What the hell is wrong with White Wolf's fluff writers?

[magnuskn]

1a. Vampires stick to the city. Why? Their food source is there, but also, as soon as you leave town, lupines (werewolves, technically *not* garou) will shred your ass and turn you into dust. You have to specifically build yourself as a survivalist character to live outside a city.

Which always was funny. Parodied very well in the great Gehenna - The Musical.

"["How we quit the forest"]
[A short, educational interlude]

A pack of werewolves are making their way towards the center of the storm.

WEREWOLF #1
Come my brethren! Let us slay the Wyrm-Beast and cleanse it's foul taint from Gaia's soil!

The other werewolves stop and look at him, confused

WEREWOLF #2
Uh... What are you talking about?

WEREWOLF #3
Yeah, dude. Did you eat something funny?

WEREWOLF #1 Not understanding
Why? Are we not Garou, Gaia's chosen warriors?

Werewolf #2 looks puzzled

WEREWOLF #2
Look, there's obviously some misunderstanding. We are Lupines.

WEREWOLF #3
Yeah. Bestial berserkers infected with lycantrophy.

WEREWOLF #1
Yes, but do we not slay vampires?

WEREWOLF #2
Well, yeah, but only because we're like twice as bloodthirsty ourselves.

WEREWOLF #1
So... No Garou?

WEREWOLF #2
No.

WEREWOLF #1
And no spirit mentors?

WEREWOLF #3
None whatsoever.

WEREWOLF #1
And what about Wyrm-thingies?

WEREWOLF #2 (Smiling)
Only if you haven't taken your shots.

WEREWOLF #1 (Blushing)
Gosh, guys. I feel so stupid. Well, I guess I'll be going then.

Werewolf #1 steps sideways and vanishes

WEREWOLF #2
A pleasant enough fellow. But I wonder how he did that?

[And now back to tonight's feature]"

The Giovanni clan disadvantage was that they had to do that, they didn't have a clan advantage that allowed them to.

Hm, I may be wrong here, but wasn't their disadvantage that their bite did not induce euphoria in their victims, but rather caused incredible pain?

[talozin]

Ok, here is a simple lesson in morality: if you don't do the right thing because it's inconvenient, or because it costs a little money, or because you won't enjoy it, then you are fucking evil.

And who cares if Diabolism costs Humanity? You can get Humanity back with XP.

This is a weird disconnect. Playing Russian roulette with someone else by draining blood from gothy wannabes is evil, but actually consuming someone's soul is OK because the game mechanics allow you to mitigate its negative effects?

I mean, you can get Humanity back with XP when you lose it after accidentally killing someone because you couldn't stop drinking their blood, too, and, unlike Diablerie, you aren't actually intentionally murdering them.

Or is the idea that destroying another vampire is OK, because, well, they're vampires?

[Prak]

Ok, as bad the fluff writers are, what the fuck is wrong with WW's players? What the hell is with all the "omg, you're actually good at combat! SHUN THE ROLLPLAYER!!!" and "NO! You can't just resurrect a dead breed/tribe! You must sacrifice a current one and spill the blood of a thousand innocents otherwise you lose the Blackness and Despair of the World of Darkness!"

Seriously, I've run into this bullshit. I know some of it's supported by the books and fluff, but... fuck. Why are there so many grognards?

[Koumei]

The system promotes "Not even looking at the rules, oh god, it's painful to read". And as such, the people most drawn to it are those who HATE RULES.

Why they like it when everyone is fucking useless is beyond me though. Though in general they seem to make exceptions for:

1. People they are currently fucking
2. People they wish they were currently fucking
3. Their mutual masturbation MC*

*Player A is in Player B's game and vice versa. They possibly even play characters that are very fucking similar, each basically playing the character that the other would be playing if they were a player and not the MC. And they reward each other heavily and think they're really clever about it.

[K]

Ok, here is a simple lesson in morality: if you don't do the right thing because it's inconvenient, or because it costs a little money, or because you won't enjoy it, then you are fucking evil.

And who cares if Diabolism costs Humanity? You can get Humanity back with XP.

This is a weird disconnect. Playing Russian roulette with someone else by draining blood from gothy wannabes is evil, but actually consuming someone's soul is OK because the game mechanics allow you to mitigate its negative effects?

I mean, you can get Humanity back with XP when you lose it after accidentally killing someone because you couldn't stop drinking their blood, too, and, unlike Diablerie, you aren't actually intentionally murdering them.

Or is the idea that destroying another vampire is OK, because, well, they're vampires?

No, it's because you are going to be committing Diablerie maybe 5-6 times EVER. Feeding off humans means killing 5-6 people a year accidentally, and chances are good you are not going to get enough XP to counteract that.

[Ganbare Gincun]

No, it's because you are going to be committing Diablerie maybe 5-6 times EVER. Feeding off humans means killing 5-6 people a year accidentally, and chances are good you are not going to get enough XP to counteract that.

I've only been able to commit Diablerie an average of one time per oWoD campaign. If you're going to commit the ultimate sin in Vampire society, you'd better be sure that you maximize the power you gain from the act and that you and your coterie can survive the inevitable reprisal that will follow.

