Has anyone reviewed the new World of Darkness games from a GNS perspective? I'd be curious to see what the opinion was.

Well I have and have read both the new WOD rules and Vampire: The Requiem. I haven't absorbed them completely but I plan to playtest them shortly going by the rules to see what grey areas there still are.

So far from reading there are some significant changes that I like quite a bit, specifically with regard to Vampire. There is still too much fiction in the books for my taste however, but it is WW's standard MO. It looks to me like the weight of metaplot no longer crushes PC's Vampires do not know where they came from and blood grows in power principly with age (and there are rules to make older vampires) and then thins out again when the vampire is forced into torpor. There is no world spanning vampire conspiracy, eveything is pretty much local.(though vampires of like opinion have contacts in other cities.) There is no dualistic setup of the 'good' vampires and the 'bad' and humanity is now the only scale. There are no paths that replace humanity.

Now the feeling of freedom could be because there are simply no supplements out yet, but as of now, and with the book written the way it is, the world is wide open for the PC's And the backstory as it stands seems like it will not admit a metaplot of the nature of the previous WoD.

The resolution system as written is still significantly oriented towards task based resolution rather than conflict. There is still the suggestion that if you don't like the way dice or rules take things then the GM should disregard the rules in favor of 'good story.'

Gone is nature and demeanor archetypes, instead characters now have a virtue and a vice, basically the seven mortal sins and their opposites. Players have some metaplot input through charcters willpower points which affect die rolls by adding 3 dice to a roll or by adding two to defensive traits. Characters regain 1 willpower point in a scene if things play out towards their vice, and regains all of them if things play out towards their virtue.

Most interesting they have gone to a fixed TN of 8, rather than different TN's for different difficutlies. All modifiers (including task difficulty) are given or removed in terms of dice added or removed from the pool. I thought that very interesting b/c it seems to show influence of so many games from indie designers. It would be super easy...and tempting...to house rule Sorcerer style die bonuses. WW leaves the door wide open here as all modifiers are decided by the GM.

Reward systems:
The experience point system and suggestions is the same system WW has been using since at least Second Edition. In itself the criteria are either simulationist or gamist. (how much danger did they face, how appropriately did they roleplay.)

Humanity is based on a heirarchy of sins. Doing one of the sins causes a degenration test which is less and less likely to cause degeneration as the characters humanity drops. Of course the GM can impose modifies to make it more likely. I haven't decided whether this is simulationist personality mechanics or whether it is more a narrativist marker of significant moral decision. And I won't be able to tell until I play it (and I will have to try hard not to drift it towards Sorcerer) I'm more inclined to say simulationist at this point.

The Willpower gaining setup that I mentioned above is for fulfilling character ideals, and seems pretty simmy because the ideals are so general, they are broad principles. If they were more in line with SA's like TROS I'd call them narrativist but at this point it seems more simmy.

That's the best analysis I can give, (apologies for being disorganized) until I get to play the game. It still seems pretty driftable. The setting doesn't crush you anymore. I don't know whether it will require drift or not. It seems to have become more solidly simulationist but it will be hard to tell until later.

best,

Trevis

Thanks, Trevis.

Do you consider it to be coherent or incoherent (in GNS terms)?

I think that GNS-Incoherence needs a close look. As someone who thinks that Sim-style rules (or at least cause/effect-style mechanics) are just about perfect for facilitating premise questions, I don't think the whole notion of GNS Incoherence is an especially well defined analysis of a rules-set.

[ But I have to say that review of the rules and setting was excellent and made it sound interesting to me! ]

-Marco

Its just more pretend-Nar, in my played-two-short-campaigns opinion.

More rules-Light

Fewer Gamist mechanisms.

Less Abusable.

But very few actually Nar elemenets, excepting:

Less Metaplot.
Better clan-scheme.

The Humanity mechanic, how its worded, how it comes in to play, leans very heavily toward use as Behavioral control, you'd have to jury rig it pretty hard to be narrativist.

