oWoD vs. nWoD, and White Wolf in general

[Oracle_Hunter]

The big draw for V:tM isn't the concept of emotional development as such. It's the struggle with the Beast, with Kindred society. The question that is not asked, but is constantly prevalent, is how far will you go to survive? Will you attack innocents night after night, potentially killing them, to survive? Will you join a corrupt political system that is slowly corrupting your city (even if it tries to improve or preserve parts)? Will you strike out against the system and suffer the consequences of success (if you even achieve it)? And if you do destroy yourself instead, what will you do to stop the thing that made you from simply making another?

V:tM, as has been stated before, is a very personal game. It's about what the players will do when the only options are bad and worse and fighting for what's good, right, or just is even harder than in the normal world of darkness. It's about the players exploring just what it really means to be a monster and finding out where they draw the line in the sand. Everything else is, ultimately, just a backdrop to that theme, just different methods of exploring it, but it's not so obvious that players can't miss it (or ignore it).

Fixed that for you

Basically, there is nothing in oWoD Vampire that precludes the above from being true there; in fact, the above serves as an excellent summary of the oWoD game.

As I've said before, the complaints centering on elder power remains baffling to me - it's like saying that because you can never run a megacorp, you shouldn't play SR; or that you should never play CoC because you can't beat the Elder Gods. Aside from those aims being antithetical to claims of focusing on the personal (what's personal about positional power?) there is a lot that can be done - both personally and power-wise - below the level of Big Cheese.

If you're not interested in working within a byzantine political system then oWoD Vampire is obviously not for you. For me, that's why I play oWoD Vampire; so far I've seen nothing in nWoD fluff that can replicate that feel.

[Lord_Gareth]

ARGH!

Alright, lemme try this one more time - you know that wonderful byzantine political system that oWoD vamp has going?

Players cannot participate unless they are elders.

THAT is the problem. RIGHT THERE. There's no method by which to challenge those that already hold power. It doesn't MATTER if you're smarter. It doesn't MATTER if you're up to date on the modern world. The best you can hope is to suck up to an actual elder and support THEIR bid for power. Forget power in the actual Camarilla - you can't even get power in YOUR OWN CITY. Do you wanna protect your family or friends? Good luck. If they're under threat from anything but another neonate, you're screwed. THAT is the problem. There's NO HOPE FOR ADVANCEMENT. There's no chance to get any better.

Getting worse, WW made a HUGE DEAL about the end times. I dunno about you, but I'd love to be able to, say, run a game where the players try to save the world, but no. That's not gonna fly. Look, being completely screwed works in a Cosmic Horror setting like CoC, but not in a personal horror game like WoD. As for the Shadowrun comparison, it doesn't fit, especially since a successful 'runner might actually amass enough funds to go legit and - wait for it - buy into a megacorp. Neonates in oWoD are boned, they get boned, and then they remain boned. There's no recourse for them short of diablerie or death, and both are bad options.

Is my point ANY clearer now?

[Tiki Snakes]

ARGH!

Alright, lemme try this one more time - you know that wonderful byzantine political system that oWoD vamp has going?

Players cannot participate unless they are elders.

THAT is the problem. RIGHT THERE. There's no method by which to challenge those that already hold power. It doesn't MATTER if you're smarter. It doesn't MATTER if you're up to date on the modern world. The best you can hope is to suck up to an actual elder and support THEIR bid for power. Forget power in the actual Camarilla - you can't even get power in YOUR OWN CITY. Do you wanna protect your family or friends? Good luck. If they're under threat from anything but another neonate, you're screwed. THAT is the problem. There's NO HOPE FOR ADVANCEMENT. There's no chance to get any better.

Getting worse, WW made a HUGE DEAL about the end times. I dunno about you, but I'd love to be able to, say, run a game where the players try to save the world, but no. That's not gonna fly. Look, being completely screwed works in a Cosmic Horror setting like CoC, but not in a personal horror game like WoD. As for the Shadowrun comparison, it doesn't fit, especially since a successful 'runner might actually amass enough funds to go legit and - wait for it - buy into a megacorp. Neonates in oWoD are boned, they get boned, and then they remain boned. There's no recourse for them short of diablerie or death, and both are bad options.

