New Testingstan

I see chocula has a buttbuddy.

On the topic of RPG/LARP retardation and fattynerds: I came to a slow realization concerning the assorted nerd/spergrage over White Wolf. Basically White Wolf wrapped up their old World of Darkness universe and created a whole new one, new systems, new mythologies, etc for their franchise... and you could hear the forum-walls rattling from the screams of rage over it.

Now I'll admit right off the bat: I like the new stuff. I don't really care if the 'game mechanics' are good or not because my GM style is way too loose to really be affected/limited by them. I just draw a lot of story, creature, organization and mythology ideas from the universe and incorporate them or some modification of them in my own heavily bastardized universe... which from what I've read in the various books is exactly what White Wolf encourages if it works.

So I was a little confused over why almost everyone else seemed to think White Wolf was stabbing their cocks in their sleep with the new stuff. I'd heard claims that it was crap stuff... but I sure as hell didn't see that. I heard claims that it was just them trying to force people to buy more books... but what gaming company doesn't do that? They're a company, it's their job to sell shit. So a few years ago I made a thread asking exactly what all the bitching over the new WoD was about. Nitram's response essentially boiled down to, "I hate it because White Wolf gave in to the emo nerds and made the entire universe emo".

This just confused me a lot more because, between the two universes, the old WoD was a hell of a lot more 'emo' than the new one. In the old world, you're either vampires fighting a losing conspiracy-war against wakening, godlike undead who want to devour all the blood in the world, or you're werewolves who are fighting against the godlike incarnation of corruption which has massive power over almost the entire world, or you're mages who... something, it was confusing, but again, really nasty. And with all three, it's hammered home that you're fighting a losing battle and are most likely going to die horribly and there's a lot of sadness all around. Pretty fucking emo.

The new world, not so much. You're vampires stuck in a city with a bunch of backstabbing political monsters... nasty, but it's just a human evil. You're werewolves trying to establish your own territory and improve it, while fighting a constant brushfire war against other werewolves with religious differences. Again, harsh, but manageable and with hope for something better on a local level. So, overall, the new stuff is a lot less 'emo' (as far as I know it to be synonymous with 'hopeless', 'miserable' and 'apathetic'), and a lot more locally focused.

Then, thinking about that, about the still widely supported retardation regarding the DnD alignment system, and of all things, about TSW, it hit me: Fattynerds suck balls at creativity, on both a character level and story level. The old WoD basically tells them, "You might be vampires or werewolves, but you're the *good guys* trying to save the world. See, the entire mythos we created pretty much hammers that point home!" The new stuff basically says, "Well, here's a world full of creatures, organizations and other weird stuff. Most all the sentient things here think they're doing the right thing, even when they're going at each other's throats. There are no overt world-threatening foes. Now go create characters to interact with this world. Good, bad, you get to decide and justify it."

Fattynerds literally cannot enjoy a world unless it has 'good' and 'evil' handed to them on clearly labeled silver platters (or a laughable, universally consistent alignment system). Any moral ambiguity must thus be labeled as 'emo' so it can be safely vilified.

I remember reading something years ago where some guy was trying to come up with plausible biological reasons for various dragon stuff.

The dragon breath stuff was basically all attached to the digestive system or something. Spitting fire involved some mechanism for igniting methane, while acid was just the dragon vomiting on its enemies. I think the cold breath had something to do with nitrogen. I can't remember. And the lightning breath was skipped because it's I'M A JUGGALO WOOP WOOP.

no that's entirely I'M A JUGGALO WOOP WOOP

like that fantasy series that had dragons be hollow boned like birds and using the fire fuel as a dirigible

does it get dumber than that


also re wod the funniest part was how incoherent hte books were

i challenge anyone to read wraith and knwo what the fuck they were trying to do there

I have Wraith on pdf. I have yet to even try reading that, the old Changeling was vague enough for me.

I fucking love the new Changeling though. Fae are amoral, demigod creepy things that randomly mimic and abduct humanity for their own pleasure and nothing more.

