Koumei wrote:Sure. My hatred stems back from the murky depths of time: around 2003, 2004.
System: I hate the old system so much that I'd hate the new system even if playing it cured cancer and the rules stated that every time you roll the dice, strippers enter the house to perform for you. It's not balanced at all, it doesn't let players start out being very competent, progression is slow, it encourages players to focus on one strength at creation then branch out afterwards, combat is really annoying - and there's a lot of combat even though they claim it's all high-art stuff and "none of that hack and slash crap". It plays badly and basically exists to piss you off so you'll say "Fuck it, let's do Magical Tea Party".
Setting: Vampires can be cool - I like vampires in Hellsing, Shadow Hearts and Dark Stalkers, as well as the Necroscope series. I don't like vampires in Twilight, any movie that also includes werewolves or Anne Rice novels. These ones fit in the latter category. Werewolves... can be cool, but I don't find them interesting. But even if I did, I still find the WW angle on them to be shit. Ghosts can be really spooky, but in WW they're just pathetic. I like my fae as sexy nymphs, naiads and dryads, or hilarious little Tinkerbell pixies, not as Changelings. Mages by definition, use magic. So basically there's a huge problem with the WoD Mages.
Anyway, mixing them all together is rarely good when you're going for the sort of supernatural horror feel instead of the "Today we'll take our shotguns and kill _____" feel.
And lastly, if you're going to be an awesome creature, fucking be the awesome creature, don't spend the whole campaign pretending you're not or wishing you could be a real boy. I'm not interested in pretending to be something that is in turn pretending to be human - I could cut the middle man and just be a human. If you're a vampire, then terrorise towns and live in a castle (also glide through windows to tear bodices from voluptuous women). If you're a werewolf, then slaughter people every night of the full moon. If you're a fey, then... play in the forest, enchanting people and having fun. Or something. If you're a mage, BLOW THE FUCKING PLANET UP.
Then we have the playerbase: 95% of all WoD players I've met are colossal douchebags who could benefit from being hit in the face with a brass urn wrapped in barbed wire. They are the most annoying people in existence, and also tend to be emo kids (who are themselves quite annoying). At least you can encourage them to become an hero and nominate them for the Golden ipod Award, though.
I spent a lot of time playing WoD games and not enjoying myself - wishing I was somewhere else, doing something else, then going home and feeling shitty afterwards. So I developed a special hatred of it.
Hugs?
I.... always liked the idea of a political game, or a game where combat isn't the main focus.
The problem is that most GMs that I've had for this tend to ... well... suck.
They made everything a combat fest where you needed to be stupid powerful in order to accomplish anything.
"fixing" most of the WW games would be pretty easy, just look at the problems you pointed out. All are problems that I saw as well, and all of them I noticed right away. I really have Kieth and Frank to thank for that, if it wasn't for Races of War I wouldn't have come here, and I wouldn't have learned how to look critically at rules.
I'd probably do the following changes:
XP is XP, no double standard system-you buy abilities at the same cost, no "creation points" and then "xp pts." which buy abilities at different rates
Moar Points!-more points to start off with
Limit Highest Ability-put a limit on your highest ability in any area; something like "you can't have any ability that is more than 1 point higher than any other ability"
Of course this is by "groups" of stats; so your physical stats are one "group" and you can have Str 3, Agi 2, Stamina 1; but not 5, 1, 1
Progression - More XP, all the time. Everytime you botch, you get xp, Everytime you finish a session, you get XP. Everytime you use an adjective to describe an action or a botch, you can get 1 xp per adjective (I really like that part of the Minimus system, fucking up is what gives progression, but if you fuck up too much, you can die; I'm not sure how well it
works though).
