Rehabbing WoD, but keeping it's spirit

[Username17]

Let's talk about Sects.

In the original writeup, the Camarilla was all there was, and all the vampire clans that existed were part of it. Except that there were some non-Camarilla vampires that were either bad (Sabbat) or neutral (Inconnu). That lasted almost a year. We had both sect creep and clan creep. Sometimes independently, and sometimes together. By the end, we had:

• Camarilla
• Sabbat
• Anarchs
• Setites
• Assamites
• Ashirra
• Giovanni
• Laibon
• Inconnu
• Kuei-Jin
• True Hand
• Gangrel
• Infernalists

OK, that is fucking bullshit. 13 fucking sects, and I'm not even counting the different versions of the Black Hand like the Tal'Mahe'Ra and the Lost Tribe. For fuck's sake, we have two flavors of Arabic assassin cult that start with the letter A (the independent Assamite Clan and the Ashirra). The thing is that all those sects accumulated because of setting bloat and simple sclerosis. One author wanted a rigid boundary between clan and sect and wrote in the Islamic vampires as Assamites. Another author wanted sects to be open across clans and wrote in the Islamic vampires as Ashirra. I take it as given that sects with lots of different clans in them are more interesting and fun, so for starters the Assamites can go fuck themselves and the Ashirra can go on being the Muslimish Vampire sect in a reboot.

But we also have to look at what a sect means. In the original book, sect wasn't really an option, there were just some vampires who were on different sides in the Jyhad and if you were a player character you were automatically Camarilla (or Anarch if you found the Camarilla too annoying). Eventually, being a sect determined what kind of sorcery you had available. If you were in the Setites you could learn Akhu, if you joined the Baali you could learn Dark Thaumaturgy, if you joined the Laibon you could learn magic negro necromancy, and if you joined the Assamites you could learn Dur-an-Ki and so on and so forth. This was a total repudiation of the original concept where the Tremere were the wizard clan and other people didn't get to do wizarding, but everyone was basically happier with it like that. Of course, by the end Vampire had at least 16 flavors of thaumaturgy, but I think we can safely combine Abombo and Voodoo Necromancy into a single set of powers for the Laibon and probably drop Lithuanian Thaumaturgy altogether.

So what it comes down to is that the number of sects you end up with is actually just the number of flavors of magic you want to bother with. And which sects you choose is to be decided by which sects can't be easily substituted and meet one of the following conditions:

• The sect has a lot of traction among WoD players (for example: The Camarilla is the name of the actual World of Darkness fan society which still exists even though White Wolf does not).
• The sect fills a needed void in the world as a whole (for example: the Laibon deliver the Blackulas needs which would otherwise be under exposed)
• The magic the sect uses has enough traction that the sect needs to exist (for example: Dark Thaumaturgy is rather important to a lot of people, so the Infernalists need a seat at the table for that magic to exist).

Shit like the Inconnu and the True Hand can obviously just be shit canned. While the Nagaraja have some neat magic, there's no special reason it can't be dumped into Western Necromancy and there are much cooler groups that could specialize in that.

-Username17

[hyzmarca]

Basically, the entire Werewolf breeding system is bad. The parts of it that aren't corrosive to the game and offensive to the sensibilities (dog rape, regular rape) are nonetheless complete failures of design. There's no reason for me to identify with the Shadowlords just because I'm miscellaneously Slavic in ancestry, I'm a fucking American. There's no reason for my character to give a shit about the complicated mating quandaries because he's 19 years old and is too young to be a father anyway. It's all crap. Werewolves should either be infective or new Werewolves should be chosen from the human population at large by spirits or reincarnation charts or some fucking thing.

But it does give you a good excuse for writing werewolf porn stories, and isn't furry porn what the internet is all about?

The sect has a lot of traction among WoD players (for example: The Camarilla is the name of the actual World of Darkness fan society which still exists even though White Wolf does not).
The sect fills a needed void in the world as a whole (for example: the Laibon deliver the Blackulas needs which would otherwise be under exposed)
The magic the sect uses has enough traction that the sect needs to exist (for example: Dark Thaumaturgy is rather important to a lot of people, so the Infernalists need a seat at the table for that magic to exist).

Infernalists and Laibon don't actually have to be sects. You can have your demon-fueled black magic open to every sect with varying degrees of acceptance and you can absolutely have black vampires just be normal vampires who happen to be black.

