nWoD: Where to start?

[DementedFellow]

I've never played any of the World of Darkness games. However, I have read Changeling the Lost and it seems like a pretty fun idea. Idea is the problem though.

Assume that I can get my hands on the other books, such as Vampire and Werewolf, what would be a standard adventure idea?

At least with D&D, I could have people all meet up in a tavern if they all insisted on having wildly different backstories and uncommon templates.

Where is a new GM to start?

[Pyrophilios]

Traditionally you start as a normal human and experience your transformation in one of the many creatures of the nWoD.

Take vampires for example:
The PCs are friends and on holidays together, they visit a bar (yes, of course, why shouldn't your adventure start there?) and make the acquaintance of a pair/triplet/quadruplet/etc. young persons of their preferred gender.
Cut
They awake with a horrible thirst in a dark dank cellar and get informed that they are dead and now the new lackeys of the local bloodsuckers...

[The Rose Dragon]

A lone Changeling is either dead, or worse, had to endure a second Durance. That's why changelings form motleys. That's why they join courts. There is strength in numbers, and the sharing of power and responsibility keeps the Fae away. That's why wildly different changelings can (and usually must) still work together.

Similar reasons exist for other splats. Vampires have to be approved before being embraced by a centuries-old society, and trying to ignore it is suicidal (though vampire cooperation is generally a prelude to a lot of betrayal and backstabbing). Werewolves are pack creatures, and lone wolves do not get much respect and tend to have quick, violent deaths. Prometheans require social contact to retain some humanity, but Disquiet drives away non-Created most of the time.

As for adventures, it depends on location, personalities involved and the specific splat. Changelings work differently from vampires work differently from werewolves. We'd have an easier time if we knew the specifics of the group.

((I strongly discourage having multiple splats in a group. They have entirely different concerns in terms of storytelling and are balanced against characters of the same splat. Even one vampire in a pack of werewolves, for example, will make things massively difficult.))

[The Glyphstone]

Yeah, cross-splat games are Wacky Superfriends Adventures at best, or The Amazing Adventures of Mages (with guest stars Every Other Splat) at worst, and invariably a rules-complicated mess. Veteran WoD players avoid cross-splat games, and for a newbie, it's a horrible idea. The games are rules-intercompatible, but far more than D&D, splats are meant to be their own games. Being a Changeling or a Vampire isn't just a race/class combo, it's an identity, a stereotype, a culture, and a history rolled into one.

Pick one splat and roll with it. If there are competing ideas for which splat to play, argue about it or just vote on it, but do no try to compromise with multiple supernaturals working together, it really lessens the quality of every game involved. Maybe once everyone has some experience under their belt, but not starting out.

[Terraoblivion]

Being a Changeling or a Vampire isn't just a race/class combo, it's an identity, a stereotype, a culture, and a history rolled into one.

Not just that, it's a set of themes and a genre. Mixing splats tends to lead to a muddled, confused mess narratively speaking without central themes, motifs or narrative goals.

Also, it's best to keep the character at the center in WoD, rather than doing D&D style adventures. They tend to inevitably blow up because somebody doesn't want to play along or feel profoundly pointless because dealing with big, external problems like that just isn't what it's about. Unless you're playing Werewolf, I guess. But even then expect more talking and investigation than you typically would in D&D.

[The Glyphstone]

^Also good advice.

Even within one splat, it's a mistake to try and play WoD like it's D&D. To use Changeling as an example, a Storyteller should not just play the game with the King as a quest-giver and the motley of players as the party*. Changeling is possibly the most-suitable genre to play 'D&D in WoD' if you absolutely have to, but it's doing both games a disservice, and you're likely to just get everyone killed horribly if the ratio of combat is even remotely similar. Instead, have plots the characters want to get involved in because of who they are, not just because someone told them to/because they're getting a reward.


*Substitute Vampire/Prince/coterie, Werewolf/Cairn Alpha/Pack, etc., as needed.

[Pyrophilios]

I respectfully disagree. I have played in mixed games without problems. It's just a question of the right mixture:

A Ordo Dracul Vampire who has a Werecat (Klinker Ash Devil Cat) friend was one of my favorite games, were the vamp didn't need to hunt but was provided for by fast healing shape changer blood.

A great combination is a Promethean and a Changeling Fetch (one of the only WoD denizens not affected by disquiet)

As was a monster hunter game with a hunter and a mage (The hunter gained so much practical XP and the mage's arcana proved to be so expensive that for the whole campaign the hunter was always slightly ahead power wise.)

And finally Sineaters, Vampires and Death Mages can mix it up for a very fun ghost centric campaign.

[The Glyphstone]

Changing Breed guest-starring in a Vampire game, a Fetch guest-starring in a Promethean game, a Mage guest-starring in a Hunter game, and a Vampire/Mage guest-starring in a Sin-Eater game. Those are combinations that can work, yes, but it's not at all the same thing as we're talking about, because that is primarily a Splat X game with a Splat Y character involved. I'd be curious to see an episodic game centered around a Mummy and a Vampire, each plot arc matching a different time in the Mummy's resurrection cycle and meeting up with his old 'friend' each time.

