30 Day World of Darkness Challenge

[TristramEvans]

So this just showed up on my Facebook feed:

 

[TristramEvans]

Day one - How did you get started?
So, with WoD. Which I haven't followed in years, but mid to late 90s? That was my jam. So, Waldenbooks or Barnes & Nobles, one of those mall bookstores. Was looking through their RPG section, and came across the newly-released Changeling: The Dreaming. It was, visually and subject matter, not like any RPG I'd encountered at that point. I knew vaguely of Vampire: The Masquerade's existence, but nothing about it really.

Coincidentally this encounter occurred at I period I was just starting to get heavy into folklore, so it struck a chord, and I became fascinated with that book. Worked backwards through the other White Wolf books from there. WW was popular enough at that point that finding games was easy.

 

[Baeraad]

For me, I guess the very beginning was a bunch of threads posted in the freeform roleplaying forum I was hanging out with that referred weightily to things like "the Masquerade" and "Sleepers" and "Garou." But I mostly scratched my head a bit at those and otherwise ignored them, same as I did people's odd assumption that wizards couldn't heal people. The real beginning, I think, was a while later when I was browsing books in a game store, and there was this weird-looking purple book called Guide to the Technocracy. I glanced at the back, and saw:

We are the greatest scientific minds of the world. We influence every aspect of human society. We protect the Earth from the aliens without and the deviants within. Through order, science and technology, our conventions shape the course of the future and catalog the wonders of the cosmos. We are there whenever someone uses a tool. We create the advancements that protect and comfort humanity. We decide how tomorrow improves beyond today.

Woah, went I. INTENSE. There was just something in the tone, the way it hovered on the line between serene conviction and soulless droning. It was like one of those perspective images that showed something different depending on how you looked at it - it went from beautiful and inspiring to evil and horrifying and back again without changing. That was a lot more subtlety than I'd seen in any game I'd ever played before. I bought the book, along with the core Mage: the Ascension rulebook (Revised Edition, at that point). And then I bought... pretty much all the others, over the course of a number of years.

 

[Ulairi]

I was vaguely aware of WoD in the 90's but I really became aware when I went to Gencon in the mid 90's and saw hot goth chicks and White Wolf used to throw their rave.

My brother ran Mage the Ascension for us and I played the Rage and Jiyad card games. I always wanted to play Vampire and other WoD games because Iove the idea of the setting but the abstraction of the rules and the writing always seems super complicated compared to BRP, Palladium, and GURPS.

 

[spittingimage]

Back when I was at trade school some friends invited me to join a game of V:tM. It never got organised, but that's how I became aware of the game. Later another friend mentioned that he'd GMed before, so at my suggestion five of us clubbed together to buy him the rulebook so he could run a game for us.

That game lasted half an hour after chargen. One of the players joined the group not because she was interested but because her boyfriend had joined and she wasn't about to let him invest his attention in things that didn't involve her. We were playing at his house, in a granny flat attached to the garage. Twenty minutes into the game proper she got up and walked out. When she didn't come back after a few minutes, the boyfriend turned utterly white, jumped to his feet and dashed out after her.

She had attempted to slit her wrists in the garden. Only she didn't have anything sharp on her, so she tried using the pin from her watch strap. Which didn't slit so much as mildly irritate the skin. Nevertheless, it was a mental health crisis and we all had to stand around being supportive until the boyfriend finally asked us to leave so they could have A Talk. The game never picked up again, and if I'm being honest it's probably for the best.

I dropped out of all my social circles for several years because I was working nights and weekends. When I finally put my head up again, everyone was playing V:tM. They all seemed to own all the books and only be interested in advanced character options from clanbooks. Getting involved would have been a huge cash layout when I wasn't that well off, so I stayed on the sidelines. It seemed to go dormant after a while.

Around the time Vampire: the Requiem came out, I came across Genius: the Transgression. Which seemed like a game written especially to appeal to my interests. I loved it from the moment I was aware of it, and loved it twice as much after reading it cover to cover. I joined a couple of forum games on TBP, but neither of them went anywhere so I threw caution to the wind and offered to GM a game of my own at the local RPG club. That pretty much brings us up to date. I've still never played V:tX for more than thirty minutes on the trot.

 

[TristramEvans]

I was vaguely aware of WoD in the 90's but I really became aware when I went to Gencon in the mid 90's and saw hot goth chicks and White Wolf used to throw their rave.

There were raves at Gencon in the 90s?! That's almost badass.

 

[Ulairi]

There were raves at Gencon in the 90s?! That's almost badass.

Yup. White Wolf used to host one. Gencon Milwaukee > Indianapolis.

 

[TristramEvans]

Day Two - Favourite Game Line?

That's tricky. I have a lot of nostalgic love for Changeling: The Dreaming, but it was a beautiful mess. There seemed to be no overall editor or vision for what the game was meant to be about, and the books were wildly different in tone. The nadir was probably the books on Ireland and Britain (Immortal Eyes trilogy), written by Americans armed with travel guides and stereotypes but no actual knowledge of the countries they were writing about. The magic system recieved a complete overhaul between 1st and 2nd edition because they initially tried to jump on the CCG bandwagon to disastrous effect. Vital sourcebooks like the highly anticipated Book of Glamour were vapourware. The line limped along as the red-headed stepchild of the WoD, finally shunted to the "Arthouse" division, with bottom barrel production values and one or two releases a year until the end.

