TheRPGSite

What's this ? But the opening post of this wonderful thread (https://www.reddit.com/r/WhiteWolfRPG/comments/1cakmux/greek_gods_and_the_cwod_mages/) on reddit, of course.

(quoted for posterity if this thing should disappear)

QuoteOk, I like the Greek Gods, or at least thought I did. But I'm starting to think I need a sanitized version, since they are too problematic in their original form, even for the Black Dog line.

How can I rationalize that they are morally more progressive (in that no means no, among other things) for players at the table. They don't need to be something from a Disney Cartoon, but I want them to feel authentic and believable, while not being HORRIBLE.

Now, on a scale from 0 to brain dead clam, how many neurons did you have to lose to write something like that ? I'm literally speechless.

Huh, well why don't they try taking Black Dog oWoD/cWoD back to a loving, self-sacrificing God like Jeebus? :D

I keed, I keed. ;) The irony is far too blinding to all concerned.

Anyway, reddit seems to be redditting, so that's enough reddit for me this year. :)

I feel bad for the original writer of that post. He/she/it had no chance trying to fit these five words together over three short lines of text:

Problematic
Rationalize
Progressive
Authentic
Believable

It was never going to happen.

Quote from: Opaopajr on April 23, 2024, 04:30:44 AMAnyway, reddit seems to be redditting, so that's enough reddit for me this year. :)

Indeed.

Bruh, my favorite mythologies are Norse, Aztec, and Japanese. Do you think that Xipe Totec could ever be sanitized?

https://mythopedia.com/topics/xipe-totec

What about Tanuki with their ginormous ballsacks?

https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.onmarkproductions.com%2Fhtml%2Fslideshows%2Ftanuki-transparent-found-on-web.jpg&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=265c2b86e4ccdb3ee12868fc63288812426a1b327fec6231259487e946721234&ipo=images

Of course, all of you already know how problematic Norse mythology is, will all the white people and violence and such!

I don't like Greek Mythology a lot, but that's because it's like a never-ending soap opera/reality tv show where so many mortals and demi-gods get awful treatment for being at the wrong place at the wrong time.

Children. There are many books about the Greek gods that omit the nasty bits and these books are written for children. This person is asking to be coddled like a child.

Not that I agree the nasty bits should be omitted for children. Maybe just presented tastefully. Kids find that stuff interesting.

Quote from: NotFromAroundHere on April 23, 2024, 03:05:14 AMWhat's this ? But the opening post of this wonderful thread (https://www.reddit.com/r/WhiteWolfRPG/comments/1cakmux/greek_gods_and_the_cwod_mages/) on reddit, of course.

(quoted for posterity if this thing should disappear)

QuoteOk, I like the Greek Gods, or at least thought I did. But I'm starting to think I need a sanitized version, since they are too problematic in their original form, even for the Black Dog line.

How can I rationalize that they are morally more progressive (in that no means no, among other things) for players at the table. They don't need to be something from a Disney Cartoon, but I want them to feel authentic and believable, while not being HORRIBLE.

Now, on a scale from 0 to brain dead clam, how many neurons did you have to lose to write something like that ? I'm literally speechless.

Note, the original post has now been deleted.

Second, oh, it's for Mage... poster child for Gnostic/Progressive "I reject your reality and substitute my own" and "you're actually a god being held back by the failure of the masses to realize your brilliance" nonsense.

You have to be a braindead moron to embrace that game, and I should know, I spent quite a long period of my stupid youth playing and then running it until I figured out how toxic it was and came back to objective reality. If I could obliterate one OWoD game line so it never existed I'd nuke... Werewolf. But if I had a second, that would be Mage (honestly, with time, I've realized that lorewise the WoD peaked with Hunter's Hunted 1e and everything else with the exception of adding dhampirs has been downhill).

The Greek gods are vicious psychopaths. They're personifications of amoral capricious natural forces. They're akin to the Fair Folk of Celtic lore, not the all-loving self-sacrificing Jesus Christ.

They're supposed to be horrible. Anyone who think they're not villains is delusional. (Sorry, Percy Jackson fans.)

Quote from: Chris24601 on April 23, 2024, 08:26:40 AM

Quote from: NotFromAroundHere on April 23, 2024, 03:05:14 AMWhat's this ? But the opening post of this wonderful thread (https://www.reddit.com/r/WhiteWolfRPG/comments/1cakmux/greek_gods_and_the_cwod_mages/) on reddit, of course.

(quoted for posterity if this thing should disappear)

QuoteOk, I like the Greek Gods, or at least thought I did. But I'm starting to think I need a sanitized version, since they are too problematic in their original form, even for the Black Dog line.

How can I rationalize that they are morally more progressive (in that no means no, among other things) for players at the table. They don't need to be something from a Disney Cartoon, but I want them to feel authentic and believable, while not being HORRIBLE.

Now, on a scale from 0 to brain dead clam, how many neurons did you have to lose to write something like that ? I'm literally speechless.

Note, the original post has now been deleted.

Second, oh, it's for Mage... poster child for Gnostic/Progressive "I reject your reality and substitute my own" and "you're actually a god being held back by the failure of the masses to realize your brilliance" nonsense.

You have to be a braindead moron to embrace that game, and I should know, I spent quite a long period of my stupid youth playing and then running it until I figured out how toxic it was and came back to objective reality. If I could obliterate one OWoD game line so it never existed I'd nuke... Werewolf. But if I had a second, that would be Mage (honestly, with time, I've realized that lorewise the WoD peaked with Hunter's Hunted 1e and everything else with the exception of adding dhampirs has been downhill).

I take the opposite approach in my freeform magic system. It doesn't operate on the conceit that reality operates on consensus and you reject it to substitute your own. It operates on the conceit that all magical traditions, like Wicca, Druidism, Mad Science, etc., are all imperfect incomplete visions of an original truth. Platonic shadows.

Any splat can learn magic, although usually you can only learn one or two different traditions without going crazy. My mage equivalent splat are reincarnating immortals from the Atlantis-Mu War in 100,000 BC, whose shtick is that they know meta-magic, allowing them to freely learn and mix all magical traditions.

Also, I hate WoD too. I wish there was alternatives...

Quote from: NotFromAroundHere on April 23, 2024, 03:05:14 AMWhat's this ? But the opening post of this wonderful thread (https://www.reddit.com/r/WhiteWolfRPG/comments/1cakmux/greek_gods_and_the_cwod_mages/) on reddit, of course.

(quoted for posterity if this thing should disappear)

QuoteOk, I like the Greek Gods, or at least thought I did. But I'm starting to think I need a sanitized version, since they are too problematic in their original form, even for the Black Dog line.

How can I rationalize that they are morally more progressive (in that no means no, among other things) for players at the table. They don't need to be something from a Disney Cartoon, but I want them to feel authentic and believable, while not being HORRIBLE.

Now, on a scale from 0 to brain dead clam, how many neurons did you have to lose to write something like that ? I'm literally speechless.

"How can I rationalize that they are more morally progressive... not HORRIBLE"...

HUH?

History of the progressive movement in America: eugenics, eugenic killing, racism, plot to, and I quote word-for-word from a progressive Hillary Clinton proudly says she's in the spirit of: "exterminate the negro population", anti-semitism, segregation, and lots of stuff that were pretty horrible.

Making the Greek gods more progressive is pretty scary.

The horrible thing I thin is openly using the word "Sanitized".  to me that means to strip away parts of reality you can't handle.

Quote from: Crazy_Blue_Haired_Chick on April 23, 2024, 08:10:19 AMBruh, my favorite mythologies are Norse, Aztec, and Japanese. Do you think that Xipe Totec could ever be sanitized?

https://mythopedia.com/topics/xipe-totec

What about Tanuki with their ginormous ballsacks?

https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.onmarkproductions.com%2Fhtml%2Fslideshows%2Ftanuki-transparent-found-on-web.jpg&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=265c2b86e4ccdb3ee12868fc63288812426a1b327fec6231259487e946721234&ipo=images

Of course, all of you already know how problematic Norse mythology is, will all the white people and violence and such!

I don't like Greek Mythology a lot, but that's because it's like a never-ending soap opera/reality tv show where so many mortals and demi-gods get awful treatment for being at the wrong place at the wrong time.

Didn't the Mario games already sanitize the Tanuki?

Quote from: ForgottenF on April 26, 2024, 09:05:34 AMDidn't the Mario games already sanitize the Tanuki?

(https://mario.wiki.gallery/images/8/88/Tanooki_Mario_SMB3_art.png)

Had to look up Black Dog, and found that White Wolf "used the Black Dog imprint to release more adult-themed supplements".

So someone wanted an adult-themed game with Greek Gods, but then was afraid that it might be triggering?

By the way, why are we even having these conversations? Are people forgetting that murder is pretty common in RPGs, but we're supposed to worry about "consent"? IT'S A GAME FFS.

Quote from: Trond on April 26, 2024, 05:26:09 PMBy the way, why are we even having these conversations? Are people forgetting that murder is pretty common in RPGs, but we're supposed to worry about "consent"? IT'S A GAME FFS.

Because the woke always go after the low hanging fruit first. The easy targets and each wave tends to go in the same progression.

Think of the children!
Think of the women!
Think of the gays!
Think of the minorities!
Think of the handicapped!

Then they start going after the higher fruit as they locust their way through as much media as they can. Usually targeting anything to do with children first.

And by the time 5e came out there were already the same murmurings of "RPGs are ONLY about VIOLENCE because there are NO rules for TALKING to people!!!"

Quote from: ForgottenF on April 26, 2024, 09:05:34 AM

Quote from: Crazy_Blue_Haired_Chick on April 23, 2024, 08:10:19 AMBruh, my favorite mythologies are Norse, Aztec, and Japanese. Do you think that Xipe Totec could ever be sanitized?

https://mythopedia.com/topics/xipe-totec

What about Tanuki with their ginormous ballsacks?

https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.onmarkproductions.com%2Fhtml%2Fslideshows%2Ftanuki-transparent-found-on-web.jpg&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=265c2b86e4ccdb3ee12868fc63288812426a1b327fec6231259487e946721234&ipo=images

Of course, all of you already know how problematic Norse mythology is, will all the white people and violence and such!

I don't like Greek Mythology a lot, but that's because it's like a never-ending soap opera/reality tv show where so many mortals and demi-gods get awful treatment for being at the wrong place at the wrong time.

Didn't the Mario games already sanitize the Tanuki?

Nobody wants to see those balls...

