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White Wolf's World of Darkness

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Leliel said:
The bolded part is is just malarkey. Lost Girl is the prototypical melancholic Changeling: the Dreaming story (20th Edition, because they finally figured out how to do Changeling in 20th, but still), and it doesn't take much rejiggering to make it work for Vampire. Simply "you don't drink blood, just life force, and you're still alive - you can walk in the sun, but if shot, you die." Hell, you don't even need to hombrew in Chronicles of Darkness, just play a Psychic Vampire who inherited her powers.

However, there's a very important thing I've noticed; those fiction bits you're citing? They don't involve weaknesses. The whole thing about American Vampire is being able to walk in the sun...the defining vampiric weakness overcome. That's not melodrama. That's a power fantasy. A lot of the points you're making seem to involve the supernatural beings having weaknesses being a bad thing.

I mean, earlier you said that you didn't like the fact that in Vampire, you're vulnerable to the sun and fire, when not all vampires are like that. But - if vampires didn't have weaknesses, why aren't they in the open?

If I'm right, that's...not an opinion I agree with, to say the least. It hurts more than it helps if the protagonists don't have weaknesses; that's not a source of good conflict or challenge, so bad from both a dramatic and mechanics perspective.
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No, that is not my intent.

Weaknesses are a great way to personalize vampirism. But Vampire is not really a toolkit. You play in Rein•Hagen's sandbox. You cannot customize every aspect of vampirism to the same degree as you could in a genuine toolkit rules system.

I am not saying that is a bad thing. It just is not my cup of tea. I am not solely invested in Rein•Hagen's particular version of vampirism. It is too restrictive for me. I like to embrace the diversity of vampire fiction in general. Like feeding on things other than blood, having different weaknesses than the traditional, a different structure for powers rather than the arbitrary and linear discipline mechanic, etc.

Kalzky said:
What does that even mean? Also, if you could kindly not use a word commonly considered a slur in your rambling hat post, that would be great.
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I know a lot of trivia about World of Darkness lore and history. It is quite rusty and probably not too detailed on the most recent innovations, but it does mean I was a very dedicated fan in the past.

What slur? I do not understand.
 
Leliel said:
The bolded part is is just malarkey. Lost Girl is the prototypical melancholic Changeling: the Dreaming story (20th Edition, because they finally figured out how to do Changeling in 20th, but still), and it doesn't take much rejiggering to make it work for Vampire. Simply "you don't drink blood, just life force, and you're still alive - you can walk in the sun, but if shot, you die." Hell, you don't even need to hombrew in Chronicles of Darkness, just play a Psychic Vampire who inherited her powers.
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I think your statement reflects an unfairly narrow view of how diverse vampires can, should, or are allowed to be in fiction. Changeling: The Dreaming is, last I checked, an elaborate metaphor for being LGBT. In Lost Girl, the fey are introduced as "an evolutionary branch that predates on humans" (although the show accumulated a lot of inconsistencies during its run). Shares a lot in common with the dictionary definition of vampires. In one episode, blood-drinking vampires are even introduced as a type of fey.

Just prior to Vampire, there was a 1990 RPG called Nightlife that had an eerily similar setting. It had a humanity mechanic, analogues to the Camarilla and Sabbat, and called its characters the "kin." The obvious difference is that the kin included a variety of races that predated on humans: vampires, demons, wights, werewolves, animates, and more. They had unique powers, weaknesses, feeding methods, etc. It is a fascinating window into what could have been in some alternate universe.
 
MediumGatoKatr said:
I think your statement reflects an unfairly narrow view of how diverse vampires can, should, or are allowed to be in fiction. Changeling: The Dreaming is, last I checked, an elaborate metaphor for being LGBT. In Lost Girl, the fey are introduced as "an evolutionary branch that predates on humans" (although the show accumulated a lot of inconsistencies during its run). Shares a lot in common with the dictionary definition of vampires. In one episode, blood-drinking vampires are even introduced as a type of fey.
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That wasn't what we were discussing. You said you couldn't represent Lost Girl in the cWoD, I pointed out a way you very much can. Then suddenly, the argument became "metaphor." Thing is, Bo is closer to being a Kithain than a Kindred, and the thing is, vampires are diverse, in that "anything that conceivably takes some form life from another being is a vampire." By that logic, nearly every genus of supernatural being in either World of Darkness is a vampire; changelings feed on creativity or emotion, depending on Dreaming or Lost, Sin-Eaters can eat ghosts, and even mages can sacrifice others to power spells. What defines a classical vampire is the ability to drink blood, and frequently classic Dracula-style weaknesses.

