Because they already did that after the Chechnya incident. Nu-nuWW has only been a thing for like a month.
It seems that after WotC exploded, the shrapnel is penetrating other companies.
It’s funny, every once and a while I go back and look at V5 and ask myself if this could be tweaked or homebrewed to run a mechanically better version of V:tM that isn’t subject to the pure ass that is V5 and every time? No. It was built on shit assumptions that gave rise to shit design goals. There is no way to mechanically represent mainstays of V:tM when it was good. Things like Methuselahs or elder level games.
Oh, hey, you ran the same dungeon I had in mind! And yeah, I fully get it; certain races break the flow of the dungeon in half, and it ruins the natural progress of how things tend to go. It's why I actually like to "gimp" my characters; as I said previously, I myself wish that Flight for Aarakocra was unlocked at a later level, or otherwise limit Flight in various ways to help not break party comp; even something like an curse that prevents/limits flying sounds like fun.
I.e., I want to modify the race to where it makes the game harder for myself, and therefore more fun. A glass cannon build where the only really useful racial ability for it doesn't unlock until it's likely the adventure is almost/already over? Sounds like fun, as long as it doesn't fuck over the rest of the party. Something to work towards, unlike what WOTC pushes out.
I came up with a solution for a similar situation for my homebrew sci-fi setting. There's a bird people species and they technically have a flight speed but it functions similar to Jump Jets. It's their object interaction to declare they are going to "fly" they can fly up to their speed but it only lasts until the end of their turn. They can get a proper flight speed but they have to take a feat to do so. Lore wise, they don't generally fly long distances anymore and require special training to learn to do it.
What makes you like Monsterhearts? I ask because it seems like the game's themes of monsters dealing with messy relationships is just replicated better in the World of Darkness games.
World of Darkness has lore baggage and its balance is different, especially between different kinds of monsters. (Except for mentioning Beast, I'm not talking Chronicles of Darkness here, since I'm not really familiar with it.) It's a lot less generic than Monsterhearts. You can do a lot more with World of Darkness, but the very specific subgenre of trashy teen supernatural romance is better in Monsterhearts. If I want to play serious drama, I'll play World of Darkness or HERO, but if I want to play Twilight, I'll play Monsterhearts and then I wouldn't have to figure out how vampires stack against werewolves and fae and witches and frankensteins mechanically, since they're all roughly the same power level in Monsterhearts. (Not that World of Darkness has to be serious, but a campaign where you help vampire Himmler take down Schlomo Rothstein, the Giovanni capo of Las Vegas is silly in a different way)
You could probably strip away the lore from World of Darkness and retool it into teen supernatural drama, but that's a lot of work to have more robust mechanics. Though I guess you could make a campaign where all the PCs from different splats are classmates and the reason they're all hanging out is because the teacher is a Beast.
I like Monsterhearts because it does one very specific thing and it does it very well. You have to play a selfish, overdramatic piece of shit in Monsterhearts, because the game does not have mechanics for anything else until the very end of character advancement and since the base system is PbTA, it's expected that you're fucking up constantly. Both of those are a good fit for playing teens. None of the basic moves you have are anything positive or constructive. IIRC, the only exception was the Chosen skin which was removed from the base book in 2 as one of the few good changes. Buffy character option seems like it'd be a good fit with the game, but it doesn't really work out, since base PbTA without heavy modifications and combat just don't mix.
It's very specific and very generic at the same time, which makes it a good fit for a limited system like PbTA. The genre it is good at is very specific: trashy teen supernatural romance, but the archetypes you can play are generic enough that passing familiarity with the genre is enough to get them. You don't need any explanations. You're teens in a high school, something which almost everyone likely to play the game is familiar with in some form, and you're also pop culture monsters at the same time. That's it.
Compare with Night Witches, which is also very specific in what it's trying to be: WW2 drama about Soviet female pilots, but then you find out that the combat flying is offscreen and the real enemy in WW2 is sexism. Or with Thirsty Sword Lesbians, which tries to be an AO3 lesbian fanfic, but the archetypes are nowhere near familiar enough or well-defined enough to make the game come together.
