Quote from: CRKrueger;1037916Are you Romani?

Why should my ethnic background have any bearing on this discussion? What Sammy was saying is equivalent to asking for D&D to add "blackface minstrel" as a bard kit. The Ravnos are thieving Romani, the Assamites are Arab ninjas, blah blah. I am not personally offended but I do find them lame and uninspired. The vampire clans are based on high school cliques, ethnic stereotypes, and other bizarre niche ideas. Rein*Hagen played with identity politics before they became fashionable.

Not only that, but the rules for vampirism itself is just a generic vaguely Ricean template and the superpowers are arbitrarily restrictive. For example, the game divides various forms of mental manipulation into domination, dementia, obfuscation, etc. These are ladders with various filler. When you watch vampire tv shows, that sort of distinction does not exist. The vampires on TV just have a generic hypnosis that lets them make suggestions, alter memories and even manipulate perception to some degree.

I got sick of it years ago, so I left and never looked back. There are many other, better games to choose from.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1037911The Ravnos are offensive stereotypes of Romani and both the Traditions and the Technocracy hate social media.

Why should anyone deal with that when there are already many other superior options to choose from like Ars Magica or Unknown Armies?

The Ravnos are fine, particularly with the update of the clan weakness from 'habitually engages in one particular vice' to 'obsessive about one particular thing' which even fits with vampire lore like having to count every every last grain of something you spill and with variant clan discipline options they've got a lot of flexibility to be a more generic near-eastern vampire.

ETA: and the Assamites are actually based on the original Assassins (a term derived from al-Ḥashāshīn). The ninja didn't hold a monopoly on being stealthy spies and murderers (indeed the original order from which all later assassins got their name was extinct for centuries before the concept of a Ninja even existed).

Ars Magica isn't set in the modern world and is limited to only a single paradigm of magic (like Mage the Awakening, its like playing a game of Mage the Ascension with only one Tradition allowed).

Unknown Armies sucks, particularly its multi-track madness meters that replace roleplaying with dice mechanics. Frankly, it reads like exactly the sort of Eurotrash garbage V5 is looking to be (avatars of mystic hermaphrodites and magic fueled by indulging your obsessions).

Mage the Ascension doesn't have sanity loss or mind-destroying horror as a theme to it's magic. It's more about belief and giving a damn about trying to change the world for the better (as defined by you... other mages have different definitions of better and that's the primary source of conflict). It's the antithesis of Unknown Armies in practically every sense.

Mage is a kung-fu movie star (or more accurately a character they'd play in a movie), a kabbalist rabbi, a shaman, a mad scientist and a guy who hacks the source code of reality with a custom laptop fighting a Nephandi riding a mile-long undead dragon (and the undead parasites feasting on the corpse) from their space zeppelin as they rocket through Etherspace while Void Engineers in powered armor with plasma cannons and rail guns land on the opposite wing from their starship that just happened upon them both during their routine sweep for tachyon particles. Then a Marauder who thinks he's Ghengis Khan comes trodding down a spirit path on the back of his Triceratops followed by an undead Mongol Horde and starts attacking everyone who refuses to bow to his rule.

Unknown Armies PCs would be gibbering wrecks just encountering that... for Mage it's a Tuesday.

Quote from: Chris24601;1037925The Ravnos are fine, particularly with the update of the clan weakness from 'habitually engages in one particular vice' to 'obsessive about one particular thing' which even fits with vampire lore like having to count every every last grain of something you spill and with variant clan discipline options they've got a lot of flexibility to be a more generic near-eastern vampire.

It's been a while since I read V20 so my memory may be a bit rusty, but that is beside the point. Ravnos have nothing in common with Middle East or Indian vampire myths like the foot-licker, the ghoul or the vetala. They follow pseudo-Ricean logic with some D&D illusionist thrown in. They have no flexibility at all if I wanted to do something different that does not fit that tiny little box... like remove the sunlight weakness, change their feeding method to using a siphon or eating dreams, make them vulnerable to roses instead of fire, add levitation, or whatever.

Quote from: Chris24601;1037925ETA: and the Assamites are actually based on the original Assassins (a term derived from ). The ninja didn't hold a monopoly on being stealthy spies and murderers (indeed the original order from which all later assassins got their name was extinct for centuries before the concept of a Ninja even existed).

That is beside the point. "Arabic assassins for hire" is still bizarrely specific and niche. It might work in D&D as a monster of the session but I don't see the sense of adding it to a supernatural soap opera or whatever WoD is supposed to be now.

