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Banality is too central to CtD to fix it without making a completely different game.
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May 17, 2015 10:30
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Pope Guilty posted:Banality is too central to CtD to fix it without making a completely different game. I think it can be fleshed out so it becomes more sensible and less arbitrary. Less "Concrete, scientists and teachers are Banal!" and more focus on things that actually crush dreams. Maybe I'm just an optimist! I guess we'll know when they start releasing updates about it. Lightning Lord fucked around with this message at 10:34 on May 17, 2015 |
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May 17, 2015 10:31
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The amount of work needed to unfuck CtD would alienate the entire extant CtD fanbase. We'd be talking about a fundamentally different game than the one they like, which means it'd be a failure as an anniversary edition, so unfortunately I'm pretty certain that C20 will be more of the same, right down to a lot of very strange design decisions, poorly executed but interesting ideas, downright AUG poo poo, and so many missed opportunities in favour of a generic fairy-land theme that anyone with half a passing interest will sit down and shake their heads in sadness.
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May 17, 2015 10:47
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I'd like to say that a well made, more thoughtful book would outsell what the CtD fans are willing to pay for the anniversary version, but the truth is that I am not sure how many of them there are out there, nor how much are they willing to pay for this game. On an unrelated note, what does AUG stand for? paradoxGentleman fucked around with this message at 11:57 on May 17, 2015 |
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May 17, 2015 10:55
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paradoxGentleman posted:I'd like to say that it's a well made, more thoughtful book would outsell what the CtD fans are willing to pay for the anniversary version, but the truth is that I am not sure how many of them there are out there, nor how much are they willing to pay for this game. Awkward, Ugly, and Gross. It's a PYF thread.
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May 17, 2015 11:18
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Pope Guilty posted:Awkward, Ugly, and Gross. It's a PYF thread. Oh yeah, I saw that thread but didn't make the connection.
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May 17, 2015 11:58
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In this particular case, going full White Wolf is the AUG poo poo.
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May 17, 2015 12:43
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C:tD has what I like to refer to as Jurassic Park III syndrome: it's chock full of (at least somewhat) interesting ideas that aren't ever really expanded upon in ways that are to it's benefit, and the result seems like a very piecemeal, slapped-together game with no real unifying themes and ultimately conflicting ideas. It tried to combine the politicking of Vampire, the adventuring of Werewolf, and the magic-ness of Mage and throw them all together, and failed spectacularly because none of those three aspects were as good as in the other core games they were featured. Politics boils down to "Sidhe and the Seelie are dicks, and the Unseelie are also dicks", adventuring in the Dreaming was wacky and inconsistent at best given that the fluff of the Dreaming is (as with everything else) unfinished and often self-conflicting, and the magic system... well, I'm just going to boil it down to Realms being a really dumb mechanic (hey, let's not only have 5-level powers like the rest of the lines, but let's make 5-level restrictions on what those powers can affect!  ). All that being said, I still actually somewhat enjoyed being an ST for a LARP of it for a while, despite the plethora of things I found wrong (and sometimes outright  ) about the fluff and the crunch, if for no other reason than that our player base always managed to have a lot of fun with it (mostly considering it was a surprisingly nice change of pace from the area's downright toxic Vampire mindset). Not to mention I got to be a part of creating and running what I feel is one of the ballsiest ST staff moves of all time: what the community refers to this day simply as the Bizarro World Chapter.