Is my point ANY clearer now?

As far as I can see, a portion of the oWoD preference boils down to you should be boned, and remain boned. A kind of YMMV It's not a bug, it's a feature situation.

[Oracle_Hunter]

ARGH!

Alright, lemme try this one more time - you know that wonderful byzantine political system that oWoD vamp has going?

Players cannot participate unless they are elders.

Which is simply wrong. No oWoD source says "high Gen vampires cannot participate in Camarilla politics;" in fact, read over the oWoD sourcebooks and I think you'll see things are presented quite differently. The night-to-night running of a city depends on youngbloods - not to mention all the Anarchs running through the streets and causing trouble. Even a 13th Gen isn't just "boned" from the get go; however, he certainly is not going to be able to bull his way up the ranks like a lower Gen might.

I think you have a very skewed view of oWoD fluff. At this point all I can do is disagree with you unless one of us decides to start quoting source text - which I certainly am not

EDIT: I don't know about you, but a pre-SR4 'runner buying into a megacorp is as likely as a oWoD neonates ascending to Prince by diablrie - possible, but unlikely and out of character to say the least!

[comicshorse]

ARGH!

Alright, lemme try this one more time - you know that wonderful byzantine political system that oWoD vamp has going?

Players cannot participate unless they are elders.

THAT is the problem. RIGHT THERE. There's no method by which to challenge those that already hold power. It doesn't MATTER if you're smarter. It doesn't MATTER if you're up to date on the modern world. The best you can hope is to suck up to an actual elder and support THEIR bid for power. Forget power in the actual Camarilla - you can't even get power in YOUR OWN CITY. Do you wanna protect your family or friends? Good luck. If they're under threat from anything but another neonate, you're screwed. THAT is the problem. There's NO HOPE FOR ADVANCEMENT. There's no chance to get any better.

Getting worse, WW made a HUGE DEAL about the end times. I dunno about you, but I'd love to be able to, say, run a game where the players try to save the world, but no. That's not gonna fly. Look, being completely screwed works in a Cosmic Horror setting like CoC, but not in a personal horror game like WoD. As for the Shadowrun comparison, it doesn't fit, especially since a successful 'runner might actually amass enough funds to go legit and - wait for it - buy into a megacorp. Neonates in oWoD are boned, they get boned, and then they remain boned. There's no recourse for them short of diablerie or death, and both are bad options.

Is my point ANY clearer now?

( Kinda feel like I'm intruding on a private argument here but I'll add my two pence)
The point is perfectly clear, I just don't agree with it.
The vital part is :

Players cannot participate unless they are elders.

Which should say : Players cannot participate, at a world changing level, unless they are elders.
But there is intrigue, manipulation and backstabbing galore to be had at a city level which the players can get stuck into and enjoy and even win power and position for themselves. I totally agree with Oracle Hunter, where did the idea that you have to be able to affect the fate of the world to have fun in a game come from.
And in SR if you buy into a Megacorp you will, unsuprisingly, find you are a tiny fish swimming in the same pond as the huge financial powers that control the beast.

[Terraoblivion]

No, it's not about actually having personal power, comicshorse. It is about the potential to achieve it existing and what that means for the choices of the characters in question. It influences how the elders will view you, after all you are a potential rival no matter who your sire were, it influences how other neonates see you, as an actual rival. Being perpetually stuck at the bottom of the heap doesn't make for a compelling story, because the field of choices of how to deal with it is quite limited. When it is possible to achieve either political power or personal might, you are faced with having to determine how to react to that. Do you suck up to those in charge to pave the way for your own ascension? Do you not care and just want to be left alone, something that will sooner or later fail as you grow more personally powerful? Do you try to tear down the established order and replace it with someone else? Do you generally lack ambition but want to hang out with likeminded people for mutual protection? How far are you willing to go to achieve any of these goals? There are choices to be found in the possibility of power existing, even if you don't act on that possibility.

Ultimately i don't care about achieving the power if my character failing would create a more interesting story, but the possibility needs to be there for there to be a story at all. Playing a high generation vampire in VtM is playing a character in 1984, you don't really get any interesting choices of what to do since your power and potential for power is so limited, yet society is so cutthroat that you need power to not just be a tool.

