Blood Games II - my players' favorite

-clash

I favour WoD, specifically with Changeling: The Lost and none of the other actual lines. The likes of vampires, werewolves, and mages still exist in the setting, but defined solely in terms of CtL's cosmology and mechanics. For example, those might be, respectively, bloodthirsty fae, bestial shapeshifters from the borderlands of Faerie, or witches who have bargained for their powers at the Goblin Markets.

Quote from: danbuter;416015Shadowrun could work if all the cybernetics and advanced tech were taken out.

And WoD could work if the system didn't suck so bad. This was my own quandary for years, until I just buckled down and did the work myself:

aWoD. Also available in pdf format.

-Frank

Quote from: FrankTrollman;416063And WoD could work if the system didn't suck so bad.

WoD (old and new) worked and works perfectly fine for thousands upon thousands of gamers, myself included. It's one thing to say WoD sucks for reason X or Y, completely another to say "it doesn't work." It does, when you're not a mindless twit when you run the game. "OMG! Actual people with brains run the game!"

I know. I've run my own 'by Night' for 8-10 years.

You've got lots of good points to make, Frank, about games and their designs, but you generally lose me when you step from "this is flawed and here's why" into the "this whole game is crap/doesn't work/is unplayable" territory.

Storyteller Games are actually unplayable without resorting to magical princess dressup teaparty. Rein*Hagen actually said that the rules being terrible was a feature, because it made people do things for the sake of the story instead of actually expecting the rules to resolve disputes. This was back before he took a higher paying job writing anti-Russian propaganda for the Nation of Georgia.

The best rule system White Wolf ever came up with for the World of Darkness was the original Mind's Eye Theatre LARP rules for Vampire. The ones with Rock Paper Scissors as the primary action resolution system. Those were actually fairly decent in a rules-light and somewhat time consuming fashion. Everything else they've written has been worse than just playing with no rules. A fact which their creator admitted in public.

Saying that White Wolf rules suck shouldn't be a point of controversy. It shouldn't be news. To anyone. Least of all White Wolf fans. Having absolutely terrible rules that are contradictory, clumsy, and inadequate to cover common circumstances in the game is supposed to be a feature.

The fact that you can run a game with shitty rules is not surprising, or interesting, or a refutation of anything. People can and do run and play games that have shitty rules all the time. People play games of FATAL. In fact, because FATAL is the worst set of rules ever made, people have played more of it than most adequate to mildly superior fantasy heartbreakers. Original Vampire isn't nearly that bad. It's just very bad as a rule set. And again, that fact shouldn't be surprising to anyone.

-Frank

Quote from: FrankTrollman;416095Storyteller Games are actually unplayable without resorting to magical princess dressup teaparty.

No, they aren't. You can keep telling yourself that in theoretical la-la-land, but really, thousands upon thousands of people played those games and liked them. That's fine if you personally get your panties in a twist over issues like this, but this is a simple fact that these games have been played millions of times over the world without any significant issues in game play and therefore, are indeed "playable." You are using a ridiculous hyperbole to make your point, but you're not willing to admit it.

Quote from: Benoist;416097No, they aren't. You can keep telling yourself that in theoretical la-la-land, but really, thousands upon thousands of people played those games and liked them. That's fine if you personally get your panties in a twist over issues like this, but this is a simple fact that these games have been played millions of times over the world without any significant issues in game play and therefore, are indeed "playable." You are using a ridiculous hyperbole to make your point, but you're not willing to admit it.

While I thought the system in the original Vampire was deeply flawed - more skill should NEVER make it easier to botch! - they mostly fixed that in later releases, and the NWoD system is quite good. My problems with WoD do not stem from system at all any more, and are entirely due to differences in taste.

-clash

Quote from: FrankTrollman;416095Storyteller Games are actually unplayable without resorting to magical princess dressup teaparty. Blah, blah, blah

-Frank

What are you even talking about.  The system oWod or nWod is completely playable.  Plain, simple and end of story.   Your tirades are futile and baseless.

Quote from: flyingmice;416101While I thought the system in the original Vampire was deeply flawed - more skill should NEVER make it easier to botch! - they mostly fixed that in later releases, and the NWoD system is quite good. My problems with WoD do not stem from system at all any more, and are entirely due to differences in taste.

