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For people who like crunch-medium games of playing hidden supernaturals, the only "big" game (currently supported, big active community, etc.) is Old and New World of Darkness. There are crunch-medium games that aren't really active (Witchcraft), and story-type games like (Dresden, Monsterhearts, etc.), but nothing in that space.

It's weird that that's the case, isn't it? There are tons of different currently supported medium (or more) crunch fantasy games. And books, movies, and tv shows where the character's are supernatural are very popular.

Don't get me wrong, I own tons of new and old world of darkness stuff and run it all the time.

<< this is where you mention the awesome kick-starter you're doing for just this sort of game, or maybe some OSR-like version of Witchcraft or something >>

It's a very good question to be honest. The original WoD really grabbed on to the Zeitgeist of the 90's. It just seemed to do everything right, even when wrong...

Onyx Path is still coasting on that good name. Reviving Cwod really injected new life into them as well...

Nwod has never had the same impact. It's done well, enough to justify it's existence, and some of it's offerings are awesome (Hunter: The Vigil, Promethean the Created, Changeling: The Lost) and it's second editions have promise... but it's still not the Classic World of Darkness.

The problem of course, is any other offering is going to draw the comparison in the end. If you do a game about Vampires, it's going to get compared to WW's version...and they kinda did the best version...

Clans, Disciplines....Blood Lines... Sure you could do something like "Houses" and I "Powers of the Blood" but you're still walking in their shoes..

It's not like Fantasy which as a million different permutations, or Superheroes which can do the same thing...

If you go to weird with your Vampires, then you get away from the appeal in the first place..

It's not impossible of course...but it is difficult... Most likely you'd have to invent a new system to capture a similar feel of sorts. I don't think a Level based system would do it well, nor would something like say, Savage Worlds ((As much as I love both))

So I don't think it's too difficult to see why it hasn't happened yet. But I welcome those who are attempting to do so. Hell, I might try to do so myself, but I'm already working on other projects of my own to get out.

I just recently backed a Kickstarter FASERIP game called human(ish) that cites the World of Darkness as one of its major inspirations (along with the show Being Human). I'll probably play around with it, maybe try to import some features from ICONS or something. If it ever gets more than one book, though, I'll be stunned.

WW/OP simply has the monopoly. They're entrenched, and anyone trying to take a piece of that action has to not only deal with muscling into their territory but also worry about the subsequent claims that they're just ripping off the World of Darkness. So any game that comes out has to have some sort of unique twist to it.

The one hope I have is that someone sees the potential and launches a line of Savage Worlds books. Not that I think SW is the best system for urban fantasy (I love it, but it wouldn't be my first choice), but I know there has been a lot of talk about just such a setting on the official PEG forums recently from fans who want a traditional urban fantasy playground. Rules-wise, it would actually be very simple to do. Coming up with an interesting setting hook and putting it all together is the hard part.

Well, there's Vampire: The Undeath from Dark Phoenix publishing

Its completely original and not like any vampire rpgs you've ever seen, honest.  (http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/15/15765.phtml)

On a more serious not, I always thought GURPs CABAL really deserved its own gameline. It was modern supernatural occult gothic adventure, like oWoD, except the person writing it really understood what all those terms meant.

There was also The Everlasting, a short-lived WoD competitor that honestly I kinda liked better than oWoD, just for the sheer enthusiasm of the author. It could very rightly even be termed a "White Wolf Heartbreaker". It was incredibly creative, but suffered from an "everything and the kitchen sink" approach. I would have liked to have seen what it as a gameline could have evolved into if it hadnt died a swift death.

I think there is a lot of room out there for more modern supernaturals games, but WW pretty much has vampires done to death, for the reasons pointed out by Orphan upthread. OTOH, Ive never liked White Wolf's interpretation of werewolves and think werewolves in general have yet to have their Great Expression in roleplaying games form.

Quote from: TristramEvans;846621OTOH, Ive never liked White Wolf's interpretation of werewolves and think werewolves in general have yet to have their Great Expression in roleplaying games form.

I definitely agree with this. I've never liked how WW seemed to be stuck on the idea that werewolves and spirits had to be joined at the hip. Werewolves as ecowarriors/spirit cops just never fully clicked with me.

Quote from: Brand55;846625I definitely agree with this. I've never liked how WW seemed to be stuck on the idea that werewolves and spirits had to be joined at the hip. Werewolves as ecowarriors/spirit cops just never fully clicked with me.

It's one of the best explanations for giving Werewolves extra powers. Vampires throughout popular media and folklore have all kinds of different abilities from Mind Control, to Super Strength and Flight, to Animal Control..

Werewolves well....They turn into either giant killer wolves or normal wolves.

But a game where you just shift into a different form, probably isn't going to be fun. Even Dungeons and Dragons has their Fighter types get all kinds of options..

So you have to find a way to give some cool powers to your Werewolves, and well...the wolf, nature, spirit connection is kind of logical for that avenue..

Unless you go with the idea Werewolves are in fact related to Demons and instead give them options for Infernal style magic and abilities.

Are you listening, Stellar Games of Ohio? Get crackin' on that new edition of Nightlife: The Role-Playing Game of Urban Horror!



(Crickets chirp. Faint sound of a lone dog howling in the distance.)



Oh well, I would buy it.

In the Perception Effect I took a lot of influence from Bloodborne which took a lot of influence from Cthulhu Mythologies.

Some thing having to do with the blood in werewolves.  Think werewolf physical abilities, regeneration capabilities, transforming powers, and stranger things.  Just look at promenthean powers for a example.

There needs to be one where you play inscrutable tentacled monstrosities who just want to be understood and breed with human women.  This isn't so much a matter of sexism as it is a failure to realize that men have a role in the reproductive system rather than being worker drones.  Alien "intelligences" and what-not.

Quote from: Orphan81;846626It's one of the best explanations for giving Werewolves extra powers. Vampires throughout popular media and folklore have all kinds of different abilities from Mind Control, to Super Strength and Flight, to Animal Control..

Werewolves well....They turn into either giant killer wolves or normal wolves.

But a game where you just shift into a different form, probably isn't going to be fun. Even Dungeons and Dragons has their Fighter types get all kinds of options..

So you have to find a way to give some cool powers to your Werewolves, and well...the wolf, nature, spirit connection is kind of logical for that avenue..

Unless you go with the idea Werewolves are in fact related to Demons and instead give them options for Infernal style magic and abilities.

One of the werewolves in the last game I ran could summon floods. That's not something any non-WoD player would think sounds like a typical werewolf ability. Even just extending their theme to nature (which is fitting) and the wolf's role as predator, there are a whole host of powers that werewolves can draw on. Shapeshifting, enhanced physical traits, different senses, hunting and tracking powers, regeneration, animal control and communication, speed, leaping, stealth, pack coordination, fear. Honestly, it wouldn't have been hard at all to add on a sort of magic on top of that to enhance them more. You could go with Native American lore or Norse berserkers or something like that, but in my opinion giving werewolves some sort of lunar magic would be more thematic. Instead we got spirit fetishes.

The problem is vampires were already given most of the powers werewolves traditionally have, even the ones vampires usually don't have in other media. And of course mages trump everybody. So it leaves werewolves needing truly bizarre powers that don't really fit the archetype just so they have something to do. That's not an inherent problem with werewolves, it's a problem with the way the game was designed and balanced.

It also probably didn't help that werewolves were ultimately completely reliant on spirits for all of their powers. Not only were spirits needed for fetishes, but werewolves weren't even able to learn Gifts on their own. That part was especially irritating to me when I first read it.

Quote from: David Johansen;846635There needs to be one where you play inscrutable tentacled monstrosities who just want to be understood and breed with human women.  This isn't so much a matter of sexism as it is a failure to realize that men have a role in the reproductive system rather than being worker drones.  Alien "intelligences" and what-not.

Well, as long as it got anime style illustrations...:D
(I kid because I love. Well I don't love tentacle rape but y'know)

Wasn't a game like that made, by that guy, whatshsname? :idunno:

I'm not a big fan of White Wolf but back in the day I loved Werewolf's The Book of the Wyrm. Modern America is fucking Mordor: Big corporations have secret super-hero teams of evil Toxic Avengers, crazy deformed incest werewolves rule Mexico, toys come alive and kill babies for Exxon, and bad guys can get "Genital weapons" as a super-power.

So exquisitely bonkers, like a Troma movie on a $200 million budget. Yet everyone back then ran WW games totally buttoned-up and "Gothic" and serious as cancer. No fun.

Quote from: The Ent;846639Well, as long as it got anime style illustrations...:D
(I kid because I love. Well I don't love tentacle rape but y'know)

Wasn't a game like that made, by that guy, whatshsname? :idunno:

Vengersatanis or something?

Quote from: TristramEvans;846648Vengersatanis or something?

Either him or the Book of Erotic Fantasy guy, I can't quite remember. :o

I never did get to play my totally shallow disco vampire who couldn't give a damn about other people's problems.  "Baby, I neeed you to get stoned so your blood will get me stoned, just suck back this line and think happy thoughts, yeah."

More seriously, I think you'd need a better take than a simple angsty supernatural superheroes thing.

I've had some thoughts about it over the years but horror's not really my thing so I've never gotten around to it.

The problem is that rpgs mostly function on archetype and expectation.

If you introduce something new or strange, that generally loses the shallow, non-readers that make up the bulk of the human race and by extension, gamers."

It's hard to get people excited about things they aren't familiar with.

So, anyhow, my thought would be to build a game more along the lines of Lords of Creation wherein you start as an ordinary human but obtain increasing degrees of taint from your contact with the supernatural.  Much of this would map to folklore and mythology but it wouldn't be rigidly tied to it.

I'm not sure if Judeo/Christian divine taint would be a thing or not, because I'm not sure I'd want the mythology to be quite so familiar.  Putting some vampiric abilities into the blood drinking related powers is one thing but angelic songs and demonic pacts are probably out.

WTF is "Lords of Creation"?

Now, I have absolutely ZERO evidence of this, but it's always struck me that 'Urban Fantasy' is an incredibly small but popular niche of the literary market, which I suppose translate to an equally small niche of the gaming market.

And in my totally anecdotal experience, most of that market are women, most of which love Vampires in some fashion.

So maybe it's not seen as all that much of a money maker?

Quote from: Phantom Black;846658WTF is "Lords of Creation"?

The other 80's game Tom Moldvay of Basic D&D fame created.

A gonzo dimension-travel thing with a lot of mixing-and-matching of genres... sort of a precursor to RIFTS and Torg.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;846660Now, I have absolutely ZERO evidence of this, but it's always struck me that 'Urban Fantasy' is an incredibly small but popular niche of the literary market, which I suppose translate to an equally small niche of the gaming market.

And in my totally anecdotal experience, most of that market are women, most of which love Vampires in some fashion.

So maybe it's not seen as all that much of a money maker?

Women buy more than 80% of all books sold in the Western world.

Of course, the vast majority of those are romance novels, which outsell every other genre of fiction by a Huuuuuuuuge margin, but the point still stands.

Well, there was Nephilim which was pretty big - in France.

I always felt that Chaosium mangled the game in the translation, and didn't play it up to the audience that would look for a kinda-WoD.

It was a perfect alternative to WoD, with a unique take on supernatural creatures hiding among humans.

Quote from: Dirk Remmecke;846681Well, there was Nephilim which was pretty big - in France.

I always felt that Chaosium mangled the game in the translation, and didn't play it up to the audience that would look for a kinda-WoD.

It was a perfect alternative to WoD, with a unique take on supernatural creatures hiding among humans.

I retain a fascination with the Chaosium Nephilim adaption. Its managed to come so close to getting everything right, but failed spectacularly. It houses so many wonderful bits of awesomeness, including one of the most "authentic" approaches to Occult magick to ever grace the pages of an RPG. The concept of developing a character over a series of past lives was great, and I remain surprised no game ever emulated that: especially games ostensibly dealing with immortal characters such as vampires. But its execution was so flawed that it remains as a book that Ive consistently mined for ideas over the years but would never even consider running as it is.

And this isnt the first time I regret no being fluent in French in regards to an rpg. Their editions of Call of Cthulhu turn me Cthulhoid green with envy.

There is plenty of urban fantasy/horror out there. But for some reason developers usually choose for an investigative game or a supernatural spy game or a game where you form a band of monsters who do the Hellboy thing.

Those games are easier to setup, because all you need is your party and a quest. You don't need 30-40 NPC's who form some sort of supernatural society. It's just a team of specialists (hacker, faceman, thief, scout etc.) or a team of investigators (gumshoe, doctor, history teacher, scientist etc.) who go out and solve things. No urban fantasy game is going for the political angle. I don't know why.

Btw, I think the Dresden Files fills roughly the same niche as the WoD, but it's Fate and that's a little too arty farty for my taste. And I also think Fae Nightmares for SW will fill the same niche, but that game still has to come out.

Quote from: PencilBoy99;846608<< this is where you mention the awesome kick-starter you're doing for just this sort of game, or maybe some OSR-like version of Witchcraft or something >>

You could of course take a look at my pdf for Ferals, that has a White Wolf - inspired base, and if I manage to get it actually finished, I plan on adding other "titles" with the same basic rules, but different specifics, of which one is ... a bit of a lighthearted (but with depth) version of Vampire mixed with a few other WoD-titles.

Maybe the emo angst market can only support one line of games at a time.

Speaking of French based Urban Fantasy RPG's... Steve Jackson games made their own version of In Nomie, which had something of a following in the 90's as well...

Looking back at it...If you wanted to make a competitor to the WoD that was different in it's own way.... Angels and Demons might be the way to go..You could always expand from their with adding Mages as well, as another playable type...

Throw in Vampires and Werewolves, but as lesser beings.

Of course, Angels and Demons might not have the same draw as they did in the 90's...given the continuing falling of religion in the current cultural sphere.

Being an Atheist this doesn't bother me so much, but it's just something I thought of which might impact such a game.

I never was a fan of oWoD or nWoD but i think that if someone can make an Exalted-ish game that fulfills all the promises that WW/OPP's Exalted makes and never delivers on, that'd be a real goldmine.

So yeah, i have asked myself the same basic question as the OP (just focused on Exalted).

One reason there isnt any major competitors is that White Wolf carved out a niche outside the fantasy realm and pretty much carved it as good as it could get within that niche. It struck just the right balance of nhilism and pessimistic optimism. Anything else was going to feel either too grim or too light. In Nomme, Immortal, Nightlife, and Nightbreed all tried for that and I think only Nightlife really hit that balance too. But was so obscure it never caught on against the WW juggernaut. Nightbreed comes in close second. Nomme was too bleak and Immortal was a cypher.

Quote from: One Horse Town;846705Maybe the emo angst market can only support one line of games at a time.

You're correct, but who says a rival to WoD must target the emo angst market specifically?

Quote from: Catelf;846709You're correct, but who says a rival to WoD must target the emo angst market specifically?

I'd pay for a solid, popular alternative to Werewolf that ditched the apocalyptic pessimism and character restrictions.

Eden Studios: Witchcrafy, Armageddon, AFMBE, Conspiracy X, Terra Primate

[in declining order of similarity to White Wolf]

They're medium crunch, do urban occult well, and then if you really like Buffy and Angel there are still copies of those in the second hand market.

Dan Davenport (around here) reviewed them all to bits on the Big Purple years ago, and I bought them all!

http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/classic/rev_7443.phtml

Free Witchcraft:
http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/692/CJ-Carrellas-WitchCraft?it=1

Quote from: Orphan81;846706Speaking of French based Urban Fantasy RPG's... Steve Jackson games made their own version of In Nomie, which had something of a following in the 90's as well...

Looking back at it...If you wanted to make a competitor to the WoD that was different in it's own way.... Angels and Demons might be the way to go..You could always expand from their with adding Mages as well, as another playable type...

Throw in Vampires and Werewolves, but as lesser beings.

Of course, Angels and Demons might not have the same draw as they did in the 90's...given the continuing falling of religion in the current cultural sphere.

Being an Atheist this doesn't bother me so much, but it's just something I thought of which might impact such a game.

I think an "Angels & Demons" game could work! :)

Personally I'd be getting Enochian with it.

Chaosium's got After The Vampire Wars in the pipeline for BRP.

Precis Intermedia's Ghostories can do any kind of urban fantasy, but you have to come up with most of the fluff yourself.

Quote from: 3rik;846723Precis Intermedia's Ghostories can do any kind of urban fantasy, but you have to come up with most of the fluff yourself.

