[Noble Drake]

Mara, that was my point - you saw the paths as "I choose to opt out of being tortured by my inhumanity," when the entire point of humanity as a trait was to mechanically encourage the player to be tortured by their inhumanity.

It was supposed to be "You do bad stuff and this rating goes down and that is bad for you," and the paths came along and said "or, you can switch to this and have a higher rating while acting the exact same way."

Yes, some of the paths were very restrictive... and more than none of them were actually directly conducive to stunningly disruptive play - "Sorry guys, I have to diablerize all my enemies. It's on my hierarchy of sins all the way down at 2... what? I thought it was cool for us to follow paths other than humanity, how was I supposed to know that Path of Blood was still off limits?"

[Mara]

Mara, that was my point - you saw the paths as "I choose to opt out of being tortured by my inhumanity," when the entire point of humanity as a trait was to mechanically encourage the player to be tortured by their inhumanity.

It was supposed to be "You do bad stuff and this rating goes down and that is bad for you," and the paths came along and said "or, you can switch to this and have a higher rating while acting the exact same way."

Yes, some of the paths were very restrictive... and more than none of them were actually directly conducive to stunningly disruptive play - "Sorry guys, I have to diablerize all my enemies. It's on my hierarchy of sins all the way down at 2... what? I thought it was cool for us to follow paths other than humanity, how was I supposed to know that Path of Blood was still off limits?"

I see the Paths differently. Humanity is about fighting your monstrosity, Paths are about controlling it. Different philosophies, to
reflect the different factions. Humanity is followed by the Camarilla because they are the vampires who try to maintain the
illusion of humanity, who live and hide among the kine. The Sabbat use the Paths because they are the monsters, the people
who think strapping some kine to cars and playing 'bumper cars' with them is a fun thing to do on a friday night. Anarchs go
either way. Only in an Anarch game would you run into a mixture of Humanity and Paths in the PCs.  If you have someone
following a PAth in a Camarilla game, it is going to be a Path that can hide in the Humanity Loving Camarilla.

[ChewyGranola]

I'm a long time player and GM of both the cWoD and nWoD. I think nWoD is great. The rules, particularly with the God Machine Chronicles update, are quite a bit better, and their is some overarching plot stuff for GMs to work in. The nWoD suffered at first from trying very hard to not be cWoD and not much else. Now it's had time to mature a bit and be something on its own.

I recommend Demon the Descent. I havn't had a chance to play yet, but the book reads well and the rules are good seeming. Also, the idea of being an escaped cog from a big cosmic machine acting like a spy in the middle of humanity sounds fun to play.

[Basic]

I would love to play an Online NWOD game. Anyone running one ?

[Mara]

I would love to play an Online NWOD game. Anyone running one ?

I am sure there are some MUSH's out there..

[tasti man LH]

Hiya. Back here.

So past few months I've been poring over a lot of the cWoD stuff, specifically the 20th Anni lines. Mostly because these have been touted as being the most definitive editions of the cWoD and without the baggage of the original metaplot. Not to mention I've backed the (soon to end as of this post) Wraith: the Oblivion 20th Anni on KS.

I'm still left with the core problem of what to make a campaign of anything cWoD about in terms of having a concrete goal and overarching plot. VtM I had to look at a setting book to get any idea of what to run. WtA I have no idea outside of having the PCs wander around the countryside helping out the caerns they see on the way. MtAs and CtD I've got nothing. WtO they at least provide me with the stuff on transcendence...but otherwise no easily graspable plot hooks like in D&D or SR.

In terms of the lore of cWoD I've started to realize that a lot of it lines up with SR, or meshes with SR's lore in interesting ways. So I've started to incorporate cWoD lore into my home campaign to add to existing SR lore. Thus far I've made the shifters the Changing Breeds and Garou from WtA (with the downside being losing the ability to go Crinos) and made the God Machine from nWoD a prominent antagonistic force.


