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    Default Explain Old World of Darkness to Me

    I identify as a fan of the New World of Darkness line. I love Changeling: the Lost with a rabid passion, and have a soft spot for the other games as well.

    Recently, I picked up a few books from the Old World of Darkness line. They are kind of thick and intimidating, and before diving in, I would like to know a bit about what to expect. What is the Old World of Darkness like? How is it different from its successor?

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    Default Re: Explain Old World of Darkness to Me

    The short version? The developers of oWoD are on record as saying that they were on potent and illegal drugs.

    The long version is that oWoD was billed as a horror game but is mostly more along the lines of a horror-themed action-adventure where the NPCs have more power than you're capable of ever using (ever). The mechanics were shoddily done and the meta-plot is grafted on with iron bands that mean most storytellers don't break away from the oppressive nature of all of these mega-powerful supes running around. All of history is a non-human conspiracy and the world hates you.

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    Default Re: Explain Old World of Darkness to Me

    It is also intensely awesome.

    There's a reason 1st edition Exalted was unofficially the foundation for this universe. Shame they scrapped that idea. It explained so much.
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    Default Re: Explain Old World of Darkness to Me

    LG isn't too far off. Part of the problem, IMO, is that some of the personal horror stuff gets mundane after a while. "Oh no, I'm a vampire who has to drink the blood of humans to survive" eventually turns into "Ok, my Hunting roll says I got 3 points tonight. Let's get on with the plot."

    Werewolf? Sure, you're a warrior raging against the dying of your species, and maybe the entire planet. There's a lot of "Either I'm dead or this is a cakewalk" to combat in the OWOD... if you didn't get heavily into the social aspects of being a werewolf, there's a lot of nothing going on.

    Mage? You're playing, essentially, Red Dawn. Your side has already lost the war. All you have left is hiding out, usually with people you don't like, trying to hold on to whatever your ideals were. The Technocracy doesn't need to chase you... you are incapable of affecting them in a meaningful way, and even less so every day, and some of your allies are pretty sympathetic to them (i.e. Virtual Adepts).

    Basically, OWoD is all about playing the losing side in a war... unless you're a vampire, then it's about rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic, just to avoid boredom (or avoid being someone else's deck chair).
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    Default Re: Explain Old World of Darkness to Me

    Wow, that was very well said. I tried playing in a few oWoD games, and this helps me finally put my finger on why I never really had fun. You aren't supposed to, at least thematically. You're supposed to win by not losing for a day.

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    Default Re: Explain Old World of Darkness to Me

    In Vampire you are a immortal but the end is coming when the founders of your line will emerge and all will perish.
    In Werewolf your species job is to preserve the balance of the world and you've failed. The Wyrm is out of control and the end is coming.
    In Mage the Technocracy rule the world and you must hide from them to live. ( Personally I always thought the Technocracy were the good guys though so this is a Good Thing)
    Pretty much the world is in trouble and its doubtful there is anything you can do to stop this. This is not necessarily a bad thing ! This gives the game a dark atmosphere but you're playing monsters so what did you expect. ( Then again I also like Call of Cthulhu were the world is equally doomed ).
    From what I've heard of Old Changeling it was a terrible idea to the extent it took extensive arm twisting to get me to play NuChangeling which I now love.
    OWoD LOVED the backstory. There was history and coinspiracies everywhere ( even if some of them only existed as rumours) and the world was firmly in the grip of the supernatural beings.
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    Default Re: Explain Old World of Darkness to Me

    In OWoD, I'm still not sure if it was canon or a fanbase joke that every single major event in the course of human history was caused by or influenced by supernaturals except for World War 2.

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    Default Re: Explain Old World of Darkness to Me

    Oh, and don't forget about Rasputin.
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    Default Re: Explain Old World of Darkness to Me

    Quote Originally Posted by The Glyphstone View Post
    In OWoD, I'm still not sure if it was canon or a fanbase joke that every single major event in the course of human history was caused by or influenced by supernaturals except for World War 2.
    I know that when I looked, it was hard to find any that weren't caused by supernaturals.