I wasn't very impressed with Ghostories myself. Bought it last year, and it came across as very lackluster. I also wasn't a fan of the setting...

Beyond that, however, you bring up an even greater mark against it. "come up with most of the fluff yourself."

Probably the best part of Cwod, was it's fluff. It's something gamers could talk endlessly about... The different practices of the Clans, and the Sects, Machinations of Methuselah's...

Vampire's Fluff is what sold it. Along with the fluff of all of it's other games too.

To be a strong competitor to whitewolf, I would argue your fluff is actually more important than your system. System is important too of course, but it's Fluff that gets people in the door of Whitewolf games.

Quote from: Just Another Snake Cult;846633Are you listening, Stellar Games of Ohio? Get crackin' on that new edition of Nightlife: The Role-Playing Game of Urban Horror!



(Crickets chirp. Faint sound of a lone dog howling in the distance.)



Oh well, I would buy it.

I'd buy it too.

jg

Quote from: James Gillen;846743I'd buy it too.

jg

I still have my battered copy of Nightlife. I would love to see it get updated, preferably with a much better system.

Quote from: TristramEvans;846621On a more serious not, I always thought GURPs CABAL really deserved its own gameline. It was modern supernatural occult gothic adventure, like oWoD, except the person writing it really understood what all those terms meant.

GURPS Cabal was amazing. Just flat-out amazing. One of the best RPG books I've ever read, and so useful that I've ported a lot of the information from it to other games (it's amazingly useful for Kult games, in certain ways!). It's one of the few games that I would always be willing to play, no matter what.

I do wish that there were more analogues for Vampire and the other World of Darkness games. Hell, I wish Onyx Path would get off the edition treadmill for a while... I've never really gotten into the New World of Darkness, despite a desire to do so (as I've said here before!), because they keep pumping out new editions that makes it next to impossible for me to determine where to start, what supplements are important, etc.

I guess I could just play Old World of Darkness, since I still have all the books. It'd be nice to use the 20th anniversary rules, though apparently those are going to be replaced with new editions soon... Maybe I should dig out my old copy of Nightlife? That was a good game...

It seems like the worst move you can make in game design is to follow the path of a big success. It's like all the games in the '80s that wanted to be D&D. The games we remember from the '80s are the ones that did something different. When White Wolf became huge, lots of companies tried to move into their space and mostly just crashed and burned.

You see the same thing in computer games where everyone has been trying to make the WoW and utterly failing.

If you want to attempt it, the best way to do it is to approach it from a level of dissatisfaction with the big game. Runequest was a result of not liking the way D&D worked. Unknown Armies was a result of not liking the way oWoD was completely unmoored from humanity, with humans having absolutely no significant role. It made a game where the occult was rooted in personal human concerns. It actually worked as a reversal on both oWoD and Call of Chtulhu.

The trap though is one they thing you are dissatisfied with is too small to justify a new game, which is where most attempts fail.

Quote from: Baulderstone;846749It seems like the worst move you can make in game design is to follow the path of a big success. It's like all the games in the '80s that wanted to be D&D. The games we remember from the '80s are the ones that did something different. When White Wolf became huge, lots of companies tried to move into their space and mostly just crashed and burned.

You see the same thing in computer games where everyone has been trying to make the WoW and utterly failing.

If you want to attempt it, the best way to do it is to approach it from a level of dissatisfaction with the big game. Runequest was a result of not liking the way D&D worked. Unknown Armies was a result of not liking the way oWoD was completely unmoored from humanity, with humans having absolutely no significant role. It made a game where the occult was rooted in personal human concerns. It actually worked as a reversal on both oWoD and Call of Chtulhu.

The trap though is one they thing you are dissatisfied with is too small to justify a new game, which is where most attempts fail.

This is a very good point, and excellent insight. It is the problem in a sense. White Wolf cornered the market on playing Monsters in the modern day.

Nightlife came before WoD, but it's system was far to complex. Vampire had the double whammy of not only playing Monsters, but a system that was very easy to get into and learn.

Nightbane was another awesome "Play the Monsters" game with an excellent setting that wasn't just a rip off of WoD....but it suffered from being wed to the Rift's system...

So really you're playing with two factors here. A Setting that's different enough to not be consumed by what Whitewolf has done before...And a system that's approachable and easy enough for anyone to learn quickly.

Quote from: Orphan81;846747I still have my battered copy of Nightlife. I would love to see it get updated, preferably with a much better system.

Ever listen to an amateur punk album on cassette and it sounded rough and awesome, then you replaced it with the CD and on CD it just sounded tinny and fake?

I think Nightlife might be like that. That gleam comes from the light hitting the jagged edges, not the facets.

Quote from: TristramEvans;846621Well, there's Vampire: The Undeath from Dark Phoenix publishing

Its completely original and not like any vampire rpgs you've ever seen, honest.  (http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/15/15765.phtml)

Oh. My. God. :eek:

Quote from: Mark Plemmons;846762Oh. My. God. :eek:

You want even scarier? Go to the youtube channel of the guy who created Vampire: Undeath...

Or go to their Forums, and see how empty they are, except for a hundred+ Posts made by the creator...

Oh, by the way...should you want to run your own Vampire: Undeath, Larp Games...you can totally give them 20 bucks and be part of their "Global" Chronicle.

It pains me to say this, but I think the reason no real contender has come forth to compete with World of Darkness is because the whole genre is just a very, very, very nineties thing.

Twilight, True Blood, Anita Blake, and all the horny housewife werewolf romances are really a separate genre. Dresden Files is the Mormon kids at Church Camp version.

I've never read Nightbane, but I've heard good things. How closely does it adhere to the Rifts system? Does it do anything unique that traditional Rifts doesn't?

I ask because we've got Savage Worlds Rifts coming early next year, so theoretically there's one avenue for Nightbane to be converted into a simpler system.

Quote from: Just Another Snake Cult;846765It pains me to say this, but I think the reason no real contender has come forth to compete with World of Darkness is because the whole genre is just a very, very, very nineties thing.

Twilight, True Blood, Anita Blake, and all the horny housewife werewolf romances are really a separate genre. Dresden Files is the Mormon kids at Church Camp version.

Well put.

I just got done doing a read on Society of Night, a vampire game by Michael Scott and Randolph Allen that is powered by StarCluster3*. Unlike my own Blood Games-OHMAS-Outremer series, where the PCs are assumed to be more human type investigators of the occult world, it is based on PCs being part of the vampire family of creatures. They both apparently prefer the percentile resolution mechanics, as not only is it the only mechanic in the book, all of the modifiers are given directly as percents. The game is pretty much complete now except for illustrations. I don't know what they are planning as for how they are releasing it, but I assume it is ready for playtest.

*This is not my game, but it is using my game engine under free license.

-clash

Quote from: Brand55;846766I've never read Nightbane, but I've heard good things. How closely does it adhere to the Rifts system? Does it do anything unique that traditional Rifts doesn't?

I ask because we've got Savage Worlds Rifts coming early next year, so theoretically there's one avenue for Nightbane to be converted into a simpler system.

It cleaves closer to Beyond the Supernatural and Recon, as well as Palladium. No MDC and thusly is more or less more compatible with those systems or even TMNT and I think After the Bomb.

I believe it has a smaller or the same skillset as BTS and only a handful of RCCs/OCC/ETCs. Psychic, Nightbane, Sorcerer, Mystic, Nightbane Sorcerer, Nightbane Mystic, (And Doppelganger, Nightlord and other NPC RCCs) as well as some optional PC types like Vampires, Wampires and Guardians.

I prefer Beyond the Supernatural personally. But like Scraypers, Nightbane presents an interesting setting twist.

Quote from: Omega;846708One reason there isnt any major competitors is that White Wolf carved out a niche outside the fantasy realm and pretty much carved it as good as it could get within that niche. It struck just the right balance of nhilism and pessimistic optimism. Anything else was going to feel either too grim or too light.

It's somewhere between urban fantasy and horror. Most urban fantasy games are lighter. And horror games usually don't have the supernatural society part of the game. In those games you usually choose a profession and start investigating weird shit without having to deal with your own kind.

Quote from: tzunder;846717Eden Studios: Witchcrafy, Armageddon, AFMBE, Conspiracy X, Terra Primate

[in declining order of similarity to White Wolf]

They're medium crunch, do urban occult well, and then if you really like Buffy and Angel there are still copies of those in the second hand market.

I am a fan of these. I particularly like Witchcraft and Conspiracy X. I like the writing style. It's no-nonsense and practical in setup. Only drawback I can think off is maybe the somewhat generic setting material. I know GURPS Cabal as well. Both Unisystem and Cabal support different styles of play and different scopes as well. But to be honest they felt a bit like WoD clones tens years too late. And they are now over ten years old and unsupported. That doesn't help either.

Quote from: jan paparazzi;846821It's somewhere between urban fantasy and horror. Most urban fantasy games are lighter. And horror games usually don't have the supernatural society part of the game. In those games you usually choose a profession and start investigating weird shit without having to deal with your own kind.

That too. The social, political intrigue and social networking aspects were another thing that set WW games apart by emphasizing them more. Or at least seeming to.

Another vote for Nightbane.

The Palladium system kinda works for me because I have houseruled it into what works with my GM style and I happily dick kick and cunt punch the damn thing whenever the system gets out of line. PB's opposed combat is great fun and that keeps me coming back.

That said, I have had players who won't touch the PB system who loved playing Nightbane via Savage Worlds or Tri-Stat. There was an LA GM years ago who ran Nightbane via Buffy and that worked fine.

I feel Rifts and Palladium Fantasy loses something intangible when you switch systems, but I have not found that to be an issue with Nightbane.

If you want another vision of WoD? Rock it out via Nightbane.

Quote from: Orphan81;846706Speaking of French based Urban Fantasy RPG's... Steve Jackson games made their own version of In Nomie, which had something of a following in the 90's as well...

Looking back at it...If you wanted to make a competitor to the WoD that was different in it's own way.... Angels and Demons might be the way to go..You could always expand from their with adding Mages as well, as another playable type...

Throw in Vampires and Werewolves, but as lesser beings.

Of course, Angels and Demons might not have the same draw as they did in the 90's...given the continuing falling of religion in the current cultural sphere.

Being an Atheist this doesn't bother me so much, but it's just something I thought of which might impact such a game.

Resident IN SJG fanboi here.

There are "mages" (sorcerers), mummies, fae, werewolves, ghosts, and vampires in the setting. There is also nephilim monstrosities, fantasy creatures, dream fragments, pagan deities, heaven/hellsworn humans, dream ghosts, and "strange unclassified things." They all work from essentially the same core rules. They are all lesser beings to angels and demons in general.

They also only matter to angels and demons by how much they either a) get in their way, or b) bother humanity. Since angels and demons feel it is their duty to discreetly interfere, or limit interference, among humanity, they take a keen interest in anyone else stepping into their domain. Usually other beings quickly learn to avoid celestial attention, for a longer more pleasant life.

Any other questions you'd like answered?

I rather agree with Just Another Snake Cult here the Gothic Punk genre and the Splatterpunk Genre (like the Nightlife RPG) are too dated for the current market and its been mainly replaced with more modern fantasy/paranormal romance and action fantasy.

However back in the day Eden Studios came somewhat close especially during the Buffy era .

The house system "Unisystem" was kind of a love child between WoD and GURPS but ran smoother and faster than either. Cinematic Unisystem is simply amazing.  

They had Witchcraft and its sequel Armageddon  as well as Buffy/Angel/, the late Regency game Ghosts of Albion and a passel of others such as the more or less Coast to Coast AM meets X Files RPG Conspiracy X .

 However between bad personal troubles with the  owners (both of them) and shifts in the market and yes a few poor publishing choices (all fluff books do not sell) they basically faded away.

Its too bad since the Witchcraft Universe is amazingly cool and well suited to the 90's when it 1st came out and to be used with more modern fantasy as well.

They also couldn't quite capitalize on the zombie craze either even though they were the market leader with All Flesh Must Be Eaten

However  the core book for Witchcraft  is free in PDF (http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/692/CJ-Carrellas-WitchCraft?it=1) still and the company is out there, with a little luck they might make a recovery but I personally  think they missed their window to be anything but a niche game.

IN SJG is extremely close to Classic Unisystem. Big difference is, after adding attribute +skill +/-difficulty, you roll 2d6 roll-under with a d6 Degree of Success die, instead of a d10 roll-over 9. The d666 also allows crit success/fails along with its pass/fail and DoS values. And Essence is a shared resource pool as well between both systems.

Quote from: 5 Stone Games;846848They had Witchcraft and its sequel Armageddon as well.
.

Armageddon was really underrated. A goth-metal-Nazi-Gasmask-fetish take on the Biblical Book of Revelations with a little Battle of Britain thrown in. The system was no great shakes, and it would've much better if it was a standalone game without the Witchcraft ties, but it had some of Tim Bradstreet's best artwork ever and the fluff had great atmosphere... even the fiction that opened each chapter was good, and I normally consider fiction in game books a fucking pox.

Wasn't there a Chill source book back in the day for playing monsters? I could see either using Cryptworld as is, or adding from that source book. Granted it would be pretty old school (so to speak) rules wise. Which wouldn't bother me, but others maybe not so much.

A lot of the people who try to muscle in on WW's territory are too much in WW's shadow and the people who aren't too much like WW are often too foreign to get a decent english audience going.

Quote from: Ronin;846858Wasn't there a Chill source book back in the day for playing monsters? I could see either using Cryptworld as is, or adding from that source book. Granted it would be pretty old school (so to speak) rules wise. Which wouldn't bother me, but others maybe not so much.

I purchased Crytpworld and Rotworld myself...and whoo boy, yes...Very Old School.

But then, my introduction to RPG's was Werewolf the Apocalypse 1st edition.

I can't stand 1st ed AD&D myself (at least not if I had to be DM), but I don't think anybody needs to apologize for liking it. If you have a good time with it, cool.

Myself, I might at times have felt a need to 'apologize' for playing Rolemaster. It's been a while, but the players actually liked my last campagn (heavily house ruled).

EDIT: shit this ended up in the wrong thread. Can we move it?

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;846712I'd pay for a solid, popular alternative to Werewolf that ditched the apocalyptic pessimism and character restrictions.

I would, too.  Werewolves have been my all-time favorite monster since I was a wee Gothling, and I was at first excited by the WW announcement that they were doing a werewolf game.  Then, I read it, and was underwhelmed and more than a little disappointed.

I played it anyway, and eventually, it grew on me (but then... so does cancer).  I got some great role-playing experiences out of it, and met one of the all-time best role-players I've ever known through it (he fucking loved W:tA.  Loved. It.), so my only regret is that my itch for a werewolf-as-PC game was never fully scratched.

In fact, this thread has got me making notes for a short game done the way I'd like to see it done.

Quote from: Ronin;846858Wasn't there a Chill source book back in the day for playing monsters? I could see either using Cryptworld as is, or adding from that source book. Granted it would be pretty old school (so to speak) rules wise. Which wouldn't bother me, but others maybe not so much.

Yup, you're thinking of Creature Feature:
http://www.amazon.com/Creature-Feature-Chill-Mark-Acres/dp/0917609247

So many folks have requested to "play as THINGs" in Cryptworld, an appendix with a set of rules for playing as monsters was added to the new Monsters Macabre sourcebook.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1895361773/monsters-macabre-a-sourcebook-for-cryptworld/description

Quote from: jan paparazzi;846823I am a fan of these. I particularly like Witchcraft and Conspiracy X. I like the writing style. It's no-nonsense and practical in setup. Only drawback I can think off is maybe the somewhat generic setting material. I know GURPS Cabal as well. Both Unisystem and Cabal support different styles of play and different scopes as well. But to be honest they felt a bit like WoD clones tens years too late. And they are now over ten years old and unsupported. That doesn't help either.

Witchcraft was 1999.
I think the unsupported thing is a bit over blown. Do you want to play the games or *buy* stuff?
You can buy the books, they're on the shelves, they still sell well from what my various FLGS managers tell me.
I did a great AFMBE/Terra Primate crossover campaign that my friends enjoyed.

Quote from: Ronin;846858Wasn't there a Chill source book back in the day for playing monsters? I could see either using Cryptworld as is, or adding from that source book. Granted it would be pretty old school (so to speak) rules wise. Which wouldn't bother me, but others maybe not so much.

