The State of the Chronicles of Darkness
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@tragedyjones No, I agree. Their actual products are good and well-tested (especially compared to the 1.0 variants). But if the MU* community wasn't so entrenched in nWoD I'd have long now moved on. They are good writers and game makers, but they are shitty professionals and quite disorganized.
- He who takes offense when not intended is a fool. He who takes offense when intended is a greater fool.
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@Arkandel said:
@tragedyjones No, I agree. Their actual products are good and well-tested (especially compared to the 1.0 variants). But if the MU* community wasn't so entrenched in nWoD I'd have long now moved on. They are good writers and game makers, but they are shitty professionals and quite disorganized.
Yeah they ain't the most together. Oddly though I.am only in the MU community because I am entrenched in WoD.
I'm a rodeo clown.
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Yeah, Rose and Matt aren't working on Mage or Changeling, so I don't think one can blame Beast or Demon for the slow progress there.
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@tragedyjones said:
@Arkandel said:
@tragedyjones No, I agree. Their actual products are good and well-tested (especially compared to the 1.0 variants). But if the MU* community wasn't so entrenched in nWoD I'd have long now moved on. They are good writers and game makers, but they are shitty professionals and quite disorganized.
Yeah they ain't the most together. Oddly though I.am only in the MU community because I am entrenched in WoD.
Same. I've dabbled in other games and genres, but WoD is the only one I go back to with any consistency. It's pretty much the opposite for tabletop. We've tried WoD a handful of times, but tabletop it just never seems to work out.
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Some day I will make a The Strange MU.
"Excuse the hell out of you. He's a bag of dicks. I'm a carefully curated box of cocks." -- to @GirlCalledBlu upon being misrepresented.
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@Mnemosyne said:
Yeah, Rose and Matt aren't working on Mage or Changeling, so I don't think one can blame Beast or Demon for the slow progress there.
I can, since it's one organization with finite resources. Even if different people are heading up production of a given line, they are taking up resources which go to the whole project and there is an inevitable matter of managing those resources by priority. I'm unimpressed with their priorities.
Mind you I care about as much as being stuck in traffic. It's inconvenient but it's not like these games matter more to me than a passtime, and meanwhile I will do other things.
But who prays for Satan? Who, in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most?
-Mark Twain -
“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos -
@HelloRaptor said:
Same. I've dabbled in other games and genres, but WoD is the only one I go back to with any consistency. It's pretty much the opposite for tabletop. We've tried WoD a handful of times, but tabletop it just never seems to work out.
Do you think it's possible your WoD-gaming has been tainted by the MU* playstyle after all this time? I know whenever I'm playing table-top I keep comparing things mentally to how they'd work on a MUSH.
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@Thenomain said:
@Coin said:
Some day I will make a The Strange MU.
It would be easier to code.
It would be easier to run, too. Player STs could be allowed to make separate realms where they can run stories of the type and style they like with rules altered per in-game specifications (i.e. physics laws and stuff). While staff could concentrate on metaplot and the Strange.
"Excuse the hell out of you. He's a bag of dicks. I'm a carefully curated box of cocks." -- to @GirlCalledBlu upon being misrepresented.
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@Silver said:
@Mnemosyne said:
Yeah, Rose and Matt aren't working on Mage or Changeling, so I don't think one can blame Beast or Demon for the slow progress there.
I can, since it's one organization with finite resources. Even if different people are heading up production of a given line, they are taking up resources which go to the whole project and there is an inevitable matter of managing those resources by priority. I'm unimpressed with their priorities.
Mind you I care about as much as being stuck in traffic. It's inconvenient but it's not like these games matter more to me than a passtime, and meanwhile I will do other things.
I can agree with this... to a point. If someone doesn't like or care about the game they're producing, its going to be a lesser product anyways. If you pulled the head person behind Beast and told them to go collaborate with the Vampire person, there's a number of issues that could crop up regardless. Everything from difference of opinion on what something should be or represent to resentfulness at not heading their own project.
Too many cooks in one kitchen, essentially. It seems like what they could USE would be some more 'extra' folk that are helping to streamline, edit, and otherwise do the 'grunt work' associated with these lines.
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I don't think they can afford many more folks tbh.
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@Coin said:
@Thenomain said:
@Coin said:
Some day I will make a The Strange MU.
It would be easier to code.
It would be easier to run, too. Player STs could be allowed to make separate realms where they can run stories of the type and style they like with rules altered per in-game specifications (i.e. physics laws and stuff). While staff could concentrate on metaplot and the Strange.
