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	darkrose 2004-04-27 08:50 am UTC (link)
	Crap. Does this mean I'm going to have to get all of the sourcebooks yet again? (Reply to this)(Thread)

	telesilla 2004-04-27 09:03 am UTC (link)
	I wanna know if the game really includes Christ in a hammock. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	yankthewank 2004-04-27 09:50 am UTC (link)
	Yes but he's not part of the "pure" metaplot. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	notjo 2004-04-27 09:55 am UTC (link)
	Okay, I've gotta ask. What is the picture of in your icon? And I have always had Christ in a hammock at my games, but that's because he doesn't like my couch. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	janegraddell 2004-04-27 07:33 pm UTC (link)
	Christ gave me a beer once in a game. We sat on the porch and shot the shit. It was cool. Gabriel just gave me oranges, the cheap bastard. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	telesilla 2004-04-27 10:33 pm UTC (link)
	It's William Blake's God as an Architect. I was looking for a naked version of the traditional Christian father god for that icon. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	crickets 2004-04-28 08:33 am UTC (link)
	That is a really cool picture. Thanks for the link. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	angkgriffen 2004-04-27 01:57 pm UTC (link)
	Pfft. Most people I know never bothered to adapt to Third edition rules, so I wouldn't worry about it too much. House rules and all. Unless you're an excitable collector. Then you're probably out some cash. ;) (Reply to this)(Parent)

angkgriffen
2004-04-27 01:55 pm UTC (link)

WoD is unavoidably wanky, with its "storytellers" and its "not stereotypical characterbuilding sects at all. really" design. Vampire: The Eternal Hassle and whatnot. I like a good game of Abberant, Changeling, or Sorceror now and again, but that's about it. I hear Orpheus doesn't suck either. Vampire, Werewolf, Mage, and Wraith? Not for me. And I know fuck-all about Exalted, but it sounds like something I'd avoid.

Come over to the GURPS side of the Force, man. :)

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	Re: notjo 2004-04-27 02:03 pm UTC (link)
	Eh, I'd have to buy new books. And I'm cheap. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	molotovchicken 2004-04-27 04:16 pm UTC (link)
	Nah, the good thing about GURPS is that if you are really cheap (like me) you only need the basic book or the two companions. The source books only contain information about game settings that I'm too lazy to research myself in history or fiction books. (Reply to this)(Parent)

angkgriffen
2004-04-28 05:13 am UTC (link)

To make a GURPS character:
- GURPS Basic
- GURPS Compendium
- GURPS Character Assistant (GCA) - there's a free trial version, plus the official copy only costs $10. All of the players in one of my games went in on a copy of it. It does all the math and stuff for you, figures defaults, etc.

If you play Supers, you'll also want GURPS Supers and maybe GURPS Psionics, but the rules are pretty easy to find online.

The great thing about GURPS is you can play just about any kind of game you want in it. Except a magic heavy game, because GURPS is meant to be a "realistic" game system and Magic isn't realistic. It works better if you just buy the effects you want your magic to have as superpowers. :) But I played a lot of superhero games, though. :)

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	eiviiaru 2004-04-27 05:35 pm UTC (link)
	Exalted is an excellent system for what it is, which is to say superpowered over-the-top vaguely-dark epic fantasy. I would say that it does epic fantasy a whole lot better than, say, Epic D&D. However, its quality is highly GM-dependent, and if you don't like epic fantasy hijinks, you won't like it. I internet-hearts me some GURPS, yo. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

angkgriffen
2004-04-28 05:17 am UTC (link)

Well, I've also only played two D&D games I ever liked. One was a single-session pick up game where I played a priestess of Idun, and did protection magic with apples, and made about five rolls in a five hour game. The other was a game I played character sheetless as an amnesiac blue dragon adolescent. That was interesting. It was a terrible game, but it was a very low stress, slumming kind of game, so it was fun in its cracked out way.

Every other time I've played D&D, I've felt like the system just made my character for me. Then again, I never looked at the psionics handbook, and psionics are what drag me into every new system I play in. I love me some psychic powers, man.

