Almost done reading through Mage. The main item I've got left is the Boston mini-setting in the back, and then there's some legacies and merits and things that I'll read in more detail later. (It's unusual for me to read a new RPG book as thoroughly as I've been covering these new World of Darkness volumes, I'm usually a lot more haphazard about it. But it's an entirely new system and I've got a lot of time on my hands, and I'd like to do a thorough appraisal before I get back to school and start playing.) So far, I like what I see. The system's spiffy, I'm starting to get this whole "themes" thing, and there's an amusingly large number of references to dungeon crawling -- I mean, exploring Atlantean ruins. Right.
The one thing that's keeping me from enthusiastically throwing myself into running the thing is the setting. Not that it's bad -- for "secret modern occult politics" it's quite good, and I like what I've read of it so far. But it's still modern, and it's still a pre-made setting. Both of those things make me nervous.
I've never run a modern game. The closest I came was when I ran a session of Feng Shui where the characters helped President Harrison Ford fight Nazi ninjas. I've run post-apocalyptic cyberpunk, a fair amount of fantasy, and a brief, ill-fated space campaign, but never anything even close to real world modern. I don't write much realistic (or even semi-realistic) fiction, either. I've started giving it a little more attention lately, but for a long time I just wasn't comfortable writing anything set in anything remotely resembling the normal, modern world. Even if it was supers or something, the real world parts would trip me up.
I'm not entirely sure why this is, but it makes me wonder if I can do a decent job with Mage as written. What if there's a real, good reason I've avoided running a modern game all these years? What if being uncomfortable with it throws off my game? What happens if, three sessions in, I decide I can't handle it?
Pushing myself out of my comfort zone could be a good thing. But the other problem with the setting is simply that there is one. All but one of my campaigns have used more or less custom settings. I did once run a game in the Diamond Throne, but I completely changed the geography, significantly altered the history, and didn't use several of the races. It's a habit that worries me, because while there's a lot I can do to alter the magical parts of the Mage setting, I'm a lot more limited in geography, history, culture, and most other major things I could change, if its still going to look vaguely like the real world.
The set up does have its advantages. Everyone has more or less the same baseline knowledge of the world: like ours, but darker. I don't have to do much in the way of pre-game explanation to allow everyone to make characters that fit. And there's a lot of material already out there. I can use maps, neat history facts, and locations from the real world, even with a few minor modifications.
But I haven't quite been able to convince myself. I'm still wondering if I should put the effort in and whip up a neat little dark fantasy or cyberpunk world or something, give myself a little more room to breath, a setting more like I'm used to. The only problem with that is that, at the moment, I don't have enough to hang a game on. If I already had some crazy cool idea that would work with the system, I'd be sketching it out without giving it this much thought. Trouble is, I don't have anything like that already, and despite my misgivings about running Mage "straight" I don't know that it'd be worth the effort and risk to try to force a more unique setting.
Showing posts with label world of darkness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label world of darkness. Show all posts
Friday, January 09, 2009
Thursday, January 08, 2009
Early Thoughts On Mage Orders
I'm about halfway through Mage, currently making my way through the rotes. It's interesting reading; the orders and paths make a lot more sense now that I know what they can actually do. The most interesting thing I've noticed is that each of the orders suggests a very different kind of camapign. It's not hard to imagine a mixed cabal, but on their own each order has its own unique set of activities.
In that sense they're much more distinct from each other than Vampire covenants. The covenants are much more different from each other politically, each having far more divergent views on the origin and purposes of their kind than the different orders do of theirs, but their core activities are all more or less similar. Each seeks to expand its own power at the expense of the others, by subverting mortal wills and weaving webs of favors and deceit. They've each got their own style, and different things they want to do with that power, but every vampire is driven by the same basic needs of territory and haven.
Mages, too, all have the same basic goal of learning secrets and advancing their power, but each of the orders has a very different set of day to day activities. The Mysterium leans towards "magical Indiana Jones," while the Guardians of the Veil are more black ops cloak and dagger. It's not simply that a guardian is "the sneaky one" and a mystagogue is "the book-ish one," filling different roles the way classes do in D&D. Each order represents its own mode of play.
