General WoD Discussion #4: Rage Against the God-Machine

[ocel]

Thanks go to One Tin Soldier, Sith_Happens and SiuiS for helping me come up with this thread's title. And to everyone else who made this game such a success, thank you. Now with that all said, where were we?

Spoiler: List of Previous Threads:

Show

• General Thread: #1: Assemble.
• General WoD Discussion #2: It's time to Celebrate!
• General WoD Discussion #3 Third time's the charm - No wait, that sounds too Exalted...

[Kiero]

If anyone wants to listen to us playing W:tF2e, our first session is up on our podcast site. There are two more to go up, and session four is tonight.

As from the previous thread, some actual play experience of W:tF2e.

[hiryuu]

Doing this for my demon campaign. Posted it in the other thread, thought I might re-post here, get some opinions, maybe get some ideas for other alternates thrown my way.

Alternate Floridas
“Control has taken note of three zone transition events in the previous eight hours. Recommended action is resetting the entire southeast region approximately ten seconds.”

Where the Sidewalk Ends
The Florida metro that crosses Tampa, Orlando, and Miami is a world of alternates; paths not taken, choices not made, and worlds only dreamed of in fevered imaginations. Where Seattle's shards are ahead or behind the times, most of the shards accessible through the strange doorways in Florida are could-have-beens and might-well-bes.

Bit of the Old In-And-Out
Some shards have access to technologies or resources that aren't available in others. These could be anything from stable rocketpacks to arm-mounted nonlethal resin spraying barnacle guns, and they understandably perk eyebrows when they're utilized or demonstrated. Most of these items cause compromise rolls when they're flashed around, and definitely cause compromise rolls or straight up Cover loss if photos or footage of them ends up anywhere that they don't belong. This doesn't apply to everything you'd pull through a shard with you, just the stuff that stands out.

Supernatural Awareness
In worlds with humans, changing fates often reveal the presence of unnatural manipulations. It should be noted that awareness is not saturation – a world could very well be a perfect facsimile of the real world in which all methods of enacting any kind of physical change are contracts, but the inhabitants be completely unaware, possibly even of each other.

None: There is no supernatural presence or knowledge at all other than the Machine and its agents, and humanity is essentially completely unaware of it.

●: There are a few people who know a few things, but knowledge, true knowledge, of the supernatural is largely held by inhuman things and the odd cult. If there is a supernatural presence at all, these shards quickly move to Awareness ●● almost as soon as photography or audio recording is invented, and certainly move up once there are devices that can detect the movement and flow of subatomic particles and energies.

●●: Some people know, a lot of people suspect something is very wrong, and hunter cells form regularly to do something about it. There's a lot of information on the internet, but for the most part, supernaturals don't talk to each other and they certainly don't talk to humans about anything. This is assumed to be the “default” level of the World of Darkness. It can easily move to stage ●●● if there's a particularly nasty breakdown of any of the barrier worlds or an information age breaks out. This can be a smooth transition or a sudden and abrupt one.

●●●: Beings from Shadow wander the streets at night, the average person on the street knows what to do if assaulted by a supernatural being. Learning the occult is like getting a college degree – everyone's heard of it, and they might have a cousin who works on strange energies or something, but for the most part, it doesn't interfere with the culture too much, it's just known.

●●●●: Goblin markets sometimes take place out in the open, during the day, and cops or the National Guard are trained to repel Arcadian beings and other such entities. Supernatural news is often the highlight of the day. The culture is built or being built around this knowledge. These types of shards move to stage ●●●●● if there is any kind of infrastructure collapse or cultural reconstruction from a transition out of stage ●●● awareness.

●●●●●: Goblin markets are the rule, not the exception. Bizarre things from Shadow or the Hedge are as normal as any other citizen. Everyone claims they know a guy who knows a guy that can decide what the rules of reality are at any moment. Magic is so integrated into society that there is very little cultural difference between “magic” and “not magic.” In fact, the concept of “antimagic” or “dispelling” things might not even exist.