Civil War Man wrote:I remember reading something years ago where some guy was trying to come up with plausible biological reasons for various dragon stuff.

The dragon breath stuff was basically all attached to the digestive system or something. Spitting fire involved some mechanism for igniting methane, while acid was just the dragon vomiting on its enemies. I think the cold breath had something to do with nitrogen. I can't remember. And the lightning breath was skipped because it's I'M A JUGGALO WOOP WOOP.

i'm pretty sure that's actually been published in a novel before

except dragons were dinosaurs and their firebreathing was part of some gas system to give them lift for flight

Djinnkitty83 wrote:I have Wraith on pdf. I have yet to even try reading that, the old Changeling was vague enough for me.

I fucking love the new Changeling though. Fae are amoral, demigod creepy things that randomly mimic and abduct humanity for their own pleasure and nothing more.

the problem with old changeling is all the pedophiles it attracted :S

omage is pretty simple- four groups of selfish asshole wizards duke it out over who gets to fuck everybody else over while they live in the lap of luxury

this actually makes omage one of the more thematically coherent games because its all about hubris and wisdom and enlightenment and the whole point is that wizards have to work harder to be good people

of course the mechanics and ww's inability to figure out whether they were willing to go all-out solipsist made it garbage in a couple other ways

but at least it wasn't mummy

and i don't really think ww has learned how to lay out a book any better. nmage core is so poorly laid out you need another book to explain how magic works. other books are somewhat better, but eh.

honestly every nwod game except geist rocks in some way

but some of the books (e.g. changing breeds) are still pretty terrible and the lines haven't sold well enough to keep ww afloat

and they were planning to make mummy their 2012 game release

Then, thinking about that, about the still widely supported retardation regarding the DnD alignment system, and of all things, about TSW, it hit me: Fattynerds suck balls at creativity, on both a character level and story level. The old WoD basically tells them, "You might be vampires or werewolves, but you're the *good guys* trying to save the world. See, the entire mythos we created pretty much hammers that point home!" The new stuff basically says, "Well, here's a world full of creatures, organizations and other weird stuff. Most all the sentient things here think they're doing the right thing, even when they're going at each other's throats. There are no overt world-threatening foes. Now go create characters to interact with this world. Good, bad, you get to decide and justify it."

well, nmage and nwerewolf have world-ending threats but only in the long run- you can deal with individual azlu and beshilu and scelesti relatively easily and their plans are only dangerous over a period of years. and nmage is explicitly on a different level of power and scope than the others, but even there the problem isn't so much the abyss as it is your fellow mages. geist doesn't quite fit into this and neither does promethean, but geist is terrible and promethean is very different from the rest, since it's largely about you vs. the world. but yeah, that's part of it. nhunter especially demands creativity unless you want to make it "the vampire and werewolf hunting power hour".

Djinnkitty83 wrote:I have Wraith on pdf. I have yet to even try reading that, the old Changeling was vague enough for me.

I fucking love the new Changeling though. Fae are amoral, demigod creepy things that randomly mimic and abduct humanity for their own pleasure and nothing more.

Changeling is great. I play one in a nwod crossover campaign. With the exception of Promethean, it's probably the one setting with the most "you're just fucked, sorry" narrative. At low levels, you are pretty much everyone's bitch. At max level, you eventually turn into one of the amoral demigod creepy things.

Also, from what I've read, Geist is basically White Wolf trying to dial back the angst and grimdark of Wraith a bit.

B-A-K-U-S-T-R-A wrote:omage is pretty simple- four groups of selfish asshole wizards duke it out over who gets to fuck everybody else over while they live in the lap of luxury

this actually makes omage one of the more thematically coherent games because its all about hubris and wisdom and enlightenment and the whole point is that wizards have to work harder to be good people

of course the mechanics and ww's inability to figure out whether they were willing to go all-out solipsist made it garbage in a couple other ways

but at least it wasn't mummy

and i don't really think ww has learned how to lay out a book any better. nmage core is so poorly laid out you need another book to explain how magic works. other books are somewhat better, but eh.

