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Free Gratis posted:Not that I can find. There certainly is no CoD style "Power Stat" on the character sheet. drat, sucks for them. I'll give Werewolf this, though: Rage dice are a much, much better design than Hunger dice. They actually do an elegant job of illustrating the way that rage is a double-edged sword, since rage dice effectively have an expanded crit range if you're doing anything violent with the exact same probability that they might spoil your attempt to do anything peaceful; meanwhile, Hunger just sucks, such that a hungry vampire is simply a strictly-worse version of a sated vampire. And, when rage dice do activate, they just do it by changing the outcome of a roll rather than by saddling you with an extra responsibility to punish someone for attempting a roll no matter what; you don't have to go flipping through tables and lists to think of some appropriate negative consequence to parcel out because someone simply can't be allowed to get away with rolling a pair of red 1s. It's still outrageously stupid that taking damage gives you +Rage except when you're in combat. Damage-based combat-speed mana regen would've been perfect! Who could possibly see that game-mechanical slam dunk and deliberately spoil it??
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Mar 11, 2024 02:12
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Ferrinus posted:drat, sucks for them. Honesty in my version of wta I would Heavily dempathasized Rage, hingosk and haran, with the narrative justification being garou getting hit by Ayin Pillar of light (before yes this setting is a PM verse/wod fusion).
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Mar 11, 2024 05:13
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Ferrinus posted:Unless I'm even more behind on errata than I thought, I don't think this is true. The BP bonus adds to dice pools to use or resist disciplines, not to your Disciplines' actual ratings. If you have BP 6, you get +3 dice to activate Spark of Rage, but I don't think your static Potence score is treated as three points higher for determining how much damage Prowess adds to your punches. No, you're correct there. But LAbN's bad rules, and other house rules from various people to 'fix' things because 'V5 nerfed everything' (which ignores the underlying math changes anyway) keep getting forum-reddit-whatever'd into peoples' brains.
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Mar 11, 2024 22:23
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MoonKnight posted:No, you're correct there. But LAbN's bad rules, and other house rules from various people to 'fix' things because 'V5 nerfed everything' (which ignores the underlying math changes anyway) keep getting forum-reddit-whatever'd into peoples' brains. I will admit to goofing then. Sorry Ferrinus.
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Mar 11, 2024 23:40
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The elder power level stuff is very helpful to me because I’ve been planning to run V5 for the first time, but I’d prefer to run a WWDiTS-style game where the PCs are all elders who have been all been undead for a least two centuries. In your opinions, is an elders game doable mechanically, or would it be a hassle?
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Mar 12, 2024 06:19
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I Am Just a Box posted:White Wolf and its successors have had a long history of saying the word "mortal" and meaning "non-supernatural human." And a long history of being ambiguous and inconsistent whether various lesser touches of the supernatural like ghouling count as being this kind of "mortal" or not. It is at least kinda fitting thematically that even mechanics-wise that lesser supernatural touches leave people in a state that's not quite one thing nor t'other as far as said supernatural forces are concerned. Ghost Armor 1337 posted:Ah yes one many possible identity of Big D. He would also have a golden crown which is much better than that dweeb MorningKill's sliver crown. Heh, and that just makes me think Dresden Files (apologies, probably) where Mother Winter of the fey wears cold iron false teeth.
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Mar 12, 2024 09:23
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Gatto Grigio posted:The elder power level stuff is very helpful to me because I’ve been planning to run V5 for the first time, but I’d prefer to run a WWDiTS-style game where the PCs are all elders who have been all been undead for a least two centuries. It is doable, yeah. Blood Potency does a lot of heavy lifting for making them as powerful as they have to be.
