this post was submitted on 05 Jan 2024
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A few thoughts on my side.
The sniper : At a shadowrun game, created a sniper with an interfaced gun, like never miss a target, it's pretty cool, I stay at long range while providing cover to the PC. This turns out in The PC are having fun doing the mission, my character stays out as support, time to play tetris because for the next 2 hours I won't do anything
The Malkavian : If you take the VtM lore as written, it's great you're dangerous, wise, borderline frightening and could explode at any moment. Practically, it's hard to play madness properly, especially on a frightening way, it's even harder when you're the clan without clear "combat discipline" meaning that other PC won't really fear you, and without a GM giving you "secret informations to handle". I tried a few time but never got a satisfying result
I feel like the Malkavians need mechanical solutions for these problems.
On derangements: something like 'you go mad when it's a full moon' is vague. I feel like it'd be easier with a just any system, for example 'renew all Willpower during a full moon, but lose one each scene thereafter', which encourages the player to try just about anything during that night.
Twisting the mechanics also means the player doesn't lose agency by thinking 'oh well, time to act crazy I guess'.
On the combat problem: I feel like this is a symptom of a larger problem with the system. Combat has a system - it has levers everywhere which do things. Nothing else does, and you can't push buttons which aren't there.
I've solved the second problem by replacing Combat rules with general 'Contest' rules -- a single system for Extended and Resisted actions, which works for Investigations, competing companies, or snide remarks at Elysium...and sword fights, if you must.
This is how Fate works and I like the idea a lot.
I toyed with having social conflict in CofD (close relative to WoD) use the same rules as combat, but attack willpower instead of health. So screaming at someone is presence + intimidate instead of strength+brawl. Seemed like it would work on paper. Don't have any players at the moment to try it with.
I think it'd work, though I added a little more in terms of stakes. Mostly, the stakes are backgrounds, so characters can steal or destroy others' backgrounds.
Also, it annoyed me that the backgrounds don't have a mechanic, so they're gained and lost by Storyteller fiat.
There's a short overview as a primer.
If that sounds like what you're after, I've recreated the original books, and modified them, so I don't have to reference a Google doc for house rules:
This looks like good stuff. I'm still sad requiem is a dead game line, but this is close enough I could port it over. If I had players, anyway!
I'm likely starting a game next month, so if you have any ideas, shoot them over. There's an issue boards on Gitlab.
You can definitely port Requiem ideas with the files, though if you want 100% actual Requiem, you're better off remaking it from scratch (took me 3 months though, so it's not done lightly). And I've kept a branch called 'original' which has the original, unmodified books, or as close as I could make in case anyone wants to start from there (go to source files, click 'branch', then click 'original').
After you mentioned Malkavians, I started thinking about better derangement rules. I've just pushed a new copy up 5 minutes ago (same link, but the Derangement rules have been changed).
I got myself in character for playing a Malkavian by running the "Malkavian Bible" youtube series a good three or four times between sessions just to keep that strange-spooky-uncanny vibe to my character in the lunatic asylum for angels. The trick was to not deliberately shoot for menacing, frightening, or dangerous-- but to project a constant aura of Twin Peaks-flavor oddness. About as disturbing as a liminal space.
The longer you can keep this energy going, without breaking character, the more effective it gets until all you have to do is lob a smilingly-spoken non-sequitur out into the field to get everyone to stop and look around spooked; and a good Storyteller will work with you to facilitate these moments.
There is always that problem with the ranged character who is optimum at the edge of their range. But most maps don't go that far and if they do you end up nowhere near the fun. The character also never gets hit or targeted so they are wasted hitpoints sitting in the back and bored. The tiny dungeon rooms from dungeon crawls mitigate this problem somewhat but its more fun to be right up in the action
Crazy characters in general. It turns out mental illness makes it really hard to work collaboratively on stuff, who knew :/