Dresdenverse game using World of Darkness rules

[quentra]

So, I recently started playing WoD, and got to thinking. The settings are very similar (not exactly, but pretty damn close.) With a few rules tweaks (No Paradox, etc.), I can see playing a Dresden game with the rulesets as very feasible. Y'know, until the actual rules come out. 

Thoughts? Anyone tried it yet? I can't see it as being too 'out there.'

[TheMouse]

You could end up with something similar, but it wouldn't be the same. Mind magic would be rather different, as would Life and Time. Several things that are easy to do with few consequences in Mage are difficult, have severe consequences, or both in Dresden.

When you get into the other supernatural splats, the differences start to stack up. Vampire would be okay at running Red Court vamps, but pretty poor for White or Black Court. You might be able to handle it by passing different Disciplines to different Courts, capping them differently, etc. I imagine that it'd take a lot of work to get things about right.

But if that stuff doesn't bother you, it could work. If your group is fine with hand waving away differences things could work out well.

[Matrix Refugee (formerly Morraeon)]

I think of the Blampires as pretty much analogous to the Nosferatu, but that's just me.

[Jaroslav]

It can work, you just have to change the arcana a little. No more turning orange juice into gasoline or corn into flies for starting wizards. And things like the fate arcanum are probably going to have to go.

[quentra]

Yeah, that's what I've been thinking. Changing a lot of the ways arete, quint, and the spheres interact. As for the Vampire side of things, I think just modifying the bloodlines into courts and giving them specific disciplines would help. Probably not gonna have a Werewolf sphere, and Changeling is gonna need a lot of modification, but Hunter works pretty well for the powered mortals, I think. Since black magic leaves a visible stain on your soul in the Dresdenverse, I'd probably introduce a humanity meter of some kind for Mages and Vampires.

I mean, yeah, I see Black Court as pretty much Nossie, and developing new types of vampire for the Courts isn't overly difficult. I mainly like the system since so much of it is already easily adapted to an urban fantasy setting, seeing as it is one itself. Also, I'm constructing the game using old World of Darkness rules, mainly because I haven't looked at the new ones. Is the system any better?

[Matrix Refugee (formerly Morraeon)]

I mean, yeah, I see Black Court as pretty much Nossie, and developing new types of vampire for the Courts isn't overly difficult. I mainly like the system since so much of it is already easily adapted to an urban fantasy setting, seeing as it is one itself. Also, I'm constructing the game using old World of Darkness rules, mainly because I haven't looked at the new ones. Is the system any better?

The same friend who got me into TDF also turned me on to WoD, and while I haven't gotten into it much (due to not being able to find a local gaming group), he claims the new WoD is more streamlined than old WoD, and since he's been into it a lot longer than I have, I'm taking his word for it.

[TheMouse]

Also, I'm constructing the game using old World of Darkness rules, mainly because I haven't looked at the new ones. Is the system any better?

It's streamlined. Whether that's better is an individual taste thing.

A lot of things are resolved as one roll rather than several. Combat, for example, is one roll per attack. You have a dice pool of At+Ab+modifier, from which you subtract the defense of you target. Then you roll and the number of successes are how much damage you did. Many powers are either At+Ab+mojo stat -At (of target) or At+Ab+mojo versus At+mojo (of target).

Rather than changing target numbers, everything is 8+ for success. Difficulties add or subtract dice, so a really easy roll might give you +5 dice, while a really difficulty one gives you -5. You reroll 10s and get to continue to add successes; some things have 9 again or 8 again, which mean that if the roll is 9+ or 8+ you reroll, which increases your chance of success.

The games do a lot more of a toolkit type approach. There aren't global conspiracies and organizations with their fingers in all the pies. Instead, there is a more local focus, which allows PCs to accomplish more and gain meaningful power. All the game lines are designed to work together, but you only use what you want to.

[quentra]

Well, the starting points of the conversion I think I've smoothed out, though that's only in theory. I still to need run some practical trials to see how it works in a game.

To facilitate that, I've starting a room on OpenRPG - Semiautomagic. If anyone's interested in trying out my conversions, feel free to drop by. It's on Veav I, and available most of the day.

[finarvyn]

I've starting a room on OpenRPG - Semiautomagic. If anyone's interested in trying out my conversions, feel free to drop by. It's on Veav I, and available most of the day.

I'm very much interested in your WoD conversion for Dresden, but am not sure where to look for it. For those of us who are unfamiliar with OpenRPG, can you (1) tell us more, and (2) give some sort of link so that I can find it?

[thausgt]

So, I recently started playing WoD, and got to thinking. The settings are very similar (not exactly, but pretty damn close.) With a few rules tweaks (No Paradox, etc.), I can see playing a Dresden game with the rulesets as very feasible. Y'know, until the actual rules come out. 

Thoughts? Anyone tried it yet? I can't see it as being too 'out there.'

For what it's worth the oWoD had at least two editions of "WoD: Sorceror" that would work very well for covering what the official Dresden RPG refers to as "Focused Practitioners". NWoD has "Second Sight" that emphasizes... well, what most would call psychics but also includes a few "hedge magic" powers. Both sets are designed to work with characters who operate only a step or two beyond the limits of perfectly ordinary human abilities.