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May 17, 2015 14:20
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Doodmons posted:Gritty Noir <------> Superheroes spectrum. A group of 5 mages of disparate Traditions sent to New Orleans as part of an effort to clean it up and stem the tide of Entropy that's been sweeping northward over the last 2 years of metaplot-related games. This whole thing started when a coterie of Vampires deliberately brought back a Baali to the city, in order to get rid of a "Salubri" that was mind controlling the Prince. Bigger fish kinda thing. Needless to say, Mary the Black didn't leave, one of the party betrayed the rest and Blood Bound them to Mary (bad decisions meant they were having trouble feeding, so they bought/stole blood from a local blood bank), and Mary ended up summoning The Great Beast with the party's assistance, then escaped a pack of werewolves by throwing the PCs at them as bait - rough quote I believe is "They are coming here, and they are looking for the most evil thing in the city. After me, that'd be... you?", ordered the rest of the party to protect the traitor, and left as a pack of werewolves kicked in the door. End campaign. So that's why the Council of Las Vegas wanted something done about it, though at the time they were having their own problems with Sabbat incursions and the pseudo-peace with the Technocracy flaring up, so they sent us; a Virtual Adept information acquirer, a Euthanatos ex-mafia psychiatrist, an Akashic monk/cook, and an Etherite Temporal Scientist. We were later joined by a Verbena pagan priest from the Bayou, and a Hermetic Demonhunter after the Akashic was mobbed by a pack of cultists and died. Given that it's Mage, and oWoD, there is some ridiculousness like the Demonhunters ridiculous sword that kills anything, and I've gotten an incredible amount of use out of Correspondance for teleporting things and general Spatial-related bullshit. But mostly it's been pretty gritty, no massive organisations in the city to help us because they were wrecked by the Hurricane/Great Beast, everything is terrible and scary because there's still a Baali Methusulah in the city somewhere with all her minions, and a bunch of stuff seems to have snuck in when the Baali Shattered the Gates and has spent the last 2 years incubating. We've been playing everything pretty carefully, lots of elaborate plans which end up going off half-cocked, and trying not to do too much Vulgar magic. Actually I think I'm the only one that has really done any, as the Etherite, and that's just because it's so much fun to go "gently caress the rules, I have Unlimited Science!" and also keep forgetting that Vulgar magic exists just before pushing all of the water out of a building while right next to a pair of sleepers. I think it also helps that the GM doesn't really give much of a poo poo towards Established Lore beyond basic factions stuff, and loves to come up with weird poo poo, especially since everybody else has read much more WoD stuff than he has - even if it's not conscious metagaming it's often more fun to go in blind and guess/uncover things, since he is harsh but fair and doesn't really railroad or twist things around to spite the players. *Demon being first, the only real foray into that went off the rails very quickly because it didn't really have the same limiting factors that other lines have? No real organisation to adhere to or be afraid of, no big weaknesses, only really limited by how much Faith you could gather and some powers didn't even need it to wreck face.
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May 17, 2015 14:45
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Tailfnz posted:Not to mention I got to be a part of creating and running what I feel is one of the ballsiest ST staff moves of all time: what the community refers to this day simply as the Bizarro World Chapter.
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May 17, 2015 16:33
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Yawgmoth posted:That is a story and you are going to tell it. e: Okay, story time. Setting of the game is Aventura, Florida, a suburb of Miami. Bizarro World grew from a snarky comment about the PC Baron of the Freehold (who regularly was a massive idiot and fuckup who managed to keep his position by pulling results out of his rear end with sheer luck) during our weekly staff meeting by our head ST, Jeremy: "Yeah, he could be remotely competent, in loving Bizarro World." Naturally, we start joking around and coming up with his polar opposite: a brutal, dictator-like warlord who harshly rules over his subjects with a literal Iron Fist, etc. His new name and title was something along the lines of: "Lord Baron Ehran 'Iron Hand' Kavanagh, Scourge of the South, the Mongol, the Great Conqueror, the Hammer of Florida, etc, etc". Eventually, over the next couple of weeks, we came up with similar alternate "mirror" characters for each of our players (including turning a hot-blooded Troll pirate into a calm scholar, a harmless Pizke childling into a cold-blooded murderer, and an rear end in a top hat Redcap grifter into an incredibly religious vigilante that does random good deeds, to name a few) and it turns into a whole full-fledged plot idea. The question came, then, of how in the bloody poo poo we were going to make something like this work with our story. A few more minutes of discussion, we realize that we have the perfect in with one of our antagonist NPCs. We had previously introduced a sort of mad scientist Boggan (who unbeknownst to the players is in the employ of the Shadow Court) that experiments on other Fae using insane Chimerical contraptions. The