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Gaming Discussion => Other RPGs => Topic started by: Libertad on June 07, 2016, 06:22:33 PM

Title: Can we get a World/Chronicles of Darkness Thread up in here?
Post by: Libertad on June 07, 2016, 06:22:33 PM
For the times you want to play hot vampires without worrying about level adjustment and healing spells. And hot werewolves maybe, if that's your thing. I won't judge.

I first got into White Wolf stuff many years ago, but only started playing recently. Masquerade, specifically, although I own mostly New/Chronicles of Darkness books.

For those not in the know, to prevent confusion White Wolf (now known as Onyx Path Publishing) decided to rename the New World of Darkness series the Chronicles of Darkness. This was to better distinguish it from its Old World equivalents, as the newer games evolved into their own things.

In recent times the Classic/Old World books are being revamped with 20th Anniversary products, which collect a shitload of material across the game lines and metaplot to compile into big codexes. This is how I first got into Masquerade: via its 20th Anniversary book.

I'm also a big fan of Mage (New) and Hunter (New).

This is more a feeling out thread at first to see if Min-Maxers here are interested in such a thread. I figured a big generic thread would be best for this site, which is more or less 3.5/D20 focused. If anyone has conversation topics to start, we can do that.
Title: Re: Can we get a World/Chronicles of Darkness Thread up in here?
Post by: Raineh Daze on June 07, 2016, 06:32:00 PM
Well, I play it when I can. That's about my contribution to an empty thread. :P
Title: Re: Can we get a World/Chronicles of Darkness Thread up in here?
Post by: Unbeliever on June 07, 2016, 08:15:13 PM
Fan of the Old World's fluff, although I find their mechanics frustrating.  Vampire (Masquerade and Dark Ages) and Mage were my favorites, but I played them all and ran most of them.  Changeling the Dreaming irked me pretty regularly.  In some ways I enjoyed larp more:  the rules were lighter and more evocative, but it only really works for vampires since their abilities mostly involve social powers. 

Insert obligatory comment about Libertad being a whippersnapper given that he got into VtM with the V20 book ...

A lot of my massive fuckups as a GM -- and most of my GMing advice is based on said fuckups, I know what works only by a process of elimination it seems -- comes from running White Wolf games.  Although, the one thing I will say in my defense is that the games make absolutely no effort to make them runnable. 
Title: Re: Can we get a World/Chronicles of Darkness Thread up in here?
Post by: Raineh Daze on June 07, 2016, 08:27:05 PM
Yeah, the rules are a total mess. XP encourages dumping as many points into as few skills as possible at chargen and they still haven't fixed that.

Flaws are actually balanced if everyone takes them (and the GM remembers the 7-pt limit) and nobody is suicidal enough to pick Dark Fate or something, though. That's always weird.
Title: Re: Can we get a World/Chronicles of Darkness Thread up in here?
Post by: Libertad on June 07, 2016, 09:07:59 PM
1: Yeah, the rules are a total mess. XP encourages dumping as many points into as few skills as possible at chargen and they still haven't fixed that.

2: Flaws are actually balanced if everyone takes them (and the GM remembers the 7-pt limit) and nobody is suicidal enough to pick Dark Fate or something, though. That's always weird.

1: They did in Chronicles of Darkness! :P And they have a good dice system, too!

Which reminds me, there are Translation Guides for each of the 3 major game lines (Vampire, Werewolf, Mage) if you want to run Old World of Darkness elements in Chronicles and vice versa. A dude I played with about a year ago had a big "Masquerade with Requiem" document based off of this. I'll see later if I still have access to it.

2: A lot of flaws are role-playing based but given static point values. For example, Infertile Vitae might not be a flaw at all if you uphold the Traditions and not create a childe. Also, starting play as a Caitiff (14th/15th Generation) hugely under-priced at -2 and -4 points. For those not in the know, Caitiff are the least powerful generations of vampires, and in addition to having trouble progressing Disciplines (special vampire powers) they are villified among the Camarilla. So you have personal flaws of power progression and social stigma to go with it. Joy.

Also, there's a certain particular Flaw which I get the feeling was immensely popular for reasons I hope are obvious:

Quote
Glowing Eyes (3pt. Flaw) You have the stereotypical glowing eyes of vampire legend, which gives you a -1 difficulty on Intimidation rolls when you’re dealing with mortals. However, the tradeoffs are many; you must constantly disguise your condition (no, contacts don’t cut it); the glow impairs your vision and puts you at +1 difficulty on all sightbased rolls (including the use of ranged weapons); and the radiance emanating from your eye sockets makes it difficult to hide (+2 difficulty to Stealth rolls) in the dark.
Title: Re: Can we get a World/Chronicles of Darkness Thread up in here?
Post by: Raineh Daze on June 07, 2016, 09:21:54 PM
If roleplaying flaws aren't being a problem, then you're not being cruel enough. The whole system is built around very roleplay heavy stuff (and why later games got stunts), so things like Glowing Eyes should be a problem. FFS, even attracting someone to nom on is easily made harder because ANY remotely sane person will be on edge from that. So many ways to take Herd out of the question, too...
Title: Re: Can we get a World/Chronicles of Darkness Thread up in here?
Post by: Libertad on June 07, 2016, 09:43:33 PM
Such stuff should be important, but I tend to prefer systems where your flaws grant an in-game benefit when they come into play, like the granting of a Bennie/Hero Point/etc.

Static point values indicate a linear, objective sense of hindrance. Take the No Reflection flaw for 1 point; in a huge metropolis it would come up all the time; the taxi driver looking through his hanging window, the rear view mirror of a car, and so on. But in a much more rural, or pre-industrial setting it won't show up as much.
Title: Re: Can we get a World/Chronicles of Darkness Thread up in here?
Post by: Raineh Daze on June 07, 2016, 09:51:13 PM
Such stuff should be important, but I tend to prefer systems where your flaws grant an in-game benefit when they come into play, like the granting of a Bennie/Hero Point/etc.

Well, it's the same as 3.5. Take a penalty, get a char-creation bonus. Then the game system actually prods you to roleplay it. Works well enough.

