Why the New World of Darkness Sucks

[Cynical Cat]

First I'm going to talk about what they did right.

1) Harmonizing and streamlining game mechanics. All of the Old World of Darkness (Old) games were designed as separate games and as such, sometimes they didn't mesh well. An ability might target an attribute another game didn't use and the Storyteller would have to wing it on the spot. This isn't a problem with the New World of Darkness (New).

2) Better division of terminology. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that if White Wolf had been thinking ahead, they would have reserved the term Gnosis for Mage, not Werewolf. But Mage was the third game they did and Werewolf the second. So. . . . .


Okay, now we have praised Caesar. Time to bury the fucker.

1) Way to much emphasis on balancing the various character types. This among other things, involves nerfing them closer to the human edge of things because the ability for starting characters to call down lightning or get a whole bunch of multiple actions can be devastating in combat. In watering down a number of abilities and characters they made those characters less interesting by removing abilities that made such beings awe inspiring and unique. Fascinating and horrifying character archetypes were removed. Tremere are NPC only, blood magic does not have Thaumaturgy's dreadful power, and the Shadow Lords and Silver Fangs have been smashed together into one generic tribe of leadership. They became closer to human and less other.

2) Related to 1. It isn't the World of Darkness. The history, the back story, the secret wars, struggles, alliances, and betrayals are mostly gone. The slate is mostly blank and the world is less interesting. Vampire was a game of being initiated into darkness, with secret plots, ancient feuds, and even older monsters pulling the strings; where the path of least resistance is always waiting to drag down what is left of the character's damned soul. Werewolves were epic heroes, mighty and doomed, with the Last Battle looming in their future. Mages struggled to unlock the divinity within, the gain not merely knowledge and power, but enlightenment and to struggle over the destiny of all human souls. The Old was old and wicked and magnificent. The New keeps some of the Old's set dressing, but gives away its dark grandeur and flavor.

[Charon]

Those are pretty much my complaints with the system as well. They were unwilling to give any of their big three a clear advantage in any one field and so made them too similar and completely did away with most of the interesting differences. The biggest death knell for nWoD is, in my opinion, definitely the removal of the meta-plot. Believe it or not, the reason it was removed was because there were idiots out there who thought it was restricting their ability to tell the story, nevermind numerously being told they can just ignore anything they don't like.

[SirNitram]

The vampire players were rewarded, which means every other game was destroyed. The bloviations of the V:tM crowd to White Wolf amounted to:

1) I HATE METAPLOT. STOP WRITING IT. I DO NOT WANT SECRETS AND MONSTERS.

2) EVERYONE ELSE IS TOO POWERFUL, MY STARTING VAMPIRE SHOULD PWNZR IN COMBAT.

Enough fit throwing got through. I reflected on this way back when, in a few posts.

Werewolf: The Forsaken encapsulates it best when I reviewed it. You can open to alot of sections of the fluff, and you'll go 'This looks neat! I gotta see more' and you quickly find out that was it. A shiny object with no substance. Vague meanderings without any real depth.

The over the top action, which in all games was so part of the enjoyment, is gone. Werewolf rampage straight through a hundred armed guards? Nope, you go human halfway and die of lead poisoning. Low Arete mage pulling off John Woo acts? Nope, not here! Battling a Wyrded Chimera in the middle of a city by variously leaping between buildings, climbing it to find stab points, and finally bumrushing it with a size-aleration power and a shoulder tackle, taking out a conveniently condemned factory?

No. None for you.

I suppose all those retards who watched someone play a Pooka for five minutes and walked off also got their wishes, too. Everyone's just a small fry whose life sucks. None of you are great heroes.(I am very touchy about the 'Changeling wasn't dark' complaints. It was as dark as any other game, which is to say it was written with the end of everything coming. When people run Werewolf and don't emphasize the doomed nature, it's not called happy.)

[Cynical Cat]

Changeling suffered from serious identity disorder issues. There was a good World of Darkness game in there, if they had given it one more edit and rewrite it would have been more coherent and better received.

I'm sure the nerf bat was at the insistence of V:tM players, the very vocal group of shitheads who couldn't run a V:tM game I'd ever want to play in. The stupid are legion and they will play and fuck up your favorite game if they're pandered too. Unfortunately, they're very fucking noisy when they whine.

EDIT: The Vampire players were not rewarded. Their game was the first to be taken out and shot. Whiny fucks who are the same kind of shitheads who fucked up MoO3 and whined about a new Fallout were rewarded.