Neeek at [unixtime wrote:1169710077[/unixtime]]The whole Sabbat thing never made much sense to me. What is the point of the Masquerade if you have an entire faction that doesn't play by those rules? And if they can get away with not playing by those rules, why do they exist at all (since there is no reason to think the rest of the vampires couldn't as well)?
The sad thing was, the Sabbat DID play by those rules. The only real difference between the Sabbat and the Camarilla was the window dressing. Both of them expect you to suck the cock of anyone above you on the totem pole at a moments notice and call it candy, and both assume you're planning to kill and drink everyone above you at the first sign of weakness. The Sabbat is just more open about it. Both will kill you just as quickly for running around letting people know you're a vampire, The Camarilla will just point to the Inquisition as an example of when humans know too much, and the Sabbat will call it "Being sloppy". The Camarilla has big decadent parties to convince themselves that they're still human, the Sabbat has big decadent parties to convince themselves that they're not. And most importantly, they're both run by secret circles of really old, really powerful fucks who are interested in maintaining their power first and reducing the power of everyone who has ever pissed them off.
Most of the stuff about the Sabbat flagrantly violating the traditions was written back when it was assumed that the Sabbat were going to be nothing but 2 dimensional villians and their thugs. When White Wolf realized that there were people who actually wanted to PLAY Sabbat, like for reals, they realized that the game breaks down REAL FAST like that. So they decided to rope the Sabbat in and play the previous impressions off as Camarilla propaganda. (Unfortunatly, their hamfisted handling of the Sabbat didn't stop there, or ever. For example, see the aforementioned Dirty Secrets of the Black Hand, a book so bad both in general and for the game that they decided it would be a better idea to drop the ghost of an atomic bomb on the subplots introduced in it than allow that bullshit to continue)
-Desdan