Rehabbing WoD, but keeping it's spirit

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sat Nov 22, 2014 9:28 am

Mask_De_H wrote:So if you were starting from Masquerade, what would be the cosmology you kept? Shade worlds, the Underworld, what else? And more importantly, what would differentiate this from After Sundown outside of the IP scrubbing?

The lack of IP scrubbing is a big deal actually, but beyond that there are some serious differences. Using vampire cosmology, you have four external worlds: Inferno, Arcadia, the Land of the Dead, and the Astral Plane. That looks a lot like Limbo, Maya, Mictlan, and the Shallows - but since you aren't trying to do Silent Hill or Jumanji there are no Shallows connected to Arcadia or Hell. Also, while the Land of the Dead is fully coterminus with Earth and has an intermediate Astral Plane and thus works almost the same as an After Sundown Nightmare World (the major difference being that Earth-side walls are visible but insubstantial on Vampire's Astral), the Demon World and Faerieland are not. A gateway to Hell goes to the whichever part of the Inferno it goes to, regardless of where you are on Earth.

The next big shift is the War of Ages. I opted to purge it from After Sundown because I didn't care about it, but if you're rebooting specifically World of Darkness it is front and center and you have to get people to care. That means that there are Methuselah, Ancillae, and Neonates and their are conflicts between the generations in addition to conflicts within cohorts. White Wolf never made that believable, but a reboot could. It goes like this: we're using nWoD Blood Potency, so you need to drink more powerful blood when your Blood Potency gets high enough. Specifically, vampires in the Ancilla range can only get sustenance from humans if they kill them to drink the heart's blood (a practice which has a chance of creating an unintended vampire a few days later) and if they want to non-fatally feed they need the vitae of lesser vampires. Methuselah can't get sustenance from humans at all, and even neonate vampires can only sustain them when diablerized. If a Methuselah wants to non-fatally feed, they need to drink the vitae of one of the Ancillae.

So vampirism is a worldwide pyramid scheme where elders need younger vampires to recruit even younger vampires so the even younger vampires can feed from humans, the younger vampires can feed from the even younger vampires, and the elder vampires can feed from the younger vampires. And there's basically nothing in it for the vampires sending vitae up the chain, so there's generational conflict. The Ancillae would like there to be less Methuselahs and more Neonates. The Neonates would like there to be less Ancillae, but not enough less Ancillae that the Methuselahs start running around murdering neonates like Queen of the fucking Damned.

And all the sects are set up to figure out means to deal with this problem. In the Camarilla, Ancilae are allowed to just point at Neonates and drink from them so long as they don't murder anyone or send their victims into feeding frenzy. In the Ashirra and Giovanni, every neonate is required to tithe a certain amount of vitae to the common fund every year, but it doesn't have to be theirs so there's a thriving blood economy where neonates trade vitae vials back and forth for favors and take mercenary work outside the sect for vitae payments. In the Kuei-Jin every neonate has a filial duty to give vitae to their clan elders every month. In the Laibon there is an established pecking order and each Ancilla has specific neonates they are allowed to feed from. In the Sabbat, the elders have no right to your blood save what they bargain for or take by force (and the neonates band together in packs to improve their bargaining positions or defend themselves).

Meanwhile, these systems don't really create enough blood sources for everyone who is going to become a Methuselah. It takes way too long for a neonate to become an Ancilla for there to be any kind of food security there. So the Methuselah either take turns sleeping away the centuries like in the original Underworld movies or fight to the death highlander style. And above it all, the clan founders are generally believed to have higher blood potency still, and it seems plausible that the Antedeluvians can only gain sustenance from Ancillae by devouring their heart's blood and vampiric society is preparing for a blood bath.

This is all fairly cosmologically big. There are no Leviathans at all in oWoD of course, but fitting Werewolves and Wizards and Fairies into this system isn't especially simple. Obviously, supernatural creature blood counts as at least the potency of a neonate vampire, so a Werewolf automatically has something in common with a neonate vampire: a common enemy in the form of Ancillae vampires. But everything that you introduce for Werewolves or Fairies has to fit into that model. The Seelie Court has to care about the War of Ages and participate in it somehow. It's not trivial to design. The Wizards and the Werewolves aren't immortal, so they can just stay Neonate flavored their whole lives, but the Demons and Fairies are and are going to want some sort of reason to make common cause with Ancillae and Methuselah at times.

