Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1129723Fair enough.

AFM is intended to simulate 80s horror movies and thus adventures only last a short time before ending in a TPK as intended. It has a specific goal in mind and creates mechanics to support that. It isn't intended to be long running or involve politics.

Saying "Patricia Briggs" isn't that informative to me. What precisely do you intend?

On another note, my mood varies on whether I want bad monsters, good monsters, or somewhere between monsters. Sometimes I might want Liminal-style vampires that are mostly evil aside from a minority who retain their human hearts, other times I might prefer more vampire politics and thus less sociopathic vampires, or I might prefer a sliding humanity scale.

That's why I decided to go for a systemless setting so that I could tailor it to different systems like Urban Shadows or whatever.

Faerie are mostly evil with a few exceptions here and there, Vampires are wholly evil with one or two exeptions, Werewolves ARE monsters kept in check by the oldest, sacariest and more powerful wolf of all that forbade human flesh (and will make sure those transgressing get killed), witches of any power are evil and will kill the white witches to gain more power. The world is full of other monsters too, from lots of mythological sources.

The heroes are the Werewolfes but only thanks to their leader not wanting humans to hunt them down to extinction.

I like her novels, even if her market is more the female YA and pink novel consumer.

I hear you on playing what I feel like at a given time, and I agree 100%

It's just that beyond CoC and Monster Hunter (Hero System) there's not much to choose from as to hunt down monsters, or to play as Monsters. Heroic Monsters don't quite float my boat as a game (funny enough given some of my reading choices) mainly because most people can't play them as anything but humans in rubber suits.

Quote from: Orphan81;1129727Dungeon Crawling and D&D Stats are kind of the exact opposite of what I want when it comes to Urban Fantasy Horror.

I was actually working on my own homebrew World of Darkness style setting material a couple years back. I actually was quite proud of how I differentiated Vampires and Werewolves and Demons from the way they were presented in White Wolf, but still kept some of those thematic elements.

System wise though, I think one of the other big draws of it is how easy it is to learn and teach someone. The Discreet powers also make things feel interesting in WoD. My own way of approaching it though, was to make a master list of dot based powers, and then give different discounts on purchasing them for specific species, and variant abilities that could only be used by specific splats.

Wilderness is just a dungeon in disguise, cities are mega dungeons, I see no difference there, sure, the stats don't lend themselves to play monsters. BUT you could always eschew those stats and go for Species as Class. Then mix some from Hero (effects based "powers"), and make all of the species to have power X but make it tied to their age, will power, evilness, etc. So the older, etc the more powerful.

I'm a huge fan of the Urban Arcana setting for D20 Modern. They did Urban Fantasy almost to perfection in my opinion. And didn't tilt things in favor of the monsters.

That setting could be adapted to dozens of different sorts of campaigns. All with different points of view. And they would all still be awesome to me.

D20 Modern is a game line that truly didn't get enough credit for the awesome things that were produced for it. And it is one of the few game lines I own every core product for.

Quote from: Darrin Kelley;1129733I'm a huge fan of the Urban Arcana setting for D20 Modern. They did Urban Fantasy almost to perfection in my opinion. And didn't tilt things in favor of the monsters.

That setting could be adapted to dozens of different sorts of campaigns. All with different points of view. And they would all still be awesome to me.

So you think it's worth some of my very limited money?

Quote from: GeekyBugle;1129731Wilderness is just a dungeon in disguise, cities are mega dungeons, I see no difference there, sure, the stats don't lend themselves to play monsters. BUT you could always eschew those stats and go for Species as Class. Then mix some from Hero (effects based "powers"), and make all of the species to have power X but make it tied to their age, will power, evilness, etc. So the older, etc the more powerful.

Maybe it's just my WoD games didn't revolve around going to places, killing things and then taking their stuff. Well, most of them didn't. The Sabbat campaign I ran was very much about going places, killing things, and taking their stuff...

But my Camarilla games were much more political and involved going to parties, researching dark secrets, and trying to keep the Masquerade in place while maintaining humanity.

Quote from: GeekyBugle;1129735So you think it's worth some of my very limited money?

Without a doubt. Absolutely without a doubt.

Urban Arcana can be truly made your own in ways the World Of Darkness never could. It is just a far more versatile setting.

