Revising the World of Darkness

[Orion]

No, being a vampire still sucks in a few number of major ways.

You're a monster, and a creepy one at that. People hate you. This is probably also true of anacrhonists, but they pass mroe easily and provoke less hatred.

You need to feed on humans; besides being ethically questionable, this makes secrecy much more difficult, which is why you need the camarilla/sabbat/whatever in the first place.

These are the big ones. Witches are on the same paradigm. People hate them, and they need bizarre items for thier rituals that attract attention and force them into the supernatural community. But Achilles? He can easily spend his entire life pretending to be Joe Farmer, and he doesn't have any needs that would force him to interact with immortal society.

[Voss]

No, being a vampire still sucks in a few number of major ways.

You're a monster, and a creepy one at that. People hate you. This is probably also true of anacrhonists, but they pass mroe easily and provoke less hatred.

You need to feed on humans; besides being ethically questionable, this makes secrecy much more difficult, which is why you need the camarilla/sabbat/whatever in the first place.

Except for the huge pile of mind control powers that make all of that a complete non-issue.
That and you can, if you wish, come with an adoring throng who absolutely love you, and want you to feed on them.

Even the monster label is questionable when you can just treat a blood-bank as a supermarket, which every edition of vampire has pretty much implied is a perfectly reasonable thing for vamps to do. A couple of dots in contacts or allies and you've got a steady food supply.

But really, when you get right down to it, WoD vamps (and other modern vampire stories, like Joss and Rice) are essentially Supers with archaic clothing and a couple annoyance-level weaknesses. The Horror is flat out gone when you're beating up other Supers to protect the Oblivious Masses. Horror is out the window when Arthur the Nocturnal Accountant puts on his wings to defend The City from those Wacky Sabbats.

[Bigode]

(Wraith comments still due for coming)

I agree wholly with Voss in that there's nothing really bad with WoD vampirism; and what I wanted wasn't ever a "horror" game; at best, WW's own "personal horror" label applies somewhat, but in any case, Mage's also my favorite - it was supposed (however failed it might've been) to be about philosophy, not "woe's me"; thus it should come as no surprise that one of my biggest issues with Vampire's how often the Paths are ignored (though, OTOH, also how badly done they tend to be, but that falls neatly in the "we don't know mysticism, philosophy or science" complaint).

My thoughts on overcrowding were to have actually more supernatural kinds (9, bringing most of the oWoD back), but chucking all internal subdivisions; powers/drawbacks develop at random/by personal story/hereditarily/via experiment/whatever, and power blocks can honestly be composed of whatever (as long, of course, as there's no diametrally opposed kinds involved).

@Frank: if what you really want outt the deal's women, your best bet's to go find the time to actually play V:tM/R.

[Iaimeki]

Honestly, I hate Mage. I hate it with a blinding passion and don't want anything to come from it at all. I find the setting annoying and the game unplayable.

You sound like you hate Mage with the same passion that I hate Werewolf :). I want to probe a bit more because I'd like to know why we differ so on this question. What, exactly, annoys you about the setting? Why do you think the game is unplayable, and do you think it's fixable?

The World of Darkness is and always will be about Vampire for me. Because that's the part of the system that ends up with black clad goth women on my lap. The horror elements are firmly ingrained into modern fantasy. Even adventure movies of modern fantasy (like Underworld and Buffy the Vampire Slayer) have strong horror elements.

I totally agree that horror elements have made their way into fantasy! I think we differ in where we want to focus, rather than on the general idea of the setting. On my part, I don't like horror per se horror, not in movies or literature. Some examples of the genre aren't so bad, but I've neither seen nor read most of the classics. So, horror elements? They're hard to avoid and they don't bother me. The rest of it though I don't like so much.

Basically the long and the short of it is that the game system is really supposed to model Interview with a Vampire and The Crow. And if you want to do things which are less depressing than that you should cut the crap and admit that you are playing Superheroes and just play Champions. There's no real advantage to setting a game about having super powers and fighting villains who also have super powers in New York in the "world of darkness" - at that point it's just a senseless restriction to try to have the various costumed heroes and villains being Universal Horror Monsters. They are so out of genre that putting any character into the situation described is as much work as any other "origin story."

Maybe "World of Darkness" isn't the right description of what I do want, but I hate the superheroes genre. Of course, what comes to mind when someone says "superheroes" is "American superhero comics." I hate almost everything about it, and so I'll elaborate a bit.

• I hate the way superheroes are set in worlds that look like ours but make no sense. People build prisons for serial murderers who've escaped multiple times from similar institutions. Even though jerks had superpowers back in medieval or older times, these people never made themselves a hereditary aristocracy like every other human faction with power has tried to do. The planet is always at risk of being destroyed yet has somehow survived 4.6 billion years of existence without it ever happening. People travel back in time and change the past and turn the whole idea of "continuity" into hash. I hate all of this.
• I hate the way the writers don't even know the meaning of genre consistency. You get aliens, ninja, vampires, mutants, Great Old Ones, gods from extinct mythologies, gods from extant mythologies (the Judeo-Christian god even!), angels, time travelers, cyborgs, sorcerers, and all sorts of other things combined into a kind of horrible collage of things that were never meant to go together.
• I hate the sexism. The art is sexist in the ways it portrays women, not to mention the ways it portrays men. (It's also ugly to boot.) Many superhero stories also have extra bonus sexism in the way they treat women as victims, either needing rescue by or suffering humiliating torture from men. And the less said about the weird fetishes that make their way into the genre, the better.
• I hate the way the stories handle violence. On one hand, superpowers will wreak massive damage and many faceless people will die with little or no consideration of the consequences or the horror of it. On the other, ordinary humans will take blows from powers that easily destroy cement buildings or what-not and survive. The genre manages to be both ultraviolent at the same time as it undercuts any of the real impact of violence.
• I hate the bastardization of science. Science isn't taken seriously on any level, but just becomes a random prop whenever someone needs another superhero origin. (Yet no one ever thinks to repeat these origins for profit!) Even with all sorts of supertechnology, no one ever thinks to use it in practical, obvious ways to make people's lives better.
• I hate ethics predicated on what's convenient for the writers rather than on any realistic psychology or philosphy. Superheroes with the powers to right obvious wrongs in the world neglect them: said individual might stop a mugger while a few thousand miles away a government is busy starving to death millions of people it doesn't like. Superheroes will adopt a deontological code so strict it won't allow them to kill someone even when that someone has been actively trying to destroy the world for years and shows no signs of stopping, and other people will let them get away with it. Stories always go after easy targets, like genocidal madmen and common criminals, rather than hard ones.
• I hate spandex and I hate secret identities. Despite the manifest reasons for sensible costuming, no one ever does: they all choose clothes that look weird (or if they're women, titillate men) rather than clothes that help them stay alive. The traditional reason is "disguising one's identity," but in practice everyone who matters knows everyone else's identities anyways so it's hard to see the point.