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Mar 12, 2024 11:57
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drat, I hadn't heard about the OPP stuff (mostly because I was trying to keep away from bad internet poo poo in 2020), it's too bad the game I love so much I'm getting it tattooed on me is currently run by shitlords. Anyway, catching up on ~14 pages of thread, Forsaken is pretty cool but my players have been strictly Mages for half a decade now. Is the combat in other CofD games actually good? In Mage it's usually clusterfuck rocket tag, with a side of "time-travelling back two turns where you lost Rocket Tag to try and re-win it again instead".
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Mar 14, 2024 05:48
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Spector29 posted:Is the combat in other CofD games actually good? In Mage it's usually clusterfuck rocket tag, with a side of "time-travelling back two turns where you lost Rocket Tag to try and re-win it again instead". No. I do feel the CofD 2e version is pretty good for playing mortals in a horror context, as rocket tag fits that very well. It should be dangerous and deadly; but for most supernaturals it fails at being tactically interesting or effective in emulating action movie scenarios. World of Darkness has failed at emulating Blade and Underworld for 30 years now despite that being how a lot of people want to run it and it doesn't look like that will change.
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Mar 14, 2024 11:50
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Demon and Werewolf make their respective protagonists a bit more durable, which is better than the baseline, but that isn't saying much.
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Mar 14, 2024 13:36
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I don't mind rocket taggy combat in principle, but combat as swingy and tactically straightforward as ChronD probably doesn't need stuff like three different combat skills, fighting styles, autofire rules, etc.
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Mar 15, 2024 00:22
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I’d probably give Deviant the gold star for “best combat in CofD” because they introduced the Goon Combat mechanic. It’s a neat halfway option for when you want PCs to fight a large group of mooks that’s easy to track, but still more tactically complex than resolving everything in a single roll. Also the game is great and probably the closest you’ll find to a CofD game that emulates fun schlocky action-horror like Blade or Underworld
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Mar 15, 2024 04:42
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According to Rich Dansky, prolific WW author James A. Moore has passed away. All of us should be so lucky as to create something like Sgt. Rage and His Killing Commandos.
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Mar 27, 2024 22:14
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Dawgstar posted:According to Rich Dansky, prolific WW author James A. Moore has passed away. All of us should be so lucky as to create something like Sgt. Rage and His Killing Commandos.
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Mar 27, 2024 22:33
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Hello, here’s the final recap of our NYC campaign, which has after two years reached its conclusion. Thank you to everyone who has read and enjoyed these recaps. As usual, our coterie consists of Thomas the Triad Tremere and Benedict the GOP Ventrue. Previously, the coterie promised a vague surprise gift to the Malkavian Primogen, Carter Vanderweyden, in order to make peace between them and the deadline is fast approaching. Also a Blood Hunt was called for one Walter Nash for seditious activities against the Prince, with the player coterie having informed the Prince of Nash’s intentions. We skipped through the following night and Nash is destroyed off-screen, since we have more important matters to focus our limited playtime on. The coterie is meeting with the Nosferatu Cockroach, a frequent ally, who is providing the coterie information on the activities of the FBI's Special Affairs Division, who in turn are hunting the coterie. Cockroach has learned that they are working with local politicians to gentrify the coterie’s domain to make hunting and feeding more difficult for them. She has some documents to prove this and provide more details, but as she enters her VW minibus/mobile haven to retrieve said documents, all hell breaks loose. A large caliber incendiary round is shot into the van, fired by an unseen sniper, and the van is immediately engulfed in flames, destroying everything inside, including Cockroach. A SWAT van bursts into the scene and deploys four fully armed and armored agents. The players decide it’s best to skedaddle, but not before Benedict takes some damage from flaming Dragon’s Breath rounds from a shotgun, letting the vampires know that these