Anatomy of Failed Design: nWoD

[Kot]

@Frank: That's not one game session. That's about one campaign. 12+ games. And my players aren't ones who would sit quiet if that would be the case. The thing is, it fits the theme and mood of the game - a dangerous, dark world. I don't cheat on their behalf. I don't have to. Especially now when they're playing mages... They're getting precautions - armor, magic, and being tactics-wise, using cover, exploiting their advantages and any enemy weakness.

As for the 'thug style' shooting, there was a rule for it in Armory, which was basically a penalty for being stupid and ignoring basic shooting rules. And it was one of those that sounded logical.

Okay. I have to admit defeat, because I don't really understand what's expected of me. Should I try to defend my houserules in a case when we're talking about. You did make me feel stupid and wrong. But on the other hand, what the hell was I thinking, having an argument with Frank Trollman... =='
In conclusion: I don't care. Honestly. Fuck math, calculating probabilities and dicepools. I'm happy that my players don't give a damn about having 60 dice to chuck around. They want a game to play, a story to be told, and fun to be had. There's one good thing that came out of this stupid, and lost from the start argument. Me not giving a damn about math in WoD anymore... I'll stick to what we have, and change it on player's request.

@Morzas: I'm Polish. DnD was never big here, nor did I ever care for the game enough to notice that one. Can't say I'm sorry for that...

[Grek]

Generally speaking, you're expected to either A] make good, consistent house rules, B] make bad houserules, but be willing to improve them or C] be mocked.

[Kot]

And it seems I'll have to go from B through C to A. Well, shit happens. Especially if you do it yourself...

[TheFlatline]

Actually, the gang-banger drive-by is one of my favorite ways of fucking vampires. Even if you don't torpor them, they just got shot 20 times in public and collapsed and has no pulse. A little influence, declare them dead, get it on the news, and they're a masquerade violation whenever they go outside.

In *my* Requiem chronicle I played in, I used to one-shot vampires with a standard shotgun. Combat breaks out, I stand in the corner aiming for a couple turns (and who are you gonna attack? the guy waving a knife in your face trying to stick you or the guy in the corner not doing anything?), burn willpower, and my dex 3 firearms 2 still is throwing over 10 dice to attack on 9-again exploding dice. If I didn't drop them with a great roll, they now are rocking massive dice pool penalties, which means they maybe have one round left to live.

[Kot]

Well, there aren't many creatures in WoD that can withstand a 12ga shell to the head...

[Username17]

Well, there aren't many creatures in WoD that can withstand a 12ga shell to the head...

Actually one of my biggest complaints is that almost everything in WoD can withstand a 12ga shell to the head. Shotguns are a 4 damage weapon. Even if you use the entirely sensible house rule that this is 4 bonus wound levels instead of 4 bonus dice, that still means that you do 5-7 wound levels in a shot. Senior Citizens have 6.

Now, there is basically nothing in WoD that can take two shotgun slugs to the chest or even the legs. But dropping someone with a single shotgun blast is just not happening.

-Username17

[Libertad]

@Frank: That's not one game session. That's about one campaign. 12+ games. And my players aren't ones who would sit quiet if that would be the case. The thing is, it fits the theme and mood of the game - a dangerous, dark world. I don't cheat on their behalf. I don't have to. Especially now when they're playing mages... They're getting precautions - armor, magic, and being tactics-wise, using cover, exploiting their advantages and any enemy weakness.

As for the 'thug style' shooting, there was a rule for it in Armory, which was basically a penalty for being stupid and ignoring basic shooting rules. And it was one of those that sounded logical.

Okay. I have to admit defeat, because I don't really understand what's expected of me. Should I try to defend my houserules in a case when we're talking about. You did make me feel stupid and wrong. But on the other hand, what the hell was I thinking, having an argument with Frank Trollman... =='
In conclusion: I don't care. Honestly. Fuck math, calculating probabilities and dicepools. I'm happy that my players don't give a damn about having 60 dice to chuck around. They want a game to play, a story to be told, and fun to be had. There's one good thing that came out of this stupid, and lost from the start argument. Me not giving a damn about math in WoD anymore... I'll stick to what we have, and change it on player's request.

@Morzas: I'm Polish. DnD was never big here, nor did I ever care for the game enough to notice that one. Can't say I'm sorry for that...

Kot, the Den is one of those kinds of places where a few of the more prominent posters view every table-top RPG except for Tome 3.5 as a broken mess, and that they're the only guys on the Internet who can fix things.

In short, don't give up on math and probability and game mechanics. Such things can facilitate a good story and game. Storytelling and number-crunching aren't mutually exclusive. When you get a good feeling for dice pools and the system, you have a better chance at gauging the skill level of adversaries and player characters, and thus less likely to create an accidental TPK or have your super-awesome final battle be a cakewalk.

There's online probability calculators for the New World of Darkness so that you can get a good sense of success and failure.

Here's a short description on rpg.net

[virgil]

Kot, the Den is one of those kinds of places where almost every table-top RPG except for Tome 3.5 is a broken mess to them, and they're the only guys on the Internet who can fix things. They're great at finding flaws in RPG systems, but anything that doesn't feel Godlike and awesome and consistent is going to fail in their eyes.

