New player confusion

[Michael Fabsits]

This is not a personal attack on anyone, or a statement about previous staffs or anything like that. I am a new player, new to the ECC. I have been gaming with the Vampire sphere for less than a year and I have to say I am confused.



What game are we playing?



In my brief time here, I have seen rules used from almost every White-Wolf classic World of Darkness setting. I have seen wraiths that appear to use arcanoi. I have seen demons using rules from Fallen. I have seen modern Vampires playing with rituals from Dark Ages. Other things from other games popping up has just been rumor and hearsay.



The problem isn’t that I don’t feel like these rules have a place, or like these story elements have a place in game, I do. The problem for me is that every addition to the rules creates a larger and larger burden for any staff members, now or in the future. We are operating under a system that is completely unsustainable. The burden is carried by players also, since in order to be an educated player I would need to read innumerable rules from dozens of books, in addition to any house rules that ECC has listed on the website.



Running a LARP is already far more difficult than running a table top game. Staff members on a LARP staff must support the logistics, rules and stories for dozens of players. On top of supporting more players, the staff needs to run like a team where everyone is playing from the same playbook. I know there have been lots of hard work done recently to make sure that everyone is on the same playbook, but the result is a playbook where if you looked at the sum total of all of the rules required to play the game as it is it would be one of the largest books ever written. We do not have one document, one point of contact, one device or system that supports those rules. No one knows all of the rules, nor are all the resources in one place.



If there is anyone who knows all of the rules, please point them out, I would like to thank them, know them better and pay for their entry to game for the next year. If there is a single point where all of the rules we use at game can be found, that is accessible at game, please point it out to me and the other players that might be confused about this.



Right now, someone could pull out a character sheet (something we are required to have when facing challenges) and have things on it that I couldn’t hope to have any idea of understanding. Not that I don’t know Vampire, I have played Vampire for years in all of its versions, but the details get fuzzy. Now we have material being used from every version of Vampire, Dark ages and some material being used from other game lines entirely. How can anyone keep track of what game we are playing or how it works? How much of a burden does this put on new players who haven’t been playing this game for 15 years? Why do we keep adding to the playbook at such an aggressive pace?



I love this game, I love the people, I love the history, but the current state of the rules just seems to be a nightmare.



Are my questions valid? Am I off base? Am I misunderstanding the game?



I would love to hear feedback on how this game could be improved, if I am wrong I would love to have it explained so that I can stop being so confused about what game I am playing.

[Skir]

I'd like to take an opportunity to address some of these things.

We're playing Vampire, and just vampire.

To my knowledge, no player character has access to anything that isn't from the Vampire sphere. I am including Dark Ages in the term Vampire Sphere, because those rules, while from different books, are completely compatible with normal Vampire the Masquerade Revised. PCs have access to things in that book that are Disciplines, powers, etc, but we don't use its rules in general, such as Aura modifiers for high and low path ratings.

While it may not appear to at first glance, stuff from other Spheres that players have access to has been put in terms of vampire to make sure it stays as one sphere.

For instance, while characters appear to have Wraiths that use Arcanoi, they do not. They use vampire powers equivalent to Arcanoi. emeraldcitychronicles.com/213224/247878.html has all the information in specific, but you won't see any wraith attacking with actual Death's Touch in Outrage - it is instead the best vampire equivalent, Lure of Flames 2. No one wants to be told "You are being attacked by Stonehand Punch and your character is in danger!" The normal response would be "Wtf is Stonehand punch?" Instead it uses easily available vampire things that players are more likely to already know and understand the rules for without referencing any material from Wraith.

In fact, in some instances of printed Vampire material, it references other spheres and efforts have been made to put it back to one sphere. Spirits have all sorts of powers, and Path of Spirit Manipulation, a power you find in Vampire materials, references Werewolf: The Apocalypse in its write-up. In the clarification I wrote, I removed that passage and instead suggested that spirits use level 1-2 discipline power equivalents wherever possible. This is for the same reason as above. No one wants to read Werewolf to play Vampire. Mind you, this is House rules that change this from the existing text in a Vampire book telling you to reference Werewolf.

Your perception that the game is fully incorporating all of the rules from all of the systems is not accurate. Instead, the opposite.

