T. B.'s page

Long story short, I'm trying to learn my way around the Old World of Darkness. Thing is, after Pathfinder, it's less than... intelligible, sometimes. So, basically, is there some resource out there that walks through a combat or social scenario, step by step?

I'm basing most of my knowledge off of the 20th Anniversary Vampire the Masquerade rules, by the way.

D20 Modern and White Wolf... don't quite fit what I'm looking for. Think more of a military simulator that takes even the littlest of minutiae into account. Multiple people to pilot a tank or jet and to be aware of the g-forces' effect on their bodies, radar jamming requiring knowledge of channels and wavelengths, hacking requiring the player to have an understanding of the operating system and source code, bomb defusal being... basically a real-time mock bomb defusal minigame, and so on.

I know that may not sound like fun to some, but it's what I'm looking for.

I'm curious. Are there, in your opinion, systems that are simply too complicated for their own good, or outright complex simply to be complex? Either in terms of combat, leveling up, or any other aspect.

And, to you, at what point does depth cross the line into miserly scrupulousness?

I ask this, being rather generally unfamiliar with any systems outside of Pathfinder.

While Pathfinder has certainly served us adequately, I'd like to ask if there's anything else that has more emphasis on story, character background, and dare I say... realism. Less gamey-ness, if that makes sense. Less emphasis on levels and feats, more on action and circumstance That may seem odd to ask for in a setting of magic and megafauna, but what can I say.

I've looked into GURPS, and while it seems like a step in the right direction, the arbitration of 'advantages' and 'disadvantages' doesn't exactly thrill me.

Anything that really fits that description? Or am I condemned to create my own system?

Thanks.