The "default" mage game seems to be a mix of the different activities of the orders -- searching for mystic secrets, defending those secrets from rivals, dealing with mortals when something goes awry, and mixing it up with the local power structure. This provides another contrast with Requiem, which presents a mostly universal set of basic behaviors -- feeding, finding a haven, gaining and maintaining access to good territory -- and then layers the goals of an individual or group on top of that foundation.
Not that any given Awakened group wouldn't have its own unique features, but a game could also be defined by what it omits from the basic design. Drop the political aspect entirely, or nix adventures in long forgotten tombs. Secrecy from sleepers would be difficult to remove, being a core part of the game, but it could be de-emphasized, a barrier to other actions rather than something the group takes a proactive stance towards.
I suspect, though, that an amalgam of different styles would make for a very robust, interesting game, such that intentionally tampering with the basic mix wouldn't be worth the trouble. But a certain amount of adjustment would be inevitable; the players would naturally signal the activities they're most interested in by the order they choose for their characters, and the campaign would shift to fit those preferences. That strikes me as one of the strengths of this model -- there's a lot of variety in what a "normal" campaign might look like, and there's a built in method for the players to clearly demonstrate what they want out of the campaign.
In that sense they're much more distinct from each other than Vampire covenants. The covenants are much more different from each other politically, each having far more divergent views on the origin and purposes of their kind than the different orders do of theirs, but their core activities are all more or less similar. Each seeks to expand its own power at the expense of the others, by subverting mortal wills and weaving webs of favors and deceit. They've each got their own style, and different things they want to do with that power, but every vampire is driven by the same basic needs of territory and haven.
Mages, too, all have the same basic goal of learning secrets and advancing their power, but each of the orders has a very different set of day to day activities. The Mysterium leans towards "magical Indiana Jones," while the Guardians of the Veil are more black ops cloak and dagger. It's not simply that a guardian is "the sneaky one" and a mystagogue is "the book-ish one," filling different roles the way classes do in D&D. Each order represents its own mode of play.
The "default" mage game seems to be a mix of the different activities of the orders -- searching for mystic secrets, defending those secrets from rivals, dealing with mortals when something goes awry, and mixing it up with the local power structure. This provides another contrast with Requiem, which presents a mostly universal set of basic behaviors -- feeding, finding a haven, gaining and maintaining access to good territory -- and then layers the goals of an individual or group on top of that foundation.
Not that any given Awakened group wouldn't have its own unique features, but a game could also be defined by what it omits from the basic design. Drop the political aspect entirely, or nix adventures in long forgotten tombs. Secrecy from sleepers would be difficult to remove, being a core part of the game, but it could be de-emphasized, a barrier to other actions rather than something the group takes a proactive stance towards.
I suspect, though, that an amalgam of different styles would make for a very robust, interesting game, such that intentionally tampering with the basic mix wouldn't be worth the trouble. But a certain amount of adjustment would be inevitable; the players would naturally signal the activities they're most interested in by the order they choose for their characters, and the campaign would shift to fit those preferences. That strikes me as one of the strengths of this model -- there's a lot of variety in what a "normal" campaign might look like, and there's a built in method for the players to clearly demonstrate what they want out of the campaign.
Wednesday, January 07, 2009
Dice Preferences
Part of the reason I could never quite get into GURPS was the dice. All d6s, all the time, at most varying the number used when rolling for damage. I appreciate the elegance of the system, and I can sort of see the appeal of being able to use whatever dice are on hand to play, at least for new players and groups. But I like my bag full of crazy, fancy dice too much to really be happy using nothing but d6s for the length of a campaign.
I like dice in weird colors. I like dice in weird shapes. I have a fondness for the d8, because of all the clerics I played when I was first starting out. I like d12s, to the point where I get excited when I find a system that uses them. And I like systems that use lots of different dice, mostly because I've got a lot of different dice.
That collection of preferences was a (small) factor in keeping me away from White Wolf and similar games. Who wants to just roll one kind of dice all the time, even if it is a little more interesting than a bunch of d6s? When the books I'm reading through now finally overcame all my various resistances, I discovered that dice pools are just as much fun as rolling crazier individual dice. Different kind of fun, but it's still nice to throw a handful of dice, and even more fun to pick out the dice I get to roll again. A tactile pleasure, rather than an aesthetic one.
