The Onyx Vault

Monopoly: XBOX 360

"Simultaneously awesome and a crime against humanity!"

So on Saint Patty's Day my dude and I bought XBOX games. I got Gears of War, which I wrote briefly about in a forum thread, while he got Monopoly. Now I know what you're thinking: "Barf!" Give it another chance, please. Console Monopoly is genuinely brilliant. See, what they've done, either on purpose or by accident... is that they've taken all the boredom and the tediousness out of the game, while opening up the space for some real strategy, some real economic genius. Allow me to demonstrate.

The entire game can be completed in just under an hour (hour and a half, tops). The reason is because all the math is relatively instantaneous and automatic. As an example, there is no need, EVER, to count money. You don't have to make change out of a 10 so you can pay that 6 dollar rent on Connecticut Avenue. You don't have to count how much you have to find out if you can afford the 300 for Pacific Avenue. You just have a numerical quantity of money, and when its time to pay, an animation of the correct amount of monopoly money shoots out of your number, and then goes where it is supposed to (like to an opponent's number, if you're paying rent). And you never have to look at your property cards to see how much the rent is going to be when some one lands on your property. That comes up automatically. And the transition time of your money going from your hand, to the bank, so you can grab a property card, is gone.

Now, I realize how unimportant that sounds. But when you add it up, you seriously shave off HOURS of the game. Not only that, but it allows for the game to get financially complicated. It turns out, all the years I've been playing, there are a host of economic maneuvers that no one has realized are legal. And they likely wouldn't try them if they DID know, since in the real world it would take so horrifyingly long to pull off. Let me give some examples:

In the console game, mortgages are COMMON. What I mean by this is that frequently, half the board will be under mortgage... no joke. Watch this. Let's say I land on some one's property and can't afford the cash for the rent... Obviously I mortgage something and pay the money. We're familiar with this concept. How about this one? I finally land the light blue monopoly, the second cheapest one... Why not mortgage half my other properties and load those babies up with houses!? Then when some one hits them, I can use all the cash I gain from that to unmortgage my other properties. That's something that was always possible, but rarely thought of or done, because mortgaging in the board game is such a pain in the hoo-ha. It gets better. You can buy, sell, mortgage, and trade property and cash in the MIDDLE of paying rent. Gone are the days when you're only option for paying large rents was just to start mortgaging things. Now, granted, you have to find a buyer, but why wouldn't you mortgage a property AND sell it to get the cash necessary to pay the high rent?

It can get even more aggressive. Have you ever noticed that once some one buys a house, they will do anything they can to preserve it? Not anymore. You can sell those puppies for half value. So there is no longer any need to keep them there if there is no one on that side of the board. If you've got two monopolies, you can easily cycle your houses between the two of them, so that they are always waiting where the opponents are about to land. The rent you gain this way more than equals what is lost in selling the houses, but more importantly, it hits your opponents in the wallet faster and harder. Granted, you don't want to do that if your opponent has a big cluster of hotels, but... are you starting to get an idea of how this game can actually involve strategy instead of just blind luck? Consider aggresive mortgaging again. Gone are the days of landing on a property and thinking, "Aw shucks, I can't afford it." You were only going to get 1/12th of the value of a property each time some one landed on it anyway, so you might as well get HALF of it right now to buy another one!! It totally changes the game, because suddenly the idea of INVESTING becomes king. Same rules, same game as the one you spent an entire weekend on and still couldn't finish, only now you play the whole thing in an hour and with more complex strategies.

This next part might be something new, or it might be a rule that was always there that I never found out about. Either way, its never been present in a game of Monopoly that I've played. If you land on an unowned property, there are only two options. When I was growing up, I thought those options were "Buy" and "Don't Buy." As it turns out, in this game the two options are "Buy" and "Auction." In the auction, the property goes up for bidding by all players, starting at 10 dollars and working its way up every time some one clicks the A button. The result is that the board fills up a lot faster, since it is no longer possible for a turn to go buy inwhich nothing happens. Either something will be purchased, or rent will be payed. As before, these auctions are more complex than you might first think, since all players can bid money they do not currently possess. If you promise 400 dollars but only have 100, then after you win the auction you will have to mortgage, sell houses, or trade properties until you've got the dough to pay it off. And if you didn't really want the property for some reason, you can then of course mortgage it to gain half its value in cash again to unmortgage the property you just mortgaged to win the auction... or use that money to buy houses, or just keep it for liquidity.