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	Re: notjo 2004-04-28 06:43 am UTC (link)
	It was a terrible game, but it was a very low stress, slumming kind of game, so it was fun in its cracked out way. I swear, I played that game! Well, okay, it was a WoD LARP for Vampire, but still. Half the fun was sitting around bitching about the game. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	eiviiaru 2004-04-28 12:49 pm UTC (link)
	Well, Exalted is also a lot more free-form than D&D in terms of character creation. It's Storyteller system, and while it still has the splats, you have a pretty significant amount of freedom within those splats to play around. (Reply to this)(Parent)

darkrose
2004-04-27 07:01 pm UTC (link)

I love Changeling, mostly because it's not as over-the-top angsty as the others. Wraith is downright depressing: a game where the best you can hope for is oblivion? Sheesh! Vampire can be good, but only with the right group of people, otherwise it turns into a huge self-indulgent goth whine-fest. Mage always bored me, and I don't like Werewolf as much as I like playing with the other Changing Breeds.

Honestly, what I like most about the Storyteller games are the rules. They're remarkably straightforward, and easy to understand for those of us who don't like math--unlike, say, 3rd Edition D&D.

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janegraddell
2004-04-27 07:30 pm UTC (link)

easy to understand for those of us who don't like math--unlike, say, 3rd Edition D&D.

Or Champions. :)

When 2nd Edition Vampire first came out, my gaming group played it for years. Still play it every now and then. We had huge amounts of fun with it and we found the system well-suited to our gaming style (ie more roleplaying, fewer dice rolls). Also, we very quickly dropped White Wolf's official metaplot and made up our own stuff. Because Vampire was first we ended up playing more in it, but the collective favorites of the group are Mage and Changeling. This is in no small part due to the fact that the lady who runs both those campaigns kicks ass.

I admit, I'm not as enamoured of the Mage scenario as some of the folks in my group, but I've found that so long as I'm playing with the right people and right set of characters, that can make up for a hell of a lot.

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angkgriffen
2004-04-28 05:20 am UTC (link)

See, the thing with the metaplot, is that the whole feel changes, depending on who's running the game. I've had three GMs in the WoD.

1. K. Made everything into a conspiracy theory story.
2. A. Made everything into a happy fun over-powered magic/myth land, and every once in a while her pet player would go irrevocably insane.
3. J. It was all about Fitting In and Surviving and Things Being Slightly Ooky, and characters having lots of fucked up relationships. Which is probably the closest to the actual feel the WoD wants us to have. Heh.

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	bitca 2004-04-27 07:11 pm UTC (link)
	Come over to the GURPS side of the Force, man. Motherfucking WORD. :) (Reply to this)(Parent)

	cpip 2004-04-27 10:07 pm UTC (link)
	While I've got tons of GURPS stuff... my biggest gripe was always that the vehicle rules and such were so damned gearheaded. All I want is to have a 50' tall giant steam-powered robot driven by George Washington, dammit! Can't I make one of those up in, like, 10 minutes? What's this entire long painful "pick out the leg gears" stuff?! (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	angkgriffen 2004-04-28 05:21 am UTC (link)
	Yeah, I kept wanting to play a gadgeteer and getting discouraged by the rules. :) "Ah well, guess I'll just go play another psionic. Hey, a teleporter!" (Reply to this)(Parent)

	wolfsamurai 2004-04-27 10:10 pm UTC (link)
	Meh, it's all about BESM. :) (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	angkgriffen 2004-04-28 05:23 am UTC (link)
	My two sadistic GMs who ran GURPS Black Ops were looking at that as a new, sillier game system to play in. I never got a chance to look at the rulebook, myself. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	Re: notjo 2004-04-28 06:40 am UTC (link)
	If you want silly, go for Toon. You get extra points for making the GM laugh until he/she/it pees him/her/its self. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	janegraddell 2004-04-28 04:37 pm UTC (link)
	I love Toon! And Teen-Agers from Outer Space. That there's some fun. :) (Reply to this)(Parent)

	wolfsamurai 2004-04-28 11:21 pm UTC (link)
	BESM isn't really that silly, though it can be. Just about anything that can be done in anime (and a lot that isn't anime-themed) can be done with BESM. The versility is amazing without getting bogged down in a lot of rules (which is why I'm not a fan of GURPS, among other things). (Reply to this)(Parent)

	jfpbookworm 2004-04-27 09:30 pm UTC (link)
	Am I the only person here who has no idea what the hell they mean by metaplot? I've never played White Wolf games, as the vampire/werewolf setting didn't appeal to me. But I haven't heard the term applied to RPGs before. Given that someone on that thread said that WoD and Forgotten Realms were both heavy on metaplot, I'm guessing I wouldn't like it. (Reply to this)(Thread)

Re:

notjo
2004-04-27 09:35 pm UTC (link)

Metaplot is the overarching storyline as defined by the creators of the game. It usually comes out in later books, and several people feel that it sets up situations that the PCs must stand around and watch rather than be involved in, or that it leads to "rail roading".

