Please, o' Grognard-King, grace us with a walkthrough of "How to beat" x or y dungeon by cheesing it in a speedrun. Please. I beg of thee. I wish to see a professional break it down.
Wraith: The Oblivion will always been my favorite virtually unplayable game. I found it beautiful, with the bleakness of the setting making the underlying theme of transcendence all the more powerful. I've only ever run the game as one-shots, usually with the party trying to escape a group harrowing. I personally think "Shoah" is brilliant -- an art piece using the medium of a gaming supplement. I would never use "Shoah" in a game, but reading it made me *feel* the tragedy of the Holocaust in ways sterilized high school lectures never managed.
That’s what the creators of Charnel Houses intended. They wanted to do a genuinely mature game instead of the juvenile orgy of sex and violence of other “mature” games being made at the time. So, chalk up a win for them.
I'm so happy. After all this time you have covered one of my all-time favorite settings, that I have never ever played. As a story setting, I think it's unparalleled. The art alone paints beautiful imagery, and their vision of the afterlife is great. The game mechanics as an internal Universal structure is great and has a lot of internal consistency. I love the concept of addressing the afterlife without necessarily sticking to a one true interpretation. The characters are all people that when they died they died in such a way that they have unfinished business and that unfinished business is what keeps them from continuing their Journey to the next part of their existence whatever that is. As a concept I like the specters and the whole concept of Oblivion being the anti version of the setting. The beautiful a concept a shadowy realm where in some locations you can dimly see the world of the living, where every physical item is either a soulforged into that shape or inanimate objects that was tied to such strong emotional bonds that it exists in this realm. As you trudge about this landscape encountering people of different faiths and Creeds some who have been alive for Generations all trying to figure out where the final destination is, in the distance you see a pillar of light arcing to the heavens and something traveling up it. Was that a person who sealed off all their bonds and is heading to their Heaven or Hell? For the characters, nothing is certain because people who move on just disappear. No one ever comes back to explain things. I agree with you 100% though, the game is itself unplayable by virtue of its own mechanics. The only way you could ever run a proper game would be with a group of extremely mature and even handed people. Something you would never be able to pull off with the average gaming group. At the time I used to describe it to people as paranoia without the humor. Not an unfair comparison I feel when everything in the game is trying to kill you, you are already dead, and even the other players are out to ruin your fun. I have I think every book for the setting. Including the DM screen, something I usually didn't buy. I bought them to read them, and I have both the Risen and the Holocaust book. I even have their World War One supplement. I want to say that the Holocaust book actually got awards from the Holocaust Society, or whatever they're called, but I just fann through my book and I can't find that so it might have been from an advertisement. I think that supplement might not have had as strong and impact, if not for the fact that they released it under their black dog imprint. By the time this book it come out, black dog head received a tremendous amount of notoriety due to the intentionally shocking and grotesque Nature's of their supplements. When prior books were stuff like freak Legion, the fomori, Pentax, there was no way that people were going to look at this book and not expect something grotesque and shocking. I was so Keen to play this that when I started collecting the books I hand typed the character sheets on parchment paper from a typewriter, just to lend that level of authenticity. Then I took a look at my friends and realize the first game session would end with a fist fight.
Wow, that really was touching. In regards to the players and their mindset with this game, I wonder if you went to your local theater and asked a group of actors if they might be interested. In my experience, actors make for some of the best players. Just a thought.
Small correction: The Shadowlands, various kingdoms, islands, labyrinth and tempest are all part of the low umbra, they aren't separate from the umbra.
1:35 - I dare say that most people lack the necessary will to make it work. 5:20 - One must be wary in dealing with the Spirit Forges. The Wraiths and Shades that inhabit them offer items beyond mortal dreams, in exchange for a sampling of your blood. The Wraith Smiths forge their items with forfeit souls. - Sheeed your bloood for me, Vampiiire. Imagine what, POWER you could wield! 5:45 - The Soul Reaver, Kain’s ancient blade - older than any of us, and a thousand times more deadly. The legends claimed that the blade was possessed, and thrived by devouring the souls of its victims. For all our bravado, we knew what it meant when Kain drew the Soul Reaver in anger - it meant you were dead. 6:10 - Nope! Excited as all hell! 7:40 - I agree. This is the first time I heard about Wraith having a book like that. Very bad idea on White Wolf. 12:10 - There's at least one in everyone's favorite WoD game Bloodlines. 13-35 - And then there's Carpenter in Hunter the Recknoning, I think he is this 'guild' . 14:12 - Well, at least this is what Carpenter becomes. A Risen. Thanks for the video Welch! But once again, I fail to see what makes this so depressing in many people's eyes. To me, this sounds like a lot of fun and I get a ton of ideas one can do with this. Great video!
