Compare oWoD w/ nWoD

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

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

Wow, no. Time for another skim. This is a pretty major change to everything. Ignore the fact that some of the names are the same, as they often don't mean what they used to.

 

[Pale]

Frank -

It was a complete and near-total overhaul. This wasn't a 3.0 to 3.5 revamp for them.

I've gone over this many times on the WoD boards. And that is a better place to ask this question, don't worry, they're civil over there (for the most part). But simply put: It's a far superior system that doesn't require purchasing every book to run a game, hell, you can just purchase the NWoD core and run a game with that, no supernatural characters needed.

 

[mhacdebhandia]

but I really wish there was a place in nWoD for the Sons of Ether.

There is no real reason you couldn't play a character much like a Son of Ether in Mage: The Awakening. The Free Council (and their sourcebook) have quite a bit to do with "technomagic", and it could be Etherite craziness as much as Virtual Adept.

You don't have to worry so much about the fact that the Sons of Ether's technology is a bunch of crap, either, because it's much less dangerous to make open use of magic under the new system.

The other thing is that I've heard some people refer to Legacies as the reverse of Mage: The Ascension's paradigms: in the old game you start with an idiosyncratic view of reality and gradually come to realise it's false, whereas in the new game you start with the same universal view of reality as any other mage and end up idiosyncratically redefining it for yourself by redefining yourself.

 

[mhacdebhandia]

I also like the fact that Awakening is much more of a horror game than Ascension could be. DaveB, who's got an amazing Actual Play called "Broken Diamond" over on RPG.Net's Actual Play forum, had this to say in recent thread, which really struck me as cool:

As time goes on and I get more experience with the game, the creepier certain aspects of it's setting get. Ascension presented a world in which humanity were in Plato's cave looking at the shadows on the back wall, except for the player characters who could make with the shadow-puppeting themselves.

Awakening presents a world in which the entire world of darkness - including the Mages - are made entirely out of those shadows. The Mages just know that their entire existence is the hologram cast by the interaction of far-off realms they can never experience or understand.

. . .

I also like to openly speculate in character as npcs in my game about the way that the Abyss appears, by all evidence, to be in Astral Space, as do the Supernal Realms if only the Abyss could be crossed. the Astral worlds, sayeth the nMage line, are inside the soul of a particular person - it's upside-down as compared to the oWoD's high Umbra, with the lowest and easiest level being the inside of your own subconcious from which you venture out into the dream of humanity and then the dream of the world . . .

. . . That means that 1) The Abyss isn't real 2) Neither are the Supernal Realms and 3) Neither are the Watchtowers. Not in any sense that you might understand "real". They're positions inside the Human Soul. The Abyss isn't a place you can fly an Ethership across, it's a wound inside the soul of every man, woman and child on Earth - a flaw in the creation of Humanity.

Sweet.

 

[Vocenoctum]

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

I read through some, and it felt more like a lot of "change for the sake of change", where new things were made and old things modified just to make them different, even if the old stuff would have fit anyway.

Moreso for my group though, the Storytell* system never appealed much for some reason.

A lot of it also had to do with the overuse of fiction in the new books, and the InsanoFonts they often use that make it actually physically irritating to try to read the things.

 

[Stone Dog]

Personally, I don't buy it and find it a sorely lacking part of the game.

Good thing it isn't an issue then. All of the factions have an interest in research and discovery. They argue a great deal because of the dreamstate of Topor, but they don't just wash their hands of it and walk away. The nature, history and origin of Vampires matters very much to a lot of them, just like humans.

All topor does is get rid of a unifying vision like "We are all decended from Caine" like oWoD had. You couldn't get around it. Cainites were Cainites and this is just a fundamental truth. Now, factions have different philosophies, find different evidences, pursue different research and generally bash heads on a fairly regular basis.

I believe that the book Mythologies details many of these varying beliefs.


Also, about the magical traditions not being represented in Mage?