To put it short, the thing Monsterhearts does well is even more limited than "monsters dealing with messy relationships". You could retool World of Darkness to do the same thing, but it would require throwing out a lot of setting assumptions and the benefits wouldn't be worth the effort of putting it together.
I don't think there's anything wrong with restricting the kind of races/classes/combos you want in your game due to mechanics that would trivialize the content you want to run. Unrestricted flight in particular is incredibly powerful in most settings, and ultimately as a GM it's your game. Some things can and should be beyond the players' reach, otherwise you get people thinking shit like this is kosher:
Just because something exists in the game world, doesn't mean players should be able to play as that thing. The setting, the adventures and the system are built with certain assumptions in mind, if you ignore or subvert them things start breaking down really quickly.
It’s funny, every once and a while I go back and look at V5 and ask myself if this could be tweaked or homebrewed to run a mechanically better version of V:tM that isn’t subject to the pure ass that is V5 and every time? No. It was built on shit assumptions that gave rise to shit design goals. There is no way to mechanically represent mainstays of V:tM when it was good. Things like Methuselahs or elder level games.
Short version (or long, you do you) of what makes it mechanically unable to support original style games? I ran VtM and MtA 1st and 2nd editions back in the day and have very occasionally thought about doing something in the system again, most recently getting the VtR game which I liked a lot of but found fatally flawed. What's wrong with 5e in terms of mechanics?
Get a desktop laser printer. Its more expensive than an inkjet and unless you go really crazy will only print B&W but for me its worth the upcharge to have it fire up when I need it and not need to buy $30 of ink.
or I guess to be frank: If your system doesn't give players a reason to play a normal human adventurer I think your system sucks. This doesn't mean it needs to dirt farming simulator, but if you have a non-human race playing as that race with its advantages and drawbacks should be baked in.
I'm fine with any race. If anything "human man" is usually the boring choice, unless it isn't.
Races should be balanced against the game, maybe against each other, but not really.
Told this story before. But was told by the internet that Dragonborn were broken, and were unplayable, but every game I saw someone play one, it was fine. The internet told me monks were bad because inefficient stats/leveling, but every game they were present they kicked arse or were even MVP. The only 5e class I've found to be objectively shit is Ranger.
And related to drawbacks, why does it only cut one way? "You can play Dragonborn, but they're illegal in this setting." or "You can play Warforged, but you don't have rights." or "You can play an attractive female, but every man will try to rape you.". It's never "you can play a human, but you're going to weakest in a universe that is trying to kill you at every turn." unless it's 40k, RIFTS, or maybe Shadowrun if @Overly Serious is to be believed.
Hollow Bones. You have a fly Speed as long as you
are wearing armor no heavier than Leather. Crits
against you are Vicious (the attacker rolls 1 additional die). Forced movement moves you twice as
far.
Something I might have missed in this thread, but supposedly a lot of non-WOTC big publishers (Paizo being the big one) are getting fucked by Diamond going out of business. Diamond is just taking the stock they have on consignment, and is selling it to pay off their debts without giving the publishers a cut.
If you want part of that answer the biggest thing would be how they just bunched together several disciplines and removed some outright making them not feel unique anymore, prime examples are blood magic and quietus and necromancy and obtenebration (sp).
I like Monsterhearts because it does one very specific thing and it does it very well. You have to play a selfish, overdramatic piece of shit in Monsterhearts, because the game does not have mechanics for anything else until the very end of character advancement and since the base system is PbTA, it's expected that you're fucking up constantly. Both of those are a good fit for playing teens. None of the basic moves you have are anything positive or constructive.
I can see that the PbTA system would be great for playing characters that constantly fuck up. One of the issues I have with the system is how aggressively some of these games push sex as mechanic.
It gets creepy when Monsterhearts has that mechanic for teenagers, along with the manipulative nature of having strings on other characters.