Another fascinating rule that might or might not be new comes in the form of Bankruptcy. If you land on some one's hotel and do NOT have enough assets to pay the rent, the computer automatically informs you that you don't have what it takes, even if you sell all your houses and mortgage everything. So you don't have to spend an hour tallying everything up to see if you can survive. But here's how the bankruptcy works: All your houses disappear, all your CURRENT money goes to the opponent, and all your properties go to them as well, in the condition they were before you landed on their high-rent location. For those of you waiting for a World of Darkness reference, its like Diablerie. So its very common to gobble some one up and inherit $4, 5 Mortgaged properties, and 3 Unmortgaged properties. Here we find my first problem with the game: It does not give you the opportunity to sell your properties around for more than their mortgage value, in an effort to gain the money necessary to barely survive. This would be the equivalent of allowing enemy companies to invest in other companies simply to keep them afloat so that their opponent couldn't do a hostile take-over. Could have added some complexity to the game. Oh well.

Speaking of problems, there are two very large demons in this game. Now that I've told you how wonderful this game is, I am obligated to inform you of why this game will make you want to break your TV. First: the music is one track that loops endlessly, and is only about a minute long. Granted, you can fit several turns in that minute, but when you play for an hour and have heard those exact notes a thousand times (its a very repetative song that consists of nothing but hooks, while pretending to be jazz), it can get quite infuriating. Second: The makers had the brilliant idea of adding the Monopoly Guy to the game. That's right, he' in there, running along side your piece, giving you advice, and commenting on EVERYTHING. At first its cute. But for each possible event, he's got only one or two scripted one-liners. Again, these get very old, very fast. To make it worse, nothing can happen while he's animatedly delivering his lines. This means that every single time you land on a square, the screen zooms in on him while he tells you that you just landed on an unowned property, and that you can buy it or put it up for auction, and THEN you can click either of the two options. Once you've done that, it zooms to him again, where he either says something to the effect of "Congratulations, you're the proud owner of a new property" or "This could get interesting" before the auction screen comes up. After the auction, its "SOLD to the highest bidder!" Every single time you access your accounts to start mortgaging and buying houses and the like, he tells you how interesting this will be. Every single time you mortgage a property, he tells you that mortgaging is a great way to get money in the short term, but that you'll have to buy it back with 10 percent interest later on. Every time you buy a house, he says something. The list goes on... and on... and on... He even exclaims happily when you roll doubles.

The makers didn't provide the normal options menu so that you can adjust the frequency of his little speeches, or get rid of the animation, or adjust the music volume, or any of that. Too much of this game can indeed invoke some serious rage attacks aimed at the cute little Monopoly Guy. I honestly never thought I would get angry at him, much less hate him, but now... I'm thinkinf of dressing up like him for Halloween. Do you remember Jar-Jar Binks, from Star Wars Episode 1? It's almost that level of an attrocity that has been committed here.

One of the most refreshing aspects of the game, though, is that every game has four players. Period. This means that I can play solo, against 3 computer opponents of variable skill level, or I can play with my dude, against two computer opponents, or just have four humans all playing against each other. You ever wanted to play Monopoly but only had two people? No one make that mistake twice. Everyone's done it once, and 5 weeks later when they finally finished, they cursed the day Monopoly was invented and took a solemn oath never to allow such an atrocity to happen to anyone else. With the short time it takes to play, and the presence of the computer players, my man and I have already enjoyed 5 games that are surprisingly refreshing and fun. He always wins of course, since he used to be a Banker and has a better ability to anticipate economic risk and gain than I do, but its always entertaining.

As I end this article, I want to make it clear that I am in absolute AWE of the fact that they were able to take this game and remove ALL of the boredom from it. It's fun, engaging, entertaining, light-hearted, and cut-throat all at once. But it is NOT tedious and time consuming, the way that the board game is. However, I also want to be clear that I am utterly INFURIATED at what they did with the little Monopoly Guy and the Music. I would seriously have used the word "PERFECT" to describe this game if they hadn't made those two mistakes, or if they had included an Options menu that would allow us to turn those functions off. Instead I have to leave it at "Simultaneously awesome and a crime against humanity!"

