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[NightWind]

Ahh, but I did get my piece of revenge in a round about way. When they made me quit my Stargazer, they were cutting their own throats. I was the only Theurge on the Grid as well as being the only Stargazer.

Guess what? When the High Level Garou up and left. No one knew the Gifts or Rites to keep things going. No one to intercede with the Spirits for help.

Oh, I had the choice of going Ronin. But that is the last thing I wanted to do. *I* had done nothing wrong in the game to get the stigmata of Ronin. Therefore it was insulting to me as a player to be told I had to either go Ronin or Nuke the char.

I found out later, when I went on as a Guest and played stupid, that most of the Caern quit the game over that fiasco because they couldnt DO anything spiritually. And at least half of them had kept in touch via E-Mails. I dont think the game ever recovered from that many Garou leaving all at once.

NightWind

[Ronin Soul]

A little tangent, but somewhat connected to NightWind's last post; the only Werewolf character I've really wanted to use was a Shadow Lords Ronin who was *not* a manipulative, amoral and vindictive control freak. Pity that game never got running...

Oh yeah, and has anyone else seen who the Wayward character is in the new PS2 game? Joshua Matthews, AKA God45. I liked that... (of course, only Hunter players will understand why, but I thought I'd raise the point).
The Hunter computer game did raise an interesting thought though. It is obscenely easy to change the WOD games to suit almost any play style. I mean, take Underworld (after all, White Wolf is trying to :) ), after reading the plot ideas I thought; a high action Vampire game ala movies like The Killer or Romeo Must Die - lots of over the top action, big guns and the vampiric abilities that make them so great in the first place... It could be done easily (especially once you use Exalted rules such as standardised difficulties and Extras rules).

Hunter was another game that struck me as a good example of it. In the computer game you had the Hunters stepping off a subway train into a town literally under siege by the creatures of the night. It has a certain Western feel and would really serve as a basis of a campaign where the angst and terror of a Hunter's life is replaced by taking the fight to the monsters with very little consequence (except some cool explosions). Resident Evil (particularly Nemesis) is an example of the sort of thing I'm thinking about. Just add ghosts and shadowy vampiric manipulators and you could have a really high action and really fun Hunter campaign. That could work (trust me, I've run a couple of adventures along those lines). Hell, you almost have canon precedent with New Dijon (only real Hunter players will understand *that* :D ).

Is it against the feeling of the White Wolf games? Well, that's an opinion thing. I think that as long as you have fun that doesn't really matter. Purists would disagree.

My rambling ends now... :grinbig:

[Hot Wheels]

I agree, most of the WW games seem to be light on mechanics and more characters driven-unlike the antithesis which are the 20d game systems.
You can do VtM as anything from a soap opera to soft core porn to occult thriller to a shoot 'em up.

[U-Boat]

Greetings all,

I've played White Wolf games for about 7 or 8 years and I've enjoyed them very much. The two games I know most about are Vampire and Mage.

Vampire is a very political game, both within the Camarilla and Sabbat. The differences between the two is that the Camarilla created the Masquerade and hides within humanity, whereas Sabbat don't feel the need to bemoan their lost humanity so take great pleasure in revelling in their vampiric nature. The one problem with vampires is that because they have non-mortal life spans, they can't have mortal lives. The problem with that is, everyone needs resources to sustain their existence. So the grab is on, for money, property, weapons, retainers, status, anything. It's not a case of whoever dies with the most toys wins, it's who ever has the most toys continues his existence. And for those who asked "If vampires are so powerful, how come they aren't running the world?", the answer is "Because of what happened in the dark ages". During the dark ages, there was no masquerade, there was no hiding from the humans. The vampires of old strode the darkened streets as lords and princes, to whom humanity were little better than underlings. Then came the Inquisition, when the humans brought fire and stake to the vampires and ages old elders found themselves throwing their assets at the inquisitors in an effort to keep themselves from the Inquisition

Mage, for want of a better term, is a wondrous game. The mages themselves are capable of metaphysical feats through their relation with their awakened avatar (soul). The latest edition of Mage sees the end of the Ascension War. The Technocracy won, but it was a hollow victory. Due to the propaganda the Technocracy spread far and wide, the stasis they wanted so much has come back to bite them in the arse. People now don't believe in magic, but they have a harder time accepting some of the new "advances" the Technocracy is trying to achieve, such as stem cell research and genetic engineering.

I'm currently running a Mage LARP in Sydney and the game has seen quite a number of interesting moments, especially with the mages who have a flair for the dramatic. As such, the game itself can become a series of missions, especially for the Technocracy. Funny thing is, I've looked at some of the cyber enhancements in the book and I've been SO tempted at times to just go looking through Man & Machine. I've also had people who have never played Mage arrive to play NPCs and one asked if he could play a Technocrat on a permanent basis. I must admit, the Technocracy get the best toys.