This list is by no means exhaustive, but I hope it gives the flavor of why and just how much I hate superheroes. Of course, the further you stray from, "American superhero comics," the less I dislike it: there are superhero elements in Sailor Moon or Buffy, after all. (And Sailor Moon has too much silly for me to enjoy it as a game.) That said, while modern fantasy can embrace superhero elements, just like it can embrace horror elements, I don't think it has to be about superheroes except in the vague sense that you're talking about people with powers that let them do things people in the real world can't: I neither require nor desire the rest of the baggage.

What sorts of things do I like?

• Ancient conspiraces.
• Secret history.
• Magic.
• Mysteries hiding in the shadows of the modern world.
• Modern mythology.
• Deep ideas from mysticism, philosophy, or science.
• Powers that come with prices attached.
• Conflicts between humans and things (ideas, beings) that aren't.
• Transcendence, humans evolving beyond the human state.
• Transformations.
• Progress in history with respect to human society and knowledge.
• Conflicts between the past and the future.
• Evolution.

Again, this list is far from exhaustive, but I hope it gives some of the flavor of what I want to build a game around.

For another example, here's what I see as canonical plots:

Horror: The Cult of Typhon has been working for the last 3,000 years to bring the Great Old Ones back into the world. You stumble across their evil scheme as it nears completion, but it's far too late to do anything to stop it, they've been working on this for longer than modern civilization has existed. If you're lucky, they'll use you as one of the necessary sacrifices, and if you're not, you'll get to see the Great Old Ones in their full glory as they come into the world and go gibbering mad as the world collapses around you.

Superheroes: The Cult of Typhon wants to bring the Great Old Ones into the world but knows that meddling superheroes will interfere, so has hired a squad of mercenary supervillains consisting of an alien energy being with vast psychic powers, a crazed scientist with a split personality and a powersuit, a common criminal who got the ability to turn invisible and shoot laser beams from his eyes from radiation instead of cancer, and a guy who can talk to goats. After destroying half of New York, you succeed in using your improbable technogadgets to defeat the powersuited scientist and the criminal. (The energy being trounced you, but decided to leave for its own inscrutable reasons, and everyone forgot about the guy who talks to goats.) You descend into the sewers and in a titanic struggle with the leader of the Cult of Typhon, an ancient sorcerer with serpentine characteristics, you succeed in capturing him and taking him back to the prison he escaped from last week.

Modern Adventure Fantasy: The Cult of Typhon wants to bring back the Great Old Ones into the world. No one knows if the Great Old Ones even exist, but nonetheless you feel obligated to stop the Cult because while their insane gods may not be real, the black magic and human sacrifices are. After traveling around Europe Indiana-Jones style, seeing the sights and finding hidden secrets in them, you use your talents at sorcery to escape from the ex-KGB assassin they've hired to kill you. You now know enough to pursue the Cult to its hideout in the Amazon, which you do and after beating the assassin a second time, you detonate their temple with conventional high explosives, escaping with the hostages in the nick of time.

I hope these examples get at some of the genre differences I'm trying to emphasize. There are no defining characteristics that separate one genre from the others, just elements that push stories closer to one genre or another.

Again, Frank, I love your faction ideas. The lack of cross-supernatural factions is a conspicuous problem in both the new and old Worlds of Darkness, and WW has never come out and plainly stated the reasons for organizations to exist in the first place. Where do you see going next? Mechanics, or more setting elements? Is there anything I could help with?

Boolean, as for anachronists, what I intend with them is something different from the meaning you took: my model here is Hercules, who yes has physical strength on the order of most gods and is the greatest warrior in Greece, but also flies into uncontrollable rages where he kills his family and friends. And Hercules would count as a lucky anachronist.

[Prak]

The World of Darkness is and always will be about Vampire for me. Because that's the part of the system that ends up with black clad goth women on my lap.

I've noticed this utility too, and I've never actually played vampire... just told my current girlfriend about it, and got her into werewolf, the game that ends up with plaid-clad punk chicks in my lap....

*stuff about comics*

I disagree with almost all of that, but really don't want to argue about it here or now, all I can say is, have you checked out what recent comics do? not the main companies like marval or DC, but you might want to check out Image, Virgin's "Voice" imprint(which allows celebrities, such as Nicholas Cage and Jenna Jameson to create their own comics.), or whatever company currently does "Witchblade".

What sorts of things do I like?

• Ancient conspiraces.
• Secret history.
• Magic.
• Mysteries hiding in the shadows of the modern world.
• Modern mythology.
• Deep ideas from mysticism, philosophy, or science.
• Powers that come with prices attached.
• Conflicts between humans and things (ideas, beings) that aren't.
• Transcendence, humans evolving beyond the human state.
• Transformations.
• Progress in history with respect to human society and knowledge.
• Conflicts between the past and the future.
• Evolution.

