the 90s.

Quote from: Tristram Evans;945762It was a good conversation starter with hot goth chicks in the 90s.

As much as I hate the Goth subculture, I can see why people liked this aspect of the game.

Don't write the factions as a parody of high school cliques, real ethnic groups, the radical left or as fads writ large? Don't write the conflict as humanities majors versus science majors?

Werewolf is a contrived setting where ecoterrorism and genocide are morally good. The tribes include manhating lesbian feminist parodies, neonazis, drunken irishmen, technophiles, and all the non-white people below the poverty line in America.

Mage has wicca, kungfu, virtual reality and drugs among others. The villains are literally the Renaissance and Enlightenment schools of thought.

I could go on but I am tired of hearing about these games and their fans who sent death threats for publishing Mage Revised. The writers aren't much better: at one point in M20 a sidebar complains that social media is too alienating and the updated for millennium traditions are literally lunatic SJWs, and the V20 companion makes vampires who use social media look like morons (e.g. The bruhaha broadcast the location of their flashmobs so the ventru can send police to arrest them, and the nosferatu try to bury videos of supernatural phenomena using troll comments on youtube rather than fabricating makeup and SFX tutorials to discredit whistle blowers.)

It was never great. If you want to make it great, play Monsterhearts, Urban Shadows or Monster of the Week instead. If you prefer personal horror done right, play Feed.

I like the Chronicles of Darkness's stuff.

Quote from: PencilBoy99;945811I like the Chronicles of Darkness's stuff.

I like New World of Darkness First Edition. Don't care for the 2E Chronicles stuff though.

Quote from: Doc Sammy;945573But enough about my setting hacks, what are YOUR homebrews and changes you make to World of Darkness (both Classic and New)?

Caveat 1: Me and my group do Mage: The Ascension and ONLY Mage: The Ascension and specifically with a 2nd Edition ethos so every other story element and thing else in the World of Darkness only exists to the extent that it services that setting.

Caveat 2: The campaign world I run has been ongoing for nearly a quarter century now (not with the same players and we've ended the stories of particular sets of PC's and started new ones, but the world has been persistent and ongoing) and upwards of 90% of the NPCs are actually old PC's from previous games. This colors a LOT of things.

So, the first and most important thing is that Gehenna/Apocalypse/Armageddon/End of the World was played out in the campaign about ten year ago and the PC's at the time kicked its ass. It was basically the worst version of every possible event with the Antidiluvians as the original Nephandi Lords (who commanded all the forces of the Wyrm) and the Nameless leading them all. But the PC's at the time were heavily Hermetic and hit upon an idea so universally cool it couldn't not work. See, per the story the Nameless had literally sacrificed its True Name to the Outer Darkness, which supposedly made it untouchable since you could not affect something without a name.

So the PC's did the opposite.

They cooked up the mother of all Correspondence, Mind and Spirit rituals using the shard of the World Tree to do one simple thing... to reach out to and share a simple thought with every last soul and spirit for just one moment; Everything that exists has a name, so if something has no name it doesn't actually exist. And the collective beliefs of creation agreed and so all that the Nameless had ever done and been was undone as if it had never been because something that didn't exist couldn't do anything. The last vision the PC's had of the Nameless was of him striking futilely at them before he faded away and even the PC's forgot he had ever existed. That particular story for those PC's ended with the group happily around a dinner table making plans for their futures.

Long story short: The World hit the bottom of the Wheel of Ages and, thanks to one group of PC's is now on the slow upswing. I refer to the setting for new players as "The Dark Fantastic." The world is dark and dangerous, but also wondrous and full of possibilities for those willing to grab them. Hope, while still not assured, is no longer in vain and "Earn Your Happy Ending" is the name of the game.

In the years since, various PC's have played instrumental roles in the restoration of many of the old 2nd Edition Mage elements while holding onto a few of the more interesting 3e/Revised elements (most notably the more humanized Technocracy). The Avatar Storm ended, Horizon was re-established, the Technocracy had a civil war that ended with a schism between the "Rebel Technocracy" (the Protect the Masses moderates who had been getting by on Earth who think harassing Tradition Mages who keep their heads down is a waste of resources and have even joined forces with the Traditions at the local level to stop Nephandi and other dark powers from harming innocents) and the "True Technocracy" (The 1e pogram-loving diehards who spent the previous decade sequestered in the Umbra who view the "Rebels" as just as much an obstacle to their Time Table as the Traditions).

There have been a few NWoD-ish elements that worked their way into the story. Most notably is that the Tremere stopped being vampires. After reading the signs of the End of Days, discerned that, just as they transformed themselves from mages to vampires to escape the dying magic, that they must again transform themselves to survive the rise of the Antediluvians. While the rest of the supernatural community (save a few PCs) believes the Tremere destroyed themselves in some mass ritual gone wrong, they actually became magic-wielding wraiths who use ritually prepared mortals as vessels. They've been the players behind a number of schemes over the years.

Finally, while we'd always been reasonably house-ruled, about five years ago now we went did a deep rewrite of the entire game engine that also incorporated a few NWoD elements along with things picked up from other systems. You can find it HERE (https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B8uzbbLvQJOLRWtSaVU4M3A5M0E) if you want to check it out.

Hunter is an interesting take but I've never played it.

Personally, I'd have gone the whole X-Files route with Hunters Hunted being the focus of the world.  But then, I freely admit that I HATE Vampires.  So really, don't what I say all that seriously.

So I cooled off and decided to look at this with a clearer head.

• ditch the ST system and use something that isn't outmoded and broken
• ignore the WoD vs CoD distinction: cherry pick, mix and match, have badwrongfun!
• ditch the separate settings and let everyone play together, since you're using a different ruleset anyway
• ditch the absurd themes of the games and base the factions on the (American) political axis: Stormfront, Democrat, and SJW.
• Stormfront is the current ruling faction and the PCs are members of the subservient Democrat faction expected to overthrow them. The SJWs are the loony faction trying to conquer/destroy the world as we know it.
• Everyone has Arcane Fate/Occultation, so most muggles rationalize the paranormal as terrorists and vigilantes. Monsters cannot take over the world because the muggles have vastly superior numbers and weapons.
• Every monster type has some kind of sorcery. Mages stand out because they have past life memories.
• Optionally, every monster has an corruption meter measuring how power mad and alienated from society they are and this scales with their superpowers. That is, the more magical you are the less empathetic and social you are. This has no downsides besides turning you into an evil overlord wannabe, which is what you were going to be anyway.

Thoughts?

Was Wraith any good? I only read the original Vampire Requiem. Seems there are a lot of Mage and Changeling fans out there.

Quote from: Voros;945877Was Wraith any good? I only read the original Vampire Requiem. Seems there are a lot of Mage and Changeling fans out there.

Wraith was much darker than it needed to be. On top of having unfinished business and an enemy within, the ruling faction wanted to use you as raw materials to make soylent green knickknacks and if they wanted you alive then they demanded you sever your ties to the living world despite needing your unfinished business to continue unliving. I prefer the unfinished Wraith: The Arising fan remake, which is much closer to Oblivion than Requiem was to Masquerade, but drops the unnecessary bleakness because the premise of being a ghost with an enemy within is bleak enough.

Yeah heard abour the Wraith supplement about the Shoah. Sounds like a bundle of fun.

Quote from: Chris24601;945842Caveat 1: Me and my group do Mage: The Ascension and ONLY Mage: The Ascension and specifically with a 2nd Edition ethos so every other story element and thing else in the World of Darkness only exists to the extent that it services that setting.

Caveat 2: The campaign world I run has been ongoing for nearly a quarter century now (not with the same players and we've ended the stories of particular sets of PC's and started new ones, but the world has been persistent and ongoing) and upwards of 90% of the NPCs are actually old PC's from previous games. This colors a LOT of things.

That sounds really cool.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;945885Wraith was much darker than it needed to be. On top of having unfinished business and an enemy within, the ruling faction wanted to use you as raw materials to make soylent green knickknacks and if they wanted you alive then they demanded you sever your ties to the living world despite needing your unfinished business to continue unliving. I prefer the unfinished Wraith: The Arising fan remake, which is much closer to Oblivion than Requiem was to Masquerade, but drops the unnecessary bleakness because the premise of being a ghost with an enemy within is bleak enough.

The more I think about Oblivion, the more I suspect it would make a fantastic gonzo OD&D setting. Necropolis, the Guilds, the Labyrinths, the Harrowings, Spectres... I think Pseudoephedrine used some ideas for his Necrocarcerus setting.

Quote from: The Butcher;945575Start with whatever rule set you prefer, up to and including nWoD/CoD.

Now get A World of Darkness, 1st edition (http://www.drivethrurpg.com/m/product/340) and bask in its magnificent gonzo radiance.

Done and done. :)

But I vastly prefer the CoD rules, if beats and experiences just went back to the normal naming conventions. The actual rules are without question superior to any other version used in any version of the WoD. And Mage finally uses the exactly the same one success system the other games do. And actually makes internal and external sense in the actual published setting unlike Mage the Ascension with it's consensual/subjective reality and HAP/HOP nonsense combined with Satr-whatthefuck Brucato's completely wrong interpretation and intention of HAP/HOP to just add gas to the fire.

Also, Changeling the Lost is actually a damned fine game that's dark and totally playable. Then Hunter the Vigil like Mage the Awakening makes total internal/external sense with the baseline setting. And the blue line, well that's just a solid game and setting that's able to handle all sorts of modern urban fantasy or horror variants that are low magic/psi easily.

Sammy is right about Beast the Primordial but Matt McFarland isn't a bad guy. I think they wanted to try something different and it just flat made no sense despite the intended concept.

All I know is that in Mage the Awakening 2e you will be an utter prick because the upside is too great to ignore and there are many easy ways to circumvent Wisdom loss or paradox depending just how far you're willing to go. It's the classic dilemma about magic "take what you want, do what you what but you will pay the price in some way either personally or through what or who you actually care for". To be an archmage for example the one's closest to you forget you the hardest, most and quickest permanently. Everyone does even the world in a short time.

And then you have Hunter the Vigil these guys aren't some scattered fools hopelessly insane with no clue they house some of the most ruthlessly evil fucks known beyond the Kindred. Some being played for dupes some very much the opposite. Most Hunters are good though with various reasons for doing what they do. Ranging from Brothers Grimm or Witchhunter to X-Files/Conspiriesy (sp) X to Resident Evil and similar.

Changeling the Lost isn't about lost childhood or imagination like Peter Pan. Imagination is fine and well in adults and science thank you very much. It's about being forcibly changed into something other by utterly alien and godlike beings strong enough to broker a deal with the gods of reality just like the other patron level beings of the other major supernatural types. All the while you're old life IS GONE never to be back and hunted by said bastards forever because they want their toy back and we're not talking just being degraded like Richard Pryor in The Toy at the start.

Marleycat!

Are you currently playing any WoD stuff?

What is superior about the CoD rules? I haven't seen them. Original Werewolf and MtA worked for me just fine.

Quote from: Tristram Evans;945590Why has no one made a Highlander TV Series RPG?

Because it's kind of boring premise for game on it's own. Now if it were one supernatural among many.... now it might get interesting. In otherwords it would make an interesting choice in a Armageddon/Witchcraft or WoD game but not standalone.

Quote from: Spinachcat;945932Marleycat!

Are you currently playing any WoD stuff?

What is superior about the CoD rules? I haven't seen them. Original Werewolf and MtA worked for me just fine.

Hi, Spinachcat,

I am playing in a Mage the Awakening game once a month.

What's superior is less rolling, combat is faster, streamlined mechanics even from NWoD 1e they have a nifty investigation and social subsystem in the base game that both work the social involves opening doors or getting them closed off depending what you've trying against the NPC's. Mage specifically? Paradox with choice/consequences you can contain it or release it and screw everyone else over except yourself for consequences that will come for you later usually. Big thing is single success resolution game wide. This means specialization in a skill is USEFUL. What it means magic wise is that praxis (magical style via spells you use all the time) give critical success on 3 not 5 successes. Which means you can get all mana back or good thing happens player choice.

