The real problem with WoD games? The setting books and DM intros are always so good at crafting that beautiful eerieness of the monsters in the shadows, while the average group handles everything by clunking around like toddlers on stilts.
My group tried three times, then it was back to standard ‘kick-in-the-door’ style games. Roleplaying isn’t the easiest thing, and it sucks. I just want a good werewolf or hunter game with some nice politicking and investigation. I’m not even asking for anything crazy, like an introspective mage or changeling meditation session! /cries_in_desperate_desire
World of Darkness, a pretty popular family of games with Vampire the Mascarade as a figurehead, it reach peak popularity during the late 90’s/early 00’s, then almost vanished during the 2010’s. But with the recent release of the 20 year aniiversary verion and the fifth edition it’s raising again.
It’s modern Urban fantasy, the setting is almost the real world, and the PC are monsters e.g. Vampire, Mage or Werewolf fighting each other to control the city. While the public part of the setting is known by everyone you play Chicago/New-Orlean/Paris/Rome by night (and can just look gooogle open street map to get a map) , the game has a lot of semi-secret lore, about the creation of the Vampire/Werewolf/the Magic world, and the secret of powerful and ancient being with each sourcebook adding extra lore.
A difficulty with that setting, is that there is always a player who is fan of the setting and going to argue that you’ll never see this happening because [insert reference to obscure sourcebook] and that other player who actually went once to the city where you play so while WOD player don’t have rule lawyer, they have lore lawyer which are a bit akin.
While I talk about rules, the system is IMO the good balance between rule light (It’s still a traditional skill-based/dice-pool system with it’s root in the 90’s) and crunchy, the 2006 revision is my default system for modern games (I know-it, it runs fines and fit my need)
I had one really good game of Vampire. Lasted a couple years. We still talk about it sometimes, and its best scenes. Like how one PC saved an NPC by jumping out a 10th story window with her. Or the time they had a huge in character fight because the job they’d tried to do went sideways.
But I’ve also had a couple really bad games. There was one where they just didn’t read and retain anything from the books. One of the players on like session 4 was like “wait. How do I get more blood? Do I like… Bite people?”. My friend what do you think was happening in the other scenes when people were hunting for blood? They also didn’t retain anything about the different factions, so they didn’t really understand anyone’s motivation. It was bad. Still feel bad about it.
I think the best WoD game I’ve seen was a 2 player game on a forum. Both of them put a lot of effort into their characters, and the DM just built a beautiful setting out of detroit. The way the spirit reflected the physical, and how the npc interactions built the story was just so cool to read.
What do you guys normally play? Ive had PF1e groups that treat the whole thing like an engine builder, and I would not let them close to WoD. I have had groups full of filmmakers and writers and actors, that came up with factions and lore and maps for 5e and really wanted to run WoD.
I really had a lot of fun making characters for our party in FATE but the DM had never run anything other than PF1e so we lost interest after one adventure :(
The real problem with WoD games? The setting books and DM intros are always so good at crafting that beautiful eerieness of the monsters in the shadows, while the average group handles everything by clunking around like toddlers on stilts.
My group tried three times, then it was back to standard ‘kick-in-the-door’ style games. Roleplaying isn’t the easiest thing, and it sucks. I just want a good werewolf or hunter game with some nice politicking and investigation. I’m not even asking for anything crazy, like an introspective mage or changeling meditation session! /cries_in_desperate_desire
What’s “WoD”?
World of Darkness, a pretty popular family of games with Vampire the Mascarade as a figurehead, it reach peak popularity during the late 90’s/early 00’s, then almost vanished during the 2010’s. But with the recent release of the 20 year aniiversary verion and the fifth edition it’s raising again.
It’s modern Urban fantasy, the setting is almost the real world, and the PC are monsters e.g. Vampire, Mage or Werewolf fighting each other to control the city. While the public part of the setting is known by everyone you play Chicago/New-Orlean/Paris/Rome by night (and can just look
gooogleopen street map to get a map) , the game has a lot of semi-secret lore, about the creation of the Vampire/Werewolf/the Magic world, and the secret of powerful and ancient being with each sourcebook adding extra lore.A difficulty with that setting, is that there is always a player who is fan of the setting and going to argue that you’ll never see this happening because [insert reference to obscure sourcebook] and that other player who actually went once to the city where you play so while WOD player don’t have rule lawyer, they have lore lawyer which are a bit akin.
While I talk about rules, the system is IMO the good balance between rule light (It’s still a traditional skill-based/dice-pool system with it’s root in the 90’s) and crunchy, the 2006 revision is my default system for modern games (I know-it, it runs fines and fit my need)
I had one really good game of Vampire. Lasted a couple years. We still talk about it sometimes, and its best scenes. Like how one PC saved an NPC by jumping out a 10th story window with her. Or the time they had a huge in character fight because the job they’d tried to do went sideways.
But I’ve also had a couple really bad games. There was one where they just didn’t read and retain anything from the books. One of the players on like session 4 was like “wait. How do I get more blood? Do I like… Bite people?”. My friend what do you think was happening in the other scenes when people were hunting for blood? They also didn’t retain anything about the different factions, so they didn’t really understand anyone’s motivation. It was bad. Still feel bad about it.
I think the best WoD game I’ve seen was a 2 player game on a forum. Both of them put a lot of effort into their characters, and the DM just built a beautiful setting out of detroit. The way the spirit reflected the physical, and how the npc interactions built the story was just so cool to read.
What do you guys normally play? Ive had PF1e groups that treat the whole thing like an engine builder, and I would not let them close to WoD. I have had groups full of filmmakers and writers and actors, that came up with factions and lore and maps for 5e and really wanted to run WoD.
Our best was 4e. The absolutely locked down mechanics let our poor permanent DM plan things out really well, and I got in some lovely character stuff.
Fate was also pretty good. The looseness let the DM sort of lead the sessions into quasi-not combats even if that approach was taken.
I really had a lot of fun making characters for our party in FATE but the DM had never run anything other than PF1e so we lost interest after one adventure :(