White Wolf's World of Darkness
AkatsukiL13
An Enlightened Mind
- Location
- New Copernicus Station
Nope. The closest I've seen is people using the Onyx Path forums to find people for Skype games.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
There are very few things that don't work as a metaphor for modern capitalism, including throwing everything in your house into a pile and soothsaying by randomly picking things out of the pile.
AkatsukiL13
An Enlightened Mind
- Location
- New Copernicus Station
Just took a look at the redesigned OPP site and under current project section they've got 2E CtL alongside its OWoD counterpart's 20th Anniversary Edition. Both are still in the early stages, estimated to come out Fall 2015. And David Hill is the Developer for CtL.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
I recently had to answer a question, I'm curious what your answers are. Here is the question, and here's my rambling answer for the person who asked it. Just wondered if I missed anything or could have answered better.
Q: Hydroplatypus said: ↑
Given that I'm new to nWoD - aside from reading through the changeling rules for another quest (which didn't make it out of char creation) - could someone please explain the power scale to me? Where do we stand relative to everything else?
From my reading it goes something like this:
ordinary mortal < hunter < changeling < werewolf < vampire < mage
While I have the general idea, exactly how outclassed are we with regards to everything else. would a vampire require 2:1 numbers to win? 3:1? what about a mage?
A: Well, the key is that nobody fights fair. There are, in fact, Hunters and hunter-groups that take down vampires, though those aren't even close to easy prey, and a clever Changeling can outfox even a Mage, it depends entirely on a matter of whether the Mage is prepared for them and how much the Mage knows about Changeling tricks.
As compared to the others splats, IMO on this of course, Changelings have the most off the wall/random tricks written into their text. Mage has it beat mostly by saying "Make your own spells, your only limit is your imagination" but Changelings have just so many ways and things they can do it gets a bit dizzying. So Contracts are a Changeling's 'spells' and in any other splat, taking those away would sorta leave the character a lot weaker.
But in terms of what a Changeling can do (because the splats don't meet *all* the time, or even that often) here are a few things they can do that doesn't even get into contracts. They can enter the dreams of mortals, with their permission, to get rid of their bad dreams. They can make deals with goblins for awesome power at a high cost, they can use Tokens, which are like magical artifacts that non-Changelings can only use at increased cost, and wear Hedgespun armor that protects them and yet 'passes' as regular clothing, meaning they can be armored for a war while looking like they're just bikers/fans of leather.
They can craft pledges, binding mortals with the power of their magic, with huge consequences if either side breaks it, and they can manipulate the 'tale' itself with Talecrafting. Let's imagine you're betting in Vegas. You lose twice. Give up? No, because as a Changeling you know 'third time's the charm' and your Wyrd literally makes storybook/tropes happen.
There's also goblin fruits, of course, but the key is that Changelings can do a lot of things, but they have relatively few 'I cast magic missile at the darkness' spells, and so, just like a Mage can't walk into a crowded room and set everyone on fire or face paradox (basically, non-mages or associates seeing you do magic causes bad things) a Changeling isn't best used as an unsubtle battle tank.
And if it gets desperate, they can flee into the Hedge. Which, note, is a dangerous, risky place for everyone, but less so for Changelings compared to, say, Vampires, where the thorns literally rip them up.
Changelings *can* have some major firepower and some of the Seemings (basically varities) of Changeling can rend you with their bare hands or slaughter enemies by the dozens, but in comparison to other splats the one-on-one, final destination, no items mode...isn't one that would favor them.
Which is a lot of talking, and I've only begun to say some things, but I hope it was helpful. Challenging a Mage to a one on one magic duel isn't wise, and neither is trying to out-claw a Werewolf, as they are murder machines close up.
Vampires, I'm not as sure on so it might be better for someone else to field that.
Another thing to note is that this is all relative. There are more magic-y, social werewolves, just as there are Changelings capable of doing a lot of damage, and for the most part each splat primarily has to worry about antagonists from within the splat. As in, it doesn't matter much to the person who pisses off the vicious Beast Hunterheart that he's probably inferior in terms of 'killing you with his bare hands' to a combat spec'd brawling werewolf, it's still good enough to utterly murder you.
