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White Wolf's World of Darkness

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hyzmarca said:
It strikes me that nWoD really needs a splat of well-adjusted normal people who are capable of operating in morally complex environments without going batshit insane.
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Is a little funny how a weekend on Western Front WW1 seems to have nearly 100% chance of driving anyone in nWoD to incredible madness.
By those mechanics everyone in Europe couldn't function afterwards :p
 
Generalissimo said:
Is a little funny how a weekend on Western Front WW1 seems to have nearly 100% chance of driving anyone in nWoD to incredible madness.
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Derangements come primarily from failing a degeneration check followed by failing the subsequent Morality check, and you don't make a degeneration check for a sin milder than your current Morality level allows. Furthermore, you might reasonably argue about where "shooting an enemy soldier during a Real Shooting War" comes on the standard sin list, especially if you're underfire yourself.

So... no, a weekend on the Western Front would not drive your nWoD character to incredible madness, though it probably would give them at least one derangement if you end up engaged in active combat.
 
nWoD at its base is not a game for military combat. If you wanna do the Dog Soldiers thing (and there is a book for that) then I'd advise just making a new morality scale. Similar to how Hunters do it. Killing the enemy is only moderately sinful, killing one of your own men is horrible and unforgivable, etc, etc.

A war story nWoD would have to be calibrated to end at the same place as regular nWoD, with an average Morality of 4-5.
 
The Laurent said:
If you wanna do the Dog Soldiers thing (and there is a book for that)
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Hilariously enough Dogs of War is functionally unplayable as written because of explicitly not changing anything with the morality.
Fight in five patrols before suffering degeneration enough to become not playable.
Alternatively a weekend Somme ought get everyone to morality zero!

grommile said:
Derangements come primarily from failing a degeneration check followed by failing the subsequent Morality check, and you don't make a degeneration check for a sin milder than your current Morality level allows. Furthermore, you might reasonably argue about where "shooting an enemy soldier during a Real Shooting War" comes on the standard sin list, especially if you're underfire yourself.

So... no, a weekend on the Western Front would not drive your nWoD character to incredible madness, though it probably would give them at least one derangement if you end up engaged in active combat.
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The Laurent said:
nWoD at its base is not a game for military combat. If you wanna do the Dog Soldiers thing (and there is a book for that) then I'd advise just making a new morality scale. Similar to how Hunters do it. Killing the enemy is only moderately sinful, killing one of your own men is horrible and unforgivable, etc, etc.

A war story nWoD would have to be calibrated to end at the same place as regular nWoD, with an average Morality of 4-5.
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Your hacks are only method to make it work.
As written the system can't handle it.
 
Generalissimo said:
Hilariously enough Dogs of War is functionally unplayable as written because of explicitly not changing anything with the morality.
Fight in five patrols before suffering degeneration enough to become not playable.
Alternatively a weekend Somme ought get everyone to morality zero!

Your hacks are only method to make it work.
As written the system can't handle it.
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You've whined about this before, and you remain 100% wrong. You're ignoring both the way the Morality system actually works and the way that combat works.

How many people do you think most soldiers actually kill? Not very many. Moreover, you're being very silly and ignoring the fact that simple murder won't make you unplayable. Even if you treat killing on the battlefield as "planned murder" rather than "manslaughter" (and honestly, barring exceptions like 'snipers' and other people who kill people who aren't actively trying to kill them too, I'd pin it as more psychologically akin to manslaughter as an "impassioned crime"), that'll just reduce you to Morality 2 after multiple such killings, until you reach the point when killing people doesn't mean anything to you.

Not to mention, "I don't kill someone normally, but they were trying to kill me back" is probably worth a dice or two towards the roll, because it's a justification for how killing is not psychologically normal.

And as a genre thing, war in the World of Darkness is something people go off to and come back lessened by. It says that, yes, a soldier who goes out and kills lots of people and becomes acclimatised to it has lost something. It says that psychologically healthy people are not okay with killing other people.
 
I just noticed something fun.
We're on page 500!
500 pages worth of substantial and insightful World of Darkness conversation.
 
Generalissimo said:
You've recycled conversations and complaints too.
Not inherently a bad thing in a conversation of this magnitude.
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Yes, but it's considered bad manners to keep on complaining after it's pointed out that you're wrong about how the Morality system works and you're using a model of warfare that basically only exists in Call of Duty.