IMHO, Harry's level of power (full membership in the White or High Council, able to step into the Nevernever pretty much whenever he's reasonably rested, etc.) sets him a step above the hedge wizards/psychics from the above-mentioned books, but not quite at the level of Awakened willworkers. On the one hand, he's able to pull off some very impressive tricks with what he knows, mixing and matching various effects according to his own needs and within his particular limits. This makes him a bit more powerful than hedge wizards as described in these books, who would have to do considerable research and practice to create these kinds of focused effects.

On the other hand, he states specifically that the full-bore wadding-up-the-laws-of-physics-like-wet-newspaper sort of magic that the Awakened can use is outside his ken. Consider his favorite spell: a blast of fire. The books state repeatedly that he is capable of conjuring fire by sucking the heat from the environment and channelling that into his attacks. The closest approximation of that effect in Mage: the Awakening is probably "Transform Forces", a 4-dot Forces effect (p. 173, for anyone with the book). A character with 4 dots in this particular Arcanum is equally capable of seeing in total darkness (Nightsight, Forces 1), maintain a comfortable temperature under any circumstances (Control Heat, Forces 2), and control light (Light Mastery, Forces 3), along with a host of other abilities. As you can probably see, Harry would probably have been extremely grateful to be able to use these abilities at various points in the books...

Part of the problem with White Wolf's Mages (both old and new WoD) is that their power is limited only by their knowledge of a particular Sphere/Arcanum, rather than a complex system of "schools" (D&D, GURPS, and probably a few others). It's very difficult for beginning players to use their powers to best effect, and it's difficult for game-masters to keep experienced players from completely derailing the game with tricky spellwork.

Ultimately, my advice would be to play around with both levels to see which ones you find suit Harry and his cohorts the best. For example, Mort the ectomancer could have several dots in Ephemera (oWoD: Sorcerer, p.98) or a series of appropriate powers from nWoD: Second Sight (Mediumist, p. 42; Ghost Ally, p. 65; See Spirits, p. 117 as three examples), or he could have access to the Spirit Sphere only, and limited to rotes and rituals; no fast-casting allowed.

With regards to Semiautomagic: please keep this forum informed about how the project is going! It sounds like a tall challenge, but I'm sure you'll come up with some fascinating ways to meet it.

[gilwen]

i'm a little late to this thread but I've been using Witchfinders and second sight for the magic system. In my game I'm not trying to mimic exactly the dresdenverse but merely have it be a heavy influence. I'm using the other hunter and wod branded books to flesh everythign out. I'm not using any of the other major WW games.

Gil

[rickayelm]

If you are going to use wod I would use the old world of darkness rules. Just use sorceror for focussed practitioners and use the thaumaturgy rules for mages. Thauamaturgy, from vampire, is split into two parts, rituals which cover thaumaturgy from dresden files and schools that would cover evocation.

[Korwin]

Dont know the nWoD, but in the old you got problems if you wanted to mix the different supernaturals (Mage, Vamp., etc.)


aWoD: Alternate World of Darkness   (in the Playtesting phase)

The World of Darkness is Overcrowded
You can't have been Rasputin, our guys were Rasputin!

Let's face it: the World of Darkness is cluttered. oWoD has way too many secret groups and supernaturals, and the nWoD is no better. With each group having their own sub-groups and politics and multiple groups of antagonist supernaturals it gets explosively, exponentially more complicated with the addition of every book, and no one knows how it works. That's not good for a political game. The players need to know at least enough of what's going on that they can advance agendas and make plans – otherwise there aren't any political maneuverings; it all devolves rapidly into hack-n-slash or just plain slash.

The concept is that you are a classic Universal Studios Monster and you engage in narrative driven dramatic role playing of both horror and intrigue. This is essentially impossible when there are too many world running conspiracies to keep track of or when people are going all Dragon Ball Z on things right next to you.

So we're paring things down. A lot. We don't have, need, or even want a bajillion clans of vampires, or fifteen tribes of werewolves. There should be few enough flavors of things that all the players can remember what the differences between them are. Ideally, people should be able to play whatever supernatural guys they want, sort of like the League of Extraordinary Gentleman; but in practice you have to put explicit limitations on what is part of the story or things get all weird. Like with Martian invasions and stuff. A story that doesn't have specific exclusions does not truly have any specific inclusions. It's not really a story at all at that point, it's a mess.

It is important to note that you can't take everything from myth and legend and cram it into a story. I'm not saying that your story will be completely incoherent, although of course it will be. I'm saying that you are literally incapable of doing that. The Vampire Book is an encyclopedia of just vampire lore from various cultures and it is literally over nine hundred pages long. And we're not talking about character backgrounds or rules text or any of the other crap that we know eats up word count like you wouldn't believe. We're talking about just a bare list of facts by mythical origin. So it is imperative not only that you acknowledge that you're going to have to cut things down to a manageable amount, but also that you establish specifically what is off limits and what's fair game.

[gilwen]

on of the things I love about the nwod is that the base book is specificaly mortal and there is a line for basically mortals. There are still the big bad voodoo guys (mages, vamps, werewolves, fae, etc) but you don't need those lines. Something else I love is that the rules are now unified. Same base character generation but each main title is now a template and they are mutually exclusive ( you can't have a mage/vamp/werewolf).

 The hunter line and the genericaly branded WOD has things you can use without ever touching those other main title books. When I decided to use the nwod I specifically wanted to avoid using Mage. Love the system but in practice it's not sometihng I'm will to sit down, learn, and then teach to my players for our infrequent gatherings.

Gil