How does a wider book selection affect game balance?

[Ascanio Giovanni]

I am making this post because this is a topic that comes up again and again nearly every election, and often outside the election season as well. Either we are too permissive in what is allowed, or we are banning too much stuff and constricting the game. A variety of reasons are given on both sides of this argument, from story, to realism, to city focus. However by far the most common argument I see on both sides of this is one of balance. The conservatives say that the less common powers unbalance the game, the liberal side says that more availability increases balance with more options for everyone.

I think it’s high time this issue was looked at directly instead of just being a sound byte for campaign speeches.

As the issue of whether or not to restrict the available books as a whole is a rather large issue with many facets, I would like to limit the first attempt at discussion to one facet of that larger issue, only the issue of whether or not it makes the game more or less balanced.


So here goes. A simple question: Does restricting what powers are available actually make the game more balanced?


Bias declaration: As most of you know I favor a quite liberal approach, where nearly anything can be allowed.


I contend that no, it doesn’t. Below is my argument as to why.


Honestly, I'm a bit sick of seeing the argument that because we stopped outright banning things from certain sourcebooks, the game has gotten out of control. I would contend that this is a straw man argument, and a scapegoat for the real problem that most players at this game don't want to recognize. This game (Vampire the Masquerade) is not balanced. It never has been. It never will be. The esoteric powers of the 2nd Edition Dark Ages Companion are not any less balanced (and for the most part are actually far weaker, at least from that specific example) than powers from the Core book. But even just looking at the Core book, the system is quite clearly not balanced. It wasn't written to be.

Now this makes things very difficult in a LARP. In LARP where PvP is the norm, balance is more of a concern than in tabletop where you are all supposedly on the same side. Nevertheless we have chosen to move on and play this game anyway. However at some point, before I ever joined this game, it seems like ECC started pretending that the game should be balanced and we started hearing things about how to maintain this balance. It seems to me that this is a likely candidate of the time that a great deal of the problems this game has with trust might have started. If we pretend that the game is balanced, then we get far more easily upset when we see that other players have things more powerful than us. The problem is that it’s fiction. This game will never be balanced. We would have to rewrite the entire system from the ground up to make that happen in truth.

Far too often the esoteric powers are blamed for being broken. And some of them are. But some of them are also far weaker. Just like some Core book powers are cracked as all hell, and some are noticeably weaker. I will still contend that I have never read a discipline more powerful than Presence in the entire game. And yes I am including every known path of blood magic in that assertion. Blaming the powers that you don't necessarily know as well is the easy scapegoat, but if you really look at them, simply isn't true. Limiting the game back to Core Book will not make the game more balanced, it will just make it smaller and more uniform. And maybe that's what some players want, but I would ask that we please stop contending that it is necessary to cut books from our repertoires to balance the game. Or if you must, please at least provide specific examples of what needs to go and why, rather than lumping everything into a catch-all such as saying that all Dark Ages material is broken and needs to go. When specific examples are provided, intelligent discussion on the topic can happen. When we lump things into overlarge and ill-represented categories, all we can do is rage.

Now I do agree that far too often, powers are used as ways to bypass story. This however is not a problem with too many powers in play. The kind of players who just want to wave their dick around will find a way to wave said dick, whatever powers it happens to be made of. That is a factor of the kind of player, not the allowance of certain powers. All that limiting the available powers will do for that problem is force all the dick wavers to be waving around far more similar dicks rather than having unique tattoo patterns to show off when waving them (I may have taken this analogy too far).

If the players don't want to deal with a certain part of the game, even things many of us, myself included, consider absolutely vital parts such as feeding and Morality Paths, they will find a way to do so, whatever powers are or are not in play. For years and years (and now again it seems) no one wanted to deal with feeding. So for years we had an incredibly abstracted feeding system that basically let everyone ignore feeding as a thing. I don't know why. I hated it. I think feeding is vital to a game like this and it reminds people that they are playing vampires rather than humans with superpowers. But I was in the minority so I sat there and vaguely looked forward to the rare time I would test down 4 times and get a feeding botch, which was the only way to get a feeding scene.

I think as long as we continue to focus on artificial causes for our problems, we won't address any of our actual problems. We need to collectively recognize that this is not a balanced game and become ok with that as a community if we're going to keep going. We need to stop feeling butthurt because someone else over there has better powers than you do. That's just part of the game we are playing and I think that such recognition of the particulars of this game is the only way we are ever going to manage to start to cut away at the awful undercurrents of bile and mistrust running through this game.


Anyway, that’s my position. I now stand ready for counterargument from those I know will disagree. I only ask that it stay civil and on the point. I think this is an issue that should be discussed above board, and that even if we don’t come to an agreement (unlikely in any case) it might help us see more of each other’s points clearly, outside the context of election speeches which we are either compelled by allegiances to firmly support regardless or decry as heresy without reading.


