Quote from: Future Villain Band;808877I think the cleanest iteration of Storyteller was the Trinity Storyteller system, because it was simplest -- one target number, for example, count successes, and a very simply combat system.  

The new World of Darkness takes lessons from that. In contrast, tasks only need one success to succeed but more provide better results. Thus, modifiers are applied to dice pools and automatic successes have been replaced with +3 bonuses. Backgrounds and Merits have been folded into a single mechanic while Flaws are not rated but instead provide bonus XP every time they impede the PC.

Quote from: Future Villain Band;808877If I were going to do a unified Storyteller, I'd start there, and then start cataloging  dice tricks, like Exalted's dice adders, doublers, Aberrant's mega-attributes, and Adventure's amplified Backgrounds.  Then I'd decide from the beginning whether I want to use certain tricks like Adversarial Backgrounds, merits & flaws, and the like.  Catalog at the beginning what works and what you'll be using, and then rely heavily on those.

Trinity Universe, Exalted and Scion have shared similar mechanics. For example, Epic Attributes are derived from Mega-Attributes, Background Enhancements are derived from 6+ Backgrounds, and so on. The new World of Darkness allows certain Merits like Safehouses to have multiple separately-rated facets.

Quote from: Will;808897I've always been distantly familiar with ST, so I don't have any detailed advice.

However, I think system design in  general has shown that reward is much more effective than punishment.

That is, anything like Virtues and Humanity should probably work such that characters can do Something when cleaving to them, rather than cueing screwball comedy when violated.

I think it should go both ways so that there's real temptation to violate it. A vampire who slowly loses his Humanity would suffer magnifying weaknesses, but would be "rewarded" with extra aid from his inner beast. Although this doesn't work well if the PCs normally act like escaped mental patients and the players aren't emotionally invested in the inner struggle between man and monster. (This could probably be solved by changing combat so that the end result is defeating opponents and then deciding their fate rather than automatically killing them to progress.)

Or maybe reward different paths.

If you want to be a beast monster, here are beasty monster perks.
If you want to be someone struggling to maintain their soul, here are dramatic character stuff perks.