[qupte]Static point values indicate a linear, objective sense of hindrance. Take the No Reflection flaw for 1 point; in a huge metropolis it would come up all the time; the taxi driver looking through his hanging window, the rear view mirror of a car, and so on. But in a much more rural, or pre-industrial setting it won't show up as much.
[/quote]

Not... really? A low-point flaw is worth a lot less than a large one because it's easily circumvented. Seven one-point flaws are a lot less problematic than one seven-point (basically a one-point is equivalent to a clan weakness) because that last one would be a huge weakpoint to hand over to the GM. Much like the value of a feat in 3.5, the freebie points will become less and less relevant as a game continues, and these are meant for loooooong games.

You're basically picking lots of tiny things that can be used against you or one or two big things that are a free bullseye.

Still balance out if you get everyone using flaws, though. Intelligent flaw-choice is a great way to build characters and since there's so many, especially when you dig into multiple gamelines... :D
Title: Re: Can we get a World/Chronicles of Darkness Thread up in here?
Post by: Unbeliever on June 07, 2016, 09:57:36 PM
1: Yeah, the rules are a total mess. XP encourages dumping as many points into as few skills as possible at chargen and they still haven't fixed that.
...

1: They did in Chronicles of Darkness! :P And they have a good dice system, too!
If it takes you over 20 years to fix something this obvious nobody gets to brag about it.  NOBODY.

I'm fine with flaws.  Basically, I assume everyone's going to take their 7 points, and a few of them will give me a license to fuck with them.  So, it's fine.

Also, baseline White Wolf characters suck so hard, I'm happy to power them up wherever they could be.  Vampire was the worst in this regard, I think, it wasn't so bad with Werewolf or Mage. 

I haven't looked at God Machine since it was in playtest.  Which I think was like 3 iterations ago.  I know some people liked it, so that's a plus.  I was utterly unimpressed with Requiem's rules, a position shared by many many people.  They suck.  Maybe they suck less than Masquerade.  But, even that's debatable.  I could fill this thread with my annoyances and disappointments with nWoD's ruleset.  At least the oWoD one had an excuse ... it was well, old. 

By the by, you underestimate the firepower that Caitiff's discipline flexibility can give them.  Not that I've played many of them, the Clans were among my favorite part of the game (although again, in concept, not implementation ... if I wanted character classes I could play D&D ...), but they can be quite powerful.  They get to cherrypick amongst the broken ass powers, many of which are quite low level. 


EDIT:  bitching about the balance of Flaws is like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.  There are huge issues with the mechanics, like how it is rocket tag times 9000 (you'd think they'd never heard of a saving throw), let the poor players enjoy their Flaws.
Title: Re: Can we get a World/Chronicles of Darkness Thread up in here?
Post by: Raineh Daze on June 07, 2016, 10:21:35 PM
As I said, I like flaws. Given how fucked up the mechanics are, may as well let in the absurdity that screams random weaknesses or builds on character ideas.

Max flaws = one discipline dot. One. Not a big deal, really, except for rounding out things.
Title: Re: Can we get a World/Chronicles of Darkness Thread up in here?
Post by: Amechra on June 08, 2016, 12:13:38 AM
So... what about everyone's favorite gameline, Mummy?

No, not the nWoD Mummy, the other Mummy. The one that lets you play non-Egyptian mummies, and doesn't have a ridiculous amount of obfuscating details covering the whole thing.

It also has "I have no schlong" as a flaw, so...



Fun fact: The World/Chronicles of Darkness had their own kinda dndtools: http://rp.thesubnet.com/ (http://rp.thesubnet.com/)

It's a pity that it got taken down and totally isn't on the wayback machine in complete and functional form.  ;)
Title: Re: Can we get a World/Chronicles of Darkness Thread up in here?
Post by: Libertad on June 08, 2016, 01:08:14 AM
It also has "I have no schlong" as a flaw, so...

It's only a flaw if you're using Strange, Dead Love. (http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/97127/Strange-Dead-Love) ;)

So anyway, I noticed that V20 (Vampire 20th Anniversary) has more than a few supplements. As Masquerade got an awful lot of supplements over its time, does anyone know what sourcebooks are covered/invalidated by the V20 books? Or are they new books entirely?

Ghouls & Revenants, Anarchs Unbound, Lore of the Clans, etc. (http://www.drivethrurpg.com/browse/pub/4261/Onyx-Path-Publishing/subcategory/8329_20632/Vampire-20th-Anniversary)
Title: Re: Can we get a World/Chronicles of Darkness Thread up in here?
Post by: bhu on June 08, 2016, 01:22:22 AM
So... what about everyone's favorite gameline, Mummy?

No, not the nWoD Mummy, the other Mummy. The one that lets you play non-Egyptian mummies, and doesn't have a ridiculous amount of obfuscating details covering the whole thing.

It also has "I have no schlong" as a flaw, so...



Fun fact: The World/Chronicles of Darkness had their own kinda dndtools: http://rp.thesubnet.com/ (http://rp.thesubnet.com/)

It's a pity that it got taken down and totally isn't on the wayback machine in complete and functional form.  ;)

I'm mostly familiar with Werewolf since almost everyone where I lived played it.  I wasn't always popular cause I rarely played garou, and that required DM's looking up additional rules.  My personal favorite being the Mokele whose rules were absolutely batshit.  "There's BSD's comin', were gonna shift to Crinos so try not to freak out" *becomes 8 foot tall wolfman*

"I should say the same to you."*becomes 80 foot tall armor plated godzilla monster*
Title: Re: Can we get a World/Chronicles of Darkness Thread up in here?
Post by: Libertad on June 08, 2016, 01:36:14 AM
So, how many Werewolf groups contain furries? I heard that it's a really popular game among that demographic, but I don't know how big their presence is as players.
Title: Re: Can we get a World/Chronicles of Darkness Thread up in here?
Post by: bhu on June 08, 2016, 02:34:49 AM
Furies were unknown to 95% of ohios population at the time I was playing.  They were into Werewolf as a "SWEET JESUS WE GET TO KILL THINGS NOW!!!" form of stress relief.
Title: Re: Can we get a World/Chronicles of Darkness Thread up in here?
Post by: Argent Fatalis on June 08, 2016, 03:02:42 AM
Interesting that this topic has more or less taken off, as for quite some time I have had several Vampire: The Masquerade and Werewolf: The Apocalypse books sitting around for years. I only just ran into them because I needed reading material to have while stuck in a place with virtually no Internet and opted for something new and different.

