Here is a link to the latest kickstarter (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/200664283/deviant-the-renegades-a-tabletop-roleplaying-game?ref=discovery_category_newest).
Sounds pretty good to be honest. We have very sympathic characters who suffered at the hands of a all powerful antagonists who have their own lackeys and organizations. A real underdog story that is far better than Beast: the Primordial. Wait... It sounds familiar, but why?
Ohhhhh... (https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/50010/Changeling-The-Lost?term=changeling+the+lost)
Deviant = Changeling
Lab = Arcadia
Experiments = Durance
Antagonist = True Fae
Lackeys = Huntsmen for 2nd Edition
Fighting Back = Hello what was the entire point of Summer and Autumn courts?
I believe I made my point that Onyx Path is running out of ideas. This is Changeling with a different skin.
Quote from: Snowman0147;1105703I believe I made my point that Onyx Path is running out of ideas. This is Changeling with a different skin.
Actually it reads more like a watered down Aberrant... :cool:
It's not the worst idea, but its Onyx Path so who knows how bullshit the final product might be.
If they focus on the underdog story, and the need for the PCs to stay on the run while learning more about how they have changed and who did this to them and why, perhaps there's some interesting potential here.
But yeah, it sounds like a low powered Aberrant campaign...which might be fun if done right.
Deviant = Aberrant
Lab = Proteus
Experiments = Nova powers
Antagonist = Terragen and Proteus
Lackeys = Utopia, henchmen, and those hopped up on that aberrant steroid.
Fighting Back = the Aberrant Underground
This is why making things up as you go along tends to result in needlessly messy settings. I would prefer an actual toolkit with guidelines on how to make my own monsters and cosmology. Not something that pretends to be a toolkit but isn't. That's why I don't like CoD.
I don't like WoD (classic) because of the convoluted comic book continuity and the absurd political preaching at points. Although I think V5 improved the discipline mechanic (even better than Requiem 2e) and hunger is more evocative than blood pool.
I like the CoD stuff, but it's such a heavy system with so much stuff. Agreed I'd love simpler core book / system and make your own creatures. Or go back to centering everything on the God Machine and have all of the splats be different creatures from earlier versions.
Quote from: PencilBoy99;1105728I like the CoD stuff, but it's such a heavy system with so much stuff. Agreed I'd love simpler core book / system and make your own creatures. Or go back to centering everything on the God Machine and have all of the splats be different creatures from earlier versions.
I personally prefer agnostic settings without global conspiracies. That's why I prefer toolkits. It means I can discuss with people who prefer slightly different settings without getting into stupid arguments over whose setting is better/right/more pretentious.
Quote from: Omega;1105705Actually it reads more like a watered down Aberrant... :cool:
yeah I was just going to say - it looks like X-Men but in WoD.
It heavily overlaps in concept with Promethean, too. The only major difference is that the Deviant is still alive while being transformed.
It covers a lot of the same ground as the fansplats Pathogen: The Infected and Outsider: The Calling, except with evil scientists or whoever replacing the pathogen and the mythos deities.
It sounds interesting. Probably the most ingriguing premise from OP since CTD, which is where they lost it. I can see the similarities to CTD, but my first thought was Promethean. (edit: ninjaed!)
But you don't need a new book for this. Hero or MM3 will already do it.
This is part of the reason why I advocate for universal rules for superpowers. If every splat is essentially built using the same guidelines, then it becomes much easier to spot conceptual overlaps. And, by extension, perhaps inspire new takes on old ideas.
Or we could do what Monsterhearts does and explicitly build splats by first finding a human issue and then creating a metaphor around that in the form of a monster. Don't pick a monster concept and then try to shoehorn a metaphor for humanity into that.
Just look how badly that went for Beast. It's a metaphor for pedophile apologia, written by a real pedophile. Leviathan: The Tempest and Dragon: The Whatever were amateur hour, sure, but they've retroactively become orders of magnitude superior to the official implementation.
Quote from: tenbones;1105739yeah I was just going to say - it looks like X-Men but in WoD.
Or Cybergeneration, but in WoD.