Ultimately the Dark Ages line was far better, so I guess it's my choice for favourite. Dark Ages:Fae presented faeries as they were conceived of in folklore, and provided the framework for nWOD's Changeling: The Lost. The setting books were highly researched, and the visual presentation of the line was the pinnacle of anything White Wolf produced. I still think the original Vampire: The Dark Ages rulebook is one of the most beautiful RPG books ever produced.

 

[Trippy]

I started playing RPGs, generally in the mid-late 1980s - due to other school students introducing us. We all followed Games Workshop and D&D, followed by Stormbringer and Warhammer, accordingly. We generally made up our own rules, because we could afford real core rule books. The first rpg I actually bought was Stormbringer, but it fell apart after a few weeks.

I got into World of Darkness games largely as a result of Games Workshop and White Wolf magazine largely giving up on rpgs in the early 1990s. I had been travelling for a couple of years anyway, after finishing school in 1990, then went back to college in 1992. I was seeking some gaming hobby at the time that I could get into. I had some fellow student who were keen, but we just needed a game - and pretty much all of us rejected AD&D 2nd Edition when we tried it. We thought it sucked.

Going into a store in early 1992 - it was dominated by Vampire. There was a big stand with just Vampire books, which at the time I didn't think were actually rpgs. I just thought they were some sort of art book, themed on Vampires. I actually went for Star Wars (D6) first, but despite the familiarity it really did nothing for me. After then, I had heard of Ars Magica and was really into wizards at the time, so we tried that for a while. There was an advert for Mage in the back. So, after a while trying out Ars Magica, we switched to Mage when it came out (1993), then Vampire and Werewolf naturally followed on. Despite getting several other games, most of them just fed into our WoD campaign as external inspiration. The campaign continued for years, but died eventually in the late 1990s (possibly due to moving on from University, I guess).

 

[Bashere]

Easier for me if I do it all at once.

1. An ex-girlfriend introduced me to a group that was playing.
2. I've only played 1st edition Vampire but Werewolf and Mage seemed cool.
3. I really don't recall any of them offhand.
4. Never read any.
5. Roll? Like dice roll? I guess when my huge, ox-brain vampire ripped the head off a werewolf and ate him.
6. Don't recall any.
7. Only played first.
8. The only one I ever played was an ox-brained guy with about four points across all his mental stats that ate candy bars constantly.
9. None. They all annoyed the shit out of me after a bit.
10. Only played once, so them by default. But this group was pretty strange.
11. Tried to get a Werewolf game going but never panned out.
12. Don't recall, but I remember realizing that a mage could nuke everyone else easily.
13. No idea.
14. The NPCs were all too cardboard to recall any differences.
15. The prince of the city that decided my character had to die because I ate candy bars and sent wave after wave of assassins after me. I killed and ate them all.
16. No clue.
17. Don't remember.
18. Don't recall reading any.
19. Just 1st ed Vampire.
20. Hell no. The Vampire LARPers in my area were all crazy assholes at the time.
21. My character didn't die, despite the game devolving into various attempts of the GM to kill me.
22. Does the look of horror on the GM's face when I killed the ancient vampire hit squad and ate them, thereby gaining their powers count?
23. Anyone not the guy running the only game I played in would qualify.
24. Hahahahaha! No one in that group!
25. Never got past the first one.
26. Don't recall making one.
27. Don't recall.
28. RP didn't happen on that train wreck.
29. Don't know of any of those things.
30. Currently running a home brew but the next won't be White Wolf.

So,as you can guess the game I played was fucking terrible and convinced me Vampire players are best avoided, at least the ones around where I lived.

 

[Doc Sammy]

I'm weird in that I started with Requiem around late 2009-early 2010 after being burned out and let down by D&D 4E.

I got into Masquerade and the Classic WoD later in 2010 because all the people who played WoD in Roanoke generally hated Requiem and the New WoD, which is a shame because I like both lines.

 

[The Butcher]

Catch-up time!

I'll assume this is all about classic WoD and not nWoD/CoD.

1. Vampire: the Masquerade 2nd edition got a Portuguese translation released in Brazil and a friend got it. It went on to become our sole gaming for a few years, up to and including LARPs.

2. Masquerade, definitely. We played it for hours and then spent hours after game discussing the finer points of canon. I loved coming up with both PCs, as a player, and NPCs, as a GM.

3. I am a huge Giovanni fanboy. Mediterranean sophisticates dabbling in dark magic? Yes please.

4. A World of Darkness, 1st edition was gloriously gonzo and doesn't get nearly enough Internet love. It's got the sort of manic enthusiasm for the game that you might expect from a Palladium or OSR thing.

5. Not sure I understand the question?

6. I have a soft spot for Monty Coven.

7. Not crazy about the metaplot concessions of the third ("Revised") editions but they were very mechanically sound. I haven't really looked at the 20th anniversary editions but I hear good things about them; not sure I'llever get around to checking out the 5th edition(s).