Nuked Orlando
Point of Divergence: Sometime in October, 1962
Supernatural Awareness: ●●●●
In October of 1962, Russia placed a series of ballistic missiles in Cuba, and while post-negotiations it was agreed that Russia would dismantle the weapons, a frustrated Castro ordered the weapons fired, which resulted in a wide-scale exchange. This Florida is nearly completely retaken by its natural environment, and is dotted with sandhill, scrub, and oak hammock. There is a small settlement named Solace where Sanford is in baseline. It's a good sort of place to lie low while waiting for heat to die down, from, say, holding up a Krystal so you can use the angel repair facility in the back.

Dinosaur World
Point of Divergence: About 65 million years ago
Supernatural Awareness: None
On baseline, sixty-five million years ago, an asteroid impact in Chicxulub resulted in the extinction of the non-avialan Dinosaurs. In Dinosaur World, this mass extinction did not occur. While most plant life continues to be recognizable as modern, there are no easily-notable modern species of animal. The megafauna of Florida consists of a wide variety of heavily modified Cretaceous landforms, from flightless Azhdarchids, active dromaeosaurs, and to an omnivorous ceratopsian species referred to as the “local boar.” The area is only interesting because it has a mortal human settlement from a sharded Earth nearby that may or may not be baseline in the approximate geographical location of the downtown Orlando Public Library. The shard here inserts from the flyover at 17-92 and 436 right into a lake just north of that area.

Oloyaindo
Point of Divergence: Around 1347
Supernatural Awarness: ●●●●●
On this shard, the Black Death managed to wipe out around three-fourths the population of Europe, rather than around a third, killing almost any kind of trade across the Atlantic. The Mexica Triple Alliance and the Mississippian complex have formed into rather large nations using Florida as a trading hub for exploration east into Europe and Africa. Oloyaindo is a large city and general tourist destination due to its nature as centralized point for culture in North and South America, in addition to greater Asia. Death Gods are a fact of life among the nochtiné (“all of us”), as well as magicians and religious practitioners of many varieties. Oloyaindo is a center for scientific research and investigation, leaning toward what other Earths might call the more esoteric expressions of science.

EPCOT Metro
Point of Divergence: Summer 1965
Supernatural Awareness: ●●
In this shard, a mysterious backer (collectively believed to be the God-Machine) awarded Walt Disney with the money required to build “The Florida Project” - Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow, also known as EPCOT - to his vision and specification, before the Magic Kingdom. The modular city so constructed continued to be a driving force for technological prowess, and the entire metro region is an experimental testbed for all sorts of infrastructure and social systems. Most of the city is covered in smartglass and robots are a common sight on the streets. Nearly everything swarms with the God-Machine's influence. It's easier for a demon to be compromised in this Orlando, but it's also the sort of place where higher and faster gains against God can be made.

Moorlando
Point of Divergence: Summer 716
Supernatural Awareness: ●●
In this shard, a small army led by Pelagius was nearly defeated by an Umayyad army in the in the mountains of Iberia, and was allowed to establish a small christian town in Asturias. The rest of the Reconquista met with similar failures, largely due to lack of leadership and centralized ambition. The series of conflicts that lead to the Moorish revitalization of Iberia also lead to a stronger, more centralized Moorish base of power in the peninsula, and it is Islamic ships that sail in the 1490s seeking a new route to a new world. Now the Islamic World Alliance operates much of the southeastern North America, along with the Mexica Triple Alliance, and while the age of Conquesta has long past, the people of the New Covadonga have built a newer, more secular government still plagued and ruled by its Islamic forebearers

Biolando
Point of Divergence: Between 0.2 and 1.7 million years ago
Supernatural Awareness: ●●●●● (but see below)
In baseline, humanity achieved control of fire before the introduction of sapiens; at some point in this shard, that practice was either abandoned or never occurred, but this shard is the site of multiple domestication events triggered by the emergence of psychic ability in several early human species. Over the course of the evolution of sapiens, selective breeding and manipulation of genetic material has led to a cultural revolution in which the history of the world is encoded in a vast memetic entity that essentially rules the equatorial regions of the planet. This entity directly opposes the God-Machine and almost anything created by its ministrations – the human culture is well-aware of multiple shards and that they are living in a pocket shard created by accident. The Hotel currently considers it a no-go zone, but there might be some secrets here where God openly wars against the hives.

