Anatomy of Failed Design: nWoD

[Username17]

At this point I'm almost surprised WW hasn't started up a 'World of Darkness: Classic' line, that tries to create some sort of unholy mix of WoD's fluff and nWod's crunch.

Well, oWoD has been licensed to Red Brick Games, and they are going to be printing up new oWoD materials.

-Username17

[Jinerviet]

A Requiem game has been going in Auckland since Feb 2007.
"In February 2007, the students of the University of Auckland protested fee increases. The protest turned into a riot, and much havoc was caused. During this time, nearly all the supernaturals of the three factions were killed. Those that survived were those that were out of the city at the time, and the three powerful leaders of each faction: The Vampire, Prince Grey; the Alpha Werewolf, Eric; and the Mage Leader, Lord Andreas.

In the year that has passed since the riot, newcomers have flocked to the city. Some look for opportunity to advance, other return to their home city seeking for loved ones lost during the riots, and yet other arrive to solve the mystery of what caused mortals to destroy the supernaturals. Whatever their reason for being here, all are bound by the Truce, ordered by the leaders of the three factions. Despite their inherent differences, the three factions are ordered to work together, to prevent a repeat of the destruction that took place."

http://interestingtimes.wikidot.com/

Most of my LARP friends play in this, but I've never really been able to get into it. A big part of that is unlike most of the Denizens, I don't like humungous rule systems. The LARPs I enjoy all have rules which are contained in less than 20 pages.

[Orion]

I rather imagine that would be the case for me as well, if I were to LARP

[cthulhu]

How would a larp even work with complex rules? Seems like it would suck - mechanics are just intrustive and clunky in that enviroment.

[koz]

How would a larp even work with complex rules? Seems like it would suck - mechanics are just intrustive and clunky in that enviroment.

Jinerviet has told me that she has seen some VERY clunky LARP rules in the past. As in, the LARP equivalent of Rifts or so.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Thinking about re-writing this to be a little more clear and include the discussions after the OP and then sharing. Nifty piece.

You better share that shit.

[DeadlyReed]

At this point I'm almost surprised WW hasn't started up a 'World of Darkness: Classic' line, that tries to create some sort of unholy mix of WoD's fluff and nWod's crunch.

Well, oWoD has been licensed to Red Brick Games, and they are going to be printing up new oWoD materials.

-Username17

I believe that was an April's Fool joke.

[Judging__Eagle]

Because the WoD system makes a literal Short Bus the best tactic. After all, retarded six year olds still get one die each. Without any sort of 'DR' the class therefore does around 30 dice of damage.

I thought it was:


Roll Attack Pool; see if it beats opponent's dodge pool roll.

If you win, roll opposed damage versus soak rolls.

And each defender defended against each attack with the same pool.

Since it's an ability that gets applied against all damage, not damage now, and then suddenly stop not taking damage for you.

What? Did your kevlar suddenly turn to dust for those extra attacks? Then suddenly start blocking attacks in the next round?

[Username17]

Crap, yes the Red Brick thing was an April Fools joke. That's what I get for only hearing about it third hand rather than checking a primary source.

I thought it was:

Well you were thinking wrong. In nWoD there is no defense roll or soak roll. There's also no damage roll. There's just an attack roll with some modifiers. Every hit (painfully called a "success" in the same vapid double speak of the 4e skill challenge) causes a wound box to be filled in.

Your defense rating is a number that is usually 2, because it is the lowest of 2 stats. It is subtracted from the dicepool of an oncoming attack. Except that it doesn't apply against ranged weapons. And it is reduced by 1 for every extra attack you suffer. And you don't get it at all if you full attack to get two attacks in a round. So when facing the short bus, your defense rating means jack diddly.

Armor is more interesting. It's a number that is subtracted from incoming attack pools. It is however usually a number that is about two, which means that when facing enemies with minimum stats, no skills, and basic weapons, they still get a die. A normal weapon provides 3 extra dice or more all bit itself.