-Username17

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Sat Nov 22, 2014 9:38 am

Frank, could you weigh in on WtA renown so I know if I remember correctly/got a legitimate run of it when I played?

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sat Nov 22, 2014 10:54 am

Unless there's some crazy optional system I don't know about, that's like a million extra steps. The Storyteller hands out temporary renown points in the three categories when you do shit the Storyteller thinks warrants them. There's an optional system where you write down cool shit you did and do renown accounting at the end of the session, but experienced Storytellers are told to hand out temporary renown at the moment characters do cool things like they were handing out AD&D roleplaying XP. Temporary Renown gets handed out like it was candy. You get 2 points of tempWisdom just for giving good advice, and the entire pack gets 3 points of tempGlory every time they overcome an average threat (which they will do several times a session). You can also lose temp renown for all kinds of shit, but even if you break laws left right and center you should still gain tempRenown faster than you lose it (while you gain 3 tempGlory for winning an average fight, the pack loses 3 tempGlory if their entire Caern gets overrun by the Wyrm - that's a pretty big discrepancy). The big Fuck You is that when you cash in for permanent Renown points, you empty your tempRenown track and if you lose any tempRenown at that point you lose an actual point of PermRenown because go fuck yourself.

Anyway, cashing in tempRenown to permanentRenown involves going to a moot and cashing in if you have at least 10 points in tempRenown. And you get 1 permRenown no matter how much you cash in. Thus, while you can gain up to three total Renown in a Moot, you can't gain more than 1 Renown in each category. This makes advancement really weird. Philodox are the only auspice that can advance to Rank 2 in only one Moot, but Theurges are the only ones who can advance to Rank 5 in only seven Moots. Ragabash need more total renown than other auspices to go up in rank but that basically means dick diddly because if you want to gain renown in multiple categories you just do.

Now here's the fuckery: to actually cash in for permanent renown, you need to meet up with a Rank 5 Werewolf who will perform the rite. The right is shit simple and basically won't ever fail (it's difficulty 4 and is being rolled by a rank 5 elder). And to go up in rank, you need to complete a task of the Storyteller's Elder's choosing. So here you're basically 100% at the mercy of the Storyteller. If the Storyteller decides that you should have to do a one on one fight against a rank 5 Elder before you can go up in rank, you probably aren't going up in rank ever. On the flip side, one of the examples in the book is "go fetch a thing, that is hidden in the basement!" that just takes some time and has no real chance of failure.

Galliards aren't really part of this process. Like, at all. The Elder is the one who recites your list of accomplishments, not your pack mates.

-Username17

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Sat Nov 22, 2014 11:11 am

And now I'm glad I asked.

Yeah, our ST was a shit WW ST. At one point he got tired of us using the umbra to solve problems so he just started saying we couldn't step sideways. At all. Some magic prevented it, we'd have to make due without being able to ignore walls that weren't five years old or older. Then he decided to do a "Play whatever you want, but not really because I don't want to read all that shit, so pick between vampires and any changing breed Haha just kidding about the vampires, your's was a pain in the ass, so now he's in torpor, pick a changing breed. HAHA, just kidding, I don't care enough to look in the damned book for your breed's rules, so you're just a funny looking werewolf."

This was also the guy who houseruled in D&D that rogues can only SA in a flank if the target isn't looking at them. So basically you get a single SA when you enter a flank, then they just focus on you because you're built competently and do more damage than the fighter, and there goes your main ability.

...fuck that guy...

Grek · Post by **Grek** » Sat Nov 22, 2014 2:44 pm

With the War of Ages, what is the benefit to being a Methuselah or Ancillae? Does it make you stronger as a vampire? If so, how do you justify a mixed generation party? If not, why would anyone want to stop being a Neonate?

Whipstitch · Post by **Whipstitch** » Sat Nov 22, 2014 4:29 pm

Given the history of the franchise it seems a safe bet that more potency makes you more potent. I'm also betting that high potency is something that is thrust upon characters with age and with the exception of diablerie you do not have opportunities to decide whether you want to remain a neonate or claim a seat at the big boy's table. So vampire society survives in part because relatively few vampires sincerely want to make Logan's Run an official long term policy since someday, Cain willing, they too will turn 300.

