World of Darkness Megathread: Curse of the Were-Poster

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Alien Rope Burn: Dec 5, 2004; _{I wanna be a saikyo HERO!}

Partly because King isn't a major influence on the World of Darkness, but mainly that the WoD is, at heart, about empowerment. Usually that's of the supernatural sort. The 2004 World of Darkness is a big shift in that it supports disempowering, mundane human-level horror at all. It's still not the core focus, though.

The 1991 World of Darkness, on the other hand, had essentially zero support for that kind of play. In the exceedingly rare supplements you played a "normal" human, you were generally part of some badass organization like the Inquisition or Project Twilight empowered to stab or kick the poo poo out of monsters. The concept of being entirely disempowered was practically alien to the 1991 WoD.

# ? Aug 25, 2015 14:33

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# ? May 20, 2024 03:03

Yawgmoth: Sep 10, 2003; This post is cursed!

bewilderment posted:

The problem PbP runs into is when two (or more!) characters want to actually have an in-character conversation and then uh-oh everything's ground to a halt.

This is my main problem with it: everything takes forever to do. A conversation between two PCs, or a PC and NPC, takes a week and a half when in a live session on IRC/roll20 it would take maybe half an hour. Combat is even worse. Even asking for something as simple as a single die roll can take multiple days, and in the meantime there's not really anything you can do except wait.

I guess I just don't see what the appeal is of doing that vs. "hey every (week/other week/month) at 6pm CST let's meet up on #butts on irc.server.net and play for a few hours" unless you're so busy that you can't spare the time, in which case I gotta ask how you have time to do anything RP related at that point.

# ? Aug 25, 2015 15:24

Attorney at Funk: Jun 3, 2008; ...the person who says honestly that he despairs is closer to being cured than all those who are not regarded as despairing by themselves or others.

The idea of PBP is cool because it lets people with wildly different schedules or in different time zones game together. But any actual PBP game is going to be unplayably slow.

# ? Aug 25, 2015 15:34

spectralent: Oct 1, 2014; Me and the boys poppin' down to the shops

I've seen PbPs continue for ages, and even finish, so they're definitely played. I just have no idea how. I've never been in one that hasn't collapsed within the first few months.

# ? Aug 25, 2015 15:35

LatwPIAT: Jun 6, 2011

I suspect that PBP is more suited to collaborative storytelling-efforts than traditional tabletople roleplaying.

# ? Aug 25, 2015 16:12

Nea: Feb 28, 2014; Funny Little Guy Aficionado.

It works pretty well for Monsterhearts and freeform games and the like.

# ? Aug 25, 2015 16:27

Loomer: Dec 19, 2007; A Very Special Hell

My issue is I just get caught up in RL things without a set time and place to run it, and next thing I know two weeks have gone by and I've let a game die like a dick.

# ? Aug 25, 2015 17:02

MonsieurChoc: Oct 12, 2013; Every species can smell its own extinction.

Alien Rope Burn posted:

Partly because King isn't a major influence on the World of Darkness, but mainly that the WoD is, at heart, about empowerment. Usually that's of the supernatural sort. The 2004 World of Darkness is a big shift in that it supports disempowering, mundane human-level horror at all. It's still not the core focus, though.

The 1991 World of Darkness, on the other hand, had essentially zero support for that kind of play. In the exceedingly rare supplements you played a "normal" human, you were generally part of some badass organization like the Inquisition or Project Twilight empowered to stab or kick the poo poo out of monsters. The concept of being entirely disempowered was practically alien to the 1991 WoD.

There's a lot of Stephen King in the nWoD "Blue Books". Not as much in the supernatural gamelines, true.

# ? Aug 25, 2015 17:31

MalcolmSheppard: Jun 24, 2012; MATTHEW 7:20

moths posted:

I'm surprised there isn't a WoD game based on being a writer, director, (or game designer?) based on how frequently those occupations get involved with the supernatural in horror.

Yeah, but consider the source.