Teslando
Point of Divergence: Around 1900
Supernatural Awareness: ●●●
In this shard, Nikola Tesla met and married Anne Morgan while working for J.P. Morgan, and with access to the Morgan fortune and Anne's assistance, managed to overcome his own innate resistance to charity and personal interaction, and together they built an empire of steel and glass. Early adoption of wireless power led directly to the proliferation of nuclear energy in the 1940s and a much deadlier World War II. Currently, airships still plow through the skies and computing technology, while not miniaturized, saturates as much of the world as it does in baseline. Companies founded by Tesla on behalf of Thomas Edison have managed to prove the existence of Twilight, and several hunter agencies openly work for the police force. While they are unaware of the God-Machine, residents of this shard have recently become aware of traffic in and out of their universe.

[One Tin Soldier]

Thanks go to the One Tin Soldier for helping me come up with a title for this thread.

Spoiler: List of Previous Threads:

Show

• General Thread: #1: Assemble.
• General WoD Discussion #2: It's time to Celebrate!
• General WoD Discussion #3 Third time's the charm - No wait, that sounds too Exalted...

I'm flattered, but I'm pretty sure I wasn't the one to suggest the title. sith_happens was the one who brought it up on the last page, and I beleive someone else had suggested it way back earlier in the thread.

[SiuiS]

So what are your opinions on the alternate Virtue and Vices for the monster splats? I am actually looking forward to them on my own terms.

Ditto. The conceptual space is nice, although part of me worries they will bifurcate too far from norm.

W:tF 2nd edition is now out in PDF - which I'm checking, but I assume means the NDA no longer applies.

Score! This is the once-named idigam chronicles, yes?

Werewolf has never interested me that much, but what I've heard about its second edition sounds good enough to change it. Unfortunately, I can't really buy it now.

Werewolf plays less cerebrally (up front) than other games. That's what got me into it. Well, that and I've my choices were vampire or werewolf and screw those emo nerds, amirite?

(No, no I am not right. I was young and stupid.)

Wait really? 2E seems like a general improvement over 1E

Aye, but some folks just don't grok.

I have two players, one who's been using 2nd edition for months and one who has now played two sessions, who both built melee brutes (martial artist and turn of century pugilist, respectively). And they described their fight against each other as "taking an hour before anyone went down". Cue white room debate XD

[Blackhawk748]

I have two players, one who's been using 2nd edition for months and one who has now played two sessions, who both built melee brutes (martial artist and turn of century pugilist, respectively). And they described their fight against each other as "taking an hour before anyone went down". Cue white room debate XD

Honestly i see that as a feature not a bug, i mean have you seen two well trained martial artists go at it? It takes forever to take each other down, and its basically just waiting for one to screw up.

[magic9mushroom]

Honestly i see that as a feature not a bug, i mean have you seen two well trained martial artists go at it? It takes forever to take each other down, and its basically just waiting for one to screw up.

Depends on the rules, I believe. Wasn't the original rationale for wrestling being fake that real wrestling would be over too quickly?

[Blackhawk748]

Depends on the rules, I believe. Wasn't the original rationale for wrestling being fake that real wrestling would be over too quickly?

Im not sure, if it was it was a faulty assumption. Look at MMA and Boxing, whose can be very long matches, or over in 30 seconds. Depends on who's in the ring.

[Morty]

Werewolf plays less cerebrally (up front) than other games. That's what got me into it. Well, that and I've my choices were vampire or werewolf and screw those emo nerds, amirite?

(No, no I am not right. I was young and stupid.)

I was never too interested in the "spirit police" theme and didn't feel as though it was meshed into the werewolf myth well enough. 2e seems like it's doing a better job at it.

As far as combat goes, an argument could be made that the GMC rules appendix doesn't really properly convey the change in approach that running 2e combat requires. Hopefully the 2e core book will handle it better.