I actually don't think that WoD's system is good for Supers-level content. I mean it can clearly do superhuman level stuff. But the abstraction of scale doesn't hold together well. And nor should it - since WoD should be more about the interactions than trying to emulate the Supers Genre... but this is a gray area. I'm not sure how far they wanna go with it.
Quote from: jeff37923;1105804Or Cybergeneration, but in WoD.
yeah! good call on that.
And Beast is basically the same premise as Vampire except without the humanity and with an obnoxious victim complex.
Quote from: tenbones;1105805I actually don't think that WoD's system is good for Supers-level content. I mean it can clearly do superhuman level stuff. But the abstraction of scale doesn't hold together well. And nor should it - since WoD should be more about the interactions than trying to emulate the Supers Genre... but this is a gray area. I'm not sure how far they wanna go with it.
Aberrant, and the Trinity line, proves you wrong. It is tied with MSH as my go-to superhero RPG. It runs surprisingly smoothly and while chargen is a bit more convoluted than standard WOD chargen. The payoff is worth it. That and you can use it to emulate other superhero settings. Moreso if you add in Adventure as it handles pulpy street level crimfighting well.
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1105829And Beast is basically the same premise as Vampire except without the humanity and with an obnoxious victim complex.
Well to be fair. WOD books tend to share alot of common themes. Some more than others. And apparently that was intentional in some cases.
There is just about always a division of the members into 6 or more factions. There is usually some sort of conspiracy or shadowy organization out there. One or more factions bitch incessantly about how oppresededed they is by the evil man! Or another faction. Theres usually at least one supremacist or racial purity faction or close enough. History does not mesh with any other books on one, or all points. And they almost always are hiding and/or in decline somehow.
And Werewolf has Beast beat for obnoxious victim complex hands down. Was there a single Werewolf book that sisnt have some moaning and weeping in it about how oppressedededed the woofs/yotes/cats/whatevers are? Please! Think of the Whatevers!
The sooner Onyx Path goes under, the better.
Oh if Bloodlines 2 flops Paradox might sell it, or worst give it to Onyx Path completely. Which if Bloodlines 2 does flop they only have themselves to blame for going woke in the first place.
Quote from: Snowman0147;1105858Oh if Bloodlines 2 flops Paradox might sell it, or worst give it to Onyx Path completely. Which if Bloodlines 2 does flop they only have themselves to blame for going woke in the first place.
Agreed.
I backed it, and read the manuscript, personally I think it's awesome and is the Chronicles of Darkness game I've been most looking forward to in a long while. Outside of the main splats (Vampire/Mage/Werewolf) It sounds like it'll be my favorite game next to Hunter The Vigil.
To be clear, this *IS* flat out... the World of Darkness Superhero game. It's exactly what I've been waiting for, and the most broad and open of all the games in terms of what you can make and what kind of adversaries you can face down. The fact that Robocop, Eleven, and Guyver are all viable character concepts and could be in the same party together is pretty fucking awesome to me.
Edit: Robocop is specifically listed as the example of a Deviant whose achieved "Guardian" Status, one that's found the perfect balance between Revenge and Loyalty and no longer suffers as much from their Scars (Deviant Disabilities) and has attained a level of Stability.
Does the game allow for likable player characters? Or is everyone a Democrat?
Quote from: Shawn Driscoll;1105888Does the game allow for likable player characters? Or is everyone a Democrat?
I thought they were all vegetarians? :eek:
You know Shawn Driscoll if Onyx Path keep it up with the whole only democrats are the good guys, then I am going to say fuck it. Then I am going to make a pure game where the forsaken are the worst aspects that people give to democrats while making the pure the actual good guys with MAGA hats, American flags, and gun rights. Then have the players be good southern boys who just want to have fun, but got this corrupt Storm Lord corrupting the small town. So now they have to do epic car stunts to avoid the cops and save the day.
[ATTACH=CONFIG]3863[/ATTACH]
Yes the southern good boys are all fire touched as God himself intended it.
