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Doesn't W5 say that all the moon bridges got broken somehow?
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Sep 22, 2023 17:08
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It remains baffling to me that the _5 games insist on back-porting basically every structural element of the nWoD, including some of the worst and least popular aspects of its design, except that keeping around all the oWoD splats and like 50-100% of the backstory and metaplot is non-negotiable. We're going to do low-powered, toolkitty, localized games but we have to have Malkavians and Get.
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Sep 22, 2023 17:51
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i mean it makes perfect sense to me, just pretend you're a marketing ghoul who neither knows nor cares about game design but is at least dimly aware that the nWoD was a brand identity nightmare
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Sep 22, 2023 17:54
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:i mean it makes perfect sense to me, just pretend you're a marketing ghoul who neither knows nor cares about game design but is at least dimly aware that the nWoD was a brand identity nightmare Oh, sure, if market surveys reveal that Toreador have 0.3% more penetration than Daeva then we have no choice but to release Masquerade products from now until heat death. But why's the design team so preoccupied with criticisms leveled by some of the playerbase back in like 2003 to the point that they're apparently trying to construct Requiem but exclusively from Masquerade's components, or Forsaken from Apocalypse's, or Vigil from... nothing...?
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Sep 22, 2023 17:59
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Ferrinus posted:Oh, sure, if market surveys reveal that Toreador have 0.3% more penetration than Daeva then we have no choice but to release Masquerade products from now until heat death. But why's the design team so preoccupied with criticisms leveled by some of the playerbase back in like 2003 to the point that they're apparently trying to construct Requiem but exclusively from Masquerade's components, or Forsaken from Apocalypse's, or Vigil from... nothing...?
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Sep 22, 2023 18:04
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Nessus posted:Ferrinus my sibling in Jeffrey: can you not see the appeal of finally being able to prove your forums enemies wrong because you're the one writing the book? This was a big thing in Exalted, but it was a matter of various partisan freelancers slamming down sidebars about how X was secretly under the control of Y or Z was right/wrong/good/evil all along. They were bold, decisive! The X5s are taking this weird, cringing posture where like all the nWoD partisans were right all along about the oWoD being structurally flawed but we'll fix it we swear see look it works fine now!
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Sep 22, 2023 18:10
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Ferrinus posted:This was a big thing in Exalted, but it was a matter of various freelancers sneaking in sidebars about how X was secretly under the control of Y or Z was right/wrong/good/evil all along. They were bold, decisive! The X5s are taking this weird, cringing posture where like all the nWoD partisans were right all along about the oWoD being structurally flawed but we'll fix it we swear see look it works fine now!
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Sep 22, 2023 18:10
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The dude who spearheaded the entire oWoD return was convinced that nWoD was a disaster that killed White Wolf so I assume that has something to do with it.
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Sep 22, 2023 18:22
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Berkshire Hunts posted:The dude who spearheaded the entire oWoD return was convinced that nWoD was a disaster that killed White Wolf so I assume that has something to do with it. But then he wouldn't copy so much of the nWoD's design ethos! I think it's actually the opposite; I recall some press release around V5's announcement in which the company, maybe Ericsson himself, acknowledged that the nWoD was very good but had to be jettisoned for marketing reasons. Maybe I'm simply remembering it backwards due to my own biases, but it really does seem like the 5 writers have taken all the criticisms of the oWoD to heart... but are bound for financial, ideological, and nostalgia reasons to just paper over crack after crack rather than do anything good.
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Sep 22, 2023 18:26
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Personally I would have gone more gonzo and over-the-top with V5 and keep the nWoD for more personal horror, but I'm not in charge at all.
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Sep 22, 2023 19:02
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Dawgstar posted:Given what we know now about the line editor Karim I'm not sure how much to put on Achilli anyway. I've met Achilli. A lot of that poo poo was definitely him. Sorry he's the beloved white savior of CoD and I'm some filthy degenerate darkie with bad opinions, but I'm standing by my opinion.
