Chimerical Realm

This blog leans pretty heavy on the nostalgia. I'd call it an "old school" blog, but it's been aggressively pointed out to me that none of the games I dig are "old school," most emphatically Vampire . In any case, it doesn't matter. Most of the games that I'm passionate about are the games from my youth-- Vampire , yes, but also AD&D, West End Games version of Star Wars , Call of Cthulhu , etc. Maybe it's just a generic nostalgia for that time in my life, or maybe it's because these are the games that set my standards for what gaming SHOULD be. In order to draw even more ire from the "storytelling games suck" crowd, in  Forge  terms, I'm a Simulationist . I like my rules and mechanics to do a decent job reflecting the reality of the genre they're trying to emulate (fantasy adventurer, horror, etc.), and they get the heck out of the way. The "story" for me is what happens when the troupe (players and GM) int...

How I hope all my games end If there's one thing I really can't stand, it's a damn metaplot . Now, in theory, these should be great. A good metaplot in an RPG can be a wonderful tool to help make the world feel alive and dynamic and chaotic in a way that only the best Game Masters can hope to emulate. Probably the best use of metaplot in service of a game is with Pendragon and its Great Pendragon Campaign , and the players follow the story of Arthurian Romance beat by beat, from the rise and fall of Uther through the Sword in the Stone and the conquests of Arthur to the Grail Quest until finally to the Battle of Camlann. But, too often, they just get in the way of the game. For one thing, a lot of GM's feel compelled to stick to the published plot as much as possible. And I really doubt any of the designers of these games intend their plot to be YOUR plot. Looking at Pendragon again, there was a question on the forums a while back about Lancelot--a given PC reall...

The Kickstarter campaign for Rifts for Savage Worlds has launched.  Since Requiem has completely turned me off Vampire for a while, my thoughts turn to this other odd love of mine. Like many, certain parts of the game always bugged me. One of the big ones is the economy of the damn setting. For example, I just don't see how Triax can afford to manufacturer and sell a suit of power armor in North America, and get 100 million credits for it. NO ONE has 100 Million Credits. Even for the CS, that's a term used for accounting in national budgets, not something available in hard currency. In fact, I don't buy much of the "mass manufacturing for credit" economy. Instead, land and people are the key to wealth, and most equipment is custom made by skilled artisans. Yes, even Power Armor. Now, from a macro-economic view, this is incredibly wasteful in time, labor, and material; but the economy of Rifts Earth doesn't really work well on the macro scale. So, ...

So, I picked up a copy of Requiem 2nd Edition, hoping to give it a second chance. A lot of people speak very highly of the game, and a Vampire game with a murkier back story, no metaplot, and a stronger Humanity focus sounded perfect. Unfortunately, I don't think this game is for me. I still can't get into it. I've read maybe half of the core book, and I can't bring my self to finish it, not even to do a few "Let's Compare" posts, let along to run it.  This pains me, because it's not the ideas of the game itself that are turning me off. I mean, there are some really awesome ideas in there, that occasionally make the whole thing tolerable. It's the art, and the writing. Most of the art is just boring. There's no passion or anything interesting going on, and the bulk of it looks like clip art or something like that. There's no depth of field or tension in it. I don't think I can adequately express why the art is bad, since I do not ha...

I'm really into Vampire: The Masquerade . I really don't know much about nor am I terribly into Vampire: The Requiem . These are two very, very similar games. Years ago, as Masquerade  was winding down, a friend of mine asked me what some of my issues were with it. As much as I love Masquerade , as the years went by I grew more and more frustrated with many of its elements, and I wasn't terribly shy about sharing these opinions.  Now, this friend of mine was a freelancer for White Wolf at the time--in fact, he's still writing for Onyx Path. I doubt my words had any real impact in the direction Requiem  went, but it was still interesting timing. I assume he was just "taking the temperature of the frustrated fan." You might just get what you want I wanted a murkier and messier origin story, not this "Caine is the origin, everyone knows it; there is no debate." I didn't want Gehenna. I hated the Sabbat, and wanted them to be mysterious and...

In the middle of the 14th Century, the Long Night came to an end. The Black Death struck Europe, and utterly depopulated it. Best guess is that 45-50% of the population died between 1346-1351, but this is an average. Some communities were spared, while others were completely wiped out. The mortals had absolutely no understanding of what was happening, or why. The undead had even less. One night, everything was normal, and their eternal existence continued as before. The next, half their mortals were dead. They had pushed their own population to the breaking point, and could not respond to the catastrophe that was happening around them. Elders seized territory and surviving herd to support themselves and their favorites. Others were cast out to fend for themselves. Mortals began looking for scapegoats, and as the undead should have remembered from the Cultics, once mortals begin looking in the shadows, their time grows short. More childer were cast out to reduce the risk of exposu...

So, what does a world of darkness and stasis, ruled over for eternity by self-proclaimed Elders, actually mean in a game? Well, it means Ignorance, Monotony, and Obedience. Unlike a modern game, where the "truth" of Kindred existence is more or less understood, and a certain degree of toleration and independence is expected, the Long Night character is a prisoner. Not just of the Beast, and not just of geography (though travel is so perilous that few ever leave their home, and even fewer ever return), but of their own perspective and world view. It is this prison, and the tension it generates, that is the heart of a Long Night game. First up is Ignorance. A neonate in the Long Night knows nothing . They know only what their sires deign to tell them. And since they only know what their  sires told them, their knowledge is, at best, limited. Even if they choose to be honest with their childe, the knowledge they impart is most likely completely and laughably wrong. A childe ...