Very good read, thank you. And I agree with the author that most Role playing games are not really those. I played D&D and Shadowrun, but my best game was Vampire: The Masquerade. I remember that my first character I spend maybe a week designing died during my first session. It was a result of unlucky roll and yes, my Game Master could have salvaged the situation but he would not. I then had a talk with him and he really did not like the roleplaying aspect - my character running around with weapons was literally "out of character" I wanted to build.
The next character I created more closely resembled me, it was easier to think about his actions that way and it eased me into the whole acting stuff. I eventually made some different characters and I really liked the actual roleplaying aspect, I think it really helped me socially in my future endeavors. To this day I have fond memories of my crew. We had a lot of fun sometimes playing through the whole night until dawn with Massive Attack or Tricky playing in the background and smell of cigarettes and cheap coffee filling the room. Good times. Plus the VtM and assorted games had incredibly high quality supplements that I read just for fun to gain some occult knowledge. The whole setting was incredible rabbit hole into one of the best worldbuilding that I have seen in my life, I have read supplements for other games just for fun.
Also I played Cyberpunk 2077 on release and I rate it as 8/10, luckily I did not encounter any bug at all. I did not mind little things people endlessly harped about such as behavior of the police. I went through the story, which to me was excellently constructed, acted and voice-acted. I got my load of fun for the buck I paid as far as I am concerned. I hear that a lot of things were fixed and polished and I am eager to return to the Night City with any future content DLC. Also for anybody out there who likes these sandboxy but story driven RPGs like The Witcher, RDR2 or Cyberpunk I can recommend a hidden gem I found recently that I already poured more than 100 hours into (my mark of superb singleplayer game): Days Gone. Thank me later.
I played the game VTM:Bloodlines. Hands down one of the most engaging worlds I've ever played... The game itself shows its age after so long, and the way they manage their contentmeans you can complete all the interactions and the world starts to feel dead towards the end... but those first 5-15 hours are some of the best in all of gaming.
I've never played the Tabletop VTM, but I checked out V5 of the tabletop game... no idea how the mechanics work, but read through the introduction and my god it has one of the best world build hooks I've ever encountered.
The entire history of VTM there have always been whispers about Ghenna, the end times, there were all these prophecies the doom of vampires was right around the corner, and something was going to happen that would kill them all off... these immortals were running out of time.
Well in most material of the setting its played off as some antediluvian vampire like Cain coming back and killing all their descendants... but in V5 there's a big suggestion it might be smart phones and the NSA, that tracking the supernatural has become so much easier that self righteous mortals are hunting them down and exterminating them, vampire hunters have become major threats, government blackops are wiping them out or black bagging them for experiments like its Delta Green... and the older vampires who're established rich and have a steady supply of blood and everything... they're looking at all the young, poor, cell phone using vampires as loose ends to be tied up.
Meanwhile there's the question of if this really is Gehenna, or if there's another antediluvian eldritch shoe to drop.
.
Again no idea how it actually plays, if its mechanics are still solid, or if they shaved off all the edges that make things fun... but the setting they build, the writing and the artwork are just exquisite.
I played the game VTM:Bloodlines. Hands down one of the most engaging worlds I've ever played... The game itself shows its age after so long, and the way they manage their contentmeans you can complete all the interactions and the world starts to feel dead towards the end... but those first 5-15 hours are some of the best in all of gaming.
I've never played the Tabletop VTM, but I checked out V5 of the tabletop game... no idea how the mechanics work, but read through the introduction and my god it has one of the best world build hooks I've ever encountered.
Oh, you do not even know how far the rabbit hole goes there. White Wolf and the whole Old World Of Darkness setting was incredibly intricate and interconnected. Just one thing, the cosmology. The story is that there are three cosmic energies respectively responsible for the following: The Wyld, The Weaver and The Wyrm responsible for creation, weaving that creation into The Tapestry of Cosmos and then Wyrm was the force of Destruction to keep the other forces in check. Except the Wyrm went insane and now is the force of corruption. Vampires are just one of the Wyrm creatures in this setting.
Then you have the whole Mage: The Ascension setting, where supernatural "willworkers" are trying to tap humanity AKA Sleepers and force them to view the world in line with their tradition, a Hegemony of sorts except that their power is curtailed by the force of Paradox - the collective resistance of the humanity to supernatural that can literally kill a Mage who exceeds her bounds. Except one faction of the Mages have "won" (not really) this Paradigm War, they call themselves as Technocracy, it is the Mage faction that was capable of utilizing tanks in 1500s as a form of Magic battling against literal Merlin with fireballs. Reading from cards? Technocracy calls it "statistics". Encountering ghosts and other interplanar beings? It is just this new cutting-edge technology of Void Engineering handling aliens. Including the part that "prayers" work: your cutting edge plasma weapon will not work when there are many sleepers around, at least sleepers not prone to believe that Men in Black can actually wield plasma weapons to protect Humanity from supernatural threats.
Werewolves are not just these weirdos running around in the wild. They are serving The spirit of Gaia and they fight corruption in all form, especially the Wyrmling manifestation inside The World of Darknes in form of shadowy cabal called Pentex, that controls corporations such as chemical mammoth of Rainbow Incorporated or Herculean Firearms Inc.. Of course unless you are one of the Black Spiral Dancers, a Werewolf tribe that succumbed to the Wyrm corruption, not unlike the Warhammer 40K theme.