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Sep 22, 2023 19:11
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MonsieurChoc posted:Personally I would have gone more gonzo and over-the-top with V5 and keep the nWoD for more personal horror, but I'm not in charge at all. That doesn't really work either, because nWoD has been more gonzo and over-the-top (if you're pulling from the right supplement material) than oWoD for years and years now. oWoD isn't really higher-powered or crazier, it's just tackier. Its setting details are more on-the-nose and stereotype-heavy, its metaphysics and lore are simpler and easier to "solve". Like, a guy in a trenchcoat carrying a katana isn't especially fearsome but he is very silly, and that's the kind of associations the old games have while the new games don't (but which the new-old games themselves are still sweatily embarrassed about). Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 19:52 on Sep 22, 2023 |
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Sep 22, 2023 19:44
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Ferrinus posted:That doesn't really work either, because nWoD has been more gonzo and over-the-top (if you're pulling from the right supplement material) than oWoD for years and years now. oWoD isn't really higher-powered or crazier, it's just tackier. Its setting details are more on-the-nose and stereotype-heavy, its metaphysics and lore are simpler and easier to "solve". Like, a guy in a trenchcoat carrying a katana isn't especially fearsome but he is very silly, and that's the kind of associations the old games have while the new games don't (but which the new-old themselves are still sweatily embarrassed about). I suppose Demons got funky, but they were also extremely loudly informed to keep it in their pants.
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Sep 22, 2023 19:47
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Nessus posted:Many things have I heard about nWoD but "gonzo and over-the-top" were not among them, with the honorable exception of the Count Freaking Dracula NPC. But as I recall even he was not, in fact, Dracula. Maybe we're not reading the word "gonzo" the same way but stuff like the Requiem clanbooks and its elder bloodlines, but also stuff like Predators out of Werewolf and a ton of stuff out of Mage (not even Imperial Mysteries itself but just like, Astral Realms and Intruders) tended to be extremely out-there, explosively powerful, or both. Count loving Dracula is sort of self-consciously silly and is a bit of a throwback to the playstyle (really, the online discussion style) that so many White Wolf gamers (really, posters) worked so hard to distance themselves from, but what I'm actually thinking of is stuff like the gigantic subterranean worm-monsters that probably spawned the entire Nosferatu clan, or the aeons at the far reaches of the sidereal wastes. Maybe the key here is that the word "gonzo" should be understood as a rhetorical shield to distance whoever's using it from something they're embarrassed about.
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Sep 22, 2023 19:56
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I'd say the nWoD got deeply weirder as time went on, but I feel it's still more horror focused. Like, Masquerade is two vampires with katanas fighting on top of a train style of over-the-top.
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Sep 22, 2023 19:57
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MonsieurChoc posted:I'd say the nWoD got deeply weirder as time went on, but I feel it's still more horror focused. That sounds like a lot of fun to me!
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Sep 22, 2023 19:59
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MrMojok posted:That sounds like a lot of fun to me! Definitely! That's why I think V5 should have doubled down on it. Get people to draw it like a 90s OVA.
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Sep 22, 2023 20:00
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MonsieurChoc posted:I'd say the nWoD got deeply weirder as time went on, but I feel it's still more horror focused. I guess the question is... is it, though? Did the setting or mechanics ever support it particularly well? Was the widespread, sneering contempt (at least a loud portion of) the fanbase had for that kind of story a response to a lot of people actually doing that, or was it all pretension? I guess I haven't seen a katana plus trenchcoat in any of my nWoD games, although a Mage player did combine a katana made of folded spacetime with, like, a tweed professor's jacket complete with elbow patches. But certainly there's been crazy combat aboard racing minecarts and submarines and what have you. So can the oWoD even boast of unique suitability or precedent for "gonzo", except for the specific case that all the action figures you're banging together represent different ethnic stereotypes?
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Sep 22, 2023 20:09
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Ferrinus posted:I guess the question is... is it, though? Did the setting or mechanics ever support it particularly well? Was the widespread, sneering contempt (at least a loud portion of) the fanbase had for that kind of story a response to a lot of people actually doing that, or was it all pretension? Good question. In my mind it does, but that's over the years of playing and reading and playing Bloodlines and playing the card game and shitposting online and stuff. Comparing, say, the Clan Novels versus the Requiem Chicago trilogy gives a very different view of the setting, even if it has zero gameplay elements.
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Sep 22, 2023 20:13
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I'll put "Earth" Baines up against any oWoD signature character.
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Sep 22, 2023 20:15
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Fuzz posted:I've met Achilli. A lot of that poo poo was definitely him. Sorry he's the beloved white savior of CoD and I'm some filthy degenerate darkie with bad opinions, but I'm standing by my opinion. Okay, but I was referring to James Sambrano, himself of Indigenous descent, saying it was Karim who overruled him on matters related to Werewolf.
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Sep 22, 2023 20:23
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Ferrinus posted:But then he wouldn't copy so much of the nWoD's design ethos! You’re probably right, I’m going off my memory of secondhand reports about the documentary they did so that’s like three degrees of telephone at least.
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Sep 22, 2023 20:26
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Dawgstar posted:Okay, but I was referring to James Sambrano, himself of Indigenous descent, saying it was Karim who overruled him on matters related to Werewolf. The only person I'd really trust to "Get" Werewolf 5th edition right would be Skemp and he's nowhere to be found. I can't begrudge Achilli for not getting Werewolf's themes right, but that doesn't really mean i'm inclined to buy it.