I gotta admit, I'm legitimately interested to see if you'll ever cross over from the World of Darkness to the Chronicles of Darkness, if only to see if even you can keep track of the shifts from 1e to 2e of that meta-game.
We did a bunch of 1e VtM / WtA / MtA back in the day, it's just what everyone did. We did play one session of Wraith, and maybe (probably!) we did it wrong, but to our poor GM's angst, the Shadow mechanic just broke our game....in a silly way, we had so much fun beating up on each of our victim players. That said, it was clear that there was a really strong thematic there, and I know that the people that liked Wraith....LOVED Wraith. I would definitely give it another look, but I'm kinda intimidated by the WoD as a whole these days, twenty years of backstory and reboots. * I think your review of Charnel Houses of Europe sounds probably accurate. Not read it myself, but I remember being tempted to buy it, just to read it. It was very controversial (amongst gamers, let alone anyone else!) when it was released....but it was also acknowledged as being really, really, well-written. I don't think the (any) topic should be automatically off-limits for our hobby, but it reminds me of the people taking happy selfies at Auschwitz (that an artist famously super-imposed with scenes of the true horrors of the place: petapixel.com/2017/01/21/artist-shames-disrespectful-holocaust-memorial-tourists-using-photoshop/ ). You have to be clear what the objective of the game session is, can you find a way to avoid being disrespectful, is it even possible?
I congratulate you on tugging up my heartstrings with that sobering picture of total biscuit. If there's any TH-camr out there that has since passed on I think I miss him the most.
Charnel Houses of Europe feels like Wraith in a nutshell. Extremely well regarded in terms of the work put in to making it and it’s artistic themes and goals but a hard sell to get anyone to actually play it. Sad. On the other hand, Orpheus sounds like it was pretty cool, and I kind of want to check it out just to see how they pull off the idea of an rpg with a deliberately limited run and a built-in but tightly controlled meta plot.
It seems like what should be an obvious rule of RPG design, is if you have the PLAYERS - not necessarily the characters, but the players - at each others throats, you did something wrong...
You got a like on the last upload, and so you shall on this one. Fitting that since you alluded to the fate of one of the most hated beings in OWoD, you deserve the extra like. Story time: Back in the olden days of the late 90's, my best friend was a guy who loved everything WW put out. I finished high school and was moving away to start my new life, he gave me his collection of books. I don't remember the exact number, but going through the lists and including the Black Dog line it was well over 75, mostly of the main 3. I poured over these books for years. I made dozens of different characters with each of the tribe/clan/tradition books. I ignored Changeling: The Dreaming because it felt like the right thing to do. The book I was most obsessed with though, was this one. I didn't have anything other than the core book. I lived in a small town at the time that didn't have a game store to get more and this was too early for internet ordering to really become a thing. Even more than Changeling, I couldn't figure out Wraith's place in the WoD. It felt so disconnected and lonely, I had a hard time imagining playing it in a group with other players as ghosts since everything was so... personal to the characters. Eventually I met a crazy person and we made little crazy people and needed rent money so the books were a luxury that I could not keep anymore, but once I saw you doing WW games I started scouring for this one, just to bring back some memories. So thank you for that.
I think Wraiths shadow mechanic works best if everyone is on the same page about it. If you’re trying to powergame using the shadow to kill the other player no one’s gonna have fun, but if you work with the other player to make it an interesting story then I could see it working great with the right group.
Then again… “right group” is doing a lot of heavy lifting. Definitely not a game I’d recommend to my regular Thursday night group. But I know a bunch of theatre kids from high school who would get a kick outa it.
That's an easy to miss distinction between the tabletop and Minds Eye Theatre rules that I didn't realize till you brought it up; in MET, shadowguiding is a responsibility of a Narrator/GM, not a fellow player. There's a tiny sidebar in the Oblivion book saying you "can" let another player shadowguide if their own character is out of action, but only if you seriously trust the player to not be an asshole. I never realized it was different in TT.
