This weekend, I've started reliving my glory days and watching all the episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer in order from the beginning. I've just recently (an hour ago) finished "School Hard", which features the first confrontation between Buffy and her nemesis Spike. In this confrontation, Buffy and Spike square off and do a very menacing stare-down of one another... and then they both openly drop their weapons - Buffy had a fire axe, Spike had some sort of metal pole - and then went at it fist-to-fist. I would like to take the time to explain why this was a bad idea on both their parts, and why we should never see something like this in the World of Darkness MMO, especially considering that we're going to be seeing mortal players - who, as I'm sure we all guessed, are probably going to be doing the same thing I am and attempting to re-enact all the awesome vampire flicks and shows.
Let's start with Buffy. Buffy is The Slayer, the mortal woman gifted with supernatural strength and durability - let's call it Potence 5 and Fortitude 5. She wields a plethora of weapons against vampires, from the classic stake and cross to silver, holy water, and of course sunlight. She has trained with all sorts of Medieval weapons (she seems to be a big fan of the crossbow), and seems to have a natural talent with any kind of martial art. Suffice to say, she could have dealt some serious damage with that fire axe. There is no good reason why she, a mortal, should have tossed it away in favor of her own two fists which - no matter how many dice she could add to her attacks - still only deals Bashing damage. Vampires, including those in this television series, are notoriously resistant to blunt trauma, so Buffy's Potence 5 wouldn't count for much. Fire axes, on the other hand, would deal Lethal damage, which is much more effective against vampires. Not only this, it would have given her reach and a better defensive weapon against a vampire. Spike gives up a lot of the same advantages: no reach, no defensive weapon, and while mortals are much more vulnerable to Bashing damage, it would take even Spike a long, long time to punch off Buffy's arm or leg. Spike compounded his error by admitting that weapons were better (they made him feel "all manly"), and he still gave up the advantage.
Why the hell did this happen? There is no good reason for it. It's not even more cinematic or exciting - we see at least one good fistfight on every episode of Buffy. It is, frankly, just a little stupid. If a similar situation cropped up in the World of Darkness MMO - which the developers claim should be equally exciting and cinematic with a focus on melee combat - I hope that our players will be much more intelligent about the situation. Assuming that a mortal can sooner or later more-or-less match a vampire on equal terms (something which is more likely if we see more rules incorporated from the New World of Darkness), then somebody or another isn't playing the game properly. The World of Darkness, at least, is not about making a fight fair or better for the spectators - even on Buffy, a television show, it might've been more cinematic and certainly more tense if Buffy had dropped her weapon but Spike kept his. This provides a certain message for the audience (Buffy is honorable; vampires are evil), but as a friend of mine on the Planet-Vampire forums once said, "I want an unfair fight - so long as it's unfair in my favor". For the World of Darkness MMO, I have to approve of this attitude.
Let's translate this fight over into the World of Darkness: A mortal with supernatural powers going up against a vampire. Unless that mortal is a mage or a really old revenant-type-creature, the fight should be over before it even begins, with or without weapons. Thankfully, the vampires in Buffy seem to lack Celerity, otherwise the show would've been over a lot sooner than its eight seasons. Even a top-of-the-line Hunter with True Faith only squares off in a mano-e-mano fight against a vampire if they have no other choice. (Remember how Grunfeld Bach in Bloodlines peppered our character with lead from a rifle.) It would be a great cinematic fight right up until the point the mortal, of whichever stripe, started suffering some internal bleeding and fractured bones. The vampire, on the other hand, may suffer the same thing but can heal it back.
There is a lot of speculation about the World of Darkness MMO, but there are a few things I can say right now that I don't want to see, and a fight like the one I describe above is one of them. There is a very good reason why vampires in the Worlds of Darkness call mortal humans "kine" ("cattle"), and that is because they are really of no individual threat to a vampire. What we should be seeing, then, is either a numbers game - which can get really out of hand if the vampire antagonist is of elder power - or really down-and-dirty tricks on the part of the mortal, like gasoline, matches, fire, and sneaky underhanded things like staying out of arms' reach. Numbers can actually work in a vampire's favor, if they are truly powerful: it means a large buffet of humans to suck dry and heal back all the damage they're taking from the other humans. (On that note, perhaps some sort of "interrupt" during feeding will be seen.) Fire, fortunately, is just as dangerous to mortals as it is to vampires - fortunately for our squishy friends, if they're smart they're pointing the fiery end away from themselves.
