redwing said:
how is the storyteller system different than d20?
The big difference is
transparency.
In the d20 system it is very easy to work out how difficult or easy you have made a check, and it is easy to set the difficulties of checks at an appropriate level.
The Storyteller system involves a mechanic called the dice pool, in which the GM sets a target number from one to ten, and the character-player rolls a number of dice determined by his or her characer's ability and skill and counts the successes. In some cases more than one success may be required. This system seems very neat and obvious. And a lot of people manage to play the games, have a lot of fun, and not notice that really bizarre things are happening.
But: there is some tricky work in combinatorics required to work out how hard a task actually is. The problem facing a GM who has to set a task difficulty is a difficult one. And it contains pitfalls: few people realise that for target numbers of 8, 9, and 10 characters with large dice pools botch (fumble) more often than those with smaller pools. Target number of 1 is meaningless, and with target 2 or 3 the probabilities of different numbers of successes vary up and down in a very strange way, besides which they make tasks so easy that it isn't worth rolling. That leaves four useful task difficulty numbers: 4, 5, 6, and 7. In the first place that isn't enough task difficulties. And in the second place they are all too easy. So you have to start requiring at least X successes to set a higher task difficulty. The problem with that is that no-one, least of all the game designers, has any real idea of
how difficult a task is getting.
The Dice Pool system is simple to explain, quick to learn, and produces almost-unusable results.
What the WW games do have is some really neat ideas for campaigns: vampire and werewolf PCs, etc. Unfortunately the overall execution of their materials is (or at least used to be) marred by badly fumbled detail. For example, the introductory adventure in the original 'Vampire' book included a major NPC who was mute, but who was detailed with a long list of things she would tell PCs. The writeup of werewolf society [originally] included insulting-matches, despite the fact that rage rules for werewolves meant that these almost invariably degenerated into murderous brawls during the first couple of exchanges. Vampires are deathly afraid of fire, but most cannot see in the dark: how did they manage before the invention of electric light? The vampire clans that are supposed to be stompiest in combat lack the Disciplines (special abilities) that actually win fights. It doesn't bear thinking about how most vampire characters get their sustenance, because it turns out that without certain Disciplines that are not widely available, a vampire cannot survive a year. The major NPC vampires, especially the rulers of the World of Darkness, are all given really low Humanity scores. In practice, this makes them not scarily cold psychopaths, but gibbering incompetents. The list goes on and on.
Then, too, there is a lot of supposed secret history that (in my opinion) simply doesn't make sense: in any case I find it unbearably irritating.
Finally, the World of Darkness setting suffers badly from supplementiasis. The various books that have been supposed to flesh out minor parts sketched in the main game invariably make their subjects vastly more powerful and more immune than the Big Players in the Main Game.
Anyway, the ideas are pretty good, but the game system needs a live organ transplant, the background needs to be re-written, the clans/tribes etc. need to be redesigned, etc, etc. I don't pay for materials that I [know I have to] do that for.
IMHO. YMMV. YDWYDWP.
Agback
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