Needless to say, these things are fascinating.

As for the melding of furries and Werewolf, I am not surprised in the slightest. Even before I acquired these books I had encountered that combination before, but many of them are not what I would say would be your "iconic furry". Not to say that's good or bad, but that's my experience as someone who has only seen it from an outside perspective of those involved and the game itself, as well as now viewing it in retrospect and from the position of someone who has played several zoanthropes, awakened and anthropomorphic beasts. I am of course biased towards the Bastet, but the Garou and Kindred are interesting enough on their own.

I guess that makes my introduction even more late to this game's series.
Title: Re: Can we get a World/Chronicles of Darkness Thread up in here?
Post by: Raineh Daze on June 08, 2016, 07:47:25 AM
ALL HAIL THE WERE-SHARK.
Title: Re: Can we get a World/Chronicles of Darkness Thread up in here?
Post by: Unbeliever on June 08, 2016, 10:53:32 AM
So, how many Werewolf groups contain furries? I heard that it's a really popular game among that demographic, but I don't know how big their presence is as players.
I played Werewolf with numerous people and it was not apparent to me that any of them were sexually into the animal thing at all.  They certainly might have been, but it never remotely came up.  It could be that the Venn Diagram goes the other way.  But, honestly, this mostly strikes me as something derogatory to say about fans of the game.  The game has its issues, not just mechanically as it has a heavily dated noble savage vibe to it, but this has never struck me as one of them.  It strikes me as the sort of thing that smug VtM players say to look down on people who liked Werewolf.

I have a love/hate thing with the Were-Whatevers.  I absolutely love the Rokea (the Weresharks, referenced above), and am fond of the Gurahl (bears) and Mokele (crocodiles, technically, but all sorts of lizard types).  The Bastet (cats) and the Naga (snakes) can go fuck themselves, though. 

The problem is, and this is sort of pervasive in White Wolf which is why I bother typing it is that it really detracts from the core game.  In many of the White Wolf games, especially Vampire and Werewolf, the most interesting thing is the social structure.  The combat mechanics are frustrating and shitty, so you're not just there for the action.  But, the social maneuvering, the playing of a pack (i.e., a dysfunctional family unit), and so on is the fun stuff.  Once you throw in the undeniably cool "Others" you've kind of thrown that out the window.  It's no longer the focus. 

(Heretically, I'm even pretty lukewarm towards the Sabbat overall, although I do like some of the elements.  A Kindred shadow war could be an interesting campaign, especially with an emphasis on the "shadow" part, but (i) I'm not sure what the Sabbat is buying you there that Anarchs didn't already, and (ii) part of the Sabbat's raison d'etre is to throw the shadow part out the window.)

The Others, like the other werecreatures, also have a huge "I'm just better than you" problem.  One of the Auspices (3 of the main character decisions you get to make) is devoted to being a trickster.  The werecoyotes render them superfluous, and odds are just plain outclass them, although I can't quite remember. 
Title: Re: Can we get a World/Chronicles of Darkness Thread up in here?
Post by: Raineh Daze on June 08, 2016, 11:02:46 AM
The Sabbat have a pretty nice internal structure and religious cult thing going on, so what they have over the Anarchs is some level of coherence, which is fun. The Anarchs are just a plain mess. :lmao
Title: Re: Can we get a World/Chronicles of Darkness Thread up in here?
Post by: Amechra on June 08, 2016, 11:05:47 AM
Kitsune are broken fuckers. Stupid things can learn any gift and have special fox magic - and are written as insufferable Mary Sues.

On a lighter topic, here (https://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?781637-Where-I-Read-Vampire-20th-Anniversary-Edition-from-a-1st-Edition-Perspective)'s a thread on RPG.net where a guy goes through and reads V20... with the caveat that the only other WW game he's ever played or read was Vampire 1st edition.
Title: Re: Can we get a World/Chronicles of Darkness Thread up in here?
Post by: Argent Fatalis on June 08, 2016, 01:21:38 PM
Kitsune are broken fuckers. Stupid things can learn any gift and have special fox magic - and are written as insufferable Mary Sues.

I do not have that book, but from what little I gleaned overall about them that seems to be an underlying sentiment that they are "just better than everyone for reasons", those reasons not being so much as explicitly stated beyond something about them being "made last" so that makes them perfect.

Fairly accurate?
Title: Re: Can we get a World/Chronicles of Darkness Thread up in here?
Post by: Amechra on June 08, 2016, 01:29:46 PM
Kitsune are broken fuckers. Stupid things can learn any gift and have special fox magic - and are written as insufferable Mary Sues.

I do not have that book, but from what little I gleaned overall about them that seems to be an underlying sentiment that they are "just better than everyone for reasons", those reasons not being so much as explicitly stated beyond something about them being "made last" so that makes them perfect.

Fairly accurate?

Yes. That.

Also, they get their own half of a book - they didn't need to get their own half of a book.
Title: Re: Can we get a World/Chronicles of Darkness Thread up in here?
Post by: Libertad on June 08, 2016, 01:48:37 PM
I played Werewolf with numerous people and it was not apparent to me that any of them were sexually into the animal thing at all.  They certainly might have been, but it never remotely came up.  It could be that the Venn Diagram goes the other way.  But, honestly, this mostly strikes me as something derogatory to say about fans of the game.  The game has its issues, not just mechanically as it has a heavily dated noble savage vibe to it, but this has never struck me as one of them.  It strikes me as the sort of thing that smug VtM players say to look down on people who liked Werewolf.

I suppose my recent avatar change or my OP doesn't help with that last bit. :blush

I didn't specifically mean a sexual fetish regarding furries, although there is a subset within that fandom. Unless their subculture progressed to the point where that is their raison d'etre now. Apologies for any offense.
Title: Re: Can we get a World/Chronicles of Darkness Thread up in here?
Post by: Unbeliever on June 08, 2016, 02:19:18 PM
Kitsune are broken fuckers. Stupid things can learn any gift and have special fox magic - and are written as insufferable Mary Sues.

I do not have that book, but from what little I gleaned overall about them that seems to be an underlying sentiment that they are "just better than everyone for reasons", those reasons not being so much as explicitly stated beyond something about them being "made last" so that makes them perfect.

Fairly accurate?
This is a very common syndrome, I think.  Also, if they have the word "Tremere" near them, they get massively more awesome for some reason ...

