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Kavak posted:What happens if you're creating Vampires too fresh to have developed a feeding method? What if they mix and match? I'm not sure how it works for fresh Fledglings, but Predator Type mostly means 'on a night to night basis, how do you feed?' On a mechanical level it gives you a simple dice pool to roll and scene to think out if needed if the roll goes poorly. Otherwise you can just say, "The roll succeeded, your Hunger reduces to one" or whatever.
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# ? Dec 27, 2020 03:41 |
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# ? Jun 3, 2024 21:54 |
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Mors Rattus posted:1 xp per might be fast enough...if costs are sufficiently low. The math is the issue there. This is why I skip the scaling XP costs now. There’s many other issues too. Like gatekeeping all the coolest powers behind a years worth of XP hoarding. There’s not really an incentive to diversify spending like Zereth suggests if you’re always struggling to buy pretty much anything. You should never have to hoard for more than a handful of sessions for new fun toys. Most people won’t be playing the same characters for 7 years, so why balance the game around that? Not to mention the classic case of min/max your starting sheet.
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# ? Dec 27, 2020 03:48 |
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Jhet posted:This is why I skip the scaling XP costs now. There’s many other issues too. Like gatekeeping all the coolest powers behind a years worth of XP hoarding (...) You should never have to hoard for more than a handful of sessions for new fun toys. Most people won’t be playing the same characters for 7 years, so why balance the game around that? Because you should be a lovely neonate getting kicked around forever/A sense of pride and accomplishment/What the gently caress is a game balance/etc.
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# ? Dec 27, 2020 04:30 |
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Mors Rattus posted:1 xp per might be fast enough...if costs are sufficiently low. The math is the issue there.
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# ? Dec 27, 2020 04:34 |
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So wait it's 1 XP period, not 1 XP base and add 2-3-4 depending on events and good RPing?
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# ? Dec 27, 2020 04:46 |
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IIRC there's also an in-character minigame where you can scratch up bonus XP for the purpose of developing Disciplines based on being able to feed on prime targets within gameplay, which I'm sure immediately breaks XP parity between players.
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# ? Dec 27, 2020 05:03 |
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Yawgmoth posted:The problem is that I can't imagine what kind of costs you could even have that would both be reasonable and be scaling. I don't think they're gonna make everything cost the new dot level in xp regardless of what it is, and even if they did that's still nearly two months of weekly play to buy a 5th dot of a thing. I don't know about everyone else, but part of what I like about RPGs in general is a sense of progression and growth. 1xp per session sounds like the definition of stagnation to me. Also individual XP that varies between players can gently caress right off.
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# ? Dec 27, 2020 05:19 |
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NGDBSS posted:Like Mors said 1 xp per session is fine if the costs are sufficiently low. Like "most things you'll want are 1 xp, but rarely some potent stuff costs 2". Of course that wouldn't be scaling xp NGDBSS posted:Also individual XP that varies between players can gently caress right off. vvv hahahahaha oh god, 4 months of weekly sessions before you get to buy a single dot of your favored discipline. I could not put up with that poo poo. Yawgmoth fucked around with this message at 06:08 on Dec 27, 2020 |
# ? Dec 27, 2020 05:37 |
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NGDBSS posted:Like Mors said 1 xp per session is fine if the costs are sufficiently low. Like "most things you'll want are 1 xp, but rarely some potent stuff costs 2". Of course that wouldn't be scaling xp but in general scaling xp is loads harder to get right. so, for reference, the cost for an in-clan Discipline is number of dots times 5; with a starting discipline at the max of 2 dots, that's SIXTY XP to get one Discipline at 5 the rules say to give out 1 XP per session plus 1 XP when you finish a story, so, that's one full year playing one session a week? this is completely hosed, and it speaks to something that the paragraph immediately following the XP rules is the one where the book says it's okay to come up with your own rules if the ones in the book get in your way
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# ? Dec 27, 2020 05:46 |
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ElNarez posted:so, for reference, the cost for an in-clan Discipline is number of dots times 5; with a starting discipline at the max of 2 dots, that's SIXTY XP to get one Discipline at 5 NGDBSS fucked around with this message at 06:09 on Dec 27, 2020 |
# ? Dec 27, 2020 06:06 |
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The World of Darkness is in an ugly spot where a main conceit of the setting- that shadowy conspiracies of monsters have and continue to influence human civilization from the shadows- requires them to be responsible for a lot of absolutely horrible things (Like, say, pogroms against LGBT people in Chechnya) or be full of poo poo in some way.
