What is the best world if darkness bookend why is it gurps vampire?
Seriously though, anybody played this? I'm considering it for my next vampire campaign. Not a fan of the oWoD system or the nWoD splats, but I do enjoy me some GURPS and it's flexibility.
It's a decent way to play vampire, though I'd note that it is outdated and will need some conversion, though not too much. You can handle all the conversions yourself without too much trouble, especally if you know GURPS.
Note that GURPS is somewhat more deadly then the OWOD system and less swing-ey. If you get into a hard fight with armed humans you are more likely to regret it.
I did see it was for gurps 3e. But aside from new magic systems, not that much seems to be different between the editions other than point costs.
post the pdf then you dork
It's 20mb.
Check the gurps general. I think that's where I got it.
I'd recommend Undying. It's inspired by Vampire but is very different rules wise. It's diceless and resolving conflicts between vampires is a matter of betting and spending Blood. There are two stats in Undying; status is how important you are in the vampire community where 0 is an exile and 3 is the leader of this community, the PCs all start at 1 and different classes have different rules for when they go up to 2 or back down to one, most of the game will be within these two ranks, the other stat is Humanity, it goes up and down based on the relationships your character has with humans, the higher your Humanity is the more control you have over your vampiric nature and in general the easier it is to be subtle, the higher your Humanity however, the lower the cap on how much Blood you can have. Blood is gained by hunting and feeding and is spent over time on survival, to use or boost special powers, and to win conflicts with other vampires.
The game alternates between Nightly Play and Downtime Play. Nightly Play begins with some kind of crisis within the vampire community and ends when it's resolved, it operates in the standard RPG way where everyone plays their character in scenes. Downtime play is what happens in-between crises, in Downtime Play you skip through months, years, or decades whilst the PCs (and all the other vampires) plot and scheme. You choose certain downtime actions which will influence the stats, resources and relationships your character has going into the next Nightly Play. The plots you can hatch are also affected by your class.
The classes in Undying consist of three things, a way that class gains and loses Status, two new kinds of schemes for the downtime phase and two special abilities usable in the Nightly phase. Your class is flexible and can be changed between sessions if it makes sense for the character to change how they operate.
For a second I thought you asked if anyone had played Vampire: the Masquerade at all, like Storyteller, and was about to post an entire post asking how the hell anyone could wonder whether people had played one of the most popular RPGs ever made
Vampire GURPS is probably decent though but is there any point in using it since old Storyteller isn't THAT terrible, and has way more content?
Storyteller is pretty bad, especially if you want to run bloody, dangerous combat that resolves relatively quickly. Despite attempts at that, storyteller combat is clunky and it can be very hard to die. Beyond that, advantages and flaws tend to be more meaningful in GURPS, where they are less constrained and better integrated into the system, not to mention character creation is far, far more flexible without a priority system.
Last, the system tends to make your stats more meaningful.
For example Strength in Storyteller is a relatively meaningless attribute that has only a minor effect on damage in close combat. Someone at peak human strength does an average of 1 point damage more then someone with average strength in close combat, and sees almost no other advantages.
In GURPS someone with 14 ST (not peak human, but high) will do nearly twice as much damage in close combat and be significantly tougher then someone with ST 10 (human average).
I'm hard core into GURPS but I feel like this is one time when you just play owod as written.
Groups VtM is ok but you don't really get a whole lot out of it compared to just playing storyteller system.
There's a fan made system for GURPS 4e to do WoD. It's out on the web somewhere.
BUt you're also playing GURPS. so you know, it sucks.
I was a regular V:tM player and GURPS player who joined one of these and it was very different. It shows how grossly imbalanced so much of V:tM is really when you see things broken into costs and it kind of breaks things some.
Mechanically, you're better off running GURPS "World of Darkness" and have the GM stat out a few base "race" templates (all vampires have "X" as a base) then let players build off from there using normal costs. Since it's GURPS you can just do whatever you can pay for and makes sense in the setting. If you want to cling to the VtM and WtA factions and stuff for politics and RP, go nuts.
I think that GURPS Mage turned out to be a better product but I'm biased towards that magic system being awesome.
I recall someone saying someone looked at GURPS WoD stuff and said "this could be so much better" and gave us GURPS Voodoo: the Shadow War shortly after, which was considered a very good system if I recall, just lacked the support WoD did.
sjgames.com
I think I even have it from when I came out, but it was a long time ago and don't recall much other than positive opinions from GURPS people I knew.
I remember reading on one of the steam Jackson forums threads that vampire the Masquerade was incredibly in balanced and those imbalances really came through in the conversion to gurps. I remember finding a copy of vampire at a local resale shop, I didn't buy it but I thought the point costs were pretty high if you wanted to make anything that wasn't the 14th generation vampire.
I've never heard of voodoo, but I enjoy finding 3rd Edition Splats and converting them to 4th so if I ever find it I'll definitely give it a read.
That's not how you spell Changeling.
Oh, whoops! Just noticed this is a GURPS thread.
I'll see myself out.
That's not Hunter
Vampires are like 200+ points if I recall, and Werewolves like 300+ points, as their template is at least 100-150 points.
World of Darkness/Storyteller is pretty absurdly imbalanced. You have 9 attributes and 4 of them are nearly pointless. The people writing the game clearly didn't understand the math involved, as they do crazy shit like allow you to change the target number on success rolls.