Q: Hydroplatypus said: ↑
Given that I'm new to nWoD - aside from reading through the changeling rules for another quest (which didn't make it out of char creation) - could someone please explain the power scale to me? Where do we stand relative to everything else?
From my reading it goes something like this:
ordinary mortal < hunter < changeling < werewolf < vampire < mage
While I have the general idea, exactly how outclassed are we with regards to everything else. would a vampire require 2:1 numbers to win? 3:1? what about a mage?
A: Well, the key is that nobody fights fair. There are, in fact, Hunters and hunter-groups that take down vampires, though those aren't even close to easy prey, and a clever Changeling can outfox even a Mage, it depends entirely on a matter of whether the Mage is prepared for them and how much the Mage knows about Changeling tricks.
As compared to the others splats, IMO on this of course, Changelings have the most off the wall/random tricks written into their text. Mage has it beat mostly by saying "Make your own spells, your only limit is your imagination" but Changelings have just so many ways and things they can do it gets a bit dizzying. So Contracts are a Changeling's 'spells' and in any other splat, taking those away would sorta leave the character a lot weaker.
But in terms of what a Changeling can do (because the splats don't meet *all* the time, or even that often) here are a few things they can do that doesn't even get into contracts. They can enter the dreams of mortals, with their permission, to get rid of their bad dreams. They can make deals with goblins for awesome power at a high cost, they can use Tokens, which are like magical artifacts that non-Changelings can only use at increased cost, and wear Hedgespun armor that protects them and yet 'passes' as regular clothing, meaning they can be armored for a war while looking like they're just bikers/fans of leather.
They can craft pledges, binding mortals with the power of their magic, with huge consequences if either side breaks it, and they can manipulate the 'tale' itself with Talecrafting. Let's imagine you're betting in Vegas. You lose twice. Give up? No, because as a Changeling you know 'third time's the charm' and your Wyrd literally makes storybook/tropes happen.
There's also goblin fruits, of course, but the key is that Changelings can do a lot of things, but they have relatively few 'I cast magic missile at the darkness' spells, and so, just like a Mage can't walk into a crowded room and set everyone on fire or face paradox (basically, non-mages or associates seeing you do magic causes bad things) a Changeling isn't best used as an unsubtle battle tank.
And if it gets desperate, they can flee into the Hedge. Which, note, is a dangerous, risky place for everyone, but less so for Changelings compared to, say, Vampires, where the thorns literally rip them up.
Changelings *can* have some major firepower and some of the Seemings (basically varities) of Changeling can rend you with their bare hands or slaughter enemies by the dozens, but in comparison to other splats the one-on-one, final destination, no items mode...isn't one that would favor them.
Which is a lot of talking, and I've only begun to say some things, but I hope it was helpful. Challenging a Mage to a one on one magic duel isn't wise, and neither is trying to out-claw a Werewolf, as they are murder machines close up.
Vampires, I'm not as sure on so it might be better for someone else to field that.
Another thing to note is that this is all relative. There are more magic-y, social werewolves, just as there are Changelings capable of doing a lot of damage, and for the most part each splat primarily has to worry about antagonists from within the splat. As in, it doesn't matter much to the person who pisses off the vicious Beast Hunterheart that he's probably inferior in terms of 'killing you with his bare hands' to a combat spec'd brawling werewolf, it's still good enough to utterly murder you.
Lealope
Not yet invincible
- Pronouns
- She/Her
You forgot about Geists, Mummies and Demons.
Generally it goes Mages = Demons> Mummies> Geists> Changelings> Vampires> Werewolves, but those last three can vary. Also, Mages, though I might be speaking from an oMage perspective here, can pretty much do every splat's thing better than they themselves can.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Actually, looking it up, there are advantages that Changelings have that nobody can even match, and I'm sure that's true of most of the various splats. For instance, apparently Changeling stacks dice like crazy. Like, you can get 'one or two dice' here and there EVERYWHERE to add up by bits to 'holy shit, you just punched a werewolf to death' levels. Pledge bonuses, token bonuses, wyrd, glamour spending, various weird motley stuff.
Changeling's strength is apparently weird, out of the way rules and functions that can be used pretty effectively.