Quote from: sniderman;846911So many folks have requested to "play as THINGs" in Cryptworld, an appendix with a set of rules for playing as monsters was added to the new Monsters Macabre sourcebook.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1895361773/monsters-macabre-a-sourcebook-for-cryptworld/description

Sniderman beat me to it. Like Ghostories, Cryptworld + Monsters Macabre could probably be used to build your own faux-WoD urban fantasy setting.

Quote from: Just Another Snake Cult;846760Ever listen to an amateur punk album on cassette and it sounded rough and awesome, then you replaced it with the CD and on CD it just sounded tinny and fake?

I think Nightlife might be like that. That gleam comes from the light hitting the jagged edges, not the facets.

I think you're right.
Of course I have that reaction to CDs in general. ;)

jg

Well it was actually a question - it is weird that there's only one game in town. Of course anyone can play an old game if you can get a copy of it. But that's different from revisions, errata, great communities with lots of people still talking about it it and tinkering with it, etc. I'm sure Witchcraft is great, but none of those things are really happening with it.

Quote from: James Gillen;846743I'd buy it too.

jg

Count me in on the Nightlife love.  I own what I think is all the Nightlife books, including the elusive Game Master Screen.

We are mostly posting about the monster settings (vampire, werewolf, changeling) in the wod. What do people think of the nwod blue books line? The mortal books about ordinary humans who by accident run into the supernatural. I mean books like Urban Legends, Mysterious Places and Midnight Roads. I always liked some of the ideas these books presented, but never knew what to do with it.

Quote from: jan paparazzi;847133We are mostly posting about the monster settings (vampire, werewolf, changeling) in the wod. What do people think of the nwod blue books line? The mortal books about ordinary humans who by accident run into the supernatural. I mean books like Urban Legends, Mysterious Places and Midnight Roads. I always liked some of the ideas these books presented, but never knew what to do with it.

I love the Mortal Nwod books. I ended up making a hell of a mortals game based off of material from Mysterious places (The college that was a living thing, my players absolutely loved it).

Midnight Roads, Urban Legends, Relics, Second Sight, Slashers... You can really run one helluva of a Mortals mixed up with the supernatural game. It's actually one of my preferred systems for running something like Call of Cthulu with..

Particularly with Nwod Second edition "The God Machine Chronicle".

For me... I liked Anne Rice's original trilogy, plus the Witching Hour and Mummy. White Wolf tastefully stole all of that and made it playable and fun.

I never even really looked at anything else.

Quote from: Orphan81;847169I love the Mortal Nwod books. I ended up making a hell of a mortals game based off of material from Mysterious places (The college that was a living thing, my players absolutely loved it).

Midnight Roads, Urban Legends, Relics, Second Sight, Slashers... You can really run one helluva of a Mortals mixed up with the supernatural game. It's actually one of my preferred systems for running something like Call of Cthulu with..

Particularly with Nwod Second edition "The God Machine Chronicle".

Didn't you have to put your players in some sort of mind pretzel? Because you have to come up with a reason how they come into contact with the supernatural and why do would investigate it further. And then you still have to fill in all the blanks in the setting material that is sort of vague. It's not Miskatonic university in there. No explanation to what that living thing is. Just a lot of random ideas.

For what it's worth, Blood Games II (http://www.flyingmice.com/bloodgames.html) is focused on humans, both magically powered and not, versus supernatural creatures. It can be set anywhere between the renaissance and now, though the emphasis is on now.

-clash

Quote from: jan paparazzi;847293Didn't you have to put your players in some sort of mind pretzel? Because you have to come up with a reason how they come into contact with the supernatural and why do would investigate it further. And then you still have to fill in all the blanks in the setting material that is sort of vague. It's not Miskatonic university in there. No explanation to what that living thing is. Just a lot of random ideas.

The College scenario was just really cool to me. I had to fill in a few details, such as WHY the college was alive, and what was going on with it.

Getting the Player Characters involved was easy. They were all students who lived on campus, and began to experience the "Haunting" style events which were going on. The College had taken a special interest in them, particularly when they noticed it had as well.

I ended up using the origin where it was a group of Professors who enacted a power ritual and awoke the school. It's going on 10 years ago since I ran that campaign though, so a few things are fuzzy.

It started with a student they all knew who had been missing for a week killing themselves in the Library, leaving a note that read "It won't let me go...It won't let me go..."

Lots of creepy things happen, the characters uncover the secret faculty occult group which had woken the school up. They uncover some secret rituals, some more of their friends die...and it ends with a show down in the boiler room conducting a banishing ritual while being assaulted by the college's medical cadavers..

After that, the characters got to go on Spring Break, and decided to take a road trip...They end up going through the Appalachian Mountains, and encounter killer redneck Vampires...The Requiem bloodline the "Oberlocks" (Who were creepy Vampires who still physically aged but stayed immortal) kidnapped them and several other tourists from a nearby rest stop...

The Oberloch family put them through several torturous blood sport games against the other captives for amusement. Gladiatorial combat the first night...followed by an endurance contest where two characters were thrown into a deep pool whose side and bottom was lined with nails...after all of that... the next night's game was suppose to be "Nail Gun Tag". The characters decided they'd try to escape before having to play that...

I had all of the characters awaken during the escape attempt and become Mages. This helped them escape. Deciding they wanted to put as much distance between them and the redneck vampires as they could, they drove in their stolen vehicles until breaking down in the wilderness a few states further.

Encountering a Church, the PC's actually teamed up with some Banishers who were under assault from a local pack of Pure Tribe vampires. The characters helped out as much as they could, and after several harrowing events, with the help of the Parishioners and the Banishers they managed to take out most of the Pure Pack.

As a thank you, they were given plane tickets home. Upon the plane, a survivor of the Pure Pack had tracked them, and caused the Plane to break apart over New Orleans...

Thanks to magic the characters were able to survive the fall. They found themselves in New Orleans Post Katrina (I was running this back in 2005). I made New Orleans far more post apocalpytic and water logged, with various gangs fighting over it. Also a cult of Lovecraftian Mages was attempting to change reality by summoning the Abyssal version of New Orleans into it's place..

After teaming up with the local mages, and several battles, they survived New Orleans, defeated the Cult...and finally...finally managed to get home.

Suffice to say it was an epic campaign.

What do you think of East Texas University and the Pinebox campaign setting? That more or less does the same, only seems to be a little bit more focused and cohesive in design.

I've been recently digging out and pouring over the NWoD material again. It reminded me how awesome it is at its best and how much I'd like to have really solid urban fantasy game, but also how glaring the flaws I see and the disagreements I have with White Wolf design are to me.

This in turn got thinking, as thought experiment mostly, how the World of Darkness lines could be tackled, so this thread really got my attention.

As others have said, between two lines of the World of Darkness and some other materials (Scion, for one), White Wolf covers an awful lot of ground in the modern horror and urban fantasy genre. You work on such a RPG, you will be operating under the Shadow of the WoD lines. Not to forget the Cthulhu Mythos games, that cover a lot of the ground WW didn't trod out over and over.

I feel some things that could work are:

- Imitate WW in one aspect: get out a basic system, covering normal mortals facing the supernatural first, as was done with the NWoD

- Define the basics of your setting from the start, including the place of various tropes, myths and monsters. The WoD had some major compatibility issues between lines, but people will cross over and you want them to as well, to sell that Vampire book even though everyone is happily playing Werewolves.

- Speaking of Werewolves, if you want to go into playing monsters gamelines (and if you want to tackle the legacy of White Wolf, you do), Werewolves have massive appeal and it is the Monster where people can be consistently found to say "WW lost me on those".

- Keep the political angle, but do it differently. Setting political structures up in their gameline is a major appeal of the WoD games. On the other hand, I find that WW had an awful tendency to keep repeating the same structures and dynamics. Design some different constellations from the WW go to and you're golden.

- Be honest about the action and drop pretenses. I get that WW got a lot of attention and following with the whole "This is a Storygame and not a Dungeon Delve" spiel, but really, sometimes having a session that is all about a bunch of Werewolves with paramilitary equipment having a great Melee or a pack of Werewolves fighting an even bigger monster-that-should-not-be is fun, so an urban fantasy should be accommodating of that. This doesn't mean playing D&D with guns, just some more attention on the inevitable superpowered havoc that will erupt sooner or later wouldn't be bad.

Similarly, yes, sometimes it's really nice to see that the writers have done their work researching sources and have some academic education. But I also often find myself thinking with WW books "Yes, yes, you read a lot of books written by people smarter than all of us and understood a good amount of it, but just get to the point and present me with actual material and not a fourth page of some faux-philosophical waxing on how your game is really deep shit?"

. Mix it up with some OSR sensibilities. I'm no OSR gamer myself, but I certainly see the appeal of many common elements in OSR design. WW is always about set pieces and pre-written scenes, they call it storytelling games, it comes with the territory. Meanwhile the whole political angle and playing monsters with active needs is very conductive to a far more sandboxy game. I mean, playing territorial packs of Monsters? If there was ever a better gaming related reason to slap a hex grid on a modern city map, I certainly haven't come across it. And random tables, so many random tables. Vampire needs to feed, massive Bystander table, here we come. Random Tables for rifling through a jacket pocket, random tables for the house you burst into, random supernatural events. You could fill books with that stuff for an urban fantasy game and it still wouldn't be enough.

Quote from: jan paparazzi;847624What do you think of East Texas University and the Pinebox campaign setting? That more or less does the same, only seems to be a little bit more focused and cohesive in design.

I think it's awesome. East Texas is one of the best settings in terms of giving a GM a lot of tools to play with. I haven't read the plot point yet, but the core book which goes into details of the setting, character creation, and contains the "Random Weirdness and Demons" chart is very cool.

I will say, however, that I don't know if I find Savage Worlds to be the best system for investigative style games. Much as I love it, (I mean, I really do love it, I wrote for it) Investigation and Mystery style games tend to be very dependent upon PC's having the right skills.

East Texas encourages this, by down playing combat, and not having Arcane Backgrounds work like normal, but the way Savage Worlds works...A player given a choice between being more bad ass at combat, or getting a single die raise to say "Knowledge: Latin", or "Knowledge: Occult" (Unless that Occult skill is powering an Arcane Background) They'll tend to take a combat edge or boost a combat or more active use skill.

It's a conundrum that's always stuck with me about Savage Worlds. Unless you start getting very liberal with "Common Knowledge" checks for the PC's.

It's one of the places I find Whitewolf, particularly Nwod to be very strong. Playing a more investigative style horror game.

Quote from: Gold Roger;847772I
- Speaking of Werewolves, if you want to go into playing monsters gamelines (and if you want to tackle the legacy of White Wolf, you do), Werewolves have massive appeal and it is the Monster where people can be consistently found to say "WW lost me on those".

- Keep the political angle, but do it differently. Setting political structures up in their gameline is a major appeal of the WoD games. On the other hand, I find that WW had an awful tendency to keep repeating the same structures and dynamics. Design some different constellations from the WW go to and you're golden.

Hence I announce my new gameline: Lycanthrope: The Libertarianism

Quote from: TristramEvans;847787Hence I announce my new gameline: Lycanthrope: The Libertarianism

The Tribes in Lycanthrope: The Libertarianism are quite diverse and give the player a range of choice in terms of playing their Werewolf who values personal freedom above any and all other sentiments!

There are the "Gunhavers" who believe it is their right to have any and all types of protective ordinance. Not just content to use their claws and fangs to get the job done, they use powerful magic to bring tanks, missiles and open carry supporters to their cause...

The "Rayndians" are a stranger tribe, unwilling to help any of their fellows if not compensated for their efforts. At the same time, they will refuse any offers of assistance unless they can compensate their allies in return. Nature is not altruistic they argue, and to try and pretend so will only deflect others from accepting the harshness of the world...

The "God Killers" See is as their duty to rip the scales from people's eyes in terms of religion and belief in the supernatural. Despite being supernatural creatures themselves, they still go around debunking mystical claims..or in the case of seeing other supernatural creatures, ripping them apart and claiming it was a hoax all along. Not content just there, they frequent forums  where they start flame wars and spread smugness where ever they go...

The biggest antagonist of the setting is the Federal Government. The secret of the world is, George Washington and the Revolutionary figures were all werewolves who founded a truly free nation....but when Abraham Lincoln took office, he made a devil's deal with an entity of absolute control in order to win the civil war. Now the Federal government is nothing more than a writhing horror that seeks to intrude on people's lives and control everything they do!

And I thought I'd never have an opportunity to use this pic...
(http://www.freakingnews.com/pictures/75000/Abe-Lincoln-Werewolf-75093.jpg)

Quote from: TristramEvans;847791And I thought I'd never have an opportunity to use this pic...
(http://www.freakingnews.com/pictures/75000/Abe-Lincoln-Werewolf-75093.jpg)

Clearly we need to create this and make all the monies.

The back cover blurb:

"You are the .00001%!

Since the beginnings of America, children of the moon have fought against two things: Big government and unfair taxation.

They've tried to strip you of your rights, but you respond by stripping off your skin!

Let the power of the wolf and Freedom rip through you!

I'm gonna rise up, I'm gonna kick a little ass, Gonna kick some ass in the USA! Gonna climb a mountain, Gonna sew a flag, Gonna fly on an Eagle! I'm gonna kick some butt, I'm gonna drive a big truck, I'm gonna rule this world, Gonna kick some ass, Gonna rise up, Kick a little ass...WOLF, FLAG AND EEEEAGLE!"

Quote from: Gold Roger;847772And random tables, so many random tables. Vampire needs to feed, massive Bystander table, here we come. Random Tables for rifling through a jacket pocket, random tables for the house you burst into, random supernatural events. You could fill books with that stuff for an urban fantasy game and it still wouldn't be enough.

I think random quest generators. And geared towards combat, politics and investigation. That's a lot more useful to how they do gamemaster advice now.

Quote from: Orphan81;847774I will say, however, that I don't know if I find Savage Worlds to be the best system for investigative style games. Much as I love it, (I mean, I really do love it, I wrote for it) Investigation and Mystery style games tend to be very dependent upon PC's having the right skills.

East Texas encourages this, by down playing combat, and not having Arcane Backgrounds work like normal, but the way Savage Worlds works...A player given a choice between being more bad ass at combat, or getting a single die raise to say "Knowledge: Latin", or "Knowledge: Occult" (Unless that Occult skill is powering an Arcane Background) They'll tend to take a combat edge or boost a combat or more active use skill.

It's a conundrum that's always stuck with me about Savage Worlds. Unless you start getting very liberal with "Common Knowledge" checks for the PC's.

It's one of the places I find Whitewolf, particularly Nwod to be very strong. Playing a more investigative style horror game.

I think in this basic roleplaying and something like ghostories do this even better with more investigation skills than nWoD.

I never really liked the rules of savage worlds that much. To me it's the concise writing style, the random quest generators, the plot point campaigns and the cool setting material that does it for me.

Pinebox and East Texas University are superior in setting material to the WoD in every way imo, because they actually made choices and those choices gave the setting it's own unique flavor. Instead of leaving everything in the middle nWoD style.

Btw, the Thin Blue Line looks pretty sweet as well. Player's guide is already out.

Quote from: TristramEvans;847787Hence I announce my new gameline: Lycanthrope: The Libertarianism

I'd buy THAT for a dollar!

JG

So after getting my copies of Nightlife and Gurps Cabal off the shelf and going through them.... I think you could really make an interesting supernatural setting different from World of Darkness, and still appealing by mashing the two up.

The Problem with CABAL is well, it's GURPS first off....but second, as much as I love Kenneth Hite and all his material...some of it is...well let's say just a bit to high brow for most people. Not in the sense of being pretentious like a lot of White wolf material... but in the sense it seems like you really need to have read "The Golden Bough" and have a degree in the secret occult history of Europe to truly appreciate the setting and all of it's nuances...

Nightlife of course is the grand daddy inspiration for World of Darkness originally. Hell it even has a humanity score. It was a great idea, but shows it's age in terms of a terrible system...and well a setting that's probably just a bit to hyper focused on the streets.

If you took some of the Edge and versatility of Nightlife, and combined it with the Scholarly world focus of Cabal you might get a new workable setting.

Think I might try a crack at that.

One of my favorite things about Nightlife -and one of the things that really sets it apart from White Wolf, et al- are the many, many musical skills and the unspoken assumption that your PC "Party" is a band.

WW had tons of competitors, back when it was relevant. Its just they didn't choose to rip off the 'creatures of the night' theme, but rather the storytelling/metaplot/pretentious vibes. Even TSR got on that bandwagon for a while.

