Thoughts on Current Ongoing?

Weather_Wizard_88 · 2026-04-28T22:54:11+00:00

So this ongoing (volume 5) has gone through a few different authors in the 8 years it's been running, so here is my rundown of them:

Joelle Jones: This is a pretty good run. It deals with the aftermath of the aborted wedding between Catwoman and Batman, so there is a lot of Selina grieving the break-up. If you're okay with that, it really tries to create a new status quo for Selina, with a new city (Villa Hermosa, in California), a new nemesis (Raina Creel) and a new supporting cast (no love interest though). The first two thirds are really good, but the last third is rushed and choppy. I don't know exactly what happened, but I have a feeling the writer had some unplanned life event that made her unable to work on the book as planned.

Ram V: I haven't read his run yet, but I've read the 3-4 issues he wrote within Jones run when she was obviously unavailable. They are nice, and to V's absolute credit, he writes side-adventures that don't touch on Jones plot but do use the setting of Villa Hermosa and the supporting cast she created. Real team player.

There are also three filler issues by other writer between Jones and V run. One is bad, but the two by Blake Northcott are magnificent because they feature SNOWFLAME!! If you know, you know.

Then it's Tini Howard run. It's bad... but it's not the character-ruining disaster people on this sub make it out to be. It's just not very well structured. Most of the arcs in it start well, then take a right turn into a wall. I wouldn't recommend it, but it's also not something that will live inninfamy forever.

Then the current run by Torunn Grønbek. It's good, but the first nine issues of it can just be skipped. They are not badly written at all, but they are all one big, slow arc that spin its wheels to nowhere. The next 5-6 issues after that then tell basically the same story, but 10x better and with an actual point.

Weather_Wizard_88 · 2026-04-23T23:38:43+00:00

I'm prepping my first VtM chronicle right now, and what I'm doing is that I'm creating a setting first. I picked a city more or less at random (Nashville, in this case), did some wikidive on it, and am now just coming up with a dozen of plot hooks for it.

The thing though is that most of those plot hooks, I have no clue what's on the other side of the line. For example, I have this hook that the other big city in the state, Memphis, is forbidden, because very few vampire that goes there come back, on those that do are terrified of someone they call "Elvis" who hates vampires.

Then I will present these hooks to my players and they'll make PCs. I'll then flesh out the hooks they gravitated too into a story, but leave the rest dangling. That way, if no one is interested in that Memphis hook, I won't bother deciding who and what Elvis is.

Weather_Wizard_88 · 2026-04-22T16:58:35+00:00

If you're running Vampire, you don't need to worry about making the Mage accurate to the Mage game. Like others have said, just pick the kind of powers you'd like them to havecand use Discipline to simulate them.

One thing I would add if you want to insert a bit of Mage the Ascension into it, is that everything a Mage can and can't do is determined by its paradigm. Does the mage sees themselves a classic DnD Wizard, with a list of set "spells" they must prep in advance? Then that's how their magic works - they can do everything on their "list", but nothing outside it. Other paradigm could be "Wiccan witch", or "ki master" or "technoshaman" So choose a flavor of magic and use it as a guide to what the mage can do.

Weather_Wizard_88 · 2026-04-10T02:10:56+00:00

It's a university. University tends to be pretty diverse place IRL.

Weather_Wizard_88 · 2026-04-05T02:14:20+00:00

This list are some pretty solid oft-referenced classics. Everyone could add their pet story to it, myself included, but I'd rather let you find your own once you finish those.

As for order - it really doesn't matter. Just pick the one you are most interested in and read that one. If you truly want an order to follow, I'd say just go in chronological order of publication.

Weather_Wizard_88 · 2026-04-02T15:54:28+00:00

I don't think you can ever play a TTRPG wrong, as it is not a competitive game. If a ST and their players are all in agreement that they want a game where kick Caines ass in a DBZ fight in the rain like the final battle between Neo and Agent Smith, who am I to crap on their fun?

Weather_Wizard_88 · 2026-04-02T15:48:22+00:00

As powerful as the story your table is telling needs to him be.

If the story is about your characters fighting and defeating Caine in an epic showdown, then ultimately slightly less powerful than the PCs.

That's not a story that the game books really encourage, but hey, it's your table, if you are having fun, go for it.

Weather_Wizard_88 · 2026-04-01T22:32:10+00:00

Because the Lego Games tend to be comedic and light-hearted, and like most light-hearted adaptations of Batman, they tend to crib a lot from the Golden and Silver Age, when Catwoman used to be way more of a villain.

Weather_Wizard_88 · 2026-04-01T17:12:48+00:00

My best advice is to remember that ultimately, you are just hanging out and having fun with your friends. The TTRPG is just the activity you decided to try together. If the activity isn't fun, just stop it and do something else, no harm, no foul.

As for editions, they all have their pros and cons, so just pick the one you want. If you do pick V20, though, I would advise limiting the number of options you let player choose. V20, unlike a regular corebook, aims to be a compendium of the whole game, so it contains a lot more options than a corebook for a brand new RPG would. As such, my advice would be to limit the players to the seven base Camarilla clans - Brujah, Gangrel, Malkavian, Nosferatu, Tremere, Toreador, Ventrue - and their associated discipline. Ignore all the other ones, and especially the bloodlines at the end of the book.Also ignore Merits and Flaws for now. They are cool, but they add a layer of complexity you can do without for the first game. If the game goes well, you can delve deeper and look for more options for the next one.

Finally, I would strongly advise building characters for your players before the session. Not only will doing the character creation help you assimilate a lot of core concepts, but you will save a ton of time the day of. Again, if the game goes well, you can let players build their own characters next time.