I'm sure the other splats have similar advantages, mechanically at the very least, when you dig into them. Similar in the sense of "I don't know whether you can just blanket Tier Rank splats."
Changeling's strength is apparently weird, out of the way rules and functions that can be used pretty effectively.
I'm sure the other splats have similar advantages, mechanically at the very least, when you dig into them. Similar in the sense of "I don't know whether you can just blanket Tier Rank splats."
A werewolf in warform versus a human that has a gun will always see the gun-user win.
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Changelings are narrative-driven creatures, and so they have narrative-driven powers. In typical White Wolf design, this means that most of their balance points rely on "I know this is mechanically possible, but would it plausibly happen in a game?" Most of the time, the answer is "no" - but part of the reason such a design is frowned upon in many RPG communities is that ambitious players are skilled at making it happen anyway.
A Changeling is at the height of her power when she is drawing upon social agreements, fairy tale tropes, magical oaths, and then ruthlessly utilizing these narrative forces in a rational manner, because Changeling is supposed to be the kind of game where your response to "you can activate this power for free if you break your glasses" is to start wearing contact lenses and carry a bag of spare spectacles with you as magic ammo.
Furthermore, a lot of Changeling powers are activated and their effectiveness determined by rolls. This means that in order to get the most power as one of the Lost, you want to start a snowball effect where you blow up your early rolls to boost your later rolls in a cumulative fashion.
Basically, as a Changeling, you want to be a high-ranked member of a Court, beloning to an additional esoteric sub-faction, bound up in magical Pledges that empower them to fulfill their terms, with a bag of tricks containing the Catches of your most useful Contracts, and using some mystical items torn from the Hedge.
Most Changelings won't do that, because where Mages lose nothing but time by making sure they're always prepared and steeped in magical power, Changelings like to have a life and a sense of relative normalcy - a high-ranked member of a Court with tons of Pledges and magical items has little free will left, many obligations and restrictions on his behavior, and generally has given up on having a "human" side to his life, instead spending most of his time in MagicLand. Few Changelings bother to do that just to get power, because it restricts the way in which they can actually use that power pretty drastically; most people you would meet at this level are either scholars of the occult who want to delve into the secrets of Faerie, or self-sacrificing people who have made it the goal of their lives to protect their community.
Most Changelings are squishy people with a few fairy-tale tricks who die when you shoot them.
Werewolves are low on the list because people don't get the intent of their mechanics and even when they do they find them lackluster, which is probably right.
However, Werewolves have also just got a second edition with new GMC-era mechanics. I have no idea how they stack up to the only other Second Edition splat at the time - vampires - but I expect people have complained long and hard enough to get their murderbeasts of doomrage at last.
A Changeling is at the height of her power when she is drawing upon social agreements, fairy tale tropes, magical oaths, and then ruthlessly utilizing these narrative forces in a rational manner, because Changeling is supposed to be the kind of game where your response to "you can activate this power for free if you break your glasses" is to start wearing contact lenses and carry a bag of spare spectacles with you as magic ammo.
Furthermore, a lot of Changeling powers are activated and their effectiveness determined by rolls. This means that in order to get the most power as one of the Lost, you want to start a snowball effect where you blow up your early rolls to boost your later rolls in a cumulative fashion.
Basically, as a Changeling, you want to be a high-ranked member of a Court, beloning to an additional esoteric sub-faction, bound up in magical Pledges that empower them to fulfill their terms, with a bag of tricks containing the Catches of your most useful Contracts, and using some mystical items torn from the Hedge.
Most Changelings won't do that, because where Mages lose nothing but time by making sure they're always prepared and steeped in magical power, Changelings like to have a life and a sense of relative normalcy - a high-ranked member of a Court with tons of Pledges and magical items has little free will left, many obligations and restrictions on his behavior, and generally has given up on having a "human" side to his life, instead spending most of his time in MagicLand. Few Changelings bother to do that just to get power, because it restricts the way in which they can actually use that power pretty drastically; most people you would meet at this level are either scholars of the occult who want to delve into the secrets of Faerie, or self-sacrificing people who have made it the goal of their lives to protect their community.