8. I played a Giovanni elder in a couple of LARPs and had a ton of fun using wraiths to gather information, and playing Camarilla and Sabbat against each other. Memorably I sent a nosy Brujah ancilla to his doom by persuading him that there was a sleeping Methuselah under a local church... which happened to be the haven of a True Faith 7 hunter. Good times.

9. None springs to mind.

10. The day the Gangrel prince and his Nosferatu allies teamed up with Lupines to fight off a Black Spiral Dancer warband and it ended with a huge office building going up in decidedly unnatural, sickly green flames.

 

[Baeraad]

Favourite game line... well, back when books were still coming out, it was almost certainly Changeling: the Dreaming. I ran a couple of long - and, for most parts, successful - campaigns in it, and I absolutely devoured the books. My take on it was probably entirely bereft of anything the least bit Gothic or Punk, but I loved it. It had colour, and whimsy, and you could put just about anything into it and justify it as a chimera.

These days, it's probably Demon: the Fallen, which I didn't like at all back in the day. Back then I was young and angry and wanted a bad guy to rage against. These days, I find it a lot easier to identify with a race of beings who have learned that raging too much tends to turn you into a bad guy. And who still try to hold on to some ideals, or at least to the hope of being happy, and who while not as all-powerful as they used to think they were, also aren't entirely helpless to act on them.

 

[Trippy]

I thought you had to answer each question on a daily basis?

 

[TristramEvans]

Day..I dunno, I missed a few days, other things keeping my attention. Let's just do 3 to catch up...

Favourite Setting Book -

nWoD - Damnation City hands down. Plenty of uses for RPGs besides WoD.

oWoD - The Auumn People for Changeling: The Dreaming. I think it really reached into the initial undertones of the setting and brought the concepts starkly forward to drive home the major theme of the setting.

Or rather, a major theme, one which apparently most of the Changeling audience chose to ignore, as did White Wolf going forward. I think halfway into the line they decided "Evil Monsters invading from the Dreaming" was a bigger sell for antagonists than the more abstract "Death of imagination as you are consumed by the miseries of daily life".

But I personally thought Autumn People was one of the most effective blendings of the idealized aerie world with the horrors of the World of Darkness, and bespoke of a much more personal, tragic game like Wraith.

Best Roll?

Blanka, in the Streetfighter RPG, White Wolf's rare dabble into adapting an IP to the Storyteller System.

Favourite Canon Character?

Astrid Thomas, because I had a friend by that name when I was younger. She's a vampire featured in White Wolf's most successful foray into CCG's in the 90s, Jyhad.

And that gets me to day 6...

 

[Baeraad]

Favourite splat: trolls. Big and strong maybe not all that bright but with tons of HONOUR!!!!, they're just the type of character I like to play. The Nocker kithbook was more fun to read, though.

Favourite setting book: I didn't really go in for setting books... If The Autumn People counts, I'll go with that one also. Marvelously written stuff. Making boredom interesting is an impressive writing feat to say the least.

Best roll: ... eh, I can't remember ever rolling well, to tell you the truth. I only remember my worst roll, which was in a Werewolf game where my Galliard tried to use a Gift to charm an NPC we were negotiating with. Quothe the GM: "Wow. I don't think I've ever seen that many 1s at the same time." The NPC, for his part, pointed to my character and told the other PCs: "That one does not talk again, or we're done here."

Favourite canon character: Probably Bookworm55 from the Hunter books. He seemed like a good guy.

 

[TristramEvans]

Day..who knows? Between Xmas at work, studying for finals, and a bunch of writing I'm well behind. Blar. So I'll just do another handful....

Favourite Edition - so, like favourite edition of a gameline, or are we talking about oWoD vs nWoD vs Onyx Path WoD vs 20th Anniversary oWoD vs V5 which was meant to be a return to oWoD modernized but caused an international incident so now Onyx Path has taken the rights back?

If the former, I generally prefer the first editions of the game lines. Yeah, they are mostly a mechanical mess, but this is when the creativity was the most undiluted, and there was an exuberance on display that was diluted and bowdlerized as time went on.

As to the latter, I think nWoD did some fantastic stuff with the concepts, but Onyx Path is an awful company staffed by horrid people who see the games as nothing but an IP mine and essentially killed the Tabletop game. Their involvement in making the 20th anniversary editions killed any interest I had in those, and V5 never stood a chance. So it's oWoD all the way for me.

Favourite Character You've Played - Larry. He was based on a combination of Sierra's Leisure Suit Larry and Larry from Three's Company (and a bit of the Isuzu guy). He was a lounge singer who dreamed of being an airline pilot, the loser younger brother of a family of mobsters who wasnt trusted enough to have anything t do with the family business, and a 35 year old virgin looking for love in all the wrong places.

Favourite Character Someone Else Played - Claudia the Bunny Pookah played by my friend Rachel back in the epic late 90s campaign of Changeling in NJ.

Strangest Grouping of Characters - I dunno, probably Promethean?