You will see some details from other spheres come into play for NPC characters. Sometimes the particulars of how antagonist groups such as Werewolves or Demons behave, or how their vampire-relevant special rules are handled does come up as a point of interest in Vampire when interacting with these creatures. For instance, "how do you kill a Demon?" has been a topic of recent interest. This is natural when these creatures are used as antagonists, and certainly, using them as antagonists was the original intent of the authors, because they were included as such in the back of the book for that purpose. (Demon hadn't been invented yet when V:tM Revised came out, but they were added to the antagonist section of the V20 book). When one of these details comes up in regards to a plot in the vampire game, Staff has two options - 1) Reference the appropriate White wolf book and run it in terms of that, or 2) make something up.

Remembering that ECC gets a new staff every year and that there is no guarantee that any given plotline will be neatly closed when staffs change, option 1 at least allows there to be a common ground for the new staff to work off of rather than having to struggle maintain or even to understand the decisions that the previous staff made if they selected option 2, make something up. In fact, since players theoretically CAN get access to the extra-sphere books, it is actually more reliable and easier to manage the expectations of interested people to use those sources rather than just making things up, in which case a given player has absolutely no basis for understanding, and that risks even more confusion.

What it comes down to is that White Wolf intended those elements to be used as part of Vampire games, but not every question that can come up is fully explored in the Vampire book, for good reason. All a responsible staff can do at that point if they are using those elements is to make a decision on how to handle certain things and, if possible, record that decision so that everyone understands what that the rules of the game are.

The only way to avoid this is to never use antagonists that come from other spheres. This can happen, but over 20 years of ECC you will likely exhaust a lot of the common scenarios and want to explore other aspects of the world. Or at least one staff will, and then here we are. As well, unless the combat guys want to fight the sentient mind control mold that staff made as an antagonist, or the army of mermaids that are assaulting coastal cities, antagonist monsters are most likely going to come from the other game lines that White Wolf made, and honestly, it wouldn't feel like "Vampire" if the risk of going into the woods was Dryads instead of Werewolves. In some ways, using material from Werewolf preserves Vampire, not pollutes it.

As to the rulebook being large, it is a long running game with a lot of players. Consider all the different calls an ST has to make in one night and multiply that by 52x20, then try to record what decisions are made to reach some level of consistency between staff members and new staffs. That's why the playbook is there.

I disagree that no one knows all the rules. I know all the rules. It helps that I was the one who recorded them, but I'm not the only one. But really, that's beside the point. These materials aren't designed to be memorized, they are designed to be reference material. All gaming books are that way - they are technical manuals not liturgy. The Core book has most of the rules, and some one offs are from various supplements. This is pretty standard. Rare is the LARP that says Tremere can only use Thaumaturgy from the core book, or that the small handful of 8 or so Necromancy rituals in the corebook are the only ones that exist. Naturally, people will want to use the Necromancy rituals published in Clanbook: Giovanni, and I don't think it's particularly valuable to forbid it just because they weren't all placed on the same document at the same time. The writers of the game, White Wolf, thought they were balanced for use in play, and at least to me, that means more to me than whether they thought of them before or after they published Vampire: Revised in 1999.

As for the rules being accessible at game, they are. Every rule is either in some book or on the website. If it isn't in one of those, it isn't a rule, it's someone's opinion and it isn't generally binding. Most of what is on the website is clarifications. Some powers, with 20 years of testing, have weird questions arise about what they do and do not do, or whether X applies under Y circumstance. The clarifications on the sites aren't rules, just a guideline about how staff would answer that question if asked. Scorpions touch reduces Stamina for a long duration. How does that work with spending Blood to Stamina? Does it ignore the penalty and just fix the Stamina loss at once? Does it lower the effective maximum stamina of the character? Can they still pump to 10 Stamina as it mentions elsewhere in the book? If you're curious about this one off, it's going to be up to a staff member to decide, and this can be a life or death decision for your character that you want to be able to understand BEFORE you risk your character in a combat scenario and have the rules call go a direction you don't like for an OOC reason and lose your character over it. Once staff decides, it goes up on the website to record the decision so other people can know.

That's a big document, but it is a bad idea? After all, it's reference material. You get the gist from just reading the book, sure, but it doesn't talk about everything that has come up in real play.


What we have is Vampire. Wherever possible, it has been left as Vampire as the game will go, but you are right, running a LARP is NOT like running a table top game. In a table top game, you can just make a call and go with it, and only affects the other players sitting in your living room, and all of them are on the same team. If it doesn't work, you just change it back. No one has hurt feelings, no other GM is going to take over your game and run things differently in your own living room. Vampire: Revised was written for a few dudes to sit around the table with cokes or beers, NOT for 100 people playing for 20 years under switching staffs. If we are going to make it work for that, it needs different accommodations and different treatment. We are playing Vampire, but we are playing Vampire LARP.