-Username17

[Mr. Bane]

You better share that shit.

Or what, you'll come beat me up?

First part, because it's 4 fucking AM now.

This is the Failed Design Series, where Frank Trollman shares his thoughts on role-playing games and their failures in design.

As part of this series on failed design we are going to talk about World of Darkness (Referred to as nWoD). This means that we are talking about Vampire: The Requiem, any discussions of Werewolf: The Forsaken or Mage: The Awakening boils down to Cat Duck Reviews. Those games are the Matrix: Reloaded of nWoD.

They have two key parts:
[*] None of the conflicts matter.
[*] None of the conflicts [/i]solve any problem[/i].

Characters are better off just leaving rather than interacting with the plot on any level. (More on this later)

Who cares, though? People don't buy about the World of Darkness because of Werewolf: The Forsaken or Mage: The Awakening, they care about it because they've played Vampire: The Masquerade with every single woman they've had sex with - and they're not alone. So the, very real, problems that the nWoD has in its non-Vampire spin-offs will have to be reviewed elsewhere because the World of Darkness sinks or swims on the merits of its Vampire line alone.

But there you go... the World of Darkness is sinking. Not in a manner in which you expect; Where the imaginary world is going to hell in a hand basket - the publishing line is a wet paper bag. Stores don't order new White Wolf material, hell no one fucking notices. You don't know what the latest White Wolf release was and neither do I. White Wolf doesn't release specific sales figures, but they proudly claimed they had over 5.5 million total book sales (as in, ever) back when nWoD released to the public. Now they claim over seven million total sales, today. Which puts nWoD sales at over a quarter of what the oWoD sales were. Further, they also claim over a million sales last year, meaning that either they stopped updating their home page or the numbers are that bad. At the end of oWoD's print run they confidently claimed a a 26% market share of the RPG industry, now they don't mention their market share at all. How did this happen? How did nWoD fail so badly? Let's look at their design goals, as explained by Justin Achilli:

Clean Up the World!
This is a goal even a die hard True Brujah would grudgingly admit had to be done. oWoD was too complicated and had far too much supernatural crap. I mean, did you know that it had dragons, manticores, and harpies in it? Secret manticores. I don't know how that works! Even worse, they had to retcon out an entire book because a secret society of assassins inside a slightly less secret society of assassins inside a secret vampire cult dedicated to ending the secrecy of vampire cults that was secretly run by an evil ancient sleeping vampire god in a secret city in the land of the dead who was in turn the pawn of a secret alien space virus was apparently going too far (see: Dirty Secrets of the Black Hand). It didn't help that literally four of those secret organizations were called "The Black Hand."

But the result wasn't clean and, more importantly, it wasn't interesting. They failed to live up to the promise of no secret vampire assassin cults led by a secret evil space virus (see: VII). While the prospect of Bloodline Bloat is actually easier to take than Clan bloat, a Bloodline could be six total vampires rather than a new secret clan structure every time you visit a new town and meet a guy with a new power - the fact remains that the very instant that you have a bloodline composed of just Vampire Prostitutes who make Vampire Perfume your setting has exploded the fucking fridge. The part that really sucks is the new setting gives no reason to give a shit about any of it. With the removal of the metaplot (unless you count the space virus thing) came a rudderless existence.

The introduction of the new rule, "vampires fight like Vulcans in heat when they meet in person" (Keep reading), meant that, not only had the designers left the game without any fucking political disagreements that you knew or cared about the designers actually made it so that Vampires couldn't engage in politics of any kind without just stabbing each other. If four PC Vampires walk into a room with four NPC Vampires in it all four PCs and all four NPCs have to make a Resolve Check to keep from flipping out for each vampire in the other group. That is thirty-two rolls just to determine if your audience with a minor functionary and his pals turns into a blood bath. Not only is the Coterie unlikely to able to have a chat with any other Vampires without bloodshed but any tension has been bled out of the scene like black bile from a stone while the Storyteller rolls die roll after die roll. Combine this with Aura Reading now a secret discipline (Auspex) the supposed restrictions on diablerie don't come into play much and you have got a recipe for mindless hack and slash because there is nothing else to do with the story pull gone. Sure hope the combat system is sound.

