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White Wolf's World of Darkness

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DuoChar said:
This post is deeply and uncomfortably ironic considering the way your government the disabled and the poor.
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No, your government the disabled and poor.

Why can't anyone her horns?

I've never read old Mummy. Didn't realize the similarities its basic premise had with Geist. Or, uh, oDemon, come to that.
 
So, I heard about the Gypsie books. Anyone care to give a breakdown?
 
ckk185 said:
So, I heard about the Gypsie books. Anyone care to give a breakdown?
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I can summarize: nothing good, everything bad.

It's not even an interesting type of bad, like Freak Legions or the Tzimisce clanbook. White Wolf writes some really great stuff, and they also write some really horrible stuff. Successful WoD games therefore rely on knowing what material to include and what to cast violently from your personal canon. The book in question is a perfect candidate for things to ignore. It has (mercifully) been quite some time since I read it, so I am not able to offer specifics, but:

-Being born a gypsy gives you magic gypsy powers.
-These powers are geared towards lying and theft.
-They are also mechanically unbalanced, to the extent that they are better than many of the powers that Vampire, Garou, etc. get.

See? Nothing about that is good, and everything about it is bad. I think we can all agree on that, and sigh quietly while shaking our heads at the foolishness of the 90's RPG publishing industry.

Now, for a desperate attempt to shift the topic to anything else: nWoD is officially getting a second edition. The Idigam and Fallen World chronicles will be second editions Werewolf: the Forsaken and Mage: the Awakening respectively.

I've been following DaveB's development blog for Fallen World here, and it looks good. I especially like the change in Wisdom from "General Morality + Magic Stuff" to being just about how carefully and thoughtfully you use magic. It ties in more with the ideas of power and responsibility that are central to Mage. Any thoughts?
 
I don't know; a book where acting like an ethnic or racial stereotype gave you magic powers sounds like a lot of fun if played tongue in cheek
 
Mutton said:
I don't know; a book where acting like an ethnic or racial stereotype gave you magic powers sounds like a lot of fun if played tongue in cheek
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It sounds extremely insulting actually. I don't think we would even be having this discussion if instead of 'Gypsy,' White Wolf had published 'Magical Negro' with powers based on mugging people in alleys and eating copious quantities of watermelon or something. Thankfully even they aren't that socially oblivious. (Watch as Onyx Path proves me wrong somehow.)
 
grommile said:
Congratulations for acting like a certain stereotype of an educated 20something heterosexual white man.
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... There's a lot of print on this here statement

It's something that would have to be done by people who fully understand the issues at hand and in a loving manner (think Black Dynamite, not Birth of a Nation), but you've never had fun playing with the stereotypes associated with your ethnic, racial, or religious background? Have you ever watched a stand up artist who talks about their background as a tool for comedy? Maybe if you're a white guy who had never dealt with any sort of racism, but for those if is who have it is a prime topic for comedy
 
Mutton said:
It's something that would have to be done by people who fully understand the issues at hand and in a loving manner (think Black Dynamite, not Birth of a Nation),
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Yeah, that's kinda the problem.
but you've never had fun playing with the stereotypes associated with your ethnic, racial, or religious background?
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That's a narrower thing than what your words taken at face value were suggesting. (And yes, I have. I mean, making jokes about Englishness pretty much is an English stereotype.)
Have you ever watched a stand up artist who talks about their background as a tool for comedy?
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Yes. (See above.)
 
grommile said:
Yeah, that's kinda the problem.

That's a narrower thing than what your words taken at face value were suggesting. (And yes, I have. I mean, making jokes about Englishness pretty much is an English stereotype.)

Yes. (See above.)
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I'm not suggesting we have unsensative McGee make it, just that "black dynamite meets Jewish mother jokes meets stand up comedians of your preferred background" would actually be a lot of fun if done properly. The fact that people immediately jump to the "you must be an insensitive white guy" is well, at the risk of mining enough iron to conquer a nation, the most white thing you could say
 
ckk185 said:
So, I heard about the Gypsie books. Anyone care to give a breakdown?
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Drakeneisen gives an overview, but by far not a breakdown. The sheer level of racism that Gypsies managed to engage in is staggering. It goes on and on and on about how pop culture only portrays the Roma as a stereotype, usually as untrustworthy thieves, and then makes sure to portray the Roma people almost exclusively as untrustworthy and/or thieving, with magical powers and skills that make you better at lying, stealing, scamming, cheating, etc.

