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It'll be under the cut, of course, for those one or two of you pursuing this bit of writing to the close. We're doing both Advantages and Merits in one round because I've 1. read both of them and 2. we've already covered a lot of this ground before the Merits, and I think it'll be fairly to the point. This is the point where I gave some more thought to what character I'm going to build and that'll be at the very bottom where I make my initial notes.
Advantages
This is chapter 4, and it covers the bit at the bottom of the character sheet where the locations for things like Defense, Health, and other derived traits. Like I mentioned before, most of these are derived totally from Attributes and are often an un-rolled dice pool, like the DVs of Exalted 2nd Ed. and facilitate a one-roll attack/damage system to save time and headaches. Defense is the lower of Dex. and Wits, Initiative is Dex. + Composure (which used to be a skill), Health is based on a combination of Stamina and base size. Ect. Et al.
I like that things that were arbitrarily set before, like health and willpower are now giving what they derive from, but that's really all I have to say about it. Most of the derived attributes are just things that specifically go over the rules for things that were discussed vaguely before. It's critical information but nothing exciting. Especially when we could be talking about Morality, Derangements, Virtues, and Vices - along with the explosion that they created back when WoD was released.
Morality is a touchy subject, but it's World of Darkness, and we need the moral degeneration that underlied the Classic WoD. This didn't make everyone happy and it has the same old 1-10 scale it used to. It doesn't bother me except a weird mixup between morality 7 and 8 where 8 is injury to another like beating them up and 7 is shoplifting a Snickers. I shrugged. You can totally ditch morality if you want; it really doesn't do anything besides slowly drive you nuts. Seriously. And that's really the issue that caused the explosion on the internets.
Why?
I'm glad you asked, italicized voice. As I'm reading, I try to decipher the mentality behind creating the rules I see in front of me. Many of the rules are modifications made to Classic WoD rules that seem designed to mitigate or solve problems that cropped up in the classic ruleset - like changing Willpower being arbitrary and using Attributes instead of an Attribute + Skill dice pool for Initiative. But here, the designers are faced with the need to include a morality system because that's what makes it World of Darkness instead of just a generic modern dice pool game (which is idea I actually really like). But what happens as you descend that darkened staircase? Well? I leave it as a game for you to play at home, because it's actually kind of tough. But the designers already have a few pages given over to Derangements, and insanity or mental illness isn't exactly a new idea as an affliction in classic gothic horror, so as you become less and less moral, you become Derangement-prone.
When I first read about it, I assumed that the afflictions were changes in personality as a result of seeing too much, killing and seeing people killed, theft, injuring others. Insomnia, megalomania, depression, fixation, ect, et al. You're not immoral because you're mentally ill and you're not really mentally ill because you're immoral, but the trauma to your mental self causes breakdowns and psychosis. The reaction to this was understandably poor, though. People did not like the relationship between derangements and morality (small and upper-case D's and M's) in any capacity, and many people did not like traditional Judeo-Christian morality systems included in their games at all. I think it's clear that the writers didn't intend malice, and if you don't particularly approve of that correlation, there's nothing at all you need the morality system for in any case. Just completely ditch it; you probably won't notice. It's one of the few setting caveats lodged in the mechanics, and can easily be jettisoned.
Now, Virtues and Vices. Man, I love the idea of Virtues and Vices! But these are really boring. I know they're supposed to tap into the roots of Judeo-Christian values which, in theory, have deep roots in the imagination of the Western world and that they're kind of a throwback to the idea that the World of Darkness is still supposed to be a game of (marginally) gothic horror, but there's something of a laundry list of reasons why I felt like they don't work for me. Here we go.
1. Besides the morality system and V&V, everything else is a generic dice pool system in the modern era. The weird semi-Catholic morality trapping doesn't really bring 'gothic' to the yard, it just comes off as weirdly limiting at best and kind of colonialist at worst.