...
I didn't specifically mean a sexual fetish regarding furries, although there is a subset within that fandom. Unless their subculture progressed to the point where that is their raison d'etre now. Apologies for any offense.
Hmmm, I am probably not up on the lingo or the way subcultures/fandoms define themselves.  Also, we're having to do quite a bit of translation here.  I played Werewolf the Apocalypse when it was a thing, i.e., about a thousand years ago.  Which is to say pre-ubiquitous internet.  The nature of fandom and subcultures and the language we use around them has changed a lot since then.

Suffice to say that in my experience Werewolf the Apocalypse players were no different from the usual RPGer at the time.  There were a few predictable tendencies -- such as being into combat or nature concepts -- but nothing I detected as any weirder than the rest of us were (which granted, is something of a generous baseline ...).  And, people used to use my larps as an excuse to break out their semi-cosplay type of gear (again, this was before cosplay was really a thing, at least w/r/t geek culture at large). 

And, you're nowhere near being offensive, at least by my lights.  I'm not even hip enough to pick up on the reference implicit in the avatar. 
Title: Re: Can we get a World/Chronicles of Darkness Thread up in here?
Post by: Unbeliever on June 08, 2016, 02:25:24 PM
Semi-tangentially: 

Would you believe that I'm scheduled to play Aberrant, of all games tonight? 

I have on occasion considered making a much rules-liter take on White Wolf games, namely Vampire.  It probably wouldn't be that hard to kitbash.  The basic dice mechanic is intuitive, and I would simply build everything out of that.  The old Laws of the Night larp rules had that feel, too.  I'd probably take that, and a bit from FATE, and call it a day.  I just haven't ever really had the motivation to spend a weekend putting it together b/c there isn't a game in the offing. 

Note that you can have fun with the games even with their crappy rules.  It's just that over time you run into two reasonably substantial roadblocks.  The first one is character creation:  you'll often find yourself fighting the system to create a real and interesting character.  And, I mean a character that does more than treat the Clans (or Tribes or Sects or Kiths or whatever) as more than a character class (tangent on a tangent, I've occasionally wanted to run all one Clan games, or maybe 90% from one Clan). The gulf between fluff and crunch in these games can be canyonlike. 

The second are what I think of landmines.  There's something that you expect to work one way, but due to some utterly bizarre rules quirk, doesn't at all.  And, the game/story sort of grinds to a halt.  A lot of that relates to some of the rocket tag or weird limitations placed on abilities.
Title: Re: Can we get a World/Chronicles of Darkness Thread up in here?
Post by: Raineh Daze on June 08, 2016, 02:54:11 PM
Also the eternal White Wolf dilemma where it's easy to raise stats at character creation, but ability XP costs are tied to their new level and XP is expected to accumulate a point or two at a time and you need to justify learning the skill.

Which makes the only sane way to make characters good at something some time less than a year into the game to go lopsided at chargen. Sure, you could be realistic with your vampire and give them some driving ability, a few resources scattered around, some knowledge of academics and social skills smattered about, but only about three, maybe four dots in their job... but you're really better off with focused backgrounds and uneven skills.

Don't know if they fixed it for nWoD, but given its presence in Exalted 2E, I'm guessing not.
Title: Re: Can we get a World/Chronicles of Darkness Thread up in here?
Post by: Amechra on June 08, 2016, 03:35:58 PM
Also the eternal White Wolf dilemma where it's easy to raise stats at character creation, but ability XP costs are tied to their new level and XP is expected to accumulate a point or two at a time and you need to justify learning the skill.

Which makes the only sane way to make characters good at something some time less than a year into the game to go lopsided at chargen. Sure, you could be realistic with your vampire and give them some driving ability, a few resources scattered around, some knowledge of academics and social skills smattered about, but only about three, maybe four dots in their job... but you're really better off with focused backgrounds and uneven skills.

Don't know if they fixed it for nWoD, but given its presence in Exalted 2E, I'm guessing not.

They fixed it for the New New World of Darkness - it's now a flat linear cost all day erry day. Exalted is more similar to Aberrant or Adventure! than either of the World of Darkness lines.
Title: Re: Can we get a World/Chronicles of Darkness Thread up in here?
Post by: Raineh Daze on June 08, 2016, 04:33:24 PM
Also the eternal White Wolf dilemma where it's easy to raise stats at character creation, but ability XP costs are tied to their new level and XP is expected to accumulate a point or two at a time and you need to justify learning the skill.

Which makes the only sane way to make characters good at something some time less than a year into the game to go lopsided at chargen. Sure, you could be realistic with your vampire and give them some driving ability, a few resources scattered around, some knowledge of academics and social skills smattered about, but only about three, maybe four dots in their job... but you're really better off with focused backgrounds and uneven skills.

Don't know if they fixed it for nWoD, but given its presence in Exalted 2E, I'm guessing not.

They fixed it for the New New World of Darkness - it's now a flat linear cost all day erry day. Exalted is more similar to Aberrant or Adventure! than either of the World of Darkness lines.

Wait, wasn't Exalted based on nWoD? Does this mean they fixed the problem only to go and reintroduce it? I...
Title: Re: Can we get a World/Chronicles of Darkness Thread up in here?
Post by: Libertad on June 08, 2016, 05:04:18 PM
The Sabbat have a pretty nice internal structure and religious cult thing going on, so what they have over the Anarchs is some level of coherence, which is fun. The Anarchs are just a plain mess. :lmao

The Vampire Translation Guide pointed on this a bit when converting the 3 major Sects to Requiem Covenants. The Camarilla could buy certain social merits and spent Willpower on permanent images with less Experience. The Sabbat got better resistances to avoid Vinculum and could buy out of clan Disciplines at reduced Experience due to all the mutual blood-drinking. The Anarchs got...nada, zilch.

I guess I can understand the Anarchs getting no benefits, as being the price you pay for going outside the major orders. But what about the West Coat USA where they're a major power on their own? No info for that.

And, you're nowhere near being offensive, at least by my lights.  I'm not even hip enough to pick up on the reference implicit in the avatar. 

Not really a reference so much as an anime girl with a smug/mischievous look. I wanted a change from drow-goth, but considered that since one's avatar is one's 'face' online how that can effect social interactions.