Vampire: The Reqiuem

As one who spent some time briefly loving the new setting, and then converted and hated it with a passion for a couple of years, I feel very qualified in naming the flaws in the New World of Darkness. Having then changed my opinion BACK to appreciating its beauty, I also feel qualified to name its new strengths and benefits. For the sake of avoiding confusion, I need to warn you that I will alternate between talking about the World of Darkness as a whole, and Vampire specifically. I do this because this article discusses the transformations in the World of Darkness, using Vampire as a case study in how they manifest in one setting.

Here's the briefest summary of the difference between the old and new worlds of darkness.
OWoD: "Our ancestors messed things up so bad that no matter what we do we're all screwed. Life is a prison."
NWoD: "Our ancestors messed things up so bad that if we do nothing we're all screwed. It's our responsibility to do the best we can to fix it."

For those of us who believe that horror is the same thing as losing all the time, the Old WoD is certainly the way to go. That setting has a thousand fail-safes in place, and encourages the Storyteller to create more, which ensure that the characters end up being cogs in the great machine of their own destruction. This is indeed terrifying. The new world of darkness, rather that focusing on "hopelessness," then, focuses on responsibility. This is also terrifying. Now, for some, this is a problem, because it does in fact empower the characters to make their own fate. But I believe that focusing on that fact really misses the point. The key is that the characters in the New WoD have lost all excuses for anything. No matter what happens, good or bad, the characters cannot "escape" their responsibility for what they do. It's their fault, good or bad. I know what you're thinking: "Old WoD did that too." Yes... AND... The New WoD has it more directly built into the setting. Let's look at some of the "escapes" that were removed to make the New WoD, specifically in Vampire: the Requiem.

All Paths except Humanity are now gone. That's right, as "scary" as those inhuman philosophies were, and as brilliant as they were, they provide a solution to the problem of holding on to your Humanity. I mean really imagine NOT having those paths to turn to when you reach five-hundred, or a thousand, or two thousand years. NO MORE. In the Old Wod, eternity really lost some of its terror, some of its ability to destroy you, because it allowed you to keep your sanity in exchange for your soul (Paths). Now every single time you lose any humanity, you get to ask yourself how the hell you're going to hold on to what's left. There is absolutely nothing in between you and oblivion. Similarly, Golconda is gone. There really is no escape from this one. I am certainly willing to grant that the previous system posed these challenges, and can allow a group to explore these issues, AND I need to point out that this system does it better.

All the Methuselahs and Antedeluvians are gone. I know, there was a lot of rich material there, a lot of wonderful plot writing, hidden lore, backstory, and the like that is now missing. We will all miss the bad guy who's plans we're falling into without even knowing it. We will all miss the idea that there are enemies that we can't defeat even after another Ten Thousand years. Several things are gained by giving them the boot, however. PAY ATTENTION TO THIS: I know this is the big beef our group has to the game, so listen up. Since it isn't a God-ling that ensures our doom, its actually OUR FAULT if the world blows up. If we can't get a job, if no one will listen to us, if innocents are murdered, if we lose our souls, if all the politics goes wrong, that's 100% ON US. When volcanoes explode or an entire bloodline dies, we don't get to blame anyone. We simply have to deal with the fact that life is hard, and that we COULD have done more. Weirdly enough, by taking away that enormous mountain of power that hates us, the game has made us more vulnerable to the universe at large. When some one dies, it's not because some one else won... It's because YOU DIDN'T SAVE THEM. Here's the second thing that's gained: With no Ten-Thousand-Year-Old-Vampires around, with no One-Thousand-Year-Old-Vampires around... your security blanket of knowing that its possible to survive that long is GONE. The Epic struggle is gone. In other words... It really makes the fact that everything you do is meaningless stare you in the face, because even as an "immortal," the fact is you are not capable of creating anything of lasting value. As the centuries go by, your soul IS going to wither into nothingness. You aren't part of some one else's plot. THAT creates a kind of meaning to your actions. No, you're just one more drop in an endless history of people living and dying. And your plots and manipulations will only be able to feed you for so long, but eventually you won't be able to gain nourishment from even THAT. Try to hold on to your hope and meaning and morality NOW, sucker. You don't even get to have an enemy that is WORTH fighting. Because whether its you or that Primogen who wins this political contest, your sanity and your souls are only going to last so long...

