nWoD

[Josh]

Oh then you will have no problem coming up with a reason then.

Will you?

This whole debate is strange to me...
 
I mean, to me, oWoD is a great game. Why? Because it did for me exactly what it was ment to do... provided me with over 13 years of great gaming fun with my friends. We played and enjoyed the game for those 3 years. So... if it did that for me, how can it be a 'bad game'?
 
This is why I think this whole good game/bad game thing is subjective, not quantifiable.

To take a more neutral stance, Rule 0 in the hands of any group of sufficient talent can counter a game's inherent qualities significantly. My issue is that Rule 0 is extremely difficult to effectively divorce from a game for any overall evaluation of the game, if it's possible at all, so claiming that a popular game is quantifiably poor and then providing little support for that statement is bold, fresh, and completely unconvincing.

No I cannot provide an example of why nWoD is good because it is a pile of shite (that's a technical term)

If you are unaware why rule zero cannot be used in a discussion like this...

Well lets say you have a long way to go.

[Josh]

This whole debate is strange to me...
 
I mean, to me, oWoD is a great game. Why? Because it did for me exactly what it was ment to do... provided me with over 13 years of great gaming fun with my friends. We played and enjoyed the game for those 3 years. So... if it did that for me, how can it be a 'bad game'?
 
This is why I think this whole good game/bad game thing is subjective, not quantifiable.

oWoD actually almost destroyed the hobby.  It is one of the worst blights to ever strike gaming.

[AstralFire]

No I cannot provide an example of why nWoD is good because it is a pile of shite (that's a technical term)

If you are unaware why rule zero cannot be used in a discussion like this...

Well lets say you have a long way to go.

1) I was asking if you can provide examples of why it is shit. It's easy to nitpick. You're going to have to be more thorough to call the entire thing bad.
2) I apologize, I thought I'd made it quite evident through my posts, but it seems that I've failed to. So, to rectify that...

I believe in trying to look at something as objectively as possible, sure. The issue is, is it possible to completely remove the subjective element and thus render an objective evaluation of this? You seem to believe so, but you're not offering evidence, even though evidence should be the easiest thing in the world when it does not have to be stained with subjective perception. You obviously have some access to the rulebooks.

Or if you're not saying to remove the subjective - and that may be the case, I do not know, you refuse to elaborate - then let me make clear that here I am using Rule 0 to refer entirely to any impact of DM or PC playstyle, not merely a strict rule change, which I agree can be easily left out of any discussion.

[emissary666]

It is possible to look at this objectively, just really hard.

[Josh]

I will repeat what I said earlier:

Question 1: "what do the mechanics do that is interesting and reinforces the theme of personal horror?"
Question 2: "what do the mechanics do that is interesting and storytelling play style?"

The answer to both of these questions is nothing.

Stack on the miserable teenage writing, the poorly implemented game layout, the lets write everything so there is no room for your creativity attitude and you have a really poor start. 

Then you could nitpick.

Bottom line.  New or Old WoD is sub par.  How sub is debatable, a debate that is not worth considering.  Why not play a decent game?

[Shadowhowler]

oWoD actually almost destroyed the hobby.  It is one of the worst blights to ever strike gaming.

 
 
 
Wow... 
 
While I fully belive everyone has a right to their opinion, that statement surprised the hell out of me. I'm not going to debate it with you... because obvously your opinion on this matter is VERY strongly held, and you have no reason to give my thoughts or opinions any more validaty then your own since you don't know me. However, I'll just offer my experinces, and you can take (or not) what you will from them.
 
 
In my experince oWoD certainly did not 'almost destroy the hobby' of gaming. In fact, for me, my friends, and the area we gamed in, it empowed it. At the time I started playing oWoD I only knew about 4-5 RPG players. We playd games like Rifts, 2e D&D, Elfquest, Cyberpunk, CoC and a few others easily forgoten. One of my friends introduced my to 1st eddition Vampire and we gave it a run. WE liked it... played some of the other games and edditions, and so on.
 