Quote from: Crazy_Blue_Haired_Chick on April 26, 2024, 08:15:16 PM

Quote from: ForgottenF on April 26, 2024, 09:05:34 AM

Quote from: Crazy_Blue_Haired_Chick on April 23, 2024, 08:10:19 AMBruh, my favorite mythologies are Norse, Aztec, and Japanese. Do you think that Xipe Totec could ever be sanitized?

https://mythopedia.com/topics/xipe-totec

What about Tanuki with their ginormous ballsacks?

https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.onmarkproductions.com%2Fhtml%2Fslideshows%2Ftanuki-transparent-found-on-web.jpg&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=265c2b86e4ccdb3ee12868fc63288812426a1b327fec6231259487e946721234&ipo=images

Of course, all of you already know how problematic Norse mythology is, will all the white people and violence and such!

I don't like Greek Mythology a lot, but that's because it's like a never-ending soap opera/reality tv show where so many mortals and demi-gods get awful treatment for being at the wrong place at the wrong time.

Didn't the Mario games already sanitize the Tanuki?

Nobody wants to see those balls...

Pom Poko is the movie that proves you wrong.

Quote from: Chris24601 on April 23, 2024, 08:26:40 AMIf I could obliterate one OWoD game line so it never existed I'd nuke... Werewolf. But if I had a second, that would be Mage (honestly, with time, I've realized that lorewise the WoD peaked with Hunter's Hunted 1e and everything else with the exception of adding dhampirs has been downhill).

Werewolf does suck in that its an eco-terrorist Progtard's wet dream. I liked Mage, but The Traditions are just 100% wrong. I'm not saying The Technocracy are right, but FFS, the neurotic, bong juice swilling, crystal-waving hippie sexual deviant asswipes in the Traditions are just so fucking stupid. That and you had morons claiming Nikola Tesla (who is really The Godfather of the 20th Century) was an Aetherite.

The only time the damn game made ANY sense was when they declared 'The Technocracy won'. The Ascension War was stupid and bringing it back into play did nothing but make the game developers look like Neo-Luddites.

Quote from: Insane Nerd Ramblings on April 27, 2024, 08:01:01 AM

Quote from: Chris24601 on April 23, 2024, 08:26:40 AMIf I could obliterate one OWoD game line so it never existed I'd nuke... Werewolf. But if I had a second, that would be Mage (honestly, with time, I've realized that lorewise the WoD peaked with Hunter's Hunted 1e and everything else with the exception of adding dhampirs has been downhill).

Werewolf does suck in that its an eco-terrorist Progtard's wet dream. I liked Mage, but The Traditions are just 100% wrong. I'm not saying The Technocracy are right, but FFS, the neurotic, bong juice swilling, crystal-waving hippie sexual deviant asswipes in the Traditions are just so fucking stupid. That and you had morons claiming Nikola Tesla (who is really The Godfather of the 20th Century) was an Aetherite.

The only time the damn game made ANY sense was when they declared 'The Technocracy won'. The Ascension War was stupid and bringing it back into play did nothing but make the game developers look like Neo-Luddites.

Mage is fundamentally Woke (Mages are even called The Awakened), which is to say Gnostic, with the underlying concept that if you believe something enough then it is true. It's literally trans-ideology before it got mainstreamed.

Similarly, it is the Sleepers' collective beliefs that most stand in the way of your beliefs becoming truly real. For the woke it is the oppressors (i.e. anyone who doesn't believe in their mental illness) who are preventing utopia (and for the Gnostic it is the masses ensnared by the Demiurge's lies that keep the enlightened from achieving their godhood).

Woke, Gnosticism, and Mage all feed from the same original lie... "You can be God."

The World of Darkness in general also suffers from the problem of having existed long enough for its rebel ideologies to become the establishment, but are unable to let go of the Revolution to see they've actually become the bad guys. The Leftwing nuttery that in the 90's focused on "tolerance and freedom from the establishment" has now reached the point where it now requires intolerance of other ideas and tyranny by the establishment to maintain.

But they won't let the natural rebels actually rebel against the real modern establishment, instead they must rebel even further into Leftist nuttery and maintain the fiction that it is still the 90's establishment and it's ideals who are in charge (ex. Vampire 5e has introduced the 2nd Inquisition backed by Religious and Rightwing elements because they can't have the Totalitarian Left as the villains).

And so they flounder because the underlying structure of their setting has no truth to it anymore. It's collapsed into the same late-stage Marxist hell that every institution which embraces it does. It can't understand that anti-establishment rebellion is now rebellion against them.

But yes, Werewolf should die first because without it's stupid we'd never have gotten to Mage and the other bad ideas (for context, prior to WtA the WoD setting was reasonably coherent and had an objective reality, the Lupines were savage beasts in the wilds akin to folklore, what became Mages were practitioners of various numina; magic paths, psychics, true faith; ghosts, fae, and demons were mysterious otherworldly entities... in contrast to defined playable factions with their own New Age/Gnosticism to push).

Before y'all start shitting on #Reddit you might want to read if not participate in the actual, you know, discussion there which pushes back against this insanity (https://www.reddit.com/r/WhiteWolfRPG/comments/1cakmux/greek_gods_and_the_cwod_mages/). I guarantee you the lack of validation is why they deleted their post. Meanwhile they have no issue leaving responses like this up on a post in r/rapefantasies so extreme the mods removed it (https://archive.is/OdWfI).

This is easily the most hypocritical example of virtue signaling I've ever encountered. It's actually awe inspiring.

Quote from: Chris24601 on April 23, 2024, 08:26:40 AMIf I could obliterate one OWoD game line so it never existed I'd nuke... Werewolf.

Too late, they already did.

Quote from: Insane Nerd Ramblings on April 27, 2024, 08:01:01 AMThe only time the damn game made ANY sense was when they declared 'The Technocracy won'.

They only did that once they shifted their own ideology to authoritarianism.

Quote from: Chris24601 on April 27, 2024, 09:21:58 AMMage is fundamentally Woke (Mages are even called The Awakened),

Pointing that out is what led to my permaban on #RPGNet.

And throughout it all we see the same breathtaking hypocrisy which demands such a profound level of doublethink that I'm all but terrified anyone is capable of it.

Quote from: BadApple on April 26, 2024, 10:40:07 PM

Quote from: Crazy_Blue_Haired_Chick on April 26, 2024, 08:15:16 PM

Quote from: ForgottenF on April 26, 2024, 09:05:34 AM

Quote from: Crazy_Blue_Haired_Chick on April 23, 2024, 08:10:19 AMBruh, my favorite mythologies are Norse, Aztec, and Japanese. Do you think that Xipe Totec could ever be sanitized?

https://mythopedia.com/topics/xipe-totec

What about Tanuki with their ginormous ballsacks?

https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.onmarkproductions.com%2Fhtml%2Fslideshows%2Ftanuki-transparent-found-on-web.jpg&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=265c2b86e4ccdb3ee12868fc63288812426a1b327fec6231259487e946721234&ipo=images

Of course, all of you already know how problematic Norse mythology is, will all the white people and violence and such!

I don't like Greek Mythology a lot, but that's because it's like a never-ending soap opera/reality tv show where so many mortals and demi-gods get awful treatment for being at the wrong place at the wrong time.

Didn't the Mario games already sanitize the Tanuki?

Nobody wants to see those balls...

Pom Poko is the movie that proves you wrong.

Hehe, you have a point.

I don't want OWoD to ever take on Japanese or even any East or Southeast Asian mythology in their games. The Filipinos have dealt with enough bullshit already!

I think the only way to make the idea that 'everyone is god and they just don't know it, knowing it gives you powers' salvageable for a story or game is to make it so that bad people can realize this. Especially bad delusional people. Imagine if Hitler or Stalin or Pol Pot had the powers of a Mage.

Quote from: Crazy_Blue_Haired_Chick on April 28, 2024, 05:31:24 PMHehe, you have a point.

I don't want OWoD to ever take on Japanese or even any East or Southeast Asian mythology in their games. The Filipinos have dealt with enough bullshit already!

Too late. They already did. Kindred of the East and a full on campaign set in modern Asia with some bits lifted from my own RPG because they are hacks.

Quote from: Crazy_Blue_Haired_Chick on April 28, 2024, 05:31:24 PMHehe, you have a point.

I don't want OWoD to ever take on Japanese or even any East or Southeast Asian mythology in their games. The Filipinos have dealt with enough bullshit already!

We've all dealt with enough bullshit and none of us need the White Wolf treatment.  It's been steeped in the hate disguised as inclusion for a long time and being bought out buy other companies isn't going to clean it up now.

In my experience, most people are happy to see others explore their culture in stories and games, even getting it wrong and handling it awkwardly, when it's done with appreciation and love.  I have had a lot of contact with Asians (Filipino, Korean, Chinese in Taiwan, and Japanese) in my life and they've always been happy when I learn about their culture and lives while adopting the things I like or feel work well for me.  Indeed, I have been encouraged in this by the Asians in my life, including my wife.  One of my fun memories of gaming in Japan is when a local brought out a copy of Oriental Adventure and wanted me to run it for the group.

Taking the other perspective, watching how Asians interpret western culture in their media is always fun for me.  It's clear that there is a fascination with the US in particular in Korean and Japanese media.  It's all in good fun and a valid form of story telling. 

Quote from: Crazy_Blue_Haired_Chick on April 28, 2024, 05:31:24 PMI don't want OWoD to ever take on Japanese or even any East or Southeast Asian mythology in their games. The Filipinos have dealt with enough bullshit already!

They did that ages ago.
https://whitewolf.fandom.com/wiki/Year_of_the_Lotus

Quote from: Omega on April 29, 2024, 12:34:51 AM

Quote from: Crazy_Blue_Haired_Chick on April 28, 2024, 05:31:24 PMHehe, you have a point.

I don't want OWoD to ever take on Japanese or even any East or Southeast Asian mythology in their games. The Filipinos have dealt with enough bullshit already!

Too late. They already did. Kindred of the East and a full on campaign set in modern Asia with some bits lifted from my own RPG because they are hacks.

Quote from: yosemitemike on April 29, 2024, 02:57:30 AM

Quote from: Crazy_Blue_Haired_Chick on April 28, 2024, 05:31:24 PMI don't want OWoD to ever take on Japanese or even any East or Southeast Asian mythology in their games. The Filipinos have dealt with enough bullshit already!

They did that ages ago.
https://whitewolf.fandom.com/wiki/Year_of_the_Lotus

Well shit.

Quote from: Crazy_Blue_Haired_Chick on April 29, 2024, 08:54:49 AM

Quote from: Omega on April 29, 2024, 12:34:51 AM

Quote from: Crazy_Blue_Haired_Chick on April 28, 2024, 05:31:24 PMHehe, you have a point.

I don't want OWoD to ever take on Japanese or even any East or Southeast Asian mythology in their games. The Filipinos have dealt with enough bullshit already!

Too late. They already did. Kindred of the East and a full on campaign set in modern Asia with some bits lifted from my own RPG because they are hacks.