2. Many of the virtues and vices are too similar when applied to a gaming setting. While we can, academically, demonstrate how Faith and Hope are different or how Envy, Greed, Lust, and Gluttony are different, having them as defining virtues and vices is difficult because there's not all that much differentiation as core (small v) virtues or character flaws. I cheated and looked ahead, and I was glad to see that God-Machine Chronicle appears to address this but how much is something we'll determine when I read it.
There are some small reasons, but actually it looks like my laundry list is an impressive '2'. Those are serious enough, though. The way by which you regain a lot of willpower by sticking your neck on the line for your Virtues and a little by carelessly indulges in your Vices is fun. In practice, though, unless you're using your willpower a lot (and maybe you should be!), they're not critical vectors. Gaining extra experience by sticking your neck out for your Virtues seems like a good extra way to handle it, providing you actually like the Virtues. They're pretty easy to ignore except when convenient otherwise.
Special note : Willpower spending does not give one sure-fire success, which is probably good in a system where 1 success is basically succeeding at your task. It grants 3 extra dice to most rolls and 2 extra dice to resistance pools. I like it.
Let's do merits.
Merits
Merits are hot, ladies and gentlemen. In WoD Classic, merits and flaws were these finicky bits that caused a fair amount of fights. Using them was walking a fine line between trying to get 7 more bonus points at character creation and overloading a character with abilities you couldn't get anywhere else, and they were totally separate from Backgrounds. That separation was the reason why Resources was a Background, Linguistics was a skill you never rolled, Do and Martial Arts existed as weirdly separate Skills aside from Brawl that cost different amounts, and why every separate combat ability besides descriptions ended up in a book simply entitled "Combat" which you couldn't use without getting kicked out of your group for being a munchkin.
Merits as a unified background helped fix a lot of that. Except Combat Styles, which still cause problems.
Merits are where you get a lot of your character granularity, actually. Its where you get some low-key supernatural powers like Unseen Sense (and later, whole magic power trees in the excellent Second Sight), you get your language proficiency at a decent cost per-language with the Language Merit, you get your Resources, your fiddly combat bits which give you small edges in ability and more combat granularity than just adding dots to Brawl or Weaponry, and you get your social resources and distinctions in the motley combinations of Allies (which I think is a particularly well-designed Merit), Contacts, Fame, Mentor, Retainer, and Status.
Other books largely expand on available Merits, which I'm not strictly sure we need. Setting-specific Merits, yes. But Merits are a lot like D&D Feats which provide a fertile ground for mechanical bloat. There are entire sub-categories of Merits that the Storyteller would be wise to consider if they even want to allow, because adding categories of Merits tends to hugely expand the level of fiddly detail in whatever you're playing. However, I wouldn't be too worried. In any game where you get supernatural powers, almost every gamer if going to dedicate the vast expanse of their precious Experience points into increasing those abilities leaving Merits like various Fighting Styles or the like in the dust except for the most specialized of characters.
I think that there's going to be a wrap-up and maybe something like Fighting Styles will get their own small entry, because they probably deserve it, but that's about it for right now.
Making a Dude (Or Lady)
So, I'd been reading through the greater bulk of the character creation bits, and now that I'm done I was thinking that I wasn't totally amazed at any one particular Skill, Advantage, or Merit that I absolutely had to make a character with. However, you know, I still wanted to make one, so I just thought of what kind of characters I'd like to see new or freshly-considered. The one that came to mind was a guy a surprising number of you will probably be familiar with - someone named Atol. What you may not be aware of is that many of you are familiar with different Atols. That's because Atol is an NPC I like to build in different systems and, in one particular case, he ended up being a shit-disturbing PC with no real abilities except for being an irritating moralist.
He started as being a secondary character in a piece of fiction that was never finished and ended up as an NPC in a play by post Serial Experiments: Lain session. He was a mid-low level Rogue/Diviner NPC in a D&D campaign, a Mastigos in the Awakening LARP for the Cam, he's statted up as a beginning Chosen of Secrets researcher in Exalted... he ends up statted up in a lot of systems that I feel I could use some practice messing around with as someone specifically designed not to upstage the PCs. So, he'll probably get his own post, too. Probably a gestalt wrap-up of what I've covered so far and miscellaneous notes that I forgot to mention before we get to dramatic rules systems.
