Explain Old World of Darkness to Me

[Chainsaw Hobbit]

I identify as a fan of the New World of Darkness line. I love Changeling: the Lost with a rabid passion, and have a soft spot for the other games as well.

Recently, I picked up a few books from the Old World of Darkness line. They are kind of thick and intimidating, and before diving in, I would like to know a bit about what to expect. What is the Old World of Darkness like? How is it different from its successor?

[Lord_Gareth]

The short version? The developers of oWoD are on record as saying that they were on potent and illegal drugs.

The long version is that oWoD was billed as a horror game but is mostly more along the lines of a horror-themed action-adventure where the NPCs have more power than you're capable of ever using (ever). The mechanics were shoddily done and the meta-plot is grafted on with iron bands that mean most storytellers don't break away from the oppressive nature of all of these mega-powerful supes running around. All of history is a non-human conspiracy and the world hates you.

I wish I was kidding.

[The Tygre]

It is also intensely awesome.

There's a reason 1st edition Exalted was unofficially the foundation for this universe. Shame they scrapped that idea. It explained so much.

[LibraryOgre]

LG isn't too far off. Part of the problem, IMO, is that some of the personal horror stuff gets mundane after a while. "Oh no, I'm a vampire who has to drink the blood of humans to survive" eventually turns into "Ok, my Hunting roll says I got 3 points tonight. Let's get on with the plot."

Werewolf? Sure, you're a warrior raging against the dying of your species, and maybe the entire planet. There's a lot of "Either I'm dead or this is a cakewalk" to combat in the OWOD... if you didn't get heavily into the social aspects of being a werewolf, there's a lot of nothing going on.

Mage? You're playing, essentially, Red Dawn. Your side has already lost the war. All you have left is hiding out, usually with people you don't like, trying to hold on to whatever your ideals were. The Technocracy doesn't need to chase you... you are incapable of affecting them in a meaningful way, and even less so every day, and some of your allies are pretty sympathetic to them (i.e. Virtual Adepts).

Basically, OWoD is all about playing the losing side in a war... unless you're a vampire, then it's about rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic, just to avoid boredom (or avoid being someone else's deck chair).

[Alejandro]

Wow, that was very well said. I tried playing in a few oWoD games, and this helps me finally put my finger on why I never really had fun. You aren't supposed to, at least thematically. You're supposed to win by not losing for a day.

[comicshorse]

In Vampire you are a immortal but the end is coming when the founders of your line will emerge and all will perish.
In Werewolf your species job is to preserve the balance of the world and you've failed. The Wyrm is out of control and the end is coming.
In Mage the Technocracy rule the world and you must hide from them to live. ( Personally I always thought the Technocracy were the good guys though so this is a Good Thing)
Pretty much the world is in trouble and its doubtful there is anything you can do to stop this. This is not necessarily a bad thing ! This gives the game a dark atmosphere but you're playing monsters so what did you expect. ( Then again I also like Call of Cthulhu were the world is equally doomed ).
From what I've heard of Old Changeling it was a terrible idea to the extent it took extensive arm twisting to get me to play NuChangeling which I now love.
OWoD LOVED the backstory. There was history and coinspiracies everywhere ( even if some of them only existed as rumours) and the world was firmly in the grip of the supernatural beings.

[The Glyphstone]

In OWoD, I'm still not sure if it was canon or a fanbase joke that every single major event in the course of human history was caused by or influenced by supernaturals except for World War 2.

[TheCountAlucard]

Oh, and don't forget about Rasputin. :smallwink:

[Techwarrior]

In OWoD, I'm still not sure if it was canon or a fanbase joke that every single major event in the course of human history was caused by or influenced by supernaturals except for World War 2.

I know that when I looked, it was hard to find any that weren't caused by supernaturals.

That being said, the point of the oWoD games, as has been pointed out, is that your group is the losing side. Coupled with the high horror elements, and it has WAY too specific a target audience. I personally, can't get enough of it. I'm a strange one though.

My actual advice? Pick up exactly the FIRST book. Hand it to your ST, and only to your ST. Play the gabe without having read the book.

[snikrept]

You're supposed to win by not losing for a day.
Sounds like an accurate description of life in general. Defy entropy, one day at a time...


( Personally I always thought the Technocracy were the good guys though so this is a Good Thing)
Mage was my favorite aspect of oWOD for this reason. The Mage-flavored NPC factions seemed much more shades-of-grey than other oWOD groups. Mage PCs seemed like the disaffected opposition party in a government that concerned itself with writing laws of physics rather than human laws.

[Alejandro]

Sounds like an accurate description of life in general. Defy entropy, one day at a time...

Probably why I and likely others never got into it. I find games most enjoyable when they are less like real life. :)

[XianTheCoder]

oWoD Vampire was just awsome... nWoD is just ok fluff-wise. A lot of people didn't like the MASSIVE amount of fluff and meta-plot in oWoD and sure the mechanics had some holes, but it was just an amazingly fun game to play. Yes, you are suppose to lose... but my RL group's GM had a "my players can't win no matter what" philosphy to start, so that never really bothered me personally.

Werewolf sucks no matter which system you're playing... pass...

I really prefered the fluff of oWoD Mage.. I'd like to have a comparison, but every nWoD Mage game I try and play in dies during character creation.

nWoD really nurfed the power levels and normalized the various supernatural rules (in oWoD the core rules were all the same, but each supernatural had their own little side rules to govern their specific supernatural abilities), all the supernatural specific rules didn't mesh perfectly, but they weren't anywhere near as bad as others made them out to be. The result was a unique flavor for each supernatural in oWoD, where nWoD feels much more commoditized. For newbie players, nWoD is much easier to pick up and run with though.

I like Masq and Req, but I will always choose Masq first if given the chance, even with the worse rules and the binding fluff.

[Yuki Akuma]

Why is it that in every thread like this, there's always at least one post calling oChangeling terrible, when it's the only oWoD game I actually think works as a horror game? .-.

[Chainsaw Hobbit]

I've started reading some OWoD stuff, and to be completely honest, I could take or leave it. It feels kind of convoluted, inconsistent, overdone. There is such a massive volume of backstory and metaplot and lore that it seems much more fun to read than play.

The mechanics have potential, but are kind of clumsy and unpolished. NWoD did a much better job in that area. Balance also sucks much of the time, especially in some of the source-books.

The only OWoD game I could really get into was Changeling: the Dreaming, and I accept that to be deeply flawed. It brought back nostalgic memories of Labyrinth and Narnia, and also reminded me of Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere. I still prefer its successor, Changeling: the Lost, but it looks like it could make for a fun short campaign.

[Friv]

Why is it that in every thread like this, there's always at least one post calling oChangeling terrible, when it's the only oWoD game I actually think works as a horror game? .-.

Speaking as a huge fan of CtD, the reasons that people call it terrible are mainly threefold:

1) The primary source of horror in Changeling, especially early in the line came from things that most people found too silly to really take seriously - growing up and becoming normal. This was really compounded by the whole "by the age of 30 everyone gives up on their dreams and becomes a boring drone" thing.
2) Much of the artwork, again primarily early in the line when people's minds were being set, was wildly too silly and fluffy for what the actual subject matter was. Once someone saw a dancing bear holding pink balloons with a tutu on in the core, that kind of set the tone.
3) A lot of the writing was just terrible, and many of the rules made no goddamn sense, once more especially in First Edition, but running throughout the whole line.

[Morty]

I'm not sure if it's just me, but a lot of oWoD seems to be built around the theme that civilization is bad and horrible and crushes human spirit. There's tons of it in old Mage and it seems to be a thing in Werewolf and Changeling as well. Of course, none of this is the humans' fault, really - it's not like oWoD mortals have any power over what's happening.

[prufock]

I was the odd man out in my group; the other players all enjoyed V:tM, but I just could never get into it. I didn't like the setting, the rules, or the story. The thing is, I like the idea of the setting, I just don't like the way it was executed. There was also a bit of a learning curve and LOTS to read just to understand the setting at all, which may have soured me a bit.

I've never tried New World of Darkness, but I think the idea could be fun if executed better, so it might be something to try sometime.

[Chainsaw Hobbit]

I was the odd man out in my group; the other players all enjoyed V:tM, but I just could never get into it. I didn't like the setting, the rules, or the story. The thing is, I like the idea of the setting, I just don't like the way it was executed. There was also a bit of a learning curve and LOTS to read just to understand the setting at all, which may have soured me a bit.

