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Yeah but I'd still need to do a huge rework to the condition/xp system to make it work and that seems like a huge pain. And I also have all the 1e books already. Also didn't they swap Kith and Seemings weirdly for no reasons?
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Jul 26, 2021 21:16
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They made them better by divorcing them from each other.
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Jul 26, 2021 21:22
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MonsieurChoc posted:Yeah but I'd still need to do a huge rework to the condition/xp system to make it work and that seems like a huge pain. And I also have all the 1e books already.
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Jul 26, 2021 21:32
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Soonmot posted:Get the 2e upgrade, it's much better. Arguable. But 2e is worth looking at, and deciding for yourself.
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Jul 26, 2021 22:22
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Chernobyl Peace Prize posted:You can ignore most of the condition system until it's case-by-case relevant and just make the xp system "how many aspirations did people fulfill this session" and call it a day. Source: I've been playing in a weekly CtL 2e game for over a year now and I think I can remember about 5 pages' worth of content from the core book off the top of my head. That’s probably what I would do if I had to run 2e, but I can also just keep using 1e. 2e isn’t enough of an upgrade, too much of a sidegrade, to be worth the hassle. Also I don’t like how they made combat rocket tag again.
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Jul 26, 2021 22:31
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MonsieurChoc posted:That’s probably what I would do if I had to run 2e, but I can also just keep using 1e. 2e isn’t enough of an upgrade, too much of a sidegrade, to be worth the hassle. If you have a bunch of the 1e books I'd still run it. If you take just it and not add in all the blue books then you should be just fine. Sure there are plenty of things to nitpick, but if you're running at a table full of normal players and not a bunch of munchkins trying to break the system then it's a blast anyway. I haven't played Changeling 2e (it is a good upgrade in many ways), but we've done years of 2e at my table and it has its +/- just like 1e did. But having the books already puts it over the line if you haven't been playing 2e CoD already. I mean, we've been playing a completely different 30 year old game for 6 months since the last one ended, and a good group makes up all the difference in deficient game designs.
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Jul 27, 2021 01:52
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Jhet posted:If you have a bunch of the 1e books I'd still run it. If you take just it and not add in all the blue books then you should be just fine. Sure there are plenty of things to nitpick, but if you're running at a table full of normal players and not a bunch of munchkins trying to break the system then it's a blast anyway. I haven't played Changeling 2e (it is a good upgrade in many ways), but we've done years of 2e at my table and it has its +/- just like 1e did. Yikes. I thought we'd left behind the stupid "roll-play vs role-play" stuff behind. The rest of the post is fine so you probably didn't mean to come off condescending there, but huh you kinda did. For what's it's worth, I'd put my playing group somewhere in the middle of the "Improv-vs-follow the rules" dychotomy. They will interact with rules and use powers and find cool stuff but also are fine with just rolling with it and having fun/telling a cool story is the goal. That doesn't make bad rules any more fun to interact with though, especially when they're kinda central to the game. Probably the best way to deal with the xp system is to scrap the beats entirely and jsut give 1xp at the end of every game. No reason to tie advancement rate to arbitrary abstractions, kinda like removing xp from D&D and having the PCs level up at story milestones.
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Jul 27, 2021 02:53
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MonsieurChoc posted:Yikes. I thought we'd left behind the stupid "roll-play vs role-play" stuff behind. The rest of the post is fine so you probably didn't mean to come off condescending there, but huh you kinda did. Sorry, not my intent. From my experience there’s a number of people who’s fun comes from breaking the system, and that’s a legit play style for some tables and systems. Changeling 1e doesn’t benefit from it for me and it would get bogged down with pledge crafting and hedge-spinning. Basically, if you know your group (and it seems you do) then you can have a bunch of fun playing 1e. I wouldn’t call the 1e system completely broken, but it can be. Pledges and hedge-spinning were cool ideas in 1e, just not that hard to make too powerful. Most players won’t abuse it and it stayed balanced in my experience. Most of my criticism of 1e would be set in the blue book lines and rules blending in. Combat could get hard to balance when it was too many combat styles, and it would take a lot of time but only on half the turns. Some of the powers could get a bit much, but not as bad as Geist usually. Combat in 2e was just as annoying with the combat styles for me. Without them it was pretty okay, but I’ve never really liked the WoD combat systems that much. So okay is pretty good considering.