    That being said, the point of the oWoD games, as has been pointed out, is that your group is the losing side. Coupled with the high horror elements, and it has WAY too specific a target audience. I personally, can't get enough of it. I'm a strange one though.

    My actual advice? Pick up exactly the FIRST book. Hand it to your ST, and only to your ST. Play the gabe without having read the book.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Alejandro View Post
    You're supposed to win by not losing for a day.
    Sounds like an accurate description of life in general. Defy entropy, one day at a time...

    Quote Originally Posted by comicshorse
    ( Personally I always thought the Technocracy were the good guys though so this is a Good Thing)
    Mage was my favorite aspect of oWOD for this reason. The Mage-flavored NPC factions seemed much more shades-of-grey than other oWOD groups. Mage PCs seemed like the disaffected opposition party in a government that concerned itself with writing laws of physics rather than human laws.

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    Quote Originally Posted by snikrept View Post
    Sounds like an accurate description of life in general. Defy entropy, one day at a time...
    Probably why I and likely others never got into it. I find games most enjoyable when they are less like real life. :)

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    Default Re: Explain Old World of Darkness to Me

    oWoD Vampire was just awsome... nWoD is just ok fluff-wise. A lot of people didn't like the MASSIVE amount of fluff and meta-plot in oWoD and sure the mechanics had some holes, but it was just an amazingly fun game to play. Yes, you are suppose to lose... but my RL group's GM had a "my players can't win no matter what" philosphy to start, so that never really bothered me personally.

    Werewolf sucks no matter which system you're playing... pass...

    I really prefered the fluff of oWoD Mage.. I'd like to have a comparison, but every nWoD Mage game I try and play in dies during character creation.

    nWoD really nurfed the power levels and normalized the various supernatural rules (in oWoD the core rules were all the same, but each supernatural had their own little side rules to govern their specific supernatural abilities), all the supernatural specific rules didn't mesh perfectly, but they weren't anywhere near as bad as others made them out to be. The result was a unique flavor for each supernatural in oWoD, where nWoD feels much more commoditized. For newbie players, nWoD is much easier to pick up and run with though.

    I like Masq and Req, but I will always choose Masq first if given the chance, even with the worse rules and the binding fluff.

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    Default Re: Explain Old World of Darkness to Me

    Why is it that in every thread like this, there's always at least one post calling oChangeling terrible, when it's the only oWoD game I actually think works as a horror game? .-.
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    Default Re: Explain Old World of Darkness to Me

    I've started reading some OWoD stuff, and to be completely honest, I could take or leave it. It feels kind of convoluted, inconsistent, overdone. There is such a massive volume of backstory and metaplot and lore that it seems much more fun to read than play.

    The mechanics have potential, but are kind of clumsy and unpolished. NWoD did a much better job in that area. Balance also sucks much of the time, especially in some of the source-books.

    The only OWoD game I could really get into was Changeling: the Dreaming, and I accept that to be deeply flawed. It brought back nostalgic memories of Labyrinth and Narnia, and also reminded me of Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere. I still prefer its successor, Changeling: the Lost, but it looks like it could make for a fun short campaign.

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    Default Re: Explain Old World of Darkness to Me

    Quote Originally Posted by Yuki Akuma View Post
    Why is it that in every thread like this, there's always at least one post calling oChangeling terrible, when it's the only oWoD game I actually think works as a horror game? .-.
    Speaking as a huge fan of CtD, the reasons that people call it terrible are mainly threefold:

    1) The primary source of horror in Changeling, especially early in the line came from things that most people found too silly to really take seriously - growing up and becoming normal. This was really compounded by the whole "by the age of 30 everyone gives up on their dreams and becomes a boring drone" thing.
    2) Much of the artwork, again primarily early in the line when people's minds were being set, was wildly too silly and fluffy for what the actual subject matter was. Once someone saw a dancing bear holding pink balloons with a tutu on in the core, that kind of set the tone.
    3) A lot of the writing was just terrible, and many of the rules made no goddamn sense, once more especially in First Edition, but running throughout the whole line.
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    Default Re: Explain Old World of Darkness to Me

