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purple gelatinous cube o' Doom
2007-03-09, 02:45 AM
Now, I'm not really well versed in World of Darkness games first off, so pardon the easy question. I'm curious as to what the differences between Vampire the Masquerade and Requiem and Werewolf the Apocalypse and Forsaken are. As far as I can tell those are the only two games that White Wolf has changed the name of. If I were to hazard a guess I would say they latter names are just newer editions, but I don't know.

Nerd-o-rama
2007-03-09, 02:58 AM
The Forsaken and The Requiem (as well as Mage: The Awakening) are part of the New World of Darkness, a major revamp and paradigm shift of White Wolf's core product lines akin to the difference between Second and Third Edition (A)D&D. The other subtitles are part of the older edition of the game. The reason no other names have been changed is that no other product lines (such as Wraith: The Oblivion or Changeling: The Dreaming) have been updated to NWOD yet, although White Wolf has released an original product called Promethean: The Created, which has no Old World of Darkness equivalent.

Jack Mann
2007-03-09, 03:02 AM
Kind of. Keeping mind that I'm not fully up on Werewolf...

They are newer editions, with changes to the rules. But the big difference is storyline. Essentially, the big shared world of Vampire: The Masquerade ended. The apocalypse came and went. The game world was rebooted with a somewhat different backstory, as Requiem. I understand that this changeover also affected the other games.

As I recall, one of the differences is that authority is more decentralized in Requiem. Each city is more-or-less autonomous, and can be run in pretty much any way that the powerful vampires there want (anything from democracy to the traditional princes).

purple gelatinous cube o' Doom
2007-03-09, 03:07 AM
ok, gotcha. I have seen Prometheon in my local Barnes and Noble, and have been thinking of picking it up. As for the apocalypse thing, I knew that they came out with it. But when looking at it in the local gaming store I noticed it was only for Hunter, and a few other games, but not Werewolf or Vampire. I also believe that Changeling has a release date set from what I hear as well. The other thing I know is that Exalted has a new edition out. I've played that before, and have heard that it can be played as a "pre WoD".

Nerd-o-rama
2007-03-09, 03:22 AM
Not canonically, but yes, there are hints that Exalted can be used as the Old World of Darkness's mythology/history, especially in Hunter.

What you need to know about the Apocalypse: it happened, White Wolf's World of Darkness products were ended and discontinued, then the three "core" games were rebooted with a different backstory as the New World of Darkness. Actually, it was a lot cleaner and less confusing than AD&D 2nd to D&D third was, because they basically got all new capaign settings to go with the new rules.

Attilargh
2007-03-09, 03:22 AM
The old World of Darkness games were not designed to fit together. Thus, a werewolf from Werewolf was a lot stronger than a werewolf from Vampire. The new WoD, on the other hand, is designed to work well with each other, so that you can have a four-way battle royale between vampires, werewolves, mages and prometheans.

Oh, and the old WoD didn't have a "core rulebook", as the games were all intended to be separate games. The new WoD has, called simply "World of Darkness". The book has all the rules you need to play a mortal (Average Joe mortal, not a Hunter), so you don't necessarily have to go out and buy two books just to play. The Vampire, Werewolf and Mage books just add "templates" on top of your mortal stats, plus of course the background. Dunno about Promethean, but I'd hazard a guess it's the same for them, too.

purple gelatinous cube o' Doom
2007-03-09, 03:35 AM
so if I understand this right, the newer editions are much better than the older ones.

Beleriphon
2007-03-09, 09:41 AM
so if I understand this right, the newer editions are much better than the older ones.

Opinions very tremendously, but I find the rules system itself is much better. There are things about both the old and the new editions that I like from a story standpoint, but the new edition is certainly better in my opinion.

Bears With Lasers
2007-03-09, 09:47 AM
so if I understand this right, the newer editions are much better than the older ones.

In some ways, yeah, if not in all.

The newer editions are certainly much more coherent and thought out, thematically. They also play more the way they're "supposed" to--old Vampire, for example, tended to run as essentially the same old killing things and taking their stuff; new Vampire is much more a game of politics, social interaction, and--as it's "meant" be be--"personal horror".

PnP Fan
2007-03-09, 10:16 AM
Also, there were books produced for Old WoD for the "apocolypse" from each of the story lines. They had seperate books each for Vampire, Werewolf, and Mage (the most popular of their lines, each with 3-5 different ways to run the End Game). There was also a single book that covered the End Game for Changeling, Mummy, and Hunter. I don't think they produced anything beyond the one or two books for Demon, and I don't think they had an End Game scenario for them at all.
Unfortunately, this is all academic, because none of this stuff is in print anymore. If you run into it anywhere, it's a fluke, and the locals didn't buy it when it was published.
From the little bit I've read in the core books, I like what I see, but none of my players want to do WoD anymore, so I haven't supported White Wolf with my money in a couple of years.
Oh, and yes, they go out of their way to make parallels between all of the flavors of Exalted and different WoD character types.

