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White Wolf's World of Darkness

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linkhyrule5 said:
(My answer to your second point is that they probably should do the same for other long-term options, lol. How many times have we complained that Exalted doesn't have a Bureaucracy system, or even much of a social system -- and so for a game that's supposed to be more about being sorcerer-kings that rule the world, it's awfully hard to actually run a nation-building game.)
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Bureaucracy is a way to interact with the world, and a bureaucracy system would enable that. Players can set themselves goals that further or drive the plot. 'Crafting' is rarely/never a way to interact with the world: at best, it's a way to make the tools that interact with the world. The goal of 'crafting' isn't to further or drive the plot, so it probably shouldn't have a niche around which entire characters can be built, because that'd be a character that has no way to interact with the world or the plot.
 
Eukie said:
Bureaucracy is a way to interact with the world, and a bureaucracy system would enable that. Players can set themselves goals that further or drive the plot. 'Crafting' is rarely/never a way to interact with the world: at best, it's a way to make the tools that interact with the world. The goal of 'crafting' isn't to further or drive the plot, so it probably shouldn't have a niche around which entire characters can be built, because that'd be a character that has no way to interact with the world or the plot.
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... the One Ring doesn't interact with the world?

Excalibur doesn't interact with the world?

The Wave Motion Cannon doesn't interact with the world?

A Crafter is just a support-type player, like a buff-caster or a bard. There's no particular problem with a concept like that. That I see.
 
linkhyrule5 said:
A Crafter is just a support-type player, like a buff-caster or a bard. There's no particular problem with a concept like that. That I see.
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What exactly does the 'crafter' do though? The caster is going to cast Fight Better, the bard is going to sing the Song of Fighting Better, and the 'crafter' is going to spend the entire combat doing... what exactly?
 
Eukie said:
What exactly does the 'crafter' do though? The caster is going to cast Fight Better, the bard is going to sing the Song of Fighting Better, and the 'crafter' is going to spend the entire combat doing... what exactly?
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Pulling out the crazy shit they made to help them in the fight and being proud that they've outfitted the party with decent gear?
 
The Daiklaive glows the bright red and molten gold of the Jade-Orichalcum mix making it up in the hands of the Sacred Blacksmith. It is unfinished. The blade must still be cooled in the blood of a thousand men defeated in heat of battle.
 
If you ask he will say that he is a simple architect, but many secrets of sacred geometry were lost with the fall of the First Age. To recover them he must study the ruins left behind, and over the years he has become quite adept at dealing with the traps and dangers to be found in such derelict structures. Strangely, it seems that lately more people are coming to him for help with that instead of for advice on architecture.
 
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Queshire said:
If you ask he will say that he is a simple architect, but many secrets of sacred geometry were lost with the fall of the First Age. To recover them he must study the ruins left behind, and over the years he has become quite adept at dealing with the traps and dangers to be found in such derelict structures. Strangely, it seems that lately more people are coming to him for that instead of his architecture.
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The Exalted thread is over there.

cmwatford said:
Pulling out the crazy shit they made to help them in the fight and being proud that they've outfitted the party with decent gear?
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That's a very passive niche: providing gear doesn't involve the character very much, and I don't think having gear is going to be that much better.
 
Hm? I thought I saw it mentioned during the course of the conversation.
 
Eukie said:
What exactly does the 'crafter' do though? The caster is going to cast Fight Better, the bard is going to sing the Song of Fighting Better, and the 'crafter' is going to spend the entire combat doing... what exactly?
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*shrug* What does the social character do in combat?

But like, I do in fat think it'd be good for the crafter to have some things he can do, if not in combat per se, then "out in the field", in real-time. Detect and disarm traps, cobble together battlefield-control devices and one-shot weapons for annoying boss fights, and so on. I just don't think it needs to be a character focus, that it should be perfectly possible in a game like Exalted to be a character focused on the long view and large projects.
 
linkhyrule5 said:
*shrug* What does the social character do in combat?
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Nothing.

Which is why a character concept built around being 'a social character' shouldn't be possible in a game where the only meaningful way to interact with the setting is violence. It's why, to tie this to the thread's topic, oWoD Ventrue had Fortitude.
linkhyrule5 said:
But like, I do in fat think it'd be good for the crafter to have some things he can do, if not in combat per se, then "out in the field", in real-time. Detect and disarm traps, cobble together battlefield-control devices and one-shot weapons for annoying boss fights, and so on. I just don't think it needs to be a character focus, that it should be perfectly possible in a game like Exalted to be a character focused on the long view and large projects.
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Being focused on the long view and large projects, as a niche, is basically the niche of "playing a different game from everyone else". It's not a good niche. Damnation City has systems for large-scale machinations, but there's no splat that has it as their niche, because that would mean the players aren't in a good position to play together.
 
