I'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've used d20 Modern, but these days I think I prefer True20.
My preference for any game I am not familiar with a dedicated system (or where the dedicated system I dislike) is Hero.
CoC with no specific Licensed setting in mind... more of an amalgam of Kult and NWOD and Lukyanenko's 'Watch' series... a bit of China Mieville... a bit of Savage Henry and the Post Bros.
WoD for mixes, specific systems for a specific focus on one PC type (CoC for humans, Nephilim for well, Nephilim, d666 for INS/MV, etc).
Angel usually. I wish they would reprint all the Witchcraft books though and I would use them. Eden are very good at this type of game.
For Dresden files. I'd use the Dresden Files rpg.
Otherwise I generally use nWod. Even my darling Kult RPG I think works much better as a wonky setting book and just leave the general mechanics up to nWod - though with Kult's ritual magic system and reality meter.
I'm surprised there's not more games around for this kind of thing, given how popular it is now on bookshelves and TV. Somehow WoD has always seemed like something other than this to me. I guess like D&D it's kind of become it's own thing?
I keep wondering about doing something based either on True Blood or the books of Ilona Andrews. Would probably be Savage Worlds if it happens.
I also have a soft spot for Urban Arcana, in idea at least if not execution. But I can't face D20 or it's derivatives anymore, so even though the premise of that one is explicitly "D&D in the modern world", I think I'd do that in Savage Worlds too.
Quote from: kryyst;415964For Dresden files. I'd use the Dresden Files rpg.
I'm reading it now. I haven't gotten to the magic section (which, of course, could be a deal breaker), but I'm really liking it.
Seanchai
I'm not sure.
I like FATE and dig on the collaborative setting creation thing in DFRPG, but I'm not sure I'd use it as written. Main reason being, I really don't like the way it cuts the PCs to the bone on the fate point economy. I guess it could work for a smallish group, but for the groups I typically run in, I don't have time to focus on each character's compels enough to fuel them through the game.
The quick and dirty solution here would be to give everyone a small allotment of fate points (say 3) that they can't touch for the purposes of stunts. I haven't played it enough to tell if that would correct the problem without turning it into a magic supers game.
Random flash thought: But then, a magic supers game, a la Dr. Fate / Dr. Strange, could be fun. :)
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.
Witchcraft or Savage Worlds are my first picks for this setting.
Sorcerer or Chill 1ed.
Conspiracy of Shadows w/mod.sett. seems doable.
:)
All sorts of cool suggestions...
So what would make a system better or worse for 'Urban Fantasy'? I'm assuming some modern day equipment stats, a magic system... what else?
Would a superhero game with magic rules be too out of wack?
Does Shadowrun qualify?
Quote from: Simlasa;416005All sorts of cool suggestions...
So what would make a system better or worse for 'Urban Fantasy'? I'm assuming some modern day equipment stats, a magic system... what else?
Would a superhero game with magic rules be too out of wack?
Does Shadowrun qualify?
As far as "system" goes I think a rules light approach with genre evoking powers etc. is the way to go. Nothing to flashy or drawn out. Quik,subtle & eerie is a go.
Nice to have lots of wiggle room to keep it all fresh and mysterious. A comprehensive rules set can be a drag in that regard unless you embrace handwavyness.
not so much into equip. more about char. network/agendas etc.This is why I mentioned CoS in my previous post.
supers. w/magic,meh, allways seems wonky to me...never played Shadowrun.
:)
Shadowrun could work if all the cybernetics and advanced tech were taken out.
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 (http://www.tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=50434). Also available in pdf format (https://sites.google.com/site/awodpdf2/).
-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. (http://www.therpgsite.com/showpost.php?p=416063&postcount=18)"
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
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. (http://www.therpgsite.com/showpost.php?p=416063&postcount=18)"
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 (http://www.nemesis-system.com/), the free ORE variant for Delta Green and Cthulhu gaming, just subtract the Mythos and drop in vamps and were-creatures.
GURPS (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gurps) has also supported a lot of Contemporary Fantasy at my table. I really like the
GURPS Cabal (http://www.sjgames.com/gurps/books/cabal/) supplement.