That's just a small start.

Quote from: Marleycat;945937Because it's kind of boring premise for game on it's own. Now if it were one supernatural among many....

Which it was, if one followed the series.

Not that I don't agree that the trenchcoats & katanas style of play isnt juvenile and boring, but that did seem to be what a certain contingent wants to make the WoD games into.

Quote from: The Butcher;945915The more I think about Oblivion, the more I suspect it would make a fantastic gonzo OD&D setting. Necropolis, the Guilds, the Labyrinths, the Harrowings, Spectres... I think Pseudoephedrine used some ideas for his Necrocarcerus setting.

   I only know Wraith secondhand and from the occasional flipthrough, but this is definitely the vibe I got from some of the promos for Doomslayers: Into the Labyrinth when I got online ... over twenty years ago.

   I feel old. :)

Quote from: Tristram Evans;945943Which it was, if one followed the series.

Not that I don't agree that the trenchcoats & katanas style of play isnt juvenile and boring, but that did seem to be what a certain contingent wants to make the WoD games into.

Agreed, I'm not adverse to it I'm just middle ground. Not emo just know you can be all that and do what ever you want but humanity will strike back hard or you will pay big if you don't plan. It's why in MtAw 2e it's far less of a possible wisdom hit to murder someone premeditated then to just go kill them straight up. Just because you can doesn't mean you should. In Mage it's easy to kill anything the trick is how to achieve your goal without doing so.

Personally I'd play Witchcraft for the Katana/Trenchcoat thing. It's built for it and the system is simpler and very solid.

Quote from: Marleycat;945951Personally I'd play Witchcraft for the Katana/Trenchcoat thing. It's built for it and the system is simpler and very solid.

Yeah, what happened to Unisystem? Seemed to be going strong, then dropped off the face of the hobby. Something to do with all the licensed games? Though I thought the buffy/angel games were rather popular.

Quote from: Tristram Evans;945953Yeah, what happened to Unisystem? Seemed to be going strong, then dropped off the face of the hobby. Something to do with all the licensed games? Though I thought the buffy/angel games were rather popular.

I have no idea except you can get Witchcraft on PDF free last I knew. It's a great urban fantasy or horror game depending which splats you let in or power level you choose to start in especially if you add in Armageddon. I prefer games where the PC's are a cut above the rest at the start the zero to hero thing is boring the me. I want to affect the world immediately. Armageddon/Witchcraft allow for all styles easily and immediately.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;945874So I cooled off and decided to look at this with a clearer head.

• ditch the ST system and use something that isn't outmoded and broken
• ignore the WoD vs CoD distinction: cherry pick, mix and match, have badwrongfun!
• ditch the separate settings and let everyone play together, since you're using a different ruleset anyway
• ditch the absurd themes of the games and base the factions on the (American) political axis: Stormfront, Democrat, and SJW.
• Stormfront is the current ruling faction and the PCs are members of the subservient Democrat faction expected to overthrow them. The SJWs are the loony faction trying to conquer/destroy the world as we know it.
• Everyone has Arcane Fate/Occultation, so most muggles rationalize the paranormal as terrorists and vigilantes. Monsters cannot take over the world because the muggles have vastly superior numbers and weapons.
• Every monster type has some kind of sorcery. Mages stand out because they have past life memories.
• Optionally, every monster has an corruption meter measuring how power mad and alienated from society they are and this scales with their superpowers. That is, the more magical you are the less empathetic and social you are. This has no downsides besides turning you into an evil overlord wannabe, which is what you were going to be anyway.

Thoughts?

Not bad except skip number 4 and rename number 5. By the way MtAw handles the hidden deal much better already via paradox and quiescence. Hunters without the sleepwalker merit basically go insane if they try and tangle with a mage. Every time a mage uses obvious magic in front of Hunter a breaking point comes for the typical Hunter and then quiescence...have it filmed? Cycle begins anew fun times. So it's better that the mage kill or leave(which the vast majority of even starting mages will have at one of the two options), no middle ground. So, no regular Hunters allowed which is good given mages have far more dangerous opponents then some sleeper type Hunters. Mostly among their own kind and broken mages (Banishers).

And number eight is the entire point of the game. You're not a superhero, not Batman. You're either straight up a supernatural monster from jumpsteet (vampire), or soon enough (werewolf), or something partially alien (changeling), or human with the power of God(mage). You will be tempted and you will slide into being an utter prick at best so enjoy the ride and hope you still have enough humanity left to not just become a total monster and be hunted down by somebody, something or someone because it will happen unless you achieve archmastery, be an elder Garou in The Shadow or a true Vampire Elder. All rare and hard to achieve.

Quote from: Marleycat;945941I am playing in a Mage the Awakening game once a month.

If you have the time/interest, please start a thread about MtAw 2e and provide more details. Your breakdown is very interesting.

How do you feel about the setting from MtAw 1e to MtAw 2e?

Quote from: Spinachcat;945971If you have the time/interest, please start a thread about MtAw 2e and provide more details. Your breakdown is very interesting.

How do you feel about the setting from MtAw 1e to MtAw 2e?

If time allows I'll try. The setting isn't changed just far more clear because of rejiggering to the Arcanum, the magic actually matching the practices, the outright removal of coincidental/vulgar magic divide, addition of reach, praxis, innured spells, legacies with 1-5 dot attainments etc. Major changes and usefulness to Mage Sight among the least being an attainment not a spell. And few other things like clearing up what a Banisher is or why the Mad (Marauders) are really bad for all involved because there's no Umbra for them to be conveniently shunted off to. (Leaking the supernal without limit in front of sleepers is BAD). Obvious magic in front of sleepers chances paradox and it does cause straight up breaking points to Morality of them and damages their soul.

Or that Atlantis isn't a thing, every mage understands and accepts it's an allegory at best and totally crap at worst. There is an Atlantis or a million of them just like there is The Time Before with multiple different civilizations that did/don't exist because both the Exarchs and archmages have and do excise whole timelines as it suits their needs in the Ascension War between them. But mages have physical evidence every possible Atlantis and civilization like Mu, Shangri-La, Hollow Earth, Lizardmen, Talking Apes did exist or not exist.

Quote from: Voros;945877Was Wraith any good? I only read the original Vampire Requiem. Seems there are a lot of Mage and Changeling fans out there.

It had its share of problems, both with premise and rules. It made for a really great Gothic dark fantasy setting, though. I keep meaning to run a new campaign of it and see if I can do better with it with the benefit of hindsight.

Quote from: Tristram Evans;945590Why has no one made a Highlander TV Series RPG?

Theres been at least one?

Quote from: Marleycat;945959Not bad except skip number 4 and rename number 5. By the way MtAw handles the hidden deal much better already via paradox and quiescence. Hunters without the sleepwalker merit basically go insane if they try and tangle with a mage. Every time a mage uses obvious magic in front of Hunter a breaking point comes for the typical Hunter and then quiescence...have it filmed? Cycle begins anew fun times. So it's better that the mage kill or leave(which the vast majority of even starting mages will have at one of the two options), no middle ground. So, no regular Hunters allowed which is good given mages have far more dangerous opponents then some sleeper type Hunters. Mostly among their own kind and broken mages (Banishers).

And number eight is the entire point of the game. You're not a superhero, not Batman. You're either straight up a supernatural monster from jumpsteet (vampire), or soon enough (werewolf), or something partially alien (changeling), or human with the power of God(mage). You will be tempted and you will slide into being an utter prick at best so enjoy the ride and hope you still have enough humanity left to not just become a total monster and be hunted down by somebody, something or someone because it will happen unless you achieve archmastery, be an elder Garou in The Shadow or a true Vampire Elder. All rare and hard to achieve.

Different system, different rules, everything runs on the same mechanics, remember? Arcane fate/occultation works better than "SAN check" because monsters using magic in public all the time (which they would) wouldn't drive everyone crazy. You only become a witch-hunter (to distinguish from game hunter and bounty hunter) if you can already notice the paranormal rather than rationalizing it away.

For those fortunate enough to have it. Bemusingly enough. Issue 17 of Dragão Brasil, a Brazilian RPG magazine with alot of conversions, had...

Highlander for the Storyteller system. Stats for Duncan and Connor McLeod. Pretty short and simple article that gets the job done.

Lots of Storyteller, Gurps and a few D&D and quite a few for D&T(Defensores de Tóquio.) in other issues like Gurps Battletech, Thundercats, Gurps Ghost in the Shell, X-Files, Matrix (Gurps and Storyteller) Metal Gear, etc.

Highlander doesn't work well for a WoD-style game. The immortals are expected to kill each other until only one remains. It's the doomed CoC investigator equivalent for WoD. If Onyx tried ripping it off they would remove the quickening and turn it into politics like they removed wasteland in Promethean 2e, which defeats the entire point. Immortals are supposed to kill each other to the last man standing. Prometheans are supposed to go on literal pilgrimages to become human. They aren't supposed to play city politics for eternity.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;946085Highlander doesn't work well for a WoD-style game. The immortals are expected to kill each other until only one remains. It's the doomed CoC investigator equivalent for WoD. If Onyx tried ripping it off they would remove the quickening and turn it into politics like they removed wasteland in Promethean 2e, which defeats the entire point. Immortals are supposed to kill each other to the last man standing. Prometheans are supposed to go on literal pilgrimages to become human. They aren't supposed to play city politics for eternity.

I'm pretty sure the trenchcoat & katana-style players of wod werent spending a lot of time worrying about the political aspects of the games.

Quote from: Spinachcat;945971If you have the time/interest, please start a thread about MtAw 2e and provide more details. Your breakdown is very interesting.

How do you feel about the setting from MtAw 1e to MtAw 2e?

What are you looking for SC? Any particular interest or thing? I'm not great at starting topics so guidance would be very helpful in helping me pick a good topic to discuss via the game line. Just keep in mind I love DnD also but I prefer 2e/5e so I'm not some Fate, DW or whatever narrative lover. I like some narrative though and I love meta currency like bunnies etc. still deciding on DOOM mechanics like Corolis etc. so I like some of the directions 2e went that are similar to Fate in certain contained and specific ways.

Quote from: Tristram Evans;946086I'm pretty sure the trenchcoat & katana-style players of wod werent spending a lot of time worrying about the political aspects of the games.

Neither were the wrist-cutters who played "personal horror" games.

I like a 50/50 blend of politics combined with Trenchcoats & Katanas. No whiny, wangsty personal horror though. I don't practice self-harm, nor do I wear guyliner or listen to Type O Negative. Therefore, I do not see the appeal of personal horror.

Quote from: Doc Sammy;946144Neither were the wrist-cutters who played "personal horror" games.

I like a 50/50 blend of politics combined with Trenchcoats & Katanas. No whiny, wangsty personal horror though. I don't practice self-harm, nor do I wear guyliner or listen to Type O Negative. Therefore, I do not see the appeal of personal horror.

Sam, you told us that dozens of times. It isn't constructive. Please talk about anything else.

For example, I want to play Monsterhearts as a melodramatic parody of soap operas. My skin would be "lonely shoggoth looking for love" which is a metaphor for people who don't fit society's absurd standards of beauty.

Quote from: Doc Sammy;946144Neither were the wrist-cutters who played "personal horror" games.

Someday I want to visit this weird Land-Outside-Time of Roanoke that's inspired these bizarre stereotypes that don't match anything I've ever seen.

Yeah 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.

Quote from: Tristram Evans;946146Someday I want to visit this weird Land-Outside-Time of Roanoke that's inspired these bizarre stereotypes that don't match anything I've ever seen.

You 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!

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 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Strain) 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 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/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 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossed_(comics)) 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). :D

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). :D

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.

Quote from: Doc Sammy;946346I 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.

The Walking Dead is okay.  It just annoys me how bad they are at fighting zombies.  They never use any of the two dozen ways (off the top of my head) which would work against zombies despite not working against people.