Quote from: yosemitemike on April 29, 2024, 02:57:30 AM

Quote from: Crazy_Blue_Haired_Chick on April 28, 2024, 05:31:24 PMI don't want OWoD to ever take on Japanese or even any East or Southeast Asian mythology in their games. The Filipinos have dealt with enough bullshit already!

They did that ages ago.
https://whitewolf.fandom.com/wiki/Year_of_the_Lotus

Well shit.

It was a book set in Japan that started me on an adversarial head on with WW as that is where I discovered they had been "borrowing" from other obscure games. Otherwise its not a bad book. Not great either. And I actually cant remember the name. But it was about playing humans in Japan battling supernatural oriblems. Think it predated Hunter.

Hengeyokai: Shapeshifters of the East was the Werewolf version of Kindred of the East and introduced the Kitsune. Again not bad. Not great. Par for the course really. Never seen the Tokyo or Jade books.

Yes it's silly, though ultimately a person's stupid choice.

Though I think to me most pantheist fictional settings are nothing like actual pagan faiths, bloodless, with out sacrifice or weirdness that came with much of actual religion. and much of pagan faith was orthopraxy not orthodoxy, which is an important distinction, it's why there were may different mystery cults with many different views regarding their gods, but often their practices and ritual were quite similar.

None of that is represented in most RPG settings, having the same God called by different names, let alone different myths which conflict or myth pertaining to those beings, often Myth that is uncomfortable and dark and profound.

I would recommend to those not interested or simply wanting to sanitize pantheist faiths to simply use a monotheist model for their game, at least than you can have an ultimate good being that isn't "problematic" except oh wait objective morality is also "problematic" oh well...

Quote from: Anon Adderlan on April 27, 2024, 01:53:30 PMBefore y'all start shitting on #Reddit you might want to read if not participate in the actual, you know, discussion there which pushes back against this insanity (https://www.reddit.com/r/WhiteWolfRPG/comments/1cakmux/greek_gods_and_the_cwod_mages/). I guarantee you the lack of validation is why they deleted their post. Meanwhile they have no issue leaving responses like this up on a post in r/rapefantasies so extreme the mods removed it (https://archive.is/OdWfI).

This is easily the most hypocritical example of virtue signaling I've ever encountered. It's actually awe inspiring.

Yes, it is a glorious self-own from one's blinding hypocrisy. And yes, reddit mostly had people bat this attention-seeking away as the piffle it is. But... it's still fucking reddit in its manner, sound and fury signaling nothing but now in soporific NPR drone. ;) So I return to shit on reddit for a second time. :D

You guys should've tried the Chronicles of Darkness reboot. It started in 2004 and was finally canceled a few years ago by Paradox. It took out the stupid stuff, but of course the old guard hated it for existing and it was treated as the red-headed stepchild once WW got bought by video game companies.

It's a real pity. While the Chronicles games weren't perfect by any stretch (this is still White Wolf), they at least tried to do new things rather than wallowing in endless rehashes of the same tired stupid material like 5th edition does.

I did try CoD (or NWoD as it was called back in the day), but I found Awakenin to lean even harder into the Gnostic (and Anti-Christian) bullshit than Ascension did so I dropped it in short order without even looking at the other splats.

These days I'd just build my own system with my own cosmology (I've brought it up before).

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on April 30, 2024, 05:28:40 PMYou guys should've tried the Chronicles of Darkness reboot. It started in 2004 and was finally canceled a few years ago by Paradox. It took out the stupid stuff, but of course the old guard hated it for existing and it was treated as the red-headed stepchild once WW got bought by video game companies.

It's a real pity. While the Chronicles games weren't perfect by any stretch (this is still White Wolf), they at least tried to do new things rather than wallowing in endless rehashes of the same tired stupid material like 5th edition does.

I quite liked them despite certain things really not liking, I very much disliked how Vigil overtook Reckoning, and how H5 went on to be a copy cat. likewise I liked old Demon more, but every other splat was a marked improvement.

But I've since given up entirely WOD/COFD all together to work on my own OSR inspired takes of them.

Quote from: Opaopajr on April 29, 2024, 09:54:50 PMYes, it is a glorious self-own from one's blinding hypocrisy. And yes, reddit mostly had people bat this attention-seeking away as the piffle it is. But... it's still fucking reddit in its manner, sound and fury signaling nothing but now in soporific NPR drone. ;) So I return to shit on reddit for a second time. :D

The problem is that every little subreddit is its own little domain really and several of the RPG related ones have some pretty nasty moderators.

This came to light recently
https://www.dndunleashed.com/home/why-we-no-longer-post-content-on-reddit (https://www.dndunleashed.com/home/why-we-no-longer-post-content-on-reddit)

Quote from: Omega on May 01, 2024, 03:19:44 AM

Quote from: Opaopajr on April 29, 2024, 09:54:50 PMYes, it is a glorious self-own from one's blinding hypocrisy. And yes, reddit mostly had people bat this attention-seeking away as the piffle it is. But... it's still fucking reddit in its manner, sound and fury signaling nothing but now in soporific NPR drone. ;) So I return to shit on reddit for a second time. :D

The problem is that every little subreddit is its own little domain really and several of the RPG related ones have some pretty nasty moderators.

This came to light recently
https://www.dndunleashed.com/home/why-we-no-longer-post-content-on-reddit (https://www.dndunleashed.com/home/why-we-no-longer-post-content-on-reddit)

Yeah, I never liked the platform. It always had that groupthink darlings and Greek chorus harpies feel to it, like RPG.net, Tumblr, and Twitter after Tumblr was purged. That and it has an atrocious interface, like a purposeful leap backwards, worse than Unix to DOS, to capture market and keep people separated.

All hobbies self-separate into little groups anyway, but the format and "good-righteous-thinking" rubbed me raw immediately and I saw no future in it as an RPG communication tool. Good doesn't have to parade its virtues. And RPGs need way more lasting substantiality and reference ability along with diverse disagreement about Imagination Land to be useful to GMs and players alike over the ages.

So I come to shit on Reddit thrice! :D

Yeah, brigading is a real problem on reddit. It's even more evident on small subs like r/rpg (yes, r/rpg is a small sub; despite the apparently massive number of subscribers, the active user base rarely reaches two thousand people at a time and usually hovers around 800), where a significant minority can effectively dictate what topics can be discussed through strategic downvotes (try to post something along the lines of "Blades in the dark is a shit game" and see what happens).

Quote from: NotFromAroundHere on May 01, 2024, 03:59:50 AMYeah, brigading is a real problem on reddit. It's even more evident on small subs like r/rpg (yes, r/rpg is a small sub; despite the apparently massive number of subscribers, the active user base rarely reaches two thousand people at a time and usually hovers around 800), where a significant minority can effectively dictate what topics can be discussed through strategic downvotes (try to post something along the lines of "Blades in the dark is a shit game" and see what happens).

And that is why I don't have a Reddit account...

Reddit is 95% bots anyway, so posting there is futile in the extreme.

Quote from: NotFromAroundHere on May 01, 2024, 03:59:50 AMYeah, brigading is a real problem on reddit. It's even more evident on small subs like r/rpg (yes, r/rpg is a small sub; despite the apparently massive number of subscribers, the active user base rarely reaches two thousand people at a time and usually hovers around 800), where a significant minority can effectively dictate what topics can be discussed through strategic downvotes (try to post something along the lines of "Blades in the dark is a shit game" and see what happens).

Happens more covertly on BGG too.

Quote from: Brad on May 01, 2024, 08:43:19 AMReddit is 95% bots anyway, so posting there is futile in the extreme.

From some comments appears there are swarms of downvote bots hitting several, possibly all, the subs on top of everything else.

Quote from: Socratic-DM on April 30, 2024, 06:14:25 PM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on April 30, 2024, 05:28:40 PMYou guys should've tried the Chronicles of Darkness reboot. It started in 2004 and was finally canceled a few years ago by Paradox. It took out the stupid stuff, but of course the old guard hated it for existing and it was treated as the red-headed stepchild once WW got bought by video game companies.

It's a real pity. While the Chronicles games weren't perfect by any stretch (this is still White Wolf), they at least tried to do new things rather than wallowing in endless rehashes of the same tired stupid material like 5th edition does.

I quite liked them despite certain things really not liking, I very much disliked how Vigil overtook Reckoning, and how H5 went on to be a copy cat. likewise I liked old Demon more, but every other splat was a marked improvement.

But I've since given up entirely WOD/COFD all together to work on my own OSR inspired takes of them.

I thought the Imbued/Inquisitors with supernatural powers could've coexisted quite well in Vigil, as the point was the diversity of organizations and capabilities. One of the Vigil orgs is outright composed of antichrist candidates, which is metal.

H5 wasn't just a copy cat, it actively demonizes organized hunters as inherently evil. So it basically pisses off fans of both Reckoning and Vigil and basically every splatbook about playing humans with low magic. Remember Orpheus? They name-dropped Orpheus Group as irredeemable evil villains for having the audacity to run a public ghost fumigating service that employs ghosts. Whoever wrote this clearly has a huge chip on his shoulder.

Anyway, good luck with your urban fantasy game design. We need more games to break WoD's stupid monopoly.

You could like it or not, but one thing that WoD did right was fanbase fidelization. They did it so right that an effectively dead gameline was resurrected after nearly ten years from the official closure and still keeps going strong, all thanks to fans.
You need to be a special kind of moron to look at this fanbase and sistematically dismantle whatever they liked and subtly (but not even so subtly) hinting that they are a bunch of perverted degenerates that got it all wrong for nearly thirty years.
Yeah, Paradox really baffles me.

Quote from: NotFromAroundHere on May 03, 2024, 01:06:16 AMYou could like it or not, but one thing that WoD did right was fanbase fidelization. They did it so right that an effectively dead gameline was resurrected after nearly ten years from the official closure and still keeps going strong, all thanks to fans.
You need to be a special kind of moron to look at this fanbase and sistematically dismantle whatever they liked and subtly (but not even so subtly) hinting that they are a bunch of perverted degenerates that got it all wrong for nearly thirty years.
Yeah, Paradox really baffles me.

I agree with you! :D

I tried to give CoD a half-hearted good college try... I only liked Changeling the Lost. And I already love Changeling the Dreaming, so it was just a new flavor from a different perspective. Then I saw CoD 2.0 with all the mechanical self-torture to get more XP and roleplay, when you could just do more roleplay and adjust the XP rates. I was done. And then I was even less impressed with 5e versions.