As far as mixed generations go, I would first like to point out that letting people take more or less mojo at character creation was always a bad idea. Secondly, it's probably for the best if Methuselahs cannot easily crank out vampires with Ancillae level blood potency, since that gives them more incentive to play nice and let younger vampires age like a fine bottle of wine rather than just promise random shmucks immortality. So while generation can probably influence blood potency to some small degree I suspect that the prestige of being low generation is related more to the fact that such vampires tend to be very old or at least have very old sires as allies rather than necessarily having super charged blood. It de-emphasizes the importance of generation somewhat, but that's not all bad--this way you can have sects with vastly different opinions on the importance of good breeding and have neither side be completely wrong.

So basically, I imagine a setup with Methuselah, Ancillae and Neonate tiers, and there's levels of blood potency within each tier. Everyone in the party should be of the same blood potency to start out, but whether you got there through being old, having a powerful sire or diablerizing someone should be up to the player.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sat Nov 22, 2014 5:14 pm

Grek wrote:With the War of Ages, what is the benefit to being a Methuselah or Ancillae? Does it make you stronger as a vampire? If so, how do you justify a mixed generation party? If not, why would anyone want to stop being a Neonate?

In the blood potency model, having a higher blood potency is something you get for living for a long ass time or diablerizing a more powerful vampire. Having a higher blood potency gives you higher stat maximums and a bigger power reserve.

So normally, you wouldn't have a mixed blood potency party. In the actual nWoD of course, you could buy blood potency with XP because nWoD always strove for that perfect "worst of both worlds" thing on every thing. And blood potency is a thing, so that is what they went with. But ideally you'd have blood potency that only went up for diablerizing a powerful opponent (at least, on the time scale that a game is likely to be played).

Ascending to Ancilla status makes things really hard on you in a lot of ways. You can't safely feed off humans anymore, so you need to have a system where minions who are themselves supernatural creatures kick blood up to you. But you also have elder powers and elder status and an enhanced attribute cap and shit. You're playing a whole different game where you have basic vampire coteries, lycanthrope packs, and witch covens as your herd. Most games would not involve any of the PCs becoming Ancillae, the Ancillae would be big penis NPC quest givers and boss monsters. The fact that they also have a group of higher tier Methuselahs to keep happy is part of what makes the Vampire setting the whole "eternal struggle" deal.

-Username17

Whipstitch · Post by **Whipstitch** » Sat Nov 22, 2014 6:27 pm

One thing I like about this sort of setup is that it helps explain why busy body vampire clans bother with mortal social status when ostensibly they can get the ultimate high just by staggering around town and biting the occasional clubber. Power for power's sake is always a good explanation, but I think it's fun to imagine that Ventrue ancillae are grim-faced Weyland-Yutani assholes primarily because they can funnel that wealth towards providing ridiculous Wolf of Wall Street lifestyles to their layabout childer and their stupid friends in exchange for having a constant ready supply of vitae.

endersdouble · Post by **endersdouble** » Sun Nov 30, 2014 6:14 am

This blood pyramid requirement means we'd probably have to entirely drop the idea of blood bonding (at least for Kindred)--it'd be way too complicated if Ancillae keep records and rotate between neonates, never drinking from the same twice, and way too broken if all the elders "in charge" are hopelessly devoted to younger, weaker boytoys.

Not the end of the world--blood bonding's hardly the most important mechanic in V:tM--but it was interesting and had major plot/setting consequences and it's important to remember that we're trashing it.

Chamomile · Post by **Chamomile** » Sun Nov 30, 2014 7:13 am

Alternative solution: You can only bloodbind vampires who are your peers or lesser.

Mistborn · Post by **Mistborn** » Sun Nov 30, 2014 1:21 pm

So basically Vampirism is a multi-level marketing scheme?

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sun Nov 30, 2014 2:05 pm

Vampirism is a multilevel marketing scheme, but it's more like drug dealing than any of the Mormon scams. The higher ups give you fabulous highs and military backup right from the start, and only start calling in favors and draining you later on.

So you never get stiffed with hundreds of dollars of startup costs. To carry the analogy, you get your initial product for free, and the people higher up take a larger and larger share of your earnings once you and your clients are hooked.

You're selling smack, not cleaning products.

