Anatomy of Failed Design: nWoD

[FatR]

I never cared about nVampire enough to even pay much attention to powers, but laughed my ass off, reading the Discipline analysis. Much thanks. (Note about nWerewolf and nMage in the initial post also was spot-on - as oWerewolf fan I tried to read the new one, despite overall aversion to nWoD system, and failed to figure out why the fuck I should care about things this game expects you to do.)

[FatR]

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?

Really, it seems the only advantage of Requiem is removal of certain problematic things, like Ancient Blood Gods That Own You. If they actually added something good, that was long after I stopped reading (Covenant politics hardly offer anything better or deeper than old Clan politics within sects; and you still have a subset of vamps who exist only to kill you, except now they seem monolitic). But is it that hard to remove the same things from oWoD.

[karldion]

Mace or Pepper Spray
Durability 1, Size 0, Structure 1, Cost n/a
Function: Contained in spray bottles that fit in the palm of the hand, these devices debilitate targets who are sprayed in the face. A Dexterity + Athletics roll is made at a -1 penalty to hit a target. Range is one yard maximum, and the target’s Defense applies. If it is successful, all of the target’s actions suffer a -5 penalty for the remainder of the scene as his senses are overwhelmed and breathing is made extremely difficult. A chance roll is not made to use a spray on a target over one yard away; the effort fails automatically. Beings that are no longer alive but that walk and talk are not affected by such devices. A single spray canister can be used three times before it’s empty.
No Resource dots are required to be able to afford a spray.

There are severe nerfs to pepper spray in Armory where they confidently inform you that pepper spray and cs gas have no effect on dogs or other animals (seriously, wtf?). But these nerfs are hidden away in a book that is largely full of stupid player options that your storyteller may not own and probably hasn't read.

But if you are using the Armory rules, you can lay down CS gas that reduces peoples' dicepools and resistance traits by 5 each. Since each Resistance Trait is generally measured on a 1-5 scale, this amounts to a death sentence. Of course, then you have to put up with the crazy rant about how it doesn't work on werewolves because dogs are immune to CS gas.

-Username17

I'll choose pepper spray..

[Ancient History]

One of the things that really got my goat was that in an effort to fight blood magic bloat, they threw away every hint of rules advancement they'd ever made.

Because when you get down to it, nearly every discipline could be handled under the idea of one rating in the "umbrella" discipline, and a handful of related, stepped powers in different "paths." Granted, that's a bit more bookwork on your character sheet - but on the other claw, at least all the necromancy powers are together and related.

[TheFlatline]

That wouldn't be a bad idea, but at the end of the day you're left with "why fucking care?" for the setting.

In Vampire the Requiem, I live maybe 40 miles outside of Los Angeles. If I play a game by the book in my home town, I'll never, ever go to LA. Why? Because it just doesn't happen. Probably because one new vampire showing up in the city would cause a wave of frenzy and bloodshed. A coterie would cause a genocide.

Werewolf the Forsaken is just about the worst excuse of an overhaul I've ever seen. It literally is a furry street gang defending their turf from ghosts and spirits. That's it. You patrol your block, you get attacked by the Purebreds or whoever they are, and you attack spirits that decide they want to fuck with the world. Oh, and you no longer can stay in warform for longer than a handful of rounds and your claws no longer deal aggravated damage: They do lethal. Which means that White Wolf totally sucked off the vampire fanboys who bitched that a werewolf in the old system could eat most vampires, and now werewolves suck.

I skipped over Mage, which ironically was supposedly the best setting of the three. Promethean, if played hardcore according to the rules, is a single PC, single storyteller game, since you'll never ever be able to gang up with anyone. It's an impossible game to play. Geist I didn't play or hear anything about because I frankly didn't care, and Changeling, while an interesting concept, is another unplayable game as written. I literally don't know what you're supposed to be doing in Changeling. You form group counseling gangs and... I'm not sure... hide from the Fae I guess. And I read the book 3 times trying to figure that out.

NWOD's design concepts can be summed up in one sentence: "You could do something, but why fucking bother?"

Each time we tried to play nWOD, we inevitably asked the same question over and over. "Why are we bothering to do this?"

[Ancient History]

There is that, and there is the fact that they bent over backwards to make each vampire bloodline, mage legacy, whatever its own special little fucking snowflake. Which is fine in theory, but doesn't work in practice because that means you end up with umpteen redundant fucking ideas, each with their own unique special snowflake powers...except some of them can do it better than others.

Example: there were more than four different necromantic disciplines in V:tR, tied to different bloodlines. You could seriously have an all-necromancer vampire coterie, and it would have worked because each of the different disciplines does shit that the others would really, really like to do. They actually complemented one another, in all ways except the storyline.