I've never tried New World of Darkness, but I think the idea could be fun if executed better, so it might be something to try sometime.

I highly recommend you do check out the New World of Darkness. It is to me what the Old World of Darkness should have been.

You should start with Changeling: the Lost, as it is by far my favorite. Other good ones include Hunter: the Vigil, Mage: the Awakening, and Vampire: the Requiem.

[Lapak]

I'm not sure if it's just me, but a lot of oWoD seems to be built around the theme that civilization is bad and horrible and crushes human spirit. There's tons of it in old Mage and it seems to be a thing in Werewolf and Changeling as well. Of course, none of this is the humans' fault, really - it's not like oWoD mortals have any power over what's happening.It's not civilization that oWoD sees as inherently problematic; it is stasis. Civilization has a stabilizing effect, which makes it part of the problem, but it's not the source of the problem.

It's explicit in Werewolf: the Wyrm (destruction) is the enemy, but only because the Weaver (order/stasis) tried to bind everything into a fixed form and drove the Wyrm mad.

It's explicit in Changeling: the gradual ordering of the world is literally killing off the imaginative force that empowers the Fae.

It's heavily suggested in Mage: the Technocracy's stated goal is to break the power of creative magic by shackling the consensus of reality into their own paradigm. The more successful they are, the less creative they can be even in their own métier, but they consider that a worthwhile tradeoff.

Without being stated, it's the essential problem with vampires in Vampire: their will to remain themselves, to extend their life, to sustain their existence as it is becomes the reason that they do what they do. They sacrifice their basic humanity on the altar of prolonging their merely physical self.

[Friv]

It's not civilization that oWoD sees as inherently problematic; it is stasis. Civilization has a stabilizing effect, which makes it part of the problem, but it's not the source of the problem.

It's explicit in Werewolf: the Wyrm (destruction) is the enemy, but only because the Weaver (order/stasis) tried to bind everything into a fixed form and drove the Wyrm mad.

It's explicit in Changeling: the gradual ordering of the world is literally killing off the imaginative force that empowers the Fae.

It's heavily suggested in Mage: the Technocracy's stated goal is to break the power of creative magic by shackling the consensus of reality into their own paradigm. The more successful they are, the less creative they can be even in their own métier, but they consider that a worthwhile tradeoff.

Without being stated, it's the essential problem with vampires in Vampire: their will to remain themselves, to extend their life, to sustain their existence as it is becomes the reason that they do what they do. They sacrifice their basic humanity on the altar of prolonging their merely physical self.

While this is true, the OWoD tended to make the case that science was a static force, when in fact it is anything but. The pace at which the world is changing only increases as our science improves.

One of my most rage-inducing moments in the line was when I read the changeling book that suggested giving players Banality for solving mysteries, because knowledge removes wonder from the universe.

[Lapak]

While this is true, the OWoD tended to make the case that science was a static force, when in fact it is anything but. The pace at which the world is changing only increases as our science improves.

One of my most rage-inducing moments in the line was when I read the changeling book that suggested giving players Banality for solving mysteries, because knowledge removes wonder from the universe.oWoD didn't so much make the case as they did declare it by fiat. Regardless of how things work in the real world, in oWoD science was just the dominant consensus of reality, the tool of the Weaver that was being used to stratify, catalog and ossify all of reality, etc. This isn't at all how things actually are, but it IS how they are in the World of Darkness.

And there's some argument in Changeling for science and discovery eliminating possibilities - think of solving a mystery not as uncovering the truth but more like observing the position of a particle. You've collapsed a superposition of waveforms down to a single point, you've transformed a webwork of possibilities down to a single answer. Right up until the players reveal the 'truth', all of the possibilities are true and none of them are in a Changeling game - but as soon as the answer is observed, the twelve-and-twenty-score alternate realities that existed right alongside the observed one die.

[hiryuu]

While this is true, the OWoD tended to make the case that science was a static force, when in fact it is anything but. The pace at which the world is changing only increases as our science improves.

One of my most rage-inducing moments in the line was when I read the changeling book that suggested giving players Banality for solving mysteries, because knowledge removes wonder from the universe.

Wow. I never really deeply read the banality rules, since they seemed pretty mean to begin with (I mean, seriously, a computer is banal? It should depend on what you're using it for.), but that's just cruel. The Dreaming was already the saddest, most depressing, soul-crushing game they had, and that just makes it worse.

I've tried to run several games of Ascension and they always died so quickly. Part of the problem is that even with the Traditions in place, each Mage is powered by selfishness. Seriously. Imagine a guy whose personal worldview is so strong and based deeply in his own ignorance of the universe that he has acquired the superpower to force it to be valid for other people (it is also pertinent to remind you that the setting sees this sort of selfishness, ignorance, intolerance, and personal incredulity as a virtue). Now imagine you have five of that guy in a room, all with wildly different world views. Now try making them cooperate.

On the other hand, I loved Mokolé, and I ran an all-Mokolé game for nearly a year.

On the scale? I prefer nWoD. Promethean is the best game no one will ever play. The Lost is freaking amazing. Awakening at least has a unified cosmology, even if the new Trads see it through that pseudo-hermetic lens. Geist is absolute win in a can.

[Giarc]

I've tried to run several games of Ascension and they always died so quickly. Part of the problem is that even with the Traditions in place, each Mage is powered by selfishness. Seriously. Imagine a guy whose personal worldview is so strong and based deeply in his own ignorance of the universe that he has acquired the superpower to force it to be valid for other people (it is also pertinent to remind you that the setting sees this sort of selfishness, ignorance, intolerance, and personal incredulity as a virtue). Now imagine you have five of that guy in a room, all with wildly different world views. Now try making them cooperate.

Those are called Marauders. They warp reality by just standing there/being insane.

[Lapak]

Those are called Marauders. They warp reality by just standing there/being insane.hiryuu's point is that they're called Mages.

[hiryuu]

hiryuu's point is that they're called Mages.

Pretty much, yeah.

Mage is all about using your personal incredulity about the real world as a virtue and sticking it to The Man's rules. Even the ones about gravity and mass being a property of matter. As an example, look at the Sons of Ether. Power of SCIENCE! and jetboots and Flash Gordon, right? Yeah. And they're also those scumbags who tell you not to take vaccines because positive thinking can save you and HIV is just a LIE perpetrated by THE MAN, and they can and do enforce their truth on the world through the use of magic. Mage is about being that jerk in the woo store who tells you that calling the sky blue is, like, intolerant, man and then being able to tell someone to look up and see that it's purple, just so you can laugh at them in the face. This is why all of my Mage games have self destructed, even the one-tradition-only game, the first session is a shouting match of worldviews, the second session turns into a prisoner-pack alpha dynamic, and then subsequent sessions are about trying to escape the tyranny of the one guy who pumped his Arete and Avatar to ridiculous levels with freebies (speaking of pack alphas, don't get me started with Werewolf, where wolf behavior is all based on how wolves in captivity behave rather than wolves in the wild).

Awakening made this better by making the world into Plato's Cave. Ignore the Atlantis story, it's simply an allegory for the world that no longer exists. Everyone is part of a shadow play and the World of Darkness is simply walls of the cave where everyone lives. A mage has glimpsed The Truth and can draw bits of that Truth into the fake world created by the ancients when they tried to rewrite Truth at its source. Rationalism works, and everyone can play the game, it's simply that most people just aren't playing with the full deck (this fact really grates on the Exarchs, who started science to oppress the muggles, but now it's exalting them and will inevitably reveal The Truth).

[Darth Stabber]

You guys have had some much worse mage the ascension chronicles than I have. The major difference I can already see is how to approach paradigm. I have always understood, perhaps incorrectly, that you gain insight by breaking down your old paradigm, and rebuilding it based on what you have learned along the way. That might be a bit off from the standard, but with that understanding of paradigm, it becomes much easier for people with radically different paradigms to get along, while still enabling your character to talk down to others about how constrained they are, and how imperfect their understanding is (if you want to play a jerk).

I took that as why you lose the need for foci as your arrete improves, since you have broken down one of the walls that contained your understanding.

That being said when I do run owod, I tend to ignore the parts of the fluff that I find constraining or ridiculous, and every game is better when you ignore the bad parts. I never could get into nwod, because I really loved the old back stories (if not the metaplot), and thought they could have done better by simply updating and unifying the rules while keeping more of the old backstory, as opposed to starting over again and going in a new direction.