It was a moment in time and I'm OK with that. And it really highlighted how people can turn in on themselves to push out everyone else around them. So I am OK being the "left behind fandom" because I'm not a "true believer" in such pompous self-righteousness. I'm Gen X/Millenial, I really do care, but I don't give a shit about hassling others like an ass-hat, especially on low stakes shit. And how you play pretend is pretty low stakes shit. :)

Quote from: Chris24601 on April 27, 2024, 09:21:58 AM

Quote from: Insane Nerd Ramblings on April 27, 2024, 08:01:01 AM

Quote from: Chris24601 on April 23, 2024, 08:26:40 AMIf I could obliterate one OWoD game line so it never existed I'd nuke... Werewolf. But if I had a second, that would be Mage (honestly, with time, I've realized that lorewise the WoD peaked with Hunter's Hunted 1e and everything else with the exception of adding dhampirs has been downhill).

Werewolf does suck in that its an eco-terrorist Progtard's wet dream. I liked Mage, but The Traditions are just 100% wrong. I'm not saying The Technocracy are right, but FFS, the neurotic, bong juice swilling, crystal-waving hippie sexual deviant asswipes in the Traditions are just so fucking stupid. That and you had morons claiming Nikola Tesla (who is really The Godfather of the 20th Century) was an Aetherite.

The only time the damn game made ANY sense was when they declared 'The Technocracy won'. The Ascension War was stupid and bringing it back into play did nothing but make the game developers look like Neo-Luddites.

Mage is fundamentally Woke (Mages are even called The Awakened), which is to say Gnostic, with the underlying concept that if you believe something enough then it is true. It's literally trans-ideology before it got mainstreamed.

Similarly, it is the Sleepers' collective beliefs that most stand in the way of your beliefs becoming truly real. For the woke it is the oppressors (i.e. anyone who doesn't believe in their mental illness) who are preventing utopia (and for the Gnostic it is the masses ensnared by the Demiurge's lies that keep the enlightened from achieving their godhood).

Woke, Gnosticism, and Mage all feed from the same original lie... "You can be God."

The World of Darkness in general also suffers from the problem of having existed long enough for its rebel ideologies to become the establishment, but are unable to let go of the Revolution to see they've actually become the bad guys. The Leftwing nuttery that in the 90's focused on "tolerance and freedom from the establishment" has now reached the point where it now requires intolerance of other ideas and tyranny by the establishment to maintain.

But they won't let the natural rebels actually rebel against the real modern establishment, instead they must rebel even further into Leftist nuttery and maintain the fiction that it is still the 90's establishment and it's ideals who are in charge (ex. Vampire 5e has introduced the 2nd Inquisition backed by Religious and Rightwing elements because they can't have the Totalitarian Left as the villains).

And so they flounder because the underlying structure of their setting has no truth to it anymore. It's collapsed into the same late-stage Marxist hell that every institution which embraces it does. It can't understand that anti-establishment rebellion is now rebellion against them.

But yes, Werewolf should die first because without it's stupid we'd never have gotten to Mage and the other bad ideas (for context, prior to WtA the WoD setting was reasonably coherent and had an objective reality, the Lupines were savage beasts in the wilds akin to folklore, what became Mages were practitioners of various numina; magic paths, psychics, true faith; ghosts, fae, and demons were mysterious otherworldly entities... in contrast to defined playable factions with their own New Age/Gnosticism to push).

It's funny how no one has commented that in The Invisible College, I turned the entire Mage philosophy into the most pathetic type of villains of the College: the Solipsists.

Solipsism isn't MtA's philosophy, it's not even a caricature of it. So that's something of a strawman.

MTA is entirely Gnostic (and Traditions/Conventions that believe otherwise are objectively wrong or outright hostile to the Truth and those not outright hostile learn to abandon those falsities as they advance in enlightenment).

Which is to say it's philosophy of Truth is the same forerunner of Woke and the Trans movement and all ultimately derive from the original Satanic lie "You can be God."

So, whichever faction are the Gnostics would be the equivalent to the true Mage faction in the Invisible College.

My preference for such a setting would be a secret pre-schism (i.e. Roman and Orthodox-backed) Catholic minstry recruiting those with supernatural Charisms* to fight the legions of Satan's minions (witches, vampires, werewolves, ghosts, possessing demons, occultists, etc.).

* this would include innocents bearing the blood of demonic creatures; dhampirs, cambions, 'Merlins' etc.; as God allowed them to have those abilities to fight the wickedness of their ancestors.

Top amusement, easily on par with that provided by our now lost "concerned by problematic Greek gods" fella.
Keep on.

Quote from: Omega on May 01, 2024, 03:19:44 AMThe problem is that every little subreddit is its own little domain really and several of the RPG related ones have some pretty nasty moderators.

Quote from: Opaopajr on May 01, 2024, 03:52:02 AMIt always had that groupthink darlings and Greek chorus harpies feel to it, like RPG.net, Tumblr, and Twitter after Tumblr was purged.

So internet as usual.

Quote from: Opaopajr on May 01, 2024, 03:52:02 AMThat and it has an atrocious interface, like a purposeful leap backwards, worse than Unix to DOS, to capture market and keep people separated.

There's no denying that #Reddit isn't perfect and only getting worse. However posts are still publicly searchable and indented, and I can sort them in multiple ways, format text, quote replies, and add text links. The only better formats for actual discussions are forums like this.

It'd be nice if their search engine actually worked.

Quote from: Omega on May 08, 2024, 12:52:04 AMIt'd be nice if their search engine actually worked.

It's called #Google, and it works better there than here and other forums. But this is getting off topic. Point is where discussions take place is far less important than what is being said.

Back to the OP. 

While I'm no fan of woke-ism or their arguments for sanitized games with no mention of hardcore crimes, I do recognize their right to do so. 

Their table, their rules. 

That is why that post is so baffling.  If you want a game to have Greek Gods who have strong morals, just do it.  It's not even hard.  It's all make believe, right?

But, the core tenet is your table, your rules. 

I just won't ask to play in that game of touchy-feely because I want horrible crimes to happen so we have something to do. 

Quote from: weirdguy564 on May 08, 2024, 10:35:53 AMBut, the core tenet is your table, your rules.

On the contrary, the fact it isn't is the problem.

The entire purpose of that post was to impose their standards on others, all while engaging in the very same problematic behavior they were calling out. Folks like this demand games be changed to suit them, all while claiming others can always ignore the parts they don't like. They're inherently narcissistic and profoundly hypocritical. And I've seen what happens when a community tolerates such behavior.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan on May 08, 2024, 02:33:47 PM

Quote from: weirdguy564 on May 08, 2024, 10:35:53 AMBut, the core tenet is your table, your rules.

On the contrary, the fact it isn't is the problem.

The entire purpose of that post was to impose their standards on others, all while engaging in the very same problematic behavior they were calling out. Folks like this demand games be changed to suit them, all while claiming others can always ignore the parts they don't like. They're inherently narcissistic and profoundly hypocritical. And I've seen what happens when a community tolerates such behavior.

Greetings!

*BOOM*! Damn right, Anon Adderlan!

It never occurs to these morons that *they* can ignore whatever books they don't like or are "offended" by--and play however they want at their tables.

No, no. They *need* to reach out and scream, and force everyone else to change their games to suit *them*. It is arrogant, insulting, and terrible in every way.

And these kinds of morons wonder why there is so many angry people? *Laughing* They keep stacking up straws, and wonder why they get ferocious blowback from this or that. Whaa. It is because people are absolutely sick and tired of all of this thought policing and tyrant-mommy BS in every book, in every game, in every hobby.

Ultimately, these morons need to be screamed at, shamed, and jacked hard. They need to be driven into the sewer, or the basement, or whatever crag they crawled out of, and forced back there. They need to be mocked, and savagely reminded that they are the evil, psychotic, mommy-slave, and they are not welcome. THEY need to stay in the margins and shadows, and leave everyone else alone.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

On the RPG related subreddits its whatever the mods allow. Which apparently some of the subs are a mess.

I poked into one of the D&D ones and one of the mods apparently does not even know D&D and keeps spouting "play another system!"

But then you get the occasional idiot there stating things like "D&D can not handle low fantasy!" and other bits of negative wisdom.

Interestigly least on the subs I poke at due to search hits. Theres been very little wokeness. Aside from the blaring LGBT flags and such. Maybe Im just getting lucky and missing it.

Quote from: Omega on May 11, 2024, 12:53:46 AMBut then you get the occasional idiot there stating things like "D&D can not handle low fantasy!" and other bits of negative wisdom.

When you add up the different releases going back to Chainmail, there are eight editions of D&D. Though granted, the various iterations of Basic aren't all that different from one another. They did not all handle low fantasy equally well.

3.X is particularly shite at handling low fantasy. 5E can do it fairly well, but looking at all of the classes and races that have some kind of spellcasting or magical abilities, one does get the impression that 5E is not the system to use for low fantasy.

Quote from: Corolinth on May 11, 2024, 08:28:24 AM3.X is particularly shite at handling low fantasy. 5E can do it fairly well, but looking at all of the classes and races that have some kind of spellcasting or magical abilities, one does get the impression that 5E is not the system to use for low fantasy.

They say that because apparently they can not imagine restricting race and class selection. And toning down monsters or even going no monsters at all. Just people and animals.

Quote from: Omega on May 12, 2024, 05:26:03 AM

Quote from: Corolinth on May 11, 2024, 08:28:24 AM3.X is particularly shite at handling low fantasy. 5E can do it fairly well, but looking at all of the classes and races that have some kind of spellcasting or magical abilities, one does get the impression that 5E is not the system to use for low fantasy.

They say that because apparently they can not imagine restricting race and class selection. And toning down monsters or even going no monsters at all. Just people and animals.

Most people don't buy a game and then think it would be a great idea to cut out 90% of it.

It's one thing to say, "5E went off the rails with Tasha's," or something like that. Pick your favorite 5E book that you think is trash, it doesn't matter. You're suggesting someone also not use the Monster Manual, three entire PC classes, and at least three subclasses of the remaining classes.

You can do that. The system allows for it. You can totally play low fantasy in D&D, as long as you don't play D&D. That's such a fantastic argument. It's not even the first time someone made it. I remember back in the '90s, these guys had this game about vampires. Then they came out and said, "You know what would be a great idea? What if we took this game about vampires and got rid of all the vampires?" And it worked! People still buy that vampire game to play it with no vampires.

Quote from: Corolinth on May 12, 2024, 09:26:33 AM

Quote from: Omega on May 12, 2024, 05:26:03 AM

Quote from: Corolinth on May 11, 2024, 08:28:24 AM3.X is particularly shite at handling low fantasy. 5E can do it fairly well, but looking at all of the classes and races that have some kind of spellcasting or magical abilities, one does get the impression that 5E is not the system to use for low fantasy.

They say that because apparently they can not imagine restricting race and class selection. And toning down monsters or even going no monsters at all. Just people and animals.