[Michael Fabsits]

Thank you for the time you took addressing some of the points. I am going to respond to some of the items in your reply. I hope that nothing in my tone or words is taken as a personal attack on you, the current staff, ECC or even the rules. You clarified a lot of things in this post, and I appreciate the clarification you have given.

The clarification on the sources and reasoning behind the additional books, adjustments to rules and what constitutes the vampire sphere both in terms of antagonists and player abilities was informative and does help. The perception I did hold was wrong, even after reading the website extensively, I was still under the impression that summoned and compelled wraiths used the abilities as defined in WTO and that it was a decision that had superseded the discipline equivalency chart on the website. Maybe if there was a clear bright line delineation defined for when rules are supplemented or superseded by the website? Prehaps one that also references the source material it is errataing? Maybe a RA could do a weekly or monthly FAQ thread where they answer confusing questions? I know that at one point you were leading workshops to improve understanding of the influence system. I think this kind of thing is very helpful.

I completely understand that the current game has a wealth of history and rules decisions. It has been running for a long time and is quite large, there have been years of player and ST decisions that have influenced the game and the way that it is played. We both agree that the playbook is huge.

However, I think there are some inconsistencies in the way that things are applied. Disciplines and rituals are used from a wealth of books, but weapon stats are only pulled from the main book, even when other resources are available. Antagonists appear from all spheres and settings and flavors, which are great and interesting, but allies are limited to mortals and vampires? I am not saying that I want these things in game, only pointing out that the logic is being applied inconsistently. I agree that the world should be diverse and interesting and dynamic that there should be many sources used to enhance the world that the stories take place in, however that enhancement if it is allowed at all needs to be allowed universally. It opens up a slippery slope of what is and isn’t allowed to make the stories interesting, and when it remains the purview of storyteller fiat in regards to story elements that is an easy matter. When there are rules for antagonists but not rules for allies then the game feels one sided. However, if we did open up the game to mage allies wielding true magick, then the game would progressively feel less and less like Vampire.

I appreciate your knowledge of the rules and the history of the game. I did imagine that my challenge would be met with a few takers. However, do think that my point still stands. Even considering that RPGs are by nature reference material games, I cannot imagine a situation where I could ask about an obscure power or ability at the current game and be presented with mechanical rules in anything less than 5 minutes. I have not seen the books be present at game or the resources made available to the player base. I also feel like your argument that the core book has most of the rules is inaccurate. I think that if I presented the rules from the core book, and the collective rules that are used in the rest of the game from other sources, the non-core rules would far outweigh the material being used from the core book.

I do not disagree that magic users should be able to use material from other core books. Magic is a rare thing in the WOD and rewards those who seek the knowledge. The core book also talked about storytellers allowing custom rituals and combo disciplines. The problem with the current game environment is that the rulebooks were designed for tabletop play, for limited campaigns chronicles and stories. I do not think that the writers intended for the game to be played with continuous plot and the addition of new rituals for 10+ years. I think you cover this point well in your own closing statement.

I like all the work that has been done to modify the core rules to make them effective to play, however I cannot help but feel like I am often playing a game with a population where the majority of the players, myself included do not understand the rules. The website is available as a resource, but it is not available to everyone during play. I appreciate all the hard work that has gone into it, I really do. However trying to find exactly what the changes to presence are for the use at ECC while present at game requires me to spend 5 minutes out of character in a corner messing with my phone, or take someone else out of game. There is no resource table where a book can be picked up and reviewed; there is no laptop where the rules can be goggled easily. The benefit of the rules clarifications is grand, but the burden, especially on new players is substantial.

As always, I am thankful for the discussion.

[Sethron]

Hey beauties!

I love conversation with brilliant people who are having constructive debate without insults. May I join? <3333

I'ma just put in basic responses to some points I noticed in the fabulous read that may be a mistake in perception or general lack of spread information. I'll let Sean continue with being eloquent and informative, as he is so good at that, and allow you to keep being eloquent and inquisitive, as you are great at that!

However, I think there are some inconsistencies in the way that things are applied. Disciplines and rituals are used from a wealth of books, but weapon stats are only pulled from the main book, even when other resources are available. Antagonists appear from all spheres and settings and flavors, which are great and interesting, but allies are limited to mortals and vampires?

Allies are not limited to mortals and vampires. They are distinguished between supernaturals and mortals, and while it is difficult and looked at funny to have a werewolf ally on your sheet, it has been allowed. Mage allies have also previously been allowed (not in the recent staffs), but it is not unprecedented. These are rare because it takes a rare and very intense background stories or efforts in story to earn these, because supernaturals do not often have friendships across types. Most of them have animosity of some flavor toward each other, and at least xenophobia... and why wouldn't they, especially with Vampires? We are douches.

