General WoD Discussion #2: Its time to Celebrate!

[SiuiS]

I'd be up for that as well. I've been wanting to test out some things anyway...

I'd play, but I'm not up for STing. I might know someone who is, though, once the laptop that has all their nWoD stuff on it is fixed?

Pass word along?

On the white room test:

I hear the new combat is either one side brutally cubstomping the other, or roughly evenly-matched combatants dragging on for ages. So that would fit.

It's interesting that the nWoD rules worked fine in a white room. Maybe this goes to show combat is more realistic now?

I might be up to ST a GMC PBP. I'm not very experienced, mind, but as long as we can avoid people wandering off I'm all for it.

Finally, a writer has confirmed that the little fiction bits are, indeed, depicting the creation of a Promethian. So that's nice to know.

Aye, the old set works in a bland, featureless test room. I suspect this was actively disliked, since it encourages such silliness as the radiation spear.


As for a game, probably best to have a time limit on posting, so one guy getting sick or forgetting to say he's on vacation doesn't tank the whole deal.

[Sith_Happens]

Aye, the old set works in a bland, featureless test room. I suspect this was actively disliked, since it encourages such silliness as the radiation spear.

Radiation spear? Do explain.

Anyways, I think the point is that when your rules utterly fail under control conditions, it does not inspire confidence that they're somehow going to work any better in "real-world" situations.

[Lady Serpentine]

This... Sounds vaguely like a perversion of one of the Summer contracts that lets you get eye-lasers?

[SiuiS]

Radiation spear? Do explain.

Anyways, I think the point is that when your rules utterly fail under control conditions, it does not inspire confidence that they're somehow going to work any better in "real-world" situations.

Came up about twenty pages ago.

Use spear fighting, staff fighting, great sword fighting, drop defense and spend willpower, and you target one guy and en up hitting every target within range with a sweep using the original target's defense. It's a bag of rats fighter build, where you bypass dodging, armor and such and just throw an AoE damage effect out by tossing a lame pigeon up and Louisville Slugger-ing the thing; if you roll five successes against the pigeon, you apply those haunts everybody, even the guy with dodging Mage armor behind cover. Oh, and +2 successes or something.

That kind of cheesy shenanigans is why dodging is now an opposed roll that reduces successes. It's also why they rewrote styles completely. Because people assumed "white room works, so it must be a compilable system, so if I can build it by the rules then it must work no matter how broken or ridiculous, like in D&D". The designers shut that down, because now the game cannot circumvent ST fiat by appealing to 'The Rules^TM'. That stuff is fine, and fun! It's the sense of entitlement they put down behind the sheds.

[Friv]

Came up about twenty pages ago.

Use spear fighting, staff fighting, great sword fighting, drop defense and spend willpower, and you target one guy and en up hitting every target within range with a sweep using the original target's defense. It's a bag of rats fighter build, where you bypass dodging, armor and such and just throw an AoE damage effect out by tossing a lame pigeon up and Louisville Slugger-ing the thing; if you roll five successes against the pigeon, you apply those haunts everybody, even the guy with dodging Mage armor behind cover. Oh, and +2 successes or something.

That kind of cheesy shenanigans is why dodging is now an opposed roll that reduces successes. It's also why they rewrote styles completely. Because people assumed "white room works, so it must be a compilable system, so if I can build it by the rules then it must work no matter how broken or ridiculous, like in D&D". The designers shut that down, because now the game cannot circumvent ST fiat by appealing to 'The Rules^TM'. That stuff is fine, and fun! It's the sense of entitlement they put down behind the sheds.

But...

That trick doesn't work in white room. Under white room, that trick specifically is broken. You just gave a white room example of why that trick is broken! The fact that some of the WoD rules were idiotic and broken does not mean that they were only tested in white room; it means that they weren't tested at all!

[SiuiS]

That is an example of compiling being a bad thing. The obvious answer so 'ST says lolno', which cannot happen if the prevailing belief is that no matter how absurd, the game must be played as if it were some computer program.

Having the system now require the story teller to work the majority of the time kicks that sandcastle over. Some people will complain that it's broken because they can't run it like a program. I believe it was done intentionally, and is working as intended.