And the page count dedicated to the personal aspects of being a vampire in VtM is miniscule compared to that found in VtR. VtM by and large spends its energy detailing the ancient plots of ancient vampires that you ultimately can't affect. How is that a useful way of spending your energy? What do these details really add that a plot created by the GM couldn't replicate. VtR on the other hand always focuses its descriptions on fleshing out the details that make the vampiric condition seem real to you. That show what you will do as a vampire, what problems you will face in your daily life and what exactly the draw and role of the social groupings are. Instead of describing what Ventrue McInvictus did five hundred years ago, it shows why a newly embraced person in the modern world would join a social grouping dedicated to ancient social customs and maintaining the status quo. It develops the theology and liturgy of both the religious covenants, goes into the philosophy of the one dedicated to research and self-improvement and truly works out the ideologies behind the two political ones. It provides details that are useful, not preexisting plots, which i have always found to be the greatest waste of space to include in any system.

[comicshorse]

Interestingly I agree with pretty much everything you said there. Though I'm going to have to take the stuff about the V:tR on faith as I only just started playing it and haven't read any of the books. Though this really encourages me to do so ( Though on a side-note I have found Clan to still be important to my Gangrel, more important than my Covenant though I've only just joined that and the Ordo Dracul don't seem the most cosy of groups. Also our ST also ran OWoD so that could be a hang-over.)
I quite agree that the labyrinthine meta-plot at the end got too much and so was happy to see OWoD wrapped up before it collapsed under its own weight.
The only thing I disagree with is some of the points of the background. Perhaps it comes from being a history buff but I loved the Kindred histories and seeing how the ancient feuds oplayed themselves out int he modern nights. And how the P.C.s could use them to their advantage/ get sucked in a and destroyed by them.
And again I disagree that the potential for power and position where as limited as you portray

[Terraoblivion]

I'll be honest. I don't think it was meant to be that way. It was just that when WW was still in the relatively early stages of developing VtM no one really understood effective developing a setting beyond the initial sketch. And like so many others at the time they went the path of metaplot and that heavily skewed the perception of what was and wasn't possible. And towards the end there was probably even so much that if you stuck to it all actual limitations crept in.

Mostly, however, as i see it VtR and VtM tries to do the same thing, create personal horror and political struggles among the undead. I just think that VtR succeeds much better at evoking that by keeping its focus, rather than beginning to detail things that are ultimately irrelevant and distracts from what the focus should be. As i understand it, the clans were also a lot broader and more inclusive early on, before the tangled weed of the metaplot added piles of history and strange customs and restrictions to them.

And personally i found the ancient vampiric histories to be quite dull to read and that they added nothing to the actual game i played. Despite liking history enough to actually majoring in it, though admittedly those stories have preciously little in common with history as a historian perceives it. Way too focused on individual actions and motivations.

[chiasaur11]

Haven't played either, but looking at both, I like New a whole lot more for fairly simple reasons.

An ordinary Joe can make a difference. Sure, it ain't easy, and trying will get you brutally murdered nine times out of eight, but in theory something an ordinary Joe does can matter.

Hunter seems ideal as an example.

Old Hunter: Angels give you superpowers. They sometimes let you kill very low level vampires and werewolves. In groups. If you're lucky.

New Hunter: You're an average guy/gal who's mad as hell and ain't going to take it anymore! You may well die in the attempt, but you have a chance at changing things for the better. Or maybe you work for the government's spook hunting division, where you and your team keep America safe from the night with lots and lots of guns. Or you're working for someone really nasty who happens to hate the undead more than those with a pulse.

The important thing? It's in large part determined by the actions of people. Not gods or centuries old conspiracies run by immortals or the guys who invented physics to prevent imagination or somesuch. Just people. Admittedly, some of the people are part demon or undead or in power armor, but still.

(Why I like Discworld so much, or a part of it. Vimes and De Word and Moist and Vetinari and Detritus? All important, and capable of impact with no special destiny or the like, even with a lot of magic and physical embodiments of things wandering about. 's nice.)

