oWoD - Is there such thing as a good one?
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@admiral said in oWoD - Is there such thing as a good one?:
I just compared Sam Haight to AIDS.
Oh yes, I caught that. You said that AIDS, like Sam Haight, was funny because it's been "long enough". You said AIDS was funny. It's hard to miss.
I know I'm not great with expressing a tone, so I empathize, but really? Really? I can't imagine what you were going for here. I really can't.
Also, Sam Haight was funny because White Wolf was serious at first. It's now funny for them, because distance is a classic element of humor, but for the rest of us it was funny at the time because of WW's distance from reality. c.f., The Gypsy Book.
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UPDATE: Tried the game suggested to me. It won't be for me, sadly.
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How about setting up a full oWoD game where every player in the oWoD game is an NPC, a full fledged world fully running fully grided oWoD game.
Players who connect are NOT part of the WoD game.
Instead, they play characters from anything BUT a WoD game.
Pokemon? Good to go.
D&D? Also great to have you.
Matrix? Sure, why not.
Shadowrun? Welcome aboard!
Amber? We welcome those of the pattern!Essentially, the entire purpose for players is to go on and absolutely DESTROY the world in every possible way for the WoD NPC's.
Wipe them out, make them cry, ruin their tea breaks, whatever you want to do.
Ergo, a crackfic of a MUSH.
That's a WoD game I would love to play
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@ashen-shugar I've been slapped around a bit, but man...who hurt you?
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@thenomain If you can't laugh in the face of tragedy you aren't drinking enough. I dunno what to tell you.
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@admiral
That’s fair. Hey, maybe you meant that the dude is tragic like AIDS, or was the AIDS of oWoD (I think that was Gypsy, myself), but yeah YMMV.
Interestingly, I tripped on an interview with the original Mage developer and he said the writer of Gypsy was surprised there was such animosity toward it. I think this was a problem with oWoD, where they were messing around with not just horror myths, but with cultures as well. When they were messing up basics of language for their game (the clan name “Toreador” still makes me a little sad), we could just play along with it. When it was a people about as oppressed as you could get pre-America, I can understand why it would be maligned.
OWoD: the epitome of YMMV.
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This ties into the current fan-rage about Vampire 5th edition (a lot of which is I DETEST CHANGE AND FEAR THE NEW when you whip away the curtain... people are cowards) -- people are howling about edgelordy stuff in the new book and wearing rose-colored glasses about the stuff in the OLD books. Here's what I can remember, off the top of my head, without cracking a book:
- Flying cockhugger fomori who attack men in the middle of the night for their sperm so they can make Ferectoi
- Chad Fomori whose power is to rape you to death with their giant agg-dealing dicks.
- A transgender SS scientist Tzimisce who practices a nazi variant of the Path of Caine, wants to kill all the Jews and runs around in a bra with swastikas on it. Nobody remembers Totentanz and she used to be ALL OVER WHITE WOLF'S SABBAT STUFF.
- Each Setite clanbook having a pedophile example PC
- A Confederate Revivalist example PC in the Revised Brujah book
And that's just what I can remember without doing any research.
“Real magic can never be made by offering someone else's liver. You must tear out your own, and not expect to get it back.”
― Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn -
That's fair. But you also have people who essentially worship Onyx Path for 'inclusion' with things that are just as bad and tone-deaf (a prewritten group of C20 Changelings who are trying to kill the Patriarchy in the Dreaming to kill it in real life, male Crones self-castrating to appease the Goddess and veiled apology for the Patriarchy, and a number of other tasteless 'inclusive' things regarding gay characters, or the entirety of Beast and the overtones and direct pedo-rape character in one of the Beast book's fiction).
Long story short: WoD in a nutshell is far from perfect, and 'good' is only what you, as a player and a storyteller, make it.
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@bobotron I have issues with the Circle of the Crone as a covenant because the basic Mother's Army really is just "Wicca, but Evil" and as much as people like to rag on Wicca, it's pretty much benevolent and that is some lazy shit, along with the 1e depiction of the Lancea et Sanctum being some pretty heavy reflexive lashing-out against Judeo-Christian religion. The NWoD/Chronicles of Darkness writers tried to learn from their mistakes but carried a lot of them with them just the same, which is evident in their presentation of stuff like the Vodoun blood magic & etc.
“Real magic can never be made by offering someone else's liver. You must tear out your own, and not expect to get it back.”
― Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn -
I remember back in the day being utterly convinced that people who wrote the splatbook suppliments never actually read the core material. It was particularly egregious in Werewolf - but that also might be because Werewolf what I played most. Like, swearing up and down that the Black Furies were something deeper and more complex than just militant man-hating lesbians ... and the Black Fury Tribebook (first edition, anyway) presenting very little more than page after page of militant, man-hating lesbians.
Or Clashing Boomboom. We really needed that.
