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What else makes for any game to teach others is somthing nobody ever thinks of, the GM knowledge of the Game/Adventure.
I use the Village of Homlet as my Teaching adventure. I have probably ran it 8-10 times in 1st-4th eds, Oriantals Adventures, Furry Outlaws and I even have a version of it writen for Shadowrun, but I have not run that one yet.
I can run it in my sleep, which means I can concintrate on teaching the rules not what is going to hapen next in the adventure.

I started with 2E. Then moved to 3E didn't like it too much so tried my hand at 3.5 which was not better. I started playing oWoD then our group went stupid and that died then we went to 4th and nWoD, both of which are going strong.

Help me out here...

oWoD and nWoD?

They stand for old World of Darkness and new World of Darkness; or, as I call them, Vampire the Masquerade and Vampire the Requiem.

Ah, I see.

I never could get into those games...

Me, either. I like my RPGs a tad crunchier.

I played Vampire (and a smattering of Werewolf and Mage) a lot in the 90s. The crunch of the rules was pretty badly designed, but the setting had a lot of flavor. If you had a good GM/storyteller and 2-4 intelligent players capable of maintaining a dramatic tone, it could be really excellent.

I always found the books for those systems to be a bit smarmy for want of a better word. Also, it always annoyed me how normal people were refered to in Vampire and Mage, and how mage went out of it's way to take away any actual innovation from normal people. (Man did not discover fire, Mage conjured fire!).

Looked like it could be good if you ignored all that though.
In Nomine was a system I got a lot of fun out of in college. It requires a good GM, because the rules aren't even close to balanced, but I found it very interesting and the setting very very fun to play around in.
These days we seem to be mostly about D'n'D.
Edit: Just saw that Balance mentioned 7th sea! That game is brilliant fun!

I started with 4th edition D&D.

It's fine for the most part, battles take FOREVER because the DM and all of us are new at it, which is fine.

What gets me really are the players and maybe I think that they are my problem. I am a fighter and am constantly told to "go tank" which is an MMO term. I'm pretty sure that D&D did not invent this. If it did, well I'm wrong but until otherwise I'm convinced that it's purely an MMO.

Then the wizard is told to use her "AoE" and it's just frustrating. Then I feel like I am playing a WoW boardgame.

Honestly it's really not all that fun as it is cracked up to be. We barely do any sort of roleplaying of the sort. It's more like fight, sleep, fight, sleep, ad nauseam.

Any suggestions?

It is actualy Easy to "Force" Roleplay.
It starts is town when you all gather around looking for you next adventure, just start engaging the other players and NPCs in conversation. Go and research the Dongeon, buy asking questions of the locals about the "Haunted Keep".
As far as the "Tank" and "AoE" coments, learn what the others powers are called and do. Sugest to them specific Powers, and when the sugest you go and "Tank" ask them what Power you should use. After while they will start saying "Use your Rain of Blows".
It is actualy not that hard to "Train" a group.

The Original term for tank was brick

c34r34lk1ll3r wrote:
I personally prefer nWoD. and White Wolf isn't going anywhere, trust me.

Whoa, where is that coming from, getting fed up of folks bad mouthing the system in other forums? As unless I'm going mad, me and MGS are the only two who mentioned WoD here and I don't think either of us rubbished nwod at all.

Not that it doesn't deserve it mind you now that you've mentioned it.. but thats for another day. Oh and I'm really glad you didn't have a guy introduce you to 40K who was rubbish, otherwise you might dislike that too.

Manchu wrote:They stand for old World of Darkness and new World of Darkness; or, as I call them, Vampire the Masquerade and Vampire the Requiem.

To those of us who played the World of Darkness back when it was worth a damn, we like to refer to it as the 'Original World of Darkness.'


On a side note regarding the nwod, I'm pretty sure that by the time the MMO final gets out, I can see White Wolf burying the whole Pen and Paper side of their nwod buisness, well depending if their MMO does well ofc.

Personally after some of the things Ethen Skemp did and said leading up to the release of Werewolf the Forsaken, I wouldn't shed a tear if the whole company went belly up, but thats just me. I can abide a lot of things, but not being conned into buying a product they knew most of the WtA players would dispise with cussing fake pics and dodgy web comments/info that had no place in their 'new' system. Yeah it still annoys me, apologies for the rant.

Morathi's Darkest Sin wrote:

MeanGreenStompa wrote:
Don't play DnD myself atm. I am still playing VtM and ignoring White Wolf's apocalypse...

Nice, sounds about the same for me, although ours is Werewolf the Apocalypse. Mind you, I am playing a bit of Dark Heresy as well.

this is what I was referring to.

Theres nothing in that quote that has anything to do with nwod.

In MGS case he's just noting he's avoiding the whole Gehenna book, while I am agreement but noting I am ignoring the Apocaypse book for our respective games.

Both are owod books. So yeah, nothing to do with the nwod.

The nwod came after that sorry situation.

Morathi's Darkest Sin wrote:

c34r34lk1ll3r wrote:
I personally prefer nWoD. and White Wolf isn't going anywhere, trust me.

