Posts made by SunnyJ

@thatonedude said in New Project?:

Hurt Locker
Mage: The Awakening Second Edition
Promethean: The Created Second Edition
Vampire: The Requiem Second Edition
Half-Damned
Secrets of the Covenants
Thousand Years of Night
The Pack
Werewolf: The Forsaken Second Edition

So if I take out "Forthcoming" books (which do not exist), the gamelines that do not interest me (Demon and Beast), the repeated re-editions of the same book (you listed the basic CofD book basically three times), Hunter (which is an update for an already outdated book, since 2e is coming out) and Dark Eras (which interests me exactly 0%, given I can't use OPP shallow settings for anything) I am left with this.

In my view, this is some contentless shit, and some of these editions are actually downgrades. Secrets of the Covenants is a fucking mess I can barely read fluff-wise and powercreeps the whole gameline, for example, and The Pack has some... new rules for Lodges, I guess. At least that is more I can say about 2e Vampire (which has no rules for Bloodlines) and 2e Mage (which has the stupidest rules for Legacies).

The Vampire remake is great, the Promethean remake is... an acquired taste. I despise Wolf 2e, and I am really ambivalent towards Mage 2e. Hurt Locker had a BUNCH of good stuff if you like combat in WoD (which I don't), TYoN is decent, and I haven't read half-damned. I hope it is good!

So yeah, to me 2e is barren. If you don't like Dark Eras, Demon or Beast the whole 2e seems to get nuked by 60%. If you like it, awesome. I don't.

@Rucket There is too little that is out, and what is out doesn't really interest me. So yeah, you are not all wrong.

@tempest 2e has no content. The only 2e game I would be tempted by is Vampire, but Vampire... is Vampire.

@zombiegenesis When it comes to RPGs I always seem to compare how steep is the learning curve versus the fun I will get from actually mastering the system.

Many White Wolf/OPP games just feel... needlessly complicated while bringing almost nothing to make learning said systems worth your time. It has always been like this, oWoD or nWoD, but it wasn't until I hit Promethean 2nd Edition that this dawned on me.

OPP/White Wolf seems obsessed with paths, auspices, clans, entitlements, contracts, pledges, gifts, rites, blood sorcery, rotes, praxes, clans, transmutations, keys, etc, and... there is no real gain from making things so complex, especially when they are notorious for fucking balance up? It even keeps new players at bay. I cannot, in my right mind, recommend Promethean 2e to anyone who doesn't LOVE systems.

Like, if I remember correctly, Scion 1e was using a simplified version of their Exalted 2e system. The sheets were simple to make, and it seemed what someone wanting to play Scion would want. Going this complex over a game with a power cap as crazy as Scion's seems like OPP shooting itself on the foot again.

Quite frankly, @thenomain! Where is your LOVE for the ART of coding?! The pursuit of greatness!?

Also, it will be great for your portfolio and give you mad exposition, bro. It is basically free advertisement.

@ganymede We need the game first!

@ganymede A lot of players seem to want to behave like shovelheads only when it suits them, screaming 'theme' when it comes to being cartoony monsters but running away from it when the book states that these hordes of imbeciles almost entirely the ones being manipulated and taken advantage by the more cerebral top of the food chain.

They want the cake and eat it too!

@tnp Castiel already left?

@zombiegenesis I think a lot of people mistake 'being a monster/bad ass' with being as evil and bizarre as possible, which in turn makes them cartoony. They think they are RPing Mads Mikkelsen's Hannibal Lecter when they are just doing the Eli Roth remake of Devil's Rejects.

@bobotron Sabbat can be super neat. I will give you this, though: I have only played one oWoD MUX ever, and most Sabbat characters there were a god damn shit show. I totally understand the worries of a lot of game runners about the Sabbat. I just like to think we can do better.

@bobotron I get this vibe that the people in Paradox really love their Camarilla stories. Then again, I think so poorly of the Anarch Movement as a PG-13 Sabbat that... maybe I am just a hater. u__u

hoists the 'NO SABBAT NO PLAY' sign!

@rizbunz Being supportive of players is very important, for sure. I don't like to be downer either, but I think pink-tinted goggles haven't ever helped a game before, so I thought I might share my experiences.

Players will not ever not be players. If you think like this, you'll be prepared for the worst, and pleasantly surprised when The One surprises you.