Actually, that's also why CoC gets a pass. Sure, in the end, everyone gets et, but for now?

Your hapless slobs can buy mankind one more year, one more week, one more minute, if you're smart and lucky. It matters, right up until nothing matters. OWoD? You start useless and you stay useless.

[Lost Demiurge]

Y'know, I had a lot to say but Chiasaur said it best. People make all of the difference.

In OWoD, humanity was a footnote at best. How many significant events in canon were the doing of vampires/werewolves/whatever? The World Wars, the discovery of the new world, the crusades, etc... Humanity was nothing. Elder vampires could do damn near anything, and were walking gods. Let's not even talk about werewolves...

In NWoD, the supernatural power level's been watered down. Now six or seven humans with shotguns or rifles are a credible threat, even if you're an elder. The supernatural's been behind very few world-changing events, if any. It hides in the shadows, because humanity's got NUMBERS. I like that.

Aside from that...

NWoD is more mechanically sound. It's also a lot more open. Using Vampire as an example, the covenant structure is a breath of very fresh air. Your powerset no longer determines your political slant, you actually get some choice in the matter! And while most cities do the prince/primogen thing by default, the door's open to other power structures. Elders are still a credible threat, but are beatable.

It's... Well, don't get me wrong, OWoD is still very playable, and fun with the right group, but OWoD suffered from being ossified. The books defined things as just SO, and any attempts to deviate from them didn't work to well. The metaplot was a pathetic joke, and there wasn't much you could really do with it, after a while, without seriously deviating from the basic game.

NWoD books... They're sandboxes, for the most part. With a few exceptions, they focus on smaller scale settings where you decide how things work. You can build awesome little games for your group. And there's room for expansion, if you want to kick it up a notch!

So yeah. I'll take NWoD over OWoD anyday. Under the right circumstances, if it's a choice between OWoD or nothing though, I'll choose OWoD. But when I'm running? NWoD all the way!

[Kurald Galain]

In OWoD, humanity was a footnote at best. How many significant events in canon were the doing of vampires/werewolves/whatever? The World Wars, the discovery of the new world, the crusades, etc... Humanity was nothing.

This is flat out contradicted by various oWOD books, though. Why do you think the vampires (and werewolves, too) have a Masquerade to begin with? They hide in the shadows, because humanity's got NUMBERS.

[Terraoblivion]

They say it is different. But the only major event that didn't involve supernatural beings as the ultimate instigators was the second world war and even that was a retcon, as originally Himmler was a vampire. So for humanity being whats matter and the supernaturals having to hide in fear is a big case of telling rather than showing, since what it shows is that supernaturals are in charge of just about everything.

[chiasaur11]

They say it is different. But the only major event that didn't involve supernatural beings as the ultimate instigators was the second world war and even that was a retcon, as originally Himmler was a vampire. So for humanity being whats matter and the supernaturals having to hide in fear is a big case of telling rather than showing, since what it shows is that supernaturals are in charge of just about everything.

It gets better. IE, worse.

One of the Gehenna scenarios has full on war between humans and vamps.

AFTER humans find out and have time to prepare, try diplomacy, and decide that it ain't worth trying with bloodsucking freaks. (The motive for human war is much stupider than any of the ones you're thinking likely, but one dumb idea at a time, right?)

Humans are depicted as getting curbstomped.

So much for the Masquarade having a point, yes?

[Lord_Gareth]

At this point, I think it prudent to allow Oracle time for his rebuttal.

[Oracle_Hunter]

At this point, I think it prudent to allow Oracle time for his rebuttal.

Eh?

Oh, there's nothing to rebut. Y'all have a completely different read on oWoD fluff than I do - and I suspect most other folks 'round here who enjoy oWoD read the fluff like I do.

Anyhoo, I think it might have something to do with The End Times. I never got into the End Times storylines, nor have I ever had them forced upon me. AFAIK, nobody liked The End Times fluff - but maybe I'm wrong?

Also: I'll second the points about Humanity being threatening as a mob on oWoD; it's true in oWoD Vampire & Mage at least.