That said its less incoherent than VTM and less obstructionist to a Nar game than VTM. Still doesn't make it coherent or narrativist.

sirogit wrote: Its just more pretend-Nar, in my played-two-short-campaigns opinion.

More rules-Light

Fewer Gamist mechanisms.

Less Abusable.

But very few actually Nar elemenets, excepting:

Less Metaplot.
Better clan-scheme.

The Humanity mechanic, how its worded, how it comes in to play, leans very heavily toward use as Behavioral control, you'd have to jury rig it pretty hard to be narrativist.

That said its less incoherent than VTM and less obstructionist to a Nar game than VTM. Still doesn't make it coherent or narrativist.

sirogit wrote:
The Humanity mechanic, how its worded, how it comes in to play, leans very heavily toward use as Behavioral control, you'd have to jury rig it pretty hard to be narrativist.

I have not yet played the game, though I have a series getting prepared. However, I know that the expressed intent of the game designers isn't to punish people for sinning, but rather to model mental and moral degredation as a theme in horror games and to have the Morality (Humanity for vampires) stat act descriptively rather than proscriptively.

I think that its hard to call but looking at the reward mechanisms of the game is telling. Since 1st edition Vampire, Humanity and degeneration are supposed to be the core around which the game revolves. V:TR actually says that.

So how can a Kindred survive the Requiem? How can he preserve some shred of Human conscience when the Beast never tires? What limit can he set to his own monstrosity?

The characters must answer that question for themselves. That's what Vampire: The Requiem is all about. (p185)

Roleplaying: The player can win one experience point for playing the role of her character exceptionally well. Not only did her performance entertain the other players, she showed the strengths and weaknesses of the character's personality. Nothing was out of character. The player stuck to what the character knew, without bringing in the players out of game knowledge, or stuck to the characters motivations even when they became inconvienient. p229

Trevis -- or anybody --

Help me out here.

Trevis above wrote:

"The system itself, rules wise, I don't think is incoherent. There is incoherence here but it comes from the mechanics of the game not aligning to what the game says it wants to do."

Now, I would have assumed that this is exactly what is meant by incoherence all the time. That in reading a game text, the total of a game text, either the paragraphs and charts across the book support each other (or, at least don't get in each other's way); or the text and charts across the book work at a cross purpose.

So, given what Trever said about the text saying the game is about one thing, and the mechanics in practice making the game is about something else, what we've got here is an incoherent game text. Not with a qualifier, but plain and simple.

Right?

Best regards,

Christopher

Trevis Martin wrote: The method for regaining humanity? Spending experience points. Though the GM and player are encouraged that the player needs to portray the character as being genuinely remorseful.

Willpower, the players main metagame power points, are also regained by adhereing to self-placed portrayal restrictions called Vice and Virtue.

Humanity would become a binary condition, either you have it or you don't. If you don't, I wouldn't say that the beast takes over, more that you have become completely inhuman. I would also allow die bonuses for cool or imaginitve roleplaying.

That's a rather wordy answer to your question but I've been doing this analysis for a few days now in my head and I had to write it down.

Christopher Kubasik wrote: So, given what Trever said about the text saying the game is about one thing, and the mechanics in practice making the game is about something else, what we've got here is an incoherent game text. Not with a qualifier, but plain and simple.

RobNJ wrote:

Christopher Kubasik wrote: So, given what Trever said about the text saying the game is about one thing, and the mechanics in practice making the game is about something else, what we've got here is an incoherent game text. Not with a qualifier, but plain and simple.

Chris,

Are you saying that due to the fact that it is saying one thing and doing another, that makes it incoherent?

What is the relationship between coherence and function (or incoherence and dysfunction)?

So it would appear that the concensus is that to one degree or another, nWoD is a troubled game from a GNS perspective. The only opinion of whether that makes it noxiously so said that it was liveable.