Dragolescu
- Essentiaphagia
-- User can perceive ghosts and haunts by sensing the raw spiritual power they emit
-- Can draw Ectoplasm from a ghost or medium and consume it
-- Can cause frightening, ghost-like effects in an area
-- Can steal knowledge and memories from a ghost
-- Can consume a ghost

Burakumin
- Getsumei
-- Can mystically preserve a corpse
-- Can see the last thing a corpse witnessed
-- Can use a token cut from a corpse to toughen his flesh
-- Can create a homunculus from dead flesh
-- Can animate a group of corpses to perform simple actions

Osites
- Memento Mori
-- Can perceive ghosts and scrutinize zombies to see how they were animated
-- Can interview a corpse
-- Can imbue her body with a deathly essence that rots others’ flesh who touches it
-- Can draw mystical sustenance or a hint of knowledge from a corpse’s bones
-- Can cause a living or undead subject to age and decay with a glance

Sangiovanni
- Cattiveria
-- Can sense nearby corpses, or by touching a corpse divine information about them
-- Can animate a corpse or a part of a corpse into a mindless automaton
-- Can bodily produce ectoplasm and use it to heal a vampire or animated corpse
-- Can empower and enhance an animated corpse
-- Can forcibly rip the ectoplasm from a vampire or animated corpse, damaging it

And that's not all of them, because there were some bullshit Voodoo discipline(s) to add on top of all that, but look at that shit - you've got guys that can raise the walking dead, but not heal them or put them down. You've got a bunch of different types of dead-related divination, and a couple different options for feeding.

[Swordslinger]

Really, it seems the only advantage of Requiem is removal of certain problematic things, like Ancient Blood Gods That Own You. If they actually added something good, that was long after I stopped reading (Covenant politics hardly offer anything better or deeper than old Clan politics within sects; and you still have a subset of vamps who exist only to kill you, except now they seem monolitic). But is it that hard to remove the same things from oWoD.

I never actually had too much of a problem with most of the obscure stuff in the oWoD, because it was easy to retcon most of it away, or just not even care about it. The game was never about ancient blood gods anyway, so it was just vampire myths.

[Don Strudel]

Well, the nWoD games are award-winning highly-rated high sellers (except Promethean and Geist), so White Wolf must be doing something right. You guys are just way too obsessive and unimaginative.

[Username17]

Well, the nWoD games are award-winning highly-rated high sellers (except Promethean and Geist), so White Wolf must be doing something right. You guys are just way too obsessive and unimaginative.

Oh... you were serious.

Winning awards in the RPG industry doesn't mean anything, because the awards don't have any meaningful or consistent method of being handed out. Winning an Origins Award in 2004 doesn't mean that you were god, it meas you were well known. Which, coming on the heels of OWoD (the industry leader less than 5 years prior), would have been true if nWoD was written in crayon. Call me when the industry starts making awards that are even as meaningful as the Daytime Emmies.

As for having sold highly... that is not true. White Wolf does not release sales figures very often, but they do in very telling ways. They say how many books they have ever sold, which if you collect the numbers from multiple years, tells you how different editions sold. NWoD sold a quarter of what OWoD sold. And that's their numbers.

Selling one fourth of the old line is not highly selling. That's totally tanking while the line staggers on with brand inertia. Need I remind you that after two years of nWoD, White Wolf went bankrupt?

-Username17

[K]

Well, the nWoD games are award-winning highly-rated high sellers (except Promethean and Geist), so White Wolf must be doing something right. You guys are just way too obsessive and unimaginative.

You do know that as far as anyone can tell WW is abandoning nWoD for oWod, right?

They are re-releasing Vampire the Masquerade and don't even have a release schedule for the rest of the year. GenCon is soon and we'll hear their full plans, but the teasers I've seen so far involve spinning off Vampire the Requiem as Vampire Romance mini-settings.

If you can think of a better way of putting a stake into the heart of nWoD, I'd be surprised.

Hell, the unofficial news I've seen so far from GenCon is that the next year is a bunch of books about converting your nWoD back to oWoD or just mixing and matching as you see fit.

It's a sign of a desperate company on the brink of collapse. Obviously, they realized the need for major creative changes.

[TheFlatline]

Well, the nWoD games are award-winning highly-rated high sellers (except Promethean and Geist), so White Wolf must be doing something right. You guys are just way too obsessive and unimaginative.

You do know that as far as anyone can tell WW is abandoning nWoD for oWod, right?

They are re-releasing Vampire the Masquerade and don't even have a release schedule for the rest of the year. GenCon is soon and we'll hear their full plans, but the teasers I've seen so far involve spinning off Vampire the Requiem as Vampire Romance mini-settings.