-Username17

angelfromanotherpin · Post by **angelfromanotherpin** » Tue Dec 02, 2014 2:30 am

My thought is that if you're subordinating the rest of the WoD to Vampire, you could save a lot of conceptual space by doing it more or less literally; make all the other supernatural types ghoul variants. A Lupine is a ghoul who picked up some Protean from their patron's blood, and a Sorcerer is a ghoul who got some Thaumaturgy from theirs. If you have 13 Clans and they all have a signature discipline that their ghouls can manifest, that could cover quite a bit of territory.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Mon Jan 05, 2015 11:38 pm

This is changing the subject, like, a lot but it's been the biggest bone in the bone of WoD since forever and we might as well bring it up now.

From the L5R: 3rd Edition Thread:

FrankTrollman wrote:Imagine for the moment that you have an Imperial Exams system like you were China. The Governor is a member of the Carp Clan, and he's governor because he did very well in his exams. The grain logistics magistrate is a member of the Wolf Clan, and he's a magistrate because he did almost as well in his exams - or maybe even just as well and magistrate was the highest available post that cycle. The governor brings in a bunch of Carp Clan people and appoints them to various offices where possible, and the Wolf Clan magistrate brings in a bunch of Wolf Clan people and appoints them to various positions. But when it comes to the governor needing adventurers, there are both Carp Clan and Wolf Clan people who are in his chain of command. The Wolf Clan Samurai is here because his father was brought in to oversee grain shipments, but he's still here and the governor he owes fealty to happens to be from the Carp Clan.

Alternately, imagine for the moment that each of the Clans has some industries that they monopolize by controlling relevant chartered guilds. So if you want tea, you have to go through the Rat Clan one way or another. Naturally, there are tea merchant outposts in every province. Even the provinces where tea is not grown, tea is still consumed. So the Rat Clan maintains houses in those provinces which oversee the transport and selling of tea. And if you're a Samurai of the Rat Clan, you may end up living anywhere there is a Rat Clan House (which is to say: anywhere in the Empire). But if the call for adventure is given out by the local Daimyo, you still have to answer it because you are living in their land and owe them fealty. The Daimyo may be a member of the Turtle Clan, who got rich off of rice wine futures, but he's still your Daimyo and if he commands you to go fight the Penanngalan, you'll have to do that.

And so on and so on. It would actually be really weird for every family to be the only set of nobles in a province.

So this got me thinking.

Everyone knows that the biggest problem of World of Darkness is how it's devillishly hard to get intra-monster splats to have a reason to team up/go in conflict with each other and it's practically impossible to have cross-splat cooperation and conflict that isn't 'kill on sight' or 'team up long enough to stave off oblivion'.

So what if we got rid of the idea that vampires only answer to vampires, werewolves only answer to werewolves, and that clans had a reason to defer and even bend the knee to other clans without explicitly being threatened with extermination? I know that in L5R this is enforced with every clan being nominally loyal to the emperor and daimyo, but is there any reason why WoD can't like have a small council of supermonsters at the top of the Masquerade who don't really give a shit that their peers or underlings are different species even if people down the social hierarchy really really do care? It'd be weird, but there's precedent for it; sexist Victorian generals and captains of industry chafed like crazy at female equality but didn't mind pledging their allegiance to and taking orders from a queen. It'd also help to tamp down on splat jealousy at vampire supremacy -- even though mummies and werewolves work for, with, and rely on vampire subordinates because they're the Top Dog species they get to maintain their cognitive dissonance because all of their bosses are nominally headed by some super-werewolf or super-demon.

ED: It'd sort of be like the vampire pyramid scheme Frank mentioned upstream, but it wouldn't be specific to vampires. And of course you still have to provide the carrot of letting a non-vampire rise to the top.

Dean · Post by **Dean** » Tue Jan 06, 2015 12:16 am

"Prince" being a title that is not species dependent is the simplest way to do this and probably is a really good idea. If you're somewhere that matters there is someone who has a lot of power centered there and that person is called the "Prince". Its best for everyone to have some authority who keeps things from being totally lawless so every city has a Prince no matter was species of monster it is. Even if the local Werewolf prince isn't crazy about vampires its still better for him to just lightly oppress them rather than try to murder them because that's shitting where he eats.

Blicero · Post by **Blicero** » Tue Jan 06, 2015 12:26 am

Lago: You realize that After Sundown is a thing, right? It does exactly what you are suggesting. There is no reason you need to make your suggestion as if it is a novel idea.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Tue Jan 06, 2015 12:45 am

Blicero wrote:You realize that After Sundown is a thing, right?