Again, this list is far from exhaustive, but I hope it gives some of the flavor of what I want to build a game around.

sounds good, and all of those have been featured in some of the better american comics.

For another example, here's what I see as canonical plots:

Horror: The Cult of Typhon has been working for the last 3,000 years to bring the Great Old Ones back into the world. You stumble across their evil scheme as it nears completion, but it's far too late to do anything to stop it, they've been working on this for longer than modern civilization has existed. If you're lucky, they'll use you as one of the necessary sacrifices, and if you're not, you'll get to see the Great Old Ones in their full glory as they come into the world and go gibbering mad as the world collapses around you.

This is what lead to the canon theme of WoD being "Standing on a turd in a toilet and someone just flushed". That is seriously a quote or paraphrase from someone at WW.

Superheroes: The Cult of Typhon wants to bring the Great Old Ones into the world but knows that meddling superheroes will interfere, so has hired a squad of mercenary supervillains consisting of an alien energy being with vast psychic powers, a crazed scientist with a split personality and a powersuit, a common criminal who got the ability to turn invisible and shoot laser beams from his eyes from radiation instead of cancer, and a guy who can talk to goats. After destroying half of New York, you succeed in using your improbable technogadgets to defeat the powersuited scientist and the criminal. (The energy being trounced you, but decided to leave for its own inscrutable reasons, and everyone forgot about the guy who talks to goats.) You descend into the sewers and in a titanic struggle with the leader of the Cult of Typhon, an ancient sorcerer with serpentine characteristics, you succeed in capturing him and taking him back to the prison he escaped from last week.

that sounds about par for the course for the worst comics of ages past... more recent comics would involve stalking the mercs down and quietly killing them, after bleeding information out of them and then going and killing the cult leader in a titanic battle, in the middle of the prison courtyard. and yes, you're one of the good guys.

Modern Adventure Fantasy: The Cult of Typhon wants to bring back the Great Old Ones into the world. No one knows if the Great Old Ones even exist, but nonetheless you feel obligated to stop the Cult because while their insane gods may not be real, the black magic and human sacrifices are. After traveling around Europe Indiana-Jones style, seeing the sights and finding hidden secrets in them, you use your talents at sorcery to escape from the ex-KGB assassin they've hired to kill you. You now know enough to pursue the Cult to its hideout in the Amazon, which you do and after beating the assassin a second time, you detonate their temple with conventional high explosives, escaping with the hostages in the nick of time.

that's possibly the best plot idea I just read.

[Username17]

I would argue for starters that you are tragically misinterpreting the Supers Comics genre. It's a part of folk lore which is contiguous with and roughly equivalent to the Norse Sagas. So they range in how "over the top" they are from Superman/Ragnarök (space snakes the size of moons are punched out by flying burly men) to Batman/Niall Saga (clever guys get to the bottom of a web of intrigue and then deck criminals in the jaw while sustaining painful but non-fatal knife wounds). The medium of comics just happens to be the medium that we use for that sort of thing today, a thousand years ago the medium in vogue was songs, and a thousand years before that it was fashionable to make paintings on walls and sculpture gardens.

The weird thing is where people write comics which try to put all the different stories together. Justice League and Avengers put Batman and Green Lantern and Captain America and Thor together respectively. This is roughly equivalent to the old Round Table Arthurian ballads in which Sir Kay (an ancient Celtic hero who could grow to giant size and set fire to things with his breath) and Sir Galahad (a Christian hero whose powers began and ended with not making it with the ladies) were put side by side in some sort of word salad that only made sense if you didn't pay it much attention and just let the rhyme and meter carry you along. Yeah, when people make Alien / Predator crossover comics it is awesome, because those characters exist at the same power level and occupy similar genres. And when people put Batman and Superman together it's kind of silly, because Superman is essentially a god and fights world destroying giant monsters and space armies, while Batman is a detective who fights people with cool gadgets and roughly human physics.

So when people make super group comics, they should generally make them within a common mythos and at a comparable power level and with similar themes of villainy and child appropriateness. The Authority works well enough because all of the members are bat shit over the top and they fight extinction level threats only. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is similarly well placed because all the members live in the Batman niche where even the ones with supernatural powers are still nominally in the human scale of overall badassery. The Mystery Men is another example - the characters all live in the same type of world. X Men is a bad example, because I genuinely don't give a fuck what Toad is doing while fucking Magneto is duking it out with the Phoenix.

American comic art varies wildly in quality. I defy anyone to look at anything drawn by Alex Ross and not come away impressed. Of course, there's a lot of other stuff that's shit, but that's creative works for you. But the aesthetic isn't about realism, it's about idealism. It's essentially just a continuation of Greek and Roman art. You can see the continuity of Hercules, David, and Superman. The Renaissance brought the Greek over-muscularized ideal to the 14th century and DC brought it back to the 20th. The statues in the Pergamon have musculature that is literally impossible, having both additional muscle tension and indeed additional muscles that real humans don't have. And American comics have heroes who look like that rather than real humans.

----

As for Mage: The Ascension, my friends all call it "Suicide Bomber: The Reckoning." The basic goal of the game is to convince people that magic is real as part of a generations old blood feud, and you labor under the constant threat of paradox where if you use your powers in public, extremely magical events will happen that will kill you. So really all you have to do is attempt to use your biggest powers in the midst of a large enough group of people and you simultaneously die horribly and win the setting.

I really don't see room for any part of the M:tA plotline. No just in the World of Darkness, but really in any game. A roleplaying game is at its core a game in which people get together and tell stories with a common groundwork of rules in order to tell a story together. If the game revolves around pushing the limits of what reality is, the groundwork of the story is essentially unraveled. The players are inherently at odds with one another about what should be possible in the world and you're basically back to the old Cops and Robbers problem. A war for reality makes for a potentially good story, but it seriously can't make a decent cooperative story. There's just no groundwork available for a storytelling scenario.

