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White Wolf's World of Darkness

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EarthScorpion said:
Well, that's an utterly facile and puerile attempt to divert from a discussion of themes with semantic quibbling.

How about you actually engage @Aaron Peori's point vis a vis how a postmodernist relativist setting's axioms are incompatible with a gothic-punk Christian apocryphal setting's, old boy, rather than flail and fail trying to change the topic because you can't counter his point?
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The theme of WoD always seemed to be the plurality of themes and monster types and philosophies placed in a single setting. It seems often presented with a "What if Vampires, Werewolves, Mages, Fae and the like all lived among us?". It wasn't "Oh, this is a world like ours, but with vampires". It's with vampires and changing breeds and magical gypsies and mummies and demonhunters and the whole kitchen sink.
 
vicky_molokh said:
The theme of WoD always seemed to be the plurality of themes and monster types and philosophies placed in a single setting. It seems often presented with a "What if Vampires, Werewolves, Mages, Fae and the like all lived among us?". It wasn't "Oh, this is a world like ours, but with vampires". It's with vampires and changing breeds and magical gypsies and mummies and demonhunters and the whole kitchen sink.
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NO.
The central tagline is "It is our world but darker" and not "This is a modern fantasy world"
 
vicky_molokh said:
The theme of WoD always seemed to be the plurality of themes and monster types and philosophies placed in a single setting. It seems often presented with a "What if Vampires, Werewolves, Mages, Fae and the like all lived among us?". It wasn't "Oh, this is a world like ours, but with vampires". It's with vampires and changing breeds and magical gypsies and mummies and demonhunters and the whole kitchen sink.
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You're still dodging the question.
 
Besides which, being broad lines, even picking out one of them (like, say, Mage) gets you a LOT of themes. At most there are some themes that might be shared between different gamelines due to the fact that the oWoD (and nWoD, for that matter) runs on a certain level of cynicism about the human condition, but they're separate beasts.
 
Aaron Peori said:
Stop.

World of Darkness does not have a Theme. World of Darkness is a marketing brand. It has no more a theme than Disney has a theme (unless "make money" is a theme).

Just like Wreck It Ralph and Zootopia have seperate themes, Vampire and Mage have separate themes.
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No, White Wolf and Black Dog are marketing brands. D&D and GURPS are systems that also act as unifying marketing brands due to having many settings.

But WoD? A quick search gives an answer of "World of Darkness is the name given to three related but distinct fictional universes created as settings for supernatural horror themed role-playing games. " Three being WoD, CoD and MCWoD.

I agree that it isn't restricted to a single theme, but it also has an overarching meta-theme: a darker world where legendary monsters are real and actually have a similarity to what the legends tell (this primarily applies to vampires, but things like the Technocracy seems to follow many legends too!). But this plurality of themes actually supports my point: these themes coexist in the same fictional universe. And this plurality of themes requires a way of reconciling them.
 
vicky_molokh said:
No, White Wolf and Black Dog are marketing brands. D&D and GURPS are systems that also act as unifying marketing brands due to having many settings.

But WoD? A quick search gives an answer of "World of Darkness is the name given to three related but distinct fictional universes created as settings for supernatural horror themed role-playing games. " Three being WoD, CoD and MCWoD.

I agree that it isn't restricted to a single theme, but it also has an overarching meta-theme: a darker world where legendary monsters are real and actually have a similarity to what the legends tell (this primarily applies to vampires, but things like the Technocracy seems to follow many legends too!). But this plurality of themes actually supports my point: these themes coexist in the same fictional universe. And this plurality of themes requires a way of reconciling them.
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Um, except Gamelines are mostly assumed to be separate because it'd be stupid to require someone to buy literally every book from every gameline just to be able to play a freaking game. Requiring people playing oVamp to give two shits about Mage is a freaking stupid idea, CoD is even *more* modular, and I am glad that your quick google search in which you look at the issue in no depth at all has given you the answers that people who actually *play* the game and *read* most of the books APPARENTLY don't have.

...honestly, I now understand what it is like for the people in the Exalted thread.

I feel sorry for their pain.
 
ManusDomine said:
Good.

Hold onto that feeling.

Because you are going to feel exactly that feeling for the next 10 pages.

