I would kill for a toolkit approach.  I still use Sine Nomine for many roll playing ideas due to the massive amount of tools the games provide.

Quote from: jan paparazzi;864802Yessss!. It's really simple to make. Make a short history chapter with events that are relevant to the players and then don't expend on it in supplements.

The problem with this approach is that you are still playing in someone else's sandbox. Unless said events are vague to the point of uselessness, it cannot support the level of creative freedom found in, say, All Flesh Must Be Eaten.

In fact, AFMBE is probably the best way to approach things. Rather than one restrictive sandbox, it has a multitude of campaign settings ("deadworlds") which each follow their own internal logic. These are never expanded on, but the limited space for each oozes more creativity than everything White Wolf wrote put together.

The whole "all monsters of X variety in my sandbox work this way" has gotten tired and stale to me. What happened to things like "5 different varieties of werewolves and 3 different varieties of vampire that have little to nothing in common" a la Dresden Files?

Quote from: Snowman0147;864833I would kill for a toolkit approach.  I still use Sine Nomine for many roll playing ideas due to the massive amount of tools the games provide.

God DAMN it, this.

Can't wait to get a Silent Legions-built CoC campaign. And a SWN-powered Traveller campaign.

Quote from: The Butcher;864966God DAMN it, this.

Can't wait to get a Silent Legions-built CoC campaign. And a SWN-powered Traveller campaign.

Yep. I'm running Masks of Nyarlathotep now, but once that puppy is wrapped up in a few months I can't wait to try Silent Legions. We need to find a way to clone Kevin Crawford so we can get even more Sine Nomine goodness published each year.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;864944The problem with this approach is that you are still playing in someone else's sandbox. Unless said events are vague to the point of uselessness, it cannot support the level of creative freedom found in, say, All Flesh Must Be Eaten.

In fact, AFMBE is probably the best way to approach things. Rather than one restrictive sandbox, it has a multitude of campaign settings ("deadworlds") which each follow their own internal logic. These are never expanded on, but the limited space for each oozes more creativity than everything White Wolf wrote put together.

The whole "all monsters of X variety in my sandbox work this way" has gotten tired and stale to me. What happened to things like "5 different varieties of werewolves and 3 different varieties of vampire that have little to nothing in common" a la Dresden Files?

Nah, not what I want at all. And here's why: as a central focal point monsters-as-PCs need some setting grounding. They can't be all mysterious all the time, otherwise you get Ethereal Plane, Dreamscape, issues. No shared patterns, no shared connection; in constant paranoia mode, devolves into numbness and farce.

First, they need to be relatable in a vaguely shared human sense so motivations and actions are not too alien to roleplay. A huge part of that is "we're the same species because we function with needs XYZ." That becomes a common language OOC to why their tension and pathos actually matter in a way we can relate to and thus conform to the horror genre. (It's why Deviants and other recent, unsympathetic monster lines reads so ridiculous; might as well flip open CoC Creature Compendium and play something from there in FATE.)

That lack of core identity mystery helps then fuel the second part which is IC cohesion creating a community. By having a broad in-group there is mutual commiseration about a shared existence, while fueling heated debate over how to approach that existence. It is quintessentially recreating the human condition. The community of monsters, mostly alike with minor variations, is the single greatest contribution to the "playing a monster" concept.

Yes, you can splat this out into endless factions from "races/strains," to "ideological factions." But the big thing about that general cohesiveness and quibbling friction is it's mostly infighting. It is not world view shattering knowledge of The Other Among Us, which sends things into paroxisms of paranoia and purification (that's the pathos challenge for monster hunters).

I much prefer a single voice for a setting, with lingering questions around the edges, instead of /shrug "who knows if anything you think you know is true?", Kafka-esque, butterfly dreaming of a man, vagaries. The latter is a cheap gimmick from those who want to save paper space and prioritize ambivalence over a point of view. But when everything is up in the air, nothing really begins to matter, and thus with endless chaos you get unrelatable boredom.

Quote from: Opaopajr;864970Nah, not what I want at all. And here's why: as a central focal point monsters-as-PCs need some setting grounding. They can't be all mysterious all the time, otherwise you get Ethereal Plane, Dreamscape, issues. No shared patterns, no shared connection; in constant paranoia mode, devolves into numbness and farce.