Fax Celestis
2007-03-09, 10:34 AM
There were Apocalypse scenarios for each of the different brands, but not all of them got their own books.

Wraith: the Oblivion actually received it first, with Ends of Empire, a full five years prior to the others (which actually synched up with the canonical timeline of the Last Great Maelstrom; if you LARPed in sanctioned events during this time, wraiths were killed, Giovanni had problems, et al.)

Then, about a year before the Apocalypse books came out, Demon came out (which was supposed to be a herald of the apocalypse right there).

Four apocalypse books were released next (Gehenna for Vampire, Apocalypse for Werewolf, Ascension for Mage, and Time of Judgement for generally everyone else). Changeling did not receive any actual rules for the Apocalypse, though the reasoning is slightly out of place: most ofthe Malkavians (from Vampire) and the Changelings subsumed Africa and disappeared about a week prior to the Apocalypse. Of course, this is only noted in the Gehenna book, so...

Having played oWoD and nWoD for the better part of forever, I'm probably a good person to talk to if you've got more questions. Feel free to email or IM me.

Hunter_Rose
2007-03-09, 01:35 PM
It really bothered me when WoD did this, and I think it was only a ploy to sell more books. I think it would have been much better to unify the system with the existing scenario rather than doing a complete tabula rasa of the game. Now the game has basically the same clans as the previous version, but with different names, and the same spells and powers as the previous version, but with different names. I guess there was some problem of crossing over the games, but I never really had an issue with it. I used to play in a game that had all aspects of WoD, although we did play an all vampire group. I just didn't see the reason they had to change EVERYTHING to make the game better.
Besides WoD had a fairly convoluted mythology associated with, and I really wasn't interested in re-reading all the new books to figure out where their world stands now.

Fax Celestis
2007-03-09, 02:31 PM
It really bothered me when WoD did this, and I think it was only a ploy to sell more books. I think it would have been much better to unify the system with the existing scenario rather than doing a complete tabula rasa of the game. Now the game has basically the same clans as the previous version, but with different names, and the same spells and powers as the previous version, but with different names. I guess there was some problem of crossing over the games, but I never really had an issue with it. I used to play in a game that had all aspects of WoD, although we did play an all vampire group. I just didn't see the reason they had to change EVERYTHING to make the game better.
Besides WoD had a fairly convoluted mythology associated with, and I really wasn't interested in re-reading all the new books to figure out where their world stands now.

You...actually just listed all the reasons they changed it. 1. the mythos was screwed up. 2. There were too much of everything. 3. Decentralization.

Krellen
2007-03-09, 03:14 PM
I don't like the nWoD for one (somewhat selfish) reason:

I miss the Technocracy.

Systematically, the nWoD is much smoother and cleaner than oWoD. But thematically, the WoD just isn't the same without the Technocracy there, controlling consensual reality. For that matter, I miss consensual reality; Mage: The Awakening did away with the old paradigm of magic, and I don't really like the "Secrets of Atlantis" flavour of the new version.

Fax Celestis
2007-03-09, 03:23 PM
I don't like the nWoD for one (somewhat selfish) reason:

I miss the Technocracy.

Systematically, the nWoD is much smoother and cleaner than oWoD. But thematically, the WoD just isn't the same without the Technocracy there, controlling consensual reality. For that matter, I miss consensual reality; Mage: The Awakening did away with the old paradigm of magic, and I don't really like the "Secrets of Atlantis" flavour of the new version.

I'll be honest: nor do I. I do prefer the new Vampire and Werewolf though.

Indon
2007-03-09, 03:32 PM
I don't like the nWoD for one (somewhat selfish) reason:

I miss the Technocracy.

Systematically, the nWoD is much smoother and cleaner than oWoD. But thematically, the WoD just isn't the same without the Technocracy there, controlling consensual reality. For that matter, I miss consensual reality; Mage: The Awakening did away with the old paradigm of magic, and I don't really like the "Secrets of Atlantis" flavour of the new version.

There's no Technocracy in the new version?

Well, now I know to avoid it.

Jannex
2007-03-09, 04:11 PM
My feelings about the new World of Darkness are not terribly favorable. For starters, I liked the old mythos and world-background. Maybe the rules for crossover weren't terribly smooth, but that could've been fixed with minor tweaks, and the unbalanced power levels sort of added to the verisimilitude of the setting; if they wanted to, they could've figured out how much XP would be necessary to calibrate a starting character from each game line up to the same level (with, presumably, Werewolves being the most powerful)--much like Level Adjustment in D&D. I mean, I can see why they might've wanted a blank slate in terms of creative control, if they'd "run out of room" to innovate, but that doesn't mean I'm going to think that the new stuff is anywhere as good.