[Username17]

But it does give you a good excuse for writing werewolf porn stories, and isn't furry porn what the internet is all about?

I think you have plenty of opportunities for furry porn regardless. The only thing that the whole kinfuck/metis system does is provide an excuse for incest pornfics. And while apparently rule 34 has decided that there is a place on the internet for those, it's a tiny minority compared with more wholesome porn categories like slash and bondage. A chance to crinos form during sex would in all ways be more conducive to the kinds of porn stories the market favors than a mandate to breed with your cousins and rape dogs.

Infernalists and Laibon don't actually have to be sects. You can have your demon-fueled black magic open to every sect with varying degrees of acceptance and you can absolutely have black vampires just be normal vampires who happen to be black.

You could indeed have the Baali be part of the Sabbat in a reboot and simply announce that the sect magic of the Sabbat was Dark Thaumaturgy. That would be a fine choice. The deal though is that you want every sect to have their own magic and you don't want to have more magic flavors than you have sects. Cleaning up the sect and sorcery lists is pretty much job one of a Vampire reboot, and making them correspond to each other is the easiest and best way to do that. Even nWoD figured that out (although they went too far and didn't have enough magic flavors because only 3 covenants did magic). If you're going to have Dark Thaumaturgy be a thing, and you probably are because a lot more people can name it than can name Koldunic Sorcery or Abyss Mysticism, then you're going to want one of the sects to lay claim to it. That could potentially be the Sabbat if you want to go that way, but it could also be the Infernalists or whatever instead. Basically you have to choose whether the Sabbat are Infernalists or fight Infernalists, because White Wolf has gone both ways on that.

Anyway, while there is nothing stopping a Blackula from being a member of the Camarilla, there's still the question of what to do with Lagos and Cape Town. If you don't declare them Laibon cities up front in your reboot, you have to assign them to the Sabbat or Camarilla or whatever. Doing the original Masquerade thing where everything south of the Sahara was just "here be black people" isn't acceptable. Giving the Laibon major strongholds in Africa and territories in Latin America, the Caribbean, and the United States would be an easy way to give Blackulas a more prominent role in the rebooted story.

It's not the only option, of course. You could promote the Church of Set to a full sect instead of a minor sect. Thulsa Doom is played by Dark Fucking Vader, and makes a pretty convincing head of the Blackulas. Or you could divvy up Africa between the Sabbat, Camarilla, and Arrisha. That would work too, provided that you also wrote Africa plotlines for the Sabbat, Camarilla, and Arrisha to care about. You could even do a mixture of things, where the Laibon are based out of Lagos and the Setites are based out of Nairobi and there are some notable Camarilla and Sabbat cities in Africa as well.

-Username17

[BoxCrayonTales]

I found the core rules for apparently legally free as a teenager, read through them, vaguely remembered an interesting setting and facepalmed repeatedly at them shoehorning in Divine Inspiration as a power source at fucking all even if it was only one of a bunch of character options.

I don't understand the hateboner for religion, Christianity in particular, on these threads. World of darkness doesn't even get the Abrahamic religions right, much less in a way that is anything other than blasphemous. In pretty much every instance where Yahweh is mentioned in the games, he is all but stated to be evil/dead/female/something else offensive. I don't think any of the writers were practicing Christians either.

The BBEG of Orpheus, who is at one point rumored to be God's evil twin, is only attacking humans because she doesn't understand they're people and will withdraw if informed of this fact. That's pretty much the single most morally upright action taken by any character in the history of the games.

If you're criticizing a game for being pro-Christian when in the game itself the Cthulhu stand-in places more value on life than the Yahweh stand-in, then something is very wrong.

[Shrapnel]

Wait, calling God female is offensive? Please tell me I'm misreading that.

(Btw, the "hateboner" toward religion is because most of the Den is either atheist, agnostic, liberal, conservative, a bear, or Ron Howard).

[Whipstitch]

If you're criticizing a game for being pro-Christian when in the game itself the Cthulhu stand-in places more value on life than the Yahweh stand-in, then something is very wrong.