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Jul 27, 2021 05:04
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By the "blue book" line you mean the mortals/core nWoD stuff not Mage I'm guessing? So you're advocating basically that CtL 1e is fine if you don't mix a bunch of core-line options in as well.
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Jul 27, 2021 05:33
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Arivia posted:By the "blue book" line you mean the mortals/core nWoD stuff not Mage I'm guessing? Yeah. Blue book stuff was all the mortals and the mortals+ books. And I'd say fine enough. Plenty of room for improvements, but it wasn't the worst line out there to run or play in terms of balance. Fwiw, and not much probably, but those always struck me as "how do we make it so the squishy boring mortals can dance with the big bad monsters", which is cool and all, but that's what tier 1 hunters were all about. It was just atonal for me to have regular humans capable of standing even nearby in power levels. There should be a big difference between the other main splat book types and regular humans for me as it raises the stakes and makes you creatively problem solve. You should be either over prepared or running for your life, unless of course your life revolves around killing the monsters that go bump in the night.
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Jul 27, 2021 05:56
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Blue book is not meant to be Buffy. It’s meant to be a Clive Barker short story generator. If you actually mix lines, mortals are hosed.
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Jul 27, 2021 06:06
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MonsieurChoc posted:Also didn't they swap Kith and Seemings weirdly for no reasons? 2e kiths are no longer restricted to specific seemings. You can be a Fairest Leechfinger or a Darkling Hunterheart. As for 1e's combat styles, the balance on those was all over the place. They weren't a strong link in 1e's mechanical chain.
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Jul 27, 2021 06:12
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I’m not talking about combat styles, but basic combat rules. The small change to how hitting and damage works makes things A LOT more rocket tag-y. I personally love the blue books, although they also vary a lot in quality. In the nWoD, no one is safe, no one knows everything and there’s weird stuff everywhere. Not even the big supernaturals. That one is mostly a matter of taste though. I’m probably not gonna use them anyway for a Changeling chronicle. I’m still at the brainstorming phase. Do I use one of the Dark Eras? Use Miami from the core, or make up my own city? What kind of plotline am I gonna use? The players seem interested in horror mystery and dark fairy tales, so definitely setting up a True Fae as a major antagonist.
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Jul 27, 2021 06:55
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Just had a chance to catch up and skim through the newest release, M20 Technocracy Reloaded. It's fine. Not much in way of stuff like Merits or Flaws and a little on the lighter side mechanics wise, but it's an extensive overview of the organization and has a lot of content. One quote in the Syndicate section stuck out to me, and is awesome: "The Syndicate has a term for the Paradox: Market Correction — the inevitable snapback when you gently caress around too much with the smooth flow of the Way Things Are."
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Jul 27, 2021 11:26
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I'm rewatching Forever Knight for the IDK how many-th time, and it's seriously the best totally not World of Darkness inspired media. Nick's vampire dad LaCroix just had a line about how something was part of Nick's "ETERNAL STRUGGLE .. for salvation" and I just wonder how much of the cast/ crew was in on it.
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Jul 27, 2021 12:10
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I Am Just a Box posted:2e kiths are no longer restricted to specific seemings. You can be a Fairest Leechfinger or a Darkling Hunterheart. My current changeling is a super buff hot orc Fairest Gristlegrinder. Separating kith from seeming was one of the best changes.
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Jul 27, 2021 12:21
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Lily sabre and thorn is a strong contender, but I've also been thinking about Victorian era Montreal. It's a pretty interesting era for my city, and got a bunch of interesting historical characters like the Molsons and Joe Beef and the future Saint André. Edit: Backporting the idea of Seeming and Kith being dissasociated from each other seems easy enough, I'll probably do it.
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Jul 27, 2021 15:20
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moths posted:I'm rewatching Forever Knight for the IDK how many-th time, and it's seriously the best totally not World of Darkness inspired media. Hell yeah Forever Knight.
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Jul 27, 2021 15:54
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Old Doggy Bastard posted:Just had a chance to catch up and skim through the newest release, M20 Technocracy Reloaded. It's fine. Not much in way of stuff like Merits or Flaws and a little on the lighter side mechanics wise, but it's an extensive overview of the organization and has a lot of content. One quote in the Syndicate section stuck out to me, and is awesome: "The Syndicate has a term for the Paradox: Market Correction — the inevitable snapback when you gently caress around too much with the smooth flow of the Way Things Are." Do they talk much about stuff from the Revised Convention Books that came out some years ago, like one of the coolest villains ever in Threat Null from the Void Seekers book?