[CatharzGodfoot]

No, it's because you are going to be committing Diablerie maybe 5-6 times EVER. Feeding off humans means killing 5-6 people a year accidentally, and chances are good you are not going to get enough XP to counteract that.

I've only been able to commit Diablerie an average of one time per oWoD campaign. If you're going to commit the ultimate sin in Vampire society, you'd better be sure that you maximize the power you gain from the act and that you and your coterie can survive the inevitable reprisal that will follow.

Aw, you know that everyone is doing it. They just say that they aren't.

[Prak]

The system promotes "Not even looking at the rules, oh god, it's painful to read". And as such, the people most drawn to it are those who HATE RULES.

Why they like it when everyone is fucking useless is beyond me though. Though in general they seem to make exceptions for:

1. People they are currently fucking
2. People they wish they were currently fucking
3. Their mutual masturbation MC*

*Player A is in Player B's game and vice versa. They possibly even play characters that are very fucking similar, each basically playing the character that the other would be playing if they were a player and not the MC. And they reward each other heavily and think they're really clever about it.

This... actually explains my group's dynamic decently... Though there is also:
4. People who have nothing better to do, and not enough social skills to find something.

ok, and also this:
5. People who have found someone stupid enough to run Mage and are gleeful at the chance to run around with their magic(oc)k shtupping the laws of physics while being a rockstar.

[violence in the media]

No, it's because you are going to be committing Diablerie maybe 5-6 times EVER. Feeding off humans means killing 5-6 people a year accidentally, and chances are good you are not going to get enough XP to counteract that.

I've only been able to commit Diablerie an average of one time per oWoD campaign. If you're going to commit the ultimate sin in Vampire society, you'd better be sure that you maximize the power you gain from the act and that you and your coterie can survive the inevitable reprisal that will follow.

When I played oWoD, the biggest deterrent against diablerie was your own coterie. It wasn't like we were super-sophisticated roleplayers or anything, but we took that "vampires are horrible, backstabbing, SOBs" fluff to heart and were constantly trying to screw each other over and murder the other PCs. In a way, it was a lot like playing Munchkin and wound up being a lot of fun because we didn't take it that seriously.

[tzor]

Aw, you know that everyone is doing it. They just say that they aren't.

Many do, but not everyone. Remember that in OWoD there was that annoying problem of aura contanimation. It's not that you say you aren't, it's that you either have to come up with the legal paperwork (yes there were cases where punishments were so severe that stake and bake just wasn't enough) or the means to eliminate the block spots from the aura.

[sabs]

in oWoD telling if someone is a Diablerist requires someone with the right power. Unfortunately, over half the clans have said power. It's pretty trivial to tell if you're a Diablerist. This makes you punishable by death, unless you have a lot of political clout.

You know what, you can live a fairly long time eating just catfood. And yet, noone who has an alternative does. This whole, "I'll just drink from animals" thing is clear munchkinism and metagaming.

[Username17]

Eating catfood isn't a lone and universally acknowledged moral alternative to anything. If your choices were to eat a bowl of catfood or stab a hobo, I would expect to smell Friskies on your breath.

-Username17

[angelfromanotherpin]

This whole, "I'll just drink from animals" thing is clear munchkinism and metagaming.

Or, y'know, an actual thing from the Anne Rice source material that at least one vampire did, for moral reasons.

[sabs]

This whole, "I'll just drink from animals" thing is clear munchkinism and metagaming.

Or, y'know, an actual thing from the Anne Rice source material that at least one vampire did, for moral reasons.

And that worked out so well for him.

[tzor]

This whole, "I'll just drink from animals" thing is clear munchkinism and metagaming.

Or, y'know, an actual thing from the Anne Rice source material that at least one vampire did, for moral reasons.

And that worked out so well for him.

Well he was stuck in an Anne Rice Novel; that's already two and 3/4 strikes against him in the first place.

[sabs]

Could have been worse. He could have been in an Anita Blake Novel.

[TheWorid]

Neither are shows that I'm very familiar with, but a quick internet search to verify my memory showed that both Barnabus from Dark Shadows and Angel from Buffy the Vampire Slayer drank pig's blood to avoid hurting humans.

[Prak]

Eating catfood isn't a lone and universally acknowledged moral alternative to anything. If your choices were to eat a bowl of catfood or stab a hobo, I would expect to smell Friskies on your breath.

-Username17

I would merely expect someone to not be a hypocrite. If they decided they didn't give a damn about the hobo, then they shouldn't conduct themselves as pure and virginal as the driven snow with ascented shit. Of course just deciding you'd rather chow down on friskies than kill someone isn't exactly indicative of any real morality...

[Nachtigallerator]

in oWoD telling if someone is a Diablerist requires someone with the right power. Unfortunately, over half the clans have said power. It's pretty trivial to tell if you're a Diablerist. This makes you punishable by death, unless you have a lot of political clout.

