|
I figured I'd leave this little rant to whenever I got to an actual keyboard, which took longer than I expected.Yawgmoth posted:Care to expound on why that is? Having to navigate the brambles of the game by actually explaining it to someone and guiding them through it really threw into relief how much of these games I mostly just tolerate because I'm used to them. There are just so many bits and bobs of rules that, ultimately, I don't give any shits about. And then of course there's the general scattershot way the rules are organized, and it's not just the poor sectional organization of the books. There are tons of things turned into individual rules-packets that just separate them out from other, related things that they could have easily been bound up with to form a more cohesive rule about a broader subject. "Oh it's cool if you want to be a grappler, but I'm telling you now we'll mostly be winging it because those rules kind of suck. Maybe I'll house rule it if you want it to be A Thing." "Don't forget your bonus Attribute dot from your Seeming. Oh poo poo your stat spread's all hosed up because you don't distribute Attribute dots that way. Let's start all of that over. Now we've got to completely redo all your derived stats too." "To start making your character, it might be good to start with at least one or two of your Needle, Thread, Aspirations or Touchstone. Uh, no, you can come up with any of those later during play." "You can totally ignore the weird bonus-penalty perception thing from Clarity. If you've got a Clarity Condition maybe I'll assess a penalty on the fly, but none of us have to give a single poo poo about relative total and current Clarity for the sake of a +1 to -1 perception bonus." And, like, even with veteran players I'll say half this poo poo if it comes up, but I'm just constantly explaining why a ton of poo poo in the book or my cheat sheets just don't loving matter. It's really disheartening.
|
#
?
Jun 5, 2021 22:43
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 31, 2024 17:17 |
|
|
CoD has been really bad about letting that sort of stuff fester and multiply, just no discipline.
|
|
#
?
Jun 5, 2021 23:24
|
|
|
SO thought exercise for the thread: How would you lay out the book's formatting?
|
|
#
?
Jun 5, 2021 23:47
|
|
|
I mean, you can start with "don't go into every subsplat in detail before you give the proper context for what it all means," which they've insisted on doing for the entire second edition no matter how much people complain.
|
|
#
?
Jun 5, 2021 23:53
|
|
|
MonsieurChoc posted:Every few months I try to find a rpg for SMT-inspired game that isn't just nWoD with some house-rules. Monsterpunk
|
|
#
?
Jun 5, 2021 23:54
|
|
|
Soonmot posted:SO thought exercise for the thread: It's something I've been chewing on for a while, this would be my rough idea: 1. Tone & touchstones 2. Basic rules 3. PC rules 4. GM rules 5. First session stuff 6. Extras (e.g. guidelines for custom rules) (I'd also pretty obviously cut a huge percentage of the content but I am a very chop heavy editor) e: Christ, yeah, all of this. There's just so many knock on effects from half-assed rules ideas that as soon as they encounter any actual intended play from somebody who isn't acculturated to walking around these particular missing stairs and potholes run into increasing irritation and contradiction. Tulip fucked around with this message at 00:49 on Jun 6, 2021 |
|
#
?
Jun 6, 2021 00:36
|
|
|
Pope Guilty posted:Of all the things in Vampire that can make a character concept non-viable you picked the one that makes the Beast matter? New page edit: That Old Tree posted:Having to navigate the brambles of the game by actually explaining it to someone and guiding them through it really threw into relief how much of these games I mostly just tolerate because I'm used to them. There are just so many bits and bobs of rules that, ultimately, I don't give any shits about. And then of course there's the general scattershot way the rules are organized, and it's not just the poor sectional organization of the books. There are tons of things turned into individual rules-packets that just separate them out from other, related things that they could have easily been bound up with to form a more cohesive rule about a broader subject. Yawgmoth fucked around with this message at 02:08 on Jun 6, 2021 |
|
#
?
Jun 6, 2021 02:02
|
|
|
 Spot the 'oh goddamnit' moments. There's at least four.
|
|
#
?
Jun 6, 2021 07:59
|
|
|
"Oh goddammit, I'm reading a Changeling: the Dreaming book"?
|
|
#
?
