Developing, editing, improving upon drafts based on input, developing, editing, improving, blah, blah, so on, so forth. Right now, I’m focusing heavily on polishing “bumper text” which is the lead-in text before every chapter gets into its meat. That takes a little more work than you might expect, because you’re often trying to blend styles, and merge ideas from different writers into one, truncated, cohesive little blurb.
I wanted to do another big share today, as we close on in to the final stages here. I’ve enclosed the Merits and Flaws appendix. It’s not a drastic change from anything you’ve not seen before. It’s a little V20, a little DA: Vampire, and a little bit of other stuff here and there. This is a pre-editing draft, so take that for what you will.
These come courtesy Monica Speca, of the wonderful 1d4cast and the award-winning Gaming as Women.
One question I have for you, what are your thoughts on including a simple experience system for purchasing Merits after creation with Storyteller discretion? Say, purchasing them as if they were equal level Backgrounds?
Comments
14 responses to “V20 Dark Ages: Clever Phrase Using the Word, “Merit””
I think it would be an excellent optional sidebar rule, especially if you indicate which ones are available for this. I know some people house-rule purchasing merits after character creation. Another option would be to use the oppositional backgrounds that were in some Revised Mage books, which is a similar concept.
I have had the situation where purchasing/soldings merits/flaws would be adequate.
* A character develops a romance with a mortal. He feels that the vampire is totally in love and want to have the merit True Love.
* The character has lost an important amount of Humanity and the player feels that his vampire would not care anymore about human relations, thus loosing the merit True Love.
* A character has been drinking faerie blood and the player thinks that that may be addicted.
* A character has been being in hight society and spending points in Etiquette, so he thinks the vampire would no longer to be Vulgar.
My house rule is designed to avoid using the system to bargain points. The costs are:
* Purchasing a merit: 2x merit cost in xp
* Selling a merit: -1x merit cost in xp
* Purchasing a flaw: -1x flaw cost in xp
* Selling a flaw: +2x flaw cost in xp
Since I am speaking of costs, negative numbers mean that you gain xp. The rule is that you lose more xp than you gain, in hope you use this system only for interpretative purposes.
Still, that must be handled with a lot of care and a lot of common sense, avoiding the use as a shop of little powers and xp. Only you should use this when it is given by the story, and never with merits/flaws that make sense (how is it that suddenly you are a light sleeper?).
A little sidebar on purchasing Merits would be really nice. Getting Merits through pure roleplaying is just fine, but I find players don’t ask for them as often as they could. Having a price would insentivise it, in a weird way.
These look good, I do have a couple of questions:
Flesh of the Corpse – so you can actually be a walking skeleton somehow if damaged enough?
And shouldn’t the Unbondable be bumped up to a 4pt merit?
I have always missed a system to buy merits with XPs, so I vote for this.
Anyway, it should have a big warning. Merits are not disciplines and most of the time a character acquiring a merit makes no sense. Only sometimes do, and it’s those times when I have missed a system.
I think that Permanent Wound needs to state that the wound can be healed, only that it reappears each night. As it is written, it seems that you can not even heal it temporarily.
I celebrate that the Light Sleeper now does not let you ignore the Road restriction during day.
I always assumed that a character could read and write if she had a level of Academicism. Making “Literacy” a merit seems to me a little redundant, since, even when most mortals are illiterate in that time, vampires are likely to be chose to literate persons or at least to learn how to write after, probably during their training and before their release.
Patron seems to me more like a background.
I celebrate also the chart of scale, giving the players a guide to create their own merits and flaws.
I’d always thought the same about literacy and I was certain it was mentioned in the rules – however I’ve just checked DA:V and the only mention of what mechanically gives a character literacy is a mention in the description for Expression that reading and writing is covered by Academics (Academics doesn’t mention literacy at all).
It was cover un Vampire Dark Ages (1997) and only through academics you could learn latin.