Chris,

Of course you are right, it's an incoherent game by simply not making mechanics to support its stated purpose. In my head I was seperating the actual mechanics from statments about play in the text. But they are a whole. I'd like to review my text more to examine any other areas where they seem to be intersted in Nar type goals, but I can't remember any at the moment beyond that one instance. What has improved is that the mechanical parts of the system don't seem to fight anymore.

Rob,

Humanity would definately be more than descriptive. I'd want humanity to have teeth. That is any morally questionable act against the definition of humanity is risking a humanity point loss. And the character is capable of any moral act at any time. This gives humanity loss teeth because you CAN drive your humaniy to 0, and without too much difficulty, at which point the character becomes inhuman and thus an NPC. He has lost his war not to be a monster.

Equally in that setup it is possible to regain humanity by meritorious acts relative to the humanty definition. Either way, the humanity roll highlights the significance of the act or the decision.

Thus each decision made that risks humanity has real significance not only in 'story' terms but also in actual terms for the people at the table.

This is what I loved so much about Sorcerer. It answered something about Vampire that I hadn't put words to. But I knew something bothered me. Ron changed humanity from a personality mechanic into a narrativist critical decision marker.

As for the game being dysfunctional. It depends on weather the prospective players go into the situation with its eyes open. IF you play the rules as written (notwithstanding the text about what the "game is about") You probably would have a solid simulationist game.

If you want the game to support Nar then the rules would have to be drifted a bit. I don't know that it blocks narrativism, but without rules changes the narrativism would be informal. Either way, since you are ignoring part of the game text you would be drifting the rules to some extent. I don't think its so troubled as to be unplayable. And as I mentioned, I quite like the setting. I like it better now than I did before.

best,

Trevis

Hi Trevis,

While I might be wrong about this, in general:

I think game play might or might not be disfunctional.

Game texts might or might not be incoherent.

Thus, a group might take an incoherent game text, drift it as a group to the group's needs, and create functional play.

On the other hand, even a tightly built game like Dogs in the Vineyard would most likely become disfunctional if one player in the group wanted to micromanage the speed of bullets during a Conflict if the other players wanted to play the Conflicts the ways the rules are written.

I suspect you know these differences, but because the terms incoherent and disfunctional are so loaded -- and so misused and misunderdstood -- for so many people, I just wanted to make the distinction clear.

Best Regards,

Christopher

Christopher Kubasik wrote:
I suspect you know these differences, but because the terms incoherent and disfunctional are so loaded -- and so misused and misunderdstood -- for so many people, I just wanted to make the distinction clear.

Best Regards,

Christopher

Chis,

Agreed.

Hence my reluctance to call them incoherent at first before examining the game text a little more. I can say that I think the game is an improvment over its predecessor. I'm aware that the terms incoherent and dysfunctional get bandied about a bit loosley sometimes and that's not what I'm intending to do. At least in that particular instance, the issue of Humanity that I discussed earlier, a certain amount of incoherence is demonstrated. All this said, I think I could have a good time playing it. Because, damn it, I like the World of Darkness. At least I did when I first bought Vampire. It all got a little silly after that. This feels like I felt when I bought first edition Vampire back in 91. I have an unfortunate suspicion that I will end up tweaking things, but I plan to give it a go without changing anything first.

I want to add an interesting note to this. I"ve been playing with a group all of which had never played before they played with me. Most of them aren't into reading gamebooks, they just like to play. We've played a LOT of indie games since we've been together and no Big press games I can think of. (Well we played Witchcraft, but we just used the setting, we used the Pool for the system.) The production values for the new Vampire book are fantastic, the book is a work of art and oozes atmosphere. It's sexy. All my players got excited about it just looking at the cover. I don't want them to be disappointed by bad gameplay due to rules not delivering on that promise. I've talked to them some about my past experiences with the game's previous incarnations (I played WoD for 8 years.) So we'll try to avoid the pitfalls.