*This message is not endorsed or approved by any HST candidate.

[Victor Vaughn]

The variability of the potency of the powers in the main book isn't justification for allowing blanket approval of powers to any character. The fact that there are PC's running around with Necromancy, Koldunic Sorcery, Akhu, Thaumaturgy, inceptor disciplines, Abyssal mysticism, all at the same time, is just plain stupid. Stupid.

There aren't canon characters that have multiple forms of blood magic that exist with any amount of regularity.

The weight of ECC is gone. Anything can be undone with a few tests and remote death beams. This is 100% due to over-permissiveness, abuse of a very liberal custom creation system, and what amounts to an arms race. The ability to overlap things that were never meant to play together makes this game a joke.

For purposes transparency, my PC has two forms of blood magic; I am guilty of participating in this arms race, even if it is just a little bit. I have multiple blood-line specific disciplines at maximum level and I have exactly one home-brew combination power (which is the obtenebration version of a protean discipline).

[Ascanio Giovanni]

Well so much for keeping discussion calm and on point. Joh, that post is incredibly hyperbolic and way off the point of what I was saying. No one, not even me with all my liberalism is saying let every character have everything at once. My character has 3 forms of blood magic and more rare disciplines than he has common ones and it's ridiculous. That's not the argument anyone is making.

I'm not talking about permissiveness on the part of what is allowed at once, or what makes sense for a given character. I'm talking about outright banning things from game. Saying that no one can ever have anything from these sets of books. That is the fallacy I'm saying doesn't actually fix balance.

[Shah-Khohr of Ventrue]

Respectfully, the statement "Allowing more books unbalances game" isn't a logical fallacy. It isn't any sort of fallacy. It is, in fact, correct.

Lets look at D&D as an example. Take two character. One you use the core book. The other has access to every supplemental book Wizards of the Coast ever sanctioned. Which one has the advantage?

Sure, white wolf isn't quite so prolific, but the example remains accurate. The fallacy with your logic is the implicit understanding that everyone has access to these things. And with a truly permissive staff, their characters might have access to these things, but the players would never think to ask for them.

In D&D, the breadth of feats you have access to, or spells, or prestige classes, directly correlates to what power your character has at his disposal. This game, right now, feels an awful lot like a D&D game; and one where I haven't read everything printed and am therefore at a disadvantage.

The sad fact of most of the vampire source material is that it doesn't make the game more politically diverse (although, the Anarch and Camarilla guides stand as true exceptions to that). Most offer some flavor history, which is largely irrelevant to a modern setting, an crunchy powers. Dark Ages is even worse, since the introduction of those power scales were never taken into account in the initial source material.

If the game is a game of personal horror and political intrigue, which I would guess most of us agree is the case, the spread of powers is immaterial. The story of an inhuman monster coming to grips with his nature isn't furthered by having access to a truly rare blood magic. That story isn't richer for having those powers. All politics are issued from the place of implied violence. We make a deal to avoid bloodshed. This dynamic can never happen when the power balance on the sheets don't resemble the power balance of the canon material.

Take our city for instance. How many of us are actually afraid of the Justicarate? How often does Seattle tell the world to fuck off and get away with it simply because of the prevalence of rare powers voltroned into something terrible?

In a game of personal horror, what powers you have shouldn't really matter. In a dungeon crawl, it totally does. Currently, it feels like we're playing Pokemon with rare stuff, and seeing who can build the greatest combo-breaker. Source material that purely offers utility powers don't further story, they further sheets.

[Victor Vaughn]

Jul 4, 2014 16:46:57 GMT -8 Ascanio Giovanni said:

Well so much for keeping discussion calm and on point. Joh, that post is incredibly hyperbolic and way off the point of what I was saying. No one, not even me with all my liberalism is saying let every character have everything at once. My character has 3 forms of blood magic and more rare disciplines than he has common ones and it's ridiculous. That's not the argument anyone is making.

I'm not talking about permissiveness on the part of what is allowed at once, or what makes sense for a given character. I'm talking about outright banning things from game. Saying that no one can ever have anything from these sets of books. That is the fallacy I'm saying doesn't actually fix balance.

My post reflect the reality of game now; there is no hyperbole, just the truth. Permissiveness is off the meter. This isn't a personal attack against you, nor is it targeting your liberalism.

In regards to more source books; not everyone has the dedication, time or zeal that is required to learn the ins and outs of every system, especially when the system is spread out across hundreds of books. I have talked to dozens of ECC players that hate the fact that they might be killed by something they don't know exists, let alone know how it functions. It's intimidating for many of the more casual players, or those that focus more on inter-character interactions rather than character building/optimization.

