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White Wolf's World of Darkness

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"Classic World of Darkness" is the term used by OPP people to refer to what was previously known as "old World of Darkness." I assume the reason is PR-based, as "classic" is cooler and more marketable than "old."
 
Mmmm. Prime infused boomboxes, easiest way to spot vamps and funnest.

Mages and vampires interacting at LARPs unfortunately lead to the great nerfing.

The new player who had only played vtm and who had joined our mage game as a vampire.....there was an incident where a fellow player almost killed him with a anti dead thibg spell. fAterward he asked to see our list of spells to see what he should expect. the look on his face was priceless, "you use my gold necklace to emit sunrays and decapitate me?!"
 
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Dark Abstraction said:
I understand oWoD and nWoD, but what does CWoD stand for?
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Classic World of Darkness, another name for the Old/Original World of Darkness. Some call it Classic, others call it Old, yet others still Original. Much as some people refer to the New World of Darkness as simply the World of Darkness (WoD). Honestly it doesn't matter for most people. I bounce back and forth between saying OWoD and CWoD.
 
As a W20 KS backer I just got my copy of the White Howlers Tribebook, one of the stretch goals for the KS. While I've only gotten a chance to read the opening comic which is beautiful, grim and sad, fitting the doomed Tribe, and to skim over the rest of the book, my first impressions of it are very positive. The artwork is nearly all new, ranging from average to pretty damn good, with my personal favorite being the one modern day version of a White Howler in Crinos, wearing a leather jacket, outside a bar standing over top a body. Though the full page image of a young Howler being tattooed by an elder with all kinds of spirits floating around them is pretty cool too.

Once I've read through it I'll give a full review on it.
 
Finished reading the Tribebook and my initial thoughts were correct, it is a solid book. Before I begin I will point that there are typos and errors but Onyx Path, like with previous PDF releases, have set up a thread for people to point out mistakes they missed so that when it's public release/PoD goes out they'll have fixed those errors. So I won't bring up those errors as non-backers won't see them when they pick it up.

I suppose I should start with a few things people not too familiar with the White Howlers and Werewolf: the Apocalypse. The Howlers were one of the sixteen werewolf Tribes in the game, originating from the ancient tribes of Northern Britain and Scotland, the Picts as they're commonly known today. Unfortunately the Howlers were the first of three Tribes that went extinct. Worse, while the other two Tribes died out the Howlers fell to the Wyrm, becoming the first Black Spiral Dancers. However over the course of WtA, who the Howlers were and the hows and whys of their fall has differed from book to book.

But those accounts were always by others, never the words of the Howlers themselves. Until now. Now we have the White Howlers in their own words.

Anyway, the White Howlers Tribebooks is laid out in typical WW/OPP fashion, opening fiction, Introduction, Chapters and Appendix. In this case the opening fiction is the previously mentioned comic revolving another a trio of Howlers and the dire signs they encounter. And again the Introduction is standard fare, discussing what's in the book and all that, ending with a thank you from the author, Jess Hartley, to all the W20 KS backers who made this book possible.

Chapter One and Two discuss the history and culture of the While Howlers respectively. It's told entirely in-person from Morag 'Memory of Stone', a Galliard of the White Howlers, on their final night she's been instructed by their Tribal Totem to speak all she knows about her people while they prepare for their doomed march into Malfeas, the lair of the Wyrm. Surprisingly while the history chapter talks about the Ice Age, or the Great Winter as they refer to it, the two major moments of Garou ancient history, the Impergium and the War of Rage are virtually ignored. In fact of the two, the Impergium is mentioned indirectly and only in passing. It would have been interesting to hear their stances on it. Aside from that one issue the history and culture chapters are great.

The history is largely divided between the vaguer pre-Roman Empire time period and after the Romans arrived in England and started making a mess of things for the Howlers. The former feels very epic and larger than life, giving the feel that the White Howlers did indeed have a long, rich history before the Fall came. The latter is much more detailed as it is the 'modern' setting for the book, the coming of the Romans to England and the downward spiral of the Howlers as they tried to drive them off. Reading through it and knowing that it will only get worse for them made it especially grim and sad. It actually reminds me a bit of the modern day setting for WtA, the Howlers fighting a losing battle against the Roman invaders who are ruining and corrupting their lands.

The culture chapter discusses things like the Kinfolk tribes of the Howlers, their views on the Breeds and Auspices, the Tribal camps and their views on the few other Tribes they had made contact with as well as the Litany.

