Quote from: Christopher Brady;1036685OK, we get it, you hate Justin Achilli.  Unfortunately, you're also wrong.  Rein-Hagen was the reason it's not that good a game system.  Ignoring his rather obvious pretentiousness, he saddled a Vampire game based on conflict without answering the most basic of conflict systems.

Quote from: Doc Sammy;1036702Mark Rein-Hagen had his flaws, but a lot of the pretentiousness of VTM can be laid at Justin Achilli's feet with his One True Way attitude that was all over Revised Edition.

Anyway, Doc Sammy is completely wrong about pretty much everything. I have listened to statements by past White Wolf staff on old dead forums long enough to get the truth.

In the 90s, the RPG market saw a slump. White Wolf saw their sales declining and so the marketing department decided that a revised/third edition was needed to bring up sales. Justin Achilli was hired and we got the metaplot advancing more than it ever had before (contrary to popular belief, it did exist since the games' inception). This did not stop the decline nor did it make it worse. Memorably, the lead developer of Mage Revised received a huge amount of death threats in his email and became terrified of checking his inbox.

Marketing department did not understand that the slump could not be fixed because it affected the entire RPG market. So they assumed it might have been because WoD lore was too unwieldy for new audiences, so they decided to pull an Ultimate Marvel. WoD metaplot was officially ended with the Time of Judgment series. CoD, then (n)WoD, was released with the intent to attract new audiences. Problem was, as I said before, there were not enough new (nor old) audiences to sustain it at the same level as the RPG boom in the early 90s. Continuing WoD, now cWoD or oWoD, would not have done any better because the old audiences were moving away too.

White Wolf was bought out by CCP, the staff liquidated because CCP fell on hard times, licensed to an indie publisher, and finally sold again to Paradox. This all would have happened regardless of whether WoD or CoD was the flagship product at the time. Both CCP and Paradox were only interested in CoD anyway.

I could saw a lot about the rules, but I will limit myself. WoD seems to have been originally inspired by Nightlife, another monster mash RPG that came out in 1989. Nightlife was basically Vampire, except that werewolves, ghosts, fairies, demons, etc all played by the same rules and many of them even fed on human blood/emotions/etc. WoD inspired a few notable competitors (now failed), such as WitchCraft, Everlasting, and the Chaosium adaptation of the French RPG Nephilim, which were actually worked on by some of the same writers. When CoD was developed, it burrowed a lot of ideas originally introduced in the competitors, such as a loosely unified mechanic for power points (from Everlasting and Witchcraft), Atlantis as a mage's utopia (from Nephilim), and variably-themed sanity meters (from Everlasting).

WoD, in any iteration, has always had crappy rules. The most notable is probably Vampire's humanity meter. It is supposed to promote a theme of personal horror, but all it does is punish characters with schizophrenia for stealing candy bars or whatever. In many iterations it is easier to get away with cruelty and slaughter if your conscience is rated higher. A good humanity mechanic would not do that.

You can see an example of a good humanity mechanic in, say, Whistlepunk Games' Feed RPG. Character traits all follow the same mechanic and are described in free form. As vampire characters lose their humanity, this is represented by replacing human traits with vampire traits. The implications of this are flexible and covers the path/road mechanics from WoD. For example: in a Stoker style setting the PCs would become unplayable after a certain point, in a B-movie style setting the PCs would exalt in vampirism, etc. If the players are invested in the concept of humanity loss and personal horror, this mechanic supports that theme a lot better than an arbitrary sanity meter. Of all the humanity systems I have seen in various vampire-themed RPGs, this is by far the best one.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1037484Anyway, Doc Sammy is completely wrong about pretty much everything. I have listened to statements by past White Wolf staff on old dead forums long enough to get the truth.

In the 90s, the RPG market saw a slump. White Wolf saw their sales declining and so the marketing department decided that a revised/third edition was needed to bring up sales. Justin Achilli was hired and we got the metaplot advancing more than it ever had before (contrary to popular belief, it did exist since the games' inception). This did not stop the decline nor did it make it worse. Memorably, the lead developer of Mage Revised received a huge amount of death threats in his email and became terrified of checking his inbox.

Marketing department did not understand that the slump could not be fixed because it affected the entire RPG market. So they assumed it might have been because WoD lore was too unwieldy for new audiences, so they decided to pull an Ultimate Marvel. WoD metaplot was officially ended with the Time of Judgment series. CoD, then (n)WoD, was released with the intent to attract new audiences. Problem was, as I said before, there were not enough new (nor old) audiences to sustain it at the same level as the RPG boom in the early 90s. Continuing WoD, now cWoD or oWoD, would not have done any better because the old audiences were moving away too.

White Wolf was bought out by CCP, the staff liquidated because CCP fell on hard times, licensed to an indie publisher, and finally sold again to Paradox. This all would have happened regardless of whether WoD or CoD was the flagship product at the time. Both CCP and Paradox were only interested in CoD anyway.