Most Changelings are squishy people with a few fairy-tale tricks who die when you shoot them.
*
Werewolves are low on the list because people don't get the intent of their mechanics and even when they do they find them lackluster, which is probably right.
However, Werewolves have also just got a second edition with new GMC-era mechanics. I have no idea how they stack up to the only other Second Edition splat at the time - vampires - but I expect people have complained long and hard enough to get their murderbeasts of doomrage at last.
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- They/Them
Well, maybe, I suppose it depends. Though really, power-ranking the various splats sorta misses the point of things. Like, Mage has never even remotely come close to interesting me, because people don't consume media based on 'Which is stronger.' I do understand it and respect it a bit more than I did before, but it's still not a splat which particularly calls to me in terms of setting or theme.
If that was so, then everyone would play Exalted or one of those games where you're literally a God.
Though I do think you might slightly overestimate how much "has no free will" high-level courtiers have, honestly, but you do make a valid point.
If that was so, then everyone would play Exalted or one of those games where you're literally a God.
Though I do think you might slightly overestimate how much "has no free will" high-level courtiers have, honestly, but you do make a valid point.
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
To be honest that sentence was written drawing comparisons in my mind between nWoD and the DFRPG.
High-level courtiers don't lack free will, it's more... They have tons of obligations and restrictions that are magically enforced. They're bound up in oaths and social agreements.
They always have the freedom to say "fuck it," but they don't for much the same reason that you rarely see corporate executives say "fuck it" to their job. There are consequences - magically enforced consequences.
And at high Wyrd your magical obligations become an innate part of their nature.
No, you're right, it's not a loss of free will. It's more social and circumstantial than that - external pressures, basically.
Changeling is a game where you get an etheral crown of faerie power when you become the King of your freehold within the determined parameters that define how someone can become King. That tells you a lot about how its magic works.
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- They/Them
Fair enough, I was just sorta saying that, though I get your point: it's PCs, so it make sense in that sense. But yeah, external pressures exist, but I always felt it was merely magically enforced social obligations. For PCs it makes sense that they'd say 'fuck it' more often since there's a reason Murderhobos and 'shit my players have done' and 'this is a game, if I wanted a 9/5 job simulator I'd be somewhere else' are things.
I'm mostly thinking about how, in character, being bound by pledges if you choose them or have some influence on whether to choose them, and by your Wyrd and your social position is no more onerous than, say, existing in any other society. Only with magic to keep you from going too far out of line: but then again, how many people would want to?
But I get that since PCs are adventurers and not NPCs that there's a narrative break/difference.
It's like how nobody makes a Doing your Chores and Going to School and then remembering to Feed the Dog RPG, I guess. But for someone living in it, that'd not be as much of a problem.
Since I'm running a Quest in charge of a single character, rather than being an ST and having to justify how five different people have a motley and go on adventures together without having to, say, stop half-way to do some Autumn Court job, I'm mostly concerned with the in-universe-y aspect of it, though of course underpinned with the mechanics.
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Not in 2e they won't. 2e Werewolves are furry killing machines. Burst fire is still a bitch but it's mitigated a lot now that werewolves can apply defense to ranged.
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- They/Them
That is interesting, and I think it does help things, since 'you can't do jack shit about guns at a distance' while accurate, does sorta tamp down on the 'holy shit' parts of being a Werewolf that I'd have expected would be reflected in the splat. I don't know much about Werewolves as a system, but I do like the idea of werewolves, finding them at least as interesting as vampires in general, if not more.
Definitely check out werewolf 2e if you get a chance, there's some nice stuff there. You might also want know a bit about them if you plan having any spirits show up in your quest as they're the ones most likely to interact with them and be interested if anyone else does.
Aaron Peori
Rest in Peace
See, I never understood being upset that Werewolves can't walk into machine gun fire.
Well, yeah. That's the point. That's the reason they hide.
For me, every player of Werewolf should be forced to watch Silver Bullet. It's a terrible film, but the scene where the Werewolf is picking off the mob in the fog? That is how a werewolf should fight, not charging like an idiot into a firing line.