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@the-tree-of-woe said in oWoD - Is there such thing as a good one?:
I have issues with the Circle of the Crone as a covenant because the basic Mother's Army really is just "Wicca, but Evil" and as much as people like to rag on Wicca, it's pretty much benevolent and that is some lazy shit, along with the 1e depiction of the Lancea et Sanctum being some pretty heavy reflexive lashing-out against Judeo-Christian religion.
When I read The Mother's Army, I thought of them more like the cultists in Crichton's Eaters of the Dead.
Wicca does not have the monopoly on Goddess-worship.
“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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@bobotron Straight up? Beast is gross top to bottom. That book reeks of misguided ideas executed in the least interesting way possible.
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No?
But I think that's an inherent flaw of the system. I think nWoD gets better at dichotomous conflict but oWoD is pretty lousy with it. Conflict is basically level set at 'nothing or nuclear' and so couple that with a lot of reductive world building, things are pretty easily shitty from the jump. For that reason, it will always attract a certain element that is socialized poorly and/or is hyper aggressive about story conflict.
But. I do also think that time has been good for oWoD in that with more distance and the benefit of some of the material being really dated, it makes it easier to see pretty easily what has aged poorly and what is just kind fucked up, shitty, and otherwise crazily racist. It helps when a lot of gamers who cut their teeth on oWoD material have also aged and have leveled-up on their abilities to think critically and understand nuance in general.
I think that creating a community around better stories and better standards is something that's maybe better positioned now. I do wish something like that did exist, currently.
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@ashen-shugar said in oWoD - Is there such thing as a good one?:
How about setting up a full oWoD game where every player in the oWoD game is an NPC, a full fledged world fully running fully grided oWoD game.
Players who connect are NOT part of the WoD game.
Instead, they play characters from anything BUT a WoD game.
Pokemon? Good to go.
D&D? Also great to have you.
Matrix? Sure, why not.
Shadowrun? Welcome aboard!
Amber? We welcome those of the pattern!Essentially, the entire purpose for players is to go on and absolutely DESTROY the world in every possible way for the WoD NPC's.
Wipe them out, make them cry, ruin their tea breaks, whatever you want to do.
Ergo, a crackfic of a MUSH.
That's a WoD game I would love to play
I did this on New Prospect... made that Iron Kingdoms/Circle Orboros/Tharn Cannibal witch, who cast buff spells on Werewolves and used some of their blood to fuel her majik. But my secret spell remains secret, MWAHAHAH.
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@the-tree-of-woe said in oWoD - Is there such thing as a good one?:
This ties into the current fan-rage about Vampire 5th edition (a lot of which is I DETEST CHANGE AND FEAR THE NEW when you whip away the curtain... people are cowards)
Good sir-and/or-madam, my rage at Vampire 5th is that they changed too little. I will allow the V20 books returning to pre-nWoD shenanigans, because it they were anniversary releases (which are in dire need of getting Mummy and KotE published already!)
But.
Vampire 5th continues down that path. Oh look, a minor variation on how to play the 13 clans (plus all the other clans which don't really count, SHHHH). Oh gee, are seven of the clans going to be in the 'good guy' faction? I AWAIT THE ANSWER WITH BAITED BREATH.
I ADORE that they have changed the feeding mechanic. The powers look alright at a glance. The world continuing to plod along, with the End Times retcon though? I find incredibly dull.
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Unrelated to all of that, I want to get someone of Romani descent to make a version of John Mullaney's 'Midget vs N-Word' standup bit, but replace Midget with Gypsy. Which word is the worse word? Both are racial slurs, but some are more accepted than others (which is probably why that book was allowed to be written in the first place - Romani are still thrown under the bus today, to say nothing of 20 years ago.)
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Should this thread be titled something else now?
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@rizbunz said in oWoD - Is there such thing as a good one?:
Should this thread be titled something else now?
"oWoD - There Never Were Any Good Ones"?
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@ganymede As a Covenant, I can't see how it doesn't provoke the same reaction as Belial's Brood, as written, because unlike the other four which seem to at least acknowledge the need for a society that allows them to survive, it seems to be geared toward being an active malefactor - at least as the flavor in the 2nd edition narrative spins it. But then again, Acolytes always seem to come out in the wash that way on a MUX anyway, sooooo...
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@rizbunz The oWoD White Whale: Cursed Theme or Bad Community?
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@sunnyj It definitely isn't the theme. I have had fantastic WoD games - new and old - away from MU*s. Tabletop, online, LARPs - all awesome, super fun. It is definitely, without a doubt, 100% the community. The only reason I went back to playing is because nothing else fits my schedule and priorities.
Also, it isn't the whole community. Its a few bad ones and then a larger group that reacts poorly, directly or indirectly, to those few bad ones. And I admit I probably sometimes fall into that latter category. But between them, those two groups affect pretty much every place there is and will be.
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@sunnyj Community. You can easily skip over the odd writer that thinks their outlandish crap is hot shit. People, though...they're harder to look passed, or adjust to the ideal of change. Regardless of the dumpster fire that is the community (not all of it, mind you!) I still adore the theme wholeheartedly.
