Quote from: jan paparazzi;730434Well, I always wondered why it work for me. And on the official WW forum people always seem to be slavelike followers of the stuff in the books as written. If you ask them something, they usually reply by rehashing the books.

I always got it completely backwards. I never used any fleshed out setting with a cast of characters, but I did use the story scene-to-scene structures. I should do it the other way around. I do have to flesh out a setting with a large (10-30) cast of characters and I should ditch the scene-to-scene structure.

I think this is part of why I could never get around GMing as a young turk playing oWoD and MET and such: I'm not much of a fiction writer. Never have been. I can write slice-of-life, I can wrote 'fictional non-fiction,' but I kinda suck at stories, and everyone was always telling me how I needed to make my games into stories.

It wasn't really until I was a grown-up that I properly fell in love with being a DM, and I did it by taking a leap of faith and considered the idea that maybe this new bunch of old guys shouting about sandboxes were on to something, and lo and behold, suddenly GMing was actually fun.

So when I went back to the urban fantasy trough and wrote my own UF game, naturally that's how I built the tools and the GM advice. Make your city, put in the major players, put in the key resources, and then throw a monkey wrench into it and just play out what happens.

QuoteBtw, to me the difference between gothic horror and urban fantasy is the ugly stuff you have to do. You might kill an innocent civilian in a horror game, but you won't find something like that in an urban fantasy game. It doesn't suck to be a vampire or werewolf in urban fantasy. You are a dark superhero.

This was, ultimately, my biggest problem with the WW universe, and why I kinda grew out of it.

I don't want to play a monster. At least not in the metaphorical sense.

Oh I don't mind necessarily playing a werewolf or a vampire or whatever literal 'monster', but what I don't want to be is some monstrous psychopath who sees humankind as food at best, and play things at worst.

WoD in those days seemed to ultimately devolve into a race to see who can play the most fucked up sociopathic shit stain they can think of, and then wank off about how not only do they just not give a fuck, but they're also too damn powerful for anyone to do anything about it who isn't also too much of a sociopathic shit-stain to care.

At least if I was playing Werewolf, there was kind of a big world-corrupting evil to fight, and I could kinda gloss over all the 'but also you can turn into a big furry rape machine at the wrong trigger.' But I couldn't really gloss over that most of the factions there too were some degree or other of awful fucking excuse for sapient beings, with less moral center and self-restraint than a starving tiger in a kindergarten.  For fuck's sake, one of the main PC factions is explicitly a bunch of fucking neo-Nazis!

The older I got and the less appealing all that juvenile, 4chan style 'rebellion against morality' shit got, the less I found I actually cared to keep up with it. And when nWoD came along and axed the whole thing, it basically killed even the nostalgia factor. I have W20 kicking around somewhere, but I couldn't even bring myself to read that.

Quote from: J Arcane;730440I think this is part of why I could never get around GMing as a young turk playing oWoD and MET and such: I'm not much of a fiction writer. Never have been. I can write slice-of-life, I can wrote 'fictional non-fiction,' but I kinda suck at stories, and everyone was always telling me how I needed to make my games into stories.

It wasn't really until I was a grown-up that I properly fell in love with being a DM, and I did it by taking a leap of faith and considered the idea that maybe this new bunch of old guys shouting about sandboxes were on to something, and lo and behold, suddenly GMing was actually fun.

So when I went back to the urban fantasy trough and wrote my own UF game, naturally that's how I built the tools and the GM advice. Make your city, put in the major players, put in the key resources, and then throw a monkey wrench into it and just play out what happens.

Agreed. I got the same thing. I tried to improvise this one time and it worked out a lot better.
Actually, there is a part in the new Blood & Smoke book (Requiem 2.0) called "Climbing the ladder". In this part there are 12 steps you can use creating NPC's with a relation to your PC. This could be people you fear, betrayed you, helped you (and expect something back), gave you bad advice, people who saw you break the Masquerade or people you are planning to take advantage of. Really helpful for creating interesting dynamics.

Quote from: J Arcane;730440This was, ultimately, my biggest problem with the WW universe, and why I kinda grew out of it.

I don't want to play a monster. At least not in the metaphorical sense.