[Lord_Gareth]

With six years of playing under about twenty different STs and groups, both tabletop and LARP, I am somehow having issues believing that my interpretation is the exception and not the rule, my friend.

[Oracle_Hunter]

With six years of playing under about twenty different STs and groups, both tabletop and LARP, I am somehow having issues believing that my interpretation is the exception and not the rule, my friend.

*shrug*

I'm not about to compare oWoD resumes, but it just doesn't seem like a game anyone would play. No emotional development allowed for PCs; NPCs running roughshod over every aspect of a PC's existence; no chance for social climbing - it sounds like the worst railroad I've ever heard.

Why did you play it for so long?

[Lord_Gareth]

Because the fluff was that compelling.

Seriously. White Wolf got things so right in a lot of places - but when they got it wrong, they got it dead wrong. Antediluvians? No. Clans as political structures (for that matter, oWerewolf tribes, full-stop)? No. Malkavians? YES. GOD YES. Daughters of Cacophany? YES. Lasombra? YEEEEEEEEEEEEEES.

While I may not agree with their execution, the concept was brilliant, which is why I love V:tR so much. It's like V:tM grew up and got all better.

[Dimers]

Well, i'll admit that i'm largely stretching the arguments in favor of Ascension to imply that those making them considers it a more mature game than Awakening. In general it just is that people actually provide reasons why they think that Ascension was a better written more interesting game than Awakening.

It is more that i have never really heard anybody elaborate on why they prefer oWoD, with the exception of Mage: The Awakening, over nWoD except in vague terms like saying it was more mature or deeper.

Sorry if some of this is already covered ... I developed a case of tl;dr-itis after forty posts or so.

Nature and Demeanor are a much more accurate and meaning-giving pair of character traits than Virtue and Vice, particularly if you're only using those listed in the main book. Deciding on Nature and Demeanor for a character really gets me into what the character would think or feel about dozens of situations. Deciding on Virtue and Vice makes me think about how to contrive having the character perform certain acts which my ST would recognize as qualifying for Willpower renewal. It's the difference (for me) between a character being an exploration of my reality in a game setting, and a character being a collection of numbers and values that I try to manipulate for quantitative benefit.

Virtue/Vice are especially annoying because they also drip with Christian montheistic assumptions and terminology. I left Christianity, monotheism, AND their neopagan equivalents quite some time ago. To read about "God" as a base assumption of the universe, to have a fifth of the characters in V:tR and M:tAwake be focused on the principles I have decided to be unsound ... it's frustrating having that forced into my play time. And it speaks of dangerous things happening in the real world that I'd rather not think about every time I sit down to play a game. OWoD managed to avoid the attitude that there was a single god or even that gods could be defined in some way that's meaningful to humans. D&D clerics notwithstanding, a roleplaying game played by humans should focus on the characters themselves, not whatever might or might not be answering that character's prayers.

Mage and Wraith were my preferences. One explored how the nature of one person interacted with the nature of reality. The other mined deep into the psyche to create a goodly chunk of the game material. Those are about characters; that's what I fail to see in nWoD. I'm not trying to say you can't have a real character in nWoD; what I'm saying is, you can't NOT have a character in the oWoD games that I like.

Five races and five classes in each book is weird, stilted, and totally unnecessary. The designers had to throw out perfectly usable ideas in some cases and pull extraneous stuff from nowhere in other cases.

NWoD is omnigoth. It's pervasive throughout the books I've seen -- a constant focus on how much things suck, without questioning whether the world really ought to seem that way to the characters. Werewolves now call themselves "The Forsaken", and call their enemies "The Pure"? The Forsaken ought to think of themselves as pure, and think of "The Pure" as betrayers, fools and cowards, based on the ancient stories. Vampires don't develop social connections with people in distant places ... I'm sorry, but does the Internet not exist in nWoD? Mind you, I'm only comparing using materials I've read, which excludes the apocalyptic brouhaha of oWoD and anything beyond the basic books for nWoD, but seriously, it really seems like the writers consider it their duty to remind us that life in the World of Darkness has to suck 24/7. Well, I prefer to be a hero and to accomplish important things, rather that NOT taking certain actions because they'll offend some power group and cause rocks to fall and everyone to die.