Also, I'm head-tilting at the "pronounced metaphor for LGBTQ" here; even if it was, it's been long cut free for the ultimate betterment of the game, given how Kithain were, for a long time, supposed to die or lose their specialness around their thirties. I always took it as a metaphor for youthful creativity and being neurologically divergent (EDIT: a bad one, it should be noted; 20th did major things to fix it, by making the psychologists who "treat" changelings be unlicensed cranks and tying the life cycle to self-image rather than age, but yeah).
 
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Leliel said:
That wasn't what we were discussing. You said you couldn't represent Lost Girl in the cWoD, I pointed out a way you very much can. Then suddenly, the argument became "metaphor." Thing is, Bo is closer to being a Kithain than a Kindred, and the thing is, vampires are diverse, in that "anything that conceivably takes some form life from another being is a vampire." By that logic, nearly every genus of supernatural being in either World of Darkness is a vampire; changelings feed on creativity or emotion, depending on Dreaming or Lost, Sin-Eaters can eat ghosts, and even mages can sacrifice others to power spells. What defines a classical vampire is the ability to drink blood, and frequently classic Dracula-style weaknesses.

Also, I'm head-tilting at the "pronounced metaphor for LGBTQ" here; even if it was, it's been long cut free for the ultimate betterment of the game, given how Kithain were, for a long time, supposed to die or lose their specialness around their thirties. I always took it as a metaphor for youthful creativity and being neurologically divergent.
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Uh huh.

Representing vampires from other works of fiction requires a fair amount of homebrewing. The Vampire game(s), despite the title, is not intended to be a generic toolkit that can easily emulate the diversity of vampires in fiction. It is specifically limited to White Wolf's particular sandbox and its idiosyncrasies. Even as recently as V5 (which made much needed improvement to the discipline mechanic by offering multiple powers to buy at each level, even if there are some flaws in the amalgam powers and purchase limits), replicating the simple power of levitation or similar SFX (as seen in a number of vampire movies) requires blood magic ritual or thin-blood alchemy.

While I do find various lore interesting in isolation, I do not find myself interested in the whole. In many instances I find it arbitrary and restrictive. Why are we limited to X number of clans and Y number of sects/covenants? I vastly prefer the sheer creativity we had back in the 90s as archived by B.J. Zanzibar. For whatever reason, I never saw that much creativity in more recent years. Fans generally seem more interested in talking about the convoluted lore than actually playing the game or creating new things.

The ST rules do not offer any advantage over other rules, so I cannot find a reason to prefer them. I have found other games that implement certain rules more elegantly than ST. The implementation of the humanity mechanic, for example, never made sense to me. The constant addition of new rules specifically for PCs to avoid the consequences of humanity loss, essentially altering the conditions to "whatever I was going to do anyway", hammered this home for me. I think some kind of dark/light-side temptation mechanic would have made more sense.

I am interested in seeing what Paradox does with the IP. The changes they made in the Bloodlines 2 include adding new disciplines and multiple factions. Those are some of the most extreme changes I have seen to the lore since the wild west days of the 90s when authors invented new clans and bloodlines willy-nilly. (Or when 1e Chronicles of Darkness added new bloodlines/lodges/legacies/whatever willy-nilly.)
 
MediumGatoKatr said:
Uh huh.

