Posts made by Killer Klown

@sunnyj said in oWoD - Is there such thing as a good one?:

No staff should ever have to handle this sort of crap.

It's not just staff; well back in the day I ended up in the Summer King position in the Changeling Sphere - and, among a slew of other things, I got drug into an blurred line IC/OOC rape argument between a couple of other players. Basically some IC kerfuffle spilled into OOC and I was... I dunno, expected to adjudicate it all or something?

And people ask me why I purpose build characters to not even accidentally fall into positions of responsibility anymore.

@thenomain Very true; but that's actually something I liked about the nWoD theme in general - the 'enemies' were basically the same as the player characters; they just had a different world view/politics/religious stance. In oWoD, Nephandi or Marauders had tweaked - if not completely different - mechanics; while in nWoD even Scelesti or Banishers follow the same general rules set. The Pure have some slightly different rules based on their lack of the Oath, but otherwise are just werewolves with a different world view and alliances; etc. Bale Hounds are nuts, but they don't have entirely different and unique sets of powers and abilities like Black Spiral Dancers did. nWoD has it's faults in terms of theme, but they do make the baked in antagonists easy to understand and, in some cases, relate to.

I remember Antagonist spheres in general being a shitshow - Sabbat, Wyrm, whichever flavor of crazypants Mage they wanted to make playable. Even Ratkin <which I otherwise love> sometimes degenerated into one-tricks focusing only on the 'we hate everything and reserve the right to be assholes on principle' aspect.
By and large, it was the players more than the spheres - people tended to have this teenage angst view of evil as simply being 'not good', rather than having its own agenda and goals. The best played ones either thought they were doing good, or simply didn't care one way or another - but most of what I remember seeing was people blatantly breaking laws, being jerkoffs to other players then trying to avoid the consequences IC and claiming that they were justified OOC because they're 'eeevul'.

@kanye-qwest It was, yeah. I remember finally seeing it in and around high school along with a number of the Troma offerings.

KillerKlown was my handle from way back in the BBS days - round about 1988 or so. I couldn't think of anything, but idly saw an ad for 'Killer Klowns from Outer Space' and was like 'yeah, what the hell'.

So, short answer; laziness.

Fear Me!

Yes, he did this to himself. Then did it to himself again after I rescued him.

Hello. Is the lady of the house in? Could I interest you in a lovely new vacuum cleaner?

@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"?

Given Changeling still isn't out, and given all the backpedaling and apologizing they throw out at the bottom <as well as citing Pugmire as one of their 'successes'>...
I'm not enthused. I'll wait for it on retail. Alternately, I'll wait to die and make a deal with an otherworldly, life-challanged entity myself. I feel that to be the more likely option.

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.

I honestly don't think there were too many 'good' oWoD games back when oWoD was just 'WoD'. The system has some inherent problems with regards to playing online - some splats more than others - and it really was never intended to be a cross-sphere setting. Each race was basically a game unto itself with only superficially similar mechanics.

And then there's the players which, really, have not changed overmuch over the last 20-25 years. The only thing that's different is that, back in the day, there were probably about as many WoD games as there were WoD players. When MIAM came out, just about anyone could put together a codebase, slap a 'by Night' on the end of a random location and have their own little corner of the multiverse. Internet access wasn't as prevalent back then, though, so the people weren't always around as much as they are now.

As time went on, though, more and more games shut down and the population became concentrated. Where there used to be dozens of different games, now there's just a rolling handful - and the population's become inbred because of it. You can go to any given game and run into exactly the same people that you ran into in the last three games you visited. This, coupled with the fact that people have more access than they did before, makes the issues that crop up far more obvious. Before, if whackjob@ClevelandByNight was harassing players, it was usually limited to ClevelandByNight and people who knew of him might only know by hearsay. He might be on several other places, but the population was usually spread out well enough that circles didn't intersect. Now, whackjob@CBN is also jerkoff@Boise, dingleberry@Plano - and everyone has either met him, or knows someone who's met him because CBN, BBN and PBN are the only places to play. The idiocy is just more obvious.

The other issue that I've noticed is a gradual decline of stories or cohesive plots over the course of the last several years. Places try to pad their numbers by offering everything and their mother as playable spheres, but don't give those spheres very much to do. There might be one-off events every so often, but no real cohesive sphere or game-wide storyline to tell. Players might call it railroading, but personally I think game - and by extension gamestaff - need to have a solid sense of identity with regards to their game and what they want to do with it; and more importantly, why they have that game, in that setting, with those spheres. Even the events tend towards bottle-episode type things - or just random social scenes that involve getting people together in a room and letting them interact on their own. That, however, is another issue and isn't necessarily the mark of a 'bad' game; but I think it does contribute to the decline of activity.

There's a lot to say about this, really. Personally I'm in favor of respecs, but with a few caveats
Core stats (Splat, Subsplat, subsubsplat) should not be allowed to be changed unless there's a way to change them in-game without penalty normally (and if there is a penalty, that should be charged post-respec). Like, Mages can concievably change Orders, but not Paths.

Stats are more fluid, and depend on the rules of the game. If the game requires justification, then no -they should not be allowed to respec. If the game blanket does not require justification, then all stats should be allowed to be respecced save for cgen only ones. If the game requires partial justification <For, example, supernatural powers> then only non-supernatural stuff should be allowed. As a personal tilt, I hate this last idea - not only because of it being too fiddly, but because it's too sphere-specific and you won't find any degree of balance across something that should be balanced.

