Vampire the Masquerade 5e- Actually a huge step up?

[Longes]

What actually happens is that there's a list of generic effects for GM to pick from. Which are things like "Lose a point of Humanity", "Go into Frenzy", "Trigger a clan compulsion", "Increase your level of Hunger", etc.

[Prak]

There's a list of suggested mechanical effects, yeah. PbtA has the same, but V5 stands above it by having better suggestions and not encouraging, say, taking away a character's defining feature with no way to recover it.

[hyzmarca]

The big difference in the hunger mechanics from previous edition is how powers are rationed. In previous editions, you were better off using spamming low-cost powers in non-combat scenes and feeding to keep yourself topped off, but budgeting yourself in combat because you lose when you run out of blood points, drawing out encounters is the worst possible choice. The V5 hunger mechanics flips that on its head. Hunger caps at 5, but 5 hunger doesn't stop you from using your powers. This encourages minimizing power use in situations where you want to keep a low profile, then spamming them when the shit hits the fan. In a serious fight, there's no real downside to having 5 hunger, unlike having 0 bloodpoints. Meanwhile, in a non-combat scene there's a downside to having 1 hunger, unlike for having 9 bloodpoints.

I'm not really sure which one is better, but I feel that V5 is better for a dark comedy Vampions game.

Incorrect. At Hunger 5 you can't make any Rouse checks at all, so you can't use Disciplines:

At Hunger 5, the vampire’s body is too starved of blood to provide increased supernatural power. A vampire can never intentionally Rouse the Blood while at Hunger 5. If some outside factor forces a Rouse Check on the vampire, the player must make an immediate hunger frenzy test at Difficulty 4 (see p. 220). As always, failing a Rouse Check at Hunger 5 still activates the effect that caused the check, if any.

Eh, my mistake. Definitely plays better if you don't read that part, like I didn't. The hungry vampire should be the most dangerous person in the room.

Do you want to act in a more brutal way (that's usually more effective, but can have messy results), or be restrained?

On second thought, the new botch and crit mechanics are terrible, especially when you consider how many actions it makes no sense for. How do I “brutally” pick a lock? Or do research in a library? How do I “brutally” sneak past some guards or cast a spell?

Lockpicking? "Well, the lock is open, that's the important part, but you'll need to replace the whole thing if you ever want to close the door again."

Research? "Supernatural speed is useful for many things, like reading books in a flash, but now the librarian is staring at you and you might want to do something about the security camera footage."

Sneak past guards? Distract them with something very loud.
Cast a spell? Depends on the spell.


Though ideally you'd want something like "Yamada, Prince of Tyoko, steps onto a balcony overlooking the foyer of his hotel, where about 50 mortals and vampires are busy chopping each other up with melee weapons and the floor is stick with gallons upon gallons of blood. Yamada raises his M-16 and sweeps across the crowd, which falls like so much wheat before his lead-spitting scythe. A second sweep and the floor is clear, mostly. However, in his bloodlust, Yamada accidentally kicks the severed head of a cumpulsive smoker, cigarette still in his mouth, into a pool of flamable oil. Yamada's tries to escape from the flames, but the layer of blood on the floor makes it impossible to get traction and he tumbles down the stairs before leaping into the fountain to extinguish himself."

[Omegonthesane]

The book also suggests that you just have your success robbed if your hunger dice make you fail.

As for hungry vampires in combat, if I'm reading it right you'd need to fail a total of four coin-flip rolls to go from "full for most player characters who aren't evil" to Hunger 5. Better than coin-flip if you use level 1 disciplines and aren't a thinblood. And that's before you get into how a hungry vampire may well still be the most dangerous in a fight because they will probably try to eat you instead of making a more detailed tactical assessment.

[Dogbert]

The Nazi Question
A couple years ago, there was a big to do about Nazi dog whistles in V5 stuff. OPP did not have a great response. The big thing I remember was a roll example that had a pool result in "1, 4, 8, 8." But there was also stuff about neo-nazi Brujah.

When your garden variety games writer puts in the gameplay examples of a prototype version of his game a number that happens to be the wolf whistle for neo nazis to know you're an ally and safe haven for them, that's probably a coincidence, but when this same thing is done by a games writer that worked for a decade as propagandist for ethno-nationalist Georgian government, wrote the game that single-handedly spawned the alt-furry, did a kickstarter for a Georgian equivalent to RaHoWa, turned what should have been V5's iconic NPC for female empowerment into a straw feminist as given to you by an obvious incel, and wrote in V5's guide to the Camarilla "the Chechen gay massacre doesn't matter"... that is definitely not a coindincidence.

