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Volume posted:Can I ask why he shouldn't do this? Maybe an intelligence roll to solve it out right is a bit much but he could definitely ask to roll Investigation to get some sort of clue as to what he should be looking for. The book even lists Puzzles and Riddles as appropriate specialties for the skill. Basically because it's a passive-aggressive way of saying 'this is stupid and I don't want to do it.' I mean, in the example it kinda is, but that's not a productive way of addressing it.
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Sep 21, 2012 20:42
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I should clarify that rolling int+investigation or whatever to get a clue to solve a puzzle should be purely a GM prompt thing based on a "well they've been staring at a door for ten minutes and I'd like to move things along" sort of deal, it shouldn't be a magic button players can press to instantly solve a puzzle.
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Sep 21, 2012 21:05
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I don't know about "purely a GM prompt" part. Some characters might want to use Investigation, some might want to use occult to see if there's some connection with a fairy tale they've heard. A player shouldn't be scared or ashamed to ask for those rolls because the GM didn't require them yet. I will agree that the roll alone shouldn't solve the puzzle but it should give some clues as to what to do to solve it.
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Sep 21, 2012 21:11
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I'm okay with it being a thing players just, try, right off the bat. Not everyone likes puzzles and not everyone who likes puzzles is always in the mood for one, and most importantly I don't think a character's ability to reason out or notice things should be tied to a player's. Rolling mental skills for clues is cool, and fun, and fine. Puzzles are tricky in general, I think. It's really easy for them to slow the game down, and end up frustrating players (why are we wasting so much time on this) and GMs (why aren't they being logical) alike. It's important to be flexible, it's important that failure doesn't mean "we all sit here".
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Sep 21, 2012 21:14
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Volume posted:I don't know about "purely a GM prompt" part. Some characters might want to use Investigation, some might want to use occult to see if there's some connection with a fairy tale they've heard. We beg/ask/demand Finding out Stuff rolls all the time in our games. GUMSHOE has the most elegant guideline for the clue bottleneck, which is they find the clue, and systems help characters squeeze more out of it than superficial information. In WoD/Storytelling design, one thing we often do is use a 1-5 success information meter that provides increasing amounts of info based on successes. It's pretty easy to wing a 1-5 scale as well. The last bit, of course, it when players come up with a more interesting theory/solution than you baked into the scenario. Typically, I allow this to be true if it's cooler than my idea. I hear that's Terrible Illusionism or something, but I like it.
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Sep 21, 2012 22:26
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Ferrinus posted:I'm never going to stop advocating that attack/defense values in WoD combat work like this: Well, if you get too meta you risk losing a sense of being connected to the character through the sheet. I prefer Traits to not be completely interchangeable in the name of balance. Otherwise, I feel they lose power as a prompt for the imagination. At extreme ends you get keywords and templating that lose touch with anything in the fiction, as per D&D3's Deflecting Divine Radiant I Don't Even Know What the gently caress bonus ladders. I know around these parts the tendency is to want to accept reskinning and fiction-second a whole lot, and I don't disagree completely, but there's a middle where you maintain some kind of, er (and I hate this) "association."
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Sep 21, 2012 22:32
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MalcolmSheppard posted:Well, if you get too meta you risk losing a sense of being connected to the character through the sheet. I prefer Traits to not be completely interchangeable in the name of balance. Otherwise, I feel they lose power as a prompt for the imagination. At extreme ends you get keywords and templating that lose touch with anything in the fiction, as per D&D3's Deflecting Divine Radiant I Don't Even Know What the gently caress bonus ladders. I know around these parts the tendency is to want to accept reskinning and fiction-second a whole lot, and I don't disagree completely, but there's a middle where you maintain some kind of, er (and I hate this) "association." Well, I wouldn't be like "Literally pick any two traits" - I agree with you that they should make as much narrative sense as possible. I just make them Strength and Dexterity, since it's easy to imagine how a character might fight in a style that favored either one (and indeed there are already merits for "You can attack with Dex instead of Str because your class is Rogue rather than Fighter"), but would actually need both traits to be good at dodging stuff. I think the WoD combat system as written has a smaller version of Exalted's old problem, which is instinctively assuming that Dexterity alone does a shitload more than it probably should. Vampire and Werewolf handle this by making it a lot easier to buff your Strength than your Dexterity, but it's still a bit awkward.
