Quote from: PrometheanVigil;917769That's totally bogus. They've designed everything post-GMC to fit what's within it. Hell, the Strix can be argued to be organic manifestation of thing. Come on man, don't undersell how strong they played into it throughout the newer books. The very fact that you mentioned Demon, I mean, it's literally designed to encompass it all and that a whole game used it as DEFAULT setting is more damming. Same thing with the design ethos, as mentioned. Proof in the pudding, you know and all that.

Saying that something "can be argued to be" is not a very strong argument.  Pretty much anything "can be argued to be" pretty much anything you want to argue it to be.  You're on the internet.  I know you have seen this in action.

I checked out the video.  42:26 long and then 1:00:47 in Q&A?  I hate to be all tl;dw but tl;dw.

Quote from: TristramEvans;917639Being way out of the loop on anything to do with White Wolf since circa '99, who is Ericsson and what is his "One World of Darkness"?

The guy Paradox put in charge of WW/WoD IP development. Reminds me of the more insufferable edgelords I used to VtM LARP with in the 1990s. Looks like Steven fucking Seagal.

TBH I haven't ruled out that he's really Steven Seagal. Or 1990s Justin Achilli's consciousness projected across time and occupying today's Steven Seagal's body.

Well, the Portlandia song, "The Dream of the Nineties Is Alive In Portland," was playing in my head as I tried to watch (and failed). So... I guess they're getting their target demo right? I liked the 1990s and all, but, let's just say rather frozen in amber level insular.

Quote from: TrippyHippy;917674Vampires and vampirism are metaphors for lots of things, some of them uncomfortable issues. If you labour under the weight of misguided literalism you may be prone to taking offence.

Next year...

Vampirisim is a metaphor for misguided liberalism!

A few years after that it will be...

Vampirisim is a metaphor for rabid SJWs!

Quote from: The Butcher;917847The guy Paradox put in charge of WW/WoD IP development. Reminds me of the more insufferable edgelords I used to VtM LARP with in the 1990s. Looks like Steven fucking Seagal.

TBH I haven't ruled out that he's really Steven Seagal. Or 1990s Justin Achilli's consciousness projected across time and occupying today's Steven Seagal's body.

Agreed. I didn't know there could be a bigger edgelord than Justin Achilli, until Martin Ericsson proved me wrong. He's yet another reason why I loathe the Goth subculture so much.

Quote from: Omega;917889Next year...
Vampirisim is a metaphor for misguided liberalism!

This isn't really a joke. I've read conservative commentary on the Bella Lugosi version of Dracula that suggests his seductive interpretation of the monster (rather novel at the time) tapped into fears of morally unworthy, sexually libertine foreigners using guile to undermine the proper order of things, especially by duping and exploiting the most suggestible members of society.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;917755Do the anniversary editions fix the combat problems?
Do they fix the other issues?
I heard the designers didn't want to alienate old fans and were very conservative, so I'm not sure if there were enough fixes to be worthwhile.

I dunno. What were your problems with the combat? You can PM me if you want on that, I'd want to actually do a comparison rather than comment off the cuff. I'm not going to defend the WW Storyteller system too much - its got some levels of abstraction in it, for sure.

The botch mechanics still suck (my group has always house ruled how those work).

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;917898This isn't really a joke. I've read conservative commentary on the Bella Lugosi version of Dracula that suggests his seductive interpretation of the monster (rather novel at the time) tapped into fears of morally unworthy, sexually libertine foreigners using guile to undermine the proper order of things, especially by duping and exploiting the most suggestible members of society.

I believe that this was an actual concern in Victorian England. Coppola's movie tapped into that as well, what with Lucy being lascivious, owning a copy of Arabian Nights with naughty illustrations, surrounded in Persian carpets and ferns...

Okay I'm going to go out on a limb here...

While "Gothic-Punk" is literally coined and baked into the earliest editions as a theme... I'll be frank about my admittedly subjective observation that I don't get all the hand-wringing about the general antipathy towards "Goth" sub-culture. Despite the obvious nod to it, the game didn't force that mentality to the degree everyone seems to want to focus on it. Sure there were a lot of quotes and shit from Bauhaus and the Sisters of Mercy, and a lot of the romantic poets, but I never got the whole "This game must be played with Dark Eyeliner and pancake makeup with katana-in-our-trenchcoats."

I *SAW* people doing that at conventions. I *READ* about people playing it that way. I've had conversations with many of the original WW folks back in the day and some of them were involved in those circles - but not all of them. Even in their city splatbooks not everything was GOTH GOTH OMG GOTH... But everyone seems to imply, at least conversationally, it was a "thing." I always felt it got airplay because from a vampire-perspective that sub-culture would make a tremendously easy target because those folks are into those kinds of affectations.

My games were closer to "Near Dark" scaled-up than it was "Highlander". Metaplot or not I never found the drumbeat of the whole Goth-thing to be anything other than an affectation to be used/not used anymore than having a law-firm with filled with banking-ghouls at your disposal, or being an OG with your horde of gang-banging Bloods to maintain your dominance of the streets or having the local police under your control by virtue of owning the local cop-bar and having all those sub-cultures clash as necessary.