-clash

See, I much prefer reading something like this. And indeed, I would completely agree that the simple way dice pools were built in oWoD was flawed on a mathematical level. What I don't like is jumping from "ok this design is flawed for this or that reason" to "OMG! That game is UNPLAYABLE!" when literally hundred of thousands, if not millions, of gamers played those games and found them enjoyable enough.

That is just a ridiculous thing to say.

Quote from: Benoist;416097You are using a ridiculous hyperbole to make your point, but you're not willing to admit it.

Does his point really have anything to do with WoD? Is he participating in the thread to discuss urban fantasy games or WoD?

Yes, the old World of Darkness has some flaws. People played with it, working around the flaws, ignoring them, or trying to fix them. Just like any other game, really. Personally, I find nWoD to be cogent and coherent (and if they ever release a sourcebook that'll do all the work converting oWoD to nWoD's mechanics, I will grab it off the presses; screw waiting for it to be released - I'm raiding the printer).

Seanchai

Quote from: Benoist;416097No, they aren't. You can keep telling yourself that in theoretical la-la-land, but really, thousands upon thousands of people played those games and liked them. That's fine if you personally get your panties in a twist over issues like this, but this is a simple fact that these games have been played millions of times over the world without any significant issues in game play and therefore, are indeed "playable." You are using a ridiculous hyperbole to make your point, but you're not willing to admit it.

What part of without resorting to magical teaparty did you not understand? The rules are clunky and incomplete. People can play them, but there are substantial times when they have to ignore the rules and just do whatever they think fits the story and move on.

There are role playing games that are entirely magical princess dressup teaparty. Games like Cops and Robbers are even competitive, despite having no action resolution rules at all. And that's OK for some people. But when I pay money for a book with rules in it, I personally expect a genuine improvement over "just winging it". Because I can wing it for free, and have been doing so since Reagan was president.

Storyteller rules are so terrible that you have to wing it frequently. That's not hyperbole, that's not even under contention. The original designer of the game claimed to think this was a good thing.

The person who is not in this argument in good faith, is you. I said that Storyteller Games are not playable without resorting to magical princess dressup teaparty. You countered that this was not true because you had played the game at all. This is not a refutation of my statement. You didn't even mention whether you had abandoned the rule-based resolution system at any point. I rather suspect that you have, because everyone who has ever played or run Storyteller games for any length of time - myself included (on both sides of the table) - has done so.

Again and still: cut the non-sequitur bullshit abut how people have played games or have had fun in a room where some game was nominally being played. People have had fun playing FATAL. People have successfully played Cowboys and Indians until someone won fair and square. These are real data points which do not in any way address actual complaints about those systems.

Magical Princess Dressup Teaparty is not a bad RPG. It's the first RPG. It's just a free RPG. And worth every penny.

-Frank

Quote from: Seanchai;416108Does his point really have anything to do with WoD? Is he participating in the thread to discuss urban fantasy games or WoD?

I don't know what his intentions were, but yeah, his point was clearly to say "WoD doesn't work because the system sucks so bad."

Quote from: FrankTrollman;416116What part of without resorting to magical teaparty did you not understand? The rules are clunky and incomplete. People can play them, but there are substantial times when they have to ignore the rules and just do whatever they think fits the story and move on.

Oh I understood fine. It's fine to have a point of view and bring arguments to the table. I just dispute your assumption that somehow you know better than everyone else, that people who play the game and enjoy it are somehow "playing it wrong," or "don't know any better," or that somehow the game HAS to be "airtight" from a rules standpoint to be playable. This is a whole lot of bullshit. The fact is, many people actually are not searching for the type of super-nitpicky coherence in the rules you seem to be requiring for play. That's it. That's my point.

Quote from: FrankTrollman;416116The person who is not in this argument in good faith, is you.

Hey, Frank. I don't dispute your good faith. Don't dispute mine. Thanks.

Quote from: Benoist;416119Oh I understood fine. It's fine to have a point of view and bring arguments to the table. I just dispute your assumption that somehow you know better than everyone else, that people who play the game and enjoy it are somehow "playing it wrong," or "don't know any better," or that somehow the game HAS to be "airtight" from a rules standpoint to be playable. This is a whole lot of bullshit. The fact is, many people actually are not searching for the type of super-nitpicky coherence in the rules you seem to be requiring for play. That's it. That's my point.

Again and still, I didn't say it was required for play. I said that the rules were terrible. And I said that playing by the rules without handwaving large sections of them is impossible.

Do you want to refute my actual statements, or do you wish to continue libeling me by angrily refuting shit I didn't say over and over again?

-Frank