Storyteller with D&D setting

[jinat]

Were trying to continue are D&D campaign - but use the storyteller system. After gameing for years first with AD&D and then d20 its dawned b us that the storyteller system is probably more appropriate for our style of play. So wer gona give it a try.

Im thinking ill get my hands on Exalted and maybe Vampire the Dark ages to get the rules mechanics.

Is there anything else taht would be useful ?

I remember seing somewhere some kind of a World of Darkness Bestiary - but i cant find it. Can somene help

Thankx

 

[Nightchilde-2]

Were trying to continue are D&D campaign - but use the storyteller system. After gameing for years first with AD&D and then d20 its dawned b us that the storyteller system is probably more appropriate for our style of play. So wer gona give it a try.

Im thinking ill get my hands on Exalted and maybe Vampire the Dark ages to get the rules mechanics.

Is there anything else taht would be useful ?

I remember seing somewhere some kind of a World of Darkness Bestiary - but i cant find it. Can somene help

Thankx

If you want fantasy using the Storyteller system, go for Exalted 2nd Edition. While the Dark Ages stuff is excellent, you're gonna have to do some hammering to get a more "D&D" feel.

As for the WoD Bestiary, you probably won't be able to find it (through retailers anyway unless someone has it sitting on their shelf; I don't have any copies in my store). The same holds true of Dark Ages and so on. WW did a "reimaging" of the World of Darkness a couple years back and discontinued all the old stuff.

And the WoD Bestiary was very..hit and miss anyway.

No, I think Exalted (get 2nd edition..it's much cleaner and better) is what you would be looking for. You can use it to pull off standard dungeon crawl type adventures all the way up through high roleplaying purely political stories easily. And, your players will get to start out powerful rather than just be 1st level wussy-boys and girls.

 

[jinat]

Thankx nightchilde-2 but tell me what was the WoD Bestiary exactly ?

Was it part of Vampire, Changeling or what ?

And should i look at Changeling for non-human races such as Elves and such ?

 

[Stormborn]

If you are going to use the Storyteller system I assume you don't want a "DnD feel". WW has come out with a new addition of the Storyteller system, with new editions of Vampire, Werewolf, and Mage (plus Prometheans soon) and depending on what you want any of those might be approproae. However, all of the basic mechanics you might need are going to be in the New World of Darkness core book. You can add into that Second Sight for a "mortals" appropriate magic system. Then add Antagonists for...well antagonists. With those 3 books and a homebrew setting and some tweaks you should be able to run a game just fine. Personally I would stick with the new system, simply becuase it may be difficult to find all the materials you want in the older version.

 

[Umbran]

I think you'll find a very basic problem with this - D&D settings have some very specific asumptions about how magic works, and what kinds of effects are possible. Storyteller and WoD 2.0 magic systems don't fit those assumptions at all.

You can run something like a sword and sorcery fantasy game with WoD rules, no problem. But I think you'll find that the Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, Eberron, or any other setting that was designed with D&D rules specificallky in mind won't work very well. You'll very quickly run into implausibilities.

 

[riprock]

Were trying to continue are D&D campaign - but use the storyteller system. After gameing for years first with AD&D and then d20 its dawned b us that the storyteller system is probably more appropriate for our style of play. So wer gona give it a try.

Im thinking ill get my hands on Exalted and maybe Vampire the Dark ages to get the rules mechanics.

Is there anything else taht would be useful ?

I remember seing somewhere some kind of a World of Darkness Bestiary - but i cant find it. Can somene help

Thankx

I think a simpler system, like D6 Fantasy, might serve you better.

If D6 is too cinematic, you might try GURPS.

But I think trying to squeeze D&D into the Storyteller system would be very difficult.

 

[Mark Hope]

I played in a game like this a few years back (under slightly modified oWoD rules). It was great fun and if you can stand the wonky WoD dice mechanics, I'd recommend it. I've thought of trying something like this out from time to time myself. I have no experience with Exalted or nWoD (beyond reading through the core book and M:tAw) but have run and played all of the oWoD stuff. You might find the nWoD rules to be a tighter option and easier to get hold of. I'd also keep the following things in mind:

It is pretty easy for WoD characters to reach 5 dots in any skill and not much harder to get attributes up to a high level - far easier than it is to boost your stats and BAB in D&D, for example. This means that characters will be more effective in combat sooner than their D&D counterparts. Not necessarily a bad thing, if that's what you're after. You can also ameliorate this by upping the xp costs of improving stats under the WoD system.

If you go all-out in combat, WoD characters can die far more easily than D&D characters (except for low-level D&D characters, who are much more frail). Some WoD games tend to discourage this kind of character mortality, so you could also take that approach, or you could give characters more health levels to reflect the feel of D&D combat.

As for magic, you have lots to choose from. The sphere magic system in Mage allows you to create pretty much any magical effect that you choose, but it is very powerful and doesn't progress in quite the same way as D&D magic. Overall, you are probably better off ditching D&D magic conventions and building a new set using WoD rules. If you give all characters a "mana" stat, you can lump the various supernaturals' powers together and represent them as different magical traditions. Vampiric disciplines could reflect one set of techniques (with blood replaced by your mana stat), druidic magic could be represented by werewolf gifts (replace gnosis or rage), wraith arcanoi could stand in for necromancy etc etc. Plus you have the path magic of sorcerers that you can use in place of sphere magic if the latter seems like too much of a headache.

Just some thoughts - make of them what you will .

 

[The Lost Muse]

Aren't the Ars Magica rules very similar to the Storyteller System? That might be a good one to look at as well - you can even get the fourth edition for free from RPGNow