Vampire: Victorian Age?

[Sammael99]

True, but I do seem to recall there being a difficulty level for candles in my rulebooks.

Maybe you're right. As I said, I haven't read the books in ages. In fact, as I recall, my Vampire rulebook has been purloined by some indelicate player and I never managed to find out which player...

Oh well, there's always Auspex 1, then...

 

[Enforcer]

It's Protean 1 that lets you see in the dark. Auspex 1 gives you heightened senses, but I think the vision component is limited to a telescope effect.

And the Rotshreck (fear) difficulties for fire are as follows:

Lighting a cigarette: 3
Sight of a torch: 5
Bonfire: 6
Obscured sunlight: 7
Being burned: 7
Direct sunlight: 8
Trapped in a burning building: 9

As you notice, cigarettes and torches are really easy to beat. And you can spend Willpower points to beat the rolls if you somehow fail, I think.

As for the so-called "combat clans" not getting combat disciplines...that's simply not correct. The Brujah get Celerity (super-speed) and Potence (super-strength) and the Gangrel get Fortitude (super-tough) and Protean (level 2 gives you claws which tear anyone without Fortitude into shreds). Most other clans are less combat-oriented, though all can kick some behinds when things get rough. My wager would go on a Tremere who knows the Lure of Flames thaumaturgical path, however.

But it really doesn't matter. Vampires who learn how to win in combat usually will pick up cross-clan disciplines to do so.

 

[Mouseferatu]

To say nothing of the fact that most Kindred who learn nothing but combat skills, techniques, and Disciplines are going to find themselves, for the most part, dancing to every little whim of their brethren who have developed the influence and social status to actually play the political game and manipulate the system.

I pity any vampire who thinks he's going to succeed in the world of the Kindred by fists and guns. But only a little bit.

 

[Zappo]

Isn't that the important thing though ? I would have imagined that slightly wonky probabilities are fairly irrelevent.

Undoubtedly. However... the Storyteller probabilities are not slightly wonky; they are wonky, full stop. They work more often than not, but they fail often and spectacularly, and create events that sometimes harm the suspension of disbelief.

Sometimes they cause stuff to happen that just don't make sense. I've played a Brujah and lost a brawl against a drunk mortal. I've driven a motorcycle with a dice pool of 12 (!) and made a triple botch with horrible consequences. I've played a mage and shot fireballs in front of sleepers with almost no Paradox problems, while another player almost blew himself up while doing something totally harmless in his sanctum. These are not isolated cases, either. For difficulties above 7, the result is basically random; your skill has very little influence. And in all cases, it is very difficult to figure out what the actual chances for an action are, and the Storyteller has very little options in this sense. Not much room between 6 and 7.

IMHO, the only reason the Storyteller system holds together is because most WW players have a tendency to ignore rules as much as possible. If characters actually had to roll Courage versus difficulty 5 every time they need a torch in the middle ages, the cities would resonate with the screams of terrorized vampires every night.

Really, the settings are fairly good, but the system needs a big revision.

 

[EricNoah]

Just a note from the uninitiated -- this has been an interesting read. The whole Vampire/Werewolf "thing" is just something I'm completely clueless about (never played it, never knew anyone who played it, never read about it, etc.). It might be pretty entertaining to sit in on a session...

 

[Mouseferatu]

Just a note from the uninitiated -- this has been an interesting read. The whole Vampire/Werewolf "thing" is just something I'm completely clueless about (never played it, never knew anyone who played it, never read about it, etc.). It might be pretty entertaining to sit in on a session...

It's a very different experience from D&D, sure enough.

I've got a suggestion, though. By all that's holy and half that's not, do not go to the White Wolf forums as a means of learning what WW players are like. There are some really cool people there, don't get me wrong, and it can be fun to hang out there at times. And many of them are very good about helping out newcomers. But the forums are largely unmoderated--only truly nasty offenses raw down the ire of the Powers What Am--and an unfortunately large number of the people there are extremely rude and insulting.

It is not as friendly a place as ENWorld, I'm afraid.