As such, I like running Mage, because it's a great game and I believe has lots of potential, for any kind of story type.

U-Boat
"It's not paranoia if they're really out to get you"

[Icepick]

Actually, some of the newer twists suggest a return to the status quo. The ascension war is back on, just with newer tricks, and more of a tradition as a whole kind of order than before.

Read Manefesto:Transmissions From the Rogue Council to find out what I'm talking about.

[White Knight]

U-Boat: Well, the Technocracy have always been the real good guys in the World of Darkness. Or as close as the WoD gets to good guys anyway.

Icepick:

[Icepick]

[Finbar]

I beleive thats 10 Unsoakable agg a round.

you got more than 10HL?
no? your dead.

[Atrox]

What if you have Fortitude 10?

[The_Sarge]

Err... Then you're some millenia-old über-vampire.
There should be some perks with immortality. *g*

[Icepick]

Well, anyways, there's always the Immunity merit.

[Tyrrell]

because there is only one post on it in this whole four page thread and because it is actually selling as well as vampire over the last few months I'm going to write about exalted.

Exalted is in some ways the opposite of the World of Darkness games. The characters have the ability within them to do darn near anything. They can take over the most powerful empire in all of creation or storm into heaven and use their unequalled bureaucracy skills to control the celestial order. The support books are specifically written to say how things are rather than how a set of characters within the setting think that they are. The rules and setting were designed for crossover play from the very beginning.

The rules for exalted give characters bonus dice depending upon how cool the action that the character takes is. The combat system tries real hard and in my opinion succeeds in making most combat scenes (an the game is set up for a good deal of combat) be wuxia-style over the top action craziness. Everything combat seems like something out of crouching tiger hidden dragon played in fast forward. The characters have large collections of mystical kung fu mastery schticks that combine together to give combat between exalteds an intricacy reminiscent of CCG's.

The die system is similar to WoD and shadowrun (roll a die pool count the number of successes) but rather than having a floating target number, difficulty is determined by how many successes are needed.

The setting is wide open. The world is flat and while it is smaller than earth it has more dry land area. The edges of the world fade off into chaos where the incomprhesible fae live. "Beneith" the world there is an underworld where ghosts try to scrape by and the dead souls of those primordial creators of the universe who fell in an ancient war plot to destroy everything in order to end their own undead existence. "Above" creation is the conenent sized city of Yu shan inhabited entirly by gods who take part in a complex and corrupt bureaucracy that controls all of creation. The setting is made for big games where characters accomplish big things.

[TinkerGnome]

When I played Exalted heavily, it was before the other types of exalted hit the shelves and it was really hard to put up decent opposition to the Solars. I imagine that now it's not too hard to have a decent game going on. I do dearly love the game and I'll be the first to admit that I'm a stunt dice whore when given the chance ;)

The hardest part about exalted is realizing exactly how powerful your characters are. At game start, many Solar exalted could take out small armies of normal humans, and by the time they hit their first century, they're nearly unstoppable. The only thing that can scratch them are other types of Exalted and really determined armies of mortals. I have a small pile of books I've never even read through, including Games of Divinity which I read maybe three pages of before I got distracted with other things :(

[bwdemon]

I've played/GM'd/demo'd WoD games since 1996. Here are my thoughts...

Pros: Setting, character-driven gaming, metaplot

Cons: Game mechanics, imbalance, metaplot, dead game

The metaplot has had ups and downs, though it is on a major upswing now with the pending end of WoD as we know it.

The single biggest knock against them is that they are dying. The game setting is being cashed in and a new game will come out of it all. This doesn't affect the historic settings at all (well, it may...), but it makes purchase of current products (especially for someone just getting into the game) a poor economic choice.

If you're looking at getting into the line, wait it out. The new core rules and splats will be out in a year or two. If you can wait until then to buy into WoD, you'll avoid getting stuck with dead product.

[vitus979]

[Tiralee]

Wft is a Gaki?

Don't play White Wolf (The "Vampire" game sort of put me off, although I did like the voice actors... :rotfl: ) and don't really have the money-patience to go forth and splurge again, just wanted the definition, and/or how a Hungry-Ghost fitted into the "World of Darkness"TM universe.

Or are they munchkins? I know Gaki is similiar in everyday use as "imp" to describe a naughty youngster.

Anyhoo,

l.

[Ancient History]

A Gaki is a cannibalistic proto-Kinjin (read: oriental vampire). Think Bruce Lee from the crow crossed with Gollum from the LOTR movies crossed with the unholy appetite for living flesh found in zombie flicks.

[Enkeli]

[Ancient History]

Right, right, my bad. Been a while.

[Enkeli]

It can happen to the best of us. :)