are professional hunters. They manage to escape the hunters, but are followed by a robotic dog-drone as well as a helicopter with searchlights. Some tense running and hiding ensues, but eventually the players take a trip through the sewers and manage to lose their pursuers. But they are not yet in the clear. I tell Thomas to make a Sense the Unseen check, which he unfortunately fails, and does not notice the Malkavian Ken Vincent until he has sunk his meat cleaver into Thomas’ shoulder. Ken Vincent had been tasked with causing grievous harm to the players, and it’s clear that’s why he is there. As a fun little metagame detail with Ken Vincent, I specifically mentioned that since he is a dull businessman with no variables, he will be using general difficulties and never roll a die. Thomas is not very good at melee combat, and Benedict is not good at any combat, but they manage to hold their own for a while, until Ken Vincent checks his watch, mutters “I will not do overtime” and rouses to increase all difficulties. One more round of combat and Thomas finds himself impaired, at which point Ken Vincent informs them that grievous harm has been caused and his task is complete, he hopes that the coterie is satisfied with his results and is open for future business inquiries, before disappearing into the night. The coterie has survived for now, but it’s clear that their enemies are close and they will need help. They decide to visit the city’s newest Elysium to inform the local coterie, Culture Club, and Uncle Smelly of the final death of their coterie mate and childe. Since Cockroach died doing a task the players had given her and the players are quite open about this, neither Culture Club nor Uncle Smelly can be convinced that this isn’t the players’ fault. Uncle Smelly reminds them that Clan Nosferatu is known for holding grudges and even if it takes years, decades, or even centuries, there will be payback. Culture Club, and their leader Portia, the new Keeper of the Elysium, has difficulties understanding how the players are even alive if they get their asses handed to them by their dinner (since most Kindred are not aware how strong actual state-backed hunters are). The players also consider that it’s polite to inform that these hunters are monitoring the club, because they monitor places the coterie frequents. For some reason, Portia is not delighted to learn that the players have led hunters to her Elysium. Before she has a chance to further berate the players, an employee of hers informs her that the Elysium has uninvited guests. This does not concern Portia, (who may or may not be that Portia), she will take care of it and make sure the hunters become permanent guests in the secret dungeons. Though she does attempt to wipe the player character’s memory of these details (she has a lot of dice), Benedict manages to resist but Thomas leaves with no memory other than the situation is under control. They are then politely encouraged to enjoy what the Elysium has to offer but not to linger. Both of them try to feed from Blood Dolls. Thomas has the Obvious Predator Flaw and no social skills, so no one agrees to let him feed on them. Benedict managed to messy crit his roll, completely draining a Blood Doll and causing a huge mess, but with an amazing social roll managed to turn this homicide into a minor faux pas, he was even given a new set of clothes to replace those stained by blood. So, the players are in a bit of a pickle. Their enemies are closing in and their number of allies is decreasing. While pondering their next move, Thomas is still hungry has to hunt. His new habit of Batman-style assaulting local petty criminals for sustenance fails, but he still has his old habit of blood bags to fall back upon. Unfortunately the prices are rising and with some terrible rolls, he ends up in even more debt to the unknown faction currently controlling the local Blood Trade. Even more unfortunate is that afterwards he is feeling sluggish and the constant hunger is even more nagging than usual. As a doctor, Thomas manages to diagnose that he is suffering from heavy metal poisoning, caused by the suspect blood bags he drank. The players continue to ponder their next moves. They are desperate. Even leaving the city and trying to outlive their opposition is considered. But it’s clear to me that they have forgotten that they had promised to deliver something and the time is up. A black SUV parks in front of their haven and the Malkavian Primogen, Carter Vanderweyden, his childe Ken Vincent, and two armed ghouls enter. Carter asks the coterie “I believe you promised to deliver me a surprise?” And with that cliffhanger ends our session and our campaign. I hope you have enjoyed these recaps and thanks again to everyone who read them! Time for me to go back to lurking 
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Mar 27, 2024 23:16
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Oh man, that is a hell of an ending! Are we to assume they lived through the malk's disappointment?