I like all the work that has been done to modify the core rules to make them effective to play, however I cannot help but feel like I am often playing a game with a population where the majority of the players, myself included do not understand the rules.

This game has often been built on people who did not want to know the rules. There was a lot of confusion for a long time because the staff didn't even bother to brush up on rules. There is even a contingency of people who pride themselves on not knowing the rules--this is fading out. The new players want to know them, and it is a frightening and overwhelming amount to take in--I felt that way, too. I had not ever played Vampire before I came to this LARP 2 years ago ( I am not that aged. I've spent about equal time on staff as I have as a player ), and am now pretty damn brushed up on all the rules and the rules that are different from the book itself.

Maybe not knowing helped me, but the time I spent on staff certainly helped.

The website is available as a resource, but it is not available to everyone during play. I appreciate all the hard work that has gone into it, I really do. However trying to find exactly what the changes to presence are for the use at ECC while present at game requires me to spend 5 minutes out of character in a corner messing with my phone, or take someone else out of game. There is no resource table where a book can be picked up and reviewed; there is no laptop where the rules can be goggled easily. The benefit of the rules clarifications is grand, but the burden, especially on new players is substantial.

There is wi fi that we carry at ECC--it is listed as "ECC Karma". You log in with your own account and it not only gets you online with your own megabytes, but assists ECC's main bandwidth by giving them a 100 free megabytes.

There are also 4 tablets with the entire library of books on them that are often not used. A player can go and borrow these to look through them. These can access the wi-fi and get you on the internet. It is not the fastest thing in the world, but it is an available resource that perhaps you have overlooked.

That's all. <333 Loves

[Skir]

I appreciate the desire to open communication about this. I don't disagree that there is a lot, and that we can improve how easy or difficult it is to access that information. I would love to see new ways to access the information more easily.

Here's what we do have:

Tablets with every book on them - My staff did a fundraiser and used the proceeds to purchase 5 or 6 tablets so that most members of staff could have one on them, and each one has a searchable PDF of every book on it. Any staff member or Paper Table should be able to provide you with the actual book info within a minute or so.

An internet connection at B&GC - Staff has the password for their wifi, so the both the above tablets and also the paper table should be able to reference both the website and any other online material.

Smartphones nearby - Most folks have smartphones. It may or may not be convenient to pull your phone out and search, but the information is there to be found. Bookmarks, etc make it easier.

Between these, we have about as best as you could get for Website + Books. It's arguably harder to find info out of a book than it is on a searchable website (You can reach ECC's internal pages from Google, by the way) so it isn't that much worse to have a website vs not have one.

What we don't have is printed hard copies of the website house rules, to my knowledge. We could do that, but
risk it being out of date and causing confusion. It can be done though.

You mention that the website has more info than the core book, but most of that is just clarification of edge cases. Specifically, you mention Presence. The Presence page has one rules change on it, marked in bold.

Presence passively reduces the difficulty of mundane social rolls by 1 per level of the Discipline. This only affects social feats like Oration, Deception and Intimidate, not activations of powers or abilities that use social Attributes.

Everything else on there isn't a rules change, just a clarification. What happens if two people Summon someone at the same time? What happens on a Summon Botch? The book doesn't say. That kind of stuff. It's only there if you ACTUALLY Botch a Summon, and want to know what the deal is with that. It isn't the kind of thing you need to have memorized in order to play a character with Presence.

And maybe that is part of the problem - the erroneous idea that this information is essential for day to day play. It isn't. It's just a record of weird situations for the most part. You could probably fit the actual rules changes on one piece of paper pretty easily, and that might be a good thing to have printed out at game. That won't change very often. I think it's easy to imagine that since there are a few rules changes in there, that the entire thing is a rules change or should be thought of as one. Having that be the perception is just as bad as having that be the reality, so maybe that's something too.

Even though I am no longer on staff, I would be willing to come early a few times a month and run a Rules Advocate rap session for any rules that are unclear or to answer any questions or misunderstandings. I would be happy to do that, and I think that might help. I'll talk to Staff and see if they would want that.

Also, the general rule, to answer your question about it, is that the Website always supersedes the book as errata. The website is a "Yes, but.." version of the book. Unfortunately, we cant put the actual rules from the book that the website is the errata for legal reasons. White Wolf would get mad.