So, are you going to address my corrections (just like I think I corrected you last time), or are you just going to ignore that Morality doesn't work that way and keep on claiming that it makes a character "unplayable"?
 
EarthScorpion said:
How many people do you think most soldiers actually kill?
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EarthScorpion said:
and you're using a model of warfare that basically only exists in Call of Duty.
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Battle of Somme a machine gunner could easily kill a thousand man.
Average was closer to half thousand.
In current morality system every kill regardless of reason is rolled versus integrity.
Roll six hundred times with 6 integrity and you'll guaranteed reach zero even stacked with bonuses.
 
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Generalissimo said:
Battle of Somme a machine gunner could easily kill a thousand man.
Average was closer to half thousand.
In current morality system every kill regardless of reason is rolled versus integrity.
Roll six hundred times with 6 integrity and you'll guaranteed reach zero even stacked with bonuses.
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No. You're the one who's being misleading here, because 2e uses Integrity. If you're going to talk about morality, you are explicitly talking about 1e. And since I have a low opinion of the GMC rules, I'm going to talk about 1e here and you never specified otherwise - especially since you were talking about Dogs of War, another 1e book.

And under those rules killing five hundred men over the course of one battle is not five hundred checks for manslaughter or murder - it's one check for mass murder.
 
This isn't really an issue in 2e. Because of how integrity works after loosing a dot or two to typical actions in war you can be justified in just saying that you've grown numb to the consequences of combat.

Edit: Getting rid of the hierarchy of sins and decoupling the sanity stat from morality was a great move I feel. Now it's just a measure of how stable you are and how ok you are with what you done and seen is part of your character's background and lifestyle.
 
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EarthScorpion said:
You've whined about this before, and you remain 100% wrong. You're ignoring both the way the Morality system actually works and the way that combat works.

How many people do you think most soldiers actually kill? Not very many. Moreover, you're being very silly and ignoring the fact that simple murder won't make you unplayable. Even if you treat killing on the battlefield as "planned murder" rather than "manslaughter" (and honestly, barring exceptions like 'snipers' and other people who kill people who aren't actively trying to kill them too, I'd pin it as more psychologically akin to manslaughter as an "impassioned crime"), that'll just reduce you to Morality 2 after multiple such killings, until you reach the point when killing people doesn't mean anything to you.

Not to mention, "I don't kill someone normally, but they were trying to kill me back" is probably worth a dice or two towards the roll, because it's a justification for how killing is not psychologically normal.

And as a genre thing, war in the World of Darkness is something people go off to and come back lessened by. It says that, yes, a soldier who goes out and kills lots of people and becomes acclimatised to it has lost something. It says that psychologically healthy people are not okay with killing other people.
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I mean, it's still not a very good system. Someone like a drone operator is still going to have issue killing someone face to face because despite bombing a wedding or two there's a difference between seeing someone on a monitor as a spec vs stabbing them to death in a supermarket parking lot.

But you generally should treat actions as part of scenes rather than individually. Let them have a chance to sink in before you start changing stats.
 
Mutton said:
I mean, it's still not a very good system. Someone like a drone operator is still going to have issue killing someone face to face because despite bombing a wedding or two there's a difference between seeing someone on a monitor as a spec vs stabbing them to death in a supermarket parking lot.

But you generally should treat actions as part of scenes rather than individually. Let them have a chance to sink in before you start changing stats.
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Well, yes. The Madness Meters in Unknown Armies are pretty much straight up Morality 2.0, and they're what I'd use instead. Hence, in that I'd just have "remote killing" be a lower-rated Violence thing than "doing it in person".

(It's pretty amusing how the GMC failed to make use of all the improvements to the basic idea that UA managed. I guess it was too busy fapping over urgh urgh urgh CONDITIONS)
 
EarthScorpion said:
Well, yes. The Madness Meters in Unknown Armies are pretty much straight up Morality 2.0, and they're what I'd use instead. Hence, in that I'd just have "remote killing" be a lower-rated Violence thing than "doing it in person".

(It's pretty amusing how the GMC failed to make use of all the improvements to the basic idea that UA managed. I guess it was too busy fapping over urgh urgh urgh CONDITIONS)
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That and it doesn't have an ability that forces people to make it rain like a strip club if they want to unleash a barrage of bullets in your general direction.
 