Quote from: Darrin Kelley;1129737Urban Arcana can be truly made your own in ways the World Of Darkness never could. It is just a far more versatile setting.

Didn't WotC add most of Urban Arcana to the SRD?

Quote from: Pat;1129741Didn't WotC add most of Urban Arcana to the SRD?

They very well could have. But I haven't kept up with the SRD in quite some time.

Quote from: Darrin Kelley;1129737Without a doubt. Absolutely without a doubt.

Urban Arcana can be truly made your own in ways the World Of Darkness never could. It is just a far more versatile setting.

Thanks putting it on my to buy list near the top.

http://spellbooksoftware.com/d20mrsd/arcana.html

D20 Modern isn't a bad game at all; I prefer True20, though. Anyway, we got to play Urban Arcana exactly once and it was a TPK to some anthropomorphic cockroach straight out of MiB.

Quote from: Brad;1129746http://spellbooksoftware.com/d20mrsd/arcana.html

D20 Modern isn't a bad game at all; I prefer True20, though. Anyway, we got to play Urban Arcana exactly once and it was a TPK to some anthropomorphic cockroach straight out of MiB.

Then you throw Dark Matter into the mix. Which does nothing but enhance something that is already great.

Quote from: Aglondir;1129683True. Have you seen Gurps: Bloodlines? It looks like a primer of vampire myths from around the world. That's not really the direction I want to go, but something might inspire me.

Blood Types? It's fairly simplistic. If you've read about vampires from around the world, there won't be a ton of new stuff, and it's not particularly exhaustive. It's okay for a first vampire book.

Quote from: Pat;1129758Blood Types? It's fairly simplistic. If you've read about vampires from around the world, there won't be a ton of new stuff, and it's not particularly exhaustive. It's okay for a first vampire book.

Correct, Blood Types.

Repost from the other Wod Thread..

In the way I presented Vampires in my own homebrew Off-brand WoD setting, they were very family orientated to make them different from The white wolf version.

Being embraced brought you into a new family, the supernatural blood tie gave you a loyalty to those who also shared your blood.

Vampires had 4 stages of Life and how it allowed them to create other Vampires. Starting off as a fledgling, a recent embrace, you were unable to truly create other Vampires... except for the potential of feral, blood crazed, zombie like creatures made by accident.

When a Vampire eventually achieved "Adult Status" they would become known as a "Lord" or "Lady"... and would be able to sire one other Vampire as a sort of mate, child, or sibling to themselves. They shared part of their soul with this Vampire and were unable to create any others until they grew older and greater in power, or until their created one died.

Eventually, A Vampire would become a "Master". Master Vampires had no limit on the broods they could create, but were old enough and wise enough, surviving to that age and power.. not to over do it. Still, the Master would stand as a grand Patriarch or Matriarch of a family line.

Ancients were Vampires that evolved into something else entirely... As Vampires carried an embodiment of Death within them, they became Psychopomps that fed on the very essence of Death itself. They would cross over into the Underworld, and feed on restless spirits, becoming gods of death there.

There were clans of a sort, known as "Bloodlines" which were basically founded by very powerful Masters, most of which had passed on to become Ancients. Names like Dracula, Carmilla, Orlov, and the like... Anything a GM would want to invent and use that could give a particular bonus to certain powers, along with a certain inherited family flaw of sorts too. The potential being for GMs able to invent whatever families they wanted for their particular setting.

Quote from: Orphan81;1129736Maybe it's just my WoD games didn't revolve around going to places, killing things and then taking their stuff. Well, most of them didn't. The Sabbat campaign I ran was very much about going places, killing things, and taking their stuff...

But my Camarilla games were much more political and involved going to parties, researching dark secrets, and trying to keep the Masquerade in place while maintaining humanity.

I never played WoD, mostly because it doesn't tickle my fancy and secondly because here in México the RPG scene is very small and therefore niche games have even less ppl playing them.

Dungeonering isn't about killing things and taking their stuff, but about solving problems.

In a sense everything in an RPG IS a Dungeon: Going to parties (The party place is the dungeon, but also some of the attendants become part of it by being obstacles for you doing what you want), researching: Problem Solving, Political: More problem solving, Keeping the Masquerade in place while maintaining humanity: The Treasure.