Editing LeviathanTempest:ArchivedConflicts (section)

=== Frank Trollman's Musings and Requirements ===
We have to understand for a moment that regardless of which of the WoD settings each of us likes the best, Vampire is the big name. It's the Jell-o of the WoD gelatin desserts, the sub-brand which defines the genre. And the reason is not simply because Lugosi is a lot cooler than Karloff, but because Vampire keeps its fingers directly on the pulse of some very primal concepts. To whit:

* Loss of Innocence
* Fear of Death
* Danger and Lure of Intimacy
* Moral Nostalgia
* Regret

Powerful stuff. And frankly Promethean's exploration of inadequacy and rejection, and Mage's exploration of rampant powergaming never really touch the Jungian heartstrings to the same extent.

And yet, for all of Vampire's incredible and palpable staying power, you can't just do the same themes. You need to find new themes. You have to stake out new territory (so to speak).

Where Vampire runs with the feelings of falling from grace, allowing people to tap into the emmotional veins filled with the ichor of regretful memories and stoked with the flames of bad descisions and failed romance - Leviathan has to do something else. '''And I suggest that the new thing should be tapping the emotional resovoirs filled with shame and shattered pride from all the times you found out that you weren't as good as you thought.'''

The history of the Leviathan shouldn't be a glorious past and some kind of acceptable but ultimately doomed intermediary, that's been done. The Leviathan should have been straight up the villains right to the very point that they were hunted to near extinction. Looking into your past should be a shaming and hurtful experience, where the initial matings between typhons and humans weren't even consensual.

There's powerful stuff to be tapped in puberty. Not in the way that Werewolf handles it where you get all hairy and strong - that's the good part, people don't have any emotional baggage to deal with after that. '''No, we're talking the part where your body became unfamiliar to you, it hurt like hell, you smelled funny, and you had to go to a new school.''' That's the part we should be tapping into, because WoD is about working through emotionally trying life periods, not just turning into a superhero and smashing things.


* '''The creatures should be in some important way horrible''' This is I think where Mage fails, and always has. Whether we're talking Ascension or Awakening, Mages may as well wear capes. Being one isn't a trade-off, it's not a curse, it's awesome. And that doesn't mesh with the gothic horror concept at all.
* '''The creatures should feel fantastic''' I honestly think that this is where nWoD lost so much market share and fan attention. It wasn't that there was specifically anything wrong with the new covenants over the old - it was that vampires in Requiem don't have super strength. While the characters shouldn't be super heroes, they need to have super powers that feel super or it loses the supernatural draw.
* '''The Antagonists should be Compelling.''' And I mean that in both senses of the word. The bad guys should have a compelling sales pitch where you can understand why people would join. And they should be doing some villainy which the players (not just the characters) feel the need to stop. Pentex was just silly, their plan made no sense and I had no idea how they made money or why people joined, and I honestly don't even care if the villains from Awakening keep the Atlantean Throne, because it's way out in crazy land and they don't seem to be doing anything with it.
* '''The Game should have Mythic Resonance''' This is Urban Fantasy, not Science Fiction. If you go back through White Wolf's press history, every time you use the word "space virus" people leave and don't come back. Every single time. 
* '''The Game should have Emotional Resonance''' This is a "storyteller" game. People pick it up because they want to do cooperative storytelling with an emphasis on emotional drama. The game's setting and play progression should deliver on that or people will get bored.
* '''The Game should be downbeat''' The target audience of a White Wolf product has a favorite Trent Reznor album. Mine is Pretty Hate Machine. If the game is not sad in overtones, goths won't like it - and then it will fade from memory.
* '''...But not too downbeat''' Players are going to be telling stories with beginnings, middles, and ends. There need to be things which can be accomplished along the way from within the setting. If you keep shocking the lab rats eventually they stop even trying to get through the maze and they just curl up and await death. Wraith, for example, went too far.