As WoD got more popular... my group met more players we didn't know and absorbed them into our group, most of them also becoming friends. A lot of these players had never played D&D or the other games my core group played... so we would never have met or gamed with them if not for WoD. Then came the WoD LARP games. Again, a lot of players I mt threw LARP had never played the core games I started with... many of them had never played a TableTop RPG at all... their only gaming experince had been WoD LARP. Some of these players I met became my friends and joined my own LARP games and my tabletop games... expanding the circle. Many of them also got moved into played NON WoD games like D&D and Cyberpunk with my other Tabletop RPG friends.
 
Hell, I even met my wife at a WoD LARP game.
 
 
So instead of 'amost destroying the hobby' oWoD EXPANDED my player and friend base, provided me and many in my area with years of great gaming experince, acted as a 'gateway drug' for a metric-ASSload of players to learn other systems and play them... and made my area VERY active with gaming and gamers.
 
 
So you'll forgive me if I have a VERY hard time seeing what you are trying to say here...
 
 
 

[AstralFire]

I will repeat what I said earlier:

Question 1: "what do the mechanics do that is interesting and reinforces the theme of personal horror?"
Question 2: "what do the mechanics do that is interesting and storytelling play style?"

The answer to both of these questions is nothing.

Stack on the miserable teenage writing, the poorly implemented game layout, the lets write everything so there is no room for your creativity attitude and you have a really poor start. 

Then you could nitpick.

Bottom line.  New or Old WoD is sub par.  How sub is debatable, a debate that is not worth considering.  Why not play a decent game?

You can keep on repeating yourself 'til you're blue in the fingers, but that isn't going to change the fact that you are holding yourself up as having a superior position backed up by logic and thought and simultaneously refusing to explain or show how you arrived to those conclusions on the whole. You don't like WoD? That's fine by me, I don't play it either and I give people looks when they suggest that I do, I really don't want to be a romantic weregoth/vamp. But I also really don't care if they want to be one.

All I'm seeing is that you have an opinion that nWoD and oWoD suck. You have conceded the possibility that you did not give them a sufficient chance to see good points, and you have conceded - no, asserted - that proving quantification is hard:

It can so clearly be quantified that it is difficult to prove

Now, being able to clearly quantify something is not the same as being able to easily do so. If something like that is difficult to prove, it must require either a very high grasp of logic, a good knowledge of the material, or both. And it appears to be agreed all around that quantification is difficult if not impossible. Even so, you are claiming that your brief experiences are sufficient to give you incontrovertible weight to objectively state the game is 'shite'. Forgive me, but that seems suspect. Maybe it's because you refuse to elaborate. Or maybe you really are just that good, but you haven't proven your pedigree yet, so I'm going to continue to play doubting Thomas and thrust my fingers in your wounds, Yeshua.

Your complaints about their production values so far are much more strongly supported and defensible than your complaints about the mechanics.

[Josh]

In your specific case of the bell curve it was fine.  In most locales it was a different story.

WoD brought a new outlook into gaming, kinda.  Gaming as a trend was moving to more character centered play.  As opposed to classic dungeon crawls/ adventure games.  WoD came along with the spiel of "this is the dramatic game you are looking for."  The problem is it was built on a foundation of nothing. 

So frustrated, smugly superior douchebags are viciously attempting to promote the game they hold so dear.  Also their ranks were filled with non-gamers who further skewed things.

This is not my conjecture alone a number of game designers and theorists independently arrived at this conclusion, Ron Edwards most famously. 

oWoD actually almost destroyed the hobby.  It is one of the worst blights to ever strike gaming.

 
 
 
Wow... 
 
While I fully belive everyone has a right to their opinion, that statement surprised the hell out of me. I'm not going to debate it with you... because obvously your opinion on this matter is VERY strongly held, and you have no reason to give my thoughts or opinions any more validaty then your own since you don't know me. However, I'll just offer my experinces, and you can take (or not) what you will from them.
 
 
In my experince oWoD certainly did not 'almost destroy the hobby' of gaming. In fact, for me, my friends, and the area we gamed in, it empowed it. At the time I started playing oWoD I only knew about 4-5 RPG players. We playd games like Rifts, 2e D&D, Elfquest, Cyberpunk, CoC and a few others easily forgoten. One of my friends introduced my to 1st eddition Vampire and we gave it a run. WE liked it... played some of the other games and edditions, and so on.
 
