What Do You Love About WoD?

TNP

@TNP said:

I liked oWoD a lot more than nWoD. The latter seems very bland.

It is. Very, very bland. I mean, Mage basically dumped consensual reality and '6 billion people believe this, you believe that, see who's right.' for a bunch of bullies thousands of years ago kicked sand in the face of everybody else and...meh?

It was, in fact, specifically Mage I was thinking of. I always loved oMage. Not so much the mechanics which were pretty bad in many ways (and anyway, I don't care about mechanics) but about the... the flavor of the game.

I also loved the Traditions. Each had a rather broad framework that you could fit so many things into. In nWoD I absolutely hate the 'choose 1 from column A and 1 from column B' framework they instituted for every game. I find it boring and, maybe it's a lack of imagination on my part, terribly restrictive. Sure, you can fit a religous oriented Mage into any of the 5 but the result won't feel at all like the Celestial Chorus.

@Arkandel said:

I wanted to put extra emphasis on this because I know - KNOW - some people won't really get it. ...

Many players learn the bare essentials and read the powers their PCs will actually use or just seem cool, but that's it. So they'll eventually become familiar with different aspects of the game through sheer osmosis over time - it's hard to not get used to "wits+composure" being a perception check after the 12th time a ST asks you to roll it - but they're not going to bother with more than a cursory look at parts of the book which aren't fun for them to flip through. At most they'll be forced to, briefly, to answer questions and finish CGen ("what are your Breaking Points?") then never revisit them.

toescuffs

Me. I don't give a shit about mechanics. I'm perfectly happy playing on completely crunchy games that use M&M or Hero System or on games that never roll a dice once and use traits. I don't like combat. I don't like mechanics. If I (rarely) play a computer game, I do it on the easiest setting.

I play for the story. I pick a game based on the setting. I love urban fantasy. I want to play a role in such a setting. I'm currently playing nWoD because it's really the only urban fantasy available right now. I play /despite/ it being nWoD not because of it. So yeah, that just described me.

Coin

See, I see the mechanics as a help towards making the story less predictable and adding a level of chance to it. When people typically complain about mechanics I find that it's because they want to do something their stats don't allow if they have to roll for it, to which I say: maybe build the character you want to play, instead of playing without consideration of the mechanics.

But I'm pretty heartless about this.

surreality

I'm in the oWoD forevah camp as well. I like some aspects of nWoD, but oWoD was the thing when I was in my maximum RPG gamer point in life. I was in tabletop, I MUSHed, I was in LARPs...

Somewhere between the two is probably the most perfect setting ever. No two people will ever agree on what that is, so I don't recommend trying to find it unless you want to lose all of your hair and hate everyone forever, but the point stands.

oWoD was messy, it wasn't always the most enlightened thing in the world (yay understatement!), and the system wasn't relatively uniform in structure across the board, but that was good. nWoD is only mostly cookie-cutter column-A, column-B the way @TNP describes, which only seems to make things even more confusing when that's really just surface and everything under the surface is just as messy and different, but it's then wedged into the structure for that appearance of sameness that's pretty deceptive in the end... but with potential sacrifices made to wedge it into that sameness. If shit's going to be different in the end anyway, just let it be, and let it be what it wants to be.

This is not accurate to real world reality -- which I know for a fact -- but it's the best impression I can give of the differences between the two: oWoD was a bunch of idealistic creators who didn't know everything and stepped on land-mines while creating because the creating was a lot more wild and crazy. Essentially, a bunch of crazy college kids on a road trip in which they get into a shit-ton of trouble but also pull off some wild adventures on the way that are the stories they'll be telling all the way to the nursing home. nWoD was written by the same people after they had been stuck working in an office for the next twenty years, had kids to support, and at least one boss they really hated that was fond of too much paperwork.