Advantages
This is chapter 4, and it covers the bit at the bottom of the character sheet where the locations for things like Defense, Health, and other derived traits. Like I mentioned before, most of these are derived totally from Attributes and are often an un-rolled dice pool, like the DVs of Exalted 2nd Ed. and facilitate a one-roll attack/damage system to save time and headaches. Defense is the lower of Dex. and Wits, Initiative is Dex. + Composure (which used to be a skill), Health is based on a combination of Stamina and base size. Ect. Et al.
I like that things that were arbitrarily set before, like health and willpower are now giving what they derive from, but that's really all I have to say about it. Most of the derived attributes are just things that specifically go over the rules for things that were discussed vaguely before. It's critical information but nothing exciting. Especially when we could be talking about Morality, Derangements, Virtues, and Vices - along with the explosion that they created back when WoD was released.
Morality is a touchy subject, but it's World of Darkness, and we need the moral degeneration that underlied the Classic WoD. This didn't make everyone happy and it has the same old 1-10 scale it used to. It doesn't bother me except a weird mixup between morality 7 and 8 where 8 is injury to another like beating them up and 7 is shoplifting a Snickers. I shrugged. You can totally ditch morality if you want; it really doesn't do anything besides slowly drive you nuts. Seriously. And that's really the issue that caused the explosion on the internets.
Why?
I'm glad you asked, italicized voice. As I'm reading, I try to decipher the mentality behind creating the rules I see in front of me. Many of the rules are modifications made to Classic WoD rules that seem designed to mitigate or solve problems that cropped up in the classic ruleset - like changing Willpower being arbitrary and using Attributes instead of an Attribute + Skill dice pool for Initiative. But here, the designers are faced with the need to include a morality system because that's what makes it World of Darkness instead of just a generic modern dice pool game (which is idea I actually really like). But what happens as you descend that darkened staircase? Well? I leave it as a game for you to play at home, because it's actually kind of tough. But the designers already have a few pages given over to Derangements, and insanity or mental illness isn't exactly a new idea as an affliction in classic gothic horror, so as you become less and less moral, you become Derangement-prone.
When I first read about it, I assumed that the afflictions were changes in personality as a result of seeing too much, killing and seeing people killed, theft, injuring others. Insomnia, megalomania, depression, fixation, ect, et al. You're not immoral because you're mentally ill and you're not really mentally ill because you're immoral, but the trauma to your mental self causes breakdowns and psychosis. The reaction to this was understandably poor, though. People did not like the relationship between derangements and morality (small and upper-case D's and M's) in any capacity, and many people did not like traditional Judeo-Christian morality systems included in their games at all. I think it's clear that the writers didn't intend malice, and if you don't particularly approve of that correlation, there's nothing at all you need the morality system for in any case. Just completely ditch it; you probably won't notice. It's one of the few setting caveats lodged in the mechanics, and can easily be jettisoned.
Now, Virtues and Vices. Man, I love the idea of Virtues and Vices! But these are really boring. I know they're supposed to tap into the roots of Judeo-Christian values which, in theory, have deep roots in the imagination of the Western world and that they're kind of a throwback to the idea that the World of Darkness is still supposed to be a game of (marginally) gothic horror, but there's something of a laundry list of reasons why I felt like they don't work for me. Here we go.
1. Besides the morality system and V&V, everything else is a generic dice pool system in the modern era. The weird semi-Catholic morality trapping doesn't really bring 'gothic' to the yard, it just comes off as weirdly limiting at best and kind of colonialist at worst.
2. Many of the virtues and vices are too similar when applied to a gaming setting. While we can, academically, demonstrate how Faith and Hope are different or how Envy, Greed, Lust, and Gluttony are different, having them as defining virtues and vices is difficult because there's not all that much differentiation as core (small v) virtues or character flaws. I cheated and looked ahead, and I was glad to see that God-Machine Chronicle appears to address this but how much is something we'll determine when I read it.