If you can think of a better way of putting a stake into the heart of nWoD, I'd be surprised.

Hell, the unofficial news I've seen so far from GenCon is that the next year is a bunch of books about converting your nWoD back to oWoD or just mixing and matching as you see fit.

It's a sign of a desperate company on the brink of collapse. Obviously, they realized the need for major creative changes.

The dude would sooner admit that the moon is made out of cheese than admit that nWOD wasn't nearly as successful as it's predecessor.

I do have damning proof that nWOD wasn't as successful: There hasn't been an edition update in 7 years (to compare, VTM went 6 years between 2nd and revised, and revised lasted 6 years). So either there isn't enough money in the line to update the game, or it's absolutely perfect and doesn't need to be touched. I'll give you three guesses as to which it most likely is.

However, I will say that rebranding Requiem as a Vampire romance mini-genre might see an uptick in sales since Twilight was so fucking huge and those 12 year old girls are now angsty teens.

[souran]

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?

Really, it seems the only advantage of Requiem is removal of certain problematic things, like Ancient Blood Gods That Own You. If they actually added something good, that was long after I stopped reading (Covenant politics hardly offer anything better or deeper than old Clan politics within sects; and you still have a subset of vamps who exist only to kill you, except now they seem monolitic). But is it that hard to remove the same things from oWoD.

Wait a minute.

NWOD is a better GAME than OWOD by fucking leaps and bounds (at least the non larp version anyway lets just stick with that).

You can actually have a whole coterie of vampires where each player rolled up there character at home and have them all come to the table and play a game where you don't have to spend the first 3 hours fighiting about what shit is legal and what shit isn't.

That is a HUGE upgrade.

The change of the core system to a fixed target number, converting exploding dice to a 2 success model, handeling the botch meschanism much better, revisting the 9 stats so that each one has an actual MEANING. All of these things are system upgrades that absolutely SHOULD NOT be undervalued. The game was reduced to a much clearer set of moving parts, and the GAME portion could actually be played.


Now the game you could play with those parts was extremly boring. The dicing mechanic was not particularly good at giving a range of results. Pretty much once you heard the target number you either new you were going to succeed or fail. Rolling was really secondary.

The effect of this in combat was to make combat EXTREMLY booring. You know the result the first time the sides indicate their dicebools/defenses.


However, even that is an imporvement from the competely unplayable pile of shit that was OWOD combat. OWOD really is a "storyteller" game because you roll dice and then tell the "story" of how that result should be a success. The game is NOT FUNCTIONAL. You cannot actually have a relevant game of OWOD becuase you cannot PLAY OWOD. I have tried, its mostly just people yelling at each other and throwing great handfuls of dice on the table.


Anyway, even being boring and completly "solvable" as a game system would be fine if it were not for the NWOD "what the fuck do we do" problem. Altough OWOD had this problem as well, NWOD has it amplified times 10. The real issue, of course, was that the general background materials for O vamp/werewolf/mage were just more interesting than the NWOD ones.

Seriously, the idea that somehow NWOD vamp means you cannot go anywhere is the most retarded idea I have ever heard, OWOD had a mechanic where if you met a vamp you might run away in pants shitting terror as well. The only reason people complain about the NWOD version is because the game is coherent enough to understand that in a group of 3 or more vamps at least one person is going to fail and totally flip the shit out every time. In OWOD the rules were so freaking stupid and contraditcotry as to be unusable.

Anybody who thinks that the issue with NWOD is its RULES is deluding themselves. NWOD rules are a huge step in the write direction for White Wolf. They still pretty much suck, but they suck so much less than OWOD that they really should win awards for them.

The problem is that the game(s) that those rules are attached to is terrible. Really really terrible. People were "ok" with the end times materials that WW put out. However, I think that they were not expecting that the new line of games would be so different fluff wise.

Also, WW is republishing VTM because there new ownership thinks it will make more money than what they are currently doing. It won't, but to say that they backpedeling because of fans is inaccurate.

[Username17]

2nd edition Revised Vampire had fixed target numbers and didn't have the one-roll combat failure. nWoD doesn't even have a better game system than later versions of oWoD.

-Username17

[TheFlatline]

You can actually have a whole coterie of vampires where each player rolled up there character at home and have them all come to the table and play a game where you don't have to spend the first 3 hours fighiting about what shit is legal and what shit isn't.

Are you talking about True Brujah and that kind of shit? If so, you're resorting to massive hyperbole. Usually, you'd say "cam or sabbat game, no exotic clans unless you come talk to me first." The same with any RPG that has fucked up classes in it. If the storyteller has any balls, this isn't an issue. It also takes about 12 minutes to gen a new character up too if you have a concept, since it's dots and counting to 10.