[SiuiS]

Honestly i see that as a feature not a bug, i mean have you seen two well trained martial artists go at it? It takes forever to take each other down, and its basically just waiting for one to screw up.

Among martial artists who train to hurt and or kill, a fight that takes 30 seconds is way too long. Boxing, jiujitsu, and the like are as much about technique and points as success – often moreso.

Soldiers aren't going to square up and slug it out. They're going to go for blood chokes, break limbs, crush testicles, cause internal organ damage, collapse throats, pop eyeballs, trow sand, sneak up, feint, spring traps from the dark, draw a weapon, use terrain, get the sun in their opponent's eyes... Or run. Because a fight that takes more than five rounds is a big commitment of energy with a target you're now in danger of actually losing to.

[Nerd-o-rama]

So I wound up running a Princess: the Hopeful game on basically a whim.

I feel pretty confident in the genre (as in, magical girls encapsulated in what's fundamentally a horror setting), but does anyone with experience with the fansplat have any advice? I'm using the Vocation version, if you happen to know what the difference is, also on a whim.

[Leliel]

I was never too interested in the "spirit police" theme and didn't feel as though it was meshed into the werewolf myth well enough. 2e seems like it's doing a better job at it.

As far as combat goes, an argument could be made that the GMC rules appendix doesn't really properly convey the change in approach that running 2e combat requires. Hopefully the 2e core book will handle it better.

Yeah, Onyx Path is of the opinion that real violence doesn't deserve to be pretty. The first big blue book for 2E is going to be called The Hurt Locker, and they've said up front it's about how horrific violence actually is.

Real violence is quick, vicious, and usually depends on planning beforehand if winning is an actual thing. Elegance is for formal sports, it conflicts with safety and efficiency.

[SiuiS]

Man I'm behind the times.

Has hunter recieved an update to second edition? Is that what mortal remains is?

We have werewolf, vampire, demon. We are expecting Mage and changeling soon. Hunter??? Geist??? Mummy and Prometheans??? My ability to read their website is apparently nil. -.-

[Kiero]

Score! This is the once-named idigam chronicles, yes?

It is, yes.

[magic9mushroom]

Yeah, Onyx Path is of the opinion that real violence doesn't deserve to be pretty. The first big blue book for 2E is going to be called The Hurt Locker, and they've said up front it's about how horrific violence actually is.

Real violence is quick, vicious, and usually depends on planning beforehand if winning is an actual thing. Elegance is for formal sports, it conflicts with safety and efficiency.

Most real weapons do look elegant, I'd say.

[ghanjrho]

Man I'm behind the times.

Has hunter recieved an update to second edition? Is that what mortal remains is?

We have werewolf, vampire, demon. We are expecting Mage and changeling soon. Hunter??? Geist??? Mummy and Prometheans??? My ability to read their website is apparently nil. -.-

Mortal Remains is half update, half Hunter versions of the non-Big Three lines (Changeling, Promethean, Geist, Mummy, and Demon). It is not the formal Hunter: the Vigil 2e.
Mage and Promethean are actively in development, with Changeling behind them. The rest of Mummy (that is so far planned) is actually being done using the 1e ruleset (since that is what they were proposed under).

[Morty]

Yeah, Onyx Path is of the opinion that real violence doesn't deserve to be pretty. The first big blue book for 2E is going to be called The Hurt Locker, and they've said up front it's about how horrific violence actually is.

Real violence is quick, vicious, and usually depends on planning beforehand if winning is an actual thing. Elegance is for formal sports, it conflicts with safety and efficiency.

Indeed. Also, 2e nWoD combat seems to put more emphasis on not fighting until you run out of health levels, or start suffering wound penalties. Lethal damage hurts, and suffering a few points of it is often enough to knock the fight out of someone.

Mortal Remains is a stop-gap rules update, covering the essentials. Whether or not Hunter receives a proper 2e treatment remains to be seen. 2e Mage is coming out soon, and 2e Promethean and Changeling are in the works.