Separate but relate concepts I suppose? I thought the transition was quite clear. But then, they are my thoughts an its easier for me to track them than for you.

[Morty]

I crafted a bit of a scenario to test the new combat rules. It is a bit white-roomy, but hopefully not too much so. Basically, it involves an axe-wielding maniac, Shining style, attacking an unarmed victim. He's wielding a fire ax and has 3 Strength but no dots in Weaponry. He has the Insane tilt and keeps making all-out attacks. Thus, his basic attack pool is 5. His victim is a normal person without any Athletics dots, so her defence is 2. Therefore, if he catches up with her in, say, a corridor, he makes an attack with 3 dice. That's not much, but if he scores any successes, he'll deal 4 points of Lethal damage minimum, which is more than a half of his victim's Health track. Now, his victim can and probably will use Willpower to defend herself, since she's terrified and wants nothing more than to get away. That tilts the odds in her favour, but she can't use Willpower forever. The maniac can't use Willpower due to the Insane tilt. If he had one point in Weaponry, it would of course bring his basic attack pool to 7 and make it more difficult for the victim to escape unscathed if the murderer gets close. Also, the ax has the nine-again rule, which helps the attacker's odds a bit.

Now, another scenario would involve the madman cornering the victim, but I'm not sure how that would affect the rolls.

[SiuiS]

That does take into account nonproficiency right? That's why it goes from five to seven?

Dodge rolls double defense, so that's 4 dice versus 5, hoping for a unceasing by success victory. Not good odds, admittedly.

[Morty]

I am taking non-proficiency into account, yes. The pool goes like this:

3 from Strength + 2 from all-out attack + 1 from Insanity - 1 from-non-proficiency = 5. If he had one dot in Weaponry, I'd add +1 and remove the -1 from non-proficiency.

So yes, if the victim dodges then the odds of the attacker hitting aren't good. But then, he is a complete amateur when it comes to melee weapons.

[Water_Bear]

I'm always wary of the idea that the solution to nonsensical rules interactions is to put more work on the ST.

On the one hand, obviously adjudicating stuff like that is the whole reason there is a referee in the first place. But there are some pretty hard limits on how much time and thought an ST can put into finicking with the rules; after all they have to run every NPC in the combat, roleplay those NPCs, describe all of that to the PCs, then integrate the PCs actions and start over from the begining. Add on the time spent building the enemies, personality and stats, and the time setting up the fight and you can see why a less Fiat intensive combat system is easier on the ST.

Personally, I know that when I run a game I prefer crunchier rules for that reason (it saves me precious time) and because I'm honestly not sure half of the time if someone should reasonably be able to say, block a falling packing crate by spinning a chain at it. I'd rather have a generally solid system that can occasionally give wonky outcomes to one which requires me to constantly adjust the rules mid-fight.

[SiuiS]

It's easy even with fiat just by knowing how the game works.
1-3 dice is the sweet spot.
4 dice is good, six is professional, 8 is world class, ten is top Olympic-class folks.
Fights and rolls only matter if there's dramatic tension.

Go from there.

[MugaSofer]

Wasn't that easier when we used ST-determinded situational modifiers, not pre-prepared "Conditions" written out and given to the players?

[SiuiS]

Wasn't that easier when we used ST-determinded situational modifiers, not pre-prepared "Conditions" written out and given to the players?

We still are using storyteller determined situational modifiers and not a list of conditions. We just have a sample list.

Sorry, I'm being snarky. The conditions thing is no more A Proscribed List from which you shan't deviate than the 3.5 "DM's best friend" of +/-2 is. Infancy, it's exactly that, plus XP.

[Turalisj]

Wasn't that easier when we used ST-determined situational modifiers, not pre-prepared "Conditions" written out and given to the players?

That's very slow for play-by-post combat, where you have to stop and wait for the ST to reply before making a combat post.

[Sith_Happens]

I'm always wary of the idea that the solution to nonsensical rules interactions is to put more work on the ST.

Similarly, I'm wary of people who think that the "G" in "RPG" is an obstacle to be overcome so that the ST can have the first and last word on anything that happens after two people pull weapons on each other. Which as far as I can tell is the attitude of both SiuiS and, more worryingly, the nWoD dev team.

