Yeah I definitely like my social/drama games to be rules light.
I'd like to say that I also like my combat-centered games to be relatively rules light, but that probably sounds silly. What I mean by that is that I don't like systems where you have an over-abundance of minutia to deal with in things, but have direct, simple, clear rules that dictate what you can do and what you cannot do, and anything in between is considered to be flavor, without violating the rules.
@Solar, do you play a lot of WoD? If so, do you prefer the new or old WoD systems?
They are so horribly restrictive being just one of them
How so? if things already has movement rules, it's just a graphical representation of what the battle field looks like.
I just feel it codified everything too much. Is it on the battlefield? If so, you can interact with it, if not, you can't. And even if that isn't the case, you end it looking at the board rather than thinking about stuff so if it's not there you forget about it anyway. It's too static and there, it completely destroys my immersion. A dark, shadowed corridor becomes a bunch of squares on a board with my dude standing there.
I don't need a board to know where everyone is, I can imagine it great in my head, and it looks a lot cooler with gunflashes and bullets spraying everywhere and so on than it does where it's a bunch of static guys standing in little squares on my kitchen room table.
Roleplaying games are escapism for me. A battlemap turns it into a game, not a story, something to win, not enjoy. They do the whole range thing okay, but they destroy a lot of stuff I like about the game.
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AntimatterDevo Was RightGates of SteelRegistered Userregular
i think ammo was a superb idea
means guns are a powerful weapon but not TOO overpowered
Yeah I definitely like my social/drama games to be rules light.
I'd like to say that I also like my combat-centered games to be relatively rules light, but that probably sounds silly. What I mean by that is that I don't like systems where you have an over-abundance of minutia to deal with in things, but have direct, simple, clear rules that dictate what you can do and what you cannot do, and anything in between is considered to be flavor, without violating the rules.
@Solar, do you play a lot of WoD? If so, do you prefer the new or old WoD systems?
The new system is far superior, to my mind, much cleaner and smoother
That said, how much of the old system was crap because the monster specific rules weren't that great and how much of it was crap because of the core rules is debatable. I go for a bit of both, to be honest. Old storyteller isn't nearly as good as new storyteller at doing what it wants to do, to my mind.
To be honest though, I'm a nWoD kid, I've played the old system but I played the new one first and those are the games that I got into. Werewolf specifically. WtA was pretty terrible, it seems, whereas WtF is really good. But that's not so much about the core rules as the setting, the design and so on.
Also the nWoD is much less racist than the old one was in places, which is nice.
means guns are a powerful weapon but not TOO overpowered
i liked the idea of ammo being an abstract thing. but ended up making them an encounter power. unless you really needed them, but then you would have to hope to find ammo again. mind you this was before i saw that most every premade thing seemed to give you ammo every other encounter. but i instead opted for a system with ammo saves. first shot works the same, but after the second you do a saving throw, you pass you have more ammo. if you fail, well guess you should have made sure to bring more bullets.
Needless? probably, but i thought it was fun. the "oh shit" moment of running out of ammo is a sweet sweet taste.
I liked a lot of the old WoD storylines and metaplots, but the new system, as a whole set of mechanics, is definitely cleaner and better organized. I especially like how they standardized everything because a lot of my WoD experience was based around multi-venue games.
I liked a lot of the old WoD storylines and metaplots, but the new system, as a whole set of mechanics, is definitely cleaner and better organized. I especially like how they standardized everything because a lot of my WoD experience was based around multi-venue games.
I am so glad they got rid of the metaplot
Fuck metaplots. Eclipse Phase seems to have one and I am going to ignore the hell out of it
Also Skull Man I refuse to believe anyone has actually played FATAL. I don't believe I can withstand the thought that somebody choose to play that game of their own free will.
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Shortytouching the meatIntergalactic Cool CourtRegistered Userregular
I like a metaplot as long as it's sufficiently generic that every single storyline doesn't follow the same points. That's what I didn't like about Werewolf in old WoD. "Oh look servants of the wyrm are attacking. Again. We'd better fight them off. Again. Glory to Gaia! Again."
I have way too much fun making sympathetic, reasonable villains with understandable motives, probably tempered by an ignorant or misguided worldview to guide them into conflict with the PCs.
