Backstage - OOC Forums
General Discussion => The Speakeasy: OOG/Off-topic Discussion => Topic started by: Silas Vitalia on 25 Mar 2012, 22:08
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So here's an interesting bit: During their presentation apparently it was mentioned that the players will be able to elect the 'prince' of each city, and that player would have the ability to permanently kill other characters. Yup, Permadeath.
That sounds incredibly interesting for RP potential... but this being elections I doubt RPers would have enough sway to swing elections. IE think if the people voting for CSM were electing people to have the power to permakill players... ugh.
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I think they are working from the mindset that somehow their WoD playerbase will be more mature and capable of having a set way of playing the game.
Instead of having a playerbase of random people that have interest in vampires that use the internet, also trolls.
All you need is Goons taking over one corner of the WoD and start to break the immersion and the whole thing goes tits up.
Also, in the spectrum of roleplayers the Vampire players are from the end that is closest to the histrionic and self centered part of the whole population. It may be for the reason that roleplaying a vampire can very easily be a Mary Sue which means that the player will consider the character to be a real extension of themselves, part of the process that makes it even more real for the player is the fact that for some people there is sexuality thrown into the mix which makes the IC/OOC divide even less.
On the permadeath thing... it is one of the ways that in WoD the prince actually can enforce her power. If you have the death sentence on your head, you can always leave the princes domain and go live somewhere where his enemies live. It will be used to keep the trouble makers out, especially the kind that do it purposefully and with malice, agents of their enemies. Paranoia is a big part of being a vampire, because mistakes cost your life, and usually a vampire wants to exist forever.
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Of course, it will slightly depend on if they do the whole shardless thing again. Any word on that? The last news I had, WoD was being accused of being vaporware... greatly relieved that they're releasing new stuff about it.
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Single shard. Multiple cities with social areas, sandbox districts and PvE mission areas.
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Necro Powah.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-02-28-vampire-mmo-world-of-darkness-being-played-internally-at-eve-online-maker-ccp
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Princes can issue permadeath?
Yessssssssssssssss
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At the price of being targets for it themselves it seems. It is going to be tough at the top.
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This is as it should be, for Vampire.
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This is as it should be, for Vampire.
Well. It should be that you spend a good chunk of your time worrying about all the other supernatural groups that can wipe the floor with you. Or at least it seemed to me that was the case in the old WoD. But then I do have an admitted bias towards Mage and Werewolf play myself.
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Has any game ever been successful with permadeath?
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For various definitions of "successful" - yes, actually, although they're quite niche games, all.
It works very poorly with the "standard" mass market MMO model, or even some of the more "pure" online roleplaying models that depend on the players' sense of achievement and belonging being linked to a character that can be the (literal) work of (literal) years.
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Has any game ever been successful with permadeath?
Quite a few. Have any MMOs been successful with it? None have even tried it, to my knowledge.
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I'm hoping disease and sickness has something for the Vampires that causes them to sparkle.
On that note there's a hole in my cheek where my tongue went through.
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I'm hoping disease and sickness has something for the Vampires that causes them to sparkle.
On that note there's a hole in my cheek where my tongue went through.
So what you are saying is you want Vicissitude for sparkles, tongue and hole. :lol:
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I wouldnt be very happy to see a character I started to care for to be permakilled by some jackass that got elected by trolls.
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I wouldnt be very happy to see a character I started to care for to be permakilled by some jackass that got elected by trolls.
WoD is a bad universe to play in - the games naturally have high mortality rates. I remember the rather sinking feeling in my stomach when my larp character died - although larp tends to get you more into the character than a pnp game.
On the other hand, a larp isn't going to have trolls - or if it does, they're simply going to get killed. I'm not sure how it will work out in an MMO. Could be bad.
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Don't misunderstand me, I love the lethal side of the White Wolf license, but I am used to have a GM to talk to for that kind of delicate stuff. It's quite different in a MMO.
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I wouldnt be very happy to see a character I started to care for to be permakilled by some jackass that got elected by trolls.