(Full disclosure: Most of my play experience is with D&D 3.5 and I like fooling around with numbers in general.)

[Friv]

That is an example of compiling being a bad thing. The obvious answer so 'ST says lolno', which cannot happen if the prevailing belief is that no matter how absurd, the game must be played as if it were some computer program.

Having the system now require the story teller to work the majority of the time kicks that sandcastle over. Some people will complain that it's broken because they can't run it like a program. I believe it was done intentionally, and is working as intended.

Separate but relate concepts I suppose? I thought the transition was quite clear. But then, they are my thoughts an its easier for me to track them than for you.

The problem for me is, what you're describing is moving the ST to the first response to rules problems rather than the last one. Rules should, in fact, compile correctly. It's totally fine for there to be a clause "and when they don't, the ST should feel totally correct to step in and say Hell No", and for that clause to be canonized, but it absolutely should not be an excuse to not let the rules compile in the first place, and that's the vibe that I'm increasingly getting from God Machine.

The last time I saw an attitude of "caring about whether the rules balance correctly is bad", we got the Old World of Darkness and my god-damned Binder of Houserules, where every session we would run into something stupid and I would have to try and figure out what was supposed to happen, and then make a note of it so that my players could at least know what they could or could not do in a general situation. And then after a few years, a new player would come in, and his ST had a Binder of Houserules, only they were all different because the core ruleset had so many places where the ST was supposed to play it fast and loose that we were, for all intents and purposes, playing a different game.

I hate Binders of Houserules. I find that they make it extremely difficult for a group to integrate new players, and I'm not getting dragged into that morass again. I did it with oWoD, I did it with Exalted, and I am done with it.

[SiuiS]

Similarly, I'm wary of people who think that the "G" in "RPG" is an obstacle to be overcome so that the ST can have the first and last word on anything that happens after two people pull weapons on each other. Which as far as I can tell is the attitude of both SiuiS and, more worryingly, the nWoD dev team.

(Full disclosure: Most of my play experience is with D&D 3.5 and I like fooling around with numbers in general.)

Oh, no. That's hyperbole, I prefer a more balanced and playable thing all around. But you have to understand, dungeons and dragons was literally built antagonistically. D&D was built around Players Versus World, come what may. It was built where if you die to some tiny, niggling detail, you should have looked harder. And world of darkness isn't built that way. To e, this is the equivalent of going to your neighbors' Labor Day barbecue with the same expectations you bring to a business lunch. The expectations will kill your enjoyment.

I love the game part of role playing games. But the point of a game is the rules, and not all rules are mathematical. I don't want to always worry about guys bringing up loopholes for +166 to every skill or who ignores defense on everyone in three meters and tosses out free damage "because the rules don't say I can't".

I still play D&D. And when I want a D&D game, I'll play one. But if you're bringing your D&D hunger to WoD... Why? Why not play D&D? Your experience is 3.5. Mine comes from 1/2e, when DMs were encouraged to do this jerk-assery stuff you're worried about. I think the key in the end is that you're all adults, you should be able to handle this stuff like adults. The rules support that, by putting some of the system processing specifically in the social dynamic range, and not strictly in the numbers and logic range.

The problem for me is, what you're describing is moving the ST to the first response to rules problems rather than the last one. Rules should, in fact, compile correctly. It's totally fine for there to be a clause "and when they don't, the ST should feel totally correct to step in and say Hell No", and for that clause to be canonized, but it absolutely should not be an excuse to not let the rules compile in the first place, and that's the vibe that I'm increasingly getting from God Machine.

Alright. That's not what I'm trying to present but I could see how you got there.

The rules are the first go to. But when the rules collide, the arbitrator should always be the first person you go to, not more rules. That's why Pun-Pun exists. I suppose it depends on how you mean 'compile correctly'. Mathematically, stuff like Pun-Pun is 'correct' but obviously a bug in the system. Having a secondary system that is designed to head that off is a good thing, in my book.

The last time I saw an attitude of "caring about whether the rules balance correctly is bad", we got the Old World of Darkness and my god-damned Binder of Houserules

Balance != compiling. Balance is do the rules work, compiling is a specifically computer programming term to represent technical function without direction or application. You can crash a computer by making it compile every digit of pi, a human will realize what's up and say "screw this noise". That's being mindful and that's good.

