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Pope Guilty posted:I like the idea that each OWOD line is its own sub-OWOD where only the splat in question is as well-defined as the book says. In Vampire, there's no Garou Nation, but there's definitely Lupines. I think that's the way to go, with Gonzo Full oWoD as an alternative. Once you have everything fully extant poo poo gets crazy in its own special fun way, but it interferes heavily with playing the game as 'intended'.
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Jan 23, 2017 07:41
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Firefly is an oWod post ghenna/apocalypse setting
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Jan 23, 2017 08:58
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bewilderment posted:Mage 2e core makes a big deal about how relinquishing a spell unsafely is bad and could go wrong and it costs Willpower so maybe don't do it, especially for petty spells that aren't indefinite in duration, but... the scale of how long it takes for a spell to go awry is pretty long? It seems like you could totally spend a bit of time loading yourself up on protective spells that just last a week or so, and then relinquishing them, draining all your willpower, just before you do your weekly time spent volunteering at the animal shelter or whatever to fulfil your Virtue. In theory, you can do this. Generally, the only reason to perma-release a spell is if you're planning it to be permanent, like making an iconic magic item or some such. The unsafe release is something you do if it's going to last only a couple days. This does make me realize how hollow your Virtue refilling your Willpower is. If Willpower represents your mental reserve and strength to put your best into something, Virtues that actually require effort and resolve on your part to perform seem like they'd cost Willpower, not restore it.
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Jan 23, 2017 11:01
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So I managed to get my Mage 2e session off the ground ( ) and after good first session I come away with a few questions. One of my players is an Obrimos with 3 dots in Prime, and for the life of me I can't figure out the Prime Arcanum other than "metamagic". He's suggested spells through creative thaumaturgy that have effects like "redirect the target of a spell" or "rip the mana out of another mage's pattern" but are these actually thing he can do? Outside of counterspelling I've ruled that interfering with another mage's imago isn't possible but I have a less compelling reason why the second shouldn't be possible (perhaps it would just trigger a clash of wills?). The second thing that I haven't really found an answer for is, what can and can't be used as a yantra? Can a firearm be used as one? What about ritually placing duct tape on doors and windows to represent the sealing of an abyssal verge? What are the order and path tools other than a suggestion?
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Jan 23, 2017 14:04
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bewilderment posted:Idle thought: The text of Mage says that a lot of things are problems for Mages that the mechanics of Mage says definitely aren't. The thing that's making me wary of Deviant is that the core concept of the game only seems to work at all if the Conspiracies are actually legitimately terrifying. All of the media influences of Deviant have these huge, unstoppable, far-reaching conspiracies that the main characters don't want to go within a hundred miles of even with all their superpowers. nWoD 2nd ed does not have a fantastic track record with making mortal-powered groups scary at all, or making player-facing power sets that aren't gut-bustingly overpowered. If Deviant comes out and the player splat is once again 100% unstoppable god-kings and the antagonist splats are paper tiger garbage men then there goes the entire high concept. Seriously, I haven't been afraid of antagonists since the Strix. Angels maybe, at Ranks 4+? Basically DaveB you should definitely pull all the stops out for the bad guys in Deviant 
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Jan 23, 2017 14:10
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Archonex posted:Plus mages at the top end of things are only super powerful until you realize that the world breaking super-mages have equivalent or greater counterparts in the other game lines. Imperial Mysteries even mentions this. We just never got books on what they'd look like. Hell no, the buy-in to just have all of your titanic buffs on at all times is so low that it would have to be really unusual circumstances for any kind of supernatural that isn't, like, Demons to put up a real fight against Mages. Adepts and above just evaporate any and all threats in a single spell, character-gen Mages have everything they need to be just about invulnerable, to win initiative and to either evac or prevent the opposition from fighting. Two entire Arcana are built around the concept of "I can never be surprised." With the exception of Demons, every other supernatural type has one or more horrible weaknesses that are trivial for Mages to discover and exploit. I'm not convinced by your theory that if the GM is proactive then Mages aren't overpowered - proactive how? Stopping them casting spells? Not letting them buff themselves? Not letting them use