No one has said two types of supernaturals can never mix, but like anything in WoD, it needs a heavy ST hand to keep the themes in check to avoid a muddled mess. Just playing WoD kitchen-soup style where you treat all the supernaturals as expansion packs/extra sourcebooks to one game, rather than 5+ different games that use the same core mechanics and can appear in each other's games compatibly, is stripping away everything that makes WoD worth playing.

[Pyrophilios]

True, but that can as easily happen within the same splat. The courts in Changeling are a grade A example: If you don't define beforehand what theme you want within your game you get Summer Court Beastling warriors trying to storm Faerie while the Spring Fairest just want to do a little low key politic.

Fun fact: You can play a shapechanger, a mind controller, a necromancer or a social combat monster with almost every splat, given the character is focused enough.

The nWoD is a pretty comprehensive toolbox which incidentally also means it has a lot of potential for absurd abuse if the ST is not on top of his game no matter which particular splat is used.

[SassyQuatch]

Just playing WoD kitchen-soup style where you treat all the supernaturals as expansion packs/extra sourcebooks to one game, rather than 5+ different games that use the same core mechanics and can appear in each other's games compatibly, is stripping away everything that makes WoD worth playing.
I couldn't disagree more. What makes WoD playing is whatever the gaming group feels is worth playing.

Respectfully, the worst WoD players always seem to be the ones who place the demands of setting above all else, even (or especially) roleplaying. Players and Storytellers shouldn't feel that they are consistently hamstrung by the game itself, since their actions must not be able to change the setting and the players are only background characters in a firm-set backdrop.

I treat WoD as every other RPG, it is a tool to use to roleplay as me and my group see fit. It isn't a D&D setting book that exists only for the setting, it is a book presenting game options, and alongside is also a fleshed out setting. Groups should feel comfortable in using the mechanics and ignoring the setting, or using the setting with different game mechanics.

My group doesn't much care for the WoD setting, and I don't much blame them. Yes, we view everything as a gaming sourcebook. That there are so many people who will say that our gaming exploits in a cyberpunk world or in a high fantasy setting are wrong just because we have discarded the confining restraints of the core setting is actually upsetting. The right way to play the game is in a manner where everyone enjoys themselves, not to play in a straightjacket because to do otherwise is "wrong".

[The Glyphstone]

And you're free to do that... but the "best" part of WoD is the setting and themes. That's not to say it's a great setting, but to say that everything else involved in WoD is worse. The mechanics are incredibly topheavy towards chargen and encourage convoluted min-maxing, the combat systems are rocket-tag to a degree D&D dreams it could accomplish, and even the most basic tasks are hamstrung by the need for constant ST input. If everything is a gaming sourcebook - a fine attitude - the WoD books are very much towards the bottom of the heap in quality, and there's very little reason to voluntarily use them unless no better options are available. GURPS or Classic Unisystem, to throw two examples out there, could also give a framework to 'vampire/werewolf/wizard shenanigans in gothic modern fantasy', with an actual structurally sound system as a bonus.

[SassyQuatch]

And you're free to do that... but the "best" part of WoD is the setting and themes. That's not to say it's a great setting, but to say that everything else involved in WoD is worse. The mechanics are incredibly topheavy towards chargen and encourage convoluted min-maxing, the combat systems are rocket-tag to a degree D&D dreams it could accomplish, and even the most basic tasks are hamstrung by the need for constant ST input. If everything is a gaming sourcebook - a fine attitude - the WoD books are very much towards the bottom of the heap in quality, and there's very little reason to voluntarily use them unless no better options are available. GURPS or Classic Unisystem, to throw two examples out there, could also give a framework to 'vampire/werewolf/wizard shenanigans in gothic modern fantasy', with an actual structurally sound system as a bonus.
The system alone isn't too shabby and the chargen is probably the best part. Sure, you can recreate everything in GURPS, but it takes a lot more tweaking and searching. With the way that WoD has turned out it makes creating non-generic archetypes fairly simple.

I want a werewolf. Sure, I could create a generic template in another system and then add a few tweaks, or I could pick up a book on werewolves, see the different concepts, and build the type of character that I want from a set of presented options. The various tribes can be renamed and refluffed for the different setting, but the overall system remains sound (more or less).

It is certainly a balancing act, sitting between a completely open system that can become overwhelming in picking a few options out of a near-limitless sea or the system where you have fewer options but somewhat easier ability to build an archetype without a lot of extraneous material to sift through.

I guess a lot of the problem for our group is that when we choose to use the nWoD mechanics we almost have to hide the fact in shame since there are a lot of players who cannot tolerate the separation of mechanics from setting. Which is sad since I have seen a lot of people walk away from the game entirely because they got frustrated with being constantly told that they were doing it wrong (add fifteen minute rant about how in the setting X cannot happen in Y location because of Z events, etc, etc.)

Not that I accuse anyone here of that inflexibility, but sometime the speaking of absolutes where the setting is inviolate and is the entire reason for playing the game needs to be challenged.

[Pyrophilios]

The character creation is indeed quite abusable, but it is extremely fast - something I can not say about GURPS.
For a more balanced approach we give every player 450 XP to create a character from the ground up. It's amazing how fast min-maxing vanishes if two Attributes on 2 doesn't equal 5 wasted XP compared to one on 1 and one on 3.

Likewise the deadliness of the combat system is for me more a feature then a bug: It does encourage good tactics and/or reluctance to attack.