Oh I don't mind necessarily playing a werewolf or a vampire or whatever literal 'monster', but what I don't want to be is some monstrous psychopath who sees humankind as food at best, and play things at worst.

WoD in those days seemed to ultimately devolve into a race to see who can play the most fucked up sociopathic shit stain they can think of, and then wank off about how not only do they just not give a fuck, but they're also too damn powerful for anyone to do anything about it who isn't also too much of a sociopathic shit-stain to care.

At least if I was playing Werewolf, there was kind of a big world-corrupting evil to fight, and I could kinda gloss over all the 'but also you can turn into a big furry rape machine at the wrong trigger.' But I couldn't really gloss over that most of the factions there too were some degree or other of awful fucking excuse for sapient beings, with less moral center and self-restraint than a starving tiger in a kindergarten.  For fuck's sake, one of the main PC factions is explicitly a bunch of fucking neo-Nazis!

The older I got and the less appealing all that juvenile, 4chan style 'rebellion against morality' shit got, the less I found I actually cared to keep up with it. And when nWoD came along and axed the whole thing, it basically killed even the nostalgia factor. I have W20 kicking around somewhere, but I couldn't even bring myself to read that.

Correct. Old wod had the metaplot. In vampire you were supposed to fight the Sabbat, werewolf had Pentex/Wyrm and mage had the Technocracy. That's all gone and so is all the rich backstory. New wod has a very vague backstory and is a very bleak setting, because there aren't any built-in conflicts (no black hats) and everything is focussed on either morality or faction-based politics.

I really didn't like Requiem for example. I gave up on it a few years ago, but I found myself pleasantly surprised with Blood & Smoke. It's really flavorful.

Edit: I am really derailing this topic now. M.R*H has nothing to do with WW anymore.

@J Arcana or any other guy who plays WOD
How do you actually handle all the different factions in a WOD games? In new WOD there are usually 4-5 different factions in one city. The factions have taken the same role as the subraces used to have.


*Should I make this a new topic?

I think we can speak as to our personal preferences, but there's no question of which was ultimately the "superior" game in the sense of tapping into a certain zeitgeist and knowing how to sell to a particular market (vampire fans, pretentious fucks) that were clearly not being adequately served by the likes of Night Life.

RPGPundit

I suspect metaplot "dominance" is an issue of RPG gamers-as-readers of splats instead of RPG gamers-as-players.

I read plenty of splats, but what bleeds into my games is only what I sounds most fun for my game. I fuck with canon timelines and run "alternate history" for any RPG that has lots of splats.

Fortunately, I rarely had a problem with oWoD or L5R players when I ran any events since I was upfront that I only use the Core Book + random bits from the splats. When an issue of canon arose, I would just say that in my game the Core Book = Canon (maybe) and anything beyond happens in game or would be discussed as Core pre-game.

Also, I don't see any "railroading" in Werewolf vs. the Wyrm or Vampires vs. Sabbat any more than a Star Wars RPG of Jedi vs. Sith or Rebellion vs. Empire. That's just setting up the basics of the game world. Nothing wrong with that. And as always, there is nothing stopping a GM from running a campaign that throws out even the most core concepts in the game world.

I am a huge Warhammer fan who has read tons of canon, but if a great GM said he wanted to run a campaign where Khorne became the new Emperor and was now leading humanity in a crusade against the other Chaos Gods, I would totally play....if I knew the players and GM would be fun to play with.  

As for playing "dark PCs" or "evil PCs", those issues have existed since before OD&D was published. Sometimes some players enjoy playing evil dudes doing evil. If that isn't your thing, then don't play with those players.

But to throw around invectives like "pretentious fucks" and "juvenile" is just more "You game wrong!!!" which is nonsense. The hobby can be inclusive enough to embrace playstyles beyond whatever your favorite style or mine might be.

To give Onyx Path their due, the 20th anniversary lines (like nWoD) are much less locked into the metaplot - most of the metaplot features in Vampire 20th Anniversary, for instance, consist of side boxes saying "Hey, this happened in the metaplot and it had this game mechanical effect on this faction; if you want to throw that into your game, here's how you do that". They're generally much more about letting individual tables decide what their personal canon is rather than trying to push a particular metaplot.