You know, the whole "Every-item-is-a-soul" thing reminds me of why I don't exactly like the soul-eating trope in other bits of fiction. It always surprises me to learn how fragile and disposable supposedly immortal souls turn out to be. These scenes kind of feel like a cheap way to up the stakes, or the EDGE in a story because you already made life super cheap in your "mature" story, and you needed a way to milk more drama and DRIMGARK out of the same, dead characters you already killed off. "And then, the monster kills a kid! Wait. No...then the monster EATS A KIDS' SOUL! MUWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAIMSUCHANAWESOMEWRITER!" *scribbles madly* Of course, if you believe the real world is a materialist universe, then REGULAR death is soul death, so you'd think that there'd be an atheist somewhere reading a story about demons eating a character's soul might just shrug and assume that the consequences of the natural order has reasserted itself after the character had a second life while people out here just get one, except...probably not. This is a whole separate, second death and the loss of an (I assume, some fictional afterlifes are sketchy on how long they last naturally) eternity of existence, and the tragedy is still there.
@@Mr_Welch BTW, I do hope you cover HtR at some point. I get some of the criticisms of it (ie "they should be humans! Not discount Exalted!"), but I've always thought others are kind of bullshit (even WoD fans seem to think all Hunters are basically Waywards).
@@SerpenThrope Hunter was probably the game where it started going downhill quickly. And it also made all the other human-centric books looks so much better because they were fun to play
My favourite game of owod by far. Yes it was stand alone, and requires actually mature players who agree to play it with the blinkers turned off but it is also the most emotional and often hopeful of the owod. Unfortunately the distribution to actually buyers in Australia and throughout asia was woeful and shifted a lot of sales to call of cuthulu because it had a similar tone but you could actually get the support.
It was okay. Like almost all of the mortal tie in books it really didn't give you a lot to keep a campaign going. Maybe for a One-Shot but it was fairly middling outside of useful background information
The "Year of the Hunter" supplement for Wraith ("The Quick and the Dead"), IMO, was the *more* lacklustre title - the Ghosthunting organizations that were featured in the core book received barely enough expansion beyond dry text and equipment/power lists; the "Year of the Ally" follow up that was "Mediums: Speakers with the Dead" was far superior in almost every aspect - the medium-specified Numina was better written, organizations like the Benandanti and the Orphic Circle got a decent amount of plot-meat added to their bones, and addition threats like Spectre Cults that manipulate Mediums into working with them, plus some details regarding the remnants of the Dark Kingdom of Flint that itinerant Mediums may encounter in their travels, provided certainly enough fuel to start/sustain either a Wraith- or Medium-based chronicle for a decent amount of time. That being said, they suffered the same fate as all of the other mortal-based game lines - by and large, nobody was interested in them; nobody really wanted to play a Ghoul or a Kinfolk when playing a Vampire or a Werewolf was possible (unless it was a one-shot) - and it was hard enough to sell the *idea* of Wraith to potential players, let alone the concept of Mediums and Ghosthunters within the same setting. Sadly, the latest "World of Darkness: Ghosthunters" supplement for the fantastic "Wraith: the Oblivion - 20th Anniversary Edition" release seems further proof of that - it seems to contain even *less* useful and interesting information than even "The Quick and the Dead", making it seemingly more of an "Antagnosists" book, rather than as a viable player character option; whereas "Orpheus" placed the "Skimmers" and "Projectors" front and centre (at the start, at least), WoD:GH seems to cast them squarely as little more than an afterthought - in contrast, the older books are better value.
@Vlad T It's actually weird to me in retrospect that no one wanted to play a Mortal. It seems like the perfect way to introduce people to WoD without giving them a prepared lecture of stuff their character should already know.
We didn’t actually play wraith (my GM created a new system) but our group played a game inspired by Shoah knowing we would all be on the short list (I’m autistic and have several physical disabilities, so was our DM, another player was gay, half Roma and Jewish, her girlfriend was gay and catholic and another player was African American) our group told a story about people who had lost their memory and had to come to terms with the incomprehensible trauma they went through
My gaming group has always played old World of Darkness games as self-contained games in a shared universe. The idea of cross-over games is just odd to me. Is my group the odd one? You speak as if pan-WoD-cross-over games was the dominant way to play but I don't personally know of anyone who's ever done it.