And I'm disappointed with the basic mechanics, too. Shadowrun 4th Ed and nWoD simplified die rolls in the same way at the same time for the same reason, but Shadowrun made it work and nWoD just stopped before it was really done. I don't understand how raising your Strength from two dots to five improves your average damage by one HP -- that's all the difference there is between an exemplar of might and an average joe? One hit point? In my paradigm, the strongman should be able to chop through armored limbs, while the normal guy has a hard time penetrating at all. OWoD had a very solid idea in the Perception stat, and that was taken out in favor of resistance stat that overlaps too much with another one. The ruleset is unaccomodating if you don't think of your skills quite the same way as the book. I could go on picking at stuff ... but I think I've kinda overflowing here, anyway.

My own TL;DR? The oWoD games I played focused much more on roleplay for human players; I don't care for the religious and hopeless tones of nWoD; the mechanics might be simpler now, but they don't make much sense by comparison.

[Lord_Gareth]

I honestly feel that nWoD cut down quite a bit on the religion, my friend. Vampire contains quite a bit of it because religion is a big theme vis-a-vis vampirism, but almost none of the other lines (ESPECIALLY Changeling and Geist) really deal all that heavily with religious themes. The virtue of Faith may be an arguable one, but it can apply in many cases - faith in a deity, faith in a cosmic principle or a cause, even faith in nihilism. Heck, I ran an ultra-atheist scientist in a H:tV game who had the Faith virtue, revolving around his theory of universal sense.

Many of your complaints, above, ignore certain aspects of the world fluff. The Tribes of Luna (they often refer to themselves as that name as well) call themselves the Forsaken because that's what they are; abandoned by the spirit world and only partially forgiven by their mother, they struggle in order to be accepted once more. The Pure are known as such because they call themselves that and brook no other title. Why should the Forsaken care about the terminology? Luna's favor speaks more than words.

Likewise, the "hopelessness" is not actually hopeless. H:tV is distilled hope in a box. Even vampires have hope in the form of transcendence, Golconda, or simply the sheer iron will necessary to beat the Beast into submission. Geists came back from the DEAD to get to where they are; Prometheans have SPOKEN to those that have finished the Great Work and learned at their feet. Oh yes, the world sucks. The Abyss, Hell, and Arcadia all exist in it, after all. But on the other hand, unlike in oWoD with Pentex and the Jyhad, Oblivion and the Time of Judgment, you can do something about it. If your character struggles and fights to make their portion of the world a better place, they might actually succeed. Hell, that's what Changeling freeholds (at least, the well-run ones) do 24/7/365 - make the world a better place.

By the by, why'd you take two of the most depressing oWoD settings (Mage/Wraith) and then complain that nWoD is depressing?

[chiasaur11]

Isn't one of the big groups in Hunter essentially the Secret Service (Spooky Werewolf Division)?

That's something I really like, actually. OWoD, some supernatural entity or other always was pulling the strings, and nobody could say "Boo".

Here, Vampires may sometimes be able to kill the president, but the response isn't balling up and whimpering, it's "Chap with wings there. Five rounds rapid."

And it WORKS. Generally, the world is run by people who don't care that much, in the grand scheme, about the bumps in the night. Sure, if things start snowballing the nice comfy arrangement could go pfft any time, but it's kinda nice, in a brutal Delta Green suppress the truth, one more night at the opera, 9mm retirement package way.

[Solarn]

I honestly feel that nWoD cut down quite a bit on the religion, my friend. Vampire contains quite a bit of it because religion is a big theme vis-a-vis vampirism, but almost none of the other lines (ESPECIALLY Changeling and Geist) really deal all that heavily with religious themes. The virtue of Faith may be an arguable one, but it can apply in many cases - faith in a deity, faith in a cosmic principle or a cause, even faith in nihilism. Heck, I ran an ultra-atheist scientist in a H:tV game who had the Faith virtue, revolving around his theory of universal sense.

Many of your complaints, above, ignore certain aspects of the world fluff. The Tribes of Luna (they often refer to themselves as that name as well) call themselves the Forsaken because that's what they are; abandoned by the spirit world and only partially forgiven by their mother, they struggle in order to be accepted once more. The Pure are known as such because they call themselves that and brook no other title. Why should the Forsaken care about the terminology? Luna's favor speaks more than words.

