I discovered the RPG Nightlife a while back and it intrigues me. I can definitely see it is the precursor and a chief inspiration for the World of Darkness setting. I have been wanting to run an urban fantasy game close to the feeling of The World of Darkness and The Dresden Files, taking inspiration and elements of each to craft my own universe with player and NPC options for being human Hunters or norms, Vampires, Werewolves, Mages, Ghosts, etc. This game seems like it can do it all.
How good is it overall? Is the system mostly sound and easy to grok and run?
How good is magic in the game for Mages and such? Are there any good adventures for it?
I loved the setting material, the NPCs and monsters. I never ran it with the system given though, we used a kind of bastardised D&D.
One of my players had the core. And the hard to find single supplement since they got lucky and met the designer at a con.
On some ways it struck me as what you might get if you played Nights Edge for CP2020 with a focus on the PCs playing the supernatural creatures and toned down the cyberpunk.
Has anyone here played it with the rules in the core rulebook and/or experimented with it as a replacement for World of Darkness?
I played several one shots at conventions back when it came out. I remember it being a fun setting, but nothing about the system. Then it just vanished off the radar. Has anyone done a 2nd edition?
Man, I had and loved that book back in the day, and I've been trying desperately to find a copy for years now. I'm jelly.
Can't answer your questions, though... my memory isn't that good and I never did actually play it, and from what I've been able to remember or glean from the stray copies of their other game I keep stumbling across (it came from teh late late show...), I seem to recall it maybe being a bit low power but swingy, and maybe, maybe, that it was percentile based? I do remember you could, in theory, cheese the reputation/fashion rules by spending a chunk on Tattoos, but that sub-aspect of the game always struck me as unnecessary... a bit like alignments in the unnecessary adn avoidable, not in their role in game...
I don't even remember there being mages. I remember the zipperheads, and the troll or ogre with powder blue polyester suits, and a few other really colorful monsters, and that's about it...
Is this the one that has the blurb on the back "silver doesn't turn lead, heard"?
I think I have a copy of that when I was in the Navy and I liked their take on the races and it felt like a less pretentious World of Darkness... by that I mean it's definitely expecting the players to sit around and have fun being monsters, rather than pretending they're having a terrible time being super-powered Immortals.
Obviously my memory is so fuzzy I can't speak to the rules, but the fact that I remember it at all and can picture some of the art if it is indeed the book I'm thinking of, says something.
Quote from: Spinachcat;1136909I played several one shots at conventions back when it came out. I remember it being a fun setting, but nothing about the system. Then it just vanished off the radar. Has anyone done a 2nd edition?
A second edition? There were 3. The third is widely considered to be the best in the series and is the one I own.
I tried to upload an image of it from my PC but when I hit "upload image" it does nothing here.
Quote from: Spike;1136974I don't even remember there being mages. I remember the zipperheads, and the troll or ogre with powder blue polyester suits, and a few other really colorful monsters, and that's about it...
Mages were introduced in the Magic supplement.
I read nightlife, but never played it. It was very unfortunately timed in its release in that it was totally overshadowed by Vampire, but it always seemed to me to be a much more entertaining game just for being way less pretentious.
Quote from: RPGPundit;1138400I read nightlife, but never played it. It was very unfortunately timed in its release in that it was totally overshadowed by Vampire, but it always seemed to me to be a much more entertaining game just for being way less pretentious.
Compared to oWoD,
everything is less pretentious, and better for being so.
The setting is fine (it's basically every 80s b-movie, so trendy now), but the rules are in dire need of revision.
My suggestion is to use the rules from Whistlepunk Games' Feed with the setting from Nightlife, or use the official Nightlife conversion for Actual Fucking Monsters on the AFM author blog.