advice on phasing out WoD in favour of the Dresden Files?

[beachhead1973]

Hi all, i think this is my first post on here. I want to start by saying that I have loved this series ever since I first picked it up, the Dresden files feels to me like it treats the fantastic logically and I love that.

Which is what renewed my interest in White Wolf's World of darkness. In the first real campaign I ran, i knew nothing of how WoD really worked, I improvised everything based off of things i'd read in the dresden files. but more recently me and my roomie moved in with a guy who is an old Vampire the masquarade fan from way back and we have been running a by the book WoD campaign.

it's an adjustment for me and not a pleasent one. Basically, everything which made any kind of sense to me from The Dresdenverse is absent in WoD and very little prevents Vampiric characters from basically becoming gods. Maybe this is something which should have occured to me beforehand. I really like the sort of Give and Take present in The Dresdenverse, these beings of great power have strong restrictions placed upon them and that they can do; IE/vampires and thresholds. It's gotten so bad now that to adequately challenge our party's resident vamp, I have to have him stereotypically fight himself in out next game and he is teling me how he has to GM himself anytime he advnaces his character to keep himself from gaining frankly godlike powers which have almost no restrictions or drawbacks.

Win loose or draw, I will be buying the Dresden Files RPG book when it comes out, but what I want right now is some advice on what I can do to bring these character's under control. Now, I have an established excuse; the campaign began with one of our wizards of which we have two revealing that he has been rerouting laylines (we rotate GMing chapters in the game) and in my cycle i have been dropping hints that this has seriously disruputed the world of magic as a whole.

what I want to do is win the palyers, mainly the two Vampires over to a sinaero where they have greater limits placed upon them. but how exactly do i do this? the more experienced player, the Masquarades vetern has admitted that the system is baised, so that gives me hope. I just want a more balanced game, because right now things are being run within the WoD books and are crazy and I think a more Dresdenverse sort of setting would help bme bring them under control. the trick is, i don;t want to geld them either.

Suggestions?

[beachhead1973]

i'll simplify this:

we have seen how vampires work in the Dresdenverse and i think alot of us know how they work in WoD.

I want to make them less prone to godlike power in our game, while keeping them fun. i think the kinds of restrictions seen in the books are a good path to this.

what do you guys think?

[Bosh]

I don't know WoD that well but I never thought that WoD vampires were THAT tough unless they have big massive piles of XP, but maybe I'm wrong. As far as Dresden goes, vampires are pretty damn tough but their weaknesses are a bit nastier.

And while I'm sure DFRPG is going to be a damn good game, often munchkinism is often better handled by OOC methods than by changing the rules.

[svb1972]

Vampires in the 10-13th gen in WoD are wimps...
Once you start at 8th gen and start going backwards they start turning into gods.  The problem is that everyone keeps on trying to make older, more powerful characters. 

And, you can easilly make some really rediculous Vampires in WoD.
Sabbat City Gangrel for one.. celerity, protean, fortitude.  I mean, REALLY?
True Brujah

There's just so much cheese.

[iago]

To be honest, it sounds like some of the PCs in your game would have a hard time being playable PCs in the DF version of the game.

(Edit: It's leaving me thinking -- how do you phase it out? You end that game. Then you start another one.)

[svb1972]

What exactly are your vampires doing that's out of balance and crazy.

Also, what are the other players playing?

What Gen are your vampires
What clans/powers do they have.

[finarvyn]

how do you phase it out? You end that game. Then you start another one.

This is exactly my first thought as well. Let your WoD campaign play itself out in the next few months and then gear up for a new campaign using the Dresdenverse. Let the players know that the new Dresden campaign will be similar in many ways, different in others. Let them know that the power structure will be different, as it's not the same world. In the meantime, let them enjoy their vampires.

[beachhead1973]

hey, sorry it has taken me so long to get back to this, Army Reserves and Exams can be the witch's brew.

okay, i'm gunna cop to this right now, we do rotating GM, we do our own chapters to the story, I am GMing two people who know way more about the system than I do and who i am convinced don't actually know as much as they think they do, especially about combat.

XP has seen alot of back and forth in our group. Our expert-GM started our by dishing out 12-15xp after every session until our expert-vampire suggested he up that, which he did and the doubled again before cranking it back down. Lotta action don;t get me wrong, but that was wild. In my chapter, just concluded, for almost two weeks worth of game-time, i dished out between 40 and 50xp total at the end of the adventure and i was critisized for low-balling. whatever.

further I must admit I am more about telling a good story than rules which don't track for me. So WoD be damned, the story was about a business-type who stumbles unto some innate ectomantic talent and enslaves the ghost of a murdered 30s hitman who then acts as his ghostly assassin in order toc lear the way for a lucrative downtown building project.

generations is a new one to me. wish i had access to either of their char sheets...maybe i can scavenge...okay found his, she took hers home.