Quote from: RPGPundit;848761WW had tons of competitors, back when it was relevant. Its just they didn't choose to rip off the 'creatures of the night' theme, but rather the storytelling/metaplot/pretentious vibes. Even TSR got on that bandwagon for a while.

I think the WoD wasn't a succes because of the Metaplot. I think it was a succes because it was different. You won't find a Ventrue clan in another game. Plus the focus on intrigue and investigation made it a different rpg than most combat focused fantasy rpg's.

Quote from: Orphan81;848746So after getting my copies of Nightlife and Gurps Cabal off the shelf and going through them.... I think you could really make an interesting supernatural setting different from World of Darkness, and still appealing by mashing the two up.

If you took some of the Edge and versatility of Nightlife, and combined it with the Scholarly world focus of Cabal you might get a new workable setting.

Think I might try a crack at that.

I find Witchraft the best of the bunch. It's functional, practical and I love the no-bullshit writing style. Combined with the supplements, Armageddon and some of the other unisystem gamelines you can easily tweak the game. Conspiracy X is cool as well.

Quote from: jan paparazzi;848830I find Witchraft the best of the bunch. It's functional, practical and I love the no-bullshit writing style. Combined with the supplements, Armageddon and some of the other unisystem gamelines you can easily tweak the game. Conspiracy X is cool as well.

Pretty much everything CJ carella writes is awesome. I have Witchcraft, and Nightbane, and Buffy: The Vampire Slayer... I'm so excited Rifts and it's intellectual properties are getting officially ported over to Savage Worlds...It means I'll finally be able to run Nightbane in a system I enjoy.

"Roleplaying the Sentinels: The monsters are out there and you have to find and kill them."

White Wolf usually needs at least one page to cover the same content. To me this was a breath of fresh air.

Quote from: Orphan81;847789The Tribes in Lycanthrope: The Libertarianism are quite diverse and give the player a range of choice in terms of playing their Werewolf who values personal freedom above any and all other sentiments!

There are the "Gunhavers" who believe it is their right to have any and all types of protective ordinance. Not just content to use their claws and fangs to get the job done, they use powerful magic to bring tanks, missiles and open carry supporters to their cause...

The "Rayndians" are a stranger tribe, unwilling to help any of their fellows if not compensated for their efforts. At the same time, they will refuse any offers of assistance unless they can compensate their allies in return. Nature is not altruistic they argue, and to try and pretend so will only deflect others from accepting the harshness of the world...

The "God Killers" See is as their duty to rip the scales from people's eyes in terms of religion and belief in the supernatural. Despite being supernatural creatures themselves, they still go around debunking mystical claims..or in the case of seeing other supernatural creatures, ripping them apart and claiming it was a hoax all along. Not content just there, they frequent forums  where they start flame wars and spread smugness where ever they go...

The biggest antagonist of the setting is the Federal Government. The secret of the world is, George Washington and the Revolutionary figures were all werewolves who founded a truly free nation....but when Abraham Lincoln took office, he made a devil's deal with an entity of absolute control in order to win the civil war. Now the Federal government is nothing more than a writhing horror that seeks to intrude on people's lives and control everything they do!

This is totally gameable.

Quote from: jan paparazzi;848829I think the WoD wasn't a succes because of the Metaplot. I think it was a succes because it was different. You won't find a Ventrue clan in another game. Plus the focus on intrigue and investigation made it a different rpg than most combat focused fantasy rpg's.

It was a success in great part because of its pretentiousness and claims of being superior to regular RPGs. People who felt contempt for RPGs could play it and convince themselves they were above it all.

White Wolf was a success because...

1)  V:TM did a very clever job of taking the entire body of vampire fiction and boiling it into a single cohesive setting. The clans each represented a pop archetype and were easy for new players to grasp (Player 1: "I wanna be like those vampires in Lost Boys!" ST: "Brujah" Player 2: "Dark Shadows!" ST: "Ventrue."). Later, Vampire: The Requiem would completely screw the pooch on this, with a weird mix of clans with gibberish names and muddled archetypes.

2) It filled a void. Back when I used to run Call of Cthulhu as a teen in the eighties players were always asking me if they could play vampires (Being an arrogant little snob, I never let them). The Anne Rice novels and Saberhagen's The Holmes-Dracula File were cult classics in geek culture at the time (I remember local RPGers having their PC's meet the Saberhagen Dracula in their super-hero and space-opera games. A few veteran PCs even got retired by having SaberDrac turn then into vampires).

3) The system was relatively simple and easy for new players to grasp.

4) It was written and illustrated with relative "Taste". It didn't look like a comic book. In the nerdscape of the late 80's/very early 90's this was quite novel and a big deal. Back when "Geek shit" still had a real stigma to it the sparse cover of the single rose on green marble intrigued people (For good or ill) who would never have touched a D&D or Traveller book in a million years.

Later WW products would completely abandon this approach and a few would even make Nightlife look subtle in comparison.

5) Most RPGs of the time seemed like they were about 2/3rds rules and 1/3rd  fluff and GM's advice. V:TM reversed this. Just looking through that 1991 edition for the very first time you knew this game had a very different approach and was going to make a splash (Although I had absolutely no idea whatsoever at just how big it would eventually get).

6) Let's be honest: Most players (In my experience, anyway) just ran V:TM as  a dumb gang-war game with vampires fighting in the street with katanas and HK MP-3s. Their games of V:TM were no smarter, sophisticated, or less violent than than a typical AD&D2 dungeon-crawl*. However... the game as written had a emphasis on drama, politics, atmosphere, and social conflict that was novel for the time and attracted a new audience, particularly women. Even if only 10% of those who ran the game did it "Right"**, that was enough. It seemed at the time, in my particular neck of the woods, that that one single game increased the number of women in role-playing by 50% virtually overnight.


*This is in no way a bash against dumb, violent, or goofball-fun games. Games are supposed to be fun and fun is fun. Remember, I'm the guy who loves Nightlife and has found good things to say about The Streetfighter Storytelling Game. I absolutely despise "You are having Badwrongfun" culture.

** See first footnote.

Quote from: RPGPundit;849455It was a success in great part because of its pretentiousness and claims of being superior to regular RPGs. People who felt contempt for RPGs could play it and convince themselves they were above it all.

Quote from: Just Another Snake Cult;8494754) It was written and illustrated with relative "Taste". It didn't look like a comic book. In the nerdscape of the late 80's/very early 90's this was quite novel and a big deal. Back when "Geek shit" still had a real stigma to it the sparse cover of the single rose on green marble intrigued people (For good or ill) who would never have touched a D&D or Traveller book in a million years.

Two ways of looking at the same elements I think. Vampire did present itself and came off as a bit more 'mature'... sitting there on the shelf next to images of half-naked men and women with huge implements of destruction.
In action the thespian goths LARPing in the cafes came off just as dorky as any other game nerd.

Quote from: RPGPundit;849455It was a success in great part because of its pretentiousness and claims of being superior to regular RPGs. People who felt contempt for RPGs could play it and convince themselves they were above it all.

I really doubt that was a great part of its success. The largest part of it was just catching the Zeitgeist of the 90s, when angst and edgy anti-heroes became the height of pop culture, and the aesthetics and themes of WoD managed to appeal to a geek subculture that was an otherwise untapped market by RPGs. The books were visually appealing, cleanly designed and laid-out, and the splats-as-adolescent-cliques was a brilliant draw.

I still think it's weird that people like movies and books and things about being monsters but the only hot game in town is still White Wolf (or onyx path or whatever). Yes I know there are a handful of people out there who still play Unisystem Witchcraft, and I know there are some indie games, but it's still weird. Given how popular it is there should be a few more big, active things going on with it - active competing systems and settings. It's weird that it's not.

Quote from: PencilBoy99;849581I still think it's weird that people like movies and books and things about being monsters but the only hot game in town is still White Wolf (or onyx path or whatever). Yes I know there are a handful of people out there who still play Unisystem Witchcraft, and I know there are some indie games, but it's still weird. Given how popular it is there should be a few more big, active things going on with it - active competing systems and settings. It's weird that it's not.

To be fair, Dungeons and Dragons didn't really have any real competition in the Fantasy Game market until Pathfinder...and the only reason Pathfinder did so well is because it was OGL.

Sure, some people play Earthdawn, or Palladium Fantasy, or Runequest, but none of them have the popularity that Dungeons and Dragons does.

I would like to see a well supported, well written competitor to Onyx Path, just to get a different take on things...but our industry is so small as it is, we're more likely just to continue to see independent offerings here and there like Witchcraft...

And unless one of them catches lightning in a bottle like Vampire again, it's most likely not going to reach the same level of market penetration.

Quote from: PencilBoy99;849581I still think it's weird that people like movies and books and things about being monsters but the only hot game in town is still White Wolf (or onyx path or whatever). Given how popular it is there should be a few more big, active things going on with it - active competing systems and settings. It's weird that it's not.

When I asked about urban fantasy settings on the savage world forum people recommended all kinds of settings which were no where near what I was looking for.

They were spygames vs the supernatural (Millenium Knights, Agents of Oblivion) or Victorian monster hunting (Rippers) or monsterteam fighting evil (Apocalypse Prevention Inc.) or modern horror (East Texas University).

With fantasy games you always have an alternative for D&D. I never cared much for D&D. I always played Warhammer Fantasy, which was the more edgier, mature version of D&D to me. You can play others like Runequest or Earthdawn.

WoD is more difficult to replace. At least the monster settings are. The mortal setting is replaceable, because that one is essiantially run-off-the-mill modern horror. I replaced it now with 12 to Midnight/Pinebox and ETU. Those 12TM adventures are sandboxy in nature btw, much better than those linear SAS adventures WW has. And maybe The Thin Blue Line, which is exactly what I already was doing with the WoD (the odds of that). Police investigating ghost and spirits in a rustbelt city.

To sum it up I am looking for a WoD-like setting minus the verbose writing style and the linear story GM's advice. Or a WoD-like setting plus concise writing and practical sandbox GM's advice.

Quote from: RPGPundit;849455It was a success in great part because of its pretentiousness and claims of being superior to regular RPGs. People who felt contempt for RPGs could play it and convince themselves they were above it all.

I think this is true specifically over those that currently are fawning over the current Vampire devs, that make up your detractors on TBP and abroad.

I believe this is less so for the majority of people who enjoyed CWoD. I would be among those. Personally for me, I'm definitely an old-school gamer that found Classic WoD to be a refreshing game when it landed. I would also say that among my crowd, we were huge fans of Anne Rice's books, and movies like Near Dark, Lost Boys, Bram Stoker's Dracula, etc. so here was a game giving us a nice system (i.e. different but playable) to explore those ideas of being a vampire in the modern world.

Could we have done that in D&D? Yeah. But it would not have been the same. It's one of the reasons I don't care for Ravenloft in general.

Not once did I buy into the silly "we're better than elf-games" hype. I took it as snark... nothing more. To the degree that is a false statement - I guess you'll have to ask them. I was in the midst of doing some work with them back in the early 90's and my brief gaming discussions with some of them, led me to believe they were just gamers like us.

Of course... times and attitudes change.

Hidden Secret - there were tons of horror and occult games before WW came along (looking at you, Chaosium!) but WW had pretty good writing, great great GREAT art direction and design and perfect timing to develop a brand that took off like wildfire. White Wolf basically ate Cyberpunk 2020's niche (trenchcoat and katana gaming). Further, White Wolf's mechanical design was perfect at the time, and still is - beginning PCs can be designed in 5 minutes in Vampire The Masquerade/Vampire The Requiem, and the setting lends itself very easily to live action role play, which no other setting does. The majority of vampire roleplayers reside in One World By Night and the Camarilla Fanclub, and these people also buy Onyx Path books as collector items. This is a perfect storm for marketing and branding.

Since then, there have been dozens of attempts to dislodge White Wolf from that ledge, with no luck. I can't state how important the live action aspect to creating an enduring fanbase and keeping the fandom alive has been for Vampire. While I don't know how much it has contributed to OPs bottom line, you can usually find at least a small OWBN or Camarilla LARP group in most major cities, and these people usually game VTM/VTR online or tabletop as well. The only other equivalent has been with WOTC and Paizo and their organized play programs (D&D Adventurer's League/Pathfinder Society). What's even more amazing is that OWBN and the Camarilla are generally entirely fan organized.

Quote from: Kaiu Keiichi;849737Hidden Secret - there were tons of horror and occult games before WW came along (looking at you, Chaosium!) but WW had pretty good writing, great great GREAT art direction and design and perfect timing to develop a brand that took off like wildfire.

Tim Bradstreet.

Quote from: Kaiu Keiichi;849737White Wolf basically ate Cyberpunk 2020's niche (trenchcoat and katana gaming).

Especially Mage the Ascension. The entire game is cyberpunkish, but especially the Sons of Ether and the Virtual Adepts were very cyberpunk. I think the races in general were very appealing in the oWoD. In the nWoD they seperated the politics from the races and moved that to the organisations; leaving the the races empty and bland. Like drinking flat Mr. Pibb.

Quote from: jan paparazzi;849917Tim Bradstreet.

Completely agree with this. Love his work.

Quote from: Ronin;849930Completely agree with this. Love his work.

This made me think for a moment here.... There sort of IS a competitor to the World of Darkness..

Shadowrun.... which was also made famous early on by beautiful Tim Bradstreet artwork...

But yeah, Shadowrun, Urban Fantasy and Horror against a Punk backdrop... Trenchcoats, mirror shades, and Katanas.....

4th edition tried to get away from this....but 5th edition re-embraced it.

There was a period in my late teens early 20's where I had completely rejected White Wolf games, because I felt between Deadlands and Shadowrun the niches I needed scratched were filled...

I went back of course a few years later....but I do think Shadowrun does fill at least some of that niche...

It's biggest problem is how the system is not newbie friendly and it doesn't encourage the kind of LARP style of play Vampire does...

But it's got Horror, rebelling against the system, magic, action, and style dripping down it's sleeve.

You know, Orphan might onto so something...  SR has hit it big, comparatively, I mean it's had 5 full editions and the game line is still happening...

I'm not going to say anything definite, but it seems to me that the 90's was both WW and Shadowrun's decade.

Hmm.... I'm not sure I buy the argument that it's the same niche - I've never seen it as a horror game, though you can add horror elements to anything.

Quote from: PencilBoy99;850018Hmm.... I'm not sure I buy the argument that it's the same niche - I've never seen it as a horror game, though you can add horror elements to anything.

Many of Shadowrun's most memorable adventures are more Horror based.

The Universal Brotherhood and it's insect spirits...

Harlequin's back and the need to prevent the "Horrors" (The lovecraftian Monsters who are slowly getting closer and closer to reality in Shadowrun thanks to the rise of magic) from arriving early.

The Renraku Acrology being taken over by the Mad A.I. Deus, who immideately began experimenting upon people within...

The arrival of the Shedim spirits in Hailey's Comet.

The Mad scientist in 2e who was removing the brains of children and hooking them up to the Matrix to raise them within it...

Aztechnology and it's embrace of full on Blood magic and human sacrifice..

This and the presence of Vampires, Ghouls, Chrome Reapers, Toxic Shamans, Adepts of the Twisted Way, Insect Shamans and Spirits, Blood Magic...

Dude if you don't see all the Horror in Shadowrun, you must not really be familiar with it.

Quote from: Orphan81;850027Many of Shadowrun's most memorable adventures are more Horror based.

The Universal Brotherhood and it's insect spirits...

Harlequin's back and the need to prevent the "Horrors" (The lovecraftian Monsters who are slowly getting closer and closer to reality in Shadowrun thanks to the rise of magic) from arriving early.

The Renraku Acrology being taken over by the Mad A.I. Deus, who immideately began experimenting upon people within...

The arrival of the Shedim spirits in Hailey's Comet.

The Mad scientist in 2e who was removing the brains of children and hooking them up to the Matrix to raise them within it...

Aztechnology and it's embrace of full on Blood magic and human sacrifice..

This and the presence of Vampires, Ghouls, Chrome Reapers, Toxic Shamans, Adepts of the Twisted Way, Insect Shamans and Spirits, Blood Magic...

Dude if you don't see all the Horror in Shadowrun, you must not really be familiar with it.

I remember the Universal Brotherhood.  Gah, that left me with nightmares for weeks!  I hate bugs...  And I remember Harlequin's series of adventures.

Quote from: Orphan81;850027Many of Shadowrun's most memorable adventures are more Horror based.

