Worst WoD idea you’ve ever heard?

[Guest]

An older guy I talked to online told me that back in the Nineties his friend showed him not even kidding an idea he had for “World of Darkness: O.J.,” where O.J. Simpson (a football player accused of murdering his ex and her boyfriend) was actually a Ronin Garou.

[Shakanaka]

1.The entirety of D:TF's line.

2.That Void Engineer who conveniently (and literally) retnuked nuked the entirety of WTO's line for whatever reason. (Also I thought Void Engineers only specialize in the Middle-Umbra, why and HOW the fuck did he get in the underworld. Even then how the hell did he get so close to Oblivion without being hounded by thousands of Spectres at once?)

3.The Week of Nightmares- the event that is never broached upon again at all

4.The Technocracy never got any consequences for nuking the middle of North India at all

5.Making VTM abrahamic, then making all the splats non-abrahamic based so VTM is the odd one out (until the DTF nonsense comes about)

6.Touchstones

7.Never making a Dark Kingdom based around the Middle-East for WTO

8.Making CTD centered around being children.. its a good game, but I always hated that about CTD

9.Removing 6+ disciplines for VTM

10.The Avatar Storm for Mage after the Week of Nightmares BS.. you can tell the writers of the time really wanted to railroad Tradition or just Independent Awakened who liked to explore the Umbra

and many other things

[No One of Consequence]

2.That Void Engineer who conveniently (and literally) retnuked nuked the entirety of WTO's line for whatever reason. (Also I thought Void Engineers only specialize in the Middle-Umbra, why and HOW the fuck did he get in the underworld. Even then how the hell did he get so close to Oblivion without being hounded by thousands of Spectres at once?)

Because A) The Void Engineers specialize in all forms of exploration, including all areas beyond the material world, including the Dark Umbra/Underworld (as well as Cyberspace, the Astral Realms, real space, time travel, and other theoretical areas), and B) the Neverborn wanted him to be there and to detonate his weapon at the very core of the Labyrinth where the hole in reality that the Neverborn crawled out of so that it would tear it open even more and unleash the Final Maelstrom that would tear down the Shroud and allow Oblivion to wash over the living world. (This plan failed because the shockwave from the use of the relic Trinity bomb at Enoch caused his device to detonate prematurely.)

10.The Avatar Storm for Mage after the Week of Nightmares BS.. you can tell the writers of the time really wanted to railroad Tradition or just Independent Awakened who liked to explore the Umbra

I can say with personal first hand knowledge that this is 100% false. This was an edict from on high - Head Developer Ken Cliffe and/or the Wieck brothers - that incoming developer Jess Heinig had no control over. All WWGS writers did work-for-hire under contract that required them to follow both a project outline and a gameline's "bible" that dictated certain setting elements and other issues, giving them no say so in the matter either.

Besides which, the Storm was not an insurmountable obstacle for most Disciple and Adept level Mages, and even less so if they took advantage of Shallowings and Junctures, had the Stormwarden merit (which would've automatically made them setting VIPs even more so than PCs usually are - I've seen people just give everyone the merit for free and have it as the reason their Cabal formed in the first place), or used Familiars or Totems. (And most of these methods were created and pointed out by the very writers of the time you've decided to blame.)

[No One of Consequence]

An older guy I talked to online told me that back in the Nineties his friend showed him not even kidding an idea he had for “World of Darkness: O.J.,” where O.J. Simpson (a football player accused of murdering his ex and her boyfriend) was actually a Ronin Garou.

I was once pitched a game idea for one where he was possessed by the Spectre of Jack the Ripper, which I don't think is much better.

One of the weirdest things is still the AOL profile of a leather clad 4th or 5th generation Kiasyd who was a 7 foot tall Japanese albino with twin nodachi swords he wore on the back of his trench coat. (Nodachi are the equivalent of claymores or even zweihanders in some cases, having blades of three feet or longer, and made to be used with two hands.)

[Guest]

One of the weirdest things is still the AOL profile of a leather clad 4th or 5th generation Kiasyd who was a 7 foot tall Japanese albino with twin nodachi swords he wore on the back of his trench coat. (Nodachi are the equivalent of claymores or even zweihanders in some cases, having blades of three feet or longer, and made to be used with two hands.)

OMG 😂😂😂😂😂

@shakanaka

2. Void Engineers usually explore the Deep Umbra.

8. Hmm, maybe. I usually play wilders.

9. Definitely

[MyWifeIsScary]

Worst WoD idea you've ever heard.

Keeping to eariler editions, I'd say Vampire Himmler.
Edit:
The M20 rebranding of every tradition was daft. DAV20's Ahrimanes, while I don't dislike the idea, was written like a parody. Gender exclusionary bloodlines don't really make sense after a few generations.


