oMage v. nMage

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Fri May 16, 2014 4:27 pm

Mord wrote:It's funny you should bring up Mummy, though, since several times you've mentioned that nWoD Mummy was Frankensteined together out of fan material... is that for real?

Unfortunately... yes. One of the stages of nWoD development was that they opened themselves up to fan submissions by "letting" people post stuff to a forum with the understanding that they'd take whatever they wanted for free. I have no idea how much random fan garbage actually made it to the final product, but considering the length and lack of give-a-shit, probably quite a bit.

nWoD Demon went even farther than merely soliciting free labor. They actually had a kickstarter level where you got to be an honorary developer and write in whatever the fuck you wanted. They literally paid some of their writers negative moneys for their work.

Basically: Onyx Path is an affinity fraud con and not a gaming company. White Wolf died, they were bought by CCP and the Icelanders kept them around for a while in case they ever finished their Vampire MMO, and when it was clear that that wasn't going to happen they shitcanned the outfit. There is no White Wolf, and hasn't been for several years.

-Username17

Rawbeard · Post by **Rawbeard** » Fri May 16, 2014 5:41 pm

That is actually impressive.

hyzmarca · Post by **hyzmarca** » Fri May 16, 2014 7:40 pm

FrankTrollman wrote: Basically: Onyx Path is an affinity fraud con and not a gaming company.

I wouldn't go that far. They're publishing canon material, so its not like investors aren't getting what they paid for. That material just happens to be shitty.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Fri May 16, 2014 8:01 pm

hyzmarca wrote:
FrankTrollman wrote: Basically: Onyx Path is an affinity fraud con and not a gaming company.
I wouldn't go that far. They're publishing canon material, so its not like investors aren't getting what they paid for. That material just happens to be shitty.

The general idea behind "canon" is that there is some sort of quality oversight process. And in this case, there really isn't.

If J.K. Rowling signed off the rights to declare things canon in the Harry Potterverse to a company that then leased those rights to some random dude who in turn started charging people for pdfs of "canon" stories that were collections of stuff copied from fanfiction.net, I don't think people would be wrong to call that a con. And that's basically what's going on with Onyx Path.

-Username17

TheFlatline · Post by **TheFlatline** » Sat May 17, 2014 5:05 am

Only in this case JK Rowling went on an epic coke bender and invested all her money in an attempt to create a *real* Hogwarts and in her bankruptcy she sold off the IP to pay her debts.

Heaven's Thunder Hammer · Sun May 25, 2014 4:05 am

FrankTrollman wrote:
Mord wrote:It's funny you should bring up Mummy, though, since several times you've mentioned that nWoD Mummy was Frankensteined together out of fan material... is that for real?
Unfortunately... yes. One of the stages of nWoD development was that they opened themselves up to fan submissions by "letting" people post stuff to a forum with the understanding that they'd take whatever they wanted for free. I have no idea how much random fan garbage actually made it to the final product, but considering the length and lack of give-a-shit, probably quite a bit.

nWoD Demon went even farther than merely soliciting free labor. They actually had a kickstarter level where you got to be an honorary developer and write in whatever the fuck you wanted. They literally paid some of their writers negative moneys for their work.

Basically: Onyx Path is an affinity fraud con and not a gaming company. White Wolf died, they were bought by CCP and the Icelanders kept them around for a while in case they ever finished their Vampire MMO, and when it was clear that that wasn't going to happen they shitcanned the outfit. There is no White Wolf, and hasn't been for several years.

-Username17

Frank, never knew about the nMage fan submission forum.

That said, it seems to be a Kickstarter thing in general for people to pay for the right to produce or be part of the project somehow. For example, in the Veronica Mars KS, someone paid $5k or something like that to be a part of the film.

I can't speak to all of the KS projects, but Justin Achilli was brought in for V:tM, Phil Brucato was brought in for M:tA. Exalted at least had some of the better fan contributers turn into developers. So we'll see how 3rd ed turns out.

Archmage Joda · Post by **Archmage Joda** » Sun May 25, 2014 6:11 am

Assuming, of course, that Exalted 3rd edition actually ever happens...

Longes · Post by **Longes** » Sun May 25, 2014 7:21 am

Archmage Joda wrote:Assuming, of course, that Exalted 3rd edition actually ever happens...

Well, I was stupid enought to pay money for the kickstarter, and got a comic out of it. The comic was pretty meh, and had a character, who's design is ripped of from Invincible Sword Princess of all people.

generalvostok · Post by **generalvostok** » Mon Jul 28, 2014 5:32 am

FrankTrollman wrote: nWoD Demon went even farther than merely soliciting free labor. They actually had a kickstarter level where you got to be an honorary developer and write in whatever the fuck you wanted. They literally paid some of their writers negative moneys for their work.

