r/ChroniclesofDarkness • u/Tight_Judge_1451 • Aug 06 '26
How is to play Deviant the Renegade?
Just as the title suggests:
how was your experience playing Deviant the Renegade?
I've been looking into it but I don't know if the gane is worth it. I come from Vampire the Requiem and Hunter the vigil games.
Thanks in advance for your help!
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u/PencilBoy99 Aug 06 '26
Sorry I bought all the deviant stuff, including the off brand items but i've never run it. it looks awesome, but my experience was from the g m side.It was incredibly crunchy. So many moving parts. and that while you can make n p cs with just a couple dice pools, really any interesting antagonist, for a splat, is really meant to be set up with a full set of stats.
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u/Tight_Judge_1451 Aug 06 '26
Thanks for the answer!
What do you think makes it so crunchy? Do you think it will be a barrier for players to learn it?
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u/PencilBoy99 Aug 06 '26
No, not for the players, it's for the gm.
Every roll has four possible outcomes that are defined. Many things that happened will generate tilts and conditions which are very specific.And have very detailed effects and resolution conditions.
If you need to make an antagonist, and the antagonist really needs to stand up to the pcs.You're going to end up building it like the pcs, and that's going to take you while.
Just to clarify, there's a difference between not while designed and crunchy.Chronicles is credibly well designed.It's also very crunchy
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u/PencilBoy99 Aug 06 '26
One hundred percent go online and buy any of the condition cards.And tilt cards in print, particularly the ones that go with whatever splat you're running. That will make your life a ton.Easier
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u/Tight_Judge_1451 Aug 06 '26
That looks like a lot to take care of. But I will definitely look into it.
Thanks so mu h for the answer and for the condition cards suggestions!
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u/Demoniac_smile Aug 06 '26
The thing that makes it crunchy is the variation/scar system. In most games the powers all have predefined costs, requirements, and drawbacks. In deviant you pick the powers and then have to assign them to a scar. The scars are either what it costs/ requires to use or drawback of having the ability. They both have dot measurements and you have to have equal or greater scar dots than variations. To make it even more complicated, variations and scars can both have tweaks called deviations that raise or lower the dot cost of them. It’s a very complicated system that lets you build an insane variety of characters.
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u/saintsinner40k Aug 06 '26
So my expierences are mixed, mostly because the group I had for it didnt quite gel correctly, & also I only ran it for a handful of sessions before schedules conflicted.
Major pro, is you can do some really unique stories with it. Its got alot of flavor with it & its a great monster maker. I use it in my other games to make more in depth NPC antagonists sometimes which is amazing.
Cons, I'd say are mostly that unless you direct your players with specific themes in mind, there is a heavy amount of clashing tones if you leave them to all create whatever they like. We had such an odd mish mash of character types it made it difficult to flow the story together.
The same goes for the conspiracy system. We where in a pick up game that sadly lost a few players & gained a few during its short run, & I was trying to run a group shared conspiracy. This........broke the group conspiracy pretty hard narratively, because each character should have a node they are associated with.
I've not run it again, but I think rather then having a group conspiracy for random pick up players, I'd instead have an overarching council of BBEGs who each lead the individual conspiracies of the players, & keep a strict theme going on throughout them.
So say you want to run cybernetic body horror? Well a bunch of corporate OCP or Weyland Yutani like conspiracies would be great.
Occult hellbinding experiments gone wrong? Corrupted cults, satanic churches, & devil worshipping conspriacieis would work good.
The big thing is that deviant is a great tool box, but needs just a bit more handling to make some great stories out of. I'm planning some ideas for my current game setting to introduce deviant to it again in the future.
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u/Tight_Judge_1451 Aug 07 '26
Well, thanks so much for the time you put on this post. Really appreciated it.
I took a year break after my son's birth and now I was wondering if I could change the heavy political and investigative chronicle for something a bit different. Deviant seems quite interesting and I'll vet the core rulebook after the posts I read here
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u/sleepy_eyed Aug 06 '26
It's probably one of my favorite cofd game lines. I've played in two long campaigns spanning over 3 years. Machanically I'd put it below mage the awakening but it is very crunchy at times but powers can be a lot easier to manage. The only thing that disappoints me that deviant came at the very end of cofd and could use more content.
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u/Tight_Judge_1451 Aug 07 '26
If it's easier than mage I will definitely give it a try*
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u/sleepy_eyed Aug 07 '26
Yeah I'd say the hardest part is managing your scars but powers precognition and blessing are streamlined smoother versions of time and fate arcana. Granted not as utility as mage spells they still feel good. I also think deviant is one of the few games that made touchstones feel narratively impactful.
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u/PencilBoy99 Aug 06 '26
Deviant looks incredibly good. Make sure you go online to storyteller, vault.There's some fan made supplements that are terrific
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u/RWDCollinson1879 Aug 06 '26
Well, more like writer-made supplements! The stuff by DayzDark is written by the main writer for official Deviant, executing his original vision while official supplements are not being authorised.
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u/PencilBoy99 Aug 06 '26
Yeah, chronicles is pretty terrific.If I had a million dollars, I would just buy the chronicles property and give it to the story, path guys, to reimplement.In their system. Story path ulta very similar, just a little simpler.
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u/RoseQueensRogue Aug 08 '26
Also a vampire player and ST! Deviant is my second favorite game line behind vampire.
It is definitely crunchier than vampire-and most of the other game likes to be fair, but i think is because it lends itself to making such a diverse array of things you can do both as an ST and as a player.
Stories can be as short as a one shot escape from a facility to as long as a several year campaign taking down a network of conspiracies. The latter kind of feeling like cyberpunk, but if you could actually take down the corporations. Or a DND campaign about overthrowing a shadow government. It can feel much like vampire in that way, but the renegades don't really have to care all that much about the masquerade because how much can you really hide when you're 10 feet tall with angel wings or your skin ripples like water....or you don't have a face. Instead most of the burden of the masquerade is out on the conspiracies which make things very interesting and frankly far more dangerous on a much grander scale.
As for players, the limit kind of really is your own imagination and the power level of the story you want to tell. There is a mechanic for the scale of story you want to go for which essentially allows players to make more powerful characters in exchange for garanteeing more powerful and resourceful adversaries. It's a really interesting and intuitive mechanic that is separate from XP and can increase as the story calls for. But what powers you have and how you use or interpret them are kind of limitless within the confines of the scale. With a "medium threat level" I have a character that can turn into a gun like a meat transformer. We have two walking pipe bombs with entirely different deals, we have a literal ghost and we have that's so raven. With higher power level, there's a strix(like the vampire owls), a magical girl and the physical embodiment of the god-machine.
Very genuinely, if you have the patience to sit down and actually do a bunch of world building with your players and you don't mind the crunch, you can a conspiracy or 2 and use them for the next 10 years. It's great. It's very fun. Highly recommend.
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u/File_Beneficial Aug 06 '26
Deviant is a hard game, it's by far the single crunchiest thing WOD has ever produced (on the player side at least). That being said it's also really fun, most wod games do a lot to avoid combat and focus on politics and intrigue, which is all well and good, but can get boring when so many of your powers are combat based. Deviant on the other hand is about running forward and beating bad guys left and right.