I didn't see any other WoD threads, so I figured I'd start one.
Recently I've been invited to join a WoD group, and have no prior experience with the game save a phalla run by CJ. I do however have a few years experience with DnD. So basically I'd like to get to know some of the basics before I actually start playing. I was looking around our local bookstore and didn't see (or at least didn't recognize) what the core rulebook was.
I was wondering if anyone here could suggest which books are worth picking up, and which could be safely bypassed. (I'll also be asking the GM which books he's going to allow/disallow.) Also if anyone has advice for a beginner player I'd appreciate it.
I've never actually played a WoD game (too many weirdo larpers), but the background literature for it is all great. Do you know if you're playing new WoD or old WoD?
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INeedNoSaltwith blood on my teethRegistered Userregular
edited October 2007
It's important before you go buying books to know exactly what your GM is running... Werewolf: The Whatever, Mage: The Awakening, Vampire: the Requiem, Changeling, Promethean -- those are all World of Darkness games. You can run them together, I guess, but it'd be a mess.
You'll want the WoD core book, though, and whatever 'race' book is appropriate for what you'll be doing.
The core book assumes new WoD right? There was never a core one for the old system...which I found so much more interesting than the new stuff.
I assumed 2.0, if only because generally with the old system, you wouldn't say "I'm running WoD", you'd say "I'm running VTM."
WoD mixed games are a pretty bad idea, just puttin' that out there.
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cj iwakuraThe Rhythm RegentBears The Name FreedomRegistered Userregular
edited October 2007
It's probably New, which I know less than a handful about, but if it's old and it's Vampire, look for Laws of the Night and any of the clanbooks.
If it's New, the Rulebook is a huge hardcover book and probably expensive. I think the V:TM stuff is out of print, but some game/comic places still sell them down here.
I guess with Old, they just had a separate book for each kind of game(Mage, Vampire, Changeling, etc.)?
I'm only familiar with Vampire, but Mage and Changeling always looked interesting(one being ridiculously complicated, the other just seeming less dark).
Even if it's New, the old V:TM stuff is still worth a read. I couldn't get into the Requiem(new Vampire) content for the life of me.
Oh, and I'd never done anything DnD-esque or otherwise, so you've got a huge advantage over me right there. I just happened to learn about the mythos in college and got rapidly hooked.
As for 'linked' games... I think they used to do that in Tampa.
Changeling was on Wednesdays, Mage on Fridays, Vampire on Saturdays, and events from those games could affect the others.
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Der Waffle MousBlame this on the misfortune of your birth.New Yark, New Yark.Registered Userregular
Couple of my friends hate it, but I personally find the premise pretty cool in and of by itself. It's a lot more "nWoD" than friggin' nWoD in that respect, albeit slanted towards action.
I really love how Vampires work in that one. Mages? The spell-crafting system's pretty cool, and LOL NO PARADOX
Ok, so my GM lent me the book last night, but I have to return it today. It's the Monte Cook version.
So the current party is a werewolf and an awakened, with a vampire character of the DM's from time to time. I'm thinking I'm going to throw a mage in the mix to make it a little more interesting. I've only skimmed through the magic system, but it looks to me almost like it's similar to psionics. Would that be a fair description of it?
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INeedNoSaltwith blood on my teethRegistered Userregular
edited October 2007
Oh wow.
The Monte Cook WoD bears absolutely no relation to anything that anyone has talked about in this thread.
Edit: except, well, uh, the discussion regarding MCWoD.
I can't wrap my head around how every other 'race' is an Invasive Spirit.
Changeling: The Dreaming was part of White Wolf Game Studio's original "World of Darkness" role playing game line. Player characters are changelings, fae souls reborn into human bodies, a practice begun by the fae to protect themselves as magic vanished from the world. The game explores the balance between imagination and practicality, and the struggle of art and beauty against the dark, mysterious "gothic-punk" World of Darkness. Changeling draws primarily from Irish mythology, particularly stories of the sidhe and Tuatha Dé Danann, but also uses mythology and folklore from various other cultures including Native American nations, Greece, India and Yoruba mythology of Africa.