Wait, wasn't Exalted based on nWoD? Does this mean they fixed the problem only to go and reintroduce it? I...

According to scuttlebutt on Something Awful and RPGnet, the Exalted design team almost never interacts with the World/Chronicles of Darkness teams and has little to no knowledge of the horror game lines.

So it's the left hand doing one thing while the right hand does another.
Title: Re: Can we get a World/Chronicles of Darkness Thread up in here?
Post by: bhu on June 08, 2016, 05:23:34 PM
ALL HAIL THE WERE-SHARK.

I always wanted to play one of those.  Stupid DM's....
Title: Re: Can we get a World/Chronicles of Darkness Thread up in here?
Post by: Raineh Daze on June 08, 2016, 05:31:25 PM
I guess I can understand the Anarchs getting no benefits, as being the price you pay for going outside the major orders. But what about the West Coat USA where they're a major power on their own? No info for that.

They still don't have any sort of established authority or benefits, though. There's none of the voodoo of the vaulderie going on, and no worldwide contact web in an organisation full of old powerful people...

Quote
And, you're nowhere near being offensive, at least by my lights.  I'm not even hip enough to pick up on the reference implicit in the avatar. 

Not really a reference so much as an anime girl with a smug/mischievous look. I wanted a change from drow-goth, but considered that since one's avatar is one's 'face' online how that can effect social interactions.

Congratulations on becoming a nun with none of the graces of a nun.

Quote
Wait, wasn't Exalted based on nWoD? Does this mean they fixed the problem only to go and reintroduce it? I...

According to scuttlebutt on Something Awful and RPGnet, the Exalted design team almost never interacts with the World/Chronicles of Darkness teams and has little to no knowledge of the horror game lines.

So it's the left hand doing one thing while the right hand does another.

Yeah, but if they RECEIVED the system from Horror, then went backwards, what the hell?
Title: Re: Can we get a World/Chronicles of Darkness Thread up in here?
Post by: Amechra on June 08, 2016, 08:13:56 PM
Raineh, Exalted 1e was based off of Trinity, which predates nWoD by quite a bit.
Title: Re: Can we get a World/Chronicles of Darkness Thread up in here?
Post by: Raineh Daze on June 08, 2016, 08:15:39 PM
Raineh, Exalted 1e was based off of Trinity, which predates nWoD by quite a bit.

I realised sometime after my posts that 1E was meant to be a background for WoD. Classic, I believe. x_x
Title: Re: Can we get a World/Chronicles of Darkness Thread up in here?
Post by: Amechra on June 08, 2016, 08:32:43 PM
Raineh, Exalted 1e was based off of Trinity, which predates nWoD by quite a bit.

I realised sometime after my posts that 1E was meant to be a background for WoD. Classic, I believe. x_x

That's also known as "put a muzzle on your marketing guys". They brushed that quietly into a corner long before 2e came out.

But yeah - there really isn't much mechanical similarity between Exalted and nWoD.

With Exalted, you roll a pool of 10 sided dice - a 7-9 is one success, a 10 is two successes, and you want to achieve successes in excess of the difficulty. Rolls for attack and damage are separated. You have 5 types of health boxes (6, if you count Dying health levels) and Soak rolls. You have four different static defensive values, as well as mechanically defined relationships and rewards for cinematic description.

With nWoD, you roll a pool of 10 sided dice - 8-10 is one success, with 10s exploding. You only really care if you've scored either one success or five successes. You roll for attack only. You have one type of health box, and no Soak rolls. You have one static defensive value, and it's in general less crunchy than Exalted.

They share some terminology, but they are pretty different when you take a closer look. Exalted was supposed to be White Wolf's crunchier competitor for D&D - if White Wolf was able to write mechanics worth a damn, they might have succeeded just on the sex, drugs, and kung fu action.

Edit: Exalted is also a case of the line director not giving a shit after Grabowski left - that's why you get stuff like how Manual of Exalted Power: Infernals starts on Chapter 3, or how the errata document (when they brought in freelancers that gave a shit and actually let them write errata) replaces the whole Raksha charmset.

Seriously - in terms of wordcount, that's like if WotC put up an errata document for Magic of Incarnum that replaced every published soulmeld. After forbidding anyone writing for them from publishing any errata for years.

(Sorry for the derail - Exalted's mismanagement is hilarious, and makes the decision to publish WoD: Gypsies look downright understandable.)
Title: Re: Can we get a World/Chronicles of Darkness Thread up in here?
Post by: Raineh Daze on June 08, 2016, 08:36:41 PM
Also if 1E hadn't been the angstiest, most unappealing backstory you could possibly give the damn setting.

... and 2E seemed to be doing pretty great and then... the Infernals fluff. Oh god why.
Title: Re: Can we get a World/Chronicles of Darkness Thread up in here?
Post by: Argent Fatalis on June 09, 2016, 02:06:34 AM
Not to detract from the conversation at hand, could someone either here or even in a message if they would rather, explain some of the intricacies or oddities of Werewolf and Vampire? I mean in a mostly mechanical regard, because this being a forum about optimization, I am very curious how exactly one optimizes the older editions beyond some of the obvious, like that of how character creation more or less outright determines how successful you might be because of the experience and point mechanics. More along the lines of things that are broken both good and bad, to be avoided, house ruled or in general result in novel interaction with something else. To narrow down the complexity, I am mostly looking at the Garou, Kindred and Bastet.

I am unlikely to ever be afforded the opportunity to play, but that doesn't detract from my interest.
Title: Re: Can we get a World/Chronicles of Darkness Thread up in here?
Post by: Raineh Daze on June 09, 2016, 07:03:43 AM
One of the most obvious things in vampire: Celerity lets you have a flat number of extra actions in a fight. Handy, that.

Also, well... you're more likely to blow yourself up the better you are at something due to how botches work.
Title: Re: Can we get a World/Chronicles of Darkness Thread up in here?
Post by: Libertad on June 09, 2016, 02:04:27 PM
One of the most obvious things in vampire: Celerity lets you have a flat number of extra actions in a fight. Handy, that.

Also, well... you're more likely to blow yourself up the better you are at something due to how botches work.

For clarification, Raineh's statement applies to the (Old) World of Darkness. The (New) Chronicles of Darkness uses a modified system which has some similarities, but is its own thing. Think of how different Editions of D&D share some things like classes and spells, but you can't transmit them expecting that they'll work the same.

