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A lot of the reason for NWoD not catching on in Europe was lack of translations, and also a lot of people thinking Requiem was some sequel to Masquerade. Even now I despair at people who still think that - even with the power of the internet - and who think Requiem "failed", when it was the biggest selling book for WW ever! Basically NWoD didn't get the cultural traction like CWoD, in a time when the RPG market was imploding, and of course, people hated that all the lore that they had spent years learning backwards and forwards would mean nothing for a new game line. The old grogs hated feeling like the rug had been pulled out from under them.
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May 29, 2016 00:54
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FrostyPox posted:Ahhhh, I see. I've encountered a handful of old grogs grumbling about how nWoD RUINED EVERYTHING (tm) but I rather like what I've seen of it so far. oWoD seems all right and I'd like to get all the oWoD books just to have them for reference and maybe even play them once in a while but I really liked what I've seen (which basically consists of a bit of new Vampire and Mage, and I own Promethean and have read about new Demon). I'm not sure why they'd pick oWoD for video games and LARPs, perhaps to appease grogs? oWoD (or really, Vampire: the Masquerade in particular) was a bit of a phenomenon for its time among tabletop RPGs, probably having enjoyed the second biggest boom behind, obviously, Dungeons & Dragons making it into toy stores in the eighties. It kind of lucked into the right timing to draw a bunch of people into tabletop roleplaying who weren't interested in elves and dwarves looting dungeons, and there are a lot of people with nostalgia for the days when they played Vampire (or Werewolf, or Mage) together. Nostalgia can be powerful in marketing. Partially, Paradox intends to capitalize on this demographic, and partially, Paradox has staff who are members of this demographic. The sprawling bombast of metaplot and stocked up decades' worth of NPC lore also, while awkward to juggle in a tabletop context, are well suited to leveraging in other media like video games. I mean, yes, CofD née nWoD is enjoying a good renaissance among hobbyists now with Onyx Path's better, non-Beast work. But Vampire: the Masquerade was big enough in its time to market five licensed video games, a WWE wrestler, and a television series. Not all of those were good or successful, but it's not surprising they're after the property that already has a mass media footprint.
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May 29, 2016 01:11
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Oh, for sure, VtM was definitely a big deal and I've played it (I'm currently playing it, in fact). I guess I understand the nostalgia factor. It'll just be a bit odd of they put video games in the old setting and then if someone who's never played or heard of the RPG gets into it and finds Requiem instead of Masquerade (or Forsaken instead of Apocalypse, or whatever).
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May 29, 2016 01:21
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FrostyPox posted:Oh, for sure, VtM was definitely a big deal and I've played it (I'm currently playing it, in fact). I guess I understand the nostalgia factor. It'll just be a bit odd of they put video games in the old setting and then if someone who's never played or heard of the RPG gets into it and finds Requiem instead of Masquerade (or Forsaken instead of Apocalypse, or whatever). That's why they re-branded the NWOD into the Chronicles of Darkness. The OWOD has been putting out 20th Anniversary Editions for a while now, but Paradox also wants to make new editions which will simply be called the World of Darkness.
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May 29, 2016 01:24
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And I'm willing to bet the new oWoD will be cringe-inducing garbage. I'm hoping I'm wrong but the outlook is pretty bad.
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May 29, 2016 01:39
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I see. So they want to do, like Chronicles of Darkness with Requiem/Forsaken/Awakening etc 2e, and then New Classic World of Darkness with new edition of Masquerade, etc? I guess having the options out there is cool for the people who were really into the old stuff, but I think that might make it confusing for new players.
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May 29, 2016 01:51
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I don't think they want to pay attention to nWoD at all. I think they want the same relationship CCP had with it where they approve or disapprove books and cash licensing checks.
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May 29, 2016 02:06
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nWoD is so cool, though. 
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May 29, 2016 02:07
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More tragically yet, nWoD makes for way better video game character building.