The Universal Brotherhood and it's insect spirits...

Harlequin's back and the need to prevent the "Horrors" (The lovecraftian Monsters who are slowly getting closer and closer to reality in Shadowrun thanks to the rise of magic) from arriving early.

Those two at least are echoes of Earthdawn... I didn't know the Horrors made an appearance in SR. Our GM played down a lot of the nastier stuff in Earthdawn but there was no sugar-coating the Horrors and the Invae.

i stand corrected. However, it's not on the "label" - I don't play shadowrun so none of these horror elements were known to me. White Wolf says horror "on the label."

I like my urban fantasy game to be broad. To more I think about it, the more I am convinced my game (if I designed one) would look something like Witchcraft. That game is essentially a Mage the Ascension clone, but it doesn't have the default monolithic conflict old Mage has and neither it has the sectarianism new Mage has.

Every association and race can be playable, an ally, a mysterious stranger or an enemy. It gives the power to the GM and is servicable to what the GM wants. You can easily play a group of Christian vampire hunters, have a vampire in your party, occassionally hook up with vampires to hunt shapeshifters or don't have any vampires at all in your game, because it's all about cults and the things from beyond.

It's flexible. That's what I also like about Traveller or SW Hellfrost. You can do a lot of different things all within the same setting.

... and yes Shadowrun looks a lot like the oWoD. Just check the covers of the tradition books and compare them to Shadowrun covers. It was the era of the dark superheroes, right?

Quote from: jan paparazzi;850422I like my urban fantasy game to be broad. To more I think about it, the more I am convinced my game (if I designed one) would look something like Witchcraft. That game is essentially a Mage the Ascension clone, but it doesn't have the default monolithic conflict old Mage has and neither it has the sectarianism new Mage has.

Every association and race can be playable, an ally, a mysterious stranger or an enemy. It gives the power to the GM and is servicable to what the GM wants. You can easily play a group of Christian vampire hunters, have a vampire in your party, occassionally hook up with vampires to hunt shapeshifters or don't have any vampires at all in your game, because it's all about cults and the things from beyond.

It's flexible. That's what I also like about Traveller or SW Hellfrost. You can do a lot of different things all within the same setting.

... and yes Shadowrun looks a lot like the oWoD. Just check the covers of the tradition books and compare them to Shadowrun covers. It was the era of the dark superheroes, right?

I'm actually working on something like this myself now. Inspirations from Nightlife, Gurps Cabal, WoD, and the like. For myself and my own playgroup if nothing else.

am I the only one who wants to mash Nightlife and Ace Agents / Supers?

Quote from: Orphan81;850428I'm actually working on something like this myself now. Inspirations from Nightlife, Gurps Cabal, WoD, and the like. For myself and my own playgroup if nothing else.

I think it's the angst that mostly bothers me in the WoD and the lack of angst I find refreshing in games like Cabal or Witchcraft. Less "Shadows run deeper in the world of darkness." or "You feel the breath of evil down your neck and you smell the stench of corruption in the air." and more practical stuff.

Btw I actually found some cool urban fantasy kickstarters.

The Thin Blue Line: A Detroit Police Story (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1231173913/the-thin-blue-line-a-detroit-police-story)
A game in which you play psychic police officers who investigate paranormal threats in haunted Detroit. Uses Savage Worlds. I got the player's guide and it looks really good.

Fae Nightmares (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/darksmilegames/fae-nightmares)
A game in which you play nightmares, humans who have stumbled into the war between the fae courts. Uses Savage Worlds.

Witch (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1568822309/witch-a-dark-modern-fantasy-role-play-game)
A game in which you play witches and warlocks who have gained magical powers after selling their soul to a demon. Uses some sort of combination of D20 and the Storyteller system.

Cool.

Orphan81 - contact me if you want to work on that together!

One of the big draws I heard players mention of all the White Wolf stuff was the overlapping mysteries within mysteries written into the setting. Then there was the whole political intrigue aspect. Helped by the fact that the books used more or less the same mechanics between books so you did not have to totally re-learn a new system. This on top of the sheer glitze of the books helped to make them stand out.

And in a way. Rifts was the main competitor. Weird setting, play monsters, generally compatible system between settings, mysteries buried in the writing.

I've gone back over the God Machine Chronicle and I actually like many of the changes. I also liked nWOD when it came out. I ran a 1+ year VtM chronicle many moons ago. I always ignored the meta-plot. I appreciated the more "generic" approach of nWOD.

So, what are people's beefs with the nWOD2? It seems like a better tuned, better explained version of what they were trying to accomplish with nWOD1.

I don't have a problem with it. I have a problem with some of the people writing for it tho.

But not all of their lines...

Quote from: trechriron;851736I've gone back over the God Machine Chronicle and I actually like many of the changes. I also liked nWOD when it came out. I ran a 1+ year VtM chronicle many moons ago. I always ignored the meta-plot. I appreciated the more "generic" approach of nWOD.

So, what are people's beefs with the nWOD2? It seems like a better tuned, better explained version of what they were trying to accomplish with nWOD1.

Metaplot is easy to ignore. Didn't like it myself, but I like the more defined oWoD settings better. Especially vampire and mage. I lost interest in the nWoD and haven't checked out 2.0. Too little, too late. The games remain very unpractical to me with all those big blocks of text with some information you need hidden in it. It could be massively condensed and with all those pages saved, they could fill that up with some practical stuff like plotpoint campaigns, random quest generators, mechanics for having a base (like those lodges in Rippers) advice on different playstyles (combat, exploration, investigation, intrigue) and some tables for that etc.

It doesn't focus on what you are supposed to do. The thing that is missing is the player. In a game like Traveller it seems to be all about the players and it starts of with the question what do you want to do? Want to be a merchant, mercenary or an explorer and then it tries to support that playstyle you choose. White Wolf games always try to give you as much info on the setting and it's themes as possible and usually in a very verbose way with bombastic prose.

Regarding Shadowrun and White Wolf...

some of the reasons for the similarities is that there was some sharing of design personnel at the top.  The name escapes me at the moment, but I seem to recall he has since died.  Now, I've always chalked up this guy to the use of the dice pool mechanic and other rule similarities, but based on what you guys have pointed out, it may be more pervasive than that.

Damnit... now I'm gonna be trying to think of the dude's name all damn day, and I don't have the time to simply research it via the interwebs

Quote from: tenbones;851741I don't have a problem with it. I have a problem with some of the people writing for it tho.

But not all of their lines...

This pretty much. I enjoy a large portion of Nwod2. God Machine, Requiem 2nd edition, Forsaken 2nd edition are all awesome, and the upcoming 2nd edition of Awakening looks great to..

The problem is some of the writers and their attitudes toward anyone who doesn't carry the exact same politics they do. It's a real turn off as a fan. It's one thing to disagree with others about your personal politics, it's another to actively demonize them and attempt to have them silenced completely.

Quote from: Orphan81;851812This pretty much. I enjoy a large portion of Nwod2. God Machine, Requiem 2nd edition, Forsaken 2nd edition are all awesome, and the upcoming 2nd edition of Awakening looks great to..

The problem is some of the writers and their attitudes toward anyone who doesn't carry the exact same politics they do. It's a real turn off as a fan. It's one thing to disagree with others about your personal politics, it's another to actively demonize them and attempt to have them silenced completely.

And sometimes, their politics bleed through their writing and makes for an uncomfortable read.

I'm sure I can't the only one who saw Price of Freedom and thought it would be a hoot to play a right-wing ultra-patriot fighting the red menace BECAUSE I don't share those politics and fears.

Quote from: jan paparazzi;851604The Thin Blue Line: A Detroit Police Story (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1231173913/the-thin-blue-line-a-detroit-police-story)
A game in which you play psychic police officers who investigate paranormal threats in haunted Detroit. Uses Savage Worlds. I got the player's guide and it looks really good.

I didn't know that was out already, very cool.

Quote from: Spike;851793Regarding Shadowrun and White Wolf...

some of the reasons for the similarities is that there was some sharing of design personnel at the top.  The name escapes me at the moment, but I seem to recall he has since died.  Now, I've always chalked up this guy to the use of the dice pool mechanic and other rule similarities, but based on what you guys have pointed out, it may be more pervasive than that.

Damnit... now I'm gonna be trying to think of the dude's name all damn day, and I don't have the time to simply research it via the interwebs

Tom Dowd? He worked on 2nd ed Shadowrun and Vampire? Dowd is listed as the one who carried over the dice pool system from Shadowrun over to Vampire. Still alive though I think?

Quote from: Ronin;851834I didn't know that was out already, very cool.

Only the player's guide and a map of Detroit. The gm's guide will be out in september (pdf) and october (print). The Detroit setting is very detailed. They really crammed a lot of info in 40 pages. It's from the same developer as The Accursed.

Quote from: RPGPundit;848761WW had tons of competitors, back when it was relevant. Its just they didn't choose to rip off the 'creatures of the night' theme, but rather the storytelling/metaplot/pretentious vibes. Even TSR got on that bandwagon for a while.

Yes, but the creature of the night theme packaged things together rather nicely and embedded a decent set of goals into the setting.  It wasn't perfect, but it was "political RPGs" with training wheels matched with a hot sector of the book market.  

Not that it was perfect, but at the time there were a lot of positive features to it.

Quote from: jan paparazzi;851997Only the player's guide and a map of Detroit. The gm's guide will be out in september (pdf) and october (print). The Detroit setting is very detailed. They really crammed a lot of info in 40 pages. It's from the same developer as The Accursed.

Being Jasons a Detroiter, I would hope the setting is detailed.:) Thats also one of the reasons I'm interested in this project. Being Detroit is practically in my backyard.

Quote from: trechriron;851736I've gone back over the God Machine Chronicle and I actually like many of the changes. I also liked nWOD when it came out. I ran a 1+ year VtM chronicle many moons ago. I always ignored the meta-plot. I appreciated the more "generic" approach of nWOD.

So, what are people's beefs with the nWOD2? It seems like a better tuned, better explained version of what they were trying to accomplish with nWOD1.

So anyone playing GMC nWODv2?

What are your problems with it vs oWOD or nWODv1?

For me it was style. None of the other companies could match WW/OP's sense of style. Eden came CLOSE, but not close enough.

Quote from: trechriron;852073So anyone playing GMC nWODv2?

What are your problems with it vs oWOD or nWODv1?

It's really a matter of taste and what I'm planning on running. GMC nwod is perfect for Mortal games, it really is. Far better than cWod ever was for it. Hell if I want to run Call of Cthulu I'll use GMC as the rules set...

As for Vampire, it's really a matter of personal preference. Neither system is superior for Masquerade vs Requiem. Both are excellent and both offer a different style of play. My group prefers Masquerade's setting so we play that more.

Again, Werewolf is about preference as well. Only this time, my group prefers Forsaken 2nd edition vs Apocalypse. I love Apocalypse, but the Wyrm is a somewhat narrow villain compared to everything you can do in Forsaken.

For Mage? It's not a question. I prefer Ascension's setting and rules to Awakening...Now, what I've seen from Awakening 2nd edition looks cool, but it's still not as cool as Ascension is... Also. Rotes.

Awakening requires you to purchase Rotes, it's like slapping all kinds of boundaries on the pure freedom and creativity of Ascension. I've ran Awakening Chronicles for the Camarilla and every game saw the same thing... Players hunt through all the rule books to find the very best Rotes they could, and just learned those... Anytime they wanted to do something, they would hunt through the rule book to find a rote that did it..

It encouraged this weird tool fixation.... You also have the fact Whitewolf broke all of their own rules they laid down for awakening magic when it came to rotes. Some rotes were just clearly better in everyway than others.

This compared to Ascension which simply had a chart of effects you could buy with success and asked "What do you want to do?" Yes, it meant it was slightly more difficult for players to figure out everything they were capable of...but it also encouraged far more creativity and less time of players looking up the rule book to decide which rote would work best in their situation...

Outside of that, well I'll need to see Wraith 20 and Changeling 20....and the 2nd edition versions of the other Nwod books... Conceptually I thought Geists were Lame and Wraith was awesome, so I'll probably prefer that....where as 2nd ed Lost sounds like it's combining the best aspects of Both Changelings into one.

Edit: I forgot to add... the thing I dislike most about Nwod is "Conditions". It's something very Fateish that's bolted onto the system and doesn't really work well in my experience... that and "Beats" for getting XP. Conditions and Tilts have the problem of every new book adding more and more, so you end up having to memorize or look up 50 different mini-things that can affect someone rather than just saying what a specific power does... or having a simple set of rules for advantages and disadvantages... I really don't like them so I don't use them..

Beats are the other thing, it's hard to keep track and remember when Beats are suppose to be handed out for each player, so I just award XP after games.

If you wanted to copy off FATE, then copy the thing that made it cool.  What I mean are the aspects that are unique to the character.  That would had taken care of the merit bulk problem.  Hell all they needed to do was fix xp cost, add some interesting setting, and then get some hard copies to market.

Instead they wasted space with tilts and conditions that only adds to bulk issue.  They change merits, but never fix the real issue which was again merit bulk.  While they did fix xp cost they brought in a new issue known as beats.  Now the issue with beats is that for ever five beats you get it becomes one xp.  So you got this illusion that xp is cheaper when in reality it takes a long time to enhance your character.  Not to mention you have two xp types to track which it is stupid.

Quote from: Snowman0147;852105If you wanted to copy off FATE, then copy the thing that made it cool.  What I mean are the aspects that are unique to the character.  That would had taken care of the merit bulk problem.  Hell all they needed to do was fix xp cost, add some interesting setting, and then get some hard copies to market.

Instead they wasted space with tilts and conditions that only adds to bulk issue.  They change merits, but never fix the real issue which was again merit bulk.  While they did fix xp cost they brought in a new issue known as beats.  Now the issue with beats is that for ever five beats you get it becomes one xp.  So you got this illusion that xp is cheaper when in reality it takes a long time to enhance your character.  Not to mention you have two xp types to track which it is stupid.

The Beat thing was to try and encourage "Roleplay", since you only get Beats for excepting dramatic failures and fulfilling your Virtue and Vices and Aspirations... But it leads to this sort of artificial play for exactly the reason you stated. You need at least 5 Beats a session to get your 1xp you end up with players trying to force themselves into situations to get those beats..

I'd much rather Players act naturally as they want their PC's to act and get XP for good roleplaying and accomplishing goals, not artificially forcing their characters into bad situations so they can try and get xp.

Also like I said... condition bloat. There's way to fucking many, there's like 10 alone for spirits and the various states they can be in. When really it's as simple as "Manifested", "In twilight", "Urging", "Possessing" that's four states and not very hard to keep track of.... The Flow Chart they made for spirit states is just damn confusing.

This is without even getting into things like Werewolf where each Auspice can inflict a different condition on a mortal as well as a different condition based on the great hunt ritual.

Yeah when you need a flow chart for spirits you got a problem.  Seriously they are making it more complicated than it should be.  Which by the is what I honestly didn't expect.  I thought they would streamlined the system to be run better.  

To add more I despise the FATE point economy because by default rules it is anti-role playing.  Name me one person that wants to fail?  No think of your character.  Do your character say, "Oh if I fail now I would lock up in the orc torture chamber, but I get a shiny fate point."  I would answer hell no to that.  Your character is going to try to avoid that horrible fate.  The fact that we have a system that not only encourages to make your character fail, but forces your character to fail is not role playing.

What the hell did they do with werewolf anyway?

Quote from: Mostlyjoe;852091For me it was style. None of the other companies could match WW/OP's sense of style. Eden came CLOSE, but not close enough.

Bleak nhilistic party at ground zero style. Combined with the whole "Play as monsters" aspect. Which Palladium also beat them to.

Quote from: Omega;852146Bleak nhilistic party at ground zero style. Combined with the whole "Play as monsters" aspect. Which Palladium also beat them to.

Whitewolf beat the pants off of Palladium however by being infinitely more accessible and actively attracting women to the game..

Shadowrun and Palladium may have had similar themes in some of their games, Chill as well.... but their some of the most complicated systems to master and don't have an easy concept like "Vampires" that attracts a female audience who had enjoyed Anne Rice novels and Vampire movies...

Throw in the LARP scene as well, an excuse to dress up in interesting clothes and you can see why Whitewolf cornered the market.

Quote from: Orphan81;852167Whitewolf beat the pants off of Palladium however by being infinitely more accessible and actively attracting women to the game..

