CofD aka 2E nWoD is miles better than oWoD. Here are my crusty and garrulous opinions.

1. No more dated 90s tropes and politics. It was timely in the moment, but like all references to contemporary politics they go sour and smelly fast. This is especially true for Werewolf the Apocalypse, which aged like fashy doo doo in summer heat. Furry ecofascists are a grim and absurd reality in the 2020s, no longer relegated to a darker future, but to the present. The same goes for Mage the Ascension to a large extent, as I’d consider the Virtual Adepts to have gone crawling back to the Technocracy by now.

2. The mechanics of 2E are more of a side-grade in comparison to 1E, but they’re still better balanced than oWoD. No more variable target numbers for dice rolls, no more botch rules that make combat between two powerhouses into pathetic slapfights. Running oWoD combat made me want to cry, even in 20th where much of the jank is edited out. There are so many stages and moving parts to the mechanics of oWoD that the alternative in nWoD 2E and even 5E oWoD are superior, flat-out.

3. No glut of metaplot. The meta of oWoD is treated all too often like some sort of canon bible, which privileges having downloaded and read a bunch of PDFs of the old books to glean all the little details. This is a leftover from the era when RPGs published and printed supplement books to fill shelf space in bookstores. It’s one of the reasons why they rebooted the setting into nWoD to begin with. The mistake in 1E was to try and chase old fans while making something new, and succeeded at neither very well.

This is only the beginning. I ask no quarter and give none. To battle!

@OT-The-Real eat shit and die loser

We all have to share the spotlight on a MU* or this kind of thing happens. I sometimes wonder if WOD could have been better if the mechanics and narrative were better suited to that, like the 2013 MET LARP ruleset, since that’s designed for games of like 15-20 people over 3-5 in tabletop.

At risk of outing myself, I do faction PVP on Silent Heaven frequently, and am the only combat character on my side so my PC often loses fights and gets beaten up as a result. It works because I know I can come back from the fight without losing anything massively inconveniencing, and dying isn’t possible in the course of day to day play. Antagonists check with me OOC to make sure I am cool with it as a player first, as is best practices when initiating a fight.

It is very much possible to have this without it devolving into OOC bad feelings and drama.

@somasatori said in Re: Dies Irae:

As it stands, Dies Irae has a great shot at being a GarouMUX-but-for-Fera given the way the population is set up, but that would require somehow convincing folks to shutter spheres. The problem being: we don’t know what spheres are required to keep the lights on. We also don’t really know what themes the game has as a whole.

I entirely support a turn towards becoming the San Diego Zoo of Darkness.

@somasatori I would leave out the bigot or intolerant flaws entirely, they seem poised for bad faith nonsense on a MU* environment. It’s one thing if it’s your own table, but then you can play FATAL for all I care if it’s in your personal space.

I tried to make my Pumonca work, but the place just kept losing players and losing steam with it. It’s a shame, I’d love a place to play a cougar-man long term.

@Popes Poor Stan. He really made Garou shine. Convinced my Bastet interacting with them was worthwhile after all!

I’ve always thought Pure Breed was a creepy, eugenicist concept if left untreated tbh, but there are versions where it’s not tied to ‘blood purity’.

It takes actually reaching out OOC to the other players and reassuring them that you are not your character, and keeping that line open. It helps you and them keep separation between you as a person and your PC. Emotional bleed IC-OOC happens, especially if you lose more frequently than you win IC, but just knowing you have that line to reach out to the other players is often enough to make things easier.

It does take an initial investment of OOC trust on both ends, which is emotional work all on its own, we have all been burned. It’s kind of like dating, but for the purposes of making your dollies fight fair and square. It’s better than enduring a sandbox meltdown though.

@catzilla That’s utterly pathetic on their part. As is that game for allowing this to go off at all.

@Roadspike A simple recipe can be delicious with only a few well prepared ingredients, while gourmet ingredients can lead to inedible glop if you are unskilled.

@somasatori Good deal, Beast is a full deal breaker for me and I’m not alone.

And as an aside, I’ll always prefer Forsaken for putting the Pure Breed nonsense where it belongs, firmly in the realm of antagonists. Ivory Claws are Pure Breed personified, and it’s as bad as it sounds. Just like how Fire-Touched are Children of Gaia if they’re being honest with themselves and others, and how Predator Kings are what the Red Talons really are in practice.

If someone sets up a WoD edition wars thread, I will offer my most garrulous, crusty opinions there.

See this is what makes pre modern games attractive in terms of ism handling. The world was so different that many of the categories of bigotry today just didn’t exist yet. The beef between ancient Assyrians and Greeks might as well be a beef between vampires and werewolves for how relevant it is today.

It’s unavoidable in all human history that people have used bigotry to justify harming perceived political and social enemies. It’s not the only way to go after your enemies, either, and those other ways are a lot less retraumatizing for people who have experienced it. Few people have been traumatized by weaponized lightning bolts, disintegration rays, or medieval weaponry applied to them. Nor have they been hurt by people orchestrating a palace coup against them and running them off their throne. But the modern ism stuff? Why drive off players like that? If the beef is between like, Hittites and Myceneans, who cares? Go ham.

@Pavel I have no interest in sharing a space with a bigot sex pest, so good on them for that.

Only the biggest dorks need apply because of how much history is in there, but I want to make the cultures and faiths of the Hellenistic world come to life with wizards. There is no equivalent to Orders, just Schools, which leaves a huge blank spot to fill in with cultures from Syrian to Shakyan, and faiths from Abrahamic to Zoroastrian. But if you’re into that, it’s the game for you.

@catzilla I like my cat as well, I have fun with my folks. I hope whatever problems Bya spoke of come out in the open to be handled soon.

CofD game would be fantastic and I would be up in it day one.

I suggest Changeling/Geist, for the Motley Krewe experience.

WOD was a mistake.