World of Darkness Dark Eras is funded on kickstarter (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/200664283/world-of-darkness-dark-eras-prestige-edition) and there is an unedited book text (https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7FqViticwNuQ0ZZLTNDNTN5cG8/view?pli=1) 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.
With that negative post out of the way I go on with some things I like.
I like how weapons and armor are handled. Weapons just do extra damage instead of providing dice to the attack pool. Armor just soaks up damage instead of reducing attack dice pool. A 2L weapon means if you successfully hit the target you do amount of successes plus two more lethal damage. Armor with a 4/2 rating means that when struck the first four damage never happens as they got soak up into the armor. The two converts any remaining damage into bashing damage if that damage is lethal. I think unless the armor is supernatural aggravated damage can still ignore armor as always. Though this time aggravated damage might be rarer.
Finally I like the fact that ghosts now are treated as spirits with their own ranks. Mere echos are rank 1 and earthly ghosts with a will of their own are rank 2. More powerful ghosts come from the underworld and I would hate to be any stupid mage that tries out summoning the dead. Necromancers will now have to be careful as shamens and not treat ghosts as empty vessals. No wise necromancers should treat these powerful ghosts as the lords of metal (http://fc02.deviantart.net/fs31/i/2008/218/c/4/Lord_of_Time_by_Ironshod.jpg) that they are.
Quote from: The Butcher;821885Vigil'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.
Thanks - well yes, I do think Vigil sounds much better!
Of the nWoD games, probably Vigil and Promethean are my favorites - though I think Promethean would necessarily require a very small group of PCs.
Quote from: Piestrio;821893Would 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?
There is also the first edition. The core book gives the rules and it focuses on the mortals in the world. There is an entire mortal line with books like Mysterious Places, Urban Legends and Midnight Roads. These books are grabbags with a lot of different ideas usually of the mystery sort. What if you wake up and the entire third floor of your appartment building is gone no one seems to notice this? That kind of stuff.
There are also some monster setting books like Requiem, Forsaken, Awakening, Vigil etc. These books give you a setting for playing a particular monster. New WoD doesn't only give you subraces like the old WoD, but it also gives you different factions you can join.
Oh, wait, I see a lot of this stuff is out of print.
Quote from: Lynn;821903Thanks - well yes, I do think Vigil sounds much better!
Of the nWoD games, probably Vigil and Promethean are my favorites - though I think Promethean would necessarily require a very small group of PCs.
I like Promethean, it's the most optimistic World of Darkness game ever published. I like the idea that even in the World of Darkness there is a happy ending. It's nightmare to play though.
Quote from: jan paparazzi;822078Oh, wait, I see a lot of this stuff is out of print.
Everything should be in print on demand on drivethru.
As to Dark Eras, some of the stretch goals were expansions, so yeah - the Egyptian mages in To The Strongest will be changing from a sidebar to a proper writeup. The whole chapter's going to be about half the length again bigger.
And we're doing Neolithic mages, which I'm looking forward to.
Quote from: DaveB;822208Everything should be in print on demand on drivethru.
Yes it is. For some reason it didn't come up yesterday when I searched it on rpgnow. This is the blue book line (http://www.rpgnow.com/browse/pub/1/White-Wolf/subcategory/1_134/World-of-Darkness-new) for example.
I think Dark Eras presents it setting material (just like all nwod) in a way like: "Here you go. There it is.". There is not plot in it. You can't pitch it that easily to a group of players.
In Deadlands for example shamans succesfully closed the door to the Hunting Grounds and everything went tits up when the shaman Raven opened the doors again in 1863. Letting magic and monsters back into the world.
New WoD would never do something like that. There is no "And this is what happened before." moment.
Edit:For the record I like some plot in the history part of a setting, because it's easy to get campaign ideas from that. You could do a Deadlands campaign where the main goal of the party is to kill Raven or to close the door again in the Hunting Grounds or maybe to win the Rail Wars for a certain company they decide to help.