I did a live reading on IRC once; I can quote some passages to give you an idea of how bad it is:

"Forever isolated from other humans by their Blood and ways, the Rom await with curiosity their role in the upcoming Convergence." (The Roma people. Cannot be with other people because of their genetics. Good to know!)

"Prejudice and pain permeate both the World of Darkness and the 'real' world." (...why is "real" in scare-quotes?)

"As you read this, the Romani of our world face poverty, ignorance and a new tide of hatred." - known as WoD: Gypsies.

"The Romani are an old and unusual people whose history remains hidden in the mists of the past."

"Since the Romani feel it is both proper and wise to bend and even break the truth when dealing with the gaje,[...]"

"Some have settled down in one city, taking part in the underground economy of the area,[...]" (Gypsies. Automatically part of the black market.)

"Although Gypsies are, as yet, a minor presence on the net, they are beginning to make an impact by running electronic scams,[...]" (Of course. They're not using the Internet for keeping in touch despite their nomadic lifestyle, or for information-gathering, (given that their supernatural origin is literally "keepers and eaters of the Tree of Knowledge". Nope. Since they're gypsies, they run scams.)

WoD: Gypsies also gets a lot of stuff wrong, like claiming there's no written version of their language. This is not true. There are very, very many written versions of the Romani language.

"While it is true that a Gypsy feels it is perfectly reasonable to take from a gaje by hook and by crook, so to speak, many Gypsies ply other, so-called honest, trades."

"Meanwhile, many of the Gypsies are being lost to a subtler enemy. Slowly becoming enmeshed in a sedentary lifestyle, caught in the webs of civilization, the music of their Blood and heritage grows faint."

"The Gypsies may even go to trial. They attest to so many accusations, both true and false, that the proceedings often turn into a complete farce."

Gypsies are speshul. They have closer ties to the supernatural than anyone else. They have their own vampire clan to watch out for them, they travel with werewolves, they have close ties to the faeries... And the Gypsy Werewolves? They have purer blood than any other werewolf tribe.

WoD: Gypsies is like made for Special Snowflake characters. Not only are you a member of a special special magical race of mystical nomads with magical powers... you can also be a member of a special magical race of mystical nomads with magical powers who are also vamps or wuffs. ...and then you can have, as your background, that you were so good at magic that you got married into the super-special clan of gypsies that have extra magical powers. And if you want to, you can also be a special gypsy vampire hunter.

If Gypsies outbreed too much, they fear they'll lose their magical powers.

Gypsies have the Seeds of Knowledge, which lets them see through all lies. If a Roma person carries a Seed of Knowledge, they can easily see through all the lies of ever the most clever vampire Elder. If a non-Roma ever got their hands on one of the seeds, though, they won't work, the person would be overcome with jealousy, and will believe everything the seeds tell them are lies.

Oh wow. There are descriptions of each of the five Seeds. And if a non-Roma gets their hands on them, their fickle minds could not possibly comprehend anything. So they'll be overcome with emotion and probably kill themselves.

"As the Egyptians who built the Great Pyramids knew, there is power in such a five-pointed construction." (The Great Pyramids are octahedrons...)

There are five Gypsy families: Vampire-lovers, Werewolf-lovers, Faerie-lovers, descendants of the True Gypsies, and Vampire Slayers.

For ~reasons~ members of these five families are encouraged to seek out one member of each of the remaining four families and go on adventures together. But we must have arbitrary reasons for different splats of Romani people to work together! So yeah. If you want a Ravnos, a Silver Fang, a Fae, a magical gypsy and a vampire slayer to go on adventures together, WoD: Gypsies gives you a reason for why!

