Yes, I'm a little bitter. Yes, this "review" is, in many ways, an outlet for that. Yes, it's probably not a good idea to write reviews while you're still mad. However, I am going to do my best to be as objective as possible and take into consideration all available evidence. Here's the deal:
I was very excited about Victorian Age: Vampire. I don't normally get very excited about White Wolf books. I don't normally even play White Wolf games. However, of late, the game company has shown a remarkable tendency to break the mold, doing things that wouldn't have been typical of them 2 or 3 years ago. Look at Adventure! Look at Exalted. Even the new direction for the Dark Ages line, though many fans are still ambivalent about making DA: Vampire the core book (not that White Wolf had many other options, guys, unless you wanted a core DA: Europe without any beasties at all), also showed a significant amount of new thinking from the guys who were once easy to parody as "Mythic Creature: The Post-Modern Dilemma." White Wolf seemed to be doing a bunch of new and interesting things. Sure, they were still somewhat limited by their trademark properties, fan expectations, and the Storyteller System, but they were trying to stretch all of those as far as they could go, achieving some pretty interesting results.
And I heard Victorian Age: Vampire had dice-minimal and diceless guidelines for the Storyteller System.
To quote comments I made after reading Funksaw's RPGnet Review:
"I'm floored. And I may actually have to go buy some of their new stuff, which is something I never thought I'd say. Nice work, guys."
So today, I went down to my friendly LGS to pick up flip through DA: Mage (which also got good reviews) and pick up VA: Vampire (mostly just to get diceless guidelines for Storyteller, which I was hoping to use for some future endeavor, maybe a diceless Exalted game or something). I was feeling really good. White Wolf had done some things to bring me back into the fold, and I was doing my part by buying their new products and supporting the new directions they were heading in.
I walk into the LGS, say "hi" to the woman behind the counter, stroll pass the comics to the back shelf where they keep their massive selection of new White Wolf products (the local community is pretty heavily WoD and D20, as is the case in most areas). Sure enough, two copies of VA: Vampire remain. I pick one up, flip through it, admiring the gorgeously fitting Christopher Shy pieces that lead off each chapter, and then flip to the Table of Contents.
The diceless guidelines are in the back. Well, that's probably because they're optional and most people aren't going to use them. Anyway, I wasn't expecting a whole chapter of diceless rules or anything. I would have been delighted with a decent-sized sidebox that just offered some basic mechanics. You know, just task-resolution stuff. I was envisioning that they'd probably do some kind of resource allocation system. Y'know:
The Storyteller selects a Difficulty rating based on the how challenging the task is. A simple task might be a 4-5, harder tasks 6-8, and truly difficult tasks 9-15 . The player then adds Attribute Ability (or whatever the appropriate Traits are) plus any additional Willpower (or "Effort") they want to spend. Subtract the Difficulty from the resulting sum to get equivalent number of successes. Negative results are botches.
Using the "official" Diceless Guidelines for Storyteller, the Characters use Willpower (or some newfangled trait called "Effort" or something) to power their actions. They begin with 50ish points of Willpower/Effort and regain spent points in the following ways: sleeping, meditation, following their Archetypes, etc.
You could fit all of that into half a column. White Wolf has a massive number of talented game designers on staff, many of whom surely have experience playing/running/designing diceless games. Heck, pay R. Sean Borgstrom by the hour, give her 30 minutes and a pencil, & you'd instantly have a great system for playing Storyteller diceless. No crazy rules mods required. No need to change character creation or advancement. And it'd all fit into a few paragraphs of space, easy enough to bury in the back of any games you felt like including it in.
However, that's not what White Wolf did. Instead, this is what you get:
-- Diceless roleplaying is like playing "Cowboys and Indians"
-- There are no real guidelines for determining how to accomplish stuff
-- The Storyteller arbitrarily makes decisions on how well the characters do
-- Playing diceless is "a big decision;" it's hard, and you should only try it if you REALLY want to
-- Are you sure you want to do this?
Okay, I made the last one up, but the rest are all pretty much straight from the book. My memory may have decayed some between the LGS and the walk back to my computer (I live in a small college town), so don't quote me.
I didn't buy the book. Instead, I bought some issues of "Automatic Kafka" and went to write this review. I may still buy VA: Vampire, for completely different reasons, since it has other good stuff going for it, but DON'T BE LIKE ME and go to buy it because of the "innovative diceless guidelines." Buy it for other reasons.
Here's why I'm angry:
-- Diceless roleplaying is NOT like "Cowboys and Indians." It CAN be, but only if you play in a freeform, systemless environment. That's cool. I like freeform roleplaying and collaborative storytelling. They rock. However, they are not the be-all and end-all of diceless roleplaying, and you DON'T NEED GUIDELINES TO PLAY THEM. You just play. White Wolf basically did the equivalent of saying, "If you want to play freeform, systemless games, that's fine. Go mess around." In my opinion, this isn't really of much help. Obviously, their acknowledgement of other gaming possibilities is nice, but where's the meat?
-- By characterizing diceless roleplaying as being driven by GM-fiat, they've fueled a powerful misconception among the vast majority of gamers, i.e diceless = systemless, which is NOT a reflection of reality. I've been running a Nobilis campaign every week for the last 3 months. No dice. Plenty of system. In fact, I've had a hard time convincing some non-gamers to play because it has "too many rules."
-- Why do they feel the need to discourage people from playing diceless? It's not like there's a worry that diceless roleplaying will suddenly become vogue and put them out of business. Diceless roleplaying is not difficult and it's not this strange post-modern gaming fad. Once you get your brain in the right paradigm, it can flow even more naturally than rolling dice, which interrupts the action and pulls people out-of-character. Sure, it might take a little practice for hardcore WoD-types to get the hang of it, but you WANT them to try it, right? Then why be so down on your own suggestion?
Okay. Calming down now. I really don't mean to rant, because I want to be supportive of the new effort White Wolf is making to be open and innovative. However, when they've fallen so far short of the potential that could have been achieved, I just felt like I had to say something.
These three paragraphs had the potential to open new windows for the mainstream gaming audience. Heck, I would have been able to run diceless Storyteller games at conventions or even within the local game community, and people would have believed it could work, just because there were "official" rules for Diceless Storyteller. Alas.
Back to my Nobilis game...
Go to forum!
(Due to spamming, old forum discussions are no linked.)