It's much harder to do with settings with an opaque history.
Are God Machine and Demon complete games or sourcebooks?
Quote from: Just Another Snake Cult;822324Are God Machine and Demon complete games or sourcebooks?
Yes they are complete games. In fact they are second edition mortal book and demon is its own venue splat. Like nWoD you need to get the core mortal book (aka God Machine) and then get demon.
Quote from: Snowman0147;822345Yes they are complete games. In fact they are second edition mortal book and demon is its own venue splat. Like nWoD you need to get the core mortal book (aka God Machine) and then get demon.
Actually, they're sourcebooks.
We wanted to do a second edition of the nWoD. CCP still thought they'd be doing the WoDMMO and preferred we put the rules updates we wanted to do in supplements instead, and the compromise was that each game would get a giant-sized "Chronicle" sourcebook containing all of its rules updates.
"God-Machine Chronicle" was the one for the corebook. "Strix Chronicle" was the one for Vampire.
God-Machine Chronicle isn't actually a complete game, and most of the book is setting and adventure advice. The Storytelling System Update is an Appendix inside it, which is available seperately for free.
Demon, the first game produced after it, used the rules updates, so it has the same Appendix (literally the same text) in it. They both still require the WoD corebook.
The rules changes were so comprehensive, though, that it was only very basic stuff left untouched, and we noted that you could run the game perfectly well with one of the old freerpg day quickstarts and the system update. We updated the old Vampire quickstart as an experiment, it proved successful, and by the a htime Strix Chronicle came out, it now contained a cut-down version of the core rules merged in with the update. Unlike Demon, it does *not* need the corebook, though rules for some things like car crashes aren't in it.
Then the WoDMMO got cancelled, and CCP no longer had a problem with second editions. Strix Chronicle has had a new cover put on it as Vampire second edition, and the in-progress Idigam, Fallen World, Firestorm, and Huntsmen chronicles got their names changed. All of them will, like Vampire, have enough of the core rules to play them.
We are now writing a proper second edition WoD corebook.
TLDR - God Machine isn't the second ed corebook. It's a chronicle advice book that has a rules patch in it. Demon has the exact same rules patch in it, both require the original corebook or enough knowledge of the Stirytelling System to wing it. Everything after that is second edition proper.
Yeah, I learned that the awkward way at the first session of my Vampire:TR game this week. One of the characters said "I want an SUV, what's the deal with those" and I spent five minutes on a wild goose chase until I looked in the 1st edition WoD book.
Suffice to say, I am really looking forward to a 2nd edition WoD book. My group has been very impressed with the 2nd edition so far. Release schedule wonkiness aside.
Quote from: JonWake;822451Yeah, I learned that the awkward way at the first session of my Vampire:TR game this week. One of the characters said "I want an SUV, what's the deal with those" and I spent five minutes on a wild goose chase until I looked in the 1st edition WoD book.
Suffice to say, I am really looking forward to a 2nd edition WoD book. My group has been very impressed with the 2nd edition so far. Release schedule wonkiness aside.
Do you like the rules? Isn't it too much micromanagement with all those beats and conditions to keep track off?
Quote from: jan paparazzi;822902Do you like the rules? Isn't it too much micromanagement with all those beats and conditions to keep track off?
They're okay and not really.
I mean, it's the Storyteller system, innit? You roll a pile of dice and count successes. They fixed some of the dumb things from 1e NWoD: weapons not doing actual damage and just adding to dice pools, and explosions or impacts have a fixed damage that's easier to remember. Disciplines are better, but a lot more subtle than you might be used to from Masquerade. For example, Obfuscate is strictly a psychic effect. People just ignore you and can't quite remember what you looked like. You don't freak out when you see another Vamp, but you do notice them immediately and can initiate an vampire pissing match where you are hissing and whatnot at each other.