# ? Aug 25, 2015 18:27

MalcolmSheppard: Jun 24, 2012; MATTHEW 7:20

Alien Rope Burn posted:

Partly because King isn't a major influence on the World of Darkness, but mainly that the WoD is, at heart, about empowerment. Usually that's of the supernatural sort. The 2004 World of Darkness is a big shift in that it supports disempowering, mundane human-level horror at all. It's still not the core focus, though.

The 1991 World of Darkness, on the other hand, had essentially zero support for that kind of play. In the exceedingly rare supplements you played a "normal" human, you were generally part of some badass organization like the Inquisition or Project Twilight empowered to stab or kick the poo poo out of monsters. The concept of being entirely disempowered was practically alien to the 1991 WoD.

We wrote support for it in Mage Revised and certain fans poo poo their pants.

Vampire 1st is about losing your Humanity. 2nd starts out that way and drifts away. Revised comes back. Werewolf is about fighting losing battles where all victories just delay the inevitable, but it doesn't home in on that until Revised. Mage is about what happens after the imposition of a dystopia in 1st, but that loosens to the high action of 2nd before settling into Revised. It really depends on where in those lines you look.

But never mind: No matter what, however, folks will default to adventure game assumptions at many tables.

I mean I know lots of NWoD partisans think they're super-mature hot poo poo compared to their predecessors, but you're the group that bought two books called Armory, and it wasn't to explore the disempowering tragedy of violence. It's because you wanted more guns and moves for your dudes.

MalcolmSheppard fucked around with this message at 18:48 on Aug 25, 2015

# ? Aug 25, 2015 18:39

Chernobyl Peace Prize: May 7, 2007; Or later, later's fine.
But now would be good.

MalcolmSheppard posted:

We wrote support for it in Mage Revised and certain fans poo poo their pants.

Vampire 1st is about losing your Humanity. 2nd starts out that way and drifts away. Revised comes back. Werewolf is about fighting losing battles where all victories just delay the inevitable, but it doesn't home in on that until Revised. Mage is about what happens after the imposition of a dystopia in 1st, but that loosens to the high action of 2nd before settling into Revised. It really depends on where in those lines you look.

But never mind: No matter what, however, folks will default to adventure game assumptions in many games.

I mean I know lots of NWoD partisans think they're super-mature hot poo poo compared to their predecessors, but you're the group that bought two books called Armory, and it wasn't to explore the disempowering tragedy of violence. It's because you wanted more guns and moves for your dudes.

I wish I'd read the copies of oVampire/Werewolf/Mage that you've got hidden on your shelf, but you must've bought them at the store that insists that supporting one line over another necessarily requires wanting and buying all the supplements for it.

That's the only explanation here.

# ? Aug 25, 2015 18:46

MalcolmSheppard: Jun 24, 2012; MATTHEW 7:20

Chernobyl Peace Prize posted:

I wish I'd read the copies of oVampire/Werewolf/Mage that you've got hidden on your shelf, but you must've bought them at the store that insists that supporting one line over another necessarily requires wanting and buying all the supplements for it.

That's the only explanation here.

Well you see, I read them before I read about them on the Internet.

# ? Aug 25, 2015 18:48

Chernobyl Peace Prize: May 7, 2007; Or later, later's fine.
But now would be good.

MalcolmSheppard posted:

Well you see, I read them before I read about them on the Internet.

Weirdly I did too, but I didn't pick up on any of the "actually well-written and maturely executed" subtext in decades past.

Lord knows the text itself isn't.

# ? Aug 25, 2015 18:53

MalcolmSheppard: Jun 24, 2012; MATTHEW 7:20

The funny thing is that I played in a great Project: Twilight game, and it was obvious to everyone at the time (1997?) that Project: Twilight was the WoD X-Files. I'm not sure how that's empowering, especially since the typical scenario in the chronicle was piecing together supernaturally driven crimes and then learning enough to know there's nothing you can ever do to stop them.

The one incident that stands out in my mind was tracking down some murderers in rural BC, thinking we almost caught them, not having our stories match up, and then discovering under hypnosis that we were all casually swatted aside by enormous wolf-things and trembled in terror when they got their last victim.