[Psychic Robot]

I thought armor didn't apply against ranged attacks but defense did.

[Mr. Bane]

I thought armor didn't apply against ranged attacks but defense did.

Melee Attack - Defense - Armor

Ranged Attack - Armor (- Defense, with Celerity)

[Mr. Bane]

BTW, this is what people are talking about in case anyone wants the specs:

Scenario:

1 Werewolf, Garou Form
Relevant Stats:
[*] Stamina: 3 (5 with Garou)
[*] Resolve: 3
[*] Composure: 3
[*] Willpower 6
[*] Size: 5 (6 With Garou)
[*] Health: 8 (11 With Garou)
[*] Armor: 0

9 Children, Human Mortal
Relevant Stats:
[*] Dexterity: 1
[*] Strength: 1
[*] Composure: 1
[*] Resolve: 1
[*] Firearms: 0 (-1 Dice)
[*] Weapon: BBgun (+1)
[*] Willpower: 2


Round 1:
Garou1: Werewolf looks at children.

Children1 <--> 12: Roll 1 (Dex) - 1 (Firearms) + 1 (BBgun) + 3 (Willpower): 4 Dice

9 x 4 = 37 Dice, average Success per 3 dice, 12 Successes.

Werewolf takes 12 Lethal, dies.

Children take out a monster.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Or what, you'll come beat me up?

Or I'll quiver in impotent rage!

I was looking more for a link.

[Username17]

I think it useful to point out at this point to point out that you actually average 1 success per three dice, so the kids would have inflicted 16 wound levels, not 12.

-Username17

[Mr. Bane]

I was looking more for a link.

What if I like getting hit?

[Lago PARANOIA]

So you only need nine children then?

Damn, no wonder why werewolves are going extinct; Cletus the Slack Jawed Yokel's family ends up pwning any werewolves that try to kill them.

Cletus: "Hey, ma! We're eatin' fresh meat tonight!"

[Jinerviet]

How would a larp even work with complex rules? Seems like it would suck - mechanics are just intrustive and clunky in that enviroment.

Jinerviet has told me that she has seen some VERY clunky LARP rules in the past. As in, the LARP equivalent of Rifts or so.

Never tried to read Rifts, so I dunno if this is quite equivalent. However, you may witness the pain of rules for a Star Wars LARP: http://diatribe.co.nz/download/file.php?id=32 Apparently condensed from a UK ruleset!

[Ganbare Gincun]

Thank you very much for taking the time to write up this post, Frank! I'm glad I got to hear about the suck from you before I actually started playing in a nWoD game and died from either 1) gangs of retarded children with pointy sticks or 2) absolute boredom from dealing with the bush league political intrigues of vampiric under-achievers. Much obliged!

[Username17]

Special tirades have to go out to the disciplines that got major overhauls in nWoD, because it hurts me in the mind. First off, let's talk Physical Disciplines:

Physical Disciplines
"I have the strength of a kind of strong guy! Boo!"

Since time immemorial Vampire has eagerly embraced (sorry) the concept of having 3 separate physical disciplines. Celerity makes you magically fast, Fortitude makes you magically tough, and Potence makes you magically strong. In order to punish munchkins (yes, their actual reasoning) all three of these disciplines have been hit with the nerf stick so hard that they might as well have been banned. Which is unfortunate, because in the nWoD's quest for universal parity every clan is now saddled with one or more of these pieces of crap. And Cain help you if you're a Daeva, because you're stuck with two of them.

Celerity
"Alternately, I could get a segue."

My how the mighty have fallen. Back in the days of oWoD, Celerity was the only physical discipline worth taking. This was because it gave you extra actions. And since WoD has always kind of suffered from the "groups of people kill your ass" the ability to fight as if you were a group of people has indeed allowed you to kill people. In the ass. Now granted, it cost blood every round and often wasn't even as good as throwing down a Domination or Corruption Spell, but it was defensible. Now it's not.

