Tag: skills

In my previous post about streamlining the New World of Darkness I talked about condensing skills, this got a lot of interesting comments that make me think about the logistics of it a bit more and whether doing so would make the game too generic/less detailed; those of you who’ve been keeping up with my blogs and video posts will be aware that i’ve recently got back from the UK Games Expo, a large RPing convention that takes place over her in the United Kingdom. During the convention I played in two NWOD games games ran by Amy Williams, one was a mortals based game and the other Werewolf: the Forsaken; both games we very enjoyable and, by necessity due to the time-limits imposed by a convention slots, used a streamlined version of the NWOD rules.

I was absolutely blown away how the few minimal tweaks that Amy made actually made the dice-rolling/rules side of the game far quicker to play and, like any good GM, resolved to steal the ideas to use in my own home games.

So how did the method work?

Well keep in mind that we were playing pre-genned characters in a convention scenario, but basically there were a few things where dice-rolls are normally required that we were just allowed to do without recourse to a roll; the two main examples that jump out in my mind are entering the spirit world and changing shape in the Werewolf game.

I loved this because it not only reduced dice-rolling and sped up the game but it also meant you didn’t have that slightly deflated moment when you’re at a dramatic part of the game and you attempt to do something cool that is in the nature of your supernatural type only to be stymied by a poor dice-roll.

The other thing was that our gifts/supernatural powers were more loosely defined than they would be normally; basically if you had a group of powers that involved manipulating darkness, you’d simply say what you wanted to do and then make a dice-roll, success being based on your result.

One other aspect of the game that wasn’t really used in the tournament was the morallity mechanics, I’d like to keep these in the game somehow but will probably have to put more thought into how to streamline them (if necessary).

Using this method in Future

Okay, so below are my current thoughts for how i’m going to run a streamlined NWOD game:

• Use existing character sheets with various attributes + skills.
• Willpower expenditure adds 3 dice to a roll as normal.
• Health works as normal.
• Merit dots add to any roll where they are relevant and can be used (rather than the normal effects).
• Supernatural powers: Players describe the effect they are attempting to achieve based on the purview of the power, they then make an attribute + skill + level of dots in the power roll to determine if they succeed.
• Supernatural strength stats (blood potency, etc) can be added to rolls to resist the application of supernatural powers.
• Werewolves can add reknown dots as extra dice to any appropriate rolls.
• Changes or effects that are inherently part of a supernatural creatures make-up (as opposed to acquired by a power) do not require dice-rolls (ie. werewolves entering the spirit world, changing form).

I’m sure this will require some additional testing outside of a convention to make it work more in a campaign framework, but I think this is a great solid foundation to begin on for building a more streamlined WOD system.

One of the things I talked about in my previous post was desire to condense the attributes and skills system of the WOD down to a more manageable form; whilst thinking about this i’ve been looking at the Fate Core skill list:

• Athletics
• Burglary
• Contacts
• Crafts
• Deceive
• Drive
• Empathy
• Fight
• Investigate
• Lore
• Notice
• Physique
• Provoke
• Rapport
• Resources
• Shoot
• Stealth
• Will

I think that this is a very neat list that covers an awful lot of the stuff that people commonly do in RPGs and it’s designed to work well in a number of different settings but i’m not sure if i’ll use it as is for my WOD conversion since I want to keep the feel of the game rather than write a Fate hack.

WOD has always had that whole attributes + skills thing going for it and I want to condense down the attributes as well; I considered using the Power, Finesse and Resistance groupings from NWOD, but to my mind they aren’t particularly evocative of what attributes they cover so i’ve decided to fall back on a more simple grouping cribbed from the old Minds Eye Theatre live-action WOD games:

1. Physical
2. Mental
3. Social

Because I want it to be obvious which skills generally go with what attributes i’m planning to group the skills under their respective attributes (something that NWOD actually does already) – I want there to be a roughly equal number of skills for each attribute.

Below is the list of skills from Vampire: the Requiem along with my notes and alteratons:

Physical skills

• Athletics – the skill can be kept as is.
• Brawl – this will be amalgamated into a single fighting skill.
• Drive – this skill can be kept as is.
• Firearms – this will be amalgamated into a single fighting skill.
• Larceny – this skill can be kept as is.
• Stealth – the areas this covers can be covered by Larceny.
• Survival – not keen on keeping this skill but unsure what to replace it with.
• Weaponry – this will be amalgamated into a single fighting skill.

Mental skills

• Academics – this skill can be kept as is and can cover a wide range of areas, representing more book-learned knowledge.
• Crafts – this skill can be kept as is, representing more hands-on knowledge; I may look at renaming it, I think this would neatly cover the previous survival skill as well.
• Computer – this skill can be got rid of and what it covers folded into academics.
• Investigation – this skill can be kept as is.
• Medicine – the skill can also be folded into academics.
• Occult – the occult is an important part of the WOD so i’ll keep this.
• Politics – the skill can also be folded into academics.
• Science – the skill can also be folded into academics.

Social skills

• Animal Ken – I will get rid of this, perhaps it can be covered by backgrounds or folded into the new crafts ability.
• Empathy – I might keep this since it represents acquiring knowledge about people based on understanding them, rather than actual interaction.
• Expression – I plan to get rid of this.
• Intimidation – I want to keep this since, along with socialise it represent the two opposite ends of socialising.
• Persuasion – I plan to get rid of this.
• Socialise – I want to keep this as is.
• Streetwise – I plan to get rid of this.
• Subterfuge – I plan to get rid of this.

So our finished skill list (after tweaking) looks like this:

Physical skills

• Athletics
• Drive
• Fighting
• Larceny

Mental skills

• Academic Learning
• Hearth Wisdom (renamed crafts)
• Investigation
• Occult Knowledge

Social skills

• Empathy
• Intimidation
• Socialise

The list is looking pretty good for a work in progress with almost all the skills that we would need; I may take a leaf out of Fate‘s book and attempt to convert some of the things that had previously been covered as background (resources, haven, etc) into skills that can be rolled rather than static ratings that give you a flat bonus, but i’ll cover that in future posts.

For now i’m pretty happy with the cut-down list, any comments are of course welcome.