Old Sourcebook Review: Clanbook: Baali

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Wed Jun 20, 2012 11:54 pm

Are you high? We're talking about RPGs. Not books, not movies, RPGs. Throughout the fucking 90s, White Wolf had their blend of horror/dog-fuckery/gothic punk pretty much all to their fucking lonesome. You think people that read Anne Rice novels want to play Ravenloft? Do they fuck.

ModelCitizen · Post by **ModelCitizen** » Thu Jun 21, 2012 12:13 am

Ted the Flayer wrote:And why again is White Wolf such a superior RP system than D20?

As far as I can tell, in 1991 it was less common for D&D characters to try to have interesting motivations instead of just a collection of optimal behaviors and in-jokes. The idea was there (there were tons of D&D novels by that point) but it wasn't an expected part of play yet. Unlike D&D and definitely unlike 1991 AD&D, it at least kind of works to build an oWoD vampire by thinking of a concept first and then bubbling in dots to fit it. You'll probably pick the wrong disciplines (unless your concept happens to be "fastest Dominate in the West" or "invisible Celerity blender") but you can get through 75% of char gen just by impartially rating an imaginary dude/chick in a series of qualities.

Don't get me wrong, I fucking hate the "Storyteller system." I would love to track down every neopagan art school dropout who ever wrote for White Wolf and beat them with an Intro to Probability textbook. But in the early 90's, White Wolf had more character focus than you could get from D&D.

Chamomile · Post by **Chamomile** » Thu Jun 21, 2012 1:02 am

Ancient History wrote:Are you high? We're talking about RPGs.

We're talking about a genre. When we talk about genre emulation, we are not talking about our ability to emulate other RPGs. When Vampire, a game in the supernatural horror genre, fails to actually emulate the media in that genre, that is a flaw with the game.

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Thu Jun 21, 2012 1:25 am

I see we're both going for winning the Special Olympics again.

oWoD: Vampire is Anne Rice meets Dracula meets Lost Boys meets Near Dark, and it does that; that's as close to "genre emulation" as you can get, and it might suck but it succeeds. White Wolf basically defined "gothic punk" for RPGs, even if the world makes no sense and the system is broken and the games don't play nice with each other.

Which still doesn't explain why you brought up Buffy. Serious fucking digression.

K · Post by K » Thu Jun 21, 2012 3:34 am

To be fair, not all the Black Dog line were terri-bad. The Fomori book (Freak Legion) was actually a playable system and pretty crunchy for a Storyteller book.

Honestly, I could never tell the difference between the Black Dog and the White Wolf products other than slightly more tit art.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Thu Jun 21, 2012 5:19 am

I don't know... Freak Legions did have the Savage Genitalia Power, and the Cro-rape-magnons Fomor breed. Possessed didn't contain either of those, and gave two other playable splats to boot (Drones aren't playable, I'm sorry).

That said... Freak Legions did have the first real playable rules for Fomor, which were honestly the closest White Wolf came to their whole "personal horror" thing. Which they did really piss poorly.

ModelCitizen · Post by **ModelCitizen** » Thu Jun 21, 2012 11:03 am

I was never interested in that personal horror thing but Freak Legion was pretty serviceable as a source of Monsters of the Week. My friends were neither dark nor edgy enough to read the book about mutant cancer zombies with their tits out, so they had no idea what Freakfeet or Hollow Men were.

Chamomile · Post by **Chamomile** » Thu Jun 21, 2012 7:16 pm

Ancient History wrote: oWoD: Vampire is Anne Rice meets Dracula meets Lost Boys meets Near Dark,

Great, now tell me which one of those would benefit from obsessing over BDSM sex.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Thu Jun 21, 2012 7:18 pm

Chamomile wrote:
Ancient History wrote: oWoD: Vampire is Anne Rice meets Dracula meets Lost Boys meets Near Dark,
Great, now tell me which one of those would benefit from obsessing over BDSM sex.

Anne Rice.