Which shouldn't have been surprising to me. My favorite GURPS character ever was a street racer who, thanks to a GM who hadn't seriously considered the results of letting all the PCs outfit themselves with TL 14+ tech, ran around with a gauss rifle. She regularly rolled ridiculous amounts of damage dice thanks to a snazzy rate of fire and ludicrous Gun skill. (Which was more a side effect of her crazy vehicle handling skills than an intentional attempt to game the combat system, but I did take advantage of it.) Somehow, it never occurred to me that the fun I had rolling that bunch of dice would translate to dice pool type systems in general.
I like dice in weird colors. I like dice in weird shapes. I have a fondness for the d8, because of all the clerics I played when I was first starting out. I like d12s, to the point where I get excited when I find a system that uses them. And I like systems that use lots of different dice, mostly because I've got a lot of different dice.
That collection of preferences was a (small) factor in keeping me away from White Wolf and similar games. Who wants to just roll one kind of dice all the time, even if it is a little more interesting than a bunch of d6s? When the books I'm reading through now finally overcame all my various resistances, I discovered that dice pools are just as much fun as rolling crazier individual dice. Different kind of fun, but it's still nice to throw a handful of dice, and even more fun to pick out the dice I get to roll again. A tactile pleasure, rather than an aesthetic one.
Which shouldn't have been surprising to me. My favorite GURPS character ever was a street racer who, thanks to a GM who hadn't seriously considered the results of letting all the PCs outfit themselves with TL 14+ tech, ran around with a gauss rifle. She regularly rolled ridiculous amounts of damage dice thanks to a snazzy rate of fire and ludicrous Gun skill. (Which was more a side effect of her crazy vehicle handling skills than an intentional attempt to game the combat system, but I did take advantage of it.) Somehow, it never occurred to me that the fun I had rolling that bunch of dice would translate to dice pool type systems in general.
Monday, January 05, 2009
The Size of a Book
So now I (finally) have Promethean, Mage, and the World of Darkness corebook. Still haven't had a chance to go through them properly. I'm half way through the core book, currently trying to work up the gumption to get through the combat section. Not that I'm not interested in it -- I'm intrigued by the system. I've never really looked at a dice pool game before, and this one has a number of features I quite like. Number one is getting to roll handfuls of dice all the time. I like rolling dice. And I like getting new dice -- I've only got six d10s at present, so if I decide I'm going to run these games I'll need some more.
I haven't even cracked Mage and Promethean yet, but I've already noticed one thing: these books have a very attractive feel to them. The corebook is about the size of the average D&D supplement, but the others are practically proper tomes. Particularly the Mage corebook, which is now the thickest RPG I own. I'm not used to it, and it gives the book an attractive heft and unusual feel. Vampire and Promethean are both about the size of the 3.5 corebooks, maybe a little heavier. Which still gives them a reasonable attraction, seeing as their dimensions match the first RPG books I ever owned, and the ones I've spent the most time with.
I haven't even cracked Mage and Promethean yet, but I've already noticed one thing: these books have a very attractive feel to them. The corebook is about the size of the average D&D supplement, but the others are practically proper tomes. Particularly the Mage corebook, which is now the thickest RPG I own. I'm not used to it, and it gives the book an attractive heft and unusual feel. Vampire and Promethean are both about the size of the 3.5 corebooks, maybe a little heavier. Which still gives them a reasonable attraction, seeing as their dimensions match the first RPG books I ever owned, and the ones I've spent the most time with.
Friday, January 02, 2009
Dr. Horrible as a Model for Preludes
Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, besides being awesome, strikes me as an example of the intent of what White Wolf calls a prelude. (If you haven't seen it yet, be warned that there are some spoilers coming up.) It's a fairly short story about one character who then goes on to have a series of adventures with another group of characters, who are introduced in the story but not central to the action. In the course of the story, something goes terribly wrong, setting up the (implied) motivation for the character's later behavior, lending depth and tragedy to any later stories.