Sucal said:
Yeah but like...

Most people will start with all the gear they need at the beginning.

What happens to the crafter after that?
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I literally do not know a single game where it was true. There is always not enough money, resources, time, access to something. I can hardly even imagine a game where everyone has all the things they need.
Eukie said:
Bureaucracy is a way to interact with the world, and a bureaucracy system would enable that. Players can set themselves goals that further or drive the plot. 'Crafting' is rarely/never a way to interact with the world: at best, it's a way to make the tools that interact with the world. The goal of 'crafting' isn't to further or drive the plot, so it probably shouldn't have a niche around which entire characters can be built, because that'd be a character that has no way to interact with the world or the plot.
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It completely depends on whether you are play the party or solo. In a solo game, it is quite easy to create a plot that is tuned to craft. The story focuses on the master, patrons, envious, enemies and great creations. Master enemies may try to kidnap her to use in evil plans, or she may be alone in the street because she has angered the king. Ultimately, the story of creating things can be interesting in its own right.

In any case, I came here to talk about the community of the world of Darkness in Russia. And it is quite interesting, it was thanks to it that I started playing tabletop RPGs. However, in reality not one book of the world of darkness was ever released in Russia in the official translation. Everything is done by fans on their sites. Nevertheless, the community is large enough to support both live and regular games. The question of why books have never been officially published remains unanswered.

At the moment, I think it's worth saying that the community has its own atmosphere due to the fact that fresh translations are not the first or second edition at all, no, this is revision. So people never saw the first or second edition unless they of course know English, which is rare.

In general, the game is played in two types, usually associated with two factions. The first are purists who believe that the World of Darkness cannot be launched in local locations of aka Russia. According to them, this is due to the fact that Russia simply does not have the same mythology as America. This sometimes leads to interesting results ....

The second faction is conditionally the lovers of the local Nights in St. Petersburg. They launch games in Russia, often rejecting the lore presented in books from white wolves about Russia. This sometimes leads to Bobruisk (a small Russian town) in the night, with a population of a couple thousand people and 100 vampires. And sometimes it leads to epic stories where Moscow explodes in a battle between demons, magicians and others. In general, few people even love that the White Wolves wrote about Russia, regardless of faction.

I just wanted to share how the world of darkness is perceived outside of America and English-speaking countries, or more precisely in my homeland.
 
If he told them the truth they would think he was crazy, so instead he hides it as fiction. Werewolves, vampires and stranger things still. For most they were simply stories, but now and again on his good days he likes to think that maybe someone out there remembered his writing and so managed to avoid the fate that found him all those years ago. Other days, well, maybe someone shows up at one of his book signings looking wide eyed and jumping at shadows. Now those days? Those are the days he gets to work at his "other" job.
 
Eukie said:
Nothing.

Which is why a character concept built around being 'a social character' shouldn't be possible in a game where the only meaningful way to interact with the setting is violence. It's why, to tie this to the thread's topic, oWoD Ventrue had Fortitude.
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Well there's your answer then.
Being the social guy or the crafter or whatever should be possible insofar as it's something that can be done to advance the plot. And at the same time it shouldn't be possible insofar as that you shouldn't be able to hyperspecialize in it to the exclusion of all else, unless everyone else in the party does the same.
 
EarthScorpion said:
Honestly, hot take here, but you should probably ban anyone automatically whose character concept is "a crafter". It's a peculiarly game-ised concept that always requires disproportionate amounts of dev time and warps the game around it. You can accept characters who can do such things, but it can't be the focus of their character.

Hotter take - most RPGs would be vastly improved if devs stopped enabling the idea of "the crafter" when they're not going to do the same for other long-term options.
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linkhyrule5 said:
But... but crafting...

*sigh* Okay, I will grant you that crafting is really really hard to do right in an interesting way. And that I've never once seen a game that did a really good job of it, and only a few that have sufficiently done good job that I think there's something to be learned from them other than "how not to do it." All of which are video games.

.... but dammit, I love the idea, of being ... honestly, what I think of as "a real wizard", someone who can sit down and look out at the world and say "if I want to work this miracle, I need those parts in this configuration," and then just do it. Some of that is Sorcery. Some of that is crafting. (And a lot of it is outright Charm creation or writing your own fluff, lol). Most of all, though -- it's a feeling you absolutely cannot get from any amount of ... of limited spell lists and pre-balanced Charms, something that you can only vaguely touch upon with freeform magic like Mage or Ars Magica, the feeling of really biting your teeth into a good engineering problem and making something work.