Then I'm surprised when half the party joins up with the bad guy because "you know, he's got a point".
i like the idea of metaplots, the idea things are going on beyond just what the PCs are seeing.
I also like the idea of people playing like two groups that maybe never meet but are affecting each other.
Also the players playing both the good and bad guys, and just let them run with it.
that last one is basically impossible, but still
I like the idea of things going on beyond what the PCs are seeing that they only feel the effects of
But at the same time, I like for those things to be under my control because I don't care for some developers ideas about how things should be going in my game.
They say "well if you don't like them, ignore them!" which is great and all except some sourcebooks on the old WoD were written at different points along the metaplot so if you ignored it then they literally made no sense.
Best part of the Werewolf metaplot was in end-world, when they decided the general of the Black Spiral Dancers decided to throw down his sword and serve Gaia, and died fighting the returned Eater-of-Souls. After that event, BSDs became playable as good guys.
They were the White Howlers, a tribe of werewolves descended from the Picts. They were outdone by their own arrogance when they followed servants of the Wyrm (big bad, embodiment of entropy and destruction) into a hive, where the entire tribe was corrupted by the Black Spiral and went insane, becoming servants of the Wyrm (one Howler escaped and made it far enough to warn other werewolves of what had happened before being slain by his former brethren).
They were the White Howlers, a tribe of werewolves descended from the Picts. They were outdone by their own arrogance when they followed servants of the Wyrm (big bad, embodiment of entropy and destruction) into a hive, where the entire tribe was corrupted by the Black Spiral and went insane, becoming servants of the Wyrm (one Howler escaped and made it far enough to warn other werewolves of what had happened before being slain by his former brethren).
I don't understand most of those words put together like that.
Tell me how it looks if you pick it up. I really like how Legends of Anglerre looks, and I'd like a variation for hard-ish sci-fi.
Re: getting people to try fate, I've had luck with proposing new games when the current DM is feeling a bit burned out. Most people are willing to give things a quick try, and the character creation system is fun on it's own. I my players ended up creating an traveling scholar, a wandering gypsy who works as a courier when he needs the money, and a former cabin boy who's grown up to be quite a slippery character. The cabin boy's player wrote most of his aspects in rhyme.
The players had fun coming up with short stores for each character, then writing themselves into each other's back stories. The only real issue was that I had the only book, so they couldn't all choose skills and stunts at once.
Ah it's like how Sorceror's can use daggers as implements and such. If it gives him a bonus and helps him in combat better, then what's the worst that could happen.
Also just imagining him swinging his sword and 10 feet away a dude gets blown back is awesome.
EDIT: Actually that is not fair. WoD combat works great for it's intended purpose, which is a couple of guys fighting with flick knives in a back ally, before one realises that he is getting stabbed and runs away.
It's really, really, really not meant for anything bigger than a few people of average combative skill with basic weapons. Anything more than that and the system just grinds to a stop or breaks entirely.
I can't fucking believe they thought it was a good idea for Aberrant or Exalted. Possibly the worst system they could have chosen.
my experience with nWoD couldn't be more different (of course, Aberrant and Exalted are oWoD-based, so maybe that's where your beef is?)
I've been running a VtM campaign for the past few months with the nWoD rules mechanics and the oWoD Vampire fluff (which I likes better you see)
Combats tend to be short, visceral, brutal affairs, usually the five PCs vs. 5-10 NPCs of various capabilities
they usually only last a handful of rounds, with most enemies being taken out in 2-3 turns
maybe I'm doing it wrong or something but if so I don't really wanna know what the "right" way is because the way we've been doing it has been a good mix of brutal realism and some fantastical action
They were the White Howlers, a tribe of werewolves descended from the Picts. They were outdone by their own arrogance when they followed servants of the Wyrm (big bad, embodiment of entropy and destruction) into a hive, where the entire tribe was corrupted by the Black Spiral and went insane, becoming servants of the Wyrm (one Howler escaped and made it far enough to warn other werewolves of what had happened before being slain by his former brethren).
I don't understand most of those words put together like that.
bad, crazy werewolves who serve a Lovecraftian god of entropy and madness
EDIT: Actually that is not fair. WoD combat works great for it's intended purpose, which is a couple of guys fighting with flick knives in a back ally, before one realises that he is getting stabbed and runs away.
