Echoes in the Mists - CoD 2e MU
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@Rinel From what I've seen and heard, Mage in 2E is a lot easier to get right and much faster to learn than 1e Mage was.
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@magee101 said in Echoes in the Mists - CoD 2e MU:
@Rinel From what I've seen and heard, Mage in 2E is a lot easier to get right and much faster to learn than 1e Mage was.
By a million.
They took that complexity and spread it out to Promethean and Changeling.
“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos -
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@RDC said in Echoes in the Mists - CoD 2e MU:
werewolf gifts
What's complicated about them? They're super-clearly linked to Renown now.
Racism isn't Tinkerbell. It doesn't need you to believe in it for it to exist.
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am i the only person who thinks 1e mage is easier than 2e mage?
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Ok, well, there's a lot to break down there, but I guess there's nothing to do but dive right in:
The process of buying Moon Gifts is different from buying Shadow Gifts is different from buying Wolf Gifts.
Moon Gifts aren't normally bought. They raise with your Auspice Renown. You cannot buy them above your Auspice Renown. In the event that they publish more Moon Gifts, there is a cost listed for them, but that's about it. You can't buy these, otherwise.
Shadow Gifts just need to be unlocked by a spirit in certain circumstances. Wolf Gifts are inherent to all werewolves and never need to be unlocked. It's not really that complicated.
If you are Rahu and buy Cunning Renown, you get a Cunning facet of any Shadow gift you have unlocked. What happens if you have no unlocked gifts? You get a wolf gift.
No. You can choose to get a wolf gift, or save the facet unlock until such time as you have a gift it can apply to. That's RAW, in the book. You're only forced to take a facet if you have an open Shadow gift that it could apply to, and even then it's not hard to do a little pre-planning to not back yourself into a corner.
If you are a Rahu and buy Purity Renown, you get your Moon Gift for free (which doesn't need to be unlocked). Then you ALSO get a Shadow Gift's purity facet, which I didn't know until recently and I've been playing werewolf 2e since it came out (and staffing it) and literally only one player has ever pointed out to me in the entire time I've been staffing it, so this is obviously not super widely known. (Again, unless you don't have an unlocked gift with an open purity facet, in which case wolf gift, unless you don't have any more wolf gifts, in which case...?)
Where have you been playing and/or staffing? Because the games I know off, off the top of my head, that ran Werewolf 2.0 were Eldritch (and @Coin and I most certainly ran it with these rules -- I even wrote a whole big thing) and Reno/Portland -- and I know for a fact that we're doing that there, too. So...
Once you get it down, it's not that hard. But if you've ever tried to explain it to a newbie to werewolf? You'll find a LOT of things that are unclear and hard for them to wrap their heads around, and a lot of fiddly little things it's easy to get wrong even as a veteran.
I've explained it to -- fifty? Sixty? It usually takes all of like four minutes, lol.
"There are three basic types of Gifts: Moon, Shadow, and Wolf. Wolf Gifts are things that are inherent to all werewolves, and you can just buy these normally with no additional hassle. Moon Gifts are unique to each phase of the moon that a werewolf can turn under, and have a Renown associated with them. You raise the Renown, this gift goes up. Shadow Gifts are the powers of Spirits, and have to be unlocked by a spirit before you're allowed to buy them."
"When you raise a Renown, you can get a facet in a Shadow Gift for that renown for free. If it's your Auspice Renown, it also raises your moon gift. You can always choose to put this on a wolf gift if you want, or if you don't have a Shadow gift this can apply to and don't want to put it on a wolf gift, you can save it until you do have a shadow gift this can work for."
The dice pools for gift lists are ALL OVER THE PLACE and require extremely broad investment in attributes, skills, and renown compared to, say, vampire Disciplines (where some clans can buy their entire suite of Clan Disciplines up to 5 with only minor investment into attributes and skills to perform very well - a Daeva with Brawl and Empathy does everything a Daeva is expected to do, Discipline-wise, very well. A Gangrel with Brawl and Animal Ken, similarly. Show me a werewolf who can buy two skills and be competent at their Tribe/Auspice gift lists and intended roles.
Not a bug, a feature, given how integrated Renown is to every other part of werewolf. It's why we put the brakes on it so hard.
You might say, "Okay, but you're not supposed to focus on a single gift list, you're supposed to focus on your Auspice's renown!" Uh, all right, but now you're spending a TON of XP on gift unlocks and way behind in effectiveness while still being more complex and having a more varied skill list requirement.
I would never say such a thing. Have you met my werewolf?
Werewolf gifts are needlessly complex and while what they DO is very cool, they could have been organized into straightforward 1-5 lists like Disciplines and done similarly well.
They're really not that complex. I honestly think that you're just overthinking them, especially since the brunt of your examples come from an apparent misunderstanding of how the facet unlocks work.
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@RDC as a new 2e WW player I think its a little complicated (and I read the character creation stuff like fifty times and read over the renown area like half a dozen times and didnt see anything about it there either) but conpared to the exhaustive list of 1e and 'Do you have this this this and this prereq? Kay you can get it' ts pretty simple. The problem I really have with the game though is none of the wolf gifts seem that great compared to the shadow gifts and there was some really neat Mother Luna FatherWolf gifts that I dont see a replacement for in 2e
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@Derp you can be really informative but sometimes it would be better for your point and your constructive critisim if you didnt beat people over the head so hard it seems like you are berating them. Clear and concise with book pages and examples is the best way to help someone learn
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I wasn't trying to beat anyone over the head. Simply trying to respond to the points made, of which there were a lot, over a long block of text. Sorry if it came off like that.
At the end of the day, all I was trying to say is that this isn't really all that complicated. It can be explained in a couple of minutes, and after the first time or two you use it, it becomes pretty easy to calculate it.
