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White Wolf's World of Darkness

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I'm thinking of getting back into New World of Darkness/Chronicles of Darkness. First Edition only, Second Edition Chronicles of Darkness has been one letdown after another for me. I don't like the new changes to the setting or the mechanics.

I own the corebooks for WoD, Vampire: The Requiem, and Hunter: The Vigil. I'm thinking of also buying the corebooks for Changeling: The Lost, Mage: The Awakening, and Werewolf: The Forsaken.

Any advice for a long-lapsed fan of New World of Darkness and an aspiring nWoD ST?
 
Paulie Romanov said:
I'm thinking of getting back into New World of Darkness/Chronicles of Darkness. First Edition only, Second Edition Chronicles of Darkness has been one letdown after another for me. I don't like the new changes to the setting or the mechanics.

I own the corebooks for WoD, Vampire: The Requiem, and Hunter: The Vigil. I'm thinking of also buying the corebooks for Changeling: The Lost, Mage: The Awakening, and Werewolf: The Forsaken.

Any advice for a long-lapsed fan of New World of Darkness and an aspiring nWoD ST?
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Mtaw 1e's corebook is shit. The supplements improve it though. 2e's corebook is good. So I'd get both and hack together a promethean out of the two.
 
So, if Taylor from Worm were to become a Werewolf from WtF, what Auspice would she be? So far I've really only gotten it down to 'not a Cahalith.' Maybe Elodoth, seeing as how Taylor's pretty judgey? Or Irraka, given that she tried to infiltrate a villain group? Or a Rahu, given that she's a pretty good tactician? Maybe you could take the Queen Administrator thing as her being suitable for Ithaeur?
 
Paulie Romanov said:
Anybody else have setting hacks or head-canons for their WoD games?
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Generic advice. The tier list looks something like this.

Elder God Tier: Mage (praise Nyarlathotep, etc, etc)
God Tier: Geist
--The Abyss--
Excellent: Changeling, Promethean
Decent: Vampire
Meh: Werewolf

If one must run a crossover party despite how unwise this inherently is, do not cross the Abyss and do not go more than one tier apart, or you'll have group cohesion problems.
 
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Jon Chung said:
Generic advice. The tier list looks something like this.

Elder God Tier: Mage (praise Nyarlathotep, etc, etc)
God Tier: Geist
--The Abyss--
Excellent: Changeling, Promethean
Decent: Vampire
Meh: Werewolf

If one must run a crossover party despite how unwise this inherently is, do not cross the Abyss and do not go more than one tier apart, or you'll have group cohesion problems.
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I'm not sure how Geist actually qualify as God Tier. I mean, I sorta-kinda get it, but it seems cheap to put something at God Tier mostly because nobody bothered making coherent rules for them that make any sense.
 
Jon Chung said:
Generic advice. The tier list looks something like this.

Elder God Tier: Mage
God Tier: Geist
--The Abyss--
Excellent: Changeling, Promethean
Decent: Vampire
Meh: Werewolf

If one must run a crossover party despite how unwise this inherently is, do not cross the Abyss and do not go more than one tier apart, or you'll have group cohesion problems.
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He's talking oWoD/cWoD. So the tier list looks something like this.

Horrifying Beings Who Put The Fear of Unknowable Overgods Into Regular God Tier: Mages abusing Exomuscle/Nanotech Integration + Soak Lethal&Agg/some ridiculously good Mage-only merits
God Tier: Mages
-The Abyss-
Excellent: Some of the better Changing Breeds, Kuei-Jin
Decent: Werewolves, Vampires
MEDIOCRE: Ghouls, Imbued, Sorcerers, Risen
Lol: Mortals
Double Lol: Changeling
Triple Lol: Wraiths

E: Your post is however good advice for his hypothetical nWoD game.
 
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The Laurent said:
I'm not sure how Geist actually qualify as God Tier. I mean, I sorta-kinda get it, but it seems cheap to put something at God Tier mostly because nobody bothered making coherent rules for them that make any sense.
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Because their power advancement system is exponential. Ignoring the fact that the book is incomplete for a moment and looking just at progression, Geist has a system where you buy categories of power application separately from ranking up your power effects with the categories priced at flat cost, which means you can expand your set of capabilities immensely with a limited expenditure of XP.

Compare this to Mage. For example, if you buy a dot of Arcana, what you're actually getting is every potential spell that one dot of Arcana lets you cast on its own, on top of every spell that Arcana lets you cast in conjunction with all the other Arcana that you have, and the lists are open-ended ones which you may add to at any time so long as what you make up makes sense in context of the magical Practices.

Either of these gives a player a lot more power (versatility, applicability, usefulness, whatever) for their XP than any of the splats buying powers one by one from a linear list (changeling, vampire, promethean) or buying powers one by one from a linear list which they have to pay a stat tax for (werewolf, lol).

Thus, my "Abyss" line - don't mix stuff across that line, because that's probably gonna cause group cohesion problems. Players don't like it when they spend some chunk of XP to get a single lackluster power while their buddy Bob spends the same amount of XP and gets, let's say, Mind 5.
 
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Jon Chung said:
Because their power advancement system is exponential. Ignoring the fact that the book is incomplete for a moment and looking just at progression, Geist has a system where you buy categories of power application separately from ranking up your power effects with the categories priced at flat cost, which means you can expand your set of capabilities immensely with a limited expenditure of XP.

