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Dumpshock Forums _ General Gaming _ World Of Darkness
Posted by: SinN Sep 9 2007, 02:34 PM
Can anyone tell me about the game "World of Darkness?"
A kid in my group really wants to try it. And is horrible at explaining anything. So Id like to know more.
Posted by: Doctor Funkenstein Sep 9 2007, 08:51 PM
The setting and even the rules are decent in theory. It just gets a bad rap from the types of players it typically attracts (emo goth kids and elitist roleplayers). Several of the expansion books are the same way, catering to those types of players, and they usually come out really, really bad as a result.
The World of Darkness itself is just our own world, set a few years in the very near future, where the supernatural wage wars and play politics in the shadow of humanity. Vampires, werewolves, mages, ghosts, faeries... all living amongst humanity, each having their own issues to deal with, and each interacting with the others in completely different ways.
One theme that runs through each game is that each "race" is split up into multiple "subraces," each with their own unique abilities, general outlooks, and themes.
Like any game, it's worth trying at least once. Thumb through one of the books at a bookstore and see if it sounds interesting. If it does, give it a try and see how you and your group like it. In the end, that's all that matters.
Posted by: Kagetenshi Sep 9 2007, 10:01 PM
| QUOTE (Doctor Funkenstein @ Sep 9 2007, 03:51 PM) |
| […] the rules are decent in theory. |
nWoD, maybe—I haven't looked at the numbers involved. oWoD can without contradiction be said to be awful rules-wise (it can create situations which produce essentially the same odds of success for everyone no matter how few or many dice they're rolling, among other things).
~J
Posted by: fistandantilus3.0 Sep 9 2007, 10:56 PM
| QUOTE (SinN) |
| Can anyone tell me about the game "World of Darkness?" A kid in my group really wants to try it. And is horrible at explaining anything. So Id like to know more. |
SinN , I know you, I know your group. I have my suspiciouns on who the 'kid' is. For your sake and his, just shoot the kid. In the face. For money.
Posted by: bibliophile20 Sep 9 2007, 11:08 PM
| QUOTE (fistandantilus3.0) | ||
SinN , I know you, I know your group. I have my suspiciouns on who the 'kid' is. For your sake and his, just shoot the kid. In the face. For money. |
Ouch. What did he do to merit such a response?
Posted by: Zhan Shi Sep 9 2007, 11:53 PM
Just be warned. Some of the older White Wolf books, especially those with the "Black Dog Game Factory" imprint, can contain material which is quite revolting. I still shudder when I think of "Clanbook: Baali", "Clanbook: Tzimsce", and "Path of Screams".
Posted by: fistandantilus3.0 Sep 10 2007, 12:32 AM
It's not so much the game it's self. Or the player him self. It's just that ending it all would be a better alternative than putting the two of them together. There's one thing that will instantly make me dislike a new SR player. If they sit down, start working out their new character idea, ,and utter the words "can I be a vampire". I'm not going to say it's wrong, but it's a huge pet peeve of mine.
Posted by: Adam Sep 10 2007, 12:49 AM
Bear in mind that in the "new" World of Darkness, there's a core WoD book that allows you to play humans in the setting; if you want to play Vampires, then you grab the Vampire book, etc. I haven't played nWoD, but I like the core book a great deal and think it's quite well put together [and some of the art is really, really nice.]
Posted by: Fortune Sep 10 2007, 12:51 AM
| QUOTE (fistandantilus3.0) |
| There's one thing that will instantly make me dislike a new SR player ... |
Well, I now know what my next character concept for one of your games will be.
Posted by: Wounded Ronin Sep 10 2007, 01:29 AM
| QUOTE (Zhan Shi) |
| Just be warned. Some of the older White Wolf books, especially those with the "Black Dog Game Factory" imprint, can contain material which is quite revolting. I still shudder when I think of "Clanbook: Baali", "Clanbook: Tzimsce", and "Path of Screams". |
Hmm. Well, I've never read that, but I frequently check www.xanga.com/rpgpundit and there the guy writes about how White Wolf issued in an era where people took up RPGs in order to play at pursuing some kind of artistic of deep intellectual endeavor, and that their shallow snobbery directly lead to the phenomenon of malodorous socially helpless people (such as myself) flocking to RPGs for a sense of self-worth whereas sociable and well adjusted people began to ridicule RPG players and move away from the hobby.
Posted by: hyzmarca Sep 10 2007, 02:12 PM
The nWoD morality system is completely untenable, but other than that the system isn't bad.
The morality system is untenable because a character who has committed no crime other than stealing a loaf of bread in order to feed starving orphans and rolled badly is morally equivalent to a person who has committed no crime other than flaying a child alive because he wanted to turn the kid's skin into a nifty leather jacket and rolled badly. In fact, with good rolls a tailor who habitually slaughters children for their skins can end up having a higher morality score than the nun who shoplifts to feed orphans has (though this is unlikely). There is also the small fact that characters can gain derangements as morality points are lost, meaning that it is possible to gain a debilitating mental illness because you forgot to pay for a 25 cent pack of chewing gum once.
If you make some adjustments to the morality system, there is some good stuff and some bad stuff, as there is with any RPG. The rules generally encourage roleplaying over rollplaying, with specifically codified personality traits that you are rewarded for playing to (a wrathfull person can regain willpower points for getting angry and beating the crap out of someone). This is rather obvious when scanning through the main book, which has more text than is necessary and far fewer tables than would be useful. The combat system appears to be complete, but I can't be sure since I've never actually played it.
There is a great deal of similarity between the nWoD dice mechanics and the SR4 dice mechanics. If you know SR4, then the learning curve will not be terribly great, though some of the differences are rather striking.
Posted by: Grinder Sep 10 2007, 02:29 PM
| QUOTE (Fortune) | ||
Well, I now know what my next character concept for one of your games will be. |
Aw, the cute old couple again.
Posted by: Kagetenshi Sep 10 2007, 03:12 PM
| QUOTE (hyzmarca) |
| The morality system is untenable because a character who has committed no crime other than stealing a loaf of bread in order to feed starving orphans and rolled badly is morally equivalent to a person who has committed no crime other than flaying a child alive because he wanted to turn the kid's skin into a nifty leather jacket and rolled badly. |
Man, that's just horrible. Saying something as minor as that is on par with theft?
~J
Posted by: SinN Sep 12 2007, 06:39 AM
| QUOTE (fistandantilus3.0 @ Sep 9 2007, 07:32 PM) |
| It's not so much the game it's self. Or the player him self. It's just that ending it all would be a better alternative than putting the two of them together. There's one thing that will instantly make me dislike a new SR player. If they sit down, start working out their new character idea, ,and utter the words "can I be a vampire". I'm not going to say it's wrong, but it's a huge pet peeve of mine. |
What Fisty is trying to explain is not about me. We're good friends and wen he used to live in utah, He was my GM. After he moved, I started up my own group and became the GM. One member of my group I knew from high school and is obsessed with vampires. ALL of his charactors are either vampires, or some kind of "Dark Outsider." He makes the same fraggin thing and gives a diffrent name every time! Needless to say, it drives me insane.
Fistandtantalus3.0 came for a visit, and for old time sake, I decided to run a game for them. Invited the whole group over. Most of them knew Fisty from when he lived here. The player in question had not. That was his first mistake. Long story short, it got to him worse than it got to me.
Thanks for all the info guys. Very important. I think Doc is right though. Im gonna try it atleast once. Most likely be the only time I ever do. Ill let you know how it goes.
Posted by: Wounded Ronin Sep 12 2007, 07:50 AM
| QUOTE (SinN) | ||
What Fisty is trying to explain is not about me. We're good friends and wen he used to live in utah, He was my GM. After he moved, I started up my own group and became the GM. One member of my group I knew from high school and is obsessed with vampires. ALL of his charactors are either vampires, or some kind of "Dark Outsider." He makes the same fraggin thing and gives a diffrent name every time! Needless to say, it drives me insane. Fistandtantalus3.0 came for a visit, and for old time sake, I decided to run a game for them. Invited the whole group over. Most of them knew Fisty from when he lived here. The player in question had not. That was his first mistake. Long story short, it got to him worse than it got to me. Thanks for all the info guys. Very important. I think Doc is right though. Im gonna try it atleast once. Most likely be the only time I ever do. Ill let you know how it goes. |
VIDEO!!!!!!
Posted by: SinN Sep 13 2007, 05:45 PM
Oh god, if only Id thought to film some of our sessions. You'd be laughing for hours.
Posted by: Adarael Sep 13 2007, 06:36 PM
The morality system is like the PA/Notoriety/Street Cred system in SR4 - you're better off playing it by ear and using the little chart as a guideline. In a couple of the books they actually state that if people are abusing the morality system, be sure to slam them down 2-3 points without even a roll.
IMO, some of them work better than others. Wisdom for Mages is a lot better than Humanity for vampires in terms of sensibility, especially after the lead dev went on record and said, "Yeah, all those 'sins' about hurting people with magic only count if you're doing it maliciously. Get mugged, punk a bitch, and you're still all good."
Posted by: Kagetenshi Sep 13 2007, 06:41 PM
| QUOTE (Adarael) |
| In a couple of the books they actually state that if people are abusing the morality system, be sure to slam them down 2-3 points without even a roll. |
Which is in itself a pretty good argument against playing the game.