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Sep 22, 2023 20:39
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Ferrinus posted:although a Mage player did combine a katana made of folded spacetime with, like, a tweed professor's jacket complete with elbow patches. 
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Sep 22, 2023 20:41
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Kurieg posted:The only person I'd really trust to "Get" Werewolf 5th edition right would be Skemp and he's nowhere to be found. I can't begrudge Achilli for not getting Werewolf's themes right, but that doesn't really mean i'm inclined to buy it. I'm sort of buddies with Ethan now, which is neat, but CCP just wore him out when it comes to game developing and I can't blame him.
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Sep 22, 2023 20:51
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Honestly nWOD could probably have thrived in the post-Twilight era, urban fantasy became super popular as a genre and it was mostly through CCP's malign neglect that the World of Darkness, both old and new, became little more than a nostalgia brand.
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Sep 22, 2023 21:03
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A bunch of the old team just retired, I think. Andrew Bates, who was the dev for Trinity and Adventure!, for example. And I haven't heard of Grabowski in years.Dawgstar posted:I'm sort of buddies with Ethan now, which is neat, but CCP just wore him out when it comes to game developing and I can't blame him. I remember Ethan Skemp being a cool guy on the rpg.net forums and had fun with the comic book drafts back in the days, before I got perma'd because I had a meltdown over Beast. Hope he's doing good.
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Sep 22, 2023 21:17
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MonsieurChoc posted:...I liked Kindred of the Ebony Kingdom, aside from the poo poo Orun/Aye mechanics. Unlike Kindred of the East, the author had at least read a wikipedia article about a couple of African countries (baby steps!). Guess what! The formatting is absolutely hosed, and none of the pictures pasted, but it should still be readable. (If anyone knows a better way to turn old saved webpages into readable content I would love to know, I had enough trouble just viewing the drat things) Predaphile/IHAL, if you're seeing this - hmu, we used to chat back on the WW forums and Shadownessence. 
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Sep 22, 2023 23:26
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Skemp is still on the rpgnet forums, mostly talking about his D&D games and having fun. Deviant, the final CofD game, definitely went full gonzo in a good way. Build your own splat and revel in the joy of your Robocop/The Fly/Kamen Rider throwing Dick Jones off the top story of the OCP building. Or make Blade and show the Ordo Dracul what happens when some muthafuckas always try to skate uphill.
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Sep 22, 2023 23:32
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Ferrinus posted:I think it's actually the opposite; I recall some press release around V5's announcement in which the company, maybe Ericsson himself, acknowledged that the nWoD was very good but had to be jettisoned for marketing reasons. Maybe I'm simply remembering it backwards due to my own biases, but it really does seem like the 5 writers have taken all the criticisms of the oWoD to heart... but are bound for financial, ideological, and nostalgia reasons to just paper over crack after crack rather than do anything good. Instead it seems like the _5 lines have gone for the worst of all possible worlds: being enough of a reboot to feel like a break in continuity from the old stuff in the way the _20 stuff doesn't, but not enough of a reboot to flat-out redesign things from the ground up to avoid all this. Gatto Grigio posted:Deviant, the final CofD game, definitely went full gonzo in a good way. Build your own splat and revel in the joy of your Robocop/The Fly/Kamen Rider throwing Dick Jones off the top story of the OCP building.
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Sep 22, 2023 23:56
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AmiYumi posted:Last time this came up, I thought I had that saved on an old external. Oh hell yeah! Gatto Grigio posted:Skemp is still on the rpgnet forums, mostly talking about his D&D games and having fun. Oh that's nice!
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Sep 23, 2023 00:48
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Warthur posted:Wait, was it the final CofD game? Have they said that they're not doing any more? Or is it just the most recent ones? It's not Officially the Final Gameline, it's just the last new gameline to come out before we landed at this current phase where some combination of Paradox refusing to greenlight CofD books and Rich Thomas trying to refocus around OPP's owned properties and the ones with safer licenses means that we don't seem to be getting any new CofD projects aside from stuff that was already promised as Kickstarter stretch goals.
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Sep 23, 2023 01:01
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I Am Just a Box posted:It's not Officially the Final Gameline, it's just the last new gameline to come out before we landed at this current phase where some combination of Paradox refusing to greenlight CofD books and Rich Thomas trying to refocus around OPP's owned properties and the ones with safer licenses means that we don't seem to be getting any new CofD projects aside from stuff that was already promised as Kickstarter stretch goals.
