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I'd basically shelved my work towards a WoD-based Exalted rules set when 3E was announced. I picked it back up when the designers said - pretty explicitly - that it wasn't going to be based on Storyteller in general and it wasn't going to be built of the newer model of the World of Darkness rule set. I wrote a huge chunk of notes (about 40 pages) and was ready to construct the basic design document when I realized that the GMC was a thing I hadn't even looked at, and I basically just gave it up and went to grad school. Two semesters of grad school and whatever change, I realized that I still wanted the game to be a thing that was playable and I still think it'd be fun to work on, so I checked up on GMC and my old design docs from last year.
It's not that I hate the God-Machine Chronicle update, it's just that it seems clumsy and superfluous compared to the original document. The biblical virtues/vices were, in my opinion, one of the weakest parts of the rules of the original game; a badly constructed token attempt at shoehorning a gothic tone to a generic ruleset. Likewise, Morality. GMC addressed both in a clumsy, somewhat finicky way that isn't especially bad, but doesn't really feel like the World of Darkness. I feel like the original Morality/derangement scandle was really overblown, but Breaking Points seem like the kind of thing that nobody is actually going to want to keep track of at the table. The update comes with a semi-comprehensive chart of +1's and -1's as to what facilitates a breaking point. Virtue/Vice isn't really much better than Nature or Nature/Demeanor when it comes down to it, it just depends on how you want to incentivise play. I don't know about most groups, but almost nobody I've met really fucks with these much in practice. I've used Virtue/Vice in my 1-on-1 game pretty effectively, but I was going out of my way to use as much of the rule set as possible. Actually, now that I think about it, most people don't seem to use enough Willpower to really worry about it, and I feel like if people were making more rolls and reminded they can channel WP, we might see more. For me, the jury's out.
Tilts are just Conditions, and I think Conditions are generally okay. They remind me of little status ailment icons in video game RPGs, though. I can see things like powers and abilities assigning Conditions and mitigating or making them worse, so as a tool for designers to work with in power construction, I can seem them being handy. They seem like they can make a lot of rules clearer. The downside is that, like Merits and equipments, they can result in pages on pages of lists that nerds love so much, and that WoD actually ran perfectly fine without. (I used to enjoy Armory, but then Armory 2 came out, and I felt like we were seeing a lot of bloat without actually getting much in return.) I feel like Conditions are a trade-off, but on the whole, I don't think they're actually making the game better.
Equipment rules are pretty much the only place I'd like to see one or two more elements of complication. Rate's obviously out, and I approve of that. (A special condition that decreases flurry or burst penalties, though...) I feel like Defense would be a big boon to weapon lists. I know why GMC went from weapons adding dice to their roll like any other tool to adding bonus successes on a successful roll, but I think that it's a stupid differentiation from how every single other tool works and I feel like people who were complaining about 'gun nibble' are completely wrong.
I just flat out don't like Beats. I feel like trading them in for exp is basically pointless, and you might as well be handing out exp, bump the exp costs for things up a bit, and call it a day. It's another layer of bookkeeping that's explicitly unneeded. They don't interface with powers but they do totally fuck up exp economy, so using GMC basically either forces you to do a bunch of extra work in terms of keeping track of exp or a lot of work dicking around with exp costs for shit. Saying I don't like Beats is an understatement. I hate this. It's weird how angry they make me. These, right here, are what would stop me from converting my work to GMC, because they don't work with powers at all and the exp system was only in need of the most marginal fix (see my previous entry). God, just... worse than worthless. Terrible.
I wanted to use the rule set as-is, because that's the design practice I was moving towards. Using the current rules state so that the port from WoD to Exalted was seemless. I'm not saying I can't, now, but I feel like - once again - the game I'd write would be much better served by ignoring the update in total, dropping Virtue/Vice for a system more reliant on the four original virtues from Exalted and retaining Motivations, dropping Intimacies (a different conversation for a different day), ignoring old Nature rules, adding Defense to weapons lists, and generally carrying over everything else from the old WoD core. The best I can say for Conditions is that they're 'okay'. I feel like they're a a hook to hang powers on that use key words from the Conditions/Tilts list. From that perspective, used sparingly, I feel like they could be a real boon for designers. In practice, like Style Merits and Armory, I feel like we'd end up with a cascade of poorly considered Tilt lists. But, since I'm doing the design writing, I feel like I can keep that impulse in check.
Feel free to kick in thoughts. I always appreciate them.