The other part of this is that the smaller our power pool, the more precedent we can put into place regarding power interactions. Corner cases that cause people to literally have to sit out of character for weeks at a time while the staff figures out how it will work are limited, of not removed completely. With storytellers dealing with fewer and fewer rules clarifications, the more time they have to dedicate to running stories, or having personal lives.

[The Mouth]

So, let me toss my .02 in there. The longstanding issue for me is as follows: Powers are cool, stats help regulate the game and explain what my character can do and is good at.

Now, you and I take two sheets. We use the core book, then run up two sheets with fifty XP. You'd probably still have a more 'optimized' character, Jaron, because you tend to build that way.

Now, same scenario, but you get to pick and choose from any book you like, from any era of Vampire. Same 50 xp - I bet we build vastly different characters. Because, at the end of it, I don't need more than the core book to get what I want. I really don't.

And it is really hard to play with those who are really unhappy with the core book's limitations.

Honestly, merits and flaws are bad enough. But when you consider the merits and flaws available from all books, ability and discipline aptitudes, extra in-clan discipline, etc, you can stack a lot of advantages. Granted, small ones. But they add up.

Should we use dark ages? Even on age appropriate characters? Nope. That isn't the setting we are using. If we wanted to start a game back in the Dark Ages, play it forward, then that stuff can apply. Dark Kingdoms? Not our setting. Kindred of the East? Not our setting.

So, why do we need these materials? Short answer, we don't. The setting should provide enough to keep us going without having to resort to power collecting. The cannon setting materials are typically slow build stories, that small characters can have impacts on big events but otherwise can't stop them from happening.

Basically, what it comes down to for me: I've only ever used core book and the clan book to work on my sheets. I've not looked at the players guide even, because an optimized build isn't what I'm going for. I don't want to invest that level of time and effort into building a character; I like my backstory, connections, little bits and pieces of awesome bits to flesh out the idea of my character. I know you do to, but you really enjoy the optimized build options. You have goals, you work for them, and you build story around them, which is awesome.

But that optimization makes you an absolute bitch to PVP with, and to be honest, it made you a pretty awful storyteller. I don't run my PC's like that, I don't run my story like that, and I see my process and your process as being like magnets of polar opposites. We can see each other, but never quite touch.

So, my defense? Without having to dive through endless piles of source books, without planning my XP build out months or years in advance (Yay, D&D in Vampire!), how am I going to engage your characters? Short answer: I'm not. I avoid them. I avoid Brad's character. I've done my damndest to avoid Rob, as my baron, because I want to be a part of my own story and not an incidental speed bump on yours.

I funnel that to you which is yours, and the rest I deal with. And I might point out, I got a lot of ST attention in the last two games, which was waaaaay outside the norm for me. Magic PC's get a dedicated ST every damned game. Ventrue get dedicate bullbutter. Toreador? Same. But Magic? They get ST attention, and dedicated at that, every game.

That is what it feels like, to me, that the super secret cool stuff that is on those sheets gets a lot of attention. You guys have restraint, and you are not murder botting across the game. But that knowledge? In Magic the Gathering it's called the Metagame, and I will admit it here: I am metagaming. I've been in too many scenes where stuff is happening and I am an afterthought. I pick the stories I get involved in, the scenes I'm involved in, and the interactions I have based on that Meta. And it's not 'Can I win this?' It is 'Can I have fun doing this?' Hanging out with walking Kill Boxes in Shoes is most certainly not a fun thing.

And all the spooky from all the books is seriously compressing what I am engaged in.

I know it is not the style of play you like, the working from limited materials. But when is the last time you walked on my side of street? My side is a hell of lot more inclusive, open, and available. It is also less prone to optimization, but so what? I get some awesome story and I have risk when I do it, meaning any scene could be my last.

I don't want to play your way, Jaron. I don't think you should have to play mine, either. But if we both are going to be in the same game? We need to have limits of some kind. Every rule is a potential exploit, every book adds new rules, meaning new exploits. You are damned good at working that process. For me, it gets in my way.

That, by the by, is why I think the transfer to V20 isn't a bad thing. We have spent $$$ on books before, I have two editions of Shadow Run on my shelves, and I transferred from 2nd Ed to 3rd Ed back in the day. This won't be that bad, and in twenty years we can check and see if Onyx Path is still making V20 books.

Less books is better. It narrows focus on what is important, discards what is not, and keeps staff resources optimized - The only optimization we should truly be concerned with. Asking volunteers to know your three pages of magic/combo discipline/special item work ups is a little extreme.

You know, I tried to get Scion's library for years. For years. Never did get it. Why did I want it? Lores. And magic. And stuff. But it was mostly all OOC, so whatevs. IC? I got most of the cookies I was looking for. I've run out of cookies. And I'm kind of happy with that.

