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I've had people who don't live in my house in my house for 4 out of 5 days, and for those days, they wanted my input on activities so, by today, I'm basically like "It's nothing personal. I like you. Get the hell out of my house." It's late, and I've only got one topic in me. I don't really care what order I take this stuff in, except I'm likely to hit the easier stuff first. Brantai wants the most complicated one, but since he actually commented, that's what I'm talking about tonight.
Hey man. I'm not, like, strictly-speaking, exactly sure what the difference between Storytelling and Storyteller is here. I'm concerned to look at my books and realize that there's a subtle difference in the nWoD Core line terminology then there was in the oWoD. I'm not sure it matters, though, so I'm not going to look. I think I got your gist.
Crafting is kind of a ridiculous issue in WoD. I mean, it persists in being ridiculous even into the nWoD line. It's mostly analogous to the Language skill, but where Language is basically a binary skill until Exalted (you either wrote and spoke a language or you don't, and the dots relate to which languages and how many you speak), Craft measures how well you craft, but not what you can Craft. By the books, in oWoD and nWoD both, you basically just knew and your ST would just kick you if you were being a tool about it. Exalted cocked things up a bit because Craft isn't particularly interesting, but instead of powers you buy it again, and again, and it sucks. Skills, as a whole unit, are not particularly interesting. In fact, they're boring. In any WoD game.
But hey, you've got Craft : Fire. Craft : Air. Craft : Magitech. Craft : Genesis. In order to get some crafts, you need other crafts, and in the core book, you have to dig around. Because the fun ones - or the ones that let you do stuff that is a little cooler so as to be close to fun, the speed-bumps closest to your destination, are not default skills. And Craft : Fate is still a joke. So what?
WoD fixed this. Language should not be a skill with dots in it. It's a Merit. Good. Done. Craft should be the exact same thing. You want to build artifacts? Man alive, but tie that shit to something more interesting. Tie it to Occult and Lore. Tie making prayer strips and altering Fate to Bureaucracy. Buy the Merit for a few points and now you're as good at that as you are at whatever it's tied to. It's a subset of a skill, anyhow. It saves it from being a tired exp. sink in a game where exp. is the most precious commodity since your Power Stat. (Which costs a million billion points to bump up, anyhow, preventing you from doing fun things like buying super fun yeah-yeah magic powaz.)
What does making armor and bulwarks and weapons and poisons get tied to? I don't know yet. I'm not exactly getting paid to do this, but I'm guessing, like, Lore, Melee, Resistance, Larceny, and stuff like that. I mean, Larceny for poisons and toxins. Make people buy appropriate Specialties so they're good for more then squeezing cheap dice out of mundane skills, or something. Listen, though, if you know someone who wants to pay me to hash this out, I guarantee you'll get good results.
My point is that crafting is boring, expensive, and makes you bad at every other thing by investing in it so that you can make cool stuff for other people so they can have a good time. You know what's poor game design? Punishing players for buying stuff that's supported in the game and demonstrated in fluff as being and sounding cool. And it's okay. It was a mistake, because it's been this way for a long time, but that's what happened. And up above is one answer. Maybe the best answer. Ever. So. You're welcome, I guess.
Actually Merits are great. Merits can get pretty weird or they can be pretty tame, but I see that writers were investigating Merits as a source of powers since Exalted 1E, the the Player's Guide. And for Beastmen. Because a lot of these character types have innate powers but don't use Charms. Well, you know, that's a good place for certain types of powers. Thaumaturgy also has a good example in having low-level powers tied directly to skills like Occult and Lore where you can just do some thaumaturgy because you have the right score level. That's not bad.
I was thinking that maybe Crafting could still hold on to some of the directions, and the stuff like magitech, artifact construction, geomancy, genesis, and stuff like that could be Merit specialties. I dunno. Just throwing that one out.
