World of Darkness 2.0... Rulebook First Impressions (essay)

[DannyK]

Well, I finally bought the WOD and Requiem set last night (a happy night, let me tell you).  I thought the mechanics were nicely stripped down in a number of ways and a lot of broken or flawed rules were cleaned up.  

And the resolution mechanic, which I am starting to really like, does seem to have some FitM quality to it.  It uses dice pools with a fixed target (8 or above), all modifiers are to the number of dice rolled, and if you have zero or less dice in your pool, you roll a "chance die" where 10=1 success and 1=botch.  I'm still trying to decide how I feel about the greatly diminished likelihood of botches.  

I think this is a big improvement over the old Storyteller system, which incoherently mixed up difficulty modifications and numbers of successes needed.  Now even one success is a "hit", and further successes mean a progressively better result in some way or another.  

On the other hand, I guess I've been hanging around here long enough to have hoped that the new system would be designed to support narrativist play, and I don't see much of that after one read-through.

[Landon Darkwood]

Just have to add my two cents here, as a followup from an e-mail exchange with Ron a long, long while ago.

I've always thought that, despite the horrendous incongruity between the play supported by the applied mechanics of the game and the play ostensibly suggested by the rest of the text, Storyteller System is a fairly focused Simulationist-supporting design when you consider the mechanics alone. I'd call it Purist for System Lite when stripped of all the High Concept mechanics specific to each game line. You do get a sort of 'low cinematics, modern day gritty' play out of it when you take out all the powers and stuff.

In that respect, I can honestly say that I really like WoD 2.0, for fixing mechanical problems that the other game had to make it adhere even moreso to a consistent range of play outcomes when the dice come out. Yes, the GMing and "how to play" sections are still incongruent. I think they may even be more incongruent now than before, because the consistency of the mechanics from a Sim perspective is more solid. I think the resolution mechanic could still be more... centralized, with specific situations (combat) adding less permutations to the basic mechanic instead of more.

Overall, the continued incongruity represents a step down for WoD 2, because play will likely tend to be more incoherent and require more Drifting than it used to. Which is sad. There's an irony in the fact that the Storytelling chapter got shorter... it feels tacked on to me, as a sort of obligatory thing to fulfill previous expectations of White Wolf's gaming advice.

On the other hand, I have a modern-day game of Call of Cthulhu that is begging for a Purist for System Lite design to be adapted to it, and Storyteller 2.0 is seeming to fit the bill after messing with the degeneration rules a little bit. And I think it'll produce a pretty coherent experience.

It's sort of like Storyteller is a decent Sim framework on which to hang your High Concept game. There's a quality there that I think becomes apparent when you take away the weight of the whole "World of Darkness" branding.


-Landon Darkwood

[DannyK]

Landon, your post really encapsulated a lot of my feelings about it.  The wild card is, I'm not sure how the combination of the WoD rules + the Requiem rules will turn out -- the special rules for Vampires may soften the Sim edges a bit.  I'm starting in an online chronicle soon, so I'll see how things work in practice.

[eyebeams]

About "corporate" gaming -- but not in terms of its definition (which was the area being modded, yes? That's *not* what I'm talking about.)

That passage is "corporate" in another way, too, because White Wolf is one of the few companies that have to write RPGs to be accessible to new gamers. It's an annoying truth that corporate team-building, psychology, sex and computer games are pretty much the only avenues through which most people hear the term.

What interests me more is the question behind this, which is one that the orientation of this community usually doesn't have to be focused on. What references would you use to write about what an RPG is to a neophyte, to distinguish it from other varieties of roleplaying? This is an interesting question, because:

1) You do not have the luxury of assuming someone has already played another game.

2) You must be brief. A series of essays is too big.

3) You must be plain. Heavily contextualized semantics won't be parsed, and to set them up would lack brevity.

4) Obviously, you must generate interest in the game.

White Wolf has one particular response to these four pressures. WotC (with the two kinds of gaming described in D&D) has another. Palladium has a bog-standard essay that, given my informal discussions with folks over the years, seems to actually do its job.

Now the pat answer here would be to claim that it doesn't matter anyway and everybody is just initiated by other players, but again, I've heard far too many stories of people setting up groups in isolation, after getting game books, to take this seriously.

[eyebeams]

Just have to add my two cents here, as a followup from an e-mail exchange with Ron a long, long while ago.

I've always thought that, despite the horrendous incongruity between the play supported by the applied mechanics of the game and the play ostensibly suggested by the rest of the text, Storyteller System is a fairly focused Simulationist-supporting design when you consider the mechanics alone. I'd call it Purist for System Lite when stripped of all the High Concept mechanics specific to each game line. You do get a sort of 'low cinematics, modern day gritty' play out of it when you take out all the powers and stuff.

Sure. During playtest, I was very concerned with the idea of what was being simulated -- but not completely. The end design is not as representational a system as the old design. It is designed to *generate outcomes* more than *describe actions.* How did you get out of the way of a kife or a bullet? That's ceded to the play group instead of being a chunk of emergent info from the fact that you used Defense X and Soak Y.

That gives the game a very different character from its predecessors.

Overall, the continued incongruity represents a step down for WoD 2, because play will likely tend to be more incoherent and require more Drifting than it used to.

White Wolf projects aren't written to Threefold needs. If you belong to a group that has these concerns, you will probabaly find some things troubling.