Representing vampires from other works of fiction requires a fair amount of homebrewing. The Vampire game(s), despite the title, is not intended to be a generic toolkit that can easily emulate the diversity of vampires in fiction. It is specifically limited to White Wolf's particular sandbox and its idiosyncrasies. Even as recently as V5 (which made much needed improvement to the discipline mechanic by offering multiple powers to buy at each level, even if there are some flaws in the amalgam powers and purchase limits), replicating the simple power of levitation or similar SFX (as seen in a number of vampire movies) requires blood magic ritual or thin-blood alchemy.

While I do find various lore interesting in isolation, I do not find myself interested in the whole. In many instances I find it arbitrary and restrictive. Why are we limited to X number of clans and Y number of sects/covenants? I vastly prefer the sheer creativity we had back in the 90s as archived by B.J. Zanzibar. For whatever reason, I never saw that much creativity in more recent years. Fans generally seem more interested in talking about the convoluted lore than actually playing the game or creating new things.

The ST rules do not offer any advantage over other rules, so I cannot find a reason to prefer them. I have found other games that implement certain rules more elegantly than ST. The implementation of the humanity mechanic, for example, never made sense to me. The constant addition of new rules specifically for PCs to avoid the consequences of humanity loss, essentially altering the conditions to "whatever I was going to do anyway", hammered this home for me. I think some kind of dark/light-side temptation mechanic would have made more sense.

I am interested in seeing what Paradox does with the IP. The changes they made in the Bloodlines 2 include adding new disciplines and multiple factions. Those are some of the most extreme changes I have seen to the lore since the wild west days of the 90s when authors invented new clans and bloodlines willy-nilly. (Or when 1e Chronicles of Darkness added new bloodlines/lodges/legacies/whatever willy-nilly.)
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You're confusing set dressing-specific powers that don't show up in the Vampire games-with the idea that you can't put most vampire stories in Vampire. This is extremely flawed because 99% of the time, the set dressing doesn't actually matter for the plot itself. The vampire games are pretty in-tune with the typical genre conceits and the most normally used (and useful) powers that show up as associated with vampires while also having mechanics to simulate the most normal sorts of struggles vampires have (against each other, against humans, against their own cursed nature). No, Vampire doesn't perfectly model every vampire in fiction, but it does in fact emulate the 'generic urban fantasy vampire' very well, and therefore the vast majority of vampire stories can just be run in either oVamp or nVamp with minor tweaks around the edges at most.

It's kind of odd that you take the WoD game which has the best claim of being in tune with the genre it's in and insist that actually it isn't in tune with its own genre.

And then your solution to a problem that doesn't really exist seems to be adding bloat for bloat's sake. The reason the wild west days of the 90s had authors inventing new clans and bloodlines willy-nilly was because of the supplement treadmill model, which encouraged cranking out as much content as possible all the time. Sure, it led to some hilarious and crazy stuff being published, but a lot less of that stuff was actually unironically good.
 
MJ12 Commando said:
You're confusing set dressing-specific powers that don't show up in the Vampire games-with the idea that you can't put most vampire stories in Vampire. This is extremely flawed because 99% of the time, the set dressing doesn't actually matter for the plot itself.
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That's an interesting way of putting it. One could easily level the same accusation at the Vampire rules. It has laundry lists of superpowers that appear nowhere else in vampire fiction. As a start, Vampire is the only vampire fiction I know of that distinguishes mind control, animal magnetism and perception filters as being different talent trees.

MJ12 Commando said:
It's kind of odd that you take the WoD game which has the best claim of being in tune with the genre it's in and insist that actually it isn't in tune with its own genre.
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I didn't say that. On a cursory examination, Vampire does seem like it is the most in tune with its genre. Part of that probably has to do with it popularizing the genre through pop cultural osmosis. Vampire settings that use the concept of bloodlines are still extremely rare and mostly limited to game properties like Warhammer, Elder Scrolls, and Legacy of Kain. American Vampire is one of the few non-game examples.

Many years ago I myself used to believe that Vampire was the be-all-end-all setting. Probably because at the time I simply was not familiar with any other vampire fiction or game design. As I learned more about the diversity of vampire fiction and more about the diversity of game design, I stopped feeling so sentimental about Vampire.