The Clans have been collapsed into Five. Now, its true that some of the clans that were lost were pretty darn cool. And not just because of their powers and curses. Some of them had philosophies that are SO FUN to swim around in. Like the Tzimisce. One of my favorite clans ever, when done the way I think they should be (which is what every role-player says). Guess what was gained though? You don't get to blame anything on your clan now. Nothing. None of your behaviour comes from your clan anymore. What I mean by this is that when there were 13 known clans plus a few weird ones, with a hundred bloodlines, there would often be only one or two clans who actually WOULD embrace any given character, and then a clan or two for whom your character would be the "mismatch that makes good RP." Now all the clans could conceivably embrace your character, and all of them will fit well some of the time, but all of them will be a mismatch some of the time as well. Gone are the days when Hannibal Lecture has to be a Malkavian or a Tzimisce or a Nosferatu, "but if you make him a Toreador that adds some awesome RP to it." Gone are the days when a Painter needs to be a Toreador or a Tzimisce or a Malkavian, "but if you make him a Gangrel that adds some awesome RP to it." No. ALL the clans have plenty of room for Hannibal, plenty of room for a Painter, plenty of room for bankers and mafia leaders and priests. You, the player, and not your clan, are responsible for your backstory and your attitude. What's far more important is your covenant, your actual ideology. Your elders have survived by giving a damn about something. Rather than a game inwhich "All that's left for the elders is the desire for power," you now have elders who have had to force themselves to still care... and who have had that caring twisted by centuries of hunger.

Gone is the eternal bliss of ignorance. I absolutely LOVED the way that Old WoD (particularly Vampire) had thousands of pages of hidden lore, thousands of pages of "the darker truth" that the characters didn't know about. I absolutely ADORED the fact that the truth was always more horrifying, and the way the players and characters had to fight tooth and nail for every scrap of information. I loved the fact that hiding knowledge was one of the primary tools of power used by the elders against the neonates, the real elders against the elders, the methuselahs against the real elders... I loved it. AND... it provides an escape. I mean exactly how accountable are our characters (or us, the players) for what they do if we don't know the "truth?" If all we have is lies told by our parents and grandparents (oops, I mean elders and methuselahs), then we can't really be blamed for what we do, can we? We can't REALLY, HONESTLY be blamed for the fact that the world sucks and for the fact that third world nations are starving (oops, I mean that elders are using mortals as pawns) if all we know about our history is that the pilgrims sailed here for freedom (I mean, that vampirism was caused by Caine getting cursed), right? The REAL bad guys, the ones who are really to blame, are the MORE POWERFUL ones who know the truth, the corporations and our ancestors who owned slaves (i mean, the elder vampires with more disciplines who feed on us). That excuse is gone. Nobody knows more than you. It's all been forgotten, and even if you did know, it wouldn't change the fact that the world suffers today. And it certainly wouldn't make you more powerful, or a better person. So you know some things, you understand the world. Big deal. NOW WHAT? What are YOU, a responsible person, going to DO now?

The iron wall of the Generations is gone. Your "Blood Potence" now increases very slowly over time (or very quickly, depending on your perspective), so if you hang around long enough, you'll have BP of 10, which is equivalent to the Antedeluvians of Old WoD. Very few make it that far... and any who do are forced into Torpor very quickly, during which time their blood potence drops considerably. So when they wake up they aren't God-lings anymore, they're just "Solid Ancillae." So they don't last long either. Granted, having the super-dupers way in the background was fun and scary. And knowing that you'd NEVER, EVER be their equal was its own kind of terrifying. I'm sure by now you can fill in the blanks of where I'm going to go with this: The gods are gone. Not even the gods are invincible. You will never be safe. And you are DOOMED to growing up some day (oops, I mean you'll be some one else's hated monster some day). All the things you think about the older vampires and how they've let their humanity go... Some day a young neonate will think the same thing about you... and then you'll grow old (powerful) and die just like your grandparents have.

To summarize the difference between the two settings differently... The New WoD has grown up from being a teenager that hates its parents to a young adult with a job and bills to pay. The Old WoD let you feel the teenage angst of always feeling isolated, of always feeling that your future was outside of your control. The New WoD tells you that your isolation is an excuse you created to avoid really dealing with reality and taking charge of your own life. Man up and take the world by the horns already. You may not control your future, but whining about it makes you useless.