Role Playing Games are a part of the folk process. Each story told is a retelling of a combination of established themes within the genre and in reference to past works. Like a Homeric Epic, it borrows heavily from past works. You seriously can't have an open ended reality matrix.

---

As to where I'm going with my ideas, I'm going for game mechanics. My preference is to have a d6 based system in which all powers are drawn off the same discipline list. If Werewolves come with transformation magic and Vampires come with blood magic and then everyone gets some powers off the master list, that should work fine. For example, a Vampire could potentially learn to transform herself into a rat, and a wererat can learn to use blood to bind people to her will.

I figure each of the groups should get cut into about three segments based on morphology. When you try to have 5, 7, or 13 Vampire Clans, you end up with stupid shit where some of them have clan weaknesses that just move numbers around and no one cares. With just 3 setups, you can have each be unique and awesome. Lycanthropy for example, should be Wolves, Rats, and Tigers only. Weresharks ca be cool, but having a world that has enough supernaturals that it has werecrocodiles is just unworkable.

-Username17

[Maxus]

Lycanthropy for example, should be Wolves, Rats, and Tigers only. Weresharks ca be cool, but having a world that has enough supernaturals that it has werecrocodiles is just unworkable.

-Username17

Funny you should say that. My sister and my mother both just read a book that took the tired old cliches about vampires hating werewolves (and vice-versa), and then tried to spice it up by adding more types of animals on the 'were' side of things. They both agreed that the werecats were all right, but the werearmadilloes and the were-turkey-vultures were just plain stupid.

I'd keep that image firmly in mind: Lycanthropic Turkey Vultures, who don't even hate vampires because between the two of them, they leave no trace of a corpse. It's a compelling argument against including more and more lycanthropes.

[Voss]

You know, your list of things that you hate about the superhero genre... almost all of those apply equally well to WoD products. Particularly the setting that makes no sense, genre consistency, sexism (especially fetishes! For fuck's sake, WW products were my first exposure to several), and mage is all about bastardizing science. As far as ethics goes, well, the Paths and various variations of humanity should need no introduction. And of course, the Masquerade(s) of various kinds are all Stupid Attempts at Secret Identities.

[Username17]

So for example, the Lycanthrope groups might be something like this:

Lycanthropy

Lycanthropy is a disease that passes from lycanthropes to people that are nearly killed at their jaws. All that is necessary to become a lycanthrope is to be bitten, nearly die, and yet survive the ordeal. It's like rabies. Only your heart has to stop at least for a little while.

Lycanthropic Culture: There really isn't any ancient lycanthrope culture. For the vast majority of time a lycanthrope would come into being only by surviving an attack by another lycanthrope. As such, most lycanthropes came into the world with their creator either defeated or hostile. The vast majority of lycanthropes either learned the ins and outs of their condition on their own or had it explained to them by someone else in the know (usually another supernatural). So it is quite common for lycanthropes to be adapted into the cultures of other supernatural creatures. A werewolf who was taken in by gypsy witches would generally have the same traditions and prejudices as those gypsy witches, not those of whatever werewolf tore into him with its fangs and left him for dead.

An exception to that generalization can be found in small family groups. Lycanthropes often go all crazy with rage and are a severe danger to their families and friends. A loved one pushed nearly to death by the rampages of a wererat is rather likely to spurn the creature which transformed it, running off and ultimately forming a new “culture” of one. However it is not unheard of for such a victim to stay on and create a pack of lycanthropes. These groups tend to avoid contact with humans and supernaturals alike and have strange views.

• Therianthropes? Fuck that noise! It is important to note that the word “lycanthrope” literally comes from Greek words for “wolf” and “form” but that it is an English word which means a human who transforms into a wolf or other beast. Many people will try to get you to use the word “Therianthrope” or “Zoanthrope” because of a misguided attempt to use Greek root words correctly. Those words are however not English, and using them is not “technically correct” it is retarded. The plural of Octopus is “Octopuses” and not “Oktopodes” like it would be if we were speaking Greek, because if you are reading this document the chances are excellent that you are not an ancient Greek.

The Nezumi: Plague on the world of Men
Tear him up.

The most frequently told story of the origins of the plague of the Nezumi is that originally someone turned their back on the teachings of the Buddha and was cursed with reincarnating in a lower form during their own life. If even partially true, this would mean that the plague started no earlier than about 500 BCE. Once afflicted, a Nezumi Lycanthrope begins to twitch their nose like Elizabeth Montgomery and click their tongues nervously.

A Nezumi's animal form is that of a large rat, her monstrous form is a human with rat features (long naked tail, furry body, rat-like head, stooped posture). Nezumi are immune to the effects of diseases, but carry virtually every disease they come into contact with. Even in their monstrous forms, Nezumi lack the brutal jaws or rending claws of other lycanthropes, but their bites are still often quite deadly because of the pestilence they carry.

The Get of Fenris
The better to eat you with, my dear.

The Bagheera: The Lady or the Tiger
You can fool everybody, but landie dearie me, you can't fool a cat. They seem to know who's not right.

-Username17

[Iaimeki]

I think that some of our differences on this come down to semantics: by superheroes, I mean specifically the genre of American superhero comics with all its associated tropes, and you seem to mean something quite a bit broader. Now that you point out the similarities, I definitely agree there's something to the idea that there's a connection between the Norse sagas and American superhero comics, but I'm not sure of its nature: were the first superhero comic authors directly inspired by reading the older literature, or is it more that they reinvented the same sets of ideas for, probably, the same reasons?