If I was in charge of Monsterhearts, I would tone down the sex and focus more on teens wanting to try new things and wanting to find that sense of belonging. Change the Turn On move to be a Passion move. Rather than sexual attraction, it’s finding out if you have interest in something or someone. Could be a hobby, a friend, or a romantic partner. The complication is that you get too obsessed with your passion, acquiring an attachment, a deep connection which can empower or harm you. Change the sex move to a bonding move, which, depending on the roll, gives you a positive or negative ability.
Teenage lives were about fucking up and learning how to navigate their soon to be adult world. I’d love if the game focused more on that than possible vampire/werewolf polycules.
I came up with a solution for a similar situation for my homebrew sci-fi setting. There's a bird people species and they technically have a flight speed but it functions similar to Jump Jets. It's their object interaction to declare they are going to "fly" they can fly up to their speed but it only lasts until the end of their turn. They can get a proper flight speed but they have to take a feat to do so. Lore wise, they don't generally fly long distances anymore and require special training to learn to do it.
I don't think there's anything wrong with restricting the kind of races/classes/combos you want in your game due to mechanics that would trivialize the content you want to run. Unrestricted flight in particular is incredibly powerful in most settings, and ultimately as a GM it's your game. Some things can and should be beyond the players' reach, otherwise you get people thinking shit like this is kosher:
Oh, lord, I remember that article; some of the ideas people come up with are just ridiculous.
And yeah, I fully get and support limiting race options down to a select few; like I said, I'm essentially forced to grab either Aarakocra or Tabaxi at this point due to a number of reasons, and it's frustrating being forced to pick between either the bird race that feels too strong for my tastes... or the furry race that is also unironically extremely dull.
I myself wish that Flight for Aarakocra was unlocked at a later level, or otherwise limit Flight in various ways to help not break party comp; even something like an curse that prevents/limits flying sounds like fun.
I don't think there's anything wrong with restricting the kind of races/classes/combos you want in your game due to mechanics that would trivialize the content you want to run. Unrestricted flight in particular is incredibly powerful in most settings, and ultimately as a GM it's your game. Some things can and should be beyond the players' reach, otherwise you get people thinking shit like this is kosher:
The general idea, that as players familiarize themselves with the game they start trying out more mechanically complicated characters and so on, is fine, but then it takes it to the extreme by saying experienced players play wacky bullshit. And since this is DnD in the 2020s, I can't tell if it's an exaggerated joke or someone being serious.
Races should be balanced against the game, maybe against each other, but not really.
Told this story before. But was told by the internet that Dragonborn were broken, and were unplayable, but every game I saw someone play one, it was fine. The internet told me monks were bad because inefficient stats/leveling, but every game they were present they kicked arse or were even MVP. The only 5e class I've found to be objectively shit is Ranger.
In general, I blame online/Reddit nogame theorycrafters for the idea that "X is always shit". Unless you're playing with a table full of minmaxers, being only 80% optimized and not 100% is fine. It also eventually leads to races being gray blobs with floating stat bonuses because the players absolutely need that INT bonus for their dwarf wizard.
I can see that the PbTA system would be great for playing characters that constantly fuck up. One of the issues I have with the system is how aggressively some of these games push sex as mechanic.
It gets creepy when Monsterhearts has that mechanic for teenagers, along with the manipulative nature of having strings on other characters.
I think the creepiness and manipulativeness are both completely intentional. A pretty strong indication of that is that the game has an explicit abuse victim class. It's also why the game works best with teen characters, since they can be utter shits the mechanics require them to be, but it's believable that teens wouldn't know any better.
A big point point of disagreement between us is probably that for me, the creepiness and the fucked up way the mechanics push the game to play out are a big part of the game's appeal.
