From: peterw@cs.man.ac.uk (Peter Wake)
Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.misc,rec.games.frp.advocacy
Subject: Re: WereVamp->Ars?
Date: 1 Oct 92 14:41:21 GMT
Followup-To: rec.games.frp.misc
Organization: Dept Computer Science, University of Manchester, U.K.

In article <qmyXRB2w165w@runic.via.mind.org>, thantos@runic.via.mind.org (Paul Williams [SysOp]) writes:
>   Has  anyone  out  there  considered  taking the combat/skill-resolution
>        system out of White Wolf's Ars Magica ]I[ and replacing  those  in
>        Werewolf and  Vampire  by  the  same  company?  I much prefer AM's
>        simple  skill  resolution   and   quick   combat   to   WereVamp's
>        Shadowrun-style of handling d10s.
>   Is  there  anyone  else  out  there that's tried this great experiment?

Well I had a shot at converting Vampire characters to Ars Magica, which
is halfway there.  Given the theory you can also go the other way.
Vampire is somewhat more coarse grained than Ars Miga however.
You can convert the Vampire effects and play them in Ars, but I can't
really see the point of mixing the two together somehow.  You can use
the general routine of Ars combat/duelling, but then Storyteller doesn't
really have a proper combat system, instead it has a set of suggestions.
Just replace suggestions with those from Ars...

Storyteller is a big leap backwards (IMHO):
1)  Shoddy points based character generation, a sort of points bandwagon
    thing rather than a proper character generation method.  It encourages
    min-maxing and rule play.
2)  Rules are so quirky as to encourage rule-lawyer type behaviour and
    rule-play.
3)  Very little guide lines for difficulty levels means that referee might
    as well just assign percentages and throw the system away.
4)  Combat system does not work.
5)  Damage system does not work.
6)  Difficulty above 9 for any task causes complete system break-down.
    i.e. The Antideluvian with 19 dice against starting character with
    Stamina 5, Fortitude 3.  However many dice he has chance of scoring
    a success (to wound) is the same as chance of losing one from a
    botch.  Furthermore Sta 10, Fort 10 is no better than above at
    resisting normal damage - still roll a 10.
    (I have a fix for this, I'm sure you can think of one too.
     Or a neat continuum of three.  Left as an exercise :-)
7)  Coarse grain problems.  You can't grade things smoothly: experience
    for example.  One XP is an awful lot to hand out or withhold, which
    makes it hard when you want to reward players differently but not TOO
    differently.  The same applies to stats, there's a very binary feel to
    it all.  Value one is feeble, five is gross and there are only three
    things in between: very poor.  Other systems have this problem,
    but only Toon and Ghostbusters as bad.  It didn't matter with them
    because no one is really bothered about the result: it's funny or it's
    not.  In Vampire there's a shred or 'realism' and it doesn't mesh well
    with the system.
7.1)
    This is most noticable with celerity.  The first point makes you
    twice as fast as someone without it, after that the return diminishes.
    Imagine a supers game that worked like this, it would be trashed by
    even the GURPS players.  Champions is a lot better.
8)  The rules are sloppily written and dreadfully organised.  I have never
    come across any rules that were so tedious to wade through (except
    maybe C&S and that's all tables).
9)  The vampiric powers are described like something from AD&D - the
    referee has to do so much work that he'd be better off re-writing
    the whole system from scratch.

When I *pay* for a set of rules I don't expect to have to do all the work.
We pay the games companies for rules because we don't want to bother
with working out everything for ourselves.  The rules do not guide
or aid the referee much at all.  The rules for Toon and Ghostbusters
are more help, much faster and can describe Vampires and Werewolves
Vampire is bad too: the scenarios are the most pathetic crocks of
shoddy railroading, internal inconsistency (especially w.r.t. to blood
bonding) is rife and pretention overbearing.  As for the background - I
could read (have read) Anne Rice and come up with a better rip-off of
it than they managed.  There is no doubt in my mind that it IS a rip
off.  I'm surprised they didn't go the whole hog and try for a licence.

Plus vampires are solitary hunters with good reasons to kill each other,
how odd that they form into little groups of friends.  It's harder to
provide justification for a vampire party to stay together than for
virtually any other background.
--
Peter Wake  (Waiting for Vampire Hero :-)
Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.misc