World of Darkness 2.0 Review

General Zod · Post by **General Zod** » 2004-09-03 05:44pm

so. . .i finally broke down and picked up the core book for white-wolf's new world of
darkness line, and managed to flip through the new vampire book. While it has its
pluses and minuses, the positives regarding the new core are excellent.

Quick Run Down:

combat is drastically changed, thus making it far quicker than it used to be. it can
typically be resolved with a roll or two.

alot of clarifications were made regarding several issues. nature/demeanor was done away with in favor of a virtue/vice setup. you get one virtue and one vice, with fulfilling an action in correspondence with either one replenishing a temporary willpower.

abilities have been significantly consolidated, and one or two useless attributes were done away with. Appearance no longer exists (yay), and Perception is handled with wits. thanks to the sreamlining of the system, the amount of superfluous abilities has been greatly reduced to just those needed.

in regards to rolling, now every roll is made at difficulty 8. HOWEVER the rule of one no longer applies, and 1s do not subtract from successes rolled. instead of increasing or decreasing the difficulty, modifiers now add dice, and you can gain bonus dice from special equipment depending on the quality of said eq. there was no such mechanic in the old system.

backgrounds have been utterly done away with, and are replaced with merits. in some sense they work like backgrounds and the old fashioned merits, except they give you far more flexibility and can add dice to your pools when attempting actions. they also clarify which can be purchased any time and which are available at creation only, according to the merits in question. a very nice revision as in the old system it was difficult to tell what could be bought at creation and what couldn't.

overall, a very nice revision to the system, with lots of excellent improvements over the old. will get around to reviewing the new vampire system soon as i own the book, or anyone else with the book, feel free to add a review. questions, comments, etc.

desertjedi · Post by **desertjedi** » 2004-09-03 07:14pm

My copy of Mage should be coming in soon.. I can't wait to see how they changed things around.

SirNitram · Post by **SirNitram** » 2004-09-03 07:15pm

desertjedi wrote:My copy of Mage should be coming in soon.. I can't wait to see how they changed things around.

If the Spheres are gone, heads will roll.

General Zod · Post by **General Zod** » 2004-09-04 03:06pm

desertjedi wrote:My copy of Mage should be coming in soon.. I can't wait to see how they changed things around.

soon? you do realize that the new Mage isn't coming out til 2005, right?

Captain Cyran · Post by **Captain Cyran** » 2004-09-04 03:26pm

I knew most of that about the new WoD stuff because I've been watching the site. But I'm really interested in what they've done with vampire, because from what I can tell they've really changed things around.

General Zod · Post by **General Zod** » 2004-09-04 03:38pm

Captain_Cyran wrote:I knew most of that about the new WoD stuff because I've been watching the site. But I'm really interested in what they've done with vampire, because from what I can tell they've really changed things around.

they have, and they haven't. three of the core clans remain as clans. the ventrue, gangrel, and nosferatu. the other two clans are mekhet and daeva, relatively new. then they have bloodlines, which aren't quite the same thing as clans. generation's no longer around and has been replaced with blood potency, which starts off at 1 and rises with the character's age.

the disciplines are largely the same. all the core ones are still around, such as auspex, animalism, obfuscate, protean, dominate, presence, celerity, potence (now called vigor), fortitude (now called resilience). the new ones for the main clans are nightmare, and. . . .uh, i think that's it really.

instead of the camarilla and sabbat you now have covenants, which is effectively the character's political alignment. invictus, old money blueblood types, lancea sanctum, vampire equivalent to the catholic church, circle of the crone, voodoo mystics, the carthian movement, vampire communists basically, unaligned (what the name says, belong to no covenant), and the ordo dracul, a very nice update of the metamorphosists.

there's also covenant specific 'disciplines'. cruac sorcery, for those belong to the circle of the crone works voodoo style magics, theban sorcery, for those belonging to lancea works 'dark miracles' remniscient of the church, and tiers of the dragon from ordo dracul lets vampires shrug off some of the curse.