I understand how you came to this interpretation of what we were talking about since we Denners tend to be rather flippant on the topic, but the problem isn't really just a simple matter of the writers being pro or anti Christian. Rather, the problem is that the writers' Christian oriented ethnocentricism doesn't have the time or inclination to explore other stuff very thoroughly. By way of comparison, think of the comic book Preacher. It's written by an atheist and Yahweh is the main antagonist but that does nothing to mitigate the fact that it's a story about heaven and angels and thus has no time for the Dreamtime or asuras.

[Username17]

In nWoD you are forced to select a Catholic Heavenly Virtue and Deadly Sin to define your character. This is more offensive and intrusive than if it was simply literally true in the game that the divine creator of the universe had one son by a virgin in Judea. It isn't that the game is telling you that Christian myths are real in the game, it's that the game is telling you that your character has to interact with the world around them through a Christian lens. Even if you want to play a Norse or a Hindu, you are only allowed to be a Christian wearing a Norse or Hindu hat.

But regardless, let's talk about Disciplines and Clans.

The original Masquerade featured 10 disciplines which each covered a thing that Dracula was shown doing, and seven clans which each covered an archetype of vampire portrayed in movies or homoerotic novels and got access to three of those 10 disciplines. That idea lasted about five minutes, and discipline bloat and clan bloat started pretty much immediately.

Now we can probably all agree that we don't want to live in a world where Old Clan Tzimisce and Tlacique are things, and that in any reboot there are going to be 13 clans maximum. But I think it also makes sense to go back and look at the core assumptions of what a Vampire clan is and does. For starters: 3 disciplines out of 10 was already insultingly low. It made for a solid card game, but a game where you could never be more than 30% Dracula was pretty bullshit from the get-go. One of the main reasons for people constantly making new bullshit bloodlines and clan variants and shit was simply that 3 Disciplines isn't enough. I propose that moving forward, you'd want to give every vampire access to seven. And no, I am not kidding.

To begin with, the three physical disciplines of Potence, Fortitude, and Celerity should be available to all Vampires and not considered part of any clan's legacy. Every Vampire should start with a dot in all three, and if they want more they can buy it. No Vampire should find themselves physically outmatched by their own ghoul, nor should any Vampire ever make a Ghoul who acquires powers from their blood powers that their blood doesn't give to them. And then, every sect should provide access to a flavor of sorcery, and that shouldn't count against any clan's powers. So the clans should keep the flavor of having 3 clan disciplines, but those disciplines should be entirely things like Animalism and Obfuscate that have actual narrative weight.

So of the main clans, the only ones whose core disciplines even could stay the same are the Malkavians (Obfuscate, Dominate, Auspex - fuck Dementation), the Tzimisce (Auspex, Animalism, Vicissitude), and the Setites (Obfuscation, Presence, Serpentis). And that's assuming that Vicissitude didn't just get merged into Protean - which I do not think is a good assumption because Vicissitude only even exists because people were angry at how bullshit Protean was (4 dots to turn into a fuckin bat!) All the other clans would have to get merged or expanded or something.

-Username17

[BoxCrayonTales]

In nWoD you are forced to select a Catholic Heavenly Virtue and Deadly Sin to define your character. This is more offensive and intrusive than if it was simply literally true in the game that the divine creator of the universe had one son by a virgin in Judea. It isn't that the game is telling you that Christian myths are real in the game, it's that the game is telling you that your character has to interact with the world around them through a Christian lens. Even if you want to play a Norse or a Hindu, you are only allowed to be a Christian wearing a Norse or Hindu hat.

I never considered this a problem, because it's a recreational game and not a Chick tract. So my Norse or Hindu character regains willpower for doing things that can be loosely sorted in the three theological virtues, the four cardinal virtues, and the seven deadly sins. It's not like atheist Japanese mangakas haven't used that idea a billion times simply because it sounds cool.

But regardless, let's talk about Disciplines and Clans.

I always thought treating disciplines like mage spheres would've been better than giving a fixed power at each level.

[Night Goat]

The thing that baffles me is that they would make a game where Christianity is objectively true, when their target audience is a group that shows open contempt for Christianity.

[Prak]

In nWoD you are forced to select a Catholic Heavenly Virtue and Deadly Sin to define your character. This is more offensive and intrusive than if it was simply literally true in the game that the divine creator of the universe had one son by a virgin in Judea. It isn't that the game is telling you that Christian myths are real in the game, it's that the game is telling you that your character has to interact with the world around them through a Christian lens. Even if you want to play a Norse or a Hindu, you are only allowed to be a Christian wearing a Norse or Hindu hat.