WoD is a bad universe to play in - the games naturally have high mortality rates. I remember the rather sinking feeling in my stomach when my larp character died - although larp tends to get you more into the character than a pnp game.
On the other hand, a larp isn't going to have trolls - or if it does, they're simply going to get killed. I'm not sure how it will work out in an MMO. Could be bad.
You found larp more immersive? Interesting. Were you using the official Minds Eye system? I, personally, found that had far too much potential to yank me out of immersion with the whole paper/scissors/stone test mechanic. That said I'm used to the rubber sword, play what you can physically represent school of larping. Accordingly I find computer games and tabletop games have a lot more potential for playing characters that aren't anything like me, at least physically.
Small larps tend to discourage trolls. Larps run at a public venue have vast amounts of potential to annoy bystanders and fest larps (which is where I got started, The Gathering on the UK August bank Holiday near Derby) can take up a lot of energy in avoiding or IC killing trolling players if you aren't careful.
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I wouldnt be very happy to see a character I started to care for to be permakilled by some jackass that got elected by trolls.
WoD is a bad universe to play in - the games naturally have high mortality rates. I remember the rather sinking feeling in my stomach when my larp character died - although larp tends to get you more into the character than a pnp game.
On the other hand, a larp isn't going to have trolls - or if it does, they're simply going to get killed. I'm not sure how it will work out in an MMO. Could be bad.
You found larp more immersive? Interesting. Were you using the official Minds Eye system? I, personally, found that had far too much potential to yank me out of immersion with the whole paper/scissors/stone test mechanic. That said I'm used to the rubber sword, play what you can physically represent school of larping. Accordingly I find computer games and tabletop games have a lot more potential for playing characters that aren't anything like me, at least physically.
Small larps tend to discourage trolls. Larps run at a public venue have vast amounts of potential to annoy bystanders and fest larps (which is where I got started, The Gathering on the UK August bank Holiday near Derby) can take up a lot of energy in avoiding or IC killing trolling players if you aren't careful.
This was a moderately sized larp, 20-ish people (grew abover 30 and then shut down due to ST burnout), and we used throwing fingers or card draw to determine success. STs carried cards ace through 10, you pulled one, added you modifier to the task, and scored a success for... I believe a 7 or 8 and another success for each 3 higher than that. It ended up giving you odds of success fairly close to what you would get rolling d10s in the tabletop game.
On the other hand, the game was highly political, so there wasn't a huge amount of combat going on to begin with. In fact, the combat-oriented characters tended to have the shortest life expectancy.
And I can get attached to any character, immersion be damned. I recall being almost moved to tears over an IC interaction in EVE that had no consequences whatsoever in game terms.
I'm hoping that once life settles down again in 6 months or so I'll be able to hook up with a local boffer larp, looks like a ton of fun. I just need a little more free time - and to rebuild some of the upper body I lost last time I was sick.
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I don't LARP (something about it weirds me out), but I will weigh in on White Wolf mechanics. I really don't like them. The D20 system, in my personal opinion, is not only far superior, but also far more intuitive. Also, due to the larger number range, a finer definition of character capabilities is possible, and given a little modification, less statistical variance in terms of success.
It's very easy, so far as I can see, for an elder vampire who is nearly godlike to "oopsImmadead" with a couple of botched rolls in V:TR. In the D20 system, that can happen as well, but it tends to be less common.
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I don't LARP (something about it weirds me out), but I will weigh in on White Wolf mechanics. I really don't like them. The D20 system, in my personal opinion, is not only far superior, but also far more intuitive. Also, due to the larger number range, a finer definition of character capabilities is possible, and given a little modification, less statistical variance in terms of success.
It's very easy, so far as I can see, for an elder vampire who is nearly godlike to "oopsImmadead" with a couple of botched rolls in V:TR. In the D20 system, that can happen as well, but it tends to be less common.
Uh, no.
In V:tR it is incredibly hard to even roll a botch, unlike in V:tM. These two games are very different in both their rule sets and theme and mood.