While Paradox did all it could to put that fire down, the damage is already done. The well is poisoned to the point Paradox had to bring Justin Achilli back from the grave to helm the game line in-house once more since no 3PP dares touch it with a 10 foot pole. This makes me a sad panda since V5 is a consistent improvement to the old storytelling system (not perfect, mind you, but good enough that it takes less than 5 house rules to make it work for me), and I wanted to see the WoD make a comeback.[/b]

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

wrote the game that single-handedly spawned the alt-furry

The what now? This guy is the reason nazi furries exist?

[Wiseman]

The Nazi Question
A couple years ago, there was a big to do about Nazi dog whistles in V5 stuff. OPP did not have a great response. The big thing I remember was a roll example that had a pool result in "1, 4, 8, 8." But there was also stuff about neo-nazi Brujah.

When your garden variety games writer puts in the gameplay examples of a prototype version of his game a number that happens to be the wolf whistle for neo nazis to know you're an ally and safe haven for them, that's probably a coincidence, but when this same thing is done by a games writer that worked for a decade as propagandist for ethno-nationalist Georgian government, wrote the game that single-handedly spawned the alt-furry, did a kickstarter for a Georgian equivalent to RaHoWa, turned what should have been V5's iconic NPC for female empowerment into a straw feminist as given to you by an obvious incel, and wrote in V5's guide to the Camarilla "the Chechen gay massacre doesn't matter"... that is definitely not a coindincidence.

Re-emphasis mine.

Can I have a source for this? I was trying to explain this to a friend but was stymied by being unable to find the proper sources.

[Mask_De_H]

This makes me a sad panda since V5 is a consistent improvement to the old storytelling system (not perfect, mind you, but good enough that it takes less than 5 house rules to make it work for me), and I wanted to see the WoD make a comeback.[/b]

What are those house rules?

[Dogbert]

Can I have a source for this?

For numbers one and three I'm afraid I lack first-hand sources, and my citations come from the Den, actually.

For number two, however, all you have to do is re-reading Werewolf: The Apocalypse. All the abhorrent crap was always there, we were just too young to know any better back then and being an edgy little shit was in.

[Longes]

The Nazi Question[/size]While Paradox did all it could to put that fire down, the damage is already done. The well is poisoned to the point Paradox had to bring Justin Achilli back from the grave to helm the game line in-house once more since no 3PP dares touch it with a 10 foot pole. This makes me a sad panda since V5 is a consistent improvement to the old storytelling system (not perfect, mind you, but good enough that it takes less than 5 house rules to make it work for me), and I wanted to see the WoD make a comeback.[/b]

This conclusion is pretty questionable. Paradox had a 3PP publisher in charge of WoD. It was Modyphius. And Modyphius fucked them, spending 4 years to write a V5 Player's Companion, and not delivering. As a result, Modyphius got cut, and what could be salvaged got published as a shitty but free pamphlet.

If anything, I'm more inclined to believe that Paradox decided that the Chechnya shitshow has been sufficiently forgotten and WhiteWolf can be resurrected as in-house publishing once again. I'm sure they could still have shoveled V5 to Onyx Path Publishing - the only company that seems to give even a little bit of a damn about the franchise and has actually released books of reasonable quality.

[Anon_issue]

Can I have a source for this?

Here maybe?:

https://www.polygon.com/2018/11/13/1808 ... ya-apology

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/ ... ontroversy

https://thefandomentals.com/the-rise-an ... hite-wolf/

Second and third articles have actual quotes from the game.

For the rein hagen thing, It's obvious he's lived in Georgia, but I can't find any examples of pro-Georgia propaganda from any primary source. There seems to be one interview here (https://dfwatch.net/world-famous-game-d ... yths-33313): where he calls Russians "the bad guys", but that's all I could find through casual internet searching.

[Dogbert]

What are those house rules?

It's been years since the game I ran, so the only two I remember off the top of my head are:

1) XP per session: I budget the XP based on how far I'll let the PCs advance and then divide the XP by status between the number of sessions I plan the chronicle to last. That chronicle was meant to let them grow into elder equivalent, they started as ancillae, and the game was planned to last six months, played bi-weekly. I can't remember the right numbers for the math, but I remember giving them 3XP per session (because otherwise what's the whole point of The Beckoning? Why removing the glass ceiling if you won't let the PCs ever get there?).

2) No ridiculous learning time for rituals: They already cost XP to learn, and Tremere players are already saddled with the Background:Library tax just to be able to increase their Thaumaturgy in addition to being the defacto new Caitiff. No need to screw them up further.