I never considered this a problem, because it's a recreational game and not a Chick tract. So my Norse or Hindu character regains willpower for doing things that can be loosely sorted in the three theological virtues, the four cardinal virtues, and the seven deadly sins. It's not like atheist Japanese mangakas haven't used that idea a billion times simply because it sounds cool.

Here's the problem. Different people have different value structures. Just as an honestly-not-that-far-out hypothetical case, lets say I want to make my Infernalist Vampire character a satanist. Let's just say, because I'm familiar with satanic values, and the game supposedly supports infernalist characters.

Despite the fact that my character is a soft atheist who thinks it's better to rule in Hell than serve in heaven, who thinks that vampirism is more a mixed blessing than a curse from YHWH ALMIGHTY for his GRIEVOUS SINS, I have to choose from Chastity, Temperance, Charity, Diligence, Patience, Kindness or Humility for a concept I honor and like and try to works towards, and from Lust, Gluttony, Wrath, Sloth, Envy, Greed or Pride as a quality I find abhorrent and must try to avoid.

Despite the fact that my character thinks the seven deadly sins are perfectly natural attitudes that don't inherently do any harm and are fine when indulged in their own time and place, and thinks that several of the virtues are actually really stupid and self-destructive if taken to extremes.

Yes, that sort of enforced world view is fucking insulting.

[ACOS]

In nWoD you are forced to select a Catholic Heavenly Virtue and Deadly Sin to define your character. This is more offensive and intrusive than if it was simply literally true in the game that the divine creator of the universe had one son by a virgin in Judea. It isn't that the game is telling you that Christian myths are real in the game, it's that the game is telling you that your character has to interact with the world around them through a Christian lens. Even if you want to play a Norse or a Hindu, you are only allowed to be a Christian wearing a Norse or Hindu hat.

My response to this isn't to challenge you - I'm just genuinely curious: What would you propose as an alternative? I mean, spending the design space on the basic kind of concept is perfectly valid. So what else do you do? default to Nicomachean Ethics? spend a whole chapter describing a giant pile of different ethos that a character is supposed to choose from? take all the world's religions and ethos, and boil down the common elements and call them "universal ethos" or some bullshit?
Like I said, I'm just curious.

The thing that baffles me is that they would make a game where Christianity is objectively true, when their target audience is a group that shows open contempt for Christianity.

Because Westerners. And lazy.
Like it or not, if you live in the Western world, your entire world view is shaped by the fact that the Judeo-Christian tradition is baked in to the social consciousness. Given that, it's pretty easy to use that as a common point of reference.
But again, lazy. And stupid implementation.

[ACOS]

Despite the fact that my character is a soft atheist who thinks it's better to rule in Hell than serve in heaven, who thinks that vampirism is more a mixed blessing than a curse from YHWH ALMIGHTY for his GRIEVOUS SINS, I have to choose from Chastity, Temperance, Charity, Diligence, Patience, Kindness or Humility for a concept I honor and like and try to works towards, and from Lust, Gluttony, Wrath, Sloth, Envy, Greed or Pride as a quality I find abhorrent and must try to avoid.

I'd say that you made a character from the attitude of intentionally ignoring the premise of the game.
I'm not saying that the game is right (holy shit, I'm not saying anything of the sort); but it is what it is. This isn't Reality Simulator; it's a game with a premise; and ignoring the premise is going to get you some fucked results.


EDIT: (and this is for Night Goat as well) ... and I can't believe I didn't think of this originally ...
Dracula myth is heavily tied to the Catholic church. As such, a whole giant pile of vampire myth is also heavily tied to said church (I may have my cause-effect backwards). So while they're at it, why not flesh out some stuff about Cane.
The whole vampire motif - as a game - is practically begging to be based on Christianity. It would almost be irresponsible to not have Christianity be a major element to the game.

[Prak]

Except that Infernalist is a supposedly supported character archetype (in the lay sense of the word) and Monster (I accept that I am a blood thirsty killer of mortals, let me go scare them) is an actual archetype in the game (in the sense of "pick two of these, acting in accordance give you willpower")

As to the "Dracula is Christian Based":
No, you could have a sect that is based on the church, or a clan that is, but you should have plenty of non-christian vampires, possibly including "I went out and made myself a vampire, damnit. Oops. Ok, maybe there were some unintended consequences..." (that could be the new Tremere paradigm, since they aren't the sole magicians).

