|
Basic Chunnel posted:The new Endowments are heavily weighted toward abilities that affect *~the Beastial Dream~* and nothing else. There are like three new pieces of equipment, one is a dream-related Ascendant One potion and the other two are Aegis relics. All these Endowments sound like the powers of Heroes, which makes it feel like you get to play a Hero in all but name.
|
#
?
Mar 30, 2017 14:56
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 18, 2024 21:18 |
|
|
Axelgear posted:All these Endowments sound like the powers of Heroes, which makes it feel like you get to play a Hero in all but name. IIRC those endowments are from a Hunter Cell that's basically a bunch of escapees from a government dream therapy test facility that found out about Beasts and tried to turn a bunch of teenagers into psychic dream soldiers. The fact that the game specifically mentions the difficulty of transporting paraplegics and comatose group members should clue you in on how well that went.
|
|
#
?
Mar 30, 2017 15:46
|
|
|
Yeah basically. That Hunter group concept is actually really cool and evocative in an alt comics sort of way (it also just happens to closely resemble Deviant's hook). The problem, as pointed by an otherwise-pedantic F&F review, is that the conspiracy is weirdly set up so that only one person fights in the dream and everyone else watches them fight on a screen, like the world's most sinister livestream. I think the implication is that the dreamer should typically always be fighting something in the dream while hostiles are closing in IRL? Idk. It's a shame about Beast, though
|
|
#
?
Mar 30, 2017 16:32
|
|
|
I mostly avoid playing with established RPG nerds, so I've only directed both vampires and Hunter: tR in my life. I'd like to get some new books, I'm looking at Vigil and Awakening, but I'm not sure if I could run a game of these without the players needing to read a book for it (I mean, not even reading the corebook). Would this be possible at all? Normally when I've run games I help them create the sheets and rely on myself a lot for the system-side of things, but I'm not so sure if these games are apt for it.
|
|
#
?
Mar 30, 2017 17:46
|
|
|
The idea that players don't or shouldn't need to read the rules is mind-bogglingly weird to me, and the only reason I don't outright disbelieve anyone would even do that is because I've GMed games twice now where people basically relied on me to teach them everything directly. I mean I can kind of see it if you deliberately designed your game up to have both relatively light mechanics and to put absolutely everything in the GM's hands but Storyteller, at least, really obviously isn't that system -- two of the basic core mechanics are "you get rewarded with XP for interacting closely with the status effect system" and "there are like five different types of probabilistically complex ways to modify dice rolls and it's beneficial as a player to understand how they work and what they do to your odds." Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 17:51 on Mar 30, 2017 |
|
#
?
Mar 30, 2017 17:48
|
|
|
I think it's a symptom of gaming with grown up people with jobs and families, but yeah my players are not going to learn the rules from the books. Just ain't happening. It is incredibly frustrating.
|
|
#
?
Mar 30, 2017 17:53
|
|
|
It slows the rhythm up a bit, but I feel like having your first session be the "let's sit down, talk about rules and making characters, then do that together" session instead of the dive-right-in gaming is a good way to get people the need-to-knows of the rules while also making it easier to keep a cohesive character feel in accordance with the game you're running, as well as making that jive with the game they want to play in.
|
|
#
?
Mar 30, 2017 17:58
|
|
|
Two of the people in my group never really read the books and it noticeably hinders them sometimes. I've been hogging our current game of Geist just because I already know what I can and can't do and can run circles around them in what I want my character to do and the risks they're willing to take. For example they didn't realize at first that you could use plasm to fill wounds and that you sin eaters can't be incapacitated.
|
|
#
?
Mar 30, 2017 18:02
|
|
|
Well, I feel safe to say that all the people in this thread are much more invested in WoD/RPGs than the average person. Some people play with other RPG fans and that's fine, but I like to play with my friends/relatives who aren't invested enough to read what all attributes and skills and powers are. I explain them the bare minimum so they can make relatively free choices about their character and remind them that they can do certain things at certain times if I consider it in-context enough. We have fun and all, I just would like to change the game!
|
|
#
?