    I'm not sure if it's just me, but a lot of oWoD seems to be built around the theme that civilization is bad and horrible and crushes human spirit. There's tons of it in old Mage and it seems to be a thing in Werewolf and Changeling as well. Of course, none of this is the humans' fault, really - it's not like oWoD mortals have any power over what's happening.
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    Default Re: Explain Old World of Darkness to Me

    I was the odd man out in my group; the other players all enjoyed V:tM, but I just could never get into it. I didn't like the setting, the rules, or the story. The thing is, I like the idea of the setting, I just don't like the way it was executed. There was also a bit of a learning curve and LOTS to read just to understand the setting at all, which may have soured me a bit.

    I've never tried New World of Darkness, but I think the idea could be fun if executed better, so it might be something to try sometime.
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    Quote Originally Posted by prufock View Post
    I was the odd man out in my group; the other players all enjoyed V:tM, but I just could never get into it. I didn't like the setting, the rules, or the story. The thing is, I like the idea of the setting, I just don't like the way it was executed. There was also a bit of a learning curve and LOTS to read just to understand the setting at all, which may have soured me a bit.

    I've never tried New World of Darkness, but I think the idea could be fun if executed better, so it might be something to try sometime.
    I highly recommend you do check out the New World of Darkness. It is to me what the Old World of Darkness should have been.

    You should start with Changeling: the Lost, as it is by far my favorite. Other good ones include Hunter: the Vigil, Mage: the Awakening, and Vampire: the Requiem.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Morty View Post
    I'm not sure if it's just me, but a lot of oWoD seems to be built around the theme that civilization is bad and horrible and crushes human spirit. There's tons of it in old Mage and it seems to be a thing in Werewolf and Changeling as well. Of course, none of this is the humans' fault, really - it's not like oWoD mortals have any power over what's happening.
    It's not civilization that oWoD sees as inherently problematic; it is stasis. Civilization has a stabilizing effect, which makes it part of the problem, but it's not the source of the problem.

    It's explicit in Werewolf: the Wyrm (destruction) is the enemy, but only because the Weaver (order/stasis) tried to bind everything into a fixed form and drove the Wyrm mad.

    It's explicit in Changeling: the gradual ordering of the world is literally killing off the imaginative force that empowers the Fae.

    It's heavily suggested in Mage: the Technocracy's stated goal is to break the power of creative magic by shackling the consensus of reality into their own paradigm. The more successful they are, the less creative they can be even in their own métier, but they consider that a worthwhile tradeoff.

    Without being stated, it's the essential problem with vampires in Vampire: their will to remain themselves, to extend their life, to sustain their existence as it is becomes the reason that they do what they do. They sacrifice their basic humanity on the altar of prolonging their merely physical self.
    Last edited by Lapak; 2012-11-07 at 02:55 PM.

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    Default Re: Explain Old World of Darkness to Me

    Quote Originally Posted by Lapak View Post
    It's not civilization that oWoD sees as inherently problematic; it is stasis. Civilization has a stabilizing effect, which makes it part of the problem, but it's not the source of the problem.

    It's explicit in Werewolf: the Wyrm (destruction) is the enemy, but only because the Weaver (order/stasis) tried to bind everything into a fixed form and drove the Wyrm mad.

    It's explicit in Changeling: the gradual ordering of the world is literally killing off the imaginative force that empowers the Fae.

    It's heavily suggested in Mage: the Technocracy's stated goal is to break the power of creative magic by shackling the consensus of reality into their own paradigm. The more successful they are, the less creative they can be even in their own métier, but they consider that a worthwhile tradeoff.