@gamerngeek OCs should take more than 2 minutes to write if they want to be taken seriously. Even OCs that take a week end up being 'I am a billionaire beautiful guy who is also Omega Mutant and super famous!' As for the rest... Man. It is hard to strike a balance between letting lazy people app characters half-assedly, and forcing you to learn a whole system to play somewhere. I particularly think that if you can't ass yourself to sit down and app a character for a hour or two, you are probably not going to add much to the game to begin with.

@surreality Pretty sure we are both in synch here. =|

@faraday Oh yeah. I am sharing my side of things. The more unique the game, the more likely players are to cling to it and work with it.

@rizbunz Riz, I think you are saying a whole lot of nothing here. I don't mean this disrespectfully, I really like you, but it is kinda hard to find a point in your post?

Yeah, if players stick to a game despite their first impulses to leave it, a game might thrive... until those impulses come again. Players leave for a number of reasons, because they have almost NO investment in a game. "But muh story! My chardev" isn't really investment. People drop and pick up characters very easily, and as time goes on, it just gets -easier- to do so. The fact many games feel samey just contributes to this feeling of 'if I leave this game now, eh, I'll app in the next version of it down the road'.

Most players have no idea just how much investment running a game takes and most don't care. If your body of staff is RLing when 10 players are online? Those 10 players are leaving. Bye bye. Taking 10 days to process ONE app? Bye bye. Their group imploded over some weird politics talk in their private build? Too bad. Lost 5 players. That friendly group of players that loved you suddenly hates you? Too bad, you don't get to know why. Creating a game requires work. Playing it... requires decidedly less, and most people are not willing to put in the effort. The only thing you count on players to do is act like players.

On the whole... "You're welcomed to play where you want, and should feel that way." I also don't agree. I think not all playstyles can be welcomed in all games. A MLP game shouldn't welcome an openly cannibal pony character. I mean, I don't watch the show, but it seems like it just doesn't fit.

And even if it fits within theme? Some things need to be kept in your playgroup. I once staffed in a game where, for two weeks straight, I got logs of cannibalism and rape from the same pack, and players of said scenes requiring rolls and reporting each other and then taking the complaints back. No staff should ever have to handle this sort of crap.

@wizz yeah but that feels like tabletop. Also it is easy for a player to want this. They can hop on, make a char, scream GIMME PLOT and then leave on a whim. A MU is much more of a commitment to staffers and owners. It is far more complex than "just hanging out with mah pals".

Does anyone in this hobby nowdays have the time, maturity and energy to provide a 'focused, story-driven experiences' to a game of 50+ players, all with conflicting schedules, interests, interpretations and OOC grudges that have lasted for years? One that doesn't just focus on a few faithful friends + whoever happens to manage to sign up for the +events and ask the right +job questions?

I think the pursuit of making MUs like tabletop games is really misguided.

The fun thing the Old World of Darkness is that it felt... like it was proud of what it was and that made me feel like it was worth investing my time into.

Not everyone enjoyed the Tzimisce or the Glass Walkers or Nagah, but there they were, and they were not going anywhere. It not only made Baba Yaga a thing in the setting, but also the zmei-controlling, former Mage/Disney princess who learned not-Thaumaturgy sorcery, erected a supernatural barrier that made Russia a no-go zone and ruled the Motherland, and had some ties with the Talons of the Wyrm, the Crescent Moon and the vampire politics there.

Don't like it? Don't go to Russia. Or just ignore the book on your own volition. But it was never like nWoD. "There are rumors of a powerful witch in Russia. Maybe. I don't know. Unless you don't like that? Because if you don't, she doesn't exist. Ohmigod, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Okay. We were kidding. ... Unless you like the idea?" That is how nWoD feels to me. A bunch of superficial ideas thrown into a book, in the most pretentious way possible, but it never sells you that it is awesome and that you should love it and sink your teeth into their books and setting.

It was designed as a tool kit, and oWoD was designed as a world on its last, dying breath. One of them may be fun to play and all, but the other made you involved, made you want to buy the next book to see what was up.

And if it was shit? Then you acted like a normal person and bitched about it to your friends and hated on Albrecht because fuck that guy.

And then you bought the next one. =|

I can safely say I am not passionate about -anything- on nWoD. And I am not someone who played oWoD for 15 years then transitioned. By the time I started playing, oWoD was almost done in the US. It is just not the nature of the beast. You may argue 'Oh, the Daeva are SO well-designed! So elegant!' but I find it hard to believe anyone would think they are more creative than the Kuei-jin or more interesting than the Baali or Tremere.

I just don't see it.

@rizbunz The oWoD White Whale: Cursed Theme or Bad Community?