Blood, Willpower, Herd, and mechanics. (But mostly blood)

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Blood, Willpower, Herd, and mechanics. (But mostly blood)

Post by Ralph »

The Spirit wrote:Feeding, the 1-a-Week Willpower Refresh and Herd, please!

Thoughts in general, the current mechanics, what's going on that we get Willpower from Feeding Tiles but not Herd, how much needs to be described or role-played versus being hand-waved or implicitly successful, or anything else please.
Thanks to Dorian for asking for this topic.

Ok, to get started on this topic, I should talk about blood in general. I actually hate our system and method of handling the blood, though I don't hate the mechanic.

You see, to me, the quest for blood should be a quintessential part of vampire. After all, that is the single greatest driving force (in theory) your character should have! It has replaced two of the other primal needs you had as a human - Hunger and Sex-drive*.

The way we humans talk about food? That should be a part of Kindred culture**. Vessels each have thier own distinctive taste, texture, and flavor. There should be desire for one particular vessel over another.

Unfortunately, our system has too much mechanics all bound up in blood. It is really hard to get people engaged in the ~process~ of hunting, much less the imagination of the complexity of the taste.

Most, not all, but certainly most of our players will respond as shortly and frankly sanitarily about feeding when asked.

"How do you hunt?"
"I feed from animals."
"I go to a club."
"I catch a homeless guy."


When pressed for details, they are like pulling teeth. I think part of that is due to perceived risk/reward, because of how valuable each little glass bead actually is in game. If you don't get enough, you can't use your super-powers. If you don't get enough, you risk social embarrassment by feeding. If you don't get enough, you have to run another fracking feeding scene!

Players are also afraid of how staff is going to punish them. If they go into too much detail, then there is too much of a chance for the staff person to mess with them, right? Perhaps there is something to that. After all, right now there are only 2 times we run feedings scenes - during play (which happens pretty rarely) and when someone pulls a double-blank, which means there is SUPPOSED to be a complication. Staff rarely has the opportunity to run the very successful feeding scenes.

In any case, this boils down to players (and staff!) being very superficial and gallant about blood in general.

Getting back to the questions -
Why do we use the dominoes? a) Because it's the system I inherited, b) Because it works for the mechanical aspects of the system and c) because we don't have time to run individual feeding scenes for everyone.

Why do the Dominoes give willpower and Herd doesn't? You know, I could make something up here story-wise to try to justify it - but I won't. It does it for purely mechanical play balance reasons. Blood is (relatively) easy for vampires to procure. Willpower isn't, and it is not supposed to be from a play mechanics perspective. However, we need some way of replenishing Willpower, and this system seems to work, for the most part. Also, feeding from Herd is like going to the Jack-in-the-box. Sometimes it hits the spot, but it's not exactly satisfying. There is no hunt, there is no risk, and consequentially there is not as much reward. However, sometimes it can be necessary.

However, I'd like to mention - When people run feeding scenes with me during play, I will often give a will or two back if I think the scene was good and roleplayed to the concept as I understand the character.

To sum up - I wish that we had a way to make the texture of blood more interesting than just another shiny red bead. It would allow me to run some more plot that I think is core-vampire. However, I don't see that happening with our current system.

*On the sex-drive note - I realize that some kindred, especially the Toreador, still have and enjoy sex. But that's not the same thing. Sure they can go through the motions, but the DRIVE... the primal impetus for sex, that should be gone. Kindred have sex with mortals as a means to an end. Kindred have sex with each other as an attempt to recapture their mortality - but in my opinion, those attempts should be ultimately hollow.

** Speaking of food - I hate the eat-food merit. Ask me sometime and I'll give you my rant about it.
-Ralph
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Re: Blood, Willpower, Herd, and mechanics. (But mostly blood

Post by Ted »

Great topic and discussion.

Ralph, I think you nailed in on the head about people having an aversion to hunting because they're worried they'll get screwed over. I've run hunting scenes in BAM once or twice, mostly with new players. People often find it difficult, because they're not sure *how* to go about it.

Hunting should, for Kindred, be a pleasurable activity, rather than a chore or a way to power up your other abilities and avoid Frenzy.