ThatGuyThere

I am definitely in the prefer OWoD to NWod Group. Especially for a MUSH, while NWoD is vastly mechanically superior it lacks the crazy zing that OWoD had. Of the games lines the only ones i like better NWoD are Vampire and Hunter. I am that one guy that never cared about the Camarilla Sabbat War; and I loves most of the new Hunter Groups and old hunter always annoyed me.
I think the biggest thing NWoD loses is the connection to the epic, because it is designed to be so sandboxy it fells less like part of a whole.
Also the whole Atlantis thing ranks right up there with "Can you roll more successes then God?" In eye roll worthiness.

Thenomain

@Coin said:

maybe build the character you want to play, instead of playing without consideration of the mechanics

Not being able to see the higher level of mechanic interaction has been part of what's been keeping me from diving into RP for a while. If I have to be super careful about how I build the character, eh, that's not the game I want to play.

(Also keeping me from RP: Code obligations, no ideas that grab me, work constraints.)

Coin

@Thenomain

This is why a lot of games, including ours, brooooo, have some sort of respec clauses. Sometimes it's a full respec (which I dislike) but other times it's letting staff know something isn't working out and there need to be some tweaks.

Arkandel

@Coin said:

See, I see the mechanics as a help towards making the story less predictable and adding a level of chance to it. When people typically complain about mechanics I find that it's because they want to do something their stats don't allow if they have to roll for it, to which I say: maybe build the character you want to play, instead of playing without consideration of the mechanics.

Obviously this is veering off-topic (a true novelty for these forums, I realize) but I think what people enjoy about a system is the chance to pick their powers and veer their general build toward a specific direction. Powers are quite popular, I've never met anyone who doesn't like'em.

So the WoD allows people to pick 'invisibility' in Obfuscate (I know it's not real invisibility), scary-fu in Nightmare, extra-sensory perception in Auspex, etc. That's appreciated because it makes things uniform; your second dot of Protean and mine are the same, so there's consistency across the board and we all know what it can/can't do. So what do I need to use that second dot of Protean? Oh, it's that roll; gotcha. How much does it cost? Oooh, that much, so now my hard-earned XP go towards stuff I already like, and thus I have incentive to get more.

That's what I assert the system provides most people. It's not the randomness or chance of failure, but then again it's not because they don't like to lose (they do, but that's not the reason); it's just the unifying framework for their abilities.

Few people - and I count myself among them - will change the way they roleplay to accommodate the mechanics. The mechanics are there to serve roleplay, not the other way around. Whenever the implementation of a system significantly alters gameplay bad things happen; what comes to memory is HM's olden days when +vote was the primary/only way people have XP so gigantic scenes became prevalent. No one liked that shit and it was horrible, characters were coming in and idling to farm +vote/all eligibility.

So how do you know if a system is good? People use it on their own because it improves their gameplay. How do you know if a system is not? People don't use it unless they are forced to, and stop using it when they aren't.

That's the only benchmark that matters. A great super-fun mechanic that's unused is neither, no matter how it looks on paper.

HelloRaptor

@TNP

I also loved the Traditions. Each had a rather broad framework that you could fit so many things into. In nWoD I absolutely hate the 'choose 1 from column A and 1 from column B' framework they instituted for every game. I find it boring and, maybe it's a lack of imagination on my part, terribly restrictive. Sure, you can fit a religous oriented Mage into any of the 5 but the result won't feel at all like the Celestial Chorus.

Tecnnically oMage had the same thing. You picked an Essence and a Tradition (or no Tradition). Now you pick a Path and an Order (or no Order). There were just more Traditions than Orders, and fewer Essences than Paths, but it was still functionally the same deal. Same with Changeling, you had Kith and Seeming, and Werewolves had Pack and Order. Really Vampire was the only game without a built in Column A, Column B, unless I'm misremembering. I don't think there's really anything wrong with the game wanting you to define What You Are vs What You Do, or making that homogenous across the systems.

The major difference is that the Orders are mostly just watered down, Hermeticized variations. Akashic Brotherhood > Adamantine Arrows, Celestial Chorus > Obrimos of any Order, etc. The Order of Hermes was cool as a Tradition. I even liked that it sort of encapsulated all the other shit people did in its Orders, but I liked it because it presented an organized contrast. Turning the whole set of things into Orders full of bureaucratic nonsense was just...bleh.

