Quote from: The Butcher;387994Now there's something I'd like to see. However, I suspect your end-result is probably a lot closer to Awakening than you might realize.

Actually, it's rather close in the sense that I basically use the Awakening background as an inspiration and just correct stuff, reinject other stuff instead, switch things around, add more groups and sub-groups, so that basically the game works the same, with a background that sticks more to the real world, with more depth to it, to me at least.

Quote from: The Butcher;387994It's also a bit too gonzo for my tastes, and this coming from a man who loves Rifts. It's one thing to have ninjas, cyborgs and wizards in pointy hats duking it out in a war-blasted, demon-ravaged future. It's another for them to do so in the alleyways of a modern metropolis...

That never really happened to us, the wild stuff was limited to otherworlds or to remote areas, paradox and coincidence were great ways of stopping that getting out of hand. Our games were more Planetary or Charles de Lint than Simon R Green.

Quote from: The Butcher;387952I don't recall "I can't stay in any one place for long". In fact, IIRC, werewolves have to stand their ground, holding territory against malicious spirits, the Pure, other supernatural threats, and even other Forsaken. And some NPCs have held their territories for a long, long time (e.g. the Pickering household from Manitou Springs, or whatever the Denver book is called).

As for "I can't maintain human relationships", well, ain't that the truth.

I see what you did there.

Look, the book tells you that you fight for territory, but the book doesn't give you any rational reason to do it. Think about it for a moment: without human contact, "ownership" of territory doesn't mean anything. If you don't have friends and coworkers and stuff, the place you are isn't your home, it's just a place you happen to be standing.

Once you commit to the life of not have attachments in the social sense, there is no value in walking or sleeping one place instead of another. You could just leave.

NWoD Mage has what is essentially the same problem. Everything I want and care about is in the mortal world. So fighting over an Atlantean tower in the supernal realm is a waste of time. There are magical superninjas who are "invading" an uninhabited section of Greenland, and only you can stop them! Except... why the fuck would you care? You could just not stop them and continue living it up as a sorcerer in New York and let people totally tag up some tower or another in the Supernal Realm. Maybe they'll write "Adamantium Arrow Sucks" on it with spray paint. But seriously, so fucking what?

NWoD had a serious motivation problem, where they kept expecting you to be all gung ho about fighting villains who were... doing stuff... to things. Things that neither you nor anyone else had any vested interest in.

-Frank

Quote from: FrankTrollman;388043NWoD had a serious motivation problem, where they kept expecting you to be all gung ho about fighting villains who were... doing stuff... to things. Things that neither you nor anyone else had any vested interest in.

Maybe I'm being dense here, but I fail to see how the motivations presented in the nWoD are any worse than those in the oWoD.

In Apocalypse, you're supposed to defend the Earth Mother from the spirit of death and decay gone mad, and its pawns. Other than the fact that it's set in 1992, why should I care one iota about "defending magical spots of Gaia power" (as you yourself put it) and saving the environment from acid-vomiting mutants?

Contrast to Forsaken's premise. "The world as you know it is under siege by hungry, nasty spirits, and we are the ones responsible for keeping them in check." Cut to Azlu eating people. In your old neighborhood. You might no longer live with your parents after you mauled Aunt Petunia to a bloody pulp in a fit of Death-Rage, as you battled the Spirit-Claimed serial killer who broke into your folks' house to kill you, but that doesn't mean you'll suffer a spider-thing to build a nest next door to them, and grow fat eating your childhood friends.

In Ascension, you're supposed to fight the people who brought us indoor plumbing, and vaccines, and television, so that everyone is free to smoke pot, and build jet packs and flying cars, and sacrifice small animals (and the odd vagrant) to the Great Mountain Spirit and generally twist reality into behaving in whatever way it's convenient for Tradition mages, all in the name of "Ascension".

In Awakening, you realize the world we know is bullshit and we are all Gods. The Pentacle Orders want to spread the love and bring humanity closer to Ascension (here defined as "storming the Heavens and wresting the divinity that is Man's birthright from the Exarchs' cold, dead hands"), while the Seers are in the Exarchs' payroll and want to keep humanity unenlightened and complacent, while enjoying their magical and temporal power (I think of them as a meaner, yet subtler Technocracy).

Those felt cheap, I imagine. I just meant to show you that (a) argumentum ad absurdum goes both ways and that (b) different people engage different premises with different levels of enthusiasm. I find it easier to relate to Forsaken than to Apocalypse, for instance. I loved Apocalypse and played the hell out of it, but today it feels pretty dated, what with all the Ecospeak and Carlos Castañeda pop-animism.

The real problem, I feel, is not about motivation. I think the nWoD's are just as good (or bad) as the oWoD's. It's about the huge, baroque mythology of the oWoD, which was very enticing and helped players and GMs alike engage the setting, i.e. care about the setting.

In this I find the nWoD actually a throwback to "old school" gaming, in that the games are whatever you make of them. If your PCs want to Diablerize their way to Princedom, it's going to be a story of them vs. the Prince and his cronies, with no Archon or Justicar to stop you. If you want to play a game which culminates with your werewolf pack punching [strike]Cthulhu[/strike] the Idigam under the Amazon River in the face, there'll be no Rank 6 Get of Fenris to bail their asses out.

Once again, not all games will click with all people. The nWoD focuses on "street-level" games and leaves a lot up to the GM and players. The oWoD had the 800lb metaplot gorilla on the loose, which irked some people, but also made the game very attractive to others (God knows I loved that stuff, and read about it all the time when not playing, and had heated arguments with the rest of my group about who was Prince of London or whatever).

Whether you'll prefer one or another will depend on your GMing style; I find that the nWoD, in general, better fits my gaming style. Some lines (Hunter, Changeling) I've found vastly superior to the oWoD; others (the "big three" above) I've welcomed as new takes on the old subjects, with their excesses mostly pruned.

Of course, depending on how attached one was to the excesses of the oWoD, that'd be a bug and not a feature.

Quote from: The Butcher;388058In Ascension, you're supposed to fight the people who brought us indoor plumbing, and vaccines, and television, so that everyone is free to smoke pot, and build jet packs and flying cars, and sacrifice small animals (and the odd vagrant) to the Great Mountain Spirit and generally twist reality into behaving in whatever way it's convenient for Tradition mages, all in the name of "Ascension".

Correction: not "so that everyone", so that a tiny "special" minority can get the pot and the jetpacks while everyone else dies of dysentery, smallpox and starvation; because Science and Western Civilization are Evil. :rolleyes:

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