I would be very sad if people gave up on crafting in games. Particularly in tabletop games, which until we get safe AI good enough to be an ST is the closest we're ever going to come to being a freeform mage in real life. Computer games just can't handle that degree of lateral thinking yet -- except games that are basically nothing but alt-physics simulators or that otherwise are basically entirely designed about the idea of building a world. I don't think I've ever seen a game that both has a nontrivial crafting system and a meaningful plot.

(My answer to your second point is that they probably should do the same for other long-term options, lol. How many times have we complained that Exalted doesn't have a Bureaucracy system, or even much of a social system -- and so for a game that's supposed to be more about being sorcerer-kings that rule the world, it's awfully hard to actually run a nation-building game.)
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Eukie said:
Bureaucracy is a way to interact with the world, and a bureaucracy system would enable that. Players can set themselves goals that further or drive the plot. 'Crafting' is rarely/never a way to interact with the world: at best, it's a way to make the tools that interact with the world. The goal of 'crafting' isn't to further or drive the plot, so it probably shouldn't have a niche around which entire characters can be built, because that'd be a character that has no way to interact with the world or the plot.
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Eukie said:
What exactly does the 'crafter' do though? The caster is going to cast Fight Better, the bard is going to sing the Song of Fighting Better, and the 'crafter' is going to spend the entire combat doing... what exactly?
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I think one of my favorite 'crafting systems' is the one from the latest edition of Scion (using the storypath system), because it encourages you to go out and do things rather than sit around crafting. Something like it could probably be retrofitted to work for a WoD game.

Scion Origin 2e said:
Scion boils any craft project down to a goal with a Tier. The goal is the aim of the crafter's work, and usually amounts to creating an Enhancement or resolving a Complication, such as preparing a lavish feast to impress a delegation of giants.

The Tier is based on the goal's scope, and determines how hard it is to achieve. Tier 2+ projects (and some large Tier 1 projects) are complex challenges that require a suitable Path, such as Student of Kagutsuchi. These projects have a number of Milestones equal to their Tier, plus one for every key element (materials, tools, design) that is missing when the project starts.

Possible Milestones for making a Relic include:

Acquire rare materials, such as mythical herbs, secret ores, or the hide of a titanic lion. Characters might do so through violence, bartering, exploration, or alchemy.
…
Uncover a recipe or secret technique, or gain inspiration from a similar item or phenomenon. Suitable methods include theft, apprenticeship, research, or trade.

Earn the blessing, advice, or hands-on assistance of a God or other powerful creature suited to the Relic. 

Perform a ritual act, like blooding a blade in the heart of a giant, parading divine armor through a grand ceremony, or spiritually cleansing oneself before work begins.
…

These Milestones have a minimum Difficulty equal to the overall Tier of the project, but remember that intervals don't need to be resolved with a roll. If Diarmuid's new spear needs the tusk of a demon boar, the players can spend an episode hunting one down to achieve that Milestone. Or if they've already slain such a beast, the crafter might produce a preserved tusk, translating the achievements of an earlier adventure into a "free" Milestone for this project.
…

A crafting project does not force the story to a halt while one character sits at an anvil. Characters pick up inspiration, acquire reagents, and win favors through their stories, allowing Heracles to sew his Nemean Cloak from the spoils of adventure.
Even when an artisan spends time in her workshop, other characters in the band can get involved in achieving Milestones by exploiting their Paths, taking on suitable challenges themselves, or offering support using the teamwork rules. Those intervals that require nothing but long and solitary work should occupy the downtime between scenes, episodes, or even arcs; while others train, plan, or party, the crafter toils away.
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Milestones for a less fantasy-ish setting:

Social and Bureauocracy
- The Union wants a raise and other concessions. Negotiate with them.
- There's a problem with the supply chain. Better organize the missing materials quickly if you want to avoid delays.
- A careless worker had an accident, and is now suing the company. Investigate to make sure your security measures are up to snuff, fight the court battle, and reassure the other workers that they're not in danger.
- Maintenance problems: A pest infestation such as hornets or termites, faulty construction, or a broken machine.
- Your buyer canceled. Find another, or you'll see all progress on your current project going to waste, and lack funding for the next one.
- Politicians are preparing to write a law that would hamstring your operations. Put your lobbying hat on and convince them otherwise.

Combat and Intrigue
- Organized crime is trying to get it's hooks into your business and workshop, for a protection racket, for money laundering, for smuggling, or because they want you to make unlicensed weapons. They're not taking no for an answer.
- A rival, business or otherwise, is sending agents to sabotage you or steal your work.

Crafting
- The design you're coming up with has revealed an unexpected problem, and you'll need to either choose to accept one of several possible flaws in the finished product, or spend more time finding a more elegant solution (and accept another milestone instead).
 