See, Celerity still costs blood every round. Only now it provides no offensive benefit at all. Seriously. It adds to your initiative score, and it subtracts from the dicepool of people attacking you, and it increases your movement rate. And that's it. So if you have Celerity you can run at the speed of a moped for 3 seconds at the cost of 1 blood. Also, your enemies will be penalized when they physically attack you. But get this: damage actually heals with blood, and the Celerity expenditure counts against your round by round spending limits. So unless you're fighting the short bus, you're actually costing yourself more hits in lost healing than you're preventing with super speed. A character with Celerity 3 (the maximum starting value) penalizes incoming attacks by 3 dice on the rounds he spends for Celerity. This prevents an average of 1 Wound level per attack. Ranged weapons normally do bashing damage, and you can heal 2 Bashing for 1 Blood. So the maximum Celerity character actually needs to be attacked by two enemies just to break even. And as previously noted: if you're outnumbered you're dead anyway, so what the fuck?

Fortitude Resilience
"The discipline so not nice they named it twice!"

As part of the never ending sacrifices on the altar of change for change's sake, Fortitude got renamed into Vigor. It also got reconcepted as a discipline you will never ever take because it is shit. Remember how there's no soak roll? Well obviously Fortitude Resilience can't give you soak dice or even prevent incoming damage (that's Celerity now for some reason). So what does it do? Two things. Both of them cost a blood to activate for a scene:

• Give you an extra set of Damage Boxes that go away at the end of combat like Barbarian Rage Hit Points.
• Transform a number of Aggravated Damage boxes you receive over the entire scene equal to your bonus Rage Hit Points into Lethal damage.

Now first of all, every point of Stamina you have gives you an extra damage box all the time that is fucking free, and won't vanish at any point resulting in Rage Death. Secondly, blood you spend on activating Resilience is blood you aren't spending on healing damage, so you're seriously behind right from the start. And lastly aggravated damage doesn't really matter that much within a combat because people heal very slowly compared to the total damage outputs and most sources of aggravated damage come with one or more boxes of normal that you can heal normally anyway. And finally, once you hit torpor you're fucking out and it doesn't make any difference if some of the damage was aggravated or not.

But the real deal here is that if you activate Resilience for a scene and downgrade some agg damage and then heal it (the best possible case for Resilience), you still end in the same place as a character who just had extra Stamina and spent absolutely nothing to activate or heal. If people are (as is very likely) fighting with bullets or swords you're even farther behind. After all, the Resilience character has to spend a blood to activate the extra wound levels and then he has to heal them (with more blood) before the end of the scene or he'll go to torpor from Rage Death.

Potence Vigor
"I feel the kind of strength that a normal man who happens to be fairly strong must feel. What a feeling this is! I wish it could last..."

So Potence used to be automatic successes in a dice and target number game, and that was weird and kind of broken. But whatever. It also just let you lift and throw things, which in a world where people have howitzers and mind control means something between "bupkiss" and "fuckall." But I suppose it had a niche. The revamped Vigor... doesn't.

Here's what it does: you spend a Blood and then your Strength increases for the scene by your Vigor. That's it. Every dot of Vigor is just like a dot of Strength that you only get in those scenes where you've spent a blood to activate the discipline. It's strictly and demonstrably worse than the mundane attribute it modifies. And the base cost is higher. So it's only worth even considering when you've hit caps on Strength, and even then it's still stupid.

Universal Disciplines

There are two disciplines in nWoD that are neither Clan Exclusives, Bloodline Specials, nor Physical Disciplines. They are Obfuscation and Animalism. This designation is important, because depending upon how you read the rest of the rules (that contradict themselves on this point repeatedly), these may in fact be the only disciplines in the game that you are allowed to buy outside of your starting disciplines and your single personal Bloodline discipline that you get to grab later on. Unfortunately, these disciplines have been jerked around a lot by the new rules.