idea was that during the upcoming Midsummer holiday feast, this Boggan would have drugged the food and drink of the entire Freehold, and taken them to his lab in an abandoned asylum to extract secrets (namely, the location of an ancient Fae relic that was a piece of an ancient Nightmare-spawning superweapon) from them. The manner in which he tried to get this information was to create, and use, a sort of Tranquility Lane-esque dream machine to create a collective dream/experience for the sedated freehold's denizens, and grabbing information as it was discovered. He would alter the 'dream' little by little and appear as trustworthy figures (the local Count of Miami, for example) to try and get the location of the Nightmare Shard. Nothing in his subtly-changing enchated cocaine-fueled experiments was working, so eventually he goes for a drastic change in hopes for a result: Bizarro World, where the personalities of everyone are so drastically different, that they may just be more susceptible to suggestion and subtle interrogation. So, how did the players get into this scenario? First, the Staff took the time to redecorate the entire Freehold room by reversing the positions of the furnishings (paintings, coffee makers, tables, chairs, etc), replacing the tablecloths with those of drastically different colors, and decorating the Baron's table with a replica taxidermy deer head trophy, literally making a 'mirror' freehold. Next, we created these opposite personalities as new character sheets in Grapevine, and gave "RP Hints" in each of the players' General Rumors section. When game time came around and we were handing out character sheets, I made an announcement right beforehand to assure them that everything is completely 'normal', and to take a bit of time reading these sheets and sharing them with each other to get into the hang of things before heading into the Freehold to start the night. We knew there was an enormous risk of potentially alienating the entire player base at once with such a move, and decided that if it didn't fly, we'd bail and retcon the night as a one-off experiment. The plan, if successful, was to have "cracks in the dream" appear over the next session (or two, if it took that long) such that once enough people realize that something is wrong, the Boggan scientist would abort the experiment and the players would begin to "wake up" as their own characters again, and give chase to the insane Boggan, the players dealing with the fact that they'd vanished from their mortal lives for a week, etc, etc. Surprisingly enough, the players loving LOVED it, and it went off without a hitch. Everyone got a huge laugh out of their Bizarro-selves and went full Monty with it. I ran an incredible series of scenes with the aforementioned Pizke and a Pooka (played by the 11-year-old daughter of the Baron's player) being horrible people and doing things such as: stealing puppies from homeless kids and beating the poo poo out of them, stealing high-performance cars from dealerships and driving them into corner stores, and beating the ever-loving hell out of a Redcap childling and dressing him up in drag. In the end, it moved the plot forward as we'd planned, and it brought a drat near unforgettable experience to the Lansing community. Would I ever try a stunt like that again? Probably not something quite that extreme. Was it worth it? Abso-loving-lutely. Tailfnz fucked around with this message at 01:31 on May 18, 2015 |
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May 17, 2015 16:39
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Lightning Lord posted:I've been looking at Changeling the Dreaming a little bit since finding out that they're going to do a 20th Anniversary, and the impression I get is that it was a failed attempt to do a take on that subgenre of 80s fairy-based urban fantasy like Emma Bull's War for the Oaks, Charles de Lint's Yarrow and John Crowley's Little, Big. I really hope they go back to these books, examine where the original creators fell down and go back to the drawing board. It's the oWoD game that needs it the most. While both editions are a mess (2E is at least a pretty mess) I honestly do think there's a salvageable concept there. I agree with this and know that it's just going to be bad.
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May 18, 2015 00:20
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Yeah, I have serious doubts about C20 being any good because CtD was simply, at it's core, an unfinished game. I believe it'll take a hell of a lot of effort from OPP to make something decently playable out of it. A part of me kind of hopes they can pull it off, because as I said previously, there are actually a few interesting ideas in the game that can be pretty cool if expanded upon well enough (Chimera, Treasures, even the concept of Banality).
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May 18, 2015 17:35
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I've never read CtD, but Banality being a metaphyiscal concept working against you could be cool. Like that book I never read where a guy's life was so banal he became a cockroach (Metamorphism?). But, from what I heard, wasn't CtD super focused on some of the most annoying elements of New Age thinking? Also, why is Promethean called the best game you will never play in the OP?
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May 18, 2015 18:02
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Covok posted:Also, why is Promethean called the best game you will never play in the OP? It's well-written but absurdly narrow. It only does one type of story, and it's almost impossible to put together a group for it.
