Looking for New World of Darkness anecdotes

[KaiserBruno]

Hi everyone!

As stated in the title, I'm looking for people's experiences and stories with the New World of Darkness RPG, particularly if anyone has played Changeling the Lost or Hunter the Vigil, though any of the games will do.

However, as someone who has only played DnD 4th Edition (for 2 sessions) and Pathfinder for their tabletop career, I am wondering how different it is to play this system compared to a d20 based one. As a GM how do you run a campaign in this world compared to Pathfinder? How is being a player different? Any and all info would be greatly appreciated.

[Norman Osborne]

Not what you are looking for, but it's now technically called the Chronicles of Darkness. Onyx Path (and presumably White Wolf / Paradox Interactive) decided to make the distinction between nWoD and cWoD

I'm much more familiar with (Classic) World of Darkness. But both are COMPLETELY different systems than 4E or PF.

[KaiserBruno]

Norman Osborne wrote:

Not what you are looking for, but it's now technically called the Chronicles of Darkness. Onyx Path (and presumably White Wolf / Paradox Interactive) decided to make the distinction between nWoD and cWoD

I'm much more familiar with (Classic) World of Darkness. But both are COMPLETELY different systems than 4E or PF.

I see. How are stories and campaigns told/played in World of Darkness? I know Pathfinder is a combat heavy system, is the same true of WoD?

[Neurophage]

KaiserBruno wrote:

I see. How are stories and campaigns told/played in World of Darkness? I know Pathfinder is a combat heavy system, is the same true of WoD?

WoD is absolutely not a combat-heavy system. Much like in real life, unless you're a phenomenally skilled combatant, fighting more than one opponent at a time is a terrible idea and getting hurt at all usually leads to an inescapable death spiral. If you get hurt, healing takes a while. Like, days or weeks. There are very few sources of fast healing in the entire system, and all of them have risks associated with them. There are a total of two methods of reviving the dead in the entire system, and both have a pretty good chance of going horribly awry.

In Hunter: The Vigil, hunters are investigators first and warriors second. If you try and fight something alone or without knowing what it is or anything about it, you probably just die. You're not a trained warrior raised to hunt monsters. You're a family man whose kid was kidnapped by something with a dozen eyes and needles for skin and you're out in the woods looking for them with two guys you meet for golf behind you and your dad's old shotgun under your arm. Or you're college kid who knows that creepy sorority is doing something for rush week besides the usual youthful indiscretions and that that "something" has something to do with demons. Or you're a guy who's absolutely certain that his friend's lethargy and pallor have nothing to do with drug abuse and everything to do with dating a vampire and you're putting the bloodsucking harlot in the dirt where she belongs whether anyone believes you or not. You're woefully under-prepared, probably insane, and the only difference between you and a serial killer is... well, okay, there really isn't any difference between a hunter and a serial killer.

And, of course, you can't just forget the things that you kill because your friends and family can only see you coming in late to work covered in bruises or stumbling home at three in the morning with blood in your hair and stench of gunpowder on your clothes before they get suspicious. Think about it. If you were a cop and you saw rope, zip-ties, pipe wrenches and a welding mask in the back seat of a guy's car, the same car that had been spotted near the crime scenes of violent homicides, what would assume about him?

[thejeff]

Of course, that's not quite so true when you're playing the monsters, not the Hunter.

I haven't played the New WoD, but have they really changed Werewolf, to take the extreme example, enough that combat is a bad idea?

[Norman Osborne]

The playstyle is going to vary, both based on the "setting" and the individual campaign/GM. By "setting" I mean if you are playing Vampire, Werewolf, Mage, "vanilla" World of Darkness, or any of the others. A game of "vanilla" nWoD where you are normal people encountering monsters is a much different game than Werewolf: The Forsaken.

[KaiserBruno]

Sorry I haven't gotten to my thread, been a bit busy.

After looking into it further I'll probably try to run a Changeling game in the near-future. Im wondering if I could build some fae monsters for the Hedge to resemble some Pathfinder fey creatures like the twigjack or redcap. Has anyone ever tried that?