"Magical Traditions"

The Fractured Prism

The higher truths of the Supernal World are constantly broadcast down into the Fallen World, distorted into a thousand different forms such as the occult beliefs of Sleepers throughout the world. A mage versed in these traditions can see past the Sleeper's occult trappings to the Supernal truth, like a faint light that is invisible to the blind. Privy to such culture-bound magical secrets, these mages wield power unknown to others.

A sourcebook for Mage: The Awakening.

- 7 magical traditions, from Santeria and Taoist sorcery to the rites of the Knights Templar and Appalachian Hoodoo hexery.

- Unique spellcasting rules and benefits for mages versed in a magical tradition

- Advice about incorporating magical traditions into chronicles and stories.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I have to say, a hoodoo tradition sounds awesome. I've been lurking on the RPGnet boards waiting for a review.

 

[Vocenoctum]

All topor does is get rid of a unifying vision like "We are all decended from Caine" like oWoD had. You couldn't get around it. Cainites were Cainites and this is just a fundamental truth. Now, factions have different philosophies, find different evidences, pursue different research and generally bash heads on a fairly regular basis.

I will disagree that you couldn't get around the Cain myth. It was the central myth of the story, but there was no proof for it except that "auntie ante told us". Kindred of the East seemed to work around Cain easily enough. Even "generation" is not regimented, because there is no way to know what the absolute top of the pyramid is. (the system basically broke down at 3rd generation.)

 

[painandgreed]

I believe that the book Mythologies details many of these varying beliefs.

I beleive I quit buying their books before that ever came out.

 

[GreatLemur]

I also like the fact that Awakening is much more of a horror game than Ascension could be. DaveB, who's got an amazing Actual Play called "Broken Diamond" over on RPG.Net's Actual Play forum, had this to say in recent thread, which really struck me as cool:

As time goes on and I get more experience with the game, the creepier certain aspects of it's setting get. Ascension presented a world in which humanity were in Plato's cave looking at the shadows on the back wall, except for the player characters who could make with the shadow-puppeting themselves.

Awakening presents a world in which the entire world of darkness - including the Mages - are made entirely out of those shadows. The Mages just know that their entire existence is the hologram cast by the interaction of far-off realms they can never experience or understand.

. . .

I also like to openly speculate in character as npcs in my game about the way that the Abyss appears, by all evidence, to be in Astral Space, as do the Supernal Realms if only the Abyss could be crossed. the Astral worlds, sayeth the nMage line, are inside the soul of a particular person - it's upside-down as compared to the oWoD's high Umbra, with the lowest and easiest level being the inside of your own subconcious from which you venture out into the dream of humanity and then the dream of the world . . .

. . . That means that 1) The Abyss isn't real 2) Neither are the Supernal Realms and 3) Neither are the Watchtowers. Not in any sense that you might understand "real". They're positions inside the Human Soul. The Abyss isn't a place you can fly an Ethership across, it's a wound inside the soul of every man, woman and child on Earth - a flaw in the creation of Humanity.

Also, about the magical traditions not being represented in Mage?

"Magical Traditions"

The Fractured Prism

The higher truths of the Supernal World are constantly broadcast down into the Fallen World, distorted into a thousand different forms such as the occult beliefs of Sleepers throughout the world. A mage versed in these traditions can see past the Sleeper's occult trappings to the Supernal truth, like a faint light that is invisible to the blind. Privy to such culture-bound magical secrets, these mages wield power unknown to others.

Hm. I think I'm only now getting the idea that there's a big (and now, really obvious) Gnostic thing going one, here. That's a bit I can work with. I hate to give up the fun of varied paradigms, but I'm realizing I might still be able to get away with the kind of crazy-ass character concepts I used to come with with for Ascension just be coming at them from a different angle. I still think I'd have to scrap the Paths and Orders to really be comfortable, but the overhaul is starting to sound like a fun job with a real payoff.