Quote from: kobayashi;946335I imagine you've looked at the Strain book series (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Strain) 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 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/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 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossed_(comics)) is, imho, quite good (basically doing in 96 pages what The Walking Dead painfully tries to do across more than 2000 pages).

I read the first book of the Strain, but despite being a Del Toro fan I never felt any impetus to seek out the sequels. But 30 Days of Night is one of my favourite vampire films of all time. I've not yet gotten into the Walking Dead, comics or TV. Like Breaking Bad, I'll probably catch up long after its popularity has waned. I may seek out Garth Ennis' Crossed, big fan of his work on Preacher and The Punisher. He's like the comic book equivalent of John Wayne mixed with Robert Rodriquez.

By the way Doc - and this might seem a little out of left field - what is your favorite vampire anime/manga? I ask to see if it might have some impact on how you envision this genre of RPG.

WW allready tried a sorta anime-esque approach with the whole "East" line and and Demon Hunter X. Which for whatever reasons it never seemed to garner much of a fanbase.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;946402By the way Doc - and this might seem a little out of left field - what is your favorite vampire anime/manga? I ask to see if it might have some impact on how you envision this genre of RPG.

Probably Hellsing Ultimate, although Vampire Hunter D is also good too.

Quote from: Doc Sammy;946431Probably Hellsing Ultimate, although Vampire Hunter D is also good too.

That's what I figured. I presume something like Shiki would be the exact opposite you are trying to avoid?

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;946432That's what I figured. I presume something like Shiki would be the exact opposite you are trying to avoid?

Pretty much

Quote from: Chris24601;945842...

So, the first and most important thing is that Gehenna/Apocalypse/Armageddon/End of the World was played out in the campaign about ten year ago and the PC's at the time kicked its ass. It was basically the worst version of every possible event with the Antidiluvians as the original Nephandi Lords (who commanded all the forces of the Wyrm) and the Nameless leading them all. But the PC's at the time were heavily Hermetic and hit upon an idea so universally cool it couldn't not work. See, per the story the Nameless had literally sacrificed its True Name to the Outer Darkness, which supposedly made it untouchable since you could not affect something without a name.

So the PC's did the opposite...

That is pure awesome sauce! Sounds like a long-running good time.

Quote from: Tristram Evans;946313...

The world has changed. ...

That is so spot on - what a fantastic suggestion!

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.




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.

You could retain the monster social structures while modifying them for modern politics. For example, one faction for xenophobes that want to maintain a status quo that privileges them, a progressive faction that wants to move forward, and a faction of the poor and foreign influx that wants to move up in the world.

Or we could take the approach from Monsterhearts, where each monster or "skin" is a thinly-veiled metaphor for some aspect of the human condition, and mash it up with the political angles in Urban Shadows. Both are PbtA and should be easy enough to merge. The end result would be closer to Nightlife than to WoD, I suppose.

WoD has so much baggage. Ignoring all the silliness in the games themselves (CoD tried to fix this before getting bogged down in its own issues)... Onyx Path went full SJW a while ago and Paradox is milking the IP on the cheap. Just recently the new WW released a pair of interactive fiction games for iphones and announced a Werewolf: The Apocalypse video game. They aren't going to be remastering Bloodlines because they don't want to invest the money in licensing it from Activision.

Quote from: Tristram Evans;946313The 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.

Some 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.

So, to make the WoD work again, you need to figure out who the audience is (is it young adults with weak income or established adults with jobs and responsibilities) and then extrapolate from there.  And my advice, go with focusing on established adults (because if you just want a WoD where you break things, the cWoD exists for that).  Then, since this is a -horror- game, make sure the Other really is something horrific.  But since we want this to be a game of personal horror, we explore how the PCs do terrible things to stop the Other.

Vampire: The Dominion - You are a Kindred.  You rule a Dominion, one of the last bastions of civilization left to mankind.  It's towering walls and policies are yours to enforce as you see fit, and if you fail your Dominion will fail and you will surely die.  But you don't rule alone; other rule it with you, with their own views on how best to protect the Kine upon which you feed.  And each of you twists Caine's curse to suit your needs and sins, which you will eventually pass on to those beneath you.  (gameplay - troupe style play, with vampires making up their own Disciplines, passing them on to their Childer (as played by other players).  Lots of "big picture" plotting and resources to draw upon.  This is the game for people who want to play about politicians manipulating and protecting and exploiting the masses.)

Werewolf: The Plague - You are a werewolf.  You know how to enter and leave Dominions, hunting humans and the Horde alike.  You decide who lives and dies, smuggling people across the world as needed, and into the Dominions at times.  Alone, it's hard, but with a pack it becomes easier.  But packs bicker and feud; who is Alpha and for how long?  And then of course there's the plague you carry; the madness and pain and rage that you can infect others with.  And you -will- infect others, because if you don't feed the plague it will eat you up.  But it's this plague that lets you have the strength to get past the Hordes, and it's your ability to move past the Hordes that motivates the Vampires to let you live.  (gameplay - Standard RPG fair, except Werewolves are serious combat monsters when it comes to the Hordes, to the point that -most- creatures among the Hordes offer little to no threat.  The real challenge comes from interacting with humans, who you have to infect on a regular basis, and the humans both know this and prove more difficult to fight than the Hordes.)

Mage: the Catalyst - There are a few humans, a very small number, who can tap into the energy that drives the Horde.  From this energy these mages can work great feats, changing the reality of the world to various (tangible) degrees.  But doing so draws the attention of the Hordes outside the Dominion, and worse than that it can bleed over and transform other humans.  Some mages accept the changes into themselves, gaining power they control but marking themselves as touched by the Horde.  Others simply let it transform people into Horde beasts and rely on someone else to clean up their mess.  After all, the chances are soooo small as to be insignificant.  So why use the power if it's so risky?  When you can reshape the world to suit your -needs-, why wouldn't you?  (Game play - similar to Mage the Ascension, but with less emphasis on intangible effects and more on things you can touch.  Paradox is also -very- different)

Guardians: those at the Wall - You are one of the humans who defend the Dominions.  You work for the damned Vampires, turning the other way when their horrible Werewolf allies move, cleaning up the messes left by some protected sociopathic Mage.  You're not helpless, you have weapons and armor unlike any other, and you're trained to withstand sights that would traumatize other humans.  And you tell yourself that this is what it takes to keep your friends and family safe.  Eventually you might even believe it.  (Game play - you're a squishy human with some really neat gear and lots of skills, trying not to burn out or become a fanatic.)

Horde: the Dream - Thoughts, dreams, ideals, all swirling in a chaotic violent broken Hive Mind.  They hunger, they probe, they want what the Dominions have.  Always looking for a crack, a sympathetic ear (or throat), a loophole.  Anything that can get them in the Dominions, so they can absorb those inside and find peace in their shared focus of consumption.  The Horde takes on all forms at one time or another, using some supernatural energy to grow and change in a rapid (hours long) manner.  Sometimes they come in the form of peaceful humans, sometimes in the form of giant raging monsters.  No one can detect them however until it is too late.  (Game play - this would be one-part a "how to make monsters" book" and one-part "how to role-play a giant multi-cellular foe".  Little to no long-term crossover potential by design (too powerful and predatory), but a Horde working with others to destroy a Dominion they all hate could last for a while as part of a short-term campaign, since that's kinda' the basis for Hordes working together anyway.)



So yeah, I kinda' like this idea.  The main kicker I see holding it back is that it's really hard for me to do a horror game about "Trump and his supporters are right!" without it coming across as if I'm saying "Trump and his supporters are right!"  Can you separate the social metaphor from the horror?

Quote from: san dee jota;946844Can you separate the social metaphor from the horror?

To be honest, I'm not sure I see the social metaphor even when I'm looking for it. Raising walls and worrying about the people outside of them is a pretty inherent thing to humans, I think - Trump didn't invent it, he just got famous for being unusually fond of it. :p

Quote from: Baeraad;946847To be honest, I'm not sure I see the social metaphor even when I'm looking for it. Raising walls and worrying about the people outside of them is a pretty inherent thing to humans, I think - Trump didn't invent it, he just got famous for being unusually fond of it. :p

True that.  The idea of building walls to keep the Other out is a pretty common one in history, and has some precedence in horror too (e.g. Attack on Titan, Priest).

I guess an analogy might be "I want to make a horror game where the white supremacists are -right-, but change African Americans to an army of orcs".  I don't want to make an RPG manifesto on xenophobia (any more than I want to do one on racism) is all.

Hmmm....

But 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.

Quote from: san dee jota;946849I guess an analogy might be "I want to make a horror game where the white supremacists are -right-, but change African Americans to an army of orcs".  I don't want to make an RPG manifesto on xenophobia (any more than I want to do one on racism) is all.

But what if that game casts the PCs in the role of the "orcs" (/insert monster of choice)? Not that I'm agreeing with that as the premise, but at the same time the ability to map fantasy concepts to uncomfortable attitudes in society and explore those from different pov is one of the great strengths of fantasy

Quote from: Tristram Evans;946872But what if that game casts the PCs in the role of the "orcs" (/insert monster of choice)? Not that I'm agreeing with that as the premise, but at the same time the ability to map fantasy concepts to uncomfortable attitudes in society and explore those from different pov is one of the great strengths of fantasy

But 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).

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.

\\

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 (http://www.magpiegames.com/2016/10/05/undying-magpies/) 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.

What We Do In Shadows RPG would be a blast.

[video=youtube_share;QWk4YtK-iHY]https://youtu.be/QWk4YtK-iHY[/youtube]

Quote from: ZWEIHÄNDER;947027This is how the evolution of the aging, boring 90's 'goth vampire' setting should evolve with a new World of Darkness:

"I say Shadow Dragon, remember 30 years ago when we weren't all overweight and out of shape?"
"What?"
"I said, 'remember 30 years ago'."
"Oh yeah.  Some great concerts back then!  Not like the music today!"
"True.  By the way, how went your prostrate exam?"
"Ugh.  It's next week, don't remind me."
"Splendid, splendid.  Well, back to pondering the dreary existence that is our ennui."

Quote from: san dee jota;947009*)  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)

Oooooh, I like those an awful lot, actually. I mean, they're depressing as hell, but it's the WoD after all - that might be seen as a feature rather than a bug. And they certainly capture early-middle-aged angst as well as the original games capture adolescent angst. :D

Quote from: Baeraad;947067Oooooh, I like those an awful lot, actually. I mean, they're depressing as hell, but it's the WoD after all - that might be seen as a feature rather than a bug. And they certainly capture early-middle-aged angst as well as the original games capture adolescent angst. :D

In the 90's, the WoD was all about that teenage/young adult "listen to me, hear me roar, I know everything because I'm a GenXer!" attitude.  Now we're all about a quarter-century older, and it all seems so dumb.  We don't need a game full of confident anger and angst, we need a game full of uncertain mid-life crisis and aging.  :D

Quote from: san dee jota;947072In the 90's, the WoD was all about that teenage/young adult "listen to me, hear me roar, I know everything because I'm a GenXer!" attitude.  Now we're all about a quarter-century older, and it all seems so dumb.  We don't need a game full of confident anger and angst, we need a game full of uncertain mid-life crisis and aging.  :D

I think the appropriate grown up theme for the World of Darkness a quarter century later is this... The scariest thing is not that the world will end but that its going to keep spinning long after we're dust. The Last Days are upon us, but it turns out they're entirely personal. Milestones pass that will never come again and the question turns to 'What am I going to leave behind that endures?' or, more prosaically, 'What is my Legacy?'

For the Vampire it is the struggle to find something worth waking yourself from torpor for and whether what you leave behind can last until you next rouse yourself from slumber.

For Werewolf it is the certainty that will you die and whether you can teach the next generation what they'll need to survive before you do.

For Mage it is whether or not you can leave behind something wonderous in an age where wonders on every corner are ignored as mundane.

The horror aspect in all of those is that what you're doing isn't going to matter and the world will keep right on spinning as if you'd never even been here. Your opponents are those who want to be certain that your efforts count for nothing (rival vampires, the Wyrm and the Technocracy/Nephandi respectively.