Themes wise, my inquisition is by no means omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent (Because it's Vampire, not Night's Black Agents on Good Ending mode). Actually during the chronicle I gave them a torches and pitchforks scare, but the Inquisition was just starting to infiltrate the city, so the coterie had a chance to notice and do something about it (lo, the coterie set that Inquisitor cell up for a Dilbert-scale fiasco big enough that the whole case was dismissed and the inquisitors demoted and transferred far away)... but then, Vampire has always been the biggest case of Death of the Author in the hobby, so I don't think my changes in theme count as houserules.

[WalkTheDinosaur]

So I found the PDF for this thing and the basic mechanics are nonsense. The combat engine can't make up its mind whether there's an initiative roll or everyone acts simultaneously, or whether your attack pool is also your defense pool. It collapses in a pile of segfaults if either side tries to focus fire instead of pairing off into 1v1s.

This thing has done a great job of carrying on the legacy of 90s White Wolf, in that it's written by a bunch of waterhead art school dropouts who belong in some kind of group home where the orderlies can sedate them if they try to express themselves with numbers. I feel bad for wasting the bandwidth it took to pirate this. Someone could have used that data for something more important, like watching doughy amateurs squirt whipped cream cans up each others' assholes.

[Prak]

As an art school dropout who enjoys game design- fuck off, newbie.

[WalkTheDinosaur]

I don't blame you for lashing out. If I'd called mechanics this bad "actually a huge step up" I'd be embarrassed and trying to deflect too.

[Prak]

For what it's worth, I went and checked the actual credits for the V5 core book. Kenneth Hite and Karim Muammar are credited as the developers, the two of them and Karl Bergström are credited as the system designers, and story and creative direction is credited to Martin Ericsson. The Dot is credited in "additional writing" (possibly to cover the concepts of the clans et al), otherwise he and Achilli are only credited as the creators of the IP, along with, like six other people.

The credits make no mention of Modiphius, though their logo is on the back, which I'm going to assume is some contract fuckery that didn't cleared up in time to print the core book, but I could easily be wrong.

I also went back and reread some of the commentary on the various things that happened with the Quickstart rules.

Obviously, I have no insight into the internal workings of White Wolf Entertainment AB, but looking at the decisions that led up to that playtest document, including the people they decided to bring in at that time, such as The Dot and Zaks, and comparing them to what I see when I watch the Actual Play game that made me interested in V5, or the weekly news updates from White Wolf, or play the Vampire the Masquerade game on my switch, it looks to me like... worst case, the idiots who made the decisions to alt-right-ify V5 that we saw in early versions of the rules were reassigned and ties were cut with The Dot and Zaks as much as they could given whatever contract may have been involved. And note- there is no mention of Zaks in the core book credits. There is a mention of Kat Von D, who is... troublesome in her own, very similar to the issues being discussed here ways, but that's not as well known as The Dot and Zaks' issues. Or her tattoo work and icon-status. I imagine she gets thanks because she was involved in the art for the book in some way. A tattoo on a model or something. I could be wrong though. And then Paradox put other people in charge and created an environment where a lot of queer writers are very comfortable contributing to the game. The ST of that actual play game I linked above is a queer man who wrote one of the clans that is wholly new to V5, the Hecata. The weekly news is delivered by Polish game developer Martyna "Outstar" Zych, which... well, she's a Polish woman, and looking at her, she is not a person that the alt right would consider inviting. Rather, she is the kind of millennial woman the alt right would consider a target. I have my issues with Coteries of New York, but an obvious appeal to the alt right, at least more so than just the concept of vampires, is not one of them.

A cynical take says that WWEAB saw which way the wind blows, and decided they needed to market away from the alt right and towards, well, queer allied if not actually queer, left-leaning if not actually leftist, millennials like me. And, honestly, at this point, I'll fucking take cynical business decisions, when the alternative is "actively courting the alt right" and "actively tripping on their dick by weakly attempting to be 'sensitive' without actually marketing towards us."

I mean, does the Brujah clan write up still mention neo-nazis as potential members of the clan? Sure. This is also a game where a good 90% of the PCs are literal murderers, so I can accept an acknowledgement that a clan appeals to bigots.

Edit: I should point out that Achilli has some association with the brand still. They trot him out for some videos and I think he occasionally runs a streamed chronicle. I try to not pay much attention to him, I got my fill of christian bullshit in the first sixteen years of my life.

[Longes2]

In the words of Dracula: "It was not by my hand that I am once again given flesh." Alas, my original account got lost. Anyway.

Edit: I should point out that Achilli has some association with the brand still. They trot him out for some videos and I think he occasionally runs a streamed chronicle. I try to not pay much attention to him, I got my fill of christian bullshit in the first sixteen years of my life.