The game is set in the World of Darkness, a fictional analog to the real world in which human beings unknowingly coexist with legendary monsters and other supernatural phenomena. The "Changelings" of the title are ordinary human beings who were kidnapped by the Fae and taken as slaves to their world (alternately known as Arcadia or Faerie). The player characters are changelings who have managed to escape their otherworldly captors and struggle through the barrier (known as the Hedge or the Thorns) that separates Faerie from Earth. The game focuses on the experiences of these changelings as they re-discover the world of their birth, try to cope with the changes they have undergone, and seek to evade recapture.
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OtakuD00DCan I hit the exploding rocks?San DiegoRegistered Userregular
edited October 2007
The new Changeling is badass. Your character's basically the kid from Labyrinth, taken away for many years and changed into something fae-like with powers and all that. Gotta stay away from the Fae and bounty hunters of sorts out to take you back while you try to adjust back in the normal world and just survive.
Does anyone have any experience with regards to the balance between the various "templates" in nWoD? People have said it's a "mess," but it seems a lot more interesting than just making a campaign focus around one races.
Yeah, it's a bit of a mess. But don't think that they're incompatible. The different templates aren't incompatible, but there are some incompatibilities.
You run into a lot of immediately obvious problems:
Any vampires in your campaign will only be active at night. If any of the action takes place during the day, that player (or those players) will be sitting out.
Each template is different in terms of "starting" power. For instance, there's going to be a world of difference between the vampire member of the group and the mage member of the group. A gunshot wound could be fatal to the mage, but it's a mild irritant to the vampire.
Different power sources. Again, using mage/vampire as the example (I'm most familiar with them), if a vampire gets low on blood they can get more blood points with relative ease. If a mage is running out of mana, well, they're pretty much going to have to wait until they can find a Hallow, unless they have a good number of dots in prime or don't mind burning health or taking temporary attribute reductions (or blood sacrifice, hey, maybe they could hunt a mortal with the vamp).
Then, you get into the more subtle issues:
Uneven power level progression. In oWoD, the power level progression came with pretty significant disparities between the "big three." The lineup for starting characters was werewolves > vampires > mages. But once everyone was significantly advanced, it flipped to mages > vampries > werewolves. Sure, the werewolf was still freakishly powerful, but the vampire could just turn invisible and then slash its throat open (and the mage could fill the room with aerosolized silver and create an artificial sun over his own head). The curve has been shaved in nWoD, but it's still there.
Incompatible politics. To really participate in the politics of each group, you have to be part of it. A mage Order isn't going to let a vampire sit in on their meetings and vice versa.
Different behavioral restrictions. Each group has to deal with certain issues when interacting with mortals, combine different groups and you can sometimes get situations where one or more members of the group has to "hold back" when they would otherwise be free to use their supernatural powers if they were a member of another group. In a situation where the group is fighting mundane human antagonists, the vampires could freely whip out their protean claws and slice things up (as long as they leave no survivors who could break the Masquerade). In that situation, the mage could risk paradox with effects that are subtler than growing beastly claws.
Then, there's different experience valuations. While starting each group by the book and with 0 extra experience points, they may look relatively similar on paper, as they gain experience, different templated characters will start to find more value in their XP.
Everyone has attributes, skills and merits. Not everyone has the same supernatural abilities. A vampire and a mage have the same number of supernatural skills, but the skills behave differently and they take advantage of them in different ways. Vampires are very ordered and structured, they spend experience points on a discipline, they get abilities associated with that number of dots. They either work automatically or work on a dice roll, they automatically use relevant skills and attributes on that discipline roll, too.
Mages advance their arcana with experience, but they can't use their attributes and skills while using those arcana unless they also spend experience to learn or create a rote. It's just Gnosis + Arcana. So, while experience points are less efficient for the mage than they are the vampire, they're individually more potent. When spent on arcana, they allow more on-the-fly freedom and creativity than a vampire gets from disciplines, and if they're spent on rotes, they may be able to turn an action that would normally require the expenditure of mana into an action that is, essentially, resource free.
Each individual character is going to have their own supernatural goals. Maybe the vampire wants to acquire a large herd to feed from without concern so they can advance their blood potency and influence in relative safety. Maybe the mage wants exclusive control of a powerful Hallow. But of course, the werewolf would want the locus, too. And that promethean is going to want to head out of town for good after a while.
I could probably come up with more crap but I haven't been keeping up with nWoD as much as I should.
