Has anybody ever run a game set in some version of the WoD and CoD where different game lines were mix and matched? I wondered, for example, if Vampire: the Masquerade could be the source for vampires of a setting but the werewolves could be from Werewolf: the Forsaken or even CoD Skinchangers. You could combine that with Dark Ages Fae and perhaps Prometheans.

I canonized Ashwood Abbey, the Hunt Club, Task Force: Valkyrie, and Slashers in my world of Darkness. Hunter: The Vigil is a great resource for the classic World of Darkness, IMHO.

I also have occasionally used Werewolf: The Forsaken as the future of Werewolf: The Apocalypse. The Garou, on the verge of collapse, proceed to have a civil war with half of them joining the Pure and the other half becoming the Forsaken.

I later did a similar "update" for Changeling: the Dreaming. The Formori have returned and the Changelings are now in the position of the Lost. On the plus side, the Formori kidnap and warp mortals into new Fae every day so they're no longer in danger of extinction.

I also tend to use the Seers of the Throne in place of the Technocracy in terms of how I run them. I really don't have any desire to do apologia for authoritarian conspiracies so the idea of just making the Union a bunch of assholes who go, "fuck you, I've got mine" is better. This isn't a genuine replacement, though, but just a way of handling it. The Union doesn't want mass ascension, it wants to keep everyone but a handful of Enlightened personnel as Sleepers forever.

I.e. The Throne's thing.

The WoD factions I would most want to replace with their CoD equivalents would be Apocalypse werewolves and Ascension mages. Both games, I feel, tend to dominate and overshadow other settings and systems they are exposed to. In a large scale crossover game, I think I'd want to use the CoD versions of both.

I think there is something kinda cool about the Technocracy, but the Technocracy may be one of the most setting dominating factions in the WoD.

I feel like a lot of people gravitate to the Technocracy as an ordered scientific materialist worldview that fights monsters in a setting overrun by them. However, I feel like the fact that falls into "The Imperium of Mankind is the good guys" which was never meant to be the case.

I admit, I've run a few Technocracy games myself, though.

Ironically, I enjoy them BECAUSE I like the idea of a La Femme Nikita or Alias situation where you work for terrible people vs. other terrible people.

I can get into the Technocracy as villains or heroes, both interpretations are interesting. As villains, I kind of see them as representing an Alex Jones is right sort of reality - with this massive world spanning conspiracy that is stamping out all alternatives. As flawed heroes, it's not hard to picture them as bringing in all of the benefits of the modern age that we experience in the modern real world. Of course, within the context of the Mage setting, modernity isn't necessarily such an improvement.

I think that working for a bad organization can be fun too. It also opens up the question of whether or not to stick with that bad organization to serve some greater good or to go AWOL, which could be exciting for players either way.

So I like the Technocracy, I just feel like it overshadows other setting elements when they are played to full effect. Especially when combined with other game lines.

Years ago I used to fantasize a bit about a mixed WoD/CoD which threw everything in a blender. Silent Striders teaming up with Khaibit to fight the demonic legions of Apophis, Seers of the Throne behind the Technocracy, etc.

Nowadays I just save those ideas for my "open darkness"-inspired settings.

Quite honestly, I've come up with a New World of Darkness/CofD 1st Edition chronicle that would be set in the Middle Ages and use the Roads from Dark Ages: Vampire in place of the Humanity system in the Requiem corebook.

I would not use the Strix though, nor would I use the versions of the Covenants from the second edition of Requiem. Fuck that pretentious punk bullshit.

I've also contemplated on incorporating the fan games for both Classic WoD and New WoD, like replacing Princess: The Hopeful with Senshi: The Merchandising or doing a New WoD/CofD 1st Edition conversion of Street Fighter: The Storytelling Game

There were a few games where I really enjoyed the premise of the Chronicles of Darkness games... Hell I've ran successful campaigns of almost all of them. But the 20th anniversary editions of the Classic World of Darkness updated and revitalized their settings.. and just.. completely overshadow the Chronicles of Darkness versions of the game.

As much as I enjoy Mage: The Awakening, particularly for it splitting Entropy into Fate and Death... The setting just...pales in comparison to Ascensions, and everything going on it... and the level of customization you can get out of your character.. For awhile I preferred Lost over the Dreaming... and then The Dreaming 20th anniversary reminded me of everything I loved about Changeling and fixed all of the issues I had with it. Once more, it's a game with a bigger scope and much larger themes... Lost you're stuck playing Abuse victims... Dreaming is just so much much more...