Mar 30, 2017 18:02
|
|
|
Chernobyl Peace Prize posted:It slows the rhythm up a bit, but I feel like having your first session be the "let's sit down, talk about rules and making characters, then do that together" session instead of the dive-right-in gaming is a good way to get people the need-to-knows of the rules while also making it easier to keep a cohesive character feel in accordance with the game you're running, as well as making that jive with the game they want to play in. I'm just frustrated because the other week I set aside a two-hour session for character creation (figuring I could answer questions if there was any confusion, and that we would get to narrative stuff like how everybody knows each other and why they're in Detroit) and instead by the end of the two hours we hadn't even finished the mechanical stuff -- my players are making Demons and we didn't have time to design demonic forms -- and on top of that I didn't explain the Cipher in enough depth (my fault, but we were already running low on time) and as a result two of them really clearly don't understand what it is and filled it in with all their character creation Embeds. e: You know I'm probably making this sound too much like their fault, a lot of the problem here reflects on things I miscommunicated rather than my players slacking off. It's just that if somebody said "hey let's play X" and I agreed, my first instinct would be to go grab the source book on my own volition and start figuring out how to optimize characters, and I didn't plan well enough for that not being the norm. Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 18:13 on Mar 30, 2017 |
|
#
?
Mar 30, 2017 18:07
|
|
|
To be fair I utterly do not get the Cipher stuff even having read it a bunch of times. I mean, I get the mechanics, but it's just so vague and abstract.
|
|
#
?
Mar 30, 2017 18:13
|
|
|
tbh I think the Cipher is easily the weakest part of Demon.
|
|
#
?
Mar 30, 2017 18:17
|
|
|
Cable posted:Well, I feel safe to say that all the people in this thread are much more invested in WoD/RPGs than the average person. Some people play with other RPG fans and that's fine, but I like to play with my friends/relatives who aren't invested enough to read what all attributes and skills and powers are. I explain them the bare minimum so they can make relatively free choices about their character and remind them that they can do certain things at certain times if I consider it in-context enough. We have fun and all, I just would like to change the game! This may not be the system to use, unfortunately. Is there a particular kind of story, aesthetic, themes, etc. kind of game you want to play? There may be something better suited as CoD and (I assume) WoD are pretty mechanics heavy by default.
|
|
#
?
Mar 30, 2017 18:16
|
|
|
Enola Gay-For-Pay posted:To be fair I utterly do not get the Cipher stuff even having read it a bunch of times. I mean, I get the mechanics, but it's just so vague and abstract. If I were starting as scratch, I'd say something like this: Choose and mark one of your Embeds as special and important to your character's concept. Later, you'll mark more of your Embeds this way, one by one, up to a total of four; the GM chooses which ones the other three are from all the Embeds you know, but should ask for your input. The order matters, because each time you mark a new one, it combines with the previous one to create a new combination power. When you have all four, you'll have a much clearer idea of who your character is as a person, and you'll learn a useful or significant secret about your character's relationship with the campaign world. Conceptually, it measures your Demon's progress towards their own personal Hell, as they discover things about who and what they really are without the God-Machine deciding their purpose.
|
|
#
?
Mar 30, 2017 18:18
|
|
|
The Unlife Aquatic posted:tbh I think the Cipher is easily the weakest part of Demon. It's actually the best part
|
|
#
?
Mar 30, 2017 18:19
|
|
|
In my experience, the hard part is the koan at the end - but then, I usually collaborate with my players to make their new powers because it's easier to make ones they actually want that way.
|
|
#
?
Mar 30, 2017 18:28
|
|
|
Kibner posted:Is there a particular kind of story, aesthetic, themes, etc. kind of game you want to play? There may be something better suited as CoD and (I assume) WoD are pretty mechanics heavy by default. Well, I've been used to playing Vampire and Hunter for the best part of my life, I really like occult, secret-society stuff happening to normal people. EDIT: What about playing the core CofD? That seems something that could be enough to run the stories I want - does it have enough tools to play around? Cable fucked around with this message at 18:38 on Mar 30, 2017 |
|
#
?
