On some more massive changes to the house rules

[HST Jacob]

I've been thinking about creating some more serious changes to the house rules.

Here's the ideas I've come up with. The idea puts our trait system more in line with TT rules.

Everyone would have a flat trait cap of 15.
They would break down into their TT categories, and you'd have a cap of 5 in each.
So for Physicals, Str, Dex, Stam.
You can have any types of named traits in those categories you want, but the break down would be maxed at 5 per category.

Bidding traits.
So instead of bidding all of your traits per-category then adding abilities, you bid the appropriate subcategory then add abilities.
Just like TT.
So if you want to be "Dex Trait" enough to hit someone, you bid that dex trait + appropriate ability when comparing ties on the challenge, they defend with dex traits + appropriate abilities.

Also I kinda want to remove the the trait cap on tempers all together.
Though I may let Elders buy to 6 in each category, because even in TT it talks about how Elders can go beyond this often.
But in this system, those extra traits aren't as big of a deal, because they can only give a 1 trait swing as compared to before where it was 4 traits over an adren for example.
This creates a much higher focus on abilities then.

Now I know these are alot of changes, and other games don't do this...but other games didn't do our other changes at first, and many games are now adopting them....so it's possible they may continue from this example.

I know the question came up, "Then what's the difference between Cliath to Fostern, or Adren to Athro".
Well the primary difference is Roleplay oriented as it's intended to be.
The way the world is built, you are not more awesome because you are a higher rank, you are a higher rank because you are more awesome...and I want to get to that more.
Ranking up should not be "leveling up" in a video game...but the way the larp game is written it feels that way. That does not follow with the genre of the world though, and it's frustrating running a game and trying to maintain that genre when the very rules do not support it.

Now you may ask..."Jacob, why the fuck do you do this shit, and how does this benefit the game to change things so much."

I actually want to explain that.
So a Fomori with a silver shot gun, and perhaps some rage, can actually be a threat to just about any werewolf if they get alittle lucky and the Garou in question fucks up.
But in LARP, that just isn't the case. An Adren and up should be able to handle most regular fomori, and by Athro no Fomori is really a threat.
That's just one example of how the system trivializes many of the Wyrm's minion that should not be trivial.
So as you guys raise in power you are going to notice that the STs running games have to create more and more outrageous villians to be threatening to you.
It's not their fault...they HAVE to do this in order to make the game challenging at all.
But in truth, in the WOD, those outrageous villians should be far more rare, and having Rank 5 BSDs fly at the PCs every other encounter trivializes how awesome such an enemy is, and how awesome the PCs are when they finally over come it.

So, in truth the only way to fix it is to fix the system.

Now I also know what you are thinking in a different way, "Jacob, why you gotta make things more complicated"...well this next part actually makes thing LESS complicated to make up with the slight raise in complication for the previous section.

Now the next issue, is if we do this, how do we work on losing traits or spending traits.
IN a system like this, spending traits is even more detrimental...so we have to do away with that.
Losing traits to regular challenges is also very detrimental...so that will have to be changed.

Here's my idea of fixing this.
For "Spends" we'll call those successes from now on, and you get a flat amount equal to half the traits you are bidding(rounding down). So if you have 4 str, and 3 intimidation, you'd get 3 successes on a successful use of True Fear, for example.
Now on lost traits...you no longer lose traits in a regular challenge. You only lose traits when you lose a challenge that someone bids a negative against you.
Yeah, this makes Negatives WAY more significant!
These rules really would streamline stuff alot.
You'd no longer have to keep track of which traits you've lost, unless you got hit with negative traits or something.
So less numbers to keep track of, and you'd know your "Half" traits for successes off the top of your head too, since your traits aren't changing as much.


Anyway, so discuss these ideas, and we'll also talk about them more next game.

But do understand that such rules changes will bring us much closer to the source material and even take some of the best parts of the new MET alpha rules that have been published, so is likely something like this will be coming out of actual books soon anyway.