I 'love' it when people are wrong like this. The Tome is not perfect and has broken flaws in it, and even its creators admit to this. The vitriol I primarily see are when people try to argue an extant rule/system isn't broken or flawed. The common viewpoint seems to be "if I had fun playing the game, then it obviously works and saying the game is bad is either calling me stupid for they're stupid/wrong for thinking it's flawed."

[Libertad]

I 'love' it when people are wrong like this. The Tome is not perfect and has broken flaws in it, and even its creators admit to this. The vitriol I primarily see are when people try to argue an extant rule/system isn't broken or flawed. The common viewpoint seems to be "if I had fun playing the game, then it obviously works and saying the game is bad is either calling me stupid for they're stupid/wrong for thinking it's flawed."

I didn't meant to say that some of the regulars here viewed the Tome as perfect and flawless, but rather that they view almost every other RPG system as a horrible wreck. I made a mistake; I meant to say that a few prominent posters have this mentality, not most posters. That was unfair of me, and for that I apologize.

And I'm not trying to excuse people who say that a game's system is perfect and flawless if it's fun for them.

[Kot]

Heh. I don't even know what Tome is. Don't really want to know. I have enough problems right now, trying to figure how to pull this one off (WoD I mean).

As for the numbers and balancing, with my luck every game is a potential TPK. I managed to get 26 successes on a regular DP8 roll once... Good thing that was not a combat roll.

[Grek]

The Tome series is an extensive set of DnD 3.5 house rules made by FrankTrollman and K. It's famous on the Den for making lots of people really mad for calling out broken rules on their brokeness. If you don't play DnD, you don't need to know the details beyond that.

[PhoneLobster]

Actually the tome series is a not very extensive series of fairly nice house rules and a lot more general commentary, written by Frank and K.

...and depending on who you ask it ALSO includes an extensive bunch of largely useless home brew custom class/feat, ugh, stuff written by a pile of fans that has... accrued like sticky internet dust rhinos under the oily stained couch of the gaming den.

The first bit was nice, I used it, I extended it with my OWN private accumulated dust rhino house rules, for a while as a temporary measure. But the Tome material... it wasn't extensive. It wasn't even complete. The fan made additions are... of variable interest and quality and don't precisely fill the biggest gaps very well... and really in the end the fans really need to come to the same conclusion that Frank and K did.

Which was, patching 3.x isn't worth it and you may as well spend your time and effort on your own thing, it'd be much more efficient in effort and produces a better result.

[Grek]

It's over 200K words. If that isn't extensive, I don't know what is.

[RadiantPhoenix]

It's over 200K words. If that isn't extensive, I don't know what is.

A complete rebuild of 3e from the ground up, which is apparently less (or at least not significantly more) extensive than a fix for all the problems in 3e.

[PhoneLobster]

It's over 200K words.

It's, off the top of my head, a handful of classes and feats, almost all bar the warrior stuff being highly specialized niche material, an incomplete list armors, and a partial rewrite of obscure but important grappling rules and the like.

The rest of it was basically just an entertaining read.

It's great stuff. I'd recommend anyone running any 3.x system (preferably not Pathfinder) use it. But it's hardly "extensive". At best it's a (partially incomplete) "fix" for some warriors and a few potentially useful prestige classes for demons and necromancers. That's pretty much it.

[Libertad]

It's great stuff. I'd recommend anyone running any 3.x system (preferably not Pathfinder) use it. But it's hardly "extensive". At best it's a (partially incomplete) "fix" for some warriors and a few potentially useful prestige classes for demons and necromancers. That's pretty much it.

How could you forget to include the essay on alignment and the creation of separate economies? Those two things alone provide fixes to some of the most common complaints about the game (morality and character wealth=power). The former clears up a lot of philosophical arguments by setting some ground rules ahead of time, while the latter allows mid-level PCs to be livin' the life in splendid palaces without having to worry about gimping their characters.

[PhoneLobster]

How could you forget to include the essays

You mean that entertaining read I mentioned? Those aren't hard mechanics, and are at best GMing advice and some mild reform of some fluff oversights in default D&D settings. Much of them are discussions and detailed fluff justifications of what many good (and even bad) GMs do ANYWAY.

At best those essays contained a ratio of actual hard fixes (or even rather... soft and Oberoni like fixes) for issues of an incredibly dilute amount for word count. And as such are barely worth listing when considering how "extensively fixed" Tome D&D is. I mean "Some architectural ways to limit scrying and an excuse for evil fish man empires, etc...". OK. That's not a even a scratch on even a single improved PC warrior class from the actual crunchy material when it comes to the contribution towards fixing what's wrong with 3.x.

[Username17]

My own experience with trying to make WoD work was that it could not be done without rewriting basically everything, so I did that.

-Username17

[Koumei]

Which was, patching 3.x isn't worth it and you may as well spend your time and effort on your own thing, it'd be much more efficient in effort and produces a better result.

