What is the best white wolf game?

Well, I've only recently gotten into WoD, so I haven't really gotten a chance run a game yet.

My GM's a little... dour, lets say.

>My GM's a little... dour

O-ooh

Well you should still have fun with your friends and such.

WoD becomes a blast when you are able to kind of take a step back and be the kind of crazy people who would survive in it.

It probably doesn't help that my first exposure to V:tM was actually Clanbook: Toreador, and the first things I read where one Toreador's in-depth impressions of all the other clans. To paraphrase some highlights...

>Giovanni
>"Your typical Giovanni likes fucking his sister so much that he doesn't stop, even after she's dead. But seriously, though, these guys are fucking creepy."

>Lasombra
>"Sooner or later one of these guys will come up to you and start trying to talk you over to their side. When that happens, just nod and smile and crank up the Presence, then when he's gone run straight to the Prince and the sheriff so they can go bust some heads."

(the phrase "crank up the Presence" was actually used; I'm not paraphrasing that, I distinctly remember it)

>Ventrue
>"They literally have a secret Internet website dedicated to preserving the Masquerade. Just type in the rough parameters of what went wrong, and a list of how to deal with it pops up."

>Setite
>"Their 'corruption', in reality, just means getting back in touch with the human stuff. Oh, gee, sex! That's not any kind of throwback to the mortal days. Drugs? Humanity all over it. Knowledge? Money? That's all humanity, not the Beast. They're basically us, except that they're bad at it."

Basically Clanbook: Toreador involved the Toreador talking shit about the rest of the Clans and painting them in the most ridiculous picture possible. It didn't even take itself too seriously: The "history of the clan" section, for example, is narrated by a Toreador elder who'd recently woken up from about 300 years of sleep. The Toreador who woke her up, while educating her about the modern world, took her to a mosh pit looking to shock her. The Toreador elder instead just jumped right in and started moshing away. Turns out the mosh pit was totally a thing Medieval France during the Plague years, according to her, only they called it the Danse Macabre back then.

That sounds hilarious

Man, I really wish that I could read oWoD sourcebooks without wanting to stab my eyes out with how bad the formatting is

I'm interested in eventually running a WoD game (or games) at some point, mostly because it is very upfront about being a storytelling game over a game where you spend a ton of time rolling dice to kill shit. I like the vibe the rulebook gives of "Do not fuck with the darkness, for the darkness fucks back with chainsaws" where you want to avoid engaging with supernatural creatures because they will completely eviscerate you in about two turns and if you do manage to get away, it can take *weeks* to heal up.

I'd enjoy running something with a serious tone, but nowhere near as dour and nihilistic as the books sound. Like my image of a kick off to a Vampire game would be entering an underground vampire club where some hookers were offering an "Easter special" where they nail you to a cross and work you over, and everyone who sees it just rolls their eyes and comments that they must be one of the newly turned batch that still thinks vampirism is all about blasphemy and being "turned away from god" and shit, while all the ones who've been around for a while realize that it's just a much longer, repeating loop of high school drama and day to day malaise. I think it'd set the tone pretty solidly in a serious place while still being a bit tongue-in-cheek about the nature of vampire life. Leaves it open for plenty of dry humor.

Jesus christ that's fucking amazing.

I got that book in a recent humble bundle Imma read that shit.

>where you want to avoid engaging with supernatural creatures because they will completely eviscerate you in about two turns and if you do manage to get away, it can take *weeks* to heal up

Depends on the creature. iirc werewolves are pretty badass baseline and vampires can heal up quickly.

I was under the impression that humans were the only ones who were completely fucked but those crazy shits will still go apeshit on a demon if they get the drop on it (which is the best part of playing Hunter)

>nowhere near as dour and nihilistic as the books sound

So long as this is your mantra you cannot go wrong with WoD.

Hippies: The ecoterrorism

Street Fighter 2: the storytelling game

I like the way you think, user.

Isn't this oWoD Werewolf?

