Can we get a World/Chronicles of Darkness Thread up in here?

[Argent Fatalis]

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?

[Amechra]

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.

[Libertad]

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.

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.

[Unbeliever]

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. 

[Unbeliever]

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.

[Raineh Daze]

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.

[Amechra]

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.

[Raineh Daze]

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...

[Libertad]

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.

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.

[bhu]

ALL HAIL THE WERE-SHARK.

I always wanted to play one of those.  Stupid DM's....

[Raineh Daze]

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...

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.

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?

[Amechra]

Raineh, Exalted 1e was based off of Trinity, which predates nWoD by quite a bit.

[Raineh Daze]

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

[Amechra]

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.)

[Raineh Daze]

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.

[Argent Fatalis]

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.

[Raineh Daze]

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.

[Libertad]

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.

[Amechra]

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.)

[Raineh Daze]

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...