Compare oWoD w/ nWoD

[Stone Dog]

Well, I know it was mentioned in the original post that the differences are pretty clear in the new Werewolf, but I'm still curious about the changes made in that line. W:TA was the only White Wolf game I could really wrap my brain around and find people interested in playing it. I owned hundreds of White Wolf books at one time, but I eventually sold them all with the exception of the Werewolf books (okay and Vampire: The Dark Ages), because I still have story ideas for the garou.

So, I'm interested in any opinions on the current WoD Werewolf material.

Lacking time, I'll cross post the antagonists bit from wikipedia to spark some discussion.

* Spirits - Spirits are the most common adversary of the Forsaken. Spirits gain sustenance by feeding on the concepts they represent. Some spirits possess humans in order to create more sustenance for themselves by manipulating their victims, others travel to the material world for the alien experiences offered by possessing a human. For example, a pain spirit might possess a child in order to inflict pain on other children in order to feed itself. The Forsaken's primary duty is to hunt down these wayward spirits and return them to the spirit world by any means necessary, defending humanity from their depredations. Most spirits hate the Forsaken for denying them the pleasures of the material world, which makes travel to the spirit world dangerous for them.
* The Pure - Werewolves descended from those who chose not to rise up and slay Father Wolf. They blame their Forsaken cousins for the loss of Pangaea and view the extermination of the Forsaken as a holy crusade. They are superior in number to the Forsaken, and their culture of hate and battle prowess has made them the Forsakens' most implacable enemies. The Pure have only contempt for humanity and feel no duty to defend them from spirits, which makes spirits far friendlier to them than to the Forsaken. Their only disadvantage is that Luna has not granted them her favor, which means they have no auspices and are more susceptible to silver than the Forsaken.
* The Hosts - Bizarre creatures who, like the Forsaken, are a hybrid of spirit and flesh, man and animal. They are descended from powerful Pangaean spirits hunted by Father Wolf for their attacks on humanity. They escaped total destruction by splitting themselves into thousands of spirit shards, each of which inhabited an animal. These shards became the Hosts. When a host becomes strong enough, it will consume a human and become a man-animal hybrid similar to the Werewolf's Gauru form. The Hosts are driven to weaken or strengthen the separation between the spiritual and material world, which can wreak havok in the area they inhabit. They also use to harm humans, either by spreading disease or by eating them. This of course causes the Forsaken to hunt them down whenever possible.
* The Idigam - The rarest of the Forsaken's enemies, these cthonic entities are the spirits that represent concepts that existed before the world was fully formed. The term "Idigam" means "moon banished," used to denote that these powerful spirits were exiled beyond the spirit world possibly by Father Wolf himself. As such, they have no place in reality and exhibit powers and motives beyond comprehension. The most infamous Idigam, Gurdilag, was able to forcibly meld spirits with humans, and even Werewolves, to create unnatural hybrids that were under its control. Idigam are vast and unknowable, which makes them almost impossible to confront physically.
* Other Supernaturals - The Forsaken occasionally come into conflict with other supernatural denizens of the World of Darkness, like vampires and mages. Usually, this conflict occurs, because the other supernaturals encroach on the werewolves' territory, either by breaching the Gauntlet and entering the spirit world or by attempting to make use of a locus that a werewolf pack has claimed as its own. However, unlike in Werewolf: the Apocalypse, there is no racial enmity between the Uratha and any other group of supernaturals; any given werewolf pack may become allied with or make sworn enemies of any given vampire coterie or mage cabal on a case-by-case basis. This is a marked difference, as being friends or allies with a vampire was considered a source of public shame among werewolves, and could even be taken as a character flaw in the creation of a character in Apocalypse.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

One of the things I like more about the nWoD is that supernatural figures are no longer responsible for everything. By the time Gehenna had blessedly rolled around, it had turned out that humans had accomplished nothing in their time on the planet, and that everything had been done by some supernatural figure or other.

Not only is that sort of insulting, it was cartoonish.

The mystery and horror returning to the WoD are very welcome.

 

[Professor Phobos]

That's another example of what I'm talking about, really. In the World of Darkness, even the outcasts have groups. Pre-existing groups defined as part of their excessively-symmetrical "five-by-five" framework, at that. I've never been able to figure out why White Wolf needs to fill every game they produce with loads of big organizations which the PCs are generally supposed to be part of. It was worse in oWod, definitely, but they're still at it...

It's much less of a problem in nWoD with the local focus. Many vampires are unaligned, plenty of werewolves are ghost wolves and plenty of mages are apostates. These are not groups, just the nomenclature. The only splat set up with no room for extra "big splats" is Werewolf, because you technically can't have more than the 8-9 tribes already presented. Mage and Vampire can have additional Orders and Covenants as desired.

Anyway, your point about the possibility of additional Watchtowers is definitely a heartening one. I still think real magic is a lot less interesting than the reality-defined-by-believe bit, but I guess it at least opens up the possibility for flavors of magic other than the five bland achetypes the core book offers

Note the Path write-ups in the core book are awful and usually ignored by most people. In fact the paths have such a minimal impact on game play it's easy to just drop them entirely.

 

[GreatLemur]

I am starting to think that nWoD might deserve another look. Thanks for the information, everyone.