Most people don't buy a game and then think it would be a great idea to cut out 90% of it.

It's one thing to say, "5E went off the rails with Tasha's," or something like that. Pick your favorite 5E book that you think is trash, it doesn't matter. You're suggesting someone also not use the Monster Manual, three entire PC classes, and at least three subclasses of the remaining classes.

You can do that. The system allows for it. You can totally play low fantasy in D&D, as long as you don't play D&D. That's such a fantastic argument. It's not even the first time someone made it. I remember back in the '90s, these guys had this game about vampires. Then they came out and said, "You know what would be a great idea? What if we took this game about vampires and got rid of all the vampires?" And it worked! People still buy that vampire game to play it with no vampires.

I'm really surprised that people still buy that and haven't made OSR-style replacements. Vampires are a public domain concept and there's no reason you can't just make your own urban fantasy games about playing them.

I personally would love an urban fantasy game where you could play vampires, shifters, wizards, ghosts, angels, dragons, mummies, etc. who go on wacky adventures a la What We Do In The Shadows. You could introduce a flashback mechanic where characters remember living through various historical eras a la Highlander: The Series, allowing you to invent pretentious lore and make it personally relevant to the PCs.

Quote from: Omega on May 11, 2024, 12:53:46 AMBut then you get the occasional idiot there stating things like "D&D can not handle low fantasy!" and other bits of negative wisdom.

Quote from: Corolinth on May 12, 2024, 09:26:33 AM

Quote from: Omega on May 12, 2024, 05:26:03 AM

Quote from: Corolinth on May 11, 2024, 08:28:24 AM3.X is particularly shite at handling low fantasy. 5E can do it fairly well, but looking at all of the classes and races that have some kind of spellcasting or magical abilities, one does get the impression that 5E is not the system to use for low fantasy.

They say that because apparently they can not imagine restricting race and class selection. And toning down monsters or even going no monsters at all. Just people and animals.

Most people don't buy a game and then think it would be a great idea to cut out 90% of it.

It's one thing to say, "5E went off the rails with Tasha's," or something like that. Pick your favorite 5E book that you think is trash, it doesn't matter. You're suggesting someone also not use the Monster Manual, three entire PC classes, and at least three subclasses of the remaining classes.

You can do that. The system allows for it. You can totally play low fantasy in D&D, as long as you don't play D&D. That's such a fantastic argument. It's not even the first time someone made it. I remember back in the '90s, these guys had this game about vampires. Then they came out and said, "You know what would be a great idea? What if we took this game about vampires and got rid of all the vampires?" And it worked! People still buy that vampire game to play it with no vampires.

This ends up being one of those borderline useless conversations, because no one can agree on what the definition of "low fantasy" is. Wikipedia defines it as "a subgenre of fantasy fiction in which magical events intrude on an otherwise-normal world". D&D could do that, though I think it's worth noting that none of the official D&D settings match that definition. Anyway, I don't think that's what most people mean when they use the term.

It's probably more profitable to talk about "low vs. high magic" rather than "low vs. high fantasy", since that's at least a little closer to being quantifiable. What I don't understand is how people can argue that D&D was ever meant to be a "low magic" game. In every edition of the game as written, magic is 1) extremely useful, 2) readily available to the players at minimal cost, and 3) assumed in the character and game progression. Of course the game has gotten more "high magic" as the editions have gone on, but that's always been there. You can homebrew it out, but it takes a substantial re-write of the game, at least on the level of something like Lion & Dragon.

Personally, I think that if you're going to go to all that trouble to strip magic out of D&D, you might as well just use a system that was less reliant on magic to begin with, but that's a matter of taste. Some people clearly like the underlying D&D system enough to make the effort worthwhile.

This reminds me of an odd sort of conversation I have seen and been involved in many time over the years.  I have seen it it in every venue I have been a part of where ttrpgs are discussed but it as most common at TBP and usually involved whatever the current darling was.

Someone will post and ask for a system to do some specific thing.  What's a good system for gritty, low-powered fantasy.

Several people would pop up to suggest the current darling no matter how poorly suited it was to what the person wanted to do.  "Have you considered Exalted?" as a suggestion for everything was so common that it became a meme.  I want to do a gritty spy thriller set during the Col War.  Have you considered Exalted?  That was a real suggestion.

Someone with an ounce of sense chimes in to say that the darling isn't really made to do what the OP wants and suggest something else.  Maybe WFRP for that gritty fantasy game or maybe an OSR title.

People start defending the nonsensical suggestion.  Exalted can totally do low-powered fantasy/gritty cold war spies/fucking everything.  Usually, what they say if self-evidentially true.  That's not what Exalted is written to do.  It says so right in the fucking book. 

After a bit of discussion, it comes out that the person saying that X game can totally do Y thing is either ignoring great chunks of the game or has house ruled it to the point where it is only nominally the same game.  Exalted works for low-powered fantasy if you take the basic resolution mechanic and the scant rules for playing mortals and discard the entire rest of the game.  In other words, if you don't actually play Exalted.  People seem to think that this is actually a sensible suggestion instead of using a system that was actually made to do that.  Every time I mention this, someone will pop up to make a case for why suggesting Exalted for a gritty cold war spy thriller totally makes sense and isn't an incredibly idiotic suggestion.  I could use the core resolution mechanic and build my own spy game around it.  On the other hand, I could not be an idiot and stupidly waste my time doing that when there are several games designed to do what I want to do. 

I'm clipping off most of the text to save space. I fucking hate walls of nested quoted text.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on May 12, 2024, 09:45:32 AMI'm really surprised that people still buy that and haven't made OSR-style replacements. Vampires are a public domain concept and there's no reason you can't just make your own urban fantasy games about playing them.

I'm not surprised at all.

The OSR community doesn't want to play Vampire, they want to play B/X and 1E. In early TSR era D&D, you didn't get to be a vampire. That's not how it was done. Meanwhile, all of the WoD players are playing WoD because they don't like D&D. They don't want to roll a d20. They don't want to have classes. They're never going to play an OSR Vampire game.

Of course there's no OSR replacement for Vampire. It's a waste of everybody's time.

Quote from: ForgottenF on May 12, 2024, 10:53:45 AMPersonally, I think that if you're going to go to all that trouble to strip magic out of D&D, you might as well just use a system that was less reliant on magic to begin with, but that's a matter of taste. Some people clearly like the underlying D&D system enough to make the effort worthwhile.

I think they argue that because if you look at the 1E AD&D books, Gary seems to have a huge hate-on for spellcasting classes. There is an undercurrent of, "Magic-users and clerics are NPCs only," that flows through the books. Did Gary actually want magic to be NPC-only? I don't think it was deliberate. I think it was subconscious. In the books and movies that inspired D&D, the wizard was always the Bad Guy. Nevertheless, there is certainly a subset of players who took this and ran with it, and they're always looking for an excuse to have a world where none of the PCs have magic.

It usually goes something like:

1) Wizards are overpowered
2) I don't want to allow wizards
3) Low fantasy gives me an excuse to ban wizards
4) Now my wizard villain is super scary

As for why they don't play a different game, most people just want to play whatever version of D&D they started with.

Quote from: Corolinth on May 12, 2024, 11:47:47 AMI'm clipping off most of the text to save space. I fucking hate walls of nested quoted text.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on May 12, 2024, 09:45:32 AMI'm really surprised that people still buy that and haven't made OSR-style replacements. Vampires are a public domain concept and there's no reason you can't just make your own urban fantasy games about playing them.

I'm not surprised at all.

The OSR community doesn't want to play Vampire, they want to play B/X and 1E. In early TSR era D&D, you didn't get to be a vampire. That's not how it was done. Meanwhile, all of the WoD players are playing WoD because they don't like D&D. They don't want to roll a d20. They don't want to have classes. They're never going to play an OSR Vampire game.

Of course there's no OSR replacement for Vampire. It's a waste of everybody's time.

I mean in the sense of "why has nobody made a replacement game like how One Page Rules is replacing Games Workshop?" Not literally using D&D rules.

There's absolutely no reason to touch Paradox's dumpster fire games. WoD is unplayable in every edition and you only buy the books to read the garbage lore, which was nuked in 5e anyway. CoD is unplayable because of course it is, plus it's canceled and you'll be bullied by the WoD cultists if you mention you like it in public.

I don't want to deal with that bullshit. I have no attachment to their garbage lore and I want rules that are actually functional.

That's fine, but it doesn't change the facts on the ground. As a general rule, OSR people aren't into Vampire, and aren't interested in recreating Vampire. The people who are into Vampire are still doing Vampire.

If there was going to be a replacement game that didn't use nu-WW's nu-WoD rules, it would probably be fueled by the end times, and you still wouldn't want to play it.

Quote from: Corolinth on May 12, 2024, 04:51:45 PMThat's fine, but it doesn't change the facts on the ground. As a general rule, OSR people aren't into Vampire, and aren't interested in recreating Vampire. The people who are into Vampire are still doing Vampire.

If there was going to be a replacement game that didn't use nu-WW's nu-WoD rules, it would probably be fueled by the end times, and you still wouldn't want to play it.

I just want urban fantasy. No end times bullshit, no leftoid bullshit, no failed novelists tricking me into reading their shitty microfiction, no faux-gamer cultists worshiping said shitty microfiction, none of that. Is there really nobody alive who would be interested in an actual game, intended to be played, that features magical creatures living on a modernish Earth?

Quote from: SHARK on May 08, 2024, 03:30:29 PMUltimately, these morons need to be screamed at, shamed, and jacked hard. They need to be driven into the sewer, or the basement, or whatever crag they crawled out of, and forced back there. They need to be mocked, and savagely reminded that they are the evil, psychotic, mommy-slave, and they are not welcome. THEY need to stay in the margins and shadows, and leave everyone else alone.

I realize some degree of gatekeeping is necessary, but going full cancel culture is ultimately counterproductive. The entire problem are people trying to make these decisions for us after all. So expose them for who they are, and let everyone else decide their response.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on May 12, 2024, 09:45:32 AMYou could introduce a flashback mechanic where characters remember living through various historical eras a la Highlander: The Series, allowing you to invent pretentious lore and make it personally relevant to the PCs.

Honestly surprised this hasn't already happened.

Quote from: Corolinth on May 12, 2024, 09:26:33 AMMost people don't buy a game and then think it would be a great idea to cut out 90% of it.

And yet arguably most do exactly that.