Now that I've talked about how awesome the new setting is, and how happy I am that they've added levels of responsibility that were not previously so inescapable, its time to point out two of the flaws that I see in the setting. I'll have to warn you in advance that my problems with this setting are in some ways minor. They are all things that were done under a good idea, that executed poorly. One of them can be fixed by a good Storyteller (which means deliberately DITCHING part of the published canon), while the other seems rather solidly in the way.

My first problem with NWoD Vampire is this:
They want the Camarilla, the Anarchs, the Sabbat, the Tremere, and the Lillim ALL to live in the same city. And they expect one prince to be able to hold the peace. Not really, those are Old WoD parallels to Reqiuem covenants. I'm just wording it that way so Old WoD folks can understand what I mean.

It seems like the only ways for that system to work are as follows:
A) For nothing to ever happen, because it's always a stalemate and no one can make a move without starting a full on 5-way war.
2) For it to just be an all-out 5-way war (which means RP goes out the window).
Third) For only one covenant to live in the city, and for all the plots to be arguments WITHIN that one covenant in that city. (This would be the natural conclusion to option 2, and really seems the most viable and the most intense RP).

For those who haven't read the Core Book,
There are 5 covenants, which are inbetween a political faction and an ideology. They would be Paths except that in NWoD all vampires are on the Path of Humanity, and have to STRUGGLE to keep their humanity AND their ideology.
1-- Invictus: all about secular forms of control, Neo-Feudalism, Ventrue-style. ((similar to old Camarilla))
2-- Lancea Sanctum: religious power, trying to do God's will, which means being a predator of darkness ((similar to Sabbat, but more hierarchical))
3-- Carthians: Anarchs who read sociology books and go to Marxist school, social engineers trying to create utopia. ((similar to non-gang-banger Anarchs))
4-- Ordo Dracul: changing and perfecting the vampiric curse through experimentation and magic. ((They merged the Path of Metamorphosis and the Tremere.))
5-- Circle of the Crone: mix wicca with "pain creates self-realization and awakening." ((Lillim or Bahari))

That really is a rich setting. It's great, as was the prior setting. But the idea of getting them all to sit down for tea in the same city is just ludicrous to me. If you really start to look at it, each covenant can get along alright with one other covenant, but should have REAL difficulties even talking to the others. Exactly how does a social activist (Carthian) talk to the Nazi Doctors in the Ordo Dracul, or the religious fanatics in the Sanctum, or the iron-fisted rich folk of the Invictus? Exactly how does a dude in the Sanctum have a chat with some one who is deliberately trying to circumvent the curse handed down by GOD HIMSELF (the Ordo Dracul)? I'm torn between dearly LOVING that conflict of philosophy and adoring how rich it is in possibility... and having no idea how they can ever coexist. It would be like dropping a Drag Queen down in the middle of Jerry Falwell's church.

My second big beef is this:
The Old WoD had a problem of assuming that every single myth and every single sub-culture needed its own bloodline and its own special discipline. So you ended up with 70 bloodlines, 60 disciplines, 30 Paths of Enlightenment, 20 Political Factions... The New WoD said, "Screw that, let the subcultures just be groups of normal vampires who had a different philosophy, but who had to deal with it just like everyone else." I fully support that move (now), because it transformed cultural differences into... CULTURAL differences, rather than supernatural ones. It took some of the magic out of the universe and put responsibility back in its place. You want to be a Nosferatu from Africa? FINE, be that and deal with the consequences. You don't get any extra bells and whistles. Gone are the days when an NPC owes his awesomeness to his obscure bloodlineage. "Dude, what if they met a Kue-jin (or Kyasid) but didn't know what it was?" Screw that. It's time for Storytellers to step up on their NPC creation.

And then... they killed it. Every new book has 3 to 5 new bloodlines. Most of those get their own signature discipline that only they can learn. Each of them represents a certain mythology, a certain sub-culture. We're right back where we started in the Old Days, when every single character type can only be embraced by one group, "Or by its opposite for awesome RP." And now every player gets to play a character defined ENTIRELY by their bloodlineage. "Dude, I'm gonna be a Khaibit. Wait, no, a Morotrophian... they're creepy."

This problem can be solved Easily: Storytellers, tell your group you think Bloodlines rob the game of RP and of believability, that they explain too much of the universe instead of making those things an aspect of human culture and choice. And PLAYERS... do the same. Just flat out tell your Storytellers you want a game in which bloodlines don't exist because they are LAME and STUPID.

Well, that's the first of my two cents. Maybe my buck fifty.
Your turn.