[GreatGreyShrike]

you should have plenty of non-christian vampires, possibly including "I went out and made myself a vampire, damnit. Oops. Ok, maybe there were some unintended consequences..." (that could be the new Tremere paradigm, since they aren't the sole magicians).

This bit of discussion reminds me a lot of Charles Stross's The Rhesus Chart (part of his Laundry books), which had an absolutely hilarious bit where self-made vampires testing themselves for all the traditional vampiric weaknesses e.g. churches and religious symbols/items.

Anyways, I strongly agree that while Christianity has certain iconic symbolism and bits and pieces that might be profitably incorporated into parts of the game, it went too far and was too deeply entrenched in nWoD. I think ideally *chargen* at the very least should be more belief-agnostic. While having one-word flaws and virtues is short and punchy, that stuff pretty much always got better with a few more words explaining it in relation to the character in my experience.

[ACOS]

I get your point Prak - I really do.
Yes, I fully and freely realize that the game ham-fisted the shit out things.
I'm waiting for Frank's response; but I also pose the same question to you. But any answer you give needs to address the fact that the vise-virtue aspect has a narrative tie-in with Humanity - which is the fundamental point (thematically speaking) to the whole game.

[Prak]

The supposed point of Vampire, as I understand it, is Personal Horror, specifically the horror of turning into a monster. The actual point of Vampire in practice seems to be pointless political posturing and manoeuvering.

So, given that, Humanity should actually tie into things that are part of humanity. And I will point out that abstaining from sex until after you've gone through a pointless social ritual is not universal to human nature.

No, Humanity should be about the ability to maintain social relationships. As your Humanity drops, it gets harder to maintain relationships, first with strangers, then your friends, then family, and finally anyone. It starts out seeing the Paperboy as a walking blood bag, and ends with the complete inability to even work with other vampires to advance a common goal. This also, handily, explains why the Clans and Sects are in constant struggle, and why Vampires don't rule the world.

[BoxCrayonTales]

Yes, that sort of enforced world view is fucking insulting.

You're missing the point of the virtue/vice mechanic. It's not meant to be a moral judgement on particular nouns and adjectives. The mechanic is meant to represent selfless and selfish actions, respectively, with some Christian terms for faux symbolism and coolness factor. Fulfilling a virtue requiring acting selflessly and often at risk to oneself. Fulfilling a vice requiring acting selfishly and often at risk to oneself. Anything else, like smoking marijuana in moderation, falls under the "rest" or "doing something significant" methods of regaining willpower. (I will attest that some of them are vague or redundant due to poor contextualization, but that's easily fixed.)

I did come across a (surprisingly good) Wraith remake that used the virtues and vices as the basis of Shadowtypes. The virtue-based Shadowtypes were exaggerations of the virtues and had a slight advantage compared to the vice-based Shadowtypes. Whereas the vice shadowtypes were at their core utterly selfish, virtue Shadowtypes genuinely believed they worked for the greater good.

EDIT:

No, Humanity should be about the ability to maintain social relationships. As your Humanity drops, it gets harder to maintain relationships, first with strangers, then your friends, then family, and finally anyone.

Why should the players care? They need a reason to care about that stuff. This is crime fantasy, after all.

[Prak]

We're not going to agree on the Vice and Virtue bullshit, so I'm just going to wait for Frank to explain to you much better than I can as to why you're wrong.

On the Humanity- I don't know, why should Werewolf players care about Rage?

[Omegonthesane]

In nWoD you are forced to select a Catholic Heavenly Virtue and Deadly Sin to define your character. This is more offensive and intrusive than if it was simply literally true in the game that the divine creator of the universe had one son by a virgin in Judea. It isn't that the game is telling you that Christian myths are real in the game, it's that the game is telling you that your character has to interact with the world around them through a Christian lens. Even if you want to play a Norse or a Hindu, you are only allowed to be a Christian wearing a Norse or Hindu hat.

My response to this isn't to challenge you - I'm just genuinely curious: What would you propose as an alternative? I mean, spending the design space on the basic kind of concept is perfectly valid. So what else do you do? default to Nicomachean Ethics? spend a whole chapter describing a giant pile of different ethos that a character is supposed to choose from? take all the world's religions and ethos, and boil down the common elements and call them "universal ethos" or some bullshit?
Like I said, I'm just curious.

