Cool nWoD campaigns

[SpamandEggs]

Hey all,

I'm starting a world of darkness campaign soon with my regular (dnd) group, and seeing as it's tons different from dnd, I don't really know how to make stories for it.

What do you guys use as inspiration, and feel free to tell any cool stories of your own. Go!

[Sith_Happens]

*cough* (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=251413)

[Libertad]

I heartily recommend using the Dudes of Legend online supplement.

Seriously, I have more experience reading Vampire and Mage supplements. Mage can be a fun game full of various adventure possibilities. You could be Astral archaeologists looking for the last vestiges of Atlantis, magical political factions fighting for power and influence, rebels against the tyrannical Seers of the Throne, etc.

The magic system's really versatile and open-minded, which can be both a benefit and a plus. It's great because it encourages creativity, but it also gives creative players a lot of unexpected options to throw at the Storyteller. Just be wary of high-level magic, or have a Gentleman's Agreement of sorts if you're worried about your players breaking the game.

[The Glyphstone]

It depends heavily on if you're using a supernatural splat, and if so, which one.

NWoD works great for pure mortals, as a mystery/horror game, but if you want to be monsters, do not attempt to go cross-venue for your first foray into WoD. "Superfriends" games are mechanically possible, but you get a better and more coherent experience by playing D&D, since blending supernaturals makes it far harder to explore their respective themes.

[SpamandEggs]

*cough* (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=251413)

Woah. That's amazing.

And I'm starting with normal nwod, but I know one of my players really wants to play Mage, and I think werewolf looks awesome. Does it hurt the game at all to cross-splat like that?

[The Glyphstone]

Short answer: Yes.

Long answer: Yeeeeeeesssss.



As I said above, Werewolf and Mage (to use your specific examples) are not only completely different tiers of power (Mages are the most powerful splat, Werewolves are one of the weakest), but they follow completely different themes.

Werewolves, quite simply, do not play well with others - they barely get along with other werewolves who aren't in their pack, it'd be incredibly out of character for them to regularly hang around with a spellcasting mortal. They know exactly what their enemies are - the Pure, the Bane Wolves - and what their job is - protecting the spirit world and mortal world from each other.

Mage, comparatively, is a game of exploration, finding your limits and how far you can push them. Venturing into the unknown, exploring ancient abandoned tombs for scraps of arcane lore, battling crazed Banishers and Abyssal monsters all the while trying not to let the power go to your head or let the Sleepers know you exist. Spending time with one werewolf pack who almost never venture outside their home territory would be the height of boredom for a mage.

[Fouredged Sword]

Start with a werewolf game if you like the look of the system. It is a straightforward theme and it's more likely to mesh well with the hack and slash mentality most players have coming out of DnD.

Things to keep in mind while running werewolf. Everything the players do effects the shadow. How they do things is as important as anything else. They need to develop empathy for strange ideas and find friends in weird places. They must earn a grudging respect from everyone else, as nobody really likes the fact they exist.

Once you go a story line or two in werewolf you can branch out into mages and try that. It's much more open of a game though, and that much freedom is hard to handle.

[Ravens_cry]

Have you tried Genius: The Transgression (https://sites.google.com/site/moochava/genius)?
It's a fan made line for playing mad, erm, differently sane scientists.
It's one of the few that actually has me thinking 'Hey, I want to play that.'
Another idea I've had was just using the Storyteller system for a near future New Space Hard Science Fiction game.
It's still percolating somewhere on the back burner.

[SiuiS]

Thanks, four edged. You've just sold me on werewolf in nWoD. Very interesting.

Something I've always wanted to do is run a "dungeons and dragons" game with the new world of darkness rules. Play up what it would look like from the inside - a gritty world of savage men and women who trip around murdering monsters in the dark places of the world in order to extort money and such from the populous. Combat would be nasty, Brutish and short, a gang of monsters nine deep would spell disaster, and diplomacy wouldn't always rest on a sword's edge but would always be played with your hand near the hilt.

My only trouble was casters. I figured for divine casters I could give them one or two Arcana from Mage, an give arcane casters different arcana to choose from. One dot in each, increasing arcanum or gnosis would be prohibitively expensive, and allow them to use rotes based on gnosis+arcanum instead of just the arcanum itself. It's not the best system, but it preserves the quadratic power of the caster, while simultaneously increasing the odds of said caster opening a hole to hell and being swallowed bodily.

[Ravens_cry]

Sounds like you want Dungeons: The Dragoning 40K 7th Edition (http://lawfulnice.blogspot.ca/2011/04/dungeons-dragoning-11.html):smalltongue:

[SiuiS]

Not quite :smallwink:

It was an attempt to segue my players Ito a new system. I figured first learning the rules was te best time to combine player confusion and character uncertainty. It requires a certain minimum of trust, but...

Now I'm just going to pick a WoD splat, hand everyone sheets, and run a primer game. Much simpler.