What is the biggest debacle of RPG history?

[Prak]

Link from earlier in the thread

What the hell is RaHoWa?

You Asked. [pdf, NSFW, Not Acceptable Anywhere]

-Username17

[Fucks]

White Wolf doesn't print things anymore. There are still pdfs made up of things in White Wolf properties from time to time, and you can still buy them or get those pdfs printed on demand, but the company doesn't make physical products anymore. Hasn't since people took Rick Perry seriously as a candidate for president.

I totally dig your hatred of PDFs.

[sabs]

WhiteWolf exists.. because the guys who wrote Eve Online bought it so Whitewolf would stop shitting on it's own IP and destroying the market place for the Vampire The Masquerade MMO they are writing. (That's right.. owod mmo)

They're kinda sorta maintaining access to OWOD stuff and doing the 20th anniversary stuff just on that premise alone. But basically Whitewolf is now an IP shell company for Eve Online.

[Wiseman]

What the hell is RaHoWa?

You Asked. [pdf, NSFW, Not Acceptable Anywhere]

-Username17

I'm reading this, and I'm having a hard time taking this seriously. Are you sure this isn't some sort of joke?

[Whipstitch]

Well, it certainly should be a joke.

[Username17]

Well, it certainly should be a joke.

However, I can assure you, it is not.

Originally founded by Ben Klassen in 1973 as Church of the Creator, the organization fell into disarray in the mid-1990s following the criminal convictions of several of its members, the suicide of Klassen in 1993 and a successful lawsuit brought by the family of a Gulf War veteran murdered in 1991 by a COTC member. In 1996, COTC was reborn as WCOTC with the emergence of the young law school graduate Matt Hale as its leader. Hale's publicity skills, his unsuccessful battle to obtain his law license in Illinois, and a two-state shooting spree by follower Benjamin Smith in July 1999 that left two dead and nine wounded, all kept the WCOTC in the headlines in recent years.

As far as I know, the worst thing the FATAL authors ever did was to tell fart jokes, rape jokes, and dead baby jokes in such poor taste that we are still talking about them. They did not, for example, shoot a bunch of Black people and "Black sympathizers".

While extreme and bizarre, Klassen's battle cries attracted increasing numbers of white supremacists around the world. Enjoying active members in Sweden, Canada and South Africa, COTC became one of the few American hate groups with international followers. South Africa's COTC chapter drew particular attention in 1992: two professed members of an undercover police unit reported that they had been instructed by superiors to join COTC in order to recruit South African racists into a "dirty war" against the African National Congress.

Also, the writers of FATAL did not at any time finance a global effort to undermine democracy through terrorist attacks against civil rights groups.

-Username17

[Winnah]

I thought it may have been an elaborate trolling exercise, so I checked the site it was hosted on. Some White Power cult called Creativity that has it's hooks into Australia.

It rang a bell with me. Pretty sure they dropped an edited and abridged copy of the Protocols of Zion in my letterbox a few years back.

[ishy]

Yeah it really reads like a (terrible) joke.

Look at the "Intimidation/Heroism Effect" section.

Every single round of combat, both (what about more than 2?) sides of a conflict have to add the intimidation score of their entire side. Then whichever side has the lower score needs to add the heroism score of their entire side. Then divide the intimidation score of the winner by the heroism score of the loser, rounded down.
The higher the resulting number, the higher the penalties.

Good luck actually playing that when you have 4 players with scores between 0-99 and X amount of enemies with different scores.

[nockermensch]

As far as I know, the worst thing the FATAL authors ever did was to tell fart jokes, rape jokes, and dead baby jokes in such poor taste that we are still talking about them. They did not, for example, shoot a bunch of Black people and "Black sympathizers".

FATAL has cursed armors that are racist caricatures, written with all the subtlety of a Stormfront cartoon. It's like they wanted to produce a smorgasbord of horribleness, and racism was too important to pass.

[Username17]

As far as I know, the worst thing the FATAL authors ever did was to tell fart jokes, rape jokes, and dead baby jokes in such poor taste that we are still talking about them. They did not, for example, shoot a bunch of Black people and "Black sympathizers".

FATAL has cursed armors that are racist caricatures, written with all the subtlety of a Stormfront cartoon. It's like they wanted to produce a smorgasbord of horribleness, and racism was too important to pass.

Right, but they didn't firebomb the Tacoma offices of the NAACP in 1993 or attempt to blow up the largest predominantly Black church in Los Angeles while there were people inside. The RaHoWa people actually did. It's simply not the same level of trolling.