Quote from: Chris24601;1037925Ars Magica isn't set in the modern world and is limited to only a single paradigm of magic (like Mage the Awakening, its like playing a game of Mage the Ascension with only one Tradition allowed).

I just complained that Vampire did the same thing.

MtA included rules for paradigms in the Chroniclers Guide that came out years ago around the time I stopped following the releases. Ars Magica is really old and probably has rules for modern days and paradigms and whatever somewhere. If not it is probably easy to homebrew with Fudge 4x5 magic or something.

Quote from: Chris24601;1037925Mage the Ascension doesn't have sanity loss or mind-destroying horror as a theme to it's magic. It's more about belief and giving a damn about trying to change the world for the better (as defined by you... other mages have different definitions of better and that's the primary source of conflict). It's the antithesis of Unknown Armies in practically every sense.

So Ascension is about playing an SJW? I think I will pass on that, thanks. Even Awakening sounds more interesting with its theme of "power corrupts" or whatever (but I still think it terrible in every other way, just like its predecessor).

Quote from: Chris24601;1037925Mage is a kung-fu movie star (or more accurately a character they'd play in a movie), a kabbalist rabbi, a shaman, a mad scientist and a guy who hacks the source code of reality with a custom laptop fighting a Nephandi riding a mile-long undead dragon (and the undead parasites feasting on the corpse) from their space zeppelin as they rocket through Etherspace while Void Engineers in powered armor with plasma cannons and rail guns land on the opposite wing from their starship that just happened upon them both during their routine sweep for tachyon particles. Then a Marauder who thinks he's Ghengis Khan comes trodding down a spirit path on the back of his Triceratops followed by an undead Mongol Horde and starts attacking everyone who refuses to bow to his rule.

Sounds like Rifts, Shadowrun, the more wacky D&D settings, or the imagination of a small child... only way more pretentious because it takes itself seriously (despite that scene being about as surreal as a Bosch painting) and throws in delusional SJW politics. At that point I might as well take acid.

In any case there are dozens of urban fantasy RPGs on the market. Suzerain, Dresden Files, homebrew... I will never give Mage a chance in hell, except maybe the Risus conversion and then only as a comedy campaign which mocks the absurdity and pretension.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1037944I just complained that Vampire did the same thing.

No, you complained about the opposite... that they were hyperspecific niche things. What I'm saying is that all of Awakening and Ars Magica is about like saying "Ventrue are the only type of vampires in existence" when compared to the options in Mage the Ascension.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1037944MtA included rules for paradigms in the Chroniclers Guide that came out years ago around the time I stopped following the releases.

I lasted about six months before I went back to running Ascension. I did read their rules for paradigms when they came out. They boiled down to "This paradigm calls Atlantis this, and this is their name for X Supernal Realm." The entire system was rooted in an objective truth. It was the antithesis of Ascension and its mechanics were horrible.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1037944Ars Magica is really old and probably has rules for modern days and paradigms and whatever somewhere.

And you'd be wrong. Its only ever had rules for the Medieval rules and all magicians are members of the Order of Hermes.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1037944So Ascension is about playing an SJW?

Or a Tea Party member or an honest cop or a vampire hunter or an inventor or an entrepreneur or anyone who takes a look at the world as it is now and says "I want to make it better."

SJW's don't have a monopoly on wanting a better tomorrow.

One could argue that the 2016 election was the result of a whole bunch of non-SJWs coming out to vote because they wanted what they believed would be a better tomorrow.

Play what you want, its all good. People like different things. I've tried the alternatives you mentioned over the years and none of them have ever delivered for me what Mage the Ascension did. They all felt hollow by comparison.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1037944It's been a while since I read V20 so my memory may be a bit rusty, but that is beside the point. Ravnos have nothing in common with Middle East or Indian vampire myths like the foot-licker, the ghoul or the vetala. They follow pseudo-Ricean logic with some D&D illusionist thrown in. They have no flexibility at all if I wanted to do something different that does not fit that tiny little box... like remove the sunlight weakness, change their feeding method to using a siphon or eating dreams, make them vulnerable to roses instead of fire, add levitation, or whatever.

  At this point, I think most of the people looking for the cWoD are looking for the World of Darkness itself in all its rococo weirdness and specificity, rather than flexibility or fidelity to folklore. It's kind of like D&D in that regard.