Quote from: Snowman0147;1105899You know Shawn Driscoll if Onyx Path keep it up with the whole only democrats are the good guys, then I am going to say fuck it. Then I am going to make a pure game where the forsaken are the worst aspects that people give to democrats while making the pure the actual good guys with MAGA hats, American flags, and gun rights. Then have the players be good southern boys who just want to have fun, but got this corrupt Storm Lord corrupting the small town. So now they have to do epic car stunts to avoid the cops and save the day.
[ATTACH=CONFIG]3863[/ATTACH]
Yes the southern good boys are all fire touched as God himself intended it.
I had a similar idea for first edition Scion. Daisy as scion of Aphrodite, etc.
Quote from: Orphan81;1105877I backed it, and read the manuscript, personally I think it's awesome and is the Chronicles of Darkness game I've been most looking forward to in a long while. Outside of the main splats (Vampire/Mage/Werewolf) It sounds like it'll be my favorite game next to Hunter The Vigil.
To be clear, this *IS* flat out... the World of Darkness Superhero game. It's exactly what I've been waiting for, and the most broad and open of all the games in terms of what you can make and what kind of adversaries you can face down. The fact that Robocop, Eleven, and Guyver are all viable character concepts and could be in the same party together is pretty fucking awesome to me.
Edit: Robocop is specifically listed as the example of a Deviant whose achieved "Guardian" Status, one that's found the perfect balance between Revenge and Loyalty and no longer suffers as much from their Scars (Deviant Disabilities) and has attained a level of Stability.
I'm surprised by this. I was expecting another disaster or snooze fest, but this sounds like it might be almost as interesting as Changeling or Hunter.
Sad that White Wolf couldn't muster the same amount of creativity for the big three. They still feel like their oWoD predecessors with some names switched around.
Imagine: Vampire with flexible rules for vampirism, like psychic vampirism or different sets of weaknesses and powers like American Vampire; Werewolf without a universal myth or biology, more like lupine theriomorphs in Dresden Files; Mage without shoehorning Atlantis, Abyss, Technocracy, Ascension War, etc everywhere.
Quote from: Orphan81;1105877I backed it, and read the manuscript, personally I think it's awesome and is the Chronicles of Darkness game I've been most looking forward to in a long while. Outside of the main splats (Vampire/Mage/Werewolf) It sounds like it'll be my favorite game next to Hunter The Vigil.
To be clear, this *IS* flat out... the World of Darkness Superhero game. It's exactly what I've been waiting for, and the most broad and open of all the games in terms of what you can make and what kind of adversaries you can face down. The fact that Robocop, Eleven, and Guyver are all viable character concepts and could be in the same party together is pretty fucking awesome to me.
Edit: Robocop is specifically listed as the example of a Deviant whose achieved "Guardian" Status, one that's found the perfect balance between Revenge and Loyalty and no longer suffers as much from their Scars (Deviant Disabilities) and has attained a level of Stability.
I'm surprised by this. I was expecting another disaster or snooze fest, but this sounds like it might be almost as interesting as Changeling or Hunter.
Sad that White Wolf couldn't muster the same amount of creativity for the big three. They still feel like their oWoD predecessors with some names switched around.
Imagine: Vampire with flexible rules for vampirism, like psychic vampirism or different sets of weaknesses and powers like American Vampire; Werewolf without a universal myth or biology, more like lupine theriomorphs in Dresden Files; Mage without shoehorning Atlantis, Abyss, Technocracy, Ascension War, etc everywhere.
Quote from: Snowman0147;1105899You know Shawn Driscoll if Onyx Path keep it up with the whole only democrats are the good guys, then I am going to say fuck it. Then I am going to make a pure game where the forsaken are the worst aspects that people give to democrats while making the pure the actual good guys with MAGA hats, American flags, and gun rights. Then have the players be good southern boys who just want to have fun, but got this corrupt Storm Lord corrupting the small town. So now they have to do epic car stunts to avoid the cops and save the day.
This seems to apply to both World of Darkness and Chronicles of Darkness, given that Onyx Path is now in charge of writing both. If I recall correctly, they have weird mandates like disallowing LGBT characters to be depicted as villains. This was a problem for the character Vykos, who was transgender and a murderous psychopath.
