Re: [WW] The feel of the game (rant)

[PdLaCara@aol.com]

In a message dated 6/19/01 3:25:48 AM, reuter@tse-online.de writes:

<< Hi there!

Waltzing through the post I find again and again, that people just
equate d20 too much with D&D (the Dragon or Lich ideas e.g.).

I'd rather think of WW as Deadlands in a different time. Scrap the
classes if they take away imagination. Too much concentration on rules
and mechanics ruins the horror theme. So rather than standard D&D
monsters, i'd be thinking in terms of reckoners and people who want
power no matter what, selling their souls for it.>>

I'd been working on a premise like that, but remember that even in deadlands 
there were creatures left over from the earlier reckoning in the middle ages 
and such.

And besides, since this is a completely separate game from Deadlands, I 
thought about going a different route, with ancient creatures existing for 
millenia, which awaken for the first time in thousands of years, and the PC's 
have to deal with it.

<<Ok, granted, the groups will have a lot of action, even without
supernatural creatures. If you want to preserve the horror element,
you need to do a gradual build-up. If you really want to go over the
top, set Earth up as just one dimension with rifts to others. And
those actually could be some of the planes, D&D describes.>>

Y'know, everyone keeps talking about how the pcs are going to be seeing lots 
of regular action and fighting in major battles a lot. How? I've learned from 
experience that trying to run huge combats and make them interesting is very 
difficult to do. Otherwise it boils down to "there's a big mass of <germans, 
stormtroopers, other great big monolithic evil>, so shoot them. for hours." 
Huge battles don't work in RPGs unless the PC's are taking roles as 
commanders who are in charge of tactical movement and such, but then it 
becomes a wargame. Also, that leaves the problems of changing history, and I 
don't much like to tamper with that. Although, as long as we're adding 
zombies we might as well add a few years to the war as well. What if what if 
what if. I wonder if PEG is going to put anything in the book about handing 
large scale confrontations and that sort of thing, because that would make my 
life a lot easier.

<<Once the powers of darkness get unleashed, anything could happen.
Imagine a kind of Turtledove scenario: After the war is in full swing,
german researchers get desperate for new superweapons and just take
risks they shouldn't have taken. Bang - the gates to hell open and
earth in its entirety faces a new invader: Demons and the spawn of
hell, crawling out of gates all over the world.

Suddenly you'd have to come to terms with the master race, because
their evil just seems to be a lot less threatening than the demon at
your doorstep...>>

Or you discover that demons aren't quite so bad compared to Nazis.

<<Does anybody know the french 666-bandes dessinees series? There (in a
very graphic and rated at least R way ;-)) something just like this
happens.

So, don't bring your Monster Manual to the play session unless you
want to throw open some portals into hell. Until then its all a
matter of the much discussed "suspension of disbelief".>>

See, I don't see what the great big huge "anti-D&D" sentiment is. While D&D 
is nowhere near a perfect system, it's not totally bad either. There are 
plenty of old-school D&D monsters which can be just as nasty in a horror 
environment if the proper spin is put on them, like Alan's The Black Lord's 
Lands. That could be a really cool adventure, which involves an old-school 
monster. 3rd edition also has a couple of fun ones that could be ported over 
into other settings.

Still, you've got to home-brew your own monsters from time to time. Nothin' 
better than a homebrewed monster.

<<Just my 2 Pfennige (as long as they are valid, cents soon ;-)).

Regards,

Arne Reuter

-- >>

Ditto.

The First Peter (there's more than one of us)