Life 3 to give everyone infinite Willpower? Not letting them use Time and Fate to always have the upper hand and be where they need to be with all the information they need? Not letting them fly invisibly at supersonic speeds through the sky, Paradox free, while an angelic choir bursts through the clouds singing a heavenly harmony about just how loving kek being a wizard is? Are you playing the same game I am? The reason why Mages won't gently caress with other supernatural types is that they're a massive hassle, not because they're dangerous. Unless you're a Mastigos, dealing with vampiric invisibility and mind control is actually a real problem. At very minimum, if you annoy a vampire that's 1 ghoul per day coming to kill you that you have to deal with. Vampires talk. They have influence. Mortals are their playthings. Vampires can be exceedingly, pervasively frustrating to deal with. If one actually tries to rumble with you, though, he's deader than disco. Same with Werewolves. They have an important role in the spiritual ecosystem, they have a gang, friends, a spirit totem and a web of influences and debts with the local spirit world. They can shapeshift, control the elements, have weird clairvoyancy, mental influence and they're really really good at hunting. gently caress with Werewolves enough and you'll literally have to kill all of them before they get lucky because they will never ever stop. On the other hand, if your Cabal goes up against their pack in a straight fight then the cleaners are going to have to mop the wolves up with a squeegee and hope that they're not allergic to silver. Changelings are startlingly hard to get hold of when they want to be scarce and a lot of your best tricks don't work right on them. They have one of the best get-out-of-jail free cards in existence and have some of the only boltholes in the universe that you really can't follow them into. Their powers are subtle, frustrating and difficult to deal with. They have absolutely no problem working as a group to put up round-the-clock harrassment if you gently caress with them, and if you get serious then they have some absolutely awful trump cards that they can pull out if they get pushed too far. On the other hand, they violently combust on contact with iron and have very few defensive powers worth a drat against Mages. Demons actually legit can go toe-to-toe with Mages who aren't Masters and I would never gently caress with them. Fortunately I would never find out they existed either and they want nothing to do with me so it's all fine. The only real antagonist for Mages are other Mages. Source: I am in a Changeling and a Werewolf game right now, I am running a Demon game at the moment and I have both played and run Vampire and Mage extensively for years now. The people I game with are either actual games designers or weird savants for RPG rules so what happens in our games are what the rules text says should be happening, not what the fluff text says should be happening.
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Jan 23, 2017 14:38
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also , if you gently caress with Vampires the Strix will take notice (same for other splat-antagonists) I always thought Mages best opponentns were Outside Context Problems because the Context is a mages plaything
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Jan 23, 2017 14:55
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The best thing about the CoD is that there are lots of cool antagonists that are explicitly outside of the major splats. Sure a mage knows how to deal with vampires and werewolves, but that thing doesn't fit into any neat boxes and doesn't respond to things the way you expect it to.
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Jan 23, 2017 15:56
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Doodmons posted:The only real antagonist for Mages are other Mages. I'd take a mummy probably 9 times out of 10, assuming it had any idea what it was doing. They have some scary bullshit powers, and it's almost impossible to get rid of one for good.
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Jan 23, 2017 16:16
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This is why it would have been good if attention were paid to inter-splat balance. The setting as a whole is less compelling once you know which set of insane irresistible win buttons trumps which.
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Jan 23, 2017 16:56
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Enola Gay-For-Pay posted:The best thing about the CoD is that there are lots of cool antagonists that are explicitly outside of the major splats. Sure a mage knows how to deal with vampires and werewolves, but that thing doesn't fit into any neat boxes and doesn't respond to things the way you expect it to. Truth. I should probably clarify that the only real antagonists from the other major supernatural types for Mages are other Mages. The nice thing about WoD is that there's plenty of weird poo poo that still makes a compelling antagonist no matter what your statline is. Even mostly statted up stuff like the Strix are pretty loving out-there to deal with. Lower Depths stuff, Abyssal entities, Horrors, things from the Blue Books and so on. Anything that's a bit more interesting than 17 Health Levels, 4 general armour, 16 dice aggravated damage attack and +14 initiatve etc etc.