  But I say this as an outsider--as a longtime fan of Stoker, Universal, Castlevania and Ravenloft, I am of the opinion that, with a few rare exceptions, vampires are for staking.

I've stated my piece before with BoxCrayonTales' recommended alternatives, such as Feed et alia. I don't think they're very good, evocative, nor as immersive as I want (basically too fiddly like Euro Board Games). And I put Storyteller on a pretty low bar mechanically; it just gets bonus points for 'apparent simplicity' (approachability).

So Armchair Gamer is right, I want oWoD and that's that. This new crew can bastardize V5 and the rest of the splat lines as they like, creating whole factories of cogs and gears to elaborately power widgets a la Eurotrash Board Games, and I won't care. I got my Splat 20 line put out for eventual collection completion, (Changeling the Dreaming 20, fuck yeah!). So they can fap to their heart's content with the belief that dividing their customer base into popularity -- again! -- is a viable business strategy. Not my concern...

I just can't wait to point and laugh when V5 inevitably fails and then I will tell all those Eurotrash Goths and Punks at NuWW "See, I told you so!"

Not even the great likes of Mark Rein-Hagen and The Gentleman Gamer can save this trainwreck, and those two are really talented. But it seems Martin Ericsson and his ilk are dedicated to destroying World of Darkness once and for all by finishing what Justin Achilli started.

Quote from: Armchair Gamer;1037954At this point, I think most of the people looking for the cWoD are looking for the World of Darkness itself in all its rococo weirdness and specificity, rather than flexibility or fidelity to folklore. It's kind of like D&D in that regard.

  But I say this as an outsider--as a longtime fan of Stoker, Universal, Castlevania and Ravenloft, I am of the opinion that, with a few rare exceptions, vampires are for staking.

Hasn't D&D always encouraged creativity in those who wanted something different? There are dozens of unique campaign settings with wildly different world views, and that is just the IP owned by WotC. There are hundreds of third party campaign settings to buy, much less homebrew.

WoD or CoD does not seem to encourage that same amount of creativity AFAIK, at least not since the heyday of B.J. Zanzibar's archive.

Quote from: Opaopajr;1037986I've stated my piece before with BoxCrayonTales' recommended alternatives, such as Feed et alia. I don't think they're very good, evocative, nor as immersive as I want (basically too fiddly like Euro Board Games). And I put Storyteller on a pretty low bar mechanically; it just gets bonus points for 'apparent simplicity' (approachability).

Would you care to quantify that statement? For example, why specifically is Feed less good/evocative/immersive compared to Vampire? I found it easy to convert between and to give new spins on things, like malk@vs that feed on sanity or gangrels with Buffy-style game faces.

Nah, we already did this song and dance on a previous topic. People can search if they're interested. I deleted Feed off of my old device afterwards, dunno if I have another copy lingering on any storage devices. I simply don't care enough to tread on old ground again.

But I'd gladly play another game of oWoD with some solid houserules and a decent sandbox.

Quote from: Opaopajr;1038042Nah, we already did this song and dance on a previous topic. People can search if they're interested. I deleted Feed off of my old device afterwards, dunno if I have another copy lingering on any storage devices. I simply don't care enough to tread on old ground again.

But I'd gladly play another game of oWoD with some solid houserules and a decent sandbox.

Your critique was extremely shallow. You criticized the mechanics for being non-traditional and you criticized a toolkit for being a toolkit. It is fine if you personally dislike the mechanics, but it is disingenuous to say the game is not good/evocative/immersive compared to some imaginary ideal without any qualifiers.

I think Feed is superior to WoD because it better fits the moniker of "storytelling system" by using free-form skills/attributes (the concept of which predates FATE by decades), the humanity mechanic actually depicts a gradual loss of humanity instead of arbitrarily punishing characters with schizophrenia for stealing a candybar, and it has none of the arbitrary restrictions that WoD does. I have yet to see any credible challenge to that assertion, despite my past queries.

Feed's a highly narrative system, so by definition less immersive, unless of course you're going to play games with 'immersing into what,etc'.

Quote from: CRKrueger;1038051Feed's a highly narrative system, so by definition less immersive, unless of course you're going to play games with 'immersing into what,etc'.