 

[Nightstorm]

Zappo zappo zappo! I think youre missing the point of the whole storyteller system. That is, stuff happens! Botches happen people screw up and so do vampires. Normal humans can kill vamps and mages can sometimes-sometimes do wild things in front of sleepers.

 

[Enforcer]

The greatest botch I've ever seen was when I was storytelling a chronicle set in Seattle, during the modern day (though at that time it was around 1999 or so). The players were investigating sabbat vampires wholed up by the docks, but as they were arriving, the pack was peeling out in their crazy souped up dodge astrovan (with a solid steel bumper). Attempting to cut off the van, the driver botched.

"You botched into a Sabbat van?!?" I said.

And crazy hijinks ensued...

On the other hand, the coolest success roll I've seen was in an even earlier chronicle set in medieval London/modern Chicago. My three players all had 800 year old Ventrue vampires, recently awoken after being staked and stowed away for centuries for getting in Mithras' way. The first one to wake up ends up wandering around Chicago's downtown, near where Cabrini Green is (not the best idea for a very white man wearing all sorts of old, expensive jewelry). A gangbanger unloads a tec-9 into his chest and gets a ridiculous amount of damage successes. Nevertheless, the player soaked the entire damn thing, every dice of Fortitude was a success. Needless to say, the gang ran like little girls to a Backstreet boy.

And crazy hijinks ensued...

I guess my point with those anecdotes is that the dice pool mechanic can make the game very entertaining. I still like that game. I never really got into the other ones, though Hunter and Exalted look appealing.

 

[Sammael99]

Undoubtedly. However... the Storyteller probabilities are not slightly wonky; they are wonky, full stop. They work more often than not, but they fail often and spectacularly, and create events that sometimes harm the suspension of disbelief.

In my years of playing WW games, that has never happened to me, either as a player or a DM. I guess suspension of disbelief is a variable notion as well.

IMHO, the only reason the Storyteller system holds together is because most WW players have a tendency to ignore rules as much as possible. If characters actually had to roll Courage versus difficulty 5 every time they need a torch in the middle ages, the cities would resonate with the screams of terrorized vampires every night.

There's certainly a lot of truth in that. A lot less emphasis was put on mechanics than with D&D when we played.

Really, the settings are fairly good, but the system needs a big revision.

I'd agree, except I don't see it as vital. Still, if they could figure a system as simple but without the odd probability bias, it would certainly be for the better. How are the GURPS adaptations ?

 

[Sammael99]

Just a note from the uninitiated -- this has been an interesting read. The whole Vampire/Werewolf "thing" is just something I'm completely clueless about (never played it, never knew anyone who played it, never read about it, etc.). It might be pretty entertaining to sit in on a session...

Eric,

If there wasn't several thousand miles between us, I would gladly dust off the books and run a session or ten of whichever one of the games you fancied the most.

I certainly find that WW games have changed the way I run games and design adventures. From Vampire, I learned how to run a game in a closed environment (usually a city) with little or no "outside world". It encourages depth of NPCs and gives important NPCs and locations n recurring role that is usually not emphasized in geographically extensive fantasy RPGs.

Also, running Vampire has helped me design political adventures which will likely come in handy now my D&D players are getting tougher.

One thing I'm struggling with in D&D is how to cope with individual character power vs. the world. When characters can potentially blow up a city (and at Level 9, they're not far off already from being capable of that), how do you cope ? The WW games all feature powerful entities, and a lot of safeguards are built-in believably to make sur it doesn't happen. I'm drawing on these ideas today for my D&D setting.

My main gripe with all the WW games, at the end of the day, is that although they stand-alone well, they don't combine well. If you agglomerate the six or seven X : The Y games they have released, half the world population is either a vampire, a werewolf, a mage, a mummy, a changeling or posessed by a wraith or demon. That hurts suspension of disbelief a lot. In my games, I never crossed over PC-Wise and toned down other "awakened" NPCs a lot to avoid that. So if London hosted 100 Vampires in Vampire, it probably only hosted 5-10 in Mage.

Oh well, I'm veering off topic. Sorry