Emptying a bathtub isn't faster by using a bigger ladle, it's faster by pulling the plug. Think around not through the block. Y'know?

[MugaSofer]

We still are using storyteller determined situational modifiers and not a list of conditions. We just have a sample list.

Sorry, I'm being snarky. The conditions thing is no more A Proscribed List from which you shan't deviate than the 3.5 "DM's best friend" of +/-2 is. Infancy, it's exactly that, plus XP.

No, we are using ST-determined conditions and we have a sample list.

The point isn't that the system shouldn't be able to tell you what happens if you get sand in your eye, although by your logic it probably shouldn't.

The point is that instead of telling the player "you take -1 to hit because of the fog" you hand them a card that says "FOGGY CONDITION: All rolls to hit take a -1 penalty. Resolution: none, unless you have a weather machine in you pocket." That's not going to DISCOURAGE players to minmax their modifiers, is it?

That's very slow for play-by-post combat, where you have to stop and wait for the ST to reply before making a combat post.

Probably, at that.

Still, situation modifiers haven't dissapeared, and the ST is still going to have to be consulted whenever the Condition system didn't think of something. You still need to ask the ST before acting what modifiers apply.

Only now the players will think they know everything they need to know as long as they can see the cards, I guess, so the ST will have to contradict them in the middle of the fight.

Binder of Houserules

Sounds like some ancient horror some poor sod called up. The Binder Of Houserules.

More seriously, though, I'm the kind of compulsive game designer who enjoys fiddling with and fine-tuning the system for my group. But I don't want to have to do that for every game, which is what I'm fairly certain I'll have to do if I want to run GMC.

That said, I don't think God-Machine is designed with this in mind. I do think WoD fans tend to view Rule Zero as a gift from the gods that makes everything good rather than a fallback. But the devs' comments seem to be more "look, we designed something that makes the game better" rather than "here's an option, take it or leave it."

And they're right; in my expert opinion, GMC is better overall than nWoD core. It's just that this is because it has some bits which are inspired and some which are broken, instead of being entirely functional but not necessarily great (for example, whittling away someone's health in combat is silly.)

This means that a houseruled GMC game should be significantly better than before. It also means that you are essentially forced to houserule it, and the correct way to do so is far from obvious.

[Morty]

If you look at my simulation a few posts above yours, you will see that there's hardly any "whittling" involved. If you're using a weapon bigger than a knife, every successful attack of yours will deal at least two points of damage. If the new combat paradigm has a problem, and I'm not convinced if it is a problem, then it's that it may be too hard to score at least one success.

[Friv]

If you look at my simulation a few posts above yours, you will see that there's hardly any "whittling" involved. If you're using a weapon bigger than a knife, every successful attack of yours will deal at least two points of damage. If the new combat paradigm has a problem, and I'm not convinced if it is a problem, then it's that it may be too hard to score at least one success.

Unless your target is wearing a leather jacket, anyway.

Since armor wasn't downgraded, but now removes attack successes, all forms of armor are exactly three times as powerful as they were before. This makes you damned-near invulnerable until people start taking called shots against you, which pushes the game back to Chance Die Town, Population Everyone.

*EDIT* As far as your earlier example - sorry, I should have noted - that's actually the exact problem that we're discussing.

Two enemies of roughly equal strength, under the GMC system, are extremely likely to be reduced to chance dice to hit one another. They can try to use various tricks to foist Conditions and Tilts on one another, but as those rolls will also be chance dice, you're going to end up with a fight that reads more like a Three Stooges routine than a gritty battle.

Two enemies of even very slightly differing skill, such as your axe murderer and average person, results in a fight where one person almost always hits for massive amounts of damage and the other guy has to run away because he can't touch his enemy.

[SiuiS]

If you look at my simulation a few posts above yours, you will see that there's hardly any "whittling" involved. If you're using a weapon bigger than a knife, every successful attack of yours will deal at least two points of damage. If the new combat paradigm has a problem, and I'm not convinced if it is a problem, then it's that it may be too hard to score at least one success.

Aye.

No, we are using ST-determined conditions and we have a sample list.