I could saw a lot about the rules, but I will limit myself. WoD seems to have been originally inspired by Nightlife, another monster mash RPG that came out in 1989. Nightlife was basically Vampire, except that werewolves, ghosts, fairies, demons, etc all played by the same rules and many of them even fed on human blood/emotions/etc. WoD inspired a few notable competitors (now failed), such as WitchCraft, Everlasting, and the Chaosium adaptation of the French RPG Nephilim, which were actually worked on by some of the same writers. When CoD was developed, it burrowed a lot of ideas originally introduced in the competitors, such as a loosely unified mechanic for power points (from Everlasting and Witchcraft), Atlantis as a mage's utopia (from Nephilim), and variably-themed sanity meters (from Everlasting).

WoD, in any iteration, has always had crappy rules. The most notable is probably Vampire's humanity meter. It is supposed to promote a theme of personal horror, but all it does is punish characters with schizophrenia for stealing candy bars or whatever. In many iterations it is easier to get away with cruelty and slaughter if your conscience is rated higher. A good humanity mechanic would not do that.

You can see an example of a good humanity mechanic in, say, Whistlepunk Games' Feed RPG. Character traits all follow the same mechanic and are described in free form. As vampire characters lose their humanity, this is represented by replacing human traits with vampire traits. The implications of this are flexible and covers the path/road mechanics from WoD. For example: in a Stoker style setting the PCs would become unplayable after a certain point, in a B-movie style setting the PCs would exalt in vampirism, etc. If the players are invested in the concept of humanity loss and personal horror, this mechanic supports that theme a lot better than an arbitrary sanity meter. Of all the humanity systems I have seen in various vampire-themed RPGs, this is by far the best one.

Monsterhearts sucks, and Achilli's amped up metaplot ruined WoD and hastened its inevitable demise. Andrew Greenburg may have started the metaplot in 2e, but it was Achilli's metaplot in Revised that sucked donkey balls, and combined with a declining RPG market, killed the franchise.

Admit it, you know I am right and you are wrong. Pride and a love of the awful Revised metaplot are fucking with you. Get Justin Achilli's dick out of your mouth.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1037484WoD, in any iteration, has always had crappy rules. The most notable is probably Vampire's humanity meter. It is supposed to promote a theme of personal horror, but all it does is punish characters with schizophrenia for stealing candy bars or whatever. In many iterations it is easier to get away with cruelty and slaughter if your conscience is rated higher. A good humanity mechanic would not do that.

I always felt the rules for Mage were much more solid (and honestly the only part of the WoD I had any interest in... though vamps, wolves, ghosts, fairies, etc. make great antagonists... along with dragons, liches and all the other things mankind has ever believed in).

Mage also didn't have a humanity meter or virtues or any of that; just Arete (basically your spellcasting stat) and Willpower (which is mostly a difficulty threshold for certain mental/emotional magic effects and points you can burn to gain successes in a system where a foundation of the setting is that willpower shapes reality... so it fits the world's metaphysics far better there than it does for the other WoD types). Mage20 and especially the overflow book "How DO You Do That?" (which is basically 100% nuts and bolts mechanics for magical effects) did a LOT to clean up the magic system for it.

The only house rule I recommend for WoD that cleans up a lot of the weird probability quirks is to floor difficulties at 4 and cap them at 8 and instead add a die for every point of difficulty below 4 or subtract a die for every point of difficulty above 8 (so difficulty 2 would be difficulty 4+2 dice, difficulty 10 would be difficulty 8 -2 dice) and treat all 10's (not just those with specializations) as 2 successes (if you want to use the specializations, just have them reduce the difficulty by 2).

Given what I've read of their updated mechanics I have a hard time seeing how Mage's magic system would transfer well into the new mechanics (it really was designed to leverage the variable difficulties on a d10 dice pool and Awakening's magic always suffered from the static difficulties CoD imposed in my opinion). Given their whole "Post-Gehenna" continuing the Revised Metaplot I don't even know how exactly they'd be able to continue Mage given where its metaplot ended up (i.e. universal Ascension, demon apocalypse or all magic dies being the primary options presented in the Time of Judgement books).

Honestly, Mage should have been set in its own game universe from the World of Darkness anyway... its whole philosophy is so contrary to it that they basically had to butcher the setting in Revised just to try and make it fit the rest of the Revised line (including adding a brand new to Revised end-times scenario that had never even been mentioned before; Armageddon; to coincide with Gehenna and the Apocalypse).

So that's my completely selfish reason for wanting V5 to crash and burn like a vampire suffering orbital re-entry... into the sun. They need to stop trying to ruin the mad genius of Mage by forcing it to be part of the malaise that is the rest of the WoD.

Quote from: Chris24601;1037514So that's my completely selfish reason for wanting V5 to crash and burn like a vampire suffering orbital re-entry... into the sun. They need to stop trying to ruin the mad genius of Mage by forcing it to be part of the malaise that is the rest of the WoD.

Great post.