Marco, I'd be very interested to hear your analysis. In fact I'd be intersted to hear anyone else's analysis who has read or played the game under the new rules.

best,

Trevis

Trevis Martin wrote:
Marco, I'd be very interested to hear your analysis. In fact I'd be intersted to hear anyone else's analysis who has read or played the game under the new rules.

best,

Trevis

Marco wrote: Caveat: I don't know what the effects are or how severely they circumscribe roleplaying so I'd need to see the book to really have a good idea of what they're doing there.

Couple of points.

1) I agree that from what I've heard of the new edition that I get much more of a First Edition vibe from it. I was a First Edition whore. I had every Vampire book up until they ruined it (an even I peg chronologically at about the time Mage was first released). I may actually consider picking this up.


2) From what I've heard so far the folks at WW still don't have the cahones to take the plunge and actually make the game they really want. Case in point, the text on awarding the "roleplaying bonus" above.

Sure its a trivial matter to change or ignore it, but embedded in those few lines are some SERIOUSLY major insights into the sort of thought process that went into the game's development.

Consider "Nothing was out of character" combine this with the text listing the range of behavior relative to different humanity levels and you pretty much have a clear indication that the designers vision is to keep characters in a pretty tight box. You may have more control in this edition over the shape and size of that box but there is still the assumption that these parameters are necessary (or even helpful) for good play.

Consider further that both this and the restriction on out of character information are required to earn the "roleplaying bonus". In other words, this is their definition of "good roleplaying". They are coming right out and saying that using OOC information is bad roleplaying and if you do it you don't get this bonus...this bonus is reserved only for good roleplayers. That highlights pretty dramatically the extremely narrow range of behaviors that the designers of this game consider to constitute desireable play, and those fundamental assumptions...regardless of how easy it is to throw out this particular rule...will continue to pervade their entire design.


This quote kills me:

So how can a Kindred survive the Requiem? How can he preserve some shred of Human conscience when the Beast never tires? What limit can he set to his own monstrosity?

The characters must answer that question for themselves. That's what Vampire: The Requiem is all about. (p185)

Valamir wrote: Consider "Nothing was out of character" combine this with the text listing the range of behavior relative to different humanity levels and you pretty much have a clear indication that the designers vision is to keep characters in a pretty tight box. You may have more control in this edition over the shape and size of that box but there is still the assumption that these parameters are necessary (or even helpful) for good play.

Ethan Skemp on another forum wrote: (in reply to the question: if you had a Humanity of, say, 3, doesn't that mean that your character wouldn't plausably return a lost baby to her mother? Wouldn't it be more "in-character" (as humanity dictates) for the Vamp to eat said baby?)

Depends. Do you need to get something out of the mother? (Am I honestly making a fetch-quest reference here?) Are you the sort of creature that's amused by outbursts of emotion, and therefore are somewhat curious to see just how worked up the mother might be? Humanity determines the level of your moral degradation, but it doesn't define your personality beyond that. It would even be possible to have a low-Humanity monster who is really trying to be virtuous, but who doesn't really understand how to do it right — maybe he really wants to take the baby back, but winds up shaking it violently so that it's nice and quiet when it's returned to the mother, so she doesn't have to worry any more. Your Humanity trait can be interpreted into different personalities, just as a high Stamina can equally mean a big Brock Lesnar-sized slab of beef or a lean and wiry outdoorsman who is just plain tough as nails.

On the apparent rigidity of a heirarchy of sins, Ethan Skemp on another forum wrote: Actually, as far as "absolute" goes, the level of crime is detailed, but not the specifics. For example, if you kill someone in self-defense, is that an "impassioned crime?" The Storyteller has all reason to rule otherwise, as befits his interpretation of what "impassioned crime" means.

3. The rewards for being good are miniscule and fleeting,

Whether this is factual or not, it is probably worth remembering that in a World of Darkness, presumably there aren't many rewards for being good. Otherwise, more people would be good.

See also: Real life.