 

[eyebeams]

One of the things I absolutely love when it comes to running *and* writing for the line is that I don't have to match up every bit of supernatural strangeness with a PC-type. There are backwoods monsters, deadly curses and twisted locations that don't have a mechanistic explanation. They aren't automatically the result of Vampires/Mages/Werewolves/etc. They're just there, fulfilling their classic horror genre roles.

 

[painandgreed]

I was intrigued by Generation for a long time, but I'm very much ready to ditch it. Caine was a great origin and I'm less inclined to drop it, but willing to see what they've come up with.

I bought and read the rules of the core books up to Mage. All this is IIRC as it has been years since doing so, and I never actually played the new system because we had an oWoD game going and none of us were interested in the new one.

That's just it, I don't think they've come up with anything. They have not only gotten rid of the metaplot (which was one of my big hatreds with oWoD) but also any back story. Instead of generation, you now have Blood Potency. As a vampire gains power their blood potency goes higher and greater things are capable of that vampire, but at the same time, maintaining that level of power is harder and once you fail, you can fall into torpor. While in torpor your blood potency goes back down and when you awake, you are little more powerful than a neonate.

I liked this idea because it solves a big issue I found with oWoD in that it was hard to play that ancient vampire with a grand history. Without invoking elder rules and campaign (which I've never heard of anybody doing) it was hard to create the hundreds of year old vampire (and if you did, it was sort of embarassing that you were possbily less powerful than others who were created yesterday). Now you can create the historic or period character.

This main problem, is that they also got rid of all history. When a vampire falls into torpor, they pretty much forget everything. Their previous life becomes dreamlike and they're not sure what are memories and what are torpor induced dreams of their past lives. Because nobody can really tell, they never trust what other vampires tell them or any writings that may be created before they fell into torpor because they could be fakes or planted by their enemies. Thus, while your character might be old, you have no history and apparently, since there is uncertainty as to what might be real, all vampires have given up on any vampiric history all together. Personally, I don't buy it and find it a sorely lacking part of the game.

In general, I and most of the people I played T:tM with found the new games had gotten rid of most of the problems that the oWoD suffered from and in the process, also got rid of anything that made them special. We felt tha the new games were well designed, and perfectly thought out games that lacked any inspiration that made us want to play them. Although, the actually deal breaker was the new system, especially combat. We all agreed that single roll to hit and damage, while making for a quicker and easier to run game, also made it less satisifying and not something we were interested in.

I stopped buying suppliments after the first couple of books that really didn't do anything for me. I stopped buying core game books after mage turned out to be what everybody thought the first Mage was going to be. I hear good things about Prometheus, but have yet to actually buy and read it, most likely because I have no interest in running nWoD. If I run another WoD game, I think I'll just run 2ed WoD (since I never reall saw the reason for Revised except to advnace the metaplot) with some sort of house ruled Blood Potency to allow PCs to make the characters they want to.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

There are ways around the torpor issue. Surely a line originally started as an Anne Rice pastiche has lots of vampires leaving themselves detailed journals and pieces of art to fill in the blanks. Even the craptacular Underworld discussed ways around the problem. It's just that, by default, the game isn't ruled by uber-vamps any more.

 

[Benben]

I am starting to think that nWoD might deserve another look. Thanks for the information, everyone.

I would recommend you trying again, just leave your expectations at the door.

I was very similar to you with the nWod and I still have issues with the Mage backstory, but now the mechanics for all the games are a lot cleaner. This allows for massive tinkering with the background if I want to. Additionally the power levels are a lot more balanced and generally toned down so multi-supernatural crossover is possible.

And if you want to read something awesome, check out Promethean. This is a new supernatural type (Frankensteins) that was never really implemented in the oWoD. It's this game that let me really love the nWoD because I didn't have any baggage from oWoD.

 

[GreatLemur]

And if you want to read something awesome, check out Promethean. This is a new supernatural type (Frankensteins) that was never really implemented in the oWoD. It's this game that let me really love the nWoD because I didn't have any baggage from oWoD.

Promethean is one of the things I'm most interested in from nWoD, yeah. The love the whole alchemy angle, and the lack of an oWoD connection is a nice thing for a whole list of reasons.

It's kind of a shame that the various lineages aren't more interesting, though. Frankensteins and Tammuz are great, but then we've got three types of Promethean that are just reanimated corpses? They seem a lot less like newly-created beings than just ordinary undead types. At least the Frankensteins are made from multiple corpses, and thus can't consider themselves the continuations of specific individuals. I cannot understand why Galateids aren't animated statues. And where the hell is the homunculus lineage?

Hm, looking up the game on Wikipedia now, I realize they've got two new lineages. That's cool. The Unfleshed and Zeky definitely seem more like what I was hoping the core book would contain.

I bet I could get my oWoD GM into this game. She's already expressed interest in Promethean; I expect all she needs is the book.

 

[frankthedm]

I picked up the core book and was a little annoyed that the spiral of death was reduced in viciousness. -1, -2, -3 at the last 3 health levels seemed almost trivial compared to the OWOD where the majority of one's health levels had some penalty and being greviouly injured meant you were in deep trouble as one ought to be. -1, -1, -2, -2, -5.

From skimming the vamp books, to me it fealt like Nwod only changed enough to require new books.

We all agreed that single roll to hit and damage, while making for a quicker and easier to run game, also made it less satisifying and not something we were interested in.

That was the deal breaker for me as well.