And demon: the fallen was one of my favorite books to read EVAR, rpg or not. The game play was so/so, but the fluff was amazing.

[awa]

for me i always hated the way changling and werewolf had mechanicaly enforced leadership postions. One person would always design their charecter to be a high ranking noble or win the alpha postion then declare perpetual time of war and use it to screw with every one.

Or the judge class they got honnor for using their punishment rituals so they would look for even the smallest infractions to try and screw over the players for honnor.

[Urpriest]

I personally loved Old Changeling's fluff, but this was back when I was very concerned with losing my own creative power as I grew up, so I'm not sure if I'd find it all that compelling now. That said, it's certainly a viable and compelling genre in general: as others have said, look at Neverwhere.

I also prefer oWoD Mage fluff to nWoD, because it feels like there's more of a point to it. I just don't really get why the Seers of the Throne do what they do: an organization of what are essentially glorified Freemasons don't make sense as rulers of the world, let alone when they are opposed by the other Mages. Also, I prefer oWoD's sense that pretty much any belief could create a Mage tradition to nWoD's sense that there are only five watchtowers and each has its own intrinsic aesthetic.

[hiryuu]

I like both, honestly. Pretty much all the WoD books have been fun to read at some point or another (except for Demon, but again, that's opinion). I like them both. WoD goes kinda like this:

oWoD is basically a SyFy channel original motion picture. It's fun, there's lots of explosions, and there is a giant undead organic sentient church underneath New York City made out of a demon space virus that only infects vampires. I'm serious, it's canon, and I have sent PCs there. They did not come back. Except for one, but honestly, did he really come back?

Mage: A war for worldviews. Your worldview gives you superpowers, and in an ideal world, it's about expanding those horizons to and accepting that you are wrong about everything, and eventually ascending to some kind of awesome uber-dude. Also, for some reason, the bad guys have the opposite of that philosophy (in which they believe in constraining reality) and that makes them somehow the champions of science (also it means that the setting's Bad Guys are the people who brought you toilet paper and air conditioning). Done correctly with the right players and ST? This is the better of the lines, and don't get me wrong, it's good. How do I know it's good? For all my bitterness at WoD and Mage, I still keep trying to run the damn thing.

Vampire: This is supposed to be about you are a monster rejected by death who will slowly become more terrible as time passes and ending it all is harder than it sounds unless you fight for redemption, which will slowly lose meaning to you as you spiral into becoming the monster you revile. In practice? It was played as "We are immortal and run everything. Go and cry now." Kindred of the East suffers from the same problem, but at least there you are a Kung Fu Demon who can shoot green lasers out of your eyes.

Werewolf: Ideally? You are all going to die fighting to save the environment, and the moment before you die you will realize you're a brainwashed religious fanatic and you could never have won in the first place. What's actually going to happen is that the PCs are going to try to buy or create more explosives than anyone actually has need of and detonate everything that pings on Sense Wyrm. But you know, that's what PCs do. Shout "screw the rules, I'm going to wear this smaller mecha as a hat on my bigger mecha."

Wraith: You are dead and are going to fade away into nothing, and at least one other player has the job of making fun of you while it happens. That's ok, though, you get to do the same thing to them.

Changeling: You are going to forget you're an awesome whimsical fae and potentially try to brainwash other fae to forget, too. Unless you are a Sluagh, then you are going to die forever.

Hunter: Hunters are perfectly normal human beings who fight the supernatural with their super normHOLY COW THAT GUY THREW A STAKE HALF A MILE THROUGH A CONCRETE WALL. Also as you get better you will go crazier and you see crazy things written in the wall. It was actually kind of a cool concept, but the execution was a bit muddy. I blame the chaos of the end of the world supplements.

Demon: SURPRISE! All the material for all our other gamelines was totally wrong and the Celestial Chorus was right about everything! Can you tell Demon sticks in my craw? Demon sticks in my craw.



nWoD is a lot less gonzo, honestly, though it has its moments.

Mage: You are Indiana Jones and you run on Spiral Power and the Antispirals are trying to track you down.

Geist: You died and it was pretty boss. Now you have a Stand and can see and hear ghosts. This is probably among my favorite of the new lines.

Changeling: Cthulhu touched you in a very naughty way, but you escaped with a Deep One costume and now he's looking for you.

Promethean: The best game no one can play.

Hunter: You are a normal guy. A werewolf just bit off the head of the man next to you. What do you do?

Werewolf: You are a junkyard dog fighting over territory. You will probably be eaten by rats.

Vampire: Really, this is the same as the old vampire. Just has certain points clarified, repeated, underlined, bolded, underlined AGAIN, and circled.

[Morty]

Hunter: Hunters are perfectly normal human beings who fight the supernatural with their super normHOLY COW THAT GUY THREW A STAKE HALF A MILE THROUGH A CONCRETE WALL. Also as you get better you will go crazier and you see crazy things written in the wall. It was actually kind of a cool concept, but the execution was a bit muddy. I blame the chaos of the end of the world supplements.

Actually, I'd describe old Hunter as more "Normal humans are useless cattle, so angels smack some of them upside the head and show them the monsters. They get some powers, they go crazy, they die". Throwing a stake half a mile through a concrete wall isn't a thing that happens either. It's ironic that the gameline which is supposedly about humans taking the fight to the supernaturals treats normal humans without Messengers backing them up even less seriously than the other ones.

[hiryuu]

Throwing a stake half a mile through a concrete wall isn't a thing that happens either.

You're right. It's much more likely that you'll turn off all a vampire's disciplines no matter how old it is for hours (Oh, Rank 3 Judgement, you so crazy).

[Morty]

Well, not all disciplines. Only those that require it to spend Vitae. But yes, the power level of Hunter Edges is all over the place. Some are so weak you might as well not bother and others are crazily powerful.

[awa]

wow world of darkness not being balanced i mean how could that happen.

[SiderealDreams]

I identify as a fan of the New World of Darkness line. I love Changeling: the Lost with a rabid passion, and have a soft spot for the other games as well.

Recently, I picked up a few books from the Old World of Darkness line. They are kind of thick and intimidating, and before diving in, I would like to know a bit about what to expect. What is the Old World of Darkness like? How is it different from its successor?

To try to tack to a more neutral tone than some stuff posted I'll toss in my 2 bits.

A lot of the New World of Darkness, beyond being set with a strong emphasis on returning to classic gothic narrative tone is defined by both the post millenial era and less as a world that is darker, more run down,terrible,etc than the real world and more a world of "The supernatural is real!" Then running to all the crazy places the collective mythology of humanity has to offer.

In contrast the Old World of Darkness declared itself built on two basic pillars in theme. The one it shares with the NWoD is the Gothic overtones. Due to a lot of factors those Gothic overtones played a bit more gonzo than it tends to in NWoD but it was there never the less. The other that the NWoD doesn't share is Punk. Particularly all that the real world 70's, 80's and part of the 90's defined and surrounded that term with. OWoD had all the same occult realities like NWoD and every other game that shares that genre has but also infused it with the idea that the world was a dirtier, more run down, terrible place all heading towards some sort of reckoning. Whether it be Eternal Winter, Gehenna, an animistic Ragnarok, universal Ascension or Descent,etc. Like the NWoD the game lines played in their own world but had a shared base in the "World of Darkness." The CWoD lines however trended ultimately to being more far afield from each other than NWoD does. Mechanically each shared the Storyteller system of the time but diverged widely after that. No such thing as Power Stats among major splats, all having morality traits,etc. Metaphysically they differed widely as well. To put it the way one writer put it and I paraphrase here. "You could add werewolves to a Vampire:the Masquerade game. You could have those werewolves call themselves Garou, have them be in tribes and have one call themselves the Silent Striders. But it still wouldn't be the same thing as them being the Silent Striders from Werewolf:the Apocalypse."

As others have said you could for the purpose of internal consistency in your games work out a cosmology for a crossover game with some work but by default they tended to work with each other only so much and were designed with independence in mind. As mention power levels were generally higher than NWoD, aggravated damage sources were plentiful and the scope of the game world as a whole tended to default on a wider scale than NWoD's more intimate tone.

As for the metaplot. Well a little yes and a little no. It was around the game table easy to ignore as much as any companies "official story" is. Which is pretty easy. The issues came in well the whole idea of supplements themselves. A supplement for an rpg is basically...well you COULD homebrew this stuff and do the historical research if applicable yourself, but we'll do the work for you. So if you weren't inclined to homebrew or lots of research,etc and dove headfirst into supplements. You had to live with the mechanical and setting realities of a book reflecting a metaplot change.