If nothing else, it's a good illustration for why a prelude might be a good idea. Were Dr. Horrible were to show up in another movie or show, antagonist or otherwise, he'd be much more understandable and even sympathetic than if presented cold. (Which is funny, because in the show I don't think Dr. Horrible is actually all that sympathetic until the end. He doesn't seem to have much concept of other people as independent actors, with lives and feelings of their own. Which is sort of the point, I suppose.)
Being a movie, the comparison isn't perfect. The Whedon brothers have a lot of latitude in setting up the specifics of their tragic payoff, because they're writing everything out ahead of time. Trying to get that level of premeditated cohesion in a game would invite either the potential for the whole thing to go horribly awry, or boredom as everything plays out exactly according to schedule. By necessity, you'd need to be willing to play a little fast and loose with exactly how things turned out.
But starting out with a character and a simple-ish goal wouldn't be a bad way to go. The "element of tragedy" part might be a little bit tricky, but luckily World of Darkness games tend to have that built in. "Character X wants to do Y, but whether he succeeds or fails he will in the process get vampirized" is pretty gameable, especially the vampire involved has his own motives.
Without such an obvious avenue, the easiest thing to do would be to agree with the player ahead of time that, regardless of whatever else happens, at some point something terrible is going to happen to their character. Might even go so far to have them come up with something cool and character appropriate during the course of the game. One thing that would help with defining a tragic moment on the fly like this would be giving the character some kind of defining flaw to build off of -- the classic approach, and one Dr. Horrible uses.
If nothing else, it's a good illustration for why a prelude might be a good idea. Were Dr. Horrible were to show up in another movie or show, antagonist or otherwise, he'd be much more understandable and even sympathetic than if presented cold. (Which is funny, because in the show I don't think Dr. Horrible is actually all that sympathetic until the end. He doesn't seem to have much concept of other people as independent actors, with lives and feelings of their own. Which is sort of the point, I suppose.)
Being a movie, the comparison isn't perfect. The Whedon brothers have a lot of latitude in setting up the specifics of their tragic payoff, because they're writing everything out ahead of time. Trying to get that level of premeditated cohesion in a game would invite either the potential for the whole thing to go horribly awry, or boredom as everything plays out exactly according to schedule. By necessity, you'd need to be willing to play a little fast and loose with exactly how things turned out.
But starting out with a character and a simple-ish goal wouldn't be a bad way to go. The "element of tragedy" part might be a little bit tricky, but luckily World of Darkness games tend to have that built in. "Character X wants to do Y, but whether he succeeds or fails he will in the process get vampirized" is pretty gameable, especially the vampire involved has his own motives.
Without such an obvious avenue, the easiest thing to do would be to agree with the player ahead of time that, regardless of whatever else happens, at some point something terrible is going to happen to their character. Might even go so far to have them come up with something cool and character appropriate during the course of the game. One thing that would help with defining a tragic moment on the fly like this would be giving the character some kind of defining flaw to build off of -- the classic approach, and one Dr. Horrible uses.
Monday, December 29, 2008
Six Half-Baked Vampire Chronicles
Vampire Rockstar
The PC coterie is based on mutual membership in a local band. Maybe they hooked up after their embrace, more likely their band is important to local politics (or their music has mystical significance) and their sires took an interest in them on that account. Perks include groupies to feed on, music and dance based devotions/disciplines, and the quest for the Ultimate Groove. On the other hand, they have to contend with that werewolf band that's beating them to all the best gigs, "creative differences" within the band, guys trying to steal their artifact instruments, and The Man.
Lawyers, Guns & Money
Three words: Vampire lobbying firm. Designed to both advance vampire political interests directly, and rack up favors from members of the business community who have heard of their almost unnatural ability to seal the deal. The PCs start out at the bottom, kept busy mostly scaring punks away from their K Street property and shaking down "the competition." As they earn a little more trust from upper management, they start getting tapped to "entertain" clients. And there are always the jobs they do on the side, either for groups they belong to or for their own self interest.
Vampire Surfers
Elysium is the best local beaches, and the Prince rules the waves. In addition to all the usual things vampires have to do to maintain rank, the PCs have to show their stuff on the water. Alternatively, they're a bunch of surf punks, with more than just good surfing to defend in their "territory."