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Mar 27, 2024 23:37
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Dawgstar posted:According to Rich Dansky, prolific WW author James A. Moore has passed away. All of us should be so lucky as to create something like Sgt. Rage and His Killing Commandos. drat that's awful. I knew I recognized his name from my reviews and after looking it up, he wrote one of my favorite chapters from Haunts 
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Mar 28, 2024 03:52
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So the coterie in my V5 game took on some independent Fomori and won the fight. The vampires had no idea what they were fighting but decided to drink on the losers since they were in pretty rough shape after winning. I went looking and couldn't find anything even in the old material about the effects of drinking that type of vitae... what if anything would y'all do to make things interesting? So far I thought about having one of the vampires have a bane tagging along in their head, not in control but just there and curious until the Fomori blood runs out.
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Mar 28, 2024 12:38
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TheKingslayer posted:So the coterie in my V5 game took on some independent Fomori and won the fight. The vampires had no idea what they were fighting but decided to drink on the losers since they were in pretty rough shape after winning.  The Bane thing is interesting. What established lore I can recall is that Banes who try to possess vampires either bounce off the power of the Blood, or end up the eternal junior power, unless they happen to thematically play nice with the Beast. (So a Wakshaani that merged with a Nosferatu has only made the Nosferatu's stank stronger.) One possibility is that they are now sweating out Wyrm-tainted traces, which could put a Garou on their trail depending on where they go. Having the Bane as a silent, enigmatic partner to one or another party member, handled in notes or DMs, sounds interesting. They might also draw attention from Tremere or Malkavians, who might (for very different reasons) be able to sense the Bane.
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Mar 28, 2024 16:10
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Soonmot posted:Oh man, that is a hell of an ending! Are we to assume they lived through the malk's disappointment? We didn't actually speculate on that when we wrapped up the campaign. The disappointed Malkavian has been the major antagonist of our campaign, starting with demanding the coterie to cut off their own limbs as compensation for disrespect, and since then the coterie has continued to not offer any reparations for their rude behaviour, so Carter has not only sent his henchmen to beat up the coterie and mess up their property, he has also spread malicious rumors to socially isolate the coterie. Also a major theme of our campaign was the players characters being naïve, overwhelmed, and constantly hosed over. I'd say it's safe to assume the coterie is not seen again.
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Mar 28, 2024 19:25
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Nessus posted:
"Why does the Beast, the largest bane, not simply eat the others?" The Beast doesn't so much make a Bane bounce off of it as consume it. I think the implication is that each vampire is walking around with a shard of the Eater Of Souls in their soul. My Ravnos ended up biting some weird Bane thing as well in an effort to not hit Hunger 5 and since then hasn't been able to get the taste out of his mouth. He's constantly gargling and spitting out tequila and doing other things to mask a flavor that only fades temporarily when he Slakes enough Hunger to harm someone.
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Mar 29, 2024 20:34
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Look up Beast Shard in Blood Sigils. Tada.
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Mar 30, 2024 03:45
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Ended up making a Bane that calls itself, The Captain. Looks like a flash scorched humanoid corpse in an age of sail naval officer's uniform since it came from a highly toxic byproduct of making stealth coated ship hulls from a shipyard in the city. The players aren't really familiar with Banes in or out of game so they've been curious about what it exactly is. So far it encourages the player it's riding along in to indulge in all their worst impulses and answers questions directed at it with misleading answers.