Are you sure you don't mean omage?

Because I thought nmage was pretty straight forward. omage was a pain in the ass because nobody could agree how paradigms worked half the time.

mummy was kind of an lol but i liked their nomenclature power

Zod wrote:

B-A-K-U-S-T-R-A wrote:omage is pretty simple- four groups of selfish asshole wizards duke it out over who gets to fuck everybody else over while they live in the lap of luxury

this actually makes omage one of the more thematically coherent games because its all about hubris and wisdom and enlightenment and the whole point is that wizards have to work harder to be good people

of course the mechanics and ww's inability to figure out whether they were willing to go all-out solipsist made it garbage in a couple other ways

but at least it wasn't mummy

and i don't really think ww has learned how to lay out a book any better. nmage core is so poorly laid out you need another book to explain how magic works. other books are somewhat better, but eh.

Are you sure you don't mean omage?

Because I thought nmage was pretty straight forward. omage was a pain in the ass because nobody could agree how paradigms worked half the time.

mummy was kind of an lol but i liked their nomenclature power

look at how they arrange the basic book- omage was absolute shit in its system and layout, but nmage still has its own problems with the base book- it makes it look as though the only things you can do are the sample rotes/effects and the introductory explanation is ridiculously obtuse for "people used to be all magical, then they tried to steal even more power and ended up breaking the world" and they bring up paradox like fifteen times before finally explaining it and a casual reader isn't going to figure out how magic works. but omage paradigms are absolutely ridiculous.

well the thing is in omage there actually was a book explaining how paradigms are supposed to work

because the core didn't really cover it

Zod wrote:well the thing is in omage there actually was a book explaining how paradigms are supposed to work

because the core didn't really cover it

haha yeah

i'm not saying nmage is as bad as that shit

but tell me more

although changing breeds is pretty much as bad as the worst of owod.

what's really odd is that there seem to be more nwod fan supplements than there were for owod

is this just because of the internet?

i never really got into the werewolf stuff so idk about changing breeds

though yeah the internet wasn't as big as it is now when owod was still "in"

Zod wrote:i never really got into the werewolf stuff so idk about changing breeds

though yeah the internet wasn't as big as it is now when owod was still "in"

true

so now people have to live in a world where fishman: the lovecraftening and sailor moon: the nothorrorening actually exist. what a world.

changing breeds is basically about playing an overpowered furry and tells people to look up furry porn in the book itself and implies bestiality

i remember hearing about how overpowered cb was when it first came out and how people really wanted to play one on the roleplaying chats i went to (most of the STs flat out said no)

but white wolf really made it easy to grief people about being furries

Zod wrote:i remember hearing about how overpowered cb was when it first came out and how people really wanted to play one on the roleplaying chats i went to (most of the STs flat out said no)

but white wolf really made it easy to grief people about being furries

i love that nwerewolf explicitly tells people that if two werewolves fuck, they create a horrible abomination of a spirit-baby that will try to kill them for the rest of its existence and werewolves explicitly can only reproduce with humans

i also remember people crying that lupus and metis were gone when nwerewolf first came out

EDIT: lololololol

They had a series of mIRC chat rooms that they used for their Camarilla fan club. During the OWoD days, the Werewolf and Changeling ones were "physical" meeting places where there could be soft RP. According to some people I know who frequented them, they were often a meeting place for cybering as their characters.

some people are just really really obsessed with the whole 'forbidden romance' idea

true

nhunter is the best nwod game

VASCU and the barrett commission and the cheiron group are absolutely amazing concepts

B-A-K-U-S-T-R-A wrote:look at how they arrange the basic book- omage was absolute shit in its system and layout, but nmage still has its own problems with the base book- it makes it look as though the only things you can do are the sample rotes/effects and the introductory explanation is ridiculously obtuse for "people used to be all magical, then they tried to steal even more power and ended up breaking the world" and they bring up paradox like fifteen times before finally explaining it and a casual reader isn't going to figure out how magic works. but omage paradigms are absolutely ridiculous.

