World of Darkness -- Alternative Settings
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@deadculture said in World of Darkness -- Alternative Settings:
@packrat WoD somehow mires itself in so much mechanical bullshit an easy 30-minute fight turns into a spammy 5 hour fight and the ST is left with a headache at the end.
I've never been so tired as after STing a combat plot in WoD.
And Pendragon is about 3000x worse, for its fatality rate.
In RP scenes for WoD it would make sense to just do all the dice work first and then pose it out. I mean most of the time if we think of actions performed in combat at times its taking cover/running for cover, closing distance or performing actions that are one off actions.
Really it could just be init -> everyone declares/acts/rolls -> pose all the results. Just doing that per round would make things faster vs the time lost waiting for a declaration, a roll, then a pose. Depending on what's happened it could be the whole combat scene tied up neatly in a pose or two.
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I'd definitely love a mortal-only game with a gritty feel, preferably urban, whether that game is based on WoD or not.
I gotta agree with others in that one of BiTN's weeknesses (as much as I loved that game) was it's sandboxiness and reliance on plot. It might be cool to combine the underlying theme with a territory code similar to RfK's to keep play happening and things moving.
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@faraday
Yes, but those games seem to have a setting that shoves the players together in close quarters. In all honesty, the big thing you would have to do with a Mortals game is create it with a hand-made, mortals only group. Not Hunter stuff. Someting like SCP, or an organization that recruits exceptional people, but never with powers. Make it part of your game's setup and policy that 'everyone has to be part of the Big Group, even if your concept is 'cupcake making housewife there to do MAKE BABBY! RP'. We did this as a 3 year tabletop game, and it was fun. Hell, you could even set it up so that players could look into getting powers and Awakening and shit, but have a rule in place that if those things happen, those PCs are retired.You hit what I was typing up with the whole 'gotta have an organization,' so I deleted it. But you have to have buy in from players. If you make a mortals only game, you, the staff, HAVE to give it some sort of focus. Allowing people to come into the Organization in their own way is fine, but the game HAS to eventually have that PC drawn into it, otherwise they're outside of the main line of plots and stuff going on.
However, doing something like this also requires something that most WoD games don't want to do: FUCKING FOCUS.
@Apos
Re: pose times. That's all well and good, and being fair to everyone in that instance is great. That's not at all limited to WoD 'players are expected to take care of their own stuff' games either. I've seen it on fully automated games like Transformers (and had a HORRID experience with it on MVC which is why I won't go back there).But people multi-playing or doing ten thousand other things and NOT paying attention and coming back "oh, lol, sorry I got caught up doing <blah>" is... less than ideal. I'm not talking about "oh shit, kid projectile vomited" or "BRB, wife is feeling frisky" (yes, this happened on a TF game), just 'Oh, I was playing LoL in between poses...' type shit. Personally, I don't think pose order is the problem (sorry, but pose order is just another word for initiative order). Lack of care for the time put in is the problem.
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@bobotron said in World of Darkness -- Alternative Settings:
However, doing something like this also requires something that most WoD games don't want to do: FUCKING FOCUS.
I agree with everything you said, but this right here is a self-inflicted problem. I mean, yeah, if you're going to let player concepts sprawl all over then it's going to be tough to get them together for anything short of "ZOMG Earthquake!" type epic plots.
@bobotron said in World of Darkness -- Alternative Settings:
Personally, I don't think pose order is the problem (sorry, but pose order is just another word for initiative order). Lack of care for the time put in is the problem.
Lack of care is certainly a problem, no question. I get around that in my FS3 combat games by just flat-out skipping people if they don't pose by the 15-minute turn limit. They can catch-up pose next turn if they like, or just be moving positions/aiming/frozen/whatever for a turn.
But I have to disagree about pose order being a problem. I mean, it's simple math. Let's say you have 10 super-attentive people all taking 5 minutes to pose. That's an hour-long turn right there!!!! Even at 3-per pose rules it's like... probably a good half-hour. But you put those same 10 people into a FS3 combat round where the results are known in advance and everyone's just posing their hero moments, and now your turn takes 10 minutes. (ETA: It's not unique to FS3; just using that as an example.)
