Nwod 2e vs owod
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@MisterBoring said in Nwod 2e vs owod:
@somasatori said in Nwod 2e vs owod:
I’m a PbtA player
I had a sneaking suspicion you were down with the Apocalypse.
Yes! I’m a big fan. My favorite PbtA game is one that I have struggled thinking of how to make into a MUSH, being Life Among the Ruins (and Generation Ship as a close second). I mean, it probably shows since I use terms like “in the fiction” and “genre emulation” constantly these days.
Requisite meme:
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Now do Curseborne.
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@Jenn said in Nwod 2e vs owod:
@Redbird said in Nwod 2e vs owod:
Now do Curseborne.
We may be working on that.
I and several folks on CoH may be prepared to pounce on that. Fear.
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I want to play Curseborne, but having seen the final book, I’m not sure if I want to MU it.
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@somasatori said in Nwod 2e vs owod:
Meanwhile, Vampire, Mage, and Werewolf
Also real quick about Werewolf, it is a mix of the two. Your Auspice Gifts do indeed level up 1-5, but the rest of your gifts are pick and choose ignoring the progression. There is no Mother Luna 4… you have Mother Luna (Cunning) or Mother Luna (Honor).
Which would be Hella cool to somehow get mage or vampire to do. But I am lazy. RIP.
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@MisterBoring Any deets you can spill on why not? I admit I’m super intrigued by the system, but wasn’t a backer and haven’t done any real dives into the mechanics or theme.
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@Pyrephox said in Nwod 2e vs owod:
@MisterBoring Any deets you can spill on why not? I admit I’m super intrigued by the system, but wasn’t a backer and haven’t done any real dives into the mechanics or theme.
The bonds mechanic rewards clique building and momentum is a currency shared by all players in the game.
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What do you mean by clique building? So often I see people complaining about what they consider to be cliques, but which I would just consider to be “groups of friends playing together”.
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Curseborne has built-in bonds (can be positive or negative). But characters are limited in the bonds they can have, as far as mechanical ones go. Like any game, families, friends, enemy lists can be as large and varied as desired.
And, bonds can be with NPC’s, such as your job’s boss, or your little sister, too.
It’s like any game with factions. Coteries and mystery cults are also able to be cliques. Ships or businesses can be cliques if they exclude non-members.
Bonds are no more/less a clique than any other reasons players have for their characters to know and/or exclude others. It will come down to game culture, and depend on if the community encourages and supports inclusivity or not - same as any other system.
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Man, Curseborne. Or really, the entire Storypath line. I think Storypath is my favorite incarnation of the overall Storyteller mechanics. While I love the system itself, I dislike almost every single attempt to execute it.
I’ve completely lost faith in Onyx Path at this point. Their insistence on building games around a “You’re a <THIS> who is a member of <THAT>” structure is old and tired, IMO. That’s the first issue. Second, they take what should be a simple and elegant system and muddy it with needlessly complex, ambiguously explained, and confusing abilities.
I find Scion 2E entirely unplayable just from reading the books. Aberrant has great moments but falls apart when you get to Nova tech. The “It Came From…” line is good but a little too cheesy and tongue-in-cheek for me. I hate the implementation of Curse Dice to power mechanics in Curseborne. Again, destroying an elegant system with kitschy mechanics. Aegis should be my absolute favorite game given the setting and its use of Storypath, but I read it and it all just falls flat.
All that said, I think the Storypath system is fantastic, and I’ve put significant work into creating a “New-New World of Darkness” type system with it. I’ve even come up with guidelines for creating Drawbacks to help flesh out characters. The system is very flexible and easy to hack.
For instance, in my custom hack, I’ve done away with Momentum and replaced it with personal pools of power. Willpower for mortals, Blood for vampires, etc. Mechanically, they all function the same (they power abilities and allow you to do things you might otherwise do with Momentum), but they shift the focus to the character rather than the group.
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@Raistlin said in Nwod 2e vs owod:
“You’re a <THIS> who is a member of <THAT>”
This is a core conceit of basically all of RP. Characters are described in terms nearly identical to those even if there’s not a spot for it on the character sheet.
@Raistlin said in Nwod 2e vs owod:
While I love the system itself, I dislike almost every single attempt to execute it.
From reading your post, it looks like you dislike every attempt to execute Storypath, which makes me question whether you love the system or the intent of the system more. You don’t mention Dystopia Rising: Evolution at all, which makes me think that either you do like it, or you have been in the horror show that is the DR LARP, and don’t want to give them any mention at all.
Proud Member of the Pro-Mummy Alliance
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@MisterBoring I’m not entirely sure what your post is trying to get across. If you want to have a back-and-forth about Storypath, I’m game, but your reply mostly feels like it’s questioning my motives rather than the points I raised.