There's no reason you couldn't do that in WoD, or elsewhere, really. There've been settings/systems that let you do that before. Even owod had Mirror Realms that both mages and werewolves could find/use for a similar effect.
Hell, to a point that's what functionally happens with a ton of PrPs anyway.
The general rule of thumb, though, seems to be that the less something directly relates to your day to day playing of the game's core setting, the less interested people are. I haven't read The Strange aside from glancing at a blurb, and while it seems neat, I don't know that it surmounts that basic issue. If one ST's realm has zero impact on or ties to the 'core' setting (see: complaints regarding PrPs having no impact because staff doesn't want to have to account for everything crazy prp runners throw into their stories, hand out rewards for, etc) or to other 'realms', you'll get some use out of them but interest will often peter out or not catch on.
Do you think it's possible your WoD-gaming has been tainted by the MU* playstyle after all this time? I know whenever I'm playing table-top I keep comparing things mentally to how they'd work on a MUSH.
I don't really think so. I think it has more to do with the modern setting, actually. I addressed this to my wife recently when we were discussing setting stuff, and I think that as much as people here whine about 'bar RP' or other slice of life shit, on a MU* people want that ability to slide into/play through just some normal shit. Even if it's just backdrop, like your living room while you use your ipad to sketch out a magic ritual with somebody else, or mention running around the corner to grab xyz from the store while you're afk for a bit RL. There's a pretty basic familiarity with a modern setting that underscores a lot of minor things in a lot of roleplay that historical, fantasy, etc settings just don't have.
I can technically do many of the same things in a D&D setting that I can do in a WoD one, but even then many of those things lack the fundamental familiarity. A D&D tavern isn't the same as a bar, I don't actually write on paper in RL pretty much ever outside of a tiny number of things where I have to sign or fill out a form, blah blah blah. I don't dislike those trappings, but they aren't as comfortable.
On a WoD game I can log in at pretty much any time of day and as long as there's people around I know and like to play with, we can roleplay something. Maybe it's a PRP, maybe it's just sitting around bitching about mundane shit, maybe it's arguing about supernatural stuff, maybe it's TS, whatever. On the D&D games I played at if there wasn't adventuring to be had I'd pretty much wander off almost immediately.
In tabletop, you're always there for an adventure. Or at least nine times out of ten. Which is cool for D&D games, but I'd often find myself wishing that WoD tabletop games would slow the fuck down and not just rush from one emergency to the next (barring specific stories where that was necessary, but even then, not all the time), and have some fun roleplaying being a supernatural creature in a modern world and how that actually feels and plays out.
Since this was true in the Vampire games I played even before I knew wod MUing was a thing, I don't believe it can be attributed strictly to MUing, though.
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I agree with Raptor on the WoD table top issue though with one caveat. I think MUSHing has helped me run better WoD tabletops because I slow them down more then when I run other genres, and I know since that style change I have gotten a lot of positive feedback and more of the gaming group interested in WoD.
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I have said and will continue saying that a MUSH is more akin to a LARP than a tabletop, with many of the same hobgoblins. For the sanity of everyone else at the table, I shall decline to talk about those at this time.
“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 can see that.
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@The-Tree-of-Woe said:
I have said and will continue saying that a MUSH is more akin to a LARP than a tabletop, with many of the same hobgoblins. For the sanity of everyone else at the table, I shall decline to talk about those at this time.
You shut your goddamn LARPmouth.
That is a terrible thing to say about another gaming environment. Honestly, some people.
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@The-Tree-of-Woe
I dunno, as another person who feels the same way, I'd love to hear your thoughts on the similiarities and differences. Of course, if people are going to end up crazy with it, you could totally PM me. -
- Disproportionate ratio of PCs to Storytellers
- Transient roleplayer population
- Players are often expected to resolve situations without an ST present
- Games tend to be restricted to a relatively small geographic area ("the city") - this is changing, somewhat, on MUXes
- STs will often attempt to be conservative with exotic concepts and abilities to try and keep things on the rails - "anti-snowflake syndrome"
- Storytellers are often not familiar with an individual character's backstory or events that have influenced them IC
Those are the ones I can think of off the top of my head.
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Let the Changeling Arguments continue:http://theonyxpath.com/changeling-the-lost-second-edition-elementals/
I'm a rodeo clown.
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@tragedyjones said:
Let the Changeling Arguments continue:http://theonyxpath.com/changeling-the-lost-second-edition-elementals/
No complaints here. Oh, wait:
with wings
We'll correct this in post.
@Sammi, that's Vera.
