Actually what attracted me was the noir aspects.  The fact you got factions working together and against each other to bring down the city to its current rotton form means you have a lot of mysteries to solve.

Quote from: Omega;1106536One of my players was verrrry into all the WOD stuff and played for years in the local LARP.

They were not impressed at all with the new material and the new-new material even less.

One of the big appeals for the nWoD at the time it came out was no Metaplot. You could make the settings your own. More so than with the cWoD. Another big appeal was the seperation of the racial splat (for example clan) from the political views that came with that splat. A Masquerade Ventrue had to be very traditional and powermongery. A Requiem Ventrue will be like that if he joins the Invictus (a covenant), but his views will be more like a Brujah if he joins the Carthian movement.

Quote from: BarefootGaijin;1106544I'm also WoD curious, never played, have CtL 1e, VtR 1e and the blue book. Is there a TL;DR on the CoD differences? Probably I expect, but pressed for time. I like the nWoD stuff and I heard rumblings of things like 'beats' and stuff from later versions. WoD/nWoD/CoD/V5/etc is all a bit confusing (I think I said that elsewhere though).

EDIT: Beats, tilts, conditions, integrity not morality (because good people do bad things too). My head is spinning.

Yep, your player character gets certain conditions and tilts (combat conditions) during play. The player then has to make a roll to make the conditions and tilt go away. You will be rewarded with a beat if that happens. You can exchange 3 (or 5?) beats for 1 xp point. So that makes the entire game more fiddly and more meta. There are some other differences, but this is the biggest one. This happened to all the books since the God Machine Chronicle aka second edition, which came out in 2013. All the second edition books are using this system.

There were also some name changes. WoD became oldWoD, later became classicWoD and then became WoD again. NewWoD became ChroniclesofD. All of this had to do with White Wolf being bought by first CCP (from Eve online) and later Paradox Interactive (from Europe Universales). The original WW crew was fired from CCP because CCP spend too much on the WoD MMO, but after that they used to be licensing both oWoD and nWoD under the name Onyx Path. Now they only do the new one, because Paradox wanted to make the old WoD themselves under the name of White Wolf. Which is now defunct because of some political backlash about gays in Chechenya (?!?). They pulled the plug and gave the rights to Modiphius.

Quote from: Snowman0147;1107630Actually what attracted me was the noir aspects.  The fact you got factions working together and against each other to bring down the city to its current rotton form means you have a lot of mysteries to solve.

That's always been the biggest part of the draw for me as well. Similar to why I was initially attracted to cyberpunk games.
I don't really care about playing the monsters, or having powers... but I like those noir themes of corruption and doom. Desperate people doing desperate things under the cover of darkness. I don't know if those elements play out on the table, as usual it probably matters most who you're playing with.

Quote from: Simlasa;1106507Okay, let's try this out...
I'm NWoD curious... I've yet to play... and I've got questions.
...

Thanks!

Quote from: Snowman0147;1106521No.  You are honestly fucked my friend.  ...

I disagree. Chronicles of Darkness is a perfectly serviceable game. You can use the various conditions/tilt and ignore beats or what not and just award straight experience. I actually enjoy conditions, they can add some "crunch" to a game without going full crunch. (no one goes full Crunch!) The game basics are very much the same dice pool mechanic nWoD and predecessors were. You can steal gratuitously from the various lines to make your own supernaturals. Frankly a lot of it reminds me of GURPS where some of the crunch is replaced with yogurt. The brand names are Sharpied out. No, not greek yogurt you fool, the 5 for a $1 stuff you can't pronounce half the ingredients.

The parts you hate are easily left out. It still functions fine. I've used it for several one shots (zombie survival, alien invasion) and most people who've played before picked it right up. Especially when I ignore the strangeness (like beats. It's vestigial. You can hack it right out and there's no bleeding. Or feeling. I guess stupid just lops off without fanfare.).

Now, if you want to see how badly you can fuck up a perfectly usable system, pick up the Trinity crap. It's seriously horrible. It makes absolutely no sense.

I'm pretty sure Onyx Path's next game is going to be a series of chapters, each written in a different lost language with strange hand-drawn stick figures and pictures of feces-art set in several of the developers' bedrooms. It will rant on about how "they're coming for us through our games" and the last half of the last chapter will just be empty where the last page has only the word "sorry" at the end without a period. It will of course have custom dice where every number on the d12 is a 1 except a lonely 3.

The progression is deteriorating fast. Pick up all the CoD shit quickly before these motherfuckers permanently shit the bed. After that, all bets are off. Like the developers are obviously off their meds.

Quote from: trechriron;1107711Now, if you want to see how badly you can fuck up a perfectly usable system, pick up the Trinity crap. It's seriously horrible. It makes absolutely no sense.

The old Trinity superhero set? Or is this some new thing called Trinity?

Aberrant was a perfectly fine system and played in some ways better than most WOD.

What's wrong with the new system? Storypath (the new system used for new Trinity/Scion/Abberant) seems pretty straightforward.

trechriron the challenge I've had when I've tried to run CoD 2e are:

- NPC's - built just like PC's, so they're a ton of work
- the massive amount of fiddly rules. All the fiddly rules of the game, plus the hundreds of tiny powers.

Quote from: trechriron;1107711I disagree. Chronicles of Darkness is a perfectly serviceable game. You can use the various conditions/tilt and ignore beats or what not and just award straight experience. I actually enjoy conditions, they can add some "crunch" to a game without going full crunch. (no one goes full Crunch!) The game basics are very much the same dice pool mechanic nWoD and predecessors were. You can steal gratuitously from the various lines to make your own supernaturals. Frankly a lot of it reminds me of GURPS where some of the crunch is replaced with yogurt. The brand names are Sharpied out. No, not greek yogurt you fool, the 5 for a $1 stuff you can't pronounce half the ingredients.