It's another reason why the game wouldn't really work with more robust mechanics. Picking whether you roll Manipulation+Subterfuge or Charisma+Presence (is Presence even an ability in WoD or just a Vampire discipline? I know it is an ability in Exalted.) says something about the character's intent and whether it's benign in both intent and result. Turn Someone On has set possible results and none of them reflect well on the character using that move. Either they want to force the other character into a position of vulnerability they can later exploit or they want to target the other character with their sex move. A WoD vampire struggles to retain humanity and/or self-control, even if pretty much all of them fail at least on the retaining humanity front and they can attempt to be selfless and succeed. A Monsterhearts character starts with limited self-control and if they try to be nice, they're a doormat, since there's no mechanical way for being nice to have results. They can by the end of the campaign pick up the grown up moves that are wholly positive, but it's a long road through being useless or a piece of shit. It's an opposite character trajectory. WoD vampires fight a potentially tragic losing battle against their thirst for blood while Monsterhearts characters are potentially slowly getting better.
In general, I blame online/Reddit nogame theorycrafters for the idea that "X is always shit". Unless you're playing with a table full of minmaxers, being only 80% optimized and not 100% is fine.
Essentially what Dungeon World did then. Remember that this system was just BDSM ERP garbage until the guy who decided to ERP rape with a player live on stream made it so the sex moves and shit like that became companion interaction moments. Dungeon World was the first of these to actually try to make it go beyond gooning.
Again, I CAN see the usecase for Monsterhearts but I intrinsically can't understand defending this forcing the fetish and possible noncery game given the wording in it when it really isn't any more work to just do a Chronicles game. Like it really isn't that much harder honestly; no moreso than running a Hunter: the Vigil run where you need an iota of familiarity with the other splats anyway given you're hunting monsters. It's also not like the ST wouldn't have to make up the fucking setting if they played the MC hat instead after all.
Plus it's completely pigeonholed into doing what is basically just Twilight, to the point where the authors are aware of that and expect you to come up with shit yourself. Not the biggest fan of that mentality tbh.
Also being self-aware that you made a game rapier and with more red flags than Beast only goes so far; it's why I joked about whether or not the writers also had allegations about them.
I'm fine with any race. If anything "human man" is usually the boring choice, unless it isn't.
[...]
Told this story before. But was told by the internet that Dragonborn were broken, and were unplayable, but every game I saw someone play one, it was fine. The internet told me monks were bad because inefficient stats/leveling, but every game they were present they kicked arse or were even MVP. The only 5e class I've found to be objectively shit is Ranger.
And related to drawbacks, why does it only cut one way? "You can play Dragonborn, but they're illegal in this setting." or "You can play Warforged, but you don't have rights." or "You can play an attractive female, but every man will try to rape you.". It's never "you can play a human, but you're going to weakest in a universe that is trying to kill you at every turn." unless it's 40k, RIFTS, or maybe Shadowrun if @Overly Serious is to be believed.
My issue is two fold; First if the only reason a race is chosen is for some mechanical novelty or better numbers, that tells me that race wasn't well thought through.
Second, if you can't have a normal, standard, down right boring character run adventures and have fun, this just tells me your system is garbage and relies on gimmicks.
The issue with humans being the weakest is that's already usually the case.
I can see that the PbTA system would be great for playing characters that constantly fuck up. One of the issues I have with the system is how aggressively some of these games push sex as mechanic.
[...]
Teenage lives were about fucking up and learning how to navigate their soon to be adult world. I’d love if the game focused more on that than possible vampire/werewolf polycules.
PbtA is garbage. It is a narrative game for cowards.
Additionally the older the crowd wanting to be horny distaster monsters on a CW show the more sus I view anyone wanting to play it.
That said, Monster Hearts picks a premise, runs with it, and it almost works. the idea is you aren't playing teenagers so much as you are playing characters on a trashy late night CW show, so there's supposed to be lots of sexual tension, hook ups... basically a soap opera.
Its not supposed to be about characters navigating their way to adulthood, its supposed to be the worst of Trash TV during sweeps month.
This Monster Hearts game, from what I read here - why would anybody want to play this as a game? Perhaps if it formed the basis of some solo video game I could see the market, but what sort of person would want to role-play out sex and relationships with their friends? That last thing I want to do is look across the table at a mate and say "so, I roll to seduce you".