I'm not particularly invested in any edition, though. Most of the settings I found arbitrarily restrictive or boring, aside from maybe Changeling: The Lost and Hunter: The Vigil since they demonstrated a lot of a creativity. I liked the Chronicles of Darkness 1e rules the most since they're the simplest, but I don't deny that they have their own problems (http://garglinggoblin.blogspot.com/2013/01/problems-with-world-of-darkness-rpg.html). Some of the 2e changes were improvements, but a lot of that was obscured by trying to crudely bolt on Fate-esque rules to the ST chassis and making basic rules more complicated than they had to be. You really shouldn't need a flow chart for anything besides syntactic magic and politics.
Another problem is the absurd refusal to use universal mechanics. This results in a dozen different mechanics for adjudicating superpowers and PC/NPC design. I don't understand why they couldn't use an Essence and charms mechanic like Exalted. Even if the splats aren't intended to play together, it still doesn't hurt to use universal mechanics and maybe a point buy system.
I have a bazillion other complaints about the rules and settings, but that's basically the gist of it. The rules need to be simplified and the settings need to be relaxed.
Your going to love Weird then.
One universal mechanics such as spirit (energy) and potency (aka power stat). Not to mention cyptics are universal.
Even if you hate my own setting there is going to be a Build Your Own Setting section where you can make any thing. Your own world, cities, roles, edges, cryptics, powers, and so on. Simply because I don't assume what is best for your table.
Quote from: Snowman0147;1105948Your going to love Weird then.
One universal mechanics such as spirit (energy) and potency (aka power stat). Not to mention cyptics are universal.
Even if you hate my own setting there is going to be a Build Your Own Setting section where you can make any thing. Your own world, cities, roles, edges, cryptics, powers, and so on. Simply because I don't assume what is best for your table.
A had lots of questions about your design. What are the basics of the mechanics? Were you familiar with urban fantasy games other than World of Darkness when you designed it, like Nightlife, The Everlasting, or WitchCraft? Is it being released under the OGL?
Also, I joined your discord.
Quote from: Snowman0147;1105899You know Shawn Driscoll if Onyx Path keep it up with the whole only democrats are the good guys, then I am going to say fuck it. Then I am going to make a pure game where the forsaken are the worst aspects that people give to democrats while making the pure the actual good guys with MAGA hats, American flags, and gun rights. Then have the players be good southern boys who just want to have fun, but got this corrupt Storm Lord corrupting the small town. So now they have to do epic car stunts to avoid the cops and save the day.
Yes the southern good boys are all fire touched as God himself intended it.
Automobile: The Racening :cool:
Gave you your rank BoxCrayonTales. You should be able to see more of that discord than just anyone that can get into the server with the server link.
The basic mechanics is roll down d20, or d10 if your using a asset. In short you got your attribute checks (d20) and your asset checks (d10). You want to roll lower than your TN (target number) which is your attribute score, or your rank in the asset. Now what makes assets so special is that they cannot suffer critical failure and if maxed out cannot suffer failure at all. Assets do suffer a weakness in that they cannot be used in moments were you are required to make rash actions and you have no time to concentrate. So for action events assets cannot be used. This also means there are no combat assets.
Now there are five results in these rolls, or usually four if it is a asset. Nat 20 is critical failure which not only does that mean you fail, but the worst happens. Above TN is failure which means something bad happens. Equal to TN is a tie which means something good, but something bad happens. Ties are always interesting. Below TN is success which you get what your striving for. Natural one is critical success which you get the best result which is more than what your asking form.
This is also the system in which only the players roll dice just like any other hack. The only time the GM is rolling dice is for monster damage which even that has a work around so he can skip that if he wants to, npc saving throws, and tables. I did this to make the game so streamline and simple that you can basically run your game with as little effort as possible.
As for the second question not really. I read WitchCraft, but never played. I did played Dresden Files and run it on a chat once. Though that was short term as one of the admins started to PM people telling them how much they suck at role playing including me. I got honest with him because that was bullshit. The other Admin sided with because it became a point where it was either me, or him. So I left with no hard feelings, but I wasn't surprise when I later found out that after getting every thing he ever wanted the asshole admin bailed out on the team when they still needed him. So even then I cannot say I know Dresden Files that well. Man I wish I screen saved those conversations. Oh well chat is dead and I will never see that shit ever again.