The parts you hate are easily left out. It still functions fine. I've used it for several one shots (zombie survival, alien invasion) and most people who've played before picked it right up. Especially when I ignore the strangeness (like beats. It's vestigial. You can hack it right out and there's no bleeding. Or feeling. I guess stupid just lops off without fanfare.).

Or save yourself from the headache and just run nWoD 1E era games.  See I am providing better a solution already.

Quote from: trechriron;1107711Now, if you want to see how badly you can fuck up a perfectly usable system, pick up the Trinity crap. It's seriously horrible. It makes absolutely no sense.

I'm pretty sure Onyx Path's next game is going to be a series of chapters, each written in a different lost language with strange hand-drawn stick figures and pictures of feces-art set in several of the developers' bedrooms. It will rant on about how "they're coming for us through our games" and the last half of the last chapter will just be empty where the last page has only the word "sorry" at the end without a period. It will of course have custom dice where every number on the d12 is a 1 except a lonely 3.

The progression is deteriorating fast. Pick up all the CoD shit quickly before these motherfuckers permanently shit the bed. After that, all bets are off. Like the developers are obviously off their meds.

Now I am curious of what is going on with the storypath system.  Though if this is what finally make you open your eyes to how bad Onyx Path is at with mechanics I guess it is a good thing.

Quote from: Snowman0147;1107759Now I am curious of what is going on with the storypath system.  Though if this is what finally make you open your eyes to how bad Onyx Path is at with mechanics I guess it is a good thing.

The most mind-boggling thing about this is that the system was actually developed with the help of the community. To me the basic task resolution in nWoD was just good. It was quick, deadly and quickly got out of the way during play. True, I enjoy systems with less dice better like a simple role over system like Unisystem or a percentile system like BRP, but it is a good system unless you hate dicepool systems. The only thing they should have changed about it was the combat system. I liked the old system better. I definitely need a dodge/block/parry roll when defending and I need a seperate damage roll. I don't mind the combat being a bit crunchier than the rest. All the new mechanics don't fulfill any need I had about the system. I don't get it.

Quote from: Omega;1107712The old Trinity superhero set? Or is this some new thing called Trinity?

Aberrant was a perfectly fine system and played in some ways better than most WOD.

The new Storypath system thing recently Kickstarted.

Quote from: PencilBoy99;1107725What's wrong with the new system? Storypath (the new system used for new Trinity/Scion/Abberant) seems pretty straightforward.

I would have to reopen and refresh my memory. My first pass was... elder god head fog.

Quote from: PencilBoy99;1107726trechriron the challenge I've had when I've tried to run CoD 2e are:

- NPC's - built just like PC's, so they're a ton of work
- the massive amount of fiddly rules. All the fiddly rules of the game, plus the hundreds of tiny powers.

This is true of most systems. You can run most NPCs in any story* system by having a name, a descriptive sentence and an average dice pool. Pick one skill they are really good at and add +2 dice.

Seriously, I'm very interested in a retro-clone d10 dice pool system that could kind of MM3e or HERO system a standard powers system. I like MM3e powers but not really the rest of it. It seems that systems with tons of unique powers that require system mastery are more popular than generic systems. I still don't understand why.

Quote from: Simlasa;1107661That's always been the biggest part of the draw for me as well. Similar to why I was initially attracted to cyberpunk games.
I don't really care about playing the monsters, or having powers... but I like those noir themes of corruption and doom. Desperate people doing desperate things under the cover of darkness. I don't know if those elements play out on the table, as usual it probably matters most who you're playing with.

I think the noir mood of the video game drew me in. The mood in Bloodlines always reminded me of the Tim Burton Batman movies and that was the biggest draw. Just walking the streets was cool in that game.

Quote from: GIMME SOME SUGAR;1107524I never understood the thing/the greatness with WoD. What is it that you do within the confounds of that rpg? Are the vampires hideous like in Salem's Lot or are they shimmering? Are the werewolves like in The Howling?

The greatest thing about WoD was the cute little goth chicks that larped it. Other than that I have never had any interest in any of their stuff.
And the answer to your question is if I recall right, is yes, they are.

My favorite Trinity product was the Quickstart. I've run a several dozen games just with it because I never felt the full game lived up to the promise.
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/86000/Trinity-RPG-Quickstart

Same goes for the Exalted Quickstart.
http://kschnee.xepher.net/rpg/exalted/Exalted%20Starter%20Kit.pdf

Quote from: jan paparazzi;1107773The only thing they should have changed about it was the combat system. I liked the old system better. I definitely need a dodge/block/parry roll when defending and I need a seperate damage roll. I don't mind the combat being a bit crunchier than the rest.

I personally prefer abstracted combat.

The only benefit of separate defense rolls is that the GM can conceal the opponent's statistics from the player, but you could do the exact same thing using a single roll if you used a custom dice rolling app that could conceal modifiers from players. Although if you're using a custom dice rolling app that saves you time on rolling dice for combat anyway, then it doesn't matter how many rolls you make since an app would take no time anyway.

The problem with separate damage rolls, at least in the CoD rules where damage is applied automatically, is that it makes weapons with higher damage automatically better than those with lower damage. It's impossible to describe imagery like a glancing blow dealing barely any damage or only a little damage, because a lot of damage is dealt anyway and CoD characters have limited hit points.

I just don't get the obsession with combat that tabletop RPGs seem to have. Ironically, abstracted combat rules seem more realistic to me because they give far more leeway in describing what happens. Because reality doesn't operate on RPG mechanics.