Chapter Three is a discussion on the Pictish people and what life would have been like for them back then. They freely admit that there is precious little in the way records about them, the most they do have being Roman records. So again they set the book during the Roman reign in Britain to maximize what they do have. But there is a sense that the author did her homework on the historical material. Obviously she's not history professor or anything like that but its clear she made the effort to research what she could on the Picts and what their lives were probably like. I'm not a historian of Iron Age Britain either so I can't say how accurate the material is but it does a solid job at building the setting as well as painting the Howlers and their Kinfolk as more than just half-naked, woad-covered, kilt-wearing* wild men and barbarians.

*The book even acknowledges that the first recorded kilts didn't show up until the 1500's, over a thousand years after the Howlers fell.

This chapter also has the possibilities on bringing the White Howlers into the modern day. Unfortunately it is short, amounting to little more than three different ways, Spontaneous Rebirth, the Great Quest and Never Fell, discussed in what amounts to less than a page. Given that one of the selling points on the back of the book is "Ideas for using the White Howlers in a story set in the modern nights" this feels rather sparse. I wasn't expecting a whole chapter around modern White Howlers, as awesome as that could be, but it could have been a bit more there.

Chapter Four is all about the Gifts, Rites, Merits and Flaws, Fetishes, Talens and Totems of the Tribe. They're all pretty interesting and some of them I would like to try out in future, particularly those Gifts, Rites, Merits, Fetishes and Talens tied to ghosts and the dead. And not only do they give us the Lion, the Tribal Totem of the Howlers, but the other major totems of the Tribe and what happened to them after the Howlers fell.

Finally we have the two appendices, sample characters and legendary Howlers. The sample characters are all, again characters during the last age of the White Howlers. Its a standard spread, featuring five characters of each Breed and Auspice. Nothing out of the ordinary for a Tribebook. Though it is kind of strange to see Iron Age characters written up on character sheets with Science and Technology Knowledge Skills on them.

The NPC section is a mixed bag. One hand you get a Howler legend that disappeared during the Great Winter, a recent war leader who's been waging war on the Romans for years and Morag herself and they're interesting enough. But they're all we get which is disappointing. I would have liked to have seen a couple more characters such as the three Garou in the opening comic.

All and all a pretty good supplement for WtA with plenty for stuff for WtA Storytellers and Players to mine for their games. There aren't really any problems with the book save that there could have been more but what is present is quite excellent.

Is it worth picking up? If you're a WtA fan, definitely. Even if you never use the Iron Age setting in the book, there are ideas in the book that could be useful in your games. If you're not... well you probably won't find the Tribebook as useful but there are aspects of it that can be harvested for non-Werewolf and New World of Darkness games.
 
The Panopticon game got me thinking about what Primal Utility 6+ would be like. What would the archspheres of human effort and endeavor be capable of, particularly in light of Primal Ventures and the ability of archPrime to create nodes and mana floods?
 
Just a little heads up, the Kickstarter for V20 Dark Ages has just gone live!



EDIT: And in just over two hours it was funded! Now it is time to watch the stretch goals!

mastigos said:
The Panopticon game got me thinking about what Primal Utility 6+ would be like. What would the archspheres of human effort and endeavor be capable of, particularly in light of Primal Ventures and the ability of archPrime to create nodes and mana floods?
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Hard to say. I personally try to avoid 6+ dot range for Magic just because it comes crazy powerful and difficult to handle.
 
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So, I recently looked up Princess: The Hopeful. It's pretty interesting!

But I want to know if anyone else thinks the Grace and Troubadour Callings/X-splats seem a bit redundant with each other.

Both seek to inspire, but one is focused on the end (inspire someone to face their problems) and the other is focused on the means (inspire through art). Wouldn't a Troubadour care to inspire someone through art to face their problems? Couldn't a Grace use art to inspire someone?

Graces have affinity for Bless, which empowers someone's ability to act, but doesn't actually inspire them to act. Troubadours have affinity for Inspire, which incites people to act. But the Graces are the ones concerned with provoking action, and Troubadours are the ones concerned with merely lifting and empowering others' spirits?

Further, if Graces are concerned with people's personal problems, shouldn't they have an affinity for Learn Charms, which let you delve into another's secrets? It seems more relevant to their role than Govern.

Govern's list of Charms starts with the ability to create magical artwork (isn't that better placed under Inspire, where Troubadours can get it?), then moves onto a Learn-type Charm (see the unseen), then a Blessing-type Charm (give others energy), then a Restore-type Charm (exorcism and purification)... I'm not seeing the relevancy here. Or coherency.


Should I make a separate thread for discussing this fan-made spinoff?
 
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Sunder the Gold said:
So, I recently looked up Princess: The Hopeful. It's pretty interesting!