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Jan 23, 2017 17:12
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Ferrinus posted:This is why it would have been good if attention were paid to inter-splat balance. The setting as a whole is less compelling once you know which set of insane irresistible win buttons trumps which. This is actually dumb though, because the one that is the best and most powerful is "whatever my players are playing in this campaign, unless the story calls for something else to be scarier"
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Jan 23, 2017 17:44
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Ferrinus posted:This is why it would have been good if attention were paid to inter-splat balance. The setting as a whole is less compelling once you know which set of insane irresistible win buttons trumps which. Intersplat balance is a terrible idea. Within splat, sure, but there's no reason that Werewolf's design space should affect Mage's. If I buy Mage, it's because I want to play Mage. I want that game to be consistent with its own tones and to its own themes, and not see them compromised because some people may run a Werewolf crossover. Incidentally, omniscient white room antics are bullshit. In the one game I get to play in, instead of run, my Thyrsus - a Gnosis 3 Life Adelt - faced down a pack of werewolves with the backing of a Rank 3 Claimed. Thyrsus. Got. Trounced. Werewolves will gently caress you up good. As will Paradox. Mage walked away only because of the wolves realized they were related to another Mage who was a friend of the tribe, and that walking away was still with three Resistant lethal levels.
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Jan 23, 2017 17:50
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Enola Gay-For-Pay posted:This is actually dumb though, because the one that is the best and most powerful is "whatever my players are playing in this campaign, unless the story calls for something else to be scarier" I"m a strict nWod constructionist, so whichever splat is mechanically the most powerful is actually the most powerful
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Jan 23, 2017 17:52
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long-rear end nips Diane posted:I"m a strict nWod constructionist
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Jan 23, 2017 17:55
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Enola Gay-For-Pay posted:This is actually dumb though, because the one that is the best and most powerful is "whatever my players are playing in this campaign, unless the story calls for something else to be scarier" No, that's much worse because it torpedoes cross-splat games before they can begin and undermines the existence of a coherent nWoD setting and replaces it with oWoD solipsism. Actually, it's worse than the oWoD because even the oWoD never ran under the assumption that whoever you were playing as was the strongest. Vampire books frequently depicted werewolves as invincible, unknowable destroyers, for instance, sheer fear of which kept vampires corralled in cities. Axelgear posted:Intersplat balance is a terrible idea. Within splat, sure, but there's no reason that Werewolf's design space should affect Mage's. None of the games would be "compromised" if they were gauged against each other such that none of the three marquee supernatural monsters looked at the others in the same way that a D&D character looks at kobolds. That's just an excuse for not doing work. Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 18:07 on Jan 23, 2017 |
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Jan 23, 2017 18:04
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Ferrinus posted:None of the games would be "compromised" if they were gauged against each other such that none of the three marquee supernatural monsters looked at the others in the same way that a D&D character looks at kobolds. That's just an excuse for not doing work.
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Jan 23, 2017 18:31
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Actually, it doesn't. Or, at least, it didn't. Crossover games were really easy and rewarding in nWoD 1E. There's also a much broader subset of technical "crossover" games in which you just happen to use ready-made game mechanics from one game to build NPCs and monsters in another without actually giving them to someone to play. Oops, can't really get away with that any more, either, so supplements from other game lines which used to serve as sources of both setting material and game mechanics now only do the former.
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Jan 23, 2017 18:33
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This is why the correct answer is to go to the opposite extreme and play the weakest characters in the setting, regular ol' squishy humans. And if you'd like to do that, I've got a game recruiting right now!
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Jan 23, 2017 18:38
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I'm honestly not having a problem with all this crossover stuff at all right now. My mage's first problem is with vampires. It was very easy to convince them that it's an actual problem to deal with, partly because they're fast and strong, partly because they've been billed as entirely ingrained in the city infrastructure, and partly because there are different camps within awakened society as to how to deal with them. So instead they have a dilemma to deal with and not just a monster to slay. If I was running a game where it was just about monster slaying, I'd choose a different system entirely. I'd do the same if I were running a group with mages and vampires. Each party is going to have influences, reasons, and desires that won't align directly with each other. If people are going to restrict themselves to the printed material only, then yeah, there's going to be trouble with running crossover games and games that deal with other super-splats, because settings aren't included. I just won't believe that people are that boring and not-creative enough to do that. Personally, I'm glad they don't write the books as one giant universe, because then they'd have to write a big crossover book and that would make everything a mess. As it is now, the nWoD 1 and 2 are a good toolbox full of things you can include or not in your personal universe. Use what you want, ignore the rest. It's your table. If you want to be married to every word written, you may run into trouble, but that's because it's intentionally not written to be all engrossing and encompassing, and wouldn't be a great use of resources to make it so. There's just some things that the splats won't know about each other and the world. Personally, I toss out werewolves (WtF, not the creatures), the god-machine (as an in world concept, not Demon exactly) and if Beasts were to exist (they don't) they would be purely antagonists, because it doesn't fit in my chronicle's cosmology.