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May 29, 2016 02:16
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Paradox are probably best known for publishing a number of very successful, highly granular historical strategy games (Europa Universalis and Crusader Kings, primarily). Plus VtM: Bloodlines is (rightly) considered enough of a cult classic that a sequel could probably do very well. Basically, Paradox have always been grog-friendly as a company and Masquerade has more prefab marketing built into it than nWoD, so the direction they're going is not particularly surprising. Whether the digital games of the future manage to stave off the more Garth Ennis-y aspects of oWoD (Bloodlines did a pretty good job, all things considered) will probably depend on who develops them. A lot of people (myself included) hoped Obsidian would get a contract but the timing didn't really work out on that.
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May 29, 2016 03:33
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I thought they hadn't decided on a developer yet. Is Obsidian too busy with Pillars of Eternity II and Tyranny?
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May 29, 2016 03:49
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Yeah. Obsidz has 3 teams working concurrently, as a general rule, and their third team is persistent support for their various sketchy Russian MMOs. Tyranny is well on its way to completion this year but they haven't said a ton about it and there will probably be post-release content and support for that as well. Paradox promised news about digital WoD games within the year, so Obsidian seems like a long shot. But there's no reason the news couldn't be a remaster of Bloodlines or something to that effect.
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May 29, 2016 04:02
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Paradox should make a political simulation game ala EU4 except instead of nations across regions, it's clans of varying splats across city blocks.
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May 29, 2016 04:50
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FrostyPox posted:I, uh, am still relatively new to WoD stuff, and I know that quite a lot of the stuff is Supreme Edgelord territory, but, dare I ask, what's the deal with this nuked gypsy clan? Now, you've heard about the Ravnos, where at least the weird racist poo poo comes from a supernatural curse caused by Caine. Let me tell you about the book World of Darkness: Gypsies. Just a little - you don't need to know much. The basic premise is that they took one of the most persecuted ethnic groups in history and decided it was definitely a good idea to declare them to literally be a special subrace of humans with magic powers and magic pure blood. Then, make their special skills stealing, cheating outsiders out of money, drinking (literally - they have a skill dedicated just to being drunkards) and lying. Now make their magic blood help them to cheat outsiders and lie to people. Also, if memory serves the book even has them kidnap children, which is basically the Roma version of Jewish blood libel. So, that's A Thing they did. Really, 90s White Wolf weren't a great place for racial sensitivity in general. It usually wasn't malevolent, but it was very much a little, uh, unfortunate - and about what you'd expect of a company formed in the same town the KKK got started. They've improved substantially since, though they still put their foot in it here and there.
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May 29, 2016 06:00
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That one got the anti-defamation league on their rear end, which as bad as their other stuff was I don't think ever triggered a real legal response like that.
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May 29, 2016 06:21
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Loomer posted:Going to take a break here, but there's some solid ideas to harvest, and that's just the surface. Just going to say that as an australian this stuff is fascinating, and I look forward to more. I've wanted for years to set some Mage or Unknown Armies in Australia, but my searches for info on occult history have dead ended pretty quickly. Do you have any references to anything similar to your post, or is this the confluence of a bunch of different sources?
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May 29, 2016 06:52
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Mostly it's pulled together since our occult history never fully coalesced into a single movement like say England's did, but for the Canberra stuff especially The Secret Plan of Canberra is good. 1994, Peter Proudfoot. Other Temples, Other Gods is the best I've found for the broad view, but it's fairly old now and lacks a lot of new information. Still one of the only studies of the broad occult movement in Australia, though. The rest tends to be about specific orders or people, e.g. the 'The Mystic Life of Alfred Deakin'. That's not to say we don't have a lot of excellent source material and figures, but they usually write about other stuff. For instance Stephen Skinner is a name known to any serious occultist and his stuff has been referenced in Mage a few times, IIRC. He's one of us Aussie cunts, but sadly he doesn't write much about the local mystical world.
