TTRPGs & D&D

[Fletch]

the VtM game idea that I've been wanting to run?

Vampire was a game I thought I wanted to play, but then I discovered Mage and spit on your Vampire.

I can't actually imagine running a Mage campaign, but the setting lore was really captivating.

in a band together.

Shadowrun had a supplement that included rules for being musicians. I definitely wanted to be a club band/shadowrunners, but my buddy counterargued those skill points were better spent elsewhere.

I've toyed with the idea of removing opportunity attacks

It does feel weird to me that anybody could opportunity attack. I figure it'd just be fighter types. But I wouldn't know how to apply the same limitation to classless monsters, which is where it matters.

 

[JakeEkiss]

Vampire was a game I thought I wanted to play, but then I discovered Mage and spit on your Vampire.

I can't actually imagine running a Mage campaign, but the setting lore was really captivating.

I loved the lore for most of the old WoD games. Those where where I actually started in ttrpgs back in the day. I got to play a little Mage and a little Changeling, but definitely the ones I ended up playing more were Vampire and Werewolf just because of who was willing to DM. The one I'm sad I never got to play at all was Wraith which probably is a good thing considering the groups I had back then, but I still wonder about that one.

 

[Damien]

I just heard about a system called The Shrike. It basically exists in the case of a TPK. In it, you send the party to a demiplane to fight their way back to the land of the living. I know a lot of DMs allow the players to quest into hell to retrieve their party member's lost soul, but that option doesn't exist if they're all dead.

That's a really cool idea.

, but presuming it's in a fantasy setting I've already got the very next scene ready to roll.

Also a really cool idea.
I wonder if this would ever trigger certain players' tendency to get worked up at feeling like their agency has been taken away? Like, I've played with people that were very clear they don't want to play in any settings where they could be forcibly turned into something (vampires, were-creatures) because that's not the character they designed and they'd rather just make a new character. Some folks get real attached to THEIR idea of what the character will be from level 1-20 (even though they'll only get to level 9 half the time).

In either case, it's good to have a TPK idea in your back pocket but I also think people overthink it as a concept because, if you're getting TPKs often enough to be putting a lot of thought into it, a lot of other things have probably gone wrong already that you should be working on first.

Not that I was ever an amazing DM, but I think I only ever had one TPK ever. And it was one of those near-unavoidable freak occurrences where none of the players could manage to roll higher than a fucking 7 for two or three straight turns. That was the game where I learned the value of -always- rolling behind the screen because I couldn't hide the crits and max damages they were getting nailed with.

 

[docsilence]

I've somehow never had a TPK and I love to run battles where you're riding the edge of survival if I can. Maybe it's just who I play with but inevitably I run games with folks who will stack ways to keep EACH OTHER alive rather than look cool themselves and it becomes legitimately hard to overclock a fight and start killing PCs. I threw a monster from the Critical Role setting into a fight one time because it had an ability to turn healing spells into damage and after years of players finding all these ways to bring each other back from death it was HILARIOUS to see them scramble for a new tactic. Probably the meanest thing I've ever done in game but they were laughing the entire fight so it worked.

My VtM pitch for years has been Salem by Night. I live in spooky city central and I've always wanted to run a Vampire game, maybe for broadcast, with a cast who lives here or is familiar with it and really lean into the intersection of real horror and the bullshit Halloween stuff. Plus the East Coast in official VtM lore has always been a contested zone so depending on when it's set, it could be very dangerous to be Kindred in New England.

Spoiler: My pitch for Salem by Night

Salem's always been a weird spot for Kindred. Yeah, the Sabbat held it for a while, back when the Camarilla completely abandoned the East Coast like cowards. But the Sabbat ate their own tail and the whole northeast has been a bit of a shit show ever since. You'd think, if only for irony's sake, the Kindred would have a stronger presence here, but for some reason it's always been mostly ignored - well, except for the Tremere, of course, because naturally those creepy old warlocks would practice blood magic in a chantry in Salem. But the rest of the clans have never really had much of a connection here.

Until recently, that is. See, Hazel Iversen has claimed praxis in Boston, and the Tremere Chantry in Salem threw in with her to expand her reach all the way to Hartford. So I guess you could say Salem has thrown in with the Ivory Tower, unofficially.

It's the unofficially part that worries me. The Prince is going to send her Ventrue fuckbois up here to rattle their sabers and tell us to get in line, grant some Primogen domain over the city. But Salem's never really been a Ventrue kind of town, has it? We've got Malkavians talking to ghosts and Tremere practicing blood magic, Gangrel howling at the moon. The Nosferatu love Halloween - it's the only time they can walk around in public without breaking the Masquerade. The whole month is like a hall pass for them.

That's why the local Anarchs are talking about unionizing. Taking a stand against the Ivory Tower. Telling that pants-suit wearing blue blood in Boston to go fuck off. But that's mean a fight, and we're not all Brujah with death wishes, right?

But then again there's rumors of the Sabbat remnants stirring up shit again, and having the Camarilla at our back might be worth it. I dunno. Where do you and your coterie stand?