The whole zeroing in on the "Goth-thing" seems overplayed - or perhaps some people were taking things a little literally?

Quote from: Coffee Zombie;917905I dunno. What were your problems with the combat?

Buckets of dice, too many rolls for attack/damage/defense/shenanigans, confusing initiative, botches, unbalanced multiple-action rules, unbalanced combat maneuver options, and hispo being generally better than the so-called "war form" crinos for combat.

Quote from: tenbones;917931Okay I'm going to go out on a limb here...

While "Gothic-Punk" is literally coined and baked into the earliest editions as a theme... I'll be frank about my admittedly subjective observation that I don't get all the hand-wringing about the general antipathy towards "Goth" sub-culture. Despite the obvious nod to it, the game didn't force that mentality to the degree everyone seems to want to focus on it. Sure there were a lot of quotes and shit from Bauhaus and the Sisters of Mercy, and a lot of the romantic poets, but I never got the whole "This game must be played with Dark Eyeliner and pancake makeup with katana-in-our-trenchcoats."

I *SAW* people doing that at conventions. I *READ* about people playing it that way. I've had conversations with many of the original WW folks back in the day and some of them were involved in those circles - but not all of them. Even in their city splatbooks not everything was GOTH GOTH OMG GOTH... But everyone seems to imply, at least conversationally, it was a "thing." I always felt it got airplay because from a vampire-perspective that sub-culture would make a tremendously easy target because those folks are into those kinds of affectations.

My games were closer to "Near Dark" scaled-up than it was "Highlander". Metaplot or not I never found the drumbeat of the whole Goth-thing to be anything other than an affectation to be used/not used anymore than having a law-firm with filled with banking-ghouls at your disposal, or being an OG with your horde of gang-banging Bloods to maintain your dominance of the streets or having the local police under your control by virtue of owning the local cop-bar and having all those sub-cultures clash as necessary.

The whole zeroing in on the "Goth-thing" seems overplayed - or perhaps some people were taking things a little literally?

Yeah the Vampires didn't give a shit about Goth Culture any more than any other mortal group.  It's a Path to Feed, it's a Place to Hide.  Taking the setting assumption of PC's are Anarchs, then they're going to gravitate to a disaffected rebellious counterculture for feeding and hiding.  In the 90's Goth had passed it's peak and was back underground, the perfect place for anarchs.

A lot of the designers might have been Edgelords, but the intertwining of sex, death, nihilism, and anarchy inherent to the setting is what drew Goths to VtM and created a Perfect Storm of Black Lipstick.

So yeah, the Goths were all over VtM like razor cuts on an Emo, and being set in the 90's the Goth counterculture was a great place for Vamps, but that was always just one aspect of the Vampire world, let alone the World of Darkness.

The Goth hatred is also overblown.  I'd take Goths, even poseurs and Emos over creepyass Anime fatbeards who play Trenchcoats and Katanas only because they're afraid to pull Maid out of their backpocket.

Quote from: yosemitemike;917819Saying that something "can be argued to be" is not a very strong argument.  Pretty much anything "can be argued to be" pretty much anything you want to argue it to be.  You're on the internet.  I know you have seen this in action.

I checked out the video.  42:26 long and then 1:00:47 in Q&A?  I hate to be all tl;dw but tl;dw.

Your avatar is perfect for the way you phrased that. "This is the Internet. I KNOW you have seen this. Don't fuck with me!" Hah, awesome.

And nah, in this case its baked into the books literally from that GMC book -- Demon further solidified its place -- as canon. Its a shame. They were using it in that new Hunter supplement they did, too, 'cept it was Angels from the other side now (so now we've got godamm Agent Smiths running around...).

Quote from: Coffee Zombie;917905I dunno. What were your problems with the combat? You can PM me if you want on that, I'd want to actually do a comparison rather than comment off the cuff. I'm not going to defend the WW Storyteller system too much - its got some levels of abstraction in it, for sure.

The botch mechanics still suck (my group has always house ruled how those work).

Without fail, if a new member has played OWOD/VTM, one of the first questions that comes up is "so do you do botches in this system or...?". Sounds absolutely awful from what they've explained it to me as. Especially with the variable target difficulty its supposed to also have.

Quote from: CRKrueger;917941Yeah the Vampires didn't give a shit about Goth Culture any more than any other mortal group.  It's a Path to Feed, it's a Place to Hide.  Taking the setting assumption of PC's are Anarchs, then they're going to gravitate to a disaffected rebellious counterculture for feeding and hiding.  In the 90's Goth had passed it's peak and was back underground, the perfect place for anarchs.

A lot of the designers might have been Edgelords, but the intertwining of sex, death, nihilism, and anarchy inherent to the setting is what drew Goths to VtM and created a Perfect Storm of Black Lipstick.