This, then, is how I want to see everybody in the WODMMO fight: smartly. Sure, I enjoy my fair share of going into it with claws and fangs bared, but vampires for their part need to keep in mind that while they may be immortal, they potentially have a lot more to lose than a mortal. A mortal may have another sixty, seventy years in them - a vampire could potentially have six or seven centuries and counting. To accomplish this necessary level of anxiety, I'm going to have to throw my support behind some sort of serious repurcussions for "dying" as a vampire. A severe cut in Backgrounds (however they translate into the WODMMO) seems appropriate, as does a temporary - but severe - penalty to the character's dots. (Recovering from torpor shouldn't be an instant process.) If a mortal wants to survive a confrontation with a vampire, they'll need to think ahead a little bit and plan to counter a vampire's strengths and exploit their weaknesses, hopefully without endangering themselves even more in the process. (Make sure that airtight seal works properly on your canister of gasoline, kiddies.) So to all you mortal players out there who want to get down with a vampire one-on-one, I just have this one piece of advice for you: don't play dumb.
8 Comments
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0 Merits
338 days ago
If the Masquerade is totally in player hands, then I don't think any average players are going to worry about believability. If somebody goes around shouting "Vampires! Vampires!", they'll say "Where?!" instead of "You crazy, man!" There will have to be some sort of developer-controlled, lore-friendly system in place to actually control that aspect of the Masquerade. ---- The burden on informed mortal players will have to be to get vampires to break the Masquerade in noticable ways, like using Disciplines in public. The more mortal players who witness this, the worse it is for the vampire player. Feeding unto death on a mortal player might, if the developers are canny enough, cause more problems than its worth - I hope to see lots of other ways to shut mortals up.
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1 Merits
CagedByTruth
339 days ago
I'm exceptionally curious about how the combat system will translate. One of the largest parts of VtM was how flexible combat was, and I'm really hoping to see an entire world that's set up to be interacted with violently. I'm also really hoping for a 'called shots' system in melee combat so I can slice people's legs off and prevent them from running away, Potence-crush their throats to prevent use of Dominate, beat someone down with the body of their ally as a club, and all the other things that made combat in Vampire fun and memorable. Since they've already stated there's going to be a Z axis and vertical movement, hopefully in all areas, that also adds a whole new dimension to the way that combat can go down. Gangrel, Nosferatu, and Brujah will probably remain the kings of close combat, especially if Animalism and Presence give access to NPC thralls. Still, saying 'all vampires should kill all mortals all the time if those mortals aren't using blowtorches and incendiary grenades' might be overstating it. A mortal that gets a lucky swing with a meat cleaver or a fire axe could mess up a Toreador. A Tremere that gets ambushed in the middle of a crowded shopping mall might have trouble with a couple ghouled hoodlums with switchblades. Even a Gangrel might have trouble if ganged up on by a large enough group of players (which is possible, given the scale of the MMO). Mano e mano is one thing, but influential vampires are almost never alone. A vampire and his ghouls vs a mortal is another story. If mortals still take full lethal damage from guns, most of the social sorts will probably be pretty well defended from them. A Ventrue with a couple Conditioned, SMG-wielding meatshields isn't going to be much afraid of anyone that isn't an angry, combat-oriented Kindred. What I think it comes down to is how the development system is going to work. The median level of combat prowess is what interests me; if investing in combat is a substantial use of 'experience' that precludes other options like social and mental development (which I assume will allow manipulation of the game world in various ways), it'll really depend on the community. The beauty of that kind of emergent system is that the optimal strategies can't be predicted until it becomes apparent how the mechanics are arranged, what kinds of decisions most players are making, and what the ratio of combat to social characters is, which clans are populating particular areas, etc. Since characters aren't cookie cutter classes, and presumably Out of Clan disciplines will be relatively easy to get after a while (which puts the Gangrel and Tremere at a large advantage that I hope is made up for somehow, even if it's just a very slow rate of training for Out of Clan disciplines after the first dot or two), there's no real metagame of 'which clans are superior' besides the two with unique disciplines, so it comes down to a ton of emergent situations that make information gathering and politics important. Which is one of the many reasons why I'm stoked for a proper themepark WoD game. Regardless though, the focus of the game is on the supernatural, and while mortals may be capable of initiating conflict with vampires, I doubt they could sustain it for long and survive. Losing temporal influence for being torpored doesn't seem sensible. How does getting stabbed up by a gang of Anarchs affect the balance of your swiss bank account or how far into your pocket the local DA is? Taking penalties to physical stats, being put in a possibly masquerade-compromising situation like frenzy upon awakening, being at risk for diablerie, and other sorts of punishments all seem viable, but it shouldn't be severe just for the sake of being severe.