@ThatGuyThere

and I loves most of the new Hunter Groups and old hunter always annoyed me.

oWoD Hunter was pretty bad, in a lot of ways. Hunters as a specific type of supernatural creature was ennnh.

@Thenomain

If I have to be super careful about how I build the character, eh, that's not the game I want to play.

Conversely, if a system is so simplistic that there's really no wrong answer, it's probably not the game I want to play. Not that I really want people to build shitty characters, mind, but a lot of this shit really isn't that hard. Especially in wod where it's not super difficult to figure out what Attr+Skill stuff is going to make you good at, or what combination of those you'll need for powers you want.

ThatGuyThere

I don't think mechanics or role-play should be subservient to each other. They should work together to form a whole. There are plenty of options out there for each part without the other. The niche for RPGs is combining both.
For example if you want combat to be deadly in theme something to be avoided, create or use mechanics that enforce this.
If you want characters to be truly concerned with NPCs give them stats that cause concern, same with Vampire a lot of times politics has no real effect since it is not reflected in mechanical terms. This is one thing Kingsmouth does right, controlling and to a lesser extant access to territory gives mechanical benefits on rolls in some situations.
Though I will be honest to me the biggest advantage of mechanics is the randomness, I play and enjoy some superhero games without stats or randomness and while it is fun, there are also times especially in plot related combats when I am bored simply because I know exactly how it will go. While that can be a very enjoyable story to read it is really not the same feeling I get from stories where due to dice I honestly do not know where it will go next.

Coin

@Arkandel said:

So how do you know if a system is good? People use it on their own because it improves their gameplay. How do you know if a system is not? People don't use it unless they are forced to, and stop using it when they aren't.

That's the only benchmark that matters. A great super-fun mechanic that's unused is neither, no matter how it looks on paper.

This is a fallacy, because some people will use it when they aren't forced and others won't.

Your claim is tantamount to saying, "a television show is good if lots of people watch it without being made to". At which point we have to admit that every television show that died because of a lack of ratings was objectively bad.

I use the nWoD system without being forced to. I like it. I think it's a good system that, if used correctly, helps further, guide, and incentivize not only roleplay in general, but the content of the roleplay that the player wants.

So I disagree with this notion that "it's good if people use it without being forced". If anything, it's easy if they do, and I could argue that, but won't.

I don't like FATE; I find its Aspects system clumsy and not to my liking. Does that make it a bad system? No. It just makes it a system I, personally, find not entirely to my liking.

Glitch

@Coin It's not that @Arkandel is saying everyone everywhere doesn't use it, but that it is the case for a majority. I don't know if he's right or not, but there's always going to be some small group that enjoys some slice of something that most don't like. When the game then changes because a majority finds it less than compelling, they become "filthy casuals".

From the discussion so far, I think you're probably in the minority. It doesn't make you wrong for enjoying the game like you do, but it also doesn't make you representative.

Arkandel

@Glitch Essentially what I'm saying is that a game should know who it caters to. The "WoD" is a collection of mechanics and systems, some of which are better suited for MU* and others which are ... less so. Different games have emphasized (or not) those parts differently with a variety of results.

All I claim here is that the way to determine if a subsystem translates well to a game or not is to see if people are actively avoiding it or not.

Wizz

I'm somewhere in between with the nWoD-vs-oWoD crowds. I loved oMage, but I also love the street-level, pack-focused setting of the new Werewolf; narrowing the scope just feels like a better fit and hits much harder in telling personal stories without some weird, massive, contradictory cosmic-war backdrop constantly hovering over your shoulder -- the sheer gonzo zaniness of the Umbra as written just made the whole thing so fucking silly sometimes and then out of nowhere, bam, super grimdark. The Shadow is at least fairly tonally consistent in comparison.

Coin

And all I'm saying is that if I am using a system in a game, I'm not using it because there was no other choice; I'm using it because that's the system I wanted to use.