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May 18, 2015 18:33
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Covok posted:Also, why is Promethean called the best game you will never play in the OP? Because Promethean is designed to tell one story with one player. It's amazingly good at telling one story with one player, but it's still only one story and only one player.
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May 18, 2015 18:43
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jagadaishio posted:It's well-written but absurdly narrow. It only does one type of story, and it's almost impossible to put together a group for it. Omnicrom posted:Because Promethean is designed to tell one story with one player. It's amazingly good at telling one story with one player, but it's still only one story and only one player. Could someone please put these motherfuckers out of their misery Covok posted:Also, why is Promethean called the best game you will never play in the OP? Promethean is a game where playing it properly requires a hell of a lot of investment in your character, a hell of a lot of emotional maturity, and a real willingness to play-act painful moments. Finding people who fit all three of these things and want to play it is, uh, unlikely. This is setting aside the parts where it contravenes the basic assumptions of most other games.
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May 18, 2015 18:48
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Got it. Too narrow, too much investment, too hard to find players, and not enough like other games.
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May 18, 2015 18:51
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It is still exceptionally well-written and I have high hopes for Promethean 2e.
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May 18, 2015 19:11
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Mors Rattus posted:It is still exceptionally well-written and I have high hopes for Promethean 2e. Yeah, it's gonna be great GMing Edward Elric, the guy from the opening sections of One Hundred Years of Solitude, and Nicholas Flamel, as they take on poorly-written enemy alchemists. 
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May 18, 2015 19:13
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Tailfnz posted:Yeah, I have serious doubts about C20 being any good because CtD was simply, at it's core, an unfinished game. I believe it'll take a hell of a lot of effort from OPP to make something decently playable out of it. A part of me kind of hopes they can pull it off, because as I said previously, there are actually a few interesting ideas in the game that can be pretty cool if expanded upon well enough (Chimera, Treasures, even the concept of Banality). If nothing else, the devs for C20 seem to be aware that they're going to have to do a Revised edition instead of trying to throw everything together and make an uncritical celebration of all things Changeling like V20 and W20 did.
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May 18, 2015 19:21
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Is there anything other than system issues preventing neatly excising C:tD and dropping Lost into the OWOD in its place?
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May 19, 2015 00:12
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Pope Guilty posted:Is there anything other than system issues preventing neatly excising C:tD and dropping Lost into the OWOD in its place? I know I am no expert on the subject, but it doesn't really make sense to do so. I mean, what's the point of doing a C:tD 20th Anniversary Edition if it's actually just C:tL especially considering C:tL 2nd Edition is on its way? Edit: Anyone know the best place to look for WoD games? Like, SA doesn't seem to have a lot so what's the best community to find games, if anyone knows? Covok fucked around with this message at 01:35 on May 19, 2015 |
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May 19, 2015 01:29
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Covok posted:I know I am no expert on the subject, but it doesn't really make sense to do so. I mean, what's the point of doing a C:tD 20th Anniversary Edition if it's actually just C:tL especially considering C:tL 2nd Edition is on its way? I don't mean have C20 be Lost, I mean is there anything about Lost that would interfere with just dropping it into the OWOD and pretending Dreaming never happened.
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May 19, 2015 01:50
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Pope Guilty posted:I don't mean have C20 be Lost, I mean is there anything about Lost that would interfere with just dropping it into the OWOD and pretending Dreaming never happened.
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May 19, 2015 01:54
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Lack of Changeling world-spanning conspiracies controlling everything.
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May 19, 2015 02:00
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Pope Guilty posted:I don't mean have C20 be Lost, I mean is there anything about Lost that would interfere with just dropping it into the OWOD and pretending Dreaming never happened. They're totally different approaches to the subject. Changeling isn't bad because of it's concept, it's bad because of poor design and strange choices.
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May 19, 2015 02:02
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Mors Rattus posted:Lack of Changeling world-spanning conspiracies controlling everything. You know how the Night Horrors book had the "Dragon of Capitalism" with his evil Wal-Mart franchise, and the unkillable Dzarumazh? There would be a lot more of that.
