The urban fantasy market seems awfully stagnant

PenBoy99 · Jun 25, 2019

I liked Angel RPGs build your own demon approach.

VelvetViolet · Jun 25, 2019

Tony Vargas said:
One of many things that was better about the oWoD. ;P

M:tA may not have been intended as a toolbox game, but it sure could be used as one. M:tA, OTOH, not s'much.

(Hey, it's they're own fault for using 'Awekening.')

Can we please not get into those stupid vitriolic edition wars for the umpteenth time? For Pete's sake, you are still operating on the fallacy of never reading past the 15 years old first edition rulebooks, if even that far. Mage The Awakening included DIY magical traditions, mad science and star gates in supplements published a decade ago.

I think Mage The Ascension and Mage The Awakening are equally insane. They are fundamentally about different flavors of egocentric jerks, who are clearly metaphors for political fringes, fighting to take over the world and oppress everyone else. While not a bad idea in isolation, the toxic community thinks these jerks are supposed to be the heroes. (The developers literally wrote a "storyteller handbook" of essays explaining their intent, and more, which went completely contrary to how most players played. I already mentioned the death threats aimed at 3e.) Any interest I might have had was long ago destroyed by that toxic community. A community that clearly hasn't improved since I left and is probably much worse if the horror stories I heard about the V5 edition war are anything to go by.

The "political parties" are about as sensible as the cliques in Divergent. Which would make sense when you notice that they seem to be based on high school cliques, ethnic stereotypes, Atlantean government agents and such. Wiccans, Aleister Crowley, Native American stereotypes, kungfu movie fans, stoners, Matrix fans, magic police, mad scientists, New Age groupies, serial killers, etc. Absolutely none of those make any sense as political affiliations. To add insult to injury, these are extremely Eurocentric. The entirety of Asia's occult history is relegated to kung fu fighters, serial killers and stoners? The entirety of every other continent is relegated to "shamans"? Really? (I know one of the Awakening books tried to pull in more global history by mentioning Kumari Kandam and other mythical civilizations, but too little too late.)

This has been pretty much the case for all World of Darkness, except Changeling: The Lost. Lost was probably the single best game ever produced because it channeled universal archetypes that were otherwise absent everywhere else and offered an unparalleled degree of customization as far as World of Darkness games go. I can only wish all the other games were like that.

Considering the vitriolic edition wars, I find it ironic that the plot of Bloodlines 2 starts with the Camarilla being killed off and replaced with a set of factions like the "pioneers." Feels more like Requiem's covenants, except maybe with better execution this time. (IIRC, V5 made a lot of changes in a loosely similar vein to Requiem. Which itself was trying to recapture the lost feel of Masquerade's first edition. The more things change, the more they stay the same and all that jazz.)

But I digress. The point of this thread is to be constructive and creative, not to criticize everything I dislike about World of Darkness. Which is a lot. That said, I do give Mage in either iteration props for using a syntactic magic system (copied and modified from Ars Magica) and including "magical traditions" mechanics for players to personalize how their character performs magic. IMO it is vastly overshadowed by Spheres of Power, though.

Umbran · Jun 25, 2019

BoxCrayonTales said:
Can we please not get into those stupid vitriolic edition wars for the umpteenth time?

You would replace stupid vitriolic edition wars with a similar screed against the entire line as a whole? That is not an improvement.

We get it. You don't like WoD. That's been made abundantly clear.

Now what? Having gotten that across... what's the goal? What do you want to get out of this thread?

Tyler Do'Urden · Jun 25, 2019

But... what if I like sexy vampires in black leather?

TwoSix · Jun 25, 2019

BoxCrayonTales said:
But I digress. The point of this thread is to be constructive and creative, not to criticize everything I dislike about World of Darkness. Which is a lot. That said, I do give Mage in either iteration props for using a syntactic magic system (copied and modified from Ars Magica) and including "magical traditions" mechanics for players to personalize how their character performs magic. IMO it is vastly overshadowed by Spheres of Power, though.

3.X using the Spheres of Power classes wouldn't be a bad start for an urban fantasy game. You'd have to expand non-magical options and update equipment lists, but I think that would be possible by using a modified Spheres of Might system.

(It's probably way too much work, but I'd love to see the SoP system adapted to the 5e chassis.)

Lord Shark · Jun 25, 2019

Has anyone mentioned City of Mist yet? It's kind of a cross between urban fantasy and superheroes that reminds me of Matt Wagner's Mage comics.

Dannyalcatraz · Jun 25, 2019

Tyler Do'Urden said:
But... what if I like sexy vampires in black leather?

Vamps in black leather
So tight it offends
My holy water
Almost reaching the end
Charming I can’t resist
With these eyes before
Just what the truth is
I can't say any more

'Cause they drain you
Yes they drain you
Oh how they drain you

Grazing on people, some hand in hand
Just what they’re going through I can't understand
Some try to tell me, thoughts they cannot defend
Just what you want to be, you will be in the end

And they drain you
Yes they drain you
Oh how they drain you
Oh how they drain you

Vamps in black leather
So tight it offends
My holy water
Almost...

Tony Vargas · Jun 25, 2019

BoxCrayonTales said:
Can we please not get into those stupid vitriolic edition wars for the umpteenth time?

Vitriolic? You clearly didn't read the post I wrote. ;P
...now, /sarcastic/ I'll cop to.

are clearly metaphors for political fringes, fighting to take over the world and oppress everyone else. While not a bad idea in isolation, the toxic community thinks these jerks are supposed to be the heroes.

Storyteller & the oWoD were very much a product of the 90s, which, ironically, in spite of being a rather pleasant period economically & by a number of other measures, sported pop culture rife with conspiracy theory. The idea of Vampires pulling the strings in every major city, Garou fighting a secret war with lovecraftian wyrm-monsters behind The Veil, and science/technology, themselves, being just one flavor of magic favored by the illuminati-style faction of wizards currently with the upper hand in a conspiracy-war as old as time, were all quite compatible with that end-of-history zeitgeist.

Then history continued right along without all that.

But I digress. The point of this thread is to be constructive and creative, not to criticize everything I dislike about World of Darkness.

Feel free to begin with the constructive & creative part any time.

syntactic magic system (copied and modified from Ars Magica) and including "magical traditions" mechanics for players to personalize how their character performs magic.

The Ars Magica DNA is pretty clear, as much or more so in the history as in the systems, and Lion Rampant merged with White Wolf three years before M:tA, so hardly surprising.

Fenris-77 · Jun 25, 2019

Mage is bonkers. I don't hate the basic system though. That said, Ars Magica is probably a better model for Urban fantasy with powerful mages, despite the very medieval setting. I don't think I'd necessarily do all that conversion, but if someone wanted to use that WoD mechanics the fluff can always be changed. If you started with just Hunter and worked out it might not be so bad, then you flavor the vamps, wolves and magi any way you wanted.

It's probably easier to just use Fate or something.