    Without being stated, it's the essential problem with vampires in Vampire: their will to remain themselves, to extend their life, to sustain their existence as it is becomes the reason that they do what they do. They sacrifice their basic humanity on the altar of prolonging their merely physical self.
    While this is true, the OWoD tended to make the case that science was a static force, when in fact it is anything but. The pace at which the world is changing only increases as our science improves.

    One of my most rage-inducing moments in the line was when I read the changeling book that suggested giving players Banality for solving mysteries, because knowledge removes wonder from the universe.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Friv View Post
    While this is true, the OWoD tended to make the case that science was a static force, when in fact it is anything but. The pace at which the world is changing only increases as our science improves.

    One of my most rage-inducing moments in the line was when I read the changeling book that suggested giving players Banality for solving mysteries, because knowledge removes wonder from the universe.
    oWoD didn't so much make the case as they did declare it by fiat. Regardless of how things work in the real world, in oWoD science was just the dominant consensus of reality, the tool of the Weaver that was being used to stratify, catalog and ossify all of reality, etc. This isn't at all how things actually are, but it IS how they are in the World of Darkness.

    And there's some argument in Changeling for science and discovery eliminating possibilities - think of solving a mystery not as uncovering the truth but more like observing the position of a particle. You've collapsed a superposition of waveforms down to a single point, you've transformed a webwork of possibilities down to a single answer. Right up until the players reveal the 'truth', all of the possibilities are true and none of them are in a Changeling game - but as soon as the answer is observed, the twelve-and-twenty-score alternate realities that existed right alongside the observed one die.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Friv View Post
    While this is true, the OWoD tended to make the case that science was a static force, when in fact it is anything but. The pace at which the world is changing only increases as our science improves.

    One of my most rage-inducing moments in the line was when I read the changeling book that suggested giving players Banality for solving mysteries, because knowledge removes wonder from the universe.
    Wow. I never really deeply read the banality rules, since they seemed pretty mean to begin with (I mean, seriously, a computer is banal? It should depend on what you're using it for.), but that's just cruel. The Dreaming was already the saddest, most depressing, soul-crushing game they had, and that just makes it worse.

    I've tried to run several games of Ascension and they always died so quickly. Part of the problem is that even with the Traditions in place, each Mage is powered by selfishness. Seriously. Imagine a guy whose personal worldview is so strong and based deeply in his own ignorance of the universe that he has acquired the superpower to force it to be valid for other people (it is also pertinent to remind you that the setting sees this sort of selfishness, ignorance, intolerance, and personal incredulity as a virtue). Now imagine you have five of that guy in a room, all with wildly different world views. Now try making them cooperate.

    On the other hand, I loved Mokolé, and I ran an all-Mokolé game for nearly a year.

    On the scale? I prefer nWoD. Promethean is the best game no one will ever play. The Lost is freaking amazing. Awakening at least has a unified cosmology, even if the new Trads see it through that pseudo-hermetic lens. Geist is absolute win in a can.

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    Quote Originally Posted by hiryuu View Post
    I've tried to run several games of Ascension and they always died so quickly. Part of the problem is that even with the Traditions in place, each Mage is powered by selfishness. Seriously. Imagine a guy whose personal worldview is so strong and based deeply in his own ignorance of the universe that he has acquired the superpower to force it to be valid for other people (it is also pertinent to remind you that the setting sees this sort of selfishness, ignorance, intolerance, and personal incredulity as a virtue). Now imagine you have five of that guy in a room, all with wildly different world views. Now try making them cooperate.
    Those are called Marauders. They warp reality by just standing there/being insane.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Giarc View Post
    Those are called Marauders. They warp reality by just standing there/being insane.
    hiryuu's point is that they're called Mages.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Lapak View Post
    hiryuu's point is that they're called Mages.
    Pretty much, yeah.