I loved the lore for most of the old WoD games. Those where where I actually started in ttrpgs back in the day. I got to play a little Mage and a little Changeling, but definitely the ones I ended up playing more were Vampire and Werewolf just because of who was willing to DM. The one I'm sad I never got to play at all was Wraith which probably is a good thing considering the groups I had back then, but I still wonder about that one.

I hate to admit it but the lore for the original run of WoD was hugely influential on my own writing. There's absolutely some of the eco-terrorist vibe to the werewolves I have in my main book series, and the non-Vancian, fluid magic concept in Mage makes for a great way to break your brain from typical game-y magic systems.

 

[JakeEkiss]

I wonder if this would ever trigger certain players' tendency to get worked up at feeling like their agency has been taken away? Like, I've played with people that were very clear they don't want to play in any settings where they could be forcibly turned into something (vampires, were-creatures) because that's not the character they designed and they'd rather just make a new character. Some folks get real attached to THEIR idea of what the character will be from level 1-20 (even though they'll only get to level 9 half the time).

It's been a bit I had a player who got worked up quite that way, but I do a lot of work reminding players throughout the game that I want them to win, just against heroic odds. I'm also not at all afraid of telling a player if they start to spin out "hey, the point of the arc is not for you to be screwed forever, it's a problem to solve". And that's how I've gotten to do things like grievously maim characters from time to time and it not be a big deal.

Like, there was a plot early in my last home game where a character was returning home to their noble family from a sort of elf Rumspringa, and they came into a situation where their noble parents were setting up an arranged marriage for them as a political machination. The moment I threw the plot out I simply stopped the game and did a quick meta check in "Hey, just so you know, I have plot regardless of how your character responds to this, I am not forcing you into a corner here, I'm trying to give us some cool story beats". And that's all it took to get the player to consider it narratively. In fact they ended up having that character marry the NPC and their courtship was a whole ongoing deal in the game. The last big arc of the game started with their wedding being interrupted by a kraken attack on the city.

I think you can do nearly anything providing you're willing to reassure the player enough to get buy-in. I think a lot of DM's want to run as "it's the world making decisions and I'm just the ref", but not only do I think that's basically bullshit, but I think it leads to negative story outcomes overall. I think the "I'm just the ref" is sometimes a shield for DMs who are a bit afraid of taking credit for their own games.

 

[JakeEkiss]

I've somehow never had a TPK and I love to run battles where you're riding the edge of survival if I can.

I am not surprised at all you've never had a TPK. I think we're pretty similar in style for our DMing and I think you foster groups that would make it hard for that outcome to happen even if you weren't paying attention to the encounter dynamics (which I'm also 100% certain you pay attention to anyway). I think the most likely time for a TPK to happen by accident is early in a DM's career when they both aren't suuuper versed in system mechanics and also haven't built up a toolkit for how to unfuck an encounter that's going south. If you've got a DM who has been runnign the same system weekly for 10 yrs straight and they have regular TPKs, it's because they want to have regular TPKs. They're either cultivating parties who take on more than they should or they're intentionally creating meatgrinders.

My VtM pitch for years has been Salem by Night.

I dig it.

I hate to admit it but the lore for the original run of WoD was hugely influential on my own writing.

Man, nah, don't hate to admit that. The best thing the WoD had going for it was the setting and lore. Was it extremely 90's melodrama? Yes. Was it AWESOME? Also yes.

 

[docsilence]

I am not surprised at all you've never had a TPK. I think we're pretty similar in style for our DMing and I think you foster groups that would make it hard for that outcome to happen even if you weren't paying attention to the encounter dynamics (which I'm also 100% certain you pay attention to anyway). I think the most likely time for a TPK to happen by accident is early in a DM's career when they both aren't suuuper versed in system mechanics and also haven't built up a toolkit for how to unfuck an encounter that's going south. If you've got a DM who has been runnign the same system weekly for 10 yrs straight and they have regular TPKs, it's because they want to have regular TPKs. They're either cultivating parties who take on more than they should or they're intentionally creating meatgrinders.

I dig it.

Man, nah, don't hate to admit that. The best thing the WoD had going for it was the setting and lore. Was it extremely 90's melodrama? Yes. Was it AWESOME? Also yes.

Yeah, there is definitely something to be said for a certain level of system mastery. Probably why a lot of us get set in our ways - I always think about an interview with Brennan Lee Mulligan about how he defaults to 3.5 or 5e too often because it's like becoming so proficient with a katana you can uncap a bottle with it, and so you use the katana to open a bottle when a bottle opener is RIGHT THERE.

There's also a level of system mastery where you have answers for folks who can't commit game rules to memory, too.

I mentioned that my oldest nephew asked me to teach him D&D before Xmas and I used that light-touch Deborah Ann Woll intro style. My sister just sent me a video where he's DMing for his two younger brothers (they're 12, 10, and 8). I WAS NOT PREPARED FOR THESE EMOTIONS

(Also the eldest bro realizing if he wants to play he's gonna have to DM...)