Systemwise, I'm ambivalent. I rather like the "equipment" rules, and streamlining the dice system isn't necessarily a bad thing. The way they did it, however, was. Starting characters SUCK, and advancement takes forever. The metaplot isn't nearly as interesting, and... meh. I'm just not impressed. Give me classic World of Darkness any day.

Hunter_Rose
2007-03-09, 04:13 PM
You...actually just listed all the reasons they changed it. 1. the mythos was screwed up. 2. There were too much of everything. 3. Decentralization.

And yet I don't see how this is going to fix anything by re-doing it all over. In 5 years there are going to be as many books for the new WoD as there were for the old WoD. It's fine that they wanted to make a mythology from the ground up that takes into account every aspect of the WoD (the original games were ment to be played as stand alones). I just don't see why they renamed all the clans and renamed all the disciplines. WW could have redone the system with the old information in place. I must have read over 30 books in the WoD system, and I see no reason to re-read all this information again but with different names. I just don't see what's different in the new game vs. the old game except for removing the armageddon meta plot.

Fax Celestis
2007-03-09, 04:25 PM
And yet I don't see how this is going to fix anything by re-doing it all over. In 5 years there are going to be as many books for the new WoD as there were for the old WoD. It's fine that they wanted to make a mythology from the ground up that takes into account every aspect of the WoD (the original games were ment to be played as stand alones). I just don't see why they renamed all the clans and renamed all the disciplines. WW could have redone the system with the old information in place. I must have read over 30 books in the WoD system, and I see no reason to re-read all this information again but with different names. I just don't see what's different in the new game vs. the old game except for removing the armageddon meta plot.

How about the fact that the world is much less populated now? There's not 13 clans to take care of, there's only 5. Bloodlines are new and improved, and the social hierarchy involved in the "generation" of vampires has been toned down if not removed. And that's just Vampires.

In addition, the core mechanics of the game itself changed--significantly changed, I'd say enough to warrant a third edition, and apparently White Wolf agreed with me.

Clementx
2007-03-09, 05:35 PM
The best thing about the nWoD is the simplicity and the unity. All the generated splats dovetail together mechanically, if not thematically (which was always forced even in oWoD). The simplicity of the rules allow you to extend and apply rules to new content rapidly, as well as play swiftly. Ten minutes of combat in oWoD could be one round; now, ten minutes can be the same fight in its entirety. Pretty much all the mechanics of the old can quickly be reinvented for the new. Some of the themes work, other are minimized. All that is really lost from the oWoD is the metaplot, which I frankly don't want to know. It is much more mysterious now, with all the supplements being very vague or providing many options. Very good things for horror- invent your own pet one if you want, but your Storyteller can still surprise you after you have studied for months. The supplements themselves are good in that they are designed to be toolboxes of rules, rather than K3wl N3w P0w3rz.

My favorite part- you don't need the splats if you don't want. With the separate core, you have all the material you need to run games of mortals and whatever supernaturals you cook up. My favorites are lifting Risen Dead and Demons as splats/mythology, and taking all the old Dark Thamaturgy Paths as inspiration for new powers. It ends up very CoC. It also is the best system for modern setting that I have ever seen. You could probably even do Days of Our Lives with it, if you wanted. Or stat up your favorite pseudo-realistic/modern movies and books. Megatokyo's Largo can be made perfectly with 70exp and the core abilities. That was amusing, to say the least.

Jannex
2007-03-09, 05:58 PM
In addition, the core mechanics of the game itself changed--significantly changed, I'd say enough to warrant a third edition, and apparently White Wolf agreed with me.

Actually, the most recent edition of the old WoD was third edition; nWoD would actually be "fourth," if you wanted to assume a continuity. But yeah; the origins myths of all the supernaturals are completely different now, and the way they interact with one another, and the way they think of themselves.

purple gelatinous cube o' Doom
2007-03-09, 06:06 PM
Also, there were books produced for Old WoD for the "apocolypse" from each of the story lines. They had seperate books each for Vampire, Werewolf, and Mage (the most popular of their lines, each with 3-5 different ways to run the End Game). There was also a single book that covered the End Game for Changeling, Mummy, and Hunter. I don't think they produced anything beyond the one or two books for Demon, and I don't think they had an End Game scenario for them at all.
Unfortunately, this is all academic, because none of this stuff is in print anymore. If you run into it anywhere, it's a fluke, and the locals didn't buy it when it was published.
From the little bit I've read in the core books, I like what I see, but none of my players want to do WoD anymore, so I haven't supported White Wolf with my money in a couple of years.
Oh, and yes, they go out of their way to make parallels between all of the flavors of Exalted and different WoD character types.

