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| Degeneration, Horror And Wod; A discussion of game philosophy | |
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| Topic Started: Jan 25 2011, 01:33 PM (85 Views) | |
| Laraqua | Jan 25 2011, 01:33 PM Post #1 |
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Administrator
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WoD is, primarily, a tale of degeneration where cruelty is rewarded with power and corruption is the road to happiness and where your own personal hell is paved with good intentions. It is a tale of antagonists in a world of antagonists where the light is smothered in apathy and where the person you choose to save might have been a monster all along. It'd be a tragedy if the emphasis wasn't on fighting styles and the accumulation of physical power (fighting styles alone out-number social merits 100 to 1, compare with oWoD merits / flaws) so instead its Horrific Pulp or Dark Urban Fantasy. Sounds horrific? Oh my, yes. But is it truly Horror? Perhaps. First, let's look at a few other games in the horror genre. Kult wraps us up in a truly bleak and nihilistic universe where beneath the wallpaper, the walls truly do lie black and bleeding. The world is a prison and both your methods of escape involve destroying all that is human within you by becoming either an unearthly paragon who feels no strong emotion and certainly no fear ... or tearing apart your heart, mind, and soul with an agonising level of anguish. Where your wife might be a prison guard of metal, sinew, and bone. Where the demi-urge is gone. Where souls are scrubbed of their memories through agony by 'demons' but the angels are little better as they would also shepherd you there. Where Heaven and Hell are both illusions. It manages to be horror because the downward spiral is brutal enough to hold the same eerie fascination as watching the aftermath of a train wreck. It stretches the imagination, suggests a lot, states a little. It also throws you into the mind-set of a vulnerable human, little more capable than yourself, and very able of being crushed by the monstrosity lurking around. The average people are just that ... average. There are people who are truly evil, truly monstrous, roaming around, who engage in debaucheries that shock the mind but they aren't everyone or everywhere. You can find love, an easy job, good friends.... In fact, the machine works better if the majority are content. Trouble is there's glitches in the machine, and resentful prison guards, and if you ever get a glimpse of reality it's hard to forget it because it won't forget you. So there's people to care about.... The protagonists, in particular, can be quite decent, human beings (though not always). It's also not well-suited to campaigns, though, as it plays the tragic horror card a little too well and can get depressing after the ninth plunge into madness. Call of Cthulhu has an uncaring universe hostile to human life and black-hat evil cultists and its contrast between good (regular folk) and evil (black-hat cultists, uncomprehensible entities) allows the players to have something to fight for. It hits you with the insanity stick, which is nice, because you can play through your torment rather than just rolling up a new character. Depending on how your Keeper rolls with it (some games are quite pulpy, others are slow-building Lovecraftian mysteries), this can be quite a slow and steady (with a few sharp plunges) into madness. But again, your characters are redemptive figures and it is most certainly worth saving the world, or your suburb, or that street, for just one additional week, month, decade, century (if you're lucky). The campaigns tend to be either pulpy or slow-building though few of them are actually horrific because the insanity / death rates are too high and the bad guys are a little too ... well, inhumanly bad. Cultists are evil because they worship Old Ones and they worship Old Ones because they're human. Oops, lost another reporter! Time to roll up another one! Warhammer, again, has an uncaring universe though it is hostile to all life. Humanity relies on a number of tools that are quite immoral and inhuman (turning prisoners into servitors, Warp speed, sacricing 1000s per day to the Emperor) and so simply by surviving they must tear chunks from themselves. Again, you've got meters to measure how corrupt / sane / alive you are and you can plummet quite rapidly. They also have a wonderful way of making you feel both claustrophobic and isolated - either on ships where no one can hear you scream - or on planets that are either sparsely populated or so overly populated with teeming hundreds of billions that no one would care if you screamed. From reading the books, in particular, I've found that the characters range the gamut from apathetic to hostile to helpful but they're generally either well-meaning or at least think themselves justified and that's a welcome change. It's not all every-nurse-is-a-secret-pedo/femme fatale/villain like the Noir genre. Now onto World of Darkness. Is World of Darkness a horror game? In my opinion, it is but ... it's also not. Especially in its current incarnation. I, personally, blame fighting styles. Fighting styles re-focus the attention onto the action. Yes, you could look at gathering social merits but then you're picking up people like candy and it's hard to feel like a regular person when you have a hundred or so people (reflected by three Allies dots at 3) that you can highly influence. Also, when you read through the merit list, outside of Changeling, there's few merits as evocative and concept-inspirational as a neat fighting style. In oWoD you had Pillar of the Community, nowadays the most character-defining non-combat-based merits are Striking Looks and Eidetic Memory. So what? Why can't we have awesome fighting styles? They exist in real life. That doesn't make reality less scary. Yes, but when a player spends exp on something they enter an unspoken contract with an ST that a) they will use them, and they will expect to be able to use them. It's the same thing in movies. If the opening shots of Quarantine were of the heroine showing off her kung fu / krav maga mix-up, you would expect her to bust some heads during the movie. There is already the urge to fight, not flee, in players. Having Kung Fu fighting style staring you in the face when you look at your character sheet is going to encourage you to expect to be able to use it. Why not punch the zombie?