It's nothing personal. I have similar problems with D&D. When I look at the White Wolf games now, all I can really think is "I don't like A, B, and C; I want to change it to X, Y, and Z." Let me know if you're interested in hearing my ideas in detail.
 
MediumGatoKatr said:
That's an interesting way of putting it. One could easily level the same accusation at the Vampire rules. It has laundry lists of superpowers that appear nowhere else in vampire fiction. As a start, Vampire is the only vampire fiction I know of that distinguishes mind control, animal magnetism and perception filters as being different talent trees.
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A RPG sourcebook is not a written work of prose fiction, so no, you can't "easily level the same accusation at the Vampire rules" without willfully misunderstanding the difference between the plot of a work of fiction and the layout and design principles of a role playing game system. Vampire has laundry lists of superpowers because it is a role playing game, with a system, and that system has a specific way of representing inhuman capabilities that leads to "laundry lists of superpowers." If Vampire was a PbtA game, it would represent vampire abilities and themes very differently. But it isn't, so it represents them with lists of specific superpowers in trees. You can quibble about the arrangement of those superpower trees, but fundamentally those powers are there and PC-accessible.

And the idea that the game having supernatural abilities that are rare in vampire fiction makes it less capable of running vampire fiction stories is weird in the first place. Having those rare powers doesn't make it harder to run vampire fiction when if you want a game where those rare powers aren't a big deal, you just... don't use them in your game and stick to the core Disciplines. That's not even homebrew.

MediumGatoKatr said:
I didn't say that. On a cursory examination, Vampire does seem like it is the most in tune with its genre. Part of that probably has to do with it popularizing the genre through pop cultural osmosis. Vampire settings that use the concept of bloodlines are still extremely rare and mostly limited to game properties like Warhammer, Elder Scrolls, and Legacy of Kain. American Vampire is one of the few non-game examples.

Many years ago I myself used to believe that Vampire was the be-all-end-all setting. Probably because at the time I simply was not familiar with any other vampire fiction or game design. As I learned more about the diversity of vampire fiction and more about the diversity of game design, I stopped feeling so sentimental about Vampire.
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You literally keep saying that you can't run anything but Vampire's vision of vampire in the game:

MediumGatoKatr said:
Weaknesses are a great way to personalize vampirism. But Vampire is not really a toolkit. You play in Rein•Hagen's sandbox. You cannot customize every aspect of vampirism to the same degree as you could in a genuine toolkit rules system.
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MediumGatoKatr said:
Representing vampires from other works of fiction requires a fair amount of homebrewing. The Vampire game(s), despite the title, is not intended to be a generic toolkit that can easily emulate the diversity of vampires in fiction. It is specifically limited to White Wolf's particular sandbox and its idiosyncrasies.
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MediumGatoKatr said:
meaning that certain character concepts are impossible without workarounds or homebrew depending on what you play (like no wraiths or fallen in New World, no prometheans or lost in Classic World), etc.
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Wait... You consider it a better complaint that a character type invented in the new version can't be made in the version that existed before they were invented? I feel like we're not going to reach an agreement because we have some fundamental differences in attitudes.
 
MJ12 Commando said:
A RPG sourcebook is not a written work of prose fiction, so no, you can't "easily level the same accusation at the Vampire rules" without willfully misunderstanding the difference between the plot of a work of fiction and the layout and design principles of a role playing game system. Vampire has laundry lists of superpowers because it is a role playing game, with a system, and that system has a specific way of representing inhuman capabilities that leads to "laundry lists of superpowers." If Vampire was a PbtA game, it would represent vampire abilities and themes very differently. But it isn't, so it represents them with lists of specific superpowers in trees. You can quibble about the arrangement of those superpower trees, but fundamentally those powers are there and PC-accessible.

And the idea that the game having supernatural abilities that are rare in vampire fiction makes it less capable of running vampire fiction stories is weird in the first place. Having those rare powers doesn't make it harder to run vampire fiction when if you want a game where those rare powers aren't a big deal, you just... don't use them in your game and stick to the core Disciplines. That's not even homebrew.