Whoa, where is that coming from, getting fed up of folks bad mouthing the system in other forums? As unless I'm going mad, me and MGS are the only two who mentioned WoD here and I don't think either of us rubbished nwod at all.

Not that it doesn't deserve it mind you now that you've mentioned it.. but thats for another day. Oh and I'm really glad you didn't have a guy introduce you to 40K who was rubbish, otherwise you might dislike that too.

Manchu wrote:They stand for old World of Darkness and new World of Darkness; or, as I call them, Vampire the Masquerade and Vampire the Requiem.

To those of us who played the World of Darkness back when it was worth a damn, we like to refer to it as the 'Original World of Darkness.'


On a side note regarding the nwod, I'm pretty sure that by the time the MMO final gets out, I can see White Wolf burying the whole Pen and Paper side of their nwod buisness, well depending if their MMO does well ofc.

Personally after some of the things Ethen Skemp did and said leading up to the release of Werewolf the Forsaken, I wouldn't shed a tear if the whole company went belly up, but thats just me. I can abide a lot of things, but not being conned into buying a product they knew most of the WtA players would dispise with cussing fake pics and dodgy web comments/info that had no place in their 'new' system. Yeah it still annoys me, apologies for the rant.

To each his own with P&P games. The thing that turned me off of oWoD was the combination of the ST and all the players playing the same exact characters in every game. I tried oWoD out for a couple years and it just didn't do it for me. I'm guessing you tried nWoD. I'm not a Foresaken player or a WtA player myself. I prefer Promethean and Hunter myself. I played 1 VtM game (sabbat) and all it boiled down to was secret blood bonds, angry diablerie and gakky roleplaying with the "want to be cute" malkavians. That doesn't make the system bad but it makes the group suck and all they play is VtM.

nWoD has been nothing but good experiences for me. May I inquire as to what turned you off of nWoD



Automatically Appended Next Post:

Morathi's Darkest Sin wrote:Theres nothing in that quote that has anything to do with nwod.

In MGS case he's just noting he's avoiding the whole Gehenna book, while I am agreement but noting I am ignoring the Apocaypse book for our respective games.

Both are owod books. So yeah, nothing to do with the nwod.

The nwod came after that sorry situation.

ahhh then this is a miscommunication. I thought he was talking about the doomsday speak that there has been quite a bit about involving WW due to less books than usual. Sorry.

c34r34lk1ll3r wrote:
To each his own with P&P games. The thing that turned me off of oWoD was the combination of the ST and all the players playing the same exact characters in every game. I tried oWoD out for a couple years and it just didn't do it for me. I'm guessing you tried nWoD. I'm not a Foresaken player or a WtA player myself. I prefer Promethean and Hunter myself. I played 1 VtM game (sabbat) and all it boiled down to was secret blood bonds, angry diablerie and gakky roleplaying with the "want to be cute" malkavians. That doesn't make the system bad but it makes the group suck and all they play is VtM.

Tbh the actual update to the ST system was really good, I didnt mind Requiem when it came out (I did still prefer the Masquerade backstory, but Requiem was okay) I've also heard that the Hunter game is probably stronger in nwod, but as you may have guessed we mainly play Werewolf and Forsaken was rubbish. Thus we dropped the whole of the nwod as their was no point doing parts of it.
I like to run my Wod games as fully combined, with the correct rules mashing against one another. Thus when my Vamps fight Werewolves, they use their Celerity etc not rage as a stand in as noted under the Werewolf book rules.

Sounds like you had a group that wasn't to your tastes which is a pity, some of the other systems played very differently, and even Masquerade can be a awesome game if the ST is right for the job.

c34r34lk1ll3r wrote:
nWoD has been nothing but good experiences for me. May I inquire as to what turned you off of nWoD

Werewolf the Forsaken, basically unlike the other systems that had a lot of connections with the owod equivilents, Forsaken drops most of the connecing stories and ideas that made Werewolf the Apocalypse a great game. I seriously didn't know anyone from my core group, the two groups that spawned from my group, and several friends in the LRP scene that also played Apocalpyse that liked Forsaken, they all dumped the system.

From forums I heard plenty of folks who didn't like Apocalypse loved Forsaken, but tbh that was like a kick in the teeth to many of us who had been hardcore fans of WtA.

The whole setting up the game prior to release didn't help either, making out Crinos form was going to play like the first game with folks holding weapons in pics, and showing emotion, and then when the book came out, you where not allowed to do anything but charge and tear into nearby threats. You had no control in Crinos. I still struggle to understand how someone who claimed to love the setting of WtA (Ethan Skemp) could get the basic reason folks loved the game so wrong.

So yeah all my dislike of nwod come from Forsaken, its build up, background and rules system. I dumped all my nwod books (think I had already got to about ten) within two months of WtF coming out.

c34r34lk1ll3r wrote:
ahhh then this is a miscommunication. I thought he was talking about the doomsday speak that there has been quite a bit about involving WW due to less books than usual. Sorry.