Most of the Chronicle games have some weird political focus upfront that ruins it for me. Geist in particular did this. I love Ghosts and ghost stories, they're my favorite kind of horror fiction. I love Wraith and Orpheus... so I was hoping I would love Geist 2nd edition... I read the intro and it flat out goes "This is a game about speaking truth to power, and standing up to oppression. It's a game about not just sitting on the sidelines..." and all I can think was... "Fuck man, I just wanted a game about Ghosts...not overthrowing the U.S. and instituting socialism."

The exception to all of this is as Phipps said... Hunter:The Vigil... whose groups can easily be ported over to Classic wod and make some very interesting and cool results.

Quote from: Orphan81;1131383There were a few games where I really enjoyed the premise of the Chronicles of Darkness games... Hell I've ran successful campaigns of almost all of them. But the 20th anniversary editions of the Classic World of Darkness updated and revitalized their settings.. and just.. completely overshadow the Chronicles of Darkness versions of the game.

As much as I enjoy Mage: The Awakening, particularly for it splitting Entropy into Fate and Death... The setting just...pales in comparison to Ascensions, and everything going on it... and the level of customization you can get out of your character.. For awhile I preferred Lost over the Dreaming... and then The Dreaming 20th anniversary reminded me of everything I loved about Changeling and fixed all of the issues I had with it. Once more, it's a game with a bigger scope and much larger themes... Lost you're stuck playing Abuse victims... Dreaming is just so much much more...

Most of the Chronicle games have some weird political focus upfront that ruins it for me. Geist in particular did this. I love Ghosts and ghost stories, they're my favorite kind of horror fiction. I love Wraith and Orpheus... so I was hoping I would love Geist 2nd edition... I read the intro and it flat out goes "This is a game about speaking truth to power, and standing up to oppression. It's a game about not just sitting on the sidelines..." and all I can think was... "Fuck man, I just wanted a game about Ghosts...not overthrowing the U.S. and instituting socialism."

The exception to all of this is as Phipps said... Hunter:The Vigil... whose groups can easily be ported over to Classic wod and make some very interesting and cool results.

The worst part is that the shoehorned left-wing politics is damn near exclusively a Second Edition Chronicles of Darkness thing.

The New World of Darkness/Chronicles of Darkness 1st Edition books didn't have that, at least not as severe as the Onyx Path stuff.

Geist 1st Edition was more of a game of second chances with a vaguely voodoo theme as I recall, and there wasn't much harping about "muh oppression" or anything like that.

Wod and Whitewolf has always had a theme of leftist values running through it to a degree. Something I've never had a problem with. In fact, to give them credit, they were doing it before it was cool.

They did things like feature gay characters before anyone else was.

But when it became mainstream they jumped on the bandwagon towards making some of the products damn right insufferable. I still haven't read all of Geist 2nd Ed and I backed the Kickstarter.

Those opening pages just turn me off so much, because they don't actually tell you what the game is about. It's so focused on being woke, the fact you're playing half-dead mediums is barely mentioned.

Beast was another one that did this so poorly they actually pissed off the very crowd they were trying to court. Beasts were presented as Trans analogues who fed off the pain and fear of others around them... Their enemies were "Heroes" who were people who survived an encounter and gained an obsession with killing Beasts.

Somehow they tried to present the Heroes as being the Badguys when quote "Beasts just want to be left alone
" You know, while they feed off the pain and suffering of others.

Needles to say the LGBT community didn't appreciate being portrayed as literal monsters that hurt people to live. First time I've seen Onyx Path back pedal hard.. And do a complete thematic rewrite. The rewrite made Beasts more palpable and Heroes make more sense as bad guys.

New Beasts were now ancient teachers of humanity about primordial lessons and knowledge. The idea of "Don't put your hand on the burning stove." Heroes originally were about taking that knowledge back with them to the rest of humanity. Somewhere that broke and Heroes became people who learned the wrong lesson and became obsessed with hunting Beasts.

Still this was gamer gate high tide and they couldn't resist putting in a fedora wearing "m'lady" nice guy as a Hero.

Quote from: Orphan81;1131383There were a few games where I really enjoyed the premise of the Chronicles of Darkness games... Hell I've ran successful campaigns of almost all of them. But the 20th anniversary editions of the Classic World of Darkness updated and revitalized their settings.. and just.. completely overshadow the Chronicles of Darkness versions of the game.

As much as I enjoy Mage: The Awakening, particularly for it splitting Entropy into Fate and Death... The setting just...pales in comparison to Ascensions, and everything going on it... and the level of customization you can get out of your character.. For awhile I preferred Lost over the Dreaming... and then The Dreaming 20th anniversary reminded me of everything I loved about Changeling and fixed all of the issues I had with it. Once more, it's a game with a bigger scope and much larger themes... Lost you're stuck playing Abuse victims... Dreaming is just so much much more...

