@faraday said in Social 'Combat': the hill I will die on (because I took 0 things for physical combat):
So I agree with @ixokai - people are way more complex than physics.
But human behavior is ultimately governed by physics. I think you got that backwards.
@arkandel I don't mind eliminating uneducated players who insist on staying that way from my games.
@tinuviel said in World of Darkness -- Alternative Settings:
@selu Anything that requires actual research is going to be a hard sell to many.
The entire hobby of roleplaying is a hard sell to many.
@bobotron said in World of Darkness -- Alternative Settings:
@распутин
Because Foreign City by Night inevitably becomes 'All Ameican Expats in Foreign City by Night'? People write what they know.
I definitely see your point. We used to re-imagine Russian heroes as communists even though communism as an idea had not existed at the time these men were alive, nor did they in reality conform to communist ideals at all. To portray one of these men as both non-communist, and as a worthy historical figure to be honored, would invite serious consequences upon oneself. It was unthinkable that someone could contradict communism yet still be a valuable person.
I see Westerners repeating this mistake. All past heroes must be looked at through the lens of current ethical precepts, and if they err too strongly from them, you must stop honoring them, and destroy their monuments and their memory. Men who helped found your civilization must be denounced entirely because in addition to that they were racists, which is unacceptable now. It's a twisted and psychotic view of history.
Considering this carefully, I think that maybe enforcing setting involvement is the necessary limitation these users must accept: no, your character can't be above the human trafficking ring, because in order to get Vitae, they have to be actively involved in it. The people operating this ring are smarter than your character so whatever he attempts to do to bypass it will not work, and worse, might get him sent to some kind of gulag-like forced labor camp, where he will burn alive in the sun within a day, and be forgotten in less than a week. In order to survive, your character must be a bad person, and you as a player shouldn't be free to evade that.
I'm surprised more Vampire games aren't set in the Orthodox World and Eastern Europe broadly, considering our history and lore has influenced Anglo literary interpretation of vampires; Vlad the Impaler was an influence for Count Dracula, as an example.
I could easily see a game being centered around a human trafficking operation that sells pretty, nubile Slavic girls as blood dolls for vampires and brood mares for werewolves. I could similarly see generations of werewolves and mages fighting over long-abandoned commie blocks for the loci and hallows that were generated there during the period where they were occupied, and agreeing to some vile arrangement after a while to avoid further bloodshed. Maybe the Masquerade in certain cities has evaporated where local Princes captured dirty nukes during the fall of the Soviet Union, and have clung bitterly to them, requiring local and national officials to allow their vile kind to drink peasants dry and run the aforementioned human trafficking operations uninterrupted across international lines.
There is a lot of potential for horror in Eastern Europe.