1. - Top - End - #6
    Barbarian in the Playground
    Join Date
    Mar 2010
    Location
    Florida.
    Gender
    Male

    Default Re: General WoD Discussion #2: Its time to Celebrate!

    Quote Originally Posted by Morty View Post
    Of all the oWoD gamelines, I think it was Hunter: the Reckoning that was most influenced by the "Creation is WoD's past" conceit. The Imbued were supposed to be heirs to Solars somehow. I'm not sure how that was supposed to work.
    Mind you, while I haven't read Imperial Mysteries, I choose to ignore the idea that each splat has a superpowered being or class of beings looking out for it. I prefer my nWoD without godlike beings playing it like chess.
    I agree completely. Anything that makes the players in a roleplaying game insignificant is, to me, a bad thing. Stories where the main characters are helpless to control their own destinies might be interesting, but if the players have no agency, why even bother with the dice? Just spend an hour or three telling your players how badly their characters fail at everything they set out to do (or succeed, but if it's not due to anything they've done, it's just as pointless).

    Now, I admit, sometimes tragedy is entertaining (for lack of a better word), but one of the key parts of tragedy is that the tragic hero is in some way responsible for their fate. If they really don't have any chance for a happy ending, or at least to avert the catastrophe, then it's just a really depressing shaggy dog story.

    Quote Originally Posted by Lord_Gareth View Post
    Once you start screwing around with Archmage level play, though, you've entered into a new genre of horror entirely (Lovecraftian, not gothic) and left 'local' behind about as definitively as it can get left. Cosmic chessmasters make perfect sense as enemies in such a setup, and the glory of it is this - unlike in oWoD, THESE chessmasters don't/can't/won't compromise free will on a massive, unstoppable scale. Chances are high that your character and their local problems mean precisely bubkis to them, y'know? They've got bigger fish to fry - mostly the ones that cause various kinds of apocalypse - which means that you can justify using them as much, or as little, as your group likes without totally re-writing the meta-plot.
    Portraying epic level magic users as Wizard Cthulhu is probably the most sensible use of them I've heard. I prefer reading cosmic horror to playing it, but at least the players have some freedom in this scenario, even if it's only the freedom not to meddle in Things Man Was Not Meant To Know. Of course, they will meddle because there's no game if they don't, and if Wizardthulhu notices at all, they're doomed. So it still feels like curtailing player freedom to me, but I admit this is a matter of taste. A lot of people like Call of Cthulhu, after all.
    Last edited by CN the Logos; 2012-07-19 at 12:44 PM.