I've sometimes thought that d20 rules or something like it would match the themes and the fiction of WoD better than the actual rule set that they use. Some say that D&D with high level characters having lots of hit points is unrealistic, and I can see that in a way, but when we're talking about powerful supernatural creatures, that makes more sense than 7 health levels that can be gone in an instant. In the fiction, we had a werewolf pack take on the Methuselah Mithras and the fight took hours and left Mithras in a weakened state after he killed the pack. You can't simulate that fight with WoD combat rules, not even close. If you look at Mithras' stats, a typical werewolf could probably kill him in two hits. He wouldn't last a single round if he just fought them. Of course, maybe he could just have the pack kill each other with his Dominate and Presence, but that isn't what the fiction described. What the fiction described was way more like a PC party taking on a big boss or monster in D&D than anything possible with vampires in WoD. They same thing goes for a number of other epic fights described in the fluff and fiction.

To emulate this, you could use a d20 style system where supernatural creatures have hit dice and increasing levels while maybe humans have a maximum level or get far fewer hit points per level to represent relative human fragility.

Edit:
There is MCWoD, though that is made for CoD and I think that the original WoD would be a better match for such a game.

I skimmed this 11 page thread, so if someone has already mentioned my attempt at an OSR V:tM, thanks!  I never really came up with a setting for Blood Dark Thirst.  Every time I started, my motivation shrank from the sunlight.  If that kind of thing is your bag, feel free to contact me.

VS

Quote from: ShieldWife;1131300I've sometimes thought that d20 rules or something like it would match the themes and the fiction of WoD better than the actual rule set that they use. Some say that D&D with high level characters having lots of hit points is unrealistic, and I can see that in a way, but when we're talking about powerful supernatural creatures, that makes more sense than 7 health levels that can be gone in an instant. In the fiction, we had a werewolf pack take on the Methuselah Mithras and the fight took hours and left Mithras in a weakened state after he killed the pack. You can't simulate that fight with WoD combat rules, not even close. If you look at Mithras' stats, a typical werewolf could probably kill him in two hits. He wouldn't last a single round if he just fought them. Of course, maybe he could just have the pack kill each other with his Dominate and Presence, but that isn't what the fiction described. What the fiction described was way more like a PC party taking on a big boss or monster in D&D than anything possible with vampires in WoD. They same thing goes for a number of other epic fights described in the fluff and fiction.

To emulate this, you could use a d20 style system where supernatural creatures have hit dice and increasing levels while maybe humans have a maximum level or get far fewer hit points per level to represent relative human fragility.

Edit:
There is MCWoD, though that is made for CoD and I think that the original WoD would be a better match for such a game.

CoD eventually reintroduced "methuselah"-ranked vampires shortly prior to 2e. (I'm not really a fan of using that name, though, for the same reason I find most WW jargon eyebrow-raising and inorganic. It refers to a long-lived man in the Bible (although his age wasn't unusual among biblical figures) and it literally/roughly translates to "bringer of death" or something like that.)

I think you could simulate it by altering how WoD handles combat. The vampire lord would need to have lots of defense, health, and offense. You also need rules for dismemberment and throwing people like projectiles...

Quote from: VengerSatanis;1131318I skimmed this 11 page thread, so if someone has already mentioned my attempt at an OSR V:tM, thanks!  I never really came up with a setting for Blood Dark Thirst.  Every time I started, my motivation shrank from the sunlight.  If that kind of thing is your bag, feel free to contact me.

VS

What is "Blood Dark Thirst"?

I'm just happy to see Venger still stops by this forum sometimes.   Blood Dark Thirst: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/223788/Blood-Dark-Thirst

Quote from: Kuroth;1131387I'm just happy to see Venger still stops by this forum sometimes.   Blood Dark Thirst: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/223788/Blood-Dark-Thirst

Thanks for the link. Seems interesting enough, although I admit that I'm generally desperate for anything to distract me from WoD.

Here's a link of my own. I had to find the article the blurb mentions on the Wayback Machine: https://web.archive.org/web/20190113212859/http://draconicmagazine.com/articles/vampires-funny

EDIT: I'm skimming right now, and I really like what I see. The way it handles humanity and the demonic is a lot more evocative than WoD.

So to continue my ideas for the contemporary Earth being invaded by monsters from the otherworlds...