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0 Merits
As to torpor causing penalties... It will certainly affect your relationship with the DA. Torpor should be simulated as time passing for your character - a vampire driven into torpor can potentially enter it for CENTURIES if their Humanity is low enough. While I don't think we need to take it to that extreme in the WODMMO, we can simulate that time passing by reducing certain Backgrounds (if you were supposed to have been in torpor for 100 years, the DA is dead), or possibly Attributes (you lose bodymass and get all wrinkly in torpor - there should be a period of recovery while you "grow back" those lost Attributes like Strength and Appearance. If it's something you have to spend a lot of XP on, though, you shouldn't have to spend the XP again). ---- Even the Clans which are not famous for close combat still have options - Celerity is good for running away, if nothing else, and Obfuscate can be used for the best ambush tactics. If we can interact with the environment to a high degree (which, among other things, puts that much more of a drag on latency... It would be zomgawesome to see, but I kind of doubt we'll be seeing that level of interaction from launch), or manipulate NPC mortals around us into doing our bidding, then combat should be easily as complex as in EVE Online, and probably more so when there are so many more combinations to factor in. In EVE Online it was pretty much empty space and ship-versus-ship, not ship-versus-ship-versus-asteroid.
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1 Merits
CagedByTruth
339 days ago
Huh, comments don't use line-breaks. Ah well.
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1 Merits
CookieMonster
340 days ago
I think one human with a crossbow VS. One vampire should be a fight that's over before it begins. One mortal is absolutely no match for any vampire, no matter how young. If I'm a mortal and I go up against a freshly-embraced vampire with Celerity 1, I want to expect to lose. Unless of course, I've got a combat shotgun with incendiary rounds and all the vampire's got is its fists and no strength in melee. Despite this, I think it would be fun enough to play as a mortal and possibly as another vampire's ghoul.
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0 Merits
Major Arcana
340 days ago
There aint a chance in hell that I'll be taking on a vampire face to face! Hopefully mortals will be able to take out vampires though, through more underhanded means. How would mortal players vs kindred affect the masquerade, I wonder.
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2 Merits
340 days ago
I'm guessing the pressure to maintain the Masquerade will be on the part of the vampires and their minions, while the pressure of tearing away the Masquerade will be on the part of mortal players. You have to give them an overarching goal, otherwise the game loses a lot of background and motive. I don't think a little more structure in this regard would be a negative thing, as opposed to EVE Online, which was basically "Go out and have fun, kids". ---- Mortals should have most of the options a vampire does, but since the game is permanent night, they lose a BIG advantage. I'm hoping the sneakiness and being able to move as one of the herd will counteract that disadvantage - sort of like a reverse wolf-in-sheep's-clothing. ---- And interesting to know that you're planning on playing a mortal... *keeps a tally* Very interesting indeed...
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0 Merits
Major Arcana
338 days ago
Perhaps for mortals, it won't simply be the pressure of tearing away the masquerade but tearing away the masquerade, without first being put in a straight jacket! This way mortals and kindred alike will suffer consequences if they are involved with each other (though perhaps being drained of your blood is consequence enough!) --- I hope I'm making some sense here and not just rambling, I'm finding it quite hard to articulate my thoughts on this, as it's an extremely complicated system to work into an mmo! Also, I'm going to assume I'll be playing a mortal as I don't know if anyone will think I'm cool enough to sire me yet, heh. Sorry for going off topic a little too by the way!
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