werewolf/mage expansion

mirddes wrote:

that's not constructive.

I have no desire to help you construct the worst idea ever.

mirddes wrote:

imagination please.

Okay. I've just imagined turning V:TES into an RPG-driven game and it's truly horrendous. Really, truly awful. It leads to horrifically confused priorities, with people on the one hand demanding the game function as a tactical CCG while other people want conflicting changes that allow it to function as an RPG. People will waste time errata-ing dozens of cards for RPG-related purposes, making it horrific for anyone actually playing the card game. The CCG does not cater to the RPG crowd, such as disciplines having exactly two levels. The CCG does not cater to the RPG crowd, such as a single point of aggravated damage being able to put you in a coma. The CCG does not cater to the RPG crowd, because you can literally be a dozen vampires at once. The CCG does not cater to the RPG crowd, because a single player can monopolize huge amounts of time. The CCG does not cater to the RPG crowd, because Arika can die a final death dozens of times, over and over, with a Soul Gem of Etrius and a capacity raiser.

So - using my imagination - if you want an RPG game, go and buy an RPG game. This one isn't one.

The game has quite a large ruleset already, with quite a LOT of visual information already (and I suspect it could do with some mechanics culled or possibly iconised instead of just left as is).

Adding in Werewolves, Mages, and a dozen other things probably means we should add in Kuei-Jin and probably more beyond that.

This sounds like what you REALLY want is someone to make a "Mage: The CCG" or similar. If you do, go figure out the rules, build it, try get it off the ground and then spend the years needed negotiating the IP agreements.

should add in Kuei-Jin and probably more beyond that.

jamesatzephyr wrote:

mirddes wrote:

that's not constructive.

I have no desire to help you construct the worst idea ever.

Actually, mirddes's idea is not totally without merit. A guy at our rpg club used vtes cards to handle combats in Vtm game. The old vtm core system was horrible when it came to combat. Roll to hit, roll for damage, roll for soak, repeat the process for x additional strikes. A few seconds of combat could take, hours worth of gaming time. I never actually played in said session, so I don't know how well it worked, but it looked like an interesting solution.

I think that mages, werewolves, etc. should only be added to vtes as a ally type of card. Adding any extra rules for them would be very bad idea.

Whisker wrote:

Actually, mirddes's idea is not totally without merit. A guy at our rpg club used vtes cards to handle combats in Vtm game.

If someone wants to graft on an entirely unofficial, unsupported system, they're welcome to (just as they're welcome to throw the cards at each other if they want). This is totally unlike adapting V:TES gameplay to be used in an RPG setting. The priorities of V:TES must always be to keep it functioning as a card game, not adapting it to meet the needs of an RPG.

They would almost certainly be much better off designing a system that meets their needs, borrowing flavour from V:TES and Rage and D&D and whatever else they want, however.

Whisker wrote:

The old vtm core system was horrible when it came to combat. Roll to hit, roll for damage, roll for soak, repeat the process for x additional strikes. A few seconds of combat could take, hours worth of gaming time. I never actually played in said session, so I don't know how well it worked, but it looked like an interesting solution.

Ah. oWoD combat is terrible. We must use something else. V:TES is something else! Therefore...

The fact that the oWoD system is terrible (which in many, many ways, it is) does not mean that V:TES is the appropriate fix for it. Many vastly more appropriate fixes have been made in the past, from the Mind's Eye Theatre rules (which can be quite good, even when not LARPing), the WoD-reimagined d20 system, WoD GURPS and everything else.

In V:TES, a vast, vast number of nuances (and not so nuances) have been obliterated that are totally unsuitable for anything that resembles an engaging RPG combat system. Examples:

- any newborn Gangrel can torporize Sutekh by playing a claw card and throwing down Rotschreck

- in the tabletop RPG, Fortitude doesn't run out. It's just on. All the time. All. The. Time. You can never run out of it - which happens all the time in V:TES. Similar for Potence.

- more recent versions of the oWoD have three levels of damage: bashing, lethal, and aggravated. Grafting that onto V:TES would be painful for V:TES. Not grafting it on to V:TES would be painful for an RPG (for exactly the reasons that bashing damage was added in the first place).

- we have relatively easy access to 'unpreventable' damage, which is very ill-suited to player-v-player brawls (which can and do happen in Storyteller systems, because not all PCs get on nicely with each other at all times).

- roughly speaking, if I choose to make it the case, you can't escape. A great many things from an RPG perspective in V:tM can be accomplished through having the PCs or NPCs escape from combat, which is generally not that hard - Celerity is expensive to maintain, vehicles are easily accessed in most settings. V:TES will let me Immortal Grapple you and Psyche! you and Telepathically Track you to force the combat, again, and again, and again.

- a wide variety of equipment based strategies are completely awful in V:TES (principally: most weapons that aren't guns or special like an Ivory Bow), while being potentially very viable in the WoD. A V:TES deck will shun Baseball Bats and Brass Knuckles because they suck, because - amongst other things - Immortal Grapple exists. But these sorts of items are bread and butter in a great many WoD game settings, because they're easily acquired, easily concealed, generally decent, and unlikely to attract the wrong sort of attention like walking down the street with an RPG Launcher would get you.

- improvisation. Once you get outside RPG combats that are very strictly rule-based, and are essentially skirmish wargames played with or without a hexmap and with extremely tight rules on who can stand where and do what and use what actions or acquire so many action points or whatever(*), improvisation is awesome. Okay, so what's around me that I can hide behind? Who's around me that I can use as a distraction? What features are there inherent to the landscape that I can mix it up with - a fire hydrant, a lamppost, a tree, a tanning salon on the high street? Can I drop that chandelier on you?

- one-on-one combat. V:TES combat is designed around one-on-one combat. The WoD isn't. People gang up on each other. People have powers that affect multiple people at once. In V:TES, 95% of this is impossible except for very, very corner case or specialised cards. (e.g. Sanguinus can tag team you, but it's really not hard for two people to hit you in the WoD)

- we almost completely smudge over the difference between "blood" and "damage", which are two very separate concepts in the WoD.


(*) There's nothing wrong with those games. Well, there might be. But having a combat system like that isn't inherently bad. It can be a lot of fun.