World of Darkness 2020
Cyberpunk + Vampires = Awesome. This one would take a little rejiggering of the rules, some adjustments to the skill set and a new equipment list at the very least, but it could work. The moods, particularly, mesh pretty well, the whole "our world, but darker, controlled by forces beyond our control" thing being a feature of both genres.
City of the Damned
Set in a real fantasy world -- none of this "our world, but darker" nonsense. Most of the world is overrun by monsters and cultists and generally unpleasant critters. The vampire rulers of the city defend it from those menaces, but at a terrible price. The players are new to the "city defense force," drafted to replace a few veterans who died under very mysterious circumstances. Should they, as they've been instructed, ignore that mystery and get on with their monster hunting duties? The attendant life of luxury they live during their off hours argues most persuasively in favor of looking the other way, but then there's the question of where exactly all those monsters are coming from, and just how benevolent the elders in charge of the city really are.
Vampires in Spaaaaace!
They are probably also pirates. Vampire space pirates. Yeah, that's the ticket. Pretty much just steal the system generation and space travel rules from Traveller, then let the PCs figure out how to feed while stuck in warp. On the bright side, there's no sun in deep space. No, I don't have any excuse for this.
The PC coterie is based on mutual membership in a local band. Maybe they hooked up after their embrace, more likely their band is important to local politics (or their music has mystical significance) and their sires took an interest in them on that account. Perks include groupies to feed on, music and dance based devotions/disciplines, and the quest for the Ultimate Groove. On the other hand, they have to contend with that werewolf band that's beating them to all the best gigs, "creative differences" within the band, guys trying to steal their artifact instruments, and The Man.
Lawyers, Guns & Money
Three words: Vampire lobbying firm. Designed to both advance vampire political interests directly, and rack up favors from members of the business community who have heard of their almost unnatural ability to seal the deal. The PCs start out at the bottom, kept busy mostly scaring punks away from their K Street property and shaking down "the competition." As they earn a little more trust from upper management, they start getting tapped to "entertain" clients. And there are always the jobs they do on the side, either for groups they belong to or for their own self interest.
Vampire Surfers
Elysium is the best local beaches, and the Prince rules the waves. In addition to all the usual things vampires have to do to maintain rank, the PCs have to show their stuff on the water. Alternatively, they're a bunch of surf punks, with more than just good surfing to defend in their "territory."
World of Darkness 2020
Cyberpunk + Vampires = Awesome. This one would take a little rejiggering of the rules, some adjustments to the skill set and a new equipment list at the very least, but it could work. The moods, particularly, mesh pretty well, the whole "our world, but darker, controlled by forces beyond our control" thing being a feature of both genres.
City of the Damned
Set in a real fantasy world -- none of this "our world, but darker" nonsense. Most of the world is overrun by monsters and cultists and generally unpleasant critters. The vampire rulers of the city defend it from those menaces, but at a terrible price. The players are new to the "city defense force," drafted to replace a few veterans who died under very mysterious circumstances. Should they, as they've been instructed, ignore that mystery and get on with their monster hunting duties? The attendant life of luxury they live during their off hours argues most persuasively in favor of looking the other way, but then there's the question of where exactly all those monsters are coming from, and just how benevolent the elders in charge of the city really are.
Vampires in Spaaaaace!
They are probably also pirates. Vampire space pirates. Yeah, that's the ticket. Pretty much just steal the system generation and space travel rules from Traveller, then let the PCs figure out how to feed while stuck in warp. On the bright side, there's no sun in deep space. No, I don't have any excuse for this.
Saturday, December 27, 2008
So What Does a Vampire Game Look Like, Anyway?
So I got my hands on a copy of Vampire. It's, um, well, it's a pretty decent read. It takes 86 pages to get to anything resembling a game, but I can forgive. The system looks kind of spiffy, and I need to get a hold of the core book so I can take a closer look at that. And it's got some amusing stuff about the usual behavior of young vampires. They pretty much all act like PCs -- questioning the government, treating Disciplines as superpowers, "getting off on being a dark creature of the night," and breaking stuff for no good reason -- which, of course, they are.