As WoD got more popular... my group met more players we didn't know and absorbed them into our group, most of them also becoming friends. A lot of these players had never played D&D or the other games my core group played... so we would never have met or gamed with them if not for WoD. Then came the WoD LARP games. Again, a lot of players I mt threw LARP had never played the core games I started with... many of them had never played a TableTop RPG at all... their only gaming experince had been WoD LARP. Some of these players I met became my friends and joined my own LARP games and my tabletop games... expanding the circle. Many of them also got moved into played NON WoD games like D&D and Cyberpunk with my other Tabletop RPG friends.
 
Hell, I even met my wife at a WoD LARP game.
 
 
So instead of 'amost destroying the hobby' oWoD EXPANDED my player and friend base, provided me and many in my area with years of great gaming experince, acted as a 'gateway drug' for a metric-ASSload of players to learn other systems and play them... and made my area VERY active with gaming and gamers.
 
 
So you'll forgive me if I have a VERY hard time seeing what you are trying to say here...
 
 
 

[Josh]

I am going to assume that you lack familiarity with the basic comparisons:

Burning wheel, Dogs in the Vineyard, Shock!social science fiction, dread, savage worlds, spirit of the century...  That's a good start to bring you up to speed.  At this point of the conversation you need to see some comparisons.

I will repeat what I said earlier:

Question 1: "what do the mechanics do that is interesting and reinforces the theme of personal horror?"
Question 2: "what do the mechanics do that is interesting and storytelling play style?"

The answer to both of these questions is nothing.

Stack on the miserable teenage writing, the poorly implemented game layout, the lets write everything so there is no room for your creativity attitude and you have a really poor start. 

Then you could nitpick.

Bottom line.  New or Old WoD is sub par.  How sub is debatable, a debate that is not worth considering.  Why not play a decent game?

You can keep on repeating yourself 'til you're blue in the fingers, but that isn't going to change the fact that you are holding yourself up as having a superior position backed up by logic and thought and simultaneously refusing to explain or show how you arrived to those conclusions on the whole. You don't like WoD? That's fine by me, I don't play it either and I give people looks when they suggest that I do, I really don't want to be a romantic weregoth/vamp. But I also really don't care if they want to be one.

All I'm seeing is that you have an opinion that nWoD and oWoD suck. You have conceded the possibility that you did not give them a sufficient chance to see good points, and you have conceded - no, asserted - that proving quantification is hard:

It can so clearly be quantified that it is difficult to prove

Now, being able to clearly quantify something is not the same as being able to easily do so. If something like that is difficult to prove, it must require either a very high grasp of logic, a good knowledge of the material, or both. And it appears to be agreed all around that quantification is difficult if not impossible. Even so, you are claiming that your brief experiences are sufficient to give you incontrovertible weight to objectively state the game is 'shite'. Forgive me, but that seems suspect. Maybe it's because you refuse to elaborate. Or maybe you really are just that good, but you haven't proven your pedigree yet, so I'm going to continue to play doubting Thomas and thrust my fingers in your wounds, Yeshua.

Your complaints about their production values so far are much more strongly supported and defensible than your complaints about the mechanics.

[Zuki]

Question 1: "what do the mechanics do that is interesting and reinforces the theme of personal horror?"
Question 2: "what do the mechanics do that is interesting and storytelling play style?"

I can't speak to the older edition of World of Darkness games, but my overall impression of the newer ones is that the focus on personal horror, or whatever the particular sub-theme of splat may be, has been greatly tightened up and distanced from the trend of 'superheroes with fangs and trenchcoats' that the old World of Darkness games had a way of falling into.

One example of a newer WoD line with a very tight focus is Promethean: the Created. The general premise is that one plays a revived corpse of some sort, an abomination of nature. Essentially, you're running around as Frankenstein's monster in disguise. The proposed 'goal' of any given character is to complete a successful Pilgrimage, with a pretentious WoD Capital Letter. This is essentially a journey and process of self-enlightenment and refinement, with the end goal to be come a mortal natural being again with memories of the person you once were. Promethean is heavily influenced by old ideas about alchemical philosophy and self-refinement, and the different paths one can take on one's Pilgrimage and the associated nifty powers all reflect this.