On the apparently simulationist intent of the humanity/morality system, Ethan Skemp on another forum wrote: The greater point here is that one of the major tropes of a horror setting or horror literature is degeneration — experiencing terrible things doesn't make you more badass, it tends to make you worse off than you were. The "I'm evil, I shouldn't be subject to any degeneration rules" defense is more appropriate to an action game with horror motifs, something like Blade or Van Helsing. Now, admittedly that's how a lot of people like to play World of Darkness games — but we try to build the rules so that there's more to it than that.

on how to play evil in this system, Ethan Skemp on another forum wrote: If it were me, and a player really wanted to play an evil character, I'd let him start with a lower Morality than usual; just make a few degeneration rolls, and we'll get started. Vito isn't a character who is morally upstanding according to the morality system of his peers (though he might have the mobster equivalent of Status or Renown); he's an experienced character who has already undergone the loss of Morality so that he is hardened enough to accept that he kills and brutalizes people for money. Maybe Vito has a mild derangement when he begins play; it'd be appropriate. (I like Suspicious for a potential mobster character.) A low-Morality made man is interesting, and a mild derangement doesn't destroy the character's functionality or plausibility. If anything, it makes Vito more interesting than Generic Lawful Evil Antihero #652.

Valimir wrote: Consider further that both this and the restriction on out of character information are required to earn the "roleplaying bonus". In other words, this is their definition of "good roleplaying". They are coming right out and saying that using OOC information is bad roleplaying and if you do it you don't get this bonus...this bonus is reserved only for good roleplayers.

Valimir wrote: The characters decide for themselves? Characters can decide nothing for themselves. Characters can decide only what their players decide for them.

RobNJ wrote:
Couldn't that be an artifact of not paying as close attention to the difference between character and player? A difference that is underlined by the GNS philosophy? And betraying a simulationist stance?

Marco wrote:

RobNJ wrote:
Couldn't that be an artifact of not paying as close attention to the difference between character and player? A difference that is underlined by the GNS philosophy? And betraying a simulationist stance?

I would say more "Immersive" than "simulationist." Specifically, I'd guess Actor Stance. From a certain standpoint characters do indeed make decisions all the time and, in fact, play can be designed to 'create the story' wherein the decision the character makes is important.

This is an immersive playstyle and could be Narrativist, Sim, or Gamist depending on how the player relates to the decisions he has his characters make.

RobNJ wrote:
Understood. Except I thought that the Actor Stance was acknowledging the player as the primary issue in decisions made by the character. I thought there was a name for that other stance, the one that involves thinking character-first.

Marco wrote:

RobNJ wrote:
Understood. Except I thought that the Actor Stance was acknowledging the player as the primary issue in decisions made by the character. I thought there was a name for that other stance, the one that involves thinking character-first.

Unless I am making mistakes here, Actor is an immersive stance and Author is the player-first stance.

RobNJ wrote:

Is an Actor stance considered to be more illegitimate or dysfunctional? Or was Valimar expressing his/her opinion?

So then the root of the problem is it's coming back to "claiming" to be a narrativist game but having too much simulationist "noise" to make that claim credible?

What about the issue of games that try and use more than one play style? Would it be most accurate to define World of Darkness 2.0 as a simulationist game with Narrativist color? Is that a problem?

[edited to note the crossposting]

RobNJ wrote: Is an Actor stance considered to be more illegitimate or dysfunctional? Or was Valimar expressing his/her opinion?

RobNJ wrote: So then the root of the problem is it's coming back to "claiming" to be a narrativist game but having too much simulationist "noise" to make that claim credible?

What about the issue of games that try and use more than one play style? Would it be most accurate to define World of Darkness 2.0 as a simulationist game with Narrativist color? Is that a problem?

Looking back at the published scenarios White Wolf made for the old World of Darkness it's really quite apparent, at least to me, that the storytelling they envision is actually illusionism with players providing color. The GM's supposed to make things happen, in more or less the right order, and sometimes there are two or three alternative endings. Which in a sense does sound like storytelling to me; in that a story is told. Some of the game texts claim that cooperative storytelling is the actual goal, but as a whole this does not seem to mean cooperative story development, and adressing premise, but illusionism or participationism.