[LibraryOgre]

wow world of darkness not being balanced i mean how could that happen.

It's not just "not balanced"... there's always going to be better and worse options. It's just that some of the powers are so crazily insanely overpowered compared to the investment, or were so poorly worded as to be unusable or insane, depending on your ST.

The thing is, OWOD had some great ideas, and I've played some great games in it. It just wasn't well-designed, and they decided to go with a "science is bad, m'kay?" theme EVERYWHERE.

[Cirrylius]

Vampire in particular, as the first product following the reboot, had some issues. Since Masqerade shifted from personal horror to over-the-top (verging on camp) action horror, a lot of the re-alignment of NWoD was awfully heavy-handed in the other direction. Attributes, skills, and Disciplines got nerfed to more realistic, easily handled levels. Combat, even for supernaturals, became significantly more lethal in order to encourage more problem-solving and team-playing. Humanity loss mechanics were made more draconian to give you a reason to HAVE to play nice. Strength comes with age, rather than exclusively from diablerie, and a negative feedback loop was included to keep blood potency down. Frenzy mechanics were installed for meeting new vampires, to keep travel minimal and stories more local and intimate (and removing the monolithic controlling organizations of Masqerade as a result). Only the outlines of vampire history and organization are given, to allow more sandboxing and to prevent railroad Overplots from forming.

I can see why a lot of players were pissed with the results, although I don't necessarily agree with their points. The overall effect kind of comes off as the developers waving their arms and going "Guuuuuys! This is a storytelling exercise about personal horror! Stop having FUUUN!!". The rules are smoother, though, and the game lends itself better to deep character involvement and setting customization.

IOW, YMMV.

[Sith_Happens]

But you know, that's what PCs do. Shout "screw the rules, I'm going to wear this smaller mecha as a hat on my bigger mecha."

So has or has not someone created Gurren: The Laganning?:smallwink:


Mage: You are Indiana Jones and you run on Spiral Power and the Antispirals are trying to track you down.

Huh, I guess I'll take that as yes.

[Alejandro]

Ironically, in the Mage game I tried, I made an Indiana Jones-inspired character. He was a professor at a university and an archaeologist, traveling around the world to find magical artifacts before The Bad Guys did (Technocracy, etc.)

It was fun at first, but I rapidly learned that all the effort I had put into being good with my Webley pistol, my fists, and my inherent knowledge on various academic topics was all worthless compared to the player in the group who knew how to take just the right flaws/bonuses/whatever and the right magical powers, and was able to solve/defeat all our encounters whether or not I did anything. I lost interest after that.

[The Glyphstone]

Vampire in particular, as the first product following the reboot, had some issues. Since Masqerade shifted from personal horror to over-the-top (verging on camp) action horror, a lot of the re-alignment of NWoD was awfully heavy-handed in the other direction. Attributes, skills, and Disciplines got nerfed to more realistic, easily handled levels. Combat, even for supernaturals, became significantly more lethal in order to encourage more problem-solving and team-playing. Humanity loss mechanics were made more draconian to give you a reason to HAVE to play nice. Strength comes with age, rather than exclusively from diablerie, and a negative feedback loop was included to keep blood potency down. Frenzy mechanics were installed for meeting new vampires, to keep travel minimal and stories more local and intimate (and removing the monolithic controlling organizations of Masqerade as a result). Only the outlines of vampire history and organization are given, to allow more sandboxing and to prevent railroad Overplots from forming.

I can see why a lot of players were pissed with the results, although I don't necessarily agree with their points. The overall effect kind of comes off as the developers waving their arms and going "Guuuuuys! This is a storytelling exercise about personal horror! Stop having FUUUN!!". The rules are smoother, though, and the game lends itself better to deep character involvement and setting customization.

IOW, YMMV.

They made up for it with Dudes of Legend, though.:smallcool:

[Friv]

Ironically, in the Mage game I tried, I made an Indiana Jones-inspired character. He was a professor at a university and an archaeologist, traveling around the world to find magical artifacts before The Bad Guys did (Technocracy, etc.)

It was fun at first, but I rapidly learned that all the effort I had put into being good with my Webley pistol, my fists, and my inherent knowledge on various academic topics was all worthless compared to the player in the group who knew how to take just the right flaws/bonuses/whatever and the right magical powers, and was able to solve/defeat all our encounters whether or not I did anything. I lost interest after that.

Well yes, if you play a mage who doesn't use magic you're going to have a lot of trouble down the road compared to players who do use magic. This is a fact in most WoD games; the magical traits are a better return on your XP as far as problem-solving goes than non-magical ones. Mages are the ones for whom that's most true.

You could make some serious use out of a mixture of Entropy 3 and various Spheres at 1 and make a great Indiana Jones, though, who can solve problems with his gun, his knowledge, and his amazing knack for things going right at just the right moment (and vice versa). Entropy 3, Matter 1, Prime 1 and Spirit 1 seems like a good Mage-style version.

[Darth Stabber]

I have evidently been playing/storytelling OWoD wrong (and intend to continue). Infact I have gone back and reread some materials, and my version is significantly askew. Combine that with a complete and total disregard for metaplot, and it leads to a very different experience, and only once has someone complained (some crap about prince albrecht).

The next chronicle I am working on is a big crossover zombie apocalypse affair with pcs as mages, werewolves, or hedge wizards, with no regards for anything written in any of the end of the world stories. I spoilered it due to length, but if anyone has any thoughts or criticisms feel free, especially if you have thoughts about what to do with the giovanni vampires, deamons, and changelings.

Pentax has a project to develop fomori capable of reproducing, combining the talents of one bsd theurge and one giovanni necromancer. The fomori's bite transfers a disease that summons a specially bred breed of bane that animates the corpse as the body dies. Before they can work out a means of controlling them, there is a raid on the lab by a pack of werewolves, which accidently releases them. The contagion is starting grow, and pentax says f it and purposefull starts spreading the disease, as part of a plan to bring the rest of the world's population under their control.

Before they can move to the next step of their plan, the technocracy figures out who caused this massive reality deviation, and starts attacking pentax. Pentax ends up calling in every favor owed them, bringing a massive force of black spirals and more than few nephandi to shore up their weakened force.

In the ensuing chaos, the camarilla is caught in a massive wave of sabbat attacks, bringing massive numbers of casualties to both sides. And even those that survive are afflicted by the loss of herds to the zombie hordes.

The silver fangs hold a giant tribal moot in one of their mountain strongholds in eastern europe, where they are discussing the call of the next imperial moot to call for a rededication of garou nation to the silverfangs and to plan how to move forward in the new world of death and terror. However the massive world wide death of kindred and kine awakened the sleeping tzimitse antediluvian. In a titanic battle the silverfangs go the way of the croatan, ending the threat at the cost of many of leaders of the garou nation.

In the power vacuum, the shadow lords move to take power, and are thoroughly rebuffed by the nation at great loss of life on both sides. Realizing that new leadership is needed, an unlikely alliance between the children of gaia and the get of fenris quickly silences the massive werewolf civil war. The need for unity and strength in the face of the possibility of black spiral retribution caused all but one of the remaining tribes to join the proclamation of a new garou nation. The red talons, seeing what might be their only chance to renew the impurgium, break away from their brothers, promising no aggression, so long as they were left to their own devices.

The traditions seeing their greatest foe entangled with an outside force were temporarily joyous, especially since the force of paradox weakened, but with that weakening came a significant increase in marauder activity. Without the technocracy to bear the brunt of the marauder hunting, the traditions quickly became bogged down, trying to keep reality from unraveling under the strain. Realizing that their magic, while less inhibited by paradox, both sped up the unraveling, also brought the attention of marauders, which unraveled things more. A great knot of freyed leylines broke in california, causing massive magical turmoil across the american southwest and northern mexico. The forces of paradox became closer to normal around the rest of the world (though still less than before), while the southwest/mexico became areas seperated from any and all thoughts of causality, things impossible even by mage standards became the norm.

As the favors ran out pentax started to fall apart internally. The blackspirals and nephandi realizing that it was losing battle for them, and left the corporates to their fate, and started creating their own domains in various places. Pentax crumbles to the technocrats assault.

Having won their battle the technocrats suddenly realize that they have been losing the war. Finding certain strange quirks in their machinery, they slowly start to realize just how much of what they were doing was Magick. They begin to rebuild in hopes of recreating the static reality that existed before the war, and have made their first great task to clean up the southwest, and reverse the stream of magickal wierdness.