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Jan 23, 2017 19:18
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Man, that's funny, those are the two things I absolutely wouldn't exclude. The cross-splat interactions that interest me the most are "how do higher-order spirits and the God-Machine relate to each other, and what would werewolves do if they found out about it?"
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Jan 23, 2017 19:22
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The thing is that while the nWoD is set up so that you can easily delete pretty much any kind of supernatural creature (it'd probably be weirdest, but still ultimately functional, if there were no such things as vampires any more) it's also set up so that you never need to. The God Machine may very well have been real from the release of the original nWoD and VtR corebooks back in two thousand whatever! It's just, unless you're playing a character type or a story that's explicitly about it, you can't really tell the difference between it and the other unfathomable background weirdness that's characteristic of the setting. What we very much don't have is an oWoD situation in which whatever you're playing has explicit metagame primacy, where like in a VtM game YHVH is real strong and your enemy while in a WtA game YHVH is just humanity's garbled memory of some piece of poo poo umbral spirit.
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Jan 23, 2017 19:27
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Ferrinus posted:No, that's much worse because it torpedoes cross-splat games before they can begin and undermines the existence of a coherent nWoD setting and replaces it with oWoD solipsism. There is no loving coherence to the nWoD setting. They ostensibly can't be, because trying to account for every single splat's role in shaping history and how they interacted is cause for madness. Consider having to write up how Mages, werewolves, vampires, changelings, mummies, and whatever else all interact in one given region in the modern day, yet alone through all history. Crossovers are fine if that's your thing, but they shouldn't be the default assumption. Vampires, werewolves, and whatever else are optional when playing Mage and vice versa, not mandatory. Ferrinus posted:None of the games would be "compromised" if they were gauged against each other such that none of the three marquee supernatural monsters looked at the others in the same way that a D&D character looks at kobolds. That's just an excuse for not doing work. What work do you feel would need doing? The only way to "fix" it would be to arbitrarily weaken Mages, taking away the entire A God Is You sensation from the splat. We'd end up with 1e's weird restrictions where, for some reason, you could turn corn into a swarm of angry bees but not shapeshift into a bird. Mage is better than it's ever been by pretending nothing else exists and if that isn't a lesson to take, I don't know what is.