Most whitewolf games are all 2edgy4u/2deep4u aside from Hunter the Vigil which is basically mediocre but entertaining HFY

The strength of white wolf is that you can apply the system to pretty much any setting and it works.

immortalpedia.wikia.com/wiki/Special:Random

Yeah, true enough, but you also have to take into account that there is a *very* limited health pool. When you compare to something like D&D/Pathfinder where you have a pool of hitpoints that tends to be sizeable, WoD has 10 slots that can fill up slowly versus some enemies, or against certain weapons could potentially go to life-threatening fullness in 1-2 rounds. Something that deals 4 points aggravated damage puts you at 60% health with one attack. Silver and/or Iron weaponry is almost guaranteed to kill you as a supernatural creature unless you fuck right off.

This is actually the thing that most has me holding back from running a game yet, because combat seems like it needs to be over and done in like two turns or you risk killing your entire party, or relegating them to a very long recovery period. I just don't understand how such a low health ceiling can work in a fight with something that can easily put you on deaths door with a single claw swipe.

Sounds like you played with a shitty GM.

Actually I have a good DM, but I've read the WoD books and the writing is either painfully edgy or up its own ass trying to be profound

Can we count their affiliates at Arthaus?
I love Secrets of Zir'an; never got to play, but setting and art compelled me to pick up books even when broke.

>Immortals setting
>Population-Assholes of varying degrees
>Magic-Robert E Howard style
>Titular immortals-Varies between mary sue bullshit, bro-tier eldritch beings, and insanity
needs more input from Veeky Forums
get a fucking clue and listen to our suggestions

>basing the game off of the tone of the books

You already fucked up.

>Population-Assholes of varying degrees

Only way to run Vampire

Probably an unpopular opinion, but really liked Wraith.

Well. I really liked playing badass ghosts who literally fought the manifestation of ennui and depression.

Never had a good vampire game, though; people always wanted to play the most fucked up characters imaginable when I just wanted to have some fun being a fundamentally decent human being.

Likewise with The Lost; had a DM who had some True Fae show up and tried to act as if the True Fae were even remotely decent (This after it turned out one of them was into fucking human sacrifice). I played it as if it were the logical situation; my character flipped his shit, grabbed as much anti-Fae equipment as possible, whipped the other players into a righteous frenzy, and got curbstomped by fiat as the Fae had somehow stolen our cold iron weapons from us with, I shit you not, literal fucking time magic.

I wasn't invited back; should've known the game was going to be shit the instant I had one such True Fae dead to rights with a contract: the Fae wanted everyone but his Redcap to leave, I was cool with this, I tried to take back the maiden who had been kidnapped and started this entire affair as was my want accordance with the contract, DM blew a gasket, ect.

Ran a nice enough Mage game once, though. Ended with a Life Mage kicking a Arch-Demon into outer space.

What's a white wolf game?

How to run combat will depend heavily on which system you're using.

But yeah, using armor and cover and Grenades is a thing.

Also most enemies shouldn't be aware of your supernatural status unless your group is going loud all the time. That's some main antagonist shit.

Or in V:TM punishment for breaking the Masquerade.

The high lethality of combat is to encourage your group to not enter into it unprepared, and to run the fuck away if someone else IS prepared.

I mean, V:TM at least had builds you can make to deal with it using Potence and Celerity and whatnot. But even then you need to make a serious investment.

Black Dog were better

>forgot pic

Wraith, no question.

Runner-up: Changeling the Dreaming because DiTerlizzi

Ive always sorta wanted to try this. Its combat system sounded fun.

I see you.

vtm

And it is. Plays like a beat-em up. Hundred-hand slap FTW!

I honest to god never played Wraith or Mummy and I had the damn games from the day their books were released. I also have a goddamn roleplaying going on. No one is interested in those two.

>Shitty Changeling GM ruined the game
Damn shame, that's my favourite game line. We once played a changeling heavy metal band called Cold Iron. We had a rock-off to the death with a bunch of Loyalists and drove our van into a spider-monster's head.

I've always found that VtM naturally transforms into that no matter what the intended tone originally was.

I had way too many TRIGGERING incidents with players and GMs while playing Changeling, ever before the whole SJW bullshit happened online. Maybe it was tied to larger-than-usual number of female players, I don't know.