What's more, Kindred generally have plenty of ways to hunt. Obfuscate, Dominate, and Presence all make hunting easier, and victims have built-in memory loss, so generally the hardest part should be picking your choice of flavor.
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Re: Blood, Willpower, Herd, and mechanics. (But mostly blood

Post by Katyusha »

Thanks for this, Ralph.
Players are also afraid of how staff is going to punish them. If they go into too much detail, then there is too much of a chance for the staff person to mess with them, right? Perhaps there is something to that. After all, right now there are only 2 times we run feedings scenes - during play (which happens pretty rarely) and when someone pulls a double-blank, which means there is SUPPOSED to be a complication. Staff rarely has the opportunity to run the very successful feeding scenes.
THIS. It's hard to shake the feeling that if a player provides detail, that's just handing Staff more rope with which to hang said player. That might be less than fair, but at least partly this feeling comes up because more detail often means more challenges, and since all challenges carry a 33% chance of outright failure, risking more of them feels distinctly disadvantageous.

Also: Your reasoning for why hunting might replenish will when herd doesn't makes plenty of sense, I think. It seems thoroughly plausible that one might gain control of one's beast (willpower, used to forestall frenzy and exploit supernatural benefit) by indulging the predatory impulse of one's beast in controlled doses (hunting). Using herd lacks this predatory satisfaction, so it doesn't really sate the darker appetites of the beast, which leaves one rather less in control. I always assumed that was on purpose :)

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Re: Blood, Willpower, Herd, and mechanics. (But mostly blood

Post by dominic »

While I agree with the above, I think there is another reason for the over-simplification of our current feeding system: a knee-jerk reaction to the old SCM system and all that it entailed. I won't get into a detailed description of the system itself, but the overall complexity, having to play "guess which trait grants a retest", and the endless IC discussions of who gets to feed where led to a much stripped down system.

More than once I've tried to add detail back in, but it's rarely been received well. I would love for feeding to be less clinical and allow for more story. Make those Feeding Restrictions and Prey Exclusions actually mean something other than just a couple of free points.

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Re: Blood, Willpower, Herd, and mechanics. (But mostly blood

Post by Glen »

This is an odd topic for me to weigh in on emotionally, since Tyler Hayes and I introduced/debuted the idea of using blood beads (locally introduced) in our old Santa Cruz game (Nicknamed "Blood on the Water" and ran for two years). We used cloth (later moved to "ziploc") bags for the beads, but generally found it a good way to track gains and expenditures to make blood more visual and more a part of the system, instead of being "generic power points" as it is in MET (in my opinion).

Interestingly, by FAR the hardest part of the system, (changing and struggling as it moved to SCM and BAM )has been the actual story, play, and random (or political) element around gaining blood beads, with the mixed-bag "territory" aspect that Chris mentioned, the hunting aspect that Ralph talked about, and the desire to add *feeling* to feeding.

The elements I have seen, (personally being fascinated to see how the system has mutated) are:

1. Organizing, finding, labeling, passing out, and sorting the bags/boxes, which is sometimes a tough thing, especially if a box, bag, or other storage device breaks. (We originally tucked character sheets in with the beads, but that got messy fast as the bags more quickly broke.) Added to this is the "where do I carry this on my awesome no pockets costume?" aspect.

2. Making feeding both interesting and also not a huge time sink for staff.

3. Adding in game character drama to the blood supply (The feeding territory thing Chris talked about. As he said, it was very mixed bag in practice, with a complexity that eventually got quite irritating and not politically fluid and dynamic as we had hoped in the design stages.)

(Later edit: I am really glad to see folks pipe in that they liked it at least for the main aspect of PvP, boons, primogen, etc..)

4. Adding some individual drama, story, or purpose to the character sheet blood sources. (Herd, Toreador Art, Medical / Occult Influence (and other influences), etc...)

5. Trying to make narrated blood scenes usually thought of as a bigger advantage in story or plot over "just" using your free sources (as listed in #4), so players would be encouraged to feed instead of just using blood as a generic "power point source". We had a "feeding scene only" narrator for a while, which was a mixed success, but the perception of risk/reward ratio was a brutal one to overcome, as was already stated.

6. Random factor. Dominoes and attaching willpower to feeding is a system I honestly don't know when it was added or who developed it. I found many players do exactly what Ralph said, avoid when possible due to fear of being "scene punished".