The change of the core system to a fixed target number, converting exploding dice to a 2 success model, handeling the botch meschanism much better, revisting the 9 stats so that each one has an actual MEANING. All of these things are system upgrades that absolutely SHOULD NOT be undervalued. The game was reduced to a much clearer set of moving parts, and the GAME portion could actually be played.

Agreed, mostly. Combat is essentially broken though because it's reduced to one roll. Fixed target numbers aren't a bad thing, but in oWOD, you generally had one of two target numbers: 6 or 8. If the storyteller wanted to change shit, he could. Which was the fucked part.

Now the game you could play with those parts was extremly boring. The dicing mechanic was not particularly good at giving a range of results. Pretty much once you heard the target number you either new you were going to succeed or fail. Rolling was really secondary.

Err... target numbers in nWOD are fixed. You know every 3 dice or so you'll average 1 success. Dice pool modifiers were the only thing that was going to change your success/fail rate over the long run.

Otherwise total agreement, though any dicepool game with a fixed TN (shadowrun 4th) is going to suffer from this.

The effect of this in combat was to make combat EXTREMLY booring. You know the result the first time the sides indicate their dicebools/defenses.

What makes combat suck is that there's only one roll. Yes, that speeds things up, but defense is non-existent. Weapon damage stacks linear with attack successes, but defense doesn't have any kind of option. On average, if you still have 3 dice and you're attacking, you're going to hit and cause significant damage, and it's almost impossible to have your attack pool drop that low.

Add in the bullshit willpower rules and things like the shotgun (again, 9-again damage exploding), aiming, and other shit, and I was 1-shotting vampires into torpor. It didn't matter that it was bashing, enough bashing will put a vampire out.

However, even that is an imporvement from the competely unplayable pile of shit that was OWOD combat. OWOD really is a "storyteller" game because you roll dice and then tell the "story" of how that result should be a success.

Err... huh? Isn't this how every dice pool system works?

I will agree though that combat was broken. Celerity won. Period. Once your opponent ran out of actions, if you had at least one more action in oWOD, you won. Pure and simple.

Combat degenerated into popping celerity and everyone gang-fucking the most dangerous opponent, who would drop in a round or two under seriously like 20-30 attacks a round. Then you'd move on to the next most dangerous person and wash-rinse-repeat. Whoever had the most actions flat out won.

Now, if you were a PC who *didn't* have celerity, you'd take your snail round, and go have a fucking cigarette or eat dinner, since you wouldn't act again for another 20 minutes.

The game is NOT FUNCTIONAL. You cannot actually have a relevant game of OWOD becuase you cannot PLAY OWOD. I have tried, its mostly just people yelling at each other and throwing great handfuls of dice on the table.

Again with the hyperbole, or you played with shit gamers.

Anyway, even being boring and completly "solvable" as a game system would be fine if it were not for the NWOD "what the fuck do we do" problem. Altough OWOD had this problem as well, NWOD has it amplified times 10. The real issue, of course, was that the general background materials for O vamp/werewolf/mage were just more interesting than the NWOD ones.

No, a boring solvable RPG system wouldn't be fine. Total agreement that oWoD's background shit was more interesting than nWOD. Wraith's metaphysics and background is some of the most artistic and interesting fluff I've ever read. Too bad the game itself was mechanically so difficult.

Seriously, the idea that somehow NWOD vamp means you cannot go anywhere is the most retarded idea I have ever heard, OWOD had a mechanic where if you met a vamp you might run away in pants shitting terror as well.

I just looked over the oWOD vampire book and couldn't find what you were referencing at all. Fox Frenzy came about from fire and a few other things, but not from meeting another vampire, even a super-low generation vampire. However, in nWOD, you have predator's taint, and you have multiple, constant references about how travel between cities rarely happens and that cities are "islands". In fact, I remember 3-4 references about how it's just plain rare to have a vampire to travel to other cities. Other countries or continents are flat out rare.

The only reason people complain about the NWOD version is because the game is coherent enough to understand that in a group of 3 or more vamps at least one person is going to fail and totally flip the shit out every time. In OWOD the rules were so freaking stupid and contraditcotry as to be unusable.

No, people complain about nWOD because there's fucking nothing to do. Predator's taint doesn't ruin the game. The complete and utter destruction of the metaplot ruins the game.

oWOD I could at least say "fuck it, let's play Magic Tea Party" and still have a good time. The setting may have been bananas batshit crazy, but that was part of the fun of it. Playing MTP in nWOD sounds about as much fun as smashing my testicles with a hammer repeatedly. To me, that fails the setting test.