Most of the Chronicle games have some weird political focus upfront that ruins it for me. Geist in particular did this. I love Ghosts and ghost stories, they're my favorite kind of horror fiction. I love Wraith and Orpheus... so I was hoping I would love Geist 2nd edition... I read the intro and it flat out goes "This is a game about speaking truth to power, and standing up to oppression. It's a game about not just sitting on the sidelines..." and all I can think was... "Fuck man, I just wanted a game about Ghosts...not overthrowing the U.S. and instituting socialism."

The exception to all of this is as Phipps said... Hunter:The Vigil... whose groups can easily be ported over to Classic wod and make some very interesting and cool results.

I think you're being unfair to Chronicles of Darkness because of your nostalgia clouding your judgment. These damn ongoing edition wars are one of the key reasons I left the toxic WoD/CoD fandom. A huge reason why I decided to make my own urban fantasy settings was specifically to get away from that toxic bullshit.

Quote from: Orphan81;1131383Most of the Chronicle games have some weird political focus upfront that ruins it for me. Geist in particular did this. I love Ghosts and ghost stories, they're my favorite kind of horror fiction. I love Wraith and Orpheus... so I was hoping I would love Geist 2nd edition... I read the intro and it flat out goes "This is a game about speaking truth to power, and standing up to oppression. It's a game about not just sitting on the sidelines..." and all I can think was... "Fuck man, I just wanted a game about Ghosts...not overthrowing the U.S. and instituting socialism."

I can say a variation of this about most of the WoD/CoD games to some degree.

Like, Wraith was about the underground railroad rather than ghost stories proper. That's why I didn't like it despite otherwise liking the idea of playable ghosts. I found myself far more interested by Lost Souls and Reaper Madness. Sadly that seems to put me in a minority, since apparently everybody else who played ghost games was only interested in underground railroad stories rather than ghost stories.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1131441Like, Wraith was about the underground railroad rather than ghost stories proper. That's why I didn't like it despite otherwise liking the idea of playable ghosts. I found myself far more interested by Lost Souls and Reaper Madness. Sadly that seems to put me in a minority, since apparently everybody else who played ghost games was only interested in underground railroad stories rather than ghost stories.

Honestly, it bothers me to no end about the people who try and associate the villains of various game-lines with RL institutions. I'm pretty left leaning [uses personal energy shield to deflect garbage] but the Hierarchy, Camarilla, Pentex, and Technocracy are cartoonishly evil. They're people you should feel no problem being against no matter what your RL politics. The Hierarchy is a fucking ancient Greek slave state.

I flat out don't get any Technocracy defenders as they're a conspiracy theory given life.

The Camarilla are a bunch of feudalists and that's something everyone should agree should be overthrown.

Quote from: Orphan81;1131438Wod and Whitewolf has always had a theme of leftist values running through it to a degree. Something I've never had a problem with. In fact, to give them credit, they were doing it before it was cool.

They did things like feature gay characters before anyone else was.

But when it became mainstream they jumped on the bandwagon towards making some of the products damn right insufferable. I still haven't read all of Geist 2nd Ed and I backed the Kickstarter.

Those opening pages just turn me off so much, because they don't actually tell you what the game is about. It's so focused on being woke, the fact you're playing half-dead mediums is barely mentioned.

Beast was another one that did this so poorly they actually pissed off the very crowd they were trying to court. Beasts were presented as Trans analogues who fed off the pain and fear of others around them... Their enemies were "Heroes" who were people who survived an encounter and gained an obsession with killing Beasts.

Somehow they tried to present the Heroes as being the Badguys when quote "Beasts just want to be left alone
" You know, while they feed off the pain and suffering of others.

Needles to say the LGBT community didn't appreciate being portrayed as literal monsters that hurt people to live. First time I've seen Onyx Path back pedal hard.. And do a complete thematic rewrite. The rewrite made Beasts more palpable and Heroes make more sense as bad guys.

New Beasts were now ancient teachers of humanity about primordial lessons and knowledge. The idea of "Don't put your hand on the burning stove." Heroes originally were about taking that knowledge back with them to the rest of humanity. Somewhere that broke and Heroes became people who learned the wrong lesson and became obsessed with hunting Beasts.

Still this was gamer gate high tide and they couldn't resist putting in a fedora wearing "m'lady" nice guy as a Hero.

If I were to include any form of Beast: The Primordial in my New WoD games, I would have the Beasts exclusively be antagonists and make the Heroes the main protagonists.

Flipping the script by subverting the subversion.