The point isn't that the system shouldn't be able to tell you what happens if you get sand in your eye, although by your logic it probably shouldn't.

The point is that instead of telling the player "you take -1 to hit because of the fog" you hand them a card that says "FOGGY CONDITION: All rolls to hit take a -1 penalty. Resolution: none, unless you have a weather machine in you pocket." That's not going to DISCOURAGE players to minmax their modifiers, is it?

I confess I am not sure what you're talking about.

I said that if you knew what the system was aiming for, you could handle it. You said that it was easier when you could ad-lib modifiers instead of ring stuck with a list of conditions. I said the conditions list is not exhaustive, and simply shows how these would work, and further that the difference between "ad-lib modifiers" and "conditions" is that the game gave ad-lib modifiers a title and that's it.

How did we go from there to the above? How did we go from me saying you haven't actually lost anything to minmaxing modifiers? I thought this stemmed from whether or not it was too much presumed workload for the ST.

In which case, no. Saying "you've got Blinded as a condition while in the fog" is actually easier than explaining everything Blinded does, and is identical to telling a player they are blind in the nonGMC rules. You point to the book and keep playing, maybe brush up on being blinded yourself (or what slight obscuring does, or whatever you decided the fog does) before hand so you know what you're getting into.

Probably, at that.

Still, situation modifiers haven't dissapeared, and the ST is still going to have to be consulted whenever the Condition system didn't think of something. You still need to ask the ST before acting what modifiers apply.

Only now the players will think they know everything they need to know as long as they can see the cards, I guess, so the ST will have to contradict them in the middle of the fight.

At a table, this is a non-issue. It takes seconds to clarify and is what the ST is supposed to do; my only concern is having to drop the fiction as give a rules statement maybe breaking immersion.

At a play by post, well, depends on style of players. For a crunchier game, of any system, you would have to stop or be ready for interuption, and action scenes would consist of lots of brief posts instead of long ones. But play by post naturally runs afoul of things that are no big deal at a table, and I'm still learning to cope with those issues.

More seriously, though, I'm the kind of compulsive game designer who enjoys fiddling with and fine-tuning the system for my group. But I don't want to have to do that for every game, which is what I'm fairly certain I'll have to do if I want to run GMC.

That said, I don't think God-Machine is designed with this in mind. I do think WoD fans tend to view Rule Zero as a gift from the gods that makes everything good rather than a fallback. But the devs' comments seem to be more "look, we designed something that makes the game better" rather than "here's an option, take it or leave it."

And they're right; in my expert opinion, GMC is better overall than nWoD core. It's just that this is because it has some bits which are inspired and some which are broken, instead of being entirely functional but not necessarily great (for example, whittling away someone's health in combat is silly.)

This means that a houseruled GMC game should be significantly better than before. It also means that you are essentially forced to houserule it, and the correct way to do so is far from obvious.

That's rather Othering and offensive. Please don't make blanket statements about labeled groups.

Everything I've seen and heard falls into two camps– people who played it and said it works fine, or people who did not play and only concocted scenarios to prove it would fail. Give it a shot and see how it actually works. I honestly think that the GMC rules don't do anything different, they are just very aware of how, despite what you'd think from reading, stuff actually happens in a game. I think they are cognizant of the outcome of their and merely wrote the rules in such a way as to account for that, and most people are upset not at the content but the presentation.

Unless your target is wearing a leather jacket, anyway.

Since armor wasn't downgraded, but now removes attack successes, all forms of armor are exactly three times as powerful as they were before. This makes you damned-near invulnerable until people start taking called shots against you, which pushes the game back to Chance Die Town, Population Everyone.

*EDIT* As far as your earlier example - sorry, I should have noted - that's actually the exact problem that we're discussing.

Two enemies of roughly equal strength, under the GMC system, are extremely likely to be reduced to chance dice to hit one another. They can try to use various tricks to foist Conditions and Tilts on one another, but as those rolls will also be chance dice, you're going to end up with a fight that reads more like a Three Stooges routine than a gritty battle.

Two enemies of even very slightly differing skill, such as your axe murderer and average person, results in a fight where one person almost always hits for massive amounts of damage and the other guy has to run away because he can't touch his enemy.