1st ed Vampire *did* advertise in the back of the book at each of the games that would follow it would be set in the *same world* and have *compatible rules*, but as Werewolf and Mage were developed and released, it quickly became apparent that, with each game bringing different (and not entirely complimentary) themes, concepts and game mechanics into the mix, it became difficult to maintain any sense of game balance, or keeping each splat's metaplots in line with the others. Over the years that followed, WWGS oscillated between downplaying (almost to the point of discouraging) cross-over chronicles, critising it as a potential source of derailment for chronicles due to clashing themes and mechanics; and giving token support with various "If Wraith uses Power X and Vampire has Power Y, what happens when they clash?" FAQs and crossover specific game mechanics (that often contridicted each other between various books and editions, as each author/developer had their own view about how things should or shouldn't work - so what was actually being published was a given author's bias, rather than any significantly play-tested framework to permit two or more titles to be combined together). That being said, I've participated and/or run several crossover chronicles (with much house ruling) involving all 5 main game lines, most of which were concluded satisfactorily (a couple did stall/did not finish, but that was mostly due to IRL concerns than the games themselves) - but for the most part, in a sea of standalone Werewolf and Mage games (and later Exalted) that were always being run at the gaming club I went to in the 90's, Crossovers were the exception, not the rule - the exception to the exception being that at least some one would try to run "The Chaos Factor" as a crossover at least once a year (with varying degrees of success) 😅 Sam Chupp (one of the co-founders of the original WoD games) said in an interview I read somewhere online that they should have called the entire line "The WORLDS of Darkness" from the start, and keep the games each in their own lane/let players and STs sort out their own crossover rules, instead of weighing in to the debate etc; he might have had a point, there; the shared world and mechanics of the subsequent "Chronicles of Darkness" games (aka "Nu-WoD") does cross-over far more easily, and yet (from what I've witnessed) it's received even *less* crossover attention than it's precedessor.... **shrug**
At least the White Wolf glorification of edgelord, Genesis of LARP, seller of 2,000,000 black trenchcoats nonsense is over, and we can all settle in for worthwhile fare.
I can't believe that the Frakking MISTER WELCH only has 21 likes right now, including mine. Seriously. this guy is the freaking guy when it comes to ttrpgs. Google the things that he (Mr Welch, by name) may not do, lose the "restrained yourself from laughing" check, and then come back and like something of his. Do this thing now. My favorite is the "It's called prismatic ray, not 'taste the rainbow.'" That or the thing about "insane-o-vision" for warp sight, but I never played that game so don't know the specifics. Anyway, this is THE frakking GUY. Okay? If there are any questions about that, then check out his review of FATAL It is painful, but, it's a righteous pain. A pain that he endured for those of us who would listen, and hopefully more will. Even his comedic sense could not hold it back, not while presenting the reality of the situation. Jeezy Chreezy, no thank you. And yes, thank you, Mr. Welch. I honor your sacrifice in this matter. Sometimes I play the creepy old guy with the naked elf chick, but even I'm not that bad, comparatively.
Please, o' Grognard-King, grace us with a walkthrough of "How to beat" x or y dungeon by cheesing it in a speedrun. Please. I beg of thee. I wish to see a professional break it down.
I second this.
Thirded, let's do this!
They had a WW1 supplement as well because it wasn't tragic enough.
Wraith: The Oblivion will always been my favorite virtually unplayable game. I found it beautiful, with the bleakness of the setting making the underlying theme of transcendence all the more powerful. I've only ever run the game as one-shots, usually with the party trying to escape a group harrowing. I personally think "Shoah" is brilliant -- an art piece using the medium of a gaming supplement. I would never use "Shoah" in a game, but reading it made me *feel* the tragedy of the Holocaust in ways sterilized high school lectures never managed.
That’s what the creators of Charnel Houses intended. They wanted to do a genuinely mature game instead of the juvenile orgy of sex and violence of other “mature” games being made at the time. So, chalk up a win for them.
I loved the setting, but yeah, nearly unplayable in practice.
That use of TB's pic brings back that sting. I think he was the most recent on the list of people here?
And if someone needs to be forged into an ashtray...
I see what you did there.
I'm so happy. After all this time you have covered one of my all-time favorite settings, that I have never ever played.
As a story setting, I think it's unparalleled. The art alone paints beautiful imagery, and their vision of the afterlife is great. The game mechanics as an internal Universal structure is great and has a lot of internal consistency.
I love the concept of addressing the afterlife without necessarily sticking to a one true interpretation. The characters are all people that when they died they died in such a way that they have unfinished business and that unfinished business is what keeps them from continuing their Journey to the next part of their existence whatever that is.