Werewolf: The Apocalypse. Because that is the only white wolf game I have ever read since I got the rulebook at a yard sale for a dollar.

White Wolf has always been a Mecca for that type of person. Changeling is doubly so.

So, What we do in the Shadows is a V:TM game?

It is really funny you should say that user, because my friends and I live in Wellington, and we ran a VtM campaign years ago that pretty much resembled the movie in every way

I have to agree that most VtM games seemed to inevitably propel themselves towards farce

>The high lethality of combat is to encourage your group to not enter into it unprepared, and to run the fuck away if someone else IS prepared.

Wiser words were never spoken. WoD isn't about playing murder-hobos traveling from tavern to tavern. Planning, forethought, and a viable escape plan should always be conducted before combat. And when shit hits the fan (and it will) don't try to go for a battle of attrition. Run the fuck away and regroup. It's a game system about operating behind the scenes, after all.

Changeling the lost.

Yes, yes I do know I'm an edgy faggot.

Only one user has mentioned Wraith because everyone else knows Wraith is the obvious winner and are just picking their second choice.

>He plays WW games in their intended tone

I love all of them, even Werewolf the Apocalypse. Something about all that 90s edge and cynicism hits the spot for me.

Aberrant

>immortals
Aww. They got rid of my guy.

>The strength of white wolf is that you can apply the system to pretty much any setting and it works.

Nwod would be so much better as a setting agnostic system.

>Any of them, but only with cherry-picked lore, and almost never with the intended tone.
This I agree with, but I think a darker tone can definitely work, it just has to not use the 'logic' and 'reasoning' in the actual books. Lots of homebrewing to make things less cartoony.

Blood and Smoke essentially turns Vampires into fucking 90s superheroes, it's so fucking stupid. The insistence on making the rules force them into being good guys is just blech

Honestly, dour and nihilistic works REALLY well in World of Darkness. The World of Darkness games are NEVER dour and nihilistic, they're all about shock horror that turns out to be, with just a tiny bit of analysis, farcical or kitsch, and this problem is exacerbated in NWoD.
oWoD was always highly political and opinionated, nothing nihilistic about it, Wraith notwithstanding.
The game that should be the most nihilistic, or at the very least detached from regular human morality, Mage the Ascension, is all about "muh natural law, muh freedom, muh evil industrialism"

thankfully, most people realize the Technocracy are the closest to good guys in that setting you can get, pretty fast

That's sort of the point of the combat: it's fucking dangerous, so don't jump to it at first opportunity, unless you're a Hunter, in which case take advantage of the fact that no matter how big and scary you are, seventeen pounds of C4 will still blow you to high hell and back

>>Never had a good vampire game, though; people always wanted to play the most fucked up characters imaginable when I just wanted to have some fun being a fundamentally decent human being.
I fucking hate when people do this in Vampire games.

I just don't see the point of playing the World of Darkness and wanting to be a completely ordinary person who happens to have magic. That's basically a superhero at that point.

Now someone who's unimaginably fucked up, but trying to be a fundamentally decent human being, that's playing into the theme of the fact that they're not actually human beings at all, but the important thing is that it needs to be an attempt, successful or otherwise, and for it to be an attempt, some factor has to oppose it from the get-go

Hunter is top tier

I suppose we're talking about the same thing, even if (I think?) you think we're talking about different things.

I'm referring to people who, in Vampire, pick a character who is Nature: Monster and Demeanor: Deviant, and who chooses to target children to consume in the game.

Character's who are broken, that's fine; characters who have a shit load of baggage, likewise; but there's a line between baggage and basically playing kiddie-fiddler, the Vampire.

I mean, I was playing a Nosferatu who used to be a model before being forcibly embraced and getting all sorts of fucked up shit happen to him.

The only one that isn't a raging dumpster fire is Masquerade.

Werewolf the Apocalypse is pretty good and fun. I didn't like Mage and couldn't find a tolerable group for Demon or Vampire so I can't comment.

I'm not so sure - white wolf games usually have bad combat and street fighter doesn't do noncombat well. But if you do, please tell us how it went.