Jun 6, 2021 08:03
|
|
|
Soonmot posted:SO thought exercise for the thread: 0. Sizzle material; introduction, hook, chapter fiction if you must 1. Introduction to the premise; keep it short and sweet but you can also build your splat setting here. One thing that I think the various oWoD games did well here is to have a glossary of the constructed terminology here. I would endeavor to have this be mostly the practical proper nouns ("vitae, Cainite/Kindred, Masquerade, Tradition, Praxis") as used in the setting, with slang terms being kept distinctly apart and used mostly for seasoning. 2. Character generation material; full overview with, to the greatest possible extent, a working guide to both "what your various boojums mean" and, perhaps importantly, what you need in order to be good at them if they have statistical basis. If there is a key secondary subsystem, like Mage magick or Demon embeds, I would try to give a thorough if basic introduction here. 3. More elaborate and loving discussions of the various subsidiary categories; splats, unique powers, specialized background/merits. I would attempt to put some thought into properly "combat loading" things so that you don't have to flip back and forth. This area can have a lot more narrative text, full page splat spreads and signature characters, etc. 4. Systems. Rules will be written as efficiently and accurately as possible. If space permits, natural-language examples of complex ideas can be useful. 5. GM facing material; ideally there will be ample guidance on how to referee this particular game, including pre-made antagonistic figures and other supplementary tables and materials. 6. If space permits, a sample adventure for the GM. 7. Requisite paraphenila and handouts. Flowcharts, Condition cards, and so on and so forth. 8. An index. I would also try to make the general design of the game in terms of text and layout evocative while at all times remaining readable. Vampire: the Masquerade accomplished this, and a lot of later games did a whole lot worse. This is a question of fonts and so forth, mostly. Given modern game design some of this can be broken out - I think that basic play aids and things like printable condition cards, and ideally at least one sample adventure, should be ground rent for a new system or "top level splat." However, as long as they are reasonably accessible, I don't think they would necessarily need to be part of the core book.
|
|
#
?
Jun 6, 2021 11:37
|
|
|
Kavak posted:"Oh goddammit, I'm reading a Changeling: the Dreaming book"? 
|
|
#
?
Jun 6, 2021 13:13
|
|
|
Soonmot posted:SO thought exercise for the thread: 1. Base Mechanics. Dice rolls, attributes, skills, what the various success states mean in general, willpower, and so on. An example of combat also goes here. 2. Splat mechanics & character creation. Gnosis, mana, praxis, legacies, and a brief description of the arcana. Then go into how to put these together into a character along with all the merits. 3. Powers. How to use them, then the big fat list of what they are and what they do. This is where I'd put the spellcasting rules, paradox, and tools, with an example of magic in combat. End it with artifacts and such. 4. Setting info. How the paths generally act, how the orders operate and recruit, and how legacies are joined/formed. Sample legacies go here. 5. GM stuff. Sample NPCs, tilts/conditions, mundane equipment lists, and so on. 6. Sample setting/plot threads.
|
|
#
?
Jun 6, 2021 14:58
|
|
|
Loomer posted:
1. Racism affects fae less than humans, as if black fae are somehow less victims of the virulent racism of the 1960s; 2. Being fae somehow making people less racist, in a transparent attempt at avoiding awkward questions about fae KKK members; 3. The implicit condemnation of violence used by civil rights protestors, painting the mythical creatures as better because they conform to a standard of non-violence better than the itself mythical level of violence assigned to black protestors in order to silence the civil rights movement; That's the ones I could find. 
|
|
#
?
Jun 6, 2021 15:00
|
|
|
Loomer posted:
I suspect what it is actually saying is, "Anyway, this is why Buford Overseer, Grump High Lord of Tara's Elite "Night Riders" Cavalry Unit, isn't ACTUALLY a bad guy."
|
|
#
?
Jun 6, 2021 23:03
|
|
|
Honestly, a game about "a lost, but valiant, chivalric past that has been swept aside for the sake of modernity" from a company based out of Stone Mountain, Georgia feels like it would have a lot more Confederate apologism than I'm aware of. But my knowledge of C:tD is limited to the Mermaid colony that all died when an undersea research platform got built and erased their ability to breathe underwater and very unsettling issues with underage characters that make me not want to look into it for its take on the South.
|
|
#
?
Jun 6, 2021 23:14
|
|
|
I kind of like the opposite kinds of stories. Where the mythic creatures of the ancient past are actually fairly okay with the state of things in the present. Where's the dragon who's hype as poo poo because the Xbox adaptive controller means he can finally play video games.
|
|
#
?