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# ? Dec 27, 2020 06:20 |
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the modiphius edits are like one cut section in Camarilla, one cut section in Anarch, one round of errata and bringing in the appendix that was added to the PDF shortly after release, on tools and advice for considerate play
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# ? Dec 27, 2020 06:33 |
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I remember the original oWoD going out of their way to try and not make every little thing influenced by vampires. Not that vampires didn't participate in or profit from historic events but they weren't pushing global politics towards a world war or things like that. I'm hoping with the new (old) minds working on V5 we can get back to that kind of thing moving forward. As far the XP thing, yeah when I first read that I knew it wasn't gonna work for any kind of fun play so our group has been doing a flat 3 xp per game and it feels pretty good. The one thing that doesn't feel... I guess fair so far is that my character has stuck hard to the path of humanity so has fallen behind the characters that have been wiling to commit diablerie. Then again maybe that's on the storyteller for not making it a more risky proposition.
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# ? Dec 27, 2020 09:39 |
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About 16-18 years ago I picked up a few of the Vampire clan novels, and seeing as I was probably about 14 years old at the time they were a big hit. I could never find anyone to actually play the game, and my one and only attempt at any pen and paper rpg ended with my characters sudden and random death 20 minutes in by the DM who hated me and so it passed into memory for going on two decades, until two days ago when I, basically halfway crippled by my two current nemesii -covid isolation and a slipped disc in my lower back, stumbled across the apparently fairly recently released ebook versions of the clan novels on a deep dive of the kindle store. I finished the first one in like an hour and a half, and I thought it was pretty good so I'm just starting the next. But this also led me on a deep dive of a white wolf wiki which has awakened something in me. For the first time in nearly twenty years I feel an intense desire to play an rpg. Specifically either vampire, which I adore the whole setting of, and changeling which sounds weird as hell but the descriptions in the OP and on wiki's resonated strongly. Mage also sounds lowkey like my poo poo. I guess what I'm asking is, does anyone run any newbie friendly games or "sessions" or whatever? Or how to go about finding such people. I'm most likely forced into online only due to my location. But I have so much loving spare time, which could and should be channeled into a fun, new, exciting and above all worthwhile activity.
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# ? Dec 27, 2020 11:21 |
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Biplane posted:I guess what I'm asking is, does anyone run any newbie friendly games or "sessions" or whatever? Or how to go about finding such people. I'm most likely forced into online only due to my location. But I have so much loving spare time, which could and should be channeled into a fun, new, exciting and above all worthwhile activity. Join some discords. The goon one is https://discord.gg/Zt5jTNvY (link will expire in one day for safety) And there's a CofD-specific one here http://discord.me/cofd
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# ? Dec 27, 2020 12:28 |
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midwifecrisis posted:I think the predator type is really one of those "cool idea, awful implementation" thing that really fucks up character creation in a similar way to the D&D 5e Backgrounds thing, which never worked in practice for me. Almost every new player I've run V5 for ends up tripping over Predator Types, thinking it's supposed to be the only way they can feed.
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# ? Dec 27, 2020 14:53 |
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bewilderment posted:Join some discords. The goon one is https://discord.gg/Zt5jTNvY (link will expire in one day for safety) Thank you!
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# ? Dec 28, 2020 12:41 |
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A rough session where a stray dog was fully drained by a Gangrel PC caused a few people in the group to be a little uneasy, but in a game of personal horror it's kinda difficult to gauge where the group is mentally at without spoilering some of the content. Has anyone ever given anything out like this for their players? Was there any success?
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# ? Dec 28, 2020 17:14 |
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I've never done a checklist mostly because, as I found from doing survey design, around 10 questions in people start to zone out. However I do open every campaign with a discussion of boundaries, and I think it's really good to give players a mechanism for basically 'halting' play - there's a number of variations like safe words or 'x cards' or what have you. The real trick is getting people to feel comfortable with being honest about their boundaries, since there's a broad social pressure to be 'open' to basically any discussion and to not look like a spoilsport or what have you. It's also never a fun conversation, and when you're doing an RPG there's a desire to 'get to the fun stuff,' but I think it's a worthwhile investment. Worst case scenario you can say "OK is this going to be PG13 or R?" and that will set most people on the same page w/r/t gore, abuse, etc.