To be fair, one of the biggest themes of nmage (and omage, I think) is, "You can do anything if you put your mind to it, but it's up to you to choose to do the right thing", and it's a little hard to tie 'anything' down to a simple rules system. I think they did halfway decent with explaining the basics of each arcana, what you can do at each level, and giving a few examples of it with rotes (as well as getting rid of Entropy, which I hear kind of completely broke omage). Even paradox was pretty clearly explained in the book (you fuck up minorly, you get a mental problem for a few weeks, you fuck up badly and you get hooved feet, you fuck up big time and an evil demonic twin spontaneously appears to make your life hell).

B-A-K-U-S-T-R-A wrote:so now people have to live in a world where fishman: the lovecraftening and sailor moon: the nothorrorening actually exist. what a world.

I'm still waiting for the Wereshark: The Buffet core rulebook to come out.

i love that nwerewolf explicitly tells people that if two werewolves fuck, they create a horrible abomination of a spirit-baby that will try to kill them for the rest of its existence and werewolves explicitly can only reproduce with humans

i also remember people crying that lupus and metis were gone when nwerewolf first came out

I think it was a good move on WW. Bestiality aside, it turns out that >99% of players think that a character who spent a majority of their life, mental processes and physical form in something fundamentally inhuman = Person who occasionally growls and sniffs at people. Don't get me wrong, I think it's something that could be wonderful drama if properly written, but in my opinion there's no way to accurately portray that sort of thing in game without making it thoroughly unenjoyable by everyone else.

Out of all the new genres, I'm pretty sure I heart nwerewolf the most, with the possible exception of most of cb, I hated the were-zoo concept of oWoD, I hate it in nWoD. The only thing I really like in cb is what they did with the Bastet, turning them into isolated kitty-zealots who go insane unless they regularly kill 'bad' people, but have no reliable yardstick of judging 'bad'. I love the re-vamp of the spirit world, turning it from 'everyone but Wyrm minions are your buddies' to 'these are a bunch of alien entities with their own agendas, most of them dislike you for a variety of reasons and any interactions with them is going be an extended exercise in politics and symbology'. The spirit-pups are fucking wonderful, both taking out the angstiest part of owerewolf (fuck you, halfbreed-furries, fuck you with a barbed pole) and giving the potential for truly dramatic consequences to fucking your own kind.

That and the Beshilu are all sorts of fun, so much so that I've had reality-gnawing little fuckers up in pretty much every game I run, werewolf or not.

Djinnkitty83 wrote: I'm still waiting for the Wereshark: The Buffet core rulebook to come out.

rokea :trollface:

Djinnkitty83 wrote:

B-A-K-U-S-T-R-A wrote:look at how they arrange the basic book- omage was absolute shit in its system and layout, but nmage still has its own problems with the base book- it makes it look as though the only things you can do are the sample rotes/effects and the introductory explanation is ridiculously obtuse for "people used to be all magical, then they tried to steal even more power and ended up breaking the world" and they bring up paradox like fifteen times before finally explaining it and a casual reader isn't going to figure out how magic works. but omage paradigms are absolutely ridiculous.

To be fair, one of the biggest themes of nmage (and omage, I think) is, "You can do anything if you put your mind to it, but it's up to you to choose to do the right thing", and it's a little hard to tie 'anything' down to a simple rules system. I think they did halfway decent with explaining the basics of each arcana, what you can do at each level, and giving a few examples of it with rotes (as well as getting rid of Entropy, which I hear kind of completely broke omage). Even paradox was pretty clearly explained in the book (you fuck up minorly, you get a mental problem for a few weeks, you fuck up badly and you get hooved feet, you fuck up big time and an evil demonic twin spontaneously appears to make your life hell).

paradox gets a good explanation, but it comes in ch3, where it should have been in ch1 or 2 so that you get why you don't want to turn people's brains into gravity casually before you get a chance to see how many dots it takes

and they probably could have emphasized the creative aspect a little better

but i'm just complaining

B-A-K-U-S-T-R-A wrote:so now people have to live in a world where fishman: the lovecraftening and sailor moon: the nothorrorening actually exist. what a world.