Going in a different direction, regarding Charms, someone on RPG.net suggested making Excellencies powers that Exalts have without having to buy them. ( I wanna say it was Kaiu Keiichi, but I can't really back that up. I can't find the post now. ) I figured this wasn't a bad idea, and it gets a precedent both in how Excellencies were bound together in an easy-to-grab package for every skill in 2.X and how Combos were eventually bundled up together in their free packages. (And I'm not sure if I thought this was the very best way to do it, but there it is.) Yeah, it does ramp the power level up from the get-go, but how much, really? I think a lot of people drop some exp. on Excellencies, but probably grudgingly. They're not that fun. They're like super-skills. Whoo. More dice. Okay, fine, I need this in Melee before I'm a huge badass because it ramps my DV up and kind allows me to be the super competent dude or lady I wanted to be when I made my character in the first place. I feel like I do when someone makes me purchase skills or Charms at character creation instead of just saying "You start with these." and giving me less points to use when making a character. It's technically a choice you make, but it's not a fun or interesting one.
Bottom line, all choices don't have to be equal, but they should at least be interesting. If you're stuck buying shit on your character you don't care about, that's not fun. Someone else got a new, rad sword power, and you're like, "Okay, I can get more dice one for one, now. I forgot it at character creation because I wanted sorcery, but alright I guess."
Also, when it comes to making Charms, the way it always breaks down is that additional complexity increases the chance something is going to break, but also gives you more mechanical bits to mess with, so more powers. Especially for the nExalted game, it's way better to have Charm Trees that are only 3-4 deep if that's all you've got. Just make them interesting. Maybe figure out if there's a way to re-purchase to widen their applicability or improve their impact at greater Essence levels, and don't be afraid to go big and just have the tree sit for 2-3 essence then make something big on the end cap. Stuff you figure every member of the splat should have should probably be automatic. I still want to talk to you about martial arts styles, and how you want them to work, but I've changed my mind since we talked about it in the beginning and think they probably ought to be Merits that you can buy up that are tied to the Brawl ability. I actually don't like WoD Core's setup for them that much though. I just think that we could tie Charm-like abilities to Merits that are tied to skills and Essence and let them be accessible to anyone who meets the qualifications. It's worth messing around with.
Hey man. I'm not, like, strictly-speaking, exactly sure what the difference between Storytelling and Storyteller is here. I'm concerned to look at my books and realize that there's a subtle difference in the nWoD Core line terminology then there was in the oWoD. I'm not sure it matters, though, so I'm not going to look. I think I got your gist.
Crafting is kind of a ridiculous issue in WoD. I mean, it persists in being ridiculous even into the nWoD line. It's mostly analogous to the Language skill, but where Language is basically a binary skill until Exalted (you either wrote and spoke a language or you don't, and the dots relate to which languages and how many you speak), Craft measures how well you craft, but not what you can Craft. By the books, in oWoD and nWoD both, you basically just knew and your ST would just kick you if you were being a tool about it. Exalted cocked things up a bit because Craft isn't particularly interesting, but instead of powers you buy it again, and again, and it sucks. Skills, as a whole unit, are not particularly interesting. In fact, they're boring. In any WoD game.
But hey, you've got Craft : Fire. Craft : Air. Craft : Magitech. Craft : Genesis. In order to get some crafts, you need other crafts, and in the core book, you have to dig around. Because the fun ones - or the ones that let you do stuff that is a little cooler so as to be close to fun, the speed-bumps closest to your destination, are not default skills. And Craft : Fate is still a joke. So what?
WoD fixed this. Language should not be a skill with dots in it. It's a Merit. Good. Done. Craft should be the exact same thing. You want to build artifacts? Man alive, but tie that shit to something more interesting. Tie it to Occult and Lore. Tie making prayer strips and altering Fate to Bureaucracy. Buy the Merit for a few points and now you're as good at that as you are at whatever it's tied to. It's a subset of a skill, anyhow. It saves it from being a tired exp. sink in a game where exp. is the most precious commodity since your Power Stat. (Which costs a million billion points to bump up, anyhow, preventing you from doing fun things like buying super fun yeah-yeah magic powaz.)