You literally keep saying that you can't run anything but Vampire's vision of vampire in the game:
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Alright. You make a good point.

I do not know a better way to explain it than to use a specific example.

There is an indie RPG, Feast or something, which explores a somewhat similar concept to Vampire. It has superpowers and a humanity mechanic, but the similarities end there.

Out of the box, groups are given guidelines for customizing every aspect of vampirism. There are several steps provided, and Numerous examples are provided at each step. The group creates a set of rules that form a "strain." Modifications of a strain are called sub-strains.

The last few chapters include multiple sample settings, including b-movie and demonic pact, and analyses of historical trends in vampire fiction like gothic horror and 70s/80s exploitation films.

It uses an indie design in which character traits are described in a more freeform manner rather than selecting from a standard set of attributes, skills and other traits. This applies to the vampire traits too.

The humanity mechanic is perhaps the innovative part. It works like a lightside/darkside mechanic rather than a sanity mechanic. A character starts off with human traits, but as they lose their humanity they replace their human traits with vampiric traits. Loss of humanity quite literally results in becoming more vampiric. Regaining humanity, likewise, means losing vampiric traits.

It's easy to emulate vampire fiction in the game, including the fluff of the Vampire games. The basic vampire in Vampire translates to a strain, with the clans translating to sub-strains.

It probably isn't for everyone, but I liked what it did.

SolipsistSerpent said:
Wait... You consider it a better complaint that a character type invented in the new version can't be made in the version that existed before they were invented? I feel like we're not going to reach an agreement because we have some fundamental differences in attitudes.
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What I mean is that White Wolf decided you can't arbitrarily mix and match cWoD and nWoD because of different rules and lore. So you can't play a wraith style character in nWoD because the lore says those don't exist, unless you homebrew everything yourself.

I would prefer if those restrictions didn't exist and that there was some universal ruleset that let you mix and match every world of darkness to your heart's content. But that will never happen. The White Wolf design philosophy is to package rules with settings and make crossover needlessly difficult. As opposed to, for example, point buy rules that can represent any settings.
 
MediumGatoKatr said:
What I mean is that White Wolf decided you can't arbitrarily mix and match cWoD and nWoD because of different rules and lore. So you can't play a wraith style character in nWoD because the lore says those don't exist, unless you homebrew everything yourself.
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Well, the lore's one thing but I'd argue wanting the rules to be the same after being overhauled for a new edition is a bit silly, since a lot of the point of a new edition is to alter the rules (with the theoretical intent of ironing out issues from the previous edition, though success at that varies). Otherwise, it'd just be supplements for the old edition.
 
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SolipsistSerpent said:
Well, the lore's one thing but I'd argue wanting the rules to be the same after being overhauled for a new edition is a bit silly, since a lot of the point of a new edition is to alter the rules (with the theoretical intent of ironing out issues from the previous edition, though success at that varies). Otherwise, it'd just be supplements for the old edition.
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Here's an idea: produce a new ruleset that incorporates all the fixes and innovations of the last three decades, then release all the various worlds of darkness as supplements for it.

The only reason to play White Wolf games over any other games in the same genre, or simple homebrew, is if you are so invested in that particular lore that you don't care about the idiosyncrasies of the rules and lore. That is not the sort of roleplaying game that attracts me.

Take Wraith, for example. As interesting as it would be to play a ghost, Wraith takes a bizarre turn and fosters underground railroad tales and alien world politics instead of playing to the strengths of ghost stories. Simple and iconic ghost powers like flight, levitation, or walking through walls are either needlessly difficult to accomplish or outright impossible in certain respects.

Mage (any iteration) has many flaws but these are generally overshadowed by its syntactic magic system (copied from Ars Magica) that can work just fine in any setting or rules. Changeling: The Lost is probably the single most creative and tightly designed game White Wolf ever produced, even if it is hamstrung by typical White Wolf idiosyncrasies.

I'm just not a fan of the idiosyncrasies from the White Wolf school of design.
 