Make the game about the Hero and have the Beasts be exclusively evil antagonists in the vein of Belial's Brood, the Tremere Liches from Awakening, or The Hunt Club, and the whole line about "teaching humanity its primordial fears" being nothing more than a pretentious canard that the Beasts use to justify their vile nature.



On an unrelated note, I've actually considered including the Giovanni in a Requiem game I am planning.

Not the Sangiovanni bloodline, but rather a small coterie of Italian and Italian-American Kindred and a few submissive ghouls nominally belonging to the Invictus.

Their leader is Augustus Giovanni, a Ventrue embraced in the late 1800's or early 1900's and I'm thinking he may have a Nosferatu and a Mekhet on his side as well.

The main inspiration are Lou DiMaggio and the Atwell Avenue Boys from the fourth season of The Sopranos.

They were only in a single episode, but they're one of the most memorable moments of the show because of how creepy and unsettling they were.

[video=youtube;qzofsq7ZH54]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzofsq7ZH54[/youtube]

Might make Augustus Giovanni a Nosferatu instead of a Ventrue, but he'd have to be one of the "uncanny valley" kind who look normal but are just downright unsettling personality-wise.

At the same time, I think it'd be cool having Augie be a Ventrue with the emphasis being on the predisposition to derangement and degeneration that the Ventrue clan had in the early days of Requiem First Edition.

I do know that Requiem's Nosferatu can be either the grotesque freaks like in Masquerade or can look and seem completely normal but have a disturbing presence in more subtle ways.

Like, the Giovanni Crime Family as a small Invictus coterie with Uncle Augie as the creepy and deranged but weirdly charismatic Ventrue, along with a Mekhet underboss and a trio of Nosferatu made men.

You may have a few ghoul associates too, including a young woman who is an assistant to Augustus Giovanni and on paper seems to be a live-in nurse to help maintain the tradition of the masquerade.

Quote from: CTPhipps;1131442Honestly, it bothers me to no end about the people who try and associate the villains of various game-lines with RL institutions. I'm pretty left leaning [uses personal energy shield to deflect garbage] but the Hierarchy, Camarilla, Pentex, and Technocracy are cartoonishly evil. They're people you should feel no problem being against no matter what your RL politics. The Hierarchy is a fucking ancient Greek slave state.

I've never found them particularly compelling as villains, either. I appreciated it when CoD/V5/BL2/whatever opted for a decentralized factionalized dynamic.

Quote from: CTPhipps;1131442I flat out don't get any Technocracy defenders as they're a conspiracy theory given life.

Tell that to the books written to make them sound heroic.

Quote from: CTPhipps;1131442The Camarilla are a bunch of feudalists and that's something everyone should agree should be overthrown.

Vampires eat people. Feudalism sounds like a perfect fit for them.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1131441I think you're being unfair to Chronicles of Darkness because of your nostalgia clouding your judgment. These damn ongoing edition wars are one of the key reasons I left the toxic WoD/CoD fandom. A huge reason why I decided to make my own urban fantasy settings was specifically to get away from that toxic bullshit.

I can say a variation of this about most of the WoD/CoD games to some degree.

There are many things I like about Chronicles, it really comes down to flavor and what you're looking for. There was a time when I liked Chronicles better than WoD. But as I mentioned, the 20th anniversary editions and supplements really brought things back to the modern day and expanded on what I love.

Really for me.. You can't beat the Caine myth of Masquerade. It's so very powerful and evocative. As much as I like Requiem blood potency and how they handle Bloodlines.
When it comes to it, Masquerade and it's secrets and mythos speaks to me far more.

I love many many things about Awakening. It's my favorite of the Chronicle games out of the original 3.. But everything I can do in Awakening, I can do in Ascension but more and better.

I think Chronicles ultimately hobbled itself by being too close to its original source material. It does excel though in the games with no Analogue.. Like Promethean, Vigil, and Deviant.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1131441Like, Wraith was about the underground railroad rather than ghost stories proper. That's why I didn't like it despite otherwise liking the idea of playable ghosts. I found myself far more interested by Lost Souls and Reaper Madness. Sadly that seems to put me in a minority, since apparently everybody else who played ghost games was only interested in underground railroad stories rather than ghost stories.

This is completely disingenuous. The very opening of Wraith is a comic about a guy killed in jail by two thugs and a ferryman showing him various aspects of the afterlife. The state of play in Wraith presents Renegades, Heretics, and the Heiarchy as equal playable factions.. As well as a very strong emphasis on just being dead and dealing with your unfinished business or exploring the afterlife.

It doesn't open with pages telling you this is a game about speaking truth to power and standing up to the oppressed. It tells you this is a game about the restless dead and their passions that drive them.

You're leaving out the part where I stated all Whitewolf games have a political slant to the left, it's just they used to do it better.