As a concept I like the specters and the whole concept of Oblivion being the anti version of the setting. The beautiful a concept a shadowy realm where in some locations you can dimly see the world of the living, where every physical item is either a soulforged into that shape or inanimate objects that was tied to such strong emotional bonds that it exists in this realm. As you trudge about this landscape encountering people of different faiths and Creeds some who have been alive for Generations all trying to figure out where the final destination is, in the distance you see a pillar of light arcing to the heavens and something traveling up it. Was that a person who sealed off all their bonds and is heading to their Heaven or Hell? For the characters, nothing is certain because people who move on just disappear. No one ever comes back to explain things.
I agree with you 100% though, the game is itself unplayable by virtue of its own mechanics. The only way you could ever run a proper game would be with a group of extremely mature and even handed people. Something you would never be able to pull off with the average gaming group. At the time I used to describe it to people as paranoia without the humor. Not an unfair comparison I feel when everything in the game is trying to kill you, you are already dead, and even the other players are out to ruin your fun.
I have I think every book for the setting. Including the DM screen, something I usually didn't buy. I bought them to read them, and I have both the Risen and the Holocaust book. I even have their World War One supplement. I want to say that the Holocaust book actually got awards from the Holocaust Society, or whatever they're called, but I just fann through my book and I can't find that so it might have been from an advertisement.
I think that supplement might not have had as strong and impact, if not for the fact that they released it under their black dog imprint. By the time this book it come out, black dog head received a tremendous amount of notoriety due to the intentionally shocking and grotesque Nature's of their supplements. When prior books were stuff like freak Legion, the fomori, Pentax, there was no way that people were going to look at this book and not expect something grotesque and shocking.
I was so Keen to play this that when I started collecting the books I hand typed the character sheets on parchment paper from a typewriter, just to lend that level of authenticity. Then I took a look at my friends and realize the first game session would end with a fist fight.
Wow, that really was touching. In regards to the players and their mindset with this game, I wonder if you went to your local theater and asked a group of actors if they might be interested. In my experience, actors make for some of the best players. Just a thought.
In my local group, we know Wraith as 'The best RPG no one ever played.'
Soulgems for enchanting is not nearly as grim as Wraith's crafting system.
I must say, Mr. Welch, you are quite pleasant to listen to.
16:05 now if that isn't just the cutest little thing ever!
Small correction: The Shadowlands, various kingdoms, islands, labyrinth and tempest are all part of the low umbra, they aren't separate from the umbra.
Ahhh totalbiscuit! My heart I wasnt ready to see him. :(
1:35 - I dare say that most people lack the necessary will to make it work.
5:20
- One must be wary in dealing with the Spirit Forges. The Wraiths and Shades that inhabit them offer items beyond mortal dreams, in exchange for a sampling of your blood.
The Wraith Smiths forge their items with forfeit souls.
- Sheeed your bloood for me, Vampiiire. Imagine what, POWER you could wield!
5:45
- The Soul Reaver, Kain’s ancient blade - older than any of us, and a thousand times more deadly.
The legends claimed that the blade was possessed, and thrived by devouring the souls of its victims.
For all our bravado, we knew what it meant when Kain drew the Soul Reaver in anger - it meant you were dead.
6:10 - Nope! Excited as all hell!
7:40 - I agree. This is the first time I heard about Wraith having a book like that.
Very bad idea on White Wolf.
12:10 - There's at least one in everyone's favorite WoD game Bloodlines.
13-35 - And then there's Carpenter in Hunter the Recknoning, I think he is this 'guild' .
14:12 - Well, at least this is what Carpenter becomes. A Risen.
Thanks for the video Welch! But once again, I fail to see what makes this so depressing in many people's eyes.
To me, this sounds like a lot of fun and I get a ton of ideas one can do with this.
Great video!
I gotta admit, I'm legitimately interested to see if you'll ever cross over from the World of Darkness to the Chronicles of Darkness, if only to see if even you can keep track of the shifts from 1e to 2e of that meta-game.
soul steal, compel spirit "go to the center of the maelstrom"
We did a bunch of 1e VtM / WtA / MtA back in the day, it's just what everyone did. We did play one session of Wraith, and maybe (probably!) we did it wrong, but to our poor GM's angst, the Shadow mechanic just broke our game....in a silly way, we had so much fun beating up on each of our victim players. That said, it was clear that there was a really strong thematic there, and I know that the people that liked Wraith....LOVED Wraith.
I would definitely give it another look, but I'm kinda intimidated by the WoD as a whole these days, twenty years of backstory and reboots.