V:tM - Which the game will be based on btw - is much more vampires with superpowers, global domination and conspiracy theories and with the end of the world aka Gehenna looming in the horizon. Where as V:tR is much more about local horrors, much more personal in nature The scope of your conniving backstabbing limits to cities not worldwide. The major difference aside is that V:tR has no set truth or backlore of what has happened before and what is the truth where V:tM establishes that Vampirism is a curse laid down by (christian) God on Caine.
On the topic of the systems. I dislike D20, it feels bulky, outdated and very unintuitive. Don't even get me started about levels and such. I feel the nWoD system to be the most fluid and intuitive ( not the OWoD one which is a fucking nightmare in combat scenes). That said it really boils down to personal preference. I mean someone actually likes Rolemaster rules too.
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I don't LARP (something about it weirds me out), but I will weigh in on White Wolf mechanics. I really don't like them. The D20 system, in my personal opinion, is not only far superior, but also far more intuitive. Also, due to the larger number range, a finer definition of character capabilities is possible, and given a little modification, less statistical variance in terms of success.
It's very easy, so far as I can see, for an elder vampire who is nearly godlike to "oopsImmadead" with a couple of botched rolls in V:TR. In the D20 system, that can happen as well, but it tends to be less common.
Uh, no.
In V:tR it is incredibly hard to even roll a botch, unlike in V:tM. These two games are very different in both their rule sets and theme and mood.
V:tM - Which the game will be based on btw - is much more vampires with superpowers, global domination and conspiracy theories and with the end of the world aka Gehenna looming in the horizon. Where as V:tR is much more about local horrors, much more personal in nature The scope of your conniving backstabbing limits to cities not worldwide. The major difference aside is that V:tR has no set truth or backlore of what has happened before and what is the truth where V:tM establishes that Vampirism is a curse laid down by (christian) God on Caine.
On the topic of the systems. I dislike D20, it feels bulky, outdated and very unintuitive. Don't even get me started about levels and such. I feel the nWoD system to be the most fluid and intuitive ( not the OWoD one which is a fucking nightmare in combat scenes). That said it really boils down to personal preference. I mean someone actually likes Rolemaster rules too.
I think I'm confusing oWoD and nWoD here. I remembered that I hated one of them. :P I do have to admit that it's been some time since I played Vampire, Exalted, D&D, or any other RPG. The older I get, the more I end up just talking with my friends rather than playing games with them.
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Yeah could be, the oWoD dice system was atrocious at times :)
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I really hope that the plot is more 'mature' than the VtM boradstrokes Clan + Camarilla/Sabbat/Unaligned politics. It was repairable in pnp or larp due to GMs being able to employ the golden rule and flesh out a locality - but in an MMO people are going to lowest common denominator that stuff REALLY fast.
Kinda thinking CCP missed a trick in promoting the nWoD system and flavouring a city scale sandbox (or multi city environment) - but the bad sales and low popularity compared to oWoD (marketing seemingly as blind to the longevity contribution that oWoD benefits from as much as the fan blogs are) are probably poisoning the well in that regard.
Either way, I look forwards to it - The First Estate and Ventrue are where it's at for me. You don't need a crown if you have the ear of the man/woman that thinks they do :P.
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I'm looking forward to seeing how long I can play as a human. :)
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Rolemaster is better than its reputation tbh.
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Yeah could be, the oWoD dice system was atrocious at times :)
Yup, sure was. Haven't played the nWoD because some of the writing for the oWoD put me off Pale Doggy. So I can't comment on the new rules. When I run the setting (heavily salted with material from other modern horror games, mainly Delta Green & the Laundry series) I use the GURPS 3rd Ed adaptations.
I'll play D20 to be sociable but wouldn't run it by choice.
This was a moderately sized larp, 20-ish people (grew abover 30 and then shut down due to ST burnout), and we used throwing fingers or card draw to determine success. STs carried cards ace through 10, you pulled one, added you modifier to the task, and scored a success for... I believe a 7 or 8 and another success for each 3 higher than that. It ended up giving you odds of success fairly close to what you would get rolling d10s in the tabletop game.
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Like I said. All that explicit reference to game mechanics would kill the fun for me. If I talk someone into something in a Larp, I want it to be because I actually did so. Not because I made game mechanic test.