I really like the changes to Humanity now. It's not morality anymore, its the literal tension between the demonic force inside you and your sense of human identity. You can lose humanity from simple isolation or surviving wounds that would kill a normal human. It's less about being a big stinky jerk face and more about forgetting what it's like to be a person.
The only downside is the extensive list of conditions, so many that there are cards for the individual conditions. Most of them boil down to +/- 2 to some actions though, so they're pretty easy to wing (except for Discipline dependent conditions). With two plays, it was pretty manageable, because I was spending most of the time RPing with the characters and only made a roll maybe once per scene.
Likewise, the beats were manageable with 2 players, provided I wrote down the character's Aspirations beforehand. It was a matter of keeping them in mind when I introduced a scene. If someone had an aspiration of "Make everyone like me", then I knew that I could put the character in a group of enemies and watch her shuck and jive to get everyone to like her. If she didn't, no worries, but if she did it was pretty easy to say 'take a beat' without things slowing down too much.
I do have concerns with larger groups. My usual group is 5 players. A lot of systems break down with larger groups of players, but we'll see.
Quote from: DaveB;822406Actually, they're sourcebooks.
...
TLDR - God Machine isn't the second ed corebook. It's a chronicle advice book that has a rules patch in it. Demon has the exact same rules patch in it, both require the original corebook or enough knowledge of the Stirytelling System to wing it. Everything after that is second edition proper.
I don't mean to raz on you much but you guys picked some horrible names and release strategy.
I'm not an expert and certainly don't mean to do the whole "fan who knows better than the creators" thing. But I AM an experianced consumer and I can tell your u when I'M confused about a product line.
I'm sure folks who follow you closely get it but to everyone else it just feels like a confusing mess.
Quote from: Piestrio;823152I don't mean to raz on you much but you guys picked some horrible names and release strategy.
I'm not an expert and certainly don't mean to do the whole "fan who knows better than the creators" thing. But I AM an experianced consumer and I can tell your u when I'M confused about a product line.
I'm sure folks who follow you closely get it but to everyone else it just feels like a confusing mess.
Yup. But that's the thing. It still sells very well. The folks who follow it closely buy all the wod games and only those rpg's. While people outside of the wod community usually hate on the owod metaplot and generally don't care for the nwod and never played it. So only the hardcore fans buy all of the gamelines and there is very few overlap with other games. At least D&D players also play Shadowrun, Numenera or Mutants and Masterminds. I think it's always good to play a number of different games from different companies.
Eh, we did release the rules patch for free simultaneously with God-Machine Chronicle, because we didn't want to increase the buy-in needed for an nWoD game to three books.
It's still up on drivethru:
http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/114078/World-of-Darkness-GodMachine-Rules-Update
Quote from: jan paparazzi;823350Yup. But that's the thing. It still sells very well. The folks who follow it closely buy all the wod games and only those rpg's. While people outside of the wod community usually hate on the owod metaplot and generally don't care for the nwod and never played it. So only the hardcore fans buy all of the gamelines and there is very few overlap with other games. At least D&D players also play Shadowrun, Numenera or Mutants and Masterminds. I think it's always good to play a number of different games from different companies.
I've been playing WoD games since 1992, and I've never stopped playing other things. I run
Mage and play D&D 4th Ed at the moment.
I'm not denying your experience, but I've never seen it. Even back in the height of the cWoD's metaplot madness, my group were playing Decipher Star Trek, Nobilis, Fading Suns, and Blue Planet.
Quote from: DaveB;823407I've been playing WoD games since 1992, and I've never stopped playing other things. I run Mage and play D&D 4th Ed at the moment.
I'm not denying your experience, but I've never seen it. Even back in the height of the cWoD's metaplot madness, my group were playing Decipher Star Trek, Nobilis, Fading Suns, and Blue Planet.
I think a lot of the mainstream RPG audience left and they only have the hardcore fans left over. At least that's my experience on the ww fora.
Forums are the worst place to get a view of the overall group playing a game.