Obfuscation
"You can't see what's in my pocket!"

This is a magic discipline, which means that it has five completely unrelated powers in no particular order that you are nonetheless required to purchase in order whether you care about the intermediary parts or not. The abilities and their order are:

1. Hide objects for a scene.
2. Fiddle with the aforementioned Predator's Taint rules.
3. Invisibility.
4. Mask that you don't get to see.
5. Mass Invisibility.

OK, first I gotta call out #2. Remember ow fucking everyone hates he Predator's Taint rules because they make the game and the setting fucking unplayable? Having a major early stage in a major discipline open to everyone that does literally nothing except interact with the Predator's Taint rules makes Predator's Taint really fucking hard to remove from the system (and no, Obfuscate s not the only discipline that has this problem). But next up, I'm going to call out some really shitty rules on the other bits.

The first level lets you spend blood to keep people from noticing things for a scene. Now the examples and the rules don't match at all. For example, they specify that you can hide a hallway by hiding the door, but that you can't hide a person by climbing into a box and hiding the box. Because um... completely opposite reasoning given in practically adjacent sentences. So I seriously don't know how it's supposed to work and neither does anyone else. But secondly, most of the stuff that you're supposed to use it for, namely keeping people from finding shit, it is actually powerless to assist you with. It only lasts for one scene! This means that the only thing it's good for is a scene where you pick up an object and take it past someone, because if the scene starts any other way the observer has already seen the object and you're boned.

The Invisibility stuff is just weird. It's not opposed, so it essentially always works, which makes you The Winners of Eurovision. The only available dice pool penalty is that if you activate it while there are people around you suffer a -1 dicepool penalty per onlooker to activate. But the basic dicepool is Intelligence + Stealth + Obfuscate (at least 3) + 1, so it basically boils down to "If you are in a large group of people it automatically fails to activate and if otherwise it always succeeds." There is this whole thing where if you activate it with onlookers and you get more successes than they have Willpower, that it retroactively becomes not a Masquerade Breach because their memories get altered to believe that you "left" rather than that you "vanished." Special attention must be made to the fact that you also have to get an Exceptional Success for this effect to apply to other vampires. This is special because of how retarded this stipulation is. Willpower is two stats added together, so it's usually 4 or more. An exceptional success is five or more hits. So for this secondary effect to chip in, you pretty much have to have gotten an exceptional success (or more) no matter who is looking.

And yeah, there's the Familiar Stranger. You appear as someone other than yourself to other people. They see someone they expect to see. But despite being a level 4 Discipline it doesn't actually let you choose to be someone in particular and it doesn't let you know who other people expect to see. Indeed, if different people expect to see different people, they actually see different people. Which can get super awkward and I want to reiterate the fact that just fucking turning invisible is a level lower.

Animalism

Animalism is also a "mystic" discipline, which means again that it is a mishmash of crazy crap that makes no sense. However, unlike Obfuscate, the awesomesauce is all front loaded, making this discipline short and sweet.

1. Speak With Animals.
2. Command Animals
3. Summon Animals
4. Possess Animals
5. Cause/Control Frenzy

OK, the first thing I want to point out is that there is basically nothing that you can command a rat to do that you can't pay a rat to do with a Toblerone bar. Secondly, summoning animals only goes out to a few hundred yards, and they have to come under their own power, so it's pretty much worth fuck all except to get large armies of vermin together. And even then it takes long enough that you can pretty much just use the first level of it to put together an army of rats in your down time by overtly hiring them to go places on your directives. So right away, you are in most cases operating at the same level of effectiveness with level 1 as with any other level you could ever get.