The players start in a small hedgewizard school for children of gaia kinfolk in southern canada, as a small cabal of mages, and about 30 werewolves realize that the generations of magical work in the area has caused it to become a node/caern, and prepared to take up residence, and work togother on a solution to the vast array of threats before them.

[Craft (Cheese)]

I'm not sure if it's just me, but a lot of oWoD seems to be built around the theme that civilization everything is bad and horrible and crushes human spirit.

Fixed that for you

[Alejandro]

Well yes, if you play a mage who doesn't use magic you're going to have a lot of trouble down the road compared to players who do use magic. This is a fact in most WoD games; the magical traits are a better return on your XP as far as problem-solving goes than non-magical ones. Mages are the ones for whom that's most true.

You could make some serious use out of a mixture of Entropy 3 and various Spheres at 1 and make a great Indiana Jones, though, who can solve problems with his gun, his knowledge, and his amazing knack for things going right at just the right moment (and vice versa). Entropy 3, Matter 1, Prime 1 and Spirit 1 seems like a good Mage-style version.

Very true. And I was shown those ideas, but as I explained, we had a player that was capable of solving/defeating everything in the game for us, and it stopped being interesting.

[Arbane]

Darth Stabber's post reminded me: One of my (many) problems with Werewolf was that its bad-guys were essentially the villains from s hypothetical NC-17 remake of Captain Planet. :smallyuk:

[Sylvos330]

I'm currently running a Werewolf Dark Ages game and ignoring a great deal of the rules and meta plot. I find the game is a lot more fun when you don't throw the fact that they are fighting a losing battle in their face.

Also my girlfriend and I are starting up a LARP for VTM and kicking the metaplot in the face by desolving all three major factions (Sabbat, Cam, and Anarchs) and making the players come up with a brand new social structure. We pretty much wrote our own metaplot for this game and only hinted at the core structures. We even took it as far as to write the Tremere out and create a subclan that works with the new society (mainly due to the fact that every game we play anyone who plays a tremere is not trusted and shunned).

[Opperhapsen]

They made up for it with Dudes of Legend, though.:smallcool:
Dudes of legend just seemed like a giant middle finger to people who complained about their game. :smallannoyed:

[Emperor Tippy]

I find Requiem to suck. V:tM had it's problems (it pushed humanity and redemption and the one true god and faith way to hard and a lot of the mechanics needed to be streamlined) but at a basic level it was interesting, it was organic, it was fun, and it worked. It was certainly a tragic game and a tragic story but it was also a human story.

At the end of the day becoming a vamp was nothing more than being a human given immortality, super powers, and told that to maintain both you had to feed on the blood of others. Everything after that was a logical progression and watching how most people fell to internal conflict as their morals and ideals are weighed and tested against their desire to survive.

You got to see the conflict between basic human desires and the reality of vampire life. Caine created the second generation because he wanted companionship that could understand him. Vampires, like humans, are social creatures and so you get the Sabbat packs and Camarilla and yet the life of a vampire is fairly inherently antithetical to working together. All of the desires, conflicting realities, and challenges of life come together to make a great, believable, organic, setting that you can run nigh any kind of story in.

Requiem, you can't do that. Requiem vamps are basically animals with a veneer of humanity over them. They aren't organic and they don't work.

That all being said, you need a decent storyteller and group for V:tM. It's a setting where the Storyteller should not be remotely fair, where the players are likely utterly screwed, where they are operating in a death world, and where they are playing against entities so far beyond them that they may as well be gods. With supreme cunning, skill, and luck the players can rise to the top and conquer existence; but they will probably die quickly, alone, and unlamented as they simply got in the way of the plan of someone more powerful.

[RPGuru1331]

It just wasn't well-designed, and they decided to go with a "science is bad, m'kay?" theme EVERYWHERE.
I remember looking back on some CtD books a year ago, after having gone to university, and especially after watching actual scientists give lectures, and giggling myself hoarse over the idea that scientists themselves added Banality to the world with rationalism. You can more or less replicate the effect by watching Bill Nye the SCience Guy or Neil DeGrasse Tyson talk. But I do still love CtD deeply.

One thing I'll say about the oWoD, for better or worse (the latter, in my personal experience), the metaplot is a lot stronger. There was, and likely still is, a much stronger feeling among the playerbase that whatever the books say happened, did in fact actually happen, and that all the developments were to remain intact. In the extreme, every little change warranted a 'houserule'. This got obnoxious with dozens of books per main splat. They also had more of a habit of making Asia super mysterious and untouched by the basic lines. Still extant now, but less so.

Still, I always enjoyed both. nWoD, on balance, moreso, but oWoD did more solidly let you point to Mummies when some jerk is whining about "how dare you not like horror, its ruining my pretensions", because Mummy was about the most ridiculous over-the-top heroes I've seen presented outside of out n' out pulp.

Edit: Oh, bother, it appears that irritation at how oChangeling treated science is totally normal. Well, don't I feel less special. It's a WoD thread so I should probably act to maintain those pretensions, but.... lazy :D

[Electrohydra]

"science is bad, m'kay?" theme EVERYWHERE.

I don't know much about it yet, but isn't science the ONLY advantage neonates have over the older generations in VtM? It seemed to me it was a good thing in that line.

[Opperhapsen]

I don't know much about it yet, but isn't science the ONLY advantage neonates have over the older generations in VtM? It seemed to me it was a good thing in that line.

Science, in oWoD, literally and provably made the world worse.
It's killing off creativity, giving the world over to an insane godlike entity that'll stagnate the world to oblivion, and in Mage the enemy is pretty much "The scientific method".

[The Glyphstone]

Dudes of legend just seemed like a giant middle finger to people who complained about their game. :smallannoyed:

I'm not sure you see that. It was more like a Take That aimed at themselves, satirizing the perception of the people who played Vampires like they were superheroes with fangs, a disturbingly common phenomenon back in the days of original Masquerade. If you took DoL as serious commentary on anything, you're definitely doing something wrong.

[Opperhapsen]

I'm not sure you see that. It was more like a Take That aimed at themselves, satirizing the perception of the people who played Vampires like they were superheroes with fangs, a disturbingly common phenomenon back in the days of original Masquerade. If you took DoL as serious commentary on anything, you're definitely doing something wrong.

Exactly, it was a screed on people playing their game wrong. Meanwhile portraying these people in an entirely negative light.

I wouldn't approve if Wizards of the Coast came out with a book making fun of people playing intrigue based games (Or asking for rules to facilitate the same) with the D&D ruleset either.
It also came out right about the time WW fired of most of their employees and became primarily a license holder if I remember correctly, so there's just that extra hint of bitterness.

[The Glyphstone]

This wouldn't be like WotC publishing a satirical book to make fun of people who played a D&D intrigue game, this would be more like WotC publishing said book to make fun of people who used D&D rules to play commoners working their fields and tending their herds, and insisted on a specialized Complete Mundane Drudgery sourcebook.

Which they kind of did, with their own April Fool's line of Commoner Flaws - Were-Sheep, Chicken Infested, Pig Bond, Corpse, Delicious...

[Opperhapsen]

This wouldn't be like WotC publishing a satirical book to make fun of people who played a D&D intrigue game, this would be more like WotC publishing said book to make fun of people who used D&D rules to play commoners working their fields and tending their herds, and insisted on a specialized Complete Mundane Drudgery sourcebook.

Which they kind of did, with their own April Fool's line of Commoner Flaws - Were-Sheep, Chicken Infested, Pig Bond, Corpse, Delicious...

'cept no one ever actually wanted to play a farmer and do farming things.
They're not making fun of an actual demographic, and even had they been it's much less mean spirited.

Although I should point out that I enjoyed quite a few of the jokes in the book.

[GammaPaladin]

I think a lot of the complaints about the age-linked seemings in CtD come from the misconception that glamour and banality are about creativity. They're not, they're about belief and credulity. They actually describe it pretty well in a couple of places, but in typical old WW style, they do it obliquely.

Certainly if you see it as a statement that we lose our creativity with age, it can seem insulting, but it has nothing to do with creativity. At one point in the core book they make the analogy that adults can enjoy sci-fi and fantasy stories, comics, movies, etc just as much as children, but unlike small children we don't actually believe that those movies are real. We know at least the basic outlines of how the special effects are produced, and that the shot of the fleet of space ships is actually a bunch of plastic models, or a 3D rendering.