[magic9mushroom]

I will note that I consider the revamp of weapon damage to be somewhat unnecessary. "More damaging weapons are more accurate" is, in fact, broadly true; two-handed swords are harder to defend against than one-handed swords (because you can use your arm muscles to control the blade instead of just your fingers), compound bows are usually more accurate than simple bows, and rifles are more accurate than pistols. And there are already the 9-again and 8-again rules to give some semblance of a second dimension.

And there's the issue that "you need to stab someone a ton of times with a knife to drop them, unless you hit something really vital" happens to actually be true. Same with a bow. The biggest break from reality in nWoD 1e combat is actually the lack of bleeding from a partial track of lethal. Full lethal from 1e is actually about right as a drop threshold from weapons - except maybe in the case of firearms - but it's well past the threshold where you'd bleed to death after the fight unless given medical attention.

What I understand of 2e combat rules is that weapon hits always do large amounts of damage when they connect, but the thresholds for dropping unconscious and bleeding out are unaltered (and thus "bleeding out" is still a subset of "unconscious"). This doesn't fix the actual issue, which is that you can be bleeding out while conscious and still fighting. And as such, it just swaps the handling of what would in reality be "mortally wounded, unless given medical attention, but still up and fighting" from "up and fighting, and can just sleep it off" (which is inaccurate) to "comatose" (which is also inaccurate). And given that in a lot of nWoD campaigns the PCs have supernatural methods of healing and don't actually just sleep it off... I think the 1e method actually is a better simulation.

[Andreaz]

What I understand of 2e combat rules is that weapon hits always do large amounts of damage when they connect, but the thresholds for dropping unconscious and bleeding out are unaltered (and thus "bleeding out" is still a subset of "unconscious").

Define "Large". 1e combat was usually a matter of "whoever hits first wins", precisely because of the size of the attack pools after defense is accounted.

2e white room combat is less lethal. Weapons do automatic damage, give no attack, and defense values are higher, often matching the attacker's dice pool. This means "white room" combat takes a little while, since everyone will be stuck with chance die and even using wp for a 3 dice pool will still not hit about 30% of the time. And when they do hit, they hit for little more than the weapon's raw damage (usually a 2 or 3 + 1 success). Armor enters here as well, so two protected combatants will fight for a good 4 or 5 rounds before one of them drops. More if they're not really good at it.

Now, you get a surprise attack? You'll drop the victim to -1 or -3 right away. Full attack pool, plus automatic damage? Sign up for the pain train! Combat in the world of darkness is a dirty, bloody thing. Almost no one fights "honestly" and lives to tell the tale. Most engagements are ambushes, surprise attacks, gang ups and guns to a knife fight.

I will have to disagree with you here, pretty hard. WoD combat wants to give you this feeling that you're screwed and in a ****ed up world, and the typical combat experience it expects you to have is exactly that, while also giving the players, when their characters prepared well, something to do other than look at the first dice roll and rip their sheets.
Same bloody encounters and more interesting to play to its limit on top? I say that's a clear win.

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

If you have a "hockey fight" (two guys square up knowing they're both about to fight) then yeah, it'll take a while and chances are the refs will intervene after 30 seconds with almost no damage done. But yeah, it favours striking first

[SiuiS]

I will note that I consider the revamp of weapon damage to be somewhat unnecessary. "More damaging weapons are more accurate" is, in fact, broadly true; two-handed swords are harder to defend against than one-handed swords (because you can use your arm muscles to control the blade instead of just your fingers), compound bows are usually more accurate than simple bows, and rifles are more accurate than pistols. And there are already the 9-again and 8-again rules to give some semblance of a second dimension.

My sniper with a high calibur rifle was less accurate at maximum range than our trigger man with his shotgun at my maximum range, because the 9-again quality gave him a straight 10% accuracy boost.

When my players are pulling out shotguns to drop targets at long range and only use rifles at medium, if at all. Something has gone wrong.

And there's the issue that "you need to stab someone a ton of times with a knife to drop them, unless you hit something really vital" happens to actually be true. Same with a bow. The biggest break from reality in nWoD 1e combat is actually the lack of bleeding from a partial track of lethal. Full lethal from 1e is actually about right as a drop threshold from weapons - except maybe in the case of firearms - but it's well past the threshold where you'd bleed to death after the fight unless given medical attention.