That said, I think part of my problem with superhero comics is that if anything, they're too similar to the Norse sagas and earlier material. The sagas derive from oral traditions told in a time dominated by, shall we say, a lack of entertainment options, agrarian warrior cultures, and illiteracy. There are a vast variety of new storytelling techniques, in terms of new media and new devices within those media, and new ideas for stories that people have invented since those old ideas. Superhero comics borrowed too many of the old tropes and invented too many new bad ones of their own, and haven't partaken enough of other elements from modern storytelling. As I noted, it's not necessarily any individual part of the superhero genre I dislike, it's the genre as a whole: some stories that involve ideas that touch on superheroes, like Buffy, are quite good because they ignore other parts of the genre. However, I would never want to run a superheroes game because the moment I define the genre as "superheroes," people bring a whole bunch of expectations to the table, including a lot of things I hate. This is similar to the way that mentioning "D&D" imports a lot of assumptions about classes, dungeon crawls, monsters, gods, and so forth that I also don't like, which is why I don't like D&D much--while I might even be interested in playing a more combat-centric game in a setting like the Iliad's occasionally, I don't feel like dealing with the rest of D&D's nonsense.

I think what it all comes down to are stylistic differences between what I like and superhero comics. In essence, I want to write a game that has some superhero elements (the idea of humans or once-humans with supernatural powers, for instance) without a lot of the other bits from superhero comics, and I don't want to call it "superheroes." Maybe Champions is a fine system for that kind of game, but given that Champions will immediately make people think "superheroes" and how close most RPG systems are tied to their implicit settings, I doubt it. So, I'm not sufficiently persuaded that I should be doing something else quite yet :).

As for Mage: The Ascension, my friends all call it "Suicide Bomber: The Reckoning." The basic goal of the game is to convince people that magic is real as part of a generations old blood feud, and you labor under the constant threat of paradox where if you use your powers in public, extremely magical events will happen that will kill you. So really all you have to do is attempt to use your biggest powers in the midst of a large enough group of people and you simultaneously die horribly and win the setting.

The rules for Paradox were--not well-thought-out. In particular, Paradox should backlash in ways that are appropriate to the area, so that if you use hideously vulgar magic and botch it in a magical duel somewhere in the arctic wilderness, a sudden blizzard freezes off fingers and toes, whereas if you try the same in Times Square, you just vanish and everyone forgets you were ever there. I don't know why they ever thought otherwise.

I'm still not super happy with the Paradox mechanics as they stand--I'd appreciate any alternate more sensible takes on the same concept that keeps the rough idea intact.

I really don't see room for any part of the M:tA plotline. No just in the World of Darkness, but really in any game. A roleplaying game is at its core a game in which people get together and tell stories with a common groundwork of rules in order to tell a story together. If the game revolves around pushing the limits of what reality is, the groundwork of the story is essentially unraveled. The players are inherently at odds with one another about what should be possible in the world and you're basically back to the old Cops and Robbers problem. A war for reality makes for a potentially good story, but it seriously can't make a decent cooperative story. There's just no groundwork available for a storytelling scenario.

Well, as a counterexample, I'd suggest that people play Nomic :). While Nomic the RPG would be insane, it's the kind of insane that at least appeals to me enough to consider. That said, while the ultimate expression of the M:tA would be Nomic, the game is not really about reality being malleable, it's about reality as we know it being false. In other words, we're talking Buddhism, Gnosticism, and The Matrix here more than postmodernism: in M:tA, the Spheres are real, Avatars are real, Quintessence is real, and so forth, while science and mundane reality are not real. This is another one of the schizophrenic splits in the game where the authors didn't understand the philosophy well enough to express it right or to write mechanics that correspond to the philosophy as they expressed it.

[Iaimeki]

Like this?

Vampirism

Like lycanthropy, vampirism is a contagious disease that passes from vampires to their victims; also like lycanthropy, it requires the victim actually die, so the mysterious powers of the Blood can bring them back to undeath as an animate corpse. Unlike lycanthropy, vampirism requires the active intervention of vampires to spread: first, the vampire must give their victim some of their own blood, and second, they must drain the victim of all their human blood. There are, of course, lots of other ways to become a vampire, including necromancy and possibly being really aggrieved before dying, but those only work for people who have Edge. Anyone can be made into a vampire with the usual method, but those without Edge end up as undistinguished spawn, which means that while they retain their normal character statistics, they become mere implements of their master's will, diligently pursuing their master's goals to the best abilities. Every so often, some young punk vampire gets the bright idea of making an entire army of vampires and using them to take over the world; unfortunately for these would-be dictators, an army of vampires attracts a lot of the wrong kind of attention, and between mortal vampire hunters, supernatural organizations that hate vampires for one reason or another, and other supernatural organizations with badass motherfuckers who police Masquerade violations, these armies never last long. If you hear about some small town in Idaho where all of the citizens mysteriously disappear, an ambitious and now thoroughly-dead vampire is even odds to be the cause.

Vampiric Culture: Since most vampires were created by other vampires, vampires have an inherited culture of their own that's quite different from human culture, since the master vampire usually takes her new creation under her wing and teaches him about the rules and customs of being a vampire. Since vampires are immortal, of course, this culture inevitably turns out to be very, very conservative: most elder vampires view everything that's happened since 1500 CE or so as an unfortunate historical aberration that will return soon enough to the way things should be, with a tiny aristocracy ruling over a vast population of impoverished peasants and of course the vampires counting among the aristocrats. Likewise, seniority is the single most important factor in determining a vampire's status among other vampires. Elder vampires expect that their juniors will spend eternity doing scut work for them, and often have the power to enforce that. The best mortal analogy is probably a cross between the mob and academia: a criminal secret society where the young are weaker than the old and tenured professors never become emeritus.