Interesting. I could have sworn I saw something about armor on my first go through. Lemme see... Nope. Not at all. Heh. Well, a proper trench coat does stop a knife, and wearing five T-shirts helps a bit too. *shrug*

Why would trying to apply a tilt to an enemy result in chance dice? You can do that without triggering their defense at all. Remember, tossing crates at them isn't an attack, it's affecting the scenery. You could chuck armfuls of ice from an ice machine onto the floor, toss your heavy wallet into a light fixture for a flash and pop, dash a handful of change at their face to make them blink, splash water from the gutter up as a surprise... You don't hav to aim at them for these almost at all. Just get the right general area.

Also, for the bloke who said tilts were ridiculous because an earthquake on a featureless desert was lethal? No it's not. Tilts are combat only. That not earthquake while you're chilling, that's earthquake while you're running for your life and there is an abundance of sharp things and chaos. If you're chill, tilts don't apply.

[Morty]

Two enemies of even very slightly differing skill, such as your axe murderer and average person, results in a fight where one person almost always hits for massive amounts of damage and the other guy has to run away because he can't touch his enemy.

I wouldn't call it "slightly differing skill", though. One of the people involved is armed and the other is not. One has murder on his mind and the other does not. I think it's entirely appropriate that the only chance for the unarmed sane person to survive is to dodge or run.

I think I'm going to do some more simulations with actually trained people later.

[Lady Serpentine]

I wouldn't call it "slightly differing skill", though. One of the people involved is armed and the one is not. One has murder on his mind and the other does not. I think it's entirely appropriate that the only chance for the unarmed sane person to survive is to dodge or run.

Considering they have no applicable merits and no dots in Brawl, that does seem reasonable.

Of course, on the other hand, with a long weapon, the other way to evade is to get inside its swing, but that's probably not the best idea if you can't fight.

Edit: And Morty is a ninja. Which I suppose makes sense considering his fondness for Hunter.

[Sith_Happens]

Why would trying to apply a tilt to an enemy result in chance dice? You can do that without triggering their defense at all. Remember, tossing crates at them isn't an attack, it's affecting the scenery. You could chuck armfuls of ice from an ice machine onto the floor, toss your heavy wallet into a light fixture for a flash and pop, dash a handful of change at their face to make them blink, splash water from the gutter up as a surprise... You don't hav to aim at them for these almost at all. Just get the right general area.

So what if I'm not playing as Jackie Chan? Not that it'd somehow be a bad thing if I was.

[Friv]

Why would trying to apply a tilt to an enemy result in chance dice? You can do that without triggering their defense at all. Remember, tossing crates at them isn't an attack, it's affecting the scenery. You could chuck armfuls of ice from an ice machine onto the floor, toss your heavy wallet into a light fixture for a flash and pop, dash a handful of change at their face to make them blink, splash water from the gutter up as a surprise... You don't hav to aim at them for these almost at all. Just get the right general area.

The Tilts that I looked at (Blinded, Deafened, Arm Wrack, Leg Wrack, and Stunned) all had rules for applying them to people, and those rules were always "attack roll at die penalty". Throwing sand in someone's eyes was called out as an attack roll at -3 dice, for example.

I didn't think to check the Tilts that were entirely scenery-based, though, so those might be more applicable. I just assumed based on the ones that I had read that attack rolls would be needed for all of them.

I wouldn't call it "slightly differing skill", though. One of the people involved is armed and the other is not. One has murder on his mind and the other does not. I think it's entirely appropriate that the only chance for the unarmed sane person to survive is to dodge or run.

I think I'm going to do some more simulations with actually trained people later.

The ax is actually pretty much meaningless in the ax murderer situation, weirdly. The main issue is that the murderer has five dice to attack and the other guy doesn't.

If the guy getting chased finds an ax of his own and turns around, he has to stop dodging to attack. At that point, the murderer has 3 dice (Str 3 + All-Out Attack 2 + Insane - No Weaponry - Defense 2), and the average guy has 1 die (Str 2 - No Weaponry), which gives the murderer an 65% chance of dealing five or more levels of damage on his first attack, while the average guy has a 30% chance of the same.