I don't play in FATE games--and if I did, I would learn and use the system as intended.

I'm only in the minority inasmuch as the majority is apparently 'people who want to play X theme without the accompanying mechanics'. But those people aren't making those games. Those that are making those games are out there playing them.

Arkandel

@Coin said:

And all I'm saying is that if I am using a system in a game, I'm not using it because there was no other choice; I'm using it because that's the system I wanted to use.

Then you are having a unique experience because that's never an option I ever had and I can't imagine it is the case for many players. What the case usually is is that unless you (the generic 'you') are specifically making a game, you are looking at what someone else put together and have to compromise between what you wish they had done and what they actually did.

For example while I played on HM I disliked those gigantic scenes +vote encouraged or the custom PrPs I had to run every single time I wanted to raise Cruac or a Devotion; however I had friends to play with and ongoing RP which I enjoyed more.

I figure that's the case for most people but I can't claim to speak for anyone else.

I'm only in the minority inasmuch as the majority is apparently 'people who want to play X theme without the accompanying mechanics'. But those people aren't making those games. Those that are making those games are out there playing them.

While that's a misrepresentation - I explained earlier that there are plenty of system parts almost everyone is using quite willingly - that's still fine; as long as you know you are catering to the latter and are open about it then I don't see a problem with that.

Coin

Well, what I mean is: be what you want to see.

I wanted to see a full 2e game that had Vampire, Werewolf, and Demon. I wanted to do Demon. I did it. If you want a different game, wih different mechanisms, do it. If you are unwilling or unable to do so, you are stuck playing in someone else's world. This is how it is everywhere, not just online. Tabletop groups have the same dynamic, except in tabletop you can cater a little more easily since the groups are generally smaller.

And I don't mind people who don't use the system day in and day out, to be clear. I mind people who, when it's time to use the system, complain because their character doesn't perform as they've been playing it without the system. It shows a lack of foresight and willingness to explore and understand the context within which one plays, and an inability to take responsibility for not having put in the effort.

This should really be in the peeves thread. Heh.

silentsophia

@Autumn Ooh, awesome.

Guy

I like the scary stuff. I like the horror and the understanding through spheres about what is going on. The right cross mechanics can pin a Garou against a vampire or either/both against some ghosts. Etc, the cross sphere combinations are limitless.

But back to the horror- I tend to play monsters and I like to think I am rather good at it. There is something rewarding (as a writer of horror and intrigue) that comes at the end of scene when other players let you know that you really had them frightened for a moment. Or the pleasure in knowing that your story has folks coming back week after week to explore horrific tunnels below the city.

That world. The dark one. I like it there.

Thenomain

@HelloRaptor

Conversely, if a system is so simplistic that there's really no wrong answer, it's probably not the game I want to play.

Agreed. It's not a fine line, tho, but a pretty big area between "too easy" and "minmaxer hell". I want the ability, even need the ability, to not solve the puzzle of what's best and still be playable. I don't want to have to know the subtleties of the system to play. I want to get close enough and just bloody play.

How close is "close enough" is subjective, because WoD is open ended enough that fiddling with he game mechanics is a valid way to play. It's just not my way to play. I don't want to be beholden to system mechanics. I want them to be guiding, even limiting, but not the be all end all.

This is why I think D&D and its derivatives are on the whole superior systems to Storyteller/ing. As long as you are reasonable with focusing on a move or talent, you're probably fine.

If the system is "meh, whatever" on the outside but a twisty maze of interactions on the inside, I will fuck it up. I will continue to fuck it up until someone takes my hand and says, Theno, Do This. I don't have the brain for it.

The Tree of Woe

Thenomain's bitching about the Order of Hermes aside (if you want to know if something's good, check out the things he doesn't like), my problem with Awakening was that it specifically threw out something you really had to do to play Ascension -- pick up a book that wasn't a fucking game book and read it, whether that's The Emerald Tablet or the Qur'an or The Selfish Gene.

That's why I don't like Awakening - it's Mage for lazy intellects.