Given that the Romani people are the guardians of the Seeds of Knowledge, one might wonder why nobody have, say, hunted down the Romani to steal the Seeds of Knowledge. Don't worry! WoD: Gypsies has you covered: The Inconnu Did It. The Inconnu may be protecting the Romani to protect the Seeds of Knowledge for... ~mysterious reasons~
Also, some mages may be protecting the Romani to protect the Seeds of Knowledge for ~mysterious reasons~

In the WoD, the Romani part of the Holocaust happened because Hitler and the SS had learned of the Romani people's secret of the Blood, and decided to exterminate them and experiment upon their Blood. What a tasteful depiction of ethnic persecution, White Wolf!

"However, it is perfectly appropriate to manipulate and use a gaje. After all, if the gaje is gullible or slow-witted enough to fall for the Gypsy's tricks, then the Gypsy was meant to succeed at her endeavor. This ethical double standard has led the gaje to misunderstand and even hate the Gypsies."

How special are the Romani people in the WoD? They have two vampire clans to watch over them.

Romani people aspected to the Element of Air are extra good thieves.

As part of the delicious 90's RPG skill bloat, WoD: Gypsies of course introduces a throng of new skills, appropriate for the Romani people. These include: Swindling, Diversions, Drinking, and Fortune-Telling.

"Gypsy contacts are usually members of a city's underworld"

New Advantage: Blood Purity. The higher your Blood Purity, the more magical gypsy powers you have. The higher your Blood Purity, the more non-Romani hate you.

The Romani have a special "Blood Affinity" that only Romani people can ever have. One of these is the "Dance of Knives", 1-5 dots. You can make as many hand-to-hand, knife, or throwing-knives attacks per round as your rating in Dance of Knives. The higher your Blood Purity, the better you can be at the Dance of Knives.

Another Blood Affinity is "Instinct", which lets you know instinctively when situations are bad for you. The example given is "avoiding alley thugs you've just swindeled".


There's also the Luck affinity, which gives you [dots] dice you can add, at will, to a roll, per story. The description of Luck makes it seem like you get more lucky the more dots you have, but this is not the case.

Here's another Affinity. "Truth of the Rom". It makes you a better liar.

Oh, and you can mind control people by dancing.

So... uh... WoD: Gypsies tells you that Gypsies are lying, thieving liars who steal, and everyone hates them because they're special, so they have to steal and cheat and lie - but because they steal and cheat and lie, everyone hates them.

And all Gypsies have a special bond of hospitality with the Gangrel, because a Gypsy once cheated in a contest with a Gangrel.

All Gypsies are Awakened beings, incidentally, but their magic has no Paradox.

The Romani people associate with the treacherous untrustworthy Balkan werewolves...

The reason the Roma people are persecuted (you know, in addition to all the other reasons), is because they have powerful Blood Magic, and the Ravnos and Verbena Elders feel the need to control the Romani people's stregth. By murdering them. The Ravnos, who have their own damn family of Roma people, are behind the persecution of the Roma people, for some reason.

Also, the Tremere don't know anything about Gypsy Blood magic, because... uh... reasons.

"When the gaje think of a Gypsy, they often picture a shriveled old woman wrapped in a shawl, cackling over palms and muttering vague-yet-ominous prophecies of the client's future. Or they imagine a voluptuous young woman with raven hair and colourful skirts staring into a crystal ball and speaking of tall, dark and handsome strangers that will soon come knocking at the client's door." Anyone would like to guess at how the art for this book depicts female Romani? Like 90% of the female characters are raven-haired young women in presumably colourful clothes. And the first character we're introduced to a cackling old fortune-teller...

And and what World of Darkness book would be complete without a sidebar talking about how science is all wrong? That somehow, logic is an attempt to constrain and rope down reality? All scientists are "myopic", incidentally.

At TN 8, a 5-dot Gypsy sight-seer can see up to 10 years into the future. They get "one piece of information" per success on their roll.

"Many Rom always carry dice or dominoes with which to make castings[scrying] for both gaje marks and themselves." "Describe how Romani magic works? Let's not forget to remind everyone that they're thieving gypsies!" "Poor, oppressed, thieving gypsies."