I'm still waiting for the Wereshark: The Buffet core rulebook to come out.

rokea ought to have been completely awesome but ww creepiness made it so that they're only ever hungry, angry, or horny

i didn't mean "go to town on an entire pack" like that, guys

i love that nwerewolf explicitly tells people that if two werewolves fuck, they create a horrible abomination of a spirit-baby that will try to kill them for the rest of its existence and werewolves explicitly can only reproduce with humans

i also remember people crying that lupus and metis were gone when nwerewolf first came out

I think it was a good move on WW. Bestiality aside, it turns out that >99% of players think that a character who spent a majority of their life, mental processes and physical form in something fundamentally inhuman = Person who occasionally growls and sniffs at people. Don't get me wrong, I think it's something that could be wonderful drama if properly written, but in my opinion there's no way to accurately portray that sort of thing in game without making it thoroughly unenjoyable by everyone else.

Out of all the new genres, I'm pretty sure I heart nwerewolf the most, with the possible exception of most of cb, I hated the were-zoo concept of oWoD, I hate it in nWoD. The only thing I really like in cb is what they did with the Bastet, turning them into isolated kitty-zealots who go insane unless they regularly kill 'bad' people, but have no reliable yardstick of judging 'bad'. I love the re-vamp of the spirit world, turning it from 'everyone but Wyrm minions are your buddies' to 'these are a bunch of alien entities with their own agendas, most of them dislike you for a variety of reasons and any interactions with them is going be an extended exercise in politics and symbology'. The spirit-pups are fucking wonderful, both taking out the angstiest part of owerewolf (fuck you, halfbreed-furries, fuck you with a barbed pole) and giving the potential for truly dramatic consequences to fucking your own kind.

That and the Beshilu are all sorts of fun, so much so that I've had reality-gnawing little fuckers up in pretty much every game I run, werewolf or not.

nwerewolf is great, absolutely great in every respect except for most of cb. war against the pure and skinchangers probably did the absolute best way for making non-werewolf shapeshifters- provide guides to making your own and explaining that they're ridiculously rare and probably some kind of abomination

it's not like luna got around much you know

the idigam are probably the absolute best

on the other hand, nhunter allows you to be part of a vampire-hunting sorority or a therapist for werewolves

choices, choices

Zod wrote:the problem with old changeling is all the pedophiles it attracted :S

wait wat? i've only ever seen the new version, can you explain?

Director of Celestial Intelligence wrote:

Zod wrote:the problem with old changeling is all the pedophiles it attracted :S

wait wat? i've only ever seen the new version, can you explain?

in old changeling there was this idea was about "youth fading away" and shit as part of the theme

so there was a class of changelings you could play that were all under 13, since once you got older you stopped being a changeling

on a public chat with several hundred players this resulted in a lot of unpleasant situations and they wound up banning any characters under age 18

Director of Celestial Intelligence wrote:

Zod wrote:the problem with old changeling is all the pedophiles it attracted :S

wait wat? i've only ever seen the new version, can you explain?

ochangeling was basically peter pan: the manchildren

it was all about maintaining childlike innocence in a world where concrete destroyed your magical powers

it doesn't surprise me that pedos would be attracted to a game where everyone was supposed to be childlike, though this is the first i've heard of it

maybe it's just the ww official forums

Zod wrote: in old changeling there was this idea was about "youth fading away" and shit as part of the theme

so there was a class of changelings you could play that were all under 13, since once you got older you stopped being a changeling

on a public chat with several hundred players this resulted in a lot of unpleasant situations and they wound up banning any characters under age 18

for fuck's sakes.

i thought B v D was bad

or that montreal by night picture with the bloody strap-on

goddamnit white wolf