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Jul 27, 2021 16:17
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MonsieurChoc posted:I’m not talking about combat styles, but basic combat rules. The small change to how hitting and damage works makes things A LOT more rocket tag-y. Could you elaborate on this? I've only started playing CofD stuff since 2E so I don't know what exactly changed in combat between first and second editions.
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Jul 27, 2021 16:23
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A Renaissance Nerd posted:Could you elaborate on this? I've only started playing CofD stuff since 2E so I don't know what exactly changed in combat between first and second editions. In 1e, you added the weapon bonuses to the dice pool, meaning it was easy to hit but harder to do large amount of damage. In 2E they change dit so the weapons add bonus success to damage instead, making it much harder to hit but when you do it's a lot more damage. Small change, big consequences.
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Jul 27, 2021 16:35
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Soonmot posted:My current changeling is a super buff hot orc Fairest Gristlegrinder. Separating kith from seeming was one of the best changes. I don't think it helps that a ton of Kiths were more or less redundant.
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Jul 27, 2021 16:47
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I do love the separation of Kith and Seeming but it seems like it makes one (or both?) of them difficult to use as an in-character category / axis of understanding. Like, say a Fireheart Fairest. You could flavor that as a beautiful redhead who has hypnotic movements like a flame, or a perfectly chiseled Ifrit looking guy who has fire hair and red skin. In the later case, how are Changelings, in-character, supposed to know that the Ifrit is a Fairest and not an Elemental? I think that is why 2E moved more towards "Seemings is about what story you were forced to play in your durance" but it makes it a lot harder for players and characters to have heuristics like "Ogres be like..." I don't actually mind all that much, it kind of makes any collection of Changelings seem like a motley (lol) collection of weird individuals but it does muddle an axis you might have used for storytelling (the Wizened go on strike, whatever.)
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Jul 27, 2021 17:37
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Digital Osmosis posted:I do love the separation of Kith and Seeming but it seems like it makes one (or both?) of them difficult to use as an in-character category / axis of understanding. Like, say a Fireheart Fairest. You could flavor that as a beautiful redhead who has hypnotic movements like a flame, or a perfectly chiseled Ifrit looking guy who has fire hair and red skin. In the later case, how are Changelings, in-character, supposed to know that the Ifrit is a Fairest and not an Elemental? I think that is why 2E moved more towards "Seemings is about what story you were forced to play in your durance" but it makes it a lot harder for players and characters to have heuristics like "Ogres be like..." I don't actually mind all that much, it kind of makes any collection of Changelings seem like a motley (lol) collection of weird individuals but it does muddle an axis you might have used for storytelling (the Wizened go on strike, whatever.) In the game I'm in now, we have a couple different Elementals, but you'd be able to 1. immediately peg them as Elementals and 2. never confuse them for one another, since one's a soil-and-corn-stalks golem and the other is a lanky tree lady.
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Jul 27, 2021 17:46
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I've mentioned this before, but I deeply dislike Aspirations as a system, first because they rotate so constantly that it adds (for me) immersion-breaking bookkeeping to basic roleplaying stuff, and second that if you're in a game that has a heavy mystery/conspiracy component with regular twists you get stuck in the really stupid position of either constantly having Aspirations that don't apply (and that might not for several sessions) or having to continually negotiate with the ST to figure out Aspirations that can apply without ruining the next surprise. Plus, if you've got the kind of player in your group who prefers to follow along and see what happens rather than drive the story, telling them they have to keep coming with multiple Aspirations for what they want to see happen every session forever is a great way to get some frustrated blank stares at times. Like, seriously, did the writers not even consider that player type? Attorney at Funk posted:2e's Contracts in particular are a big step up from 1e's in fun and structure. My biggest complaint with Changeling 2e is my biggest complaint with most every 2e line, which is that rules are tucked through the book so haphazardly it's a pain to use as a reference document. I'll absolutely second this. It feels like all the 2e books desperately need more editing passes by a good technical writer. Roadie fucked around with this message at 19:38 on Jul 27, 2021 |
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Jul 27, 2021 19:32
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Roadie posted:Plus, if you've got the kind of player in your group who prefers to follow along and see what happens rather than drive the story, telling them they have to keep coming with multiple Aspirations for what they want to see happen every session forever is a great way to get some frustrated blank stares at times. Like, seriously, did the writers not even consider that player type? It's possible they considered them and discarded them as "Not playing the game right".