And of course, you have all the "edge" players such as Hunters, Mummies, literal Ghosts and other beings being part of the whole world. It really is a wonderful piece of worldbuilding compared to which some nukes being shot at Vampire Antediluvian in India are just background stuff.
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Very good read, thank you. And I agree with the author that most Role playing games are not really those. I played D&D and Shadowrun, but my best game was Vampire: The Masquerade. I remember that my first character I spend maybe a week designing died during my first session. It was a result of unlucky roll and yes, my Game Master could have salvaged the situation but he would not. I then had a talk with him and he really did not like the roleplaying aspect - my character running around with weapons was literally "out of character" I wanted to build.
The next character I created more closely resembled me, it was easier to think about his actions that way and it eased me into the whole acting stuff. I eventually made some different characters and I really liked the actual roleplaying aspect, I think it really helped me socially in my future endeavors. To this day I have fond memories of my crew. We had a lot of fun sometimes playing through the whole night until dawn with Massive Attack or Tricky playing in the background and smell of cigarettes and cheap coffee filling the room. Good times. Plus the VtM and assorted games had incredibly high quality supplements that I read just for fun to gain some occult knowledge. The whole setting was incredible rabbit hole into one of the best worldbuilding that I have seen in my life, I have read supplements for other games just for fun.
Also I played Cyberpunk 2077 on release and I rate it as 8/10, luckily I did not encounter any bug at all. I did not mind little things people endlessly harped about such as behavior of the police. I went through the story, which to me was excellently constructed, acted and voice-acted. I got my load of fun for the buck I paid as far as I am concerned. I hear that a lot of things were fixed and polished and I am eager to return to the Night City with any future content DLC. Also for anybody out there who likes these sandboxy but story driven RPGs like The Witcher, RDR2 or Cyberpunk I can recommend a hidden gem I found recently that I already poured more than 100 hours into (my mark of superb singleplayer game): Days Gone. Thank me later.
I played the game VTM:Bloodlines. Hands down one of the most engaging worlds I've ever played... The game itself shows its age after so long, and the way they manage their contentmeans you can complete all the interactions and the world starts to feel dead towards the end... but those first 5-15 hours are some of the best in all of gaming.
I've never played the Tabletop VTM, but I checked out V5 of the tabletop game... no idea how the mechanics work, but read through the introduction and my god it has one of the best world build hooks I've ever encountered.
The entire history of VTM there have always been whispers about Ghenna, the end times, there were all these prophecies the doom of vampires was right around the corner, and something was going to happen that would kill them all off... these immortals were running out of time.
Well in most material of the setting its played off as some antediluvian vampire like Cain coming back and killing all their descendants... but in V5 there's a big suggestion it might be smart phones and the NSA, that tracking the supernatural has become so much easier that self righteous mortals are hunting them down and exterminating them, vampire hunters have become major threats, government blackops are wiping them out or black bagging them for experiments like its Delta Green... and the older vampires who're established rich and have a steady supply of blood and everything... they're looking at all the young, poor, cell phone using vampires as loose ends to be tied up.
Meanwhile there's the question of if this really is Gehenna, or if there's another antediluvian eldritch shoe to drop.
.
Again no idea how it actually plays, if its mechanics are still solid, or if they shaved off all the edges that make things fun... but the setting they build, the writing and the artwork are just exquisite.
Oh, you do not even know how far the rabbit hole goes there. White Wolf and the whole Old World Of Darkness setting was incredibly intricate and interconnected. Just one thing, the cosmology. The story is that there are three cosmic energies respectively responsible for the following: The Wyld, The Weaver and The Wyrm responsible for creation, weaving that creation into The Tapestry of Cosmos and then Wyrm was the force of Destruction to keep the other forces in check. Except the Wyrm went insane and now is the force of corruption. Vampires are just one of the Wyrm creatures in this setting.
Then you have the whole Mage: The Ascension setting, where supernatural "willworkers" are trying to tap humanity AKA Sleepers and force them to view the world in line with their tradition, a Hegemony of sorts except that their power is curtailed by the force of Paradox - the collective resistance of the humanity to supernatural that can literally kill a Mage who exceeds her bounds. Except one faction of the Mages have "won" (not really) this Paradigm War, they call themselves as Technocracy, it is the Mage faction that was capable of utilizing tanks in 1500s as a form of Magic battling against literal Merlin with fireballs. Reading from cards? Technocracy calls it "statistics". Encountering ghosts and other interplanar beings? It is just this new cutting-edge technology of Void Engineering handling aliens. Including the part that "prayers" work: your cutting edge plasma weapon will not work when there are many sleepers around, at least sleepers not prone to believe that Men in Black can actually wield plasma weapons to protect Humanity from supernatural threats.
Werewolves are not just these weirdos running around in the wild. They are serving The spirit of Gaia and they fight corruption in all form, especially the Wyrmling manifestation inside The World of Darknes in form of shadowy cabal called Pentex, that controls corporations such as chemical mammoth of Rainbow Incorporated or Herculean Firearms Inc.. Of course unless you are one of the Black Spiral Dancers, a Werewolf tribe that succumbed to the Wyrm corruption, not unlike the Warhammer 40K theme.
And of course, you have all the "edge" players such as Hunters, Mummies, literal Ghosts and other beings being part of the whole world. It really is a wonderful piece of worldbuilding compared to which some nukes being shot at Vampire Antediluvian in India are just background stuff.
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