*
I think your review of Charnel Houses of Europe sounds probably accurate. Not read it myself, but I remember being tempted to buy it, just to read it. It was very controversial (amongst gamers, let alone anyone else!) when it was released....but it was also acknowledged as being really, really, well-written.
I don't think the (any) topic should be automatically off-limits for our hobby, but it reminds me of the people taking happy selfies at Auschwitz (that an artist famously super-imposed with scenes of the true horrors of the place: petapixel.com/2017/01/21/artist-shames-disrespectful-holocaust-memorial-tourists-using-photoshop/ ).
You have to be clear what the objective of the game session is, can you find a way to avoid being disrespectful, is it even possible?
Reminds me of Ghost Story in the Dresden Files line of books. Except they fired strong memories and not souls as ammo.
My favorite White Wolf setting!
I feel like this whole shadow system would make Wraith work better as a board game. Think of an edgier version of _13 Dead End Drive_
16:44 here’s to you TB
Wraith the oblivion is what happens if Zack Synder directs a Ghostbusters reboot.
I congratulate you on tugging up my heartstrings with that sobering picture of total biscuit. If there's any TH-camr out there that has since passed on I think I miss him the most.
Kindred of the East was pretty much Wraith done right. Dark Kingdom of Jade - not so much (it was fun though).
This was my favorite in the series.
There is enough drama between players that you don't need a mechanic about it to get people to fight one another.
Charnel Houses of Europe feels like Wraith in a nutshell. Extremely well regarded in terms of the work put in to making it and it’s artistic themes and goals but a hard sell to get anyone to actually play it. Sad.
On the other hand, Orpheus sounds like it was pretty cool, and I kind of want to check it out just to see how they pull off the idea of an rpg with a deliberately limited run and a built-in but tightly controlled meta plot.
Everytime I see Wraith in my book collection I feel it's daring me to open it again and get sucked down into Oblivion :(
I just got the ashtray joke nice
Interesting to learn about this system
It seems like what should be an obvious rule of RPG design, is if you have the PLAYERS - not necessarily the characters, but the players - at each others throats, you did something wrong...
You got a like on the last upload, and so you shall on this one. Fitting that since you alluded to the fate of one of the most hated beings in OWoD, you deserve the extra like.
Story time: Back in the olden days of the late 90's, my best friend was a guy who loved everything WW put out. I finished high school and was moving away to start my new life, he gave me his collection of books. I don't remember the exact number, but going through the lists and including the Black Dog line it was well over 75, mostly of the main 3. I poured over these books for years. I made dozens of different characters with each of the tribe/clan/tradition books. I ignored Changeling: The Dreaming because it felt like the right thing to do.
The book I was most obsessed with though, was this one. I didn't have anything other than the core book. I lived in a small town at the time that didn't have a game store to get more and this was too early for internet ordering to really become a thing. Even more than Changeling, I couldn't figure out Wraith's place in the WoD. It felt so disconnected and lonely, I had a hard time imagining playing it in a group with other players as ghosts since everything was so... personal to the characters.
Eventually I met a crazy person and we made little crazy people and needed rent money so the books were a luxury that I could not keep anymore, but once I saw you doing WW games I started scouring for this one, just to bring back some memories. So thank you for that.
I think Wraiths shadow mechanic works best if everyone is on the same page about it. If you’re trying to powergame using the shadow to kill the other player no one’s gonna have fun, but if you work with the other player to make it an interesting story then I could see it working great with the right group.
Then again… “right group” is doing a lot of heavy lifting. Definitely not a game I’d recommend to my regular Thursday night group. But I know a bunch of theatre kids from high school who would get a kick outa it.
This was a great one thanks.
bunny!
Only RPG I never played again.
That's an easy to miss distinction between the tabletop and Minds Eye Theatre rules that I didn't realize till you brought it up; in MET, shadowguiding is a responsibility of a Narrator/GM, not a fellow player. There's a tiny sidebar in the Oblivion book saying you "can" let another player shadowguide if their own character is out of action, but only if you seriously trust the player to not be an asshole. I never realized it was different in TT.
Dear Mr Welsh, I would love to see you do a video about the Ancient Taymoran Civilisation.
It's already on the list
Most of what has been made is Fanon a la Threshold Magazine and the like. However, that stuff is amazing.
You know, the whole "Every-item-is-a-soul" thing reminds me of why I don't exactly like the soul-eating trope in other bits of fiction. It always surprises me to learn how fragile and disposable supposedly immortal souls turn out to be. These scenes kind of feel like a cheap way to up the stakes, or the EDGE in a story because you already made life super cheap in your "mature" story, and you needed a way to milk more drama and DRIMGARK out of the same, dead characters you already killed off.