Edit:
From players?
Viccissitude should be protean

[MalkSam]

There are a few things I am iffy about. I don't like the Garou as a whole because they are written to be such roid-raging jackasses that it makes them really unsympathetic despite their rather noble goal. I'm not fond of V5 touchstones. I don't like thinbloods. I'd probably find something to hate about M20 if the book was actually readable.

But the crown has to go to Cherubim, from one of the late 90s VtM books (Montreal by Night).


Genuinely, what the fuck.

[Guest]

MyWifeIsScary maybe 😊. In the sense that it was intended to generate discussion. But it was told to me as a true story. And I included it as an example of how ridiculous some people can get (though the 7 foot tall albino Kiasyd is worse).

I totally agree with you about making Heinrich Himmler a vampire.

[Guest]

MalkSam OMG yuck. I am so glad I never bought or read that book.

That’s way worse than my example.

[Shakanaka]

Gender exclusionary bloodlines don't really make sense after a few generations.

How don't they make sense? It's not as if Vampires reproduce sexually at all. They gain numbers from draining a prospect dry then giving them a portion of their vitae.

[MyWifeIsScary]

How don't they make sense? It's not as if Vampires reproduce sexually at all. They gain numbers from draining a prospect dry then giving them a portion of their vitae.

1- Vampires don't reproduce sexually at all. There's no need to have gender rolls. Sexism becomes pretty silly among vampires when the prince is a bitch five times your age and half your size who'll trounce you physically, socially and mentaly if you actually tested her patience. Sexism is for kine, not kindred. You'll grow out of applying gender politics to kindred by ancillae.
2- You can't really enforce the gender thing. At some point, a descendant will want to embrace someone of the forbidden sex, and there's nothing there to stop her. Pegasus can mandate who joins the Black furies from anywhere, but you can't really do much if Erin moves cities and embraces a lineage of men. This is even more true in the Dark ages where it's all so easy to disapear.happe Bloodlines like the DoC and their little subgroup the SoD are clearly the pets of people wrapped up in mortal gender politics rather than something that would happen organically.

3- All female Bahari cults make sense. If you want an all girl group, go with that. Bloodlines that have actually spread enough to get a page in a book are inevitably gonna have both genders with them if they're around enough. Modern Ahrimanes kinda work as all-female in that they get shut down within a decade.

[Guest]

MyWifeIsScary gender politics are important. Even to Kindred. Even Antediluvians still think of themselves as he and she, at least the ones who are not non-binary do. Ilyes Embraced Troile because he was crushing on her.

But this is only my personal opinion. If in your campaign you want your version of the Kindred to transcend gender, that’s cool too.

[MyWifeIsScary]

1- You're mortal
2- respectfully, people with gender disphoria naturally put a lot of emphasis on sex. I don't think most people put anywhere near as much thought to it. I think most vampires are sex realists; They notice kine are attached to gender roles and respond appropriately (plus it's "What they know"), they know other kindred mostly think the same for predation/masquerade purposes, but they recognize that kindred-kindred relationships aren't bound by "strong men and weak women". I think, say, Ventrue have strong reasons to prefer embracing men, but that doesn't mean they're bigots amongst kindred.
3- The very few vampires with serious gender disphoria will likely visit a shaper, or get the third level of obfuscate. It's nice to write empowered characters who don't do that, but that's not the likely reality of it. I honestly can't say that I know how someone with disphoria would think about gender after a shaping session and a hundred years; Maybe they're still scarred by their mortal years, maybe they still have 'impostor' syndrome, maybe they've forgotten all about it and put no thought into the new body they're happy with. But if you ignore the potential Viccissitude stigma, you are going to be treated like a hundred year old vampire regardless of whether you look like Barbie or Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson. I'm sure there'll be tiny etiquette ideas like who shakes hands and who doesn't, but nothing like "We can't entrust this task to her, she's a woman"

[Sergeant Brother]

I’m not completely opposed to mono-gender groups in WoD, but I think that they need a fairly strong justification for their existence, which is usually absent. I don’t think that any of the vampire bloodlines have a sufficient justification for remaining female after hundreds or thousands of years and over multiple vampire generations. It’s also a bit jarring that there are so many female only splats and no male only ones. I have my own head canon version of Daughters of Cacophony and reason for why they are purged the male members. I guess I can’t complain too much, because in one of my own custom splats is almost exclusively female, but it’s a bit different from the vampire bloodlines.

Black Furies have a better Ideological and thematic justification for being mostly female, but logistically with the way that werewolves reproduce, they would have lots of problems from that practice that vampires wouldn’t.

[Guest]

MyWifeIsScary interesting. In paragraph 2 you make a really good argument, but in my own head canon I prefer a world where gender is important to vampires (a world where Kindred of different genders are equal but still different, if that makes sense). Also, I’m pretty sure the part about Ilyes crushing on Troile (although Troile’s gender is unclear) is part of canon.

Sergeant Brother what’s your head canon for the Daughters of Cacophony?