- Ben

[Bertie]

So on the ST side of things, here are the four worst things I see in game right now:
Path of Blood
Path of Focused Mind
Clarity of Emptiness
Quicksilver Contemplation

One of those is from the core book, one of them is from Blood Magic, and the other two are from Dark Ages. The Path of Blood only has two troublesome powers, Blood Potency and Theft of Vitae. Blood Potency can be used to get uncapped physical pump, and bypass and instill generation based immunities to powers. Theft of blood lets you steal blood directly from people, and with current rulings store it outside of yourself. It can be made much worse easily with Focused Mind and Lesser Trigger. Clarity of Emptiness can be used to make most mental checks trivial, and Quicksilver Contemplation does the same for difficulties. Focused Mind seems to do everything, winning initiative, taking multiple mental actions per turn, frenzy control, and crowd control all in one power set.

By its base fiction in Blood Magic, Focused Mind should be a relatively rare hermetic power, but they then went and put it in nearly every form of blood magic, often directly contradicting its own fiction.  Focused Mind is in Assamite Sorcery, Dur-an-ki, Sadhana, Akhu, and Hermetic Thaumaturgy.

I think the game would be improved with either their removal, or in the case of path of blood, a massive revision.

As far as game balance, here is what I think we are arguing around:
Core is not balanced.
Additional books are also not balanced.

I don't think additional books really tip the scales of overall balance, but it does still include additional options for imbalance.

At the same time more books do have more options that can be used to better the game. While I do appreciate V20, if one of those reset platforms wins, I'll be sad that there will be no Abyssal Mysticism, or how Sadhana and Akhu will be bundled into the same blood magic, or the lack of moral paths which Dark Ages did far better than masquerade standard.

I'm fine with restrictive games, I've played in far more restrictive games than any of the candidates is running on. I don't think the problem is with more books of content as a whole, but identifying problem powers regardless of book. In the end, has anybody's game been truly ruined by another player playing a vampire on Path of the Vizier?

[Ascanio Giovanni]

I'm hearing alot of the same arguments I always hear when this issue comes up. And as always, they don't actually address the issue at hand. I'm hearing a lot of "but we don't need this stuff." On this I will absolutely agree. We don't need the extraneous books. But why stop there? We don't need any of it. We don't need to allow anything but a bare bones system. Hell we don't even need that. Framing the issue as what we do or don't need is ridiculous because we don't technically need to allow anything. This has never been an issue of what we need. It's an issue of what we want.

To address each point raised in turn now.

Rob: You point out that more books widens the playing field. I completely agree. You also point out that not everyone has access to everything that others do. This might have been true 10 years ago when most of us were still working from actual books, but at this point, the game now owns tablets with the entire WoD library on them, and I have offered to give that library to any player who wants it. So access is not a valid argument anymore.

And the argument of a character using only the core book versus a character using supplements makes no sense. Of course a character using supplements has more options. But that isn't the point. I'm saying that two characters made via the Core Book aren't any more balanced than two characters made via everything. In short if x equals a core book character and y equals all other material, x does not equal x, so therefore x + y does not equal x + y.

And I'm sorry, but the argument that some people don't want to read the books is a terrible argument for banning them. I'll bet there's a significant population at our game that hasn't read the core book either. The point is that any of our players COULD read them and use them if they wanted to. They are available. Of course someone who reads the material will understand it better than someone who doesn't. But that is true of anything we do. Unless you want to design a game where anyone can fully get every nuance without reading anything, this problem will not go away.

I will absolutely contest the statement that most of the source material doesn't make the game more diverse. I'd be hard pressed to point to any vampire book that doesn't introduce some new group or faction doing their thing in the world. Does every group need to be represented in our game? No, of course not. But if someone wants to tell that story, why is that story any less valid than you wanting to play an Anarch Tremere Baron? Because the backup flavour for their concept happens to be in a different book than yours?

And if you absolutely must insist that Dark Ages is all wrong for us and needs to be removed surgically, can you please at least cite one iota of direct evidence for this point rather than just repeating the position over and over?

Joh: Do you think that your character should know about every single power that might exist in the world? Really? I know mine doesn't. And that is why I don't mind being killed by a power I don't understand OOC either. Because the only reason I can see for this need to restrict the game to material that absolutely everyone is familiar with is to advocate metagaming.

It's a trust thing again. If we trust each other not to cheat and trust our STs to appropriately adjudicate how each power works, then I or you or any of us don't necessarily need to know how everything in the world works. And for those who want to anyway, we can read the books. But there is no requirement for anyone to fully understand anything in the world that they aren't claiming to understand in character (and hell, there isn't even really the requirement to know how all of your own shit works in this game, as has been seen time and time again).