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Jul 27, 2021 21:57
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Roadie posted:Plus, if you've got the kind of player in your group who prefers to follow along and see what happens rather than drive the story, telling them they have to keep coming with multiple Aspirations for what they want to see happen every session forever is a great way to get some frustrated blank stares at times. Like, seriously, did the writers not even consider that player type? I don't know if they were wrong to assume players would want to play.
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Jul 27, 2021 22:28
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Roadie posted:I've mentioned this before, but I deeply dislike Aspirations as a system, first because they rotate so constantly that it adds (for me) immersion-breaking bookkeeping to basic roleplaying stuff, and second that if you're in a game that has a heavy mystery/conspiracy component with regular twists you get stuck in the really stupid position of either constantly having Aspirations that don't apply (and that might not for several sessions) or having to continually negotiate with the ST to figure out Aspirations that can apply without ruining the next surprise. I'm in this bucket. Aspirations end up feeling like more work to me constantly thinking and rethinking up plot beats to hit ahead of time, and their mechanical role is almost entirely to output beats, which is not a hole that needed to be filled, between Conditions (I still stubbornly insist the base Condition concept is sound, though several books have grossly misused it), dramatic failures, and just doling out a set number of beats per session like usual. Roadie posted:I'll absolutely second this. It feels like all the 2e books desperately need more editing passes by a good technical writer. This is a weakness of White Wolf/Onyx Path books in general but it's been getting worse in later 2e releases. In addition to the common complaint of confusing and inconvenient layout, books continue to occasionally have content in one section that doesn't fit with or outright contradicts content in another section. There needs to be more attention paid to reviewing the manuscript as a cohesive work rather than doling out sections to different writers and being content to staple them together.
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Jul 27, 2021 22:48
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Dienes posted:I don't know if they were wrong to assume players would want to play. There are plenty of people who are perfectly good players as long as you don't expect them to come up with plot beats ahead of time. Kavak posted:It's possible they considered them and discarded them as "Not playing the game right". In that case something like a good quarter to half of the Chronicles of Darkness players I've played with are 'playing it wrong', given that even out of the ones perfectly comfortable with Aspirations there's been a clear tilt towards obvious makework gimmies that the group was going to do anyway. Doubly so with the splats that regularly repeat some major necessity (hunting, feeding, etc). I Am Just a Box posted:I still stubbornly insist the base Condition concept is sound, though several books have grossly misused it At this point I think more of the books have misused it than actually used it well. It also really doesn't help that there's a ton of individual Conditions but they also each take up a big chunk of page space, so they're a pain in the rear end to reference at the same time that they come up constantly. Roadie fucked around with this message at 23:06 on Jul 27, 2021 |
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Jul 27, 2021 22:58
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The solution we're trying in our Hunter game to Aspirations is to let people pull multiple beats from the same Aspiration (as in, you get a beat every time you fulfill *or* work substantively towards one of your Aspirations in a scene, with the same maximum on beats gained this way per scene/session). This solves the problem of needing to churn through them, and then ending up doing either the very unsatisfying 'aspire to whatever you know's going to happen in the next scene/session' or the honestly kind of weird communicating to the ST about stuff you'd *like* to happen through blurbs on your character sheet instead of as part of the regular conversation around running and playing the game. You change your Aspirations when it's narratively appropriate rather than because you've already procced them and need to refill them. Aspirations you pull multiple beats from become, in effect, not just the goals but the themes of your character. I like the core concept of Beats as a way to tie character growth to stuff that happens in the story rather than the amount of real-life time that passes, but as implemented they're just so intrusive and paperworky for a group that's already doing the social behaviors that Beats exist to incentivize. It's a little bit like Exalted stunt mechanics in that way. Tilts and Conditions I still think need a ruthless cull and standardization and a lot of what's broken out as Conditions should just be rules text within the single individual powers that produce them.
