Vampire: The Masquerade

[Musopticon?]

Let me quote myself:

Unless I've misread, the original poster has never played the original World of Darkness.

Ah, alright. I misinterpreted.

[Maria Caliban]

Ah so, Spider. I'd still suggest the new line over the old ones, but that's just me. Also, I just found out the complete title is "Changling: The Lost."

 

Musoptican,

No worries.

[Spider]

I also prefer the new line. I much prefer the openess of the setting and I think the rules are vastly improved.

[Maria Caliban]

I like the fact that every book explicitly states, "No, you can not have Mage/Vampire, Vampre/Werewolf, Werewolf/Mage, or any other odd combination."

[Kinokono]

Let me quote myself:

Unless I've misread, the original poster has never played the original World of Darkness.

Thats true, and I also did not know there was a new world of darness either...I'm a total noob to the scene and was only hoping to get some info before I spent money on books and what not. Thanx for all the info though...I have a feeling my WoD campaign is gonna be prety cool =)

[IMRavnos]

I played the oWoD for several years pretty much weekly, sometimes less sometimes more. My RP'ing group pretty much shrunk down to 3 a few months before the new books came out and so I never purchased them. I did however read through tons of them and it just felt odd to me. It seemed to me like the new people at White Wolf just didn't get the old school WoD.

 

Granted, there were about 1000 ( serious not a mde up number ) contradicting facts, statements and descriptions in the old World of Darkness and thus killing it off and creating a new line was a good idea. They just didn't carry it out to well.

 

The new setting is geared much more for huge RP'ing groups ( 8+ ) or for LARP troupes IMHO.

 

As to the fact that it was hard to run crossover chronicles with Vampire, Mage, Changelling and Werewolf, yeah it was hard, but not impossible.

 

The key was having mature ( mental not physical ) gamers who could all get together and discuss certain aspects of the different races and how they would be delt with before starting a chronicle. For instance Mages are often seen as way overpowered. However everyone seems to forget that if a mage is seen doing magic, he could literally BLOW UP. Werewolves are so powerful right? Well yeah, but compaired to a Vampire who Can soak aggravated damage ( Fortitude ) and who can boost his or her physical traits to extreme levels in order to rip the head off of a Garou, there is a slight balance.

 

The problems came when you had Rank 2+ Werewolves and Neonate vampires with 3 dots in disciplines. A rank 2 garou will DESTROY a neonate vamp 99% of the time. What our group did was we would discuss hundreds of aspects and then when we agreed on things we made sure to follow things by the book very strictly to ensure that there were not any min maxers who were making cheesy death machine characters. Many folks don't realise that the WoD is NOT a combat game. Yes there are rules for combat ( way too damn many ) but overall the game is supposed to be a tale of Gothic horror. In otherowrds your supposed to deal with survival in a world full of monsters more powerful then you who exist solely for the purpose of aquiring power in order to control and manipulate those weaker then themselves.

 

Changeling ( which is great by the way ) was a fantastic pain in the @ss to intigrate into a crossover chonicle and as a result we seldom allowed it, but from time to time we bent the rules and to be honest, the Changeling characters were some of the best we ever had, mainly because their players were not trying to create characters that would destroy the city or cause strife for everyone.

 

Sadly this thread has made me miss the WoD and now I am depressed =P

 

haha J/K

 

P.S. all mispellings are on purpose because i am a Malkavian =P

[Maria Caliban]

IMRavnos:

" As to the fact that it was hard to run crossover chronicles with Vampire, Mage, Changelling and Werewolf, yeah it was hard, but not impossible."

 

I never found it that difficult, but then again, my group only played potpourri.

 

 

" For instance Mages are often seen as way overpowered. However everyone seems to forget that if a mage is seen doing magic, he could literally BLOW UP."

 

Unless he's standing in the middle of Time's Square lobbing fireballs, a Mage should never blow up. Even then, I'd say that an underground gas main right under him blows up, as paradox ought to enforce mundane reality, not violate it even more.

 

On the other hand, a good Mage player can be overpowering without ever gaining a point of paradox.