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Apr 7, 2024 10:41
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I came back here after discovering W5 exists in the world and was shocked to have heard nothing about it or have noticed it was out during my every couple of weeks visit to this thread. But after going back in time and reading all the posts I can see why. These newer games just don't seem to be for me anymore which is a shame, but I'll keep up with books and hopefully take a liking to some project in the future. It just feels like what made those oWoD games oWoD and magical for me aren't what those games are now about ( by which I don't mean the old time hackish racism ). As I was to hear W5 had already come out, I'm loving shocked as hell that they not only made H5 but that H5 is out? It's only a few notches down from the confusion I'd have to learn Mummy: The Resurrection 5th Edition hit the shelves. Oh well. Vhujunka are pretty cool. Old Doggy Bastard fucked around with this message at 04:30 on Apr 9, 2024 |
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Apr 9, 2024 03:57
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H5 is actually pretty great and miles ahead of old Reckoning. The grognards are mad because they basically adapted HtV and made it very street level homebrew Hunters fighting ghosts with shotguns full of rock salt and grim determination and a lot of luck instead of making them literal servants of biblical angels with stupid bullshit powers. It uses a pretty cool setup of tracking the overall Desperation of your Hunt which is basically a Blades style clock that's counting down how dangerous the situation is progressively getting, while also giving you ever increasing dice bonuses as you lean into your Hunter skillset. It's fun and good and just got another book out recently that was solid and had a lot of cool tips on how to make weird and scary antagonists and pace and setup an investigation and mystery hunt.
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Apr 9, 2024 13:47
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I'll dissent here and say I was disappointed that H5 was literally just the Hunters Hunted supplement written big. I liked the Imbued. Call me a grognard if you must, God45 will judge us all.
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Apr 9, 2024 13:59
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Old Doggy Bastard posted:These newer games just don't seem to be for me anymore which is a shame, but I'll keep up with books and hopefully take a liking to some project in the future. It just feels like what made those oWoD games oWoD and magical for me aren't what those games are now about ( by which I don't mean the old time hackish racism ). As I was to hear W5 had already come out, I'm loving shocked as hell that they not only made H5 but that H5 is out? It's only a few notches down from the confusion I'd have to learn Mummy: The Resurrection 5th Edition hit the shelves. Oh well. Vhujunka are pretty cool. Believe it or not, there's a very simple reason Hunter was second and that's because thanks to the video games Reckoning has the biggest brand recognition of any of the lines, including Vampire. ZearothK posted:I'll dissent here and say I was disappointed that H5 was literally just the Hunters Hunted supplement written big. I liked the Imbued. Call me a grognard if you must, God45 will judge us all. It's not really a dissent. H5 didn't land with as much as an awkward thud as W5 did but for the people who liked Reckoning there wasn't much of it in H5 beyond the name and while I'm the first to admit a lot to do with the Imbued needs some very critical work it's probably for the best we didn't see Paradox attempt it going off of W5. Still, it's a very baby bathwater situation.
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Apr 9, 2024 14:42
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Dawgstar posted:It's not really a dissent. H5 didn't land with as much as an awkward thud as W5 did but for the people who liked Reckoning there wasn't much of it in H5 beyond the name and while I'm the first to admit a lot to do with the Imbued needs some very critical work it's probably for the best we didn't see Paradox attempt it going off of W5. Still, it's a very baby bathwater situation. The fact that hunter was a smaller and less popular game (Despite it's bizarrely large brand recognition) is probably why it didn't fall flat on it's face as hard as W5 did. Ericksson was talking about how he wanted to change Werewolf the minute he bought the license, I'm betting Hunter had very little editorial meddling from him.
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Apr 9, 2024 14:51
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Kurieg posted:The fact that hunter was a smaller and less popular game (Despite it's bizarrely large brand recognition) is probably why it didn't fall flat on it's face as hard as W5 did. Ericksson was talking about how he wanted to change Werewolf the minute he bought the license, I'm betting Hunter had very little editorial meddling from him. True. It wasn't from that golden WoD 2E era Ericsson was so infatuated with.
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Apr 9, 2024 14:58
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It’s just really funny to be called a grognard for being disappointed that new Hunter: The Reckoning bears no resemblance to actual Hunter: The Reckoning, considering the hordes of people upset that old Hunter: The Reckoning wasn’t just Hunters Hunted Revised. The Imbued were so poorly received by old WoD heads. Calling H5, “Reckoning” is such a nakedly cynical attempt to exploit the video games’ brand recognition, but ok, call me a grognard for being one of the few people that actually dug The Imbued for being a different spin on the Hunter archetype within WoD.