As for the clarification work, a) most of it is already done. We did that on Sean's staff. And b) I will say that speaking as someone who has now gone through two sets of this clarification process (once on Sean's staff and once by myself again for Sabbat), the Core Book powers BY FAR are in general worse written and take far more work to deal with the "corner cases" as you put it than anything else. When writing clarifications for Sabbat, it took me about 4 months to clarify all the Core Book disciplines, not including magic, looking for all the angles and edge cases I could find. I knocked out every other discipline in the game (including the really obscure ones like Rift and Kineticism) in about 3 weeks. There are less versions of them, less contradictory information to consider, and quite often they are better and more clearly written (though I'm certainly not going to claim that last one in all cases).

Ben: First of all, can we please leave out the personal attacks? I'm quite aware that we don't remotely see eye to eye on what is best for game but there is no need to go after me personally, attacking my ability as a roleplayer and a Storyteller.

Can we also please cut the elitism? If there is one thing I'm more sick of than anything else it's this concept that people who make weaker characters on purpose are somehow better roleplayers. There is a type of roleplayer, I've seen mostly in WoD than in any other system, who love to look down their nose at anyone who makes an effective character and feels superiour that their characters are "real characters" because they gave no thought to system. It's just pretentiousness.

Now I'm sure we would make vastly different characters if presented with any set of creation rules. However I'd also bet I'd make a vastly different character than most other players and say the same for all of them. What does that prove? Everyone has a different play style and makes different types of characters. However the difference with what I'm saying is that I'm not personally threatened out of character by the fact that someone else in the game might (and probably does) have made a character with a bigger dick than me. Everything I have heard coming out of your arguments over this election season and before has seemed to come down to, "I don't understand how that works, therefore I'm afraid of it. Therefore it needs to go away so I can feel safe and have fun."

You talk a lot about exploits, and munchkining, and cheesing the rules. But where does that start? Where do you draw the line between using the system and abusing it? Here I'm actually curious with an answer. There are some obvious far cases that I'm sure even we could agree on, some bizarre voltroning of powers that was never meant to happen (and yes, I'm guilty of this sometimes). But effective use of a system is not necessarily abuse, though those who don't want to understand the system are always the first to cry abuse. I know I was before I learned how the system worked.

You're saying that you cannot possibly have fun while there are characters in the game more powerful than you. Well, I'm sorry, but that's going to be the case in any LARP you play. It just is. And even if you have the most xp in the game, there will always be characters who can do things you can't, because that is the nature of the game. I'm truly sorry that you feel you cannot enjoy your character because other characters can have their stories too.

As for magic, which has always been your crusade going back years, I've played both magic and non-magic characters at this game and I'm not really sure what you are talking about with favoured treatment. Are you talking about beginning of game thaum time? Seriously? You're counting the fact that this part of the system includes a need to make a few checks at the beginning of the game as favoured treatment by the STs? Because none of us in that line are getting extra plot or story attention there. I'll guarantee you that if you only have the need to make a few checks as well, you could get in that same line and make them, but I don't think it would give you what you want.

I'm going to try to continue to ignore all the attacks about how anyone who builds a decent character sheet isn't interested in story or roleplay, because it simply isn't the case. These are not mutually exclusive things and never have been.

When was the last time I walked on your side of the street? I think it was about 3 years ago at this game, before Galen's staff. I remember those glorious days, when no one could play the kind of character they wanted. When I was told that Assamites have no place whatsoever as PCs, then told that I couldn't be more than 100 years dead, then told that no one, including Giovanni could ever be on a Path other than Humanity, then told that Lasombra never became Anarchs (despite pointing out the section in the book), then told that I couldn't be high status, then told that I couldn't be independent, then told that my Nosferatu couldn't have Sabbat contacts, and many more that I can't remember off the top of my head. Yep, there are some optimization limits there. Not at all limiting of the stories I wanted to tell.

And for your information, the stories weren't any less absurdly epic then either. Anyone remember the Setite Pyramid in the middle of downtown? How about the Bell that could end the world? Joe Somebody reaching Golconda in game? The gems that granted elder powers? The Skittles? The mage that was running around teleporting people into his mind maze? The 4th generation elder randomly attacking PCs for sustenance? Malkav waking up in the body of a neonate and exploding in Elysium? The insane knowledge spirit that granted everyone with Auspex access to the Malkavian Madness Network? And of course let's not forget the sewer penguins. Every one of these examples from long before we all got "too permissive". So let's not pretend that allowing the PCs access to more books is to blame for the stories getting more absurd. That's its whole own problem and needs to be addressed separately.

And no one is asking even the STs to memorize every clarification ever written. That's why we got the tablets. We are asking them to know where to look them up.

Kevin: Thank you for actually addressing the issue on point. I'll solidly agree with you about Clarity of Emptiness and Quicksilver Contemplation. Quicksilver Contemplation can add some story, but I think it is outweighed by its rather absurd system. And Clarity really exists only as an optimization power. I'd have no objection to cutting them both from the game, other than my general objection that I don't really think anything should be cut unless it completely breaks the game by its existence (defined for me as making it impossible for other players to have fun). Personally I'd adjust the system on them to preserve the flavour. I'd probably make Quicksilver just give -1 dif on the next check you make rather than scaling so absurdly. Clarity I don't know. It's so optimization heavy that it might need to just be cut.

