[Insect King]

Hey there.

Since I presume many of you have your own NWOD House Rules, I was wandering if you'd come post them here and share them with everyone.

This topic covers essentially Crunchy Bits, bits of system mechanica, rules revisions, and all that good crunchy stuff.

What would also be nice are rules detailing the new and the use of the WoD antagonists, such as ghosts or zombies.

Thanks.

Cheers,

Chris.

[Pigsticker Bill]

I really dig the guidelines the Antagonist book offers for the creation of zombies. Not to reprint everything in the book but I'll try and give enough of an idea to wet some appetites.

Essentially you first need to determine how many zombies that you are going to have running around. The more zombies there are, the less points they get to distribute. Now, if my memory serves me right, these 'points' can be spent on the zombie's actually attributes (power, essence, and something else - I'll look it up at home) but they can also be spent to purchase special abilities like being able to move fast, or to have extra strength or to sense undead/magic. There are quite a number of special powers and if you've ever seen an undead/zombie movie you can draw many parallels with what options you have (ex. contagiousness via death or bite or touch or some airborne virus, etc.)

They also give suggestions for a zombie's lifespan and its ability to resist decomposition, which can also be bolstered by spending points, as well as a few story starts that offer new ways to see how zombies can be created (there is a relic detailed in the Antagonist book which I thought was a nice idea). From the amount of space the Zombies are given in the Antagonist book, I'd bet that it was at one time given a lot of attnetion and possibly slotted for the main WoD book, for my tastes, that section alone overshadowed much of the other sections in terms of detail and actual game usage - lots of 'crunchiness' as it were.

[Orphan-Grinda]

Well, I've got two ideas for system tweaks rolling around in the great BINGO drum that is my head.

The first is for a sci-fi game that I homebrewed the setting for. I was thinking about d20 until a thunderbolt smacked me in the forehead with a better idea.

For my game, you make a mortal just like any other, but after that, you apply the 'Past & Present' templates, which work, for lack of a better description, like race and character class from D&D. You pick a Past template, which grants you certain benefits based on your upbringing . . . if you're from a planet with a primarily agriculturally-based economy, you're going to be better at things like Forrest-Gumping your around alien flora than some dude who comes from a habito-industrial complex on a manufacturing colony.

The Present template applies to your career (which is appropriate for my game, since all PCs will be adjunctory to the military). You pick two Abilities and an Attribute that tie into your job (a commercial pilot, for instance, probably picks Wits or Dexterity, and then Computer and Drive). For your 'core Skills' you not only get a specialty, you get a specialty for every dot in the ability. For your core attribute, the ten-again rule is also the nine-again rule, which should hopefully reflect some really whacky things (like nine successes on a five-die roll).

That's what I've got for right now. Some other ideas exist in potentia, like expanded uses for Skills that can be purchased with XP, as well as a some really expensive pseudo-power-stat to tempt players away from dropping all their points into Skills during the game.

The OTHER idea I have I haven't fleshed out completely, but it's for a more WODy game. Apparently, Neil Gaiman and I had the same idea, as evidenced by his book AMERICAN GODS. I intend to run a game with what (possibly, haven't actually read it yet) seems to be a similar theme. The PCs are average humans at the start, and then discover in-game that they're not normal, or even human. Deep down, they're the sleeping forms of gods who're looking to wake up and remake the world again, but can't seem to snap out of the 'human' mode. I'm trying to come up with a system that accurately reflects a tiny smidgen of god-like power that doesn't break the game. I haven't yet decided on antagonists for the game, since I intend for it to be more about personal horror a la V:tR than Things That Go Bump In The Night, like W:tF.

So far my best idea is to steal from Demon: the Fallen and D&D with domains and an elastic magic system (not quite as elastic as Mage: the Ascension, but getting there). I'm thinking there ought to be pitfalls to go with the power, like accidentally overchanneling one's divine nature and spewing it all over the place (a god of love who dramatically fails a long-shot roll using his power to put someone at ease might accidentally give everyone in a five-block radius the mystical equivalent of a double-shot of Vicodin, for instance). I do want my PCs to go a little hog-wild, though. So I can demonstrate the horror of twanging the universe's strings without knowing what note will come out.

Wow. This post is a lot longer than I intended.

[Insect King]

From the amount of space the Zombies are given in the Antagonist book, I'd bet that it was at one time given a lot of attnetion and possibly slotted for the main WoD book, for my tastes, that section alone overshadowed much of the other sections in terms of detail and actual game usage - lots of 'crunchiness' as it were.

Like crunchy zombies, Bill? Yeah. check 'em out here. You might need to chase after them but you'll get there - just look for Zombies v2.0.

Well, I've got two ideas for system tweaks rolling around in the great BINGO drum that is my head.

The first is for a sci-fi game that I homebrewed the setting for.  I was thinking about d20 until a thunderbolt smacked me in the forehead with a better idea.

Hmm. Sounds like it has promise. I like plausibly detailed flora and fauna in accurate-ish SF games. It needs more work, but keep at it, OG.

The OTHER idea I have I haven't fleshed out completely, but it's for a more WODy game.  Apparently, Neil Gaiman and I had the same idea, as evidenced by his book AMERICAN GODS.  I intend to run a game with what (possibly, haven't actually read it yet) seems to be a similar theme.  The PCs are average humans at the start, and then discover in-game that they're not normal, or even human.
Wow.  This post is a lot longer than I intended.

I have an idea for a complete WoD RPG that includes this God set-up within the boundries of the game (but it deviates substantially from the Gaiman mythos). This I'm most interested in merely because it has immediate NWOD access and it sounds damn funky.

But go read American Gods anyway.

Wring out some rules and post them to me and I'll work out a correspondence, and hopefully more people join up over time.

Cheers,

Chris.