Mar 30, 2017 18:33
|
|
|
A low tier Vigil game is probably the easiest for a non-reader group as it's mainly just figuring out which nouns make up your dice pool. At most they'll need to read merits but anything else is easy to explain in an elevator pitch. Best thing about Vigil with non-wod fans is they won't be able to metagame by knowing mechanics from the other gamelines. Awakening needs a read of the books as the magic system can be hard to wrap your head around.
|
|
#
?
Mar 30, 2017 18:40
|
|
|
Enola Gay-For-Pay posted:I think it's a symptom of gaming with grown up people with jobs and families, but yeah my players are not going to learn the rules from the books. Just ain't happening. It is incredibly frustrating. Same boat here. They'll skim the core book for some setting stuff but that's it, which is why I choose to run Hunter instead of Mage.
|
|
#
?
Mar 30, 2017 18:46
|
|
|
Cable posted:Well, I feel safe to say that all the people in this thread are much more invested in WoD/RPGs than the average person. Some people play with other RPG fans and that's fine, but I like to play with my friends/relatives who aren't invested enough to read what all attributes and skills and powers are. I explain them the bare minimum so they can make relatively free choices about their character and remind them that they can do certain things at certain times if I consider it in-context enough. We have fun and all, I just would like to change the game! This is also why its really frustrating that Swedracula et al is all about re-introducing the 'difficilty mechanic'. If the only people you talk to are hobby-cultists then you won't realize that your old busted system died a death for a reason. But hey, gotta bring those 90s kids back into the fold.
|
|
#
?
Mar 30, 2017 18:49
|
|
|
Further Reading posted:A low tier Vigil game is probably the easiest for a non-reader group as it's mainly just figuring out which nouns make up your dice pool. At most they'll need to read merits but anything else is easy to explain in an elevator pitch. Best thing about Vigil with non-wod fans is they won't be able to metagame by knowing mechanics from the other gamelines. Okay, then I'll discard Mage for now  What's the difference between Vigil and core CofD 2.0? I don't want the players to necessarily approach the supernatural in a violent fashion, if that's what -hunting- is about in Vigil. Actually in my Reckoning games, violence was the smallest fraction of interactions between the players and "monsters".
|
|
#
?
Mar 30, 2017 18:52
|
|
|
Cable posted:Okay, then I'll discard Mage for now Hunters get access to risking willpower - essentially, once per scene, when they spend Willpower, they can choose two benefits off a list of, I think, five? And if they succeed on the roll, they get the Willpower back...but if they fail, it's a dramatic failure, automatically. Also, hunters can (but not have to) belong to compacts (to get social benefits) or conspiracies (to get magic powers or equivalent tech). Beyond that, hunters are just people who know the supernatural is out there and can be dangerous - how a hunter reacts to it is entirely on them.
|
|
#
?
Mar 30, 2017 19:07
|
|
|
Cable posted:Okay, then I'll discard Mage for now Hunters can easily have supernatural allies - many are just average people who see the darkness of the world and want to fight back for themselves, their family, and their communities. In tone I often find it's the splat that feels closest to Shadowrun. Nothing is stopping a local mage from taking pity and helping them out. Or a Demon from giving them a little information that sets them on a path that the Demon made for them.
|
|
#
?
Mar 30, 2017 19:13
|
|
|
That said: a hunter would be stupid to trust a vampire, werewolf or mage, even if they're allies, without an exceptionally good reason.
|
|
#
?
