World of Darkness Dark Eras is funded on kickstarter and there is an unedited book text available so you can check it out yourself.

What do you think of it? To me it seems like it is sticking really close to our real history that it loses some appeal to me. There are very few events in which the supernatural made an impact on the world. It´s more the other way around. The mortal made an impact on the world and the supernatural who lived in it. They just had to survive and adjust to the circumstances they were in. If you were a werewolf in during the fall of Rome you just have to deal with it somehow.

I don´t know. Am I missing something? For some reason I am more looking out to After the Vampire Wars where there seems to have happened something more fictional than this.

I actually like the more subdued NWoD. I thought it was a bit silly when vampires were behind every major political play in the past 6,000 years. It looks like its bringing the lessons learned in 2nd edition NWoD, so I'm on board. But it's a taste thing.  Old World of Darkness was Tim Burton's Batman, New World of Darkness is Chris Nolon's Batman.

I like the sounds of it being more closely tied to actual history and like Jon Wake I generally prefer not to have all of history explained as the manipulations of Vampires, Mages or Cthulhu.

Quote from: JonWake;821286I actually like the more subdued NWoD. I thought it was a bit silly when vampires were behind every major political play in the past 6,000 years. It looks like its bringing the lessons learned in 2nd edition NWoD, so I'm on board. But it's a taste thing.  Old World of Darkness was Tim Burton's Batman, New World of Darkness is Chris Nolon's Batman.

Same here and I think the Tim Burton/Chris Nolan analogy is brilliant.

Also give me Lost and Vigil over Dreaming and Reckoning any day of the week.

I just read through the Alexandrian setting information.  It makes me want to run a Mage chronicle in this era, which is nice because I've never particularly cared for Mage. I love that it points out that the mystical history that Mage puts forth is almost certainly self-aggrandizing bullshit, and these people have a different mythology to explain their status. That reads true to how people in secret societies act: their glory days were always behind them (to rise again!), they are always the chosen people, and the current internecine conflicts are just the result of the influence of this fallen world.

Quote from: JonWake;821286I actually like the more subdued NWoD. I thought it was a bit silly when vampires were behind every major political play in the past 6,000 years. It looks like its bringing the lessons learned in 2nd edition NWoD, so I'm on board. But it's a taste thing.  Old World of Darkness was Tim Burton's Batman, New World of Darkness is Chris Nolon's Batman.

Yeah, I heard this analogy before. In fact I always use it myself. I guess it's a taste thing. A germanic faction of the verbena causing the rise of paganism in Germany and therefor the rise of the nazi's? Yeah, a bit over the top and quirky perhaps. But I like it builds in a lot of conflict. You can easily say: "What if those guys are back?" and build a campaign from there. I find it easier to use. The new stuff is also a bit dry. My current gold standard for this kinda stuff in rpg world is not the old WoD though. It's the third imperium for Traveller.

I prefer NWOD over OWOD. My analogy has been NWOD is Silent Hill while OWOD is Resident Evil. Both are good games, but they have very different themes.

I wasn't sold on the Dark Eras until they started adding historical periods of history that I was interested in. Still bummed that the Golden Age of Piracy didn't make it in, though I suspect that the reason it didn't get a second chance was because it was tied to Geist in the last round of voting.

Quote from: JonWake;821401I just read through the Alexandrian setting information.  It makes me want to run a Mage chronicle in this era, which is nice because I've never particularly cared for Mage. I love that it points out that the mystical history that Mage puts forth is almost certainly self-aggrandizing bullshit, and these people have a different mythology to explain their status. That reads true to how people in secret societies act: their glory days were always behind them (to rise again!), they are always the chosen people, and the current internecine conflicts are just the result of the influence of this fallen world.

That needs to happen more often especially for mage the awakening.  Seriously the fan base is annoying as fuck as they constantly shoved down that mage cosmology as if it is fact.

It is almost as bad as vampires actually owning task force valkyrie.  I don't mind seeing hunters being the actual real power in nWoD with their world wide conspiracies.  It is a nice change from oWoD when it was the supernaturals that ran the world in secret.  So to see vampires controlling a conspiracy pisses me off to no end when I read it.