No. I mean, I know it exists, but I haven't read any of it and I don't have any desire to read any of it until I see some evidence of it being a thing outside TGD. This is why this thread exists, after all, because World of Darkness is actually a thing.

Josh_Kablack · Post by **Josh_Kablack** » Tue Jan 06, 2015 1:05 am

Lago PARANOIA wrote:it until I see some evidence of it being a thing outside TGD. .

Counterpoint: I have seen no evidence that you are a thing outside of TGD.

TheFlatline · Post by **TheFlatline** » Tue Jan 06, 2015 2:08 am

Lago PARANOIA wrote:This is changing the subject, like, a lot but it's been the biggest bone in the bone of WoD since forever and we might as well bring it up now.

From the L5R: 3rd Edition Thread:
FrankTrollman wrote:Imagine for the moment that you have an Imperial Exams system like you were China. The Governor is a member of the Carp Clan, and he's governor because he did very well in his exams. The grain logistics magistrate is a member of the Wolf Clan, and he's a magistrate because he did almost as well in his exams - or maybe even just as well and magistrate was the highest available post that cycle. The governor brings in a bunch of Carp Clan people and appoints them to various offices where possible, and the Wolf Clan magistrate brings in a bunch of Wolf Clan people and appoints them to various positions. But when it comes to the governor needing adventurers, there are both Carp Clan and Wolf Clan people who are in his chain of command. The Wolf Clan Samurai is here because his father was brought in to oversee grain shipments, but he's still here and the governor he owes fealty to happens to be from the Carp Clan.

Alternately, imagine for the moment that each of the Clans has some industries that they monopolize by controlling relevant chartered guilds. So if you want tea, you have to go through the Rat Clan one way or another. Naturally, there are tea merchant outposts in every province. Even the provinces where tea is not grown, tea is still consumed. So the Rat Clan maintains houses in those provinces which oversee the transport and selling of tea. And if you're a Samurai of the Rat Clan, you may end up living anywhere there is a Rat Clan House (which is to say: anywhere in the Empire). But if the call for adventure is given out by the local Daimyo, you still have to answer it because you are living in their land and owe them fealty. The Daimyo may be a member of the Turtle Clan, who got rich off of rice wine futures, but he's still your Daimyo and if he commands you to go fight the Penanngalan, you'll have to do that.

And so on and so on. It would actually be really weird for every family to be the only set of nobles in a province.
So this got me thinking.

Everyone knows that the biggest problem of World of Darkness is how it's devillishly hard to get intra-monster splats to have a reason to team up/go in conflict with each other and it's practically impossible to have cross-splat cooperation and conflict that isn't 'kill on sight' or 'team up long enough to stave off oblivion'.

So what if we got rid of the idea that vampires only answer to vampires, werewolves only answer to werewolves, and that clans had a reason to defer and even bend the knee to other clans without explicitly being threatened with extermination?

The hengeyokai splat book does this in (typical) bad WW fashion. It focuses on the shape shifters, who in normal Werewolf won't even talk to each other, but in Asia not only do they talk to each other they'll work with each other.

But in order to do that you have to do an Avengers Assemble! thing and become I think it's called a wave sentai or something like that. It's not a new idea.

Blicero · Post by **Blicero** » Tue Jan 06, 2015 2:11 am

Lago: here it is being mentioned on rpg.net
http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?651 ... o-I-get-it
http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?577 ... tasy-Games

Here it is being mentioned at paizo
http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2mi8q?After-Sundown-RPG

Its market penetration is obviously tiny, but it is nonzero. But this is beside the point. It is an attempt to fix the world of darkness. It is not the only way to fix WoD, but it is a complete and reasonably playable attempt that solves a lot of the problems of WoD, including the one you just mentioned. If you are trying to fix WoD, you could do a lot worse than by reading After Sundown and asking yourself "okay, which of these changes do I want to keep, and which do I not want to keep." This is basically what Prak started to do.

hyzmarca · Post by **hyzmarca** » Sat Apr 18, 2015 12:22 am

FrankTrollman wrote:What's above it? Demon? Mummy? Immortals? Street Fighter?

