Vampire: Victorian Age?

[Zappo]

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.

Nah, that's just bad design IMO. One thing is introducing the possibility of unexpected results, which is well and good and which most systems do. But this isn't it. The game simply holds together only because players try to limit dice-rolling for a variety of reasons. If you try to actually rely on the system, you stand a relatively good chance of having it turning into Toon, like one particularly dice-heavy session I had where we spent literally two thirds of the game running around screaming in terror from a variety of things due to botched Courage and Willpower checks, and the remanining third trying very hard to feed without being noticed. Mind ya, it was fun - heck, I hadn't laughed so hard in months - but it's not exactly the kind of fun you expect from Vampire.

Sammael99 - yes, a lot less emphasis is placed on mechanics, and that's why it's possible to have a decent game if you just take care never to roll 12 dice versus difficulty 9 (btw, the motorcycle accident had difficulty 7), and why the need for a major revision hasn't been fulfilled yet.

Hmm... I wonder if the designer did it on purpose, so that players would be forced to rely less on the dice and more on roleplaying.

As for the stand-alone vs. crossover problem, see my post in the Demon: tF thread.

 

[Sammael99]

Sammael99 - yes, a lot less emphasis is placed on mechanics, and that's why it's possible to have a decent game if you just take care never to roll 12 dice versus difficulty 9 (btw, the motorcycle accident had difficulty 7), and why the need for a major revision hasn't been fulfilled yet.

Hmm... I wonder if the designer did it on purpose, so that players would be forced to rely less on the dice and more on roleplaying.

As for the stand-alone vs. crossover problem, see my post in the Demon: tF thread.

Saw it. We seem to have the same position, although I won't buy DtF, being heavily ensconsed in a D&D and a Fading Suns campaign right now...

 

[retan]

There are some weird probabilities in Vampire, but I didn't find that to be too much of a problem when I and my group were playing it. Notice also that we were basically D&D players who were playing a Vampire campaign (Giovanni Chronicles) for a change of pace, so we were used to a rules-heavy system, but we were also used to a lot of house rules (from when we played 2e).

(I wrote a computer program that could calculate the probabilties of success, failure, botch as well as the number of successes by counting all the results. I have an excel sheet with some of the results if anyone is interested.)

Note that our GM used a house rule in which 10s cancelled 1s to reduce the number of botches. We also didn't bother with rötshreck rolls for torches.

We were five characters. Two of us had Auspex 1 (equivalent of D&D low-light vision) and one of us had Protean 1 (equivalent of D&D darkvision). If we couldn't use torches, two of the characters would have problems seeing.

-- Retan

 

[Graf]

....like one particularly dice-heavy session I had where we spent literally two thirds of the game running around screaming in terror from a variety of things due to botched Courage and Willpower checks, and the remanining third trying very hard to feed without being noticed. ...

Hmm... I wonder if the designer did it on purpose, ...snip

I still remember picking up what would turn out to be the first printing of the first edition, and being struck by this. The game, in its original incarnation, was about these people who could do some pretty neat stuff, but who had a massive pain in the ass of a time doing simple stuff.

I realize that many people get into the game to wear black and throw cars at people but the neatness of the game, for me, was definitely the inflicted humility.

Lots of groups ignore that and just focus on the car throwing but that was always sort of the appeal for me (that and playing a Sabbat and trying to actually play an inhuman mindset).

As for the stand-alone vs. crossover problem, see my post in the Demon: tF thread.

Haven't seen your thread (is it on these boards?). The White Wolf people themselves have basically said that Lupines in Vampire aren't Werewolves. They're lupines, they don't have sects, etc.
On one level I realize that can be frustrating, on the other hand its got an advantage over D&D in that the DM is specificly supposed to pick which version of his world exists, so it cuts down a lot on metagaming (if done right).
[I don't have this problem in my game because my players don't get to see the sourcebooks and don't know much cannon D&D; but I've seen other games where 'stat-knowledge' makes it harder for everybody to enjoy themselves.]

 

[Zappo]

I still remember picking up what would turn out to be the first printing of the first edition, and being struck by this. The game, in its original incarnation, was about these people who could do some pretty neat stuff, but who had a massive pain in the ass of a time doing simple stuff.

I realize that many people get into the game to wear black and throw cars at people but the neatness of the game, for me, was definitely the inflicted humility.

Lots of groups ignore that and just focus on the car throwing but that was always sort of the appeal for me (that and playing a Sabbat and trying to actually play an inhuman mindset).

Oh, when I say dice-rolling I definitely don't mean car-throwing. Storyteller has mechanics for a lot of social/psychological aspects of the game, and these mechanics suffer from the weird probabilities just as much as the rest. Sometimes you lift a car that by all means you should be able to lift easily and it falls on you instead, and other times the Charisma 7, Manipulate 8 methuselah fails to convince a random guy to offer him a cigarette.

Haven't seen your thread (is it on these boards?)

It's here. I am currently wondering whether limiting the presence of other supernaturals in a given game is enough, or whether you need to remove them altogether.

 

[Graf]

I am currently wondering whether limiting the presence of other supernaturals in a given game is enough, or whether you need to remove them altogether.

It would be interesting to remove them. But I liked the idea of 'the other'. for stylistic reasons the other can't be humans. The other can be other vampires (sabbat for the camarilla, etc) but I like the idea of it being a different kinda thing. I remember one game where Lupines were actually cursed vampire spirits returned from hell under some kind of ancient pact to slay other vampires and increase their ranks. Basicially demons I guess. When the players (mostly old Storyteller system players from way back) found out they kind of flipped out a bit.
I keep them but just give them access to displines (and displine like powers) instead. lupines get celerity 2-4 without requiring blood, etc. Obviously its your game, do as you will, etc.

 

[Nightstorm]

I think you're looking at it wrong. The wod is not all that populated with supernaturals. Humans would outnumber ALL supernaturals together say 3 to 1 or 4 to 1.
In Cincinnati, where I live, There MIGHT be 6 vampires ( with only 3-6 clans represented) , 4-5 werewolfs(maybe)
Even the most overpopulated city of LA has a realistic population of about 200 vampires( almost all Brujah and caitiff.

 

[Mouseferatu]

I think you're looking at it wrong. The wod is not all that populated with supernaturals. Humans would outnumber ALL supernaturals together say 3 to 1 or 4 to 1.

Actually, I think you're being generous.

Let's see...

According to official canon, there are about 60,000 vampires (Kindred and Kuei-Jin both) in the world. The other lines aren't as specific (at least, I don't think they are), but let's be extremely generous and say 100,000 each of the other major supernatural types--werewolves, mages, wraiths, hunters, changelings, and even demons. Then we'll say, oh, 40,000 to round things out, and to account for the realy weird stuff (other shapeshifters, hedge-wizards, etc.) And again, these are all extremely over-estimated; there's almost certainly far fewer than 100,000 of any given type.

Added all up? We've got 700,000 supernaturals. In the world.

Even with these inflated numbers, humanity outnumbers them over eight-thousand five-hundred to one.

Who says the WoD is crowded?

 

[Nightstorm]

you're right Im a very generious man But yea it is not an overpopulated world. The humans on the other hand,....