Final question which is the OGL. I should, but I will need legal advise from that because I feel like I made game into a hybrid between D&D and nWoD. So I guess only a lawyer could answer that.
I thought using retroclone rules like Opening the Dark would make it easier for players familiar with World of Darkness to adopt it. Switching to something like Urban Shadows seems like it might be more difficult for those used to the White Wolf school of design.
Opening the Dark is based on the Storyteller System, not the Storytelling System. At some point I'll try to write optional hacks for various mechanics from the latter. These include Fixed Difficulty (only one success is needed on a roll, difficulty is relegated to modifiers), Two Axis Attributes (attributes use power/finesse/resistance model), Derived Traits (hit points, will, etc are derived from attributes), Variable Speed (character speed is derived from attributes), Abstracted Combat Rolls (reduce combat rolls made per round), Merits (non-linear background traits), Conditions (flaws, circumstantial modifiers, etc), etc.
Let me know if you are interested in hearing more.
It seems like typical WoD material. A lot of mood creation, the books look great as usual, but what do you actually do in a game? It seems thematically interesting, but also made for a GM to go into full 'frustrated novelist' mode and ramble on about the dark mood of the game with the players being either railroaded by the GM or otherwise clueless what to do. It doesn't seem to be made for playing, but more for telling a scary story by the campfire holding a flashlight under your face.
If you're designing an alternate WoD, you definitely should at least read Nightlife. You'll probably enjoy it. The game was wonky, but we enjoyed the couple of sessions we played back in the day.
I'd suggest checking out Palladium's Nightbane as well.
Quote from: Spinachcat;1105987If you're designing an alternate WoD, you definitely should at least read Nightlife. You'll probably enjoy it. The game was wonky, but we enjoyed the couple of sessions we played back in the day.
I'd suggest checking out Palladium's Nightbane as well.
I looked into Nightlife. The basic concept is almost identical to Vampire, except with more diverse monsters. Only one of them is outright called a vampire, even though most are essentially vampiric. I will definitely incorporate that sort of diversity into my treatment.
I said in my last post that I wanted to hack Opening the Dark (https://www.scribd.com/lists/2653023/Opening-the-Dark) to incorporate innovations from Storytelling System and such. Anyone interested in seeing me work that out here? Or should I discuss that in the design forum?
You might also want to check out Frank Trollman's work. I think it is called After Dark. You should be able to find it as his forums, The Gaming Den.
One of the main advantages is that Frank tells you what's in the public domain, so you can avoid using copyrighted terms.
Quote from: Aglondir;1106076You might also want to check out Frank Trollman's work. I think it is called After Dark. You should be able to find it as his forums, The Gaming Den.
One of the main advantages is that Frank tells you what's in the public domain, so you can avoid using copyrighted terms.
After Sundown is the name. Thanks for reminding me, it's currently located at: https://thegamingden.github.io/after-sundown/
The problem is Frank's tone. It is
extremely condescending and makes reading really unpleasant. You should read the Something Awful review of it.
[/HR]
I noticed something interesting while hacking Opening the Dark. One blog post notes a number of idiosyncrasies (http://garglinggoblin.blogspot.com/2013/01/problems-with-world-of-darkness-rpg.html) in the Storytelling System rules and proposes some alternatives (http://garglinggoblin.blogspot.com/2013/04/world-of-darkness-house-rules-draft-01.html). Several of those alternatives, while differing in implementation, try to accomplish the same result that the Storyteller Rules did.
The section about modifiers not penalizing enough stems from a misunderstanding of the rules (in STing, any single modifier normally doesn't exceed +/-5, but any number of modifiers may apply to a roll, and that's before you remember rule zero saying to ignore the rules as written if they don't do what you want... so GM's can apply arbitrary penalties rather than adding a needlessly complex subsystem about subtracting successes), but the section on abstracted combat does hit upon an interesting problem. Although reducing combat to one roll per round rather than one for attacking, dodging, soaking, and damage each is good for streamlining, the downside is that this reveals the opponent's defense statistics to the players.