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Sep 21, 2012 22:40
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MalcolmSheppard posted:Well, if you get too meta you risk losing a sense of being connected to the character through the sheet. I prefer Traits to not be completely interchangeable in the name of balance. Otherwise, I feel they lose power as a prompt for the imagination. At extreme ends you get keywords and templating that lose touch with anything in the fiction, as per D&D3's Deflecting Divine Radiant I Don't Even Know What the gently caress bonus ladders. I know around these parts the tendency is to want to accept reskinning and fiction-second a whole lot, and I don't disagree completely, but there's a middle where you maintain some kind of, er (and I hate this) "association." I agree with this for player characters, but I think a simpler, more abstract system is actually better for creating NPCs. When you have to write up a "cast of thousands", I prefer a simpler template. I actually used a system similar to yours for NPCs in my M:tAw game, except just using Power/Finesse/Resistance, and it worked quite well. Every time I see the system for creating Spirits, I look and think "Why not just use that for ALL minor NPCs?"
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Sep 21, 2012 22:56
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Simian_Prime posted:I agree with this for player characters, but I think a simpler, more abstract system is actually better for creating NPCs. When you have to write up a "cast of thousands", I prefer a simpler template. Very true. I mean, we currently have a minor character system which is "list relevant dice pools and describe," period, and full fledged writeups, but there's room for something in the middle. MalcolmSheppard fucked around with this message at 23:53 on Sep 21, 2012 |
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Sep 21, 2012 23:00
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MalcolmSheppard posted:The last bit, of course, it when players come up with a more interesting theory/solution than you baked into the scenario. Typically, I allow this to be true if it's cooler than my idea. I hear that's Terrible Illusionism or something, but I like it. I do this constantly and I felt really bad about it until I realized everyone does it. 
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Sep 21, 2012 23:02
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MalcolmSheppard posted:I use a stripped down version of Storytelling to run convention and casual games. Might interest you. Rules at: Have you thought about formatting this and polishing it a bit? It seems like I'd be more likely to get people to play a single-page WoD than anything else.
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Sep 21, 2012 23:57
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moths posted:Have you thought about formatting this and polishing it a bit? It seems like I'd be more likely to get people to play a single-page WoD than anything else. Yeah. The learning curve for nWoD is already pretty slight but I could see this being a good "get your feet wet" kind of thing for someone to introduce their group to WoD. It seems like "oh I don't want to learn another system" is a big barrier to getting people to try things sometimes.
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Sep 22, 2012 03:55
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Running it today (PCs are mid-level drug dealers in a collapsing pocket universe where WW2 was a stalemate and everybody knows IG Farben harvests vampires for blood and parts, developed as a tool for a sorcerer to distil the essence of moral choice) I would say that the main thing is that it requires a high degree of ST moderation, where you need to be able to decide on which pool to apply fast. So the ST load is heavier. Also, I ended up dropping the bashing/lethal distinction given the high number of HLs characters get -- the "gunshy" problem I anticipated was not so prevalent and aggravated damage provides a big cushion anyway. In a snap decision, I decided to drop Morality as well, and just demand a roll to acquire a derangement after a bad act, using dice based on the chart. Better for conventions, where Morality loss as a persistent problem doesn't really matter, but probably not so much for ongoing games. Anyway, if you guys want to fancy it up with DTP software, as long as you include my name and make it a hack of the core WoD instead of being autonomous, I'm cool with it. If you want something like a whole light WoD RPG . . . I'm not the guy that gets to decide that stuff. EDIT: Also, today's game featured an argument between oMage and nMage partisans at my table. Oh, and between them and a guy who was an Ars Magica supremacist. So these were my people. MalcolmSheppard fucked around with this message at 07:59 on Sep 23, 2012 |
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Sep 23, 2012 07:56
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MalcolmSheppard posted:EDIT: Also, today's game featured an argument between oMage and nMage partisans at my table. Oh, and between them and a guy who was an Ars Magica supremacist. So these were my people. Did they reach a, uh, consensus
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Sep 23, 2012 08:12
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Attorney at Funk posted:Did they reach a, uh, consensus Yep. Unknown Armies owns them both. 
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Sep 23, 2012 15:11
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Attorney at Funk posted:Did they reach a, uh, consensus I get this. Ha.