Mar 30, 2017 19:15
|
|
|
Cable posted:Okay, then I'll discard Mage for now Honestly, I started a Mage Awakening 2e game with a bunch of people who'd never played a White Wolf game before. It's going pretty great. One person read the core book a bit (engaged to be married), one person hasn't had time to read it hardly at all (he's very busy with work), his significant other (she travels for work frequently and doesn't make very many sessions), and another person who reads bits and pieces when there's time (two kids and a spouse, and they're moving house). So that leaves me with the most systems mastery. It's not hard to pick out one or two things to focus on learning each session and allow the mechanics to get more complicated over time. It's working well for us, but we started with the understanding that this is how it's going to flow. We're not going to waste time on figuring out each specific rule at the beginning, and rather just play the story and add in rules as time allows. Our sessions have gone from a lot of discussion and learning about how to cast spells, to how to better use reaches, to how to better stack bonuses, and it keeps progressing along that path. You have to enter into this pattern honestly, and openly though, and need to have a group of people who are okay with the rules progressively getting more complicated. We did a little 'monster of the week' stuff, and I tied it into the social/political things as well. Now they've set up shop, removed an abyssal infection from a hallow, negotiated for help in awakening it, and have begun the process of starting a hedge fund to fund their more ambitious plans. Over the course of all this, they've: found a common goal for the cabal, killed a ghost, killed a vampire, made a giant mess in vampire politics (that will likely come back to haunt them in the future), gotten the attention of the Seers in the city, crossed paths with an Ochemata and assisted vaguely in something, found out that Ochemata are bad business, one's switching Order's and dealing with political fallout, taken a trip to the Temenos in which they took in a Freddy Mercury concert and then hopped on Trolley (from Mr. Rogers) to go watch a reenactment of the Apollo XIII mission, and are approaching the end of their first large Mystery. All that was done in about 8 play sessions (with a few emails a week) while learning the rules and everything else about the system and setting. So I don't know if that would work for your normal sort of group, but if you pick out the most important parts of mage/system and then start to sprinkle in other things as time progresses, you can still have a great game, even if it's not something the purists would care for.
|
|
#
?
Mar 30, 2017 19:17
|
|
|
Mors Rattus posted:That said: a hunter would be stupid to trust a vampire, werewolf or mage, even if they're allies, without an exceptionally good reason. This. If your party has supernatural allies they shouldn't be perfectly trustworthy unless there's a good reason. How could the average person trust a mage? Even the newest mage has god-like power and dangerous need for intellectual stimulation.
|
|
#
?
Mar 30, 2017 19:22
|
|
|
I think the main problem with the Cipher is that because the game doesn't determine what the Cipher actually is, or whether you are wise to be following it, it's difficult to figure out what to do with it if you don't have your own answer to that question.
|
|
#
?
Mar 30, 2017 19:23
|
|
|
Cable posted:Well, I've been used to playing Vampire and Hunter for the best part of my life, I really like occult, secret-society stuff happening to normal people. Also handily broken up into books for playing vs running vs other stuff, and still uses d10s, and coming out soon in 3rd edition (I don't know if the PDFs are up for sale yet? I know the physical books from the KS are up).
|
|
#
?
Mar 30, 2017 19:34
|
|
|
Cable posted:Okay, then I'll discard Mage for now There's a book called "Mortal Remains" that converts Vigil to 2e. I haven't read it but I believe the main differences would be the XP system and the presence of "Aspirations" which are mid to long term character goals? Someone else in this thread probably knows. In terms of minimising violence, that's very possible, especially in the low to mid tier. Low tier hunter is basically just the PCs against the world, so you can have murder mystery, urban legend sleuthing and all those sorts of things for sure. Mid tier would involve some or all the hunters being part of a "club" that lets them access contacts who may have more supernatural knowledge or even be willing to provide back up. In terms of non-combat samples you have one group that are scientists who share peer review research about the supernatural and another that are wikileaks that post videos of Werewolves. Even the high tier games can have a lot of non-violence, at least until poo poo hits the fan. At this level you are part of a conspiracy that is completely aware of the supernatural and in many cases have access to supernatural abilities of your own. One of the fan favourites at this level are VASCU who are psychic FBI agents.
|
|
#
?