Demon Kickstarter wrote: And you'll be listed in the “Special Thanks” section as you are brought into mission control to participate in the creation of an upcoming Demon: The Descent project as a Consulting Developer. You'll be included on every communication between Rich, Matt, Rose, and the writers from the beginning to the end of the book's creation.

There's a difference between getting CCed on the development emails and getting to write in whatever you want. $700 does seem pretty steep for getting included in a bunch of game development discussions for a supplement and a "Consulting Developer" credit, but only about as crazy as the people paying $300 to get their pictures used as photo references or $250 just to get a named tossed in a rulebook. It's an appeal to vanity, but not a con job.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Mon Jul 28, 2014 6:23 am

If actual published professionals were kicking down the door trying to get a writing credit and some of their own pages inserted for nWoD: Demon, then sure, I would begrudgingly admit it was legit. Unfortunately, I can't think of any established IP with room for guest writers -- and I'm including gonzo ones like Game of Thrones and Mad Men -- that have so many talented people aching to write for it that they have to let a pool of crazed writers bid among themselves to see who gets script dibs.

If you don't have that kind of labor glut then someone paying you to accept their work is them pretty much telling you that they're aware that their writing sucks so much that you would rather have nothing than their script. So here's some weregild to make up for the damage they think their contribution will make to the IP. You could more charitably argue that you're just paying for the chance to get noticed, but again unless you have a labor glut you don't need to resort to this kind of bribery unless you suck all that is ass. And call me cynical but I don't think that there are so many awesome or even decent writers out there willing to work on nWoD: Demon that the development team just can't spend 10 minutes to look at every serious audition.

generalvostok · Post by **generalvostok** » Mon Jul 28, 2014 6:35 am

If you look at what was actually promised, nowhere did it say the people who paid the money would get anything they wrote into a book, only that they'd get a Consulting Developer credit, "be included in all communications," and "participate in the creation". It sounds to me like the RPG equivalent of paying to sit in on meetings and get an Executive Producer credit. Maybe they did more, but it doesn't read to me like they were assured of getting anything in a book for their money.

Longes · Post by **Longes** » Mon Dec 21, 2015 9:27 am

Mage the Ascension 20th Anniversary edition thinks really highly of itself.

Introduction wrote:Twenty years ago, a game came along that changed gaming. It was big and epic and confusing as hell. It dared folks to think outside the box – to not simply throw fireballs but to really think about how and why we do the things we do. Often considered “the thinking gamer’s game,” Mage: The Ascension subverted everything (including itself) while challenging people to make a difference in their world.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Mon Dec 21, 2015 10:20 am

Introduction wrote:Twenty years ago, a game came along that changed gaming. It was big and epic and confusing as hell. It dared folks to think outside the box – to not simply throw fireballs but to turn vampires into lawnchairs and encase people in lead. Often considered “demon hookers and spirit-blow: the RPG,” Mage: The Ascension subverted everything (including itself) while making no goddamned sense

Fixed that for them.

Longes · Post by **Longes** » Mon Dec 21, 2015 11:32 am

Mage 20 actually has a very sad two-page long rant about turning vampires into lawnchairs. TL;DR: this is wrong, vampires are awesome, you need to be a master of both Life and Matter magic to even have a chance to turn vampires and stop playing our game in a badwrongfun way.

talozin · Post by **talozin** » Mon Dec 21, 2015 4:18 pm

So basically the same "YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG" they printed 15 years ago in the Vampire Revised Storytellers Guide, only with a couple of find and replace operations? This is my shocked face.

Mask_De_H · Post by **Mask_De_H** » Mon Dec 21, 2015 6:44 pm

The vampire to lawn chair and playing a D&D wizard means you're doing it wrong memes get repeated a whole bunch in M20.

Longes · Post by **Longes** » Mon Dec 21, 2015 7:14 pm

Yes, but vampire to lawn chair gets two pages dedicated to it in the Rote chapter, instead of, I don't know, explaining what any of the fucking spheres do.

Shrapnel · Post by **Shrapnel** » Mon Dec 21, 2015 7:17 pm

Excuse my ignorance, but... lawn chair?

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Mon Dec 21, 2015 7:23 pm

http://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/ ... -come-from

Shrapnel · Post by **Shrapnel** » Mon Dec 21, 2015 7:50 pm

Thanks. Now I know.