It was never great in the first place. You can't wash a turd and try to make anything other than a turd out of it.

The World Of Darkness was never about a mature point of view. It was aimed at those who wanted to fantasize about the social cliques they were exposed to in high school. It was a overblown power fantasy teamed up with a big dose of social masturbation.

If you change that, you change the fundamental basis of a set of games that is based completely on an immature world view.

Alex Jones tells Bad Touch Donny wild conspiracy theories about how reptilians/ liquid metal space elves/ Knights Templar/ Nephilim are the Secret Globalist New World Order Illuminati KEEPING AMERICA DOWN.

POTUS then sees the ultra-secret (Woefully incomplete, fragmentary, garbled, half-true) Deep State files on vampires, garou, mages, etc.

He "Puts two and two together" and becomes the first president to declare total war (Albeit a secret war) on the supernatural. A secret concentration camp is built in the Utah desert. Skinheads, gang-bangers, and religious weirdos are quietly deputised and trained for "The Ultimate Holy War for the Future of America and the Entire Human Race!". Elon Musk builds anti-vampire weapons in exchange for the president's ear and tax breaks.

All the vampires in San Francisco die in one night. Six princes go down over two weeks. The Camarilla is discussing fleeing en masse to Europe. No quarter is given even to "Good" monsters. Slaughter not seen since the darkest days of the burning stake.

Now, vampires really are the underground, hunted, tormented punk rebels they always pretended to be.

Quote from: Just Another Snake Cult;947120Alex Jones tells Bad Touch Donny wild conspiracy theories about how reptilians/ liquid metal space elves/ Knights Templar/ Nephilim are the Secret Globalist New World Order Illuminati KEEPING AMERICA DOWN.

POTUS then sees the ultra-secret (Woefully incomplete, fragmentary, garbled, half-true) Deep State files on vampires, garou, mages, etc.

He "Puts two and two together" and becomes the first president to declare total war (Albeit a secret war) on the supernatural. A secret concentration camp is built in the Utah desert. Skinheads, gang-bangers, and religious weirdos are quietly deputised and trained for "The Ultimate Holy War for the Future of America and the Entire Human Race!". Elon Musk builds anti-vampire weapons in exchange for the president's ear and tax breaks.

All the vampires in San Francisco die in one night. Six princes go down over two weeks. The Camarilla is discussing fleeing en masse to Europe. No quarter is given even to "Good" monsters. Slaughter not seen since the darkest days of the burning stake.

Now, vampires really are the underground, hunted, tormented punk rebels they always pretended to be.

Hmm, A Hunter's Hunted campaign where the final global inquisition goes on? Basically a Fantasy Flight "The End of the World" rpg for cWoD?

I'd totally play that.

I would totally play that as either the human grist fodder for the inquisition mill, or as the monsters being systematically wiped out irrevocably in under a year.

The humans could easily be OSR-esque, 3d6 straight down, holy crusade/jihad, sheer numbers guerrilla open warfare fighters. The WoD monsters as players can still be the "precious bean bag" Storyteller system, and the game is how long your monster can scramble against assured annihilation, or "find final meaning," or last noble act before the fall, etc.

Could be lots of fun! And I hate zombie survival horror games.

Though the hunter swarm one sounds super fun! DCC random chargen PCs vs. WoD chargen minigame NPCs mashup! Ooh, we could call it Special Snowflake Smash, abbreviated SSS, just like Sigue Sigue Sputnik! You play with X PCs "quarters," join a table team, and go all XCrawl-Smash TV-Robotron against the WoD merit/flaw slathered preciousness, and shoot for the highest score!

That sounds crazy fun horror!

Quote from: Opaopajr;947135Hmm, A Hunter's Hunted campaign where the final global inquisition goes on? Basically a Fantasy Flight "The End of the World" rpg for cWoD?

I'd totally play that.

I would totally play that as either the human grist fodder for the inquisition mill, or as the monsters being systematically wiped out irrevocably in under a year.

The humans could easily be OSR-esque, 3d6 straight down, holy crusade/jihad, sheer numbers guerrilla open warfare fighters. The WoD monsters as players can still be the "precious bean bag" Storyteller system, and the game is how long your monster can scramble against assured annihilation, or "find final meaning," or last noble act before the fall, etc.

Could be lots of fun! And I hate zombie survival horror games.

Though the hunter swarm one sounds super fun! DCC random chargen PCs vs. WoD chargen minigame NPCs mashup! Ooh, we could call it Special Snowflake Smash, abbreviated SSS, just like Sigue Sigue Sputnik! You play with X PCs "quarters," join a table team, and go all XCrawl-Smash TV-Robotron against the WoD merit/flaw slathered preciousness, and shoot for the highest score!

That sounds crazy fun horror!

You seem to have a real issue with players and their characters having actual power and intelligence. You seem to dig being an ignorant boring zero type that dies for no particular reason that makes a damn bit of sense. I know this because I have had you as a DM and it was boring and frustrating no matter what I tried to do which was very little given you de facto eliminated most of any possible interesting concept right from the start. So yeah CoC is interesting for a one off type of game but as a campaign not even.

Yeah, you guessed it right that I think Snake Cult's premise is boring really boring. As are any street level games or zeroes to hero journey crap stories. I prefer being somebody that matters like Harry Dresden or Buffy or the women from Charmed or even Angel or the guys from Supernatural.

It's a copout to be horrified when you can't do a damn thing against it. Real horror is when you can and understand there will be a price no matter how many precautions you try to take.

Vampires are bad people because they are serial killers with political and social power. Werewolves are bad because they are hunters of intelligent beings not mere animals. While being half human themselves.

Mages are bad because they have ultimate power and ultimate power corrupts fully. Obviously you have no clue about this and think it's you against the players and your precious story/vision as this very post  that I quoted proves beyond a shadow of doubt. You don't even try to hide your contempt of characters with competency. Hordes of ignorant hunters against special snowflakes?(characters that are weak, stupid or worse) Seriously? Jealousy of something much?

Gee, I figure if I were a Mage with Mind 2 I would just misdirect those ignorant assholes easily. Why use crude methods like Psychic Domination in public when you can in private given it's an available option at Mind 2? Or I guess I'm just ignorant and stupid correct? It's covert so at least Dissonance isn't a factor unless I get bored and start playing with you or straight up you and your group of ignorant hunters being driven insane by my obvious magic.  Remember power corrupts and ultimate power corrupts ultimately. Thing is most magic is covert not obvious. Coincidental/Vulgar isn't a thing anymore unless said mage decides being obvious like some DnD wizard or straight up using a Jedi/Psi sword in Times Square is the smart move.....

What you are describing is Armageddon/Witchcraft/Blade/Underworld not WoD or CRoD. The former allows for your scenario but those supernatural types fight back on even terms at worst and should mean what's good for the gander is good for the goose, fair is fair when Gehenna comes calling.

WoD games are zero to hero as well. It's just how zero is defined versus hero. High XP WoD PCs and wipe the floor with newb PCs. Gamma World 1e, CoC and Traveller are among the very few RPGs which aren't zero to hero.

It would be an interesting WoD game to play monsters hunted by a US gov't crusade. It's got a bit of an X-men feel.

Quote from: Marleycat;947176You seem to have a real issue with players and their characters having actual power and intelligence. You seem to dig being an ignorant boring zero type that dies for no particular reason that makes a damn bit of sense. I know this because I have had you as a DM and it was boring and frustrating no matter what I tried to do which was very little given you de facto eliminated most of any possible interesting concept right from the start. So yeah CoC is interesting for a one off type of game but as a campaign not even.

(...)

What you are describing is Armageddon/Witchcraft/Blade/Underworld not WoD or CRoD. The former allows for your scenario but those supernatural types fight back on even terms at worst and should mean what's good for the gander is good for the goose, fair is fair when Gehenna comes calling.

Waah, waah, he took my precious game and shat all over it.

Your milkshake, Marleycat, we drink it. We drink it up.

Quote from: Marleycat;947176You seem to have a real issue with players and their characters having actual power and intelligence. You seem to dig being an ignorant boring zero type that dies for no particular reason that makes a damn bit of sense. I know this because I have had you as a DM and it was boring and frustrating no matter what I tried to do which was very little given you de facto eliminated most of any possible interesting concept right from the start. So yeah CoC is interesting for a one off type of game but as a campaign not even.

I play In Nomine Steve Jackson Games, dear. If you think WoD is filled with crazy, imagine every single beginner celestial PC starting with "I go celestial, I ignore all your corporeal attacks, including your nuclear bombs... plural." You better bring intelligence to the table, because like KULT, death is only the beginning -- and you should've spent points on spare vessels.

Mages believe they change reality until paradox backlashes. Angels and demons are the foundations of that reality and their enforcing backlash, and human souls are how they count stakes of their in-house spat. Yes, as the fandom jokes about a low level PC possessing your underwear and burning your vessel to goo undodgeably with song of acid, "you can't dodge your underwear!" I have had to deal with very high "magic," high power play with intelligence otherwise an In Nomine campaign completely runs away from you.

I've seen high power play, and I've seen high creative play, and those concepts are not synonymous! Most high power I've seen is boring, real boring. People are often more sledgehammer than subtle.

So what issue did you have in my game? I ran Basic 5e RAW. I had setting demographics. I wouldn't let you teleport distance so you can always be together as a team where the action is. Yet I also allow you to split up to find your own side adventures (which others often did!). And I reminded you that I don't run 0th level NPCs. (I will admit the graveyard puzzle did fall flat... secret password doors are often hard to pull off.)

Quote from: Marleycat;947176Yeah, you guessed it right that I think Snake Cult's premise is boring really boring. As are any street level games or zeroes to hero journey crap stories. I prefer being somebody that matters like Harry Dresden or Buffy or the women from Charmed or even Angel or the guys from Supernatural.

It's a copout to be horrified when you can't do a damn thing against it. Real horror is when you can and understand there will be a price no matter how many precautions you try to take.

Vampires are bad people because they are serial killers with political and social power. Werewolves are bad because they are hunters of intelligent beings not mere animals. While being half human themselves.

Mages are bad because they have ultimate power and ultimate power corrupts fully. Obviously you have no clue about this and think it's you against the players and your precious story/vision as this very post  that I quoted proves beyond a shadow of doubt. You don't even try to hide your contempt of characters with competency. Hordes of ignorant hunters against special snowflakes?(characters that are weak, stupid or worse) Seriously? Jealousy of something much?

Gee, I figure if I were a Mage with Mind 2 I would just misdirect those ignorant assholes easily. Why use crude methods like Psychic Domination in public when you can in private given it's an available option at Mind 2? Or I guess I'm just ignorant and stupid correct? It's covert so at least Dissonance isn't a factor unless I get bored and start playing with you or straight up you and your group of ignorant hunters being driven insane by my obvious magic.  Remember power corrupts and ultimate power corrupts ultimately. Thing is most magic is covert not obvious. Coincidental/Vulgar isn't a thing anymore unless said mage decides being obvious like some DnD wizard or straight up using a Jedi/Psi sword in Times Square is the smart move.....

What you are describing is Armageddon/Witchcraft/Blade/Underworld not WoD or CRoD. The former allows for your scenario but those supernatural types fight back on even terms at worst and should mean what's good for the gander is good for the goose, fair is fair when Gehenna comes calling.

You obviously have not the foggiest of what I have seen or played, or even an effort to understand my point of view, even though we have been talking on this forum for years. I am perfectly fine with oWoD as is (nWoD holds zero interest for me, except CtL). AND my first post to this topic was that I LIKE the personal horror element to WoD, otherwise it's just another Supers! system to me. I would kill for some subtle, intelligent play with personal horror in WoD -- but it's like finding hen's teeth. Most tables are not like that, they are cluttered with overwrought PCs and blunt trauma melodrama (or just blunt trauma).

I do (and did) run high power play, just not WoD (because the system really cannot handle it at higher dots, and neither can most of the players, especially if there's any fresh blood). Most of it was not good at all; predominantly eye rolling, cringey nonsense with all the subtlety and foreplay of a jackhammer. I don't bother continuing playing so with most games because I don't always get a chance to run veteran RPG players who are intimately familiar with the system. I'm right now running CtD 1e for gawds sake, with the cantrip cards 'n shit (and, my, is that a fucked up splat with some grotesque powers!).