As far as what stats should be allowed if a respec is permitted? I'm in general favor of not limiting them - especially if a game offers 'catchup' xp, or has changed the amount of starting xp over the course of its lifetime. In such a case, newer characters would have more to spend, and could allocate things in a more efficient way (especially if we're talking 1e) than someone who started with less.

But really, the answer to most Respec problems is to just go 2e. Flat costs for everything removes much of the urge to min-max stats at chargen, and makes respecs a legitimate use for changing the direction of the character proper rather than trying to maximise spends.

Well, hi. Not sure who you were at any respective place, but in the odd chance - was Thorne (GoF Ahroun) and Dominic (Giovanni) at Due Rewards, Blaine at Paris, and ... some guys at Metro. Jaeger certainly (Simba) and I think possibly a Kuei-Jin at some iteration,though I don't remember if I used Kagero or Takeda there. One or the other; the other would've been at Pacifica. I feel like I had characters at Ashes and Tempest as well, but I can't for the life of me remember who or what I played there.

@misadventure That works for multiplicative systems like oWoD or nWoD 1e (Remember Elysium in oWoD? Not only did your Elders have more xp starting off, they had an elevated template of stats to distribute as well). 2e pretty much did away with the need to minmax, given that everything is flat cost - it costs just as much to go from 1 dot to 2 as it does to go from 4 dots to 5 in any given stat. People will still try to maximize their pools, probably; but there's no real burned in need to and no great benefit for doing so. To my experience you're far better served in spreading your points around with an eye to pre-requisites than just trying to buff pools

It holds to 2e as well; though they did tone down Mage significantly with a few simple <and necessary> rules. 1e Werewolf, though? No amount of xp could make those measure up to the other supers.

I said it earlier, but I really think the issue arises when you combine multisphere games with high xp.
In a single sphere setting, everyone can do basically the same thing; and high xp characters basically can do those same things too, just more of them. There are small boosts (Especially in Changeling with regards to high Wyrd bonuses and drawbacks) but by and large those balance one another out and don't always come into play.
When you're working with a multisphere game, though, you start off with people doing similiar things (mostly relying on skills and low level powers that boost those skills/rolls) but as the XP creeps higher and higher, what players can do with it begins to vary wildly; and it's not always the most balanced of distributions. For example, at starting level a Werewolf, a Mage and a Vampire are more or less on an even keel. For the lower end of the balance, the Werewolf tends to have the edge - especially in purely physical contests. In the midrange, vamps tend to excel because many of their powers don't have much that resists them and they can afford a wider spread. At the high end, Mages are practically godlike compared to the other two by sheer value of flexibility.
This also has the ancillary effect of wearing on staff; which does tend to kill even the most enthusiastic ST's desire to come up with stuff. You not only need to know All The Things, but you also need to know every little detail of the rules and how they interplay or play off one another for basically every power listed in every book you're STing for.

A lot of it depends on the players. Fates Harvest did it, but players there are generally pretty cool and the fact that it's a single-sphere game helps keep things balanced. Fear and Loathing had something akin to tiered starting xp as well, but that seemed to be more a barrier than anything else there.

As far as Feature Characters, that was a different sort of beast - when done properly. Features were supposed to have a dedicated role which they needed to be active in and maintain. You generally did not just put in an app and ask for more xp (Though some places did that); but you apped for a specific position like Primogen or Sept Warder or whatnot, and that position came with increased experience (Since those positions would logically be more powerful). It was sort similiar to the way some games do Rosters, exept you were rostering in for a position rather than a specific character. The biggest problem I remember from it was that sometimes it passed over an existing pc who might have been shooting for it by bringing in an 'outsider'; though that was largely due to a lack of communication <Either from the player not expressing a desire for the position to staff, or staff not opening the position to existing players before advertising>

GarouMUSH did something like this using WtA rules back in the day. There were stats <attributes and backgrounds only, as I recall, no skills> and everything was done through rp and time rather than xp gain. Just about every stat needed justification, and usually a months-long wait before the raise went through. Gaining rank involved being involved and doing things IC to attain the sort of renown that might be relevant. Progression was ... glacial to say the least, but it was at it's height some of the best werewolf related rp available online (although a good part of that was likely due to the fact that it was single sphere and had, for the time, pretty stringent application requirements even for normal characters; other stuff was available on a limited basis, but basically as NPC's and you had to be an established player to app for one)

It's true; High School is that stage of development between the point when people develop a sense of self and identity (usually between 7 and 12 - where folks start having 'preferences' and likes or dislikes of their own rather than what other people tell them) and the point where the part of the brain responsible for ... well, being responsible and considering consequence develops (usually early to mid twenties). It's why that's generally the age that folks test boundaries or rebel - they want what they want, and have no way of conceptualizing the longer reaching consequence to themselves or others. That attitude doesn't just go away when people leave high school, but usually it's tempered - either by societal pressures and no longer being able to hide behind the 'just a dumb kid' defense, or the person's own sensibilities coming into play.
That doesn't mean that the impulses are no longer there, though; some folks just hide it better - and others never adequately develop that second stage of measuring consequences.

That's actually something I'm really interested in Vamp 5th about - how it's doing blood and 'hunger'. Instead of a pool of points, it becomes a constant thing that applies to all your die rolls, and has the potential to affect anything you do.
Like, traditionally, a vampire with low blood could just choose to not spend it and be otherwise ok. A vamp in 5th would have issues doing something as mundane as driving or studying while hungry - which is far more realistic.