Incoming Random W:tA idea.

A great ritual succeeded, or perhaps some victory in the Umbra. The Wyrm was... not weakened as such, but it cannot hide itself as well anymore. Even the most careful concealment cannot prevent ordinary humans from sensing a Wrongness from it's works and creations, and a gut-level desire to avoid such is now the default. The ambitious willing to seek power from it will do so, and those who cannot find/afford an alternative will (for example) choke down O'Tollys rather than go hungry, but subtle corruption is far harder as the various branches of Pentex are suffering what ranges from steady loss of market share to complete free-fall.

It takes a few weeks for the 'downside' to be properly noticed.

Delirium? Gone. Totally. The closest thing to a saving grace is that those previously effected have to be actively reminded to recall what was forgotten or rationalized away. Other forms of magical concealment or misdirection work (although anything with serious Wyrm Taint may feel 'off' enough to notice), but while mundane self-preservation means normal humans will scatter before a pack of Garou in full War Form smashing in... beyond the usual issues with eyewitness reliability they will remember the reality quite well.

Ramifications?
 
htgriffin said:
Incoming Random W:tA idea.

A great ritual succeeded, or perhaps some victory in the Umbra. The Wyrm was... not weakened as such, but it cannot hide itself as well anymore. Even the most careful concealment cannot prevent ordinary humans from sensing a Wrongness from it's works and creations, and a gut-level desire to avoid such is now the default. The ambitious willing to seek power from it will do so, and those who cannot find/afford an alternative will (for example) choke down O'Tollys rather than go hungry, but subtle corruption is far harder as the various branches of Pentex are suffering what ranges from steady loss of market share to complete free-fall.

It takes a few weeks for the 'downside' to be properly noticed.

Delirium? Gone. Totally. The closest thing to a saving grace is that those previously effected have to be actively reminded to recall what was forgotten or rationalized away. Other forms of magical concealment or misdirection work (although anything with serious Wyrm Taint may feel 'off' enough to notice), but while mundane self-preservation means normal humans will scatter before a pack of Garou in full War Form smashing in... beyond the usual issues with eyewitness reliability they will remember the reality quite well.

Ramifications?
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I expect an upsurge of popularities of various green parties, grassroots all-natural-stuff movements etc., to a large extent as a result of purely subconscious reactions that you mentioned.
 
htgriffin said:
Incoming Random W:tA idea.
A great ritual succeeded, or perhaps some victory in the Umbra. The Wyrm was... not weakened as such, but it cannot hide itself as well anymore. Even the most careful concealment cannot prevent ordinary humans from sensing a Wrongness from it's works and creations, and a gut-level desire to avoid such is now the default. The ambitious willing to seek power from it will do so, and those who cannot find/afford an alternative will (for example) choke down O'Tollys rather than go hungry, but subtle corruption is far harder as the various branches of Pentex are suffering what ranges from steady loss of market share to complete free-fall.
It takes a few weeks for the 'downside' to be properly noticed.
Delirium? Gone. Totally. The closest thing to a saving grace is that those previously effected have to be actively reminded to recall what was forgotten or rationalized away. Other forms of magical concealment or misdirection work (although anything with serious Wyrm Taint may feel 'off' enough to notice), but while mundane self-preservation means normal humans will scatter before a pack of Garou in full War Form smashing in... beyond the usual issues with eyewitness reliability they will remember the reality quite well.
Ramifications?
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Garou: "...um, this is good, but..."
All of the other Fera: "The fuck did you just do?!"
 
EarthScorpion said:
You've whined about this before, and you remain 100% wrong. You're ignoring both the way the Morality system actually works and the way that combat works.

How many people do you think most soldiers actually kill? Not very many. Moreover, you're being very silly and ignoring the fact that simple murder won't make you unplayable. Even if you treat killing on the battlefield as "planned murder" rather than "manslaughter" (and honestly, barring exceptions like 'snipers' and other people who kill people who aren't actively trying to kill them too, I'd pin it as more psychologically akin to manslaughter as an "impassioned crime"), that'll just reduce you to Morality 2 after multiple such killings, until you reach the point when killing people doesn't mean anything to you.

Not to mention, "I don't kill someone normally, but they were trying to kill me back" is probably worth a dice or two towards the roll, because it's a justification for how killing is not psychologically normal.