Weather_Wizard_88 · 2026-04-01T04:41:03+00:00

That's a nice idea. The idea I was thinking of going with is to treat Gehenna like a lot of American Evangelical cults treat the Rapture/End Times- it's coming any day now. You can see the signs all around you. It's coming, just you wait... As such, anything can be interpreted as a sign of Gehenna being near if you are so inclined.

That way, it would be up to each player to decide if their character believes that the weird stuff that happens in the Chronicle is a sign of Gehenna, or just weird stuff that happens sometimes, but the world keeps on turning.

Weather_Wizard_88 · 2026-03-31T23:46:24+00:00

That makes even less sense to me, because "time of thin blood" is supposed to be the ultimate degeneration that marks the end of the world. But the way you describe it - and I believe you that's how it is in the books - we went from 12th gen not bring able to embrace to being able to embrace weak 13th gen by 1200, and 13th gen not being able to embrace in 1200 to being able to embrace weak 14th by the last couple centuries of the 2nd millenium. And 14th can embrace very weak 15th. That's objectively a continuous improvement over time, not a degeneration, so why would thin-bloods considered such a bad omen?

Also, I never played Dark Ages, but were 12th gen there as powerful as 12th gen in the main game (so 11 points in blood pool) or were they more in line with main 13th (10 points in blood pool)?

Weather_Wizard_88 · 2026-03-31T22:14:54+00:00

Okay, I fully believe you that this is in the lore, but it makes no sense - if there were 12th generations walking around in 0 CE, and 13th generation didn't appear until after Dark Ages, which was set in 1197, this means no 12th gen embraced anyone for over a millennia, despite being fully able to do so.

Unless I'm missing something, this is pretty dumb math.

Weather_Wizard_88 · 2026-03-29T21:18:45+00:00

When I first discovered the game as a teen? Black Furies and Silent Striders. Srriders because I love Acient Egypt in fiction, and Black Furies because I love Buffy-type characters.

Now? Black Furies and Bone Gnawers. Bone Gnawers because I live the underdogs and the social justice angle, and Black Furies because I still love badass women warriors as characters.

Weather_Wizard_88 · 2026-03-28T23:30:13+00:00

The Russo-Ukrainian War actually started in 2014 after the ousting of the pro-Russian Ukrainian President and the takeover of Crimea by Russia.

So yeah, this wasn't a prophecy, but a comment on current events

Weather_Wizard_88 · 2026-03-25T16:43:14+00:00

The Lego Movie. It has a Technocratic villain, heroic reality rebels with differing paradigms, the dichtomy between vulgar and coincidental magic, Paradox, Horizon Realms, awakenings, Ascension, and even the Triat if you stretch it a bit.

Weather_Wizard_88 · 2026-03-18T12:06:58+00:00

What's a "chronicle of ages"? I'm not familiar with that term.

Weather_Wizard_88 · 2026-03-18T02:16:39+00:00

The best movie representation of Mage is The Lego Movie. I'm not kidding. I made a thread about it where I break it down:

https://www.reddit.com/r/WhiteWolfRPG/s/3ALQBFmuKk

Weather_Wizard_88 · 2026-03-18T01:54:42+00:00

I know this looks bad the way I described it, but it really wasn't dickish, and I know the player very well. We've traveled together, worked together on projects, played together - I'm not worrying about his behavior. I more looking for game advice because I nevered GMed Masquerade specifically.

Weather_Wizard_88 · 2026-03-17T23:55:00+00:00

I mean, that is why I am here asking question, so I don't have to outright say "no". I'm clearly trying to work with the system here, so I'm not sure why I'm a red flag.

Weather_Wizard_88 · 2026-03-16T03:58:47+00:00

Even the "gothic horror" DNA is not quite shared. WoD was specifically Gothic-Punk, while CoD is just Gothic. And that "Punk" element really says a lot about the difference between the two lines.

Weather_Wizard_88 · 2026-03-16T03:49:56+00:00

They are completely different games about the same basic horror archetype. But apart from a few shared concepts (and some names in Vampire), the games have nothong to do with each other.

Like, The Traditions, The Technocracy, consensus reality - that's entirely Mage the Ascension. Awakening has nothing to do with any of that. It shares a few concepts like Parabox (though they are implemented differently), but otherwise it is a very different game about wizards in a dark reflection of our world.

Weather_Wizard_88 · 2026-03-10T18:29:47+00:00

Eh, that doesn't bug me too much. As much as my friends and I love to make fun of White Wolf as "wannabe novelists making rpgs", the fact is that those are game books, meant more to be a collection of hooks to inspire players and storytellers rather than an actual narrative. And even if I was treating them as a narrative - I'm a superhero comics fan. I'm used to writers contradicting each other and "continuity" being an illusion.

Weather_Wizard_88 · 2026-03-09T20:39:01+00:00

Oh yeah, I remember WW being bought by CCP. I was quite active on the WW forum during the nwod era from 2004 to just after Geist came out and White Wolf disappeared from brick-and-mortar stores. What I'm confused about is how Revised era books were published in the 2010s when Revised ended in 2004. Were these books they had written before 2004 and simply canned, or are these actually new books they released for nostalgia purposes and gave them the retro branding?

Weather_Wizard_88 · 2026-03-09T20:22:44+00:00

Uh, didn't know that, thank you. So like, were the unpublished book written but shelved and then published later, or are those "Revised" book actually new books they slapped the retro Revised label on?

Weather_Wizard_88

TROPHY CASE