It's not that I hate the God-Machine Chronicle update, it's just that it seems clumsy and superfluous compared to the original document. The biblical virtues/vices were, in my opinion, one of the weakest parts of the rules of the original game; a badly constructed token attempt at shoehorning a gothic tone to a generic ruleset. Likewise, Morality. GMC addressed both in a clumsy, somewhat finicky way that isn't especially bad, but doesn't really feel like the World of Darkness. I feel like the original Morality/derangement scandle was really overblown, but Breaking Points seem like the kind of thing that nobody is actually going to want to keep track of at the table. The update comes with a semi-comprehensive chart of +1's and -1's as to what facilitates a breaking point. Virtue/Vice isn't really much better than Nature or Nature/Demeanor when it comes down to it, it just depends on how you want to incentivise play. I don't know about most groups, but almost nobody I've met really fucks with these much in practice. I've used Virtue/Vice in my 1-on-1 game pretty effectively, but I was going out of my way to use as much of the rule set as possible. Actually, now that I think about it, most people don't seem to use enough Willpower to really worry about it, and I feel like if people were making more rolls and reminded they can channel WP, we might see more. For me, the jury's out.
Tilts are just Conditions, and I think Conditions are generally okay. They remind me of little status ailment icons in video game RPGs, though. I can see things like powers and abilities assigning Conditions and mitigating or making them worse, so as a tool for designers to work with in power construction, I can seem them being handy. They seem like they can make a lot of rules clearer. The downside is that, like Merits and equipments, they can result in pages on pages of lists that nerds love so much, and that WoD actually ran perfectly fine without. (I used to enjoy Armory, but then Armory 2 came out, and I felt like we were seeing a lot of bloat without actually getting much in return.) I feel like Conditions are a trade-off, but on the whole, I don't think they're actually making the game better.
Equipment rules are pretty much the only place I'd like to see one or two more elements of complication. Rate's obviously out, and I approve of that. (A special condition that decreases flurry or burst penalties, though...) I feel like Defense would be a big boon to weapon lists. I know why GMC went from weapons adding dice to their roll like any other tool to adding bonus successes on a successful roll, but I think that it's a stupid differentiation from how every single other tool works and I feel like people who were complaining about 'gun nibble' are completely wrong.
I just flat out don't like Beats. I feel like trading them in for exp is basically pointless, and you might as well be handing out exp, bump the exp costs for things up a bit, and call it a day. It's another layer of bookkeeping that's explicitly unneeded. They don't interface with powers but they do totally fuck up exp economy, so using GMC basically either forces you to do a bunch of extra work in terms of keeping track of exp or a lot of work dicking around with exp costs for shit. Saying I don't like Beats is an understatement. I hate this. It's weird how angry they make me. These, right here, are what would stop me from converting my work to GMC, because they don't work with powers at all and the exp system was only in need of the most marginal fix (see my previous entry). God, just... worse than worthless. Terrible.
I wanted to use the rule set as-is, because that's the design practice I was moving towards. Using the current rules state so that the port from WoD to Exalted was seemless. I'm not saying I can't, now, but I feel like - once again - the game I'd write would be much better served by ignoring the update in total, dropping Virtue/Vice for a system more reliant on the four original virtues from Exalted and retaining Motivations, dropping Intimacies (a different conversation for a different day), ignoring old Nature rules, adding Defense to weapons lists, and generally carrying over everything else from the old WoD core. The best I can say for Conditions is that they're 'okay'. I feel like they're a a hook to hang powers on that use key words from the Conditions/Tilts list. From that perspective, used sparingly, I feel like they could be a real boon for designers. In practice, like Style Merits and Armory, I feel like we'd end up with a cascade of poorly considered Tilt lists. But, since I'm doing the design writing, I feel like I can keep that impulse in check.
Feel free to kick in thoughts. I always appreciate them.
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My larger issue with GMC rules is that (and I understand why this is due to the licensing agreements between CCCP and Onyx Path) it's formatted like one of my house rules google docs, where rules are presented as changes from another source you have to reference.
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Does the 2nd V:tM require the first? Because I'm counting Core, GMC, and Vampire.
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I *also* feel like there's no excuse for BP/EXP splits that they're keeping for Exalted 3, and that flat EXP costs are clearly a superior design with very little to suggest otherwise. It's such a simple house rule that works so effectively that I can't find much of a reason not to just write it into the game with the explanation available and if people don't like it - they can reverse it.