all of the annoying clans are largely gone. tzimisce, lasombra, malkavians, assamites, ravnos, tremere, no more. (the malkavians exist as a ventrue bloodline now though, called the malkovians).

vampires also aren't nearly as static in the new vamp either. upon reaching a certain blood potency, they can join their sire's bloodline if he was from one, create their own bloodline or join another bloodline within their own clan that their sire was no part of.

there's also no longer a single origin story. caine isn't the founder anymore, and all the covenants have their own unique origin mythos for the most part. nobody can agree entirely upon one thing.

very nice revision to the vampire system overall.

Captain Cyran · Post by **Captain Cyran** » 2004-09-04 05:02pm

The main thing I am upset about is that they got rid of my favorite clans, namely Lasombra and Tzimisce, I thought they'd gotten rid of the Malks, another favorite of mine. Good to know they're still around. The whole covenent idea is really cool, but from what you posted it looks like a lot of the covenents have a sort of magic now, an idea I was never really keen on with the Tremere.

Stravo · Post by **Stravo** » 2004-09-04 05:04pm

I spent over $1,000 on WOD supplements and rulebooks, then they just decide to make a do over? UGH. While some of this sounds interesting and cool I'm just not into RPGs anymore and I'm glad I'm not because I'm one of tehse completists jackasses that buys almost anything published in connection to my favorite games.

Captain Cyran · Post by **Captain Cyran** » 2004-09-04 05:06pm

Stravo wrote:I spent over $1,000 on WOD supplements and rulebooks, then they just decide to make a do over? UGH. While some of this sounds interesting and cool I'm just not into RPGs anymore and I'm glad I'm not because I'm one of tehse completists jackasses that buys almost anything published in connection to my favorite games.

You poor poor soul...

I'm sure you can find some sap to sell all those books to for double the price after you wait maybe three years.

Stravo · Post by **Stravo** » 2004-09-04 05:09pm

Captain_Cyran wrote: I'm sure you can find some sap to sell all those books to for double the price after you wait maybe three years. [/i]

Ebay is my friend on that issue.

Wanna fill me in on the quick and dirty how they ended everything? Did they go the cheesy route and have Caine return? What about the mages and did the werewolves all die in a hopeless battle against the Wyrm?

Captain Cyran · Post by **Captain Cyran** » 2004-09-04 05:13pm

Stravo wrote:
Captain_Cyran wrote: I'm sure you can find some sap to sell all those books to for double the price after you wait maybe three years. [/i]
Ebay is my friend on that issue.

Wanna fill me in on the quick and dirty how they ended everything? Did they go the cheesy route and have Caine return? What about the mages and did the werewolves all die in a hopeless battle against the Wyrm?

Spoiler alert, just so people don't get pissy at me.

Blood suckers went out like bitches. The Gehenna book never actually got into it. But vampires were suffering from a blood weakness and slowly just dying out. Not to mention the Anti's were waking up, which was fun. The fuzzies got taken out by the wyrm, but at the same time it was finally freed so it wasn't gonna destroy randomly anymore. Of course, Earth was pretty much taken out by this. And the D&D nerds ascended, which, if what my brother told me is true, and if I remember correctly, took out the galaxy.

All in all, fun shit.

General Zod · Post by **General Zod** » 2004-09-04 05:13pm

Captain_Cyran wrote:The main thing I am upset about is that they got rid of my favorite clans, namely Lasombra and Tzimisce, I thought they'd gotten rid of the Malks, another favorite of mine. Good to know they're still around. The whole covenent idea is really cool, but from what you posted it looks like a lot of the covenents have a sort of magic now, an idea I was never really keen on with the Tremere.

iti sn't exactly like old fashioned blood sorcery. it's more like each level of the sorcery you possess gives you access to rituals that correspond to that level. so there's no more paths. plus they're rather strict about who they let learn them, and the sorcery itself is twinked down considerably.

with the ordo dracul, it's not so much sorcery as levels of enlightenment that let a character ignore or overcome aspects of the vampiric curse. like being able to spend only 1bp every few nights to wake each evening instead of one per night. so it's not a discipline in the strictest sense.