A small child watching that same movie has no idea how it's done, and in the moment they're watching it, they believe it utterly. I mean, you can tell a kid that it's all make-believe and explain how it's done even, and they can even understand that, and acknowledge it after the movie ends, but in the immediate moment that the movie is playing and they're absorbed in it, that thought is completely out of their minds. We adults suspend our disbelief, but we never forget that it's not real the way a child does. They don't have to suspend disbelief, they simply believe.

The game is about loss of innocence and naivete, not loss of imagination. As we grow older we take on more responsibilities, and have to spend more of our time thinking about reality. We start to learn what isn't possible.

Grumps aren't people with no dreams. They're people who don't believe their dreams can come true anymore.

If you ask very small children what they want to be when they grow up, you'll hear a lot of "fireman" and "policeman" and all the stereotypical answers you expect to hear, but you'll also hear answers that are utterly crazy and impossible. A small child will tell you with complete sincerity that he wants to be superman when he grows up, and until someone explains to him that that isn't possible, or he learns it by extrapolation from other things he learns, he honestly believes that he can grow up to lift cars and shoot lasers out of his eyes and fly.

The process of growing up is an utter mystery to him, he has no idea how it works, so anything is possible.

If you give very young children a little playhouse and explain the game of "playing house" to them, give them the idea of roleplaying mommy and daddy, it's interesting that you generally won't see much of a link between sex and role chosen. They don't have a clue that boys become daddies and girls become mommies, but of course eventually either an adult or an older child will come along and say "No, you have to be the mommy because you're a girl!" and a possibility is killed in their minds.

Growing up is about learning what is and is not possible. What works and what doesn't, how things can and cannot be done, which things go together and which do not.

A writer may be a very creative person, but he channels that creativity into a very focused and driven process in order to create a work which is coherent, that has internal consistency, that works. He's creative, but he's also constrained by what he knows is impossible, what he knows is inconsistent.

If you ask a child to tell you a story it will generally involve all of their favorite things with very little rhyme or reason involved in their selection. Look at "Axe Cop" for an example. An adult would never write that because it's a bunch of things that don't go together. It doesn't make sense.

It's the same way the mists operate. A changeling could ride a flying carpet above a crowded park, and the adults would all dismiss it as having been a bird or a plane or a kite or something, because they know that flying carpets can't happen. The children would remember and accept it because they don't know that it can't happen.

Kids don't have to work to believe in magic. They just do.

Grumps have learned too much of what is and isn't possible. Their ability to believe in nonsensical things is impaired. To age to 25 or 30 means that he's spent a significant amount of time in mundane reality, which means he has had to devote a significant amount of mental effort to keeping up with the necessities of adult responsibility in mundane reality.

To say that adults no longer have dreams would be false. To say that our dreams become more modest, or at least less different from our current situations as we grow older, on the other hand, is almost indisputable.

Even in changeling society the grump comes to understand what the realities of their social order are, so even there he's come to know what doesn't make sense, what can't be done. The breadth of things he can simply believe in becomes narrower and narrower, until he can no longer truly believe in faerie.

And then the door is shut.

Honestly though, I never actually got to play it because I never had reason to read the books until years after the nWoD release, but in theme I'd say it's the only WoD (Old or new) that I'd really have much interest in.

I played some Mage in college, and it was fun in its own way, but honestly I detest the "futile struggle" concept, period, so even Mage isn't something I can really get into.

Exalted was the one WW game I loved, but mainly because if you ignored supplements it didn't really have that element of futility. You can save the world and right injustice and live happily ever after, and it's that way by design.

Changeling appeals to me because of its theme of innocence and wonder. Admittedly you also have the problem of losing that over time, but there's nothing in the rules that necessarily force that on you. If you start the campaign by creating a childling, there's nothing really to stop you from turning 13 with 6 glamour and still only 1 banality. There's nothing to stop you from making it to 90 without picking up any permanent banality even.

It'd be difficult, but there's definitely nothing in the crunch that precludes it.

And that's assuming you even grow up at all, since you could spend 100 years of game time and only age a few years without much trouble. There's bedlam, sure, but there are also a lot of ways to avoid it.

I honestly love the setting (And absolutely loathe the setting of CtL), but sadly it's unlikely I'll ever play it because I simply cannot deal with the oWoD storyteller system's mechanics. And rewriting the entire core book to adapt it to the Exalted/Aeon rules would be a ton of work that I'll never get around to.

[hiryuu]

I think a lot of the complaints about the age-linked seemings in CtD come from the misconception that glamour and banality are about creativity. They're not, they're about belief and credulity.

This misconception comes from the place where it says that banality is about creativity right there on page 66 of the core book. And that trying to understand how the universe around you works is dumb and boring.

But yeah. Not a big fan of the anti-science slant of the whole thing when scientists are, you know. Awesome, creative people who would jump for joy at the idea of fairies.

Hmm.

You know. Demon Hunter X, Mokolé, Bygone Bestiary, and Sorcerer: Revised were my favorite oWoD books and to this day I refuse to get rid of them.

[Lapak]

Science, in oWoD, literally and provably made the world worse.
It's killing off creativity, giving the world over to an insane godlike entity that'll stagnate the world to oblivion, and in Mage the enemy is pretty much "The scientific method".As with most things in Mage, that's a bit of an oversimplification. The [largest group of the] enemy happens to be science-focused, but so are the Sons of Ether and the Virtual Adepts. It's not science-as-paradigm that's the problem, but a flawed execution of that paradigm that overemphasizes Order. Actually, in Mage it's known that the scientific paradigm drastically improved the lot of the average non-Mage, which is how the Technocracy got started in the first place: to tamp down on how much raw chaos and random reality-shifting was going on. Science literally and provably and historically made the world better. The enemy in OWoD Mage is Order, not Science, and only an over-emphasis on Order to boot. A little is good; most of the traditions have rules and structures. Too much is stifling. Just as a little disorder is good, but too much causes everything to fall apart.

The SoE would be very pleased with the Uncertainty Principle, the possibility of universes forming something-from-nothing and spontaneous matter/energy arising from sub-quantum unreal structures, and all kinds of similar modern scientific theories. Anything that introduces a little Chaos/Change/Creation into the mix.

[Lord_Gareth]

You know, I've noticed a trend with oWoD for storytellers to marry themselves to the fluff far above and beyond what happens in nWoD; in no other system have I heard (so very often) things like, "This character could never be a Tzimice," or "Gangrel just aren't like that," or, my personal favorite, having a Mage concept shot down because "he would have died, no way he got away with that." And before you think this is just a case of sour grapes, the behavior that goes with this is that these storytellers are then utterly unwilling to work with me to make the concept more appropriate.

Maybe I'm just cursed with a string of bad storytellers, but in no other system have I encountered such hostility and inflexibility from those running the game.

[Alejandro]

You know, I've noticed a trend with oWoD for storytellers to marry themselves to the fluff far above and beyond what happens in nWoD; in no other system have I heard (so very often) things like, "This character could never be a Tzimice," or "Gangrel just aren't like that," or, my personal favorite, having a Mage concept shot down because "he would have died, no way he got away with that." And before you think this is just a case of sour grapes, the behavior that goes with this is that these storytellers are then utterly unwilling to work with me to make the concept more appropriate.

Maybe I'm just cursed with a string of bad storytellers, but in no other system have I encountered such hostility and inflexibility from those running the game.

I had a similar experience with a WoD devotee. I think it stems from the futility concept of the game, where you aren't supposed to win or save the day, so why bother breaking any molds?

[hiryuu]

Maybe I'm just cursed with a string of bad storytellers, but in no other system have I encountered such hostility and inflexibility from those running the game.

I have encountered this, too. I think it stems partly from the fact that A) the setting sits around and tells you, in terrible stereotype format, how that faction is, no buts, and B) oWoD players tend to submit characters like "I have a Son of Ether with an iron man suit who is also kinfolk to the last of the White Howlers and his best friends is a tszimisce vampire named Screamin' Ted" and STs slowly build up a sort of rage, and C) The Cam was super strict about what it allowed but was hopelessly corrupt and took bribes and would "kill" groups one or two cities away because of the actions of another. So much so that a lot of the STs just up and quit and made their own "official" group, with blackjack and hookers.