Anybody who thinks that the issue with NWOD is its RULES is deluding themselves. NWOD rules are a huge step in the write direction for White Wolf. They still pretty much suck, but they suck so much less than OWOD that they really should win awards for them.

The problem is that the game(s) that those rules are attached to is terrible. Really really terrible. People were "ok" with the end times materials that WW put out. However, I think that they were not expecting that the new line of games would be so different fluff wise.

More or less agree. The rules are a general step forward, but weren't executed well enough. Combat needs to be fucking overhauled entirely.

People were okay with the end times games because as WW said, you can only cocktease the end of the world so long before people call you on it. Plus, the splatbooks had gotten esoteric and not very useful except for niche games (though there were still some gold splat books. The city combat book Midnight Siege was a great read).

What pissed people like me off about nWOD was that they first scammed us for even more money with the core book under the pretense of offering that much more content in the core books (but really there's not much more offered) along with most of the basic splat books that actually gave you adversaries and shit to look into started out as hardcover. I paid 30 bucks for the blue book, 30-40 for the Vampire book, and then they expected to bang me out of another 30 to find out what VII was. Fuck you very much.

To be fair WW did warn that they were pulling out the metaplot. Most people were fine with that. We didn't care that Tremere had captured his prodigy inside a magical mirror and took his body over. However, WW pulled out *setting*, claiming it to be metaplot. That was their mistake. You can set the chess board up with all kinds of plot hooks. That's setting. Moving the pieces around for your customers- that's metaplot.

Also, WW is republishing VTM because there new ownership thinks it will make more money than what they are currently doing. It won't, but to say that they backpedeling because of fans is inaccurate.

It might. It's a better setting. Pure and simple. There were some good ideas behind Requiem, but the execution and the setting are just too damn sterile.

[Desdan_Mervolam]

There's a huge LARP from White Wolf themself that you have to be a member of the Camarilla club to play in (after 3 trial games).

Take a look at this Fan Wiki that lists several people with detailed descriptions and pictures of their characters.

Warning: Some parts of this link may be scary http://cam-wiki.org/index.php/Main_Page

That's bull. Camarilla decided to fight membership attrition by allowing oWoD campaigns about 2 or 3 years ago, and I am given to understand just about everyone dropped everything and switched over.

I've been known to disagree with Franks interpretations of things in the past but here he's absolutely right. There is NO point to anything in the new World of Darkness. What few nuggets of good ideas there are are swamped out by an ocean of diarrhea, you're better off taking the things you like and porting them back into the old system.

-Desdan Mervolam

[Sir Neil]

Good to see you're still kicking, Des.

[TheFlatline]

Somehow this slipped by me months ago... but in addition to the 20th anniversary edition of Vampire, at Drivethrurpg.com all the original oWOD clan books are apparently back in print.

http://white-wolf.com/old-world-of-dark ... n-to-print

Cheap too... 15 bucks for the clanbook. I think that's roughly what they cost (or 5 bucks cheaper) back 10 years ago.

Looks like the guides to the anarchs, sabbat, and cam are back in print also. Which makes for the majority of the "core" oWOD revised books.

[Kot]

TBH I skipped the Vampire part, since in my games bloodsuckers tend to become enemies, or in the best case scenario, indebted to the characters who released them (accidentally). I'm currently GMing a serious and well-prepared (I've spent two years on that) Mage campaign, which evolved from a mortal campaign (essentially Supernatural meets Scooby Doo and Indiana Jones). Now, I learned it the hard way, but the nWoD combat system is inherently screwed. Any beta-testing would make this flaw stick out like a sore thumb, but WW obviously decided that it doesn't matter.

So I was left to my own devices, and tried to fix it, so I can have an actual game that does seem at least partially plausible, when it comes to combat - and it was at least a third of what the players were interested in. I'll try to sum up what I've done till now below:
1. Firearms rules needed reworking. Any firefight consisted of multiple flesh wounds and nicks, until one of the sides started bleeding out. It was dumb and didn't work at all. I was in luck, because one of my old friends already tackled with the problem. The obvious thing was:
-Taking the +x bonus to hit, and turning it into base automatic damage. That also got us rid of the pesky bonuses that made dicepools too big.
-Halving the base damage into a (L)ethal/(B)ashing code, round up to (L). Where (L) is actual body damage, and (B) is shock, and blood loss from the wound. This way a 9 mm pistol had (1L/1B) base damage code, and a .44 had a (2L/2B) damage code. This allowed for a more realistic firearms table, where a .45 was different from a .50.
-Any successes on the Firearms roll above the first (which is reserved for a basic 'hit' and provides you with the basic gun damage) increase the base damage. For example, shooting a gun with 2/1 damage code and rolling 4 successes means +3 damage. So it would be 2+1/1+1+1=3L/3B damage.
After testing that through multiple game sessions, on a mortal level, it was proven that patch works. At least for us. But...