Succubi and Incubi: Making the Victims Want It

The Succubi (women) and Incubi (men) take their name from old Latin words adopted by monks and nuns during the Middle Ages to explain how they might have pornographic dreams despite having kept their vows of chastity. As a whole, the group is referred to as the Succubi, reversing the usual Latin convention probably because of sexism dating back to Roman times. Regardless, these vampires have probably existed a lot longer than that, because there are stories of seductive blood-drinking females recorded in ancient Sumer. Many Succubi claim to be descended from Lilith, but as Lilith's stories aren't much older than 1000 BCE at the oldest and Genesis as recounted in the Hebrew Bible contradicts a lot of stories other people believe, most other supernaturals view this story with some skepticism.

The common trait that distinguishes Succubi is that they get blood by luring their victims close enough for a kiss, then biting their neck. What happens after that depends on the individual Succubus: some have sex with their victims and try to make it fun so they'll come back for more, others have sex with their victims in ways that are distinctly unpleasant, others drain their victims dry, and still others do things best not thought about. Succubi are at least as often bisexual or gay as they are straight, no matter their orientation before they became vampires. Their appearances range from human handsomeness to impossible angelic beauty, but they are never openly monstrous. They have powers of hypnosis, supernatural attraction, and such, sometimes branching into more usual vampire abilities.

Exemplars: Carmilla, Lestat

Nosferatu: The Real Monsters

The Nosferatu are a bunch of hideous monsters. While they can often pretend to humanity, depending on their specific powers and the quality of the light, most people who get a good look at a Nosferatu will recognize something off, and no one who sees one feed would ever mistake them for anything but what they are, a blood-sucking corpse. Obviously, they can't use the tactics Succubi do for feeding on mortals, so most prefer stealth or main force. The origins of the Nosferatu are obscure, but most of them believe that the first Nosferatu was a cannibal cursed by his victims to wander the earth with an unceasing hunger for blood as punishment.

All Nosferatu look monstrous when they're feeding or using their vampiric powers: long fangs, sickly skin colors, and slitted eyes are the least hideous traits a Nosferatu will display, and their features run the gamut from that to the most horrible things you can imagine. The lucky ones have enough shapeshifting ability to disguise themselves as (more or less) human so they can go out without frightening small children, the unlucky ones--well, probably best not to talk about them. Most of them also have other offensive traits, such as foul odor, screeching voice, slime, or so forth. Nosferatu specialize in physical prowess, illusions, and shapeshifting, and their disguise powers are the only ones they can use without revealing their true forms.

Exemplars: Count Orlok, The Master

[Jacob_Orlove]

Tell me more about this "Count Orlov".

[Maxus]

Tell me more about this "Count Orlov".

He's the result a horrible genetic splicing of you and Count Arioch.

I think what was meant was Count Orlok of silent movie fame. Basically, they ripped off the Dracula story and made the vampire into an actual monster. Nosferatu. Classic piece of old-school horror cinema

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image ... castle.jpg[/i]

[Iaimeki]

I think what was meant was Count Orlok of silent movie fame. Basically, they ripped off the Dracula story and made the vampire into an actual monster. Nosferatu. Classic piece of old-school horror cinema

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image ... castle.jpg[/i]

Oops! Yes, for some reason my brain remembers "Orlok" as "Orlov."

[Iaimeki]

You know, your list of things that you hate about the superhero genre... almost all of those apply equally well to WoD products. Particularly the setting that makes no sense, genre consistency, sexism (especially fetishes! For fuck's sake, WW products were my first exposure to several), and mage is all about bastardizing science. As far as ethics goes, well, the Paths and various variations of humanity should need no introduction. And of course, the Masquerade(s) of various kinds are all Stupid Attempts at Secret Identities.

Some of my criticisms do hold for both, I'll grant, but I don't agree with all of these. For instance, WoD products are not half as sexist as D&D, from my experience of them, and most of that is the art, which I honestly don't care much about for an RPG book. (I care more about art in comics, where the medium is primarily art.) And I don't think the Masquerade and secret identities have much in common. Really, though, I don't see much worth saving from superhero comics at all, whereas I think there are lots of things about the WoD that work well and are interesting, just there are also parts that need serious help.

[Jacob_Orlove]

Tell me more about this "Count Orlov".

He's the result a horrible genetic splicing of you and Count Arioch.

I think what was meant was Count Orlok of silent movie fame. Basically, they ripped off the Dracula story and made the vampire into an actual monster. Nosferatu. Classic piece of old-school horror cinema

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image ... castle.jpg[/i]

Ah, thanks!

I was turning up some interesting stuff on wikipedia, but nothing vampiric.

Apparently, a Count Orlov had been the lover of Catherine the Great, and he'd actually given her a huge diamond that once served as an eye of the statue of the presiding deity of the Sri Ranganathaswamy Temple of Srirangam in southern India.. In true D&D style, someone pried out the gem and sold it. I was looking to see if there was some kind of associated curse, but no luck.

[Username17]

Iameki, I am still genuinely confused as to what you think "World of Darkness" and "Superheroes" even is. You genuinely don't seem to want to really use any of the tropes that the WoD actually relies upon. Once you've stripped out the game mechanics, the poetry, the art, the back story, the associated evocative poetry, the philosophy, and the perspective, what's left?

If you just want to have modern day heroes fighting an uphill battle for reality, may I suggest Feng Shui? It has the advantage of having a reality war which makes any fucking sense at all. Here's the key conceits which make it work:

• Control of reality is based on control of arbitrary locations scattered throughout the world (and netherworld). This means that proselytizing normal rubes on the street is pretty meaningless and the secret masters don't have to keep everyone convinced that objects fall at the same rate in order to keep steel ships from sinking. Importantly, this means that you actually have to fight the enemies in order to win fights, and you don't have to explain away the fact that the vast majority of people don't know how science works.
• Being on the losing end of reality makes it harder to use your super powers, and it gets harder to use them as you get closer to the power seats of the people controlling reality. This gives the world inertia so you don't just go nova and change the setting unrecognizably day 1.
• The Netherworld, or Supernal Realm if you prefer, is real and does not change with regards to the whims of those presently controlling reality. It's also a place, which really exists and you can physically go there. And once you go there, you're real too. And until you do, you're subject the whims and flickers of reality and if someone else changes reality you could vanish altogether or have your history erased or replaced. By having a hard in-game definition of what is part of the malleable reality and what is not, you can have real discussions about where the story can and should go.