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Sep 23, 2012 16:21
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Liesmith posted:I get this. Ha. D'oh! I missed it. It was me all along. I was the grognard. 
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Sep 23, 2012 16:54
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How many humans per vampire are necessary in a town/city?
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Sep 24, 2012 12:03
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I think the book says there's an average of something like 50-100,000 people per vampire, but that seems really arbitrary and dumb (by that logic, a major port like Duluth can't even support a single vampire, which just seems weird as hell to me.), so go with whatever ratio feel right to you.
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Sep 24, 2012 12:21
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Project1 posted:How many humans per vampire are necessary in a town/city? According to Dracula, your average Dracula will eat 1 (one) boat's worth of people in the time it takes to sail from Transylvania's nearest port to London. Hope this helps.
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Sep 24, 2012 12:26
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Project1 posted:How many humans per vampire are necessary in a town/city? Masquerade says 100K per vampire, Requiem thinks maybe not so much. This article on the Camarilla Wiki has been severely formatted to death but discusses the logistics and math of how many victims a vampire can go through without being noticed and concludes that BUY HERD YOU FUCKERS.
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Sep 24, 2012 12:30
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Punting posted:I think the book says there's an average of something like 50-100,000 people per vampire, but that seems really arbitrary and dumb (by that logic, a major port like Duluth can't even support a single vampire, which just seems weird as hell to me.), so go with whatever ratio feel right to you. I think that ratio is skewed for the larger American cities most represented in the source material. Personally I've taken to organizing domain by region/province/commune when basing games in Europe.
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Sep 24, 2012 12:49
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Pope Guilty posted:Masquerade says 100K per vampire, Requiem thinks maybe not so much. This article on the Camarilla Wiki has been severely formatted to death but discusses the logistics and math of how many victims a vampire can go through without being noticed and concludes that BUY HERD YOU FUCKERS. This was really more of a Camarilla decree than an actual limit. IIRC, the Dark Ages figure was 10,000 or possibly 50,000 - which is still too high, really, for the time period (when most cities are that size and no one will give a poo poo if all the peasants are pale and sickly). Those calcs are really interesting though.
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Sep 24, 2012 13:01
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I like the idea that for all of recorded history, the majority of vampires killed while feeding pretty much all the time, because there were no blood transfusions and even the cities weren't big enough to spread out feeding properly (although they were big enough to hide in.) Kind of makes me think of the only interesting part of True Blood, the idea of synthetic blood letting vampires be friendlier. Suddenly with the invention of ambulances and blood transfusions, only a seriously irresponsible vampire is going to kill their prey through overfeeding. Probably seriously impacted their whole culture.
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Sep 24, 2012 16:46
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Liesmith posted:I like the idea that for all of recorded history, the majority of vampires killed while feeding pretty much all the time, because there were no blood transfusions and even the cities weren't big enough to spread out feeding properly (although they were big enough to hide in.) Kind of makes me think of the only interesting part of True Blood, the idea of synthetic blood letting vampires be friendlier. Suddenly with the invention of ambulances and blood transfusions, only a seriously irresponsible vampire is going to kill their prey through overfeeding. Probably seriously impacted their whole culture. Well in Vampire, you can take small amounts of blood without causing serious injury, and you can lick the wound closed so that they don't bleed out. So they have it a little easier in regards to feeding without murder. But, doubtless, yeah, it was probably easier to drain someone dry and dump the body, especially in times when forensics and consistent law enforcement were virtually non-existent. It probably helps to explain why so many elders are low-Humanity bastards, as well.
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Sep 24, 2012 18:52
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Simian_Prime posted:Well in Vampire, you can take small amounts of blood without causing serious injury, and you can lick the wound closed so that they don't bleed out. So they have it a little easier in regards to feeding without murder. But, doubtless, yeah, it was probably easier to drain someone dry and dump the body, especially in times when forensics and consistent law enforcement were virtually non-existent. It probably helps to explain why so many elders are low-Humanity bastards, as well. It's not just that, though. In a small community, you are gonna take serious hunting penalties, and there aren't any hobos whose deaths won't be investigated or goth blood fetishists or whatever. You feed off someone, you need to take enough to get you to the next feeding, which could be a long time if you're unlucky. And people are going to hear about you or even recognize you and are going to avoid strangers more after a while. You're like a big cat: you need a much larger territory to support you, and you are gonna gorge when you do feed because the majority of your hunts don't actually succeed. Meanwhile in a city, you can find strangers who don't have even slight connections to your last victim. You don't even have to gorge anymore because you can safely hunt every night without setting off any alarms. And if you do gently caress up and kill someone, in a seriously hosed up city where you get a hundred unsolved homicides a year, you are pretty safe from detection. And in a MODERN city, the populations are larger than ever in history, and modern medecine makes the safety margin for loving up and draining a fool a lot more generous.