-Username17

Chamomile · Post by **Chamomile** » Thu Jun 21, 2012 7:44 pm

Well. Benefit was perhaps the wrong word. Anne Rice didn't obsess over BDSM sex in any of her vampire books I'm aware of. She had some actual smut books about BDSM sex once, but those were not vampire books (they were about Sleeping Beauty according to this, which is all I have decided I ever need to know about them) and do not get to count as being in the vampire genre. As I mentioned earlier, vampires doing weird and depraved things is entirely something that should be happening in vampire fiction, but dedicating half of your vampire sourcebook to the subject of explicit vampire bondage sex is not. Armand eats people on stage, but he doesn't rape them.

Ted the Flayer · Post by **Ted the Flayer** » Thu Jun 21, 2012 8:12 pm

I have read the first Sleeping beauty novel. Just reading it gave me anal fissures...

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Thu Jun 21, 2012 9:23 pm

Oh, please. Ever since Camilla, vampirism has been a metaphor for kinky, badwrong sex, in one way or another. Sometimes it's homosexual sex (Camilla, Anne Rice to an extent), sometimes it's rape (Dracula, well, most vampire stories). So bathroom blood harvesting BDSM with fright makeup sex isn't too out of genre for vampires.

Voss · Post by **Voss** » Thu Jun 21, 2012 9:43 pm

Chamomile wrote:Well. Benefit was perhaps the wrong word. Anne Rice didn't obsess over BDSM sex in any of her vampire books I'm aware of. She had some actual smut books about BDSM sex once, but those were not vampire books (they were about Sleeping Beauty according to this, which is all I have decided I ever need to know about them) and do not get to count as being in the vampire genre. As I mentioned earlier, vampires doing weird and depraved things is entirely something that should be happening in vampire fiction, but dedicating half of your vampire sourcebook to the subject of explicit vampire bondage sex is not. Armand eats people on stage, but he doesn't rape them.

While I don't recommend reading the Anne Rice vampire novels again, I think you need to fact check yourself. Armand's more or less explicit backstory was that he was a child fucktoy before whichever elder vampire picked him up, made him _his_ fucktoy, then vamped him in his 'later' teens. She goes on at (fairly disturbing) length that much of the attraction Lestat and the elder feel for him come from his 'angelic' beauty and the fact that his eyes and manner expressed that he was fundamentally 'broken.'

But, yeah, Vampirism as a 'sexual deviancy' (pick whichever) metaphor rather than the dead, blood-craving horrors of folklore is pretty much established from the 19th century on.

Chamomile · Post by **Chamomile** » Thu Jun 21, 2012 10:12 pm

Sure, but it's shuffled offstage. It's there and referred to, but they don't hit you in the face with it over and over and over again the way White Wolf ended up doing. And that's why all the bondage sex pictures are only slightly harmful to the setting, but the one Fish Malk picture has caused far more widespread damage.

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Thu Jun 21, 2012 10:51 pm

...okay, I read "The Vampire Armand" and there's literally a scene in there where Armand is getting jacked off by his vampire sugar-daddy. And that's not the only scene like that in the entire series. Rice put a lot of vampire-fucking in her books.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Fri Jun 22, 2012 1:56 am

So tell me - and this thread seems vaguely appropriate - what's the obsession guys have with vaginal monsters? It's not even so much a sexual fetish thing (I hope), but you/they seriously seem to love putting fangs inside the same things you like putting your dicks. Or swarms of wasps, or whatever. Next time I'm fingering a girl, I don't want to have to check for hidden blades and things, so seriously, why do guys obsess over it?

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Fri Jun 22, 2012 2:21 am

Primal fear. Vagina Dentata is seriously an actual mythical thing, which shows up across any number of cultures' myths. Between use as a bogey man against sex and rape, and basic male willful ignorance towards female anatomy, especially the reproductive system, which has always gotten a lot of badwrong magic associated with it, saying that the vagina itself is dangerous is kind of an obvious thing.