Anyway, you know what's a great WoD movie? Network (the 1976 film). Finally saw it start to finish last night.

# ? Aug 25, 2015 18:57

Attorney at Funk: Jun 3, 2008; ...the person who says honestly that he despairs is closer to being cured than all those who are not regarded as despairing by themselves or others.

MalcolmSheppard posted:

Anyway, you know what's a great WoD movie? Network (the 1976 film). Finally saw it start to finish last night.

Ned Beatty in Network is one of my primary referents for Dispater.

# ? Aug 25, 2015 19:03

MalcolmSheppard: Jun 24, 2012; MATTHEW 7:20

Chernobyl Peace Prize posted:

Weirdly I did too, but I didn't pick up on any of the "actually well-written and maturely executed" subtext in decades past.

Lord knows the text itself isn't.

Both lines have great bits and both lines have groaners. CWoD's virtue and curse is how wide a range of topics you can find covered in 20-odd years of material. NWoD's good and bad thing is the degree to which the lines are managed to present a common tone. So you've got one line where the signature characters look like they're out of a crazy comic book, and one line where the signature characters wear hoodies and look vaguely annoyed 20% of the time.

# ? Aug 25, 2015 19:05

MonsieurChoc: Oct 12, 2013; Every species can smell its own extinction.

MalcolmSheppard posted:

I mean I know lots of NWoD partisans think they're super-mature hot poo poo compared to their predecessors, but you're the group that bought two books called Armory, and it wasn't to explore the disempowering tragedy of violence. It's because you wanted more guns and moves for your dudes.

That swipe seems a bit needless.

But I completely agree with you on Project: Twilight.

# ? Aug 25, 2015 19:08

MalcolmSheppard: Jun 24, 2012; MATTHEW 7:20

MonsieurChoc posted:

That swipe seems a bit needless.

But I completely agree with you on Project: Twilight.

Keep in mind:

<---------- Wrote significant chunks of Armory Reloaded. I don't blame folks for wanting that stuff at all. I like action and run action-heavy games. One of the great things about long form play is that you can shift tone over time, and the game is ultimately about whatever recurs the strongest.

# ? Aug 25, 2015 19:11

Yawgmoth: Sep 10, 2003; This post is cursed!

MalcolmSheppard posted:

I mean I know lots of NWoD partisans think they're super-mature hot poo poo compared to their predecessors, but you're the group that bought two books called Armory, and it wasn't to explore the disempowering tragedy of violence. It's because you wanted more guns and moves for your dudes.

oWoD had how many Thaumaturgy books? And how many of them were 3+ dots of "here's another way to melt/explode/incinerate someone"? Edition wars are loving stupid regardless of game line but if you're gonna take potshots at least aim at something worth aiming at.

# ? Aug 25, 2015 19:11

MalcolmSheppard: Jun 24, 2012; MATTHEW 7:20

Like I said, I'm the guy who suggested, among other things, that "monster hunting Judo team" be a hook in one of those books. I still think it's a great idea. Remember, an exceptional success is Ippon.

# ? Aug 25, 2015 19:17

MonsieurChoc: Oct 12, 2013; Every species can smell its own extinction.

Yawgmoth posted:

oWoD had how many Thaumaturgy books? And how many of them were 3+ dots of "here's another way to melt/explode/incinerate someone"? Edition wars are loving stupid regardless of game line but if you're gonna take potshots at least aim at something worth aiming at.

The two Thaumaturgy boosk were actually pretty loving great, Page XX aside.

# ? Aug 25, 2015 19:37

Yawgmoth: Sep 10, 2003; This post is cursed!

MonsieurChoc posted:

The two Thaumaturgy boosk were actually pretty loving great, Page XX aside.

Thaumaturgy is an abomination, koldunic sorcery 4 lyfe

# ? Aug 25, 2015 19:39

MalcolmSheppard: Jun 24, 2012; MATTHEW 7:20

MonsieurChoc posted:

The two Thaumaturgy boosk were actually pretty loving great, Page XX aside.

