Hey, a question for you all! Are the new versions of the games, (vampire: the requiem, werewolf: the forsaken, etc), better than the old versions? Are they worth buying? I'm thinking about getting back into whitewolf games if I can find a group and I need to decide whether or not to buy the new core books. Please let me know your opinion!!!

Sanaldo_de_Mirdo wrote:

The group I played in had Mage: The Ascension, Werewolf: the Apocolypse, Hunter: The Reckoning (which we largely disregarded, playing humans only as humans with not superpowers), Vampire: The Masquerade, and a bunch of clan books for vampires and werewolves plus a couple of things we didn't get to use like a book on wraiths and stuff like that. We never used the updates and honestly I don't see any need for them.

Okay, that's one for the "no" column. Now if anyone else would ever deign to reply I might just get some more advice. Seriously Senaldo, are you and me the only ones who post anymore? Anyhoo, I'm leading towards the "no" side myself and just staying with the older edition. *Captures all the lurkers in a pokeball. Then he puts them into a blender with milk, sugar, and ice to turn them into lurker smoothies.*

Oh thought I replied to this earlier, I honestly like the new edition, the streamlined nature of it, and the fact that everyone is built with the same basic rules (they start as humans made from the World of Darkness Rulebook) and the supernatural side of things is basically a template you add on to the top. I'm becoming a fan.

van Helsing

I agree with tomvanhelsing on this: The new games are much more streamlined. So much, that it really makes a difference.

In short they have changed the basic roll from having varying difficulties (in the old game) to having difficulty 8 (in the new). That means you get a pretty clear idea of how many successes you can expect on each task.

Apart from that, the skills have been clarified a lot. So much, that there are now only 24 skills, with very well-defined uses. As you still add up skill and attributes, you have plenty of combinations.

The greatest change is in the combat system though. Now there is only one (1) roll per attack. Attacker rolls (skill) + (attribute) + (weapon) + (various) and subtracts his opponents defense value before rolling. The resulting succeses is how much damage is dealt. Earlier it was 4 rolls per attack (to hit, dodge, damage, and soak). There's a lot of maneuovres now that modify your roll in some way, even for normal people, and you can get merits (backgrounds) that give you even more combat options.

The books and gamelines
Mortals (basic game line): This is arguably the best horror-game to come out in many years. Great ideas, and very, very good sourcebooks. In general you can use all the books for this line with all the other game lines (and Mages with guns from "Armoury" is scary). One of the greatest things is that the basis rules are in the World of Darkness book, and doesn't get reapeated in the core books for each gameline - meaning more pages for something interesting.
Vampire: Introduced the new 5 x 5 system of characters. Instead of having a group of clans to choose from, there is now only 5 clans. Between them, they cover most types of vampires. On top of that there is 5 covenants making it up for political groups (instead of the old camarilla and sabbat sects). Besides this, you can add a bloodline to your character, which is a refinement of his clan. Other than that, focus in the game is on personal horror, and local politics (as opposed to the earlier games inclination towards epic quests and international politics). A lot of small changes make this game run better, and you can run it pretty well with just the corebook.

Werewolf: This has become a scary game. Werewolves have the same 5 x 5 structure as the others, and can add a Lodge to further specify a given concept. There is no end of how much this game has changed - the whole wyrm/gaia thing is gone. Instead werewolves are predators patrolling the borders between physical reality and the spirit worlds. But due to an incident in the mythic past (something about slaying their own mythic arch-ancestor), all spirits are more or less suspicious or hostile to werewolves. And there are tribes of werewolves, who blame other tribes for that ancient killing incident (think of it as a religious war - it's bitter and it just keeps going). Apart from that, werewolves are still the strongest fighters of all the game lines, but their strength comes with a caveat. It is fueled by rage, and it can very well slip out of control for them, so they end up injuring people they didn't intend to hurt.

Mage: The most changed game line. Now it's much more a modern fatasy game, and much less philosophical inclined. It has the 5 x 5 structure (again), which maybe works ok (haven't played this game much).
The good stuff is that the rules for using magic is clear - your character stil has spheres (although now they are called arcana) and each dot gives access to a great range of effects, and can be combined with other arcana to make some very creative rotes.
However, the "sample spell list" is longer than the one in the D&D 3.0 Plyers Handbook. And that's too much space. You don't get much setting, and what you do get is something about all mages being the interitors of Atlantis and fighting in a secteric war to claim access to the Heavens. This game really needs sourcebooks to run well.

And lastly: There is a program called "herolab" that does a wonderful job at character creation, but only for Mortals and vampires.

Alright, more replies! That's two for the "yes" column vs two for the "no" column, so it seems to go both ways. From what Tomvanhelsing and Jos said I might be interested in getting some of the books just for the new setting and the new 5x5 deal. I would probably still run the old edition, but borrow some of the stuff I like from the new books. I especially like how combat is more streamlined, I might steal that. The new 5x5 deal intrigues me in terms of Vampire, I never really liked the "Camarilla vs Sabbat with other groups just hanging out in the shadows doing nothing" deal.

Meefman wrote:

The new 5x5 deal intrigues me in terms of Vampire, I never really liked the "Camarilla vs Sabbat with other groups just hanging out in the shadows doing nothing" deal.

That bit does seem interesting...I might wait till net-books come out or till a friend has them to look at it, but I doubt I'll take anything from it. I did like the Camarilla vs Sabbat thing actually. It was kind of a result of consolidation of power in the main groups. Sort of an Axis vs Allies thing. All the neutral countries didn't do much on their own, but they did have some key points of interest at times.

All in all, I'd at least take a close look at the newer editions, vampire makes a number of references about being post-camarilla instead of a new game all together. Personally, I think the new version places a more accurate focus on vampire politics. It seems like a lot of reference material and video games took this bent as well.

Also, the bloodlines are like dnd prestige classes, and there are a number of books full of just bloodlines, as well as a few bloodlines in each of the clan books. Overall, I like the changes.

I've only purchased the new editions of vampire and mage, and I have only the main mage book, and as has already been mentioned, I need more of the mage books to get a clearer picture. Mage has specialties as well, the their name escapes me. Like the changes to mage too.

Exalted 2nd additions I'm not liking too much. There's a lot of changes to powers and some of my favorite spells have been removed altogether.

Scions is still going on 1st edition, only gripe I have with Scion is 1/2 or more of each of the main books are an ongoing adventure. The actual player info could have been placed in just one of the books, but I like the game.

Thanks for the feedback Etoc! I have decided to maybe get vampire and werewolf if I can find them used and cheap enough. Only going to get the one book, not going to collect them like I did with the older books. I actually LIKED the clanbooks - so sue me! Everyone else for some reason didn't like them.