They've been hyping this for what, two years now? And it's much duller than I expected it would be. I think the best stretch goal they could have would be to make the chapters longer so that they aren't so cramped and shallow in their world-building. The most interesting thing I can think of doing with this would be to go on rpg.net or their forums and make a big stink about how problematic it is that they only gave coverage to indo-european mages in the Alexandrian setting, depicting egyptian mages as wacky foreigners and not representing semitic, african or asiatic steppe mages at all.

Quote from: The Butcher;821291Also give me Lost and Vigil over Dreaming and Reckoning any day of the week.

I have Hunter: The Vigil, which is great, but not Reckoning. Can you say a bit about how different they are?

Quote from: Millenium;821765They've been hyping this for what, two years now? And it's much duller than I expected it would be.

Well, I don't know why you think it's dull. My take on it is that all of the history in the new WoD in general is just mortal history you can easily get from a history book or wikipedia. There is nothing fictional or at least very few. I like events that affect the supernatural worlds like for example a major war between two factions, a blood plague almost wiping out vampires, a gate to the underworld being opened and causing a very dark period in history untill it was closed again, an important NPC being assassinated etc.

Now that kind of stuff isn't in there, so I need to make it up myself or look for other sources. And that's what I do with nWoD books in general. Skimming them through quickly, then closing them and reading other sources  of information for inspiration. Well, it can't be the idea of a setting book to close it quickly and read some other stuff to get some ideas, can't it?

Quote from: Millenium;821765... how problematic it is that they only gave coverage to indo-european mages in the Alexandrian setting, depicting egyptian mages as wacky foreigners and not representing semitic, african or asiatic steppe mages at all.

Yeah, I think you have to take for granted that new Mage is by itself Western in focus. Same goes for new Vampire.

Quote from: Lynn;821821I have Hunter: The Vigil, which is great, but not Reckoning. Can you say a bit about how different they are?

In the Reckoning you are Imbued by default. You are one of the people with powers. Vigil is much more like Hunter's Hunted. You are a vanilla mortal (sometimes with powers), but you don't have as much ooompf as Reckoning. No metaplot either in Vigil. No factions in Reckoning, but creeds. Those are splats you are born in, just like the vampire clans. You can't switch sides like you could choose a different order in new Mage.

Quote from: Lynn;821821I have Hunter: The Vigil, which is great, but not Reckoning. Can you say a bit about how different they are?

Reckoning's Hunters, the Imbued, were common folks granted mysterious powers (like... flaming baseball bats) by mysterious voices who might be angels but it's a mystery really and it was all very mysterious and mixed up with the Year of the Reckoning metaplot. To me it was when the oWoD jumped the shark (well, jumped higher/worse than DSotBH anyway).

Vigil's Hunters are people who survived at least one brush with the supernatural, and while the top-tier (Conspiracy) Hunters may have minor cool toys to play with (Aegis Kai Doru has artifacts, Chiron Group has biotech gleaned from vivisection of supernaturals, Lucifuge has infernal bloodlines, Malleus has prayers, etc.), the middle (compact) and low (Cell) tiers of play rely on grit, wit and tactics alone.

Would anyone be willing to explain to me exactly how nnWoD works?

Like what product is there? What do you need? What's the overall plan?

Right now there is just God Machine Chronicles for mortal, Vampire: The Requiem second edition, Werewolf: The Forsaken second edition, and Demon: The Descent which actually has supplements.

Mechanics wise which I bought the pdfs so I know what the hell I am talking about.  They took only the bad shit from FATE that forces the GM to spend a fate point, or force the player character to fuck himself over in game in order to get a fate point.  Which I suppose that is player choice, but it is a shit one that could had been done better.  They never took the good thing about FATE which was creating your own aspects that defined your character and let you do cool things with it.

Oh did I forget the about the two forms of xp you got to keep track of?  Yeah you got beats and xp.  It takes five beats to convert into one xp.  Beats are your fate points you have to earn in game by suffering through conditions, resolving aspirations, and getting your ass handed to you by social rules.

This is of course the added complexity, social rules which again removes the player choice from the defender, and does nothing to fix the merit bulk that plague the first edition of nWoD.  Instead it adds more bulk with conditions and tilts.  This is the only edition of World of Darkness where I saw spirits needing a flow chart to show what they can do and the developers bragging about condition cards because it might be hard to keep track of the game.