But hell, it's not like there haven't been similar mythical treatments of the penis, such treatments just tend to be less covert, with obvious disfigurement. Everything from incubi with iron or super hot or cold dicks, to the phallus vermiculim, which was sorta the same kind of deal, but attributed to a guy who made some kind of deal with the devil, and got a monstrously large, spiny, "dear god I don't even want to touch it" cock. The vagina just gets "teeth." usually.

Of course, then there's the vagina mouth on the back of Tzimisce, which, rather than being a vagina with teeth, is some poor ghoul whose mouth was turned into a vagina, which is just generic "she's just a sex object, any hole will do, oh hey, I can warp flesh" bullshit.

Chamomile · Post by **Chamomile** » Fri Jun 22, 2012 3:36 am

Ridley Scott probably doesn't think it's awesome being stalked by a murder machine in a closed and claustrophobic environment in the vacuum of space. Probably he just thought it was scary. I'm guessing the dude who came up with vagina dentata also just thought it was scary, and people thought it was cool because confronting fear is a thrill.

Ted the Flayer · Post by **Ted the Flayer** » Fri Jun 22, 2012 10:48 am

Koumei wrote:So tell me - and this thread seems vaguely appropriate - what's the obsession guys have with vaginal monsters? It's not even so much a sexual fetish thing (I hope), but you/they seriously seem to love putting fangs inside the same things you like putting your dicks. Or swarms of wasps, or whatever. Next time I'm fingering a girl, I don't want to have to check for hidden blades and things, so seriously, why do guys obsess over it?

If you strip away sexual function and enjoyment from the vagina, it's basically an oozing, bleeding hole that opens up directly into someone's abdominal cavity. Strip away the whole mystique and it's actually kind of terrifying in a body-horror type of way.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Fri Jun 22, 2012 11:55 am

Ted the Flayer wrote:
Koumei wrote:So tell me - and this thread seems vaguely appropriate - what's the obsession guys have with vaginal monsters? It's not even so much a sexual fetish thing (I hope), but you/they seriously seem to love putting fangs inside the same things you like putting your dicks. Or swarms of wasps, or whatever. Next time I'm fingering a girl, I don't want to have to check for hidden blades and things, so seriously, why do guys obsess over it?
If you strip away sexual function and enjoyment from the vagina, it's basically an oozing, bleeding hole that opens up directly into someone's abdominal cavity. Strip away the whole mystique and it's actually kind of terrifying in a body-horror type of way.

Yes, and a penis is just a rigid, penetrating object which injects a person's essence into another, and, if that other is a woman, enacts strange mass bodily transformation on them, even altering their behaviour and responses to stimuli. Given sufficient driving force, or a small/weak enough victim, it can actually cause a large amount of damage.

Your point?

Ted the Flayer · Post by **Ted the Flayer** » Fri Jun 22, 2012 11:58 am

Prak_Anima wrote:
Ted the Flayer wrote:
Koumei wrote:So tell me - and this thread seems vaguely appropriate - what's the obsession guys have with vaginal monsters? It's not even so much a sexual fetish thing (I hope), but you/they seriously seem to love putting fangs inside the same things you like putting your dicks. Or swarms of wasps, or whatever. Next time I'm fingering a girl, I don't want to have to check for hidden blades and things, so seriously, why do guys obsess over it?
If you strip away sexual function and enjoyment from the vagina, it's basically an oozing, bleeding hole that opens up directly into someone's abdominal cavity. Strip away the whole mystique and it's actually kind of terrifying in a body-horror type of way.
Yes, and a penis is just a rigid, penetrating object which injects a person's essence into another, and, if that other is a woman, enacts strange mass bodily transformation on them, even altering their behaviour and responses to stimuli. Given sufficient driving force, or a small/weak enough victim, it can actually cause a large amount of damage.

Your point?

She wanted to know why vaginas were terrifying to some men. I told her. I don't see what the problem is.