But this is what I am talking about. This is the way we should be looking to restrict things. Not making blanket statements that everything in a given book or set of books is bad, but looking at individual things that might cause problems and either modifying them or cutting them as needed.


To everyone: Basically it comes down to this. I have stories I like to tell and so does everyone else. LARP exists as the intersection of the stories I like to tell and the stories you like to tell. We don't always get to tell exactly the story we were expecting, usually due to that collision of desired stories, and that's what makes this a game rather than a novel. However, if you genuinely cannot enjoy your story because you see that I am also enjoying mine, then I think the problem lies with you and some serious issues of your own.

[The Mouth]

I wasn't attacking Jaron, just sharing my perspective.

And I am not an elitist. I don't think I'm 'special' because I play the way I do. In fact, my observation is that I am more of the 'baseline' and less the outlier. Nor do I have a problem with more 'powerful' pc's. My problem is as follows: No matter how smart I play, no matter how clever I make my character, if I am not playing at 'your level' of optimization and skittle collecting I cannot hope to have an interaction that involves dice go well for me in any way.

So I avoid them. Quite well, if you haven't noticed.

I've made story out of that, and I will keep making story out of that until we reset, continue as we have, or the sun burns out. It's not like it has been hard for me to work through the IC processes on that.

And it isn't just magic. Merits and Flaws have a place here as well. Combo Disciplines have a place here. Odd snowflake abilities have a place here. And I'm guilty of dipping my toes in those waters. I've made my thoughts on all of them pretty apparent; in a given game there are people on my end of the continuum and people on yours. Gamers will game the system, I've done my time as an ST and an exploit seeking player.

Now, I'm not an ST and I am not an exploit seeking player. When I need to find one, I know who to talk to as a resource, and you are one of those resources - You got the mind, the time, and interest in doing so.

My chief complaint, and it is a complaint, is that the snowflake/magic/skittle/combo discipline/merit/flaw exploit people take up staff resources, and a lot of them.

Epic plots aren't an issue. Epic plots that can be affected only by characters with certain powers are. That's a staff thing, and I am guilty of it; Giovanni are a bitch and a half like that. I remember the bells, I remember the Golconda, I remember the Pyramid. I remember the demon plots, I remember the PVP dramas, the songs that were sung to end the earth. Been here a long time.

But for a guy like me, just showing up to run my sheet and interact with people, maybe build goals? The access to all those books is used by a few to the benefit of the few and to the detraction of the many. That is my thesis.

Path of Blood is a broken ass path. Two tweaks would fix it: First, Blood Potency only affects generation blood spend limits and stat limits. Still does an insane amount with that. Theft of Vitae would need some more work. Arguably, Presence is worse, and I pwn Presence. It is so good, it's redonkulous. With a K.

Focused Mind? I get the flavor behind it, but it more or less needs to be burned at the stake.

I know that there will always be sheet tuners, min maxing, efficiency builds, proof builds, and all the rest. I just don't see any reason why we need to make it so damned easy to do it.

[The Mouth]

Oh, yes, one other point. Anything skill or discipline based is teachable currently. This means that there is an 'ecosystem' in play in which characters evolve based on their exposures to things. Anything new added to the ecosystem will change it. Lately I do not believe that there has been a lot of consideration regarding that.

People have bitched about 'powerful' characters for years; I do recall one solution to Mayek was to make him an Alastor, which was an NPC position at the time. My options for story resolution in PVP are exceptionally limited at this point; my IC explanation of the tier system is an IC way of explaining the Metagame as it exists OOC.

There will always be powerhouses. Always has been.

Remember a time when we could play some PVP and not get zorched from space?

Pepperidge Farm remembers.

[The Mouth]

Oh, one final note. You often feel attacked Jaron, by me. I recognize that I am creating that feeling in you, and am sorry for that. I get your style of play, recognize it, and see it as a cost to having mine. I'm just hoping that you can see that my style of play is possibly a cost of you getting yours.

[Bertie]

I don't think the books themselves are inherently a problem with taking staff time. I've seen people take just as much staff time with mundane mortal interaction or camarilla politicking as I've seen people take up time with Dark Ages Thaumaturgical Paths. None of these take inherently more time than anything else.

Now, the only time problem I've seen tied to extra powers is the ability to have more tools. If one player has the solution to every plot we throw, then there is the temptation for them to go ahead and solve every single plot to the exclusion of other players. This can be frustrating for STs and for other players. We have been trying to target plots in such a way that the same players don't resolve them every time, but once the plots are in game, there is often little to stop other players from stepping in.