First, they need to be relatable in a vaguely shared human sense so motivations and actions are not too alien to roleplay. A huge part of that is "we're the same species because we function with needs XYZ." That becomes a common language OOC to why their tension and pathos actually matter in a way we can relate to and thus conform to the horror genre. (It's why Deviants and other recent, unsympathetic monster lines reads so ridiculous; might as well flip open CoC Creature Compendium and play something from there in FATE.)

That lack of core identity mystery helps then fuel the second part which is IC cohesion creating a community. By having a broad in-group there is mutual commiseration about a shared existence, while fueling heated debate over how to approach that existence. It is quintessentially recreating the human condition. The community of monsters, mostly alike with minor variations, is the single greatest contribution to the "playing a monster" concept.

Yes, you can splat this out into endless factions from "races/strains," to "ideological factions." But the big thing about that general cohesiveness and quibbling friction is it's mostly infighting. It is not world view shattering knowledge of The Other Among Us, which sends things into paroxisms of paranoia and purification (that's the pathos challenge for monster hunters).

I much prefer a single voice for a setting, with lingering questions around the edges, instead of /shrug "who knows if anything you think you know is true?", Kafka-esque, butterfly dreaming of a man, vagaries. The latter is a cheap gimmick from those who want to save paper space and prioritize ambivalence over a point of view. But when everything is up in the air, nothing really begins to matter, and thus with endless chaos you get unrelatable boredom.

That is not what I mean. All Flesh Must Be Eaten is characterized not by vagueness but by the large number of deadworlds it has. Each is unique and follows a consistent internal logic. There is no mystery because the rules for zombie-ism are clear from the outset. In one deadworld the zombies are corpses controlled by alien centipedes, in another they are ordinary people implanted with mind control microchips by a runaway theme park, in another they are unsubtle metaphors for McCarthyism red scares, blah blah, addicted to ice cream, superheroes/villains, reincarnation gone wrong, Christian apocalypse, and so forth.

THAT is the sort of creativity I want to see in a generic urban fantasy. I want people to actually CREATE and PLAY and not argue about GMPCs or fictional histories. Roleplaying games are not comic books or video games. They are limited only by the imagination of the players. So the players should be given the tools to adjudicate any vision they desire.

For an example of what I mean, download Feed. It is free and it is far more creative than Vampire: The Masquerade.

Those are just alternate premises, not fleshed out settings. That is not a creativity I need or want. It is something I myself can easily generate and later do in detail.

I buy games for settings more so than mechanics. Mechanics can be a horse's ass to learn and often not deliver. But some do. And other mechanics support the setting conceits baked into setting. As for mechanics I have my wealth of extant choices, from generic to those with baked in setting alterations — nothing all that special to me.

However enticing settings, with fleshed out slices of the world and interesting world-in-motion gear seeds, that's a challenge. That's a valuable resource to me. It saves me time.

Yes, ongoing NPC intertwined metaplot fiction reads like bad fiction. TMI is TMI and bad novelization is nothing I am interested in running (VtM novels affecting oWoD, for instance; Forgotten Realms Mary Sue parade is another). But no one tells you you have to use all of it, every character, and stick with its timeline.

It's like the same arguments I hear about FR products. Then don't use that material, hopefully the land and the main pool of acting factions and races are present to keep general cohesion going. It is easy to excise bad fiction tie-ins as long as I get a few cool location, actors, and hooks.

But things like FR 4e or Year of Reckoning/Gehenna are useless to me because they nuke the core setting of whole factions, races, continents, etc. I understand that argument. Those are terrible products on the whole in my opinion. Most of the "History of the Mary Sues' Adventures" is useless fluff yet easy to excise; setting nukes however backlog so much GM re-editing overhead that it makes compatibility issues with existing campagins.

I want a setting with a voice. I want a bushel of details to spice it, and edit as I please. I don't mind a few calendar events and main agents around either, as they are also easy to edit. I don't want apocalypse products inducing whole alternate histories.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;864989That is not what I mean. All Flesh Must Be Eaten is characterized not by vagueness but by the large number of deadworlds it has. Each is unique and follows a consistent internal logic. There is no mystery because the rules for zombie-ism are clear from the outset. In one deadworld the zombies are corpses controlled by alien centipedes, in another they are ordinary people implanted with mind control microchips by a runaway theme park, in another they are unsubtle metaphors for McCarthyism red scares, blah blah, addicted to ice cream, superheroes/villains, reincarnation gone wrong, Christian apocalypse, and so forth.

Isn't this just like the shards in WoD Mirrors or the chronicles in Danse Macabre or maybe even the city examples in Blood and Smoke (Requiem 2.0)? Or is it different? It sounds a bit like mini-settings to me.