Chloe Sullivan
Subdefective
- Location
- 1630 Revello Drive, Sunnydale CA
Werewolves should take levels in wizard so they can cast obscuring mist? With the LA adjustment, that seems like a bad
/joke
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- They/Them
I never said, 'Werewolves should be able to tank machine-gun fire' you realize. I wasn't even thinking of machine guns, I was actually thinking more about every other type of gun. I'm fine with machine guns putting them down since, you know, they're illegal and nobody they're going to accidently stumble across (as opposed to stir up) is going to have one.
It was merely that based on the description above, I was imagining some buck-toothed guy with a hunting rifle, "Woo, I caught a furry varmint, would ya look at that!" I don't actually know the specific setting so I can't actually give you mechanical judgements on what will or will not kill them, so maybe that's a bullshit comparison, but all I heard here and other places is "Guy with a gun beats Werewolves, period."
If that's wrong, than all those random people on the internet are wrong...which is very possible.
Eh, either way I'm glad they've been beefed up some in 2e, and from what it sounds like you don't even have grounds to complain since 'Man with a machine gun/automatic rifle' is still a threat to them, if not an insta-gib like before.
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grommile
nasty-minded old cynic
- Location
- NERV-Mercia
- Pronouns
- Traditional/Animate
In much of the world, yes, automatic firearms are flat-out illegal for civilans to own.
In the USA, items classified as 'machine guns' under 26 USC § 5845 (which includes not only automatic firearms, but things such as semiauto-to-auto conversion kits and semiauto firearms which can be conveniently restored to automatic) are only illegal (at the federal level) to own as a civilian if they were manufactured on or after the 19th of May, 1986, or if you haven't filed (and had approved) the appropriate federal paperwork.
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- They/Them
Hmm, true, I'm just saying you won't see the average random person sporting a machine gun. I mean, besides the point that in America, increasingly, the number of gun owners is staying the same or even decreasing while the number of guns increasing. Which means what a Werewolf really has to worry about is the gun enthusiast who collects every type of gun and loves showing them off. They're the ones who might have a machine-gun lying around, since it's pretty damn useless as a hunting weapon, I'm sure you'd agree, considering just the damage it can do to meat (or hide if you're gonna stuff it) compared to one good shot with a hunting rifle.
So that's why I'd think it somewhat unlikely that Werewolves would run into someone in the country-side with a machine gun, and also why I'm fine with machine-guns being the death of them. I'm more of the aesthetic belief that Werewolves should be able to shrug off most of what the average civilian can bring to bear on them unless that civilian is smart, prepared and resourceful...or unless the werewolf is an idiot. Or both. I'm perfectly fine with the idea that a bunch of soldiers with semi-autos can tear a Werewolf apart since, well, it makes sense.
Though this has been a tangent and I don't want to ignite some discussion on guns in America.
It's because, honestly, Werewolf has never been done right and there's far too much legacy code built in that they've failed to scrap. Just from the sound of the changes in Forsaken 2e, it's sounding like classic heartbreaker territory. They're trying to "fix" things like "werewolves get grievously wounded by people with guns" without understanding why that's in effect (and, I strongly suspect, fuelled excessively by nostalgia for oWerewolf, which was a fucking awful game by the standards of "let's actually write a game about werewolves"). So they apply buffs without real appreciation for how the way that Forsaken meant that Werewolves had to be scared of guns meant that yeah, that means they hunt like a wolf-pack, harrying a foe and retreating (and since they can casually heal up from gunshot wounds while their foes can't casually heal from lethal, they're ahead in any encounter where both sides take lethal). The problem with Forsaken 1e wasn't the vulnerability to guns - it was things like "what idiot decided Spirits use the higher of Power and Finesse for defence" and "properly reinforcing the idea that you can't just bullrush some prepared and wary humans in wolf form".
Like, seriously, Dog Soldiers is one of the best werewolf films out there, and the werewolves in it are wary of guns.
I've put some thought into how I'd design Werewolf from scratch to actually be a game about werewolves with the werewolf classic themes of things like body horror and thinly veiled puberty metaphors [1]. And when you do that, you realise how much of the stuff is legacy code or attempts to fix what were seen as problems with oWerewolf, rather than things which are in the game to reinforce the themes of werewolf stories.