Jun 7, 2021 00:16
|
|
|
Precambrian posted:Honestly, a game about "a lost, but valiant, chivalric past that has been swept aside for the sake of modernity" from a company based out of Stone Mountain, Georgia feels like it would have a lot more Confederate apologism than I'm aware of. But my knowledge of C:tD is limited to the Mermaid colony that all died when an undersea research platform got built and erased their ability to breathe underwater and very unsettling issues with underage characters that make me not want to look into it for its take on the South.
|
|
#
?
Jun 7, 2021 03:04
|
|
|
Nessus posted:What this seems to be saying is: Many troll changelings were involved in struggles adjacent/involved with the Civil Rights movement, primarily on the side of justice but with exceptions due to your Seeming not overriding your human upbringing and prejudices. Trolls often fought trolls over the matter, although their shared Changeling background allowed some of them to find common ground their mundane peers could not - at least as far as Changeling society goes. The bigger issue is the positioning of non-violent resistance to apartheid as noble, while the willingness to stand in the face of violence and proactively beat it back for those who cannot (which is, essentially, the entire thing of the Troll kith) positioned as inherently ignoble and wrong. See also the condemnation of riots and looting when riots and looting are legitimate tactics against the system (and then there's LatwPIAT's excellent point about the extent of the violence being inflated in the service of a narrative legitimizing the state's violence against protestors). Some Changelings being lovely is comparatively no problem, and the text doesn't actually go into Buford Overseer territory.
|
|
#
?
Jun 7, 2021 04:57
|
|
|
It is very neo-liberal to rate property higher than human lives. They have eaten from the trashcan of *sniff* ideology.
|
|
#
?
Jun 7, 2021 11:51
|
|
|
MonsieurChoc posted:It is very neo-liberal to rate property higher than human lives. Certainly it does feel like it could stem from Mark "If You Hit The Nazis, They Win" Rein*Hagen as a direct lineage although it's of course by no means exclusive to him. Which Changeling book was that from, Loomer?
|
|
#
?
Jun 7, 2021 14:00
|
|
|
Dawgstar posted:Certainly it does feel like it could stem from Mark "If You Hit The Nazis, They Win" Rein*Hagen as a direct lineage although it's of course by no means exclusive to him. Kithbook: Trolls, by Allen Tower - who, appropriately, also wrote Hierarchy.
|
|
#
?
Jun 7, 2021 14:53
|
|
|
Loomer posted:(and then there's LatwPIAT's excellent point about the extent of the violence being inflated in the service of a narrative legitimizing the state's violence against protestors) That's also a thing, but the thing I was actually thinking of was how MLK, despite being recognized and celebrated for his use of non-violent protest, was condemned in the 1960s for how violent his protests were. Despite that violence being committed by other people and exaggerated. Not just because it legitimized state violence, but because it was used to dismiss MLK's protests as violent messes. You're right though: the modern version is calling for the police to beat the protestors senseless because of the threat of concrete milkshakes and self-inflicted bike-lock wounds. But what are four things???
|
|
#
?
Jun 8, 2021 00:31
|
|
|
LatwPIAT posted:That's also a thing, but the thing I was actually thinking of was how MLK, despite being recognized and celebrated for his use of non-violent protest, was condemned in the 1960s for how violent his protests were. Despite that violence being committed by other people and exaggerated. Not just because it legitimized state violence, but because it was used to dismiss MLK's protests as violent messes. You hit 3 of 'em, the 4th was allocating a willingness to do violence against injustice as predominantly an Unseelie trait in an edition of Changeling where Unseelie was used moderately interchangeably with Evil (this was when there was still a Black Spiral Unseelie Sabbat Pentex alliance in some books - the better authors were already going 'no, that's not how that works', of course). Not only is it presented as basically unworthy to counter-charge the cops with your magic hammer so they can't arrest anyone, but it's presented as both honourless and a betrayal of duty within Changeling ethics to do so by associating it with the Unseelie Court at a time when Unseelie is being used as a byword for bad. All of this could be used well as a source of conflict, of course, but here it's as written - a snippet that condemns, rather than producing a story seed for a chronicle of an internal struggle in a troll court of the 50s and 60s about whether it's right or not to allow the cops to brutalize the defenceless (the answer is, obviously, not).
|
|
#
?
Jun 8, 2021 06:09
|
|
|
Loomer posted:You hit 3 of 'em, the 4th was allocating a willingness to do violence against injustice as predominantly an Unseelie trait in an edition of Changeling where Unseelie was used moderately interchangeably with Evil (this was when there was still a Black Spiral Unseelie Sabbat Pentex alliance in some books - the better authors were already going 'no, that's not how that works', of course). Not only is it presented as basically unworthy to counter-charge the cops with your magic hammer so they can't arrest anyone, but it's presented as both honourless and a betrayal of duty within Changeling ethics to do so by associating it with the Unseelie Court at a time when Unseelie is being used as a byword for bad.
|
|
#
?