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# ? Dec 28, 2020 17:43 |
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Derek Fcking Carr posted:A rough session where a stray dog was fully drained by a Gangrel PC caused a few people in the group to be a little uneasy, but in a game of personal horror it's kinda difficult to gauge where the group is mentally at without spoilering some of the content. This isn't limited to WoD (granted the setting skews a lot darker than your average TTRPG) it can be a useful tool if you don't treat it like homework. It's best treated like "hey here's a bunch of potentially upsetting topics or possible scenarios, look at this list and let me know if any of them raise any red flags for you". I've never formally handed out a sheet like this as a GM but even if you try to cover all your bases, it's still possible that something could come up while playing that sits wrong with people, even if they didn't think it would when you set out your boundaries. Equally as important tho, is the response to when the line gets crossed. A couple years ago I had a case where a GM kept having a Toreador primogen aggressively flirting with my character, at first I think it was kinda just for levity, but they kept pushing it session after session. I snapped eventually (after iirc some line that was a veiled threat of public embarrasment like "maybe I'll make you come to court with me with a collar around your neck") in a way that I think even surprised me, because I never would have identified that in myself as something that would be over the line for roleplay. They tried to blow it off with a classic "My Guy Syndrome" excuse and we moved on but it definitely changed the tone of the campaign. I was strongly considering bailing on the campaign after that poor handling of my concern but it ended up being the one exception so tl;dr a consent list can be useful to identify hard boundaries but it should always be clear between all the players and the GM that if/when something crosses the line, everybody should be respectful and fuckin adults about it
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# ? Dec 28, 2020 18:33 |
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Derek Fcking Carr posted:A rough session where a stray dog was fully drained by a Gangrel PC caused a few people in the group to be a little uneasy, but in a game of personal horror it's kinda difficult to gauge where the group is mentally at without spoilering some of the content.
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# ? Dec 28, 2020 18:52 |
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Derek Fcking Carr posted:A rough session where a stray dog was fully drained by a Gangrel PC caused a few people in the group to be a little uneasy, but in a game of personal horror it's kinda difficult to gauge where the group is mentally at without spoilering some of the content. I'm running a game of V5, and while I haven't used that checklist in particular, I have used the one that it clearly borrows its presentation from, the checklist from Monte Cooke Games' Consent in Gaming. I actually prefer theirs over the one in your post, if only because it's got less topics on it in general (with some blank spaces for people to add their own topics) so it's a quicker fill, a better explanation of the Red/Yellow/Green check boxes, and most importantly, it lets you put in what you believe the theme of the game is and its "rating." Those last two are vitally important for context and expectations. It's been pretty successful, there's just some considerations you'll need to keep in mind. You'll need to fill it out, too. You're playing as much as anyone else is, and your comfort level is just as important. You should consider having your sheet be publicly available as an example, but your players should have the choice of whether they show theirs to the group or just to you. You also should create a master list of what's Red, what's Yellow, and what's Green, without identifying who contributed what, and have that master list easily available. When you're compiling topics, if one person rates the topic at a higher level than the rest (i.e. one person rates something a Red when everyone else rates it Yellow or Green, or even one Yellow among a sea of Green), put it in the higher level. Ideally, you should be pairing it with a safety system, for when a topic comes up that no one thought of, or when someone realizes that what they had rated a topic back at the beginning of the game has changed into a new category. I use the X/N/O system from this summary here: https://imgur.com/a/tIJlArK Interestingly enough, I've had to be the one to go, "Woah, let's take a step back here," more times than my players. There's plenty of ways to do this, and sometimes all you really need is a full frank discussion, but in my case, I think it really helped and created an environment where players felt more comfortable with things.
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# ? Dec 28, 2020 19:25 |
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I was always under the impression that the formal checklists were meant more for like Con play, where you don't wanna sit down at a game with a table of strangers and have some GM leering over you describing a rape or something way over the line, and that the better option for people you know is less formal but still does the same thing
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# ? Dec 28, 2020 20:56 |
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The checklist signals to me that the campaign default is on transphobic gore incest rapist spiders unless I check enough red circles. A list is good for reminding people of some potentially sensitive topics, but "how much [bad thing] is ok?" is not a good way to present any of these subjects.
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# ? Dec 29, 2020 14:13 |
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GNU Order posted:I was always under the impression that the formal checklists were meant more for like Con play, where you don't wanna sit down at a game with a table of strangers and have some GM leering over you describing a rape or something way over the line, and that the better option for people you know is less formal but still does the same thing In my case, while I knew everyone at the table and had played with them before, for most of the group this was either their first time in a World of Darkness setting, their first time in a horror/urban fantasy game, or their first Vampire game. Some of them also haven't been in a group with each other before. I decided that a more formal checklist would be a better way of establishing boundaries and safety. If it had been my usual WoD or CofD groups, I probably would have kept things more casual. Just to be clear, I used this checklist, not the one we've seen earlier: Again, I like it more because it allows me to quickly explain the game, the general "rating" I prefer, and unlike the other one, it's not throwing a whole bunch of nasty topics at you at once. The taboo section, to me, is really, really unnecessary. The "Additional Topics" section covers those sorts of eventualities without making the whole thing feel like the Worst Survey Monkey Ever. It also opens the door to talking things out with the GM, and the other one doesn't. Once more, it's also immensely important that a GM show their sheet first, either to the group as a whole or individually through PMs and such. If your players are just handed a blank sheet without an idea of what's already Red or Yellow, it's just going to end up looking like, well... moths posted:The checklist signals to me that the campaign default is on transphobic gore incest rapist spiders unless I check enough red circles. Like that! So, once I got the Master Consent List up, Session 0 and the campaign from here on out has gone smoothly since.