If only there was some way to marry the strengths of both the abstraction and hiding information from the players... would it be particularly difficult to devise a group dice rolling app that can hide some or all modifiers from the players? Does anything like that already exist?
Again, let me know if I should move this tangent to the design forum.
You woke up different, changed, by unknown forces.
I can smell the politics coming of this.
Quote from: Warboss Squee;1106101You woke up different, changed, by unknown forces.
I can smell the politics coming of this.
No politics so far actually. Beast was supposed to be the metaphor for being Trans, but this one was headed by Dave Brookshaw before being passed over to another bloke whose name I can't remember. There's been no heavy handed politics of any kind.
Edit: To add further, the big thing about Deviant is You didn't want to be what you are now. Out of the 5 Deviant "Origins" only 1 sought out it purposefully and even then didn't end up the way they originally planned to.
And since the Conspiracies can be literally anything, in terms of organized groups... there's no heavy handed political leanings one way or another, since you can have the Super Leftists Pagan eco group that decided you were going to be a host for a nature spirit, versus actually being descended from a Nazi super soldier program.
Quote from: jan paparazzi;1105981It seems like typical WoD material. A lot of mood creation, the books look great as usual, but what do you actually do in a game? It seems thematically interesting, but also made for a GM to go into full 'frustrated novelist' mode and ramble on about the dark mood of the game with the players being either railroaded by the GM or otherwise clueless what to do. It doesn't seem to be made for playing, but more for telling a scary story by the campfire holding a flashlight under your face.
Basically you fight the Conspiracies that helped create you. There are two types of Deviants, "The Devoted" and the "Renegades". This book is dedicated to playing the Renegades with plans for Devoted getting their own supplement further down the line. All of your goals are going to be wrapped up in your two defining attributes.. "Loyalty" and "Conviction" they both go to 5. Every dot of Loyalty you have, is someone you love, someone you want to protect and keep safe. It can be a pet, another human, or even another Deviant in your group.
Every dot of Conviction is someone, or some place, or something you want to get revenge on, and want to destroy.
You get your moral degradation to unplayable character status if you lose all of your loyalty and conviction dots. Like you would if you lost all your Humanity in Vampire, or all your Wisdom in Mage. You lose those dots when you fail to follow through on your loyalty or Convictions. Loyalty person in trouble? Better go help them. Chance to pursue your Revenge? Better go after it. Renegades start with 1 loyalty dot and 3 conviction dots. If a Renegade achieves more Loyalty than conviction, they enter a state known as "Guardian" where most of their disadvantages from their abilities are lessened.
Players and the GM create the conspiracies that created them, together... and all the Conspiracies are supposed to be intwined like an incestuous family. The Deviant whose a cyborg finds out the Head Scientist in charge of the black ops Military program that made him, is also a member of a secret occult group that bound the essence of a shadow spirit into the other member of his group. The occult group is how the scientist "enlightened" his mind and figure out how to make man and machine viable in the first place. The occult group is regularly provided the drugs they need by the Street Gang who sold out the third party member to the Corporation that created them.
Devoted by the way, those loyal to the Conspiracy that created them, reverse their two virtue traits... They start with loyalty 3 and Conviction 1. If they end up with more Conviction they end up in the state of "Fury" which has all the benefits of the Guardian Status from Renegade... Guardian and Fury are also not forever statuses, you can lose them and regain them as the story goes on.
Quote from: jan paparazzi;1105981It seems like typical WoD material. A lot of mood creation, the books look great as usual, but what do you actually do in a game? It seems thematically interesting, but also made for a GM to go into full 'frustrated novelist' mode and ramble on about the dark mood of the game with the players being either railroaded by the GM or otherwise clueless what to do. It doesn't seem to be made for playing, but more for telling a scary story by the campfire holding a flashlight under your face.
I'd love to see your contributions to a monster mash game. You sound like someone who knows how to design something for actual playing than waxing gothic emo.
Given the popularity of indie urban fantasy games on DriveThru, it seems like a fairly good time to write a World of Darkness retroclone. Drop the edition wars that divided people. Recapture the good old wild west days of B.J. Zanzibar's archive.