And that's where Werewolf really stands apart. Because Vampire? Both Vampires are very strongly recognisably games about vampires, using vampire themes. You can describe Vampire to people as "you play a vampire" and they'll be able to get most of the game straight off. Both Mages are not quite as closely linked, but you can still explain nMage and non-technomage Traditionalists to people fairly easily (as long as you don't start getting into Consensual Reality). Even Promethean can be explained as "you play Frankenstein's monster, trying to become human" and you get most of the game that way.
Werewolf? Both of them? Miss out a lot of the werewolf themes and mythos. You're too in control and "being a danger to your friends and family" is a very minor theme. There's the fact it's all related to bloodlines, rather than... you know, being bitten by a werewolf. You don't need to worry about losing control when you see the moon. There's all the spirit stuff. There's how hilariously badly designed Gifts are compared to Disciplines when it comes to emulating the stories and proving "magical things werewolves can do". And above all, there's the frankly bemusing decision to make it so both kinds of Werewolf were never human to begin with.
And it's reasons like this that I say that neither Werewolf game is a very good game about werewolves.
[1] Unlike Vampire and its thinly veiled rape metaphors.
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- Pronouns
- They/Them
That's a very helpful analysis. I haven't looked into it, but from the way you describe it, that makes sense. I always did wonder, just reading casually on TV Tropes, how you'd have werewolves without the whole 'bitten by one' thing. And your deeper point about how it fails thematically is interesting, especially compared to some of the other stuff I've looked at. Both Vampires and Changeling both seem to fit pretty well to a theme, fairy tale powers and bits of myth, legend, and superstition on the one hand and 'It's a vampire, what powers do you expect they'd have' on the other hand. Don't know enough about Mages to judge, but from what you've said, both it and Prometheans also have a pretty reasonable connection between their mechanics and their story.
I wonder what makes Werewolves the odd ones out? Is there something particularly hard about designing a game based around werewolves, or are the designers of that particular splat known for not being good, or what? Since I don't have complaints with some of the other Splats I've gotten around to looking at.
I wonder what makes Werewolves the odd ones out? Is there something particularly hard about designing a game based around werewolves, or are the designers of that particular splat known for not being good, or what? Since I don't have complaints with some of the other Splats I've gotten around to looking at.
If you want my guess, it's probably because of just how much of Forsaken is a reaction to Apocalypse, rather than a thing in its own right. Awakening was a reaction to Ascension by basically starting all over again (same for Lost to Dreaming) - by contrast, Forsaken reacts to Apocalypse by basically shaping itself to avoid certain features and mistakes.
Take the short time limit in Garuu form, for example, despite the fact that it's... not that much better than the near-wolf form. That's because that's a reaction to the way that oWolves would just hang out in Crinos form all the time (and then go and use it for acts of furryness). Likewise, Ghost Children are a reaction to the way that the metis really weren't a punishment for Garou. Or, indeed, the entire Forsaken spirit world (which I do love a lot in all its Darwinian Silent Hill-ness) can basically be viewed as a reaction to the good-and-evil nature of the Apocalypse spirit world. Things like the Maijiin in Forsaken stand out because... well, they're really just vice spirits, but since they're an import from Apocalypse they don't really work as some kind of big evil.
But since for whatever reason, they decided to make Apocalypse into Furry Genocidal Captain Planet, a bunch of these idiosyncratic design features got carried forwards for... no really strong thematic reason. Like the entire massive spirit link. It was in Apocalypse because... well, it was the 90s. They probably had a reason. But so Forsaken gets this spirit link that doesn't really particularly tie into werewolf myth. Likewise, Forsaken Werewolves are inherited because ???, because Apocalypse Werewolves were inherited.
...
Oh yes, and trying to make the idiagm the focus of Forsaken 2e is even more hilarious in its misguidedness than making the Strigoi the focus of Requiem 2e. At least the Strigoi were cool in A Requiem for Rome - and what's happening to them now is just the usual problem of overexposure where people go "they were cool! Let's cram them in everywhere!" which just manages to make things lamer. You know, like what happened to the Weeping Angels in Dr Who. The idiagm managed to be far less cool than either bog standard spirits or magath.