I run zero to hero D&D campaigns to suss out what I'm working with as players. I run them for fun, to kick back and enjoy a player and setting mature together. They are relaxing affairs to study what works & what does not.

And for mindless fun, Robotron Hunter WoD sounds like a blast! (The WW combat will suck up too much time, but, alas... the social/investigation hunt should be real good, tho.) And it puts to use all that oWoD chargen mini-game expertise we've all accumulated over the years. It's like building grand jell-o salad mold to throw at the ravening tupperware party hordes!

You think you know why I like something, but you only see what you want to see. You obsess over your gishes way too much and get defensive. Stop that disservice.

Wow, who ever said WOD was for wankers?

Quote from: Marleycat;947176Yeah, you guessed it right that I think Snake Cult's premise is boring really boring. As are any street level games or zeroes to hero journey crap stories. I prefer being somebody that matters like Harry Dresden or Buffy or the women from Charmed or even Angel or the guys from Supernatural.

Just for contrast, what did you think of  Chris24601's ideas a few posts above Snake Cult's? They fly in the face of Doc Sammy's parameters (tone down the personal horror), but they do allow powerful PCs facing appropriate threats (or rather consequences I suppose).

Quote from: san dee jota;947009*)  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.

No, no, no. Gaia is alive, and because of it everything is dying, because Mother Nature is a Bitch and Evolution don't play favorites. The Triad bullshit is only the Garou trying to rationalize about be the next thing going to the same place as the Dodos, because they are an evolution dead end.

Quote from: DarcyDettmann;947203No, no, no. Gaia is alive, and because of it everything is dying, because Mother Nature is a Bitch and Evolution don't play favorites. The Triad bullshit is only the Garou trying to rationalize about be the next thing to the same place as the Dodos, because they are a evolution dead end.

This is appropriately cynical. That said, pollution isn't necessarily a bad angle.

Everlasting did a parody where the PCs were humans ritually bound to an animal or plant spirit. Pollution was a problem, but aliens/demons trying to hellform Earth were a much bigger problem.

Witchcraft did a parody with unwilling spirit possession which was passed by heredity. Spirits turned crazy destructive if their physical counterparts were damaged by human activities.

Quote from: Marleycat;947176It's a copout to be horrified when you can't do a damn thing against it. Real horror is when you can and understand there will be a price no matter how many precautions you try to take.

I know I'm playing semantics games here ("what is horror versus fear versus dread"), but whatever you want to call it powerlessness is the defining element of horror.  

Now, I'll also admit that games where players' actions are irrelevant are not fun.   But this is where you have to decide "do I want a dark fantasy game where the PCs can fix the world" or "do I want a horror game, where PCs merely explore the horror they can't fix."  It's the difference between being able to stop a zombie plague and -not- being able to.  This doesn't mean one is fun and the other isn't, but rather one is mislabled as horror.

So what does this all have to do with the WoD?

Vampire - 1ed was very much a game of personal horror.  You were expected to struggle with your nature as someone who attacked people and drank their blood.  You had all sorts of powers to make you a better metaphor for mugging/rape, but ultimately you couldn't avoid your new nature.  And that was the horror of the game.  Later on though, it became a game where the "horror" was dealing with all sorts of other supernatural monsters who were more powerful than you, or unknown to you, while you tried to "win" through Golconda/Leveling Up.  Hence things like "The Path of Doing What I Wanted To Anyway" replacing Humanity.  It wasn't horror any more, but it -was- pretty cool (granted, I say this thinking of the Dark Ages line).

Werewolf - The "horror" came from being a guy with fightin' powers that you used to beat up monsters more scary and (hopefully) evil than you.  The real horror though came from realizing that your actions didn't mean much in the big scheme, and all your werewolf buddies were various degrees of fucked up.  Including you.  Unfortunately, White Wolf never quite had the balls to flat out say "the Garou tribes are all a bunch of horrible people in their own ways, and thanks to Tribe, genes, and spirits, you are too!", instead only ever flirting with the idea that the Garou were actually -monsters-.  I'd recommend reading the Ferals comics for some ideas on what living in a society of Rage-driven shapeshifters with Primal-Urge as a skill might actually look like.

Mage - Much like Werewolf, but to an even worse degree, there's no actual personal horror here, just dark supers.  Hell, you even have multiple Black Hat baddies to beat up on, removing any moral uncertainty in the whole damn process.  But if you start adding in some uncertainty (making the Technos multi-dimensional characters, making the Trads more like the bigoted cultures they're based on), then things get interesting.  Still not horrific, but at least you have some doubt on the part of the players and PCs.  And from there you -might- be able to expand it all into a kind of personal horror where your Hubris and the pressures of survival keep pushing you to breaking point (like Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment, or Cole from The Grifters).  Assuming everyone doesn't say "fuck it" and flies to Jupiter to fight alien demons beforehand.

Changeling - I hated it.

Wraith - It's fine as is, provided players -really- get into character, but the horror is constant and unrelenting.

Now, if you notice, some of these games -do- have "win" conditions.  To some degree you can beat Mage and Wraith (and -maybe- Vampire), but "winning" also ends your character within the game generally speaking.  Wraiths Transcend out of their current existence, Mages Ascend from it (and Goloconda is ultimately left to GM's to define, assuming it's even possible, but leaving behind vampirism is a listed possibility).  Are they still horror?  Sure!  The -certainty- of helplessnes isn't the key, but the -illusion- of it.  Now sometimes (e.g. Call of Cthulhu) there really isn't anything you can do; you simply can't stop the horrors from coming.  But dealing with your helplessness is what the game's about.  Which is why when Mages and Wraiths "win" the game and become essentially safe, the game ends for them.  "But what about all the stuff left in the world I want to deal with?"  No prob, there's your new horror to focus on.  How do you save the people/things you care about in a world of darkness?  And also, you aren't going to Ascend/Transcend if you're still tied to this world, so you won't "win" (a recurring theme in the WoD games it seems).

Quote from: DarcyDettmann;947203No, no, no. Gaia is alive, and because of it everything is dying, because Mother Nature is a Bitch and Evolution don't play favorites. The Triad bullshit is only the Garou trying to rationalize about be the next thing to the same place as the Dodos, because they are a evolution dead end.

But how would that -look-?  The closest I can think of is Gaia from Kult (imagine if the Thing was also into plants, and functioned less like a creature that moved around and more like an ocean wave that just sweeps over -everything-).

Quote from: san dee jota;947215I know I'm playing semantics games here ("what is horror versus fear versus dread"), but whatever you want to call it powerlessness is the defining element of horror.  

Now, I'll also admit that games where players' actions are irrelevant are not fun.   But this is where you have to decide "do I want a dark fantasy game where the PCs can fix the world" or "do I want a horror game, where PCs merely explore the horror they can't fix."  It's the difference between being able to stop a zombie plague and -not- being able to.  This doesn't mean one is fun and the other isn't, but rather one is mislabled as horror.

Spot on.

Quote from: san dee jota;947215So what does this all have to do with the WoD?

Vampire - 1ed was very much a game of personal horror.  You were expected to struggle with your nature as someone who attacked people and drank their blood.  You had all sorts of powers to make you a better metaphor for mugging/rape, but ultimately you couldn't avoid your new nature.  And that was the horror of the game.  Later on though, it became a game where the "horror" was dealing with all sorts of other supernatural monsters who were more powerful than you, or unknown to you, while you tried to "win" through Golconda/Leveling Up.  Hence things like "The Path of Doing What I Wanted To Anyway" replacing Humanity.  It wasn't horror any more, but it -was- pretty cool (granted, I say this thinking of the Dark Ages line).

I think it's arguable whether this was a late development. VtM1 seemed to assume PCs would become Anarchs right off the bat (with adventures using "the PCs" and "the anarchs" interchangeably) and while the VtM2 core rulebook strongly hinted at Golconda as a possble endgame, attaining it was never (to the best of my knowledge) laid out in detail in any book, in that edition, or any other.

I think the key change from VtM1 to VtM2 was dropping this assumption, and toeing the Camarilla line becoming the default for PCs, effectively taking the "punk" out of the original "Gothic-Punk" game. Which also had the side effect of bringing the intrigue-laden internal politics if the Camarilla front and center, and making the game more about scheming and maybe less about surviving.

Quote from: san dee jota;947215Werewolf - The "horror" came from being a guy with fightin' powers that you used to beat up monsters more scary and (hopefully) evil than you.  The real horror though came from realizing that your actions didn't mean much in the big scheme, and all your werewolf buddies were various degrees of fucked up.  Including you.  Unfortunately, White Wolf never quite had the balls to flat out say "the Garou tribes are all a bunch of horrible people in their own ways, and thanks to Tribe, genes, and spirits, you are too!", instead only ever flirting with the idea that the Garou were actually -monsters-.  I'd recommend reading the Ferals comics for some ideas on what living in a society of Rage-driven shapeshifters with Primal-Urge as a skill might actually look like.

I actually think it was pretty clear several of the Tribes sucked ass, and the current trainwreck state of the spirit world was at least partly their fault, at least circa WtA2. But I did enjoy the modern-day sword-and-sorcery vibe.

Quote from: san dee jota;947215Mage - Much like Werewolf, but to an even worse degree, there's no actual personal horror here, just dark supers.  

Plus postmodern solipsism. At 17 I thought this game was amazing. At 37? Heh.

Quote from: san dee jota;947215Changeling - I hated it.

I didn't hate hate it but I never liked it. And realizing Banality was shorthand for adulthood and that creeped me out and not in a good way.

Quote from: san dee jota;947215Wraith - It's fine as is, provided players -really- get into character, but the horror is constant and unrelenting.

Wraith is a great game but sort of tricky to get it to work. You have to balance out the Shadowlands/Fetter management and the acid-trip grimdark fantasy of Stygia, all while players play each others' Shadows egging them on to do stupid shit and get Harrowed (boom, dungeon crawl).

Quote from: san dee jota;947215Now, if you notice, some of these games -do- have "win" conditions.  To some degree you can beat Mage and Wraith (and -maybe- Vampire), but "winning" also ends your character within the game generally speaking.  Wraiths Transcend out of their current existence, Mages Ascend from it (and Goloconda is ultimately left to GM's to define, assuming it's even possible, but leaving behind vampirism is a listed possibility).  Are they still horror?  Sure!  The -certainty- of helplessnes isn't the key, but the -illusion- of it.  Now sometimes (e.g. Call of Cthulhu) there really isn't anything you can do; you simply can't stop the horrors from coming.  But dealing with your helplessness is what the game's about.  Which is why when Mages and Wraiths "win" the game and become essentially safe, the game ends for them.  "But what about all the stuff left in the world I want to deal with?"  No prob, there's your new horror to focus on.  How do you save the people/things you care about in a world of darkness?  And also, you aren't going to Ascend/Transcend if you're still tied to this world, so you won't "win" (a recurring theme in the WoD games it seems).

Most of these "victory conditions" were never laid out in mechanical detail or gotten much editorial attention. And the lines were worse for it, IMHO. Otherwise pretty good rundown.

For me and my group the key to good horror (and story in general) has been all the unintended consequences of various characters' actions; particularly when a player realizes it was their decision with a past character that led to the awful situation they find themselves in now.

Since the whole zombie apocalypse is kinda the zeitgeist of horror at the moment its worth looking at why. The zombies these days are NOT magical, but some man-created bio-engineering project gone awry. They're the ultimate horror consequence for mankind's tampering with things it doesn't totally understand and suffering the consequences of that.

Similarly, the story for the protagonists is often all about the consequences of the choices you make in trying to survive the zombie apocalypse. Can you shoot your kid in the head because they just got bitten and will soon turn and kill everyone else and how do you live with yourself after doing so?

Half the fun of my ongoing Mage game is that by this point almost every problem the current cast of characters is face is the result of the unintended consequences of the choices made by the PC's.