A mini setting I am OK with, but it is not something I go out of my way to buy. I hope AFMBE is more mini setting, with at least 5 to 10 pages of ramifications spelled out, and then another sprinkling of gears, hooks, and seeds. A page or two of Locations and Notable NPCs would be nice, too.

But if it's less than that... meh. Just give me the core rule mechanics, any special mechanical gimmick that ties to setting, and get out of my way. And I'll likely end up discarding the system anyway because honestly I don't need more statistical formula crap when I have creative empty space to fill.

Quote from: jan paparazzi;865053Isn't this just like the shards in WoD Mirrors or the chronicles in Danse Macabre or maybe even the city examples in Blood and Smoke (Requiem 2.0)? Or is it different? It sounds a bit like mini-settings to me.

That's precisely what it is. "Campaign premise" might be a better word than "setting" in both cases, since there's plenty to inspire a GM, but little in the way of game table-ready material (except AFMBE deadworld write-ups usually include stats for one or more zombie types). But by that rationale, tons of well-established settings might not make the cut.

Quote from: Opaopajr;865060A mini setting I am OK with, but it is not something I go out of my way to buy. I hope AFMBE is more mini setting, with at least 5 to 10 pages of ramifications spelled out, and then another sprinkling of gears, hooks, and seeds. A page or two of Locations and Notable NPCs would be nice, too.

But if it's less than that... meh. Just give me the core rule mechanics, any special mechanical gimmick that ties to setting, and get out of my way. And I'll likely end up discarding the system anyway because honestly I don't need more statistical formula crap when I have creative empty space to fill.

The problem with investing all your attention into a single campaign setting for a dark and edgy urban fantasy game is that it will inevitably be compared (unfavorably) with World of Darkness. Why would anyone want to play a ripoff when they can play the real thing? Games like Monsterhearts, Feed and Urban Shadows only have an audience because they do not have defined settings and instead focus on mechanics that support the themes they are trying to convey.

Anyone can write a campaign setting with npcs and a list of plot hooks. There are innumerable systemless settings that do that. I can make one up in an afternoon if I really tried. It takes real talent and skill to design game mechanics that support specific themes without sucking.

Quote from: The Butcher;864966God DAMN it, this.

Can't wait to get a Silent Legions-built CoC campaign. And a SWN-powered Traveller campaign.

I made a entire sci-fi setting with Stars Without Numbers.  Use the mutant rules to create alien race mechanics from Other Dust.  Finally used the fluff for those aliens in a Stars Without Numbers supplement.  Thirteen sectors of ass whooping with eight major factions and five races so far.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;865120The problem with investing all your attention into a single campaign setting for a dark and edgy urban fantasy game is that it will inevitably be compared (unfavorably) with World of Darkness. Why would anyone want to play a ripoff when they can play the real thing? Games like Monsterhearts, Feed and Urban Shadows only have an audience because they do not have defined settings and instead focus on mechanics that support the themes they are trying to convey.

Anyone can write a campaign setting with npcs and a list of plot hooks. There are innumerable systemless settings that do that. I can make one up in an afternoon if I really tried. It takes real talent and skill to design game mechanics that support specific themes without sucking.

They will be compared to WoD because that's the market leader. It even beats out Ravenloft in name recognition. But WoD does have a voice, "goth-punk," and it does not suit much other setting conceptions outside its lush/bleak world of incestuous infighting with looming apocalypse and blind status quo.

I need another set of rules to learn like I need a sexually transmitted disease. I'd rather be playing rpgs, not learning the ropes of another. And helping me save those afternoons of creative effort is the point, especially as I get older. Just like artists use models and photos/paintings to copy and then personalize, GMs do the same with setting material.

As far as I can see if anyone bring books to store shelves, then WoD won't be number one for long.  Let us not forget that both White Wolf and CCP shot themselves in the foot a few times.

Quote from: tenbones;862314So let's pretend Paradox pulls the license for World of Darkness from Onyx Path... for kicks and giggles tell me:

World of Darkness: Reloaded -

- Who gets the license?
- What is the system?
- How would you change it?

GO!

- DwD Studios
- d00Lite (Barebones Fantasy and Covert Ops)
- Making its more FABULOUS and Bizarre, Jojo's Bizarre Adventure style. With options of going full emo or full gonzo. Plus, its already happening in form of "Sigil & Shadow", it's in public playtest right now.