EDIT: As far as penises being terrifying, I was sexually assaulted as a young lad and I know damn well why they can be perceived as terrifying. No one had asked that question, your jumping in was meaningless.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Fri Jun 22, 2012 12:12 pm

Sorry that I touched a nerve. I also explained the vagina thing, though possibly not as well as you. My basic point was "vaginas are terrifying out of context? so are penises, so that doesn't really amply explain why vags get singled out." Although your explanation coupled with the fact that the vast majority of modern cultures are male dominated and androcentric would....

Edit: I was also being flippant, it's something I'm known, and not well liked for.

Ted the Flayer · Post by **Ted the Flayer** » Fri Jun 22, 2012 12:18 pm

It's cool. I have a bad habit of interpreting words on a screen to be more scornful than they were meant by the writer.

Desdan_Mervolam · Post by **Desdan_Mervolam** » Fri Jun 22, 2012 12:52 pm

Ted the Flayer wrote:And why again is White Wolf such a superior RP system than D20?

Just like in the 90s Comic Books were pushing back against the perceived stale and immature comics of the Silver Age, in the 90s a lot of RPGs were pushing back against the perceived stale, immature and mechanics-obsessed RPGs of the 70s and 80s. And just like with Comic Books, to a very large degree this push was done very poorly. (In fact, d20 came out when oWoD was winding down, and ushered in a pushback against overly narritivist RPGs with poorly-defined rulesets).

It's important to remember that if any of the founding members of White Wolf ever came to this board they would puke their guts up in disgust. In the 70s and 80s, roleplaying games liked to try and build realism and verisimilitude by enacting ever more complicated mechanics systems. Some games, like Iron Crown's Rolemaster, used this as a point of pride in their very advertising. While it's very possible to create a character in any system that is more than the sum of their Stats, most people playing D&D don't. White Wolf wanted a system where the PCs were fully realized people who had goals and where skills that don't end something's life were useful. A noble enough goal, but there were two problems. Firstly, no amount of goal statement, sidebar admonisions and Storyteller cautions are going to keep players from creating min-maxed combat monsters as long as the ST lets them. Secondly, it's pretentious as fuck.

To a certain extent, oWoD was very much like Rifts. The game mechanics were bad, you accepted that and moved on by either pushing the rules further down or attempting to patch them (Neither worked very well). The world was full of incredibly awesome shit that inspired you and made you want to play it, and most of the stuff you actually wanted to play was incredibly overpowered. I feel very confident in saying that Old World of Darkness is the most extensively detailed setting for a game ever, and that's ignoring the reality subtext and focusing on the published material. Marbled throughout the stuff you wanted to play was a lot of ideas that just went nowhere, or were just plain bad and stupid. Generally speaking, you were pretty well expected to ignore the stuff you didn't like and focus on stuff you did. And if one of your friends liked something you didn't like, you were expected to shout them down and call them a bad roleplayer. Seriously.

Just like gaming has come a long way since Gygax in the 70s, Gaming has come a long way since White Wolf in the 90s. I think with a better system and a steadier editing hand the World of Darkness could still be a great setting. It's a shame that ever since, we've just gotten either the retread editions, or the bland-as-oatmeal New World of Darkness.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Fri Jun 22, 2012 1:38 pm

Desdan Mervolam wrote:I feel very confident in saying that Old World of Darkness is the most extensively detailed setting for a game ever, and that's ignoring the reality subtext and focusing on the published material.

Depends on your definitions. newWorldofDarkness had more text spilled on it than any edition of Old World of Darkness ever did. A bullshit book like Dogs of War or Nomads in nWoD is closing in on a hundred thousand words. The old Clanbooks were 68 pages and had big text (around twenty thousand words). "Mysterious Places" may not be about anything or provide any real information, but it is literally five times longer in terms of actual text than a first edition oWoD book.

Old World of Darkness produced 494 books and products, including the more than a hundred edition reprints that it went through. Even that doesn't put it anywhere close to the wordcount of nWoD. Geist has the wordcount of all first edition clanbooks combined. nWoD went to full shovelware combined with digital writing, editing, and typesetting. They could put out raw wordcount that it is difficult to wrap your mind around. And they did.

-Username17