 

" Werewolves are so powerful right? Well yeah, but compaired to a Vampire who Can soak aggravated damage ( Fortitude ) and who can boost his or her physical traits to extreme levels in order to rip the head off of a Garou, there is a slight balance."

 

I disagree.

 

Fortitude? Werewolves soak aggravated damage naturally and regenerate one level of health per turn. Pump blood points into stats? In Crinos, a werewolf is going to get +4 to strength and +3 to stamina without having to spend anything. Even if the vampire has seven blood points to spend, how long will they have that boost? A werewolf can run around in that form all day long if they feel like it.

 

When it comes to close combat, there's no advantage a vampire can have that a werewolf can get a better, cheaper version of. The werewolf designers set out to make psychotic blenders on two (or four) feet. The vampire designers set out to make elegant urban predators. If a vampire wants to kill a garou, it needs to use its head, not its powers.

 

" What our group did was we would discuss hundreds of aspects and then when we agreed on things we made sure to follow things by the book very strictly to ensure that there were not any min maxers who were making cheesy death machine characters."

 

Garou slaughter things en mass for Gaia. They don't need to min/max to be death machines. Moreover, their background forces them to kill nasty things like vampires. If you actually have werewolves working with or befriending kindred, then the garou ought to be gaining wyrm taint.

 

" In otherowrds your supposed to deal with survival in a world full of monsters more powerful then you who exist solely for the purpose of aquiring power in order to control and manipulate those weaker then themselves."

I think you're confusing all the world of darkness lines with vampire. That description doesn't apply to Mage, Changeling, Werewolf, or Demon, nor are any of those gothic horror.

[Spider]

IMRavnos:

When it comes to close combat, there's no advantage a vampire can have that a werewolf can get a better, cheaper version of. The werewolf designers set out to make psychotic blenders on two (or four) feet. The vampire designers set out to make elegant urban predators. If a vampire wants to kill a garou, it needs to use its head, not its powers.

 

Although if the vampire is equipped with silver weaponry, it becomes a whole other story entirely. Add celerity to that and a vampire could dodge the werewolf's rage attacks, giving give the vampire the upper hand after a couple of turns (since rage runs out much quicker than blood points). But it's the silver that makes all the difference. Without that (or if the werewolf has gifts that remove that weakness), vampires do not want to go toe to toe with werewolves.

 

As for the difficulty of cross-setting chronicles, it's certainly not impossible to play that way. I've played some cross-setting in the past myself. But the games aren't meant to be played that way and they're definitely not balanced for it. It takes a fairly tight group and preferably a storyteller with some experience for it to work properly.

 

(also, vampires with a humanity of 7 or above does not give out the taint of Wyrm, so those could be working with werewolves that are fairly liberal minded without them getting tainted in the process)

[Maria Caliban]

Silver makes a huge difference, though I recall a power which negated the silver vulnerability. It was stupid. Ha! I should have remembered the effect of humanity, I was in a cross-setting game when a vampire's humanity slipped from 7 to 6. It wasn't pretty.

 

I'd never play a vampire again in a cross-setting game, having to be asleep all day can mean you miss out on a great deal of action.

[Spider]

There is a gift that protects against silver. Iirc it's fairly high Silver Fang or Ahroun (possibly both). Luna's Shield or something like that I think (but I could be totally off on the name. It's been several years since I even looked at Werewolf).

 

At least Vampires doesn't have it as bad in cross-setting games as Wraiths do. If you think sleeping all day is bad, imagine being dead.

[Maria Caliban]

I don't even like it as a high level gift. I also don't like the Red Talon (?) gift that lets you regenerate in full when you take enough damage to kill you. Oddly enough, both of these gifts have lead to the death of my demon character. Of course, it was a temporary death, but I still dislike them.

 

Wraith was the worst. Either -

1) No one can see you. Or,

2) They can see you and have the power to make you do their bidding.

 

I'd say Hunter is a bad game to take cross-setting as well. Did you ever play Orpheus in a cross-setting? I remember sitting in on a friend's game, but it was just that system.

[Spider]

I never played Orpheus at all actually. There is a limit even to how many games I get to play.

 

And yeah, hunter would be kinda bad. Everyone's a target!