The animal Possession thing is really weird. Really really weird. If you successfully possess an animal you are normally limited to using no disciplines other than Animalism while in the animal's body. If you get extraordinary success however, you get the ability to use Auspex or Majesty. I think it is important to note that Auspex and Majesty are the clan special disciplines of two clans that don't get Animalism as a Clan Discipline. So I have no idea what that's even about. And the last level is an extremely limited emotion control thing that is generally speaking not quite as good as the first level version of Dominate, Majesty, or Nightmare. So... um... yeah.

But the point is that you can put together a fucking army of commando rats, raven spies, and attack dogs with level 1, which is what you actually wanted the discipline for anyway. So all the other levels get a giant "Whatever."

-Username17

[Username17]

Now let's talk about the "Unique Clan Disciplines" of nWoD. First of all, let's talk about what that designation means: nobody fucking knows. See, there's a page citation that tells you where to look for the restrictions that apply when attempting to learn Unique Clan Disciplines. But that page doesn't actually have any restrictions on it. Some people think this means that there are no restrictions, because the place where the restrictions are is just an empty page citation. Other people think that the restriction that you can only have one that isn't yours at character creation is supposed to apply for your whole life. Other people have other interpretations. And none of them are right or wrong, because the book never explicitly says anything, it just leaves it all confusing bullshit.

One thing is clear however: each Unique Clan Discipline is a clan discipline for exactly one and no more than one Clan. Five Clans, 5 unique clan disciplines. All of them are weird mystic types, so each one is a pile of five related or unrelated powers that are for whatever reason required to be purchased in order. Obviously there is not even vague power equivalence between the different ones.

Auspex
"You cannot hide from me."

This is the clan discipline of the Mekhet. It lets you ruin mysteries and foil the plot.

1. Heightened Senses
2. Aura Perception
3. Retrocognition
4. Telepathy
5. Astral Projection

This is one of the most solid disciplines in the game. Not much to say here except that the capacities of this power are so vast that the actual authors can't keep track of it all. Heightened Senses lets you see in total darkness whenever you want for free. Spirit's Touch can be repeated for credit on every single object in a room and it's uncontested so it pretty much always works even when used on objects with no emotional resonance at all - the maximum penalty is only 3 dice and you get three bonus dice just for having enough Auspex to use that discipline. There are all kinds of things in the books that are basically predicated on players not being able to do that shit. A character with Auspex 3 (which any Mekhet can start with) pretty much turns any of the published adventures into farce.

It's not that you can't write stories and challenges for people with Auspex, it's that White Wolf doesn't. Apparently they rarely remember that you can do anything with this discipline except use Aura Perception to check for Diablerie (itself a basically pointless misuse of the power since you can just ask them questions and use the same power to see if they are lying). I also want to point out that Astral Projection is kind of pointless. But it's also level 5 and you'll never get it.

Dominate
"Do what you want. Want what I want."

OK, I'm going to lay it right down: dominate is the most fucking broken thing ever in pretty much every game it ever rears its head. nWoD is absolutely not an exception in that regard. It is broken as fuck.

1. Command
2. Hypnotism
3. Alter Memory
4. Permanent Mind Fuck
5. Possession

OK, from the get go you're spending an action to command someone to spend an action. Sounds kind of fair, right? Well, no. See, Dominate always fucking works. It's an opposed roll where your dice pool is Stat + Skill + Dominate Discipline, and you are opposed by either a single stat or a stat added to blood potency. Either fucking way you have substantially more dice than the target even if they are an elder.

Did I just say Elder? That's right, I said Elder. The thing where older generations are arbitrarily immune is gone from this edition. Instead, one's Blood Potency adds to a resistance roll. But you seriously don't even get a resistance roll against the third or level. And the resistance roll against the 4th level just makes turning into a mind bitch take longer, so it doesn't really matter. And the attacker is still rolling a fuck tonne more dice, so you can pretty much fuck all the way off no matter who you are. Yeah, having level 2 in Dominate pretty much lets you hypnotize and give orders to pretty much anyone regardless of power disparity.

I also think it's important to note that you can get access to Devotions that allow you to use Dominate simultaneously on large groups of people. This is as ridiculous as that sounds.