Earth-30H is a parallel Earth resembling our contemporary reality. It has smartphones! There are differences (to account for individual campaigns), but nothing major. Earth is currently being invaded by monsters from other worlds. These monsters previously had a greater presence on Earth, but most started leaving sometime during the Enlightenment and have only recently started revisiting. At the same time (either causation or correlation), magic in general started weakening for hotly-debated reasons and most magic-users lost their powers until a recent resurgence of magic. So the monsters and magicians don't have long-established power bases on Earth, so the PCs don't need to worry about ancient global monolithic conspiracies constantly breathing down their necks.

Ybervalt is another parallel Earth (specifically a country or collection of countries corresponding to Eastern Europe), although it's history is vastly difference due to much greater concentrations of magic. Namely, the nobility consist of vampires, wizards, werewolves, and other classic monsters. So it's a bit like the Sylvania of the Warhammer World, I guess. Ybervalt is currently experiencing a war between a cabal of wizards (the House of Magnus) and a vampire knightly order (the Order of the Dragon) due to the wizards harvesting vampires as ingredients for youth potions. There's currently a succession crisis since a vampire-werewolf Romeo/Juliet couple who are the heirs of the two most powerful werewolf and vampire houses (who are archnemeses) have eloped to Earth.

Jermyn-PC Partition 01 is a New^15 York that is a virtual reality running inside of an assumed Jupiter Brain. It's basically the Matrix meets the Reboot cartoon meets Digimon. Much like the Matrix and Digimon, they have programs mimicking mythical creatures like vampires and werewolves. Jermyn is currently under assault by a virus called Terabyte, whose goal is conquest. Plucky bands of heroes fight the various infected files. The network's safeguards have gone a bit haywire since apparently whoever was in charge of the mainframe has gone AWOL, so the safeguards have decided on a scorched earth policy whenever anybody tries to attempt network access. This world is intended to be a techgnostic's wet dream.

Castleworld is a post-apocalyptic world whose main notable feature aside from radioactive fallout is that its orbit is filled with gothic castles and spacecraft from a long-collapsed vampire civilization. Most of them have since become infested with monsters and demons and space pirates, but a possible plot hook is that one of the PCs inherits one from a deceased vampire lord relative they didn't know they had, have magically inherited vampirism through the contract if they didn't have it before, and must now unravel the castle's many mysteries. Yes, this is blatantly influenced by Vampire Hunter D.

The Wizarding Galaxy is an alternate Milky Way galaxy where wizards pilot spacecraft. I'm too tired to imagine more details.

Let me know what you guys think.

EDIT: I had an idea for a POV character: a time-traveling cyborg templar homunculus who lives in a laser katana squid starship.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1131491The Wizarding Galaxy is an alternate Milky Way galaxy where wizards pilot spacecraft. I'm too tired to imagine more details.

The spaceships are shaped like brooms, and the pilots are all high on this melange of spices puked up by various worm-shaped alien creatures, so they frequently end up in the wrong quadrant and report seeing fanciful creatures like griffons, dragons, and giants. They're also racist elitists who think they're above the "diggles" (their term for non-pilots, a reference to dirt). There's a war between the deeply racist wizardlings who think playing horrific mind- and body-warping practical jokes on defenseless people is hilarious, and a mildly worse group with dreams of conquest.

Quote from: Pat;1131533The spaceships are shaped like brooms, and the pilots are all high on this melange of spices puked up by various worm-shaped alien creatures, so they frequently end up in the wrong quadrant and report seeing fanciful creatures like griffons, dragons, and giants. They're also racist elitists who think they're above the "diggles" (their term for non-pilots, a reference to dirt). There's a war between the deeply racist wizardlings who think playing horrific mind- and body-warping practical jokes on defenseless people is hilarious, and a mildly worse group with dreams of conquest.

You reminded me of this:

[ATTACH=CONFIG]4506[/ATTACH]

Quote from: Pat;1131533The spaceships are shaped like brooms, and the pilots are all high on this melange of spices puked up by various worm-shaped alien creatures, so they frequently end up in the wrong quadrant and report seeing fanciful creatures like griffons, dragons, and giants. They're also racist elitists who think they're above the "diggles" (their term for non-pilots, a reference to dirt). There's a war between the deeply racist wizardlings who think playing horrific mind- and body-warping practical jokes on defenseless people is hilarious, and a mildly worse group with dreams of conquest.