There are a lot of incompatibilities but you can make them work.
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cj iwakuraThe Rhythm RegentBears The Name FreedomRegistered Userregular
edited October 2007
How did/do the Mages relate to Tremere(or whatever the nWoD equivalent is)? Like Garou to Gangrel, I'm guessing?
"We still don't like you, but we won't tear your throats out on sight either."?
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OtakuD00DCan I hit the exploding rocks?San DiegoRegistered Userregular
edited October 2007
Well, Tremere in the nWoD are a bunch of liches now, from what I've briefly read. Take that as you will.
There is no more Tremere clan, the blood sorcerer archetype isn't a standard vampire type anymore.
There's a mage legacy called Tremere Lich, though.
It's specifically for the mage path Moros, who deal with death and the like. They're essentially mages who steal souls to prolong their life. They were attacked by the Tremere clan (lured into an ancient necropolis) that burned to ash upon drinking mage-blood.
The Tremere were a clan of vampires who devoured souls as well as blood (hence trying to eat the souls of mages, which are more "tasty" than human souls). This specific part of the Tremere curse was passed on to the mages who were bitten, thus creating the Tremere Lich, an awakened human who must feed on souls. Tremere Liches have tried to find unliving Tremere vampires, but none have been found since.
So what happened to the Giovanni vampires, then? I thought they were the necromancers of the group. I really should read up on the nWoD but it never captivated me like the old backgrounds did.
Well, Tremere in the nWoD are a bunch of liches now, from what I've briefly read. Take that as you will.
Yep. The Tremere where vampires who could eat souls in order to become more alive, such as the abillity to eat food and withstand sunlight better. They decided they wanted to eat mage souls because they hoped it would make the affects permanent. They made a deal with some mages and long story short the vampires where killed by the mage souls and the mages where left soulless.
The mages adopted the Tremere name and need to eat souls to continue to use magic. On the plus side they are immortal as long as they eat souls.
EDIT: Crap, beat.
I don't think their are any more Giovanni, but they might be a bloodline now.
There are some rules for making your own bloodlines and your own bloodline disciplines, so you could recreate the blood sorcerer type vampires again.
Though this is already touched on with the Order of the Crone covenant. You could make your own variant, though, if wicca blood magic isn't your thing.
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OtakuD00DCan I hit the exploding rocks?San DiegoRegistered Userregular
edited October 2007
Sangiovanni Bloodline is rather interesting. They're necromancers and necrophiles. Well, more along the lines of corpse manipulation/animation, etc. Which... as part of some bloodline flaw, I forget really, led to necrophilia.
Sangiovanni Bloodline is rather interesting. They're necromancers and necrophiles. Well, more along the lines of corpse manipulation/animation, etc. Which... as part of some bloodline flaw, I forget really, led to necrophilia.
They're Mekhet.
Wasn't there also necrophiliac overtones with the old Giovanni as well? I'm missing my source book, but I definitely remember it was hinted at.
Sangiovanni Bloodline is rather interesting. They're necromancers and necrophiles. Well, more along the lines of corpse manipulation/animation, etc. Which... as part of some bloodline flaw, I forget really, led to necrophilia.
They're Mekhet.
Wasn't there also necrophiliac overtones with the old Giovanni as well? I'm missing my source book, but I definitely remember it was hinted at.
Edit: Or was it just incest? Or both?
Both. And then some.
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cj iwakuraThe Rhythm RegentBears The Name FreedomRegistered Userregular
edited October 2007
The Giovanni clan novel is by far the most twisted of all twelve.
To whoever said that running all of the NWoD games together would be a mess is totally wrong. I've begun running such a game (One of each type of super) and it's the most fun we've had. It just requires an extensive knowledge of the games.
Anyways, I prefer NWoD to OWoD. While OWoD had all that backstory that was interesting, NWoD is a much more open system, one where I can do pretty much anything I want to do. OWoD was heavily restricted due to the metaplot.
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WulfDisciple of TzeentchThe Void... (New Jersey)Registered Userregular
edited October 2007
I actually like how more geared towards horror and things that go bump in the night the NWoD source book seems. I could very much see running a campaign where the party doesn't see the actual monster till the finally
The really great thing about the nWoD is how much high-quality support "mortals facing the darkness" games get. Some of the most brilliant books of the nWoD- Mysterious Places, Second Sight, Asylum, etc, were targeted straight at humans facing Lovecraftian horrors, zombies, and ghosts.