    Mage is all about using your personal incredulity about the real world as a virtue and sticking it to The Man's rules. Even the ones about gravity and mass being a property of matter. As an example, look at the Sons of Ether. Power of SCIENCE! and jetboots and Flash Gordon, right? Yeah. And they're also those scumbags who tell you not to take vaccines because positive thinking can save you and HIV is just a LIE perpetrated by THE MAN, and they can and do enforce their truth on the world through the use of magic. Mage is about being that jerk in the woo store who tells you that calling the sky blue is, like, intolerant, man and then being able to tell someone to look up and see that it's purple, just so you can laugh at them in the face. This is why all of my Mage games have self destructed, even the one-tradition-only game, the first session is a shouting match of worldviews, the second session turns into a prisoner-pack alpha dynamic, and then subsequent sessions are about trying to escape the tyranny of the one guy who pumped his Arete and Avatar to ridiculous levels with freebies (speaking of pack alphas, don't get me started with Werewolf, where wolf behavior is all based on how wolves in captivity behave rather than wolves in the wild).

    Awakening made this better by making the world into Plato's Cave. Ignore the Atlantis story, it's simply an allegory for the world that no longer exists. Everyone is part of a shadow play and the World of Darkness is simply walls of the cave where everyone lives. A mage has glimpsed The Truth and can draw bits of that Truth into the fake world created by the ancients when they tried to rewrite Truth at its source. Rationalism works, and everyone can play the game, it's simply that most people just aren't playing with the full deck (this fact really grates on the Exarchs, who started science to oppress the muggles, but now it's exalting them and will inevitably reveal The Truth).

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    You guys have had some much worse mage the ascension chronicles than I have. The major difference I can already see is how to approach paradigm. I have always understood, perhaps incorrectly, that you gain insight by breaking down your old paradigm, and rebuilding it based on what you have learned along the way. That might be a bit off from the standard, but with that understanding of paradigm, it becomes much easier for people with radically different paradigms to get along, while still enabling your character to talk down to others about how constrained they are, and how imperfect their understanding is (if you want to play a jerk).

    I took that as why you lose the need for foci as your arrete improves, since you have broken down one of the walls that contained your understanding.

    That being said when I do run owod, I tend to ignore the parts of the fluff that I find constraining or ridiculous, and every game is better when you ignore the bad parts. I never could get into nwod, because I really loved the old back stories (if not the metaplot), and thought they could have done better by simply updating and unifying the rules while keeping more of the old backstory, as opposed to starting over again and going in a new direction.

    And demon: the fallen was one of my favorite books to read EVAR, rpg or not. The game play was so/so, but the fluff was amazing.
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    Default Re: Explain Old World of Darkness to Me

    for me i always hated the way changling and werewolf had mechanicaly enforced leadership postions. One person would always design their charecter to be a high ranking noble or win the alpha postion then declare perpetual time of war and use it to screw with every one.

    Or the judge class they got honnor for using their punishment rituals so they would look for even the smallest infractions to try and screw over the players for honnor.

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    Default Re: Explain Old World of Darkness to Me

    I personally loved Old Changeling's fluff, but this was back when I was very concerned with losing my own creative power as I grew up, so I'm not sure if I'd find it all that compelling now. That said, it's certainly a viable and compelling genre in general: as others have said, look at Neverwhere.

    I also prefer oWoD Mage fluff to nWoD, because it feels like there's more of a point to it. I just don't really get why the Seers of the Throne do what they do: an organization of what are essentially glorified Freemasons don't make sense as rulers of the world, let alone when they are opposed by the other Mages. Also, I prefer oWoD's sense that pretty much any belief could create a Mage tradition to nWoD's sense that there are only five watchtowers and each has its own intrinsic aesthetic.
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    Default Re: Explain Old World of Darkness to Me

    I like both, honestly. Pretty much all the WoD books have been fun to read at some point or another (except for Demon, but again, that's opinion). I like them both. WoD goes kinda like this:

    oWoD is basically a SyFy channel original motion picture. It's fun, there's lots of explosions, and there is a giant undead organic sentient church underneath New York City made out of a demon space virus that only infects vampires. I'm serious, it's canon, and I have sent PCs there. They did not come back. Except for one, but honestly, did he really come back?