Presence Majesty
"Let's hear it, for me!

For reasons that defy ready analysis, Presence was renamed Majesty in this edition.

1. Social Skill Bonus
2. Compel Exposition
3. Charm
4. Sending
5. Sanctuary

Basically Majesty is just a weaker version of Dominate. But the first level is fucking recursive where every hit you get on activating it gives you a bonus die on all further uses of the power. So if you thought Dominate always works (and you were right), then you'll love Majesty. Because it always works even more. Unfortunately, it's the discipline of the Daeva, who have no other good Clan Disciplines. So really, you'll probably never use this discipline.

Nightmare

This discipline was created whole cloth for the new edition. And it... blows. The Nosferatu lost Animalism, which previously noted is made of awesome, just to get this discipline. And it was not a good trade.

1. Cause Fear
2. Aura of Small Penalties
3. Gaze of Slightly More Fear
4. Bestow Temporary Curse
5. Mind Sword

OK, the first thing that needs to be said is that the Nosferatu have a disadvantage where all of their social dice are worth substantially less than other people's social dice. As in, in a fixed target number system they have a worse target number. Nightmare nonetheless runs off of Social attributes. And while it has the completely arbitrary rule where the target number shift on Social tests doesn't apply specifically to activating this fucking power, the fact remains that investing in social stats as a Nossie makes you a god damned moron and yet that's exactly what you need to make this discipline work at all.

The other thing to note is that the first and third levels are single target behavior attacks on enemies that are therefore collectively just a small sample of the options available from the first level of Dominate. The second level is an area of -2 dice pool penalties to people, but it's centered on you, it affects your allies too, it costs Blood to turn it on, and most damning of all if you do anything at all other than walk around concentrating on the effect it fucking ends. The fourth level lets you give an enemy a mild derangement for a couple of weeks. This is the power that is so high level you can't start with it. And it isn't as good as the second level of Dominate. The fifth level lets you spend Willpower to do small amounts of Lethal Damage to enemies. You can just have an axe without maxing out a discipline or spending willpower or anything. It's fucking retarded.

Protean

Fuck that. You want to turn into a bat? Fuck you. This is a vaguely physical discipline. That means that it is not allowed to be good in nWoD.

1. Fiddle with the Predator's Taint rules.
2. Earth Meld
3. Claws
4. Beast Form
5. Mist Form

I think it's important to note that the first level of this discipline, the level every single fucking aspiring shape shifter needs to take - doesn't do anything at all except highlight the Predator's Taint rules. As in seriously, even having it is a disadvantage to the entire party because it reminds the Storyteller that the Predator's Taint rules exist. Your magic claws are a fucking joke. They give you a really shitty dice pool for attacks and inflict aggravated damage. They are at their best against enemies who heal wounds, and even then it only matters if all of your allies have such claws or you are the only one attacking the foe in question. You'd seriously rather just have a big axe and not spend any blood or use a 3rd level discipline.

Animal Form and Mist Form are actually vaguely OK. Not super exciting, but fine. Unfortunately they are level 4 and 5 respectively so you can't have them at chargen. Indeed, I think it requires extra special attention that at the starting character caps, the discipline basically doesn't do anything you care about at all.

-Username17

[Username17]

I think that I should talk about Bloodline Disciplines. I can't list them, because there are literally four books that contain nothing but bloodlines and there are bloodlines in every covenant book. And in just about every other book too. Bloodline explosion is worse in terms of raw numbers in just three than Clan Bloat ever dreamed of being in oWoD even a dozen years after publication. But I can talk about the whole Bloodline thing - and why it sucks.

The first thing to note is that the Bloodline discipline limits are completely insane and almost certainly written by different people. The limit is that you can't ever learn the first dot of a Bloodline Discipline except the Bloodline you express. But for no reason at all, you're allowed to fucking start play with a single dot in someone else's Bloodline discipline. And then you can advance it as much as you want, and ultimately get your own bloodline discipline.