But I just can't seem to wrap my head around how I'd actually run the dang thing. I don't have a good sense of what a typical session would look like, or what a really good session would look like. The book tends to go on about "moral choices" and "themes" and "Man vs. Beast" but I can't imagine running a game that gets too seriously into that stuff. Most of my games, though they're not necessarily combat heavy, tend to err on the adventure-y side of things. Crashing weddings, jumping out of helicopters, questing for lost swords, setting off volcanoes, that kind of thing.
Which should, theoretically, be doable with Vampire--people are always complaining about it being used for "dark superheroes" which sounds like it would work, but I can't really get a good sense for what that would look like. The game has a pretty obvious starting point, the whole "you've just been turned, now what do you do?" thing, but I'm not completely solid on where I would go after that.
And I have absolutely no clue what to do with a "standard" game, which otherwise I'd think might be interesting to try. What is it that Vampire PCs spend most of their time doing? Clawing their way up the power structure? Messing with other vampires? Trying to connect with mortals?
My suspicion is that my problems will be solved once I can just get a hold of some players. Get some characters, some actual goals, a couple extra sources of ideas, and I should be able to get a better handle on what exactly this Vampire thing is supposed to look like. Or I could just run some Traveller or something. We'll see.
But I just can't seem to wrap my head around how I'd actually run the dang thing. I don't have a good sense of what a typical session would look like, or what a really good session would look like. The book tends to go on about "moral choices" and "themes" and "Man vs. Beast" but I can't imagine running a game that gets too seriously into that stuff. Most of my games, though they're not necessarily combat heavy, tend to err on the adventure-y side of things. Crashing weddings, jumping out of helicopters, questing for lost swords, setting off volcanoes, that kind of thing.
Which should, theoretically, be doable with Vampire--people are always complaining about it being used for "dark superheroes" which sounds like it would work, but I can't really get a good sense for what that would look like. The game has a pretty obvious starting point, the whole "you've just been turned, now what do you do?" thing, but I'm not completely solid on where I would go after that.
And I have absolutely no clue what to do with a "standard" game, which otherwise I'd think might be interesting to try. What is it that Vampire PCs spend most of their time doing? Clawing their way up the power structure? Messing with other vampires? Trying to connect with mortals?
My suspicion is that my problems will be solved once I can just get a hold of some players. Get some characters, some actual goals, a couple extra sources of ideas, and I should be able to get a better handle on what exactly this Vampire thing is supposed to look like. Or I could just run some Traveller or something. We'll see.
Thursday, December 04, 2008
nWoD + Sandbox
So this new World of Darkness thing and my pre-existing obsession have combined, Voltron-like, into something new and horrible. What if I ran a World of Darkness city as a sandbox? Or at least something sandbox-esque; Vampire, Mage and the rest lack levels and treasure, but there are a few principals besides "run around stealing things" that I could loot for a game run with such a system.
Most specifically, the idea of having a large, irregular player pool and allowing more than one character per player appeals to me, and wouldn't be too hard to implement in a dark urban fantasy game. I'd just make sure that the action ends by the end of the session, so the next one can start at the local nightclub or whatever else the game uses as its tavern-equivalent. With that policy in place, scheduling becomes a lot easier, since I don't have to worry if a couple people can't make it, and it would be easy to introduce new players and include people who can only play on an occasional basis.
On the other hand, I'd have a whole lot more characters to keep track of--more plans, goals, family members, rivals, and NPC reactions, not to mention more factors to work into any NPC plots and plans, if I go in for that sort of thing. My main thought right now would be to rely heavily on maps. Get a map of Washington DC, or a couple specific neighborhoods, and mark it up with the places various characters have been, then key in all the people they've pissed off. Planning for the future wouldn't be too much of a problem; so long as I could keep a good handle on what's out there and what's already happened, I can figure out how to react to whatever weird plan the PCs come up with during play.
I'm not sure it'd really end up being all that different from a normal nWoD, just with stronger emphasis on setting and how the characters interacted with that setting than on any particular player groups grand story arc. It's unlikely that I'll find out any time soon, since I'm still happily working on my Swords & Wizardry sandbox and I've got plans to run that all next semester. But it might be a fun thing to try, if I ever give into the lure of those wonderfully shiny books.