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Jan 23, 2017 19:29
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Axelgear posted:There is no loving coherence to the nWoD setting. They ostensibly can't be, because trying to account for every single splat's role in shaping history and how they interacted is cause for madness. Consider having to write up how Mages, werewolves, vampires, changelings, mummies, and whatever else all interact in one given region in the modern day, yet alone through all history. That's just wrong. nWoD monsters aren't assumed to be shaping history or fighting each other at all, and their societies are mostly city-level rather than world-level. "How could history have unfolded if vampires AND werewovles AND changelings were here all this time...?!" has never been cause for concern. You appear to be confusing the nWoD with the oWoD - specifically, with the super early and super-rough-edged oWoD where Al Capone was a vampire and every single world event had been secretly machinated by changelings or mummies or whatever. quote:What work do you feel would need doing? The only way to "fix" it would be to arbitrarily weaken Mages, taking away the entire A God Is You sensation from the splat. We'd end up with 1e's weird restrictions where, for some reason, you could turn corn into a swarm of angry bees but not shapeshift into a bird. Okay, first off, you're just wrong (again? was it you I had this discussion with some number of pages ago?) about what were the per-dot restrictions on 1E awakened magic and why they were there. It was not harder to turn into a bird than into a bee in order to balance mages with vampires. Rather, it was harder to turn into a bird than a bee because the 1E arcana didn't actually take the Practices seriously and instead rationed out power and flexibility according to different schema. (Effects that WERE explicitly balanced against other supernaturals were things like Time superspeed duplicating Celerity, and that was really not to the detriment of the game) You'd just need to lay out some standard for like, what kind and number of contested rolls need to be passed, or how much combined defense/health/resistance trait/power trait, needs to be overcome for one character to control, disable, or destroy another, and be more liberal with Demon: the Descent-style powers like Merciless Gunman that trivialize and one-shot inanimate or mortal opposition but have subdued effects on supernatural creatures. It's not that hard - but it does require both priorities and a level of coordination that I don't think currently-existing Onyx Path has got. Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 19:38 on Jan 23, 2017 |
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Jan 23, 2017 19:35
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Ferrinus posted:That's just wrong. nWoD monsters aren't assumed to be shaping history or fighting each other at all, and their societies are mostly city-level rather than world-level. "How could history have unfolded if vampires AND werewovles AND changelings were here all this time...?!" has never been cause for concern. You appear to be confusing the nWoD with the oWoD - specifically, with the super early and super-rough-edged oWoD where Al Capone was a vampire and every single world event had been secretly machinated by changelings or mummies or whatever. Yup. Demons, Changelings, and Prometheans all have extremely strong reasons to hide themselves or even outright stay away from normal human beings. Vampires need to live near people but are parasites that would be extinct in a month if humanity at large knew they existed. Werewolves are part of a semi-natural system designed to keep supernatural poo poo from pestering the status quo in the first place. Mummies I don't really know anything about, but apparently they spend 99% of their time asleep anyways? And gently caress Beasts.
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Jan 23, 2017 19:40
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If i'm honest i've never seen this supposed inconsistency in nWoD. Aside from Mummies creation myth (told by gods who are notorious assholes and liars) everything slots together quite well. DaveB even posted a timeline on RPGnet that explaining how atlantis, pangea, irem and other prehistoric times of the game lines meshed together. Nothing i've ever seen in one game line ever really steps on the toes of another, and even in the cases where it does its easily handwaved away as in-universe bias (a lot of the hunter conspiracies) or is so ambiguous that its very ambiguity makes it flexible (god-machine). Hell in the case of the Tremere its actually required that vampires exist, and there are other examples of game lines directly referencing each other (that i'm sure i could dig up if i wasn't at work) which makes claims that each line is segregated into its own little space ring hollow.
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Jan 23, 2017 19:49
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:Man, that's funny, those are the two things I absolutely wouldn't exclude. The cross-splat interactions that interest me the most are "how do higher-order spirits and the God-Machine relate to each other, and what would werewolves do if they found out about it?" That's the very best part about it having a toolbox approach to deciding on what and how is going to be in your chronicle's world. I don't care for something, but that doesn't mean someone else doesn't really enjoy that part. And then, it can all change the next time you do it or not, it's up to which tools you pull out. Another theme I really like is a mage's struggle with mortality. You have a ton of power, but still die like any normal sleeper (yes, you can try to stop it, but you can still die). That's a terrible realization when first discovered. I'm more surprised that more mages don't focus on this internal struggle (and I appreciate that it was highlighted better in 2e). I will say that there's definitely a barrier to entry to this in which you have to be able to actually read a text for something other than just a specific set of words. Some people don't want to use or see the subtext, and that's fine too (so long as it isn't the authors, they should know their own subtext). But the people who tend to want the crossover are also (when I run across them) the people who have read all the books and try to understand the subtext and the text.