But I want to know if anyone else thinks the Grace and Troubadour Callings/X-splats seem a bit redundant with each other.

Both seek to inspire, but one is focused on the end (inspire someone to face their problems) and the other is focused on the means (inspire through art). Wouldn't a Troubadour care to inspire someone through art to face their problems? Couldn't a Grace use art to inspire someone?

Graces have affinity for Bless, which empowers someone's ability to act, but doesn't actually inspire them to act. Troubadours have affinity for Inspire, which incites people to act. But the Graces are the ones concerned with provoking action, and Troubadours are the ones concerned with merely lifting and empowering others' spirits?

Further, if Graces are concerned with people's personal problems, shouldn't they have an affinity for Learn Charms, which let you delve into another's secrets? It seems more relevant to their role than Govern.

Govern's list of Charms starts with the ability to create magical artwork (isn't that better placed under Inspire, where Troubadours can get it?), then moves onto a Learn-type Charm (see the unseen), then a Blessing-type Charm (give others energy), then a Restore-type Charm (exorcism and purification)... I'm not seeing the relevancy here. Or coherency.


Should I make a separate thread for discussing this fan-made spinoff?
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If you'd like you can ask the devs. This is the current dev thread.
 
Princess: the Hopeful, an interesting game about playing magical girls trying desperately to hold onto hope without despairing in the new World of Darkness, ruined by people who wanted a game about befriending moeblobs~
 
I'm still very confused about what changed and how and when. Princess had a... troubled production. People left, people joined, people fought. I'm not even sure in which way the current vision of the game is different from the one it had back when I played it, but I don't even know what it was then.
 
Basically what Omicron said. As a project Princess has basically had different people coming in and out of it like clockwork, all with different visions of the game, so much so that trying to pin a central theme on it all the way through its development cycle is impossible.
 
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Hmm.

It's not reassuring to me that the only inspiration listed for the Grace Calling is Hinamori Amu, from Shugo Chara. Seems like there should be a few other sources of inspiration around which to base an entire X-splat. Especially given the existence of the Troubadours.
 
Sunder the Gold said:
Grace and Troubadour
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The way I've seen it explained is that one is a teacher(focused on teaching/instructing) and the other is a muse(focused on inspiration). Don't know which is which though.

Currently there are three versions of the game;
Pre-GMC, Dreams, and Vocation.

The Vocation version has rules for social interaction between groups while the author of the Dreams version believes that all social interaction should be between individuals.
That and a few crunchy/fluffy bits in the charms, and the downplaying(read; ignoring and pretending they don't exist) of male characters in one version are the main differences.



edit: And look what happens eleven minutes after I said that there are three versions.
 
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I'm actually playing in a Princess campaign (my first exposure to WoD! Also one of the few campaigns where I'm not the GM :D) and I'm having fun.

It's also a complete mess.

On a mechanical level, the Callings are kind of forced, the Charm categories are ridiculously arbitrary and the default XP rules makes for some weird optimization choices at chargen, along with making it tough to get access to your magical fighty unless you zoomed directly in on them at chargen. The fighty is very straightforward and not terribly interesting, and small parties risk getting mildly locked out of a lot of useful Charms because of XP taxes on non-affinity Charms.

It also uses the interesting, but broken and badly implemented Aspiration and Condition system from the GMC rules update, which creates more nasty incentives because certain Charms are XP generators.

The fluff is probably worse. It's completely incoherent, postulating ridiculous levels of random complexity in various systems - implausible levels - and the Darkness is dull, dull, dull. And incoherent too, by the way. Likewise the Light either gets a ton of nasty implications, needs a ridiculous degree of unintentional complexity, or cannot withstand even simple scrutiny.

Then there's the gratuitous Japanese.



I don't want to talk about the bloody gratuitous Japanese.

So yeah... at the end of the day, I can't really recommend using the system. It's just... not that good. It's not all that mahou shoujo either, though it tries.

If you know how to hotfix mechanics, it's not terrible though.
 
Sunder the Gold said:
You have any specific complaints that might be enlightening?
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The guy who is is currently basically running the show at one point insisted that the Queen of Mirrors just be a cute girl who doesn't have any friends because of she has low self-esteem (she looks in the mirror, see, and doesn't like what she sees), and hates the world because of this, but desperately wants friends.

In short, a boring moeblob. This was apparently a pattern and not just a one-off. (Said brilliant writer also wanted it to be codified in the rules that "Queens have a default dice pool of 20 dice for anything" in the rules, or words to that effect. Yay Elder Syndrome!)
 