Shadowrun and Palladium may have had similar themes in some of their games, Chill as well.... but their some of the most complicated systems to master and don't have an easy concept like "Vampires" that attracts a female audience who had enjoyed Anne Rice novels and Vampire movies...

Throw in the LARP scene as well, an excuse to dress up in interesting clothes and you can see why Whitewolf cornered the market.

Vampire was so absurdly easy to LARP. That was another boon for it. I was one of the early playtesters for it.

Nephilim seemed like a pretty good take on the formula. I think basically it's tough to get much traction copying a formula when there's already a clear leading brand.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;851814And sometimes, their politics bleed through their writing and makes for an uncomfortable read.

I'm looking at you Dark Ages 20.

I think there is a very simple reason why there isn't a White Wolf competitor. For the audience that want to play a WoD style game White Wolf does it well enough that there is no demand for an alternative, or little enough to make no difference.

There are nearly endless games that do what D&D does, and have been since 1975 at least. The reason is that many people who want to play a D&D style fantasy game do not like the way D&D does it. I am not talking about OSR, I am talking about RuneQuest, Palladium Fantasy, Tunnels & Trolls, etc. Even those games have never really rivaled D&D. Pathfinder is perhaps the most serious rival D&D has ever had, and it really is a version of D&D.

There were "play the monster" games before White Wolf and will continue to be after, but White Wolf set the genre standard for emo monsters and not enough people are seriously dissatisfied with it to buy the same something else.

Immortal comes to mind as a try at the WW look and feel. And wasnt there something called Covenant or the like that had a a really odd background as well.

Quote from: Orphan81;852093Edit: I forgot to add... the thing I dislike most about Nwod is "Conditions". It's something very Fateish that's bolted onto the system and doesn't really work well in my experience... that and "Beats" for getting XP. Conditions and Tilts have the problem of every new book adding more and more, so you end up having to memorize or look up 50 different mini-things that can affect someone rather than just saying what a specific power does... or having a simple set of rules for advantages and disadvantages... I really don't like them so I don't use them..

Beats are the other thing, it's hard to keep track and remember when Beats are suppose to be handed out for each player, so I just award XP after games.

A lot of extra bookkeeping. The main reason I didn't switch. There wasn't anything wrong with the nWoD 1.0 system. The system was fine. The combat was a bit bland. That was the only thing that needed fixing.

The main problem were the settings. I miss a brief history where the reader gets informed what the vampire/werewolf/mage society etc. did during the Roman Era, the Middle Ages, the Victorian Era etc. I also really like some worldbuilding, like for example the Path of Kane does, describing several continents around the world. Hellfrost and Leagues of Adventures also do this very well with descriptions of several locations you can visit. The nWoD is too undefined for my taste.

Another biggie for me is the lack of practicality. This is a problem in all editions of the WoD. And it is the main reason I prefer BRPG, Unisystem and Savage Worlds right now. I think WW/OP could really learn a lot from a game like Covert Ops (http://dwdstudios.com/covertops). This game sets you up with a descriptions from spy bases all around the globe, a prefab base you can toss into your game and random generators for creating missions, NPC´s, villains and organisations. Much better than flipping back and forth through each book like a motherfucker, searching for that one piece of info tugged away between walls of text, usually the very angst kind. Like in the setting chapter of Hunter the Vigil, where it takes them ten whopping pages to describe the world is dark and monsters are out there. That annoys me so much it makes me wanna eat my RPG book out of sheer frustration.

Quote from: Orphan81;852167Whitewolf beat the pants off of Palladium however by being infinitely more accessible and actively attracting women to the game..

Agreed.

Quote from: Orphan81;852167Shadowrun and Palladium may have had similar themes in some of their games, Chill as well.... but their some of the most complicated systems to master and don't have an easy concept like "Vampires" that attracts a female audience who had enjoyed Anne Rice novels and Vampire movies...

Shadowrun I can agree with. Palladium, and Chill I don't. System wise they are pretty simple. Though Palladium is a bit ponderous in character creation. Also Palladium does have a vampire class in Nightbane if I remember correctly. Not to mention all the psychic classes.

Quote from: Orphan81;852167Throw in the LARP scene as well, an excuse to dress up in interesting clothes and you can see why Whitewolf cornered the market.

LARPing.... Yeah not a fan. But if folks out there want to, more power to them.

Quote from: Omega;852238Immortal comes to mind as a try at the WW look and feel. And wasnt there something called Covenant or the like that had a a really odd background as well.

Immortal seemed like the same storytelling concept, with a bit of a highlander feel (before the highlander WoD fan-port), and its own backstory. It didn't have the same horror feel as I recall.

Did it have more success elsewhere? I seem to feel like it was a failed product.

Quote from: Ronin;852019Being Jasons a Detroiter, I would hope the setting is detailed.:) Thats also one of the reasons I'm interested in this project. Being Detroit is practically in my backyard.

The setting book is out now. It has one extra chapter with NPC's and one with a case generator and some sample adventures.

Quote from: Willie the Duck;852391Immortal seemed like the same storytelling concept, with a bit of a highlander feel (before the highlander WoD fan-port), and its own backstory. It didn't have the same horror feel as I recall.

Did it have more success elsewhere? I seem to feel like it was a failed product.

It played more like what Exalted would years later be I guess. But with the emphasis on the storytelling aspects and the grand scope.

It seemed to just come and go. It was heavily promoted at cons and in magazines for a while. Then faded out like so many RPGs do.

If you're going to compete with White Wolf, you're going to need to focus on where your approach is different from theirs. I'll provide a few useful examples from the more notable contenders. If you want to compete, the best approach I can see is to take all the things that made those games unique and combine them.

Nightlife -- Nightlife is arguably the original inspiration for Mark Rein•Hagen. It has a few major differences: the in-game slang sounds like something people would actually use, all the monsters recover energy by consuming humans life force, all the monsters live in shared societies rather than being artificially segregated, and it is generally not pretentious.

Nephilim -- This actually came out the same time WoD did... except it was French. Anyway, the only part of it that stands out to me is the past life mechanic. Past lives are great for immortal campaigns, rediscovering past lives, being taken over by past lives, etc.

Everlasting -- This game was made by dissatisfied WW writers and as a result shares some similarities. What makes it different is that it includes a wide variety of unique character classes (including elves and dragons!) that all work off the same rules. I would even argue it inspired nWoD. All classes can play well together, magic is open to everyone, and players can invent new powers. All classes also have some kind of "torment" that made their immortal lives suck in some strangely fascinating fashion.

Witchcraft -- This is loosely similar to Everlasting, but focuses more on down to earth settings rather than the more fantastical approach of the other. It focuses primarily on human sorcerers with werewolves, vampires and ghost coming in supplements.

Monsterhearts -- WW books always mentioned in the intro that monsters were metaphors, but this quickly got lost in power fantasy. Here, the main rule of the classes is that each is an obvious (and usually dysfunctional) metaphor: zombies are addicts, vampires are emotionally dependent, werewolves are overprotective boyfriends, etc. This makes them resonate better than WW's power fantasies.

Feed -- This is a small press game, but it has by far some of the best innovations in the genre. Vampires come in "strains" that are be defined by players or GM: e.g. WW vampires are a strain with "sub-strains" (clans) and those monsters in the Night Horrors book are other strains. The two primary fluff mechanics are hunger and the conflict between vampirism and humanity; the former is self-explanatory but the latter is unique. Character traits are defined by their personal background: as a character loses human traits, these are replaced by vampiric ones until the character is unable to interact with others except by using their vampiric powers.

Urban Shadows -- I am less familiar with this, but from what I understand it is most similar to Witchcraft. It includes a special "corruption" mechanic where characters can get a short-term power boost at a cost to their soul.

Thoughts?

EDIT: I forgot to mention a couple others:

Dead Inside -- Produced by Atomic Sock Monkey Press. I don't know much about it, but from the product description it is fairly more bizarre and whimsical than other urban fantasy games.

Dresden Files -- Powered by FATE. It's more or less a straight adaptation of the setting in the books.

Strands of Fate -- Along with its companion book Strands of Power, this game can be used to emulate many genres including comic book superheroes and urban fantasy. SoP in particular includes various rules to simulate world of darkness-style monster characters.

Lost Souls -- an old, old game that still has minor support from the original author on its website. It's about playing ghosts, but with comedy rather than sorrow and grief.

Fireborn -- loosely similar to any World of Darkness game, but the PCs are reincarnated dragons.

Box - I want to thank you for these breakdowns on these alternative games! I plan on looking into several of them!!!

Rock on man!

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;852877...

Nightlife -- Nightlife is arguably the original inspiration for Mark Rein•Hagen. It has a few major differences: the in-game slang sounds like something people would actually use, all the monsters recover energy by consuming humans life force, all the monsters live in shared societies rather than being artificially segregated, and it is generally not pretentious.

...

Thoughts?

Umm, I don't want to make a competitor and I need to check out Nightlife?

:-)

Quote from: trechriron;852880Umm, I don't want to make a competitor and I need to check out Nightlife?

:-)

Eh, Nightlife suffers from being too simulationist (common in 90's RPGs) and the humanity mechanic is broken. I would use the Feed rules instead with the Nightlife setting.

Excellent Breakdown Crayon!

For the game I'm working on, I'm trying to take inspiration from a variety of sources to make the game myself and my players would be interested in playing.

Many inspirations from the various games you listed, mixed together to make something original of my own. Monsters who exist in major cities in their own political groups (i.e. Detroit could be it's own fiefdom with it's own rules and own leadership who have no say or control over the monster society in Chicago who have their own rules and own leadership)... With individual sub-groups giving loyalty ties and differing goals to characters (i.e. Detroit's leader may belong to the Werewolf Supremacy group and therefore feel obligated to help Chicago's Werewolf population overthrow it's Ghost Leader)...

With an overarching apolitical mega-group who pool their resources to enact a "Masquerade" together across the globe. The mega-group's leaders are unknown to monster society at large, but are guessed to be powerful leaders and members of the sub-groups...even ones who may work at cross purpose to one another...but who all agree on the principal of "Don't shit where you eat".

There will also be multiple clear cut "These separate societies of strange monsters are bad guys that nobody likes" to provide easy Adventure fodder and threats for GM use and to unify disparate PC's.

System wise, I'm not going to re-invent the wheel here. As a tiny rpg writer whose only worked on a handful of books, I don't have the "Juice" to create a brand spanking new system and hope it gets picked up. So I'm going to be doing an OGL style version ((But much more open character progression, think closer to Mutants and Masterminds than Dungeons and Dragons)) and a Savage Worlds version since that's where my original material has already been published before and I love the system.

Quote from: Orphan81;852942Many inspirations from the various games you listed, mixed together to make something original of my own. Monsters who exist in major cities in their own political groups (i.e. Detroit could be it's own fiefdom with it's own rules and own leadership who have no say or control over the monster society in Chicago who have their own rules and own leadership)... With individual sub-groups giving loyalty ties and differing goals to characters (i.e. Detroit's leader may belong to the Werewolf Supremacy group and therefore feel obligated to help Chicago's Werewolf population overthrow it's Ghost Leader)...

With an overarching apolitical mega-group who pool their resources to enact a "Masquerade" together across the globe. The mega-group's leaders are unknown to monster society at large, but are guessed to be powerful leaders and members of the sub-groups...even ones who may work at cross purpose to one another...but who all agree on the principal of "Don't shit where you eat".

I can't take conspiracies seriously due to problems of logistics and security. http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Conspiracy_theory#Logistics WoD has always glossed over that, but it is fairly important for verisimilitude. Either there are so few monsters in any one populated area that they don't need to worry about logistics, or they have the omnipresent Big Brother powers from that movie The Adjustment Bureau or Harry Potter. Shouldn't the US government  get involved at some point?

Secondly, The idea that any character could break the masquerade is questionable. There are already millions of lunatics in real life who claim to be magical or whatever. What makes people any more likely to believe someone with yet another shaky handheld iphone video?

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;852877Nightlife -- Nightlife is arguably the original inspiration for Mark Rein•Hagen.

I seem to recall that Vampire was already in development when Nightlife came out. I was a big fan of Ars Magica at the time, so I had an interest in what he was up to. I have a distinct memory of picking up Nightlife as soon as it came out and thinking that it will be interesting to compare to Vampire when it came out.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;853026I can't take conspiracies seriously due to problems of logistics and security. http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Conspiracy_theory#Logistics WoD has always glossed over that, but it is fairly important for verisimilitude. Either there are so few monsters in any one populated area that they don't need to worry about logistics, or they have the omnipresent Big Brother powers from that movie The Adjustment Bureau or Harry Potter. Shouldn't the US government  get involved at some point?

I liked early Vampire, in that everything revolved around city politics. There were conspiracies, but they were local ones, and players could either oppose them or join the Elders and get involved. It was great for sandbox play.

Both Werewolf and Mage gave you vast and unbeatable evil conspiracies that I found boring. Where Vampire let you make your own allies and enemies, these games served up your antagonists on a platter. Having ready-to-go enemies in a game isn't automatically bad, but when you combine it with enemies you can't every really beat it gets old quickly. Both games are basically Windmills: The Tilting.

The best model for conspiracies is just to model good old-fashioned, real world corruption. Conspiracies don't demand perfect secrecy. They just need to ensure that anyone with power to stop them has no interest in doing so.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;853026I can't take conspiracies seriously due to problems of logistics and security. http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Conspiracy_theory#Logistics WoD has always glossed over that, but it is fairly important for verisimilitude. Either there are so few monsters in any one populated area that they don't need to worry about logistics, or they have the omnipresent Big Brother powers from that movie The Adjustment Bureau or Harry Potter. Shouldn't the US government  get involved at some point?

Secondly, The idea that any character could break the masquerade is questionable. There are already millions of lunatics in real life who claim to be magical or whatever. What makes people any more likely to believe someone with yet another shaky handheld iphone video?

Because Monsters don't exist in real life. In a world where they in fact do, and HAVE infiltrated local governments, businesses, criminal organizations and other such things... the idea enough evidence could come out to blow the whole thing open is a real possibility...

If you have a cult of Liches unleash a mass of walking dead into a neighborhood, there is a real chance it could end up being exposed... Sure conspiracies don't exist in the real world so much (Like the idea of "Crisis Actors" and 9/11 being an inside job) but in an Urban Fantasy Horror game, the idea the local Newstation is ran by a Vampire is a very real possibility.

Hence for my setting, I have the overarching apolitical mystery conspiracy known as "The Keepers". Most monsters in the world know they exist...they even have public representatives of other apolitical monsters known as "Judicators" who act as neutral parties to help solve disputes and also keep an eye on areas to help clean up public supernatural incidents..

The Keepers are not omniscient or omnipotent, and I'm making sure to state they can be kept out of an area completely by a strong enough force... But they specifically exist as a tool for the GM to say why the zombies unleashed in a suburban neighborhood doesn't make CNN and ends up discredited..

Also, they use teams of specialists known as "Ferrymen" which gives a easy campaign model for GM's and players who prefer doing more "Action orientated" gameplay instead of political gameplay.

As for the U.S. government, I haven't finished writing the setting, but I planned on branches of it being aware of the supernatural at various levels. At the end of the day though, since most Monsters aren't trying to replace the president and spend more time fighting one another, they're less worried about it, and are treated more like organized crime is. The NSA doesn't care so much what the crips and the bloods are up to when they're looking for terrorists... unless said terrorists begin to work with the Crips and the Bloods..

Anyway, I'm drawing inspiration from a variety of sources and whitewolf is only one of them. I don't want to just copy what whitewolf does...Whitewolf has political monsterplay pretty down pat...while that will certainly be an aspect of my game and a big one...I'm also making sure to build in tools for GM's and PC's who want to instead play their monsters as a group of globe trotting action stars fighting off even worse threats if they want to as well.

Yeah for my The Perception Effect idea I at least gave hunters the means of gathering resources.  Mainly for the major hunter conspiracies set up their bases beyond the mundane perception and treat the land they claim as their own tiny nation.  This process takes centuries of work as they need to set up the infrastructure, set up the logistic, and get their networks going.  

Of course the only reason that things are secret is that it will cause a panic.  When the major conspiracies started they didn't need secrecy as society was full of superstition, but at the time they really couldn't do much.  Now they are capable of handling threats the world had change.  If they reveal themselves now the mundane world leaders would freak out and get in the way, or worst try to end them.

The none major conspiracies are far smaller in scale.  The biggest are secret branches in world governments.  This is followed by terrorists, criminals, and those who secretly work for major world religions.