"And then, the monster kills a kid! Wait. No...then the monster EATS A KIDS' SOUL! MUWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAIMSUCHANAWESOMEWRITER!" *scribbles madly*
Of course, if you believe the real world is a materialist universe, then REGULAR death is soul death, so you'd think that there'd be an atheist somewhere reading a story about demons eating a character's soul might just shrug and assume that the consequences of the natural order has reasserted itself after the character had a second life while people out here just get one, except...probably not. This is a whole separate, second death and the loss of an (I assume, some fictional afterlifes are sketchy on how long they last naturally) eternity of existence, and the tragedy is still there.
Sounds kinda neat also makes me wonder if the guy who made the manga bleach played this game in his youth as there is some over lap I am seeing
Dude, trust me, Seal videos are your friends
Could you do a Mad Musings about demon the fallen? (And while we are at it, the mummy one as well?)
Would be a while I'm pretty backed up
@@Mr_Welch No rush, I am still only at episode 100 of the mystara series, so you have some time.
Any chance of getting some mad musings on the lesser WoD lines? Hunter, Mummy, Wild West, Dark Ages, etc.
I've looked at them, would need to find a copy.
@@Mr_Welch I have a 2nd edition copy of Mummy I'd be willing to send you.
Hey, could you make a Playlist for just your WoD reviews?
That shouldn't be too hard
@@Mr_Welch Thanks!
@@Mr_Welch BTW, I do hope you cover HtR at some point. I get some of the criticisms of it (ie "they should be humans! Not discount Exalted!"), but I've always thought others are kind of bullshit (even WoD fans seem to think all Hunters are basically Waywards).
@@SerpenThrope Hunter was probably the game where it started going downhill quickly. And it also made all the other human-centric books looks so much better because they were fun to play
Ayo when's Hunter: The Reckoning?
My favourite game of owod by far. Yes it was stand alone, and requires actually mature players who agree to play it with the blinkers turned off but it is also the most emotional and often hopeful of the owod.
Unfortunately the distribution to actually buyers in Australia and throughout asia was woeful and shifted a lot of sales to call of cuthulu because it had a similar tone but you could actually get the support.
Hey You want to play the Crow
Um, the wiki says Mediums: Speakers with the Dead was published 6 years before Orpheus. Was that any good?
It was okay. Like almost all of the mortal tie in books it really didn't give you a lot to keep a campaign going. Maybe for a One-Shot but it was fairly middling outside of useful background information
The "Year of the Hunter" supplement for Wraith ("The Quick and the Dead"), IMO, was the *more* lacklustre title - the Ghosthunting organizations that were featured in the core book received barely enough expansion beyond dry text and equipment/power lists; the "Year of the Ally" follow up that was "Mediums: Speakers with the Dead" was far superior in almost every aspect - the medium-specified Numina was better written, organizations like the Benandanti and the Orphic Circle got a decent amount of plot-meat added to their bones, and addition threats like Spectre Cults that manipulate Mediums into working with them, plus some details regarding the remnants of the Dark Kingdom of Flint that itinerant Mediums may encounter in their travels, provided certainly enough fuel to start/sustain either a Wraith- or Medium-based chronicle for a decent amount of time.
That being said, they suffered the same fate as all of the other mortal-based game lines - by and large, nobody was interested in them; nobody really wanted to play a Ghoul or a Kinfolk when playing a Vampire or a Werewolf was possible (unless it was a one-shot) - and it was hard enough to sell the *idea* of Wraith to potential players, let alone the concept of Mediums and Ghosthunters within the same setting.
Sadly, the latest "World of Darkness: Ghosthunters" supplement for the fantastic "Wraith: the Oblivion - 20th Anniversary Edition" release seems further proof of that - it seems to contain even *less* useful and interesting information than even "The Quick and the Dead", making it seemingly more of an "Antagnosists" book, rather than as a viable player character option; whereas "Orpheus" placed the "Skimmers" and "Projectors" front and centre (at the start, at least), WoD:GH seems to cast them squarely as little more than an afterthought - in contrast, the older books are better value.
@Vlad T It's actually weird to me in retrospect that no one wanted to play a Mortal. It seems like the perfect way to introduce people to WoD without giving them a prepared lecture of stuff their character should already know.