If the normal guy goes all-out, the murderer's chances of hitting him go up to 87%, while his chances increase to about 65%; those two dice increase the chance of a game-ending hit by a fifth.

And that's a two-die difference with both people behaving like, if you'll forgive me, ax murderers. If they're both fighting to some semblance of intellect it'll go a lot worse for the average guy.

[Morty]

Keep in mind that the normal person can spend Willpower, whereas the axe murderer can't due to the Insane tilt. Either way, I don't think I see that particular situation as problematic, although I can see why someone would. If an average non-combatant is cornered by someone armed, bent on murder and more capable of it - due to one more dot of Strength - that someone is in serious trouble.

Now, it might become a problem if a slight advantage in skill when two combat-capable people are fighting becomes overwhelming. I'll devise and run some simulations for that. Actually playing the GMC is not in the cards unless someone volunteers to ST that CSI Supernatural game.

I do agree that the system could use some more non-environmental Tilts that don't rely on called shots to apply.

[Turalisj]

Let me ask you this: Can you absolutely, with no doubt, say that this system is worse than the initial NWoD one?

[Morty]

So, looks like a quick-and-dirty guide to playing Mage with the GMC rules has been posted on the WW boards. If only I gave the slightest bit of a crap about Mage, I'd be pleased. As it is, I'll wait for B&S and hope that they release some guides for Changeling and Hunter.

[SiuiS]

So what if I'm not playing as Jackie Chan? Not that it'd somehow be a bad thing if I was.

If you choose to stand there and duke it out you choose to stand tere and duke it out. I've witnessed an actual fistfight that was two perfectly coordinated but very amateur boxers who couldn't hit each other to save their lives. The smart one backed up to a metal pole and juked, and the thee guy broke his hand.

Given this, the idea of a fight going on long enough for someone to decide this wasn't working, change tactics is normal, I think. Or not a system bug.

The Tilts that I looked at (Blinded, Deafened, Arm Wrack, Leg Wrack, and Stunned) all had rules for applying them to people, and those rules were always "attack roll at die penalty". Throwing sand in someone's eyes was called out as an attack roll at -3 dice, for example.

I didn't think to check the Tilts that were entirely scenery-based, though, so those might be more applicable. I just assumed based on the ones that I had read that attack rolls would be needed for all of them.

Okay. I'm going off of having this exact conversation elsewhere. Someone said use the terrain, toss a crate to inflict a tilt, and a writer said "exactly". I know you don't always need to roll an attack to do it and you don't always need a critical to do it.

Personally, I would expect the ST to give the bad guy a dramatic failure, if only for the WP refresh so he can clobber the good guy next round, if tits aren't in play. Dynamism is available, I don't understand why it isn't expected.

The ax is actually pretty much meaningless in the ax murderer situation, weirdly. The main issue is that the murderer has five dice to attack and the other guy doesn't.

If the guy getting chased finds an ax of his own and turns around, he has to stop dodging to attack. At that point, the murderer has 3 dice (Str 3 + All-Out Attack 2 + Insane - No Weaponry - Defense 2), and the average guy has 1 die (Str 2 - No Weaponry), which gives the murderer an 65% chance of dealing five or more levels of damage on his first attack, while the average guy has a 30% chance of the same.

If the normal guy goes all-out, the murderer's chances of hitting him go up to 87%, while his chances increase to about 65%; those two dice increase the chance of a game-ending hit by a fifth.

And that's a two-die difference with both people behaving like, if you'll forgive me, ax murderers. If they're both fighting to some semblance of intellect it'll go a lot worse for the average guy.

Is that not good?

[Sith_Happens]

If you choose to stand there and duke it out you choose to stand tere and duke it out. I've witnessed an actual fistfight that was two perfectly coordinated but very amateur boxers who couldn't hit each other to save their lives. The smart one backed up to a metal pole and juked, and the thee guy broke his hand.

Given this, the idea of a fight going on long enough for someone to decide this wasn't working, change tactics is normal, I think. Or not a system bug.

Hm, now that I think about it, back when I did Tang Soo Do a sparring match against a similarly-ranked opponent would often go at least about twenty seconds between points. That's seven nWoD rounds, so...

Problem is that when that twenty seconds takes five minutes to play out it gets boring fast.