One of the issues you get when you design to support a theme or flavour is that sometimes not every idea is really good for five dots (or in other games, however many levels) of stuff. so for Thaumaturgy you've got some powers which are sort of filler. Then again, the opposite, which is to design a power and shove it into a theme (which is basically what you do every time you cast a spell in Mage: The Ascension) doesn't necessarily work much better.

# ? Aug 25, 2015 19:45

Daeren: Aug 18, 2009; YER MUSTACHE IS CROOKED

Loomer posted:

I've always thought a Hunter game built around a reality TV show like Mountain Monsters actually finding real monsters would be awesome.

I've talked about something like this before, but to repeat: my favorite Changeling character I've played is/was, the Mythical Lobsterman of New Auburn, Maine (or just Lobsterman for short), the local bigfoot for the town. He was an Autumn Courtier by grudging association via his M.O. overlapping with the Scarecrow Ministry, using terror of his myth to keep people away from a Trod in the waters near the island he lived on. Near the end of the game, a Destination Truth type show came to his island and I had an entire side session dedicated to loving with their heads, eventually sending them back to the mainland in legitimate terror, where they discovered my spooky claw marks along the underside of their boat in drydock. It was incredible.

Yawgmoth posted:

Thaumaturgy is an abomination, koldunic sorcery 4 lyfe

420 worship the Earthbound everynight

# ? Aug 25, 2015 19:48

Rohan Kishibe: Oct 29, 2011; Frankly, I don't like you
and I never have.

LatwPIAT posted:

I suspect that PBP is more suited to collaborative storytelling-efforts than traditional tabletople roleplaying.

This is what I've found as well. I cut my RPG teeth on play-by-post in the 00s and back then a PbP game actually finishing was some kind of holy grail. I was in one PbP game that lasted for like 6 years, but most of the actual posts were just formalising things that we had hashed out through IM chat and such and it was just a collaborative storytelling thing, where each individual had final veto say on a particular character/set of characters.

The amount of "actual play" to discussion ratio was way different to what I'm used to now. And the collaborative nature made moving into campaigns with a more traditional very defined player/DM dynamic was very jarring.

# ? Aug 25, 2015 19:49

Mendrian: Jan 6, 2013

Playing "spot the tonal dissonance" in either WoD is like spotting sand at the beach. I prefer to read it as tonal diversity.

# ? Aug 25, 2015 20:33

unseenlibrarian: Jun 4, 2012; There's only one thing in the mountains that leaves a track like this. The creature of legend that roams the Timberline. My people named him Sasquatch. You call him... Bigfoot.

I actually had a campaign pitch for a Monster of the Week game that should start...soonish that was basically "Reality show monster hunters find real monsters", but as a weird ongoing series premise instead of a one-shot where everyone dies.

quote:

Not long ago, you thought monsters were fake; and you should know- you were part of a �reality� TV show that faked them. But no one was allowed to let on while the cameras were rolling. One of the producers used to work in wrestling, and he called the pretense that everything that happened on camera was real �Kayfabe�. �Be Fake�, backwards. No one involved really believed (Except maybe for one or two of the crew, the guys who built the gadgets to detect ghosts,) Neither did most of the audience, not really. It was all a show.

And then that all blew up in your face when you found a real monster.

And then another. and another.

You figured no one would believe you. I mean, you were a fake entertainment show, it�s in the disclaimer in really small print in the credits. So you tried to cover it up. But someone out there knew enough to realize that the sudden jump in the �FX budget� was the real thing. And now there�s a new producer who carries a gun under his suit jacket, and your contract has a disclaimer you don�t remember signing.

The new deal? Keep pretending to be a fake monster hunting show. But start hunting the real ones. And keep everyone convinced that it�s all a joke, and that monsters really -aren�t- real.

Don�t get killed, don�t go over budget, and whatever you do, don�t break Kayfabe.

# ? Aug 25, 2015 20:43

MonsieurChoc: Oct 12, 2013; Every species can smell its own extinction.