But in DA:V they chance that we need Linguistics 1 for the second point un Academics.
I, personally, find literacy a little useless en the game context (1197-1230)
They seem good globally. There are only a few that makes me some questions:
Addiction merit: Maybe it could contain some word for Ventrue characters. You know, if I was a powergamer, I could chose drunkard as my Ventrue prey, and then take the addiction merit for drunkards, gaining points with no cost. On the other hand if my prey are clerics and the drunkard addictions is legit.
Literacy merit: I always thought that worked with Scholarship. Characters without scholarship couldn’t read.
Potent/Weak Aura: I thought increments of difficulty on low roads were deprecated. You know, that a character with low value in the Road of the Beast wasn’t less menacing that a character on the Road of Humanity.
Sorry for the bad translation: Scholarship -> Academics.
Literacy also seems redundant with academics.
A merit that would be interesting in the book is personal aura.
Defects that would like to see are:
– Apostate (considering the importance of the way)
Other social qualities and defects on the roads would be interesting, too.
– No Sign uninvited (with the effect of losing one blood point per turn and bashing damage clearly visible form) – as something quite associated with vampires.
I would say yes. Quite a lot of Merits and Flaws are backgrounds by another name – what’s a spirit mentor but a highly specialized Ally? – so they should be part of the character advancement system.
In answering the question, yes. Some, not all, merits and flaws ought to be purchasable after character creation, within reason. Mind if I nitpick the choices in the document?
I’m new to WoD, so I’m expressing very loose opinions that can be dismissed if they have no value. Especially since I don’t yet know what’s in the rest of the text and don’t understand the rules and character creation. These opinions would probably lead to heavy adjusting. For potential distant-future consideration, I’ll never understand why these sorts of lists in games can’t have equal opposites. For every 10 Merits, why not exactly 10 Flaws?
Some examples: being a Child can have its merits storywise. It can add an extra creep factor in some situations. I understand lower strength, but a Child can be more spry, limber and could easily hide in small spaces. A Child could scare taller humans in much the same way that a rodent does. (No offense, I’m quite small myself and have scared tall people.)
Also, Social Merits is an unusually short section. Social Flaws has Outspoken Heretic, and an opposite to that could be Charistmatic Church/Cult Leader with disciples of your own to do your work while you sleep or are away. I can see Natural Leader, and Natural Follower being Social Merits. And the Social Flaw of Mistaken Identity makes little sense to me since it can be apart of a plot in general. Anyone can encounter this, real life or fiction. If it must be so, then could it also be a Merit? You could be mistaken for some great person and people desire to be around you to boost their social status. You could receive all sorts of positive invitations. Maybe you receive 10 in one day. Hilarity/chaos ensues if you tried to attend all those social events. Also, I see Mistaken Identity (Merit or Flaw) combined with Flesh of the Corpse, if possible, could make for an amusing situation.
And is there no mimicry (Michael Winslow qualities) or throw-voice merit (to stalk/escape)?
Well, I could go on, but I don’t want to nitpick so much so to seem disatisfied with a game that I honestly know nothing about. I’m not. I look forward to playing this for years to come. I do apologize if I missed some things in the document.
I know this is pre-editing, and you all will likely catch it before publication, but I was curious about the singular personal pronouns used in a couple of these samples. In the past, White Wolf/Onyx Path has always alternated between the masculine and female singular forms, which I thought was an awesome way to deal with the sexist “he” or “him” for everything or the not-quite-proper (as an English professor, anyway) “they” to refer to both males and females. I always thought alternating pronouns was a particularly elegant way to handle that situation.
I’ve noticed a few instances of “they” used singularly in one chapter, and this sample uses the clunky “he or she” construction a few times. I just wanted to cast my vote for a return to alternating between masculine and feminine pronouns in the text.
You’re doing awesome work here, but I felt the need to nit-pick since I’m a grammar nerd and I thought the old way of doing things was just that cool.