WW/Onyx Path bashers may chime in at this point to note that it shouldn't take 20 years to reach a conclusion a lot of folks came to much earlier.

Quote from: RPGPundit;730852I think we can speak as to our personal preferences, but there's no question of which was ultimately the "superior" game in the sense of tapping into a certain zeitgeist and knowing how to sell to a particular market (vampire fans, pretentious fucks) that were clearly not being adequately served by the likes of Night Life.

RPGPundit

Quite so, even if one doesn't assume that every Vampire fan is a pretentious fuck.  

JG

Quote from: thedungeondelver;729522No.  Nightlife was it's own thing.  Less angsty Sisters of Mercy bullshit and more like The Lost Boys meets Near Dark meets Innocent Blood meets Fright Night.

This is possibly the  best description of Nightlife ever.

Quote from: James Gillen;730924Quite so, even if one doesn't assume that every Vampire fan is a pretentious fuck.  

JG

You know the funny thing is, while most of their games are kind of arsepants when it comes to actually being as 'deep' as the claim to be, my wife and I realized this evening that Werewolf, supposedly the dumbest game in the line from a philosophical perspective, is actually pretty darn good metaphor for the Freudian tripartite psyche in disarray.

Just one more reason I guess for why WtA is the bestest of a very badly aging bunch.

Also, Wraith totally did the angst thing soooo much better than Vampire actually did.

Quote from: RPGPundit;730852I think we can speak as to our personal preferences, but there's no question of which was ultimately the "superior" game in the sense of tapping into a certain zeitgeist and knowing how to sell to a particular market (vampire fans, pretentious fucks) that were clearly not being adequately served by the likes of Night Life.

RPGPundit

Wasn't it just a social phenomenom like Magic the Gathering? A lot of people playing it who would normally never play a CCG or tabletop RPG? Just mainstream audience. I think now only the more hardcore audience is left.

And of course the metaplot and canon were quite cool. It spawned a CCG, an historical tabletop spin-off, a tv-series and of course Blade and Underworld are based on VtM.

Quote from: Spinachcat;730859Entire post

I think the railroading was meant for the way WW wants you to make adventures. Scene-based chronicles with a beginning and an end. Works really well if you have full control over a group of players. Good for writing stories , but not for DM'ing. I really like story-based RPG's btw. I am not interested in a dungeon crawler.

New wod doesn't have metaplot anyway. It doesn't even have any canon. Which makes it more flexible, but also less interesting. It doesn't have default templates for factions or ancient vampires either. You are supposed to make them your own and individualize them.

Biggest problem I have with the new wod is that most of it early books (2004-2007) were really bland. And this includes the big three core rulebooks. It got better when Russell Bailey (now Rose Bailey, don't ask) took over. Now it's Onyx Path and I am getting interested again. The second edition of Requiem with the confusing name looks flavorful compared to the sterile first edition.

Quote from: Warthur;730879Entire post

Much like the new WoD. I found the V20 edition also very crunch heavy. It crams all the clans and their disciplines in one book.

Quote from: J Arcane;730996You know the funny thing is, while most of their games are kind of arsepants when it comes to actually being as 'deep' as the claim to be, my wife and I realized this evening that Werewolf, supposedly the dumbest game in the line from a philosophical perspective, is actually pretty darn good metaphor for the Freudian tripartite psyche in disarray.

Just one more reason I guess for why WtA is the bestest of a very badly aging bunch.

Also, Wraith totally did the angst thing soooo much better than Vampire actually did.

Old werewolf was pretty much "HULK SMASH!". New werewolf is like that, but it also has a very shamanistic occult side to it. I find it the more interesting of the two.

Quote from: thedungeondelver;729522No.  Nightlife was it's own thing.  Less angsty Sisters of Mercy bullshit and more like The Lost Boys meets Near Dark meets Innocent Blood meets Fright Night.

New vampire has The Vampire Chronicles and Near Dark/The Lost Boys and Dracula/Nostferatu as inspiration.

Quote from: jan paparazzi;731006Old werewolf was pretty much "HULK SMASH!". New werewolf is like that, but it also has a very shamanistic occult side to it. I find it the more interesting of the two.

Me too.

jg