~J
Posted by: Adarael Sep 13 2007, 06:49 PM
I fail to see the connection between the two. That's like suggesting that since SR4 uses device ratings as a guideline for matrix stats, even though sometimes it doesn't make any sense (Stealth RFID tags having more signal than a bottom-level commlink), the game shouldn't be played under any circumstance.
That said, Morality ratings actually play very little part in Mage, which is by far the best of the nWoD. Which may, I admit, contribute to my liking it.
Also, on the subject of RPGPundit: he SAYS a lot of things. He says a lot of things in very good language for convincing people. He also doesn't do a damn thing to support most of his arguments, and takes it as true that everyone agrees with his assumptions. Take the 'whiny WoD players chased gamers away from RPGs.' I've never met a SINGLE person that this is true of. I've heard of people getting scared away by a WoD LARP, but that's because it was a LARP, and they're scary. In fact, I know more people who now game because of WoD than any other game than D&D.
(WoD is followed closely by Shadowrun.)
Posted by: Kagetenshi Sep 13 2007, 07:02 PM
| QUOTE (Adarael) |
| I fail to see the connection between the two. That's like suggesting that since SR4 uses device ratings as a guideline for matrix stats, even though sometimes it doesn't make any sense (Stealth RFID tags having more signal than a bottom-level commlink), the game shouldn't be played under any circumstance. |
Not remotely, though SR4 does do this with the magic-user edges. No, the warning sign is the "this is broken, we're not going to fix it, just slap the player with an arbitrary penalty if they actually think about how the rules work". Numbers that don't make sense are a bad sign, but aren't by themselves a sign of developer failure to care about good rules.
~J
Posted by: Adarael Sep 13 2007, 07:04 PM
To be fair, that's always been a hallmark of WW outside of Exalted. And even INSIDE Exalted a lot of the time. The unfortunate thing is that you're suggesting throwing the baby out with the bathwater, if I may use a cliched turn of phrase. The core rules and settings for the nWoD are quite nice, very interesting, and lend themselves to a lot of possibility. I personally like using the nWoD rules for Delta Green instead of Delta Green.
But you're never gonna catch me saying it's perfect. Jesus, the Armory book alone gave me hives. I don't think they did ANY playtesting on that shit.
Posted by: Dashifen Sep 13 2007, 08:27 PM
| QUOTE (Adarael) |
| [...] I've heard of people getting scared away by a WoD LARP, but that's because it was a LARP, and they're scary [...] |
I resemble that remark!
Posted by: fistandantilus3.0 Sep 13 2007, 10:02 PM
| QUOTE (Wounded Ronin) |
| VIDEO!!!!!! |
Sinn's leaving out the worst part. The player in question was playing a character that wanted to be a vampire, and was looking for someone to make him into one. Well, my wife and I both have vampire hunter characters that have managed to survive through way more than they should have, and Sinn asked us to play those two in particular.
We only threatened him direclty once, but apparently, we should have done more. Sinn told me that a few weeks later, the character did indeed become a vampire. So Sinn asked us to send him copies of our character sheets. Still waiting on that end result.
I think I'm a bad person for it. But at least I know that Sinn is worst.
Posted by: farrenj Sep 14 2007, 12:44 AM
| QUOTE (hyzmarca @ Sep 10 2007, 09:12 AM) |
| The nWoD morality system is completely untenable, but other than that the system isn't bad. The morality system is untenable because a character who has committed no crime other than stealing a loaf of bread in order to feed starving orphans and rolled badly is morally equivalent to a person who has committed no crime other than flaying a child alive because he wanted to turn the kid's skin into a nifty leather jacket and rolled badly. |
You don't seem to be very familiar with the morality rules. First, a person stealing to feed their family /could/ go down in morality, from 7 to 6, where humanity 7 is the average "good" person, on a 10 point scale. I won't say that's not possible, it is. But if that is their only sin they'll only ever go down to 6. Period. Where as a person who flays children alive and makes them into clothing is on a quick trip to morality 0. You make the system sound much more unreasonable than it actually is. You even forget to mention that the reasons for the sin are factored in and considered in awarding bonus dice or taking away dice for the degeneration roll.
Posted by: Kagetenshi Sep 14 2007, 01:35 AM
| QUOTE (farrenj) |
| You make the system sound much more unreasonable than it actually is. |
You say this, but you just said:
| QUOTE |
| First, a person stealing to feed their family /could/ go down in morality, from 7 to 6, where humanity 7 is the average "good" person, on a 10 point scale. I won't say that's not possible, it is. But if that is their only sin they'll only ever go down to 6. Period. Where as a person who flays children alive and makes them into clothing is on a quick trip to morality 0. |
So which is it? Is the system not unreasonable or is it?
~J
Posted by: farrenj Sep 14 2007, 01:37 AM
I don't see the connection between your two statements, I'm saying the system treats murder and brutal cruelty more harshly than theft.
Posted by: Kagetenshi Sep 14 2007, 03:06 AM
Right. But you also implied that the system isn't that unreasonable. One of these statements must be in error.
~J
Posted by: Wounded Ronin Sep 14 2007, 03:23 AM
| QUOTE (Adarael) |
| In a couple of the books they actually state that if people are abusing the morality system, be sure to slam them down 2-3 points without even a roll. |
See, I find that stupid and offensive to the extreme. That's just them flinging a shovel of horse shit in my face and calling it "rules". If you're going to publish a ruleset and make me spend money on it I want the ruleset to actually work. Not be totally dysfunctional and depend on the GM being heavy handed and arbitrary when it appears to not be working out. What did they think I'm paying for? The *concept* of being a moody vampire? Do I need to pay them to even come up with such a cliched idea? No! I'm buying the rules. And if the rules don't work at all that's making me pay to eat a hamburger bun filled with impacted three week old shit.
Posted by: Adarael Sep 14 2007, 03:45 AM
It's one rule in a ruleset that includes vastly more than a morality mechanic. If one mechanic is enough to spoil an entire ruleset for you, you are among the pickiest of gamers I've ever met. I have yet to find a rules system where I didn't find something that was flawed and needed to be overruled or fixed.
In terms of Farrenj's refutation, Kagetenshi, here's what he's saying:
Let's assume we have Joe and Bob. Joe steals things to feed his family. Bob eats babies, because he hates humanlings and thinks they're tasty. Let's assume Bob and Joe indulge in their respective crimes once a week for 2 months. This cements Joe's rep as a petty crook, and Bob's rep as a serial killer.
Joe has the virtue of Charity - he's a family man, and only wants the best for them. His vice is Greed - he likes taking shortcuts in his pursuit of wealth.
Bob has the virtue of Faith - he thinks he's taking the babies to a better place inside his soul by eating them. His vice is Gluttony - they also taste great!
So we get both of them to check for degeneration eight times for the eight instances of their crime.
Joe: Joe engages is both burgulary and shoplifting, so he has a chance to drop in morality twice. His actions will never force his morality lower than 5, because he will never commit a crime intentionally that is worse on the morality chart than burgulary.
Bob: Bob does whatever it takes to eat them babies, culminating with his own culinary escapades. Every roll is treated as a '1' on the chart - "heinous acts of perversion."
Both characters can be said to gain a slight bonus on their degneration rolls because of their virtues. Joe gains a +2 as assigned by me, because Joe ONLY steals to feed his family. He doesn't get a +3 because he could probably shoplift enough if he wasn't so damn lazy. Bob only gets a +1, because while he's faithful to his wacko creed of helping the tasty babies, a lot of it has to do with the taste and not a religious thing.
I'm gonna actually bust out some dice, now. Here are the results:
Joe's 2 months in successes, rolling 5 dice, which is the die amount for the level of the sin he's comitting plus virtue bonus: 4, 1, 2, 2, 1, 2, 2, 1
Final result: 7 morality. Joe does feel bad about stealing to feed his baby and his wife. But he knows he's doing what he has to, in order to make sure they live how they deserve to in a cruel world.
Bob's 2 months in successes, rolling 2 dice, which is the die amount for the level of the sin he's comitting plus virtue bonus: 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 1, 2, 0.
Final result: Morality drop to 2. Bob occasionally had a pang or two of guilt about murdering the babies, but really it's all fun and games. Now he only pauses for killing babies, genocide, serial rape, et cetera. Murder, random acts of violence and rape... they're just like going to the store for him.
So we can see that the system does work as it's supposed to. Really what we're seeing here is that while the system works as intended, it doesn't work as well as some players would like it to. That doesn't mean the game is broken and is a piece of crap, it means that maybe you'll have to houserule something.
Posted by: Critias Sep 14 2007, 06:03 AM
The problem -- the ENTIRE problem -- with the World of Darkness rulebooks is that they beat you over the head with the fact it's for "role players, not roll players," and that's their gigantic excuse for every rule that sucks. They've marketed their game that way, built up a following that firmly believes RPing is all about angst and inter-party-politics (and can never, ever, be about combat or anything else with dice involved), and they've convinced all these fans of theirs that the setting, not the rules, is what matters...
...which gives them carte blanche to fuck up whatever rules they want to, consequence-free.
WoD has always had a cool setting. They've always had interesting (some good, some bad) artwork, tons of mood and character and imagination, and their games have always made me want to roll up my sleeves and dig in. But as soon as I do, I'm reminded that (1) their rules don't matter to them at all, so gameplay sucks, and (2) in order to play any WoD game, I've got to be surrounded by the type of people that want to play a WoD game.
I've got a ton of their books. A ton. Between my wife and I, I'd say over a thousand bucks worth, easily (most bought used, mind you). I can sit and just read their Clan books for hours. But then I get to the "crunch" and there's so much shit that just doesn't make sense, it makes me want to burn the whole pile of them.
Posted by: Adarael Sep 14 2007, 06:57 AM
Well, that's a point I'd never dream of arguing against, since it pretty much hits the nail on the head with regards to why I have a love-hate relationship with most of their games. I mean, the fact that the oWoD combat system was actively designed to discourage combat by making it a major pain in the ass is seriously one of the more retarded design decisions anyone's ever made.
Mage is about the only one I'll regularly open up and ooh and aah over, although I do love me some Wraith. I dunno, Kafkaesque dead guys amuse me.
Posted by: hyzmarca Sep 14 2007, 07:21 AM
| QUOTE (Adarael @ Sep 13 2007, 10:45 PM) |
| It's one rule in a ruleset that includes vastly more than a morality mechanic. If one mechanic is enough to spoil an entire ruleset for you, you are among the pickiest of gamers I've ever met. I have yet to find a rules system where I didn't find something that was flawed and needed to be overruled or fixed. In terms of Farrenj's refutation, Kagetenshi, here's what he's saying: Let's assume we have Joe and Bob. Joe steals things to feed his family. Bob eats babies, because he hates humanlings and thinks they're tasty. Let's assume Bob and Joe indulge in their respective crimes once a week for 2 months. This cements Joe's rep as a petty crook, and Bob's rep as a serial killer. Joe has the virtue of Charity - he's a family man, and only wants the best for them. His vice is Greed - he likes taking shortcuts in his pursuit of wealth. Bob has the virtue of Faith - he thinks he's taking the babies to a better place inside his soul by eating them. His vice is Gluttony - they also taste great! So we get both of them to check for degeneration eight times for the eight instances of their crime. Joe: Joe engages is both burgulary and shoplifting, so he has a chance to drop in morality twice. His actions will never force his morality lower than 5, because he will never commit a crime intentionally that is worse on the morality chart than burgulary. Bob: Bob does whatever it takes to eat them babies, culminating with his own culinary escapades. Every roll is treated as a '1' on the chart - "heinous acts of perversion." Both characters can be said to gain a slight bonus on their degneration rolls because of their virtues. Joe gains a +2 as assigned by me, because Joe ONLY steals to feed his family. He doesn't get a +3 because he could probably shoplift enough if he wasn't so damn lazy. Bob only gets a +1, because while he's faithful to his wacko creed of helping the tasty babies, a lot of it has to do with the taste and not a religious thing. I'm gonna actually bust out some dice, now. Here are the results: Joe's 2 months in successes, rolling 5 dice, which is the die amount for the level of the sin he's comitting plus virtue bonus: 4, 1, 2, 2, 1, 2, 2, 1 Final result: 7 morality. Joe does feel bad about stealing to feed his baby and his wife. But he knows he's doing what he has to, in order to make sure they live how they deserve to in a cruel world. Bob's 2 months in successes, rolling 2 dice, which is the die amount for the level of the sin he's comitting plus virtue bonus: 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 1, 2, 0. Final result: Morality drop to 2. Bob occasionally had a pang or two of guilt about murdering the babies, but really it's all fun and games. Now he only pauses for killing babies, genocide, serial rape, et cetera. Murder, random acts of violence and rape... they're just like going to the store for him. So we can see that the system does work as it's supposed to. Really what we're seeing here is that while the system works as intended, it doesn't work as well as some players would like it to. That doesn't mean the game is broken and is a piece of crap, it means that maybe you'll have to houserule something. |
The orginal example was a character who flayed a kid alive and made his skin into a coat once. Not someone who did so habitually. There is a lack of proportion so long as the number of major transgressions is small.
However, it should be noted that a realistically roleplayed serial killer (with reasonable periods of time between kills) could maintain a steady 8 on his morality rating without a GM fiat smackdown.
There is also the issue of Moral Relativity to consider. If the character comes from a culture in which the eating of babies is the highest possible good, why should he be penalized for selflessly striving for that good?
Which is why I generally hate morality systems in the first place, except for D&D since it does actually allow you to murder babies for the forces of Good.
Posted by: nezumi Sep 14 2007, 12:31 PM
Yum, babies.
As an aside, and not to pick a big fight, how does the D&D morality system support anything but confusion?
Posted by: Kagetenshi Sep 14 2007, 12:56 PM
| QUOTE (Adarael) |
| In terms of Farrenj's refutation, Kagetenshi, here's what he's saying: Let's assume we have Joe and Bob. Joe steals things to feed his family. Bob eats babies, because he hates humanlings and thinks they're tasty. Let's assume Bob and Joe indulge in their respective crimes once a week for 2 months. This cements Joe's rep as a petty crook, and Bob's rep as a serial killer. |
So noted.
| QUOTE |
| Joe: Joe engages is both burgulary and shoplifting, so he has a chance to drop in morality twice. His actions will never force his morality lower than 5, because he will never commit a crime intentionally that is worse on the morality chart than burgulary. Bob: Bob does whatever it takes to eat them babies, culminating with his own culinary escapades. Every roll is treated as a '1' on the chart - "heinous acts of perversion." |
Right, so the system treats Bob's devotion to his art as worse than Joe's vile misappropriation of the property of another. We've confirmed the unreasonableness of the system.
| QUOTE |
| I'm gonna actually bust out some dice, now. |
Not generally a good idea for rules discussions—calculating some odds and expected results is a much better approach.
~J
Posted by: eidolon Sep 14 2007, 02:30 PM
| QUOTE (Wounded Ronin) |
| If you're going to publish a ruleset and make me spend money on it I want the ruleset to actually work. Not be totally dysfunctional and depend on the GM being heavy handed and arbitrary when it appears to not be working out. What did they think I'm paying for? |
Wait...do you actually own any role playing game books, then?
Posted by: hyzmarca Sep 14 2007, 04:22 PM
| QUOTE (nezumi @ Sep 14 2007, 07:31 AM) |
| As an aside, and not to pick a big fight, how does the D&D morality system support anything but confusion? |
Whether or not something is Good or Evil is clearly printed in the book and Killing Evil is always a Good thing. So Paladins kill Kobold babies and it's perfectly alright.
Posted by: Moon-Hawk Sep 14 2007, 04:26 PM
| QUOTE (hyzmarca) | ||
Whether or not something is Good or Evil is clearly printed in the book and Killing Evil is always a Good thing. So Paladins kill Kobold babies and its perfectly alright. |
Right. See, it doesn't make any sense, but at least it's clear.
Posted by: Adarael Sep 14 2007, 04:59 PM
Hyz: Yes, moral relativity is always something to consider. But that's why the system isn't perfect, it's just a guideline. Some of the devs have gone on record answering questions like that and basically have said, "Intent is more important than result. If you kill someone to save them, your morality score is fine." So I guess they aren't blind to the simplicity of their system and all it doesn't take into account. I didn't say I liked the rule, I just said that as far as those kinds of mechanics go, it works okay.
Kagetenshi: Okay, I gather that you're either making a joke or trying to make some kind of point about the moral relativities of theft and murder-as-art, but I'm missing it. I'm sorry.
Posted by: Wounded Ronin Sep 15 2007, 12:39 AM
| QUOTE (eidolon) | ||
Wait...do you actually own any role playing game books, then? |
Let me clarify a little more what I was trying to say. Yes, in any RPG system it is typical that there are at least a couple rules that don't work. But White Wolf distinguishes itself in constantly telling you that the rules easily break and in that case the storyteller needs to step in arbitrarily and tell the player that he or she can't do something defined by the rule. I've read a couple of WW sourcebooks back in the day and more than any other sourcebooks I've read I found repeated statements in them to the effect of, "these rules are easily exploitable to create silly situations, but only a lowly twink would deign to do such a thing, so as the storyteller you just need to step in whenever you feel like it to rectify situations you don't like as defined by the rules."
That's just crap rules, then. I don't want to buy a set of rules but then be told repeatedly by the game designer that the rules I just bought break down with so much ease that I might as well throw them out and just be a total arbitrary GM.
I mean, hell, why am I buying anything in that case? Back in middle school my friends and I got together and played "Demented D&D" where we just narrated ridiculous situations. The players would work out outlandish solutions to problems and the GM would validate them and create new outlandish situations. For example, I remember that once the GM confronted us with a dragon and I said, "I massage his brain." We all burst out laughing and since then "I massage his brain" had been a running joke in our circle of friends and instant death for any large creature with big ears in our Demented D&D games.
Basically, I don't want to buy a sourcebook that tells me to be a sour-tempered GM in a game of Demented D&D.
Posted by: Narse Oct 3 2007, 09:59 PM
| QUOTE (Critias) |
| ... firmly believes RPing is all about angst and inter-party-politics (and can never, ever, be about combat or anything else with dice involved), ... |
um, have you ever played Werewolf:The Forsaken? 'cause that system tends to emphasize combat more than the others. It's the smash-and-bash white wolf game. I don't know if this is how other people play it, but the last game I was involved a series of problems, most of which were solved by force.
To answer some of the other point brought up in this thread, yes the morality system can be forgiving of occasional slight transgressions, however as you increase the frequency and/or severity of these transgressions the likely hood of loosing morality increases. And also, morality isn't really that important of a mechanic, it affects only a few things in game so you're not really discouraged from playing a serial killer if you want to.
Furthermore the system is really based around GM (storyteller) control of the playing environment. Many major mechanics (such as the 'scene') are GM controlled. I'm not going to debate the merits of such a system but I will say that some people will like it more than others. If you don't like it, don't play the Rules as Written.
On a side note, someone brought up armory. That has to be one of my favorite rules expansions ever! I don't think it has balance problems as long as the gm makes sure to enforce a realistic availability. Keep in mind tho, that it is an ADVANCED weapons expansion and as such has rules for anything the players could potentially encounter, everything from rocks and broken bottles to heavy machine guns, milspec vehicles and Nuclear/biological/chemical weapons. Still it tries to preserve balance such as with the following example from the book: "nuclear weapons may be game breaking".
Posted by: Kagetenshi Oct 3 2007, 10:24 PM
| QUOTE (Narse) |
| If you don't like it, don't play the Rules as Written. |
If you're going to do that, why on earth pay for the rules?
~J
Posted by: eidolon Oct 3 2007, 10:28 PM
That old chestnut? I had forgotten that there were so many people that played every single RPG using every single rule as it was perfectly created by its omniscient author. 
Posted by: Kagetenshi Oct 3 2007, 10:32 PM
The attitude quoted above certainly disincentivizes spending the time to make rules of a quality that would permit that.
~J
Posted by: farrenj Oct 3 2007, 11:06 PM
Umm.. isn't there a thread in the sr4 forum about what people use as houserules? Saying that a system isn't perfect and that sometimes house ruling is ok, maybe even a good idea, does not invalidate the whole thing.
Posted by: Kagetenshi Oct 3 2007, 11:32 PM
It's all a matter of degree—of how much of the core is fundamentally rotten. The amount of houseruling that is a good idea is a good inverse indicator of the quality of the product (but not a perfect one—some systems are fragile enough that the fact that houserules are a bad idea doesn't mean the original rule is good enough). If you're going to straight-up not use the canon rules, why buy them in the first place?
~J
Posted by: Wounded Ronin Oct 4 2007, 04:54 AM
| QUOTE (eidolon) |
| That old chestnut? I had forgotten that there were so many people that played every single RPG using every single rule as it was perfectly created by its omniscient author. |
Well, that's what D&D 1st edition was all about.
Do you want to know what the ultimate TRPG experience was?
Playing D&D 1st edition set in Mystra using an Oriental Adventures character with a weapon proficiency in Karate complete with rolling for the weather every day, the occupants of a tavern being completely rolled randomly according to the tables, random wilderness encounters being completely by the book, all the encumberance rules enforced, the PCs getting taxed for entry whenever possible at towns as per the rules suggest the DM do sometimes, and finally the adventure concludes in Hollow World.
That, my friend, is in fact THE TRUE WAY OF THE JEDI.
Posted by: Moon-Hawk Oct 4 2007, 05:17 PM
| QUOTE (Kagetenshi) |
| It's all a matter of degree—of how much of the core is fundamentally rotten. The amount of houseruling that is a good idea is a good inverse indicator of the quality of the product (but not a perfect one—some systems are fragile enough that the fact that houserules are a bad idea doesn't mean the original rule is good enough). If you're going to straight-up not use the canon rules, why buy them in the first place? ~J |
To put it another way, the ability to house-rule is an important option for any game, since every group is going to be different, but when the ability to house-rule becomes an excuse for poorly written rules then a line has been crossed.
Posted by: Jeremiah Legacy Oct 4 2007, 07:53 PM
| QUOTE (Critias) |
| The problem -- the ENTIRE problem -- with the World of Darkness rulebooks is that they beat you over the head with the fact it's for "role players, not roll players," and that's their gigantic excuse for every rule that sucks. They've marketed their game that way, built up a following that firmly believes RPing is all about angst and inter-party-politics (and can never, ever, be about combat or anything else with dice involved), and they've convinced all these fans of theirs that the setting, not the rules, is what matters... ...which gives them carte blanche to fuck up whatever rules they want to, consequence-free. |
I agree, and there is someone else who agrees.
In a column printed many, many years ago in Dragon magazine (the official "Isn't D&D just cool?" magazine), the writer talked about "games where there is no DM but a storyteller" (emphasis mine) where the emphasis is on telling a story. The author was basically saying that while they were roleplaying in their own way, they lost sight of the fact that it was a game - and a game with dice and randomness. Then they did their obligatory "TSR would never do anything like that" bit.
If you're into that, that's fine. Personally, I prefer RGPs where there is a chance at failure and even the GM has to abide by the rules ... mostly.
Posted by: Ravor Oct 9 2007, 09:26 PM
Although I agree the morality system is rather "odd" (But hey, DnD's Alignment System isn't much better considering that it's an Lawful Good act to slaughter entire villages of women and children provided that belong to the "correct" race.), it's easy enough to ditch and all-in-all personally I really like the nWOD rule-set, it reminds me of Shadowrun Fourth Edition in many ways.
However, with that said, I've come to loathe the core settings over time, with the notable exception of "Mysterious Places" which in my opinion should be required reading for every DM no matter what ruleset he is planning on running.
Posted by: Adam Oct 9 2007, 10:01 PM
| QUOTE (Jeremiah Legacy) |
| I agree, and there is someone else who agrees. In a column printed many, many years ago in Dragon magazine (the official "Isn't D&D just cool?" magazine), the writer talked about "games where there is no DM but a storyteller" (emphasis mine) where the emphasis is on telling a story. The author was basically saying that while they were roleplaying in their own way, they lost sight of the fact that it was a game - and a game with dice and randomness. Then they did their obligatory "TSR would never do anything like that" bit. If you're into that, that's fine. Personally, I prefer RGPs where there is a chance at failure and even the GM has to abide by the rules ... mostly. |
Wow -- that letter was a damned effective piece of FUD, if you're remembering it and its misconceptions years later!
Posted by: hyzmarca Oct 9 2007, 10:42 PM
| QUOTE (Ravor) |
| Although I agree the morality system is rather "odd" (But hey, DnD's Alignment System isn't much better considering that it's an Lawful Good act to slaughter entire villages of women and children provided that belong to the "correct" race.), it's easy enough to ditch and all-in-all personally I really like the nWOD rule-set, it reminds me of Shadowrun Fourth Edition in many ways. However, with that said, I've come to loathe the core settings over time, with the notable exception of "Mysterious Places" which in my opinion should be required reading for every DM no matter what ruleset he is planning on running. |
D&D alignment system makes more since when you come to understand that Good and Evil do not equate to Moral and Immoral. The war between Good and Evil isn't about resisting the temptation to take morally questionable shortcuts or act selfishly. It is, literally, a war. It is a war with fought with swords and bows and in some settings Guns. And the choice between Good and Evil is not a moral choice at all. It is a choice of sides, nothing more and nothing less. And neither side is in any way superior to the other. Evil can be more moral than Good and Good can be genocidal.
Posted by: Kagetenshi Oct 9 2007, 11:09 PM
No, actually, Evil can't be more moral, because moral is defined as what Good does. The problem in that situation is just that Ravor fails to see that the moral choice is to slaughter that village.
~J
Posted by: Wounded Ronin Oct 9 2007, 11:17 PM
| QUOTE (Kagetenshi) |
| No, actually, Evil can't be more moral, because moral is defined as what Good does. The problem in that situation is just that Ravor fails to see that the moral choice is to slaughter that village. ~J |
Heh, I should play a paladin named Mai Lai.
Posted by: GrepZen Oct 10 2007, 03:03 AM
In regards to the D&D alignment: Take a look at the Eberon campaign setting...it has a much better take on alignment & the factionalization there of. You have a mythos and people of all alignments who follow said mythos but, have their own interpretation of how it should be followed. Kind of like real life. It still breaks down around the LG slaughter of the kobold village but thats just one of those paradoxal quagmires based upon changing social mores.
Posted by: Kagetenshi Oct 10 2007, 03:24 AM
Why do you say it breaks down?
~J
Posted by: GrepZen Oct 10 2007, 04:03 AM
That kind of goes into the whole "inherently evil/good genetic pre-destination/disposition" thing unless you are playing strictly by the rules and what the stats book says holds true for all members of the species. Logically a person/monsters character is shaped by its social dynamic & experience. There are exceptions to the norm but, in general an intelligent being doesn't instantly want to eat the tasty hobbit right from birth so killing of said babe by the Lawful Good Paladin of the God of Justice and All Things Nice isn't a very good or moral act in today's terms.
Of course "good" & "Moral" are terms subjective to the periods society & cultural norms.
Posted by: Zhan Shi Oct 10 2007, 04:47 AM
The "Book of Exalted Deeds" goes into much more detail about what constitutes an evil act...at least from a game perspective.
Posted by: GrepZen Oct 10 2007, 05:08 AM
I thought the "Book of Vile Darkness" was much more fun. Of course the rules in both books were pretty much the same differing only in application.
Posted by: Wounded Ronin Oct 10 2007, 10:50 PM
OK, I have thought a lot about Mai Lai the paladin.
Mai Lai should be female because the name sounds a bit feminine in the context of fantasy RPGs. Mai Lai's shtick is, of course, systematically trying to "cleanse" places that have the wrong species living in them. As such, Mai Lai would first generally try to recon a place, sketch a preliminary map, and then plan an assault such that there's nowhere for the defenders to escape and they can be slaughtered to the last individual.
With these objectives in mind Mai Lai is likely to spend a lot of money on hirelings in order to be able to block off areas to the enemy and conduct systematic sweeps. Furthermore, since chopping goblins with a sword is a bit inefficient and tiring, Mai Lai likes to use flaming oil a lot so as to hit as many enemies at once as is possible. Perhaps Mai Lai will even be saving up to finance a wheeled catapult that fires incindiary projectiles.
Naturally Mai Lai is Lawful Good and the character concept is to see how far we can push Lawful Good to resmble Lawful Evil while still being Lawful Good and not violating any paladin-fu rules.
Posted by: Ravor Oct 11 2007, 09:49 PM
Oi, and now we see why I only play either Lawful Neutral or Chaotic Neutral characters in DnD. 
Posted by: Crusher Bob Oct 12 2007, 09:39 AM
Bonus points if you are playing in the Realms, since athiest and other such undesireables are fated to suffer horribly in the wall of the faithless after they die. Therefore, it is a good act to convert them to be a follower of your god, by torture, if necessary.
Posted by: Fortune Oct 12 2007, 10:26 AM
| QUOTE (Crusher Bob) |
| Therefore, it is a good act to convert them to be a follower of your god, by torture, if necessary. |
And then kill them and send them to your God before they get a chance to backslide.
Posted by: Critias Oct 12 2007, 12:11 PM
My wife and I recently moved, and since we scored a second bedroom we've decided it'll be a game room. Other than the computer desk and a tv/X-Box combo, this room is books. Shelves and shelves of the damned things. We are both gamers, you see, and both had been gamers for over a decade a piece before we even met -- we have books a-plenty.
For shits and giggles, I decided to organize our books while unpacking. I cleared out a bunch of space on the floor and just started stacks, sorted (roughly) by game company. I had one for D&D, one for Shadowrun, one for Privateer Press, one for Games Workshop, one for Star Wars, one for CP:2020, one for L5R, one for Champions/HERO, etc, etc, all the way down to one for "other." In addition to being a handy way to roughly categorize them to make it easier to find what I'd be looking for some hypothetical day, I figured it would be fun to see what game system could lay claim to the most shelf space.
My money was on Shadowrun. We've both been playing it since SR1, are both rabid collectors (not just players), and, hell, we met playing Shadowrun. Even with us selling or trading away most of our doubles (to save shelf space, after moving in together), I figured it was a shoe in.
To my surprise and chagrin, it was the World of Darkness stack that won out when all was said and done, looming over its rivals like the mightiest oak in the forest, leeching sunlight from its lessers and growing ever taller at their expense. It was a stack roughly as high as my wife's chin, with its nearest rival (Shadowrun) just about the right height for a boobie shelf.
Two things struck me; it was going to be a pain to get the stacks of books turned vertical instead of horizontal and put onto shelves, and either my wife is even shorter than I tease her about, or we've got a fuck ton of WoD books we never use.
Turns out it's the latter. She didn't shrink or anything, we've just got a lot of World of Darkness crap. And -- lemme tell you -- I've played in exactly two sessions of a Vampire or Werewolf or any other game of theirs in the last ten years.
So my wholly unscientific little study of "what books do I have the most of" just made me realize I really do just have their shit lying around because I enjoy reading them, and not because they've got a core system that makes them worth actually playing.
Posted by: fistandantilus3.0 Oct 12 2007, 03:35 PM
| QUOTE (Critias @ Oct 12 2007, 07:11 AM) |
| with its nearest rival (Shadowrun) just about the right height for a boobie shelf. Two things struck me; it was going to be a pain to get the stacks of books turned vertical instead of horizontal and put onto shelves, and either my wife is even shorter than I tease her about, or we've got a fuck ton of WoD books we never use. Turns out it's the latter. |
Oh I laughed and laughed.
Now I've read this entire post to my wife, and she's sitting here telling me what stacks of my books would and wouldn't go above her knees. My money's on Shadowrun and Darksun of course. Anyway, you've just started a little competition over here. Although sadly I don't think I hae anything that will get to "boobie" level.
Edit: For some reason, she hit me after reading this post.
Posted by: Fortune Oct 12 2007, 03:56 PM
| QUOTE (fistandantilus3.0) |
| Although sadly I don't think I hae anything that will get to "boobie" level. |
Take comfort in the fact that the older she gets, the less books you will need to collect in order to achieve 'booby level'.
Posted by: pbangarth Oct 12 2007, 04:27 PM
*Ducks and runs*
Posted by: hyzmarca Oct 12 2007, 04:53 PM
| QUOTE (Fortune @ Oct 12 2007, 10:56 AM) | ||
Take comfort in the fact that the older she gets, the less books you will need to collect in order to achieve 'booby level'. |
And the fact that, as he gets older, he'll have a boobie level of his own.
Posted by: Penta Oct 12 2007, 06:07 PM
Oy, did we need to bring up geezerboobs?
Posted by: Zhan Shi Oct 13 2007, 02:06 AM
Bad Fisty!
My White Wolf Stack was very large as well. I traded them in to an online store for credit. All together, I estimate I got about $1,000 of store credit for them. I think the most I got for a single book was either "Games of Divinity" (Exalted) or "Into the Labyrinth" (Wraith). That surprised me; I had no idea that those books were so sought after. But this was shortly after White Wolf played out the "Armagedon" in their old game lines, and started fresh. Maybe that caused a spike in demand.
Reading the last few posts made me think about a joke I heard on the third Blue Collar Comedy show, about baloons three days after the party... 
Posted by: SinN Oct 13 2007, 05:32 AM
| QUOTE (Zhan Shi) |
| Bad Fisty! |
Oh god no....you've opened a whole new door of mod banning there.
Posted by: Angelone Oct 13 2007, 07:12 AM
I have twice as many White Wolf books than all my other gamebooks put together. I have damn near all the vampire and mage books, with a good chunk of the werewolf/changing breed thrown into the mix. I'd say I could stack it as tall as I am if not taller.
Posted by: Grinder Oct 13 2007, 09:30 AM
| QUOTE (Fortune) | ||
Take comfort in the fact that the older she gets, the less books you will need to collect in order to achieve 'booby level'. |
Man, that was simply great.
Posted by: Kagetenshi Oct 13 2007, 12:48 PM
I think I have one copy of the Mage core book somewhere that someone gave me once. Always did mean to get around to reading it.
~J
Posted by: Angelone Oct 13 2007, 03:32 PM
Mage is my favorite WoD game. You can get really creative with the stuff you can do. You also get to say "Isn't that a coincidence" or some version thereof alot.
Posted by: fistandantilus3.0 Oct 13 2007, 03:52 PM
| QUOTE (SinN @ Oct 13 2007, 12:32 AM) | ||
Oh god no....you've opened a whole new door of mod banning there. |
SinN- shush you.
Zhan - why bad me? Fortune's the one that's going to get me in trouble with my wife. Again!
| QUOTE (Kage) |
| I think I have one copy of the Mage core book somewhere that someone gave me once. Always did mean to get around to reading it. |
Me too. Big ol
purple book that , sadly, was just the right size to fill in a gaping hole in one of my boxes of soft cover books, keeping the covers from warping. And so it's stayed there, literally taking up space.
Posted by: Kagetenshi Oct 13 2007, 06:43 PM
| QUOTE (Angelone) |
| You can get really creative with the stuff you can do. |
You can, but you also have to either have all players follow the same tradition, be ignorant of each others' abilities and activities, or quickly go insane or die.
~J
Posted by: Angelone Oct 14 2007, 03:09 AM
Not particularly, in my mind a mixed tradition group is funner because of all the paradigm(sp?) arguements you can have, "Well, take your beliefs and shove em!"
Posted by: Kagetenshi Oct 14 2007, 03:40 AM
Maybe it's my limited understanding of the setting, but doesn't it cause Paradox every time someone uses magic in a manner significantly different from that of an observer's tradition? Like, say, anytime someone in a mixed-tradition group is observed to use magic by the rest of the group?
~J
Posted by: Angelone Oct 14 2007, 03:54 AM
No, paradox is caused by using blatent magic, like shooting lightning from your fingers. Around "sleepers" (mundane humans) it's guaranteed, but around other supernaturals you have a chance to get away with it. Now if it's a stormy night and someone happens to get struck by lightning it's coincidental so you get off pretty much scott free.
It basically breaks down to if it's an accident or freak occurance you're good. If you run around chucking fireballs you're basically screwed. You can get away with it on occasion however.
EDIT- Some spheres are more paradox prone than others. Mind magic is pretty much the least paradoxial while stuff like time and some force effects are going to get you.
Posted by: hyzmarca Oct 16 2007, 06:15 PM
| QUOTE (Wounded Ronin) |
| OK, I have thought a lot about Mai Lai the paladin. Mai Lai should be female because the name sounds a bit feminine in the context of fantasy RPGs. Mai Lai's shtick is, of course, systematically trying to "cleanse" places that have the wrong species living in them. As such, Mai Lai would first generally try to recon a place, sketch a preliminary map, and then plan an assault such that there's nowhere for the defenders to escape and they can be slaughtered to the last individual. With these objectives in mind Mai Lai is likely to spend a lot of money on hirelings in order to be able to block off areas to the enemy and conduct systematic sweeps. Furthermore, since chopping goblins with a sword is a bit inefficient and tiring, Mai Lai likes to use flaming oil a lot so as to hit as many enemies at once as is possible. Perhaps Mai Lai will even be saving up to finance a wheeled catapult that fires incindiary projectiles. Naturally Mai Lai is Lawful Good and the character concept is to see how far we can push Lawful Good to resmble Lawful Evil while still being Lawful Good and not violating any paladin-fu rules. |
Using the D&D 3E book Libris Mortis, one could take Mai Lai to further extremes by sending on an expedition against evil humanoids in an area devoid of food and have the Evil enemy army poison their rations, thus forcing Mai Lai to order her men to cook slain enemies for sustenance. Eventually the entire group is slaughtered by a force led by a powerful character who will become Mai Lai's Arch-Nemesis. Because they ate humanoids they all rise as ghouls, but Mai Lai is just so devout that she and her followers retain their alignments and she remains a Paladin.
Thus, you have a Paladin ghoul leading an army of Good ghouls on their eternal quest to kill and eat Evil people.
Posted by: Wounded Ronin Oct 16 2007, 11:17 PM
| QUOTE (hyzmarca) | ||
Using the D&D 3E book Libris Mortis, one could take Mai Lai to further extremes by sending on an expedition against evil humanoids in an area devoid of food and have the Evil enemy army poison their rations, thus forcing Mai Lai to order her men to cook slain enemies for sustenance. Eventually the entire group is slaughtered by a force led by a powerful character who will become Mai Lai's Arch-Nemesis. Because they ate humanoids they all rise as ghouls, but Mai Lai is just so devout that she and her followers retain their alignments and she remains a Paladin. Thus, you have a Paladin ghoul leading an army of Good ghouls on their eternal quest to kill and eat Evil people. |
Genius! It reminds me of the South Park episode where some characters are snowed in a building overnight but nevertheless resort to cannibalism while waxing melodramatic about how they had no choice.
Posted by: Narse Oct 20 2007, 12:48 AM
Um, I hate to beak up your lovely fantasy, but as far as I know that is a corruption of the rules of 3.5e at least. I first played D&D 3.5e, and I distinctly remember that in going through the main books that in one place it talks about role playing and alignments. It gave an example of a paladin who walked in on 2 lesbian succubi (you can see why it stuck in my memory ) and it said something along the lines that this should create an internal conflict as the Paladin was both sworn to exterminate evil (e.g. succubi), but his/her good alignment meant that s/he also had to honor love (e.g. lesbian couples). So in conclusion you've just been playing the game wrong .
For those who are unable to detect sarcasm the last sentence is an example
Posted by: hyzmarca Oct 20 2007, 01:18 AM
There are many ways to honor love. Sowing their corpses together and animating them as a Demonflesh golem so that they will never be physically separated again, for example, is one of these. It is also permissibly neutral so long as the Paladin's deity doesn't enforce obscure burial requirements.
Posted by: Narse Oct 20 2007, 04:35 AM
Yes, sure that honors love, but isn't raising dead an inherently evil act? (I really don't play enough to know for sure)
Posted by: hyzmarca Oct 20 2007, 04:50 AM
| QUOTE (Narse @ Oct 19 2007, 11:35 PM) |
| Yes, sure that honors love, but isn't raising dead an inherently evil act? (I really don't play enough to know for sure) |
Flesh and Demonflesh Golems aren't undead, they're Constructs. The flesh is just a building material, no different from wood, stone, clay, or metal. Because Golems are always Neutral, creating them or having them created is also Neutral.
Posted by: Wounded Ronin Oct 22 2007, 11:15 PM
Check it out, more stuff on White Wolf.
http://www.xanga.com/RPGpundit/622942464/item.html
| QUOTE |
Ryan Dancey has become the second-largest source of frustration to me in these last few days; granted a distant second behind all the serious pressure of moving this weekend and getting everything ready. In this thread ( http://www.therpgsite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=7930&page=14 ) over on theRPGsite, he's been defending his new and wacko ideas about "story" against all comers. But while there, he took a little break to provide a history lesson about the White-Wolf era and its effects. I have to admit, I agree with damn near everything he said there, and he put what I've been saying about that era in gaming history into better words than I'd been able to do. Here's what he said: The central core of the idea that drove White Wolf to success was the pitch that its games delivered a more intense storytelling experience than D&D. I use the word "intense" on purpose. Part of the allure of White Wolf was that it was pitched squarely at people going through the stages of becoming adults. The bottom end was kids entering puberty, and the top end was people leaving college to start their "real lives". A hallmark of this period of time is that people feel things more intensely than they do later in life. Emotions become magnified. And an outlet for those magnified emotions becomes a channel through which people can relieve themselves of the stress of having all that pent up emotion inside them. White Wolf explicitly sought to provide that outlet. And I use the word "more" on purpose. The marketing message from White Wolf (including statements by its founders) often took the uber-position that D&D didn't tell stories AT ALL, and that a "new kind of game" was needed to do that, but we all know that was propaganda and not the actual beliefs of the people involved. White Wolf evolved out of Lion Rampant, where the core team of Nephew, Tweet, Wiek & Rein*Hagen were experimenting with ways to use RPGs to tell stories differently than D&D told stories. Their medium of larger exchange were APA zines and the very early internet. This idea of "more intense storytelling" passed what my consulting partner Luke Peterschmidt & I call a "Blink Test" after the term coined by Malcolm Gladwell in the eponymous book. In basic terms, that means that when presented with the idea, people instantly accepted it as true. (The other odd, and important aspect of a Blink Test is that when you ask people afterwards how they reached the true/false conclusion, they are almost always wrong in their self-analysis. This is a bug in the way the brain works, and it can be exploited once its nature is recognized.) Once the player network started to "Blink Test" the White Wolf proposition, the follow on activity was to buy and play the resulting products. And this is where things got really, really interesting. Edwards notes, correctly, that other than some hand waving exposition, none of the White Wolf Storyteller Games actually presented any game content that was specifically designed to support the White Wolf proposition. The worlds were interesting, the characters you could make with the games were really interesting, and the game mechanics were reasonably well designed (but not demonstrably better either simply as RPG rules, or specifically as RPG rules designed to generate more intense stories than other RPGs). But people reacted weirdly to those games. Because they were told they would get a more intense story experience, and because they clearly desired that, they tried to convince themselves that the White Wolf games actually were different than other RPGs. Of course, one other interesting effect of the White Wolf marketing was that it reached and attracted an audience of people with very little prior RPG experience: Women. And of the men it attracted, it often attracted men who had not found prior RPG concepts interesting enough to learn anyway. So you have this big population of people who are viewing the whole RPG experience through the lens of one game system, a game system which was marketed explicitly as delivering intense storytelling, and built a community of people who believed that was true, and told each other it was true constantly. Of course, just because they believed it, and communicated it, didn't make it so. And that's where Edwards' critique hits the mark. He bought the value proposition, but didn't see how the product actually delivered on that proposition. Because, in large measure, it didn't. Instead of being a system-driven success, it was really a subject-matter success. Playing Vampires turns out to have a whole potential player population who did not, and would not play Adventuring Heroes. And, he adds: What we had for most of the 1990s was a disconnect in the industry which lead to a whole lot of dead-end products. We had designers looking at White Wolf's success, saying to themselves "ok, I can do that", and then following that lead. Following that lead even when it meant abandoning a formerly successful line of business. The followup at FASA to BattleTech was Shadowrun. The followup to Shadowrun was Earthdawn. Nobody at FASA stopped the bus and said "hey, we seem to be really good at writing rules for combat games, why don't we focus on doing more of those kinds of games?" Instead they said "let's do games where stories matter", and went bankrupt. At TSR, you had people watching White Wolf and saying "we're fucking TSR, we can do better than some startup!" So they did R.I.P. (You know, the horror based RPG that they put into their catalogs, and pitched as their next big game, but never made?) Oh, and they bastardized D&D by connecting it to a series of house-driven settings, where TSR NPCs were always more powerful than your NPCs, and TSR story decisions (often made in novels) were more important than the story decisions made at your game table. And went bankrupt. Ironically enough, White Wolf looked at the success of Vampire, and said "ah ha! We have a winner", and did 3 versions of Werewolf and Mage, 2 versions of Wraith and Changeling, and one long string of Adventure, Aeon, and Trinity. And nearly went bankrupt. You can plot that path through just about any RPG company in the 1990s, except Palladium & Steve Jackson Games (both, notably, still alive & kicking!) Also: they often made more intense storytelling for the publishers at the expense of player fun. There was a lot of intense storytelling done in the 1990s. It just wasn't done by players. What you had then was an industry that went crazy and ate itself. Designer desires (to tell great stories) swamped player desires (to get tools to tell great stories). Well, ok. The debate over what the fuck he means by story and just how much he wants to mangle existing RPG structure to do it is ongoing. But let's conclude on a positive note: At WotC, we had a group of people who had the force of will to pick up D&D, and force it back into being a game people wanted to use to play. But that was an exceptionally lucky thing, because Wizards could just as easily have tried to make it the uber-storytelling game in the White Wolf mode, with a massive metaplot and a supplement treadmill from here to eternity. We made a lot of educated guesses, and we by and large guessed right. But fixing D&D is only half the challenge. What it says to me is that we must be eternally vigilant: I agree that it was a lucky thing, and that it could have easily gone the other way. And what's more, it STILL could. Which is why I'm so leery of your ideas now, Ryan. RPGPundit Currently Smoking: Missouri Meerschaum Corncob + Ark Royal |
That was pretty brutal about Shadowrun. Then again, it's also true that I have almost completely ignored the SR metaplot after SR2 because it wasn't 80s enough for me after that.
Posted by: Kagetenshi Oct 22 2007, 11:48 PM
| QUOTE (Wounded Ronin) | ||
|
This is the point at which you know you can safely ignore anything the writer has to say about game design—if they have insight, it is surely by accident.
~J
Posted by: Wounded Ronin Oct 23 2007, 12:46 AM
| QUOTE (Kagetenshi) | ||||
This is the point at which you know you can safely ignore anything the writer has to say about game design—if they have insight, it is surely by accident. ~J |
True.
Posted by: eidolon Oct 23 2007, 01:12 AM
Ugh. Somebody got Ryan Dancey on my Dumpshock Forums.
Posted by: Zhan Shi Oct 23 2007, 04:17 AM
I hate to seem the dunce, but who is this Ryan Dancey, and why is he so reviled?
Posted by: Narse Oct 23 2007, 04:29 AM
| QUOTE (Kagetenshi @ Oct 22 2007, 06:48 PM) | ||||
This is the point at which you know you can safely ignore anything the writer has to say about game design—if they have insight, it is surely by accident. ~J |
Oh, yeah cause we all know systems where you roll a number of dice equal to your attribute + skill +or- any modifiers and count any results higher than a certain # as successes are inherently bad game design. After all look at SR4, I mean people can't stop saying how totally crappy the mechanics are. Not the fluff and how it disagrees w/ the mechanics, or how they are unrealistic, but how the mechanics are poorly designed.
I mean seriously when I first introduced my group to SR4 (well, me and another player who became the GM) their first reaction was: "Oh so its just like white wolf, only with D6's, no dots, and a different setting."
On another note: palladium actually also went out of business, but I think that was mainly because someone embezzled money from them.
Posted by: Kagetenshi Oct 23 2007, 11:33 AM
I'm having difficulty telling whether you're serious, but your tone sounds more sarcastic than not, so I'm going to assume it is sarcasm. My apologies if it wasn't.
The SR4 mechanics are pretty awful, but they avoided the utter abomination that was oWoD. Among other things, there aren't any flaws on the level with, say, what happens when your oWoD TN becomes 10.
~J
Posted by: Angelone Oct 23 2007, 12:19 PM
Dice asplode! If you have the proper spec.
What's so bad about OWoD? Personally, I prefer to the new system.
Posted by: Kagetenshi Oct 23 2007, 02:32 PM
I was thinking more about the fact that, since the roll of a 1 takes away a success, when your TN is 10 your expected successes will be 0 no matter how many dice you have. If the TN can go past 10, your chance of failure actually increases the more dice you have (since each die is more likely to take away a success than to add one).
~J
Posted by: Wounded Ronin Oct 23 2007, 09:12 PM
| QUOTE (Kagetenshi) |
| I was thinking more about the fact that, since the roll of a 1 takes away a success, when your TN is 10 your expected successes will be 0 no matter how many dice you have. If the TN can go past 10, your chance of failure actually increases the more dice you have (since each die is more likely to take away a success than to add one). ~J |
It just goes to show that mathematical testing is a must for any RPG system.
Posted by: eidolon Oct 23 2007, 09:26 PM
| QUOTE (Zhan Shi @ Oct 22 2007, 10:17 PM) |
| I hate to seem the dunce, but who is this Ryan Dancey, and why is he so reviled? |
Ryan Dancey, lots of thorough explanation aside, is the guy that got D&D from TSR to Wizards. He was the brand manager for D&D for quite a while.
I personally just disagree with him on just about all things gaming.
| QUOTE (Narse) |
| On another note: palladium actually also went out of business, but I think that was mainly because someone embezzled money from them. |
Someone embezzled money from them and they had a rough time of it for a while, yes, but they did not go out of business. They were at GenCon this year and they seem to be doing okay again.
Posted by: Narse Oct 24 2007, 02:01 AM
| QUOTE (eidolon) | ||
Someone embezzled money from them and they had a rough time of it for a while, yes, but they did not go out of business. They were at GenCon this year and they seem to be doing okay again. |
Seriously??
Are they still putting out rifts?
If so i know some people that will be really happy to hear that.
On another note: I have no experience with the oWoD system so I can't really comment about how bad it was, but something that annoyed me greatly was the d20 system core mechanic in which low-level characters (and sometimes high level characters) can have NO chance of accomplishing an action. Example DC 30 check for any level 1 character (within normal parameters that is. I'm sure there is some way to power game it).
Posted by: Kagetenshi Oct 24 2007, 02:22 AM
I hate having things with no chance at all too (which is why I was always bugged by the way SR3 handled defaulting, and why I utterly despise SR4's fixed-TN die-pool-modifying system)—if your system cannot create high but finite levels of difficulty, it's time to get cracking on new mechanics.
~J
Posted by: Angelone Oct 24 2007, 03:17 AM
| QUOTE (Kagetenshi) |
| I was thinking more about the fact that, since the roll of a 1 takes away a success, when your TN is 10 your expected successes will be 0 no matter how many dice you have. If the TN can go past 10, your chance of failure actually increases the more dice you have (since each die is more likely to take away a success than to add one). ~J |
Isn't your chances of hitting a 10 or a 1 the same? Even if you don't hit any 10s you aren't nessicarily going to hit any 1s so you'll just fail the check. One thing that kinda was funny but upsetting when it happened to you was rolling a 10 and then when the die exploded you got a 1 on the next roll.
Posted by: Kagetenshi Oct 24 2007, 03:29 AM
To resolve this confusion, I would have to have a clearer memory of what exactly the resolution mechanics were, or have access to a rulebook. Since the only oWoD rulebook I own (the only fooWoD rulebook, actually) is about a thousand miles away, I can't provide meaningful guidance as to whether your interpretation is more correct than mine or not.
~J
Posted by: Simon May Oct 24 2007, 05:16 AM
| QUOTE (Angelone) |
| Isn't your chances of hitting a 10 or a 1 the same? Even if you don't hit any 10s you aren't nessicarily going to hit any 1s so you'll just fail the check. One thing that kinda was funny but upsetting when it happened to you was rolling a 10 and then when the die exploded you got a 1 on the next roll. |
Mathematically, the odds state that for every 10 you roll, you should also roll a 1. That doesn't make it a hard and true fact, just as flipping a quarter in math is 50/50 while it's actually closer to 52/48 thanks to physics and the weight of the heads side. Regardless, basic odds state that mathematically you would never succeed at TN 10 if 1s wipe out 10s.
Also, even in oWoD, the system wasn't broken enough that a rerolled 1 would wipe out any of your previous 10s.
Posted by: Critias Oct 24 2007, 05:40 AM
Which means, even in the best case of a 10/1 having good odds of "cancelling each other out," it still means that they create a situation where the dice pool (and as such the stats of your character) don't fucking matter.
Say the difficulty 10 situation is a called shot to the head, with a pistol, in low light conditions (pretty common stuff, right?). You're trying to take out some leather-and-denim clad vampire in a back alley behind a nightclub somewhere, and you want the extra damage of a headshot.
Shouldn't it matter whether you've got a Dex of 5 (the absolute best a human being can ever have) and a Firearms of 5 (better than most DELTA operatives) or are a bumbling clumsy oaf with a Dex of 1 and an absolute 0 in Firearms and have never handled a gun before in your life?
Well, sorry, too bad. It doesn't.
Posted by: Narse Oct 24 2007, 06:47 PM
Ok, I have to post because some of the things being posted here are doing nasty things to math. First of all, having 10's cancelled out by 1's does not mean that you will never succeed. You still have a finite chance of success, but it is a bitch to calculate for someone like me who has no training with probabilities (I can work them out though). Note: this is a flaw of almost every TN system where you are rolling more than 1 die. (d20 tests are child's play to calculate).
Secondly: Your pool size does matter if the number of successes matter. You might have the same odds of achieving 1 success as someone with a smaller pool, but (and this should be readily obvious) you can obtain more total successes(i.e someone with a DP of 3 can only hope for 3 successes [I guess this might be modified depending on how explosions were handled in oWoD]). I don't know if this matters in oWoD, but it did in SR3. Anyhow, this seems fairly academic as the system was revised and addressed some of these problems. You don't see people on these forms bitching about SR1 rules (this is just an example, I have no SR1 experience) without mentioning how they think latter systems did as far as correcting the perceived problem.
@Kagetenshi
I don't understand your hatred of SR4's modified pool, fixed TN system. Most characters (PC & NPC) have pools >= 4 and thus can succeed on all the tests I can think of (no thresholds higher than 4) [it should be noted that SR3 also had some checks that required a number of successes > 1 and thus were not possible for everybody, e.g. damage resistance]. Even if you are reduced to making a check you could not possibly succeed on, then you can spend edge to make the check. I am not familiar with occurrences where success was not at least possible (if improbable).
Posted by: Kagetenshi Oct 24 2007, 08:34 PM
| QUOTE (Narse) |
| First of all, having 10's cancelled out by 1's does not mean that you will never succeed. |
No, it doesn't. I don't believe anyone claimed it does, and if it was claimed, it was almost certainly by accident.
| QUOTE |
| You still have a finite chance of success, but it is a bitch to calculate for someone like me who has no training with probabilities (I can work them out though). Note: this is a flaw of almost every TN system where you are rolling more than 1 die. (d20 tests are child's play to calculate). |
It's still pretty simple for this—for exactly s successes on n dice, it's just ∑(i=s…n) (1/10)^((i)*(i-s)), unless my exhaustion-addled brain is missing something. To get at least s successes, just change references to s to another variable of summation which ranges from s to n.
There are prettier ways to express it that are less obnoxious to calculate, but the basic idea is simple.
| QUOTE |
| Secondly: Your pool size does matter if the number of successes matter. You might have the same odds of achieving 1 success as someone with a smaller pool, but (and this should be readily obvious) you can obtain more total successes(i.e someone with a DP of 3 can only hope for 3 successes [I guess this might be modified depending on how explosions were handled in oWoD]). |
But that only shifts the flaw—as long as you have enough dice for the test to be possible, it's just as easy or difficult as anyone else for whom it is possible.
| QUOTE |
| Anyhow, this seems fairly academic as the system was revised and addressed some of these problems. You don't see people on these forms bitching about SR1 rules (this is just an example, I have no SR1 experience) without mentioning how they think latter systems did as far as correcting the perceived problem. |
You certainly would if the discussion were about SR1. A question was asked about WoD, with no version specified, and the assertion that the nWoD rules were decent in theory had already been made. The missing information was how abysmally awful the oWoD rules were, so I supplied it. I don't really feel the need to say "but they made it better!" every time I do that, especially since they shouldn't have gotten it that wrong in the first place.
| QUOTE |
| I don't understand your hatred of SR4's modified pool, fixed TN system. Most characters (PC & NPC) have pools >= 4 and thus can succeed on all the tests I can think of |
You're forgetting modifiers, which can bring the pool down below the threshold (or zero).
| QUOTE |
| [it should be noted that SR3 also had some checks that required a number of successes > 1 and thus were not possible for everybody, e.g. damage resistance]. |
Yes, you are correct. I considered it one of the flaws of the system, and was thus displeased when it was dramatically amplified in SR4.
| QUOTE |
| Even if you are reduced to making a check you could not possibly succeed on, then you can spend edge to make the check. I am not familiar with occurrences where success was not at least possible (if improbable). |
No edge remaining is the most obvious example. With no thresholds lower than 4 there cannot be any tests with success odds lower than ~1.23% but above 0.
~J
Posted by: farrenj Oct 24 2007, 10:45 PM
| QUOTE (Kagetenshi) | ||
No, it doesn't. I don't believe anyone claimed it does, and if it was claimed, it was almost certainly by accident. |
| QUOTE (Simon May) |
| Regardless, basic odds state that mathematically you would never succeed at TN 10 if 1s wipe out 10s. |
| QUOTE (Kagetenshi) |
| they shouldn't have gotten it that wrong in the first place. |
But they did. And, a long time afterwards, they fixed it. I think we can all agree that oWoD dice rolling left a lot to be desired. But I imagine anyone that's coming here to read or participate in a discussion on WoD rules wants to talk about nWoD rules. Otherwise we can just say, "oWoD fucked up" and leave it at that.
Edit: Quoted way too much in the first go round.
Posted by: Fortune Oct 24 2007, 11:00 PM
| QUOTE (farrenj) |
| But I imagine anyone that's coming here to read or participate in a discussion on WoD rules wants to talk about nWoD rules. |
The exact same thing can be said about Shadowrun, yet there is still a Forum on Dumpshock for the discussion of editions other than SR4.
Posted by: Kagetenshi Oct 24 2007, 11:12 PM
| QUOTE (farrenj) | ||||||
|
Definitely missed that (stupid page changes—100 posts/page is too few!). Your expected successes do become zero, but that was without question an incorrect statement.
| QUOTE |
| I think we can all agree that oWoD dice rolling left a lot to be desired. But I imagine anyone that's coming here to read or participate in a discussion on WoD rules wants to talk about nWoD rules. Otherwise we can just say, "oWoD fucked up" and leave it at that. |
You should imagine otherwise in the context of a quote discussing the history of WoD, wherein rules that are most certainly oWoD are called "decent". In fact, given how recent nWoD is, this is a bad assumption in the first place.
~J
Posted by: Simon May Oct 24 2007, 11:25 PM
| QUOTE (Kagetenshi) |
| Your expected successes do become zero, but that was without question an incorrect statement. |
I really don't like arguing semantics, but the word "mathematically" modifies the phrase "you would never succeed at TN 10 if 1s wipe out 10s." In that context that means that within a perfectly constructed theoretical realm of mathematics, assuming all math is perfectly true, that would be the case. It does not mean that is the case when working outside a perfectly constructed theoretical realm of mathematics, as we actually do.
Posted by: Kagetenshi Oct 24 2007, 11:57 PM
I will remind you that probability is very solidly within the realm of mathematics. If you want I can do the combinatorial analysis for you (after I'm done with my research paper, graded stuff comes first), but as a discrete math major, let me assure you that mathematically, you absolutely will, at times, succeed at TN 10 if 1s wipe out 10s.
Edit: the short, informal, and unsupported version is this: there exist combinations of possible dierolls such that the number of 1s, m, and the number of 10s, n, obey the inequality n>m≥0 , therefore you can succeed at the test.
~J
Posted by: Narse Oct 25 2007, 04:34 AM
I think we can all agree that oWoD rules leave something to be desired and nWoD rules are an improvement.
@Kagetenshi
Thanks for clarifying your remarks about the SR systems. Just out of curiosity, what kind of system would you prefer? and is there an easy way of simulating it? It sounded like what you were describing would be a system where the numerical result of a test can be represented with a normal distribution of infinite range (I haven't taken statistics so I'm not sure if that is the proper way of saying it) and a mean result based on skill level and/or aptitude.
| QUOTE |
| It's still pretty simple for this—for exactly s successes on n dice, it's just ∑(i=s…n) (1/10)^((i)*(i-s)) |
meh, its easier for me to just write a program to run a simulation of the rolling and have it output the results of 10,000 (or more) iterations than to reteach myself how to do n-ary summations.
Posted by: Kagetenshi Oct 25 2007, 04:52 AM
| QUOTE (Narse) |
| Just out of curiosity, what kind of system would you prefer? and is there an easy way of simulating it? It sounded like what you were describing would be a system where the numerical result of a test can be represented with a normal distribution of infinite range (I haven't taken statistics so I'm not sure if that is the proper way of saying it) and a mean result based on skill level and/or aptitude. |
I'm not sure, to be honest—most of my time has been spent thinking about ways to tweak Shadowrun's system to be closer to what I desire, rather than coming up with a system that may be totally different but provides my desired probability distribution. The most obvious way to counter impossibility in SR3 is to allow people to buy dice on a 1 die for +1 TN basis (possibly capped at dice=necessary successes), but that breaks down several places—most notably places like rigging or social skills, where depending on the circumstances and gear/edge loadout you can encounter significantly negative TNs, resulting in a "free" and significant quantity of bonus dice to situations in which said characters are already very powerful. If it gets capped at dice=necessary successes, you also encounter problems like Skill n = Skill n+1 at TN 6*m (due to the 6=7 issue, which is a whole different mess).
In many ways, SR3 holds me back by being too good in too many ways. Because there's so much it does right, I need to make sure I don't break those bits when I fix something it does wrong, creating a giant nasty interwoven dependency mess.
| QUOTE | ||
meh, its easier for me to just write a program to run a simulation of the rolling and have it output the results of 10,000 (or more) iterations than to reteach myself how to do n-ary summations. |
I'd suggest you just write the program to perform the summations for you
should be comparable in complexity (if you already have the formula), but will be precise instead of trending towards the correct answer.And like I said, I'm pretty sure there's an easier-to-calculate way to express it, but 時間���。
~J
Posted by: Blade Oct 25 2007, 08:49 AM
@Kagetenshi: Just out of curiosity, your biggest complaint about the SR4 system is that some actions can become impossible?
Posted by: Kagetenshi Oct 25 2007, 10:46 AM
Not remotely. I'll clarify more when I gain full consciousness.
~J
Posted by: Kagetenshi Oct 25 2007, 12:01 PM
Ok. It's hard to identify what I'd peg as my "biggest complaint", but impossibility is definitely not it. Some other complaints of similar or greater magnitude:
Glitching: adding one die to your pool will, half of the time, increase your chance of glitching, inverting the ordinary expectation.
Coarseness of the system: related to the impossibility issue but not identical. As I mentioned above, with an ordinary cap on threshold of four, the system cannot create odds of success less than 1.23% but greater than zero.
Abandonment of Shadowrun's roots/neophilia/fresh-off-of-Slashdot syndrome: the deemphasizing of cyberware, expansion of bio/geneware augmentation (an abomination which existed in third edition, certainly), the wireless matrix (which is nonsensical, particularly for the matrix as described), abuse of terminology ("hacker" and "firewall" being the two most obvious cases, as neither is remotely what the term claims it to be), ridiculous terminology ("rad" instead of "policlub", "technomancer" instead of "otaku" (though I'll grant that the now-well-known preexisting slang meaning does perhaps make the latter name undesirable)), RFID fetishism, the absolute ridiculousness of the Sakura Fubuki/metalstorm fetishism, it goes on and on and on.
The elimination of the most significant tool for tactical decision-making in the game (namely, pools).
The elimination of useful concealability ratings.
The dramatically smaller useful range of the ruleset (hard caps on attributes and skills at very low numbers, a system that cannot handle removal of those caps due to Immunity to Normal Modifiers at high pool sizes).
There's more, but homework calls.
~J
Posted by: Blade Oct 25 2007, 12:28 PM
Ok. Thanks.
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