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@bobotron The reason I pick on it is the games I played just didn't have pose order of any form (I never heard the term at all before I checked out WoD), and people just kind of politely didn't pose several times in a row, with an unspoken 2pr. I definitely don't think it's a culprit alone but I do think the environments where it is common and ones where it is not having a striking difference in pacing. I'm sure there were extremely slow posers in the other games, but I just don't remember them at all since everyone customarily wrote past them. If it's customary for people to write slow in an environment, everyone slows down, and vice versa imo.
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@faraday
I agree on skipping people, and have before. And I get what you're saying. I also really left off something I meant to, wherein breaking things down into smaller groupings is also a thing, and that's what I'm used to on games I used to play on and run. But, even then, an hour to get everyone through is better than 'everyone poses in a half hour, except for Agnes, who ends up giving 4 lines every 45 minutes'. There's never going to be anything perfect, and things have to swing either direction to make a scene and situation work, I feel.@Apos
No, I get it. I'm just pointing out that it's not the primary problem, unless it is allowed to become such. -
@thatonedude That's similar to have I've run Saga Edition Star Wars previously: roll init, handle the first person's actions/rolls, then while they're posing, go on and handle the next person's actions/rolls. I would stop taking actions/rolls every couple of people, just to let the poses start to catch up, and to keep everyone from getting confused, but it generally worked pretty well.
Of course, FS3 works even better, since, as Fara said, it's everyone rolls at once, then everyone poses -- generally in any order, unless they're waiting for a response from a particular character.
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@cupcake said in World of Darkness -- Alternative Settings:
There seemed to be at least one character who seemed capable of doing everything on BitN. Had crazy amounts of all kinds of psychic abilities, enough to make me feel redundant, seemed to get up in every scene and make it focus on her, and seemed incapable of sharing the spotlight or letting other people's more reasonable expertise show.
The game unfortunately had a couple of those in its lifespan.
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@bobotron said in World of Darkness -- Alternative Settings:
@faraday
Yes, but those games seem to have a setting that shoves the players together in close quarters. In all honesty, the big thing you would have to do with a Mortals game is create it with a hand-made, mortals only group. Not Hunter stuff. Someting like SCP, or an organization that recruits exceptional people, but never with powers. Make it part of your game's setup and policy that 'everyone has to be part of the Big Group, even if your concept is 'cupcake making housewife there to do MAKE BABBY! RP'. We did this as a 3 year tabletop game, and it was fun. Hell, you could even set it up so that players could look into getting powers and Awakening and shit, but have a rule in place that if those things happen, those PCs are retired.You hit what I was typing up with the whole 'gotta have an organization,' so I deleted it. But you have to have buy in from players. If you make a mortals only game, you, the staff, HAVE to give it some sort of focus. Allowing people to come into the Organization in their own way is fine, but the game HAS to eventually have that PC drawn into it, otherwise they're outside of the main line of plots and stuff going on.
However, doing something like this also requires something that most WoD games don't want to do: FUCKING FOCUS.
I gotta disagree. You're right if the assumption is that the focus of the game's theme will be on the Supernatural or will be on a Such and Such Org, but I don't think that just because a game is mortal-only it has to have that focus.
A mortal-only game, for example, would be a great political game, since none of the chars would be able to fix the outcome by using some ubernerfed ability. Combine that political game with some big supernatural mystery that keeps complicating the chars lives, or a haunting horror in the background and I think players could have a ton of fun with that.
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@apos said in World of Darkness -- Alternative Settings:
@arkandel I noticed a difference too, with the pace being much slower on nWoD in my limited experiences there. I attributed the spacing to how the game system puts the impetus of managing rules more on the players themselves with it being less coded, which in turn I think emphasizes a strict pose order since the consequences of someone being skipped or passed over is much higher.
Writing the mechanics of a published, for profit RPG system into code that can fire and forget gets into very iffy territory, depending on the game company. Since the mechanics are reproduced on the game in a way that doesn't necessarily require someone to own the books, a lot of companies don't allow this.
More full automation of their systems is something most companies prefer to license to video game companies, not small fries like the lot of us. Depending on how they write their permissions, this may be apples and oranges, or we may all be oranges. We are usually all oranges when it comes to coding in the actual combat mechanics other than 'you have a dice roll simulator and a sheet simulator to tick off damage'/etc. that makes things much more on par with tabletop usage of those rules.