TheFlatline · Post by **TheFlatline** » Mon Dec 21, 2015 8:09 pm

By the time I came along towards the end of 2nd, Vampires to Lawn Chairs was a way to piss the vampire people off. You'd drop it and suddenly 20 people from the Vampire forum who never commented in Mage would show up bitching and whining and freaking out.

It also was kind of a joke about how loose the Mage 1 rules were.

Rawbeard · Post by **Rawbeard** » Tue Dec 22, 2015 3:30 am

shouldn't it be entropy to affect vampires instead of life? is that why they sucked all that stuff out of matter and entropy to create a new, superfluous death sphere in nMage?

but I love the contradiction in oMage, like "you don't have spell lists" but "the character does not know that, he only really knows his rotes (spells) and might not even understand that he is reshaping reality and his tools and believes are only crutches, so yes you do have spell lists like a D&D mage, now suck this White Wolf dick, please".

Longes · Post by **Longes** » Tue Dec 22, 2015 9:19 am

Rotes in oMage are a curious case - there are no rules for learning rotes, and there are no rules for what the rotes actually do. So they are pretty much sample effects, which is damn useful for a system as arcane as oMage. For example, Entropy can apparently be used to detect lies by reading subject's destiny. This rote has been reprinted at least three times, and I'd never fucking guess that you can use Entropy to detect lies.

shouldn't it be entropy to affect vampires instead of life?

Entropy is not a material sphere. Life affects organic materials, Matter affects non-organic materials. Entropy affects chance, destiny, decay, and makes affecting ghosts with Spirit easier. You can use Entropy to rot vampire's hand off exactly how you'd rot rot human's hand off exactly how you'd rot a door - with Entropy 4. But you need material spheres to transform X into Y, vampire into lawnchair in this case.

shouldn't it be entropy to affect vampires instead of life? is

As far as I can tell, Death exists because oMage didn't support a necromancer archetype. If you want to see dead people you need Spirit, if you want to raise zombies you need Life and Prime, if you want to raise skeletons you need Matter and Prime, if you want to command creepy crawly shadows you need Forces, if you want to decay things you need Entropy... Moving all things necromancer into the Death sphere allowed necromancers to be playable from the start. Only not, because Paradox still explodes your zombies the moment you send him to the grocceries store.

Mechalich · Post by **Mechalich** » Tue Dec 22, 2015 5:49 pm

Longes wrote:and there are no rules for what the rotes actually do

Technically using an 'established' rote is supposed to reduce the difficulty of the effect by one, at least in Revised. Of course, the actual system for establishing that difficulty was so baroque most people just defaulted to highest sphere + 3 and ignored all the tinkering so that casting an effect didn't take 20 minutes.

As far as I can tell, Death exists because oMage didn't support a necromancer archetype. If you want to see dead people you need Spirit, if you want to raise zombies you need Life and Prime, if you want to raise skeletons you need Matter and Prime, if you want to command creepy crawly shadows you need Forces, if you want to decay things you need Entropy... Moving all things necromancer into the Death sphere allowed necromancers to be playable from the start. Only not, because Paradox still explodes your zombies the moment you send him to the grocceries store.

oMage didn't really easily support any classical archetypes at all, except healers (which was straight up Life) because the requirements to do anything else required more spheres than a character could ever get. The actual sourcebooks printed tons of 'Sample Rotes' that required multiple 4-dot or 5-dot sphere rankings, which was incredibly stupid because a creative player with 5 dots in any sphere could come up with a ritual of world ending power in their basement over a weekend and if you were smart you only gave the players a chance to play with a single level 4 sphere for the last couple of sessions of the campaign (which was totally a matter of ad hoc adjudication anyway, since the sphere system isn't actually a system and is rather a set of components used to assemble metaphorical MTP idea boxes).

As for Mage20, I've looked at it and its hundreds of pages of reprinting of old material that includes several colossally dumb ideas (like the Disparate Alliance) a handful of ideas that might be useful for a game (like the Reality Zones idea) and a huge amount of pretending that all possible metaplot outcomes lead to equally good setting backdrops, which they obviously don't. The only reason to both with it would be if you didn't already own a version of Mage (since it condenses multiple books into one mammoth pdf). If you do it adds nothing.

Heaven's Thunder Hammer · Tue Dec 22, 2015 7:48 pm

I'm still cheesed that M20 needed a whole other book to explain the magic in the game. "How do you do that?" itself is actually very good, but given the game is "Mage the Ascension" not "Phil Brucato: The Blathering" I'm fairly irritated the most important part of the game wasn't in the core book.[/u]