I can go into more detail on CharOps stuff and strange things, but right now I have work surrounding me so I'll get back to this post in a few hours.
Title: Re: Can we get a World/Chronicles of Darkness Thread up in here?
Post by: Amechra on June 09, 2016, 05:36:28 PM
One of the most obvious things in vampire: Celerity lets you have a flat number of extra actions in a fight. Handy, that.

Also, well... you're more likely to blow yourself up the better you are at something due to how botches work.

For clarification, Raineh's statement applies to the (Old) World of Darkness. The (New) Chronicles of Darkness uses a modified system which has some similarities, but is its own thing. Think of how different Editions of D&D share some things like classes and spells, but you can't transmit them expecting that they'll work the same.

I can go into more detail on CharOps stuff and strange things, but right now I have work surrounding me so I'll get back to this post in a few hours.

Well, they were asking about oWoD - Bastet are an oWoD thing.

I don't have much info on them, sorry (other than that Tremere paths are good, since you only need to focus on one attribute + skill combo.)

(Also, what Infernals 2e fluff? My book had a... printing problem... where the book started on Chapter 3.)
Title: Re: Can we get a World/Chronicles of Darkness Thread up in here?
Post by: Raineh Daze on June 09, 2016, 05:44:04 PM
So, explaining the good = better chance of catastrophically failing thing, the basic setup for rolls in oWoD:

You have a dicepool generally consisting of ability + skill (whatever they're calling the two things today). Both have a (normal) maximum of five each. To see if you succeed, you roll that many d10's, with 10's exploding (I think, been a while) and want to roll above the difficulty. Success is just having numbers above the difficulty.

The thing is, a 1 isn't just a failure--it's a -1 to your number of successes. Get a negative number of successes and you don't just fail, you break something. Like trying to hotwire a car leading to destroying the starter motor or something. Now, by basic probability, who's going to have more chances to fail at a difficult task: someone with a dicepool of 10, or someone with a dicepool of 3? If the difficulty's, say, 9...
Title: Re: Can we get a World/Chronicles of Darkness Thread up in here?
Post by: Unbeliever on June 09, 2016, 08:36:09 PM
There's a lot of them.  Although a bunch of game systems probably have them, especially old and hoary ones. 

I'll just pick a couple. 

Hyper Rocket Tag.  The White Wolf systems tend not to have much of a saving throw/AC mechanic.  Or, it's sporadic.  So, you'll have situations where with a fairly modest investment on offense, you can be guaranteed to have a potent effect over the target. 

I think this is particularly egregious with non-damaging powers, which tend to give you mind control  or something like that over the target.  And, it's not like these are high level powers.  There are a number of rank 1-3 powers (they tend to go from 1-5) that have this effect.  Picking one or two of these are a great way to crack out a character with almost no effort. 

Action Economy Abuse Abounds: partly related to the above, there are a bunch of important ways to get extra actions or deny targets actions.  I think Celerity is actually one of the less powerful ones, mostly b/c people kept on freaking out about it and trying to tweak it (seriously, there are like 5 versions of the damn thing).  As a combat tactic, this can be particularly potent b/c unless someone takes an action to dodge or parry, they are basically a sitting duck.

Equipment is Startlingly Potent:  another example of the fact that White Wolf authors have some form of brain damage (sorry Justin, but you know it's true ...).  In a game filled with hip cool mystic and supernatural entities, there is all sorts of bullshit "mundane" equipment that's really effective.  The nWoD is particularly awful in this regard -- like seriously, I want to keep track of my tennis shoes, really ...  In short, there's this very effective way of getting stacking or force multiplying firepower by picking the right pieces of equipment, rendering the people who spend character points on things into chumps. 


Don't get me wrong.  In part due to this thread, and due to Lib himself, I've been thinking about WW a lot.  And, there are a lot of WW games I would jump at the chance to play.  But, the games don't help you very much.  Indeed, they seem to go out of their way to be difficult.  Hence the impulse to take what's good and leave the rest behind, Egg Shen style.
Title: Re: Can we get a World/Chronicles of Darkness Thread up in here?
Post by: Argent Fatalis on June 09, 2016, 08:55:37 PM
I am glad to know that Celerity seemed to be as powerful as I imagined when I read it for all the reasons similar effects are in Third or other editions, along with the fact that mind-altering or outright dominating abilities being plentiful or not too difficult to acquire. I mean, both Rage and Blood can grant extra actions too, but a whole Discipline devoted to that was pretty exceptional just at cursory glance.

I did not immediately realize however, just how bad the results of a 1 could be as your dice pool would grow. That seems entirely unintended and the odds of horribly failing things just way more common than they should be. It sounds like you would have at least one horrible botch per scene where something likely trivial just fails spectacularly without any logical reason.

Going on to mundane gear, what in particular is so absurd?

I appreciate the insight and explanations so far, and for reference I am mostly talking about the old World of Darkness, as I have not read any "new" material on it.
Title: Re: Can we get a World/Chronicles of Darkness Thread up in here?
Post by: Unbeliever on June 10, 2016, 04:14:53 PM
Going on to mundane gear, what in particular is so absurd?
I'd have to think about it and do some dumpster diving for gear that I don't have the time for.  But, suffice to say that you could dumpster dive for awesome, typically mundane gear.  I'm not talking about getting a Vorpal Sword by taking the right background (although you could do that, too, especially if you were smart ...).  I mean just things you could buy. 

And, two reasons why this ended up being egregious and problematic, in my estimation (though I don't think I'm being idiosyncratic here).  The first was how much it devalued the dots on your character sheet.  I could spend a big chunk of points on badass claws that do aggravated damage.  Or, for a trivial cost, you can get bullets that do the same.  Awesome magic senses?  As good or inferior to modern espionage equipment.  That might be true in some sense, but the game is called Vampire:  the Masquerade, not CTU:  the Bauering.  Second, there was nothing that stopped you from both spending the points to be a badass and getting the gear.  There's no reason why the Fortitude-enhanced tank vampire couldn't also invest in whatever fancy pants armor existed, too.

If anything, this got considerably worse in nWoD.  An extra dot in Athletics or something is a substantial investment.  Or, you could just wear sneakers.  Actual example from the Core Rulebook.