But as a hideous abomination of nature created from a dead man's corpse, you cannot be allowed to hide away and study in peace. As Frankenstein's monster, you need to be chased out of town with riots and lynch mobs and flames. This is mechanically represented as Disquiet, the ranked from 1-10 stat that measures how pervasive the unnatural aura around you is. At low levels people may simply react with distrust and animals will run away from you or bite you. High levels of disquiet result in sudden irrational hatred and violence. Yep, there's your lynch mob. Even a reclusive Promethean that only associates with other mockeries of life is encouraged to stay on the move, wandering from place to place, because staying in any one place for too long creates a supernatural Wasteland of urban slumland, dangerous wilderness filled with feral beasts, etc.

So the overall result is a lonely existence, wandering from place to place out of either a sense of responsibility or a lack of welcome. It should also be noted that the rules for how a Promethean may complete a successful pilgrimage exist in the main splatbook and are laid out in detail, as opposed to vague ideas about how a vampire might reverse their own condition.

There are a lot of other ideas I want to comment on while I've watched this debate, but I've got to get to my doctor's appointment. I just wanted to provide a brief refutation of the idea that WoD games don't provide any mechanics that aid in genre emulation.

[AstralFire]

I am going to assume that you lack familiarity with the basic comparisons:

Burning wheel, Dogs in the Vineyard, Shock!social science fiction, dread, savage worlds, spirit of the century...  That's a good start to bring you up to speed.  At this point of the conversation you need to see some comparisons.

So, assuming I look at those games and WoD and do not see how the one is superior to the other generally, as opposed to in my specific case - what then?

That looks an awful lot like "my opinion is right and if you do not agree with me then you are wrong and that is why I am right." That's not objectivity at all.

[Shadowhowler]

In your specific case of the bell curve it was fine.  In most locales it was a different story.

WoD brought a new outlook into gaming, kinda.  Gaming as a trend was moving to more character centered play.  As opposed to classic dungeon crawls/ adventure games.  WoD came along with the spiel of "this is the dramatic game you are looking for."  The problem is it was built on a foundation of nothing. 

So frustrated, smugly superior douchebags are viciously attempting to promote the game they hold so dear.  Also their ranks were filled with non-gamers who further skewed things.

This is not my conjecture alone a number of game designers and theorists independently arrived at this conclusion, Ron Edwards most famously. 

 
 
 
Well, obvously I can not speak with any authourity on the impact of the WoD game line on the gaming world as a whole... I just don't have the experince to do so. I can only speak on what I have seen in my 18+ years as an RPG player... which is anecdotal evidence at best. None the less, I have been playing and Running RPG's for quite some time, and have played many differant RPG's from many differant sources, and with a lot of other people.
 
I certainly did see WoD bringing in a lot of 'non-gamers' as it were... if by non-gamer you mean someone who did not play RPG games before WoD. However, I didn't see that as a bad thing. It incressed the size of the RPG playing community in my area (Which, for refrence, was the Monterey Bay area in CA) drasticly. While that ment I had to endure a larger share of douchebags for sure, it also ment a larger share of decent people, a lot of which became players and friends of mine and transitioned onto other games as well.
 
I guess the problem I'm having is... nothing in what you said above explains HOW WoD almost destroyed the hobby of gaming. Since you have not explained why you belive this... and my OWN experince has been the exact opposet of that, it leaves me confused.

[Zuki]

I am going to assume that you lack familiarity with the basic comparisons:

Burning wheel, Dogs in the Vineyard, Shock!social science fiction, dread, savage worlds, spirit of the century...  That's a good start to bring you up to speed.  At this point of the conversation you need to see some comparisons.

Okay. You've listed off several games that are newer than the Storyteller system the World of Darkness uses, with (unsuprisingly) more innovative mechanics systems. What's the point you're getting at here? How are you using these games as examples, and of what?

With the exception of Dread, none of these are games centered around themes of horror, so I'm not sure how they're relevant examples to this debate. Dread is a decidedly indie sort of game with a very tight focus, but is not effective for the same broad range of (highly successful, long-running, and entertaining) campaigns and styles of play that I have seen accomplished with the (new) World of Darkness system and setting.