At minimum.
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"You turned your back and I wrecked your WoD thread. I robbed your people of their topics, their discussions, their homebrew, themselves. What will you do when your friends, your posters, your STs, are all @vicky_molokh? When there is one discussion. One thread. One question. One argument that is vicky_molokh. Will you be the enemy of all SufficientVelocity then? What irony that will be, WoD players!"
 
Omicron said:
"You turned your back and I wrecked your WoD thread. I robbed your people of their topics, their discussions, their homebrew, themselves. What will you do when your friends, your posters, your STs, are all @vicky_molokh? When there is one discussion. One thread. One question. One argument that is vicky_molokh. Will you be the enemy of all SufficientVelocity then? What irony that will be, WoD players!"
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It seems that the way I see things differs drastically from SV. While I'm a stubborn sort, I the extent to which the difference became prominent here seems to exceed all other similar cases by orders of magnitude. (Then again, some of the arguments I've seen in these threads seem to be just as long-winded as mine, although often distributed over a group of multiple posters.)
 
Demon the Fallen answers all contradictions by declaring all of them happenned at the same time via alternate dimensions. If God tried to create a stone too heavy to lift he can't and can lift it at the same time.

It is in their core book and makes sense. All oWoD settings were alternate dimension in our minds anyway it just carries that to IC and explains how all of those lines intersect -Reality fell back to 3d after Lucifer rebelled-
 
Tasoli said:
Demon the Fallen answers all contradictions by declaring all of them happenned at the same time via alternate dimensions. If God tried to create a stone too heavy to lift he can't and can lift it at the same time.

It is in their core book and makes sense. All oWoD settings were alternate dimension in our minds anyway it just carries that to IC and explains how all of those lines intersect -Reality fell back to 3d after Lucifer rebelled-
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(Sigh) I really don't like Demon: The Fallen and the fact that it was the official canon explanation to all the other oWoD gamelines.

But then again, Demon: The Descent isn't really any better.

So, anyway, on another topic, is it just me or was 1e nWoD better than 2e/CofD? I don't know why I prefer 1e over 2e, but I just do. I've considered running a 1e Requiem game on this very forum using nothing but the two corebooks required for the game (World of Darkness 1e and Vampire: The Requiem 1e) and a few fluff modifications. I may incorporate the other 1e gamelines later on, but we'll start with where it all began.
 
Paulie Romanov said:
(Sigh) I really don't like Demon: The Fallen and the fact that it was the official canon explanation to all the other oWoD gamelines.

But then again, Demon: The Descent isn't really any better.

So, anyway, on another topic, is it just me or was 1e nWoD better than 2e/CofD? I don't know why I prefer 1e over 2e, but I just do. I've considered running a 1e Requiem game on this very forum using nothing but the two corebooks required for the game (World of Darkness 1e and Vampire: The Requiem 1e) and a few fluff modifications. I may incorporate the other 1e gamelines later on, but we'll start with where it all began.
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2e Vamp is miles and away better than 1e vamp. I've heard Werewolf also gets a 'most improved' sticker for 2e. D:TD on the other hand, what I've heard of Changeling, etc...bit more mixed.

But absolutely, the base powers as written in 2e are just much sexier (as a player) and more interesting than in 1e, and the descriptions of the Clans pop a lot more.
 
The Laurent said:
2e Vamp is miles and away better than 1e vamp. I've heard Werewolf also gets a 'most improved' sticker for 2e. D:TD on the other hand, what I've heard of Changeling, etc...bit more mixed.

But absolutely, the base powers as written in 2e are just much sexier (as a player) and more interesting than in 1e, and the descriptions of the Clans pop a lot more.
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Meh, I disagree, I much prefer 1e Vampire but to each their own.
 
I'm certainly partial to 2e, the cofd core book issues aside. I'd never even consider playing Vampire in 1e but 2e has me interested. 1e Werewolf was meh but had cool fluff where as 2e is fucking amazing. Mage is fixing the mangled mess that was the 1e core book. Promethean being slightly more accessible means I might get to play it someday, which is grand. Demon is cool shit but definitely needs you to work with the ST to keep things from falling apart. I'd really like to play Beast at some point. I didn't really care about changeling in 1e but 2e might change that. Still waiting to see what the rest of the lineup shapes up to be, especially Deviant.
 