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Jan 23, 2017 19:56
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The idea that various splats should be balanced against one another is downright bizarre to me. I don't think that's ever been a stated goal in nWoD, has it? I have never, ever, had a game where all of the players had the same degree of system mastery, or the same goals in character design. One guy will dig into the system and look at the player's guide and make a pretty optimized fighter. One player will just throw dots on a sheet and take the powers that sound the coolest. One guy will completely fail to make a character at all and get me to do it. A lot of WoD (old and new) games were really bad about power balance. Two given powers, of the same level or experience cost, could have wildly disproportionate power levels. Second Edition games have done a lot to fix that, but even now a lot of powers are very useful in extremely specific and rare situations while others are useful in extremely broad or common situations, like combat. Is the guy who took the power that gives him a bonus to resisting torture just as powerful as the guy who can kill six people a turn? Is it the Storyteller's responsibility to engineer a situation where the first guy gets captured and tortured so that his Experience points are just as valuable? A Hunter played by an assertive, creative player is going to get more screen time and have more fun than a mage played by a quiet, reticent player regardless of power level. Ideally the ST can arrange for everyone to have some screen time. Whether or not it's a crossover game, every character should be given a chance to use their specialties and resources. Mages have, on the whole, more versatility than anyone else and that means more opportunities to shine. This, however, is not generally a competitive game. It behooves the mage player, the Storyteller, and the other people at the table to make sure that everyone has fun and gets to do their thing. Balance is an illusion. Free yourself from these constraints, or go play Warhammer or something where it actually matters.
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Jan 23, 2017 20:14
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Enola Gay-For-Pay posted:The idea that various splats should be balanced against one another is downright bizarre to me. I don't think that's ever been a stated goal in nWoD, has it? It has. In contrast to the oWoD, the nWoD was going to be a unified setting in which the main splats were roughly balanced against each other such that they could believably be rivals for territory or uneasy allies or members of a crossover chronicle or whatever. The original plan was to have vampires/werewolves/mages be the social/physical/mental splats such that, in a direct comparison, vampires had the edge in social situations, werewolves had the edge in combat, etcetera. But, they weren't supposed to have the incredibly lopsided relationships you got in oWoD where it was assumed that a single werewolf could tear apart an entire coterie of vampires before the vampires knew what was going on or whatever. To this end things like dicepool sizes and maximum stat buffs were (quite loosely) standardized, powers with about the same narrative effect tended to have the same game effect (vampire celerity vs. werewolf increased footspeed vs. mage bullet-time, for instance), etc.
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Jan 23, 2017 20:24
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I still don't see what social advantages vampires have that mages and some others can't duplicate. Especially when Kindred have social limitations based on their Humanity and unique weaknesses.
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Jan 23, 2017 20:30
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Enola Gay-For-Pay posted:Balance is an illusion. Free yourself from these constraints, or go play Warhammer or something where it actually matters. This is a load of poo poo, and even if it weren't, the fact that players have varying degrees of system mastery is an argument for stricter balance, not against it, because good balance includes eliminating false choices. Mind you, I think it's fine that Mages are stronger than everyone else and Hunters are weaker, because cross-splat balance would interfere with the incredible theme / mechanics reinforcement of games like Demon. But within-splat balance is another story entirely.
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Jan 23, 2017 20:35
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Ferrinus posted:It has. In contrast to the oWoD, the nWoD was going to be a unified setting in which the main splats were roughly balanced against each other such that they could believably be rivals for territory or uneasy allies or members of a crossover chronicle or whatever. There was also a stated goal to lower the power level from the crazy heights of the oWoD, making the new World of Darkness more scary. I liked that, and am sad over the power creep there was starting from Geist onwards.
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Jan 23, 2017 20:39
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Halloween Jack posted:I still don't see what social advantages vampires have that mages and some others can't duplicate. Especially when Kindred have social limitations based on their Humanity and unique weaknesses. Dominate, Majesty, and the vinculum gave a vampire a lot more ability to obtain both hard and lasting control over someone's actions than any level of Mind magic below 5 did (and even then if you wanted to use Mind 5 to make an indefinite-duration, low-to-no upkeep servant or slave, you had to strap them down for hours in a ritual circle first), so it was a lot easier for a vampire to just take over someone's business or whatever. I think I had this conversation a thread ago, but the counterpoint to a mage's incredible flexibility was the fact that all of a mage's powers, especially those used on people, would evaporate in around an hour by default. Obviously, 1E mages were OP, but that had to do with their ability to stack buffs and ratchet all their numbers way higher than anyone else could, not the irrelevance of those numbers to mages.