Yeah no worries, thats what threw me tbh, apologies for disliking nwod, of course like you said to each his own, but for me the bridge was burned by White Wolf a long time ago.

yeah the ST always ran the minimal story and never attempted to come up with his own game (every game was based around the apocalypse with WtA, and Pentex) so every game he tried to run boiled down to use being Captain Planet with the people playing the same characters every single time. When I say they played the same characters I don't mean identical I mean same exact mannerisms, attitudes, emotional responses. This was a good example of what I posted earlier about a bad group doesn't mean bad game. I would honestly give WtA and VtM another chance (never tried MtAs, WtO, MtR, DtF, or CtD) if I knew that I wouldn't have anything to do with this group. I am however, still interested in playing Wraith, Demon and Mummy.

Wraith sounds like an extremely interesting game to give a go. Very bleak, but very interesting. Possibly the most interesting White Wolf concept I've heard of.

Reminds me a bit of Kult.

yeah I would totally love to try Wraith, Mummy and Demon from oWoD. Other than those, very very little interest in oWoD for me.

I played the Original Werewolf when it came out [We even Pre-Ordered the Books] and most of us loved it. I even ran a 1890's compleatly diceless Yukon gane set is Dawson City.
Now I use the Orginal WoD Univers for parts a Modern Game that I am running [Using the Shadowrun 4 Mechanic]. Some of the players do freak out a little when I had a Garuo Pack help the PC's take out another one and one of the PC's has a Pair of Vampiers as contacts [She does not relise it at the moment]

Back to the D&D 4e.

One of our peaple were talking about it and we all started discusing the WoW conection and we actually agree with him now
It plays more like Final Fanatasy than WoW.

For me, WoW and FF are NOT selling points for a game of D&D, but then I realize that I'm nowhere near their target "sell to" demographic.

The main thin, to me, is that the various games (D&D, FF, and WoW) are pretty much at a stage now best referred to as 'cross pollination.' They all borrow bits and pieces of rules mechanics and design ideas from each other left and right.

The 'roles' of 4th edition are not a new thing, and go back further than MMOs. I heard them used informally for classless RPGs (mainly superhero ones) years before even Everquest shipped. It was a quick way to describe a character's combat role before diving into details.

The powers are a bit more unique, but I can completely understand why they exist as an outgrowth of complains that Fighter-types from earlier editions were 'boring[' as they generally were reduced to some variant of "I attack with my weapon" for most of their combat rounds. 3.0 tried to make this more interesting with feats to allow more tactical options (making bull-rushing and grappling a bit more useful) but this was still limited.

4.0 is a bit heavy on the 'particle effects lightshow' in the default descriptions, though.

Balance wrote:
4.0 is a bit heavy on the 'particle effects lightshow' in the default descriptions, though.

Good points all around!

That particular comment made me laugh out loud, hard!

I never found 'plain' fighter types all that boring.

They are spiced up with various arms and armor, as well as items, of magical nature.

And they were ABSOLUTELY necessary to the survival of the party, especially at the early, low levels.

But, that might be the old schooler in me...

Balance wrote:4.0 is a bit heavy on the 'particle effects lightshow' in the default descriptions, though.

I prefer the phase
"OOOOH How Spealbergian!"

I've had fun with 'plain' fighters, but it depends on the GM. My comments were based partially on sources like rpg.net where the edition wars are much more prevalent.

Last time I played a fighter in 3.0 I had fun, but only rarely because of the mechanics. It was more because of being involved in the story and having some fun characters to interact with. The combat tricks we were using were mostly the 1st wave of 3.0 'class books' from WotC, so we had some options but not the weirder stuff that was added later.

My 4th edition paladin has gotten a bit boring as he is so focused on spamming a few powers every action. I've worked at it to try to get a bit more creative with powers, but it cans till be boring. I'm working with my Gm on some possible solutions.

For those used to miniatures games where there either is no referee or they are purely there for rules-disputes, RPGs are very different as the GM has to be concerned with making sure everyone has fun.

GMing an RPG is a lot of work. I'd love to be running a game, but I don't have the bandwidth these days.

I dunno man, 3.5 paladin was even more limited. More boring than Fighter I reckon. I'm enjoying my paladin so far.

My Paladin issues may be my build. This was our first 4.0 game, and the 4th edition Paladin is almost more of a 'Jedi' in some ways, as it should be based around Wisdom and Charisma, with Strength as a tertiary stat at best. I didn't quite follow these guidelines, so I've got some great Charisma based abilities and some near-useless Wisdom based abilities.

Plus, I do like that a lot of other classes have some interesting stuff to do in combat besides being a 2nd rate healer.

But Paladins have always been 3rd rate healers.

After a fashion I suppose you could say that 4th Ed did kill D&D for me. However 3.5 was suffering a slow death at the hands of a thing called college graduation anyways. The real reason 4th booted me from the game was that I wasn't going to pay for a new set of books for a game I was already losing the time to play. So really it was more of an assisted suicide than murder.

Tyyr: that sucks. I think I would go insane if I couldn't play D&D or WoD anymore.