I think I'm about to break a juris imprudence law by claiming I'm too tired to define it better than that. Sorry. It's after 2 in the morning here.

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bitca
2004-04-27 11:24 pm UTC (link)

It's also what TORG did, that killed the line, IIRC.

It's basically a plot that weaves its way through all the books and supplements, generating even more supplements. It's a way for Storytellers to have their own stuff going on in a game, but have this big Other Thing going on, that the players can interact with on occasion.

Or you can run the metaplot. Vampires seeking Gehenna. Werewolves seeking...whatever it is they seek. And end to BSDs? (no, not black screens of death.) And then the small bits of plot therein, using their iconic characters.

Gah, I'm not explaining it well. I don't play much WW.

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janegraddell
2004-04-28 01:46 am UTC (link)

Like the posters above me said, the metaplot is a story that runs through all the source material, and supposedly comprises a kind of meta-structure on the whole World of Darkness. I don't know much about the actual recent details of said plot, because my group ditched it within a few months of starting to play the system (and, wow, it's been two or three years since we played any WoD stuff, come to think of it) but I gather that a few years ago they basically destroyed everything that they'd set up over the last ten years, and a lot of players who were adhering to the metaplot were Pissed Off.

The metaplot is fairly detailed, and frankly rather restrictive. According to the system, there are typically only a certain number of vampires in a given city, and some of the city supplements had so many meta-characters that there wasn't room for anyone else, not to mention that the power struggles were mapped out, the territories taken, and the fun and interesting jobs and positions in the power structure filled. And if your group moved in and say, killed off the Prince and took over, the next supplement might blow it all to hell by saying, "Well, the Prince of Bumfuck is still in control and has killed every strange vampire in the city."

Which is kind of why I wonder that any sane player would bother with the metaplot in the first place. It's a starting point, but, as

notjo points out above, following it through all the changes almost inevitably means that the PCs will stand around picking their noses while the metaplot characters have all the fun.

Where the wank *really* hits the metaplot fan is in the Live Action RP. I'm not part of the official sanctioned LARP Camarilla thing (so anyone who knows better feel free to correct me if I get stuff wrong) but my understanding is that in order to participate in the Camarilla, your games *have* to be consistent with the metaplot. Again, many pissed off players when the metaplot went wahooni-shaped, and given that 90% of all the Vampire LARPers I've met are batshit crazy, you can imagine the uproar. (The two times my gaming group tried to LARP with other Vampire LARPs, years and years ago, we ended up backing away veeery slooowly from the crazy people and then running like hell.)

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	Re: notjo 2004-04-28 06:48 am UTC (link)
	I think you managed to help me better understand why I don't like the metaplot. It's like being in a game where the Storytellers have their own characters -- and the game is just so they can fool around with them. sigh (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	eiviiaru 2004-04-28 12:53 pm UTC (link)
	This is why I recommending finding a GM who dislikes the metaplot as much as the players do. WW has a similarly pretentious metaplot arc for Exalted -- but my GM doesn't like it, and so he is taking great glee (and so are we) in letting the PCs run through it and fuck it up. We're saving the world, one dead canned NPC at a time. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	Re: notjo 2004-04-28 01:00 pm UTC (link)
	We're saving the world, one dead canned NPC at a time. That's hilarious! I think I might make that my new gaming motto. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	eiviiaru 2004-04-28 03:15 pm UTC (link)
	You're welcome to it, if you like; it's served me quite well thus far. (Reply to this)(Parent)

janegraddell
2004-04-28 05:01 pm UTC (link)

I had to find a new icon picture for this thread. :)

I think you managed to help me better understand why I don't like the metaplot.

Yeah, I think I helped myself, too. I'd never really laid it out like that, and it was kind of a revelation for me, too. :)

It's like being in a game where the Storytellers have their own characters -- and the game is just so they can fool around with them.

Yep. Following the metaplot is about as interesting as some stranger at a con telling you all about his character in great detail.

I appreciate that the folks at White Wolf seemed to be running their own little WoD campaign within the metaplot, and that it's cool. But for a game that's supposedly all about being able to be more creative, the World of Darkness metaplot just kept wrapping tighter and tighter around the actual players. Which, again, isn't actually a problem unless the players are trying to follow it--which of course WW seemed to expect them to do.

I have to admit that I have a certain lingering admiration for White Wolf for what they did for the first few years. We had a hell of a lot of fun with the World of Darkness, and I think that it was an important step away from the stat-heavy and dice-heavy games we'd started with as teens.

