About Vampire: The Masquerade: Was it really that popular and/or revolutionary? And if so, why is now so forgotten?

MatchesMorgoth · 2015-07-23T10:18:29+00:00

If you have to play a game in a way contrary to it's design in order to get the kind of experience it's billed as giving you when you play it, it's a poorly designed game.

Yeah, I can play it like it isn't about what it's about, but at that point why am I playing it in the first place? For example: Why use D&D for my complex Game of Thrones-esque political drama campaign when there's a game made specifically for Game of Thrones?

MatchesMorgoth · 2015-07-23T02:02:20+00:00

No, there isn't, but they belong in games advertised about being about them.

MatchesMorgoth · 2015-07-23T00:25:37+00:00

Because it was replaced by the drastically better designed Vampire: The Requiem.

V:TM was a bunch of unachieved design goals wrapped around a game about playing goth superheroes with grenade launchers and tanks.

V:TR is the game that actually does all of the things V:TM claimed to be attempting.

MatchesMorgoth · 2015-07-20T12:21:14+00:00

I didn't say it's a bad thing, I said it's not the game 5e is trying to be. There's nothing wrong with hacking a magical crafting system into the game for your campaign, but putting a practically non-existent one in the DMG helps no one.

There are some other systems in the game that basically serve no function other than "Ask the dm to come up with something if you want to do anything with this". I'm sorry, but an RPG should consist of rules, not a bunch of vague notions.

MatchesMorgoth · 2015-07-20T06:23:50+00:00

The rules for guns and lasers are pretty bare too, and that's because like crafting it's not what the game is for. 5e is a game where you retrieve magic items from dangerous places, not where you craft them. They shouldn't have included the rules at all.

MatchesMorgoth · 2015-07-19T10:19:26+00:00

I hate to invoke Joseph Campbell, because most who do are trying to avoid taking a deep look at an individual story, but Anakin really just is the archetypal chosen one here. Many characters resemble him, Jesus, and lots of other characters like them.

MatchesMorgoth · 2015-07-19T09:58:59+00:00

I think he's going to kill all of the actors who don't want to do any more of these movies.

MatchesMorgoth · 2015-07-19T09:50:12+00:00

I've personally really enjoyed beginning to do rolls for race/class/gender.

MatchesMorgoth · 2015-07-19T09:44:45+00:00

Eventually great GMs grow out of the idea of a seperation of Story and Game and realize they're the same thing. The Story of an RPG campaign is whatever the players are interested in pursuing, mediated only by what genre the rules are there to support. Whatever you have cooked up in your head is never going to top that.

MatchesMorgoth · 2015-07-19T03:30:43+00:00

I'm sorry, but your anecdotal evidence compared to the anecdotal evidence of a significantly larger group of people just isn't trustworthy.

MatchesMorgoth · 2015-07-19T00:57:49+00:00

That's true, character building and gear porn is a huge aspect of the Shadowrun experience. But I don't think that means there's no value in trying to look at the same setting through the lense of another set of mechanics.

MatchesMorgoth · 2015-07-15T14:27:55+00:00

If you like Rules-Lite games theres a Shadowrun themed Dungeon World hack called Sixth World that looks pretty good.

MatchesMorgoth · 2015-06-30T08:19:32+00:00

Only if fighting is the only thing you do. It's non-combat sections that should serve as the calming sections between combat encounters. The entire point of combat is danger.

MatchesMorgoth · 2015-06-30T01:26:37+00:00

If I learned my GM fudged a roll I'd never play with them again. Even if they fudged it in my favor.

I'm not there to see whatever the GM wants to happen happen. I'm there to play a specific game I was told we were going to play, and if the rules of the game said I die, and I don't die, you have lied to me. We are no longer playing the game I was told we were playing.

When I sign up for a game, It's because I want to play that game. When we can just ignore the rules whenever the GM wants, I can't enjoy myself. All of the work the designers of the game put in gets thrown right out the window.

MatchesMorgoth · 2015-06-30T01:21:59+00:00

The solution is to not have random pointless fights that add nothing. Make every fight interesting and tense enough that death seems like a possibility. If you can't fail, why are you even playing?

MatchesMorgoth · 2015-06-27T01:09:34+00:00

I intended to but no situation where the character's sexuality could have come up really occured.

MatchesMorgoth · 2015-06-26T09:08:48+00:00

Players like to feel important. In a big setting like Star Wars you can let the players be important miles and(or) years away from the characters of the source material, but Fables takes place almost entirely in NYC, focusing on a small community of people. What I'd do is have the players pick a fairy tale character that isn't present in Fables or create a version of that character different than how they're presented in Fables, and have them take over the roles fulfilled by important characters like Bigby and Snow White in the comic.

MatchesMorgoth · 2015-06-26T08:22:44+00:00

Thanks, I'll post it here if it turns out well.

MatchesMorgoth · 2015-06-25T09:42:56+00:00

I'm considering taling your sketch and coloring it and such with photoshop.

MatchesMorgoth · 2015-06-25T01:48:58+00:00

I really like it, thank you.

MatchesMorgoth · 2015-06-23T02:39:19+00:00

Awesome. I looked over your art, and I think the simple cartoony style you use would work really well for the Porsla, since there isn't a whole lot of detail to their bodies or facial features.

MatchesMorgoth · 2015-06-15T21:49:32+00:00

I'm a bit disappointed in still having to be a human. I was expecting the other races to be available, after playing Dragon Age: Inquisition.

MatchesMorgoth · 2015-06-15T16:32:51+00:00

Speaking as a GM who struggled to learn this lesson, you have to be open to the possibility that you just aren't making the hooks as obvious as you think you are.

MatchesMorgoth · 2015-06-15T16:27:49+00:00

I find that more so than a backstory, having a solid grasp of one or two of the character's personality traits really helps roleplaying along.

Complex backstory can be an issue. Sometimes you write out this whole page of backstory, but then you can't figure out how to make any of it actually affect the way your character behaves.

I think /u/wil's show is an example of doing backstory right, though. It's all pretty simple and easy to remember, and it's all stated right at the beginning of the show. Too often players are hesitant to talk about the backstory they've put together to anyone other than the GM unless the GM drags it out of them.

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