It's really, really, really not meant for anything bigger than a few people of average combative skill with basic weapons. Anything more than that and the system just grinds to a stop or breaks entirely.
I can't fucking believe they thought it was a good idea for Aberrant or Exalted. Possibly the worst system they could have chosen.
my experience with nWoD couldn't be more different (of course, Aberrant and Exalted are oWoD-based, so maybe that's where your beef is?)
I've been running a VtM campaign for the past few months with the nWoD rules mechanics and the oWoD Vampire fluff (which I likes better you see)
Combats tend to be short, visceral, brutal affairs, usually the five PCs vs. 5-10 NPCs of various capabilities
they usually only last a handful of rounds, with most enemies being taken out in 2-3 turns
maybe I'm doing it wrong or something but if so I don't really wanna know what the "right" way is because the way we've been doing it has been a good mix of brutal realism and some fantastical action
I feel that nWoD is far superior to oWoD but that once you start having a lot of combatants rolling dice the system starts to break down.
And it depends how complex your fights are. A few Werewolf PCs vs a few spirits is cool, they have some variance but not too much that it gets difficult to manage and the players will keep track of their own shit.
I once ran a game where five players took on half a dozen Pure in a straight fight, surprise ambush in a basement. It was really, really hard to keep track of everything, the dice pools were just spiralling out of control and if I listened hard I could hear the system creaking under the weight.
That combat was fun, but it was also really rough and anything more than that would have ground things to a halt. Once you start having wait for nine turns until your go, you start getting really bored, and to be honest WoD doesn't tend towards minion style enemies who all go on the same initiative but individual foes with personality and so on because that's more in depth and dramatic.
Big fights are supposed to be fun because of the fight itself, but WoD doesn't see fighting as fun but rather just another part of the story. So I feel that, as a system, once you start getting to fights of a certain length of combat the lightness of the system begins to really show.
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I'd like to say that I also like my combat-centered games to be relatively rules light, but that probably sounds silly. What I mean by that is that I don't like systems where you have an over-abundance of minutia to deal with in things, but have direct, simple, clear rules that dictate what you can do and what you cannot do, and anything in between is considered to be flavor, without violating the rules.
@Solar, do you play a lot of WoD? If so, do you prefer the new or old WoD systems?
guns were fine, but ammo was both a neat and not great idea by my standards.
I just feel it codified everything too much. Is it on the battlefield? If so, you can interact with it, if not, you can't. And even if that isn't the case, you end it looking at the board rather than thinking about stuff so if it's not there you forget about it anyway. It's too static and there, it completely destroys my immersion. A dark, shadowed corridor becomes a bunch of squares on a board with my dude standing there.
I don't need a board to know where everyone is, I can imagine it great in my head, and it looks a lot cooler with gunflashes and bullets spraying everywhere and so on than it does where it's a bunch of static guys standing in little squares on my kitchen room table.
Roleplaying games are escapism for me. A battlemap turns it into a game, not a story, something to win, not enjoy. They do the whole range thing okay, but they destroy a lot of stuff I like about the game.
means guns are a powerful weapon but not TOO overpowered
The new system is far superior, to my mind, much cleaner and smoother
That said, how much of the old system was crap because the monster specific rules weren't that great and how much of it was crap because of the core rules is debatable. I go for a bit of both, to be honest. Old storyteller isn't nearly as good as new storyteller at doing what it wants to do, to my mind.
To be honest though, I'm a nWoD kid, I've played the old system but I played the new one first and those are the games that I got into. Werewolf specifically. WtA was pretty terrible, it seems, whereas WtF is really good. But that's not so much about the core rules as the setting, the design and so on.
Also the nWoD is much less racist than the old one was in places, which is nice.
i liked the idea of ammo being an abstract thing. but ended up making them an encounter power. unless you really needed them, but then you would have to hope to find ammo again. mind you this was before i saw that most every premade thing seemed to give you ammo every other encounter. but i instead opted for a system with ammo saves. first shot works the same, but after the second you do a saving throw, you pass you have more ammo. if you fail, well guess you should have made sure to bring more bullets.
Needless? probably, but i thought it was fun. the "oh shit" moment of running out of ammo is a sweet sweet taste.