For example, on the vampire front, in one past campaign a player-instigated conflict with the Tremere escalated when several other Clans became collateral damage because the mages couldn't tell the difference between a Tremere and a Ventrue using Dominate or a shape-shifting Gangrel. This led to a Blood Hunt on every mage they could ferret out and the PC's having to gather up the real mages (because it was mostly only occult poseurs who looked enough like Mages to be targeted) and counter-strike at the vampire leadership. This ended with the entire Camarilla leadership in the city being gutted (because there is nothing more dangerous in the Word of Darkness than experienced mages with time to prepare) and the players celebrating their victory.

Only for the vampire problem in the next campaign to roll around and the City's south-side had become a blood bath as a new type of vampire had rolled into town. Taking out the Camarilla made it a ripe opportunity for the Sabbat to try and move in... and after another costly war, the PC's broke the back of the Sabbat as well.

The vampire problem in the current campaign is that every organized vampire knows that trying to move in on the main city in the campaign is death; so only the desperate, crazy or extremely powerful vampires operating alone or in small groups operate in the city and there's no central leadership to even try and reign them in when they go to war with each other over 'resources' and no protocols keeping rival vamps from going after each other by wiping out each others' flocks.

And that's just one of many problems facing the current batch of PC's as they try to clean up their city. One group of past PC's was involved in a major campaign to capture an Anchorhead from the Technocracy (basically a super-node/shallowing and, in my game at least, one of the nine anchors that determines the course of reality as a whole), but now much of the Tradition leadership is more interesting in doing whatever it takes to hold it than necessarily helping the masses living in the city surrounding it because.

Likewise, for the first time in ages, the Technocracy no longer controls the majority of Anchorheads (the Technocracy had five and the Traditions two with two missing, the loss of one to the Traditions and a group of PC's finding one of the missing ones puts them in balance at four and four) so Tradition leaders are looking for ways to either find the last missing Anchorhead (and so is the Technocracy) and/or take another one from the Technocracy because they see it as a way to eventually bring the Mythic Ages back. Meanwhile the Technocracy (now led by a former PC who sought to reform them) needs one of the Anchorheads back if they have any hope of saving the world from an invading horde from the Deep Umbra (which was only riled up by the unintended consequences of former PC's defeating a major villain by banishing him to the Outer Darkness).

Is a Deep Umbral invasion that will likely kill millions of innocents worth it if it brings back belief in magic? Some Tradition mages currently think so. And even those who think that price is much too high think the Technocracy's plan to basically wall off the Earth from the Spirit World (making spirit travel impossible) is the wrong way to go about it while others are skirting or even outright plotting "treason" against the Traditions by hoping to get the Technocracy the fifth Anchorhead they need for the greater good.

All of which will, in turn create many of the unintended consequences for the NEXT campaign to have to deal with.

- - - -

Applying this to the general WoD though I think you could play with those elements by playing up the fact that the vampires are, by and large, the architects of their own misery. Their power has allowed them a fair amount of insulation from the consequences of their actions, but all power has its limits and the backlog of consequences is considerable. The story is set at the point where the dam is about to crumble under the sheer weight of all those bad decisions where the PC's and vampires in general put the Beast before their humanity and then used their power to paper over the mess.

For Werewolves it would be the acknowledgement that their own rage and past actions played a huge role in humans abandoning nature for the safety and security of the very Weaver that chokes the natural world in its webs and turns necessary recycling (the pure form of the Wyrm) into lingering rot that infects all of creation (the Corrupting Wyrm). You are the thing that goes bump in the night and convinces mankind that putting up with some pollution is worth the cost of not having to live in fear of the wild beasts anymore. The Garou's past Eco-terrorism has made man deaf and even disdainful of even peaceful protests for reasonable goals like conservation of natural resources.

For Mages its the acknowledgement that their 'philosophical knife-fights' have led to the current mess of the world. Man needs both technology and spirituality to be whole, but the Ascension War has forced most mages to pick one extreme or the other while Sleepers make a hash of science by trying to make it their religion while religious extremists draw in the gullible with promises that spirituality can completely replace the need for things like modern medicine. But how do you let go of all the old grudges and find common ground when both sides have lost friends and loved ones to 'the enemy.' How do you trust that the other side isn't just going to look for signs of weakness and stab you in the back as soon as your guard is down? What 'sacred' beliefs are you willing to surrender to find common ground with your enemy?

Quote from: The Butcher;947251I think the key change from VtM1 to VtM2 was dropping this assumption, and toeing the Camarilla line becoming the default for PCs, effectively taking the "punk" out of the original "Gothic-Punk" game. Which also had the side effect of bringing the intrigue-laden internal politics if the Camarilla front and center, and making the game more about scheming and maybe less about surviving.

Makes sense.  It really felt as time went on that the gameline became less and less about being a vampire (i.e. dealing with being someone who hunts and murders -humans-) and more about being something that tried to get power over other things like yourself.  I suppose it had to though, since any PC who continued to struggle with losing their humanity (small h) for very long wouldn't make a viable long-term character I'd imagine (and it got boring for everyone at the table eventually if -everyone- kept whinging about the exact same aspect of their characters).    

Quote from: The Butcher;947251I actually think it was pretty clear several of the Tribes sucked ass, and the current trainwreck state of the spirit world was at least partly their fault, at least circa WtA2. But I did enjoy the modern-day sword-and-sorcery vibe.

Yeah, but....

As an outside adult looking in on a game from 20 years ago it was clear, but the games never really saw themselves as such.  The Black Furies were violently sexist, the Red Talons liked killing humans, the Children of Gaia were soldiers on the frontline who refused to help out their allies, the Wendigo were a bunch of loser racists, the Get were a -different- bunch of loser racists, the Silver Fangs were arrogant and worthless, the Shadow Lords were worthless and arrogant, etc. etc.  "But, but-"  No, I get it, and the books were written as if the "but, but" perspective was right, which was wrong.  Ultimately, the game only played lip service to the idea that the Garou were a bunch of rage freak religious terrorists, and then it made their religion the objective truth so they weren't even wrong in their faith.  "The Spirit Lords told me" is a stronger defense when they're -real-.

On the flipside, sometimes you just want to tank out and swing a giant magical sword at a monster and roll a bunch of dice, and Werewolf is still a heck of a good choice for that.  No shame there!

Quote from: The Butcher;947251Plus postmodern solipsism. At 17 I thought this game was amazing. At 37? Heh.

Amen!

Quote from: The Butcher;947251I didn't hate hate it but I never liked it. And realizing Banality was shorthand for adulthood and that creeped me out and not in a good way.

It's the tragic game of growing up, for people who don't realize why growing up isn't all that bad.  (and it helps if you had a shitty childhood you got out of)

Quote from: The Butcher;947251Wraith is a great game but sort of tricky to get it to work. You have to balance out the Shadowlands/Fetter management and the acid-trip grimdark fantasy of Stygia, all while players play each others' Shadows egging them on to do stupid shit and get Harrowed (boom, dungeon crawl).

Yeah, between making viable characters, and then having the party team up to psychologically destroy each other, it's a tough sell.  Still, I'll give it props for setting and experimentation.

Quote from: The Butcher;947251Most of these "victory conditions" were never laid out in mechanical detail or gotten much editorial attention. And the lines were worse for it, IMHO. Otherwise pretty good rundown.

Enh, a "win" breaks the themes so greatly (and requires things to be so defined in Mage) that I can see why they were largely ignored.  Promethean the Created is a good look at what "winning" is, and why it's not really for everyone's taste in games.

One of the issues to me with VtM was that you were a party of vampires. The initial idea of the game seems to play better with one player or a smaller group of 2-3 for a limited series of sessions focused on the struggle and loss of your humanity. I guess that's why the focus became so much about the vampire factions and society. But there also seemed to be way more vampires around than seemed believable, even in a fantasy setting.

Quote from: Spinachcat;947190WoD games are zero to hero as well. It's just how zero is defined versus hero. High XP WoD PCs and wipe the floor with newb PCs. Gamma World 1e, CoC and Traveller are among the very few RPGs which aren't zero to hero.

It would be an interesting WoD game to play monsters hunted by a US gov't crusade. It's got a bit of an X-men feel.

We never played WoD games without at least 35 experience points at start. What the basic character is literally a baby and has no business being off by themselves with no minders. It's pretty much exactly like Wheel of Time. If you're special you're either a strong wilder or being "forced" because you're not to be messed with by the weak assed rank and file.

I and my group doesn't believe in adventuring types ever being just baseline humans beyond sleeper Hunters. You adventure because you question the baseline and have definable and quantifiable talents beyond the baseline unless you're stupid. Otherwise you're just a meatbag and prey for those that are beyond the baseline. Luckily the new versions of the game admit you're not just some pissant baseline human and have abilities that disabuse the thought of trying to be just normal. You aren't so start dealing or die. That's your entry into the horror. You aren't baseline anymore.

Vampires are self explanatory. Werewolves hunt and have a whole tribe specifically specialized in hunting humans. Mages all have "spidey sense turned to 11" that is innate and they are Colombo by nature. They not only ping everything(they usually have no idea what it is) but they can't look away they just get curious and are driven to investigate.

Then again every OWoD game never made sense. We have a billion vampires hidden from sight seriously? And almost as many ecoterrorist 9 foot tall wolfmen filled with the essence of hatred no less. And then the top of ridiculous...a select few all about solipsism and subjective reality... come on are you 12 or something?

Vampires with an enemy that can mess with them on their terms.... Werewolves not hating humanity in the main and having to deal with an unseen reality filled with their half siblings that are apex predators and humans that bend reality a reality that's objective yet tells you straight up magic doesn't work off scientific laws and because of that can be weaker then science and be less effective or wildly more powerful then science and far more effective.... that makes sense. An open WoD game is exactly like The X-Men or the Witchcraft RPG. It's similar to a Super Hero game with setting conceits.

Quote from: The Butcher;947193Waah, waah, he took my precious game and shat all over it.

Your milkshake, Marleycat, we drink it. We drink it up.

Dude, I'm not hurt so try again. Play how you prefer it doesn't affect me though I may laugh at you like you do me. That's fair and expected.

Quote from: Voros;947349One of the issues to me with VtM was that you were a party of vampires. The initial idea of the game seems to play better with one player or a smaller group of 2-3 for a limited series of sessions focused on the struggle and loss of your humanity. I guess that's why the focus became so much about the vampire factions and society. But there also seemed to be way more vampires around than seemed believable, even in a fantasy setting.

Good points!

I will concede that VtM works pretty well as a generic toolbox for playing games about vampires, -if- you're willing to ignore all the stuff that doesn't mesh with your desired game.

I honestly don't understand this thread. Who adheres to canon-as-100% fact? I thought it was pretty implicit in all the WoD games that most/any/all/none of the canon is rumor and you can make whatever you want "fact" for your game?

So I never had a problem with a billion vampires, or gigantic Wyrm-beasts destroying entire blocks of Los Angeles, or a huge living mass of undead Tzimisce-flesh living under NYC - unless I chose to.

The PC's know what the PC's experience and everything else is speculation. Play on. Make it as scary/action-oriented/BDSM/Gritty-body-horror-inducing/funny/trivial as you see fit. Having an undead Prince tell you he believes in the Cain-myth is as verifiable as him saying it's really all about Longinus (and matters just as much - or not at all). What matters is how you as a GM make it meaningful (or not) in your game.

It sounds like everyone just wants to say "What are some WoD variants that sound cool" - which some of the ideas in this thread are indeed - very cool. I don't think WoD needs saving. It just needs a firm hand on the tiller to decide WTF is going on - even if the players don't actually know. But then I could say this about every RPG.

Quote from: tenbones;947515I honestly don't understand this thread. Who adheres to canon-as-100% fact? I thought it was pretty implicit in all the WoD games that most/any/all/none of the canon is rumor and you can make whatever you want "fact" for your game?... But then I could say this about every RPG.

YES.