Compare this to Mage. For example, if you buy a dot of Arcana, what you're actually getting is every potential spell that one dot of Arcana lets you cast on its own, on top of every spell that Arcana lets you cast in conjunction with all the other Arcana that you have, and the lists are open-ended ones which you may add to at any time so long as what you make up makes sense in context of the magical Practices.

Either of these gives a player a lot more power (versatility, applicability, usefulness, whatever) for their XP than any of the splats buying powers one by one from a linear list (changeling, vampire, promethean) or buying powers one by one from a linear list which they have to pay a stat tax for (werewolf).

Thus, my "Abyss" line - don't mix stuff across that line, because that's probably gonna cause group cohesion problems.
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That sorta makes sense. But that'd require a person to want to run Geist. And the moment they tried they'd realize, "Hey, this isn't really even complete? WTF."

As far as crossovers go, I'm not that interested, but you could probably do something with Changeling-Vampire, I suppose? I'm also not sure about Werewolf. Less in the 'powers' sense, and more that with their regen, they're pretty terrifying to a pretty decent chunk of Changelings. Or at least they should be. I haven't actually dug into 1e's specific mechanics for this kind of thing, because for some reason, with the exception of the Predators book and so on, nWolf 1e just didn't grab me at all?
 
Jon Chung said:
No idea about homebrew, ask the writers. Hunters are in their own universe where the rules work differently (what works on witches definitionally doesn't work on mages, for example), so, they should not be mixed with the other splats at all.
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For Princess, as I understand it the design intent at least somewhere along the line was that they be comparable to Changelings, iirc. How much that remains true I don't know. Genius might be somewhat weaker than Mage? Similarly broad access to effects, but propably more constraints on actually accessing them (money, time, semi-mandatory faults, committed mania). Leviathan, no clue.

Put differently, where would a 'mere mortal' without supernatural powers but with the equivalent value of merits, skills and styles fit in with the supernaturals?
Minor templates such as Ghouls?
 
The Storyteller's Vault is now operational.

In my opinion, this is the first thing White Wolf has done right since the Paradox Interactive buyout.
 
MJ12 Commando said:
Decent: Werewolves, Vampires
MEDIOCRE: Ghouls, Imbued, Sorcerers, Risen
Lol: Mortals
Double Lol: Changeling
Triple Lol: Wraiths
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I'd probably go for a bit higher fidelity at this level: Werewolves are generally more powerful than Vampires, and an experienced Elder's ghoul can be an even match for either. Kinfolk occupy the space between ghouls and mortars where they're just kinda terrible, because no Kinfolk can ever hope to match a higher splat.
 
Jon Chung said:
Generic advice. The tier list looks something like this.

Elder God Tier: Mage (praise Nyarlathotep, etc, etc)
God Tier: Geist
--The Abyss--
Excellent: Changeling, Promethean
Decent: Vampire
Meh: Werewolf

If one must run a crossover party despite how unwise this inherently is, do not cross the Abyss and do not go more than one tier apart, or you'll have group cohesion problems.
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How are Changelings supposed to be higher-tier than Vampires?
 
If we're discussing tiers, Pendragon on the NWOD forums proposed tiering the splats by the danger normal people present to them before talking about how tiers are generally pointless. It may be 2e but the principles seem like they would apply to 1e just the same.

Tier 1 (Very Dangerous): Vampire / Promethean - Both splats live in constant fear of being outed to the general public, and with the knowledge that their reveal would most certainly result in a witch hunt.

Tier 2 (Moderately Dangerous): Werewolf / Mummy - Normal humans are no match for characters at this tier, but will still see ample reason to take action against them. Both splats have mechanics for protecting their 'masquerade', but get enough normal humans together and they still offer up severe complications, should they get wind of you.

Tier 3 (Mildly Dangerous): Changeling / Beast / Sin-Eaters - At this tier it is almost impossible for a normal human to discern the supernatural creature, and even if they do the splats have easy outs, or fairly good chances of convincing the humans they are not a threat. (Werewolf would probably be here, if they weren't prone to Death Rage)

Tier 4 (Tertiary Danger): Mage / Demon - Humans pose no direct threat, complicating these splats lives only through the indirect intervention of higher powers (the Abyss and the God-Machine). The splats appear perfectly human, have powers that bulldose bystanders, and 99% of people either cannot perceive or forget all supernatural interaction with them.
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Power Tiers in 2E? - Onyx Path Forums

Which is why if I ever did anything Nmage I'd only consider adding Changelings/Demons as NPC splats beyond the generic weirdness of the New World of Darkness. Also because they can make magical contracts. And Demons only if I found a setup of how the God Machine and the Exarchs relate I liked.
 
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NemoMarx said:
Okay, probably dumb setting question, but with the older Mage stuff and the consensus reality mechanics, how far can a normal person influence that?

Like, would changing your name, faking your death and moving around have any material effect on reality? Could you lie about your past until enough people know and believe the lie that it's true?
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Generally, not very far. People believe that lying about your history is possible, therefore lying about your history is just lying about your history.

It's not enough that people believe your lie. It's necessary that people believe that it's impossible for you to be lying about it.

Also, the important thing is that you know its a lie. Therefore, you're always paradoxing any attempt to make it true. The only way this can work is if you believe it as much as they do.
 
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