You could run a pretty awesome horror campaign with just the corebook and the general WoD supplements without ever cracking open Vampire, Werewolf, Mage, Promethean or Changeling.
Posts
You'll want the WoD core book, though, and whatever 'race' book is appropriate for what you'll be doing.
I assumed 2.0, if only because generally with the old system, you wouldn't say "I'm running WoD", you'd say "I'm running VTM."
WoD mixed games are a pretty bad idea, just puttin' that out there.
If it's New, the Rulebook is a huge hardcover book and probably expensive. I think the V:TM stuff is out of print, but some game/comic places still sell them down here.
I guess with Old, they just had a separate book for each kind of game(Mage, Vampire, Changeling, etc.)?
I'm only familiar with Vampire, but Mage and Changeling always looked interesting(one being ridiculously complicated, the other just seeming less dark).
Even if it's New, the old V:TM stuff is still worth a read. I couldn't get into the Requiem(new Vampire) content for the life of me.
Oh, and I'd never done anything DnD-esque or otherwise, so you've got a huge advantage over me right there. I just happened to learn about the mythos in college and got rapidly hooked.
As for 'linked' games... I think they used to do that in Tampa.
Changeling was on Wednesdays, Mage on Fridays, Vampire on Saturdays, and events from those games could affect the others.
Couple of my friends hate it, but I personally find the premise pretty cool in and of by itself. It's a lot more "nWoD" than friggin' nWoD in that respect, albeit slanted towards action.
I really love how Vampires work in that one. Mages? The spell-crafting system's pretty cool, and LOL NO PARADOX
So the current party is a werewolf and an awakened, with a vampire character of the DM's from time to time. I'm thinking I'm going to throw a mage in the mix to make it a little more interesting. I've only skimmed through the magic system, but it looks to me almost like it's similar to psionics. Would that be a fair description of it?
The Monte Cook WoD bears absolutely no relation to anything that anyone has talked about in this thread.
Edit: except, well, uh, the discussion regarding MCWoD.
I can't wrap my head around how every other 'race' is an Invasive Spirit.
Anyone have any experience with it? Is there a discussion about MCWoD somewhere that I missed?
I am available typically at 6-7 MNT.
(Is The Lost the result of the Gehenna story for Changeling?)
I have no idea what the differences are. To wikipedia!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Changeling_The_Dreaming
I like the Seelie/Unseelie conflict.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Changeling_The_Lost
I really liked the character concept of a kung-fu using "monkey"-type Beast.
You run into a lot of immediately obvious problems:
Any vampires in your campaign will only be active at night. If any of the action takes place during the day, that player (or those players) will be sitting out.
Each template is different in terms of "starting" power. For instance, there's going to be a world of difference between the vampire member of the group and the mage member of the group. A gunshot wound could be fatal to the mage, but it's a mild irritant to the vampire.
Different power sources. Again, using mage/vampire as the example (I'm most familiar with them), if a vampire gets low on blood they can get more blood points with relative ease. If a mage is running out of mana, well, they're pretty much going to have to wait until they can find a Hallow, unless they have a good number of dots in prime or don't mind burning health or taking temporary attribute reductions (or blood sacrifice, hey, maybe they could hunt a mortal with the vamp).
Then, you get into the more subtle issues:
Uneven power level progression. In oWoD, the power level progression came with pretty significant disparities between the "big three." The lineup for starting characters was werewolves > vampires > mages. But once everyone was significantly advanced, it flipped to mages > vampries > werewolves. Sure, the werewolf was still freakishly powerful, but the vampire could just turn invisible and then slash its throat open (and the mage could fill the room with aerosolized silver and create an artificial sun over his own head). The curve has been shaved in nWoD, but it's still there.
Incompatible politics. To really participate in the politics of each group, you have to be part of it. A mage Order isn't going to let a vampire sit in on their meetings and vice versa.