Likewise, the "hopelessness" is not actually hopeless. H:tV is distilled hope in a box. Even vampires have hope in the form of transcendence, Golconda, or simply the sheer iron will necessary to beat the Beast into submission. Geists came back from the DEAD to get to where they are; Prometheans have SPOKEN to those that have finished the Great Work and learned at their feet. Oh yes, the world sucks. The Abyss, Hell, and Arcadia all exist in it, after all. But on the other hand, unlike in oWoD with Pentex and the Jyhad, Oblivion and the Time of Judgment, you can do something about it. If your character struggles and fights to make their portion of the world a better place, they might actually succeed. Hell, that's what Changeling freeholds (at least, the well-run ones) do 24/7/365 - make the world a better place.

By the by, why'd you take two of the most depressing oWoD settings (Mage/Wraith) and then complain that nWoD is depressing?

Also, as I can't stress enough, while EVERY SINGLE oWoD game had the end of the world (Gehenna, the Apocalypse, Oblivion, Banality for a more personal one and in the end, even Mage got its unique unavoidable end-of-the-world scenario) as a major element of their fluff, nWoD has... that thing with the Abyss in Mage and maybe something in Werewolf, and they're pretty much contained by their respective supernaturals.

[Kurald Galain]

They say it is different. But the only major event that didn't involve supernatural beings as the ultimate instigators was the second world war and even that was a retcon, as originally Himmler was a vampire. So for humanity being whats matter and the supernaturals having to hide in fear is a big case of telling rather than showing, since what it shows is that supernaturals are in charge of just about everything.

Two words: Unreliable Narrator.

Most books are written as if they were told to a novice vampire by an elder. This is why e.g. the Clanbook Gangrel gives a very different take on the Gangrel than the Clanbook Ravnos does. So yes, you can find statements in the setting that are stupid or don't make sense (and this is hardly unique to Whitewolf settings, either). That does not mean they are automatically true in most GM's renditions of the setting.

[Yuki Akuma]

So your reaction to bad fluff is automatically "Oh, that must be in-character propoganda or lies, WHite Wolf would never write something that bad seriously"?

Wow.

[Kurald Galain]

So your reaction to bad fluff is automatically "Oh, that must be in-character propoganda or lies, WHite Wolf would never write something that bad seriously"?

No, of course not.

My reaction to the fluff that "vampires caused every single major event throughout world history" is that this is a good example of an unreliable narrator.

My reaction to the fluff of e.g. the Black Hand, or that idiotic Mary Sue vamp/wolf hybrid from first edition oWOD is to say "that didn't happen in my campaign". And yes, I'm aware that this is an Oberoni fallacy.

Yes, there are parts of oWOD fluff that are bad. Yes, there are also parts of oWOD fluff where the writers intentionally gave us multiple contradictory versions of the same event. And saying that the game is bad because some of the fluff is bad is quite the exaggeration.

[Solarn]

No, of course not.

My reaction to the fluff that "vampires caused every single major event throughout world history" is that this is a good example of an unreliable narrator.

My reaction to the fluff of e.g. the Black Hand, or that idiotic Mary Sue vamp/wolf hybrid from first edition oWOD is to say "that didn't happen in my campaign". And yes, I'm aware that this is an Oberoni fallacy.

Yes, there are parts of oWOD fluff that are bad. Yes, there are also parts of oWOD fluff where the writers intentionally gave us multiple contradictory versions of the same event. And saying that the game is bad because some of the fluff is bad is quite the exaggeration.

As far as I know, almost none of the contradictions (except maybe for Rasputin) were intentional, the writing teams for the different gamelines (or even different sets of books within the same line, a la Vampire and Mage) just had no communication with each other or care for any other line than their own.

[Quincunx]

. . .and I like having to wrestle with contradictory, unreliable narrators. I read arty novels, mentally disciplined questions of the spirit, and poetry for enjoyment; I read fanfiction when FF7 was current just to see what great stuff people came up with to plug the gaping plot holes.* Unreliable narrators are a hook that gets me thinking about the world, engaging with it, to find out my version of the truth**.