What does making armor and bulwarks and weapons and poisons get tied to? I don't know yet. I'm not exactly getting paid to do this, but I'm guessing, like, Lore, Melee, Resistance, Larceny, and stuff like that. I mean, Larceny for poisons and toxins. Make people buy appropriate Specialties so they're good for more then squeezing cheap dice out of mundane skills, or something. Listen, though, if you know someone who wants to pay me to hash this out, I guarantee you'll get good results.
My point is that crafting is boring, expensive, and makes you bad at every other thing by investing in it so that you can make cool stuff for other people so they can have a good time. You know what's poor game design? Punishing players for buying stuff that's supported in the game and demonstrated in fluff as being and sounding cool. And it's okay. It was a mistake, because it's been this way for a long time, but that's what happened. And up above is one answer. Maybe the best answer. Ever. So. You're welcome, I guess.
Actually Merits are great. Merits can get pretty weird or they can be pretty tame, but I see that writers were investigating Merits as a source of powers since Exalted 1E, the the Player's Guide. And for Beastmen. Because a lot of these character types have innate powers but don't use Charms. Well, you know, that's a good place for certain types of powers. Thaumaturgy also has a good example in having low-level powers tied directly to skills like Occult and Lore where you can just do some thaumaturgy because you have the right score level. That's not bad.
I was thinking that maybe Crafting could still hold on to some of the directions, and the stuff like magitech, artifact construction, geomancy, genesis, and stuff like that could be Merit specialties. I dunno. Just throwing that one out.
Going in a different direction, regarding Charms, someone on RPG.net suggested making Excellencies powers that Exalts have without having to buy them. ( I wanna say it was Kaiu Keiichi, but I can't really back that up. I can't find the post now. ) I figured this wasn't a bad idea, and it gets a precedent both in how Excellencies were bound together in an easy-to-grab package for every skill in 2.X and how Combos were eventually bundled up together in their free packages. (And I'm not sure if I thought this was the very best way to do it, but there it is.) Yeah, it does ramp the power level up from the get-go, but how much, really? I think a lot of people drop some exp. on Excellencies, but probably grudgingly. They're not that fun. They're like super-skills. Whoo. More dice. Okay, fine, I need this in Melee before I'm a huge badass because it ramps my DV up and kind allows me to be the super competent dude or lady I wanted to be when I made my character in the first place. I feel like I do when someone makes me purchase skills or Charms at character creation instead of just saying "You start with these." and giving me less points to use when making a character. It's technically a choice you make, but it's not a fun or interesting one.
Bottom line, all choices don't have to be equal, but they should at least be interesting. If you're stuck buying shit on your character you don't care about, that's not fun. Someone else got a new, rad sword power, and you're like, "Okay, I can get more dice one for one, now. I forgot it at character creation because I wanted sorcery, but alright I guess."
Also, when it comes to making Charms, the way it always breaks down is that additional complexity increases the chance something is going to break, but also gives you more mechanical bits to mess with, so more powers. Especially for the nExalted game, it's way better to have Charm Trees that are only 3-4 deep if that's all you've got. Just make them interesting. Maybe figure out if there's a way to re-purchase to widen their applicability or improve their impact at greater Essence levels, and don't be afraid to go big and just have the tree sit for 2-3 essence then make something big on the end cap. Stuff you figure every member of the splat should have should probably be automatic. I still want to talk to you about martial arts styles, and how you want them to work, but I've changed my mind since we talked about it in the beginning and think they probably ought to be Merits that you can buy up that are tied to the Brawl ability. I actually don't like WoD Core's setup for them that much though. I just think that we could tie Charm-like abilities to Merits that are tied to skills and Essence and let them be accessible to anyone who meets the qualifications. It's worth messing around with.