It's really no more difficult than trying to explain in-and-out-of-clan disciplines and the rates that they can be raised, or how devotions work on xp costs, or how ruling, common, and inferior arcana work. Werewolf's stuff is pretty much all based on Renown. The gifts system might seem complex at first, but you take a good glance at it and it's pretty straightforward, once you get past the daunting step of learning a new system.
Apologies to @RDC if that's how it came across. That wasn't how I intended it. Was just trying to help.
Racism isn't Tinkerbell. It doesn't need you to believe in it for it to exist.
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Telling someone who has said they find something complicated that it isn't complicated is the opposite of helpful, as the implication is that they are just dumb for being confused by something that is clearly so simple.
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I'm allowed to disagree, and to point out errors that, when corrected, reduce the complexity. I'll apologize if it came across as browbeating. I'm not going to apologize for saying 'no, there are not that many steps, look'.
Racism isn't Tinkerbell. It doesn't need you to believe in it for it to exist.
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Absolutely, but if you are saying it to disagree, then you aren't actually trying to help, you are trying to state your opinion, which is fine? But they are different things. If you are trying to be helpful, which you said you were, telling someone who is intimidated or overwhelmed by the rules that they are wrong for being so
Isn't
Going
To
HelpEta: In reality, what it will actually do is alienate your audience and make them stop listening, and they are likely to walk away thinking it is MORE complicated than they thought, not less, AND it will likely reduce their desire to learn.
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Ok. Let me try it this way:
- Every time you raise a Renown, you get a free Shadow Gift Facet in a gift you have unlocked. This facet must match the Renown you raised. So if you raise Cunning, you get a free Cunning facet.
- If the Renown is your AUSPICE renown, you ALSO raise your Moon Gift up by 1.
- In the above example, if you already have all of the Cunning facets in your open Gifts, then you have two options:
- Save it for later, when you unlock a new Gift
- Spend it on a Cunning facet of a Wolf Gift
For purposes of the following examples, let's pretend that Iggy the Irraka only has the Gift of Stealth unlocked.
Example 1: Iggy the Irraka raises Cunning. Cunning is Iggy's Auspice Renown, so that comes with an automatic raise in Iggy's Moon Gift. Iggy also gets the free Shadow Gift facet that comes with every Renown raise, and chooses to use that on Gift of Stealth's Cunning Facet, which is the only one they have available.
Example 2: Now Iggy raises Purity. Purity isn't Iggy's Auspice Renown, so Iggy's moon gift doesn't go up. They just get the Shadow Gift facet. Iggy doesn't like Gift of Stealth's Purity facet, so they choose to unlock the Purity facet of a Wolf Gift instead. Legitimate move.
Example 3: Iggy raises Cunning AGAIN! Woo! Iggy's Moon Gift goes up 1 more, but Iggy hasn't unlocked any new Shadow Gifts. Iggy can put it in a wolf gift, if they want, but they decide to save this one for later. Now, the next time that Iggy unlocks a Shadow Gift, they'll get the Cunning Facet of that gift too, since they had one saved.
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Portland seems like a happening place. Shame about those staffing problems.
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Re: various werewolf renown issues - I kind of have a solve? And this solve works a lot better in 2e than it did in 1e, since gift costs don't go up with each level, and you don't have the 'skipped a level' tax.
The solution? Every Gift (except Auspice/Moon Gift) must be purchased. Raising renown would no longer give you a free gift. Renown, then, ought be discounted to reflect this.
@Auspice said in Echoes in the Mists - CoD 2e MU:
am i the only person who thinks 1e mage is easier than 2e mage?
Probably not, but possibly unfounded? The issue is that 2e came up with a bunch of new terms, but the root of things ended up being mostly the same. Kinda. Ish. With some Ascension flavor of paradigm thrown into the mix that I love, but I'm weird.
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@Admiral Since I've come up in your reasoning to have a dim view of them in that regard in the past, I need to make clear: there are zero issues I have with anyone there. I probably should have mentioned that ages ago, but I keep forgetting since it hasn't come up again.
(The problematic folks from the Reno Threeboot are not part of the current team.)
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@Jennkryst said in Echoes in the Mists - CoD 2e MU:
Re: various werewolf renown issues - I kind of have a solve? And this solve works a lot better in 2e than it did in 1e, since gift costs don't go up with each level, and you don't have the 'skipped a level' tax.
The solution? Every Gift (except Auspice/Moon Gift) must be purchased. Raising renown would no longer give you a free gift. Renown, then, ought be discounted to reflect this.
@Auspice said in Echoes in the Mists - CoD 2e MU:
am i the only person who thinks 1e mage is easier than 2e mage?
Probably not, but possibly unfounded? The issue is that 2e came up with a bunch of new terms, but the root of things ended up being mostly the same. Kinda. Ish. With some Ascension flavor of paradigm thrown into the mix that I love, but I'm weird.
That and the math is like three times simplier at the end of the day to figure out if your custom created mixed spell is a legal spell in terms of the magic system. The flow chart from 1e is about 50x more complicated than a 2e flowchart for legal spells.
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@Jennkryst said in Echoes in the Mists - CoD 2e MU:
@Auspice said in Echoes in the Mists - CoD 2e MU:
am i the only person who thinks 1e mage is easier than 2e mage?
Probably not, but possibly unfounded? The issue is that 2e came up with a bunch of new terms, but the root of things ended up being mostly the same. Kinda. Ish. With some Ascension flavor of paradigm thrown into the mix that I love, but I'm weird.
Probably just my unwillingness to learn new things, but I found 2E to be unlearnable. Granted, it could be because I learn by doing (I cannot visual things in my head, so I have to do things to get the hang of them), and the person I wanted to help me learn basically made me feel stupid because I couldn't just read and understand the rules.