My personal feeling is that a game should commit to one genre and not try to please everyone. Trying to balance soap opera, political thriller and superhero dynamics at once is a recipe for disaster. (I never liked the political elements in supernatural soap operas, since the writers were clearly out of their depth.)

As others have said before, a WoD competitor will only really succeed if it is written in response to the many perceived flaws in WoD. There are WoD players who are disappointed with certain core aspects of the game. Attracting them is the best bet.

Quote from: Omega;851839Tom Dowd? He worked on 2nd ed Shadowrun and Vampire? Dowd is listed as the one who carried over the dice pool system from Shadowrun over to Vampire. Still alive though I think?

Dowd. Yeah. I thought I heard he died? Well, off to Google for me then.




Hmmm... wiki entry suggests, he may still be among the living.  Dunno... could be undead. Will need to find some garlic to test this...

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;853940My personal feeling is that a game should commit to one genre and not try to please everyone. Trying to balance soap opera, political thriller and superhero dynamics at once is a recipe for disaster. (I never liked the political elements in supernatural soap operas, since the writers were clearly out of their depth.)

As others have said before, a WoD competitor will only really succeed if it is written in response to the many perceived flaws in WoD. There are WoD players who are disappointed with certain core aspects of the game. Attracting them is the best bet.

I think White Wolf games are thematically very focused (and restrictive in a way), but gameplay-wise they are very unfocused. A very frequent complaint the developers get is that people don't know what to do in the game. You won't have that problem in Cthulhu or D&D, because in those games it's pretty much spelled out to you what to should do.

Compare the nWoD core to a game like Ghostories. Ghostories is pretty much the same thing (modern horror), but it pretty much spells out that you are an investigator and the rest of the game is geared towards the player's investigating weird stuff.

Most spy games are geared towards supporting the GM (and the player's) with a prefab base, mechanics for item repair and healing your crew, random mission and NPC generators and prefab missions. White Wolf/Onyx Path rather discusses the themes of the spy genres, like it's an essay, usually in a very angsty way. "You can't trust anyone. Your best friend could be your enemy. Paranoia is everywhere. oooOOOooo!"

This is of no practical help whatsoever. An urban fantasy game should really compete if it would actually support a political game for example. Not only by setting up a setting with different factions, but also by supporting political gameplay just like the Game of Thrones rpg does.

A modern horror game could compete if it would actually support investigation. Because the nWoD core and the God Machine Chronicle don't actually support that a lot. It's a bit opague in how your pc's actually get involved with the supernatural. I don't really know how to put this into words ... anyone else got this too?

Quote from: jan paparazzi;854269A modern horror game could compete if it would actually support investigation. Because the nWoD core and the God Machine Chronicle don't actually support that a lot. It's a bit opague in how your pc's actually get involved with the supernatural. I don't really know how to put this into words ... anyone else got this too?

I seem to recall the storytelling chapter in the World of Darkness Rulebook mentioning a few examples for how PCs would stumble on the supernatural. It's been a long time since I've read it and I don't have the book on me.

Beyond advice for actually running games, what would you say are the biggest flaws of the games? What openings are there to allow competition to flourish?

With this whole OBG mess going it occured to me one other reason there hasnt been any big WW competitors.

Who else would delve into some of the depths of depravity that WW did over the course with some of its books. They really pushed the envelope at times in just how much they could get away with. Which is probably another draw point for the game. It allowed some pretty horrible characters and subject matter. Especially when those Sabbat books came out.

Quote from: Brand55;846625I definitely agree with this. I've never liked how WW seemed to be stuck on the idea that werewolves and spirits had to be joined at the hip. Werewolves as ecowarriors/spirit cops just never fully clicked with me.

Quote from: Orphan81;846626It's one of the best explanations for giving Werewolves extra powers. Vampires throughout popular media and folklore have all kinds of different abilities from Mind Control, to Super Strength and Flight, to Animal Control..

Werewolves well....They turn into either giant killer wolves or normal wolves.

But a game where you just shift into a different form, probably isn't going to be fun. Even Dungeons and Dragons has their Fighter types get all kinds of options..

So you have to find a way to give some cool powers to your Werewolves, and well...the wolf, nature, spirit connection is kind of logical for that avenue..

Unless you go with the idea Werewolves are in fact related to Demons and instead give them options for Infernal style magic and abilities.

Quote from: Snowman0147;846634In the Perception Effect I took a lot of influence from Bloodborne which took a lot of influence from Cthulhu Mythologies.

Some thing having to do with the blood in werewolves.  Think werewolf physical abilities, regeneration capabilities, transforming powers, and stranger things.  Just look at promenthean powers for a example.

Quote from: Brand55;846637One of the werewolves in the last game I ran could summon floods. That's not something any non-WoD player would think sounds like a typical werewolf ability. Even just extending their theme to nature (which is fitting) and the wolf's role as predator, there are a whole host of powers that werewolves can draw on. Shapeshifting, enhanced physical traits, different senses, hunting and tracking powers, regeneration, animal control and communication, speed, leaping, stealth, pack coordination, fear. Honestly, it wouldn't have been hard at all to add on a sort of magic on top of that to enhance them more. You could go with Native American lore or Norse berserkers or something like that, but in my opinion giving werewolves some sort of lunar magic would be more thematic. Instead we got spirit fetishes.

The problem is vampires were already given most of the powers werewolves traditionally have, even the ones vampires usually don't have in other media. And of course mages trump everybody. So it leaves werewolves needing truly bizarre powers that don't really fit the archetype just so they have something to do. That's not an inherent problem with werewolves, it's a problem with the way the game was designed and balanced.

It also probably didn't help that werewolves were ultimately completely reliant on spirits for all of their powers. Not only were spirits needed for fetishes, but werewolves weren't even able to learn Gifts on their own. That part was especially irritating to me when I first read it.

Yeah, I really have to agree that werewolf are shafted compared to vampires in the popularity department. The only solution I can think of would be to create a game similar to Feed except focused around werewolves.

Feed gives two commandments that inform how its themes and rules work: "Vampires Feed" (not necessarily blood, but must feed on something) and "The Vampiric Nature Opposes Some Other Nature" (not necessarily humanity, but still non-vampiric values). Those are the only constants, as otherwise how vampires work is devised by the players or GM.

You'll need such commandments for a werewolf game, whatever their other facets are. Oddly enough, these would be very similar to those above. I would articulate it as: "Lycanthropes Change" (that is, they must transform and run and hunt and otherwise indulge their animal side) and "The Lycanthropic Nature Opposes Some Other Nature." That second one is important. Whether it is man versus beast, flesh versus spirit, civilization versus savagery, or whatever, werewolves are fundamentally torn between two different natures.

I'm going to give lycanthropes the freedom of having strains like vampires do. Developing a strain also translates fairly similarly: you define the rules by which lycanthropy functions in the story. You can even have multiple different strains in the same story a la Dresden Files.

I'll start with some examples of the the basic elements (these are compared in terms of Strong, Neutral and Weak depending on whether you want lycanthropy to be more or less of a curse):

Aging: This may seem like a strange question to ask, but do (these) werewolves age? Whether due to regeneration or something else, certain fiction portrays werewolves as capable of living for centuries or even forever barring violent death.
   Mortal (Neutral): Werewolves age and die like humans do, though signs of aging may manifest differently for them.
Immortal (Strong): Barring violent death, werewolves never die of old age or become decrepit in any way.

Appearance: How well can werewolves pass for human when they are not transformed?
   Undetectable (Strong): Provided they don't do anything obviously supernatural, werewolves can easily pass for human. While they aren't given away by physical appearance, it may be possible for medical examination to reveal irregularities.
Conspicuous (Neutral): While werewolves don't look inhuman, they do look a bit odd. Typical marks include hair in unusual places like the palms or tops of the feet, fingers of equal length, unusual eye color, disturbing to animals, etc. They tend to stick in the memory and those familiar with the strain can readily recognize members.
Monstrous (Weak): Monstrous werewolves are obviously deformed. They can't pass for human even with extensive makeup and bad lighting. Depending on particulars, they may be able to pass this off as birth defects, extreme body modification, or (in the worst cases) pretend to be exotic or deformed animals.
Degenerative (Weak): Werewolves start as Undetectable, but gradually and irreversibly transition through Conspicuous and into Monstrous over a period of time. This is linked to a modified Change Element where the werewolf does not switch between human and wolf forms. Instead, they gradually and irreversibly changed from human to wolf form.

Change: How do werewolves transform? What does it look like and how long does it take? How are their clothes affected?
   Bursting Transformation (Neutral): The change is quick but gruesome, involving the new form exploding out of the old in a shower of blood, gore, shreds of skin and fatty tissue.
Mystic Transformation (Strong): The werewolf quickly shimmers and fades into their new form, and any clothing they were wearing melds with them until they return to their human form.
Stretching Transformation (Weak): The change is long and incredibly painful, involving the werewolf's body stretching and warping into the new form.

Control: How much control does the character's human side have over the wolf side while transformed?
   Amnesiac (Weak): The werewolf has no control over themselves while transformed and has no memory of what happened while transformed. Likewise, while transformed they have little or no memory of their human side and act like the wolf they emulate.
Rage (Neutral): While transformed, the werewolf's mind remains their own, but their faculties are impaired by powerful animal urges.
Full Control (Strong): The werewolf retains their faculties and full control of themselves in any form.
Conscience (Neutral): The werewolf is otherwise an amnesiac after transformation, but their wolf side retains their conscience. While transformed, they will not do anything they would not do as a human.

Transmission: How do werewolves transmit their condition to others? How much control over the spread do they have?
   Airborne Transmission (Weak): These werewolves have a flat chance to infect anyone in their vicinity. Alternatively, the infection is spread through sharing food, drinking water from a werewolf's paw print, or similar. In any case, there is a random chance of infection and the werewolf has no control over this.
Infectious Bite (Neutral): Werewolves may infect others through their teeth or claws, sometimes even in human form. The strain only ever has partial control over this: the strain may be able to avoid accidental infection but can't infect at will or, conversely, infect at will but can't avoid the chance of accidental infection.
Sorcery (Strong): Werewolves are created only through deliberate rituals or curses.
Procreation (Strong): Werewolves reproduce only through sexual reproduction. Lycanthropy in their descendants may be present from birth or remain latent.

Trigger: What causes the werewolf to transform?
   Temporal Trigger (Neutral): The werewolf only transforms at certain times, like from dusk to dawn, on the nights before, during and after a full moon, etc.
Emotional Trigger (Weak): The transformation is triggered by strong emotions, such as anger, fear, or sexual arousal.
At Will (Strong): The transformation is under the full control of the werewolf and requires conscious and deliberated intent to induce.

That's all I can think of at the moment and it's getting late. Hope you find this useful. I welcome any advice or contribution.

This really has me thinking about doing a WoD Retroclone now.

I think in particular the time is becoming right. We had the first wave of OSR hit back around the mid 00's....Now you got guys like me who grew up with World of Darkness hitting their 30's and feeling nostalgia..

That and Onyx Path has shown they're no longer serving the demographic that has an interest in Gothic Punk. On the contrary to Eddy Web's suggestion that it's "So 90s" and Vampire: The Masquerade needs to leave it behind (Hence the announcement of Vampire 4th edition) and think they're will always be a market for a dark dystopic stylish game set in a gothic world on the brink.

Skyscrappers like tombstones, Gargoyles on every building, rain hitting the surface... I don't think that really ever goes out of style.. Throw in the rebellion Punk Ethos as well. When V20 was announced and it was a return to this style, it brought back lots and lots of lapsed players...

Now it seems, Onyx Path is leaving this somewhat behind with their new endeavors.

It may be time for the World of Darkness Retroclones to be created. Capturing what those who grew up with those games loved, and improving on them in the ways each individual creator wants.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;855474I seem to recall the storytelling chapter in the World of Darkness Rulebook mentioning a few examples for how PCs would stumble on the supernatural. It's been a long time since I've read it and I don't have the book on me.

Always with a mind-pretzel. Usually contact with the supernatural (and how the players meet) is by accident in some cumbersome way. Why not say the players are part of a God Machine investigation agency that gives them missions about investigating the God Machine?

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;855474Beyond advice for actually running games, what would you say are the biggest flaws of the games? What openings are there to allow competition to flourish?

1. Arguably you can't play all different monster types in one game. I don't really have a problem with it, because I don't see the need why vampires and werewolves and others would work together.

2. Practicality. A hunter game could benefit from a prefab base with base mechanics, prefab (non-linear) adventures, non-linear campaigns (like the plot point campaigns), random monster generators and random quest generators. White Wolf/Onyx Path has the habit of blathering about the themes and mood of a game. It is a mood creator style of writing that simply doesnt work for me. I like a more concise writing style instead of the angsty padding of the wod. Sum it up quickly and then write about stuff I would actually use in-game. It just isn't very clear.

3. System. Not a dice pool system would draw some people in.

Quote from: Orphan81;855564This really has me thinking about doing a WoD Retroclone now.

I think in particular the time is becoming right. We had the first wave of OSR hit back around the mid 00's....Now you got guys like me who grew up with World of Darkness hitting their 30's and feeling nostalgia..

That and Onyx Path has shown they're no longer serving the demographic that has an interest in Gothic Punk. On the contrary to Eddy Web's suggestion that it's "So 90s" and Vampire: The Masquerade needs to leave it behind (Hence the announcement of Vampire 4th edition) and think they're will always be a market for a dark dystopic stylish game set in a gothic world on the brink.

Skyscrappers like tombstones, Gargoyles on every building, rain hitting the surface... I don't think that really ever goes out of style.. Throw in the rebellion Punk Ethos as well. When V20 was announced and it was a return to this style, it brought back lots and lots of lapsed players...

Now it seems, Onyx Path is leaving this somewhat behind with their new endeavors.

It may be time for the World of Darkness Retroclones to be created. Capturing what those who grew up with those games loved, and improving on them in the ways each individual creator wants.

Well, if you or someone does do a retroclone of WoD I hope it gets opened up with different "race" types: ghouls, liches, mummies, ghosts. I think any of those could be just as interesting or fun or amusing to play as vampires or werewolves.

Quote from: Doughdee222;855570Well, if you or someone does do a retroclone of WoD I hope it gets opened up with different "race" types: ghouls, liches, mummies, ghosts. I think any of those could be just as interesting or fun or amusing to play as vampires or werewolves.

I'd already written up a good portion of Lore for my own take on a "WoD" style world, and the big way to make things different of course is to open it up to cross over and extra supernatural "races". So it's already baked into the setting!

Vampires, Werewolves, Revenants (Which will cover both "Crow" style and "Frankenstein" style), Damned (People who made demonic pacts but escaped from Hell and now are slowly turning into Demons), Ghosts (who are automatically visible to all other Supernatural creatures like in "Being Human") and possibly a few more..

Liches exist in the setting too but are more set up as an antagonistic race, though will probably have rules in a GM section.

The funny thing is, I'd already done a bunch of work fitting this into a more D20 style system since I was worried about legality issues... But I started work on a preliminary Retroclone and making it different enough to avoid copyright issues.

Quote from: Orphan81;855578I'd already written up a good portion of Lore for my own take on a "WoD" style world, and the big way to make things different of course is to open it up to cross over and extra supernatural "races". So it's already baked into the setting!

Vampires, Werewolves, Revenants (Which will cover both "Crow" style and "Frankenstein" style), Damned (People who made demonic pacts but escaped from Hell and now are slowly turning into Demons), Ghosts (who are automatically visible to all other Supernatural creatures like in "Being Human") and possibly a few more..

Liches exist in the setting too but are more set up as an antagonistic race, though will probably have rules in a GM section.

The funny thing is, I'd already done a bunch of work fitting this into a more D20 style system since I was worried about legality issues... But I started work on a preliminary Retroclone and making it different enough to avoid copyright issues.

You may want to look at "Opening The Dark." It's a retroclone of the ST system released under the OGL. While not a perfect duplicate, it does a lot of the work.  https://www.scribd.com/collections/2653023

I would recommend to take a look at Jared Sorenson's Vampire clone too: https://www.scribd.com/doc/229289549/Jared-Sorensen-s-Vampire

Personally, I don't like the ST system, but I'm still curious to see how OSR would handle it.