The very first edition of V:TM was fairly explicit about this, but it was forgotten by both the fans and WW almost immediately.

Quote from: Marleycat;947417Dude, I'm not hurt so try again.

For the record, neither am I. :) We've all been on this forum long enough to have what the Koreans call "chong," longevity in a relationship that can survive ruffled feathers. It's part of the charm of this place's free speech.

I have both Cheech and Chong. :cool:

Quote from: Voros;947349One of the issues to me with VtM was that you were a party of vampires. The initial idea of the game seems to play better with one player or a smaller group of 2-3 for a limited series of sessions focused on the struggle and loss of your humanity. I guess that's why the focus became so much about the vampire factions and society. But there also seemed to be way more vampires around than seemed believable, even in a fantasy setting.

yeah, the population and cultural diversity doesn't square with the logistics required to remain secret. then again secret conspiracies of humans couldn't remain secret for the same reason. ultimately the masquerade is a farce since vampires could only hide at all if fate itself was concealing their existence. although it stills work in that hiding evidence makes it much more difficult to be instituted for delusions of vampirism. just because fate hides the existence of vampires doesn't mean it hides their actions.

Quote from: tenbones;947515I honestly don't understand this thread. Who adheres to canon-as-100% fact? I thought it was pretty implicit in all the WoD games that most/any/all/none of the canon is rumor and you can make whatever you want "fact" for your game?

So I never had a problem with a billion vampires, or gigantic Wyrm-beasts destroying entire blocks of Los Angeles, or a huge living mass of undead Tzimisce-flesh living under NYC - unless I chose to.

The PC's know what the PC's experience and everything else is speculation. Play on. Make it as scary/action-oriented/BDSM/Gritty-body-horror-inducing/funny/trivial as you see fit. Having an undead Prince tell you he believes in the Cain-myth is as verifiable as him saying it's really all about Longinus (and matters just as much - or not at all). What matters is how you as a GM make it meaningful (or not) in your game.

It sounds like everyone just wants to say "What are some WoD variants that sound cool" - which some of the ideas in this thread are indeed - very cool. I don't think WoD needs saving. It just needs a firm hand on the tiller to decide WTF is going on - even if the players don't actually know. But then I could say this about every RPG.

I think the problem is that the hardcore fans hate change of any kind. e.g. the werewolf orthodoxy, the death threats send to jess henig for writing the avatar storm. We make suggestions because we are disappointed in both the games and their vocal consumers. onyx path went SJW and paradox wants to milk it on the cheap. urban shadows and monsterhearts already do the genre justice, so we don't have any room to compete.

Quote from: san dee jota;947257Makes sense.  It really felt as time went on that the gameline became less and less about being a vampire (i.e. dealing with being someone who hunts and murders -humans-) and more about being something that tried to get power over other things like yourself.  I suppose it had to though, since any PC who continued to struggle with losing their humanity (small h) for very long wouldn't make a viable long-term character I'd imagine (and it got boring for everyone at the table eventually if -everyone- kept whinging about the exact same aspect of their characters).    



Yeah, but....

As an outside adult looking in on a game from 20 years ago it was clear, but the games never really saw themselves as such.  The Black Furies were violently sexist, the Red Talons liked killing humans, the Children of Gaia were soldiers on the frontline who refused to help out their allies, the Wendigo were a bunch of loser racists, the Get were a -different- bunch of loser racists, the Silver Fangs were arrogant and worthless, the Shadow Lords were worthless and arrogant, etc. etc.  "But, but-"  No, I get it, and the books were written as if the "but, but" perspective was right, which was wrong.  Ultimately, the game only played lip service to the idea that the Garou were a bunch of rage freak religious terrorists, and then it made their religion the objective truth so they weren't even wrong in their faith.  "The Spirit Lords told me" is a stronger defense when they're -real-.

On the flipside, sometimes you just want to tank out and swing a giant magical sword at a monster and roll a bunch of dice, and Werewolf is still a heck of a good choice for that.  No shame there!



Amen!



It's the tragic game of growing up, for people who don't realize why growing up isn't all that bad.  (and it helps if you had a shitty childhood you got out of)



Yeah, between making viable characters, and then having the party team up to psychologically destroy each other, it's a tough sell.  Still, I'll give it props for setting and experimentation.



Enh, a "win" breaks the themes so greatly (and requires things to be so defined in Mage) that I can see why they were largely ignored.  Promethean the Created is a good look at what "winning" is, and why it's not really for everyone's taste in games.

Yeah, werewolf has a huge problem with tone deafness. the werewolves all have the same religion and empirical evidence of its truth. there are other shape changers for other animals but the writers arbitrarily excluded them with wars of rage, which don't make sense as religious wars if there isn't any possibility for heresy. if there was faith rather than knowledge then you could have more diverse views and religious strife that doesn't contradict its own premise. maybe you could even outright state in the text that the werewolves are evil monsters and you don't have to agree with their values while playing them. playing a character with values opposing your own could be quite fun, as evidenced by the popularity of vampire's path of enlightenment "whatever i was going to do anyway" crime fantasy.

even the weaver and wyrm going crazy assumes that if they weren't crazy everything would be okay. you could just as easily argue they would arrive at the same result while sane. for example: weaver drives progress and dumps toxic waste due to simple incompetence (like real life), while the wyrm decides that going green is impossible and creates a new ecosystem dependent on toxic waste that must supplant the old or die.

as for the humanity conflict not making for long chronicles, I think that is handled fairly well in Feed. you can still play past humanity zero, but you have no real human connections and can barely interact with the world without using vampire powers.

Quote from: Opaopajr;947613For the record, neither am I. :) We've all been on this forum long enough to have what the Koreans call "chong," longevity in a relationship that can survive ruffled feathers. It's part of the charm of this place's free speech.

Correct. For the record I like you as a person. I don't like your DM style or your preference in power level in most games. Then again I think the very premise of VtM, WtA, and MTA is ridiculous. At least the CroD makes some level of actual sense regardless of the writer's real life politics especially since I prefer an integrated world.

Something I forgot to add in my last post is how superpowers are handled. WoD is all over the place with this, but I have an idea for simplicity.

Superpowers come in form of magical skills. You could cast freeform spells on the fly at a penalty or as time consuming rituals. You could buy a fixed spell to cast at will without the improv penalty. This what, say, Godbound uses.

You could further divide these along an Ars Magica techniques/forms or Changeling arts/realms system where you have separate skills for the effect and the target, or a Geist key/manifestation or Inferno malapraxis system where you have to combine more esoteric skills like "wrath in the night" or whatever.

Effects usually have difficulties scaling with complexity. Optionally each new rank in a skill unlocks new uses of that skill a la Mage practices. Skills may be more or less expensive based on the frequency of their purviews (e.g. "mental" costs a lot, "dominate" and "charm" a lot less).

Typical game design stuff like that.

Actually if you fuckwits insist on straight crossover... understand this,... Demons, Mages, and Mummies are stronger then the rest intentionally. The developer said so and the games aren't meant for true crossover like Witchcraft. Understand that, and know that have my interest. This isn't 4e you nerd boys. Mages are supposed to kick ass because the baseline mage is supposed to be an asshole that can erase any stupid non Jedi without a thought, a Jedi would be interesting to eliminate in MtAsc,
and fun in MtAw, a Super Jedi takes planning. Think about it. Paradox or not. It's not about if/why/what..it's about how. Mage's kill anything/everything easily. The question is how much Wisdom they willing to risk? Better to just downgrade to irrelevant if/wherever possible given it's much less effort and quite effective. Thing is magic isn't visible unless the Mage chooses it is.... think on it and get back to me.

MtAsc is all about HAP/HOP and whatever the GM decides and me thinking he's an asshole and ignorant.:) MtAw means all magic is unseen until it's OBVIOUS. This means you can be Firestarter, Jedi Knight, Scanners or whatever unless you show off (yantras, maybe some rote mundras)just to end the bullshit.:)).

Yes, gals and guys that move the goalposts from the beginning work on a different and higher playing field. Really pretty simple if arrogant but deal. They don't use the elements to change the rules. They change the actual rules every time they wish.

OWoD was much worse given Mages could make vampire lawnchairs regardless of Sat..Sara Brucatto's wishes.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;947696Something I forgot to add in my last post is how superpowers are handled. WoD is all over the place with this, but I have an idea for simplicity.

Superpowers come in form of magical skills. You could cast freeform spells on the fly at a penalty or as time consuming rituals. You could buy a fixed spell to cast at will without the improv penalty. This what, say, Godbound uses.

You could further divide these along an Ars Magica techniques/forms or Changeling arts/realms system where you have separate skills for the effect and the target, or a Geist key/manifestation or Inferno malapraxis system where you have to combine more esoteric skills like "wrath in the night" or whatever.

Effects usually have difficulties scaling with complexity. Optionally each new rank in a skill unlocks new uses of that skill a la Mage practices. Skills may be more or less expensive based on the frequency of their purviews (e.g. "mental" costs a lot, "dominate" and "charm" a lot less).

Typical game design stuff like that.

Or you could be really simple and use REACH like Mage the Awakening. Just a thought.

Quote from: Marleycat;947855Or you could be really simple and use REACH like Mage the Awakening. Just a thought.

I stopped following Onyx years ago. I don't know what that is.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;947867I stopped following Onyx years ago. I don't know what that is.

I stopped following OWoD years ago, many years ago so I think we're even. I hated on that game pretty quickly beyond Mage the Ascension if that helps? And NuWW confirms my decision wasn't wrong. So you better hope NuWW doesn't pull OP's licenses for your beloved glorious mess of a game. Vampire 5e and it's ilk sounds like quite the trainwreck but whatever.

Quote from: Marleycat;947843Actually if you fuckwits insist on straight crossover... understand this,... Demons, Mages, and Mummies are stronger then the rest intentionally. The developer said so and the games aren't meant for true crossover like Witchcraft. Understand that, and know that have my interest. This isn't 4e you nerd boys. Mages are supposed to kick ass because the baseline mage is supposed to be an asshole that can erase any stupid non Jedi without a thought, a Jedi would be interesting to eliminate in MtAsc,
and fun in MtAw, a Super Jedi takes planning. Think about it. Paradox or not. It's not about if/why/what..it's about how. Mage's kill anything/everything easily. The question is how much Wisdom they willing to risk? Better to just downgrade to irrelevant if/wherever possible given it's much less effort and quite effective. Thing is magic isn't visible unless the Mage chooses it is.... think on it and get back to me.

MtAsc is all about HAP/HOP and whatever the GM decides and me thinking he's an asshole and ignorant.:) MtAw means all magic is unseen until it's OBVIOUS. This means you can be Firestarter, Jedi Knight, Scanners or whatever unless you show off (yantras, maybe some rote mundras)just to end the bullshit.:)).

Yes, gals and guys that move the goalposts from the beginning work on a different and higher playing field. Really pretty simple if arrogant but deal. They don't use the elements to change the rules. They change the actual rules every time they wish.

OWoD was much worse given Mages could make vampire lawnchairs regardless of Sat..Sara Brucatto's wishes.

Can't the game balance be loosely addressed by a point buy system? I'm under the impression GURPS WoD works in this way.

Quote from: Marleycat;947868I stopped following OWoD years ago, many years ago so I think we're even. I hated on that game pretty quickly beyond Mage the Ascension if that helps? And NuWW confirms my decision wasn't wrong. So you better hope NuWW doesn't pull OP's licenses for your beloved glorious mess of a game. Vampire 5e and it's ilk sounds like quite the trainwreck but whatever.

What is "reach" supposed to be? How and why it is more elegant than what I proposed?

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;947874Can't the game balance be loosely addressed by a point buy system? I'm under the impression GURPS WoD works in this way.


What is "reach" supposed to be? How and why it is more elegant than what I proposed?

It could be, just understand if you're regular guy is 100 points to start in whatever setting, Vampires are 150-250 and Werewolves are 200-250 and Mages/Mummies/Demons are 300-400 points in GURPS for example.