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Jan 23, 2017 20:39
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Halloween Jack posted:I still don't see what social advantages vampires have that mages and some others can't duplicate. Especially when Kindred have social limitations based on their Humanity and unique weaknesses. Dominate, Majesty and the Blood Bond are amazingly good.
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Jan 23, 2017 20:39
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:This is a load of poo poo, and even if it weren't, the fact that players have varying degrees of system mastery is an argument for stricter balance, not against it, because good balance includes eliminating false choices. It was never intended that EVERY line produced PCs of equivalent power - Changelings and especially Hunters seemed on-purpose weaker than the big three, Mummies aren't really comparable because they play the game backwards, etc. But you can't actually make the decision to make splat X weaker than splat Y unless you're thinking about rather than deliberately ignoring the question of how powerful, generally, a splat is. MonsieurChoc posted:There was also a stated goal to lower the power level from the crazy heights of the oWoD, making the new World of Darkness more scary. I liked that, and am sad over the power creep there was starting from Geist onwards. I'm actually on board with 2E's power creep, but I wish more of it looked like Merciless Gunman and less of it looked like Knockout Blow.
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Jan 23, 2017 20:40
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Enola Gay-For-Pay posted:I have never, ever, had a game where all of the players had the same degree of system mastery, or the same goals in character design. One guy will dig into the system and look at the player's guide and make a pretty optimized fighter. One player will just throw dots on a sheet and take the powers that sound the coolest. One guy will completely fail to make a character at all and get me to do it. Limited system mastery vs. down-to-the-page-# citation memory for each power? Not all that relevant if your choices are weighted equally in practice by the system. Strict utility vs. broad, with proportional power levels? That IS balance; if I spend 5 points for "spit in your eyes when you ask me where the bomb is" and someone else spent 25 points for "kill six people in a turn", I'd imagine that the latter comes up 5 times as much. Although "balanced vs. combat timeshare" is something that no *wod game has actually done that well in implementation; look at how much space in a given book, and how much crunch, is devoted to the combat chapter vs. mystery-solving or social interaction. If those areas were balanced better (I'm thinking less crunch in combat, not more in the other two, personally) you wouldn't have a problem. Tentatively excited about Scion's Storypath system as a result. The Hunter v Mage example is irrelevant because they could both be playing the exact same character on paper and it wouldn't matter, because the problem there is player engagement, not mechanical weight. You are right that it's not a competitive game; it's a cooperative one. But people shouldn't have to band together with their ST to overcome the vile perfidy of their chosen system in order to make sure the story they're collaborating towards gets equal input from all parties throughout regardless of where they allocated numbers in session one. Throwing up your hands and claiming balance is an illusion is the refuge of the intellectually lazy, and more often than not, comes out of designers unwilling to do the loving work.
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Jan 23, 2017 20:46
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Enola Gay-For-Pay posted:A lot of WoD (old and new) games were really bad about power balance. Two given powers, of the same level or experience cost, could have wildly disproportionate power levels. Second Edition games have done a lot to fix that, but even now a lot of powers are very useful in extremely specific and rare situations while others are useful in extremely broad or common situations, like combat. Is the guy who took the power that gives him a bonus to resisting torture just as powerful as the guy who can kill six people a turn? Is it the Storyteller's responsibility to engineer a situation where the first guy gets captured and tortured so that his Experience points are just as valuable?
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Jan 23, 2017 21:01
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Extremely unlike systems should be siloed and competence in them shouldn't be purchased with the same points. I realize this is a pipe dream in a system where Mages exist, but it's still true. 
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Jan 23, 2017 21:03
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It's fine to use the same points to buy Firearms and Persuasion but hopefully that means uses of either skill are equally quick to resolve.
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Jan 23, 2017 21:08
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Ferrinus posted:It's fine to use the same points to buy Firearms and Persuasion but hopefully that means uses of either skill are equally quick to resolve. It depends on the game, if you're running some kind of super-abstract story game where the GM asks you "how are you going to solve this problem" and "I shoot it" or "I talk it out" are handled in mechanically similar ways (and, as you say, with similar time budgets) sure, go nuts. In World of Darkness I find it dubious and if it were D&D it'd be downright toxic.
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Jan 23, 2017 21:11
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