As I've understood it (with some difficulty), your main complaint is that the Storyteller system and World of Darkness games don't provide any mechanical structure to encourage the styles of play and games that they claim to promote. I've provided one at least example of why I think otherwise, and I'd like to go into more detail for other splats and gamelines later. But in general:

The nWoD change of providing a 'Morality' mechanic or its supernatural-splat analogue, along with the fact that the willpower resource can be restored by indulging one's vices, overall creates a game where temptation and degeneration of the individual is the principle source of 'horror'. The fast route to power and mechanical effectiveness in a nWoD game is always the morally repugnant option, in my observation.

Like Astralfire, I'm not the biggest fan of of the World of Darkness--Vampires sulking about in nightclubs bore me to tears. However, my experience with World of Darkness games suggests that they are perfectly capable of conveying stories of horror, personal temptation, and intrigue, and that the mechanics of the system are part of that.

[Zeke]

The games arent centered around horror, theyjust have mechanics that renforce the themes of the game. NWoD doesn't have mechanics that do much of anything. The humanity mechanic had a shot at doing that, but it was poorly esecuted.

[Josh]

The problem here is that I can't talk to you about what good games do, if you have no frame of reference. 

You can either learn about good games or you can believe my judgment.  I encourage you not to believe me and learn for yourself.

[Josh]

How do the mechanics affect play?  I am a monster what do I roll to further my goals or to reduce my weaknesses?
What do you do in play?  What kind of game do I play?
How does more than one person play?
Is the drama the adventure(like burning wheel) or is the drama an "excuse" to adventure(like DnD)?

Question 1: "what do the mechanics do that is interesting and reinforces the theme of personal horror?"
Question 2: "what do the mechanics do that is interesting and storytelling play style?"

I can't speak to the older edition of World of Darkness games, but my overall impression of the newer ones is that the focus on personal horror, or whatever the particular sub-theme of splat may be, has been greatly tightened up and distanced from the trend of 'superheroes with fangs and trenchcoats' that the old World of Darkness games had a way of falling into.

One example of a newer WoD line with a very tight focus is Promethean: the Created. The general premise is that one plays a revived corpse of some sort, an abomination of nature. Essentially, you're running around as Frankenstein's monster in disguise. The proposed 'goal' of any given character is to complete a successful Pilgrimage, with a pretentious WoD Capital Letter. This is essentially a journey and process of self-enlightenment and refinement, with the end goal to be come a mortal natural being again with memories of the person you once were. Promethean is heavily influenced by old ideas about alchemical philosophy and self-refinement, and the different paths one can take on one's Pilgrimage and the associated nifty powers all reflect this.

But as a hideous abomination of nature created from a dead man's corpse, you cannot be allowed to hide away and study in peace. As Frankenstein's monster, you need to be chased out of town with riots and lynch mobs and flames. This is mechanically represented as Disquiet, the ranked from 1-10 stat that measures how pervasive the unnatural aura around you is. At low levels people may simply react with distrust and animals will run away from you or bite you. High levels of disquiet result in sudden irrational hatred and violence. Yep, there's your lynch mob. Even a reclusive Promethean that only associates with other mockeries of life is encouraged to stay on the move, wandering from place to place, because staying in any one place for too long creates a supernatural Wasteland of urban slumland, dangerous wilderness filled with feral beasts, etc.

So the overall result is a lonely existence, wandering from place to place out of either a sense of responsibility or a lack of welcome. It should also be noted that the rules for how a Promethean may complete a successful pilgrimage exist in the main splatbook and are laid out in detail, as opposed to vague ideas about how a vampire might reverse their own condition.

There are a lot of other ideas I want to comment on while I've watched this debate, but I've got to get to my doctor's appointment. I just wanted to provide a brief refutation of the idea that WoD games don't provide any mechanics that aid in genre emulation.

[AstralFire]

The problem here is that I can't talk to you about what good games do, if you have no frame of reference. 

You can either learn about good games or you can believe my judgment.  I encourage you not to believe me and learn for yourself.