Most specifically, the idea of having a large, irregular player pool and allowing more than one character per player appeals to me, and wouldn't be too hard to implement in a dark urban fantasy game. I'd just make sure that the action ends by the end of the session, so the next one can start at the local nightclub or whatever else the game uses as its tavern-equivalent. With that policy in place, scheduling becomes a lot easier, since I don't have to worry if a couple people can't make it, and it would be easy to introduce new players and include people who can only play on an occasional basis.
On the other hand, I'd have a whole lot more characters to keep track of--more plans, goals, family members, rivals, and NPC reactions, not to mention more factors to work into any NPC plots and plans, if I go in for that sort of thing. My main thought right now would be to rely heavily on maps. Get a map of Washington DC, or a couple specific neighborhoods, and mark it up with the places various characters have been, then key in all the people they've pissed off. Planning for the future wouldn't be too much of a problem; so long as I could keep a good handle on what's out there and what's already happened, I can figure out how to react to whatever weird plan the PCs come up with during play.
I'm not sure it'd really end up being all that different from a normal nWoD, just with stronger emphasis on setting and how the characters interacted with that setting than on any particular player groups grand story arc. It's unlikely that I'll find out any time soon, since I'm still happily working on my Swords & Wizardry sandbox and I've got plans to run that all next semester. But it might be a fun thing to try, if I ever give into the lure of those wonderfully shiny books.
Wednesday, December 03, 2008
Vampire? Seriously?
I've been struck lately, in between working on my sandbox thing, by a weird interest in all things World of Darkness. These things come and go--at one point I was fascinated by Promethean, and I even went through a brief period where I was into Exalted--but lately I've been wanting to get a couple of those big old shiny hardbacks and play some Vampire or some Mage or even some Werewolf. (The new World of Darkness versions at least, since they seem a little less heavy on teenage specialness angst and random technology hate.)
"Play," of course, is the strange part. I usually get kind of grumpy if I'm not running the game, or at least a game. I've gotten better about that recently, but I haven't played in a long campaign for a while. If the Battlestar game had gone on longer, I might have gotten less puzzled and more irritated when the GM started talking about "writing a campaign." Or at least started itching to run my own game, though that's less of an issue now that I don't have one and only one regular group.
But at least for now, there's something about those new World of Darkness books that tells me to make a character and start messing around in someone else's world. Sure, I could run a game, probably happily. Flipping through the Vampire corebook did give me some ideas for my usual side of the screen, and I've come up with a couple of interesting things I could do with Mage, but mostly I want someone else to do the story work and let me get on with the wacky adventures.
Could be that I've already got enough game master side projects going. I'd very much like to have that Swords & Wizardry game running by January, and that won't happen if I start thinking too hard about exactly what kind of Indiana Jones hijinks a bunch mages could get up to. And if it were just Promethean, that'd be easy enough to work out. I've got a thing for the robot/humanity/angst thing that game is built around. But other than that? All I know is I've got this sudden urge to be a vampire (or whatever) and knock some stuff over. Sometimes my gaming interests just don't make sense.
"Play," of course, is the strange part. I usually get kind of grumpy if I'm not running the game, or at least a game. I've gotten better about that recently, but I haven't played in a long campaign for a while. If the Battlestar game had gone on longer, I might have gotten less puzzled and more irritated when the GM started talking about "writing a campaign." Or at least started itching to run my own game, though that's less of an issue now that I don't have one and only one regular group.
But at least for now, there's something about those new World of Darkness books that tells me to make a character and start messing around in someone else's world. Sure, I could run a game, probably happily. Flipping through the Vampire corebook did give me some ideas for my usual side of the screen, and I've come up with a couple of interesting things I could do with Mage, but mostly I want someone else to do the story work and let me get on with the wacky adventures.
Could be that I've already got enough game master side projects going. I'd very much like to have that Swords & Wizardry game running by January, and that won't happen if I start thinking too hard about exactly what kind of Indiana Jones hijinks a bunch mages could get up to. And if it were just Promethean, that'd be easy enough to work out. I've got a thing for the robot/humanity/angst thing that game is built around. But other than that? All I know is I've got this sudden urge to be a vampire (or whatever) and knock some stuff over. Sometimes my gaming interests just don't make sense.
Thursday, May 17, 2007
My Latest 15-Minute Obsession
Argh. I want to play Promethean. Badly.
