Vampire: Masquerade

[Vataes]

This conversation is starting to remind me a bit of a problem with Call of Cthulhu - about people going hunting the Great Ancients. On the W: M scale, Antediluvians are just such individuals, seemingly impossible to move, but the ancient rule says - if it has stats, it can be killed. Antediluvians are basically gods capable of sweeping the floor with anyone. Unfortunately, you can beat them because they have stats. This is such a problem typical of all high - power, eventually creatures epic enough to move the gods (as in D&D where the priest Shar once changed plane of radiance to plane of darkness and summoned his goddess avatar there). Of course, this cannot be done except the good old way, i.e. MG modifiers that sweep the team away in the face of an antediluvian.

[Oneia]

The problem you started to talk about wasn't whether they had stats or not. The problem is how far the MG can interfere with the reality of the Dark World. At the same time, I want to lead in this world, but on the other hand, there are players for whom not everything will be immediately understood. You can tell them almost anything about your world, but they won't understand it all.

This is not only a problem with Masquerade, but with other systems as well. Let the players feel more confident in a given world, or impose realities in which they probably get lost. The trade-off is a slow introduction to the world, but you can't allow nude more advanced players. The only solution is to stretch the realities of the systemic world so that both groups feel satisfied.

[Rincewind1]

Interference in CM was possible - once, but when WHite Wolf revealed most of the cards and brought the world to the brink of doom, this interference became extremely difficult. It's just that the world has become too complete and too much interference is a kind of stretching it and its logic can finally break. Therefore, running a CM is difficult and requires a colossal knowledge of the subject in order for it to turn out well. Therefore, there are discussions like this one, resulting from the fact that some go beyond the world creating situations that are unacceptable to the more orthodox experts on the realities of the world, I prefer to stay in my beloved Far East where the manipulations of the Antediluvian do not reach and face the Yama Kings .

[Supergirl]

I admire RPG creators for wanting to invent these worlds. I used to think it was easy, but miscalculated trying to come up with my own. For me, too many details need to be described. I gave it up. It is one thing to create a literary world that the reader will believe in, and another RPG world in which the player must find himself. The role of the MG is to help him do this.

That's why I also admire the creators of Mystica, it's also a lot of work.

Back to the topic:
As for the "edge of doom", it was planned from the first edition of Vampire. In the fragments about the history of vampires there is a record that the oldest vampires (twentieth century) predict the coming of Gehenna, to complete the next cycle. The "time of poorer" was inferred from the increasing number of anarchists and the declining importance of Tradition.

[Eredin]

I ran about 4 different systems myself. I played some 2 other author's.
If you do not assume "world first, then we play", it does not require several hundreds of sheets and a year of work.
The spectrum that players see is narrow enough for a handful of generalities and a detailed description of a small area is enough to start with. Will you tell green players about, for example, FR in more than 20 sentences? Politics, geography, and the city of Luskan looks like this ...
The neighborhood develops as the game progresses.
This has a lot of disadvantages - the main one is consistency. You really have to be serious. However - and this is not just my example - it is possible.
Now my last (2 year old) sys already has a few M bytes in my brain, a lot on paper and computer. Listed a number of creatures, spells, herbs, equipment, associations or guilds ... etc.
I know more about him than about worlds from the textbooks I've read.

An example of "game first then world" could be the set for the book "Hobbit". You know who, you know what.
[When you look at a map, for example, practically everything in Middle-earth 3rd and 4th Era is the route of the trip ... one, but what! Sillmarillion describes it from scratch, comprehensively - but most of that set lies under the seas, or in the west ... almost all of it. ]