Quote from: yosemitemike on May 12, 2024, 11:09:06 AMAfter a bit of discussion, it comes out that the person saying that X game can totally do Y thing is either ignoring great chunks of the game or has house ruled it to the point where it is only nominally the same game.  Exalted works for low-powered fantasy if you take the basic resolution mechanic and the scant rules for playing mortals and discard the entire rest of the game.  In other words, if you don't actually play Exalted.  People seem to think that this is actually a sensible suggestion instead of using a system that was actually made to do that.  Every time I mention this, someone will pop up to make a case for why suggesting Exalted for a gritty cold war spy thriller totally makes sense and isn't an incredibly idiotic suggestion.  I could use the core resolution mechanic and build my own spy game around it.  On the other hand, I could not be an idiot and stupidly waste my time doing that when there are several games designed to do what I want to do.

RPGs are ultimately a collection of procedures under a single umbrella, and so arguing when such ceases to be a particular game is rather pointless. That said this is easily the most frustrating thing I encounter as a game designer, as you cannot test your game if they aren't playing the one you designed, and if they've been exposed to other RPGs previously then they're likely playing that one by proxy anyway.

Quote from: yosemitemike on May 12, 2024, 11:09:06 AMAfter a bit of discussion, it comes out that the person saying that X game can totally do Y thing is either ignoring great chunks of the game or has house ruled it to the point where it is only nominally the same game.  Exalted works for low-powered fantasy if you take the basic resolution mechanic and the scant rules for playing mortals and discard the entire rest of the game.  In other words, if you don't actually play Exalted.  People seem to think that this is actually a sensible suggestion instead of using a system that was actually made to do that.  Every time I mention this, someone will pop up to make a case for why suggesting Exalted for a gritty cold war spy thriller totally makes sense and isn't an incredibly idiotic suggestion.  I could use the core resolution mechanic and build my own spy game around it.  On the other hand, I could not be an idiot and stupidly waste my time doing that when there are several games designed to do what I want to do. 

If you dig a little deeper, what inevitably emerges is that the person claiming X can do Y is already ignoring many of the rules and actively fudging the ones used.  Of course if you do that, you can use almost any system to run almost anything.  I mean, Paranoia for a Three Musketeers game probably doesn't work, because the fluff is too disjointed.  But as long as the fluff is remotely in the vicinity and can be twisted all out of recognition, then you can do it.  Because you aren't really playing X, but some patina of X.

This trend is part of what I mean when I sometimes mention that I'd run Star Wars as a parody game using Toon rules.  Because it's the same kind of disjointed nonsense, while at the same time as a parody I could certainly do it. (And most of why I couldn't run it as a serious game is that I can no longer take anything in the Star Wars universe even remotely in the spirit intended, not because of any deficit in the Toon rules for pulling off that gambit.)

Not coincidentally, this is also why some game "designers" aren't.  Not in the sense of Gygax avoiding the AD&D rules, but in the sense of the so called designer not even using the rules they are purportedly running, whatever those might be.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan on May 12, 2024, 06:40:08 PM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on May 12, 2024, 09:45:32 AMYou could introduce a flashback mechanic where characters remember living through various historical eras a la Highlander: The Series, allowing you to invent pretentious lore and make it personally relevant to the PCs.

Honestly surprised this hasn't already happened.

There's an obscure dead French ttrpg that did it a couple decades ago. It didn't get any traction because this hobby is dominated by an obscene first mover advantage.

I am so exasperated with the sheer fucking stupidity of this hobby.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell on May 12, 2024, 06:58:08 PM

Quote from: yosemitemike on May 12, 2024, 11:09:06 AMAfter a bit of discussion, it comes out that the person saying that X game can totally do Y thing is either ignoring great chunks of the game or has house ruled it to the point where it is only nominally the same game.  Exalted works for low-powered fantasy if you take the basic resolution mechanic and the scant rules for playing mortals and discard the entire rest of the game.  In other words, if you don't actually play Exalted.  People seem to think that this is actually a sensible suggestion instead of using a system that was actually made to do that.  Every time I mention this, someone will pop up to make a case for why suggesting Exalted for a gritty cold war spy thriller totally makes sense and isn't an incredibly idiotic suggestion.  I could use the core resolution mechanic and build my own spy game around it.  On the other hand, I could not be an idiot and stupidly waste my time doing that when there are several games designed to do what I want to do. 

If you dig a little deeper, what inevitably emerges is that the person claiming X can do Y is already ignoring many of the rules and actively fudging the ones used.  Of course if you do that, you can use almost any system to run almost anything.  I mean, Paranoia for a Three Musketeers game probably doesn't work, because the fluff is too disjointed.  But as long as the fluff is remotely in the vicinity and can be twisted all out of recognition, then you can do it.  Because you aren't really playing X, but some patina of X.

This trend is part of what I mean when I sometimes mention that I'd run Star Wars as a parody game using Toon rules.  Because it's the same kind of disjointed nonsense, while at the same time as a parody I could certainly do it. (And most of why I couldn't run it as a serious game is that I can no longer take anything in the Star Wars universe even remotely in the spirit intended, not because of any deficit in the Toon rules for pulling off that gambit.)

Not coincidentally, this is also why some game "designers" aren't.  Not in the sense of Gygax avoiding the AD&D rules, but in the sense of the so called designer not even using the rules they are purportedly running, whatever those might be.

This explains so much of the stupidity in this hobby and is a key reason why I keep giving up on my ideas to make my own. If most "gamers" ignore the rules anyway or buy the books to read shitty microfiction instead of playing, then why should I spend any effort to write functional games or coherent settings? They're brand loyalty cultists who won't buy my work anyway.

A flashback system was also essential to Fireborn, only there the flashbacks were to an ancient time where the PCs play dragons. I've long thought about trying to do a Fireborn game using a different system, but I've just never found the time. It's an intriguing game but the combo mechanics used for combat are way too involved for most of the people I play with.

Quote from: yosemitemike on May 12, 2024, 11:09:06 AMThis reminds me of an odd sort of conversation I have seen and been involved in many time over the years.  I have seen it it in every venue I have been a part of where ttrpgs are discussed but it as most common at TBP and usually involved whatever the current darling was.

Someone will post and ask for a system to do some specific thing.  What's a good system for gritty, low-powered fantasy.

Several people would pop up to suggest the current darling no matter how poorly suited it was to what the person wanted to do.  "Have you considered Exalted?" as a suggestion for everything was so common that it became a meme.  I want to do a gritty spy thriller set during the Col War.  Have you considered Exalted?  That was a real suggestion.

Someone with an ounce of sense chimes in to say that the darling isn't really made to do what the OP wants and suggest something else.  Maybe WFRP for that gritty fantasy game or maybe an OSR title.

People start defending the nonsensical suggestion.  Exalted can totally do low-powered fantasy/gritty cold war spies/fucking everything.  Usually, what they say if self-evidentially true.  That's not what Exalted is written to do.  It says so right in the fucking book. 

After a bit of discussion, it comes out that the person saying that X game can totally do Y thing is either ignoring great chunks of the game or has house ruled it to the point where it is only nominally the same game.  Exalted works for low-powered fantasy if you take the basic resolution mechanic and the scant rules for playing mortals and discard the entire rest of the game.  In other words, if you don't actually play Exalted.  People seem to think that this is actually a sensible suggestion instead of using a system that was actually made to do that.  Every time I mention this, someone will pop up to make a case for why suggesting Exalted for a gritty cold war spy thriller totally makes sense and isn't an incredibly idiotic suggestion.  I could use the core resolution mechanic and build my own spy game around it.  On the other hand, I could not be an idiot and stupidly waste my time doing that when there are several games designed to do what I want to do. 

So no one can play gurps?

Quote from: yosemitemike on May 12, 2024, 11:09:06 AMThis reminds me of an odd sort of conversation I have seen and been involved in many time over the years.  I have seen it it in every venue I have been a part of where ttrpgs are discussed but it as most common at TBP and usually involved whatever the current darling was.

Someone will post and ask for a system to do some specific thing.  What's a good system for gritty, low-powered fantasy.

Several people would pop up to suggest the current darling no matter how poorly suited it was to what the person wanted to do.  "Have you considered Exalted?" as a suggestion for everything was so common that it became a meme.  I want to do a gritty spy thriller set during the Col War.  Have you considered Exalted?  That was a real suggestion.

Someone with an ounce of sense chimes in to say that the darling isn't really made to do what the OP wants and suggest something else.  Maybe WFRP for that gritty fantasy game or maybe an OSR title.

People start defending the nonsensical suggestion.  Exalted can totally do low-powered fantasy/gritty cold war spies/fucking everything.  Usually, what they say if self-evidentially true.  That's not what Exalted is written to do.  It says so right in the fucking book. 

After a bit of discussion, it comes out that the person saying that X game can totally do Y thing is either ignoring great chunks of the game or has house ruled it to the point where it is only nominally the same game.  Exalted works for low-powered fantasy if you take the basic resolution mechanic and the scant rules for playing mortals and discard the entire rest of the game.  In other words, if you don't actually play Exalted.  People seem to think that this is actually a sensible suggestion instead of using a system that was actually made to do that.  Every time I mention this, someone will pop up to make a case for why suggesting Exalted for a gritty cold war spy thriller totally makes sense and isn't an incredibly idiotic suggestion.  I could use the core resolution mechanic and build my own spy game around it.  On the other hand, I could not be an idiot and stupidly waste my time doing that when there are several games designed to do what I want to do. 

When I see this sort of things happen I usually come to one of two different conclusions, which one depends on what faith in the human species I have at the moment:

• The guy making the suggestion is a fucking idiot devoid of even basic reading comprehension and/or a drooling fanboy of some kind
• The guy making the suggestion directly or indirectly works for the company that makes the suggested game and the suggestion itself comes as part of a marketing campaign

On rare occasions both points are true at the same time.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on May 12, 2024, 01:19:25 PMI mean in the sense of "why has nobody made a replacement game like how One Page Rules is replacing Games Workshop?" Not literally using D&D rules.

They have.  There are a shitload of these that have come out.  The Everlasting is one of the better known examples but there are lots more.  None of them have ever really gotten much traction.  Most of them, like After Sundown, came out and then sank without a trace and were forgotten.   

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on May 12, 2024, 05:00:24 PM

Quote from: Corolinth on May 12, 2024, 04:51:45 PMThat's fine, but it doesn't change the facts on the ground. As a general rule, OSR people aren't into Vampire, and aren't interested in recreating Vampire. The people who are into Vampire are still doing Vampire.

If there was going to be a replacement game that didn't use nu-WW's nu-WoD rules, it would probably be fueled by the end times, and you still wouldn't want to play it.

I just want urban fantasy. No end times bullshit, no leftoid bullshit, no failed novelists tricking me into reading their shitty microfiction, no faux-gamer cultists worshiping said shitty microfiction, none of that. Is there really nobody alive who would be interested in an actual game, intended to be played, that features magical creatures living on a modernish Earth?

You want Sigil & Shadow from Osprey Publishing.