The Technocracy are total bros. Always wanted to play a Technocracy campaign and kill homeopaths/scientologists in the name of progress.
I'm not trying to be edgy or sarcastic, I just think it would be pretty fun.

Yeah, it's good to have a game where you can forget about over-politicised writers, because all political views involve hating monsters, and a game where you can avoid being a complete emo, because Hunters start off as decent people, and if they go full emo they become villains themselves.

Mage: The Ascension
Especially when playing as Technocrats

I'm a huge fan of Exalted, but the right answer is probably Adventure! The other Trinity Continuum v1 games had good premises, but the mechanics were a mess.

I haven't played enough WoD to say much about the different games there, save that C:tL is probably best at sticking to its themes and making them gameable.

The Technocracy are far from being bros apart from the Void Engineers, Engineers are literally without flaw, but they are a realistically portrayed organization with true moral and philosophical nuance. It is neither good, nor evil, but a group of individuals with their own agendas.

In oWoD, this was OBVIOUSLY the case too from even a cursory examination of the setting, but the books wrote about them as if they were mustache-twirling supervillains who hate freedom because they are fascist and evil oppressive science men. Their actions were completely justified for the most part, the writers kept telling us to hate them for no discernible reason.
Yeah they have flaws, but the Traditions are dysfunctional as fuck, and only morally 'better' because they don't have the responsibility of policing the whole fucking earth

Their reign was terror for just about anyone who wasn't a Mage

Abberrant/Aeon Trinity

What would you have to change in the setting about the Technocracy and the Traditions to make the latter actually read as better than the former?

Make the Technocracy the underdogs.

That's it.

They championed a magic (Science) that would be within the reach of the average Sleeper, they do battle against things that are questionably above their weight-class (Ravos, I think, being a prime example), and they, as a collective, stress the importance of power coming with responsibility.

Now compare that to the dickbutts your average player is going to make.

Face it; the only reason people root for the Traditions are because they are underdogs, and triumphing against all odds is seen as more heroic.

Mage isn't a game where you're fighting a losing war; you lost the war, and horrifyingly enough, you lost it to the good guys.

>the only reason people root for the Traditions are because they are underdogs

Does anyone actually do that?

Look, everyone knows the best White Wolf game there ever was is Dudes of Legend.

I think there may have been a misunderstanding. What I mean with my question was, what would you have to do to the setting to make the wizards WORTH rooting for?

Old and new Mage

Oh. My bad; I somehow read your question as being on how to make the Technocracy as even more Heroic then they already are.

The Traditions, it's a bit more of an uphill battle; the reason for that is because they have a Romantic interpretation of the world, and the Romantics had a horrible habit of ascribing 'Nature' == 'Good' and 'Science' == 'Bad'; a perspective no sane person would actual make in an era where eating meat as its still wriggling is less than ideal, and one that seems almost ironclad amongst said mages to an almost dogmatic degree.

You COULD make Mages more moderate, and Technocracy as extreme in their desire for 'Scientific' progress; of course, then you run into Hitler parallels, and that's it own can of worms, and it fundamentally abandons the idea of having multiple, if philosophically incompatible, ideals.

I suppose you might be able to manage it if Awakening wasn't such a clusterfuck that kills some, maims most, and causes still others to go batshit crazy, OR if you tied the increase in problematic Awakenings with Technocracy over-idealization of 'order'.

Emphasize the Technocracy as being extremely authoritarian. They are the worst aspects of 1984, The Matrix, and MIB (comic version) all rolled into one. They don't care about humanity, they care about order and structure.

Then make the Traditions actually care about Humanity. Make sure that each one can explain not only why their version of reality would be awesome, but how individual people would visibly benefit.

From what I heard the combat system is DISASTROUSLY bad, but that can be part of the fun if you play it 'right'.
Also, apparently you shouldn't allow cyborgs or basically any option in the Player's Handbook.
I've considered giving it a whirl, but it really takes the 'Street Fighter is full of offensive stereotypes' idea and runs with it like there's no tomorrow. It's so fucking hilarious and campy the only way you can take it seriously is to buy into it wholesale.

...