Actually, I know quite a few used book stores that have the older WoD editions. That, and they're really easy to find on Ebay. So I really wouldn't call it a fluke to find the material. There's still much of it out there.

Winterking
2007-03-09, 06:44 PM
The New WoD seems to provide much more of a "Goth: The Angsting" feel than the Old WoD (which had angstful brooding aplenty, let me tell you. It was hard enough to find anything like optimism anywhere there--unless you were helping the GM out and playing NPC evildoers...)

There's much less emphasis on combat, conflict, and direct action, the conspiracies and prophecies are toned down and, in many cases, removed, and, like Bears said, it's even more focused on 'Personal Horror'.

The concealed mythos is nice, though--with oWoD, players could be just as informed, and often more informed, than the GM, concerning metaplot issues. And that could make horror and mystery harder to pull off.

And minor point: they did come out with End Times material for Changeling, as well as Kindred of the East, Hunter, Demon, and Wraith. They are all included in a single book, the name of which eludes me at the moment. Each game line is given three potential Apocalypse scenarios for the GM to use/steal from, and sample explanations of the way the metaplot interacts with those scenarios.

Krellen
2007-03-09, 06:50 PM
The New WoD seems to provide much more of a "Goth: The Angsting" feel than the Old WoD[.]
A large part of why I prefer the old Mage mythos. The Traditions were hopeful - though outnumbered and largely outclassed - of a return to "brighter times", while rank-and-file Technocrats (as opposed to those in the upper echeleons running things) were also quite hopeful, largely Paladin-like in their desire to defend Humanity and Reality against Things-Best-Unknown. As a bonus, when you got to those upper levels of power, you got the fun of Illuminati - bring the Steve Jackson card game to the table and have at it! :smallbiggrin:

The mythos of old Mage was beautiful, and its loss is one of the few blemishes on what otherwise is an excellent update of the old WoD system.

Clementx
2007-03-09, 08:53 PM
I don't know about you, but learning that your next-door neighbor is really a colony of rats dressed up in a man-suit is not very gothy to me. It's not like the tormented ghosts and ancient tomes of demon summoning driving you mad are picking you last for softball, so you go home and cut yourself. You run, succumb to your vices, search for a weapon using the wonderful improvised weapon system and combat, get yourself trashed, spend a month in intensive care, and hope it doesn't come back while you are asleep.

That being said, I can't really judge Mage mythos, and I hated the moral-objectivity of Werewolf (I only dig games with shades of gray like DnD, after all lol), and though that Vampire was too Super Fangman or Anne Rice, and not enough horror. But the one thing I can say is that things are neater now. Introduce 3rd edition mess at your discretion.

Krellen
2007-03-09, 09:25 PM
It's not like the tormented ghosts and ancient tomes of demon summoning driving you mad are picking you last for softball, so you go home and cut yourself.
You're confusing goth and emo.

Bears With Lasers
2007-03-09, 09:27 PM
It's easy to tell them apart: when they cut themselves, the emo bleeds tears.

Krellen
2007-03-09, 09:29 PM
That's awful, BWL.

Someone should sig it.

Clementx
2007-03-09, 09:48 PM
You're confusing goth and emo.

Since everything gothic is composed of equal parts WIN and HAWT, any disparaging remarks like, ":the Angsting" must by definition refer to only that that pathetic subdivision known as, "emo".

Either way, the nWoD is much less club-goth (notice the distinct lack of facial piercing and tattoos on 15th century vampires) than oWoD. It is gothic, like Mary Shelly's Frankenstein or gargoyles. Even the vampires are less, "oh the despair of the night", and more, "Am I going insane? No, I can hang on another decade. Now to kill my rivals. Who are my rivals? No, I killed that one in 16th century France...or did he live" And before they get crazy, they are just as motivated by petty quirks and vices as any murderous and over-stressed person. What they did lose is the punk angle of teenage rebellion and apocalyptic nihilism. They replaced that with above rat-men.

Just because you aren't encouraged to be a 5-Celerity katana-Desert Eagle akimbo Dex monkey from the back of your sportscar, doesn't mean the conflict got turned down. Battles are just important, they just don't take 3 hours to resolve. They are just as fun, though.

Beleriphon
2007-03-09, 09:56 PM
Either way, the nWoD is much less club-goth (notice the distinct lack of facial piercing and tattoos on 15th century vampires) than oWoD. It is gothic, like Mary Shelly's Frankenstein or gargoyles.

Totally agree with that. There is a huge difference between the goth horror that oWoD became and the gothic horror that it purported to be. NWoD is much better for the gothic, things man was not meant to know, kind of horror atmosphere.