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May 19, 2015 03:02
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Dreaming is bad because, basically, it's about growing up and the pains and joys of that, and it was written by people who had not grown up yet and did not have valuable perspectives to share on the subject. Which makes it theoretically pretty good material to return to twenty years later and hopefully wiser.
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May 19, 2015 03:32
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Rand Brittain posted:Dreaming is bad because, basically, it's about growing up and the pains and joys of that, and it was written by people who had not grown up yet and did not have valuable perspectives to share on the subject. I think it shouldn't be a game about growing up also I'm pretty sure some key contributors were old as hell even in the 1990s.
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May 19, 2015 05:00
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Pope Guilty posted:Is there anything other than system issues preventing neatly excising C:tD and dropping Lost into the OWOD in its place? Not really, no. Changeling is one of the least connected, least impactful lines in the setting. That's part of its problem, really - it thematically doesn't quite fit, and while that's not a big deal, it doesn't help when combined with the other problems. I do enjoy having the Changelings play a much larger role in my own spin on the setting, but they're a fairly different spin on things and a lot of their powers can affect other supernaturals more readily, and vice versa.
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May 19, 2015 05:24
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The only CtD book I ever read that didn't make me hate myself at least a little bit for reading it was, of all things, the Vampire/Changeling crossover novel Pomegranates Full and Fine, and that was mainly because the protagonist was a changeling whose utter loathing for changelings' twee pseudo-feudal renfaire society saturated every page where she was forced to interact with that culture. Of course the villain of the book wasn't even a villain from either game line; he was a Nephandus. And his master plan was delightfully banal considering the circumstances (which I guess almost made him accidentally appropriate as a CtD antagonist): Throughout the whole book he's been manipulating powerful mortals and vampires and changelings (and probably some random Black Spiral Dancers, for all I remember) into completing a ritual to summon his demonic masters to Earth, after which all the cultists will get supreme power in the new post-apocalyptic world. Except that he's not going to complete the ritual; he's going to keep leading on the cultists for as long as he possibly can, because he's got a good thing going as the leader of a vast and influential cult. Sure he's a Nephandus, but he's got power, money, and sex with hot vampire chicks; what could a demon possibly offer him that's better than what he's got now?
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May 19, 2015 06:22
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Covok posted:
No where. I'm in a W:tF game on the OPP forums, but it's slow as hell. I've looked at RPG.net on advice from here, but there didn't seem to be any games recruiting for nWoD.
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May 19, 2015 07:05
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Soonmot posted:No where. I'm in a W:tF game on the OPP forums, but it's slow as hell. I've looked at RPG.net on advice from here, but there didn't seem to be any games recruiting for nWoD. My IRL friend who is also a fan said the same thing. It just is strange to me. I mean, I know it isn't anymore, but these gamelines were once first in the industry (or second, I forget) so it's odd that it's so hard to find a game.
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May 19, 2015 07:08
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At one point, the only game line that had more pbp threads here than WoD was M&M. I came back to TG after a few years of not playing and there were a handful of vampire games running, but nothing since. There was a recruitment for a mortals game last week, I think, if you check the recruitment thread.
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May 19, 2015 07:35
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Soonmot posted:At one point, the only game line that had more pbp threads here than WoD was M&M. I came back to TG after a few years of not playing and there were a handful of vampire games running, but nothing since. There was a recruitment for a mortals game last week, I think, if you check the recruitment thread. Then that's probably the reason why, for here at least: over-saturation. In all honesty, sounds like I got into the game at a bad time: a low point in popularity. I'll look for the mortals game. Thanks for the heads up. I just don't want to have to be storyteller since I really don't know the system and I'm GMing some other things.
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May 19, 2015 07:38
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We are in the middle of an edition shift, that might have something to do with it.
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May 19, 2015 07:50
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paradoxGentleman posted:We are in the middle of an edition shift, that might have something to do with it. I suppose that could be doing it. I do remember hearing the shift from old to new was very rough. So, this might be, on a much smaller scale, similar.
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May 19, 2015 07:52
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I'd still love to get a vampire or werewolf game going here.
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May 19, 2015 07:59
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I'd like it, too. Problem is, I am not comfortable enough with the system to GM it myself.
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May 19, 2015 08:27
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