If I understand you correctly, you are criticizing narrative systems as less immersive because they represent the outcome of "role playing" (i.e. internal conflict) with dice rolls instead of the players deciding everything? Traditional RPGs are not designed to represent characters losing control of themselves and engaging in crimes of passion as a result of psychological trauma, and it is highly unlikely that most players would "role play" their character suffering a psychotic break because that is contrary to the typical RPG goal of accumulating power and wealth. Feed is designed around the characters struggling with their hunger, and dice rolls are used because the outcome of struggle is supposed to be unpredictable. Allowing players to arbitrarily decide whether their characters are hungry or not and how they react defeats the entire point.

But that is beside the point. WoD is advertised as a narrative-focused game and includes narrative mechanics like psychotic breaks. Feed is no less immersive than WoD in general, since mechanics like anchoring and compulsion have precedents there. It is disingenuous to claim Feed is less good/evocative/immersive compared to a game it was deliberately written in response to without qualifiers or explanation. That is what I take issue with.

Claiming that narrative games are less immersive just stinks of one true wayism to me. Non-narrative/simulationist/whatever-the-jargon-is games have numerous breaks from reality that can make them less immersive. Off the top of my head, most RPGs discourage angrily shooting at the corner an enemy already escaped around because it increases the chances of a critical failure, despite this being common in fiction involving gunfights. The only RPG I know of that does not suffer this problem is Risus, which explicitly rebuts this. It includes the example of action heroes: they cannot fail to outrun the fireball, so the outcome of the roll only determines whether they land in a swimming pool or a stinky garbage dumpster.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1038038Hasn't D&D always encouraged creativity in those who wanted something different? There are dozens of unique campaign settings with wildly different world views, and that is just the IP owned by WotC. There are hundreds of third party campaign settings to buy, much less homebrew.

  True. There have always been two strains in the D&D audience and design--"D&D for D&D's sake", or favoring a specific playstyle and mélange of influences, or "D&D as fantasy toolkit." Most of the settings came out in the 2E era, which pushed heavily into the latter, or under the OGL, which allows anyone to use the familiar skeleton. But there's also been a heavy push towards the former, especially from WotC. And this is further complicated by the fact that D&D is the 8000-lb. gorilla of the hobby, so a lot of people will just try to hack D&D into something even if there are better tools out there, simply from familiarity, accessibility, popularity, etc.

 

QuoteWoD or CoD does not seem to encourage that same amount of creativity AFAIK, at least not since the heyday of B.J. Zanzibar's archive.

  If memory serves, that archive dates back to the days when WoD had a similar level of presence in the market. Nowadays, though, people who are doing that sort of thing seem to have moved on to other tools, such as FATE, CoD, or other systems. Which brings me back to my original point--I think most of the people still interested in the oWoD nowadays are interested in it for the specific kind of flavor you get from the WoD, just as a lot of people stick with 1E AD&D because they want that specific style and flavor of D&D gaming.

Quote from: CRKrueger;1038051Feed's a highly narrative system, so by definition less immersive, unless of course you're going to play games with 'immersing into what,etc'.

What does "narrative" even mean in this context? I have seen several different definitions so I cannot tell what you are saying unless you explain what definition you are using.

If you mean "narrative" as the opposite of "immersive," that is a narrative games makes you ask "what makes for a better story" and immersive asks "what would my character do," which is one of several possible meanings... well, I certainly never got that impression.

Furthermore, Feed was being compared unfavorably to WoD without qualifier, not non-narrative RPGs in general. WoD is typically advertised as a "storytelling" game. Saying "Feed is less good/evocative/immersive than WoD" needs actual support before I can take that statement as anything other than thoughtless nonsense.

Quote from: Armchair Gamer;1038058If memory serves, that archive dates back to the days when WoD had a similar level of presence in the market. Nowadays, though, people who are doing that sort of thing seem to have moved on to other tools, such as FATE, CoD, or other systems. Which brings me back to my original point--I think most of the people still interested in the oWoD nowadays are interested in it for the specific kind of flavor you get from the WoD, just as a lot of people stick with 1E AD&D because they want that specific style and flavor of D&D gaming.

CoD is not a toolkit, just the equivalent of Marvel's Ultimate Universe for WoD. The same may be said of it. Anal retentive edition wars aside, CoD and WoD have more similarities than differences.

Nah, my critique was complex as it hit at the core of why Feed is needlessly complicated to interact with, how it disassociates, and offering unevocative pablum as a setting. But you like it, and hate WW, so yeah, you'll be on topics like these to push your darling. I get it, too old to care in the same way nowadays, but once upon a time I did. Have fun chasing the dream!