Never cared much for 1E CoD/NWoD. Half the time it felt they were trying new things while the other half too afraid to step away from the OWoD. It wasn't until later, namely the 2E, that they were finally willing to go beyond dipping their toes out from under the shadow of the OWoD.
 
Hydroplatypus said:
If you're really that worried about someone pepper spraying you, put on a pair of goggles and be done with it. Can't reach your eyes, so it makes you effectively immune to it. If you're in the northern parts of the world you should be able to get ski goggles for like $20 for a cheap pair.
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Pepper spray also irritates your lungs, so you'd need a a breathing mask with filters.

Quantumboost said:
nWoD is explicitly a toolbox. oWoD has a sort of will-they-won't-they relationship with splat crossovers imx.
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In oWOD, each splat his its own rules variations which are not compatible with each other. There all based on the Storyteller system, but even little things like standard target numbers for basic actions could be different between lines. People wanted crossovers, so there were crossovers, but the different games were designed separately and meant to be separate.

Anyway, the World of Darkness splats tend to work best when there are no answers. Unreliable histories and contradictory stories make everything better. Maybe the Settites are right and Tyhpon was a god and the first vampire, not Caine, is interesting is a way that the Settites certainly being wrong just isn't. Having many multually contradictory origin stories works.

Anyone can have True Faith if they believe in something strong enough and it's questionable if any gods actually exist is a lot more interesting than God certainly existing.

Having Muslim vampires, Hindu vampires, and Buddhist vampires, each with their own unique take on the condition, is interesting. Having those guys be objectively wrong isn't.

That being said, the everything is true solution is unsatisfactory. Because if everything is true, then nothing is.
 
The Laurent said:
Um, except Gamelines are mostly assumed to be separate because it'd be stupid to require someone to buy literally every book from every gameline just to be able to play a freaking game. Requiring people playing oVamp to give two shits about Mage is a freaking stupid idea, CoD is even *more* modular, and I am glad that your quick google search in which you look at the issue in no depth at all has given you the answers that people who actually *play* the game and *read* most of the books APPARENTLY don't have.

...honestly, I now understand what it is like for the people in the Exalted thread.

I feel sorry for their pain.
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Exalted is substantially worse than this, I swear. A significant plurality of the Fandom only really knows it from fanfic and threads like these. So, fanon - not a term of derision, when you consider how much many of us, myself included, prefer certain brands of fanon put forward on this site to the direction the Devs have been going for years - has largely supplanted any of the three versions of canon out there to the point where a lot of people can't tell whether Memetic Exalted, ES's interpretations of it, or the stuff put out by the Devs is what's actually in the books because most haven't ever Seen the books.

At least with WoD people are just being idiots.
 
The Laurent said:
Depends on what it was.
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The main focus would be on Vampire: The Requiem and Changeling: The Lost, although I may allow Werewolf, Mage, and Hunter in later on. I'm still brainstorming ideas in all honesty. The setting would be the default modern day setting in a fictional American city.

I have also considered starting off small with just the 1e nWoD corebook and the 1e Requiem corebook as the playable material and then as the game grows, adding in more gamelines and other game materials for play. I'm not sure, as I'm still in the early planning stages.
 
Paulie Romanov said:
The main focus would be on Vampire: The Requiem and Changeling: The Lost, although I may allow Werewolf, Mage, and Hunter in later on. I'm still brainstorming ideas in all honesty. The setting would be the default modern day setting in a fictional American city.

I have also considered starting off small with just the 1e nWoD corebook and the 1e Requiem corebook as the playable material and then as the game grows, adding in more gamelines and other game materials for play. I'm not sure, as I'm still in the early planning stages.
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Interesting, though for me I was very iffy on some of the Requiem 1e powers and the like, but it'd at least be an interesting thing to be tried out and all. Making it too big, though, that's a problem.

Like, V:TR and Changeling and others allowed...my own thought was that instead of trying to run it like an RP with tons of players, you should try to make a party of some type (perhaps multi-splat) and just run that.

Adding more players would just slow things down.

Edit: So try to find out what books you like and which you don't, what works and what's too complicated, and whether you'll do multi-splat, and then post a 'call for players' here and see who bites and see if you can get together a full Motley/Coterie/PC party.
 
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