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Jul 27, 2021 23:35
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I Am Just a Box posted:This is a weakness of White Wolf/Onyx Path books in general but it's been getting worse in later 2e releases. In addition to the common complaint of confusing and inconvenient layout, books continue to occasionally have content in one section that doesn't fit with or outright contradicts content in another section. There needs to be more attention paid to reviewing the manuscript as a cohesive work rather than doling out sections to different writers and being content to staple them together. Agreed. I feel like this doesn't get enough attention, because most RPG buyers don't choose their books based on editing, but every Onyx Path book (with the exception of stuff by the mainline Exalted team) holds together worse than the one before. It's too many ill-paid cooks who are all being stitched together by a single ill-paid developer, or maybe two. Mummy 2e was so bad they should have been ashamed to publish it, but I don't think they're paying any price for selling word salad aside from their general slow slide into nonexistence, so they'll probably keep doing it.
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Jul 28, 2021 00:09
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Rand Brittain posted:Mummy 2e was so bad they should have been ashamed to publish it, but I don't think they're paying any price for selling word salad aside from their general slow slide into nonexistence, so they'll probably keep doing it. Mummy 2e was one of the examples I had in mind. In addition to wildly strewn contents like the multiple different supporting character templates and types of ephemeral entity, the body of the text references Conditions that aren't listed in the Appendix or described anywhere, and the Appendix lists and describes Conditions that aren't ever called for or referenced in the body of the text.
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Jul 28, 2021 00:43
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I Am Just a Box posted:Mummy 2e was one of the examples I had in mind. In addition to wildly strewn contents like the multiple different supporting character templates and types of ephemeral entity, the body of the text references Conditions that aren't listed in the Appendix or described anywhere, and the Appendix lists and describes Conditions that aren't ever called for or referenced in the body of the text. It's not even just the rules content. The body of the text careens wildly from topic to topic as it moves between paragraphs with no flow whatsoever. It's just book soup.
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Jul 28, 2021 03:00
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Ya'll should watch Blood Red Sky on Netflix if you haven't yet. I haven't seen a movie that tracks with the themes of Vampire: The Requiem so strongly in a while.
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Jul 29, 2021 02:42
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Edit :Whoops thought i was posting in the bloodlines thread.
Sentinel fucked around with this message at 00:10 on Jul 30, 2021 |
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Jul 30, 2021 00:02
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Speaking of other adjacent threads: a friend just pointed out that Debate and Discussion (was gonna abbreviate that, but...) has a Politics of VtM thread. In case any of the rest of you are as siloed as I am I figured I'd throw the link here.
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Jul 30, 2021 02:08
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I would like a feedback about an idea: I like WOD lore but I hate V5 and everything they did. I also love Requiem vampires and system. Specially 1e Requiem. I will start a new campaign in a couple months time and Im thinking of using Requiem with Masquerade. Using the idea listed in Beckets diary about multiples types of Gehenna, it would start as a change in the blood of Cainites. First the power of generation would be destroyed and changed to Blood potency. For most vampires that dont use Thaumaturgy the change will go unnoticed. But Thaumaturges would notice that every single vampire is counted as 0th generation. Elders would start to feel the effect of high blood potency (need for vampire blood, animal blood stop working,etc) and some would refer to old nodhists texts about sleeping to weaken the blood. The generation power also destroyed the clan ties, leaving the 5 clans of Requiem. A vampire would still be able to connect to their old clan (now in the system as bloodlines) but that would require a certain power of blood. Vampire nodhists would have lots of theories about it, most would think that now they are closer to the 2nd generation than the third. The fact that there is 5 main bloodlines would be explained using the theory that some third generations actually used diablerie on the second generation. So the Daeva would be considered descendants of Zillah, to give an example. It all started in the late 90´s so now in 2021 people are already used to it. What would you think of playing in this sort of game?
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Jul 30, 2021 21:40
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Derek Fcking Carr posted:I would like a feedback about an idea: the requiem-masquerade conversion guide covered most of this (mechanically and narratively) and it was fine
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Jul 30, 2021 22:02
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Derek Fcking Carr posted:What would you think of playing in this sort of game?
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Jul 30, 2021 22:51
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I’m trying to figure out how one would mechanically stat out a hook-on-a-chain weapon for a V20 game I’m a player in, and was wondering if anyone would have some suggestions or ideas. I was thinking of a sort of meat hook or grappling hook style end with a mid-length chain, so that it could be held up at the hook normally.
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Jul 30, 2021 23:30
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