Posts made by lordbelh

I'd be down for it. Its an iconic setting, and people keep trying to push big city themes into any game anyway.

I love pinnekjøtt. I've been dreaming about it for weeks now, looking forward to Christmas day dinner. Pinnekjøtt, akevitt and yule ale, and I'll be filling myself up until I can't move. Mmm. I'm not much of a Christmas guy, but damn, my grandma's pinnekjøtt is to die for.

Something historical.

Do/did you play in a tabletop game now or in the past?
No.
What games(s) do/did you play as tabletop?
See above.
Are/were you the GM/ST/DM at your tabletop?
See above.
Would you tabletop if you had the opportunity?
Possibly.
Do you have the opportunity but choose NOT to tabletop?
Yes.

@Tempest

The reason for the heavy reliance on physical disciplines on Reno is a simple consequences of it being a Sandbox game with zero political play. Sandbox games incentivise brute force because there are no other mechanics you're required to be good at, and in the end of the day any conflict resolution becomes a matter of who can throw around the most combat dice. Its the same reason why Reno has such a massive Rahu over representation. If you want more people to play social fu characters, schemers and plotters, then you need an environment in which they can thrive. Reno isn't that.

This is in stark contrast to say RfK, where social fu monsters were kings, and purely combat oriented characters mostly found themselves at the bottom of the pecking order.

@Tempest said:

Animalism is pretty crappy. It's "better" than 1e Animalism, but it is still the worst discipline (would anyone like to argue this? Maybe I am wrong!). Lord of the Land is kind of cool, but....it's the dot5 power, it better be kind of cool.

I think you're wrong. I don't really think there is a worst discipline, though any of them is useless if you don't apply them correctly and if the game is rigged against them. You can break a game with Animalism if Staff will let you. There's its biggest weakness: it requires playing along with Staff/Sts to make the most out of its first 3 levels. How many Bear/Large Cat/Wolf familiars will they let you hang onto? By the book there's no limit at all. Perhaps they force you to buy 'em as retainers, in which case they've made them pretty pointless.

On the other hand if there are no great secrets to discover, what's the point of Auspex (it doesn't let you break Obfuscate unless you have cause to be looking)? If everybody will Lash Out against you the moment you use Majesty, good luck getting much out of it vs Players.

@Tempest said:

Core Ventrue has nothing but Dominate going for it. Ventrue + 1 other discipline is not on par with Any Other Clan + Dominate.

I am baffled by this argument. (Question: What is a Gangrel without Protean? Same as a Ventrue without Dominate, only with a worse bane.)

@Tempest said:

Resilience alone is pretty lackluster unless the person/people you're fighting have NO physical discipline.

• Vigor gives you per level: 1 attack dice (and each is between .3 and .4 of a success) and 1 dmg if you spend blood. (Edit: Yes, it lets you jump real high and swing small cars around, but meh)

• Resilience gives you per level: 1 health level (equaling 1, 2 (or 3) damage depending on what's being dealt), A to L downgrade per level. Additionally if you spend blood the first level does 2 damage reduction, further adds 1 (or just 1 all over if its vs banes).

What does this mean?

It means that for the first 3 rounds Resilience's first passive is better, after which extra dice of Vigor gradually becomes better. However if you're coming in contact with A damage (which is rare but happens, say against an angry Gangrel), that A to L downgrade is massively important. And of course the Resilience active is just plain better in the dmg vs soaking game, massively depending on what sort of damage is being dealt.

Situationally Vigor can better (for ambush first strike to win, or in a Grapple, or if its the difference between hitting at all or not), but in straight up fighting there's no debating Resilience vs Vigor.

• Celerity gives you 1 Defense (including vs Firearms), and its actives are great in that i lets you Speed multiply, Act First and of course Interrupt.

It's easy to see why you would say it is best; situationally it can certainly be employed to max effect. Hit and run with enough speed multiplier that the opponent can't actually catch up and hit you back can't be denied. Never underestimate hitting first, either. If your movement is limited or complicated, its less useful. If you find yourself in a grapple, Celerity is completely useless.

Edit summary: I find Resilience better because it is universally dependable, rather than situationally great (though it is that as well.) But it's all a matter of taste and playstyle. And how often do people get into fights, anyway? Not very often at all. Let's face it, for RP generating purposes, physical disciplines are the worst.

I do agree with you criticizing @tragedyjones ' Mekhet combat ranking. Obfuscate is a combat ability. Anything that allows you to dictate when and where you want to fight will massively help you win. Obfuscate + Celerity lets you do that.

@Tempest said:

The problem is there are a lot of Nosferatu/Daeva/etc Bloodlines that get Dominate In-Clan, which IMO is the only thing Ventrue have going for them.