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Apr 9, 2024 16:00
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Kurieg posted:The fact that hunter was a smaller and less popular game (Despite it's bizarrely large brand recognition) is probably why it didn't fall flat on it's face as hard as W5 did. Ericksson was talking about how he wanted to change Werewolf the minute he bought the license, I'm betting Hunter had very little editorial meddling from him. Considering that Ericsson was already gone and H5 was made under Achilli's watch as creative director, I'd be surprised if he touched it in any way. If I had to speculate, Ericsson's plan was probably for an H5 with the Imbued but ultimately never got a chance. The Camarilla sourcebook identifies the Imbued as a kind of people who might be on FIRSTLIGHT's payroll when striking vampires, and the problems with the Imbued are 100% the kind of things Ericsson would love to lean into, considering his takes on where Werewolf should go. As far as I know, that bit of Camarilla is still in the Renegade printings, so hey! The Imbued are in WoD5, just, you know, Mike Wazowski style. Dawgstar posted:Believe it or not, there's a very simple reason Hunter was second and that's because thanks to the video games Reckoning has the biggest brand recognition of any of the lines, including Vampire. Which is very funny considering that you can't really play the protagonists of those games without engaging in some serious reskinning and a very permissive Storyteller. But that's probably fine from a business standpoint; the iron on those games are ice cold and I doubt most people picking up H5 at the moment even have the old video games on their minds, or any WoD video game that isn't Bloodlines 1, Bloodlines 2, or maybe the Choice of games. Plus, Hunter's also probably second because Werewolf was super delayed, given that Hunter's Entertainment's W5 was cancelled favor of the version Renegade published. Sambrano started commenting on the W5 situation because he was trying to see if his written work at Hunters ended up in the published version uncredited, if I recall correctly. I doubt it was intended to be a stopgap in releases, though, that was probably just unfortunate timing. Fuzz posted:It uses a pretty cool setup of tracking the overall Desperation of your Hunt which is basically a Blades style clock that's counting down how dangerous the situation is progressively getting, while also giving you ever increasing dice bonuses as you lean into your Hunter skillset. Forgive me for this, but I think that's a bit of an oversimplification, and I am Compelled to write words. For those not familiar with H5, Desperation is the level of anxiety and urgency in the cell while on the Hunt, and the dice bonus goes up and down quite often! The better things seem to go for the Hunters, the lower Desperation becomes, and vice versa when things get worse. These are accessed with Desperation Fields, the only real hard mechanic attached to the game's Creeds. These are super broad, but only apply to the Hunt and in practice might only see access in certain phases of the story, certain Creeds are more likely to tap on their Desperation Fields at certain points of the hunt than others. Danger is more the, well, overall danger tracker, but it's really more how aware the cell's quarry is aware of their pursuit. Danger mechanically serves as a free floating number to slap onto things that the quarry uses to retaliate or protect itself. It might be a dice bonus to a monster ability, a dice penalty on a Hunter when not attacking its weakness, the number of guards around its lair, or even the base Difficulty to hit it at all. It only reduces when the Hunters lay low for a while, or in some stories, when Hunters create situations where outsiders and innocents are put in harm's way. They're independent X and Y axes for story pacing, how the cell feels internally compared to the actual situation on the ground around them. In theory, a cell can be really desperate while the quarry barely knows they exist, and a confident cell can get their poo poo rocked by a quarry that's got the drop on them. As someone currently playing H5 as a break from his V5 chronicle, I think the game's all right. It very much is just Tier 1 HtV: The Game, maybe even moreso (and only Tier 1; you're not the Imbued but you're also not the Union, VASCU, Task Force: Valkyrie, Cherion, or even many monster hunting/urban fantasy protagonists post Season 2 of their respective series) with a good dollop of Hunters Hunted. I think this is a much harder sell than people realize, but I also think there's a way bigger audience for asphalt-crawling street level monster hunting games than people realize as well. A lot of people are turned off by the fact that Hunters attached to organizations are in-fiction referred to as sellouts and jobbers, and there's of-course the infamous comparison of a cell to a tech startup, but in practice I can't say I feel too restrained not providing the antagonist orgs as player character options for my group. ...Except for Orpheus Group. I wish they'd saved that for a Wraith 5 book, but it's fun to see them here and in an active state before the events of the game line. Still, they're the only ones I go "Man, I wish they were playable!" Love those folks. The game can be a bit weird when it's played, especially if your players aren't really