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Sep 23, 2023 01:27
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MonsieurChoc posted:Definitely! That's why I think V5 should have doubled down on it. Get people to draw it like a 90s OVA. It may make me a heretic ITT, because I know this isn’t what WoD is all about. I haven’t played the TTRPG since whatever version it was in about 1996 or so. And I do understand that what I want isn’t what most Vampire players want. But the opening sequence of Blade is what I personally want a game like this to be about. Not necessarily where the players are superheroes, but I do want it to be over the top. The players should be able to absolutely whale on the kine if need be, and be threatened only by others like them. Give me insane celerity and auspex and make me a killing machine. It’s how I’ve always played Bloodlines, create a character and then open the console and add points here and there to make him into Blade. Yeah, I start out overpowered. But I keep a low profile whenever possible, until I need to do otherwise, and when I need to do otherwise, watch out, suckheads and mortals! For the RPG, I like the idea of a group of characters who have walked into or perhaps started a war between clans. Now they have to both fight against the opposition but also keep clear of the cops, and uphold the masquerade as best they can. Or a character(s) who have infiltrated a clan for the purposes of damaging them, and eventually they will be found out, and it leads to fights on top of a subway train or a building, double and triple-cross. Powerful, evil beings fighting each other for supremacy and when inevitably mortals get involved, well… there is some collateral damage. You have to deal with it the way Agents deal with it in Delta Green. Okay now that I’ve completely turned everyone off, I will lurk for another couple of years. e: I guess I have just described D&D but with VtM rules and setting MrMojok fucked around with this message at 06:01 on Sep 23, 2023 |
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Sep 23, 2023 05:59
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Nessus posted:Of all the lines, other than maybe Changeling, Werewolf seemed to be the one best suited for a 'road trip' style of chronicle but maybe that's the bad kind of fun. Promethean kinda pretty much enforces this playstyle, what with your presence literally blighting the land and turning people against you the longer you stay in one place and all, and having an underground society of hobo frankensteins who use alchemy-derived hobo markings. Like with Mage being academia slapfights with actual magic, it's at least a clear core concept and one that's pretty fun at least in theory to be able to style a campaign around.
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Sep 23, 2023 08:41
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Kurieg posted:The only person I'd really trust to "Get" Werewolf 5th edition right would be Skemp and he's nowhere to be found. I could think other people who could write a good Werewolf game, even if the end results would diverge from both WT:A V5 and Legacy story and tone wise. One I could think on the top of my head is the guys who wrote SPIRE, who got the rage agent the MAN (tm) tone of werewolf down (with THE MAN(tm) being high elf occupying your homeland, rather than grimderp captain planet villeins). Hell SPIRE even got Gonzo Just look at the classes in the core and supplement which includes animist batman, a rabble rouser who at higher levels could turn into a literal riot, a perpetually drunken ganger-knight who access they high level skills by going on quests and a literal pulp author whose belief in they story is so strong it manifests into reality (although huffing magical runoff ink helps too). Hell I know of a poster on SpaceBattles who have some fascinating insights on Garou politics. Like part of a post on how the Fennia is divided is an amusing anecdote on how the British branch of Fennia want to change the tribes name since the name is an Irish hero, they came up with Wolves of the Round Table. It was quickly rejected. Edit: hell if you really despite then you can then could have Matt Ward write W5 would have opposite problem... MrMojok posted:e: I guess I have just described D&D but with VtM rules and setting Well one of my ideas is basically H:TR by the way of dark hearsay that is also a fusion of project moon verse, which I head cannon as World of Darkness after dozens of simultaneous apocalypse. Ghost Armor 1337 fucked around with this message at 10:13 on Sep 23, 2023 |
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Sep 23, 2023 08:46
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This is now a Shadownessence nostalgia thread. I Hate All Life is cool and good.
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Sep 23, 2023 11:39
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Man, Shadownessence. I was such an edgy teenage twat back then, I am so so sorry for being a bad poster. Still loved the site.MrMojok posted:It may make me a heretic ITT, because I know this isn’t what WoD is all about. I legit love running WoD games that way, so you're definitely not alienating anyone.
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Sep 23, 2023 11:48
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ZearothK posted:Man, Shadownessence. I was such an edgy teenage twat back then, I am so so sorry for being a bad poster. Still loved the site. We all were, even if we weren't teenagers. I'm sorry for being a bad mod. And yes, I loved that place.
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Sep 23, 2023 11:50
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MrMojok posted:It may make me a heretic ITT, because I know this isn’t what WoD is all about. Please allow me to introduce you to All of Their Strengths.
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Sep 23, 2023 12:07
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