What I understand of 2e combat rules is that weapon hits always do large amounts of damage when they connect, but the thresholds for dropping unconscious and bleeding out are unaltered (and thus "bleeding out" is still a subset of "unconscious"). This doesn't fix the actual issue, which is that you can be bleeding out while conscious and still fighting. And as such, it just swaps the handling of what would in reality be "mortally wounded, unless given medical attention, but still up and fighting" from "up and fighting, and can just sleep it off" (which is inaccurate) to "comatose" (which is also inaccurate). And given that in a lot of nWoD campaigns the PCs have supernatural methods of healing and don't actually just sleep it off... I think the 1e method actually is a better simulation.

The biggest change for realism is the Beaten Down condition.

Yeah, you need to be stabbed eight more times before you're dead dead, but that first cold burn of steel through your intercostals sends an animal panicked into you; it takes extreme effort to continue fighting in that situation instead of running or surrendering. This means after the first bit of lethal, you drop. If I break your jaw with a haymaker, you drop. If you shoot me with a .38, I drop. If we both stab each other with broken bottles, we're both out of the fight.

Trained soldiers in life or death situations or on mission deployment can keep going, but your average Joe cannot. This supplements bleeding. The second part is that without professional medical attention – not your buddy rolling. First aid, but a doctor with sanitary equipment giving you stitches and medicine – you're going to have complications. Lethal wounds are open wounds, exposed to disease, scarring and mutilation.

You're not guaranteed to pass out when at full lethal, either. It's likely, but the people who wouldn't are the ones who wouldn't; high resolve, composure, willpower, stamina, iron stamina merits, etc., and they can Keep going heroically. Everyone else? This is not a system of heroic combat situations. This is a system where the first book on combat is about the horror and permanency of Violence. The dysphoria you are going to have FOREVER when the boxer break sets and your fingers are shorter and don't bend right. The scars and disfigurement. Waking up screaming because your knee tingles and you remember the side-kick that one time that ripped your meniscus. Vomiting from the sheer horror of the brutality of he murder when your friend snaps and bashes the hobo to death with a cinder block.

You're not awake and soldiering in? Good. This is not the game of soldiering on. This is the game of ghosts and their acumulation. This is the game where demons haunt you and those demons have the faces of your regrets and mistakes.

[Morty]

Tilts are another feature of the new combat system that change the dynamics considerably. They're a standardized way of tracking effects that do not boil down to losing health levels. And as I said, I don't think the rules appendix does as good a job as it could at explaining them, integrating them and providing examples. Hopefully Hurt Locker and the new corebook will. Using the environment is all well and good, but there's room for creativity even if you only have your own hands and weapon to work with.

One thing I'm especially looking forward to in Hurt Locker are the short location cards that provide mechanical and narrative features of different pieces of background. It should be very handy for Storytellers to breathe life into scenes.

[magic9mushroom]

Define "Large". 1e combat was usually a matter of "whoever hits first wins", precisely because of the size of the attack pools after defense is accounted.

"Average" stats for all would give something like 2 attribute + 2 skill + 3 weapon - 2 defence = 5 dice. Average health is 7.

"Peak" stats for all would give something like 5 attribute + 5 skill + 1 specialty + 5 weapon - 3 defence - 3 armour = 10 dice. Peak health is 10.

With a gun you could get 5 attribute + 5 skill + 1 specialty + 4 weapon + 3 autofire - 4 armour = 14 dice, but that's bashing damage unless you pull out an AMR or HMG.

Iteratives are broken, yes, but that's a quite specific issue rather than a general failing - you can't get iteratives without a Fighting Style or Gunslinger. Otherwise, combat takes a few turns.

(I'll admit that it does tend to have constant hitting for small amounts, but in quite a few scenarios that's what actually happens.)

My sniper with a high calibur rifle was less accurate at maximum range than our trigger man with his shotgun at my maximum range, because the 9-again quality gave him a straight 10% accuracy boost.

When my players are pulling out shotguns to drop targets at long range and only use rifles at medium, if at all. Something has gone wrong.