Jun 8, 2021 07:39
|
|
|
Nessus posted:Yeah I dimly remember that Unseelie varied wildly between "violent, dark, willing to hurt others, unrestrained, etc" and "40% Lawful evil 60% Chaotic evil" in Changeling literature. It was a constant issue. Cassada's work was genuinely important in fixing it, since she wrote Unseelie characters who were, y'know, properly Unseelie and not just EVUL.
|
|
#
?
Jun 8, 2021 07:58
|
|
|
I've been playing VtM Night Roads, the interactive novel using the Choice of Game engine. It's my first real thing set in the V5 continuity, I kept up on a lot of the larger metaplot changes but never felt compelled to actually read any of the books. It's a great game, actually, and although it only apes the V5 system I think it conveys a lot of what I heard V5 is going for mechanically. Hunger is actually pretty cool, messy crits are hosed, that sort of thing. The setting seems pretty cromulent to me. The Second Inquisition is a little better in practice than in theory, IMO, as they (at least in this game) serve as a way of making each vampire stronghold feel a little more organized and tenuous. A major theme of the game is "well if the SI knows about us, won't everyone soon?" Not sure how the written V5 materials address that, it's a good question. A coordinated, international group of vampire hunters embedded at the federal level of a bunch of governments is the kind of thing that should pretty rapidly break the Masquerade. But I have to complain about one thing in particular: the Sabbat. Look, I never really liked the Sabbat. Some of their deep lore was cool, and I kind of dug the fact that they were basically right about the antediluvians but loving psychos about everything else. I'm okay with the new setting reducing their importance in favor of Cam v. Anarch conflict. Still... writing them off by saying "and then the Sabbat went to the middle east to do mysteries!" is the dumbest loving thing ever. I know they have a book coming out soonish that will explain things. I know they wanted to get V5 out without needing to update ever single dangling metaplot thread. But... like... "they went to the middle east because reasons?" That's so loving dumb. First off-- where? The "middle east" is big and means different things to different people. Secondly, why does no one know why? The Sabbat was a gigantic world-spanning evil vampire church. Surely someone loving knows what they're up to. And maybe most importantly: why does no one still not know why they went? It turns "the middle east" into some kind of weird information black hole. You're telling me all phone and internet lines are dead? That no vampires living in that part of the world emailed a friend who hunts in Vancouver or whatever "hey buncha weird anti-catholic murder vamps showed up, you know anything about that?" It honestly feels a little bit like every time they say "the middle east" it's like an 19th century British person saying "darkest Africa." Like "who the gently caress knows what's going on there, it's literally impossible to understand [because the region is savage and backwards and the people who live there don't count as people.]" I think that last bit is the part that really rubs me the wrong way. anyway if you have animalism in the game you hang out with a wolf that's accounted for in like every scene so it's a good game
|
|
#
?
Jun 10, 2021 05:24
|
|
|
I mean it'S especially egregious since the Middle-East had the Ashirra, who I guess just do nothing with all the Sabbat that show up?
|
|
#
?
Jun 10, 2021 05:38
|
|
|
Loomer posted:Kithbook: Trolls, by Allen Tower - who, appropriately, also wrote Hierarchy. Huh. Literally the last name I expected to see there and a surprising take based on everything I remember them saying regarding Ian Banks’ Complicity and related political issues.
|
|
#
?
Jun 10, 2021 05:58
|
|
|
The Gehenna war is basically Sabbat vs (beckoned) Camarilla+Ashirra(+waking methuselahs). Of course the real reason everyone is going to the cradle of civilization is to feed the antediluvians.  Chicago by Night details why the Lasombra bail out of the Sabbat after meeting their founder in the war and mostly get sucked into its void-maw. So instead they are hiding and hoping the SI will nuke it like the last ante. Another aspect of the Sabbat and Gehenna war takes some explanation. One of the themes between BJD and V5 is that it's possible and in fact beneficial to take over a diablerist's body (see: Mithras, Michael, Saulot) and get a new lease on unlife. The lower the humanity of your diablerist the easier it becomes. The Sabbat are perfect hosts for that and I could see a bunch of them return from war very different from when they left, now actually methuselah building a power base again. That has already been hinted at and I would bet it's a plot element in the new Sabbat book.
|
|
#
?