The second thing to note is that the rules contradict themselves as to whether bloodline disciplines are considered Clan Disciplines. They'd better be, because some poor bloodlines get Unique Clan Disciplines as their bonus discipline, and that probably wouldn't have any effect unless there was a restriction somewhere on getting extra Unique Clan Disciplines (something which as previously noted is not elucidated in the rules). But even more mysteriously, some shitty bloodlines just get universal disciplines as their "bonus" bloodline discipline - which is lame beyond belief even if they do get the cost discount. Because joining a bloodline itself has a cost even before you factor in the disadvantage (more on that later). I think at this point that I need to point out that one of the bloodlines that gets access to Vigor and Resilience has a special note on it for storytellers to look out for powergamers because of how potentially unbalancing it is for a character to have two physical disciplines. This despite the fact that physical disciplines aren't fit to lick my shoes clean and there's a basic fucking Clan available to everyone saddled with two of these pieces of shit.

And thirdly, I need to point out that some bloodlines don't even get a Bloodline Discipline. And some of them get what amounts to more than one. For example, there are these Hive Ventrue chicks that get access to some special advantages in addition to having access to Auspex (whatever that's worth). Some of these bloodlines get fucked by this, but the bug Ventrue's special bonuses to buy are power advantages to Animalism and Dominate that allow them to use both on groups of people and swarms of insects. And that's as overpowered as you could possibly imagine.

Anyway, to get your Bloodline discipline (other than the aforementioned trick of simply beginning play with a bloodline discipline all your own), you need to awaken your bloodline. This is a not terribly expensive but irreversible process that you can only do once. There are Blood Potency minimums for this, but they are variable. As in seriously the minimum Blood Potency is different if someone in your lineage of an older generation expressed the same bloodline - which is pretty much a straight powerup for writing a character background. Also if you get your blood potency very high you're allowed to make your own.

Once you Awaken your Bloodline you get the ability to purchase the special powers of the bloodline. That's right, purchase. Actually joining the bloodline doesn't give you anything positive. But it does come with a disadvantage. Yes, you get an extra Clan Disadvantage that is normally cumulative with your normal one. However in classic White Wolf tradition, these "disadvantages" vary from crippling (like: "you're a corpse man who can't be in society" or "you are forced to fight and eat every vampire you ever meet even the other PCs") to mildly beneficial (like "You're able to teach your discipline to the other PCs" and no, I'm not making up that "disadvantage").

TL;DR: Bloodlines are a confusing mess that is clearly written by different people who aren't recognizably playing the same game.

-Username17

[sake]

So... is there any reason to actually play V:tR over V:tM? What little I know about Requiem has come from this thread and none of it actually seems to be an actual improvement over oWoD aside from no more badly played Malks?

[Lago PARANOIA]

Mr. Bane, you never did show me where you posted the criticisms of the oWoD.

I have my suspicions to where you posted it but I was looking more for an actual link. If it's where I think it ended up then it shall provide lulz for days.

[Username17]

So... is there any reason to actually play V:tR over V:tM? What little I know about Requiem has come from this thread and none of it actually seems to be an actual improvement over oWoD aside from no more badly played Malks?

Actual improvements:

• Generation is gone. This removes a lot of kicks to verisimilitude like the fact that there are any Tremere of worse than 6th generation and makes being from a shitty and dishonored lineage a viable role playing choice instead of being an application for a Darwin award.
• Related: all the Vampire Gods and shit are gone. Not having to justify why human history ever happened when signature people around 500 BC could pull the fucking moon into the Earth with their minds is all good.
• Covenants are allowed to sit around and talk to each other. This allows you to play a pick up game with whatever characters other people happen to have, rather than requiring a Camarilla/Sabbat/Setite/Whatever game to have different characters from any of the others.
• Action resolution in nWoD is basically no less stupid than n oWoD, but it is legitimately faster.

I think that's it. Those are major advantages. But a playable hybrid would virtually by definition take more from oWoD than nWoD.

-Username17