This is a silly argument. Any Ventrue bloodline also gets another discipline. Further, unlike say for the Mekhet where more Auspex users is directly detrimental to the Clan (because they have Obfuscate, and also because Auspex is the only way to tell if someone has used Auspex), more Dominate around doesn't actually lessen the power of the Ventrue.

@mietze I think you're right. There are a lot of people out there who will try to attach a stigma of being Bad People, just because what's happening IC is bad. Rather than attract that sort noise, they'll just not be too obvious about it. I'll do the same thing if I'm honest. Also cuts down on having to deal with Saviors. Which is also kind of a pity, because those can be cool storylines. Just not when random bumfuck SUPPOSEDLY evil vampire is the one trying to come to the rescue.

oWoD Werewolves were pretty annoyingly PC Guardians of Nature way too often. Rather than the rawrfuck hypocritical monsters I always read them to be in the source material. The amount of trouble my Shadow Lord'd go through just cause his kinfolk mate better tend the damn trailer like a good slavic woman, was OUTRAGEOUS!

@mietze said:

I guess, after so many years staffing and playing, my point is that I'm so tired of legislating to the lowest common denominator.

So much this.

@Balerion I find that the best game decisions tend to be based around 'how to enable role play' rather than 'how to prevent cheating'. If in your quest to limit cheating you cut out aspects of your game's role play, you'll inevitably find that the people who would have abused X system are simply going to abuse Y system instead. And probably they're still abusing X system anyway in a way you haven't foreseen. This is because your problem is player mentality, rather than code. Which is not to say you shouldn't limit cheaters, and that code can't in some ways help, but it should never guide your mechanical decisions.

Best of luck, though.

Edit: Especially as I really do love well made influence/rumor systems. They add a lot to a game.

@Balerion I see more benefits to there being no code proof to share. If you want to share what you know, share it, and the receiving end can verify it themselves through a separate investigation. Or perhaps they don't, because they're too lazy. Perhaps you counted on that, and you lied, and whoever you fingered wasn't actually culpable. Perhaps they did investigate, but came up short, and you still lied and said they must not've dug deep enough (ie, gotten successes on their roll). And perhaps they buy that, too.

@Miss-Demeanor Another good point.

Pretty much what @Coin said.

@Derp Even when individual rolls may be contested, there's no parity in the Doors system. There's one active participant, and one passive participant. For what it's there to do, its a good system. But not for PvP.

@Derp said:

They don't actually say that they aren't good for PvP. They say that they recommend things be worked out in RP, and then go on to provide a system for how to use them in PvP.

As always you seem to have some real trouble with reading only what you want to read. The developers very much states that it isn't useful for PvP because only one side is active.. Basically its like physical combat only just the aggressor is allowed to roll. Which would be bad enough if social interactions aren't also a million times more complicated than physical ones.

@Derp said:

I'm not dismissing relevant points. I'm stating that the OP asked for a system they could use in-game to help resolve these things, and you saying 'no I don't like systems' isn't conducive to the conversation.

When you offer up a bad solution, it is constructive to the greater conversation to point out that it is, in fact, a bad solution. Contrary to some people's beliefs, any solution is not always better than no solution.

@Derp The Beaten Down and Surrender mechanics are optional, though.

@Alzie said:

@Ganymede Social combat is just as valid as physical combat.

I'd say social dice is as valid as physical dice. But there's no good social combat system. Actual combat is fairly straight forward, but social combat never will be, because it actually requires you to take into account motives, personalities, histories, etc for it to work on anything but the most superficial levels.

In a low XP setting you're just as likely to succeed. In that case you're generally looking at 2-4 dice penalty. If you have a dicepool of 6-8, tat's 75 percent chance of success. And who determines the alternative?

In my experience where people go wrong is when they attempt to enforce what the other side considers implausible resolutions. Rather than roll to bribe X person to do Y thing, they want to get their victim to do whatever they want, for free. Or in the case of @Derp they want to make the straight guy suck their dick regardless of said person's sexuality. Instead of settling for using social dice to bend the other person a little bit rather than all the fucking way. Okay, so persuading you to give up your lover for my friends to kill her isn't going to happen, but if I instead settle for persuading you to tell me where she usually frequents, or even just persuade you to try to persuade her to make good on whatever bullshit caused our beef, then that's a lot easier for people to swallow. If you want to straight up force to go counter to their character, sincerely, stick to mind control style powers.

I've gotten a ton of mileage out of social dicepools, but when I use them I try to play with the other person and their character. If I want to just railroad them, well, I'll use Dominate or its like.