I'm looking at this, and I'm thinking that, if I were doing a fan-made oWOD revival without any regard to copyright, Street Fighter would be one of the core splats. It actually sort of fits in a perverse way.

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Sat Apr 18, 2015 7:37 am

hyzmarca wrote:
FrankTrollman wrote:What's above it? Demon? Mummy? Immortals? Street Fighter?
I'm looking at this, and I'm thinking that, if I were doing a fan-made oWOD revival without any regard to copyright, Street Fighter would be one of the core splats. It actually sort of fits in a perverse way.

Mix both and you have darkstalkers

hyzmarca · Post by **hyzmarca** » Sat Apr 18, 2015 5:38 pm

OgreBattle wrote:
hyzmarca wrote:
FrankTrollman wrote:What's above it? Demon? Mummy? Immortals? Street Fighter?
I'm looking at this, and I'm thinking that, if I were doing a fan-made oWOD revival without any regard to copyright, Street Fighter would be one of the core splats. It actually sort of fits in a perverse way.
Mix both and you have darkstalkers

Oh, of course. The Makai and its politics would be central to World of Darkness vs Capcom: New Age of Horror.

The year is 201X, and most humans are content in their sedentary lives. Robots provide for their every need . The This development serves the goals of both the Technocratic Union and the Camarilla Elders, who support the status quo for entirely different reasons.

Meanwhile, in Southeast Asia, the psychic crime lord known only as Bison is gathering the greatest fighters in the world for a Tournament to determine wo is the best, but there is a sinister plot hidden within this competition and Bison's goals are nothing less than world domination.

The Garou are divided between those who seek to defend Gaia from human industry no matter the cost, those who feel that technology and nature can coexist, and those who seek to replace overthrow Gaia and replace her with a manmade spirit formed by the interconnection of computer technology.

And in the Makai, Queen Morgan Aensland defends her throne from those who seek to usurp it, chief among them the powerful Kindred, Dimitri Maximoff.

Primary Splats would be Vampire, Werewolf, Martial Artist, and Hunter.
Secondary splats would be Mage, Succubus, Wraith, Robot.
Tertiary splats would be Yeti, Merman, Zombie, Alien, Mummy, Catgirl, Beegirl, [Animal]girl, God, Half-demon and T-Virus Mutant.
We might want to consolidate some of those.

The Makai repalces all of oWOD's alternate worlds. It's where demons and fairies and all the never-were-human monsters come from (except space-aliens), and it's where human souls go when they die (assuming that they don't reincarnate). Christian theology may or may not be true, but there isn't any demon old enough to remember the beginning, anyway, so it doesn't matter. Demons are just as in the dark about the nature of god and the universe as everyone else

There are three major political balls. Human society, Gaia/Galatia, and the Makai Throne. All the factions have reason to play in all three courts.
Political questions like "should be break the Masquarade or preserve it" cut across all splats and thus like-minded characters have a reason to work together no matter what they are.

Likewise, each of the major factions contains members of other splats, even if they're only token. Vampire and Werewolf technograts both exist. So does Mage Camarilla.

Consensual reality is out. Reality is real. The Technocrats and the Traditions are still at odds with one another, though, and their motives remain mostly the same.

Robots are three-laws compliant, except the ones that aren't. Dr. Light and Dr. Wiley are both technocrats but are part of different factions.

Hunters range from Reckoning style crazy chosen ones to pure profiteers who sell vampire teeth to old Chinese guys who make magical viagra pills out of them.

The nature of the Masquerade is different. If it were just a matter of hiding the existance of monsters, it would be trivially easy to break. The public knows that monsters and super-powered martial artists exist. What they don't know is how deep the rabbit hole goes. The Masquarade isn't about making people think that vampires don't exist. It's about making people think that Barack Obama isn't one. It's about hiding how much of their lives is manuipulated by the supernatural behind the scenes, and about individual monsters keeping in the closet, as it were.

endersdouble wrote: This blood pyramid requirement means we'd probably have to entirely drop the idea of blood bonding (at least for Kindred)--it'd be way too complicated if Ancillae keep records and rotate between neonates, never drinking from the same twice, and way too broken if all the elders "in charge" are hopelessly devoted to younger, weaker boytoys.

Not the end of the world--blood bonding's hardly the most important mechanic in V:tM--but it was interesting and had major plot/setting consequences and it's important to remember that we're trashing it.