Quote from: yosemitemike on May 13, 2024, 03:52:38 AM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on May 12, 2024, 01:19:25 PMI mean in the sense of "why has nobody made a replacement game like how One Page Rules is replacing Games Workshop?" Not literally using D&D rules.

They have.  There are a shitload of these that have come out.  The Everlasting is one of the better known examples but there are lots more.  None of them have ever really gotten much traction.  Most of them, like After Sundown, came out and then sank without a trace and were forgotten.   

I heard from a guy who was trying to a do a 2nd edition of everlasting, but the copyright owner is apparently dead and his family cannot be found. So the IP is in copyright limbo.

WitchCraft is in the same boat because the owner has severe health problems.

Right now is probably the perfect time to make an urban fantasy game because Paradox has alienated basically everyone who bought their IPs. But nobody's trying. The fanboys would rather buy the old dead editions on drivethru than make their own. I actually asked some CoD fans if they'd like me to write a spiritual successor to their canceled darling and they just told me to fuck off.

I really don't like interacting with these people. I don't think they even play the actual rules, they just like reading lore and imagining what it would be like to play.

I want urban fantasy written for normal people, not them.

Quote from: NotFromAroundHere on May 13, 2024, 04:05:18 AM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on May 12, 2024, 05:00:24 PM

Quote from: Corolinth on May 12, 2024, 04:51:45 PMThat's fine, but it doesn't change the facts on the ground. As a general rule, OSR people aren't into Vampire, and aren't interested in recreating Vampire. The people who are into Vampire are still doing Vampire.

If there was going to be a replacement game that didn't use nu-WW's nu-WoD rules, it would probably be fueled by the end times, and you still wouldn't want to play it.

I just want urban fantasy. No end times bullshit, no leftoid bullshit, no failed novelists tricking me into reading their shitty microfiction, no faux-gamer cultists worshiping said shitty microfiction, none of that. Is there really nobody alive who would be interested in an actual game, intended to be played, that features magical creatures living on a modernish Earth?

You want Sigil & Shadow from Osprey Publishing.

Hmm... I've checked that out, but it still has the emogoth aesthetic that turned me off from WoD/CoD. I'm not an angsty teenager anymore.

I'm basically looking for a superhero/supervillain game with halloween monsters. Not horror, faux horror, or whatever the fuck personal horror is. D&D Modern or something.

At this point I'm just writing prose fiction to get my thoughts out. Original fiction doesn't get any views on ao3 unless you add porn scenes, unfortunately. I'm interested in the philosophical, occult and ethical implications, so I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place. All the options are garbage

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on May 13, 2024, 08:50:58 AMI want urban fantasy written for normal people, not them.

People are still coming out with them but they are mostly PbtA games like Urban Shadows or Undying. 

Quote from: Brand55 on May 12, 2024, 10:34:00 PMA flashback system was also essential to Fireborn, only there the flashbacks were to an ancient time where the PCs play dragons. I've long thought about trying to do a Fireborn game using a different system, but I've just never found the time. It's an intriguing game but the combo mechanics used for combat are way too involved for most of the people I play with.

Fireborn looks really interesting, so I'm disappointed that it died. Aside from FantasyCraft, there's really no game that actually lets you play a dragon.

Urban Shadows 1e apparently had a dragon playbook, but I cannot find it in the online store or in the 2e quickstart.

Quote from: yosemitemike on May 13, 2024, 09:15:51 AM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on May 13, 2024, 08:50:58 AMI want urban fantasy written for normal people, not them.

People are still coming out with them but they are mostly PbtA games like Urban Shadows or Undying. 

Urban Shadows looks the most interesting to me out of the options with communities still behind them. It's actually written to be a real game and doesn't restrict itself to dogmatic lore, so I've found the community very welcoming and open-minded. Not only that, but they hate the Storyteller games too!

However... the gameplay is very improv. I'm not asking for another bloated mess of bad lore, but I do like setting books, splat books, monster manuals and that sort of thing. I'd think Urban Shadows would lend itself to that like D&D does, but there's only a handful of books for the first edition and the second edition has been in development hell for years. It's not a deal breaker, but it is still disappointing.

The writers are very liberal urbanites and it shows in their writing. There's a sidebar in the quickstart that states how pro-minority they are, that all cities were created by minorities, and that the magical creatures are all metaphors for minority groups. (The playbooks are not actually written to be 1:1 metaphors btw. This isn't Monsterhearts.)

I'm not comfortable with associating vampires with gay people. It just reeks of blood libel.

I would guess that, since WoD/CoD is mostly moribund now, people don't have the motivation to publish that WoD Heartbreaker that they did when it was big.  WoD-alikes just aren't really the thing any more.  A company called Fen Orc makes a series of Black Hack hacks along these lines but I don't know much about them.  They have some silver and electrum sellers so they have gotten some traction anyway.

Quote from: yosemitemike on May 13, 2024, 10:59:31 AMI would guess that, since WoD/CoD is mostly moribund now, people don't have the motivation to publish that WoD Heartbreaker that they did when it was big.  WoD-alikes just aren't really the thing any more.  A company called Fen Orc makes a series of Black Hack hacks along these lines but I don't know much about them.  They have some silver and electrum sellers so they have gotten some traction anyway.

I'm not looking for a heartbreaker, I'm looking for games in the urban fantasy genre. I don't actually like WoD/CoD because they're bad microfiction pretending to be games, which the fans don't actually play anyway.

Urban fantasy is still a thriving literary genre. It's oversaturated. I'm really surprised there's zero spillover into ttrpgs.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on May 13, 2024, 11:34:57 AM

Quote from: yosemitemike on May 13, 2024, 10:59:31 AMI would guess that, since WoD/CoD is mostly moribund now, people don't have the motivation to publish that WoD Heartbreaker that they did when it was big.  WoD-alikes just aren't really the thing any more.  A company called Fen Orc makes a series of Black Hack hacks along these lines but I don't know much about them.  They have some silver and electrum sellers so they have gotten some traction anyway.

I'm not looking for a heartbreaker, I'm looking for games in the urban fantasy genre. I don't actually like WoD/CoD because they're bad microfiction pretending to be games, which the fans don't actually play anyway.

Urban fantasy is still a thriving literary genre. It's oversaturated. I'm really surprised there's zero spillover into ttrpgs.

Because they don't want to play TTRPGs, they want to write fanfiction about vampires and werewolves. They want melodrama. They want powered by the apocalypse or something like that. Repeating the term "microfiction" over and over again on an OSR forum doesn't change that. They want to imagine themselves writing microfiction that everyone else at the table gushes over. Their fantasy isn't being a vampire and doing vampire things in 21st century London, their fantasy is being that gal who started writing bad Twilight fanfiction and ended up with a movie deal for softcore BDSM pornography that every middle-aged white woman in North America saw in the theater, but pretends not to like in public.

You're the one who's different.

Well, I've already given my pitch a few times, so no point in repeating that.

What I will say new is I think it's a mistake to think anything the WoD/CoD fans want is even remotely for normal people.

Normal people read Dresdan Files, Anita Blake, Monster Hunter International and watch stuff like Vampire Dairies, Being Human, Magicians or the like... basically, the supernatural is mostly just a way to crank up the ordinary drama of another genre.

The idea that Urban Fantasy is a single genre is the biggest obstacle to doing it well. The vampire you want for a detective thriller and the one you want for a teen romance are completely different beasts.

WoD vampires (and all their other splats) exist in the genre of Marxist social commentary (and lost its dark satirical edge once that started getting in the way of The Message) and only appealed to the normals to the extent it maintained its satire.

These days the only people still actively playing the new stuff are there for the ideological message first and a game second. You can't recruit them to a different system because they aren't there for the system.

Those playing the older stuff are the same types who are still using their AD&D 1e and Rules Compendiums books. You can't recruit them for the same reason you can't get an OSR to play 4E.

Best bet to go after normies is either license an existing series labeled Urban Fantasy -or- pick a genre with a modern setting (spy, crime, procedural, action) that works well for RPGs in general, figure out how to "supernatural it up" and market that to people who've never touched WoD/CoD before (so probably newish players whose experience is mostly 5e).

Yeah.

At this point I'm more inclined to just give up on ttrpgs. The market is just not a growth sector. Even D&D is dying and it looks like nobody else is picking up the slack.

To be fair, there are a lot of people picking up the slack for D&D, but you don't hear about them for the same reason you don't hear about all the small time authors writing the next great original novel... until they actually get discovered spending money on a lot of promotion just isn't worth the cost.

Everything has its seasons and D&D/rpgs have had a rather extended summer. I also feel a bit that the seasonal conditions for D&D and Urban Fantasy are a bit out of phase in terms of their seasons in the same way that the public seems more drawn to sci-fi when the future looks bright, and towards heroic fantasy when the future looks more uncertain.

Urban Fantasy, the idea that there is a secret world of magic and that threatens the normal one most thrives when the audience feels safe enough in their lives to imagine danger in the shadows (it's no accident the genre exploded in the 90's) and the pretend of being a victim.

I don't think it's an accident either that D&D's heydays line up with periods of perceived threat (cold war tensions + the Carter economy, 9/11, covid+malaise+invasion) and D&D heroes often being played as those with the power and skill to kick down the doors of the enemy.

D&D is only faltering now because those in charge want to bend it away from the seasonal concerns it naturally caters to and make it into propaganda declaring seeking respite from the worries of the season to be hate speech.

It's why my default approach for something in the Urban Fantasy adjacent genre these days would be 'Hunters of The Damned'... exceptional heroes finding and kicking in the doors of enemies that live in the shadows and prey upon ordinary folks and corrupt those in authority.

"Play the monster" is appealing when times are easy. "Stop the monsters" is the zeitgeist of the day.

Yeah, I've noticed that monster hunting is in vogue. Monster of the Week, Night's Black Agents, Stokerverse, Chill... Call of Cthulhu dominates 99% of the genre tho so they can only do so much.

The seasonal zeitgeist makes it really frustrating because I constantly feel like I got left behind. Like, There's been precisely zero conspiracy thriller rpgs released in the last decade to my knowledge, which is weird because cryptids are more popular than they've ever been, the government has publicly acknowledged UFOs, the WEF is openly trying to conquer Earth, Resident Alien is airing on Syfy, and the X-Files is getting a reboot.

With urban fantasy I'm more interested in the fantasy part, like Harry Potter. Not horror or evil conspiracies or post-modern neo-marxist emogoth bullshit. D&D modern, urban arcana, basically. I'm completely burnt out on medieval fantasy. Moving it from Middle Earth to Modern Earth feels like the only way to keep my eyes from glazing over. I'm so unhappy that WotC cancelled d20 Modern because they were the only publisher with the clout to market it.

Quote from: yosemitemike on May 13, 2024, 10:59:31 AMI would guess that, since WoD/CoD is mostly moribund now, people don't have the motivation to publish that WoD Heartbreaker that they did when it was big.