The reason the advice is the way it is comes from (among otyher things) the fact that the WoD is not really Gamist. The ST has no ECL, CR or other way to keep from truncating the game with inappropriate encounters with adversity. Combat does not have the choices needed to create sufficiently variegated tactics.  By "inappropriate" I do not mean, "too tough" or "unbalanced." I mean things that bar the continuation of play. Characters are expected to encounter the supernatural as anything from a mood to an overwhelming threat -- and each of these things must have significance. In White Wolf parlance, story is simply the act of giving significance to events. The chapter is advice about the importance of that and how to go about it.

[Callan S.]

Are they kidding? The book goes on to warn people not to "...get lost in an Ivory Tower..."(The World of Darkness, Storyteller System Rulebook, Pg 188.) Ivory Tower? Corporate Roleplaying? I wonder if I could sue them since I have been using the term Corporate Gaming for some time now. I was probably not the first one either and it's really not a big deal but that's hardly the point. White Wolf is the epitome of Corporate roleplaying. The entire Rulebook is chock full of telling you when and where and how many dice to roll! That's approximately 185 pages of rules cocnerning DICE not DRAMA.

Again, ok it's a Rulebook after all. Ok I can accept that except the focus of these rules is Combat. Combat has it's own chapter. Experience has 1 page, front side. That's right now front and back but front, stuck back on page 216-217 (the Experience section is on two pages but barely has enough text for one full page). It is stuck between Skinrider (an antagonist) and Optional Rule – Character Flaws.

I think another of Seans posts
The Grognard Speaks: System and Step on Up in OD&D is sort of on a similar subject.

I think there's a bit of a magicians trick here. You give them a book that says it's for one thing and then fill it full of contents for another thing.

So what happens?

Well, utimately in terms of CA those combat rules are pretty bland. They don't have much oomph. I mean, contrast it with SA's in TROS. Try to have fights without SA's going...then try to have fights in line with SA's. Feel the 'oomph'?

But instead you have a pretty bland combat system...doesn't do anything for nar, not much gamist there (I don't understand sim too well, so I'll skip on commenting there).

But the book has just said it's all about drama and stories and art!. While at the same time giving a (fairly) directionless rules system.

It's a massive set up for drift. But more importantly, it's a massive set up for drift to exactly the kind of game the group drifts it to. What's going to stop them? A directionless system? What direction will they drift to? Well, the direction the book says it's about...or atleast they will go in the direction they percieve is what the book means.

The most interesting bit? Assuming this works, the users feverantly believe the book just perfectly forfilled their expectations...when actually, they drifted it, so they forfilled their own expectations. Palladium comes to mind, in relation to this.

So, how can it go wrong? Well my careful wording above "it's a massive set up for drift to exactly the kind of game the group drifts it to." says it in one. Exactly the kind of game the group drifts it to...which could be anything. It's up to the groups own coherance in terms of play style because the book IS NOT providing any 'omph' that will help them play in a similar manner. While the worse thing is, often they will all reference the book on 'how this game should be played' when it comes to arguing how to play, when the book has nothing to do with it.

The worse thing is, I think, that this leads to cel playing. Unlike those damn lucky wargamers who can hop from table to table playing with total strangers and have a good old time, with system like this if I go from table to table I have to face a myriad of play styles from people who think they are playing book standard (and even though they are playing in their style, really, they wont negotiate on how they play when a new player comes on board...because 'were playing by the book'. GRRRR!).

Looking at it now, its a design method that glorifies the book rather than attributes quality of play to the users. At the further expense that negotiation about play is hamstrung by this and thus a vital ingrediant of RP, communication, is ham strung. End rant.

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

Callan, you might be interested in my Champions essay if I can ever freakin' get it whipped into shape. My call is that Vampire amost perfecftly recapitulated Champions' remarkable success at being almost just right for all the various priorities of play. As I've said many times, it can drive anywhere, but you have kick a tire (off) to make it work right, and choose which tire to kick.

Since Vampire is entirely built on the Champions chassis of character design (not the first or last, either) ... well, I'm stopping now. Lots to talk about, an essay to finish, etc.

Malcolm, I invite you to examine the differences between The Big Model (which GNS was a precursor to) and the Threefold Model (which inspired GNS). They are pretty different beasts.

Best,
Ron

[Callan S.]

As I've said many times, it can drive anywhere, but you have kick a tire (off) to make it work right, and choose which tire to kick.

Heya Ron,

Where's the guidance for this? Or even the suggestion that some material needs to be kicked? And that this is best done as a group process rather than someone (GM) going off and deciding it all by themselves?

If you produce something that can drive in many directions but without any guidance on how the group can choose their own direction, they wont choose it, it'll just sort of happen. Without having conciously made a choice, many users are going to assume what ended up happening is a quality of the book. The skill to notice when the book is giving them a choice which isn't obvious about being a choice, isn't that common. I think many people mix up what the books author(s) chose and what they have chosen.

Note: I haven't read champions.

[Ron Edwards]

Hiya,

Total agreement, Callan. Total.

Cries of rage, frustration, accusation, and resentment were the sea in which islands of successful Champions occurred, for this very reason.

Best,
Ron

[Callan S.]

Heya Ron,

Ah!

...Champions' remarkable success at being almost just right for all the various priorities of play.

It'd be more: Champions remarkable amount (or quality) of material available for all the various priorities of play, in one book.

Sorry to pick out one sentence, I'm a little spun by the use of the word success and want to get my bearings on this. :)

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

Damn - we're getting off topic. About "success," yeah, I buy your re-phrasing - what I had in mind was the large number of groups that I definitely know had fun with the game (and continue to do so, in the larger scope of the Hero System), just all in very different and patently incompatible ways.

Anyway, I'm gonna moderate myself now and say shuddup, yer off topic. This thread ought to close now, I think.

Best,
Ron