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May 29, 2016 07:38
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So, for the record, i'm an actual writer for Convention of Thorns, the big upcoming Masquerade larp in poland. I'm writing my way to a ticket. That's not to say that i work for white wolf, but i work for the people who've been hired by whitewolf to do their big larp (The same who did the rather famous College of wizardry). In regards to stuff like the the ravnos, we've been very explicitly instructed to change the focus. The ravnos aren't 'the gypsy vampires' to any particular degree in our description of them. What they are instead, is that they are the vampires who prey upon the roma, and, really, upon the various other marginalized people in the world. We also haven't touched their special discipline at all. as far as the larp is concerned, that isn't really a thing. In general, for all vampires, we're putting a lot of focus on the fact that vampires are /predators/ who prey upon humanity. We're also distancing thbe various 'ethnic' vampires - the roma, the assamites, ect. - from their supposed ethnic group. While i think that a lot of the changes and reinterpretations are less than ideal for the game as a whole, i don't think that we need to be overly worried about oWoD style tone-deaf racism. Then again... 'crypto facist eco-terrorist'
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May 29, 2016 09:02
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Magnusth posted:In regards to stuff like the the ravnos, we've been very explicitly instructed to change the focus. The ravnos aren't 'the gypsy vampires' to any particular degree in our description of them. What they are instead, is that they are the vampires who prey upon the roma, and, really, upon the various other marginalized people in the world. We also haven't touched their special discipline at all. as far as the larp is concerned, that isn't really a thing. In general, for all vampires, we're putting a lot of focus on the fact that vampires are /predators/ who prey upon humanity. We're also distancing thbe various 'ethnic' vampires - the roma, the assamites, ect. - from their supposed ethnic group. While i think that a lot of the changes and reinterpretations are less than ideal for the game as a whole, i don't think that we need to be overly worried about oWoD style tone-deaf racism. Then again... 'crypto facist eco-terrorist' The feeling I got, at least from our inteview with someone who attended End of the Line, is that the actual products will probably be pretty good on the racism and other problematic areas that plagued 90's era white wolf. But their advertisement style is still 100% Rein-Hagen and all the 90's edgelord that ensures.
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May 29, 2016 14:59
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Loomer posted:It usually wasn't malevolent, but it was very much a little, uh, unfortunate - and about what you'd expect of a company formed in the same town the KKK got started. The second founding was at Stone Mountain. The Klan was originally founded in Tennessee during Reconstruction but was wiped out/integrated into the Democratic Party after Washington abandoned Radical Reconstruction. I'm sure you'll get to learn all about that in Beast: Reconstruction Era. There's a part of me that can't wait to see Beast: Reconstruction Era.
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May 29, 2016 15:13
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So the even worse Klan. Bonus points!
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May 29, 2016 16:04
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Magnusth posted:So, for the record, i'm an actual writer for Convention of Thorns, the big upcoming Masquerade larp in poland. I'm writing my way to a ticket. That's not to say that i work for white wolf, but i work for the people who've been hired by whitewolf to do their big larp (The same who did the rather famous College of wizardry). Really, if we're going by Paradox's video game wing, the actual people making the stuff are conscious of a lot of poo poo like this, and have gotten fairly good at handling it - even if their official forums are full of the people who aren't.
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May 29, 2016 22:15
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Enjoy http://podcast.darker-days.org/e/darker-days-radio-episode-72/ "Primal Fears Chris, Chigg and Matt delve into Beast the Primordial, and take a critical eye to the game. For the Secret Frequency we have a look at the Pope Lick Monster."
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May 30, 2016 00:53
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I'm listening to the review of Beast, and holy loving poo poo, this is like the inversion of everything I've grown to like about what little I know of WoD. It would've worked just loving fine if they had been like "Beasts are evil and bad. That's all there is to it. You're playing the unquestionable bad guy here. The Heroes trying to stop you are good guys." and bam, I think it would've been acceptable. This whole "You're actually doing GOOD things for the GOOD of humanity but everyone hates you because they just don't understand that tricking people into trying to take your treasure so you can drown them in your lake is GOOD. Also, heroes have super-low morality and are terrible people. Don't use high-morality heroes because literally the only reason a Hero could want to kill a beast is to appease their own ego because they're jealous of you" is just so infuriating. Like I've said, my the only system and setting I know with any even vague amount of depth is V:tM or V:tR, but I've also played one game of Werewolf the Forsaken and Mage: The Awakening, and have read the Promethean books a few times, and it's like... What the actual gently caress, Onyx Path, how did you gently caress this up so badly!? I'm probably more annoyed about this than I should be but I just spent the last 11 hours playing what was supposed to be a one-shot V:tM game that we've all enjoyed so much it actually lasted three sessions and arggghh how could they gently caress this particular splat up so badly? Like, I feel like I could still play this game, but I'd have to ignore all the flavor text and the Heroes would have to be run as good guys, or at least not complete shitbags all the time. FrostyPox fucked around with this message at 04:09 on May 30, 2016 |
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May 30, 2016 04:07
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This is going to be the new Magechat, isn't it
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May 30, 2016 04:09
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Daeren posted:This is going to be the new Magechat, isn't it
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May 30, 2016 04:30
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Beastchat is all Onyx Path's fault, we have no one but ourselves to blame for Magechat.