(On a side grumble: Why aren't there more merits involved in dealing with the Ephemereal Bullshit? Generally, the rule is that unless you have the right Arcanum / Rite, you can't see it, touch it, deal with it, which is plain dumb because a) it turns the occult into a math equation, combine Spirit + Matter = Roll dice to win, and unless you're the right species, you're just a set-piece, but if you are the right species, it's just a math equation.)So, what do you think? Does WoD horrify you? And if so, why? If not, why not? |
| OOC: Shannon O'Farrell | |
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| Checkers Pockets | Jan 25 2011, 05:39 PM Post #2 |
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Eager
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I'm inclined to agree with you, and in Changeling at least I've had to tweak my game to keep it horror. The fighting moments are often won on the rule of cool, making it more akin to a Chinese martial arts movie. Honestly, I'm okay with that. One of the most interesting ways I've found can bring horror back into things is by giving the players a choice in which both outcomes are have benefits but are dangerous and risk horrible consequences, and then putting them in a situation where they *have* to choose. The best example I can think of this being really well executed was inherent to the mechanics of PS2 survival horror game I played ages ago - The Suffering. There were monsters but only not constantly, so there was a good ratio of jumpy to actual threats. You had a torch and a limited supply of batteries. The lighting was very poor and the darkness was almost complete at times - you often could not see enemies until you'd just about fallen over them. You wanted to be able to spot clues and monsters and so used the torch. On the other hand the monsters could see you in return and it invited trouble. On one hand with the lights on you would never be caught in an ambush and could snipe at monsters from a distance. On the other hand if you had it on always to spot ambushes you'd run out of batteries when you really needed them the most. This is a situation where you are forced to make a choice and will suffer for it either way. It was fucking nerve-wracking. I've used this dilemma in Changeling from time to time and the result has been some extremely tense scenes. Yes, you have awesome fighting styles, and yes you can use them. They'll even help you survive better. But they will not solve the dilemma for you. So, player, what do you do? |
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ooc: Damien Hunter IC: Checkers Pockets, cockney nutjob extraordinare! (and his rats) Acknowledged of Adelaide Recognized of Clan Gangrel Valued of the Carthians | |
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| Laraqua | Jan 25 2011, 05:47 PM Post #3 |
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Administrator
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True, but I wish I could do some stuff like in Penumbra. There's this terrifying scene where you crawl behind boxes and hold still so you don't draw this dog's ire. Humbling the fighter's enough that they'll do that is often difficult. You can't do it too often or you'll frustrate them so you let them build themselves up ... but if you want something to be truly frightening, it's hard to point out the fact that now is a 'hiding time' without smacking the character on the nose. I agree with you, though, in that WoD Horror is very well-made for moral dilemmas and dangerous choices. Run to the more dangerous hospital for the doorway or take the long and ambiguously dangerous route to the Adelaide Air Port. |
| OOC: Shannon O'Farrell | |
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| Apollo | Jan 30 2011, 10:07 PM Post #4 |
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Shy
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WoD scares me, well, Requiem scares me because the character is kinda meant to be scared of themselves and what they become. The problem is, is that a lot of people enter game at the "I've already become it" so there really isn't much fear. For me, its about moral dilemmas and the non-understanding of the rest of the WoD. |
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OOC: Christopher Bond The face of Gawler! IC: Daniel Firth-Hallet | |
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they will expect to be able to use them. It's the same thing in movies. If the opening shots of Quarantine were of the heroine showing off her kung fu / krav maga mix-up, you would expect her to bust some heads during the movie. There is already the urge to fight, not flee, in players. Having Kung Fu fighting style staring you in the face when you look at your character sheet is going to encourage you to expect to be able to use it. Why not punch the zombie?




10:33 AM Jul 11