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Sep 24, 2012 19:26
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That's why my gangrel started an artist's colony out in Death Valley. Bunch of hippies in the desert a few miles from his actual town of residence make for a good food supply. No one will notice if they seem tired or unusually pale one morning (and, being as this is a Death Valley artist's colony, there's a non-zero chance of drug use to help explain any 'odd' memories. Also, anyone he accidentally drains too much 'overdosed' or 'got high and wandered into the desert'.) It's all about the herd when you're dealing with small communities.
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Sep 24, 2012 19:33
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Loomer posted:That's why my gangrel started an artist's colony out in Death Valley. Bunch of hippies in the desert a few miles from his actual town of residence make for a good food supply. No one will notice if they seem tired or unusually pale one morning (and, being as this is a Death Valley artist's colony, there's a non-zero chance of drug use to help explain any 'odd' memories. Also, anyone he accidentally drains too much 'overdosed' or 'got high and wandered into the desert'.) That or Dominate. Forgetful Mind is badass. 
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Sep 24, 2012 21:40
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So I finally got a pdf of V20. Beautifully laid-out book, with some gorgeous art and great writing. But that old-school ruleset... *sigh* Oh well. I knew what I was getting into. Thanks for the memories, I guess. EDIT: I do have the Translation Guide, but, y'know,  , and I really like the Requiem setting as well as the rules.
Simian_Prime fucked around with this message at 06:51 on Sep 25, 2012 |
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Sep 25, 2012 06:49
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Book does not include Gaki, 0/5. You know, you forget how insanely racist White Wolf was in the early 90s when you aren't reading their stuff chronologically.
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Sep 25, 2012 10:34
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Loomer posted:You know, you forget how insanely racist White Wolf was in the early 90s when you aren't reading their stuff chronologically. They used to be headquartered in Stone Mountain, GA. For the uninitiated, this is what's on Stone Mountain.
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Sep 25, 2012 10:47
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Kavak posted:They used to be headquartered in Stone Mountain, GA. For the uninitiated, this is what's on Stone Mountain. What is that, for non-Americans? I guess something to do with the Civil War?
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Sep 25, 2012 11:53
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Project1 posted:What is that, for non-Americans? I guess something to do with the Civil War? That's Confederate President Jefferson Davis and Generals Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson.
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Sep 25, 2012 12:02
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Ya know...that explains a lot, actually. Sadly. 
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Sep 25, 2012 12:07
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The KKK revival of 1915 was headquartered in Stone Mountain.
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Sep 25, 2012 12:24
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Kavak posted:That's Confederate President Jefferson Davis and Generals Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. All three of those dudes are pretty much canonized as American Heroes though. Especially Robert E. Lee. Did you know that the confederate vice president went right back to being a senator after the war? What a baller
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Sep 25, 2012 12:37
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Pope Guilty posted:The KKK revival of 1915 was headquartered in Stone Mountain. They had a HUGE proportion of Maine for a while, but it was cool because back then there were literally no nonwhites in Maine so it was basically a rotary club with dragons and wizards
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Sep 25, 2012 12:39
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Liesmith posted:They had a HUGE proportion of Maine for a while, but it was cool because back then there were literally no nonwhites in Maine so it was basically a rotary club with dragons and wizards Much like the Pentacle, IMO.
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Sep 25, 2012 12:48
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Attorney at Funk posted:Much like the Pentacle, IMO. Join the Seers.
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Sep 25, 2012 17:34
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 At some point I really want to run (or play in) a Pentacle vs. Throne game with a large-ish group of PCs divided into either group. It'd probably work best as a forum game, with one main forum for both groups and separate hidden forums for secret plotting.
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Sep 25, 2012 18:34
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