That being said, when they went beyond setting to directly try novels, mental discipline, and poetry, they crashed and burned. I'm still looking for the granola box from which they copied the Book of Lilith.

*****

In my LARP, we were allowed to buy up to 10th gen without prior approval. Beyond that you had to challenge the Storyteller--a win allowed you the chance to buy up to 8th, tie 9th, etc. It did skew the bell curve a tad towards 10th because many people just didn't take the risk, but the same idea could be used to set the general generational mix where you wanted it.

*****

Dimers, I think the Virtue/Vice baggage was something that was explicitly brought into gameplay mechanics during the End Times hullabaloo, and they found they afterward couldn't unmake the idea that there was a single point of judgment--at least not in a system where the ST wields so much power.

*****

*Pursuant to the "why don't you try homebrew?" argument--D&D has no plot to be broken, just broken mechanics. Reading homebrew would be more like reading mindtwisters and sudoku puzzles that someone else has already answered.

**Brand X, of course.

[Project_Mayhem]

I'ma just drop in and say that Changeling the Lost is about the coolest game evar.

I've played VtM a lot more than VtR, and I'm pretty sure that biases me unfairly :p From what I've read I like them both

[Terraoblivion]

You know, Dimer. In VtM, vampirism was explicitly a curse created by God to punish Cain. Really, VtM was probably the game WW has ever developed where Christianity played the largest part as most of the background is, admittedly fairly loosely, based on Christianity and God is very explicitly real in VtM.

In VtR on the other hand there is one out of five political groups that are somewhat based on Christianity and can you honestly say that doesn't make sense for a society that developed in medieval Europe? Now i do have some problems as a historian with a liturgy developed in the fifth century being meant to evoke images of Roman Catholic liturgy that didn't come about until the counter-reformation in the 16th century, but that doesn't change what the core idea is.

As for Virtues and Vices compared to Nature and Demeanor, i find them roughly equally annoying and useless in describing a character. I'd prefer to just give them a miss and walk away happy, i pretty much always ended up doing that when playing oWoD games. It's a bit harder in nWoD since more mechanics ties into Virtue and Vice.

And Quincunx while i have no problem with unreliable narrators in fiction, i do believe it is quite a bit of trouble in games. Gaming is a cooperative exercise with multiple writers, having too much ambiguity in the writing is bound to cause conflicts and gross misunderstandings of the reality of what is going on. That doesn't improve the story the way an unreliable narrator in traditional fiction can do, it instead weakens it by introducing inconsistencies into the world. And the more broadly focused the game is, the greater the risk of such problems cropping up is and WW being incapable of keeping their VtM fluff straight did cause unending trouble when i played it. Without even going into the fluff from the other oWoD lines. It was especially problematic since the switches in narrator were hardly consistent and at times difficult to even track down, often jumping into an OOC voice without real warning.

As for supernatural beings controlling everything, Kurald, that was stated in the OOC setting descriptions too. The only real conflict there was centered about which supernatural beings were in charge. WWII was the only element of the setting that was explicitly stated to have been caused by humans. I'm not saying that WW meant for humanity to be unimportant on its own, i'm saying that in their eagerness to develop the metaplot and the power of the supernaturals they accidentally wrote themselves into that corner. In general i just think oWoD was ruined by WW having no idea how to keep developing their themes at the time and instead weakened or even ruined them by not keeping track of the material they added to the setting. They have been much better at keeping focus and consistency in nWoD, which is really the only major difference between VtM and VtR in my opinion. The rest are just cosmetic changes to make it clear they are different settings and establish a break, or minor elements in pruning the parts that didn't fit the theme. Other nWoD games differ more from their oWoD counterpart.

[Tyrrell]

In particular, the "war of ideas" approach to oWoD Mage was inspired and its implementation was excellent. Yes, it steals from Ars Magicia but, IMHO, it does a better job of fluffing it out.

The war of ideas in OWoD Mage had nothing at all to do with ars magica. The fluff of the two games was vastly different and both games were improved by the severing of the connection between them.