I thought you guys were talking about FATAL
I am so glad they got rid of the metaplot
Fuck metaplots. Eclipse Phase seems to have one and I am going to ignore the hell out of it
Also Skull Man I refuse to believe anyone has actually played FATAL. I don't believe I can withstand the thought that somebody choose to play that game of their own free will.
well sometimes I want to maybe pick the lock on a door
and then kill everything on the other side
I also like the idea of people playing like two groups that maybe never meet but are affecting each other.
Also the players playing both the good and bad guys, and just let them run with it.
that last one is basically impossible, but still
Then I'm surprised when half the party joins up with the bad guy because "you know, he's got a point".
I like the idea of things going on beyond what the PCs are seeing that they only feel the effects of
But at the same time, I like for those things to be under my control because I don't care for some developers ideas about how things should be going in my game.
They say "well if you don't like them, ignore them!" which is great and all except some sourcebooks on the old WoD were written at different points along the metaplot so if you ignored it then they literally made no sense.
yet you are a ranged bard
you may have noticed that most of my plans regarding it involve hurling it a great distance at some pivotal dramatic moment
It's two things in one.
Fun.
This sounds cool. Might pick it up.
you ain't gonna be stabbin' that many dudes
just wait
it's going to be awesome
They were the White Howlers, a tribe of werewolves descended from the Picts. They were outdone by their own arrogance when they followed servants of the Wyrm (big bad, embodiment of entropy and destruction) into a hive, where the entire tribe was corrupted by the Black Spiral and went insane, becoming servants of the Wyrm (one Howler escaped and made it far enough to warn other werewolves of what had happened before being slain by his former brethren).
I don't understand most of those words put together like that.
Hunh, wha?
Tell me how it looks if you pick it up. I really like how Legends of Anglerre looks, and I'd like a variation for hard-ish sci-fi.
Re: getting people to try fate, I've had luck with proposing new games when the current DM is feeling a bit burned out. Most people are willing to give things a quick try, and the character creation system is fun on it's own. I my players ended up creating an traveling scholar, a wandering gypsy who works as a courier when he needs the money, and a former cabin boy who's grown up to be quite a slippery character. The cabin boy's player wrote most of his aspects in rhyme.
The players had fun coming up with short stores for each character, then writing themselves into each other's back stories. The only real issue was that I had the only book, so they couldn't all choose skills and stunts at once.
That would be terrible.
Ah it's like how Sorceror's can use daggers as implements and such. If it gives him a bonus and helps him in combat better, then what's the worst that could happen.
Also just imagining him swinging his sword and 10 feet away a dude gets blown back is awesome.
my experience with nWoD couldn't be more different (of course, Aberrant and Exalted are oWoD-based, so maybe that's where your beef is?)
I've been running a VtM campaign for the past few months with the nWoD rules mechanics and the oWoD Vampire fluff (which I likes better you see)
Combats tend to be short, visceral, brutal affairs, usually the five PCs vs. 5-10 NPCs of various capabilities
they usually only last a handful of rounds, with most enemies being taken out in 2-3 turns
maybe I'm doing it wrong or something but if so I don't really wanna know what the "right" way is because the way we've been doing it has been a good mix of brutal realism and some fantastical action
bad, crazy werewolves who serve a Lovecraftian god of entropy and madness
there
MAN
mormonism.
whoops
this is what happens when you have too many Chrome tabs open, kids
tab responsibly
I feel that nWoD is far superior to oWoD but that once you start having a lot of combatants rolling dice the system starts to break down.
And it depends how complex your fights are. A few Werewolf PCs vs a few spirits is cool, they have some variance but not too much that it gets difficult to manage and the players will keep track of their own shit.
I once ran a game where five players took on half a dozen Pure in a straight fight, surprise ambush in a basement. It was really, really hard to keep track of everything, the dice pools were just spiralling out of control and if I listened hard I could hear the system creaking under the weight.
That combat was fun, but it was also really rough and anything more than that would have ground things to a halt. Once you start having wait for nine turns until your go, you start getting really bored, and to be honest WoD doesn't tend towards minion style enemies who all go on the same initiative but individual foes with personality and so on because that's more in depth and dramatic.
Big fights are supposed to be fun because of the fight itself, but WoD doesn't see fighting as fun but rather just another part of the story. So I feel that, as a system, once you start getting to fights of a certain length of combat the lightness of the system begins to really show.