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MediumGatoKatr said:
The only reason to play White Wolf games over any other games in the same genre, or simple homebrew, is if you are so invested in that particular lore that you don't care about the idiosyncrasies of the rules and lore. That is not the sort of roleplaying game that attracts me.
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I like idiosyncratic lore in my games over the generic, so we're definitely going to have irreconcilable differences. In fact, I suspect that most of thread prefers it that way. So... the ultimate question is why you're here on the Whitewolf thread if that's not the kind of roleplaying game that attracts you?

It's like saying 'this seafood place should focus more on burgers'... and choosing to say it to a bunch of people who like fish. Unsurprisingly, it creates a lot of argument. Not everything is for everybody. Just play GURPS or something.
 
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SolipsistSerpent said:
Just play GURPS or something.
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Indeed, it's worth noting that the first edition of Vampire: the Masquerade, the first World of Darkness RPG, was released four years after the first edition of GURPS Horror and a year after the second.

People who wanted a generic-system point-build toolbox approach to horror could already reasonably easily obtain one.
 
The games are trying to do specific themes and moods, with a decently fleshed out lore. And That's Okay. I don't go to Werewolf the Forsaken to play a werewolf, I go to play an Uratha. Not every single game needs to be all-purpose toolbox, and it would honestly hurt the feel of these games.
 
SolipsistSerpent said:
So... the ultimate question is why you're here on the Whitewolf thread if that's not the kind of roleplaying game that attracts you?
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Because WoD holds a virtual monopoly over the urban fantasy market, which is tiny to begin with since D&D holds an overwhelming majority of the RPG market overall. When it comes to urban fantasy gaming, nobody wants to talk about anything else but Cainites and Garoux.

And there are bits and pieces I do like, in theory if not practice. I don't actively hate WoD, or feel much strong emotion period unless it's overflowing from my hatred of something else. The humanity mechanic is an interesting idea. Lost is amazing. Syntactic magic is always cool. Themes are interesting.

Generic simulation systems like GURPS aren't designed to represent themes.

Games like WoD, Monsterhearts, Feed, etc devise mechanics to support their intended themes. Which are some variation of "monster as metaphor." Monsterhearts in particular is chock full of that in its skins mechanic.

But there's nobody discussing anything but WoD. So I'm stuck with that despite it not being a great fit for my tastes.

I'd write my own urban fantasy game to cater to my tastes, but I like people to talk about shared interests.
 
there are actual people on this forum who would love to talk about Monsterhearts

wod makes for good conversation material because it is a heady mix of gold and bullshit
 
EarthScorpion said:
Then go make a thread for the game you want to discuss, rather than griping and moaning here.
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But what if the game I want to discuss is essentially just a remix of WoD? As much I can critique various parts of the execution, the basic idea of WoD interests me. Its various competition over the years interests me.

Vampire, Werewolf, Mage, Ghost, Fae... the basic idea of a dark urban fantasy setting inhabited by those five broad classes of freak and their associated soap opera dynamics is interesting to me.
 
MediumGatoKatr said:
But what if the game I want to discuss is essentially just a remix of WoD? As much I can critique various parts of the execution, the basic idea of WoD interests me. Its various competition over the years interests me.

Vampire, Werewolf, Mage, Ghost, Fae... the basic idea of a dark urban fantasy setting inhabited by those five broad classes of freak and their associated soap opera dynamics is interesting to me.
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You have this idea for a game that is a remix of World of Darkness with many different elements, which is fine, but then you complain that World of Darkness doesn't live up to the aforementioned imaginary version of it in your mind, which people find grating.

There's nothing stopping you from creating a thread discussing your idea for a game system based on World of Darkness.
 
So, the Deviant Kickstarter is up.

AKA: "You want supers with fangs? Good plan!"

This isn't a criticism, mind you. The previews are already inspiring me, and not even for Onyx Path games, the Web of Pain (the decentralized favor economy between amoral Deviant-making conspiracies) is way, way more insightful and interesting than Illuminati Stand-In #3087310.
 
There's just something that's stopping me from being excited by Deviants and I'm not sure what it is...
 
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