into the idea of reskinning the intentionally broad, mostly material based set of "powers" H5 Hunters have. You are indeed fighting ghosts with grim determination and rock salt...you know, as long as you consistently roll that required Difficulty 4 test to have access to your cool custom sawed-off from scene to scene. Or the required Difficulty 4 to get your drone in the air, or roll enough successes to spend a day off-screen researching worthwhile, or to use some of the three supernatural-focused Edges available. That's being a bit harsh to the Edge system, and in theory this should be where Hunters can tap into their Desperation and their Willpower and also where the Storyteller should step up and offer Wins at a Cost should neither of those be available, but that might not be something you easily pick up on if this is your very first WoD game, which H5 is often brought up as an option for. The book does let you know the high Difficulties (at least, high for the pools of most starting characters who didn't use the Specialist skill spread to hyper focus for their preferred Edge pools) are intentional and suggests having players tap into Desperation, but that's where the Fields can potentially hinder the game. They're broad, but I wouldn't say they're all as equally effective as the other. Monster design is pretty simple, slap two different Difficulties where it's strong and where it's weak, give it some Health and Willpower, and give it a few abilities (the equivalent of Vigil's Dread Powers.) It's so simple that its antagonist section is actually mostly story hooks and descriptions of how they work in the hunt. Those are cool, but might disappoint those looking for a larger variety of stuff to Hunt that they don't have to make themselves. For better or worse, every Hunt is a big deal, every Quarry is a dedicated character. There are some big missed opportunities, though. Cutting out Loresheets, one of the unique hooks of this edition, is justified in the book as Hunters not knowing the lore of the World of Darkness around them, which is fine but short-sighted. Since Hunters have very little special mechanics meaning that 60% to 80% of the time you're just playing the baseline Storyteller 5 rule set, this could have been a way to shift the Loresheet design space into something akin to Vigil's Tactics or ways to tap into other special things your Hunter can do when they might not have the right opportunity to tap into their Desperation. A lot of the Advantages and Flaws are brought over from Vampire save for some fun new ones, and I wish they had space to fit in more of the latter, or did a bit more retooling for the carryovers to fit the Hunter theme. Not glaring flaws in the least, but it would have been some fantastic polish. So yeah, I like H5 enough. It's never going to beat HtV 1e for me, but it makes a good effort at being an explicitly street level game in a market where there's less of that than you think and I'm willing to work with it being a bit of a loose yet harsh ruleset. Free Cog fucked around with this message at 17:37 on Apr 9, 2024 |
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Apr 9, 2024 16:13
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Free Cog posted:The game can be a bit weird when it's played, especially if your players aren't really into the idea of reskinning the intentionally broad, mostly material based set of "powers" H5 Hunters have. You are indeed fighting ghosts with grim determination and rock salt...you know, as long as you consistently roll that required Difficulty 4 test to have access to your cool custom sawed-off from scene to scene. Or the required Difficulty 4 to get your drone in the air, or roll enough successes to spend a day off-screen researching worthwhile, or to use some of the three supernatural-focused Edges available. This is largely why our group bounced hard off of H5. Mechanically it felt too copy/pasted from vampire and also as an American group there was big narrative dissonance when you compared the various Edges. The 'I Have Guns' power can essentially be replicated by any PC with resources and a credit card and the augments to it range from mechanically useless (I have a laser sight that does what exactly?) to extremely powerful on a narrative level (authorities can't track the guns back to you). See also the Drone and I Have Cars edge. On the other hand, you have the Ordinance edge which gives you access to explosives which is going to vastly change how your chronicle since even in WoD law enforcement tends to take domestic terrorism seriously. Even we all sat down to test build some characters we ended up recreating the Imbued using the supernatural edges. The other issue is that players like using powers in any game. By locking the edges behind high dice rolls, players are naturally going to want to specialize to make them more reliable even with the dice modification above leading to cookie cutter characters. At this point we've largely decided that we'd rather go back to orange book Hunter as we think it's a much better system even if you don't like the lore behind it. MantisClaw fucked around with this message at 05:16 on Apr 10, 2024 |
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Apr 9, 2024 16:54
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I am making my obligatory post at the mention of Orpheus to say that it is legit my favourite oWOD release.