How does 9-again give accuracy?

All I can think of is that you're allowing 9-again to work on chance rolls (which is a questionable reading of RAW, given that a chance roll replaces your nonexistent dice pool), but even then it would only increase accuracy from 10% to 11% and (depending on reading) increase the likelihood of dramatic failure by the same amount.

The biggest change for realism is the Beaten Down condition.

Yeah, you need to be stabbed eight more times before you're dead dead, but that first cold burn of steel through your intercostals sends an animal panicked into you; it takes extreme effort to continue fighting in that situation instead of running or surrendering. This means after the first bit of lethal, you drop. If I break your jaw with a haymaker, you drop. If you shoot me with a .38, I drop. If we both stab each other with broken bottles, we're both out of the fight.

Trained soldiers in life or death situations or on mission deployment can keep going, but your average Joe cannot. This supplements bleeding. The second part is that without professional medical attention – not your buddy rolling. First aid, but a doctor with sanitary equipment giving you stitches and medicine – you're going to have complications. Lethal wounds are open wounds, exposed to disease, scarring and mutilation.

You're not guaranteed to pass out when at full lethal, either. It's likely, but the people who wouldn't are the ones who wouldn't; high resolve, composure, willpower, stamina, iron stamina merits, etc., and they can Keep going heroically. Everyone else? This is not a system of heroic combat situations. This is a system where the first book on combat is about the horror and permanency of Violence. The dysphoria you are going to have FOREVER when the boxer break sets and your fingers are shorter and don't bend right. The scars and disfigurement. Waking up screaming because your knee tingles and you remember the side-kick that one time that ripped your meniscus. Vomiting from the sheer horror of the brutality of he murder when your friend snaps and bashes the hobo to death with a cinder block.

You're not awake and soldiering in? Good. This is not the game of soldiering on. This is the game of ghosts and their acumulation. This is the game where demons haunt you and those demons have the faces of your regrets and mistakes.

It doesn't take a lot of training to ignore wounds and keep fighting. Just adrenaline. I've seen a report of a fight between schoolchildren where the victim pulled a knife and it took a dozen stabs for the bully to drop (more than enough to kill him).

Both sides being killed in a fight is a very real possibility when weapons are involved, and having "bleeding out" be a subset of "down" ignores that.

[SiuiS]

It's disingenuous and ignores the facts, that because it's possible for a school child to survive being knifed multiple times we must assume every character in every fight in every game must therefore be able to ignore the psychological effects of bleeding and lethal damage.

And 9-again provides more accuracy through more dice; a ten dice shotgun blast will roll more successes than a ten dice rifle shot, because it will have two extra dice rather than one. Simplified, of course.

[magic9mushroom]

It's disingenuous and ignores the facts, that because it's possible for a school child to survive being knifed multiple times we must assume every character in every fight in every game must therefore be able to ignore the psychological effects of bleeding and lethal damage.

And 9-again provides more accuracy through more dice; a ten dice shotgun blast will roll more successes than a ten dice rifle shot, because it will have two extra dice rather than one. Simplified, of course.

That's not accuracy. That's damage. Accuracy is the chance to hit (ie, to get any successes whatsoever), which is unaffected by 9-again.

Armory's range stats for shotguns all have long range limits of 80, while rifles' short range limits are 100 and up, so I'm not seeing how a shotgun is going to be more accurate than a rifle at the rifle's medium-long range (the shotgun will be either a chance die or forbidden outright, while the rifle just gets -2 or -4 penalties). At short range, a shotgun firing shot will be more accurate, because the shot hits in a cone rather than a line.

[Blackhawk748]

At short range, a shotgun firing shot will be more accurate, because the shot hits in a cone rather than a line.

Heres the thing on Shotguns, firstly i believe WoD assumes your using slugs (im getting this from the ranges) secondly buckshot or birdshot doesnt really fire in a cone, you use a choke which keeps the pellets fairly close together, which is why the damage is pretty high. However they also lose stopping power rapidly, which is why you generally dont shoot past 60 feet, unless your using turkey loads, buts thats a 3.5 inch shell and thats a whole other mess.

