Quote from: FrankTrollman;416116You 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.

EVERYONE? Of whom? The ten buddies you ran games with? Well, I'm not playing Old WoD at this point, but during the years I ran my games, I have not changed the resolution system, no, and it worked fine for me. The game was indeed "playable." Thanks for asking.

Quote from: FrankTrollman;416116Again 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.

That's not a non-sequitur when you make the link that BECAUSE this or that aspect of the rules suck, THEN the game is unplayable, or terrible. It's just not the case. You are the one who lives in some sort of dream world where rules have to be something they're not at most people's game tables. And what matters is what people do with the game, not what's actually in the game. Vampire is actually a prime example of this, because it fails at what it professes to do (serious introspective role playing about being a monster lest you become one) but actually provided fun to maybe millions of people in the form of dark gothic superhero games.

Quote from: FrankTrollman;416125Again and still, I didn't say it was required for play. I said that the rules were terrible.

No. You didn't just say "the rules are terrible." You said "WoD doesn't work because the rules are terrible."

That's where I say: "No, that's factually not the case. WoD works fine for plenty of people, myself included."

Quote from: Benoist;416126That's not a non-sequitur when you make the link that BECAUSE this or that aspect of the rules suck, THEN the game is unplayable, or terrible.

Yes. Because the game is incomplete and the rules are contradictory and powers do not interact in a clear way, then the game is unplayable without using magical princess dressup teaparty rules to cover the gaps.

How is that even in contention?!

We're talking about fucking Vampire. Rein*Hagen said that facet of the rules was a feature. He bragged about it. What the fucking hell are you arguing?

-Fran

Oh I don't know. Read?

I played lots of Werewolf, Adventure and Trinity.    The magical teaparty was not required any more often than in other RPGs.   Like most RPGs, the game worked best with low/mid XP characters.  

As for my choice for Urban Fantasy...I gotta go COLD CITY and NIGHTBANE.  

Nightbane is really a tremendously cool RPG.   The duality of playing a weak human during the light and a super-monster at night is lots of fun, especially since the world is a puppet show where 99% of the people are desperately trying to make believe everything's fine and the world isn't enthralled to soul devouring evil.

Even if you're not a Palladium fan, the concepts EASILY leap over to whatever point-buy game you enjoy.

For modern Fantasy I almost exclusivly use my own Shadow World. Especially now the rules for Pocket Dimensions have been introduced in Wizkid. You can actually run a dungeon crawl with Chavs. It's fucking hillarious!

Quote from: FrankTrollman;416129We're talking about fucking Vampire.

Are you? Because much of this thread sounds as if you might be lumping every iteration of the past Storyteller and the current Storytelling together, and then judging the resulting mess by its worst flaws. After all, Vampire isn't even a standalone RPG these days, but an expansion set for the fairly generic horror game that is WoD.

Quote from: GrimGent;416233Are you? Because much of this thread sounds as if you might be lumping every iteration of the past Storyteller and the current Storytelling together, and then judging the resulting mess by its worst flaws. After all, Vampire isn't even a standalone RPG these days, but an expansion set for the fairly generic horror game that is WoD.

Yes. Yes I am. The "The rules are contradictory and incomplete so that your storyteller has more freedom to tell a story. If you can't know what the rules say or mean, then you can't rules-lawyer and you can go back to letting the storyteller do whatever he wants." speech by Rein*Hagen was in reference to Vampire specifically. So when I'm talking about that particular explicit design goal of White Wolf, I am specifically talking about Vampire because he was explicitly talking about Vampire. I am implicitly talking about the rest of the oWoD, because the other games were clearly created with the same design theory, even if I have never directly heard the designers admit that in respect to Changeling specifically.

Now, oWoD was explicitly not supposed to be used as a Monster Squad Super Friends game, even though that's exactly what everyone wanted it to be. Each of the books had a standalone game system, that often had quite severe changes even in basic action resolution (especially in the first several years of it, when target numbers changed and thus identical basic tasks could be given different target numbers in different books and therefore were).

nWoD has the advantage of actually being made with the assumption that you will attempt to play with multiple different supernatural types. But the key word is "attempt". Different character types are wildly differently powerful, are supposed to care about wildly different things, and have explicit limitations that make working with other supernaturals (often even within their own type) difficult or impossible. Werewolves and Hunters scarcely have an edge over normal humans and Mages and Geists can turn you into shaving cream just by thinking about it.

Even within a splat, the discrepancies are astounding. Vampiric magic strength is so shitty that it doesn't even give you as big a bulge as a policeman or soldier has simply by virtue of having been given dots arbitrarily and thus being better than a starting character. But vampiric magic mind control is incredibly awesome and basically lets you push the "I Win" button in any circumstance where you can see another person's eyes.

The combat system in nWoD is atrocious. It is insulting to the point of comedy. Interestingly, the combat system being both boringly deterministic and essentially impossible to be "good at" in the way of actually being able to take on a larger  number of enemies and win - is design intent. Justin Achilli seriously said that he hates combat characters and players who want to be good at combat, he thinks they are munchkins who ruin the story and he made the nWoD combat system to punish them. And that's apparently why combat in nWoD is just a ludicrous "sum your pile of dice and compare to the other side's pile of dice, bigger pile wins" setup.