I gotta say Deviant sounds more interesting than most of Onyx Paths other offerings.
I'd play a demo of Deviant at a con if I had the chance.
or Kamen Rider!
Quote from: Snowman0147;1105948Your going to love Weird then.
One universal mechanics such as spirit (energy) and potency (aka power stat). Not to mention cyptics are universal.
Even if you hate my own setting there is going to be a Build Your Own Setting section where you can make any thing. Your own world, cities, roles, edges, cryptics, powers, and so on. Simply because I don't assume what is best for your table.
your ideas are of interest to me, where can I read more?
Quote from: remial;1106189your ideas are of interest to me, where can I read more?
Discord link is sent.
I think for my hypothetical urban fantasy pastiche, I should go with a more parodic and satirical tone.
Statements like "most monster characters permanently emigrate to other planes because Earth is boring and gratuitous space battles against The Man are cool," "the celestial bureaucracy's agents typically engage in random and nonsensical tasks that we pretend are deep and meaningful in some way incomprehensible to human minds," "typical PCs are murderous psychopaths so the sanity/karma meter is optional because I do not want to arbitrarily punish players for having fun," "the sheer number of secret societies working at cross purposes with too many members to manage means that none of them get anything done on reasonable time scales, much like public societies," "near-apocalypses happen on a literally weekly basis but a scoobie gang always manages to save the world," etc.
This just sounds like Changeling:The Lost but with X-Men knockoff stuff thrown in. I'm not sure how I don't like the Character's and Storyteller's coming up with the conspiracy together idea; that should've been part of the adventure. It seems to have less options as well. In something like C:TL you couldn't play loyalists true, but there was a lot of ways you could customize your character by adding layers; This seems like it's just the two way split to me with the rest being dependent on the powers you come up with.
Just please (insert your favourite deity here) don't let them near Aberrant.
Quote from: Omega;1106389Just please (insert your favourite deity here) don't let them near Aberrant.
Too late. Far too late.
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1106128I'd love to see your contributions to a monster mash game. You sound like someone who knows how to design something for actual playing than waxing gothic emo.
Given the popularity of indie urban fantasy games on DriveThru, it seems like a fairly good time to write a World of Darkness retroclone. Drop the edition wars that divided people. Recapture the good old wild west days of B.J. Zanzibar's archive.
It's just a pet peeve of mine to complain about this. WoD books seem to be written for people who like reading rpg books, but not necesarily like playing them. In 5th Edition there is some discussion about feeding and sex all written down in essay style. Now I understand the connection. It's always been there in vampire fiction, but how does the exploration of such a theme actually come up in a game? How does it effect gameplay? Do you fondle people while feeding? Or is it just pseudo-intellectual windowdressing to make it seem deeper than it really is? I think the latter.
Quote from: jan paparazzi;1107621It's just a pet peeve of mine to complain about this. WoD books seem to be written for people who like reading rpg books, but not necesarily like playing them. In 5th Edition there is some discussion about feeding and sex all written down in essay style. Now I understand the connection. It's always been there in vampire fiction, but how does the exploration of such a theme actually come up in a game? How does it effect gameplay? Do you fondle people while feeding? Or is it just pseudo-intellectual windowdressing to make it seem deeper than it really is? I think the latter.
You do 1d4 WP damage on the intended target and gain a equal amount of SP back. Boom! Weird just explained vampire fang to neck blood feeding.
Quote from: jan paparazzi;1107621It's just a pet peeve of mine to complain about this. WoD books seem to be written for people who like reading rpg books, but not necesarily like playing them. In 5th Edition there is some discussion about feeding and sex all written down in essay style. Now I understand the connection. It's always been there in vampire fiction, but how does the exploration of such a theme actually come up in a game? How does it effect gameplay? Do you fondle people while feeding? Or is it just pseudo-intellectual windowdressing to make it seem deeper than it really is? I think the latter.
These days, it's all about the new wave of vampires that have
I EAT ASS slogans on their t-shirts and suck blood from their victims' hemorrhoids.
Quote from: HappyDaze;1107623These days, it's all about the new wave of vampires that have I EAT ASS slogans on their t-shirts and suck blood from their victims' hemorrhoids.