Okay background;

we have two players with vampire characters. our expert player has one and our newbie player has another. I will note, they are both trueblood fans. never seen it, but apparantly stuff from trueblodd tracks under WoD rules and stuff from Dresden Files does not. whatever.

okay, She has set herself up, as almost something like a white court vampire, she is "older" ballpark 300-500 years. more into subtle powers and keeps a "Stables" if you know what I mean. but she could also play red court Bianca style, so I think. alot of mental powers, dominate is one.

he is about 100 years old. and a dead ringer for red court IRL and in game. yes, he is, himself a "character". real drive for power in him. Khaibit bloodline. pre-vampire telekinetic abilities and pyrokinetic invulnerability. obtenebration, full shadow-play stuff, which is hard as hell to GM. He seems not to need to feed on people. at all. instead he can get blood points from objects. theban sorcery. obfuscate, celerity (move 60KPH without regaurd to physics it seems, three actions in a turn) makes him nigh-impossible to hit. vigor at 3 dots and starting from 5 STR. both fo those at speed of thought. oh and something called obtenenbration and blood tenbrous. man there is alot here, a bunch more stuff, smaller things mostly, those look like the highlights.

okay, i need to admit that i have not studied everything about these guys, obvious since i don't even have full access to their char sheets. I have tried to understand it all, but it;s alot to keep straight, I just shoot things, or try to.

But i figure, why not convert? i see two reds, a  junor-harry like wizard, a more subtle-magic witch, a corrupted human, hooked on vampire blood and the on-call human thug power with counter-goon capability.

[svb1972]

OMG

I don't know about her.

But him?
He's playing a total cheese character.  I mean.. A block of smoked gouda wrapped in velveta, topped with cheese whiz.

First off, the exp they're giving out is crazy.  It should be 10-15 xp per adventure, not session.
Obfuscate, Celerity, Blood Sorcery, Shadow Magic(obtenetration), + human kinetics, and he's immune to certain types of fire?
Vigor 3?  He's built himself a superfast, hard to kill, mage of doom.  Who doesn't even need to hunt.
You need to look up their Clan weakness. Khaibit is a subclan of the Mehket whose weakness is that they take /extra/ damage from Sunlight and Fire.

I don't know about her, but he's bought all sorts of cheese with all his EXP.  You're basically starring at a Munchkin character.

[Moriden]

looks like you've got someone whos took whatever powers he felt like from Nwod supplements without having to make it actually make any sense. Part of the problem is Nwod is just a bad system, but most of it is he grabbed things for there mechanical benefits that usually had extreme price tagsor restrictions attached to it with out having to deal with those things. id strongly suggest simply scrapping the entire game and starting over with a new rules set.  As a note generation is a old world of darkness thing since it sounds like you people are using Nwod they'll have blood potency instead. one of the flaws of this is that if its over 6ish they are prone to randomly falling asleep for several hundred years. feel free to invoke this isf he gets upity and wants to use thing son his charecter sheat "as writen"

[beachhead1973]

I was awfully suspicious when he took over three hours to make his character.

We are using the latest edition of WoD, which is NWod?

The Xp thing, that's fair enough, honestly, I was spending alot of energy trying to make my character competitive in fields I never ever considered before, simply on the basis of this vampire we were fighting right off the bat. Ended up watsing alot of XP on wierd shit like anti-psi and a house-ruled moral code merit, both 5 points, ugh.

[svb1972]

NWod
New World of Darkness

[Moriden]

We are using the latest edition of WoD, which is NWod?

Yes Nwod is an entirely different setting and system from the original world of darkness. Other then some superficial similarity's and words they have little in common. Id be surprised if the males character obeys the letter of the rules hes using hes definitely not obeying the spirit. id suggest reading the books hes using and then calling him out for essentially cheating.   also never, ever, ever, use Nwod, its setting doesn't make any sense and its system is ... well bad[ that's the nicest way i can describe it].

[svb1972]

Send a daytime hunter after him.

He takes double damage from sunlight and fire
Use the Kincaid approach

We blow up the building
we pour gasoline on the ruins and light them on fire.
Then we blow up the building again.

[SaintAndSinner]

I was awfully suspicious when he took over three hours to make his character.

You will need players that 'buy in' to the FATE system.  I've seen big time Munchkins love the system though because they get to 'game' it while role-playing hard.  Others, meh, don't like it at all since you have to accept your character having problems to get the juicy FATE points.  Honest conversations about this will go miles and miles to seeing if they would even want to play this game.