All of which points to a fundamental issue with the games.  One that might be due to their age?  I don't know.  The game lines are almost uniformly evocative, rich in tone and interesting lore.  Yet, that is usually paired with a lot of very nitpicky rules rabbit holes you can dive down.  This can sometimes be fun to optimize, although it's a little bit without challenge.  But, what I'm driving at is that it often gets in the way of what makes the games great.
Title: Re: Can we get a World/Chronicles of Darkness Thread up in here?
Post by: Argent Fatalis on June 14, 2016, 08:08:31 PM
I never expected to read such a thing as absurd as sneakers being a means to improve what amounts to a skill.

Any other unique quirks of the system or lore?
Title: Re: Can we get a World/Chronicles of Darkness Thread up in here?
Post by: Raineh Daze on June 14, 2016, 08:37:48 PM
I never expected to read such a thing as absurd as sneakers being a means to improve what amounts to a skill.

Any other unique quirks of the system or lore?

If you read the rules properly, to be generally proficient in conversation, you need all three attributes, four different abilities, and even more because the disciplines etc. are inconsistent to hell and back.

Or just work out exactly one conversational approach you can take and stick with it come hell or high water.

Even building to be good at one thing can get very MAD.
Title: Re: Can we get a World/Chronicles of Darkness Thread up in here?
Post by: Amechra on June 14, 2016, 10:15:24 PM
I never expected to read such a thing as absurd as sneakers being a means to improve what amounts to a skill.

Any other unique quirks of the system or lore?

If you read the rules properly, to be generally proficient in conversation, you need all three attributes, four different abilities, and even more because the disciplines etc. are inconsistent to hell and back.

Or just work out exactly one conversational approach you can take and stick with it come hell or high water.

Even building to be good at one thing can get very MAD.

That's a fool's errand! Everyone knows you just pump the stuff you need to use The Lure of Flames Thaumaturgy path, and rule through terror!

(That you are in no way, shape, or form immune to.)
Title: Re: Can we get a World/Chronicles of Darkness Thread up in here?
Post by: Amechra on June 14, 2016, 10:46:31 PM
New post, because this is something hilarious I just found in the corebook for Chronicles of Darkness, the "new" edition of nWoD.

It has a system for tricking out vehicles - a pretty simple one, too - the maximum possible number of modifications is 30+applicable specialities, assuming you find an old supernatural being that has nothing better to do than practice motorcycle repair.

More importantly, horses are listed as a type of vehicle. My next character is taking Automotive Genius and a Craft speciality in "Horses". Hell, a lot of the driving style merits are hilarious when applied to horses.
Title: Re: Can we get a World/Chronicles of Darkness Thread up in here?
Post by: bhu on June 14, 2016, 10:47:43 PM
I never expected to read such a thing as absurd as sneakers being a means to improve what amounts to a skill.

Any other unique quirks of the system or lore?

If you read the rules properly, to be generally proficient in conversation, you need all three attributes, four different abilities, and even more because the disciplines etc. are inconsistent to hell and back.

Or just work out exactly one conversational approach you can take and stick with it come hell or high water.

Even building to be good at one thing can get very MAD.

"Give me what I want and I'll go away."
Title: Re: Can we get a World/Chronicles of Darkness Thread up in here?
Post by: Raineh Daze on June 14, 2016, 10:53:56 PM
I never expected to read such a thing as absurd as sneakers being a means to improve what amounts to a skill.

Any other unique quirks of the system or lore?

If you read the rules properly, to be generally proficient in conversation, you need all three attributes, four different abilities, and even more because the disciplines etc. are inconsistent to hell and back.

Or just work out exactly one conversational approach you can take and stick with it come hell or high water.

Even building to be good at one thing can get very MAD.

"Give me what I want and I'll go away."

And then you have to make a seduction roll.
Title: Re: Can we get a World/Chronicles of Darkness Thread up in here?
Post by: bhu on June 15, 2016, 01:15:47 AM
http://stephenking.wikia.com/wiki/Storm_of_the_Century

I meant that in less of a seductive and more intimidative means.
Title: Re: Can we get a World/Chronicles of Darkness Thread up in here?
Post by: Raineh Daze on June 15, 2016, 07:52:20 AM
http://stephenking.wikia.com/wiki/Storm_of_the_Century

I meant that in less of a seductive and more intimidative means.

And you still have to make a seduction roll because they're taking it entirely the wrong way? :P
Title: Re: Can we get a World/Chronicles of Darkness Thread up in here?
Post by: magic9mushroom on April 28, 2023, 05:41:04 AM
Some 1e MtAw questions:

- Is there anywhere that they actually said what degree of Wisdom sin it is to summon a Gulmoth? I know the Summoners book calls it an act of "direst hubris", but it never actually gives a number and it specifically notes that sacrificing humans to pay a summoned Gulmoth is Wisdom 1 which kinda implies summoning one without human sacrifice is not quite as bad (and, of course, if summoning a Gulmoth is Wisdom 1, then it doesn't make sense for non-Mad frequent Gulmoth summoners to exist).

- Did they ever clarify Phantasmal Weapon's limits? (i.e. can you make a gun or suit of armour that has +30 equipment bonus, or is it limited to whatever a nonmagical item of those dimensions gets?)

- Was there any kind of definitive word one way or another on whether non-Banishers can use the spells in Banishers? Some of them are hilariously OP, and one of them was called out elsewhere in the text as something normal mages can't do.

- Is it just me, or are Mastigos a bit too good? Mind can do a very-large number of things quite well - buffs (Euphoria, Supreme Augmentation and Skill Mastery are all crazily good), attacks (Psychic Assault/Sword are covert making them spammable, and Assault's also three-dot so you can do an extended sympathetic cast pre-archmastery which only Celestial Fire shares, plus straight-up combat mind control - I know Mental Shield is a thing, but that's also Mind and only Prime can substitute), and minionmancy (Goetic Evocation - yes, it's a Wisdom ding, but only one worse than spirit summoning - as well as just mind-controlling people to help you) - and Space is obviously great as a conjunctional but also has the kinda-WTF Apportation and Ban (and in all cases you again kind of need either Space or Prime yourself to not get hardstopped, with even Prime having trouble against some of Apportation's more serious abuses like bombing and item theft).

I never expected to read such a thing as absurd as sneakers being a means to improve what amounts to a skill.

