Wise Turtle Publishing

Hi all, I am in the process of converting and convincing a small Vampire game into the much cleaner and fantastic system of OVA. Because of the versatility of OVA I think I could easily convert some existing characters, but I have a few early questions.

How would you guys handle something like Frenzy? I was thinking that instead of Blood Points, an OVA Vampire would just use endurance. When they run out of endurance ought they make some sort of Frenzy roll?

Likewise, for all of the Disciplines that use Blood Points, do you think that could be converted to an endurance cost?

Also, I was thinking of making each Discipline their own type of skill, so a character might look like:

Dementation +2
Celerity +3
Etc....

I will delve more into this topic when I have received more sleep, this is only a starter question. Once I get some converted characters, I will post and would love to receive some input for various weaknesses and abilities.

I believe you’re looking too much into it. My advice… don’t try to convert VtR into OVA. Create characters naturally. If someone wants to be a Nosferatu with Obfuscate, then they have Bizarre Appearance with Invisibility. The only thing you may want to do is draft up a generic vampire template representing the abilities and weaknesses that all vampires will share, but keep it to the bare minimum. Only include the logical basic necessities: blood dependency, sunlight, being undead (Life Support +3). Everything else should be left up to the player to customize his character. Believe me; it will be a lot easier on you, and you can concentrate on running and playing your game than translating unnecessary minutia like blood points and frenzy. OVA is designed to be fun, fast, and simple. Take advantage of that.

Yeah, what Calibur said...

As a veteran of using generic systems to play other games, I'd say the number one rule is to convert the Setting not the System. If you try to convert the system mechanics you'll end up doing a lot of work creating haphazard new game. This is a hard one for me to remember too cause I love seeing how I can tweak things, but trust me, avoid the headache.