2) This killed the already retarded armor system, obviously inspired by DnD. Who the hell though making armor deflect attacks, instead of soaking them would be a good thing? So I tried to resolve that problem, making a test military game that again proved at least partial success:
-Armor of any kind provides soak equal to it's rating. The ratings from basic rulebook will work fine, so a bulletproof vest would be 2/3. This means Impact armor 2, and Ballistic armor 3 (Shadowrun, anyone?).
-The soak rules are simple. Armor downgrades an amount of damage equal to its Rating, but only Lethal and Bashing ones. Lethal are downgraded to Bashing, and Bashing are soaked completely. So a .38 shot to the torso that deals 2/2 damage to a target wearing a 2/3 vest would: 1) turn both points of Lethal damage into Bashing; 2) soak 1 point of Bashing damage; 3) reduce the damage to 3 Bashing.
-The same goes for melee and unarmed attacks, Armor Piercing works as usual(even better), by lowering the armor rating.

These fixes allowed us to play the game like a real Urban Fantasy story, where guns aren't as useless as you might've thought. For example: the gun-totting streetwise businessman character managed to stumble upon a vampire's lair in his search for a certain book. Off course he woke the bloodsucker up, who in turn proceeded with throwing him against walls for fun. The character was almost unconscious after two attack, when the player declared a called shot to the head with his .44 magnum. One exceptional success later, the player had a trophy vampire skull with a hole in its forehead to put on his bookshelf... The same character got shot by a Spirit-Ridden geezer with a Russian 'handcannon' revolver. After a while (and taking out the geezer), his teammates managed not to kill him while trying to save his life (failures on a first aid roll are fun). And they're Mages who already learned the hard way, that without their shields* any Hunter with a gun can kill them.



As for the 'children with BB guns vs Werewolf in Gauru' case, GM fiat allows me to say to the werewolf player. "Roll for attack. Any point of damage kills or maims one child..." And then laugh maniacally as he fails his degeneration roll.
Seriously, this example is all kinds of retarded. Why?
1. Children with 2 Willpower go catatonic, shitting themselves and getting mentally scarred for life by a glimpse of the Gauru form.
2. BB guns don't cause any damage worth notice. Even with Bashing it wouldn't work. Who in his right mind would rule that a bb pellet would hurt anything but a werewolf's pride?
3. If you substitute that with a real gun, the dice pool is 0. So a Chance Roll. Because (according o the base rules) the werewolf in question has Armor 1 (-1), the kids don't have Firearms (-1), and they're not strong enough to handle a gun (-1). That, and when you take into account the Innocents rules, where all attacks made by children against adults are further penalized... Well, then even Willpower doesn't save them.
4. And that's only if you don't count other penalties, like for example trying to shoot a goddamn half-ton killing machine in 'Kill! Maim! Rend! Destroy!' mode.

* For those who know Mage, a simple houserule: Subtle arcana provide shields that lower the enemy attack roll, providing deflection as classic rules armor did. Gross arcana provide shields that work as armor from my fix. This doesn't work on any source that needs specific armor (like the Prime magic shield, or Spirit numinous shield). That counteracts the 'lethal firearms' fix, but in turn takes up one more slot, and drains their Mana faster...

[Username17]

So I was left to my own devices, and tried to fix it, so I can have an actual game that does seem at least partially plausible, when it comes to combat - and it was at least a third of what the players were interested in. I'll try to sum up what I've done till now below:
1. Firearms rules needed reworking. Any firefight consisted of multiple flesh wounds and nicks, until one of the sides started bleeding out. It was dumb and didn't work at all. I was in luck, because one of my old friends already tackled with the problem. The obvious thing was:
-Taking the +x bonus to hit, and turning it into base automatic damage. That also got us rid of the pesky bonuses that made dicepools too big.

This doesn't fix anything. Everyone of even modest skill hits all the time even without the bonus dice from weaponry, and adding a bunch of damage to every hit just makes the "multiattacks are way more powerful than anything else" and "groups of enemies will fucking rip you to shreds" problems so much worse. Instead of 10 kids off the short bus rolling 30 dice and blowing you away with 10 wound levels, you have them rolling 20 dice and doing an extra damage whenever they do any damage - so the average number of wound levels inflicted is 11.8.

It puts some swinginess in when unskilled people swing shotguns around, where about half the time you take no damage and half the time you take five damage - but for anyone vaguely competent it's just a modest damage boost to every single attack.