Now that you point out the similarities, I definitely agree there's something to the idea that there's a connection between the Norse sagas and American superhero comics, but I'm not sure of its nature: were the first superhero comic authors directly inspired by reading the older literature, or is it more that they reinvented the same sets of ideas for, probably, the same reasons?

It was directly inspired. Note that SHAZAM actually specifically stands for Solomon, Hercules, Atlas, Zeus, Achilles, Mercury.

And yes, Atlas, Hercules, and Achilles play a similar game on wildly different power levels. And that's fine for a story. A role playing game just needs to narrow its focus down.

Vampirism

The Nosferatu/Succubus divide isn't very good for this. While the Nosferatu are distinguished by something that they physically are, the Succubus is defined by something it's supposed to want to behave like. Behavioral conceits are bad divisions of supernatural groups because players can and will play their characters with whatever behavior they want. The moment that playing "against type" makes you unidentifiable the category obviously isn't good.

The Nosferatu were always good as a vampire group because they had a specific classification and you could play them however you wanted. The Tremere were a shitty group because they were only really defined by a behavioral expectation that half of them didn't even live up to.

So a decent division along those lines might be something like this:

The Nosferatu
That fate which condemns me to wallow in blood has also denied me the joys of the flesh. This face - the infection which poisons our love. This face which earned a mother's fear and loathing, a mask: my first unfeeling scrap of clothing. Pity comes too late, turn around and face your fate, an eternity of this before your eyes!

Nosferatu are social pariahs. Many of them look monstrous, animalistic, or deformed. While others look reasonably human, there is a certain otherworldly air about them which frightens small children. Any human who sees a Nosferatu's face will be instantly convinced that they are dealing with something monstrous. Young women will recoil, priests will present crosses, that kind of thing.

The Ventrue
Don't ever invite a vampire into your house, you silly boy. It renders you powerless.

Ventrue appear to be normal humans, but they react oddly to light. They cast no reflections, allowing them to be readily identified by anyone knowledgeable with a camera or a mirror, and they are physically threatened by the harsh gaze of the day star. While any vampire is rendered largely powerless by sunlight, a Ventrue actually burns if her skin is touched by sunlight directly. The burn is slow and only eventually fatal, sharing little in common with the explosive reactions seen in some movie and TV offerings.

---

Both of those vampire groups has a physical (and disadvantageous) marker which makes them genuinely different regardless of how a player chooses to play them. And that's important. If you're going to have groups at all you need to have them be different rather than simply be expected to behave differently.

Also, there should probably be a third group, for parity. Good group definitions are hard to find in WoD material. Most of the Clans, Tribes, and Bloodlines would make a cult, if even that.

Cults
“Has it ever occurred to you that maybe, just maybe, all the crazy pointless crap we do isn't crazy or pointless?”

Many magical creatures attempt to increase their magical power by sharing secrets of magic with other supernatural creatures. These mystical filesharing groups serve as secret clubs, religious heresies, and trade guilds. These organizations are semi-secret. While their membership is largely composed of supernatural creatures (whose very existence is a secret from the mundane humans of the world), the specific activities of these groups are kept under wraps even from other supernaturals.

The Black Hand
“A well placed knife can change the world.”

Black Spiral Dancers
“The rhythm of the stars moves our feet, moves our teeth.”

Circle of the Crone
“An it harm none, do as you will ”

The Giovanni
“Loyalty to the family. To death and beyond.”

Madness Network
“It's not much of a code if I just tell you the message, right?”

Stellar Oracles
“Heaven may forgive you, but I will not!”

The Tremere
“The greater the loyalty toward the group, the greater is the motivation among the members to achieve the goals of the group, and the greater the probability that the group will achieve its goals.”

---

But there are still some divisions around which you could make a half way decent vampire distinction. All the crap like the Samedi are basically just like the Nosferatu and I don't care. Frankly the Gangrel and the Brujah's thing where they become more beastial over time is just more Nosferatism and makes a crap character distinction. Any social networking setup (example: Tremere, Caitiff, etc.) or mental hangup (example: Malkavian, Toreador) is inherently bullshit. There's nothing stopping you from playing any character with any kind of mental or social setup you can imagine, so it fails as a clan characteristic.

Feeding restrictions (like the Giovani, Assassamites, Nagaraja, or Ventrue from oWoD) can work, as can entirely magical ailments (like the Galloi's requirement to bathe in blood, the Bohagande's astral staining, or the Melissidae's need to be surrounded with bees). Personally, I would prefer it if the third group staked out radically new territory like the Melissidae and had a whole insect vibe going on. Snake vampires are classic and awesome, but honestly as long as the Leviathan are in the mix there's no particular need for an extra group with a scales theme.

-Username17

[Maxus]

Well, let's see...

Only some of the Nosferatu can participate in human society because they're so monstrous-looking.

The Ventrue look right, but have a couple of tells, but as long as one remembers the SPF 180, he should be all right.

So based on that logic, wouldn't the third type of vampires be the ones who don't have much problem passing as ordinary people?

And then you can have whatever freaky hobbies they take up, like snake-molesting or beekeeping, transformation, or Mind Control for Fun and Profit be just niches characters can fill.

Personally, I do sorta like the idea of a vampire keeping a few hives of bees around because he can find out stuff from the hivemind, but that might just be my liking for Discworld showing.

[CatharzGodfoot]

My immediate thought was 'Vampires that feed on honey? Is this some Bunnicula shit?'