So yes, I was specifically talking about Vampire. Original Vampire at that. But if you want me to go into more detail or talk about other Storyteller (or Storytelling) systems, I can. Because mechanically, they are all bad. Sometimes they are bad in slightly different ways, but they are all bad. And again and still, that's not news. The White Wolf fans know their system sucks. They don't try to hide that shit. They act all snooty about how if you were a Real Roleplayer (or True Scotsman, whatever), you wouldn't care about mechanical flaws in the system or try to puzzle out incoherent power interactions. You'd just go with the flow and allow an immovable object to block an irresistible force one scene and have it be smacked down by the same irresistible force in another scene as "The Story" required. And fuck your Rules, Man.

-Frank

Quote from: danbuter;415935I'm talking stuff like Dresden Files, with modern day mages and werewolves and vamps. At present, I usually stick with Witchcraft, since I know the system well. I was curious what other people used, and maybe if there was a game out there I might not know about that would work better.

I'd be inclined to go the Cinematic Unisystem route (Buffy/Angel) with Apocalypse Prevention Inc. as a close second.

Quote from: danbuter;415935I'm talking stuff like Dresden Files, with modern day mages and werewolves and vamps. At present, I usually stick with Witchcraft, since I know the system well. I was curious what other people used, and maybe if there was a game out there I might not know about that would work better.

My experience with the Urban Fantasy genre comes less from the literature side and more from the Games It Hath Spawned side. My knowledge of what Urban Fantasy is will probably be a bit skewed.

Nemesis, the free ORE variant for Delta Green and Cthulhu gaming, just subtract the Mythos and drop in vamps and were-creatures.

GURPS has also supported a lot of Contemporary Fantasy at my table. I really like the GURPS Cabal supplement.

My old Beyond the Supernatural book has seen allot of use over the last twenty years.

I am also brainstorming a game using the Nameless Streets setting for HeroQuest. With a more 'A Twenty Palaces' feel.

Many moons ago I played a Dark Matter game with the Alternity RPG rules, that was a blast. The default setting has more of a X-files Sci-fi vibe than the Dresden Files.

Also, I think Feng Shui has a strong Contemporary Fantasy with plenty of action feel to it. Like an updated A Chinese Ghost Story or Encounter of the Spooky Kind, just ignore the time travel sci-fi elements.

Take it easy,
Hans

Quote from: FrankTrollman;416368The White Wolf fans know their system sucks.

Sorry, but I don't buy for a moment that the White Wolf crowd in general suffers from some greater collective tendency to ignore the shortcomings in their favourite systems than any other section of the gaming populace. "WW games don't really have proper rules 'cause it's all just meant to be roleplayed" is the kind of a comment that I'm used to seeing on D&D boards from posters whose familiarity with the subject is limited to secondhand hearsay, not hearing from anyone who actually plays them, and the notion of people pretending to play specific RPGs in order not to have fun but to feel superior didn't sound credible even back in Pundit's old rants about "Swine." (Not to mention that I've been running various WoD titles on and off since the first edition of Mage: The Ascension, and make it a policy never to fudge the rules arbitrarily.)

While the current system does facilitate more convenient crossover play by standardizing the supernatural character templates, there's no expectation of combining the various splat lines, or using any material at all beyond the relevant cores, due to the toolbox approach. In fact, whenever the GM advice in the various supplements raises the possibility of crossing the lines, it takes care to draw attention to potential problems which might follow, both mechanical and otherwise (such as theme dilution). In a fae-focused campaign run with only Changeling, for example, there's really no reason why the Kindred as detailed in Vampire should exist in the setting. And of course, the default PCs are now all ordinary mortals.

As for dismissing the combat as "sum your pile of dice and compare to the other side's pile of dice, bigger pile wins", that's not only inaccurate (as combat rolls aren't contested), but purely a matter of preference. What exactly would render it inferior to any other kind of a simple one-roll resolution mechanic, except a personal distaste for dice pools?

In fact, could you come up with a single practical example of a situation in play that can't be resolved "without resorting to magical princess dressup teaparty"?

I'm actually wondering at this point if Frank is running live games, or if this is all pure theoretical wankery on his part.

Hmm.. its never been my favorite kind of genre.  I would say that the closest things I've ran to it are Unknown Armies, Over the Edge, Amber, or Call of Cthulhu, and none of those are, I think, quite what the OP meant.

RPGpundit

This Frank Trollman character is kinda new to me... he seems kind of... frustrated... and I find myself wondering what RPGs he DOES like. I looked but he hasn't posted in the 'favorite games' thread.
Is there a list somewhere, Mr. Trollman, of games that have passed your rigorous test of 'playability'?

Quote from: RPGPundit;416544I would say that the closest things I've ran to it are Unknown Armies, Over the Edge, Amber, or Call of Cthulhu, and none of those are, I think, quite what the OP meant.

I once ran an intro scenario for OtE in which the PCs ended up spending a night at the port of Skylla during their Mediterranean cruise, facing various creatures and figures from Greek mythology but none of the regular Al Amarjan conspiracies.