It's easier to say "Okay guys, we're playing D&D Triple, with some houserules and custom classes - if you get bored reading them, read the rant on gold mattresses" than "Okay guys, I made my own Totally-Like-D&D-But-Better game, you're going to sit down and learn the rules. You don't get a bathroom break until you finish making a character. I have a cattle prod here."

Or indeed easier to say "Well I'd love to play in your D&D game, is it okay if I use this popular fan-made replacement monk? It's better, but doesn't waste everyone's time with eleven attacks a round, and has cool specific effects." (or whatever) than "Hey, why don't you instead run this other Like-D&D-But-Better game, I'd play that!"

You probably can't get a perfect game system. The best you can do is pick the least bad of the popular systems, mod a bunch of stuff and use that to get people interested and on the same page as you. Otherwise we probably all would have made our own Like-D&D-But___ games by now and have loads of fun, while all speaking ill of the differences in everyone else's.

Although a "Lock every Denner in a separate chamber with no communication between them, each has to make their own Fantasy Heartbreaker that they think is ideal" would be hilarious, mind you. Just picture the results. This includes people like Shadzar.

[Kot]

Hmmm... That's not WoD, Frank. It's an entirely different game. Looks nice, coherent, and all, but it's not the same. And in a good way.

@Koumei: That's why I've given up on doing anything but basic re-writing of my projects. Maybe some day I'll find people who will be interested in doing something with these projects, but until then they're not going to see the light...

[Aryxbez]

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.

Well I do appreciate you reviving this thread, I've actually been meaning to do so, felt unsure if it'd be kosher (shrugs). Mostly that it's been a few years since this thread, and way sounded from friend of mine that plays this (Requiem too maybe? Mostly the LARP though), sounded like game may've updated some of its rules by now. So I felt maybe there is some need of updating the information therein to better detail how this game is badly designed? Still wondering how much of all this still holds up, including the above scenario, as friend of mine was apparently mentioning how that wouldn't work.

Believe may in part been due to above factors? idea Werewolf would have a more optimized form to actually take into, something about children making checks to even contribute dice? Also believe commented on that Frank said Celerity = terrible, when it's actually the go-to ability EVERYONE takes?

Still sounds to me, even when my friend talks about the game long enough, that's it's rather pretty crappy, both rules and setting wise. So don't think it's too much ill to ask for a 2012 look at it still being a failed piece of design, if need be, post specific links detailing it all. Otherwise as can probably tell, not played this RPG at all, so do pardon me being rather vague in parts. However, have read a little of "After Sundown", rather like Dice Pools, and been the RPG I've suggested for those who want some kind of horror-like game.

[Koumei]

Also believe commented on that Frank said Celerity = terrible, when it's actually the go-to ability EVERYONE takes?

So many people take Celerity for the same reason that cauliflower is in decline: people are idiots.

No really, people claim it is so immensely powerful, and the kind of person who plays WW games isn't the kind of person who pays attention to what the rules actually say, so they believe it and take it without a second thought. Or a first thought.

Though in oWoD, it was pretty handy (though I have greater familiarity with the Demon God Body: Multiple Limbs power of Kindred of the Ag, that did basically the same thing). You use your normal action for the Full Defence (so you can defend against every action without penalty and don't have to suddenly spend Willpower just to change your action because someone else negated it with better Initiative), then use your extra actions on a sensible "Declare now and act now" basis to do whatever you want.

And yes, it involved a lot of dice rolls, and slowed the game down even more. Sure, technically all fights were over in 1-2 rounds that way, but if everyone has +2 actions, it's a bit dishonest to call that one round for the purpose of "how much table time is wasted, how many dice are rolled?"

But there was some point to it. Not any more though, yet people still claim it's the best ever and continue to take it. Because they're idiots and don't bother reading the actual rules.

[Orion]

I don't think this can be said enough times: there is no fucking damage roll. No damage, no soak. Your to-hit roll is also your damage roll. And it's a dicepool system. If I roll 2 dice I am handing out exactly and linearly half as much damage as a guy rolling 4 dice. If there are two of me, we are handing out the same damage (actually more, because there are multiple attacker bonuses, but you get the idea). This means that a handful of anyone with sticks has the combined offensive output of anything in the whole game. So actual combat is pretty much just War with the cards replaced by piles of dice. My side has a pile of dice, so does your side. The biggest pile almost invariably wins and no one cares.
-Username17

Ultimate thread necro, but the love of a woman is at stake. Can anyone explain this assertion to me. I've glanced very quickly at the book, but it looks as though armor and defense work as dicepool penalties to the attacker. Doesn't that solve this problem the same way that soak would?

If I have 1 points of armor, than one 4 die attacker should deal 50% more damage than 2 2 die attackers, right?

[Wulfbanes]

I think you can't roll less than 1 die, so with enough people it's not even relevant. Similarly, armour is then useless against weak things and only of benefit against anything stronger than that.

[Longes]

If the penalties reduce your dicepool to zero, then you are rolling hail mary, instead of a normal die. Which means you only succeed on 10 and critfail on 1.