Hey now, there is absolutely nothing wrong with eating Ass. You don't have to be a Vampire to enjoy that.
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They've released more info on how things work for Kickstarter backers, and as I said, this is the Wod version of creating a superhero. The powers called "Variations" all have to be tied to drawbacks called "scars". Magnitude is how powerful your variations and Scars are. The Biolumiscence power lets you create full on Sunlight at level 3, Deviants can be pretty damn scary to other supernatural creatures depending on the powerlevel the ST sets the game at. The regeneration ability lets you come back from death and heal all lethal damage at the end of a scene and multiple agg levels in a single day.
Today we also got to see some of the rules for creating a conspiracy. They're based around assigning points to a few different categories based on how a Conspiracy prefers to get things done. Each category also has a "Lynchpin" a specific NPC that represents the face or heart of a particular asset of the Conspiracy. I like this because it encourages and puts into framework right away who and what the players have to go after in order to hurt a particular conspiracy and start chipping away at it's power base.
Quote from: jan paparazzi;1107621It's just a pet peeve of mine to complain about this. WoD books seem to be written for people who like reading rpg books, but not necesarily like playing them. In 5th Edition there is some discussion about feeding and sex all written down in essay style. Now I understand the connection. It's always been there in vampire fiction, but how does the exploration of such a theme actually come up in a game? How does it effect gameplay? Do you fondle people while feeding? Or is it just pseudo-intellectual windowdressing to make it seem deeper than it really is? I think the latter.
WoD is partly directed at people who buy the books just for reading rather than playing. Which I never understood. I'm not interested in lore for reading, I'm interested in lore for how I can use it to craft scenarios.
The indie vampire game Feed is vastly more competent in the essay department, because it actually analyzes the trends in vampire fiction over the last two centuries and explains how this could be relevant to the GM crafting scenarios. It isn't pretentious and talks to the reader in plain English about what vampires are and how the game uses them. It could certainly have used more proofreading, examples of play, and further rounds of playtesting, but it's miles ahead of even V5.
Quote from: Orphan81;1107652Hey now, there is absolutely nothing wrong with eating Ass. You don't have to be a Vampire to enjoy that.
More on Deviant.
They've released more info on how things work for Kickstarter backers, and as I said, this is the Wod version of creating a superhero. The powers called "Variations" all have to be tied to drawbacks called "scars". Magnitude is how powerful your variations and Scars are. The Biolumiscence power lets you create full on Sunlight at level 3, Deviants can be pretty damn scary to other supernatural creatures depending on the powerlevel the ST sets the game at. The regeneration ability lets you come back from death and heal all lethal damage at the end of a scene and multiple agg levels in a single day.
Today we also got to see some of the rules for creating a conspiracy. They're based around assigning points to a few different categories based on how a Conspiracy prefers to get things done. Each category also has a "Lynchpin" a specific NPC that represents the face or heart of a particular asset of the Conspiracy. I like this because it encourages and puts into framework right away who and what the players have to go after in order to hurt a particular conspiracy and start chipping away at it's power base.
And power creep rears its ugly head yet again. CoD was created in part to make crossover easier, yet they quickly backpedaled on that in favor of making it needlessly difficult and unbalanced. Every subsequent splat has increased the power creep. Then the writers went so far as to claim game balance was a myth. What is wrong with a point buy system, seriously?
Funny that Onyx couldn't have made those conspiracy mechanics for all organizations a long time ago. Seems like it would have come in handy. Maybe they'll do that in the 3rd edition, whenever that comes out. I'm guessing that 3rd edition will incorporate the innovations from V5, like being able to select from multiple powers at each dot in a discipline or weaknesses getting worse as blood potency increases.
Not that I really care since this franchise is on life support as Paradox exploits it for their video game properties. The new Vampire video game politics more closely resemble Requiem than Masquerade, which might alienate tabletop fans even if it is more consistent with the way Bloodlines 1 gave you multiple factions to deal with. The Werewolf: The Apocalypse video game is going to be comedy gold in today's political climate, and that's assuming it doesn't literally claim the GOP are satanists deliberately trying to cause the apocalypse by fracking.