As of right now, I've even started a chronicle/campaign of VtM with a group of four set in LA (aka THE Anarch Free City)

[Mara]

Tasti man, I am curious: are you restricting yourself just to the corebooks? If so..then:

Vampire: The PCs are Neonates in a Camarilla city at war with the Sabbat. They are starting off with a simple
job: cover up the Masquearde breeches of the Sabbat. Over time, they begin to notice a pattern and figure out
that someone inside the Camarilla is leaking the Sabbat information. Who is it? How can they do something
about it, as they likely do not have the same Status as their suspect, who can just use his/her status as a shield
against these Neonates. And so, they have to begin working against him subtly, plotting, planning, until they can
make his enemies have an excuse to move against him.

Werewolf? Take a city, look at the threats to natural things in it..make those supernatural threats. Your Werewolves
are a pack working to stop those, and defend their Caern. Or maybe they are dealing with a subtle threat. Start out
with a grissly murder of some Kinfolk. The Elders won't deign to send a more experienced pack on it, because,
after all, these are merely Kinfolk..so the player's pack gets that task. As the investigate, the find more subtle things
going on, and find a link between these kinfolk and that battered woman's shelter that opened a couple months ago.
And it just gets darker from there, leading, ultimately, to some major Bane that is manipulating everything to try and
cause the Wolves to turn on each other.

These are the only ones that have their 20th anniversary books out. Mage is still in writing, so I would not say that that
won't provide similar great hooks, and Changeling is not going to be touched until next year.

[tasti man LH]

Of course I haven't been restricting myself to just the corebooks. That would be silly.

The Vampire game I'm running right now I got from looking through LA by Night and where I figured out the plot I'd like to run. How despite being the capitol (of sorts) of the Anarch Free States that's it's a powder keg waiting to blow. Especially considering that many of the former Anarch cities have been taken from the Anarchs (San Diego had the former Anarch Tara turn the city over to Camarilla and her getting installed as Prince while San Francisco completely crushed any Anarch resistance by its local Prince). So when LA's "Prince" disappears, the various Anarch factions start falling apart and openly warring with each other, prompting the Camarilla and Sabbat to take action. The Camarilla seeing this as one big Masquerade breach that they feel it's their duty to plug up, by whatever means necessary, and also reclaim a city that they felt rightfully belongs to them. The Sabbat wants to settle an old score at the embarrassing defeat they suffered at the Anarchs years ago and see this as an opportunity for some bloody revenge. The PCs were recently Embraced neonates, so they haven't really had enough time to grasp and uphold the Anarch lifestyle and philosophy, so they could in theory choose to side with whoever they please on who will run LA.

The thing about Werewolf is that while Vampires tend to be stuck in one city to do the stuff they do, Werewolf lends itself to having a pack travel around the world helping the other septs and caerns. Especially since in the modern nights, they continue to mention that all of the Garou need every bit of help they can get to fight the Wyrm, even if it means other packs from septs in different countries dropping by to help out. W20's Rage Across the World solidified this idea in my mind in particular, and how they portray the Wyrm conflict being very global and far-reaching. While the W20 books have said that a chronicle revolving around sept politics can work, for me it's not the kind of game I want to run for Werewolf...at least for now.

In the meantime, I've been flipping through PDFs of the older cWoD books as I wait for the 20th versions to be released. Wraith in particular has been fascinating to me. Granted I'd have to wait until 2016-17 at best before the Wr20 book gets officially released but I can bide my time with the other lines.

[Mara]

Tasti man, yeah..you pretty much need Rage Across the World 20th and the Book of the Wyrm to make the most of W20(and
the new Umbra book). But there is  alot more. You just have to decide on the theme you would be working with. I try to avoid
the 'Furry Superheroes' route or the 'Religious Eco-terrorists' route, because, first, those have been done to death, and second,
there is so much more to the setting. I am actually running a game now focusing on the subtle spiritual corruption of a Sept,
and the PCs are trying to find out what is happening and stop it.