All except #OnyxPath themselves, who are working on a new line called #CurseBorne.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on May 13, 2024, 07:14:33 PMThere's been precisely zero conspiracy thriller rpgs released in the last decade to my knowledge, which is weird because cryptids are more popular than they've ever been, the government has publicly acknowledged UFOs, the WEF is openly trying to conquer Earth, Resident Alien is airing on Syfy, and the X-Files is getting a reboot.

That's entirely due to the industry being dominated by left wing ideologues who view any 'conspiracy theories' as an alt-right thing despite having plenty of their own.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan on May 14, 2024, 03:23:35 AM

Quote from: yosemitemike on May 13, 2024, 10:59:31 AMI would guess that, since WoD/CoD is mostly moribund now, people don't have the motivation to publish that WoD Heartbreaker that they did when it was big.

All except #OnyxPath themselves, who are working on a new line called #CurseBorne.

They still suck at actual game design tho and none of the teasers explain what the fuck curseborn is. I'll take Urban Shadows over that shit any day of the week.

Quote

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on May 13, 2024, 07:14:33 PMThere's been precisely zero conspiracy thriller rpgs released in the last decade to my knowledge, which is weird because cryptids are more popular than they've ever been, the government has publicly acknowledged UFOs, the WEF is openly trying to conquer Earth, Resident Alien is airing on Syfy, and the X-Files is getting a reboot.

That's entirely due to the industry being dominated by left wing ideologues who view any 'conspiracy theories' as an alt-right thing despite having plenty of their own.

The old conspiracy theories were political for their day (there's a documentary book called Necronomicon is something that documents the 60s–90s conspiracy craze and it's wild!), but now come across as quaint and inoffensive for the most part. Roswell grays, Satanic cults, New World Order, cryptids, psychic powers...

I miss that

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on May 13, 2024, 11:34:57 AM

Quote from: yosemitemike on May 13, 2024, 10:59:31 AMI would guess that, since WoD/CoD is mostly moribund now, people don't have the motivation to publish that WoD Heartbreaker that they did when it was big.  WoD-alikes just aren't really the thing any more.  A company called Fen Orc makes a series of Black Hack hacks along these lines but I don't know much about them.  They have some silver and electrum sellers so they have gotten some traction anyway.

I'm not looking for a heartbreaker, I'm looking for games in the urban fantasy genre. I don't actually like WoD/CoD because they're bad microfiction pretending to be games, which the fans don't actually play anyway.

Urban fantasy is still a thriving literary genre. It's oversaturated. I'm really surprised there's zero spillover into ttrpgs.

Do you mean that the most recent versions of WoD games don't get play, or that the old WoD games don't get played much now? I might accept either of those, but in the 90s and perhaps a little after that, the original WoD games were heavily played in several areas I lived.

Quote from: HappyDaze on May 14, 2024, 11:02:37 AM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on May 13, 2024, 11:34:57 AM

Quote from: yosemitemike on May 13, 2024, 10:59:31 AMI would guess that, since WoD/CoD is mostly moribund now, people don't have the motivation to publish that WoD Heartbreaker that they did when it was big.  WoD-alikes just aren't really the thing any more.  A company called Fen Orc makes a series of Black Hack hacks along these lines but I don't know much about them.  They have some silver and electrum sellers so they have gotten some traction anyway.

I'm not looking for a heartbreaker, I'm looking for games in the urban fantasy genre. I don't actually like WoD/CoD because they're bad microfiction pretending to be games, which the fans don't actually play anyway.

Urban fantasy is still a thriving literary genre. It's oversaturated. I'm really surprised there's zero spillover into ttrpgs.

Do you mean that the most recent versions of WoD games don't get play, or that the old WoD games don't get played much now? I might accept either of those, but in the 90s and perhaps a little after that, the original WoD games were heavily played in several areas I lived.

Check out Frank Trollman's Anatomy of Failed Design series to see what I mean. He writes several articles where he explains that the rules are unplayable as written and the groups who "played" ignored the rules anyway in favor of fiat or whatever.

This even extended to the CoD groups. They used fiat rather than even reading the rules. This notably resulted in things like groups not knowing basic facts about CoD vamps, like that they can identify other vamps on sight. I vaguely remember arguing with bad faith critics about it in the 2000s.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on May 14, 2024, 12:54:50 PM

Quote from: HappyDaze on May 14, 2024, 11:02:37 AM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on May 13, 2024, 11:34:57 AM

Quote from: yosemitemike on May 13, 2024, 10:59:31 AMI would guess that, since WoD/CoD is mostly moribund now, people don't have the motivation to publish that WoD Heartbreaker that they did when it was big.  WoD-alikes just aren't really the thing any more.  A company called Fen Orc makes a series of Black Hack hacks along these lines but I don't know much about them.  They have some silver and electrum sellers so they have gotten some traction anyway.

I'm not looking for a heartbreaker, I'm looking for games in the urban fantasy genre. I don't actually like WoD/CoD because they're bad microfiction pretending to be games, which the fans don't actually play anyway.

Urban fantasy is still a thriving literary genre. It's oversaturated. I'm really surprised there's zero spillover into ttrpgs.

Do you mean that the most recent versions of WoD games don't get play, or that the old WoD games don't get played much now? I might accept either of those, but in the 90s and perhaps a little after that, the original WoD games were heavily played in several areas I lived.

Check out Frank Trollman's Anatomy of Failed Design series to see what I mean. He writes several articles where he explains that the rules are unplayable as written and the groups who "played" ignored the rules anyway in favor of fiat or whatever.

This even extended to the CoD groups. They used fiat rather than even reading the rules. This notably resulted in things like groups not knowing basic facts about CoD vamps, like that they can identify other vamps on sight. I vaguely remember arguing with bad faith critics about it in the 2000s.

I can provide a bit of a testimonial on that, since I was a teenager when the whole Goth-Techno Vampire Kung Fu peaked in the early 00s. Everybody I know who liked roleplaying bought the VTM books. Everybody read them. Everybody was very excited about the possibilities. We probably "started" 50 VTM/Werewolf campaigns, but I don't think we ever strung more than two consecutive sessions together, and there was a distinct sense of no one really "getting" how the rules were supposed to work.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on May 14, 2024, 12:54:50 PMCheck out Frank Trollman's Anatomy of Failed Design series to see what I mean. He writes several articles where he explains that the rules are unplayable as written and the groups who "played" ignored the rules anyway in favor of fiat or whatever.

This even extended to the CoD groups. They used fiat rather than even reading the rules. This notably resulted in things like groups not knowing basic facts about CoD vamps, like that they can identify other vamps on sight. I vaguely remember arguing with bad faith critics about it in the 2000s.

I gave up trying to run WoD by the rules in the book after a handful of sessions.  I spent a lot of the 90s hand-waving it. I ran 6 or 7 campaigns of various flavors of WoD.  I never actually ran it in the sense of using the rules as written.

I played in a kitchen sink CoD campaign for a while.  I think I'm the only one who actually read any of the rules.  The person playing the vampire and the GM were both surprised to hear that celerity doesn't give extra actions in this version.  I'm not sure how they could be surprised by this except that they just didn't look at the rules for the discipline at all and just assumed it worked like it had in Masquerade.

Quote from: yosemitemike on May 16, 2024, 05:49:10 AMI gave up trying to run WoD by the rules in the book after a handful of sessions.  I spent a lot of the 90s hand-waving it. I ran 6 or 7 campaigns of various flavors of WoD.  I never actually ran it in the sense of using the rules as written.

What part was the problem? I DMed it for a session and played a session. Seemed like an actually fairly simple system? Aberrant is what I DMed the most with a brief foray into Aeon/Trinity.

On all honesty the system is so simple I suspect that is why they pad so much of it out with prose pretending to be worldbuilding.

The chargen instructions though for several were a mess. It seemed like the real instructions were on one page that didnt even look like instructions. Least the editions I had.

But part for the course with lazy WW writers.

Quote from: Omega on May 16, 2024, 05:57:49 AMWhat part was the problem? I DMed it for a session and played a session. Seemed like an actually fairly simple system?

I suppose.  If you ignored most of the subsystems which was most of the game.  Every storyteller game I have run, which is 8-9 of them now, was a pile of disjointed subsystems that didn't really fit together.  I would guess that your GM ignored most of that which was most of the actual rules.  The core resolution mechanic was a but clunky but it worked.  The problem was the rest of it.

All my stuff except for Werewolf:Wild West are in storage. Since it seems to be a complete game I'll have a look through. Got it from a friend who got it from the owner of Viking Leathers way back.

Exactly.

When you confront the fans about it, they get irrationally defensive. I once tried suggesting to CoD fans to use point buy a la GURPS (or more specifically Everlasting) to keep splats balanced against each other for mixed splat play, and they told me that's bad because having good crossover rules would ruin the distinct vibes each splat is going for. Oh, and they admit they've never played any games other than CoD. They completely refuse to acknowledge any constructive criticism of the rules and settings.

For example, power creep is a huge problem with the splats. IIRC a starting vampire or werewolf with the right build can lift a car for a few seconds, while a starting geist can telekinetically lift all the the cars on a street. Another example is the Coils of the Dragon are basically worthless. They either give weak highly situational benefits or provide "solutions" to "problems" that are already easily avoidable.

I get that CoD has gotten tons of bad faith criticism ever since it first released. It still gets irrational hate from butthurt WoD fans, even though it's been cancelled for years and has fallen into such obscurity that new fans all go into WoD and are only aware of CoD by its reputation as "that sucky bad game with no lore" (this is completely wrong btw). But not all the criticism was bad faith.

I get that Justin Achilli wanted the vampires to be depowered to the point where vampire hunters are a credible threat, but a better way to accomplish that would've been to have vampires get worse curses as their powers increased such that vampire hunters could take advantage of to compensate for being only human. Not to mention that you could make the vampire hunters into outright superheroes to compensate. I don't care that would go against the "vibe," that emo goth vibe is not why I'm interested in urban fantasy.

This is a roleplaying game, not limited by a tv budget. I want the vampires to be supervillains. I want the Ordo Dracul to have drugs that can let vampires walk in sunlight for hours at a time, not let them survive a few seconds longer against dawn light specifically. Make it costly to manufacture or inflict some other drawback for the sake of game balance, I guess, but make it worth spending XP on.

Of course that's not gonna happen because the game is cancelled, and I don't expect Curseborn to be any good. God, it sucks to be an urban fantasy fan in the tabletop scene. d20 Urban Arcana has been dead since 2008 and nobody has tried to recapture its setting.

White Wolf and their sidelines all had problems. Be it lazy writing to power creep, to just flat out trolling the players.