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# ? Dec 29, 2020 17:25 |
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I started playing V:tES again, online on lackeyccg.
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# ? Dec 30, 2020 03:57 |
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I have learned the combo power Command the Swarm, which along with the Servitor's Perception ritual lets me put my senses into a swarm of whatever and use my Way of Spirit through it. I decided that the first type of insects I use would be a swarm of entirely male wasps, which I then flew over to an encampment of Tremere and used some assorted low-level koldunic sorcery to soften them up before we go charging in. Thus, it is history's first recorded drone strike.
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# ? Dec 30, 2020 04:17 |
Booooooooooo (Great job!)
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# ? Dec 30, 2020 06:12 |
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Yawgmoth posted:I have learned the combo power Command the Swarm, which along with the Servitor's Perception ritual lets me put my senses into a swarm of whatever and use my Way of Spirit through it. I decided that the first type of insects I use would be a swarm of entirely male wasps, which I then flew over to an encampment of Tremere and used some assorted low-level koldunic sorcery to soften them up before we go charging in.
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# ? Dec 30, 2020 06:32 |
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MonsieurChoc posted:I started playing V:tES again, online on lackeyccg. Congrats man, me, on the other hand, I'm burned out of V:tES and taking some time out. Are you playing with the folks of the official discord?
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# ? Dec 30, 2020 13:12 |
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Yawgmoth posted:The problem is that I can't imagine what kind of costs you could even have that would both be reasonable and be scaling. I don't think they're gonna make everything cost the new dot level in xp regardless of what it is, and even if they did that's still nearly two months of weekly play to buy a 5th dot of a thing. I don't know about everyone else, but part of what I like about RPGs in general is a sense of progression and growth. 1xp per session sounds like the definition of stagnation to me. Yeah, one of the first things I house-ruled when I ran V5 was removing the multipliers and adjusting the prices around. In free point-buy systems I want my players to have the option of grabbing a small thingie every session and to wait at most a month to grab a big cool thingie.
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# ? Dec 30, 2020 16:05 |
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Aw. Apparently Jackie Cassada died of something COVID-related. She worked on a bunch of Changeling and Wraith stuff. Did stuff for ever line, I think.
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# ? Dec 30, 2020 17:17 |
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Angry Lobster posted:Congrats man, me, on the other hand, I'm burned out of V:tES and taking some time out. Are you playing with the folks of the official discord? I found A discord, not sure if it's the official one. Gonna try and recontact with the Montreal fan community after covid ends in like a year (very optimistic timeframe). Dawgstar posted:Aw. Apparently Jackie Cassada died of something COVID-related. She worked on a bunch of Changeling and Wraith stuff. Did stuff for ever line, I think. Yeah, that's a name I remember seeing often in credits. Sad.
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# ? Dec 30, 2020 18:07 |
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Sad to see her go. Unfortunately, I won't be making my deadline on the project as I had a death in the family myself.
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# ? Dec 31, 2020 03:55 |
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Loomer posted:Sad to see her go. Unfortunately, I won't be making my deadline on the project as I had a death in the family myself. Condolences and hugs.
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# ? Dec 31, 2020 09:01 |
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Loomer posted:Sad to see her go. Unfortunately, I won't be making my deadline on the project as I had a death in the family myself. Real life is more important than any fictional world could ever be. Best wishes Loomer, do what you need for however long you need to.
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# ? Dec 31, 2020 18:23 |
Loomer posted:Sad to see her go. Unfortunately, I won't be making my deadline on the project as I had a death in the family myself. Sorry for your loss, friend.
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# ? Dec 31, 2020 18:37 |
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Deviant PDFs are going out. Check your emails etc.
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# ? Jan 4, 2021 18:29 |
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Twibbit posted:Deviant PDFs are going out. Check your emails etc. But god, is this easier to read with actual tables instead of the KS manuscript <BEGIN TABLE> things. And the art direction is really nice in a lot of places too (though I just made fun of it, I do appreciate the crumpled-piece-of-paper half-page with all the example Lash formats). And this is definitely one of the more elegant character sheets they've put out.
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# ? Jan 4, 2021 18:34 |
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# ? Jun 3, 2024 21:54 |
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Got my backer pdf. I haven't followed the discussion post-kickstarter. Were there significant rules changes since the KS previews?
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# ? Jan 4, 2021 19:04 |