This is awesome! I love the satire of Harry Potter, too.

So something I liked about the Mage (any iteration) mechanics was that it used a syntactic magic system to cover both conventional magic as well as mad science, reality hacking, etc rather than having distinct subsystems for each like say Rifts or Shadowrun. (Although to be fair this is a result of having sufficiently heavy crunch. A light system like Risus uses the same rules for everything.)

Opening the Dark uses a syntactic magic system where magical traditions consist of an Art (e.g. Animism, Thaumaturgy, Faith, The Dark Art, Mysticism, Wicca, Dao) and each Art has several Praxes (sing. Praxis) representing specific areas of magical ability. As a matter of game balance, each Praxis also has an associated Nemesis (e.g. Air/Earth, Life/Death, War/Peace).

Rather than trying to provide some universal underpinning like consensus reality or gnosticism, I'm opting for the approach that "magic just works, don't think about it too hard." However, different worlds may affect the usage of magic. For example, a world with low amounts of ambient magic may result in magical workings being weaker overall (to the point that mages lose their power entirely). Conversely, a world may have an ambiance that makes magic more likely to go haywire.

There's a lot of leeway.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1131600So something I liked about the Mage (any iteration) mechanics was that it used a syntactic magic system to cover both conventional magic as well as mad science, reality hacking, etc rather than having distinct subsystems for each like say Rifts or Shadowrun. (Although to be fair this is a result of having sufficiently heavy crunch. A light system like Risus uses the same rules for everything.)

Opening the Dark uses a syntactic magic system where magical traditions consist of an Art (e.g. Animism, Thaumaturgy, Faith, The Dark Art, Mysticism, Wicca, Dao) and each Art has several Praxes (sing. Praxis) representing specific areas of magical ability. As a matter of game balance, each Praxis also has an associated Nemesis (e.g. Air/Earth, Life/Death, War/Peace).

Rather than trying to provide some universal underpinning like consensus reality or gnosticism, I'm opting for the approach that "magic just works, don't think about it too hard." However, different worlds may affect the usage of magic. For example, a world with low amounts of ambient magic may result in magical workings being weaker overall (to the point that mages lose their power entirely). Conversely, a world may have an ambiance that makes magic more likely to go haywire.

There's a lot of leeway.

Personally, I think it'd be better if we stuck to fan games and gave Onyx Path/White Wolf the finger by ditching personal horror and all that Goth/Punk bullshit, and instead decided to grab a katana and unironically don a trenchcoat to trigger the whiny goths and punks, and then decided to go out and Make World of Darkness Great Again.

Any Cease & Desist letters will be openly defied and any attempts on Onyx Path and Paradox's part to promote the "One True Way" to play will be mocked, condemned, and rejected.

"Hurr durr make your original setting" is letting them win.

Quote from: Doc Sammy;1131639Personally, I think it'd be better if we stuck to fan games and gave Onyx Path/White Wolf the finger by ditching personal horror and all that Goth/Punk bullshit, and instead decided to grab a katana and unironically don a trenchcoat to trigger the whiny goths and punks, and then decided to go out and Make World of Darkness Great Again.

Any Cease & Desist letters will be openly defied and any attempts on Onyx Path and Paradox's part to promote the "One True Way" to play will be mocked, condemned, and rejected.

"Hurr durr make your original setting" is letting them win.

Would you please go away? I just had diarrhea because talking with you and your ilk stresses me the fuck out.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1131654Would you please go away? I just had diarrhea because talking with you and your ilk stresses me the fuck out.

I'm not going away.

I'm trying to illustrate that it's NOT a binary choice.

You can create your own setting AND you can make WoD great again if you want, it's not an "either/or" choice.

Quote from: Doc Sammy;1131658I'm not going away.

I'm trying to illustrate that it's NOT a binary choice.

You can create your own setting AND you can make WoD great again if you want, it's not an "either/or" choice.

Discussing WoD/CoD is so stressful for me that it literally gives me diarrhea.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1131662Discussing WoD/CoD is so stressful for me that it literally gives me diarrhea.

Well, then just don't post in threads about it

That should be a fairly simple solution.