Mar 30, 2017 20:10
|
|
|
MtAw 2e doesn't even have a proper Storyteller's Screen. I would probably kill for a good concise Mage 2e cheat sheet. Freaking Mummy has one 
|
|
#
?
Mar 30, 2017 21:01
|
|
|
Foglet posted:MtAw 2e doesn't even have a proper Storyteller's Screen. I would probably kill for a good concise Mage 2e cheat sheet. I'd love to see Spell Cards. I made my own, and the fact that CT is so easy to use makes it nice that I just print my own too. Still, that would be a cool thing that I would buy. Or just a neato little Grimoire-esque book full of spells. A "Little Book of Spells" would be a cool prop/utility, but I don't see it ever happening. Cost of printing alone puts it out in the cold.
|
|
#
?
Mar 30, 2017 21:38
|
|
|
Foglet posted:MtAw 2e doesn't even have a proper Storyteller's Screen. I would probably kill for a good concise Mage 2e cheat sheet. Seriously!
|
|
#
?
Mar 30, 2017 21:49
|
|
|
Foglet posted:MtAw 2e doesn't even have a proper Storyteller's Screen. I would probably kill for a good concise Mage 2e cheat sheet. It does have the handy spellcasting summary in the appendix, though, so that's good, right?
|
|
#
?
Mar 30, 2017 22:15
|
|
|
I was gonna suggest cheat sheets, yeah. That was the biggest part of running games smoothly during 1st edition Awakening was having a couple of extremely concise and useful cheat sheets handy both for myself and players to remind people of what they can do or how the rolls for X work. It's a major bummer that there apparently isn't one for 2nd edition Awakening. I'd follow that up by saying yes, if your players aren't into delving into books, this might not be the system for them. There's nothing wrong with that, but there's a reason my main gaming group has almost completely migrated over to rules-lite systems.
|
|
#
?
Mar 30, 2017 22:17
|
|
|
When I ran Mage I ended up making little A5 booklets for each player, including what Gnosis did, spellcasting rules how paradox worked, relevant merits, Legacy attainments, and even published spell for every arcana dot they had access to. By the end of the (2 year!) game the booklets were extensive, but I'd say they were invaluable.
|
|
#
?
Mar 30, 2017 22:33
|
|
|
That's a good idea and I think I will steal it.
|
|
#
?
Mar 30, 2017 22:45
|
|
|
Flavivirus posted:When I ran Mage I ended up making little A5 booklets for each player, including what Gnosis did, spellcasting rules how paradox worked, relevant merits, Legacy attainments, and even published spell for every arcana dot they had access to. By the end of the (2 year!) game the booklets were extensive, but I'd say they were invaluable. That's exactly the size and organization I've been using. Spellcasting flow charts, Reach charts, Attainments, Legacy cards (coming soon), and basically any little chart or table that comes up more than once. I'm contemplating buying little ring binders for it. I bought a large recipe box looking thing, but it's quickly becoming too full. This works for my group though because we like having little props and tangible things to hold in our hands instead of everyone sitting and flipping through books. At this point, it's only going to get "worse".
|
|
#
?
Mar 30, 2017 22:45
|
|
|
This is a pretty good idea. I do something like this with powers and merits people are going to want to reference frequently. I should go ahead and include important rules too. While I'm thinking about it, does anyone have any sort of cheat sheets or quick references for Demon?
|
|
#
?
Mar 31, 2017 01:26
|
|
|
Enola Gay-For-Pay posted:While I'm thinking about it, does anyone have any sort of cheat sheets or quick references for Demon?  
|
|
#
?
Mar 31, 2017 01:51
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 18, 2024 21:18 |
|
|
I saw a suggestion earlier in the thread about making Wisdom more like Harmony, where each end is really just a different extreme of an overarching character aspect, instead of a scale of "bad" to "good", with an attendant modification to some key mechanic. I find this idea appearling. Are there more fleshed out house rules to this effect somewhere, or suggestions along those lines, for Wisdom and other "morality" tracks, that I could look at?
|
|
#
?
Mar 31, 2017 07:56
|
|