I do think Mark's idea of having social consequences for this sort of thing was a good one. You can still play an elder with crazy powers, but if you spend all your time solving low level hunter plots, other elders will start to look at you funny.

[Shah-Khohr of Ventrue]

Jul 5, 2014 4:36:40 GMT -8 Ascanio Giovanni said:

Rob: You point out that more books widens the playing field. I completely agree. You also point out that not everyone has access to everything that others do. This might have been true 10 years ago when most of us were still working from actual books, but at this point, the game now owns tablets with the entire WoD library on them, and I have offered to give that library to any player who wants it. So access is not a valid argument anymore.

And the argument of a character using only the core book versus a character using supplements makes no sense. Of course a character using supplements has more options. But that isn't the point. I'm saying that two characters made via the Core Book aren't any more balanced than two characters made via everything. In short if x equals a core book character and y equals all other material, x does not equal x, so therefore x + y does not equal x + y.

And I'm sorry, but the argument that some people don't want to read the books is a terrible argument for banning them. I'll bet there's a significant population at our game that hasn't read the core book either. The point is that any of our players COULD read them and use them if they wanted to. They are available. Of course someone who reads the material will understand it better than someone who doesn't. But that is true of anything we do. Unless you want to design a game where anyone can fully get every nuance without reading anything, this problem will not go away.

I will absolutely contest the statement that most of the source material doesn't make the game more diverse. I'd be hard pressed to point to any vampire book that doesn't introduce some new group or faction doing their thing in the world. Does every group need to be represented in our game? No, of course not. But if someone wants to tell that story, why is that story any less valid than you wanting to play an Anarch Tremere Baron? Because the backup flavour for their concept happens to be in a different book than yours?

And if you absolutely must insist that Dark Ages is all wrong for us and needs to be removed surgically, can you please at least cite one iota of direct evidence for this point rather than just repeating the position over and over?

A lot of what you are saying is conjecture and opinion, but I will do my best to explain, simply, what my objection to all this source material is.

Your argument that everyone has access to everything is true since pirated PDFs make this a reality for anyone willing to get them. However, a great deal of stuff in game was never designed to be played with each other. Just because two supplements are printed by the same company doesn't mean that they're supposed to be played the way they are. Unfortunately, your stance that these powers should be use together is flawed. This need for an 'iota' of evidence is also flawed, because you simply rejecting the opposing view outright.

However, the greatest bit of evidence I have is character creation. Each of these systems has different character creation rules. Each of these systems has different advancement rules. Each of these systems has similar, but more powerful powers (take Enchant Talisman and it's Dark Ages equivalent for instance). They run paths differently. They run status differently. They run traditions differently. Why is it, then, that you are allowed to cherry pick what you do like and what you don't like from these books and put them into place for the rest of it?

The problem with adding more source material is that it doesn't affect just you. Everything that you add to the game is now things that all of us have to deal with. Sure, it might seem totally reasonable to want to have a story told where your super cool PC deals with the True Black Hand. Now, unfortunately, the rest of us are in a game/world where these guys are real, here, and interested. Your story affects all of the rest of our stories.

Dark Ages viking source material is great, and if people were just taking flavor from it, that would be its own thing. However, pointing to it and saying "There is a merit in here that says I can have mortal Sorcery!" is a whole different ball of wax. Nevermind that this merit should have died off already (as it isn't represented in modern source material). Nevermind that it is a cultural thing for a culture that was wiped out centuries ago. Nevermind that it doesn't fit the setting in any way shape or form of a modern Seattle game. Nevermind all of that, opening that book and pointing to that merit and putting it on your sheet now opens a whole different Sphere with all of that sphere's powers and rules. How is it fair for you to say "but I want to tell my viking story, so the STs have to learn the rules, and the players have to learn these rules, and everyone has to deal with my snowflake because I said I can"?

Do Dark Ages paths add to game? I would argue no, they don't. Canon for a Cam/Anarch game is extremely few path walkers. The handful in the back of the core book is plenty. The slew offered in the extra source material becomes simply that, more. EC, right now, is cherry picking what it wants from all of the source material, and I really hate that. Paths seem like a great idea, sure. They're fairly personal and all that. But, now you're forcing Staff to learn your hierarchy and anytime they're telling you a story, they need to do it from the framework of that path. Further, the mechanics for using paths in Dark Ages is different. What paths give you is different. How the world reacts to you is different. How you get on one is different (similar, but different). And when you start delving into these other books and pirating just a few of these rules, you're adding volumes to the house rules that now everyone has to deal with because you really wanted that weird alternative path to that one other path you probably never should have had access to to begin with.