As far as I know, the FATALists still have a death toll of zero. RaHoWa has a death toll higher than that each and every year since its founding in the 1980s. Almost one in three of RaHoWa's domestic contact points are currently in prison, many of them for murder.

Sometimes we hyperbolically talk about things as being acts of terror on the grounds that they are poorly designed or deeply offensive. But RaHoWa is in fact an actual murderous multinational terrorist organization dedicated to the violent dissolution of each and every state that doesn't support their reprehensible and genocidal racial separatist ideology (which is all of them except possibly North Korea).

I understand that their ideology is so extreme and insane that it seems like a ham fisted parody of insane and extreme ideology. But their actual murder of actual people says otherwise.

-Username17

[shadzar]

Vampire the Masquerade by Mind's Eye Theater LARP.

I know the rules are shit, but MET was one of the most popular LARP rulesets out there. Hell I could go out tonight and find a Vampire LARP running. It's consistently the most popular part of White Wolf these days. I don't see how it's a disaster, unless you mean in and of itself it's a disaster.

if in some cases it is like a private area with "plants" that are playing the rubes such as "normals humans" then it works ok i guess, but to take it to coffee shops and downtown streets and actually play out the "masquerade" is a bit fucking psychotic!

the whole premise is to do just that. but on the large scales it oftetn happens and needing permission from the businesses and such involved and jsut being disruptive to normal daily business, they idea doesnt work unless it was at say a theme park made for such a thing. a small group playing it out like a TTRPG of say 10 people max might work, but not the 80+ players at one time wandering around having to be tracked and such by the STs and also herded by them to make sure they arent screwing up public life and property.

thus why LARPs in general got harsh treatment because it was a public disturbance.

I don't think I've seen it mentioned yet but wasn't Dragon Dice a huge blunder by TSR?

has nothing to do with RPGs, its just another product like Spellfire or the D&D cross-stitch patterns and wood burning kits. might have hurt T$R, but really didnt affect the RPGs it had directly.

[Desdan_Mervolam]

Shadzar: In the early Aughts I was part of a VLarp game that met weekly and was based out of a game shop in a strip mall with a second-run theater, a Chinese restaurant, and a couple other places that were never open when we were playing. One of the first rules, spelled out to everyone who played and strictly enforced, was "No fucking with the mundanes. If they're not part of the game, leave them alone." Such was standard procedure among larp groups that met in public spaces.

[shadzar]

when you have trimere and brujah that dress the part and have a large number of players in an area of small businesses... it does things to freak out the customers even in college towns playing around a group of coffee shops.

it isnt about messing with people so much as just being in the way or pedestrian traffic and surrounding businesses calling it "loitering" even if EVERYONE playing ir getting stuff from the one coffee shop in on and a part of the game. 80+ players is also just too damn many, and there were some groups that were larger than that. it is a flawed premise the whole "masquerade". a LARP where you don't even have other people around nd everyone is a player is pretty much what you had and different. or at least they were gamers since it was ran out of a game shop.

but 80+ trimere, brujahs, witches, seneschal and sabbat all dressed the part... doesnt matter how well kept and behaved you are, it can be a nuisance.

LARP like TTRPG should be something that is held in private, NOT in public. even at cons, that is private, not like just loitering around in a mall.

[infected slut princess]

Shadzar: In the early Aughts I was part of a VLarp game that met weekly and was based out of a game shop in a strip mall with a second-run theater, a Chinese restaurant, and a couple other places that were never open when we were playing. One of the first rules, spelled out to everyone who played and strictly enforced, was "No fucking with the mundanes. If they're not part of the game, leave them alone." Such was standard procedure among larp groups that met in public spaces.

You need a rule for that?

[Prak]

I've been to a Vlarp all of once. It was fun, but i literally saw no reason we couldn't have just been playing table top. The game took place in town, but we weren't actually at that place, we were at a college campus after hours.
I know that there are larps that differ from tabletop in more ways than just having an even worse core mechanic, but that was my experience.

[shadzar]

There really is no reason unless it is something big such as a group that cant fit into a room around a table, but that is when the problems occur. Especially when people dress the part as if they are going to an SCA gathering or whatever it is called, the ones that wear armor and carry swords. LARP isnt a RenFaire/Fest. the only thing about it in some cases that uses more people is the NPCs are like the plants at a mystery dinner party of old, and they are their own person rather than being run by the ST. they have bits of info they can give out when they feel the right poking around for it is being done. pretty much ALL LARP of VtM could be done around a table since both systems sued the same things, save for one used Rock/Paper/Scissors as the mechanic for everything, which works fairly well in the absence of dice.