Different behavioral restrictions. Each group has to deal with certain issues when interacting with mortals, combine different groups and you can sometimes get situations where one or more members of the group has to "hold back" when they would otherwise be free to use their supernatural powers if they were a member of another group. In a situation where the group is fighting mundane human antagonists, the vampires could freely whip out their protean claws and slice things up (as long as they leave no survivors who could break the Masquerade). In that situation, the mage could risk paradox with effects that are subtler than growing beastly claws.
Then, there's different experience valuations. While starting each group by the book and with 0 extra experience points, they may look relatively similar on paper, as they gain experience, different templated characters will start to find more value in their XP.
Everyone has attributes, skills and merits. Not everyone has the same supernatural abilities. A vampire and a mage have the same number of supernatural skills, but the skills behave differently and they take advantage of them in different ways. Vampires are very ordered and structured, they spend experience points on a discipline, they get abilities associated with that number of dots. They either work automatically or work on a dice roll, they automatically use relevant skills and attributes on that discipline roll, too.
Mages advance their arcana with experience, but they can't use their attributes and skills while using those arcana unless they also spend experience to learn or create a rote. It's just Gnosis + Arcana. So, while experience points are less efficient for the mage than they are the vampire, they're individually more potent. When spent on arcana, they allow more on-the-fly freedom and creativity than a vampire gets from disciplines, and if they're spent on rotes, they may be able to turn an action that would normally require the expenditure of mana into an action that is, essentially, resource free.
Each individual character is going to have their own supernatural goals. Maybe the vampire wants to acquire a large herd to feed from without concern so they can advance their blood potency and influence in relative safety. Maybe the mage wants exclusive control of a powerful Hallow. But of course, the werewolf would want the locus, too. And that promethean is going to want to head out of town for good after a while.
I could probably come up with more crap but I haven't been keeping up with nWoD as much as I should.
There are a lot of incompatibilities but you can make them work.
"We still don't like you, but we won't tear your throats out on sight either."?
There's a mage legacy called Tremere Lich, though.
It's specifically for the mage path Moros, who deal with death and the like. They're essentially mages who steal souls to prolong their life. They were attacked by the Tremere clan (lured into an ancient necropolis) that burned to ash upon drinking mage-blood.
The Tremere were a clan of vampires who devoured souls as well as blood (hence trying to eat the souls of mages, which are more "tasty" than human souls). This specific part of the Tremere curse was passed on to the mages who were bitten, thus creating the Tremere Lich, an awakened human who must feed on souls. Tremere Liches have tried to find unliving Tremere vampires, but none have been found since.
Yep. The Tremere where vampires who could eat souls in order to become more alive, such as the abillity to eat food and withstand sunlight better. They decided they wanted to eat mage souls because they hoped it would make the affects permanent. They made a deal with some mages and long story short the vampires where killed by the mage souls and the mages where left soulless.
The mages adopted the Tremere name and need to eat souls to continue to use magic. On the plus side they are immortal as long as they eat souls.
EDIT: Crap, beat.
I don't think their are any more Giovanni, but they might be a bloodline now.
They each fill the role of one of the classical vampire archetypes.
Daevas are the seductive, alluring vampires.
Gangrel are the beast-like vampires.
Sekhet are the secretive, shadowy vampires.
Nosferatu are the horrifying vampires.
Ventrue are the noble, lordly vampires.
A Bloodline is basically a subclan that a vampire can be a part of.
There are some rules for making your own bloodlines and your own bloodline disciplines, so you could recreate the blood sorcerer type vampires again.
Though this is already touched on with the Order of the Crone covenant. You could make your own variant, though, if wicca blood magic isn't your thing.
They're Mekhet.
Wasn't there also necrophiliac overtones with the old Giovanni as well? I'm missing my source book, but I definitely remember it was hinted at.
Edit: Or was it just incest? Or both?
Both. And then some.
So, will they support Orpheus/make a new version of Wraith?
Shit, now that I remembered Orpheus I feel required to play oWoD now.
Orpheus is the only game that makes me regret not ever getting into the OWoD.
Anyways, I prefer NWoD to OWoD. While OWoD had all that backstory that was interesting, NWoD is a much more open system, one where I can do pretty much anything I want to do. OWoD was heavily restricted due to the metaplot.
You could run a pretty awesome horror campaign with just the corebook and the general WoD supplements without ever cracking open Vampire, Werewolf, Mage, Promethean or Changeling.