World of Darkness and Vampire: The Requiem

[Celisasu]

I thought I'd share my experience with White Wolf's new WoD as well as their new Vampire.


First off to play any WoD system you now need both the WoD core book as well as the specific book for whichever supernatural creature you're planning on playing.  At this point that's only Vampire: The Requiem although I think Werewolf: The Forsaken comes out soon.  With the WoD book you can only play normal humans although I could have some fun with that I suspect in a Call of Cthulhu type way where they're dealing with horrors that are out of their league.  

The die rolling rules are now like Exalted.  Base difficulty of 8.  Roll as many dice as attribute plus skill.  Every roll of 8, 9, or 10 is a success.  Roll of 10 allows a reroll.  Higher difficulties require more successes.  For those who didn't play the original WoD difficulty was a set number that you had to roll higher than and things became harder by giving you a higher number to roll.  

Combat has combined damage and accuracy.  You just roll once, add and subtract modifiers, and then you've got your damage for your opponent to soak if you've hit.  


I'm neutral about all of those.  They don't make WoD better or worse than the original for me.  Now I'll look at the good and bad.


The Good:

WoD has taken some steps to prevent twinking your character.  It can still happen over the course of the game but it's harder.  Starting characters have to pay double for their fifth dot in any skill or attribute.  Combined with the fact you get less skill and attribute dots than under the old system this means that odds are if you have a 5 in one of your attributes that you've got ones in both of the other ones.  


Merits and Backgrounds have been combined into one all inclusive category called Merits.  For those merits that only make sense if you have them from the start they just mark them as "starting characters only".  This means that some merits can indeed be acquired over the course of play.


Blood Potency(Vampire specific background) is more balanced now.  In the past people who wanted raw power often dumped five points into Generation.  After all it gave them more blood to play with.  Now though when you do that you've got to deal with feeding restrictions.  The higher your blood potency the more restricted your meals.  At Blood Potency 3 you have to feed on humans.  At Potency 7 you have to feed on vampires.  Every 25 years you spend in torpor your blood potency drops by one.  


Physical powers have been weakened.  Potence and Resiliance(Fortitude under the old system) now have a duration of one scene instead of constant.  


Vampire is more "mysterious" now.  Heck, the whole WoD is.  The vampires just don't know much beyond 500 years ago because that's about the oldest clear memory they have access to.  Just myths, random journals, and the very muddled memories of vampires emerging from torpor(torpor distorts memories now).  

The Bad:

Social powers might be too powerful(I need to playtest to be sure but they're looking that way).  You get to roll attribute plus skill plus dots in a discipline.  With how many dice you have your odds of succeeding are extremely high.  


You're paying more for books now as I said before.  You have to buy a minumum of two books to use the system.  Still it's less than you would for D&D 3.5.  I'm just noting this for people who liked only buying just one book.  I'm not bothered but they might be.

[Dracos]

Huh.  Wow, they even remotely started fixing it.  I'm surprised.  Twice now by white wolf.  Intriguing.  I recall back when I first saw Vampire and then the absolutely sickening amounts of d10s it'd use for anything and it's fairly annoying dice system.  Practically got itself pushed right onto computer only for use and that's without the whole scene that tends to hang around it.

Dracos

[Brian]

The big issue we have right now with WoD is that the core book says that any non-mage (including non-awakened humans) automatically gets a chance to counter any magical effect a mage is using.  We have yet to see how this is actually implimented.

For what it's worth, I own only the new WoD book, I will probably get Werewolf when it comes out, and I will get Mage when it comes out.

As a vetran Werewolf player, I actually greatly appreciate the streamlined combat rules.  Old WoD combat (I'm still currently running an old WoD Apocyplse campaign) takes a long time, especially when you involve armies, as they suggest in the books.  The new rules really help push combat faster.

Not sure about the social powers myself -- I'd certainly like to hear more on that once you find out, though.

[Celisasu]

Oh, I can explain how the mystical countering works.  If you're human you're probably screwed.  You're only going to be rolling the appropriate defensive attribute(stamina, resolve, composure).  So at best five dice.  Supernatural creatures get bonus dice.  For vampires these bonus dice are equal to your blood potency(so automatically one die, maybe more).  Presumably werewolves and mages will use one of their unique attributes for these bonus dice.

[Brian]

Sphere ratings tend to be 'high' at three.

We're figuring they PROBABLY stack spheres with arete, so a starting mage would have a pool of two dice for arete one, and (say) correspondence one.

That seems a bit low.

On the other hand, an arete three mage with, (for example) life three would get six dice.  For a 'powerful' mage this seems low, though.

They may balance it so arete is cheaper, but that would ultimately demean its value as a role-playing tool in mage.  We suspect that a given sphere is going to have an attribute or skill tied to it ... which one probably depends on what you're trying to do.  So, healing would be wits+medicine+life, or wits+medicine+arete.

Otherwise, though, at a glance (obviously, this is all speculation -- no one's yet SEEN an actual Mage book for the new WoD) it looks like your average mortal has an awesome chance to counter any spell a mage throws.  And the problem is that according to the book, the person (mortal sleeper) who's witnessing the effect doesn't even need to be targeted by it to get a chance to counter it.

So if you've decided to throw down against some IT-X cyborg in the street, and you're willing to get doxed for it, you first have to deal with the fact that every witness provides dice of countermagic against every magical effect you pull.  THAT is what we're not clear on ... and what we really want to know.  They don't even specify in the WoD book if it applies only to vulgar effects ... though the wording does say 'all'. :/

[Celisasu]

Well we'll find out eventually.  I think Werewolf is next followed by Mage.

[Brian]

The Mage book is out.  I'll be picking it up with my first paycheck to discuss handling of the spheres.  I'll prolly grab the Werewolf book and add my notes on it to this thread later this month/next month.

[Carthrat]

I had a look through a free campaign they were handing out at Mind Games. It looked pretty neat; they've reworked paradox a little and split Entropy into 'Fate' and 'Death'.

I've also been told that it's possible to blind yourself on the extremely shiny paper used in the actual book.

[Dracos]

SHINY!

Anyhow, looking forward to it, Brian.

Dracos