Now a lot of things in play are not even in current continuity. There are systems of magic or rituals in play from books that have two or three revisions on them. There is nothing in the House of Tremere book appropriate for current setting. It even says that. This ritual is lost to time, that ritual is lost to time, that power gets weaker in the modern nights. That book is a great resource for a Dark Ages game, but I would argue that in the current Dark Ages setting it is no longer appropriate as they are different editions and rules. Allowing these things into the game opens up other, equally in appropriate, equally out of date Dark Ages material. It invites cherry picking of what you want to read and what you don't. That means that no only do people need to read all the base stuff (which is exhaustive), but read all the supplemental stuff (which is crazy), and then they have to know what isn't in play and what is. Then they need to compare that to existing house rules to figure out what may or may not be in game or appropriate for their character.

You saying that all of the flavor of the other source material strengthens game is true in a sense, but we would need to agree what game we are playing first. You and I seem to have an intrinsically different view on what game should be. For you, again, it seems to be a very D&D like escapade where you go about collecting feats and powers in a non-level based game. While you always have distinct personalities and costumes for your toons (which I greatly appreciate, for whatever that's worth), their motivations seem to be shockingly similar- collect and empower. To that sort of game/story, more is better. However, the canon story for Vampire: The Masquerade is simple- you're supposed to play a neonate, either fresh embrace or recent release. You're supposed to be a little fish in a pond where everyone will always be bigger than you. You're supposed to struggle and be oppressed and drink the kool-aid. Now, I get that V:tM has been going for some 20+ years now and most of us have already told this story. That's why things like Elder characters and the off brand sect seems appealing. However, it's gotten too far. Opening up a book and saying "Shit, there's a faction called the Innconu in here. Look at that! It gives sheets any everything! Right on! Wouldn't it be cool if there was a Monitor in Seattle?" seems all well and good, and in a tabletop where you control all of the factors, it would be. But once you introduce that story, it's now real for everyone and just because something was printed doesn't mean it should ever be in Seattle.

A lot of your arguments are 'slippery slope' or strawmen arguments, and I won't accept that from you. You're an educated man who is feeling very defensive for some reason; I predict because even in the Sabbat sphere you are hearing echos of these same desires, and you're feeling directly attacked. Allow me to sooth you; I am not attacking you Jaron. I am attacking your stance. You and I will never agree on this stance; more is not better. More does not make a better game. More is simply more.

EC, when it was in a 10+ year continuity benefited from a limited form of what you are proposing. After four or five characters in the same storyline, you get bored and want to flex a little, I can understand that. Storytellers took that to heart and started offering more outlandish stories because the stock stories had become stagnant. I can understand that too. I don't even fault either party for doing that; I literally popped a bottle of champagne when custom stuff was first allowed. It was incredibly liberating to play to my imagination rather than rules. And now we're in a world where we're all forced to play to my imagination. And your imagination. And their imagination. And all of the source material ever.

I reject your stance that just because a book is in print it is mandatory reading for play. I reject your stance that just because a book has 'Vampire' in it somewhere means that it is appropriate for play in this game, in this continuity, in this setting, and in these rules. I reject your stance that what we are playing in now is anything resembling what is appropriate to canon. I'm not innocent in this, and neither are you. The different between you and I isn't the severity of our crimes, its the steps we are taking to correct them.

It's time for a reset, sir. It's time to put us back to canon and let us grow into this big ass world you seem to crave. It's time to start over and be a baby dragon in a world full of titans. Give me the chance to tell you a story, and after that tell me if you think all these extra books really made you that much happier.

-Rob.

[Bertie]

Chris, while I don't see you and Jaron agreeing on what is the proper way game should be run, telling him that he cannot have nor express his opinion is way too much. Jaron isn't violating any of the charter rules in this thread, and he has the same right to speak, think, and vote as the rest of us. If people have quit game because they don't like the current climate or source material, then they can try and get that changed. If people have quit because they don't like that Jaron has expressed his opinion, then that is their fault, and not Jaron's.

Also I don't see what gender has to do with wanting or not wanting a diversity of sources. There are men and women who want a lot of sources, and who want restrictive sources.

[Decimus]

This entire thread has become extremely personal attack oriented.

I would suggest all parties involved look at how they're presenting their argument(s).

[The Mouth]

Sure it has. Lightning rods do that; part of the discussion in this next election is going to be about the two-ish play styles. Nearly, if not all, candidates have announced that in some way things are changing in a big way. Not speaking for him, but what I read into Jaron's side is that he is kind of okay with the current practices in terms of book access. We are coming back with our own sense of alienation, and trying to communicate it. And my statement is that what we have now is not working for us.

[Decimus]

Alienation is one thing, as are heated remarks.

This thread has become outright, hostile attacks.

[Webmonkey]

Post pulled. My apologies for what some considered personal attacks. I saw them as disagreements with personal choices and opinions. Regardless, as my intent did not come across, apologies.