Any other unique quirks of the system or lore?

It doesn't improve all aspects of the skill. It gives you a +1 in a foot chase or when shadowing someone. Makes sense to me; running shoes are better at running and at avoiding making noise than dress shoes or sandals. Sure, most people will get the bonus most of the time, but that's not really a big deal.

I think the main thing complained about in 1e nWoD (and don't correct me on that name; it was renamed after the start of 2e) is rocket tag, particularly via Fighting Styles. Fighting Styles are Merits (basically nWoD's version of D&D feats; to give a comparison, it's 2/6/12/20/30 XP to buy a Merit rated 1/2/3/4/5, while increasing an attribute by 1 is 5x(new rating) and increasing a skill by 1 is 3x(new rating)), which represent specific training with a weapon (to continue the analogy, fighter feats). Most of the abilities from Fighting Styles are pretty balanced, but a few of them let you attack multiple times per turn (nWoD's combat turns are 3 seconds, and you normally only get one attack). The ones that let you attack twice and make you lose your Defence (in D&D terms, Dex to AC, except it's a bigger deal), those are pretty reasonable. The ones that let you attack twice and don't make you lose your Defence are smelly. The ones that let you attack (N-1) times per turn where N is one of your attributes (max for mortals is 5, max for supernaturals is typically somewhat over 10), those are pure rocket tag - if someone gets it off you're reasonably likely to be dropped in one round (the worst, by far, being Fighting Style: Combat Marksmanship 5 - guns ignore Defence, can ignore a lot of armour, and are ranged, so a legal mortal starting character can often drop the actual maxed-out mortal durability against guns in one turn; when you get into supernatural boosts on each side, you're talking about "when this goes off, instant TPK" because the ludicrous amounts of shots don't even all have to be at the same target).

I'm not especially familiar with 2e CoD, mostly because a lot of the mechanics changes are stupid; from what I understand they fixed the XP-versus-starting-stat-cost issue the wrong way (should have aligned starting stat costs to XP rather than XP to starting stat costs), they let skill specialties stack (specialties are cheaper than more points in the skill, but this means you just pick one method to use the skill and then take a billion specialties that all apply to that method instead of buying more points - Firearms 1 (Assault Rifles, Autofire, Laser Sight) and then just use autofire from an assault rifle with a laser sight, much cheaper than Firearms 4 or even Firearms 3 (Assault Rifles)), and XP for stunting (different strokes, yes, but I'd wind up strangling the GM after about three or four sessions of this because my idea of "cool" is very different to most).

EDIT: Okay, the most literal reading of Skill Mastery isn't as crazy as I thought; if total dots granted by the spell are limited to Mind dots (as opposed to dots-per-skill being limited to Mind dots) then you can't just go full crazy with extended-cast the way I thought you could.
Title: Re: Can we get a World/Chronicles of Darkness Thread up in here?
Post by: magic9mushroom on May 08, 2023, 04:43:38 AM
The "Lines of Power" adventure for MtAw 1e lists a character as having "Flaw: Sociopath". Does anyone know what sourcebook this is from? I haven't found anything either in the sourcebooks I have or by Googling (the latter being badly poisoned with oWoD results).
Title: Re: Can we get a World/Chronicles of Darkness Thread up in here?
Post by: Nanashi on July 22, 2023, 04:08:16 PM
This flaw, while nasty for only 2 points, seems to have an included bonus of boosting things you cast on yourself.
Quote from: Magic Susceptibility
You are susceptible to the magical rituals of the Tremere, as well as to spells of mages of other creeds and orders. The difficulty to cast a spell upon you is two less, and all spells cast have twice normal effect on you.

Any thaumaturgy abilities that this would apply to particularly well?

Also looked into the Street Fighter RPG (It's a Storyteller system based game!) for a lark. I noticed that the power Wall is the sole Focus based attack in the system without a Chi cost, and it seems pretty decent even if it wasn't free (same range, damage and no worse speed than a standard fireball, exchanges making a wall for the often hazadrous fire of a fireball). The sole cost is that, like any other Elemental maneuver, you need points in the Elemental(ist) background to pick it, but this costs a mere two dots, and being an elementalist gives you minor penalty to "air-based attacks" (not even aerials. I think it's just air elementalist abilities, Sonic Boom, and a handful of electric attacks at most generous). Since Focus based attacks use intelligence and wits instead of strength and dexterity, and the game still uses the engine's primary/second/tertiary attribute groups (so assigning physical to tertiary is possible), I wonder how viable playing a mage would be in a system that was never intended for it (Tessa is apparently the best non-boss character in SvC Chaos, but everything in that is broken).

Also appears to be implied you can go all Aang and take the elementalist background multiple times for each element (it's never explicit for or against, but the line "[Elementals] also tend to specialize in only one element" seems to clearly imply it's possible) but this doesn't seem particularly great past two elements (and even then, only if you really want a particular exclusive) since each element really only has ~3 exclusive abilities with the other five being identical or near identical between the other three elements. Fire is even worse here, since several styles gain access to fire based stuff anyways.

Also got to love that Cammy has a 6 in appearance (Chun-Li only has a 5).
Title: Re: Can we get a World/Chronicles of Darkness Thread up in here?
Post by: Skyrock on July 23, 2023, 03:13:04 PM
Also looked into the Street Fighter RPG (It's a Storyteller system based game!) for a lark. I noticed that the power Wall is the sole Focus based attack in the system without a Chi cost, and it seems pretty decent even if it wasn't free (same range, damage and no worse speed than a standard fireball, exchanges making a wall for the often hazadrous fire of a fireball).
You also have Extendible Limbs. Attacking at range without needing to spend Chi or WP is useful for a zoner like most Kabbaddi fighters turn out.

There are a few more Focus maneuvers that don't cost Chi/WP like Sakki and Musical Accompaniment, but those are not attacks: https://web.archive.org/web/20040315045748fw_/http://mu.ranter.net/rpg/focus.html
Title: Re: Can we get a World/Chronicles of Darkness Thread up in here?
Post by: Nanashi on July 24, 2023, 12:37:43 PM
I don't read  Extendible Limbs as an attack on its own, just a passive that's listed under Focus. You're still using the Basic Maneuvers, they're just boosted in range for having the Extendible Limbs passive.