Oh fucking well.
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Yeah, but a 'mortals game' that is @faraday 's example of 'a priest, a musician and a housewife get jumped in an alley' ends up getting a lot of small play groups, and then you have the problem of cliques all over again. The players need a reason and impetus to work with each other, socialize, etc. A political mortals only game would be awesome, but that's just another type of focus.
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@surreality said in World of Darkness -- Alternative Settings:
Writing the mechanics of a published, for profit RPG system into code that can fire and forget gets into very iffy territory, depending on the game company.
Yeah, frankly that's a big reason that led to the development of FS3. It's not that I couldn't have coded the combat mechanics of my favorite RPG system. I just didn't want to step on copyright toes.
That and I think most tabletop RPG systems are just too complex to use on a MUSH. They're written for interpretation by a GM, and are not very code-friendly.
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@faraday Yep. 'A person is looking at the specific scenario and the dice on the table and is available at all times as play is happening to oversee the conditionals and corner cases to make a judgment call' is a hugely impactful part of tabletop RPG design. There's a reason it changes dramatically for LARP, even.
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Using the WoD rules for mortals, I'd love to see it taken into sci-fi horror, like, all the players are on a seed ship to colonize a different planet, but they were woken up for some reason, nobody knows why, nobody can access the command deck to figure out what's going on and there are /things/ out there...
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@faraday said in World of Darkness -- Alternative Settings:
Lack of care is certainly a problem, no question. I get around that in my FS3 combat games by just flat-out skipping people if they don't pose by the 15-minute turn limit. They can catch-up pose next turn if they like, or just be moving positions/aiming/frozen/whatever for a turn.
I don't think you can compare FS3 and WoD Combat for many reasons. The biggest one is FS3's lack of "initiative"; everyone goes at the same time, and the combat engine takes the pre-set "preferences" indicated by each player (weapon used, target, attack-type, etc.) and finds the results lickety-split. In WoD, each person gets a turn in sequence, and, unless that person is actively engaged, they aren't always going to do this quickly; even if each player took 5 minutes to choose their action, roll for it, and pose, a 6-person combat moves at the glacial speed of 30 minutes per turn.
And no, many people don't just queue this shit up. I do, but that's because I'm awesome.
@lisse24 said in World of Darkness -- Alternative Settings:
I gotta agree with others in that one of BiTN's weeknesses (as much as I loved that game) was it's sandboxiness and reliance on plot. It might be cool to combine the underlying theme with a territory code similar to RfK's to keep play happening and things moving.
A territory/resource management system is going to be cornerstone of whatever I end up doing.
“It is better to live doing the things that you like. It is foolish to live within this dream of a world seeing unpleasantness and doing only things that you do not like.” -- Yamamoto Tsunetomo.
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@ganymede said in World of Darkness -- Alternative Settings:
I don't think you can compare FS3 and WoD Combat for many reasons. The biggest one is FS3's lack of "initiative"; everyone goes at the same time, and the combat engine takes the pre-set "preferences" indicated by each player (weapon used, target, attack-type, etc.) and finds the results lickety-split. In WoD, each person gets a turn in sequence, and, unless that person is actively engaged, they aren't always going to do this quickly; even if each player took 5 minutes to choose their action, roll for it, and pose, a 6-person combat moves at the glacial speed of 30 minutes per turn.
FS3 has initiative, it's just handled under the hood. It all comes down to how you view initiative. If you view it as "I get to wait to see what you do AND whether you succeed before I even pick my action" then yeah - it is going to be serial by necessity.
But that's a design choice. You could just as easily say that declaring actions happens in parallel because your decision to act is unaffected by anyone else's decision to act.
Then you have what I believe someone else suggested a bit ago:
- Declaration phase (in parallel)
- Resolution phase (GM-handled, in initiative order; GM spits out the results)
- Pose phase (in parallel, which can happen alongside the declaration phase in subsequent turns)
None of this is FS3-specific. It can work for any RPG system as long as you're willing to make declarations happen in parallel.
And if you're not? Well... then you get 8 hour long combat scenes. But why do that to yourselves???
Side note: FS3's code makes declarations public because it's meant for co-op PvE. But you could have people page the GM if it's PvP and you're worried about somebody cheating by seeing someone else's action first.