Jun 10, 2021 06:35
|
|
|
Wait, i know that Mithras is wearing Monty like a meat-suit but who did Michael take over again?
|
|
#
?
Jun 10, 2021 14:19
|
|
|
Digital Osmosis posted:I've been playing VtM Night Roads, the interactive novel using the Choice of Game engine. It's a great game, first playthrough was 7 hours for me and I only barely "won". I hesitate to replay the game because how uniquely tense the climax was (I was literally sweating), and how rewarding "solving" it was. I don't think a replay would ever capture that again. Because I stumbled onto a secret ultra-hard difficulty setting, by playing as a Ventrue that feeds on older men. By the end I had so few choices to feed I entered the last couple scenes with zero blood and serious aggravated damage.
|
|
#
?
Jun 10, 2021 14:21
|
|
|
citybeatnik posted:Wait, i know that Mithras is wearing Monty like a meat-suit but who did Michael take over again? Some baali. They are more sharing and now trying to do an unholy trinity thing.
|
|
#
?
Jun 10, 2021 16:31
|
|
|
Goa Tse-tung posted:It's a great game, first playthrough was 7 hours for me and I only barely "won". The game really does capture the sense of "I'm a Neonate and This poo poo Sucks." I'm in my second playthrough as a Ravanos. A lot of the "missions" in the game would send you to an area you'd stay at for like a week and there's often either a choice about how to find shelter or it's provided for you based on your social connections. Ravanos all have extra sections about needing to keep moving with several additional choices. I really dig that. Even towards the end when you've maxed out multiple disciplines the game feels hardscrabble. I think that's a big part of what I was talking about when I said it captures what some of the V5 mechanics are going for, I think omnipresent hunger always being a threat versus the more knowable blood points goes a long way towards that. My first play was a Tremere who pretty exclusively drank from bagged blood and used a ton of blood sorcery but as it turns out my stats and skills worked really well for that and there were only a couple of times it became a problem. High willpower really helps mitigate some of those hunger issues.
|
|
#
?
Jun 10, 2021 18:55
|
|
|
MonsieurChoc posted:I mean it'S especially egregious since the Middle-East had the Ashirra, who I guess just do nothing with all the Sabbat that show up? Also it's the home base for the Banu Haqim. One would think if it wanted, ur-Shulgi could just walk out of Alamut and kill them all with some sort of ancient Quietus thing.
|
|
#
?
Jun 11, 2021 00:13
|
|
|
I'm starting to think SwedeDracula's homebrew setting wasn't that well thought out.
|
|
#
?
Jun 11, 2021 00:31
|
|
|
cptn_dr posted:I'm starting to think SwedeDracula's homebrew setting wasn't that well thought out. Reject Mondernity, Return To The Traditions (i.e. Steal any interesting developments and apply them to V20)
|
|
#
?
Jun 11, 2021 00:43
|
|
|
Dawgstar posted:Also it's the home base for the Banu Haqim. One would think if it wanted, ur-Shulgi could just walk out of Alamut and kill them all with some sort of ancient Quietus thing. You know, that happening and the Cam just not telling anyone so they could spin it as them mysteriously disappearing would probably be better than whatever they actually reveal. What happened to the Sabbat? They definitely did not have tons of members slaughtered and could definitely pose a threat if they come back here, so you better join the Camarila for your own good and protection. Totally. Don't question your elders.
|
|
#
?
Jun 11, 2021 07:16
|
|
|
Nothing Swedracula was ever going to come up with was going to be interesting enough to justify shaking up the setting so severely. He wanted the Sabbat gone or mostly so, so he put them on a bus to a place that feels mysterious and dangerous and portentous to him, the end, and like every other bad idea in V5's plot the devs are rolling with it instead of just declaring it to be the edition that never happened and moving on to Vampire XP.
|
|
#
?
Jun 11, 2021 07:42
|
|
|
Note: The Sabbat died on the way back to their home planet.
|
|
#
?
Jun 11, 2021 17:56
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 31, 2024 17:17 |
|
|
Looks like V5 is getting added to Roll20 by renegade game studios. Really wish Chronicles of Darkness games would get similar treatment. https://marketplace.roll20.net/browse/bundle/11261/vampire-the-masquerade-5th-edition-core-rulebook
|
|
#
?
Jun 11, 2021 21:54
|
|