Nancy Drew: White Wolf of Icicle Creek

It's easy to make Mages "good"
Consider the radical and brutal acts committed by the Technocracy against Reality Deviants, or those suspected of being related to RDs.
Consider their aversion to individual freedom and free will. Consider their predilection for bureaucracy, to act only when it might be too late.
Their manipulation of the groundwork of reality for the purpose of direct control is... not evil, but a scary thought when absolute power over existence is placed into individuals.

They also seek to prevent Sleepers from Awakening, for "their own good".

Existentially it seems empty to lead a life within the cave. The Mages want to blow the cave up. Some might die, but the rest will finally see the truth of reality, be free of the bondage of the shadow theatre.

The Technocrats on the other hand went outside and brought back some pelts so it'll be more comfy to sit in there, and they'll violently beat down anyone who wants to go outside too.

>first ever world of darkness game
>mage
>im a cult of ecstasy guy
>we're gonna do character creation and prelude
>everyone flakes after allocating stat points, gives us no idea of carried gear or backstory
>one guy remains and rambles about being akashic brother (but a girl)
>write out my backstory
>basically blackbeard reincarnated, maybe, because avatars kinda a dick and won't confirm or deny
>gonna create new Nassau and relive the golden age of piracy
>akashic fuck drops out before we do the prelude bit of the prelude
>been nearly two weeks
>got a written out backstory from akashic monk faggot
>no one is even remotely interested in trying to tie our characters together and while ive worked on establishing goals to pursue for my character and getting feedback on this his characters goals is literally "make money kill the chinese"
>GM sais fuck it, we'll do a net campaign, hell have an NPC pull us together or something and we'll figure some shit out
>guess im gonna just pirate shit in virtual reality
>my grand goal may actually turn out to be illegally downloading tons of anime

how fucked am i lads? GM said he has some ideas and he's actively working on the story, but we both suspect akashic faggot will flake and it will end up just being me and him, though both of us have said we'd be fine with that.

So long as both you and the GM are both fine with the fact that this is probably going to be a one on one game, it should be fine.

There's no reason Mage can't work as a one-on-one game. Smaller parties are essential to a good WoD game, since it gives you more time to angst over how your life is so awful for giving you superpowers

Mage the Ascension, hands down.

Man, I'm surprised no-one mentioned Orpheus, the sequel to Wraith: The Oblivion.

It was fucking awesome. The end of the game has the protagonists venture into the Underworld and become the new Ferrymen. They also meet Abel.

Wait, VTM Abel?

Yes. The Lady of Fate in Wraith was Eve, as you probably know. In the ending of Orpheus, the players meet and speak with Abel, who turns out to be the ultimate weapon against Grand Maw.

They can use him to channel life-force from our world to kill or blind Grandmother, the progenitor of the Neverborn/Malfeans.

Because literally no one knows about Orpheus

Me included, please tell me more
I've heard it fixed most issues with Wraith, but being unfamiliar with both beyond Wraith's general setting and its themes fitting right up my alley as a chronic depressive, I got no clue

GUN SLINGING, CATTLE RUSTLING, TRAIN ROBBING, MUTHA-FUCKIN' WEREWOLVES

Scion is the most quintessential White Wolf book, IMO.

The concept is good, and it has some interesting ideals mechanically (fate-binding for example), but the self-insert characters whose story takes up most of the books are awful, a lot of the specific fluff is terrible, and the rules go from 'mediocre' in the first book to 'unplayably broken' in the next ones.

Basically, Orpheus is about astral projectors. A group known as the Orpheus Group began to plumb the nature of life and death (coincidentally, after the Sixth Great Maelstrom) and they learnt several ways for the soul to 'project' out of the body, basically forming a temporary ghost.

Since the Underworld is fucked from the events of Ends of Empire (Charon returns, ascends, all hell breaks loose) the Malfeans have free run of the place. But even the Malfeans are in deep shit, because Grandmother (i.e. Grand Maw) the progenitor of the Neverborn, has awoken from slumber. She's coming to eat her children, and then eat the world.

The Neverborn are focused their efforts on the real world, to create as many Specters as possible. Why? So they can basically conscript these evil ghosts into their armies to fight Grand Maw's hordes of alien, fleshless spirits that are without number. To make things even more complicated, the very first batch of projectors (Death-row criminals) are still around, and their leader - a charismatic sociopath called Uriah Bishop - is fucking everything for everyone.