Network Zero goon starts his own Reviewer-style youtube show about the griblies of the night. Gives himself a adjective + title internet name. Web savvy supernaturals decide to troll him instead of killing him.

# ? Aug 25, 2015 21:41

Chernobyl Peace Prize: May 7, 2007; Or later, later's fine.
But now would be good.

MonsieurChoc posted:

Network Zero goon starts his own Reviewer-style youtube show about the griblies of the night. Gives himself a adjective + title internet name. Web savvy supernaturals decide to troll him instead of killing him.

It took me a second to realize you weren't talking Andrew Daly's Review-style show.

Becoming a ghoul, becoming Prince, becoming draugr
**, *****, (no rating)

# ? Aug 25, 2015 21:51

Emy: Apr 21, 2009

Kellsterik posted:

http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3723657

Loomer posted:

I really wish I was better at not being an rear end in a top hat and letting my games die on here. I can manage them IRL, but online I don't seem to be able to. I feel like a total dick over it.

I find that the inevitability of the death of PbP games is one of the most personally affecting forms of horror.

# ? Aug 26, 2015 01:42

DJ Dizzy: Feb 11, 2009; Real men don't use bolters.

I need ideas for how to portray the guardians of the veil in a post-public magic world.

# ? Aug 26, 2015 17:32

Attorney at Funk: Jun 3, 2008; ...the person who says honestly that he despairs is closer to being cured than all those who are not regarded as despairing by themselves or others.

DJ Dizzy posted:

I need ideas for how to portray the guardians of the veil in a post-public magic world.

Does Paradox still exist? Do Sleepers?

# ? Aug 26, 2015 18:58

DJ Dizzy: Feb 11, 2009; Real men don't use bolters.

Paradoxes still exists, but unbelief doesn't.

# ? Aug 26, 2015 20:08

shitty poker hand: Jun 13, 2013

DJ Dizzy posted:

I need ideas for how to portray the guardians of the veil in a post-public magic world.

Guardians of the Veil as magic police who deal with the weird poo poo happening to or because of Sleepwalkers (or whatever you're using as Non-Mages) who are curious and trying to overstep the boundaries of safety.

# ? Aug 26, 2015 20:10

Ferrinus: Jun 19, 2003; i'm finding this quite easy, i guess in part because i'm a fast type but also because i have a coherent mental model of the world

If publicity is no longer toxic to magic, the Guardians can turn their attentions completely to discouraging and punishing paradox, while continuing to serve ad executioners, torturers, etc. so that other mages don't have to.

# ? Aug 26, 2015 20:13

Rand Brittain: Mar 25, 2013; "Go on until you're stopped."

If mages are public, are mage executioners really necessary? We have ordinary executioners for that.

# ? Aug 26, 2015 20:22

Daeren: Aug 18, 2009; YER MUSTACHE IS CROOKED

Rand Brittain posted:

If mages are public, are mage executioners really necessary? We have ordinary executioners for that.

Are you gonna be the one to tell the magic executioners they don't get to trample on state-monopolized violence?

Alternatively, YOU try executing the guy who can turn into a swarm of angry bees at will.

# ? Aug 26, 2015 20:29

Attorney at Funk: Jun 3, 2008; ...the person who says honestly that he despairs is closer to being cured than all those who are not regarded as despairing by themselves or others.

Rand Brittain posted:

If mages are public, are mage executioners really necessary? We have ordinary executioners for that.

Can the ordinary executioners cast magic spells?

# ? Aug 26, 2015 20:31

Rand Brittain: Mar 25, 2013; "Go on until you're stopped."

Executing a mage is more complicated but if mages aren't a secret society it just takes, like, wizard policemen or something. It's not something you have to leave up to the one cult out of five that's most willing to handle executions for you.

# ? Aug 26, 2015 20:33

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# ? May 20, 2024 03:03

DJ Dizzy: Feb 11, 2009; Real men don't use bolters.

I was going for the magical enforcers and secret police too. Modern prisons can't really hold a mage of any kind.

# ? Aug 26, 2015 20:39

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > World of Darkness Megathread: Curse of the Were-Poster

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