For the record, the only time I've ever said "no" was when it blatantly contradicted anything on the list I was given, which, admittedly, had some weird things on it. Like "no female Sons of Ether," "no Camarilla Uktena," "no Verbena Kuei-jin," and "no Mokolé." (But again, I just like Mokolé; I ended up running a side-group just for them for a little while until one of the other STs noticed and approved and muscled it through, citing "the game is set in a small town in a Florida swamp.")

AH! That's D) WoD games can have upwards to 6 to 7 STs in the same area. They all have to vote on your character and they all have different tastes. It's like trying to get oWoD Mages agree on what they think reality is.

This is one of many reasons I moved to nWoD, a lot of those metaplot-PCs can't really be there anymore. And I'm the only ST, so I can approve Iron Man mages who punk around with Vampires all day. >_>

[The Glyphstone]

I have encountered this, too. I think it stems partly from the fact that A) the setting sits around and tells you, in terrible stereotype format, how that faction is, no buts, and B) oWoD players tend to submit characters like "I have a Son of Ether with an iron man suit who is also kinfolk to the last of the White Howlers and his best friends is a tszimisce vampire named Screamin' Ted" and STs slowly build up a sort of rage, and C) The Cam was super strict about what it allowed but was hopelessly corrupt and took bribes and would "kill" groups one or two cities away because of the actions of another. So much so that a lot of the STs just up and quit and made their own "official" group, with blackjack and hookers.

For the record, the only time I've ever said "no" was when it blatantly contradicted anything on the list I was given, which, admittedly, had some weird things on it. Like "no female Sons of Ether," "no Camarilla Uktena," "no Verbena Kuei-jin," and "no Mokolé." (But again, I just like Mokolé; I ended up running a side-group just for them for a little while until one of the other STs noticed and approved and muscled it through, citing "the game is set in a small town in a Florida swamp.")

AH! That's D) WoD games can have upwards to 6 to 7 STs in the same area. They all have to vote on your character and they all have different tastes. It's like trying to get oWoD Mages agree on what they think reality is.

This is one of many reasons I moved to nWoD, a lot of those metaplot-PCs can't really be there anymore. And I'm the only ST, so I can approve Iron Man mages who punk around with Vampires all day. >_>

Why would you have multiple primary STs for OWoD (assuming 1 per supernatural type), but only one primary ST to run all the NWoD venues?

Though I have heard so many horrors stories about the wild-west days of the early Cam (from people who lived through it), it's almost funny. Not sure if the current system of a banned/restricted list longer than the tax code is better, but it does limit the stupid.

[hiryuu]

Why would you have multiple primary STs for OWoD (assuming 1 per supernatural type), but only one primary ST to run all the NWoD venues?

Because in my area, when I said I wanted to run nWoD I got precisely four people (which is awesome, by the way, set in Detroit, I have a Sin-Eater, a Vampire, a Werewolf, and mortal Hunter, it works and it's amazing). The only nWoD list with any length is Changeling, and it has all the exact same people who are on the Vampire: the Masquerade list. Call me crazy, but I can't fire up the gumption to run a Lost game with all the same crowd who plays Masquerade near me.

[Morty]

The enemy in OWoD Mage is Order, not Science, and only an over-emphasis on Order to boot. A little is good; most of the traditions have rules and structures. Too much is stifling. Just as a little disorder is good, but too much causes everything to fall apart.


The problem is that "too much Order" translates to "a world where your average non-Mage can wake up in the morning with reasonable hopes of not being eaten by a dragon" as far as the Traditions are concerned. And everyone who enjoys a world where things happen in a logical manner and not because someone thinks they should is a couch potato.

[GammaPaladin]

This misconception comes from the place where it says that banality is about creativity right there on page 66 of the core book. And that trying to understand how the universe around you works is dumb and boring.

But yeah. Not a big fan of the anti-science slant of the whole thing when scientists are, you know. Awesome, creative people who would jump for joy at the idea of fairies.
I know it says that it's about creativity, but it's kind of a matter of "talk is cheap", in that mechanically, and in the majority of places where they're describing it in concrete terms rather than just labeling it, the statement is contradicted entirely.

Some scientists might jump for joy at proof of the existence of fairies, but the fact that they need proof is what makes them banal ;)

You could even go so far as to say that banality == skepticism, full stop. And scientists must be skeptics. The entire scientific method relies on skepticism.

[Cirrylius]

And, of course, there are times when it backfires; in OWoD, America demonstrating that the moon was nothing but a barren lump of airless rock resulted in a flood of Glamor that cracked open Arcadia itself as virtually every man, woman, and child on earth thought "HOLY S**T WE'RE ON THE MOTHERF*****G MOON" in tandem.

The (mostly) hateful relationship that science has with magic in the OWoD has more to do with inflexibility of paradigm than anything else. Non-awakened science discovers absolute rules, and when rules are absolute, anything that would break them becomes impossible (or at least much harder). Faeries, in particular, since they live a dual life between what's real/not real, suffer when examined critically because their imaginary/impossible aspects start to fail when exposed to the everyday laws of creation.

It's possible to think of everyday science in the OWoD as a big, wonderful room full of sculptures and murals that's gradually added to year after year. As the room gets more crowded, though, there's less room for anything that doesn't accomodate the art; it gets harder to move around. Eventually, anyone who's not the right size or shape to get around between the exhibits has to squeeze their way through forcefully, damaging either themselves or the works, and the builders and the visitors become more hostile towards each other as their goals are made more difficult. And God help you if the artists think you'd would make a good addition to the art, 'cause that means getting slapped into a cage or a glass enclosure and left to starve or suffocate. The artwork may be beautiful and meaningful, but it by definition makes it so you have no choice but to accomodate it.

[hiryuu]

And, of course, there are times when it backfires; in OWoD, America demonstrating that the moon was nothing but a barren lump of airless rock resulted in a flood of Glamor that cracked open Arcadia itself as virtually every man, woman, and child on earth thought "HOLY S**T WE'RE ON THE MOTHERF*****G MOON" in tandem.

Which is what every scientific discovery should do.


The (mostly) hateful relationship that science has with magic in the OWoD has more to do with inflexibility of paradigm than anything else. Non-awakened science discovers absolute rules, and when rules are absolute, anything that would break them becomes impossible (or at least much harder).

Which is utterly backwards from how science actually works. It's in constant flux, changing and updating and modifying itself and admitting its mistakes.

The adversarial nature of science and magic in oWoD was a conscious design decision, and the setting was built around that concept. Even when it doesn't work as intended. Especially when they started expounding and hammering on the idea that scientific inquiry is somehow inimical to imagination. They wrote a whole book about it. Like, that's what the book was about. Teachers and concerned sympathetic onlookers were the BAD GUYS.

Not that I'm saying that's a bad thing in and of itself. Werewolves are essentially the bad guys, only because their kids are brainwashed psychopaths intent on tearing down the system so that humans could live, frightened, in caves again. Their "bad guys," of course, are pokémon, murderous frat boys, fast food chains, a Saturday morning cartoon show, and perfume salesmen.

This would be awesome were it not for the fact that you're supposed to take this seriously.

Anyway. Tangenting hard.


Faeries, in particular, since they live a dual life between what's real/not real, suffer when examined critically because their imaginary/impossible aspects start to fail when exposed to the everyday laws of creation.

Honestly they could have explained all of this without completely misunderstanding the process of science and casting it as the bad guy. Just saying that they don't live on matter as we know it, needing human husks to survive, and then indicating that over time, they think less like an alien and more like a human and slowly lose their ability to interact with that world because they are stuck in human form (which actually leaves a big wide game open to play with and accomplishes a lot; this might how I next run The Lost). nWoD actually does this by turning science into something that the Seers had a hand in helping get big, but that it got away from them now and it threatens to awaken the masses through understanding, growth, and change.


It's possible to think of everyday science in the OWoD as a big, wonderful room full of sculptures and murals that's gradually added to year after year. As the room gets more crowded, though, there's less room for anything that doesn't accomodate the art; it gets harder to move around. Eventually, anyone who's not the right size or shape to get around between the exhibits has to squeeze their way through forcefully, damaging either themselves or the works, and the builders and the visitors become more hostile towards each other as their goals are made more difficult. And God help you if the artists think you'd would make a good addition to the art, 'cause that means getting slapped into a cage or a glass enclosure and left to starve or suffocate. The artwork may be beautiful and meaningful, but it by definition makes it so you have no choice but to accomodate it.

Which means the system and setting punishes you for, say, reading, testing anything, challenging yourself, being imaginative, and expanding your horizons. It does the exact opposite of what it means to do.