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EarthScorpion said:
Honestly, hot take here, but you should probably ban anyone automatically whose character concept is "a crafter". It's a peculiarly game-ised concept that always requires disproportionate amounts of dev time and warps the game around it. You can accept characters who can do such things, but it can't be the focus of their character.

Hotter take - most RPGs would be vastly improved if devs stopped enabling the idea of "the crafter" when they're not going to do the same for other long-term options.
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Hotter take here: The "crafter" character in a modernish game should be the social character, and the 'crafting' story should be about herding cats to get funding, facilities, and personnel over individual personal talent. The science and engineering skills should be more useful for investigation or MacGyvering than for being a "crafter." Make it so that an expert 'crafter' needs like, 2 dots in a reasonably related STEM ablity at most, and wants to buy up 'interacting with others and the bureaucracy' abilities, and you've instantly made "the crafter" a useful concept which can do more than just sit in the background cranking out doohickeys.
 
Is there a book about making up a spy themed game? I'll probably GM a game happening during the cold war, so I was wondering if there was one, or if you had advice on how to build that so it doesn't devolve into an impossible to follow mess right away.
 
MJ12 Commando said:
Hotter take here: The "crafter" character in a modernish game should be the social character, and the 'crafting' story should be about herding cats to get funding, facilities, and personnel over individual personal talent. The science and engineering skills should be more useful for investigation or MacGyvering than for being a "crafter." Make it so that an expert 'crafter' needs like, 2 dots in a reasonably related STEM ablity at most, and wants to buy up 'interacting with others and the bureaucracy' abilities, and you've instantly made "the crafter" a useful concept which can do more than just sit in the background cranking out doohickeys.
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That sounds far too much like my real life job description to be any fun.


... Or like, "you should have your craft system imitate 'Professor: The Grant Proposing'" is definitely a hot take I haven't heard before :V.
 
Renu said:
Is there a book about making up a spy themed game? I'll probably GM a game happening during the cold war, so I was wondering if there was one, or if you had advice on how to build that so it doesn't devolve into an impossible to follow mess right away.
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Demon by all accounts is already a spy game? Otherwise, as long as you're only looking for storytelling advice instead of mechanics compatible with the ST engine, GURPS propably has something that fits your needs. Mysteries, Espionage, and Illuminati sound about right, possibly Black Ops and some of the Monster Hunter books if you're after an urban fantasy spy game.
 
Gnarker said:
Demon by all accounts is already a spy game? Otherwise, as long as you're only looking for storytelling advice instead of mechanics compatible with the ST engine, GURPS propably has something that fits your needs. Mysteries, Espionage, and Illuminati sound about right, possibly Black Ops and some of the Monster Hunter books if you're after an urban fantasy spy game.
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I was thinking about a supplement like City of the Damned to make a usable city or shadows over the UK for all things british, but yes, I'll look Demon up, thanks.
 
MJ12 Commando said:
Why do you say this?
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It might be a similiar line of thought to @Eukie's Gurps Espionage influenced musings from 2015?

Eukie said:
I believe the quickest way to illustrate this is in what it tries to do. Much like Changeling is a game about playing an abuse victim and Vampire is about playing a neo-feudal sex criminals in organized crime, Demon wanted to be a game about playing a spy. To emulate the crushing cold sense of mistrust and double-dealings of The Spy Who Came In From The Cold and similar spy novels, it suggests that you face off against the incomprehensible. One example actually given in the rulebook was for the players to investigate and eventually shut down a family restaurant run by a God-Machine agent. The purpose of the restaurant was to provide the God-Machine with lettuce.

Why does the God-Machine need lettuce? You're not supposed to know. What happens if we don't stop the God-Machine from getting lettuce? You're not supposed to know. Is it important to stop the God-Machine from getting lettuce? You're not supposed to know. Will things actually end up worse if we try to stop the God-Machine from getting lettuce? You're not supposed to know.

The game encourages the ST to make scenarios where the players have no concept of the reason for why they're doing things, or of the consequences of their actions. This is terrible for a game about playing spies, because it's neither fun nor interesting. It becomes an exercise in doing pointless things for no reason. GURPS: Espionage, and excellent-if-dated book on how to run spy games, points out that this is a really stupid thing to do. While secrecy, mysterious orders, and duplicitous missions with hidden intentions are important to the spy genre, the players must never be left feeling that their actions and choices have no meaning, because that's no fun.

It was just one of those things that stood out to me when I skimmed the public text-only release; it was a game about playing spies that actively encouraged doing exactly what my favourite book about playing spies had said not to do.
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