There are some small reasons, but actually it looks like my laundry list is an impressive '2'. Those are serious enough, though. The way by which you regain a lot of willpower by sticking your neck on the line for your Virtues and a little by carelessly indulges in your Vices is fun. In practice, though, unless you're using your willpower a lot (and maybe you should be!), they're not critical vectors. Gaining extra experience by sticking your neck out for your Virtues seems like a good extra way to handle it, providing you actually like the Virtues. They're pretty easy to ignore except when convenient otherwise.
Special note : Willpower spending does not give one sure-fire success, which is probably good in a system where 1 success is basically succeeding at your task. It grants 3 extra dice to most rolls and 2 extra dice to resistance pools. I like it.
Let's do merits.
Merits
Merits are hot, ladies and gentlemen. In WoD Classic, merits and flaws were these finicky bits that caused a fair amount of fights. Using them was walking a fine line between trying to get 7 more bonus points at character creation and overloading a character with abilities you couldn't get anywhere else, and they were totally separate from Backgrounds. That separation was the reason why Resources was a Background, Linguistics was a skill you never rolled, Do and Martial Arts existed as weirdly separate Skills aside from Brawl that cost different amounts, and why every separate combat ability besides descriptions ended up in a book simply entitled "Combat" which you couldn't use without getting kicked out of your group for being a munchkin.
Merits as a unified background helped fix a lot of that. Except Combat Styles, which still cause problems.
Merits are where you get a lot of your character granularity, actually. Its where you get some low-key supernatural powers like Unseen Sense (and later, whole magic power trees in the excellent Second Sight), you get your language proficiency at a decent cost per-language with the Language Merit, you get your Resources, your fiddly combat bits which give you small edges in ability and more combat granularity than just adding dots to Brawl or Weaponry, and you get your social resources and distinctions in the motley combinations of Allies (which I think is a particularly well-designed Merit), Contacts, Fame, Mentor, Retainer, and Status.
Other books largely expand on available Merits, which I'm not strictly sure we need. Setting-specific Merits, yes. But Merits are a lot like D&D Feats which provide a fertile ground for mechanical bloat. There are entire sub-categories of Merits that the Storyteller would be wise to consider if they even want to allow, because adding categories of Merits tends to hugely expand the level of fiddly detail in whatever you're playing. However, I wouldn't be too worried. In any game where you get supernatural powers, almost every gamer if going to dedicate the vast expanse of their precious Experience points into increasing those abilities leaving Merits like various Fighting Styles or the like in the dust except for the most specialized of characters.
I think that there's going to be a wrap-up and maybe something like Fighting Styles will get their own small entry, because they probably deserve it, but that's about it for right now.
Making a Dude (Or Lady)
So, I'd been reading through the greater bulk of the character creation bits, and now that I'm done I was thinking that I wasn't totally amazed at any one particular Skill, Advantage, or Merit that I absolutely had to make a character with. However, you know, I still wanted to make one, so I just thought of what kind of characters I'd like to see new or freshly-considered. The one that came to mind was a guy a surprising number of you will probably be familiar with - someone named Atol. What you may not be aware of is that many of you are familiar with different Atols. That's because Atol is an NPC I like to build in different systems and, in one particular case, he ended up being a shit-disturbing PC with no real abilities except for being an irritating moralist.
He started as being a secondary character in a piece of fiction that was never finished and ended up as an NPC in a play by post Serial Experiments: Lain session. He was a mid-low level Rogue/Diviner NPC in a D&D campaign, a Mastigos in the Awakening LARP for the Cam, he's statted up as a beginning Chosen of Secrets researcher in Exalted... he ends up statted up in a lot of systems that I feel I could use some practice messing around with as someone specifically designed not to upstage the PCs. So, he'll probably get his own post, too. Probably a gestalt wrap-up of what I've covered so far and miscellaneous notes that I forgot to mention before we get to dramatic rules systems.
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I've got a copy. I dunno, it's not awful, but it just wasn't its time.