-Halving the base damage into a (L)ethal/(B)ashing code, round up to (L). Where (L) is actual body damage, and (B) is shock, and blood loss from the wound. This way a 9 mm pistol had (1L/1B) base damage code, and a .44 had a (2L/2B) damage code. This allowed for a more realistic firearms table, where a .45 was different from a .50.

Considering that it doesn't generally matter what kind of damage anyone is taking inside an actual combat because unconscious is unconscious and other would numbers aren't, I can't see as how this would make any difference at all. You're just making bullet wounds heal faster, who fucking cares?

-Armor of any kind provides soak equal to it's rating. The ratings from basic rulebook will work fine, so a bulletproof vest would be 2/3. This means Impact armor 2, and Ballistic armor 3 (Shadowrun, anyone?).
-The soak rules are simple. Armor downgrades an amount of damage equal to its Rating, but only Lethal and Bashing ones. Lethal are downgraded to Bashing, and Bashing are soaked completely. So a .38 shot to the torso that deals 2/2 damage to a target wearing a 2/3 vest would: 1) turn both points of Lethal damage into Bashing; 2) soak 1 point of Bashing damage; 3) reduce the damage to 3 Bashing.

Damage is caused by successes. Reducing incoming dice reduces damage. All you've done is made armor three times better by making it reduce successes at the end instead of dice at the beginning. And then you made it 50% worse by having it go lethal to bashing to nothing instead of stopping damage altogether. So you've introduced some funky accounting where armor is 50% better than it was. Again: so fucking what?

As for the 'children with BB guns vs Werewolf in Gauru' case, GM fiat allows me to say to the werewolf player. "Roll for attack. Any point of damage kills or maims one child..." And then laugh maniacally as he fails his degeneration roll.

Ah, so faced with the fact that the rules are so fucking ridiculous that they don't work at all as soon as groups larger than 6 show up even if those groups are people who should be effectively meaningless in combat, you... tacitly admit this by scrapping the rules entirely and then start making shit up on the fly. Then you claim this as a victory for the rules? Oberoni anyone?

That was a lot of text to wade through, but you seriously haven't fixed shit. The short bus is an actual joke. The actual case is that you're an immortal vampire lord or badass garou soldier and a car full of gang bangers with gats will ice you in one round after a time consuming but depressingly deterministic set of die rolling. Outside one on one combat the players don't stand a chance, and inside one on one combat the combat system is still fucking boring.

-Username17

[Kot]

Okay. Besides the tone, I get that you say this doesn't work. Why did it work then? Why did we have a few nasty firefights in which things unfolded like they would in real life, not a mid-day chidren's cartoon?
We had people with assault weapons having mid-range firefights that players were caught in, or enemy raids in which they were surrounded by semi-trained thugs with decent equipment. And in none of those was it 'fucking boring', or they 'didn't stand a chance'. Because players think. They go for cover, use covering fire, distractions, and body armor. They may not think with the rules in mind, but with logic, but they do anyways. And so they may risk being hurt, but except for 'ambush&first-strike' situations, none of them was taken out without a chance, and even that happened only once (that oldtimer with a hand cannon, boosted by a Spirit of pain that was riding him, and only because he beat the player by 1 point of Initiative, and that was because the character didn't have his weapon ready and his +Firearms to Initiative, because they were aiming for a non-lethal takedown with ether).

To be honest, I didn't do any math o confirm this. I'm a journalist by trade, not an accountant. And I never thought it matters if the rules make sense math-wise, actually.
I never claimed victory for the rules, only stated that the hotfixes I presented worked for us. Even if the math is off (as I stated, I don't count that crap, I just try it out and see how that works). I claimed victory for the story, because with these fixes the rules didn't kill it, as they did before. And mind that I don't even get 10% of the Den-speak references. 'Oberoni' included.
I just pointed out that the example was incorrect, rules-wise. It was those basic rules you were discussing, right? I was trying to prove a point - if you want to discuss the rules, get to know them. I did, and decided that anything I can do to fix them will be better, than leaving them as they are...

As for your gangbangers example, if you're immortal, nothing works on you. If you're a vampire lord, any bullet you take to the head is dangerous. But you Obfuscate and Dominate, and in the end suck them dry, or just kill them, if you have a more refined taste... If you're a werewolf in Gauru, they shit their pants, trying to get out of the car in panic, and you decapitate them one by one. Or the driver panics and crashes into the nearest lamppost. Regular humans aren't much of an antagonist for vampires or werewolves, except when they're aware of their existence and well-prepared.