Did this get edited because of the yotub overlords? I thought all the stills used to be... the departed, not all cute animals.
It's a mix of both. The people we lost too soon and some happy critters to cheer us up
Wasn't End of Empire the end of the line?
Last book for Wraith in 99
@@Mr_Welch yeah, it detailed the fall of Stygia and return of Charon
Did you have to reupload for some reason?
I'm guessing some of the pictures had to be replaced with cute cats?
@@CowCommando the one with the local rapper with the blunt
@@Mr_Welch Seriously!? Something you can see almost anywhere. That's utterly lame, glad you were able to reupload.
@@charlesborden8111 I didn't get a warning but it was more of a preventative measure
@@Mr_Welch I see, better safe than sorry, I guess. But, still it is sad that's the lengths you have to go though. Keep up the good work.
We didn’t actually play wraith (my GM created a new system) but our group played a game inspired by Shoah knowing we would all be on the short list (I’m autistic and have several physical disabilities, so was our DM, another player was gay, half Roma and Jewish, her girlfriend was gay and catholic and another player was African American) our group told a story about people who had lost their memory and had to come to terms with the incomprehensible trauma they went through
My gaming group has always played old World of Darkness games as self-contained games in a shared universe. The idea of cross-over games is just odd to me. Is my group the odd one? You speak as if pan-WoD-cross-over games was the dominant way to play but I don't personally know of anyone who's ever done it.
Not really, from qwhat I understand majority of WoD games are self-contained.
1st ed Vampire *did* advertise in the back of the book at each of the games that would follow it would be set in the *same world* and have *compatible rules*, but as Werewolf and Mage were developed and released, it quickly became apparent that, with each game bringing different (and not entirely complimentary) themes, concepts and game mechanics into the mix, it became difficult to maintain any sense of game balance, or keeping each splat's metaplots in line with the others.
Over the years that followed, WWGS oscillated between downplaying (almost to the point of discouraging) cross-over chronicles, critising it as a potential source of derailment for chronicles due to clashing themes and mechanics; and giving token support with various "If Wraith uses Power X and Vampire has Power Y, what happens when they clash?" FAQs and crossover specific game mechanics (that often contridicted each other between various books and editions, as each author/developer had their own view about how things should or shouldn't work - so what was actually being published was a given author's bias, rather than any significantly play-tested framework to permit two or more titles to be combined together).
That being said, I've participated and/or run several crossover chronicles (with much house ruling) involving all 5 main game lines, most of which were concluded satisfactorily (a couple did stall/did not finish, but that was mostly due to IRL concerns than the games themselves) - but for the most part, in a sea of standalone Werewolf and Mage games (and later Exalted) that were always being run at the gaming club I went to in the 90's, Crossovers were the exception, not the rule - the exception to the exception being that at least some one would try to run "The Chaos Factor" as a crossover at least once a year (with varying degrees of success) 😅
Sam Chupp (one of the co-founders of the original WoD games) said in an interview I read somewhere online that they should have called the entire line "The WORLDS of Darkness" from the start, and keep the games each in their own lane/let players and STs sort out their own crossover rules, instead of weighing in to the debate etc; he might have had a point, there; the shared world and mechanics of the subsequent "Chronicles of Darkness" games (aka "Nu-WoD") does cross-over far more easily, and yet (from what I've witnessed) it's received even *less* crossover attention than it's precedessor.... **shrug**
At least the White Wolf glorification of edgelord, Genesis of LARP, seller of 2,000,000 black trenchcoats nonsense is over, and we can all settle in for worthwhile fare.
I can't believe that the Frakking MISTER WELCH only has 21 likes right now, including mine. Seriously. this guy is the freaking guy when it comes to ttrpgs. Google the things that he (Mr Welch, by name) may not do, lose the "restrained yourself from laughing" check, and then come back and like something of his. Do this thing now.
My favorite is the "It's called prismatic ray, not 'taste the rainbow.'" That or the thing about "insane-o-vision" for warp sight, but I never played that game so don't know the specifics. Anyway, this is THE frakking GUY. Okay?
If there are any questions about that, then check out his review of FATAL It is painful, but, it's a righteous pain. A pain that he endured for those of us who would listen, and hopefully more will. Even his comedic sense could not hold it back, not while presenting the reality of the situation. Jeezy Chreezy, no thank you. And yes, thank you, Mr. Welch. I honor your sacrifice in this matter. Sometimes I play the creepy old guy with the naked elf chick, but even I'm not that bad, comparatively.