The Gaming Den

...and that's before you get to bloodlines!

TheFlatline wrote:Not to mention that a 5 way political struggle doesn't look like intrigue and a cold war mentality, it looks like chaos. You have like 120 different permutations of faction alliance possibilities alone. Not to mention keeping track of potentially 120 different ways all the political factions can ally/piss in each other's cheerios is really fucking hard for a storyteller to do, bordering on impossible.

As someone who fairly regularly runs five-way political struggles, I can confirm that it is chaos however it is not bordering on impossible to run. It does take a lot of prep-work, though, and if you aren't in the habit of spending a month planning a campaign before you start recruiting for it (like I am) it might not be a good idea. Also: Chaos is awesome.

Chaos is fine but it is anti-thematic to the whole secret society/conspiracy thing.

120 is actually 5!, which isn't particularly relevant to the situation. For starters, if the Invictis was enemies with the Carthians, you would expect that reverse to also be true. The actual number is just 10 possible interaction lines, and only 4 of those intersect with any faction you're interested in.

The reason that politics are such a fucking clusterfuck in nWoD is that no one really wants or cares about anything. The Longinus people are a Christian heresy and the only people who will even debate them on Christian theology are the Ordo Dracul (who are a slightly different Christian heresy). But even they won't debate very much, because the Ordo Dracul are ascetics who pursue a doctrine of personal improvement through austerities and don't actually even want the secret doctrines of Theban Sorcery. Meanwhile the other three factions are: Pagans who don't give a rats ass about the intricacies of Christ's substance and two factions that are interested in political power - one of whom wants a feudal structure and the other wants a noble republic structure.

And that really comes down to the nub of it: only two of the "political" factions even care about politics. And their only contribution is that one of them wants to be in charge and be called "Duke" and the other wants to be in charge and be called "Doge." Who gives a shit? Very importantly: not any of the other factions! We talked about this sort of thing a bit with the Factol's Manifesto, but basically if you're going to have multiple "factions," you need to have a number of issues where every faction has at least one ally and at least one enemy to their stance on that issue. Having factions whose position is just that they want blue lasers instead of red lasers is not acceptable. And having factions that don't care about anything at all is just beyond the fucking pale.

-Username17

FrankTrollman wrote:120 is actually 5!, which isn't particularly relevant to the situation. For starters, if the Invictis was enemies with the Carthians, you would expect that reverse to also be true.

Most of the political Vampire games I played in this isn't an absolute truth. Maybe a 50% of the time truth (50% of the time it works 100% of the time!). Secret fuck-you grudges while openly being allies and vice versa were like plot twist 101.

Personally, I'd just avoid monster political factions altogether and have monsters covertly integrated with human politics and economy. Thus instead of Camarilla and Sabbat you have Democrats and Republicans. This also helps avoid human politics and society becoming completely irrelevant.

hyzmarca wrote:Personally, I'd just avoid monster political factions altogether and have monsters covertly integrated with human politics and economy. Thus instead of Camarilla and Sabbat you have Democrats and Republicans. This also helps avoid human politics and society becoming completely irrelevant.

But it's a monster game! Where would you find a human political faction that wants to, say, force the arrival of their god by acting on thousand years old apocalyptical prophecies so that everybody but them dies horribly?

It would totally ruin the suspension of disbelief.

hyzmarca wrote:Personally, I'd just avoid monster political factions altogether and have monsters covertly integrated with human politics and economy. Thus instead of Camarilla and Sabbat you have Democrats and Republicans. This also helps avoid human politics and society becoming completely irrelevant.

This is not a good idea. At all. Real politics is something people care about. Saying "I'm a Tzimisce and I WILL EAT THIS KITTEN!" is fun and games, and just ends with people laughing and going on with their business. Saying "I'm a Republican and I WILL EAT THIS WELLFARE!" is a good way to get non-republicans in the group angry with you over a period of time.
TL;DR: don't bring up politics at a gaming table ever.

Longes wrote:

hyzmarca wrote:Personally, I'd just avoid monster political factions altogether and have monsters covertly integrated with human politics and economy. Thus instead of Camarilla and Sabbat you have Democrats and Republicans. This also helps avoid human politics and society becoming completely irrelevant.

This is not a good idea. At all. Real politics is something people care about. Saying "I'm a Tzimisce and I WILL EAT THIS KITTEN!" is fun and games, and just ends with people laughing and going on with their business. Saying "I'm a Republican and I WILL EAT THIS WELLFARE!" is a good way to get non-republicans in the group angry with you over a period of time.
TL;DR: don't bring up politics at a gaming table ever.

I don't mean that Republicans are literally the Sabbat. I mean that monsters advance their policy goals through mortal institutions and apparatuses rather than the alternative that mortal institutions and apparatuses are completely useless and exist only to make the cattle feel important.

How well has discussing real-world politics gone here?

We talked about Maat here, and how Setites are enemies of the normal mummies. However! According Dark Ages: Vampire description of Setites their goal... is to return people to following Maat, because Osiris was the one who made laws and perverted people. Ah, White Wolf...