Eukie said:
The guy who is is currently basically running the show at one point insisted that the Queen of Mirrors just be a cute girl who doesn't have any friends because of she has low self-esteem (she looks in the mirror, see, and doesn't like what she sees), and hates the world because of this, but desperately wants friends.

In short, a boring moeblob. This was apparently a pattern and not just a one-off. (Said brilliant writer also wanted it to be codified in the rules that "Queens have a default dice pool of 20 dice for anything" in the rules, or words to that effect. Yay Elder Syndrome!)
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Technically there are two people "running the show", that's why Dreams and Vocation are two separate things.

Queens are power-stat 10 and can't leave the Dreamworld.
Also, anyone who actually manages to get to that level has to fight Archmages, the God Machine, and who knows what else to make sure that the Nobility aren't retconned out of existence.
 
Eukie said:
The guy who is is currently basically running the show at one point insisted that the Queen of Mirrors just be a cute girl who doesn't have any friends because of she has low self-esteem (she looks in the mirror, see, and doesn't like what she sees), and hates the world because of this, but desperately wants friends.

In short, a boring moeblob. This was apparently a pattern and not just a one-off. (Said brilliant writer also wanted it to be codified in the rules that "Queens have a default dice pool of 20 dice for anything" in the rules, or words to that effect. Yay Elder Syndrome!)
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The Queens are weird.

I kind of sort of like the idea of them, but Invocations and how it all gets tied up in a sense of objective moral rightness along with the Light instantly hits a lot of my "nope" buttons (I ended up going Courtless because I didn't like any of them enough), and they're kind of boring because they don't really do things, yet it's so easy to drag them in as Mentor NPCs which is kind of "uh" to me.

They're simultaneously ridiculously accessible yet terribly useless while being supposedly supremely powerful and they have broad moral authority, and I end up being pretty apathetic towards them.

Fortunately they're not all that important to the game, so they're easily ignored.

The problems with the Darkness are much, much worse. The Darkness isn't even Sailor Moon villain tier. Sailor Moon villains had complexity. The Dethroned are shitty Madoka Witch ripoffs. The Darkness operates purely on malice. Its purpose is malice, its means are malicious. It's so ridiculously blatantly EVIL with capital letters that I have to actually struggle to not just go "meh" when dealing with it.

And yet the system isn't calibrated well for Monster of the Week style scenarios either!

I'm growing increasingly convinced that Princess would be best as a crossover with something like Vampire, using Vampire as the "enemy" splat. Ignoring that Princess is a load of semi-broken mechanics anyway.
 
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Well, I remember back when Madoka just appeared, me and my friend decided to write RPG for it. We kinda got a snag about how to properly represent the power, while keeping it crunchy, since, well, that's one of the things I dislike about Charms in Princess. My friend wants something like Charm, keyed-off on Skills - I want something like Genius' Wonder. 'course, then Magical Burst appear, so we kinda abandon it :D

Anyway. Yeah, agree with all points: Great idea, not exactly good execution. Except about Darkness, perhaps? I mean, WoD seems like Grey vs Black setting, so having blatantly Evil anti-side seems per the course.

Though it kinda limits the possibilities, but eh.
 
I see no problem with the darkness being capital-E EVIL for the same reason I have no issues with Mage's Abyss being evil, or vampire's Strix. Having a purely evil/malicious opponent is perfectly acceptable for a nWoD splat.

That said, if you're gonna have a pure-evil entity/object/faction, you can't have them be the only source of conflict, since it doesn't really fit like the WoD themes. I suspect that the game might benefit from having the darkness be something defeatable at a low-level (i.e. clean out this house, get a stalker-monster away from the school, etc.) but too capable of growth and spread to be easily dealt with on a large level. That way, you have a generic class of weak, low-level enemies to provide a general source of conflict that unites the Princesses, while leaving plenty of space for differences in how you think they should be dealt with in the long run. That way, the game's more like Vampire, in that while you may fight monsters sometimes (Darkness/Draugr), the real conflicts are between you and those like you.

Also, with regards to differing thematics between different interpretations of the splat, I once heard it put something like this: Some people want it to be Magical Girls in the World of Darkness, some people want it to be Magical Girls as imagined by the World of Darkness, and some people want it the be the World of Darkness as a magical girl show. They may look similar and have similar ideas for how the game should look at a low-level, but they're gonna disagree fundamentally on what the themes should be. The people who want it to be WoD as a magical girl show are gonna want the game to show that hope is truly the most powerful thing and being a magical girl is awesome, while those who want it to be Magical Girls designed by the WoD are gonna want it to show that hope is powerful but won't help you on its own, and being a magical girl means that you're a child soldier called by some ancient power to fight monsters until you die.
 
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