If they'd just left their metaplot as a starting point and let players screw with it freely, I'd have had a lot more respect for them now. But once they got successful, the company really seemed to get the idea that they were the uber-gods of roleplaying, and that they could do whatever they wanted and the players would still kiss their feet. And that we'd all care about hearing about their game in great detail.

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wolfsamurai
2004-04-28 11:35 pm UTC (link)

Metaplot, if done well, adds a lot to a game world. It makes it feel like it's a living breathing world in which events happen whether the characters are involved or not, a world that other characters and entities inhabit independant of the characters. It gives things depth. The problem is that there's a razor thin line between metaplot for depth and metaplot for railroading. And WoD has almost always gone the railroading track, mostly so that the designers can seemingly keep their pet NPCs in the spotlight. If you break away from that sort of thing, metaplot is great to mine for adventure ideas. I did that all the time with Shadowrun. And if you swap out NPC Prince Designer's Pet, sometimes you can even vaguely follow the metaplot (for a while) with your own characters.

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	cpip 2004-04-27 10:05 pm UTC (link)
	Wow... I'm not sure if I'm sorry I wasn't in that community (when I read this I wondered if the Roleplayers one had exploded when I wasn't looking) or glad I'm not around the WW-obsessed loonies anymore. (Reply to this)

	bitca 2004-04-27 11:28 pm UTC (link)
	Oh, THAT's where I know the OP from! Seen his name bandied about Ambercon games lists. (Reply to this)

	yadda 2004-04-27 11:50 pm UTC (link)
	Plus, I think "actually played by people" is a better yardstick. It's notable how many White Wolf supplements people don't use but own anyway[...] What have I told you about saying "people" when you mean "I," young man? (Reply to this)

	notapirate 2004-04-28 12:14 am UTC (link)
	I have met some very wanky WoD players. I love the game and the plot and the system but there are just so many bad WoD players I can't even play in it. When I ran WoD, I didn't use much of the plot. I made up my own. The word has potential if you look at it right. < /rant> (Reply to this)

garlicbug
2004-04-28 03:13 am UTC (link)

I'd like to try Abbarant or Exalted someday, but WoD is loaded with so much whining and 'OMG evil humans!' that it's almost laughable.

I did come close to playing Werewolf, but the would-be storyteller ended up throwing the book across the room whilst screaming 'STUPID FUCKING ALTERNATIVE GOTH HIPPIE WHITE WOLF BITCHES!', so perhaps it's a good thing I didn't.

Forget GURPS! Play Deadlands! It has ZOMBIE COWBOYS!

(I am fully awake and refreshed; I have no excuse for this comment)

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angkgriffen
2004-04-28 05:26 am UTC (link)

I don't think WoD actually has any humans in it. To quote Red Mage, the whole war's being waged for some guy in a one-bedroom apartment in Canton, Ohio, man. Everyone in that world is some sort of metahuman, or related to them. It's insane.

Abberant has the advantage of not being in the WoD, and being slightly less bleak. My favourite Abberant story is the guy who made the character called The Man who used all his Nova points to have a 5 in every stat and every ability. He also, if I recall, has a ridiculous willpower. He was like Captain America. Only with no shield.

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	Re: notjo 2004-04-28 06:38 am UTC (link)
	I have a friend who actually played a human in a WoD LARP. Not a "mortal", a "ghoul", a "sleeper", or a "kinfolk", but an actual human. He was the only one who survived the game. Funny, that. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	notapirate 2004-04-28 07:27 am UTC (link)
	Actually, Hunter involves humans. They have been imbued, but they are still human. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	notapirate 2004-04-28 07:24 am UTC (link)
	I played Exhalted. It was amusing. I made my character a clueless stable-boy who got exalted later. He had archery skills mainly but otherwise was leet with da animals. He was a basic everyday human when the game started. Sometimes those are the best. The game world has potential if you have a good ST. I would love to play Deadlands but no one runs it XD (Reply to this)(Parent)

meshou
2004-04-28 08:51 pm UTC (link)

Heh. I know a storyteller in this game who was asked to write a metaplot, told to go ahead and have people play it through by the higher ups, then screwed over because the higher ups decided metaplot needed to stop now, or at least be changed so it's indistinguishable from the rest of the game.

The real problem I hear is that the head honcho wants to be 100% in control of the direction of the story, and since metaplots have to be controlled by regional storytellers to work, and do affect gameplay, he can't control every little element of the story as easily.

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