[Michael Fabsits]

I appreciate you joining the conversation and the insight you have given. Given that a number of the items you have responded with are things I personally did not know about, maybe we need someone who can have the formal duty of greeting new players for a half an hour at game and making sure that they know where everything is and how to find the resources they might need.

Call it a new player orientation as an example. Anyone who has been out of vampire for a bit, or is new to ECC completely can be guided around for a few minutes at the beginning of game or before game during the 9pm hour and shown resources, shown the books, set up a folder, how to work with paper table, introduced to the STs, how to donate to NOTR, how to access and navigate the website.

[Michael Fabsits]

Maybe what we could do to help this situation out is we can sit down with a copy of core book and highlight anything in the core book that has a clarification or rules change on the website. Use one color for a clarification and one color for a change. That way we have a kind of "master index" that can be flipped through to find the base rule, and then we can see that "hey this rule is highlighted orange, it must be changed." Or "hey, it is yellow is what I want clearly defined here in the rules? nope, I guess I will look up the clarification on the website."

I don't know if others would find that helpful, I might just do it to help myself learn the rules better, then make it available to the RA/Staff and players as needed. 

[Styx]

BY the way, Lee, Welcome to Vampire there are many of us who can try to help answer questions you may have on rules calls and mechanics at the time too, and as a long time player of Vampire, I can heartily agree that there is a FLOOD of information, house rule clarifications, and other things that can overwhelm both new and existing players.

[Sethron]

Nov 14, 2013 8:18:09 GMT -8 Michael Fabsits said:

I appreciate you joining the conversation and the insight you have given. Given that a number of the items you have responded with are things I personally did not know about, maybe we need someone who can have the formal duty of greeting new players for a half an hour at game and making sure that they know where everything is and how to find the resources they might need.

Call it a new player orientation as an example. Anyone who has been out of vampire for a bit, or is new to ECC completely can be guided around for a few minutes at the beginning of game or before game during the 9pm hour and shown resources, shown the books, set up a folder, how to work with paper table, introduced to the STs, how to donate to NOTR, how to access and navigate the website.

This is a brilliant idea; we had it on the last staff, basically, with Paul, and on this staff, Basically, with Sabrina, but those people get swamped and it is very hard for the STs to guarantee their time to escort some people around. A 'new player liaison' could be a great position for some of us to volunteer for; perhaps a thing that could be given to narrators in the same way that scenes could, hm?

Maybe what we could do to help this situation out is we can sit down with a copy of core book and highlight anything in the core book that has a clarification or rules change on the website. Use one color for a clarification and one color for a change. That way we have a kind of "master index" that can be flipped through to find the base rule, and then we can see that "hey this rule is highlighted orange, it must be changed." Or "hey, it is yellow is what I want clearly defined here in the rules? nope, I guess I will look up the clarification on the website."

I don't know if others would find that helpful, I might just do it to help myself learn the rules better, then make it available to the RA/Staff and players as needed.

This idea has been brought up to staff before. Del Johnson offered this to us early on in our staff career, but we put him off because the AMOUNT of things we were planning to clarify meant that he would just have to keep changing the book.

A physical book comprised of the house rules would be lovely, especially if it also had the core book rules in it. If you did not publish it to the internet in any way, we would be fine, I believe.

This is a MAJOR task, though. This isn't something we could ask our already overburdened staff to do. The community would have to do it.

We could make this; it would require a huge binder that can have the pages taken in and out for later changes, and it would be worthwhile to have a certain player be put in charge of paying attention to updates and updating it when the staff changes anything.

[Michael Fabsits]

Well, I will put it out there that if there is a rules and resource savvy person who attends game and wants to be the vampire new player liaison. I will donate to the NOTR to cover them for entry/play every week. It isn't much but it allows this to be a community resource without burdening staff with any additional responsibilities. If two people wanted to take on this role, I would be happy to donate to cover both of them.

While I can't speak to a desire to print out hard copies of the digital rules. I will take on the task of making a highlighted index book as soon as I can pick up a new hard-copy of revised.

[Sethron]

I am happy to personally play new player liaison, but I already offered myself up for this position to the staff when I first stepped down, but more than one is best, I think. Which is why I think it's an appropriate place to tap Narrator's for.

I also know most of the new rules, as I participated in the arguments for most of them.

[Michael Fabsits]

Nov 15, 2013 15:40:54 GMT -8 Sethron said:

I am happy to personally play new player liaison, but I already offered myself up for this position to the staff when I first stepped down, but more than one is best, I think. Which is why I think it's an appropriate place to tap Narrator's for.

I also know most of the new rules, as I participated in the arguments for most of them.

Consider your donations paid by me on your behalf.