My old
Beyond the Supernatural (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beyond_the_Supernatural) book has seen allot of use over the last twenty years.
I am also brainstorming a game using the
Nameless Streets (http://shop.cubicle7store.com/epages/es113347.sf/en_GB/?ObjectPath=/Shops/es113347_shop/Products/CB75803) setting for
HeroQuest (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heroquest). With a more
'A Twenty Palaces' feel.
Many moons ago I played a
Dark Matter (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark%E2%80%A2Matter) game with the
Alternity RPG (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternity) 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 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feng_Shui_%28role-playing_game%29) 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.
Quote from: RPGPundit;416544Hmm.. 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
The only literature I have read and enjoyed that has been labeled
Urban Fantasy would be the 'Twenty Palaces' series by Harry Connolly. If a game were ever to be created from this setting it would totally be a Unknown Armies+Call of Cthulhu mash-up.
-Hans
Welcome, Hans. :)
I would use Mercenaries, Spies, and Private Eyes, and bring in magic and supernatural creatures from Tunnels and Trolls.
Quote from: hanszurcher;416567The only literature I have read and enjoyed that has been labeled Urban Fantasy would be the 'Twenty Palaces' series by Harry Connolly. If a game were ever to be created from this setting it would totally be a Unknown Armies+Call of Cthulhu mash-up.
-Hans
I'd never heard of 'Twenty Palaces' before you mentioned it but it looks pretty cool... I jumped over to Amazon and ordered the first two books.
Thanks for that.
Quote from: GrimGent;416508Sorry, 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."
Well, you need to get out more. Because that is the apologetics from Whte Wolf's
own forums. As someone who has played and run a lot of White Wolf games and participated in a lot of White Wolf discussion and listened to not a small number of White Wolf designers - yes, they know their system sucks.
We know the system sucks. You're supposed to look past that, and there is a lot of cool ideas and a neat setting full of awesome stuff to convince you to do so. But the
system really is shit on toast, and always has been. It was a shitty rip off of 1st edition Shadowrun in 1991, and it's a pale replacement for 4th edition Shadowrun now. And White Wolf players acknowledge and accept this. And they play the game
in spite of the lousy ruleset.
QuoteNot 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.
OK, now I
know you're just fucking with me, because Mage is
all about fudging things. Do you let people transmute cubic meters of the floor into equal masses of solid elemental nitrogen at room temperature? If not, why not? If you do, how much damage does the near instantaneous endothermic expansion do?
You seem to be convinced that I am somehow cherry picking the worst things that White Wolf did. I'm not. If I was, I would be talking about their truly regrettable and offensive decisions like printing World of Darkness: Gypsy (would actually have been less offensive had they made World of Darkness: The Jew instead), or their decision to make having sex with dogs a major plot and character development point (and no, not hyper intelligent talking dogs like Goofy or Scooby Doo, that would have just been Furry, they were talking about
actual normal dogs that you were supposed to be fucking). But indeed, while those lapses in judgement were indeed appalling at the time and still stomach churning in retrospect, they aren't particularly relevant. We ignore the "Pygmy" entry in the AD&D Monster Manual these days too.
White Wolf makes bad crunch and good fluff. It has ever been such. It's why they fill their writing staff with people who are literature majors and stuff instead of engineers. White Wolf,
from the beginning has sold themselves as an alternative to worrying about whether the rules are good. And unsurprisingly, their rules aren't good. That's not why we like them.
I'm not "picking on" White Wolf when I say that their rules are shitty. That is me,
as a fan admitting what everyone who has ever been in any way introspective about the World of Darkness has always known: that the rules are not even mediocre. They are bad. And to play the game, it is best to ignore many of them.
However, I do have to give special props to the old Mind's Eye Theatre rules. Those aren't everyone's cup of tea, and they get pretty slow when everyone on both sides of a conflict has a lot of special abilities, but they really
work. It's rules light, it's props light, you can play it effectively while standing up in the dark and drinking a cup of coffee and holding a pet rat. I know, I've done it. It really is one of the better LARP systems out there. Hell, it's better
as a game than any of their actual table top offerings have been. The new MET, with the cards and shit, is garbage.