A better analogy for how science should work is labeling the statues that are already there, and somewhere between oWoD and nWoD they realized this.

Not saying it's better or worse, just different. I just don't like the way oWoD portrays the process of science. It's trying to be a set of philosophical games, but it gets even its own philosophy wrong and winds up just going "man, what if our hands are actually dinosaurs?" And that's portrayed as a personal strength rather than a useless question.

[The Glyphstone]

Not that I'm saying that's a bad thing in and of itself. Werewolves are essentially the bad guys, only because their kids are brainwashed psychopaths intent on tearing down the system so that humans could live, frightened, in caves again. Their "bad guys," of course, are pokémon, murderous frat boys, fast food chains, a Saturday morning cartoon show, and perfume salesmen.

I don't know much about Apocalypse...I think Black Spiral Dancers are the 'murderous frat boys', but Pentex is the only other villain I know. Who's what in your hilarious analogy?



Not saying it's better or worse, just different. I just don't like the way oWoD portrays the process of science. It's trying to be a set of philosophical games, but it gets even its own philosophy wrong and winds up just going "man, what if our hands are actually dinosaurs?" And that's portrayed as a personal strength rather than a useful question.

Considering the quantities of cocaine and other drugs that were ingested during the writing of the OWoD books, this is hardly surprising.

[hiryuu]

I don't know much about Apocalypse...I think Black Spiral Dancers are the 'murderous frat boys', but Pentex is the only other villain I know. Who's what in your hilarious analogy?

That's all Pentex: There are literally evil perfume salesmen (the perfume slowly turns the user into a sex-crazed fomori), evil pokémon shows (they psychically influence the viewer into starting riots at department stores that kill people), and there are frat boys sponsored by Pentex's beer division who murder people with hazing - King Distilleries. O'Tolley's is a fast food chain where eating there makes you open to bane possession. There is also that cartoon show about the Pentex mercs who hunt the evil laser-eyed werewolves and exist to sell dangerous toys to children. Action Bill, part of Avalon Toys. They even have the toys pumped through fomori guts so they straight up damage a kid's personal sense of self worth. Endron makes gasoline that turns your car into a smoke-spewing gas-guzzling monster.

Also there are evil mind controlling video games that turn kids into mass-shooters.

[The Glyphstone]

What about Black Dog Games?

[Chainsaw Hobbit]

Honestly, I like OWoD's approach to science. I don't think I agree with it, but I enjoy the idea.

[Cirrylius]

Which is utterly backwards from how science actually works. It's in constant flux, changing and updating and modifying itself and admitting its mistakes.

Keep in mind that the Real World Paradigm was crafted by the Technocracy, bottom to top. What would be flux, change, and modification IRL is in the OWoD just a gradual trickling down of watered-down (or accidentally misunderstood by sleeper scientists) ideas leaked from the Conventions as determined by the Timetable. Science isn't experimental, on the heights; it's monolithic, albeit subtle and elegant with regards to anything that doesn't involve spirit. In inception, it was designed to be a perfectly impartial, non-subjective means of making the world stable by being deliberately exclusive to everything that disagreed with it. It was meant to be Truth, rather than Beauty, to deliberately make dangerous entities and phenomena impossible for humanity's benefit; the Traditions, OTOH, are typically pretty open to other paradigms, even if they do define them in terms of their own worldview. Therefore, science as understood in the OWoD is meant to be a (de facto) destructive, limiting force compared to other conceptual builds. Unfortunately, it's also morally neutral, being nothing but a point of view, which means that you have to rail and rave at the Technocracy itself rather than the scientific method in general.

[Dogbert]

OP, my 2 cents:

The basic differences between nWoD and oWoD:

- oWoD games are based on conflict, and half the splats include global-scale conflicts and ages-long conspiracies (which makes it great for cloak&dagger games).
- Said setting conflicts are all full of inconsistencies that make them incompatible with the other splats (most splats are "the secret masters of the world", but no one knows about them (not even the other splats) ).
- Expect squick in some of the splats, and some of them will be downright offensive (like the infamous gypsies book).
- oWoD doesn't penalize characters for engaging in combat.
- While both old and new WoD splats are divided by tiers of power, all tiers of oWoD are considerably more beefed up and there are considerably less trap options (which gives you more variety of valid character builds rather than nWoD's "you need to have mental powers to 1-hit the opposition before they 1-hit you with theirs").
- oWoD can easily be exploited during chargen due to its trad-style Flaws system which allowed you to pick all kind of "roleplay flaws" that didn't have any real effect in game.
- oVampires were the secret masters of the world and Al Pacino's devil.
- oWerewolves weren't a joke, and were as strong as they were prejudiced (which is to say, the meanest killing machines around).
- oMage was about a war for shaping reality, plurality, and about how all roads lead to Rome (at least until WW changed all creative staff for Revised and wrecked the game).
- oChangeling was about melancholic stories about the end of innocence with hints of Pan's Labyrinth.
- Wraith was misery tourism alternating between a physical world you could barely interact with and a surreal land of the dead woven out of the same stuff you'd see in Pink Floyd's The Wall's animated shorts (amazing reading, but a piece of the brightest art that no one would want to play).
- oHunters were angel-powered Daleks on a racial purity crusade... just like Vigil, however, they were on the bottom of the food chain (fortunately for everyone)
- oDemon was the point at which WoD officially jumped the shark and tried to usurp oVampire's niche, but I heard they were on Mage's tier of power.

I hope that helps.

[The Glyphstone]

OP, my 2 cents:

The basic differences between nWoD and oWoD:

- oWoD games are based on conflict, and half the splats include global-scale conflicts and ages-long conspiracies (which makes it great for cloak&dagger games).
- Said setting conflicts are all full of inconsistencies that make them incompatible with the other splats (most splats are "the secret masters of the world", but no one knows about them (not even the other splats) ).
- Expect squick in some of the splats, and some of them will be downright offensive (like the infamous gypsies book).
- oWoD doesn't penalize characters for engaging in combat.
- While both old and new WoD splats are divided by tiers of power, all tiers of nWoD are considerably more beefed up and there are considerably less trap options (which gives you more variety of valid character builds rather than nWoD's "you need to have mental powers to 1-hit the opposition before they 1-hit you with theirs").
- oWoD can easily be exploited during chargen due to its trad-style Flaws system which allowed you to pick all kind of "roleplay flaws" that didn't have any real effect in game.
- oVampires were the secret masters of the world and Al Pacino's devil.
- oWerewolves weren't a joke, and were as strong as they were prejudiced (which is to say, the meanest killing machines around).
- oMage was about a war for shaping reality, plurality, and about how all roads lead to Rome (at least until WW changed all creative staff for Revised and wrecked the game).
- oChangeling was about melancholic stories about the end of innocence with hints of Pan's Labyrinth.
- Wraith was misery tourism alternating between a physical world you could barely interact with and a surreal land of the dead woven out of the same stuff you'd see in Pink Floyd's The Wall's animated shorts (amazing reading, but a piece of the brightest art that no one would want to play).
- oHunters were angel-powered Daleks on a racial purity crusade... just like Vigil, however, they were on the bottom of the food chain (fortunately for everyone)
- oDemon was the point at which WoD officially jumped the shark and tried to usurp oVampire's niche, but I heard they were on Mage's tier of power.

I hope that helps.

If the Masquerade Translation Guide is any indication, I'd say NWoD PCs (vampires, at least) got massively watered down rather than beefed up - the Requiem rewrites of Masquerade disciplines are almost all insanely overpowered compared to existing ones. One additional point related to what you said here:

-In OWoD, Physical actions are king because of Celerity allowing multiple actions. Comparatively, NWoD favors the equivalent of save-or-dies/scene-long crowd control because everyone only gets one action (in most cases) anyways. Both want loads of Initiative.

[comicshorse]

If the Masquerade Translation Guide is any indication, I'd say NWoD PCs (vampires, at least) got massively watered down rather than beefed up - the Requiem rewrites of Masquerade disciplines are almost all insanely overpowered compared to existing ones. One additional point related to what you said here:



Having played both New and Old I'd agree and say Old Vampire Disciplines were generally more powerful than New

[Dogbert]

If the Masquerade Translation Guide is any indication, I'd say NWoD PCs (vampires, at least) got massively watered down rather than beefed up

Sorry, that was a typo, yeah I meant oWoD's splats were more beefed up.