But how about a vaguely [Night|Day]watch type mosquito thing?

Example: These vamps don't feed directly. They have a mosquito swarm which they mentally control. The mosquitoes feed on humans; then they inject the blood back into the vamps. So the vampires seem completely normal, but under their clothes they're covered in little bumps, some with mosquitoes still attached. They're highly allergic to bug spray, and tend to get angry when you go around squashing their swarm. They can be carriers for malaria and sleeping sickness.

Higher level powers include morphing into a cloud of mosquitoes or transferal of consciousness via blood (they get drained to a husk by their swarm, then injected into some poor human).

[Maxus]

My immediate thought was 'Vampires that feed on honey? Is this some Bunnicula shit?'


But how about a vaguely [Night|Day]watch type mosquito thing?

Example: These vamps don't feed directly. They have a mosquito swarm which they mentally control. The mosquitoes feed on humans; then they inject the blood back into the vamps. So the vampires seem completely normal, but under their clothes they're covered in little bumps, some with mosquitoes still attached. They're highly allergic to bug spray, and tend to get angry when you go around squashing their swarm. They can be carriers for malaria and sleeping sickness.

Higher level powers include morphing into a cloud of mosquitoes or transferal of consciousness via blood (they get drained to a husk by their swarm, then injected into some poor human).

Eh. It feels a little much like were-turkey-vulture territory. Where does the skeeter vamp come from, aside from a certain biological parallel in feeding methods. I'd be inclined to take a note from a CSI episode and have a vamp clan that can pass as human, which is a good thing, because they're all psychically inclined and pretty much need emotional energy as well as blood to keep going.
Keep in mind this is just speculation I came up with while I was mowing the lawn after my last post...

The Nosferatu avoid humans except at feeding time, the Ventrue socialize with mortals as part of their plans, but this clan is dependent on human contact, because without a constant stabilizing anchor of contact with ordinary people, those psychically sensitive minds pick up too many Influences from the chaos of reality and go crazy until they've re-anchored themselves.

Of course, hanging out with other vampires can get them by for a while, but sooner or later they'll have to spend some social time with ordinary humans. Fortunately, what with bars and nightclubs, this isn't too hard for one in a city or town to do. And while they're the most suited to dominating humans, a dominated mind isn't nearly as good as a free one, so they probably do keep a circle of human friends who aren't dominated and probably aren't aware of the vamp's true nature.

And if you wanted to make generalizations about what concepts each clan goes with, the Nosferatu get more physical/animal stuff, the Ventrue I guess could be more mystic, and this clan would more inclined for the mental pursuits.

Just a thought I'm putting out here for consideration, and I expect for it to be ripped to shreds, but it does seem to...fit somehow.

[Bigode]

I'd bring the Lilitu (a.k.a. succubi) back. While I do get Frank's point on "it has to be different, not expected to", I think they can be forcibly distinct: they might have a feeding restriction of only willing donors, or a tell of either: always ruddy except when severely underfed (in which case they are livid), or look like they have absolutely perfect health, except for various subtle signs of various diseases.

EDIT: I'd actually really like the mosquito vampires, but I think that, if we are to have a short, limited number of vampire kinds, succubi are much more deserving of a place.

[Prak]

I once worked up a group of vampires based on various blood sucking animals for D&D, and they might be good for some ideas of various nosferatu factions or maybe even a third group of vamps.

They were:

• Squid-vamps(there is a species of squid that drinks blood)- these vamps have no traditional restriction over water, and can swim rather well. Instead of fangs, they have a hollow cavity where their stomach should be, filled with tentacles with barbed ends that extract blood from their victims
• Traditional bat vamps
• Spider Vamps(yes, I know spider don't exactly drink blood, but their method of feeding is close enough)- these vamps had full spider mandibles/pedipalps that hid behind their normal teeth
• Mosquito vamps- These vamps had probosci like tongues that whipped out and extracted blood, but the other idea of mosquito swarms harvesting/injecting blood is cool too.
• Leech Vamps- These vamps had leech-mouth structures on their palms that extracted blood for them, and also gave them incredible griping power.

[Username17]

The important thing is to make the overlap between Witches, Leviathan, Vampires, and Lycanthropes as small as possible. So once you outline that you have werewolves, then the Gangrel "wolf vampires" have to go. There should be an insect group, a fish group, and a reptile group.

So if the Leviathan are: Fishmen (Deep Ones / Gillman); Troglodytes (Mole Men / Morlocks); and Insectiles (Mothman / the Spider Woman) ; then you're going to want the third group of vampires to be all snake-themed like in Lair of the White Worm or the oWoD Followers of Set. On the other hand, if one of Leviathan groups is already snake themed (like the Naga / Yuan-Ti); then you're going to want the third group of vampires to be bug themed instead to avoid toe stepping.

It can be awesome either way, because snakes are really cool regardless of whether they are an ancient race who want to undermine civilization or are a corrupt group of blood drinkers whose signature fangs drip poison; and insects are cool regardless of whether they are filling the minds of their victims with buzzing sounds and collecting blood honey or growing their babies in carcasses from their nest.

You just have to find a theme set where there isn't overlap so all the choices are different and people can feel the differences in their choices.

-Username17

[Prak]

Why does overlap have to be so heavily avoided? Why can't you have scaly leviathans that want to undermine modern civilization and scaly vamps that weave their own conspiracies and plots and maybe occasionally ally with the scaly leviathans? So long as scaly vamps and scaly leviathans feel different in their plots and goals and outlook, what's the problem?

[Username17]

So long as scaly vamps and scaly leviathans feel different in their plots and goals and outlook, what's the problem?

Because these aren't D&D monster groups, they are player character groups. And PCs can and will have whatever plots, goals, and outlook that the player feels like bringing to the table.

-Username17