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Apr 9, 2024 16:59
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ZearothK posted:I'll dissent here and say I was disappointed that H5 was literally just the Hunters Hunted supplement written big. I liked the Imbued. Call me a grognard if you must, God45 will judge us all. Especially what with the cover showing an armed woman with a halo. Free Cog posted:
Desperation is the 'gently caress around' meter, and Danger is the 'find out' meter. I remember the first time I ran the original H:TR game for my group. They kept completely forgetting about the whole 'imbued' part and had a lot of fun just playing as 'mortals JUUUUUSSSSSTTTTT enough in the know that they're going to get themselves killed' milieu. Anywho, my favorite WoD take on 'hunters' is actually Dark Ages: Inquisition. Some supernatural, some mundane, and I really liked their take on the obligatory '10-step scale telling you if you're munchkining too hard, or not enough.' I found it had a really good balance between 'why we're hunters' and 'we actually don't know what we're doing, and it's scary out there.'
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Apr 9, 2024 17:33
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TheCenturion posted:Especially what with the cover showing an armed woman with a halo. To be fair to them, that wasn't the original cover! They had a cover ready to go as shown in previews that better reflects the actual game but wasn't all that popular. I think the original cover is this:  Someone correct me if I'm wrong because it's been years, but I could have sworn this was implied to be the original cover during previews.
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Apr 9, 2024 17:49
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ZearothK posted:I'll dissent here and say I was disappointed that H5 was literally just the Hunters Hunted supplement written big. I liked the Imbued. Call me a grognard if you must, God45 will judge us all. Huge same. If I wanted to play Hunter the Vigil, it exists (and I dont play it)
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Apr 9, 2024 17:59
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i don't have strong feelings on Hunter specifically but folding the tonal changes of the nWoD back into the oWoD almost always comes off to me as a "worst of both worlds" scenario
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Apr 9, 2024 18:27
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I like Vigil the best, but Hunters Hunted style more than the Imbued. H5 should not have been subtitled the Reckoning.
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Apr 9, 2024 21:38
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I suggest Frailty (2001) to all flavors of Hunter fans. Reckoning was a bummer. There's room for Marvel supers vs the WoD, but it wasn't what anyone was expecting or asked for or wanted at the time. Plus the concept worked so much better when there was a ERROR: Ttype Character Mismatch between the cosmic heralds and the regular people they imbued. Wayward (and the ones who just rejected it) suggested that Imbuing fundamentally changed who you are. For them, it wasn't just free rad anti-vampire powers; Farting sunlight was saved over their empathy neurons, and they were made arguably worse than the vampires. That game could be amazing in the right hands, but I don't think we'll ever see it. Internal conflict is a pretty huge theme in WoD, and it was extremely missing from 90% of HtR.
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Apr 10, 2024 04:53
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Dawgstar posted:
I mean Hunter the Parenting pulls off H5's intended tone better than H5 it self. And even then Big D is heavy implied to be a imbued and even if he isn't one, He's bizarrely knowledgeable of the supernatural for H5 PC...
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Apr 10, 2024 07:15
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