I was reading through the new releases on Noble Knight Games when I noticed that they had a new game called P.E.R.K. Urban Horror. Apparently they had a successful Kickstarter (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1365674513/perk-horror-rpg-setting/description (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1365674513/perk-horror-rpg-setting/description)) about a year ago. I'd never even heard of  the P.E.R.K. system but I thought I'd mention it in case anyone had and was interested in checking it out. What little I've read specifically mentioned werewolves, vampires, and homunculi, though other horror characters (including humans) are supposed to be playable, too.

Quote from: Doughdee222;855570Well, if you or someone does do a retroclone of WoD I hope it gets opened up with different "race" types: ghouls, liches, mummies, ghosts. I think any of those could be just as interesting or fun or amusing to play as vampires or werewolves.

Quote from: Orphan81;855578I'd already written up a good portion of Lore for my own take on a "WoD" style world, and the big way to make things different of course is to open it up to cross over and extra supernatural "races". So it's already baked into the setting!

Vampires, Werewolves, Revenants (Which will cover both "Crow" style and "Frankenstein" style), Damned (People who made demonic pacts but escaped from Hell and now are slowly turning into Demons), Ghosts (who are automatically visible to all other Supernatural creatures like in "Being Human") and possibly a few more..

Liches exist in the setting too but are more set up as an antagonistic race, though will probably have rules in a GM section.

The funny thing is, I'd already done a bunch of work fitting this into a more D20 style system since I was worried about legality issues... But I started work on a preliminary Retroclone and making it different enough to avoid copyright issues.

I think that this would be a fun project to work on, a variety of different creature types for a WoD type of setting. I've worked on a something like that myself a little bit, with cambions and djinn as two different creature types, existing as creatures in much the same way as vampires of werewolves do in the WoD. I haven't fully fleshed them out, but one of these days I would like to.

Tapping into the LARPing community probably was another big boost for White Wolf. Aside from Werewolf, their stuff is overall absurdly easy to costume for overall.

Shadowrun was another that could have pulled that off if FASA hadnt folded.

Quote from: Omega;856373Tapping into the LARPing community probably was another big boost for White Wolf. Aside from Werewolf, their stuff is overall absurdly easy to costume for overall.

Shadowrun was another that could have pulled that off if FASA hadnt folded.

I think Shadowrun has a more limited appeal for LARP compared to Vampire.

Vampire is primarily a social game in the end, and attracts those Larpers who want to dress up and play pretend, but don't want to do the Boffer Larp scene.

Shadowrun lends itself more to Boffer Larp style play, than social salon play...and doing Dungeons and Dragons with a Boffer LARP is easier than a game with guns, cyberware, decking, rigging, and magic.

True. Back in the 90s the gunfights would have been a little harder. But like Vampire, its pretty easy to costume for.

Now with the advent of nerf guns being cheap and stylish a Shadowrun LARP would be more viable.

A Johnson Arms repaint.
(http://johnsonarmsprops.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/20120929-1454532.jpg)

Quote from: Omega;856382True. Back in the 90s the gunfights would have been a little harder. But like Vampire, its pretty easy to costume for.

Now with the advent of nerf guns being cheap and stylish a Shadowrun LARP would be more viable.

A Johnson Arms repaint.
(http://johnsonarmsprops.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/20120929-1454532.jpg)

Oh wow.  Nice job!  Did you paint those?  Freakin' awesome!

On topic:

The reason there's no White Wolf Competitor is because as Orphan81 pointed out, they've stopped making games for that particular sub-set of Urban Fantasy, and as such, no one seems to be willing to pick up the slack.

Nope. One of Johnson Arms pieces. Lots of prop work for people. Do a search for nerf blaster on DA and you'll get all sorts of amazing pieces people have done. Lots of steampunk for obvious reasons.

Sometimes Exalted feels like it is following White Wolf. Ive met a few players who used to play various WW games who moved to Exalted. They do not seem very simmilar at all so not sure what the connection is? None?

I wouldn't worry too much about what specific monster types to support in the core rules. Ignoring the power fantasy, monsters work best as metaphors and those metaphors work best if the rules support those. Monsterhearts and Feed are the best examples of this. Monsterhearts is about taking a personal struggle and then building a monster metaphor around it, while Feed is basically about vampirism as addiction. Werewolves, for example, are extremely well suited as a metaphor for disability (papers have even been written about that).

Beyond that, a big part of what made World of Darkness popular was the extensive backgrounds and the (oft high school level) politics. The changing cultural zeitgeist has watered down these elements severely. Vampire is no longer as psychosexually transgressive as it once was. Werewolf's ecoterrorist crusade falls flat in a world where anyone who denies climate change is derided as a lunatic. Mage... well, the 20th anniversary edition has unironically made mages out to be SJWs.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;856454Beyond that, a big part of what made World of Darkness popular was the extensive backgrounds and the (oft high school level) politics. The changing cultural zeitgeist has watered down these elements severely. Vampire is no longer as psychosexually transgressive as it once was. Werewolf's ecoterrorist crusade falls flat in a world where anyone who denies climate change is derided as a lunatic. Mage... well, the 20th anniversary edition has unironically made mages out to be SJWs.

They could have gone for a different extensive background. Now they just went for little background and leave the rest up to the GM's imagination. Landing somewhere between an extensive background and something like a Sine Nomine game. Somewhere in the uncanny valley of rpg's. Still it sells a lot, so I guess we are stuck with it.

Quote from: jan paparazzi;856467They could have gone for a different extensive background. Now they just went for little background and leave the rest up to the GM's imagination. Landing somewhere between an extensive background and something like a Sine Nomine game. Somewhere in the uncanny valley of rpg's. Still it sells a lot, so I guess we are stuck with it.

The cracks are beginning to show. The upcoming 4th edition is going to move the metaplot past the 90s. From the metaplot developments I read in the Mage 20th anniversary book and the new convention books, it is not going to be pretty.

The consensus in the Mage metaplot seems to be that "new media is evil." The technocracy and the virtual adepts were utterly blindsided by the advent of social media and have lost all hope of control, so both now hate social media. The traditions have become lunatic SJWs trying desperately to remain relevant in a popular culture that has left them behind.

In werewolf, the coming apocalypse has been retconned away with the eighth sign of the phoenix. I have no idea how that's going to work out.

In vampire, gehenna is going to be resolved. It happened, but it wasn't as apocalyptic as everyone feared. A lot of vampires bit the dust, but human society didn't notice and now the survivors are picking up the pieces.

You know how everyone hated the metaplot, particularly during the revised edition when it took center stage (to the point of sending the writers hundreds of death threats)? It's not only staying, it's being continued. The avatar storm, the sixth great maelstrom, etc are back and they're going to be resolved.

Not only that, but ever since CCP destroyed WW, OPP has been forced to make do with substandard efforts. They can only raise funds through kickstarter by piggy backing off the good will of their long-time fans. They hire freelancers to write nearly everything, and quite a few of these freelancers are SJWs. They even instituted a retroactive mandate where villainous characters cannot be of LGBT background (e.g. Vykos was made a "good" vampire because it's technically a transexual).

The resulting fallout may break OPP's monopoly on the market.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;856516The resulting fallout may break OPP's monopoly on the market.

It's more likely to me that it'll kill that part of the market.  If there was a big demand for a White Wolf competitor, I think there would be one.  People want White Wolf, and a WW that doesn't suck, and I don't think that can happen any more.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;856516The consensus in the Mage metaplot seems to be that "new media is evil." The technocracy and the virtual adepts were utterly blindsided by the advent of social media and have lost all hope of control, so both now hate social media. The traditions have become lunatic SJWs trying desperately to remain relevant in a popular culture that has left them behind.

Shouldn't the SJW's be connected to the Technocracy? They're progressive and empowered by a number of establishment institutions. Plus they want to control how everything thinks.

Quote from: Sergeant Brother;856531Shouldn't the SJW's be connected to the Technocracy? They're progressive and empowered by a number of establishment institutions. Plus they want to control how everything thinks.

The whole "SJWness" of Mage 20 is severely being overstated here. The Traditions have always been about marginalized groups. I'm sick of SJW rhetoric myself even as a Liberal, and Mage didn't really set off my alarm bells or make me roll my eyes. Mage 20 was great BECAUSE it resolved the Avatar Storm and got rid of the punitive paradox rules of revised..

Mage 20 was all about pushing forward "Magick is still alive!" and painted the Nephandus as the real villains of the setting allowing players to be Technocrats OR Tradition mage and possibly even work together.

Suffice to say, I was VERY satisfied with Mage 20 and thought it was great.

Werewolf 20 has been excellent too, and if anything, the 8th sign of the Phoenix, the fact the Garou now have hope is probably the greatest addition to the setting, and what was needed to continue going forward.

Now, here's where things fall apart...

Vampire 20 was an excellent book and was mostly metaplot agnostic... HOWEVER, the supplements for Vampire 20 DID push plot forward, only a different plot. It undid the worse aspects of Revised edition...the Anarch state never fell, the Keui-jin aren't in california, the red sign has not appeared, the Ravnos have not been destroyed, ect....

Yet it still updated the setting...bringing the Anarch state into the modern day, as well as Thamaturgy and talking about how Vampires handled Facebook and social media... overall it was awesome stuff...

Now, however, it seems Onyx Path is undoing all of that. Vampire IV is going to be ignoring everything Vampire 20 did...It's bringing back all of the ugly revised edition metaplot most people hated...

See, Vampire 20 gave Vampire fans what they always wanted... an awesome sandbox to play in, where they could do what they wanted with the best parts of Vampire. Vampire IV is continuing what everyone hated about Vampire... The metaplot..

Not only that, it's actively seeking to remove what made Masquerade fun, and still makes it fun...the Gothic Punk element... As much as some people say "Gothic Punk is so 90s" the fact Vampire 20 has sold so well, and Gothic asectrics are still very much alive in the modern fiction (I'm not talking about black trenchcoats and make up here, I'm talking about Gargoyles roofs, Skyscrappers like Tombstones, rain and melodrama)...

Basically it sounds like they're going to turn it into Requiem....They even have Rose Bailey on board to try and make sure it doesn't get to close to Requiem....which tells you right then and there huge problems are going to be within the setting...

Then you also have all the problems Dark Ages 20 had, with rabid PC police like David Hill being the developer. That's where you get the mandate Sasha Vyokos is now a Heroic "Good" Vampire, and a "She" rather than an "It", and that LGBT Vampires cannot be portrayed in a negative light. It's also where you got horrible rules problems, from weapons tables not having the correct information, to Disciplines missing entire rules sections..

You also have the other problems of Onyx Path chipping away their good will...Exalted Delays, the whole Beast Fiasco, the fact physical copies of books are not in stores, and the attitude of many of their current staff which is very toxic and dismissive of anyone who doesn't have the same exact politics they do.

Masquerade IV strikes me as an attempt to make themselves relevant again. They're hoping for another win, hence the "Bringing it into the modern day" spiel... If anything, since Eddy Web announced this, and he's not actually an Onyx Path employee but a CCP employee, it makes me wonder if the mandate came down from on High from CCP...

Onyx Path isn't going to vanish anytime soon, I'm not saying that...however if they do continue down their current "path" they're going to end up making themselves irrelevant to anyone who doesn't post on the big purple.

I haven't read Mage 20th, though from some of the discussion I've seen about it on some of the forums, I don't think I'll be buying it. Largely what turned me off was some of the book's defenders, not claiming that it was a-political, but agreeing that it had SJW content and that they were glad that it was pissing off the evil scum who aren't SJW's.

Then there is all of the Beast stuff. Which I also haven't read, but I don't think I'll be reading it either with some of the horrible things I have heard about it, including from its defenders and opinions in general over on Big Purple.

I do have V20 and like it. In fact, one thing about V:tM I like as opposed to some of the other WW lines is that they don't beat you over the head with an ideological bias.

Not a huge fan of "SJWs" but I will say that the "Children of Ether" bit was a controversy (in game) as early as MAGE 2nd Edition.  Although female Akashics didn't seem to raise too much fuss about being in a Brotherhood.

JG

I thought that their new name was going to be Etherism+

Sadly all of this talk of what WW has become and what rhey have done to their product afterwards makes me really glad that so far they have not revisited Aberrant or Aeon/Trinity.

It's the "Society of Ether" now, which sounds better than "Sons of Ether" to me.

The "Chakravanti" is the replacement name for the "Euthantos" and I prefer that as well..

The "Khavadi" as the replacement for "Dream Speakers" is stupid though. Dream Speakers is a much more evoactive name, and multicultural for a shamanistic group as is..

The "Akashyana" and "Mercurial Elites" is kinda "meh". I think the point with the "Mercurial Elites" was to try and modernize the Virtual Adepts....but Virtual Reality is actually a big thing again, so that sorta backfired.

They seem to have lost their flair for naming things.

Quote from: Orphan81;856769It's the "Society of Ether" now, which sounds better than "Sons of Ether" to me.

The "Chakravanti" is the replacement name for the "Euthantos" and I prefer that as well..

The "Khavadi" as the replacement for "Dream Speakers" is stupid though. Dream Speakers is a much more evoactive name, and multicultural for a shamanistic group as is..

The "Akashyana" and "Mercurial Elites" is kinda "meh". I think the point with the "Mercurial Elites" was to try and modernize the Virtual Adepts....but Virtual Reality is actually a big thing again, so that sorta backfired.

I think "L33t Haxxzorz" would've gotten the point across better, but it also would've been lame.

JG

huh? Interesting. I did not know that one of the Blumes, Brian I assume, did some work for White Wolf? Wonder what?

It seems like people seem to dislike White Wolf for different reasons. A lot of people don't like the metaplot. The new games don't have a metaplot, but the setting backgrounds were so vague that I often didn't really knew what to do with it. A more focused approach would make it a lot better.

Quote from: Omega;856775They seem to have lost their flair for naming things.

They put too much thought into naming things now. They probably spend hours thinking about each name and researching it, making sure it was linguistically accurate, culturally sensitive, politically correct, and so on.

In the olden days they just said "Hey, these guys who can control darkness, let's call them 'The Shadow' in Spanish."

Quote from: Sergeant Brother;856795They put too much thought into naming things now. They probably spend hours thinking about each name and researching it, making sure it was linguistically accurate, culturally sensitive, politically correct, and so on.

In the olden days they just said "Hey, these guys who can control darkness, let's call them 'The Shadow' in Spanish."

The names they picked were generally goofy or nonsensical.

BTW There's nothing culturally sensitive about the mage traditions. Most of them are of western origin and the ones that aren't are mashups of various non-white cultures that completely ignore cultural diversity.

Akashic = Asian martial artists
Euthanatos = Indian serial killers
Dream Speaker = all indigenous cultures displaced by white imperialism

Seriously, you could build an entire game around the real world occult traditions and religions of China alone. Instead we got the worst possible stereotype!

Quote from: jan paparazzi;856789It seems like people seem to dislike White Wolf for different reasons. A lot of people don't like the metaplot. The new games don't have a metaplot, but the setting backgrounds were so vague that I often didn't really knew what to do with it. A more focused approach would make it a lot better.

I would suggest picking another game until the smoke blows over. Chill is good for paranormal investigation (they recently released a 3rd edition with simplified rules). Feed is good for vampires and vampire-like creatures struggling to maintain their humanity.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;856802I would suggest picking another game until the smoke blows over. Chill is good for paranormal investigation (they recently released a 3rd edition with simplified rules).

3rd edition Chill was written by Mathew Mcfarland, making it a Onyx Path/Whitewolf release in all but name.

If you want the real 3rd edition Chill, you need to check out "Cryptworld", which is actually written by the original creator of Chill.

Quote from: Orphan81;8568073rd edition Chill was written by Mathew Mcfarland, making it a Onyx Path/Whitewolf release in all but name.

If you want the real 3rd edition Chill, you need to check out "Cryptworld", which is actually written by the original creator of Chill.

Cryptworld wasn't written by the original writer of Chill. But it is very good and it uses the original rule set. Which is pretty simple, if very old school.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;856802I would suggest picking another game until the smoke blows over. Chill is good for paranormal investigation (they recently released a 3rd edition with simplified rules). Feed is good for vampires and vampire-like creatures struggling to maintain their humanity.

Probably will mix and match East Texas University, 12TM/Pinebox and The Thin Blue Line (all SW) for a good paranormal investigation game. Waiting for some other games (possibly the Witch rpg or Fae Nightmares) for a good supernatural urban fantasy game. I wouldn't mind a Triple Ace urban fantasy game either. I like their setup with all those factions and all those different areas you can use. Make it easy to pick and choose something.