SirNitram · Post by **SirNitram** » 2004-09-05 08:19pm

The Mages and Technocrats acheived perfect Ascension: Everyone in the Tellurian became Awakened, all magic is coincidental, the Gauntlet collapses, and there is another day. The Nephandus become Reality's bitches and the Marauders.. Well, there's always madness.

Stravo · Post by **Stravo** » 2004-09-05 11:35pm

And all these changes (end of the WOD) happenned in the span of what? A few days? Weeks?

While the outcome of the mage storyline seems to me what was neccessary to happen I just cannot see what Nitram said happened occuring in the span of even a year, There's just too much to overcome.

SirNitram · Post by **SirNitram** » 2004-09-06 11:27am

Stravo wrote:And all these changes (end of the WOD) happenned in the span of what? A few days? Weeks?

While the outcome of the mage storyline seems to me what was neccessary to happen I just cannot see what Nitram said happened occuring in the span of even a year, There's just too much to overcome.

Years. The Gauntlet wearing down is the major event, of course, and that takes a month per point of 'solidity'. So you're talking at least nine months to completely erode it in city areas, PLUS the time for the barriers deeper in the spiritual realms. Of course, buttloads happen in the world of men, but when there's no more room in hell....

Dahak · Post by **Dahak** » 2004-09-06 04:43pm

Hm, what I really didn't like all that much is that you now have to have at least two books, the WoD "main book" and the book for whatever role you want to play (Vamp, mage,...), as they have outsorced the main chraracter creation stuff.
It might be nice to have central place for rules et al., but this smacks of "Hm, let's make more books, so we can get more money. The D&D guys do it, too. Why not we?"...

Stravo · Post by **Stravo** » 2004-09-06 04:55pm

Dahak wrote:Hm, what I really didn't like all that much is that you now have to have at least two books, the WoD "main book" and the book for whatever role you want to play (Vamp, mage,...), as they have outsorced the main chraracter creation stuff.
It might be nice to have central place for rules et al., but this smacks of "Hm, let's make more books, so we can get more money. The D&D guys do it, too. Why not we?"...

Whitewolf is the master of that shit before this new revamp. I can attest the amount of sourcebooks, clanbooks, GM assis books, secret books, etc that they published for each of their lines. They're merely following the same game plan that made them so successful in the first place and made them beaucoup dollars from completist jerks like me

Vendetta · Post by **Vendetta** » 2004-09-06 07:37pm

From another point of view though it does mean that you don't buy a set of books and find out that 20% of the content is exactly the same reprint of the basic rules.

(plus the core rulebook doesn't cost that much, even in rip-off britain I picked it up for £13, D&D supplements cost more).

ZShade · Post by **ZShade** » 2004-09-08 01:43am

Stravo wrote:Wanna fill me in on the quick and dirty how they ended everything? Did they go the cheesy route and have Caine return? What about the mages and did the werewolves all die in a hopeless battle against the Wyrm?

Well, I haven't picked up Werewolf or Mage, but Vampire has four different endings, letting the Storyteller tailor the ending for his or her particular group. They range from "God says fuck it and unleashes a beatdown." to "END OF THE WORLD! BLOOD AND GUTS! WHEE!" The final scenario does say who the final victor of the Jyhad would have been, though.

I'm pretty sure the 4 core books don't really overlap that much. They focus on their people, and ignore the other games.

Crom · Post by **Crom** » 2004-09-08 03:11pm

Does anyone know how they're going to alter Mage?

General Zod · Post by **General Zod** » 2004-09-08 04:09pm

Crom wrote:Does anyone know how they're going to alter Mage?

not the slightest idea. everybody's rather tight-lipped about the new systems after vampire. unfortunately the new mage won't be coming out until '05.