[Prak]

Personally, if I were to go back in time and be one of the people in charge of VtM, I would establish MET as more of a RenFaire thing, with rules for converting your table top character to the MET system (or MET rules that just use your Tabletop stats in a different way). It would be perfect as a monthly or twice yearly or yearly social gathering for groups that play in the same area, with maybe a big national meetup at Comic Con or a dedicated White Wolf Con.

At least the big, if not all of, supernatural types have an in world big social event. Werewolves have moots, Vampires have the Prince's court and Elysium and private parties, Mages just kind of do their thing and, to my knowledge, are the type with the least inter-tribe hostility. I would not present Larp as an alternative to tabletop, but rather an accentuation of it.

[Surgo]

Back up here for a second. The LARP part of Vampire is an alternate ruleset? I was under the impression that that was, well, the only way to actually play Vampire! At least, that's the only way I've ever seen it played.

[shadzar]

that is how it should have been, cause people at a con do weird shit like that already without rules, like playing the original lazer tag, or those other strange live-action games. it works best that way, and you would expect people at a con to be dressed up in some sort of cosplay. since it wasnt actual fighting like medieval swords and sorcery, then a con wouldnt be interrupted and LARP would have been like the big event or D&D tournament mode of the game.

imagine if they took the TT and then designed this con system where in the early days of the net you could track your character across all the players of WW games and follow a giant over arching story, sort of like GW nonsense with 40k that killed off the squats; then you bring that character to a con or event and they can give you an updated LARP version quick and easy and a set of rules and regs to follow to play it at the event. as people have said, with the Twilight stuff going on, WW could have dwarfed Pathfinder if they teamed up with Twilight people in only a small way and had the Jakob and Edward actors at the cons as say, Toreador and Garou leaders. or maybe Brujah for Edward. never watched or red it so no idea where he would fit.

heck if someone wanted to make money, they should right a LARP for cons for furries, scalies, and other anthros like some GURPS style evrything fits, but a LARP and sell it at cons and have the con accept it being played and well... PROFIT! i mean people are already RPing while in cosplay anyway most of the time.

Back up here for a second. The LARP part of Vampire is an alternate ruleset? I was under the impression that that was, well, the only way to actually play Vampire! At least, that's the only way I've ever seen it played.

you had Mage, Vampire, Werewolf, etc like Munchkin has its original and Ctuhlu games that can be mixed an matched or played standalone as TTRPGs. MET made a LARP version that was not table top. so there was the rock/paper/scissors LARP system, and like D&D a TT system that uses dice.

also they had a card game. not sure which came first anymore as i have some cars still from each but there was Jyhad then V:TES, or was the card game someone else cause it used Toreador and Trimere and such in it that i thought wer WW creations?

[Surgo]

imagine if they took the TT and then designed this con system where in the early days of the net you could track your character across all the players of WW games and follow a giant over arching story

Wasn't this sort of what they tried to do with One World By Night? Of course, that was basically the most terrible idea ever and an epic failure in every way imaginable, but I think that's sort of the idea they had going anyway.

[Prak]

Pretty much this. I need to write something based on AS to capitalize on the Paranormal Romance trend.

...and I need to stop focusing on what to call it so that actual writing gets done.

Back up here for a second. The LARP part of Vampire is an alternate ruleset? I was under the impression that that was, well, the only way to actually play Vampire! At least, that's the only way I've ever seen it played.

Yes. MET uses rock-paper-scissors and biddable "traits." WoD uses dice pools and stat numbers. There isn't really any direct correlation between the two, though there is probably some kind of conversion guideline somewhere.

imagine if they took the TT and then designed this con system where in the early days of the net you could track your character across all the players of WW games and follow a giant over arching story

Wasn't this sort of what they tried to do with One World By Night? Of course, that was basically the most terrible idea ever and an epic failure in every way imaginable, but I think that's sort of the idea they had going anyway.

Sort of, except, of course, tainted by the fact that White Wolf could not find their ass with both hands, a road map, a flashlight and satellite guidance.