On the “You’re a <THIS> who is a member of <THAT>” comment:
- What I was pointing out is that Onyx Path doesn’t just use that as a descriptive shorthand (which, sure, all RPGs do in some way). They make it the mechanical spine of their games; your role and affiliation aren’t just flavor, they dictate what your character can do, how they progress, and even how you interact with the world. For me, that overreliance makes the designs feel narrow and repetitive.
On Dystopia Rising:
- The only reason I didn’t mention it is that I haven’t read it. No hidden motive there.
On Storypath in the context of this thread:
- Since the discussion is about which version of World of Darkness works best, I’ll clarify: I think Storypath’s core mechanics and dice resolution are fantastic. It’s a really solid system, and I love that part of it. What I don’t care for is how Onyx Path tends to implement those mechanics in their published games. That’s why I’m actually looking forward to Storypath Ultra, it seems like a cleaner, more generic take on the system that could really shine outside of those heavy-handed frameworks.
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@MisterBoring I can at least report that the worst of the DR LARP crowd has been purged with fire.
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@MisterBoring ahahaha I did the Dystopia Rising Texas game in it’s first couple years. some truly heinous behavior over time. I learned to hate nerds
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@Raistlin said in Nwod 2e vs owod:
That’s why I’m actually looking forward to Storypath Ultra, it seems like a cleaner, more generic take on the system that could really shine outside of those heavy-handed frameworks.
I’m looking forward to Storypath Ultra as well! This was (in my mind anyway) the way they should have gone about setting up the nWoD mechanics rather than attempting to couch it in the way they did. You can infer that World of Darkness (the book) was intended to showcase the storyteller system as a toolbox rather than a complete setting + system like in the previous editions, but a lot of the messaging was around waiting for the other lines to come out.
If you wanted to play Mage, you’ll have to wait for Awakening and then deal with the constant (mine included) complaints about Atlantis in the early days. If you want to play Werewolf, well, there were no real mechanics in the WoD core book that emulated shapeshifting so you’ll have to wait or have a very creative ST or just go extremely rules-lite. Though, going the route of including basic mechanics to emulate all of the different splats – something OPP sort of did in CofD with the Dread Powers – would have probably been very divisive and pushed players away even more than they already had. Anyway, from what I can tell about Storypath Ultra they are including a lot of the different narrative and “special effects” stuff that you could find in a Trinity or Scion game, only made generic to fit into whatever setting you want.
This is good because, ultimately, reskinning things does come down to that “have a very creative ST” thing. Even (tooting my own horn) being a creative ST, there have been so many times when I’m just trying to get something to the table and don’t have time to re-craft it all into something I want it to do (with the exception of PbtA, as it’s a much easier system to reskin since everything is narrative anyway). Plus, I think with WoD more than most systems, you tend to have a mix of people who are very into the story line side of things and people who are very into mechanics, which creates its own stressors in trying to adapt and create your own powers and abilities.
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@labsunlimited Hah. We probably knew each other, then.
There was so much extremely shitty behavior back then, especially at that game…
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(Max Capacity, for the record.)
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@somasatori said in Nwod 2e vs owod:
The lack of metanarrative requires STs and leads to frontload their world-building in order to get the plot started.
I think this is a feature, not a bug. It gives you a vague structure and requires you to run your own game, with your own world and your own story with strong mechanics. If you can’t do that, the game might not be up to par anyway and running something from previous editions will only work well if your players stay on the rails you give them. Once they try something outside of the box, a lackluster ST will lose control of the game quickly.
nWoD gave out so much specific detail that canon became this amalgamation of 542542 different parts of 4924 different books, not all of which agreed with each other, leading to many an argument over which character can be what type of monster and how this player or that player doesn’t know how to play splat x at ALL because they don’t even know about obscure passage X and quoted some obscure passage Y which I don’t know about so they must be making it up or at least really misinterpreting the writers’ intent, which is SO very obvious, so I don’t even want to play with this person who is making a mockery of the game and ruining my own fun if they are around me. Because that’s how differences of opinion work. TLDR:
@somasatori said in Nwod 2e vs owod:
nWoD generally had something for everyone, eventually to its own detriment as time went on.
Separately…
@Pyrephox said in Nwod 2e vs owod:
A couple of places where CoD 2E stumbles:
I think all your examples, even by your own explanations, are of good systems that players and STs use poorly. I don’t think that’s CoD stumbling. I think that is players that are used to playing a certain way refusing to evolve with the game system and continuing to play like they always have in previous versions/editions out of laziness or because that’s what they’re used to, then criticizing the game system for not conforming to their preferences. The explanations of how those things work are great for a storytelling environment, as you say. People’s lack of understanding/willingness to use them properly is their own fault because it is a textbook example of willful ignorance.
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If I could somehow jam Werewolf: The Apocalypse into Changeling: The Lost I’d be a happy kitty. Does someone want to do all of that intellectual legwork for me? I don’t pay in anything but affirmation and soothing gifs.