Because you know what I see when I look at this game?
Robot angst.
Probably because I'm a mutant.
I'm serious, though. I'm not one of those squares who thinks that "robot" has to mean bits and gears and dials. This game taps my inexplicable fascination with all things created, and alienated. Robots, golems, Frankenstein, heck, even the Hulk. No idea how solid the execution is, but the concept is brilliant.
Trouble is, it's a World of Darkness game. Which means that it'd be hard to find someone to run it, and other people to play it. And I'd have to buy at least one book, maybe two. I know Rae has the basic World of Darkness book, but I don't know that she'd be into running a game this summer.
If it doesn't happen this summer, I'm going to either have to wait until next year (by which time I will have lost interest) or try putting together a game with a bunch of strangers. Which I am not sure is such a good plan. Because, at the very least, the particular nature of this game's GM responsibilities means I would be very wary about playing with a GM I don't know. And I'm not terribly interested in running this game myself. This concept engages me on a character level, not a story or environmental level. (Unlike D&D, and standard fantasy in general.)
Also, I worry about World of Darkness people being freaks. For some reason.
The other big problem is the book itself. I've only read a little bit of it, but what I have read falls in an uncomfortable place between "Damn! That's awesome!" and "Get to the point already!" Maybe this is the D&D player in me talking, but I don't care how six different groups interpret the whatsit's creation myth. I want to know what the whatsit does.
Not that it doesn't make for un-entertaining reading. (Especially the bits about ectoplasm coming from the pineal gland. That's totally how science works.) But from a "how do I use this in a game?" perspective, it's frustrating.
Then there's the game fiction. Oh, the game fiction.
I figure I can get past that, though. What I know of the basic system looks pretty neat, and the additions that Promethean bolts onto it don't look too onerous. Especially when compared to Exalted, which is the most similar system I have any actual experience. Exalted is cool and all, but talk about option overload. Yowch.
If someone to run it. And people to play it. Who aren't scary.
In all likelihood, this will turn into one of those things I get really obsessed with for a week, and then forget about. Forever!
At least I've gotten some decent ideas out of it.
Because you know what I see when I look at this game?
Robot angst.
Probably because I'm a mutant.
I'm serious, though. I'm not one of those squares who thinks that "robot" has to mean bits and gears and dials. This game taps my inexplicable fascination with all things created, and alienated. Robots, golems, Frankenstein, heck, even the Hulk. No idea how solid the execution is, but the concept is brilliant.
Trouble is, it's a World of Darkness game. Which means that it'd be hard to find someone to run it, and other people to play it. And I'd have to buy at least one book, maybe two. I know Rae has the basic World of Darkness book, but I don't know that she'd be into running a game this summer.
If it doesn't happen this summer, I'm going to either have to wait until next year (by which time I will have lost interest) or try putting together a game with a bunch of strangers. Which I am not sure is such a good plan. Because, at the very least, the particular nature of this game's GM responsibilities means I would be very wary about playing with a GM I don't know. And I'm not terribly interested in running this game myself. This concept engages me on a character level, not a story or environmental level. (Unlike D&D, and standard fantasy in general.)
Also, I worry about World of Darkness people being freaks. For some reason.
The other big problem is the book itself. I've only read a little bit of it, but what I have read falls in an uncomfortable place between "Damn! That's awesome!" and "Get to the point already!" Maybe this is the D&D player in me talking, but I don't care how six different groups interpret the whatsit's creation myth. I want to know what the whatsit does.
Not that it doesn't make for un-entertaining reading. (Especially the bits about ectoplasm coming from the pineal gland. That's totally how science works.) But from a "how do I use this in a game?" perspective, it's frustrating.
Then there's the game fiction. Oh, the game fiction.
I figure I can get past that, though. What I know of the basic system looks pretty neat, and the additions that Promethean bolts onto it don't look too onerous. Especially when compared to Exalted, which is the most similar system I have any actual experience. Exalted is cool and all, but talk about option overload. Yowch.
If someone to run it. And people to play it. Who aren't scary.
In all likelihood, this will turn into one of those things I get really obsessed with for a week, and then forget about. Forever!
At least I've gotten some decent ideas out of it.
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