[shadzar]

go for it Prak.

imagine if they took the TT and then designed this con system where in the early days of the net you could track your character across all the players of WW games and follow a giant over arching story

Wasn't this sort of what they tried to do with One World By Night? Of course, that was basically the most terrible idea ever and an epic failure in every way imaginable, but I think that's sort of the idea they had going anyway.

no idea what that is never heard of it, but Living Greyhawk did something like it with tracking players character for its events. i also answered your other questions in the post above. all i know of LARPs and VtM is the one i got dragged into by some people, and needles to say being 1/3rd the STs i was bored out of my mind especially the night 122 people showed up to play, and they kept coming more and more. it made no sense to me. that is like playing D&D with 40 players and 1 DM.

[Judging__Eagle]

heck if someone wanted to make money, they should right a LARP for cons for furries, scalies, and other anthros like some GURPS style evrything fits, but a LARP and sell it at cons and have the con accept it being played and well... PROFIT! i mean people are already RPing while in cosplay anyway most of the time.

Which is pretty much where I'm going with my multi-platform remix of Frank's Fantasy Kitchensink, After Sundown, Dead Man's Hand, Asymmetric Threat, Warp Cult, and some of the Wargaming stuff from Races of War.

I want to play a Larp in southern Ontario (a place literally teeming with both active larps with 50-100 attending members for ~6 monthly (outdoor) events and as many as 8-9 total events in a season) and seemingly a new crop of start up larps every year) that I could see myself having fun playing to some degree.

However it would have to include:

[*] Gives lots of costuming options, on par with the half-dozen or so Cons that exist in the Hamilton-to-Toronto region (ConBravo, Anime North, AN Con, Toronto Comic-con) (Dead Man's Hand (i.e. 'no humans'; if you're a 'human' you're a Troglodyte spawn by default, and a Troglodyte if you give yourself sufficient makeup to look like a monkey-ghoul-windigo), Fantasy Kitchensink, After Sundown, Asymmetric Threat)
[*] Allows players to play balanced, supernatural, characters from the start (After Sundown, Warp Cult, Tomes D&D, Fantasy Kitchensink)
[*] Has 'some' sort of rules for players controlling the region (Warp Cult, Dominions 3, After Sundown, Dead Man's Hand)
[*] Can fold Amtgard/SCA grade physical sports with MET/Elegy non-physical action/combat resolution (Physical combat rules remixed from After Sundown and a variety of location/Hit Point systems; Vampire MET, Elegy Doompunk Larp (A recently started local larp))
[*] [Possible?] Allows players to bring their kids (it's not many; but a sizable amount of larpers in and around ontario have children under 18; and being able to include kids under 18 isn't a bad idea)

=========

go for it Prak.

imagine if they took the TT and then designed this con system where in the early days of the net you could track your character across all the players of WW games and follow a giant over arching story

Wasn't this sort of what they tried to do with One World By Night? Of course, that was basically the most terrible idea ever and an epic failure in every way imaginable, but I think that's sort of the idea they had going anyway.

no idea what that is never heard of it, but Living Greyhawk did something like it with tracking players character for its events. i also answered your other questions in the post above. all i know of LARPs and VtM is the one i got dragged into by some people, and needles to say being 1/3rd the STs i was bored out of my mind especially the night 122 people showed up to play, and they kept coming more and more. it made no sense to me. that is like playing D&D with 40 players and 1 DM.

Ok, this is something that all larps have to manage.

Usually the best/only way to do so is as follows:

-Player Characters are supposed to be interacting with each other; possibly even competing/fighting/killing each other

-The Artistic Directors, Head of Plot, Game Referees, need to have "cast"; players who decide to participate as NPCs. Usually there are rewards to incentivize this, and the heads of plot are also players with their own characters who earn commensurate rewards for being "on plot" for a larp.

You usually need at least a 1 cast: 10 Player ratio for things to be decently balanced, and be able to continuously throw stuff out for PCs to interact with besides each other; only when you get to 1 cast: 20+ players do you run into problems.

Any moment that your ratios of cast:players go to 1:9- then you actually have more opportunities for interaction with players and cast. If Cast ever are on par with, or even outnumber the players; then you're sitting on a goldmine of opportunities.

[fectin]

Pretty much this. I need to write something based on AS to capitalize on the Paranormal Romance trend.

Just call it "Paranormal Romance" until you have it written, because you'll want a different title then anyway.

[Voss]

Back up here for a second. The LARP part of Vampire is an alternate ruleset? I was under the impression that that was, well, the only way to actually play Vampire! At least, that's the only way I've ever seen it played.

I'm going to hope this is sarcasm I'm just missing cues for, again.

But yeah. The rulesets were fairly different, and the resolution mechanics for at least one generation of the LARP rules used a combination of bidding, stats and actual rock-paper-scissors. Rather than dicepools, like the table version.