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May 30, 2016 04:38
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yeah sorry, I haven't really kept up with the thread, only read like the last three or so pages since I've only recently started to really, really get into WoD, so I'll drop it. (seriously though this sounds bad, it basically sounds like Beast: The Mary Sue) So onto a better topic, I'm interested in Demon: the Descent and Mummy: the Curse. Which do you think would be easier to run as a relative newbie who has never GMed any game ever before? I don't know a lot about either but the whole "technological monstermen undercover and sneaking around" in Demon sounds cool and from what I understand, Mummy starts your characters as high Supernatural stat, low morality, and as the game progresses this inverts so you end up high morality but technically weaker than when you started. How does that play out?
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May 30, 2016 04:38
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FrostyPox posted:So onto a better topic, I'm interested in Demon: the Descent and Mummy: the Curse. Which do you think would be easier to run as a relative newbie who has never GMed any game ever before? I don't know a lot about either but the whole "technological monstermen undercover and sneaking around" in Demon sounds cool and from what I understand, Mummy starts your characters as high Supernatural stat, low morality, and as the game progresses this inverts so you end up high morality but technically weaker than when you started. How does that play out? I am basically the only person in here that didn't write Mummy who'll defend it, and it is absolutely not something I'd ever suggest to a new ST for a lot of reasons. The short version is that Demon is much, much more accessible to someone putting their toe in the water, and has a much tighter mechanical and thematic design to boot.
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May 30, 2016 04:41
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That's the sense I've been getting so I'll probably go with Demon. How does Mummy compare to Promethean in terms of being the ST? I've read the Promethean book several times and conceptually it's loving amazing but I have absolutely no idea whatsoever how to run it.
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May 30, 2016 04:43
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FrostyPox posted:I'm interested in Demon: the Descent and Mummy: the Curse. Which do you think would be easier to run as a relative newbie who has never GMed any game ever before? Of those two, Demon is much easier to run, in my experience.
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May 30, 2016 04:47
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FrostyPox posted:Also, heroes have super-low morality and are terrible people.
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May 30, 2016 05:08
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Zereth posted:Actually Morality doesn't exist anymore, it's Integrity now. Well, that's what I meant. I was listening to the podcast but for some reason wrote Morality instead of Integrity. Either way their "I'm a good person" stat is low which is ridiculous, and I just got to the "All the other supernaturals like them and think they're soooo cool omg" part and it's like... what the gently caress, seriously, this is bad. Like.... just make them loving evil and own it, gently caress argh
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May 30, 2016 05:11
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Zereth posted:Actually Morality doesn't exist anymore, it's Integrity now. That said, in the original draft (and possibly the revised one) Integrity was conflated with morality, and Heroes having low Integrity was used as evidence of their being awful people, if I recall correctly.