So yeah, the Goths were all over VtM like razor cuts on an Emo, and being set in the 90's the Goth counterculture was a great place for Vamps, but that was always just one aspect of the Vampire world, let alone the World of Darkness.

The Goth hatred is also overblown.  I'd take Goths, even poseurs and Emos over creepyass Anime fatbeards who play Trenchcoats and Katanas only because they're afraid to pull Maid out of their backpocket.

Shots fired!

Quote from: CRKrueger;917941The Goth hatred is also overblown.  I'd take Goths, even poseurs and Emos over creepyass Anime fatbeards who play Trenchcoats and Katanas only because they're afraid to pull Maid out of their backpocket.

True that. Still love me the goth and punk subcultures. I'll likely be out there on the dance floor with my walker after my hip replacement in the far distant future.

I think the big take away from the "goth-punk" aesthetic was an overwhelming cynicism (both) coupled with the romance of iconoclastic rebellion (punk) and the romance of baroque nostalgia (goth). It's a somewhat contradictory aesthetic order whose Venn diagram tends to overlap on a very dark color pallete amid "ultra-violence." Anything that narrow can easily slip into kitsch pastiche in coarse hands, so I can readily see it turning insufferable.

Quote from: CRKrueger;917941Yeah the Vampires didn't give a shit about Goth Culture any more than any other mortal group.  It's a Path to Feed, it's a Place to Hide.  Taking the setting assumption of PC's are Anarchs, then they're going to gravitate to a disaffected rebellious counterculture for feeding and hiding.  In the 90's Goth had passed it's peak and was back underground, the perfect place for anarchs.

A lot of the designers might have been Edgelords, but the intertwining of sex, death, nihilism, and anarchy inherent to the setting is what drew Goths to VtM and created a Perfect Storm of Black Lipstick.

So yeah, the Goths were all over VtM like razor cuts on an Emo, and being set in the 90's the Goth counterculture was a great place for Vamps, but that was always just one aspect of the Vampire world, let alone the World of Darkness.

The Goth hatred is also overblown.  I'd take Goths, even poseurs and Emos over creepyass Anime fatbeards who play Trenchcoats and Katanas only because they're afraid to pull Maid out of their backpocket.

Hey, I may be an anime fatbeard, but I am in no way creepy!

Plus, I play Big Eyes Small Mouth, never touched Maid in my life.

On a more serious note, I legitimately enjoy "Trenchcoats and Katanas/Superheroes With Fangs" and genuinely hate "Personal Horror". What works for me may not work for you, but so be it. To each their own.

Quote from: Opaopajr;917956 True that. Still love me the goth and punk subcultures. I'll likely be out there on the dance floor with my walker after my hip replacement in the far distant future.

I think the big take away from the "goth-punk" aesthetic was an overwhelming cynicism (both) coupled with the romance of iconoclastic rebellion (punk) and the romance of baroque nostalgia (goth). It's a somewhat contradictory aesthetic order whose Venn diagram tends to overlap on a very dark color pallete amid "ultra-violence." Anything that narrow can easily slip into kitsch pastiche in coarse hands, so I can readily see it turning insufferable.

Sure. But my takeaway from this is exactly the surface-view of "iconoclastic rebellion" among gamers coming into Vampire being *only* about this misanthropic view that only Gothic-punk was the legit way to express this *in* the World of Darkness.

I suspect most of the gamers that do the trenchcoat-katana-thing were gamers first as their primary social avenue, and other things as corollary inference by way of gaming. I would point to the very fact the trenchcoat-katana meme even exists, does so as a nerd-meme via Highlander, not as some kind of expression of real-world sub-cultures. Hell, even in the books, the NPC's don't run-around as Goths with trenchcoats OR katana.

CRKrueger nailed it on the disaffected counterculture vibe - in our games it was cross-subculture. Wanna see some disaffected people? Go talk with some old-school gangbangers that think Goth (if they even know what it is) is some kinda satan-worship thing, and you'll see some disaffection. Motherfuckers burning their towns down around their own ears in rage and killing each other, largely completely out of touch with the realities of life beyond their immediate situation. That is far more disaffection. I think the Goth angle appeals more to the white sub-urban gaming folks whether it's by intent or just incidental (I tend to lean a little towards the latter).

Goths have very little to do with the tenets of the Anarchs (straight up punk or political anarchists are more germane here) or even the overt classism and Gerontocracy within the setting. For me, the Goth sub-culture are a bunch of easy targets. It's part of why it always mystified me that so many people made such a big deal about it, either pro or con.

My big "problem" (I say this as my biggest faux-gripe) with old-school WoD is the system. It works at a very low-end level, but the dice-pool mechanics and the original 1st Ed version had some *big* mechanical issues. LOL like no upper-limit to blood-pool expenditure, you could effectively try to massacre a boatload of homeless people to load up for a fight. (yeah yeah, this never happened in my games, but I've seen/heard people trying to do it). The relative Difficulties based on stats made the avalanche-of-dice mechanics *very* wonky. Later editions did nominally better... NWOD is much better imo.