And your gangbangers are: 1 driver, who can't do shit. max 4 morons with crappy SMG's who: 1) shoot like morons, negating their Firearms of 1 with the penalty for 'gangsta-style' shooting. 2) fire from a vehicle, and that leaves them with just a chance roll 3) cant hit you even with full auto fire if you get some cover
So, they're as useless as they should be. You can be hit by accident, if you're a supernatural being. Or be killed in an orgy of burst fires by the sheer number of bullets, with no roll needed if you're human and devoid of cover and protection.

And if that would be boring/deadly, believe me, my players wouldn't let those rules stick.

[Username17]

Okay. Besides the tone, I get that you say this doesn't work. Why did it work then? Why did we have a few nasty firefights in which things unfolded like they would in real life, not a mid-day chidren's cartoon?
We had people with assault weapons having mid-range firefights that players were caught in, or enemy raids in which they were surrounded by semi-trained thugs with decent equipment. And in none of those was it 'fucking boring', or they 'didn't stand a chance'. Because players think. They go for cover, use covering fire, distractions, and body armor. They may not think with the rules in mind, but with logic, but they do anyways. And so they may risk being hurt, but except for 'ambush&first-strike' situations, none of them was taken out without a chance, and even that happened only once (that oldtimer with a hand cannon, boosted by a Spirit of pain that was riding him, and only because he beat the player by 1 point of Initiative, and that was because the character didn't have his weapon ready and his +Firearms to Initiative, because they were aiming for a non-lethal takedown with ether).

That is stupid and you should feel stupid. You told the players that guns were going to be a lot more dangerous and that everything was fixed, and then they made decisions as if that was true. Good for you, you successfully fooled people for a gaming session.

The reality is that you're proposed system still gives a semi-competent enemy a 76% chance of hitting and then having them do 5 wound boxes whenever they do. Any modest sized group of enemies will drop player characters left and right in an incredibly deterministic way. You have solved nothing.

-Username17

[wotmaniac]

I'm not fully caught up yet; but this really jumped out at me:

Who the hell though making armor deflect attacks, instead of soaking them would be a good thing?

Armor, like every other game mechanic, is an abstraction. Since Frank already covered the relevant math, I'll give you my take on the associated simulation:
armor being what it is, it's effectively reducing the size of the target or otherwise making it harder to get to the vital/vulnerable spots.
It's not necessarily perfect for every circumstance; but it is a game (i.e., good enough).

[Morzas]

I don't even get 10% of the Den-speak references. 'Oberoni' included.

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=oberoni&l=1

This isn't Den-speak, this has been part of the D&D neckbeard argument lexicon for half a decade now.

[erik]

I don't even get 10% of the Den-speak references. 'Oberoni' included.

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=oberoni&l=1

This isn't Den-speak, this has been part of the D&D neckbeard argument lexicon for half a decade now.

We certainly use it a lot more than most other places on account of Oberoni having been a more frequent poster here and on our precursor board, Nifty, once upon a time. (I believe he still lurks here sometimes =-)

Heh, after a bit of googling, apparently that attribution will turn 10 years old in July.

Just be happy you missed out on some other tjoice quirks and jargon.

[Username17]

And let's actually critique Kot's "system":

And your gangbangers are: 1 driver, who can't do shit. max 4 morons with crappy SMG's who: 1) shoot like morons, negating their Firearms of 1 with the penalty for 'gangsta-style' shooting. 2) fire from a vehicle, and that leaves them with just a chance roll 3) cant hit you even with full auto fire if you get some cover
So, they're as useless as they should be. You can be hit by accident, if you're a supernatural being. Or be killed in an orgy of burst fires by the sheer number of bullets, with no roll needed if you're human and devoid of cover and protection.

OK, that is top to bottom total horse shit. Thugs with Gats do not get "is stupid" penalties to their attack rolls. However stupid they are is built into whatever Firearms skill they have. So right away you're saying that as Storyteller, in order to make this combat not be a crushing defeat for the player, you're going to cheat outrageously on their behalf.

But let's go to the other extreme. The one where you're making normal people die in a hail of gunfire without rolling dice. What the fucking hell? People survive getting shot at by automatic fire all the time. So not only are you saying explicitly that you intend to cheat here too, but the event you are cheating to engineer doesn't even make sense.

So basically we have you admitting defeat on every possible level. The game doesn't hand out a remotely acceptable or workable result for a supposedly powerful werewolf versus a carfull of supposedly low grade thugs with guns. And your blunt refusal to follow even your own listed house rules to generate this encounter makes that abundantly clear. At the same time, however, individual bullets aren't nearly deadly enough, in that they actually have virtually no chance of killing even a stationary and unaware elderly civilian. And your response to that is again to bluntly refuse to actually use the rules because at some level you are acknowledging that these rules don't fucking work.

-Username17