Reach is a MtAw mechanic. In that system mages can do anything safely but can do nasty stuff with risk. You get free reach to modify baseline effects and you can reach as much as you prefer with risk.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;947624just because fate hides the existence of vampires doesn't mean it hides their actions.

"Global Anemia has been a mystery plaguing mankind since the beginning of recorded history, but for just pennies a day, you can help contribute to the fight to stop G.A."  

To some extent, you have to just handwave it away.  Kinda' like accepting elves cast fireball spells in D&D, it's just a given in the setting.  But yeah, that's easier said than done when the WoD so desperately wants to mirror our world... except when it doesn't.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;947624Yeah, werewolf has a huge problem with tone deafness. the werewolves all have the same religion and empirical evidence of its truth. there are other shape changers for other animals but the writers arbitrarily excluded them with wars of rage, which don't make sense as religious wars if there isn't any possibility for heresy. if there was faith rather than knowledge then you could have more diverse views and religious strife that doesn't contradict its own premise.

It works if you run with the idea that the shapechangers have all the truth and evidence, but -chose- to ignore it.  I'm pretty sure that's canonical too.  

Still though, White Wolf had this great vehicle for exploring both the positive and negative aspects of religion and faith and chose to ignore it in favor of going the D&D Cleric route of "how much damage does my miraculous intervention from on high do?"

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;947624even the weaver and wyrm going crazy assumes that if they weren't crazy everything would be okay. you could just as easily argue they would arrive at the same result while sane. for example: weaver drives progress and dumps toxic waste due to simple incompetence (like real life), while the wyrm decides that going green is impossible and creates a new ecosystem dependent on toxic waste that must supplant the old or die.

"They weren't crazy.  They were never crazy.  All this time we fought them, thinking they were insane, because we couldn't admit the truth.  In the game of evolution, the fittest survive, and they were the most fit.  And all we were doing was trying to help the weakest link hold them back."

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;947624as for the humanity conflict not making for long chronicles, I think that is handled fairly well in Feed. you can still play past humanity zero, but you have no real human connections and can barely interact with the world without using vampire powers.

Feed?

Heck with all this. I want to play Dino Crisis with Vampire:tm! Another one from Dragao Brazil.

Bemusingly enough they also did Blade and the Matrix conversions. Truly Trenchcoats and Katanas...
Among several others.

All this stuff about disparate power levels is why my ongoing campaign is Mage exclusive.

All the other stuff that's playable in the OWoD exists because enough of mankind believes it exists on some level and the Technocracy does its damnedest MIB style to keep knowledge of it confined to conspiracy web sites. Cleaning up the messes left by supernaturals so the public doesn't find out about the monsters in their midst eats up the majority of their resources. Its something of an ongoing joke that most of Hollywood and D.C. are actually cloned replacements because the originals keep ending up targets of some supernatural with a grudge or an obsession (there's some degree of confusion over just which vampire has the original Sarah Michelle Gellar as his Childe/Ghouled Thrall).

It is also something of an joke that since belief creates reality its only a matter of time before vampires start to sparkle and there are several betting pools amongst various mages as to when that will occur. The few vampires aware of this via their contact with mages actively dread that this could happen to them.

Quote from: Marleycat;948021It could be, just understand if you're regular guy is 100 points to start in whatever setting, Vampires are 150-250 and Werewolves are 200-250 and Mages/Mummies/Demons are 300-400 points in GURPS for example.

Reach is a MtAw mechanic. In that system mages can do anything safely but can do nasty stuff with risk. You get free reach to modify baseline effects and you can reach as much as you prefer with risk.

I remember seeing a point buy netbook for WoD/CoD somewhere that used CoD 1e rules with adjustments for WoD specific elements. I will have to look it up again.

I assume "reach" is a 2e CoD thing. How is that different from 1e CoD rules?

Quote from: san dee jota;948038"Global Anemia has been a mystery plaguing mankind since the beginning of recorded history, but for just pennies a day, you can help contribute to the fight to stop G.A."  

To some extent, you have to just handwave it away.  Kinda' like accepting elves cast fireball spells in D&D, it's just a given in the setting.  But yeah, that's easier said than done when the WoD so desperately wants to mirror our world... except when it doesn't.



It works if you run with the idea that the shapechangers have all the truth and evidence, but -chose- to ignore it.  I'm pretty sure that's canonical too.  

Still though, White Wolf had this great vehicle for exploring both the positive and negative aspects of religion and faith and chose to ignore it in favor of going the D&D Cleric route of "how much damage does my miraculous intervention from on high do?"



"They weren't crazy.  They were never crazy.  All this time we fought them, thinking they were insane, because we couldn't admit the truth.  In the game of evolution, the fittest survive, and they were the most fit.  And all we were doing was trying to help the weakest link hold them back."



Feed?

Arcane Fate, Occultation, Veil, Lunacy, Mists, Fog, Mask whatever is one giant hand wave. The only distinction is the viewers' reaction (e.g. denial, forgetting, panic) and whether disbelief backlashes on you (e.g. damage, distortions). I could figure a unified mechanic later.

"Feed" is an indie vampire rpg on onebookshelf by "whistle punk" I think. It was created when the author found VtM chargen too restrictive, but it's not a heartbreaker since the rules are completely different and there's multiple settings a la AFMBE. It's a real toolkit and an overlooked gem IMO.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;948318Arcane Fate, Occultation, Veil, Lunacy, Mists, Fog, Mask whatever is one giant hand wave. The only distinction is the viewers' reaction (e.g. denial, forgetting, panic) and whether disbelief backlashes on you (e.g. damage, distortions). I could figure a unified mechanic later.

This hand wave is a very personal obstacle to my enjoyment of these games. I hate their inclusion, but I still have more trouble imagining monsters existing among humans in our actual world without it. Of course you could argue the entire premise is absurd from top to bottom anyway, but for whatever reason my suspension of disbelief crashes into my horror power fantasy at that exact point.

I always thought Changeling the Dreaming was more than "growing up" or "hating science." The Moon Walk opened the gates of Arcadia once again, briefly, for many sidhe to spill out -- and two Realms attached to Science, and one Realm to Technology, are used for resistance (as much as performance & music). In fact there's a whole kith obsessed with tinkering. Science and technology is very much a part of Changeling celebrating the dreams of mankind.

The tragedy was not so much growing up, but no longer being appreciative. Gratitude for the world's wonders & terrors was dying. It doesn't take adulthood to become bored with the world, it takes dying inside to become blind to its surrounding awe. The personal horror is finding yourself comfortable as you become numb, hollowed from the inside out.

Quote from: Omega;948091Heck with all this. I want to play Dino Crisis with Vampire:tm! Another one from Dragao Brazil.

Bemusingly enough they also did Blade and the Matrix conversions. Truly Trenchcoats and Katanas...
Among several others.

Dragão Brasil's conversions made me cringe even back in the day. They had cyborg vampires for V:tM in one of their first issues. They were also the kings of copyright-be-damned conversions varying from the somewhat stupid (Jedi knights for AD&D2) to the terminally stupid (Swat Kats for GURPS). Being a monthly magazine outside the Anglosphere meant they could get away with this stuff.

You Brazilian, Omega?

Quote from: Opaopajr;948336I always thought Changeling the Dreaming was more than "growing up" or "hating science." The Moon Walk opened the gates of Arcadia once again, briefly, for many sidhe to spill out -- and two Realms attached to Science, and one Realm to Technology, are used for resistance (as much as performance & music). In fact there's a whole kith obsessed with tinkering. Science and technology is very much a part of Changeling celebrating the dreams of mankind.

The tragedy was not so much growing up, but no longer being appreciative. Gratitude for the world's wonders & terrors was dying. It doesn't take adulthood to become bored with the world, it takes dying inside to become blind to its surrounding awe. The personal horror is finding yourself comfortable as you become numb, hollowed from the inside out.

Yeah. I always figured that Banality was something like "despair" or "apathy" - a state of mind where you knew that it didn't really matter what you did. Where there weren't any adventures to be had or discoveries to be made, just a whole world full of homogenous blah. And Glamour was hope and fear and just generally the sense that your life was important and that something interesting was bound to happen soon.

I also pretty much ignored the parts of the books that said that hardly any changeling made it past thirty without being Undone. I figured that while most changelings did indeed drop before that (not necessarily from being consumed by Banality, but from suffering chimerical death and not having enough Glamour left to come back out of it - or just from regular death, since changelings tend to live dangerous lives), the ones that did manage to make it that far had every chance at staying changelings until they died of old age.

It doesn't help that the 1e book is organized like a fairy tale, replete with seeming contradictions. You can apparently come to your chrysalis as a human grandmother age -- the only catch is you'll almost assuredly be a grump. The reincarnation for commoners is sorta interesting: you could die a grump, but be reborn a childling, wilder, or grump next time, with grimayre being your connection to your fae memory. Given newcomer nobility sidhe are not known to reincarnate, it almost becomes a whole additional theme -- the nature of reincarnation, maturity, & memory -- in a game already drowning in themes competing for your attention.

That actually be my biggest complaint against the splat; it overflows with ideas, themes, kith, etc. You feel tempted.to include it all somehow. But using all the crayons in the box all over the same picture makes mud.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;948318I remember seeing a point buy netbook for WoD/CoD somewhere that used CoD 1e rules with adjustments for WoD specific elements. I will have to look it up again.

It's one of those fucked up game design choices White Wolf never allowed itself to admit was ass-backwards game design.  Either use "bonus points" for everything, or use "experience points" for everything, but having two systems which charge stuff at different rates is asinine.  (having spirits use a whole separate system for stat builds was my other rage trigger.  Why spirits and not everything else?  Just another example of muddying up rules in a weak attempt at immersing the GM, who doesn't need immersion through multiple mechanical systems)  

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;948318"Feed" is an indie vampire rpg on onebookshelf by "whistle punk" I think. It was created when the author found VtM chargen too restrictive, but it's not a heartbreaker since the rules are completely different and there's multiple settings a la AFMBE. It's a real toolkit and an overlooked gem IMO.

Thanks!  I'll give it a look.

Quote from: The Butcher;948359Dragão Brasil's conversions made me cringe even back in the day. They had cyborg vampires for V:tM in one of their first issues. They were also the kings of copyright-be-damned conversions varying from the somewhat stupid (Jedi knights for AD&D2) to the terminally stupid (Swat Kats for GURPS). Being a monthly magazine outside the Anglosphere meant they could get away with this stuff.

You Brazilian, Omega?

Ive shown a few to a player who REALLY likes Gurps and used to like Vampire and his comments on it were interesting. But the main thing is appreciation for the effort put into these conversions. And apparently they cranked out a ton of them? And I knew one of the artists for the magazine and didnt make the connection till years later. Which is about par for the course for me. :o

I picked up a few of the magazines at GenCon and another gaming con way back along with some for Graal and Backstab and one other whos name eludes me now. Which ended up lost with alot of other gaming material. And artist I know though is Brazillian. She helped me with the translation of Alerta Vermelho's comic. (Yes. It is a bootleg of Awful Green Things)

(http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-xNYmrfkTv7Y/TZTu1LCXdeI/AAAAAAAAJs4/7x3h_o9Au24/s1600/Lote%2B071.jpg)
(https://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic1238427_md.jpg)

And turns out she collected Dragão Brasil too.

Quote from: Omega;948575And apparently they cranked out a ton of them?

You don't have idea. They still doing it until today, in TWO different magazines now: Dragon Slayer (http://jamboeditora.com.br/categoria/publicacoes-antigas/) (made after the original left the Dragão Brasil, now out of print) and in the new edition of Dragon Brasil (http://jamboeditora.com.br/categoria/dragao-brasil/), who gone digital.

Now they try to put everything in the house systems, Tormenta d20 (http://jamboeditora.com.br/categoria/tormenta/) and 3D&T Alpha (http://jamboeditora.com.br/categoria/3det/). 3D&T, as a system, is totally okay even with some quirks. But Tormenta d20, oh boy, it's a bizarre mix of Star Wars Saga with Pathfinder, done without any kinda of playtest or common sense.

It's a clusterfuck of epic proportions.