So, with one type of Lesser Auguries, you get a -2 TN to scry about "knowledge of pain and conflict". Why, yes, conflict. Such a narrow field.

(Fun fact: the section on scrying doesn't tell you how to roll scrying dice pools.)

And what would a book on the Roma people be without gypsy curses. So! With an Evil Eye + Manipulation roll, you can inflict people with a gypsy curse:
1 success: they lose 1 die on "some" Skill rolls for a week, and botch one roll.
2 success: the target loses 1 die on 10 different Skill rolls for a month, and botch 3 rolls
3 successes: half a year, 6 botches, "1-2 dice" lost on half the target's skills, or they lose all their hair.
4 successes: one year, 12 automatic botches, "2-3 dice" from half their Skill dice pools, or a "severe disease or injury"
5 successes: permanent, like 4 successes
Gypsies (AND ONLY GYPSIES) can reverse the effects of the curse.

I also love how fucking unspecific the book is. You lose "1-2 dice" from your dice pool. That sure is helpful when you try to figure out what happened!

The more powerful you are at placing curses, the worse you fuck up if you botch the "lift curse" roll. Because, if you botch the roll to lift the curse, you roll and increase the severity of the curse by your number of successes. So if you have 10 dice of curse-lifting, and botch on lifting an easy curse, you can easily make it 6 successes worse. If you have a terrible pool of curse-lifting, and try to lift a difficult curse, you have maybe a 20% chance to make it worse by once success.

Gypsy powers: Curse people for eternity, see 10 years into the future, and... talk to ghosts and visit the underworld.

Due to open wording, Gypsies can make special amulets that protect against magic and stack. You can also make date rape drugs.

The Gypsies have scrying magic. The more successes you get, the more you know. Gypsies can also make potions that add dice to their scrying rolls. They may very possibly stack. One of the magical thingemabobs gypsies can create include an amulet that gives you bonus dice on mechanical rolls, and can tell you unknown information about mechanical things. Make one guess at what the example is. (It's computer crime.) You can make a potion that makes you a better liar!

As a 5-dot power, you can create a knife that does Agg damage, and then Agg damage-over-time for 5 rounds.
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And that was as much racism and bad mechanics I could take in one sitting.
 
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Did anyone else get annoyed at the fact that every morality-equivalent had "Utter Perversion, Heinous Act" as a rank-1 sin?
Seriously, couldn't the writers come up with an less ambiguous wording?
Even the damn fan-splats do it.

P.S. Wait, I don't think that Werewolf had that.
P.S.S. Nope, just "Betrayal of pack, hunting werewolves for food."
 
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Eukie said:
I did a live reading on IRC once; I can quote some passages to give you an idea of how bad it is:
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:wtf:

Did they also make a Jew splatbook where you have stats for controlling world finance and need to bake christian blood in your matza to get powers, and a Native American one where you need to smoke your peace pipe and use the purity of nature to summon your spirit animal and destroy the white people while also having lots of really titillating sex?
 
Blake Hannon said:
:wtf:

Did they also make a Jew splatbook where you have stats for controlling world finance and need to bake christian blood in your matza to get powers, and a Native American one where you need to smoke your peace pipe and use the purity of nature to summon your spirit animal and destroy the white people while also having lots of really titillating sex?
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That sounds like an amalgamation of the Dreamspakers and the Cult of Ecstasy from Mage the Ascension. There's probably non Native American Dreamspeakers in the tradition though... somewhere.
 
Blake Hannon said:
:wtf:

Did they also make a Jew splatbook where you have stats for controlling world finance and need to bake christian blood in your matza to get powers, and a Native American one where you need to smoke your peace pipe and use the purity of nature to summon your spirit animal and destroy the white people while also having lots of really titillating sex?
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Bad jokes aside, there actually is a Craft of Jewish mages, the Lions of Zion. Their beliefs and practices does incorporate aspects of the religion without being over the top. And there's plenty of other groups that have been handled well by White Wolf and Onyx Path. Doesn't excuse their screw ups like the Gypsy book or a few of the others but more often than not they have handled such things fairly well.