When I read the new game text I could not see this perspective on what storytelling games are having changed. Some mechanics are improved, and there is luckily no published metaplot yet, but many of the improvements seem to be aimed primarily at making gamist player priorities compatible with illusionist gamemastering, and when it concerns published metaplot this is only a matter of time, I'm afraid. A great example is the rule of giving bonus dice for "good descriptions" of actions. The net effect of this rule is pushing the resolution into fortune-at-the-end, though. This works great for making a gamist player provide color in an illusionist context, but it's no good for narrativism.

To me WW come across as having a specific idea about what storytelling in roleplaying games is; the illusionistic telling of stories by the GM with player-provided color and dramatic execution. They are making games that work out from this perspective, aiming for arty GM's who need a low-threshold medium for their stories and a system to accomplish this even if they have players with gamist priorities or gamist habits. In that sense, it should work great in it's undrifted form.

Also, there are some good ideas in their settings, and the rules are quite driftable, so with a bit of insight in the relationship between rules and actual play it should be possible to make the game work out as a narrativistic storytelling game too, if that's what you want.

-E

I can say that module-analysis is, IMO, tricky business. When I set out to write modules they came out railroaded (this is before I got to The Forge). Why was that?

It was because when I based my module on a game I'd run, I wanted to enforce exactly the same experience on the people who played it--since, in my games, which (IMO) were highly fluid, things had developed in a player-driven or even 'random' way, when it came to make a module I put in controls to provide the same thing.

In other cases, I simplified things greatly in order to provide a "complete" document (i.e. to avoid the charges of 'it's not finished'). In one case, I had NPC's doing a lot of the leading simply because they were the characters I had to work with--I had no idea who the players or characters would be in someone else's hands. In other words, with no actual "group" to address, I fell back putting direction in the text in order to link concepts together.

In some cases things explicitly *were* railroaded because the module was some kind of experiment that was entirely unlike the way I ran normal RPG's.

So I'd be careful about judging a game by its modules. I think the expectation for modules is (mostly) what's condsidered here to be railroaded.

Now:

1. My original assumptions were flawed--there are ways to write modules that aren't that deterministic. Of course this is potentially more work for the GM but that's okay. Ron's Sorceror's Scroll is a good way to approach this. A second way is to simply put a detailed starting situation together and then not care or guide the experience any further.

2. Metaplot is something else entirely. I never got into V:tM's meta-plot but having characters show up who are untouchable for reasons not integrated into the game system is, IMO, a kind of explicit illusionism.

What I don't think is that metaplot precludes narrativism. Not by itself (although the way White Wolf may have done it could've--I'm not certain because I haven't looked closely). If the metaplot simply provides background color and the player's play addresses unrelated premises then it shouldn't interfere.

Even if you meet an untouchable character, there's nothing that says it'll be "within your premise" to kill him, for example (and even if it was, I think its an extreme take on Narrativism that any rules-legitimate action must be feasible--I think there are degrees of Narrativism and small blips of meta-plot showing up, even if somewhat theme-related, wouldn't otherwise derail the game).

None of this is to say you're wrong: I haven't read those modules and your analysis may be spot-on. I'm just pointing out that my experience with modules is that the ones I wrote didn't reflect my playstyle--and I wasn't even aware of it until it was pointed out to me.

-Marco

Erling Rognli wrote: Looking back at the published scenarios White Wolf made for the old World of Darkness it's really quite apparent, at least to me, that the storytelling they envision is actually illusionism with players providing color. The GM's supposed to make things happen, in more or less the right order, and sometimes there are two or three alternative endings. Which in a sense does sound like storytelling to me; in that a story is told. Some of the game texts claim that cooperative storytelling is the actual goal, but as a whole this does not seem to mean cooperative story development, and adressing premise, but illusionism or participationism.