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View Full Version : Best New World of Darkness splat for new players



Malistrae
2014-02-12, 05:26 PM
Hello!
I recently gathered a group who are willing to try out nWoD with me as their Storyteller. The problem is that they are totally new to roleplaying, as tabletop rpgs are not well-known (most people don't even know about D&D!) in my country. I have access to all splats (excluding Demon: the Descent, ofc) so I am wondering about which would be ideal for total newbies.
However, vanilla nWoD and Hunter: the Vigil isn't something I would pick for them, since I know that they would enjoy being supernaturals. I am contemplating Requiem but some of my players are probably too nice in RL to play as vampires effectively, especially with their lack of rpg experience. Changeling is also a likely one, but faeries are not really prevalent in our culture (they exist in our stories, ofc, but we don't have the same fascination with them as Western Europe) so I don't know if they could comprehend the story well. Especially, since the Seasonal Courts are too Celtic to me and I am not overly fond of using the Day-Night Courts (they might seem too limiting to my players, since they would only have 2 options) which are supposedly the system of my region. Perhaps I should combine the Day-Night with the Dusk and Dawn courts, so that I can have a fully fleshed out system of 4 courts? If so, how should I integrate the two extra courts into the struggles of Day and Night?
So, which splat is the best for total newbies in your opinion?

Lorsa
2014-02-12, 05:41 PM
I would go with Vampire. While nWoD has its own rules for how they work and what weaknesses they have, they are very true to the ideal of vampires (unlike, say Twilight). That means there's plenty of source material for inspiration. Don't worry so much about the players being "too nice". You can almost certainly be nice vampires, it's even mechanically beneficial!

I'm also a very nice person IRL and I can play Vampire just fine. It's really the safest bet imho.

Otherwise you could always do a homebrew type. nWoD is perfect for those and I think I have created 3 new supernaturals for my player(s) in various campaigns. What if you let them play Angels decended from heaven to turn the world right for example? You'd get to be hunters (sort of) but being all cool and supernatural!

In the hunter (writing it with small h because it's not using the Hunter: the Vigil rules really) the characters have all done a sort of "spirit-bond" and merged a spirit with their soul which has given them 3 powers each, a spirit ban and an essence pool. The way to get essence depends on what sort of spirit they merged with. So that's another possibility if you want to start with more normal human characters but give them a supernatural bent.

vitkiraven
2014-02-12, 09:09 PM
Honestly, with the nWOD set up, I actually recommend starting people out as mortals, since they are totally new, just to get the swing of the new mechanics. As an aside to that I also recommend the book Second Sight. It allows one to have supernatural powers, but not completely be the focus.
If the desired result is to have a supernatural template group, then I can easily agree that Changeling can provide a wealth of experience, just based on the massive variety that can be found within the options as presented. The Seasonal courts focus is really just a representation based on how they feel about their time in the realms of Arcadia, and how they feel about fighting back. That is really the focus around all of the courts, regardless of what they attach to themselves as a name.
If the Day/Night courts are presenting an issue of too little variety, then I might put in the Dawn and Dusk courts as kind of keepers for the preceeding court, ala the Day/Night Watch Book/Movie series.

<this was much longer and better thought out, but my netwrok ate my post>

Sir Pippin Boyd
2014-02-12, 09:21 PM
Snip

Even some of the nicest people I know turn into foamy-mouthed sociopaths when playing Vampire, so I wouldn't worry about them being 'too nice' being an issue. The main thing one has to consider in Vampire is the tremendous amount of extra work the DM has to do compared to some other systems, since it functions best when the players can be in a deeply immersive and politically complex world. Hunter, on the other hand, just requires good storytelling skills and players that want to kill spooky stuff.

GungHo
2014-02-13, 09:39 AM
Start them as mortals and have them be Embraced. They already are fish out of water when it comes to TTRPGs anyway, so that will be a good excuse to introduce them to the game, its politics, and its mechanics from the ground up. Don't even bother having them make a character yet. Make their embrace part of character generation.

Driderman
2014-02-13, 05:33 PM
I'd suggest Hunter also because if they're not familiar with the WoD, it's a great opportunity to actually have the various scary monsters be really unknown to the players.
If you really want the players to be supernaturals, I suppose you could always do a Buffy-approach (where the PCs gradually become supernaturals themselves) but I honestly don't know enough about nWoD Hunter to know if that's even viable.

If Hunter isn't the thing, I'd suggest Vampire. Easiest splatbook to learn for the uninitiated due to how easily we relate to the roles of vampires, as already mentioned. Alternately, Geist is pretty great if you're into ghost-stories, and it's a great compromise between mortal and supernatural, where being nice is generally not a bad trait either :smallamused:

vitkiraven
2014-02-14, 01:52 AM
I'd suggest Hunter also because if they're not familiar with the WoD, it's a great opportunity to actually have the various scary monsters be really unknown to the players.
If you really want the players to be supernaturals, I suppose you could always do a Buffy-approach (where the PCs gradually become supernaturals themselves) but I honestly don't know enough about nWoD Hunter to know if that's even viable.

If Hunter isn't the thing, I'd suggest Vampire. Easiest splatbook to learn for the uninitiated due to how easily we relate to the roles of vampires, as already mentioned. Alternately, Geist is pretty great if you're into ghost-stories, and it's a great compromise between mortal and supernatural, where being nice is generally not a bad trait either :smallamused:
I thought Hunter was just the addendum to the core book for mortals?:smallwink:
Also, the higher tier conspiracies can get pretty supernatural... Lookin' at you Luciferge...:smallbiggrin: