World Of Darkness Options

[farrenj]

I don't see the connection between your two statements, I'm saying the system treats murder and brutal cruelty more harshly than theft.

[Kagetenshi]

Right. But you also implied that the system isn't that unreasonable. One of these statements must be in error.

~J

[Wounded Ronin]

[Adarael]

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.

[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.

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.

[Adarael]

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.

[hyzmarca]

[nezumi]

Yum, babies.


As an aside, and not to pick a big fight, how does the D&D morality system support anything but confusion?

[Kagetenshi]

[eidolon]

[hyzmarca]

[Moon-Hawk]

[Adarael]

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.

[Wounded Ronin]

[Narse]

[Kagetenshi]

[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. ;)

[Kagetenshi]

The attitude quoted above certainly disincentivizes spending the time to make rules of a quality that would permit that.

~J

[farrenj]

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.

[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

[Wounded Ronin]

[Moon-Hawk]

[Jeremiah Legacy]

[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.

[Adam]