In short, a slugs max range is about 80 or so, whereas shot is much shorter.

Honestly i think the White Wolf guys need to go shoot some guns.

[magic9mushroom]

Heres the thing on Shotguns, firstly i believe WoD assumes your using slugs (im getting this from the ranges)

Yes. But you get a +1 on close-range buckshot, and as such that's the only time that SiuiS's claim of "shotguns are more accurate than rifles in WoD" even makes sense (rifles give 4-5 dice while shotguns give 4; 9-again is irrelevant to accuracy).

secondly buckshot or birdshot doesnt really fire in a cone, you use a choke which keeps the pellets fairly close together, which is why the damage is pretty high. However they also lose stopping power rapidly, which is why you generally dont shoot past 60 feet, unless your using turkey loads, buts thats a 3.5 inch shell and thats a whole other mess.

In short, a slugs max range is about 80 or so, whereas shot is much shorter.

I know it's a narrow cone and nowhere near what video games portray them as, but it's nonetheless the case that that dispersion can turn what would be a near miss into a hit with a couple of pellets.

The rules they have for shot are +1 at close range, range penalties halved, and armour penalties doubled. I do agree that that's a bit optimistic.

Honestly i think the White Wolf guys need to go shoot some guns.

Won't disagree with that.

[SiuiS]

That's not accuracy. That's damage. Accuracy is the chance to hit (ie, to get any successes whatsoever), which is unaffected by 9-again.

Quibbles. The concept – that players use shotguns at extreme range because they are mechanically better – stands. Because for whatever reason, we can extrapolate that a shotgun has more precision than a rifle, even if their accuracy is being assumed by total dice pool as a binary function.

Armory's range stats for shotguns all have long range limits of 80, while rifles' short range limits are 100 and up, so I'm not seeing how a shotgun is going to be more accurate than a rifle at the rifle's medium-long range (the shotgun will be either a chance die or forbidden outright, while the rifle just gets -2 or -4 penalties).

Because a shotgun fired at it's extreme range is still likely to work due to exploding dice adding enough oomph to be worthwhile.

This isn't even something I alone notice. It's a common complaint if you do a casual to moderate search on nWoD complaints. It's even one of the foundational points of Mass: the Effecting.

[The Glyphstone]

Honestly i think the White Wolf guys need to go shoot some guns.

So I read this at 4am as 'guys' instead of 'guns', and thought 'wow, that's some pretty hard-core research for a tabletop game'.

[magic9mushroom]

Quibbles. The concept – that players use shotguns at extreme range because they are mechanically better – stands. Because for whatever reason, we can extrapolate that a shotgun has more precision than a rifle, even if their accuracy is being assumed by total dice pool as a binary function.

No, we extrapolate that if a shotgun slug hits, it is likely to cause more damage than a rifle bullet.

9 again is not "more likely to hit", it's "very damaging on a hit". Precision and accuracy are dice pool.

Now, is it therefore the case that shotguns are more effective than rifles at the shotguns' optimum range? Yes. But I'm not seeing the problem with that.

Because a shotgun fired at it's extreme range is still likely to work due to exploding dice adding enough oomph to be worthwhile.

This isn't even something I alone notice. It's a common complaint if you do a casual to moderate search on nWoD complaints. It's even one of the foundational points of Mass: the Effecting.

What you said, and I have been responding to, is this.

My sniper with a high calibur rifle was less accurate at maximum range than our trigger man with his shotgun at my maximum range, because the 9-again quality gave him a straight 10% accuracy boost.

When my players are pulling out shotguns to drop targets at long range and only use rifles at medium, if at all. Something has gone wrong.

At any range greater than 80 yards - the long range of a shotgun - the rifle will always be better. This is because you don't get a dice pool at all for a shotgun at those ranges; you get a chance die at 80-160 yards and fail automatically beyond that. Your sniper rifle, by contrast, suffers no penalties all the way out to 250 yards, and still gets a pool out to 1000 yards.


Thus, what you said is nonsense. At the rifle's long range, the shotgun is not superior at all.