I look forward to seeing what the system changes to (or not) and will happily do what I can to help brainstorm if asked. It is kind of a source of pride/fascination for me and I love to see how it all get adapted for each game / head ST / system.
Last edited by Glen on Fri Aug 23, 2013 3:17 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Blood, Willpower, Herd, and mechanics. (But mostly blood

Post by MikeLG »

My thoughts on blood is that if a scene should happen, then at least on SOME level, it shouldn't be a happy thing for all around. You are, after all, taking blood, through force, trickery, or other methods, and there should at least be some sort of dirty feeling about that.

As for pulling dominoes? I think that sure, it's fine for blood, but some sort of "how are you getting this blood" question should be answered, if only to get the player to not just think of pulling dominoes, but actually thinking of the character's action.

My thoughts on regenerating will: While I believe we get 1 dot of will back a week, I'm not fully sure on the method for pulling dominoes to get up to 6 additional will back from it. Will is incredibly useful, from delaying frenzy tests, giving you retests, suppressing derangements for a scene, to fueling some disciplines, but at the same time, I think that lowering some access to willpower could add some dramatic elements. If you burn through a lot of will in a scene, it's easy to think "Well, I've got full blood, next week, I'll just pull to get my willpower back"

While willpower is important, I think that because it's so important that it shouldn't be replenished as easily as blood is (or nearly so if you have herd/are a toreador). Your nature has a mechanic for regaining willpower, but it really often does not come up as often as it should.

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Re: Blood, Willpower, Herd, and mechanics. (But mostly blood

Post by dominic »

MikeLG wrote:My thoughts on regenerating will: While I believe we get 1 dot of will back a week, I'm not fully sure on the method for pulling dominoes to get up to 6 additional will back from it. Will is incredibly useful, from delaying frenzy tests, giving you retests, suppressing derangements for a scene, to fueling some disciplines, but at the same time, I think that lowering some access to willpower could add some dramatic elements. If you burn through a lot of will in a scene, it's easy to think "Well, I've got full blood, next week, I'll just pull to get my willpower back"
This is something I've lobbied for as well. My personal thought is that Blood from dominoes should be 1-6, while Willpower should be 1-3 - just halve whatever is pulled.

And don't get me wrong, the feeding grounds system of SCM certainly led to some VERY entertaining political plays. Seeing feeding grounds used as political bargaining chips was awesome. Unfortunately those moments were outweighed by IC arguments of "wait, which clan gets to feed in Cupertino? Is it the Ventrue or the Assamites?"

All this talk of the feeding system is giving me ideas...

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Re: Blood, Willpower, Herd, and mechanics. (But mostly blood

Post by Aldona Piast »

So, for those of you who were not here at the time - we used to have a very complicated in game system of feeding grounds - some feeding grounds gave more blood, some gave a bonus to certain influences ect. This required the domain to be divided up into regions. Each clan had areas that they claimed as their own, and then there was a rack.

This made personal domain more valuable - because the owner of the personal domain was allowed to determine who was and was not allowed to feed there (see Lennet's domain of downtown San Jose!).

there were maps drawn up to help see who got what areas - and it was all in player hands. Areas were traded like precious commodities, boons were used for the privilage of feeding in another person's or clan's feeding area - Primogen would get locked in a meeting for HOURS arguing over who would get what and serious political grudges would be created over the backstabbing that happened regarding all the territory.

I happened to love it.
This system was, however, abandoned AT PLAYER REQUEST.

I'd love to see something similar return.
I'd love to see all the politics it would generate - not having a Primogen to speak up for your clan would become a big issue, boons would get used more, it would generate more pvp which I love...... but in the end, because it was taken away at player request, I think that it would only come back at player request as well - because majority player request has always carried a lot of weight here at BAM.

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Re: Blood, Willpower, Herd, and mechanics. (But mostly blood

Post by MikeLG »

If we had a few more primogen on the council, I would absolutely love to bring that back. I didn't really experience any of that, but as a whole, it sounds like it would bring some nice politics in game and in the hands of the players.

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Re: Blood, Willpower, Herd, and mechanics. (But mostly blood

Post by Isabella »

Regarding giving information during feeding:
One of the first things I do when creating a character is to figure out how they feed so when I'm doing a feeding challenge it's already in my head. This helps me to answer those questions when they come up. It also helps me to come up with a reason why a challenge went well or only partially well and use the experience to fuel my interactions for the night. Let's face it, in real life if we are hungry we act differently than if we are well fed. So I try to use that in my RP.