I don't think it's broken. It just means that Golddigging Twink is a viable character choice, and you have backstabbing between the younger generation for the favor of the older.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sat Apr 18, 2015 7:38 pm

hyzmarca wrote:Primary Splats would be Vampire, Werewolf, Martial Artist, and Hunter.
Secondary splats would be Mage, Succubus, Wraith, Robot.
Tertiary splats would be Yeti, Merman, Zombie, Alien, Mummy, Catgirl, Beegirl, [Animal]girl, God, Half-demon and T-Virus Mutant.
We might want to consolidate some of those.

First off, I have to say that White Wolf vs. CapCom is an awesome idea and I wish it was actually possible for the web of IP rights to be untangled sufficiently for it to be "official" in any way.

But yeah, I don't think you are doing yourself a great service by splitting up splats that finely. Martial Artists and Hunters are exactly the same thing, and shouldn't be treated differently. Chris Redfield == Cammy. Further, you should get your mashup from the standpoint of having already mashed up the CapCom and White Wolf side of the equation. So since the Avatar War doesn't play nicely with the other things in White Wolf, it gets tossed before we start trying to hybridize things.

So the first thing you're going to have to get around from the CapCom angle is how a bunch of the characters are set in the past, a bunch of them are set in the present, and a bunch of them are set in the future. I don't think it's super hard to claim that MegaMan's future is somehow the same 2348 as the plasma sword wielding galaxy gladiator Hayato Kanzaki lives in, but both of them really obviously don't live in the same time period as Guile or Zangief - while Jill Valentine very plausibly could. Meanwhile, Amaterasu is very specifically an ancient spirit wolf from the Makai Kingdoms, and has no particular use for or knowledge of modern tech. You could split people up into Luddite, Technocracy, and Balance factions, I think that would be a classic White Wolf mistake. Because obviously you are going to want parties that have Megaman and Morrigan in them. Because obviously.

I think the best way to handle this is with the entire plot being about controlling the future, and having various possible horrible futures be visitable and have characters from the horrible futures be playable. The magic world is just the magic world, and the tech there is all pre-industrial because it's full of demons and fairies and shit. So every character has to choose whether they are from the modern human world, the Makai Kingdoms, or one of the doomed futures. This choice applies to "White Wolfish" splats as well, and is so much better than the threefold parentage of "Mother raped dogs," "Incest baby," or "Other."

Anyway, the big deal from White Wolf is the whole secrecy angle, so you keep that. The Masquerade stays because no one has found a future where the Masquerade got broken that didn't end terribly. Even characters who think it's stupid or unjust, or who would stand to make a shit tonne of money or gain a fuck tonne of power from breaking the masquerade tread lightly on it because they have no idea how to do that without the dominoes falling out in a horrible way. The second big thing is the "War of Ages" where you hate and fear and depend upon the powerful elders while trying to bring yourself up the ladder so you can sexually harass underlings of your own. That's going to be universalized to all splats. There's a pyramid scheme you have to get in on if you want to control the future (like Feng Shui in that regard, but it's other supernaturals rather than specific areas). And there's a thing not unlike Diablerie, but if you ritually murder a dude after a fair fight it works way better.

Anyway, splats are:

Vampire.
Shapechanger. Includes Werewolves, but also catgirls and shit.
Demons. Includes half-demons like Dante and dudes like Akuma and whatever. Also Fairies are Demons now, because it's all Makai anyway and who cares?
Hunters. Includes martial artists.
Mages. Basically like Sorcerers from White Wolf or Witches from After Sundown. Definitely also does crazy Dhalsim shit.
Risen. Subsplats include Wraith, Zombie, and Mummy.
Promethean. Subsplats include Robots and Frankensteins.
Cryptids. Includes Leviathans, Yetis, and Mothman.

I have no idea what to do about Amaterasu. She is pretty classically a thing that wouldn't be playable in a game.

-Username17

shau · Post by **shau** » Sat Apr 18, 2015 7:58 pm

FrankTrollman wrote: I have no idea what to do about Amaterasu. She is pretty classically a thing that wouldn't be playable in a game.

Couldn't you do like a Neil Gaiman American Gods thing? Angsty immortal deities who have lost most of their power and are trying to survive in a society that does not need them or want them. I'm actually kinda surprised there is not already a WoD product trying to capitalize on that.