If you had spent the last 13 hours huffing enough paint to think that dipping into the poisoned well of nWoD was a good idea, there's even a splat that provides a more... agnostic framework in nWoD Innocents, which requires you take an Asset and Fault and has things other than outdated Catholic bullshit on the list.

If I were forced to implement Vice/Virtue, I would openly throw up my hands and say that every character was welcome to pick their own from any list they fucking dared. If Wolverine has the Virtue of Wrath and the Vice of Compassion, fine. If Steve the Crap-Covered Farmer has the Virtue of Watching Game of Thrones and the Vice of Watching Teletubbies, then that's a strange moral framework but I give a negative number of shits. The fact is, I don't even remember Vice/Virtue tying into your actual Evilometer in any meaningful way, so you can just pull that bullshit and leave the moral preaching to the Evilometer.

[DSMatticus]

The virtue/vice system of NWoD is ripped from Catholic theology and the book explicitly says so. The book is not shy abouts its source material, and as such there is no room for debate on this. There are words. If you read them, they will tell you "yes, this is totally Judeochristian, and yes, your character will use it." Stop saying stupid things on the interent and go read those words.

If you are wondering why that might be totally fucking stupid (and offensive), it is because the vast majority of people alive today (even Christians) do not adhere to an ethical framework which aligns with the seven virtues and seven vices of Catholicism. Do you really think the WoD fanbase as a whole will be receptive to the notion that faith is a virtue?

[Username17]

You're missing the point of the virtue/vice mechanic. It's not meant to be a moral judgement on particular nouns and adjectives. The mechanic is meant to represent selfless and selfish actions, respectively, with some Christian terms for faux symbolism and coolness factor. Fulfilling a virtue requiring acting selflessly and often at risk to oneself. Fulfilling a vice requiring acting selfishly and often at risk to oneself. Anything else, like smoking marijuana in moderation, falls under the "rest" or "doing something significant" methods of regaining willpower. (I will attest that some of them are vague or redundant due to poor contextualization, but that's easily fixed.)

As DSM said, you're just fucking wrong. Here's the actual quote from the actual book:

The seven Virtues and Vices detailed below are ostensibly drawn from Western, Judeo-Christian beliefs (e.g., the Seven Heavenly Virtues and Seven Deadly Sins), but it's important to note that nearly all cultures value these ethics and revile these sins.

The book very explicitly is ramming Judeo-Christian concepts down your throat, and is so incredibly full of itself on this subject that they insist that practically everyone is basically a Christian whether they know it or not. It's cultural chauvinism on a level that so massive and tone deaf that it's offensive to pretty much everyone. Where are the virtues of honor, filial piety, or cleverness? Where are the vices of cowardice, filthiness, or disloyalty? Even the framework itself is explicitly and aggressively Christian, with sacrifice being the highest ideal and offering the greatest reward. Anansi forbid you be a Pareto-Efficiency Libertarian who holds the highest ideal to be arranging situations where no one is hurt.

The reality is that most of the people in the world are not Christians, and even people who are Christians in the modern era tend to embrace modernist virtues and condemn modernist vices. Ramming archaic Christian moral teachings down peoples' throats and telling them that they like it is offensive. It's as fucking out-there as if they had a pro-circumcision rant in the middle of the book.

My response to this isn't to challenge you - I'm just genuinely curious: What would you propose as an alternative? I mean, spending the design space on the basic kind of concept is perfectly valid. So what else do you do? default to Nicomachean Ethics? spend a whole chapter describing a giant pile of different ethos that a character is supposed to choose from? take all the world's religions and ethos, and boil down the common elements and call them "universal ethos" or some bullshit?
Like I said, I'm just curious.

You know honestly, oWoD just gave people a list of religion agnostic "natures" and let people write up more if they wanted. That was fucking fine. But the nWoD book uses up a quarter page per skill to present little in media res pieces of flash fiction in all italics. It's not like there isn't some fucking space you could make in that book. Just write a handful of non-Christian virtues and vices and put in a paragraph about how people can write in more virtues and vices with Storyteller permission instead of the paragraph about how basically everyone is a Christian anyway and other cultures can go pound sand.