Quote from: Chris24601;1037514Mage also didn't have a humanity meter or virtues or any of that; just Arete (basically your spellcasting stat) and Willpower (which is mostly a difficulty threshold for certain mental/emotional magic effects and points you can burn to gain successes in a system where a foundation of the setting is that willpower shapes reality... so it fits the world's metaphysics far better there than it does for the other WoD types). Mage20 and especially the overflow book "How DO You Do That?" (which is basically 100% nuts and bolts mechanics for magical effects) did a LOT to clean up the magic system for it.

I thought Awakening's arcana made somewhat more sense than the spheres did, and did not require a second book explaining how to use it. And I say that as someone who read over the custom spheres on B.J. Zanzibar's site and old usenet posts. Splitting entropy and correspondence into fate, death and space are much easier to grok than other concepts I saw suggested.

I prefer Ars Magica though, since it is Mage's granddaddy and the techniques make so much more sense than the idiosyncratic practices (or whatever the terminology is) in Mage. I would prefer any other game that uses a syntactic magic system. The politics in Ascension are absurd and repulsive, especially in the 20th anniversary book where the metaplot expansion explains that the nine traditions became even more insane than they already were. The politics in Awakening (and CoD in general) are not so repulsive, but they still make no sense as political parties that human beings would actually create.

Which is the best version of Mage to buy?

Quote from: Ashakyre;1037571Which is the best version of Mage to buy?

Get a copy of Second Edition off of either eBay or Amazon.

Avoid Revised and M20 like the plague.

Quote from: Doc Sammy;1037572Get a copy of Second Edition off of either eBay or Amazon.

Avoid Revised and M20 like the plague.

Ascension or Awakening?

Quote from: Ashakyre;1037581Ascension or Awakening?

Ascension.

Quote from: Ashakyre;1037571Which is the best version of Mage to buy?

For mechanics, definitely Mage20. The rules for Focus (Paradigm/Practice/Props) and Mythic Threads/Hypernarratives blows the earlier versions of their foci system out of the water and if you're playing Mage, the main reason to do so over a generic urban fantasy setting is their magic system. It was good enough to get me to drop my 60 page* house ruled "White Book" Mage system (vs. Purple or Blue book) I'd been using for the eight years previously for my latest campaign.

Mage20 is also the only version to ever include playable Technocracy and minor factions in the core book so that's a plus too.

For setting, either playing 2e with no Revised elements or the "Revised happened but was just another millennial scare and is in the rearview and fading fast" depending on your focus. The former is good for an upbeat rebels against the evil Technocracy game, the latter for one where the Traditions, Technocray and Independents are all flawed heroes with competing goals (primarily the classic security vs. freedom with both sides representing the pros and cons of each).

Avoid Revised like the plague that it was.

* it was that long because I included all the rules for character creation and playing the game, including full rules for all skills, merits/flaws, equipment, spirits, animals, etc. since this was back in the days before the pdf explosion and I wanted the players to have everything needed to play without having to track down out of print books.

So the notebook is only $13.99, and the 'Luxury' Rulebook $676.99. What a [STRIKE]steal[/STRIKE] ripoff.

Good grief this is a train wreck. They're obviously trying to bank on brand recognition, yet they're doing everything they can to destroy it.

Quote from: NeonAce;1036583You're just making fun of a different kind of nerd, but fact is, we're all nerds. The whole goddamned industry is ridiculous if you're not into its kind of fun. We're playing pretend. It's fine.

No it's not, because White Wolf wants a particular image for this property, and 'ugly awkward nerds' aren't it.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;1037823So the notebook is only $13.99, and the 'Luxury' Rulebook $676.99. What a [STRIKE]steal[/STRIKE] ripoff.

Good grief this is a train wreck. They're obviously trying to bank on brand recognition, yet they're doing everything they can to destroy it.

The fact of the matter is that the people behind V5 aren't even making it with Americans as a audience in mind. Their stated goal has been to break away from American-centric settings and elements and instead market it primarily to rich European Eurotrash LARPers.

They're going to deserve every bit of "Fail" that's headed their way.

Quote from: Chris24601;1037838The fact of the matter is that the people behind V5 aren't even making it with Americans as a audience in mind. Their stated goal has been to break away from American-centric settings and elements and instead market it primarily to rich European Eurotrash LARPers.

They're going to deserve every bit of "Fail" that's headed their way.

Agreed.

Instead of undoing Justin Achilli's fuck-ups that killed the game in the first place, they are continuing them to an exponential degree.

Keep the Gangrel in the Camarilla and bring back the Ravnos, goddammit!

V5 is going to be a bigger flop than D&D 4E. If it isn't, I will eat my hat.

The Ravnos are offensive stereotypes of Romani and both the Traditions and the Technocracy hate social media.

Why should anyone deal with that when there are already many other superior options to choose from like Ars Magica or Unknown Armies?

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1037911The Ravnos are offensive stereotypes of Romani and both the Traditions and the Technocracy hate social media.

Why should anyone deal with that when there are already many other superior options to choose from like Ars Magica or Unknown Armies?

Are you Romani?