QuoteAs 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?
Are you seriously defending nWoD
combat? nWoD combat is bad
by design. As explained
by the designer. It makes extremely minimal allowance for
toughness, or dodging, or really any ability at all that effectively enhances survivability. Personally, I loves me dice pools. I have written multiple games that
use dice pools. But nWoD combines the to-hit and damage equation into a single dice pool and then outputs a
linear result. Each hit in the pool is a wound level. So not only is there no real difference between someone using a large and inaccurate weapon versus a smaller and more accurate weapon (something even 4th edition D&D can do), there isn't even any difference between one very skilled combatants and two random dudes off the street. Two dice pools that are half the size do
exactly as much damage as one dice pool that is twice as big.
And that's one of the many reasons that Dominate is so much better as a "combat" discipline than Celerity or Vigor. Having an extra
pile of dice is ridiculously superior to any
bonus dice you could possibly have. Heck, a kindergarten full of kids with bb guns is an unbeatable threat in that game, simply because enough bullshit dice pools is still indistinguishable from a single massive dice pool that will one-shot your entire coterie.
QuoteIn 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 wasn't going to bring up Mage, because that is cheating. However, you brought it up Let's take the Matter sphere. Before we get into using Matter and Prime to "Create" materials or Matter and Life to "animate" materials" or Matter and Spirit to animate materials
differently, let's just talk about a single, low level ability: transforming some matter into other matter. Now you are supposedly
limited in that you can't change the temperature, the mass, or the state of matter. But you can change its elemental composition to something else.
Anything else. Now as it happens, you are usually surrounded by
gas at all times because you are breathing something and you are usually
standing on something as well, so there is probably some
solid available for use as well.
Do you know what happens to room temperature and pressure gaseous iron? Like, immediately? Obviously, the
writers of Mage have no idea, and probably never passed even highschool chemistry or physics, which is one of the reasons that they
made a game that was in essence a long anti-science tirade. It's an exothermic contraction. A very fast one actually. What would
you do in that situation if sleepers could or could not see that happen? Keep in mind, this is a very low level sphere use, and the resultant thunder clap is created by entirely natural processes requiring no input of power from the mage at all. And indeed, the only reason it is happening at all is because materials are suddenly
far outside their normal conditions on a heating curve - and
that is caused by a supposed
limitation of magic. Making stable materials that would neither explode nor implode requires more power and Forces. But of course, if mass destruction is your
goal, why is that a limitation?
-Frank
Quote from: GrimGent;416560I 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.
Sounds very cool and very Over The Edgy. OtE would probably be my go to system for urban fantasy or maybe Unknown Armies.
Quote from: RPGPundit;416544Hmm.. 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
At the core of it the definition's in the title - it's fantasy in an urban setting (and often definition stretched to be fantasy in any modern setting). So while CoC and UA might be considered horror rather than fantasy, they're in more-or-less the ballpark, even if they're not hitting the mainstream of what most people would assume by the genre titles.
The three big pillars of modern Urban Fantasy would probably be the Dresden Files, the Sookie Stackhouse books (True Blood), and the Anita Blake series. In practise the Dresden Files are actually a massive outlier themselves, but they're big enough sellers to be seen as a big part of the genre now I'd say.
I'd say Charles de Lint would be my biggest influence, followed closely by Dresden Files. I don't care for Anita Blake or Sookie at all.
Quote from: danbuter;416780I don't care for Anita Blake at all.
Hot vampire and werewolf sex, what's not to like? I only read one book though, Anita may have moved on to fucking Cthulhu or zombies for all I know.
Any of these:
WoD
Unisystem
Cortex
Quote from: Benoist;416576Welcome, Hans. :)
Thanks for helping me feel at home.
I was just cleaning some of my shelves and discovered
Dreaming Cities: Tri-Stat Urban Fantasy Genre.
Forgot I had it. Never played it. However, if you are into Tri-Stat I see Amazon Marketplace has a few new copies for sale at under $10.
-Hans