Justin Achilli is the Brand Creative Lead of World of Darkness, brought back from his grisly tomb after the Modiphius debacle.

To be frank, I don't believe VtM and V5 were ever deliberately catering to "the alt-right", even as a business decision. Writing fails, not thinking things through, and inner biases leaking explains even the stuff like "Gay genocide in Chechnya is a cover for vampires feeding" far better than some 5d chess. The same goes for the other side too. Clearly the gay communist "Bear Gangrel" Rudi was someone's fetish OC on the core team because they heavily marketed him, and he completely fell out of the world once other teams started writing their own books. Matthew Dawkins clearly has a giant boner for his pet project Hekata, which is why they are the single best-covered and best-supported clan in the game with the staggering eleven loresheets dedicated to them alone.



This brings me to a different big issue - game consistency. Corebook, Anarchs, and Camarilla were going big on The Second Inquisition, Thin-Bloods, fall of Tremere, and power structure changes brought by the loss of the elders.
Come Onyx Path and Modiphius, all of these are forgotten. Cults of the Blood Gods never even mentions the Second Inquisition. Chicago by Night pays it lip service by reintroducing True Faith [FUCK YOU] super duper ancient inquisitor from past editions. A resurgence of the Cainite Heresy? Fuggedaboutit, Dawkins wants to play with the Noddists in the Camarilla instead.

V5 is kind of a mess is what I'm saying, and the newer books are showing the finger to the core to go play in their own sandbox.

[Dogbert]

V5 is kind of a mess is what I'm saying, and the newer books are showing the finger to the core to go play in their own sandbox.

Eh, V:tM was already the biggest example of Death of the Author in the hobby, so if the "authors" themselves decide it's not worth it to care then it's no skin off my back (and it's not like giving money to Onyx Path is in my plans).

[Prak]

Yeah, honestly, I see "showing the finger to core to go play in (your) own sandbox" as pretty intrinsic to RPGs, so, I'm not *hugely* worried about the actual authors doing it (tho it'd be nice to see them cop to it upfront)

[Prak]

*sigh*

I still think V5 is mechanically a step up from Rev, but it would be nice if Achilli could crawl out of Christianity's arse.

[WalkTheDin0saur]

Achilli is full of shit anyway. He needs to go back and actually read what he wrote in the 90s.

The "medieval death cult" thing was a throwaway line from the 1e and 2e core books. Back in the day the Sabbat was just a half-page writeup about some extra bad badguy vampires who did spooky shit in cemetaries. They never got developed as an idea until Player's Guide to the Sabbat and a little bit in Chicago by Night (both 1994, 2 years after 2e core), when the medieval death cult thing got dropped in favor of Lost Boys + Black Masses + Project Mayhem + Vicissitude.

He's badly underselling Guide to the Sabbat Revised, which is weird because he has top billing in the credits. The revised Sabbat book had White Wolf's two strongest fluff writers working on it (Achilli and Andrew Greenberg) and it shows. By this point the Sabbat has evolved into a much more interesting faction than the Camarilla and one that supports party-based RPG play much better. Lots of diversity of potential character concepts, room for every weird bloodline from every rando splat, conflict and intrigue within the sect that neonate characters can actually participate in, enough cohesion from the pack structure and vinculum that you can throw a party together without having to justify why they aren't working at cross purposes, plenty of excuses for combat whenever you want it.

I haven't been following V5 outside of this board and the core book, but as far as I can tell they shipped the Sabbat off to the Middle East because the new team doesn't like them and doesn't know what to do with them.

[Dogbert]

Eh, as long as the metaplot keeps moving and the splatbooks start coming, I can care less for Achilli's screeds.

[Prak]

Achilli... just kind of annoys me? A lot of it is probably from his rep here as being the big source for a lot of the Christian bullshit in owod, but there's also just the fact that he looks like the typical 90s "cool edgy guy" with his shaved head and leather jacket, and I just can't take that kind of person seriously.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

God, more people should wear black leather jackets.

[WalkTheDin0saur]

When I met him at a con in Dallas he was wearing a Hawaiian shirt and being pretty down to earth. "We're publishing a book on police tactics because let's be honest, cops are like orcs" (laugh from the room). From the way everyone else describes him I must have met his alternate-universe clone. He is responsible for that "fat dorks in Xena t-shirts" quote but that was 25 years ago.

I never read that book on police tactics and I don't have a law enforcement background, but I've read White Wolf books that pretended to have expert knowledge of things I *do* know about. I'm guessing it wasn't very good.