However, I don't think that the fear of ST smack down is the only reason why some people don't give a lot of detail. I know that sometimes I've been at work all day and my brain is so fried that I can't be very detailed til I unwind a little more which usually doesn't happen til after coffee and a walk around the park. But there's also been times when I've had a lot on my plate either in game, out of game or both and the very thought of trying to run a complex scene with staff that I know is going to go sideways makes me literally sick to my stomach and therefore I just give very short answers because I want it done with quick. I think the same can be said for others too. We've all had those days and I think it's important to keep that in mind as well. It's kind of like saying "It's not you. It's me" to the ST.

And then there's the noob factor. New players and those who have never done feeding challenges and had them go wrong might feel a bit overwhelmed with the idea. Which is where communication and trust comes into play. Yes, if you pull a double blank it's going to be a gnarly feeding but it can also be very good for character growth. I remember pulling my first double blank and learning something I didn't even know about my character because of it. So I think that these sorts of scenes can provide a lot of valuable character building blocks if we let them. But you need to communicate your concerns with Staff and you need to trust them. Which can be especially hard if you're new.

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Re: Blood, Willpower, Herd, and mechanics. (But mostly blood

Post by The Spirit »

dominic wrote:
MikeLG wrote:My thoughts on regenerating will: While I believe we get 1 dot of will back a week, I'm not fully sure on the method for pulling dominoes to get up to 6 additional will back from it. Will is incredibly useful, from delaying frenzy tests, giving you retests, suppressing derangements for a scene, to fueling some disciplines, but at the same time, I think that lowering some access to willpower could add some dramatic elements. If you burn through a lot of will in a scene, it's easy to think "Well, I've got full blood, next week, I'll just pull to get my willpower back"
This is something I've lobbied for as well. My personal thought is that Blood from dominoes should be 1-6, while Willpower should be 1-3 - just halve whatever is pulled.

And don't get me wrong, the feeding grounds system of SCM certainly led to some VERY entertaining political plays. Seeing feeding grounds used as political bargaining chips was awesome. Unfortunately those moments were outweighed by IC arguments of "wait, which clan gets to feed in Cupertino? Is it the Ventrue or the Assamites?"

All this talk of the feeding system is giving me ideas...
Here is my take on What That Means:
#InternalDialog wrote:Your Beast: OMNOMNOMNOMNOMNOMNOMNOM!!!!
You: Wha??? NO!
Your Beast: ....OMNOMNOMNOMNOMNOMNOMNOMNOW!!!!
You: I don't wanna!
Your Beast incoherently shouts at you constantly
You incoherently shouts over Your Beast
Your Beast incoherently shouts at you constantly
You gets tired
Your Beast incoherently shouts at you constantly
You gets REALLY F#**KING tired
Your Beast incoherently shouts at you constantly
You starts breaking down
Your Beast incoherently shouts at you constantly
You: OMNOMNOMNOMNOMNOMNOMNOMOKAY!?!?
Your Beast gives you a f#)*king dog treat
You sighs in relief and munches on dog treat
Your Beast pets You
Your Beast: good human
Your Beast: now
Your Beast: OMNOMNOMNOM
And that's where my feeding Willpower usually comes from in a nutshell, I think; it's a combination of the relief of sating the Beast and/or the Beast trying to train you.

Alternately, Feeding Willpower could also be "stuff that happens in my feeding pursuits happens to bolster my sense of self and well-being, or I sacrificed sating my Hunger to assert Me more and in doing so I bolstered my sense of self-direction/identity". I feel like these things happen too.

I'm not saying it should be this way.
I am saying that the rules as they are lead me to suspect this kind of relationship between a vampire and their Beast, and I find expressing that kind of dynamic in ways like this to be fun and interesting and helps me play in the kind of personal/introspective horror game I want to play here.

EDIT:
I did actually originally say "should" right before I said "I'm not saying it should". Herp, and my apologies.
I do personally feel like my character has this relationship with his Beast, but I do not mean to say "should" about it, let alone "should" for all PCs/characters/vampires.

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Re: Blood, Willpower, Herd, and mechanics. (But mostly blood

Post by The Spirit »

Subject: Quotes - OOC but still BAM
Ginger wrote:Ari, while discussing blood, feeding, and vampiric "food shame":

"It's like sexy hypnotic date-rape cake that will kill someone if you eat too much."
I believe this is an appropriate place for me to say "+1" to this simile. Staffs, you're welcome to relocate this to a Discussion thread if it would live better there.

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