Not to mention a few basic combos in the game are stupidly hard to counter and suck any fun from the game. It comes to mind that werewolves get a power that lets them go first in a fight and a power that lets them stop people from attacking.
So a werewolf can go first, attack someone, then use True Fear to keep them from attacking in return.
>Storyteller is pretty absurdly imbalanced.
I bought the 1st edition of oMage for storyteller and never ran a game until I found the GURPS conversion. Those books are almost incomprehensible on top of storyteller looking very off balanced.
It's amazing how cleaner formatting and organization matters.
Storyteller is designed to be imbalanced. Everything is so freeform that the st compensates in real time by just winging it. GURPS can do that but you rarely need to so most GM's don't.
VtM was an attempt to create a different kind of RPG altogether. Gamers, especially powergamers, weren't supposed to be the audience at least at first.
It started as a cause, quickly turned into snootiness, and then eventually became pure laziness. I've talked to old ww devs and they often kicked stuff out the door without any playtest at all.
But the original idea was a good one. A heavily narrative driven game with rules enough that you could wing it but not enough rules to be limiting and broken enough that powergaming was kind of pointless. It didn't work out that way when VtM hit big in the 90s but for a long time its virtues were self evident. Clash of philosophies with GURPS but thirty years later WoD is broken and narratively bankrupt... it became the game the original team made so much fun of. GURPS remains GURPS, but adopted some narrative conventions from Storyteller. You have to really get on board to do it, but you CAN wing it if you're experienced (or use BAD from the action series).
Phil Brucato deserves credit for cleaning up not just the game mechanics, but also the setting and philosophy behind it.
But yeah modern GURPS magic systems blow original MtA away.
I have my copy of GURPS M:tA in front of me and it was Robert Schroeck that handled this one. He also worked on the Werewolf conversion.
On a mechanical level, what would you say is better for running something in the oWoD setting, GURPS or nWoD?
Even the basic ideas have some serious flaws. Strength and Appearance are pure vanity stats then have no real effect and are barely used. Manipulation is used inconsistently and doesn't really make sense as a basic attribute, especially when you also have Wits as an attribute.
Can anyone explain how spell casting works mechanically in WoD?
If you care about mechanics at all, GURPS is much, much better. You can go to lite if you want to keep things simple.
I want to try this with urban shadows and see how it goes. I haven't played it yet but for reading rules it seems like it does wod better than wod
>it can be very hard to die
I would argue that this is a feature, not a flaw. If you're a vampire(or werewolf, for that matter), it SHOULD be hard to kill you.
The whole point of the game is that you can survive the physical damage but you will end up defeated by your own beast in the process
It extends to mortals too, and I'd say that while being a powerful monster focused on internal struggles and threats is cool for a story, you don't really feel powerful, just absurd. A normal person shot with a pistol has an excellent chance to suffer no damage.
BAD is truly fantastic, and so are range bands. Action brings so much good stuff.
>Can anyone explain how spell casting works mechanically in WoD?
In Mage magic is broken up into nine spheres; Forces, matter, Colocation, Prime, etc.
You can either use a single sphere for your spell like using Co-location to shift locations, or combine spheres to create more complicated effects like combining the spirit and life spheres to create bodies for spirits to possess.
>collocation
You need to take a Correspondence course.
When it comes to Vampire, I am very much in the nWoD camp.
I played GURPS Vampire ages ago though, on a con, and remember it didn't stand in the way of me having fun.
Fuck I realized my mistake too late.
Speaking of Mage, there was a document regarding updating the GURPS version to 2e years ago that disappeared.
Article title was "GURPS: Mage the Ascension Second Edition"
and it was posted at docs1.chomikuj.pl
It might be reaching but does anyone know if any copies of this are still floating around?
I never looked at M:tA 2e but I know that it changes how foci and some of the spheres work. I'd be interested to at least know what the original system changes in these areas.
>Can anyone explain how spell casting works mechanically in WoD?
There's basically two types of spellcasting.
The "small" variant is called Sorcery, or more dismissively "Hedge Magic", follows linear paths focussing on distinct topics. Examples here:
whitewolf.wikia.com
The second type, let's calll it "Awakened Magic", works as has been said by control over several distinct spheres or arcana. oWOD Mage has 9 spheres, while nWOD Mage has 10 arcana.
A complete run-down of how those work is basically what you get when you read the CRB of either edition. In general it can be said that the deeper your grasp of each arcanum/sphere, the further your control reaches.
The understanding of both Mage CRBs however is quite an effort, due to the authors not understanding how their own system works time and again. If you manage to make it worth, this is well worth the effort though.
>CRB
not familiar with this acronym.
Core Rule Book, sorry.
No, I am just newish to the hobby so I don't know all the vernacular. Thanks though.
Quick addendum:
"Awakened Magic" will allow you to improvise any spell within the purview of your arcana and within your control of those arcana. So if you have Matter 3, turning concrete to sand or changing a piece of metal into the perfect key for the door in front of you are handled by the same pool. Arcana/spheres can also interact, so if you have Matter 3 and Life 2, and you want to turn concrete into bees, go ahead.
There's a lot more to the system but that is the general direction.
>you want to turn concrete into bees
When would this not be useful?
Sometimes you've got lots of bees and need more concrete.
>When would this not be useful?
When you're Nicolas Cage
Just get Life 2 and some other interesting Arcanum, and it's BEE TIME
&Mind: Turn thoughts into bees.
&Death: Turn shadows into bees.
&Prime: Turn your enemys' spells into bees.
THE LIST GOES ON