Trust me, I'm not going to just sit down and believe what someone tells me. I should hope this line of questioning had already proved that.

I've done my research on mechanics and I've come up with a fair amount of them myself. My current knowledge does not in any way preclude you explaining - I have the ability to understand new mechanics and determine their benefits and weaknesses - it helps that I've hardly forgotten my math, either.

The only difference between a ruleset and individual mechanics is synergy... an important part of game balance and flow, but I think we can agree there are very few instances where bad mechanics synergize to something good. So my lack of familiarity with those rulesets as whole entities isn't really an issue, not as long as we can bring out independent 'good' mechanics which completely trump n/oWoD - but you're going to have to also compare those to their analogous partners in n/oWoD.

So stop stalling and bring out proof, you're not talking to just me, this is for the whole thread and all its participants if you want it to have accomplished anything beyond you shaking your stick and grumping at those damn self-absorbed goths. You've provided less information than some customer reviews on Amazon. If you want to move game design from art to science, act scientific.

[Shadowhowler]

The problem here is that I can't talk to you about what good games do, if you have no frame of reference. 

You can either learn about good games or you can believe my judgment.  I encourage you not to believe me and learn for yourself.

 
 
Hm.
 
Well, I'd like to think 18 years of playing and running RPG's with groups as small as one-on-one and as large as over 100, and with systems as varried as CoC and D&D to Cyberpunk and Gurps, gives me a 'frame of refrence' as to what is a good game and a bad game. However. I belive you and I have differant philosophies in that I think about 75% of what makes a game good or bad is somewhat subjective.
 
I can look over a game and say the mechanics for it are clunky, poorly devised, and just plain bad. However... someone eles might have a great time with the very same game. I've had many arguments of this nature regarding Rifts and other Paladium games... which *I* belive have an AWEFULL system... but I was able to have a lot of fun playing Rifts anyway, dispite the horrbile mechanics, because the players I played with were so good. However, I have spoken with people who think the system for Rifts was actauly good. I don't belive so, but to each their own.
 
I suspect you and I would dissagree one what makes a 'good game' in the first place... the only differance would be *I* would think we just have a differance of taste and opinion... were I suspect YOU would think I'm just flat out wrong and don't know what a good game is.
 
After 18 years... I've learned what are good and bad games for ME. 

[Josh]

The problem here is that I can't talk to you about what good games do, if you have no frame of reference. 

You can either learn about good games or you can believe my judgment.  I encourage you not to believe me and learn for yourself.

 
 
Hm.
 
Well, I'd like to think 18 years of playing and running RPG's with groups as small as one-on-one and as large as over 100, and with systems as varried as CoC and D&D to Cyberpunk and Gurps, gives me a 'frame of refrence' as to what is a good game and a bad game. However. I belive you and I have differant philosophies in that I think about 75% of what makes a game good or bad is somewhat subjective.
 
I can look over a game and say the mechanics for it are clunky, poorly devised, and just plain bad. However... someone eles might have a great time with the very same game. I've had many arguments of this nature regarding Rifts and other Paladium games... which *I* belive have an AWEFULL system... but I was able to have a lot of fun playing Rifts anyway, dispite the horrbile mechanics, because the players I played with were so good. However, I have spoken with people who think the system for Rifts was actauly good. I don't belive so, but to each their own.
 
I suspect you and I would dissagree one what makes a 'good game' in the first place... the only differance would be *I* would think we just have a differance of taste and opinion... were I suspect YOU would think I'm just flat out wrong and don't know what a good game is.
 
After 18 years... I've learned what are good and bad games for ME. 

Spoken like a person who has never seen a good game. 

You take the blue pill - the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill - you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes.

It's as simple as that. 

[Shadowhowler]

Spoken like a person who has never seen a good game. 

You take the blue pill - the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill - you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes.

It's as simple as that. 

 
 
Err...   
 
 
I don't even know what to say. That you could so easily assume that in all the time I've been Running/Playing RPG's I've never seen a 'good game' because my viwes differ from yours astounds me... as dose your confidence in the unwavering, indisputable right-ness of your opinions. Since this is your 'home' so to speak, I guess I'll just wave the white flag and drop it.