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@faraday said in World of Darkness -- Alternative Settings:
FS3 has initiative, it's just handled under the hood. It all comes down to how you view initiative. If you view it as "I get to wait to see what you do AND whether you succeed before I even pick my action" then yeah - it is going to be serial by necessity.
WoD is, and has always been, serial by design. The idea of acting first to knock your opponent out of commission before he or she can act is integral to how many powers and merits work. Many other systems work the same way.
And if you're not? Well... then you get 8 hour long combat scenes. But why do that to yourselves???
The first system, Vampire: the Masquerade, has strong roots in BDSM culture. That's why.
GM: Roll for initiative.
PC: Uhhhhh. Yes, game master.“It is better to live doing the things that you like. It is foolish to live within this dream of a world seeing unpleasantness and doing only things that you do not like.” -- Yamamoto Tsunetomo.
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@ganymede you’re missing my point. A, B and C are fighting. They each (in parallel) declare an action meant to take their opponent out. Then you resolve the actions. B goes first. He takes A out. A doesn’t get to actually do his intended action.
Resolutions can be serial even if the declarations are not.
I’ve played WoD combat in tabletop and there’s no reason why it can’t be done this way. If a game chooses not to, that’s fine, but that’s a choice.
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@faraday said in World of Darkness -- Alternative Settings:
A, B and C are fighting. They each (in parallel) declare an action meant to take their opponent out. Then you resolve the actions. B goes first. He takes A out. A doesn’t get to actually do his intended action.
Well, they don't declare in parallel in WoD; they declare in inverse to the initiative order. Supposing A, B, and C are sequential in initiative, the players declare in order of C, B, and A. C can change his or her action based on what B or A declares at a penalty, as can B, based on what A declares.
Now that we have the actions set, we can then resolve it. For simple attacks, this isn't an issue; however, WoD have numerous modifiers that could apply to the rolls. For instance, if A is a vampire, then she may decide to activate Vigor, which would be on top of its passive effect. If A was attacking B, then B may have bonuses to her defense based on Merits, some of which may need to be activated to work. If A is working in conjunction with C, there is a negative modifier to B's defense based on numerous attackers. Next, we have to consider what weapons are being used, and whether certain specialties would apply to add further dice.
I understand what you're saying: you could build a combat engine for the World of Darkness. At that engine could calculate and apply initiative in order to figure out whether a PC can make an attack or not. But it would be an undertaking of gargantuan, epic proportions, for arguably little benefit because, in all honesty, a good World of Darkness game won't require a thorough combat engine.
The designers have created a "Down and Dirty" combat system for PC v. NPC combat that can be used. The designers have also created a "Beaten Down" mechanism that should be implemented to make combat less deadly and much quicker.
None of this stuff existed for oWoD or nWoD. But, again, this is why nWoD 2E is superior. And if people would just read and follow the rules you would not have combats that last a lifetime.
“It is better to live doing the things that you like. It is foolish to live within this dream of a world seeing unpleasantness and doing only things that you do not like.” -- Yamamoto Tsunetomo.
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@ganymede said in World of Darkness -- Alternative Settings:
I understand what you're saying: you could build a combat engine for the World of Darkness
I'm not even talking about building a combat engine. I'm simply talking about changing the order in which the people involved declare and resolve their actions.
Concrete example:
A pages GM: "I'm going to attack C and use my Vigor."
B pages GM: "I'm going to change into my (werewolf attack form - I forget what it's called) and attack C with my claws."
C pages GM: "I'm going to dominate B and have her turn on A."GM makes a bunch of rolls, factoring in all of the merits and conditions and initiative and all that good stuff.
<OOC> GM says, "OK here's what happens: A attacks C and does (blah blah) damage. C then dominates B, who changes forms and wheels on A with claws bared. B - you're now dominated."
Or whatever. Then everybody poses. And while they're posing, they can be paging the GM with their intended next actions.
It's different from tabletop yes, but there's no reason it couldn't work.
WoD is designed for a tabletop gaming experience where you just go around the table and say what you're doing. Insisting on doing it this way when you have players scattered across the globe on terminals watching TV or doing whatever between poses is ill-advised IMHO, and leads to crazy-long combats. The WoD computer RPG didn't do it exactly that way, and MUSHes don't have to either.