    Mage: A war for worldviews. Your worldview gives you superpowers, and in an ideal world, it's about expanding those horizons to and accepting that you are wrong about everything, and eventually ascending to some kind of awesome uber-dude. Also, for some reason, the bad guys have the opposite of that philosophy (in which they believe in constraining reality) and that makes them somehow the champions of science (also it means that the setting's Bad Guys are the people who brought you toilet paper and air conditioning). Done correctly with the right players and ST? This is the better of the lines, and don't get me wrong, it's good. How do I know it's good? For all my bitterness at WoD and Mage, I still keep trying to run the damn thing.

    Vampire: This is supposed to be about you are a monster rejected by death who will slowly become more terrible as time passes and ending it all is harder than it sounds unless you fight for redemption, which will slowly lose meaning to you as you spiral into becoming the monster you revile. In practice? It was played as "We are immortal and run everything. Go and cry now." Kindred of the East suffers from the same problem, but at least there you are a Kung Fu Demon who can shoot green lasers out of your eyes.

    Werewolf: Ideally? You are all going to die fighting to save the environment, and the moment before you die you will realize you're a brainwashed religious fanatic and you could never have won in the first place. What's actually going to happen is that the PCs are going to try to buy or create more explosives than anyone actually has need of and detonate everything that pings on Sense Wyrm. But you know, that's what PCs do. Shout "screw the rules, I'm going to wear this smaller mecha as a hat on my bigger mecha."

    Wraith: You are dead and are going to fade away into nothing, and at least one other player has the job of making fun of you while it happens. That's ok, though, you get to do the same thing to them.

    Changeling: You are going to forget you're an awesome whimsical fae and potentially try to brainwash other fae to forget, too. Unless you are a Sluagh, then you are going to die forever.

    Hunter: Hunters are perfectly normal human beings who fight the supernatural with their super normHOLY COW THAT GUY THREW A STAKE HALF A MILE THROUGH A CONCRETE WALL. Also as you get better you will go crazier and you see crazy things written in the wall. It was actually kind of a cool concept, but the execution was a bit muddy. I blame the chaos of the end of the world supplements.

    Demon: SURPRISE! All the material for all our other gamelines was totally wrong and the Celestial Chorus was right about everything! Can you tell Demon sticks in my craw? Demon sticks in my craw.



    nWoD is a lot less gonzo, honestly, though it has its moments.

    Mage: You are Indiana Jones and you run on Spiral Power and the Antispirals are trying to track you down.

    Geist: You died and it was pretty boss. Now you have a Stand and can see and hear ghosts. This is probably among my favorite of the new lines.

    Changeling: Cthulhu touched you in a very naughty way, but you escaped with a Deep One costume and now he's looking for you.

    Promethean: The best game no one can play.

    Hunter: You are a normal guy. A werewolf just bit off the head of the man next to you. What do you do?

    Werewolf: You are a junkyard dog fighting over territory. You will probably be eaten by rats.

    Vampire: Really, this is the same as the old vampire. Just has certain points clarified, repeated, underlined, bolded, underlined AGAIN, and circled.

  30. - Top - End - #30
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    Default Re: Explain Old World of Darkness to Me

    Quote Originally Posted by hiryuu View Post
    Hunter: Hunters are perfectly normal human beings who fight the supernatural with their super normHOLY COW THAT GUY THREW A STAKE HALF A MILE THROUGH A CONCRETE WALL. Also as you get better you will go crazier and you see crazy things written in the wall. It was actually kind of a cool concept, but the execution was a bit muddy. I blame the chaos of the end of the world supplements.
    Actually, I'd describe old Hunter as more "Normal humans are useless cattle, so angels smack some of them upside the head and show them the monsters. They get some powers, they go crazy, they die". Throwing a stake half a mile through a concrete wall isn't a thing that happens either. It's ironic that the gameline which is supposedly about humans taking the fight to the supernaturals treats normal humans without Messengers backing them up even less seriously than the other ones.
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