Funnily enough, at least for one particular edition of oWoD V:tDA, the core rules specified that

"Unfortuneately, the signs of Amaranth are plain for all to see, at least those with the Auspex power of Soulsight. The diablerist's spirit halo ist shot through with black veins, reflecting the imperfectly merged souls of the Cainite and her victim. This de facto admission of guilt fades in a number of years equal to the difference in generation between the diablerist and her victim (with a minimum of one year) and trace evidence may last decades or centuries and be detectable with thaumaturgy."

(page 259)

So basically, if your game is set before the emergence of the Tremere (which is a stupid story anyway), you've got a safe haven and your ST isn't a big fan of the various Thaumaturgy-equivalents for other clans, you can theoretically get away with lots and lots of diablerie. I actually find it rather funny how those little things hint at how some of the game designers weren't digging the whole "We're slaves to crazy ancients for all eternity, and all we got was these lousy disciplines!" mentality that was the alleged selling point of Vampire - they seemed to prefer Fanged Superheroes, which I guess was the reason for writing some of the DA Roads the way they wrote them. Roads, for those who don't know, are a gift from the Team Superhero writers to the Team Superhero players, and basically gave you a different morality chart to follow - and the great thing is, some of these are actually compatible with an ordinary playstyle as long as nobody looks to closely.


Of course, it's rather .. stupid that this seems to have been fought out in shady edit wars and not presented as equally viable options, as in aWoD. Also naturally, the "life sucks, and if you disagree, you're some inhuman philosophical extremist" doctrine had to be respected to keep the goths in the boat.

To get somewhat back to the point, I once presented the above quote to my ST, along with the question how it was possible for Salubri clan vampires (who practised consensual diablerie) to retain their diablerist aura after some point. His answer might shed some light on why people actually like a game with rules as crappy - basically, he said: "F*ck the rules, I like the spirit of the game."
Which was why he thought the game was a marvelous piece of rpg-crafting, instead of some idiots taking a great idea, writing some fluff every reasonably gifted college graduate could've pieced together, and then proceeded to build a ruleset that contradicted most of said fluff by fundamentally failing and math and game balance both. It appears that it's only workable because every single ST out there outlaws large portions of the official material to create something at least faintly coherent - while thinking that what he did is exactly what the writers intended to say anyway, so he still praises them.

[Lago PARANOIA]

So...

How many of you guys have had games where Vampires and some other WoD sourcebook have had to duke it out? And how did that go down?

I am practically jizzing my pants at the thought of a story of a Captain Planet-style Genius deciding that his goal is to kill all of the werewolves in order to give Mother Earth the finger.

[tzor]

When I was playing it was mostly Vampiree and Werewolf ... Generally we didn't "cross the streams" as it were. I forget offhand how different the combat systems were from each other (mostly in the ways combat abilities were metered out) but generally most of our games were purely one thing or the other (mostly purely vampire).

[Username17]

Practically the entire point of Werewolf is to fight shit, and fighting shit almost invariably turns to fighting people out of the other splats. Apocalypse Werewolves will fucking murder you if you're a Vampire. They basically walk in with 2-4 in all the physical disciplines before they even select mystic gifts. The only way to hope to oppose them is with mind magic, and even that doesn't work super well because they can bypass most of it by spending rage.

Werewolves in Forsaken are shitty. Their ultimate war form is about as useful as a hand gun, and it only lasts for a few seconds. Vampires hand them their ass.

Every version of Mages fucking owns everything in the setting, so if you end up fighting mages you lose. It's pretty cut and dried.

Changelings get their asses handed to them by vampires in Masqurade, because their powers don't work when people around them are being serious. nWoD Changelings are about an even match with Requiem Vampires.

Wraiths in Oblivion basically don't even get to interact with vampires unless those vampires are necromancers, in which case the vampires turn them into their bitches. Krewes of Geists are basically at the level of nWoD Mages and will turn you into a skin puppet whether you have vampire powers or not.

-Username17

[sabs]

A starting character werewolf would wipe the floor with even an experienced combat vampire.

RAGE > Disciplines

That being said
MAGE = WIN!

I mean, the Magic system in mage is.. "Yes, yes you can do that."
None of those systems were balanced against each other /at all/ and mixed games were atrocious for power levels. And you had to make house rules for everything.
Dominate officially says that humans don't get to spend willpower to resist. They just suck it. Mages are humans, so /technically/ a Vampire with Dominate could order a Mage to do anything he felt like, no saves. Which of course made everyone unhappy. (Except the Vampire Player)

[Koumei]

Back in the day, playing Werewolf flat-out meant you would fight a vampire at some point, playing Vampire meant you'd encounter at least one of the following (werewolves, mages, changelings) and some people flat-out ran fruits basket games (oWoD here, where they didn't even pretend it was a good idea).

[magnuskn]

I am practically jizzing my pants at the thought of a story of a Captain Planet-style Genius deciding that his goal is to kill all of the werewolves in order to give Mother Earth the finger.

How'd that be different to what Pentex, Black Spiral Dancers and other similar entities plan to do and actually do all the day anyway?