It would still be slightly grating to people who don't value sacrifice, but you cold at that point deflect criticism by saying it was a game mechanic designed to get people to roleplay their characters even when it otherwise wouldn't be beneficial to act in-character and people would accept that. Instead of, you know, calling out cultural relativism and explicitly rejecting it because Christianity is basically right and everyone knows it.

-Username17

[ACOS]

@Frank:
Okay, fair enough. My only experience with WoD is of the "new" variety; so this is good to understand.

Of course, looking at your response to BoxCrayonTales, it doesn't seem like you would be too opposed to using something akin to Nicomachean Ethics.
Just an observation.

[Username17]

@Frank:
Okay, fair enough. My only experience with WoD is of the "new" variety; so this is good to understand.

Of course, looking at your response to BoxCrayonTales, it doesn't seem like you would be too opposed to using something akin to Nicomachean Ethics.
Just an observation.

Nicomachean Ethics is, like many ethical systems, the kind of thing that you can get most everyone to vaguely get behind so long as you don't delve into the specifics. At the most basic level, if you tell people that being good is good, the tautology of the statement will get most people to cautiously agree with you. When you get into the specifics of what actually is good, there's no agreement anywhere.

So I could see something that was like "choose a path between two extremes, that is your character's path. If things would compel her towards one extreme or the other, she gets bonuses to resist that. If your character stays in between in defiance of temptations to veer towards an extreme, regain willpower." That would be vaguely in line with Nicomachean ideas, but still be flexible enough that I don't think it would offend anyone.

If you get into Aristotle's specifics of course, you're going to offend all kinds of people. Anyone who supports martyrdom is going to be perplexed or even offended by the assertion that you can have an excess of courage. And of course, Aristotle's idea that only upper class people can reasonably expected to have moral understanding is rather at odds with modern egalitarian concepts.

Even the aggressively Christian virtues and vices framework could, with the focus softened sufficiently, be the kind of thing that non-Christians could use without feeling put upon. But it would have to be the kind of thing where you chose a virtue and weren't told that you had to respect and adhere to Christian virtue and vice frameworks.

-Username17

[Omegonthesane]

I found the core rules for apparently legally free as a teenager, read through them, vaguely remembered an interesting setting and facepalmed repeatedly at them shoehorning in Divine Inspiration as a power source at fucking all even if it was only one of a bunch of character options.

I don't understand the hateboner for religion, Christianity in particular, on these threads. World of darkness doesn't even get the Abrahamic religions right, much less in a way that is anything other than blasphemous. In pretty much every instance where Yahweh is mentioned in the games, he is all but stated to be evil/dead/female/something else offensive. I don't think any of the writers were practicing Christians either.

WRT Witchcraft & Divine Inspiration - at the time I was - or thought of myself as - a Christian. I just took issue with how shoehorned it felt to have a game with spellcasters and also some guys who got superpowers in a manner consistent with being buffed when needed by (what I would today describe as) an invisible space zombie, and with how this was presented as a valid character option even though IIRC its main faction didn't play nice with the main factions for the other ways of having magical powers.

Honestly the only other Witchcraft conceit I remember was Black Magic, where you could ignore the bit where spells cast to hurt people would backfire in exchange for all of your spells hurting someone. This honestly sounded like a good trade-off to me at the time, and looking back, still does, and it would've been interesting to see an actual sincere protagonist Black Mage working around the restriction - but it was instead portrayed as Team Evil only, and that made me sad.

[hyzmarca]

I get your point Prak - I really do.
Yes, I fully and freely realize that the game ham-fisted the shit out things.
I'm waiting for Frank's response; but I also pose the same question to you. But any answer you give needs to address the fact that the vise-virtue aspect has a narrative tie-in with Humanity - which is the fundamental point (thematically speaking) to the whole game.

I'd argue against humanity being particularly useful. It gives a rather shallow view of what it means to be human.

This is especially true in NWOD, where even normal humans become unplayable monsters if they act in a manner that the game considers immoral.

Onyx Path's revisions contain some painful things, but replacing the morality scale with something more freeform was a good thing.

Generally speaking, you'll want something more freeform for both humanity and virtues/vices. "What does it mean to be human" is not a question that you can answer with a ten point chart. Its an abstract philosophical issue and should be treated as such.