Conjured Blade said:
That sounds like an amalgamation of the Dreamspakers and the Cult of Ecstasy from Mage the Ascension. There's probably non Native American Dreamspeakers in the tradition though... somewhere.
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Of course there is. The Dreamspeakers Tradition was in part created by European mages lumping together the various smaller, non-European groups of shamans and the like when they were laying down the ground work of what would become the Nine Traditions. The Dreamspeakers have groups from Africa, North and South America, the Pacific Islands, the Caribbean, etc. They are the most diverse group of mages among the Traditions and among all mages for that matter.

Scia said:
To be fair there Shoah book was seen by all critics as a a not bad take on the topic, lackign such goofs if I remember it right.
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Charnel Houses of Europe had a few typos, which was pretty common back in those days, and an utterly useless map that had the various cities, towns and concentration camps plotted but no actual geography, making it basically a blank square with labelled dots. But beyond that it is a solid, albeit grim book that handles a difficult topic in a respectful manner. In fact Rich Dansky, the head developer of WtO from the 2nd Ed to its end is deeply proud his work on Charnel Houses of Europe.
 
I'm little curious but what was everyone's first encounter with the World of Darkness (Old or New). For me it happened back in late 2000 when a friend got the PC game Vampire: the Masquerade Redemption, the lesser known of the two VtM video games. It was basically a Diablo-style hack-and-slash game so it lacks when it comes to non-combat areas of the source material. But it was a decent enough, if now dated, game with some interesting characters and story ideas that could be used in VtM (or even converted over to VtR).

Anyway he got the game, liked it and started showing it off to me and the rest of our circle of friends. We got interested in, more so when we learned it was based off another game. It was around February or March of 2001 that we picked up the Rev Ed of VtM and tried it out. Our first game was, looking back on it, a mess but it got its hooks in me and from there I began to explore the universe, jumping to Dark Ages: Vampire, Mage: the Ascension, Hunter: the Reckoning and Werewolf: the Apocalypse in those early years. I've played some NWoD games but I've found they don't quite have the same appeal to me as their OWoD counterparts do, the only exceptions being Changeling: the Lost (I've never read Changeling: the Dream save for Dark Ages: Fae which is a different beast) and Giest: the Sin-Eater (which has no true OWoD counterpart). Though NWoD has produced some very interesting material and I certainly do appreciate what they've done as opposed to what was done with the OWoD.

In more recent years I've been exploring Wraith: the Oblivion, Orpheus, Kindred of the East and Mage: the Sorcerer's Crusade lines with much gusto as well as much of the newer books released by Onyx Path.

All of that stemming from one 1999 PC game.

So who else would like to share how they got into the World of Darkness?
 
I got into it from my mother's books, namely vampire, and a few werewolf books she has. But I personally love vampire. Currently reading up on dark ages stuff/fluff.

Lasombra dominatus!
 
Murderhobo of Nod said:
I got into it from my mother's books, namely vampire, and a few werewolf books she has. But I personally love vampire. Currently reading up on dark ages stuff/fluff.

Lasombra dominatus!
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Yeah, the Dark Ages setting was a really great line, though I wish they did a bit more with DA Werewolf, Mage, Fae and Inquisitor. Werewolf, Fae and Inquisitor only had the Rulebook while Mage had only one supplement. A shame since DA Mage, Fae and Inquisitor were all interesting games and really could have done with some more love.

Well maybe if the upcoming Dark Ages: Vampire 20th Anniversary does well we'll see more for those lines.
 
Uh. I kind of wanted to write a story like Mizuki Stone's Invisible Rolls thing, using Vampire the Requiem to create the character and all...
But then I came up with a problem:
Which setting to use?
And how to 'give stats' to the persons within the setting?

In order to keep things 'even' which setting could actually have a V:TM vampire frolicking about -a starting vampire, which gains exp and advances through sessions- with a reasonable scaling?
 
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