And as a genre thing, war in the World of Darkness is something people go off to and come back lessened by. It says that, yes, a soldier who goes out and kills lots of people and becomes acclimatised to it has lost something. It says that psychologically healthy people are not okay with killing other people.
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Adding onto the last part, there's pretty good verisimilitude justification for people who regularly go out and kill others as part of a military unit being gigantic shitbirds with low Morality and multiple Derangements. c.f. that SEAL Team Six thread in Current Affairs. Normal people don't think they're reincarnations of Indian warriors and mutilate corpses for fun.
 
MJ12 Commando said:
Adding onto the last part, there's pretty good verisimilitude justification for people who regularly go out and kill others as part of a military unit being gigantic shitbirds with low Morality and multiple Derangements. c.f. that SEAL Team Six thread in Current Affairs. Normal people don't think they're reincarnations of Indian warriors and mutilate corpses for fun.
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Wut.
 
GardenerBriareus said:
Wut.
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https://forums.sufficientvelocity.c...f-seal-team-6-investigative-journalism.35336/

I'm sorry @Generalissimo, this suggests that it's really not 'unplayable' to run nWoD Dogs of War. In fact, the net result is pretty realistic-if you're in a tip of the spear situation and regularly going out and killing people, you rapidly get a bunch of Morality 2-3 psychopaths with multiple Derangements, covering for each other so that nobody realizes they're all Morality 2-3 psychopaths with multiple Derangements.
 
EarthScorpion said:
So, are you going to address my corrections (just like I think I corrected you last time), or are you just going to ignore . . .
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I don't feel pressing desire to answer something that confrontational?
Going to step a little back to allow deescalation.
Let's not escalate?
It's not personal we're just discussing a game.

The Laurent said:
nWoD at its base is not a game for military combat. If you wanna do the Dog Soldiers thing (and there is a book for that) then I'd advise just making a new morality scale. Similar to how Hunters do it. Killing the enemy is only moderately sinful, killing one of your own men is horrible and unforgivable, etc, etc.

A war story nWoD would have to be calibrated to end at the same place as regular nWoD, with an average Morality of 4-5.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
grommile said:
Derangements come primarily from failing a degeneration check followed by failing the subsequent Morality check, and you don't make a degeneration check for a sin milder than your current Morality level allows. Furthermore, you might reasonably argue about where "shooting an enemy soldier during a Real Shooting War" comes on the standard sin list, especially if you're underfire yourself.

So... no, a weekend on the Western Front would not drive your nWoD character to incredible madness, though it probably would give them at least one derangement if you end up engaged in active combat.
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cmwatford said:
This isn't really an issue in 2e. Because of how integrity works after loosing a dot or two to typical actions in war you can be justified in just saying that you've grown numb to the consequences of combat.

Edit: Getting rid of the hierarchy of sins and decoupling the sanity stat from morality was a great move I feel. Now it's just a measure of how stable you are and how ok you are with what you done and seen is part of your character's background and lifestyle.
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Mutton said:
I mean, it's still not a very good system. Someone like a drone operator is still going to have issue killing someone face to face because despite bombing a wedding or two there's a difference between seeing someone on a monitor as a spec vs stabbing them to death in a supermarket parking lot.

But you generally should treat actions as part of scenes rather than individually. Let them have a chance to sink in before you start changing stats.
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All excellent insights deep in your topic,

MJ12 Commando said:
https://forums.sufficientvelocity.c...f-seal-team-6-investigative-journalism.35336/

I'm sorry @Generalissimo, this suggests that it's really not 'unplayable' to run nWoD Dogs of War. In fact, the net result is pretty realistic-if you're in a tip of the spear situation and regularly going out and killing people, you rapidly get a bunch of Morality 2-3 psychopaths with multiple Derangements, covering for each other so that nobody realizes they're all Morality 2-3 psychopaths with multiple Derangements.
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That's a fair and reasonable assessment based on real world current events thread.
 
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Generalissimo said:
I don't feel pressing desire to answer something that confrontational?
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Then stop claiming false things about how Morality works. If you consider "pointing out that you dodged actually answering any of the points" to be confrontational when you get called on the fact that you claim things that aren't true, stop propagating falsehoods and it won't happen.
 
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