The Orpheus Group is destroyed in Book 2, and the PCs end up on the run, framed for murders they didn't commit. They end up playing a cat-and-mouse game with the government, while being stalked by spectral assassins and other stuff.

There's a lot of cool stuff in Orpheus, and I'll try to list some of it:

- The ghosts in Orpheus are REALLY POWERFUL. They are insanely powerful. The new version of Arcanoi are called Horrors, and they don't have 'tiers' - You just pick the amount of Vitality (That's the MP/HP stat, like Pathos and Corpus combined) and shit explodes.
- There are multiple 'Shades' of ghosts, which map to the old Arcanoi types, except jacked up. For instance, Banshees get Keening and Fatalism, Haunters get Inhabit and Pandemonium and a bit of Argos, and so on. Some of the high-level horrors involve creating miniature Nihls (Banshee)!

mediafire.com/download/xah7wwecdo55e4j/WOD_-_Werewolf_-_The_Wild_West_-_Core_Rulebook.pdf
mediafire.com/download/6jhtcmvjyochywd/WOD_-_Werewolf_-_The_Wild_West_-_Companion.pdf
It's such a long time since I've seen anyone mention those, and considering it's a setting that eliminates more or less all of the elements that people don't like about the WoD (mainly the supposedly toxic fanbase, the subcultural pandering and the meaningless brooding), I'll just slap it up here in case anyone's interested in playing werewolves in the Wild West.
Get arsed.
I'm a long-time oWoD player, and Scion is not in any way typically White Wolf - it's typical new White Wolf, since it was released after Justin Achilli gutted the company staff in 2004. The editing is terrible, the fluff is terrible, there's no attempt at balance whatsoever and multiple gods are always objectively better choices in any and all ways, the sample characters are cringy, the tone is ham-handed and inconsistent, and the only good thing about the whole steaming mess is the concept.
A quintessential White Wolf book would be Vampire. The concept, rules, mood, setting and basically everything else is solid - the game actually succeeds at creating mood and tension, and the portrayal of vampires is both fun to play and has depth for longer games. There's some real meat on the game - which makes it a shame that it's terribly edited and the combat system completely collapses if you don't comb the book with a fine-toothed comb from one end to the other to catch all the little rules smattered in the midst of fluff passages, and the fluff is often painfully overdone in places. It's a game that works well when you give it a second read-through, and the retards are the ones who play it after their first.

The clanbooks are fucking great. A few of them were duds but the majority are hilarious.

- Haunters get to turn into a fucking monster truck for their final power. Will o' Wisps can channel the force of Oblivion itself.
- There's a 'secret' Shade, the Orphan-Grinder, which is a redeemed Specter, who uses the equivalent of Dark Arcanoi. They're insanely badass, and have powers that include summoning spectral steeds, warping their bodies, possessing other ghosts, and so on..
- You don't have to deal with the Shadow. Living projectors have no Shadow. Ghosts have a Spectral twin that tries to fuck with their life, but you don't have an internal voice that constantly tries to kill you.
- A force of human projectors eventually fights an all-out war against Spectral swarms. Canonically, they win.
- The PCs must ultimately travel into the Underworld to find some way to defeat Grandmother. There are multiple outcomes, all of them have horrific consequences.

It's not all perfect, of course. The Marrow shade (Moliate) is utterly broken in that it simply doesn't work. The Sandman (Phantasm) is severely underpowered.

Also, the HP = MP thing means that you're using your HP to fuel Horrors. You can have at most 10 Vitality, and you can burn 1 Willpower for 3 more. That means you can have, at most, 40 Vitality ever.

There's a lot more stuff, but I encourage you to check out the books for yourself. It's only 6 books, and the metaplot is very tightly scripted.

V:tM and DA:V. V:tM is more polished mechanicswise, but I prefer DA:V's setting and fluff.

>V:tM is more polished mechanicswise
But DA:V is an evolution from V:tM. It fixes a lot of stuff, especially for the disciplines.