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May 30, 2016 05:20
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FrostyPox posted:So onto a better topic, I'm interested in Demon: the Descent and Mummy: the Curse. Which do you think would be easier to run as a relative newbie who has never GMed any game ever before? I don't know a lot about either but the whole "technological monstermen undercover and sneaking around" in Demon sounds cool and from what I understand, Mummy starts your characters as high Supernatural stat, low morality, and as the game progresses this inverts so you end up high morality but technically weaker than when you started. How does that play out? Demon is pretty well designed for accessibility in the structure of its stories. It breaks down the antagonistic God-Machine into constituent parts, its discrete projects, and then breaks those down into their core elements: the material people, places and things that are the infrastructure carrying it out, the ritualistic requirements of time and circumstance the God-Machine needs to enact which are the occult matrix, the practical output sought that the occult matrix will bring into effect, and the linchpins that present hidden but conspicuous failure points for the players to seek out. (The one thing I think the book's explanation is missing would be giving a name to the tell, the surreal eccentricities that show up in God-Machine infrastructure because form needs to match some strange occult function, which add atmosphere and signal the presence of a plot hook for players.) The Unchained template itself, while interesting and unique, still fits pretty comfortably in the average game's play structure. Mummy... is not accessible. It leaves a lot of work up to the Storyteller to figure out what drives an individual game: the characters' pasts and histories, their actions in previous death cycles, the first purposes a mummy's cult is inclined to awaken them to carry out, the final purposes the Judges demand of the mummy and why, even a lot of the cosmology. Especially if you work from the corebook alone, a lot of significant setting elements are introduced without enough detail to particularly know what the book is suggesting you do with them. Promethean gives you an intuitive story archetype, but one that suffers from being wide open and demanding you do a lot of filling in the blanks. Mummy doesn't really fill the blanks in for you much more than that, but it doesn't very well communicate the archetype it's meant for either, beyond repeatedly having to steal back holy relics and avenge disturbance of your tomb.
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May 30, 2016 05:26
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Thanks for the advice, guys, I'll definitely go with Demon over Mummy. It's my hope someday to be able to run one of the more... esoteric games like Promethean and Mummy, but what I'm hearing about Demon hits a lot of the right notes for me. Thanks!
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May 30, 2016 05:31
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A cool thing about running Demon is you can very easily run a session or short arc that amounts to "ok, do a heist here or sabotage this thing" and then slowly introduce small complications that, depending on the fall of the dice, lead to either a really satisfying semi-mundane solution, or absurd escalation into "and then, angels." Both of which are great fun.
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May 30, 2016 05:40
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Chernobyl Peace Prize posted:A cool thing about running Demon is you can very easily run a session or short arc that amounts to "ok, do a heist here or sabotage this thing" and then slowly introduce small complications that, depending on the fall of the dice, lead to either a really satisfying semi-mundane solution, or absurd escalation into "and then, angels." Both of which are great fun.  that sounds cool and good. You mean like spy movie heists/sabatoge? Cuz if so, hell yeah!How is the freebie intro doodad they have up on drivethrurpg.com? Does the core book include a pre-made chronicle like the Promethean book does? I figure it'd be easiest for me to start with those. FrostyPox fucked around with this message at 05:45 on May 30, 2016 |
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May 30, 2016 05:41
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The one complicated thing about Demon that sticks out to me is the Cipher; if you're doing a long-running campaign that will probably come up, and it requires you to make up some special abilities and stuff for all the PCs. It does give advice on that as well, but some people might be daunted by it. It might not be a problem for you, though, and for the most part the game is pretty accessible, so, yeah. It's really good.
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May 30, 2016 05:53
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FrostyPox posted:How does Mummy compare to Promethean in terms of being the ST? I've read the Promethean book several times and conceptually it's loving amazing but I have absolutely no idea whatsoever how to run it. As someone that's run Mummy for a long time, it has the benefit of having a very basic adventure structure that you can rely on: there's a Relic, it does something spooky and/or horrible to the unprepared, you want it and have to go get it. Add in some complications and you're good. Like Promethean, it has an assumed character arc for the PCs that you can choose to dive into at your own leisure. That said, there's a lot of moving parts, especially if you choose to have a group with more than one Mummy: you might end up tangling with separate cults and their machinations or the power level might get wildly out of hand. There's also the slight possibility that one of your party might Descend too quickly to the point that they return to slumber while everyone else is still awake, but I haven't run into that problem myself. I Am A Box covers a lot of other potential problems. As much as I love Mummy, warts and all, I would fourth everyone else and say that it is not a game for a new ST to go with as their first game. Also Demon's just really cool and more people should run it. quote:How is the freebie intro doodad they have up on drivethrurpg.com? Does the core book include a pre-made chronicle like the Promethean book does? I figure it'd be easiest for me to start with those. The core has the adventure "How an Angel Dies," which I liked running a whole lot. The line doesn't have a whole chronicle with it, but the core adventure's pretty meaty and with a setting that you can get a lot out of.
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