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View Full Version : How do you create a credible masquerade?



Thinker
2012-11-20, 03:00 AM
I love modern fantasy settings where the creatures, magic, and such are hidden from the public. The problem is that creating such a masquerade that passes the sniff test is all but impossible. They often rely on giant conspiracies and all of the fantasy mumbo jumbo going along with it, which simply defies rational thought. What I need help with is really two questions:

1) How could mystical entities, magic, and the weird remain hidden in a credible fashion?
2) Why would everyone who is a part of the strange want to go along with the masquerade?

My only previous attempt to answer this was that there was a fundamental force to the world that made people forget about the weird after they weren't exposed to it for a long time, but this isn't a very satisfying answer. It also doesn't explain recording devices and the like.

So, how would you handle it?

Deathkeeper
2012-11-20, 05:20 AM
Let me answer the first question with some examples I can think of
-Supernatural beings walk around like everyone else, people just refuse to recognize them due to their brains not comprehending it or a force at work (Percy Jackson, etc)
-Encounters are relatively rare due to effective hiding, and people have a tendency to get mind-wiped if they ever see past the ruse (Harry Potter, Men in Black)
-The above, but witnesses don't talk mostly out of fear of being called insane instead of mind-wipes. The general populace is also very, very oblivious.(Gargoyles)
-Occult beings have a tendency to look human anyway and therefore blend in fine, and often make use of their powers to keep hidden those that aren't (This one's pretty generic)
-People are aware of the occult, it's just so uncommon that it's still always surprising when it pops up, and they're not aware of just how much there is. (Danny Phantom, Marvel Comics)
-Almost nothing at all; pray your Illusion spell doesn't get screwed up (Young Wizards) This one creates some pretty funny situations.


The second is a bit harder. Usually it's very simple concepts that can be hard to convey. For example, it might be because humanity isn't ready to know about everything, they're afraid governments might react negatively, they don't want to cause hysteria and pandemonium (which would ruin their favorite home/second home/vacation spot/alternate reality), or simply because not doing so would upset the natural order; it might not even be mentioned, they just don't, kinda like the unspoken "superheroes should be masked" rule.

Totally Guy
2012-11-20, 05:35 AM
I've always had trouble with masquerade type things. When the going gets really tough or you have nothing left to lose there doesn't seem to be a good reason not to blow it and figure out something new in the chaos.

My favourite instance was when I explained that I had set up a timer to send an email to many addresses detailing vampire society and if I didn't return home safely there'd be no way to prevent it from being sent.

Point is that there has to be a benefit of the masquerade that is really important to someone within the society that has nothing left to lose.

Thinker
2012-11-20, 06:32 AM
Let me answer the first question with some examples I can think of
-Supernatural beings walk around like everyone else, people just refuse to recognize them due to their brains not comprehending it or a force at work (Percy Jackson, etc)
-Encounters are relatively rare due to effective hiding, and people have a tendency to get mind-wiped if they ever see past the ruse (Harry Potter, Men in Black)
-The above, but witnesses don't talk mostly out of fear of being called insane instead of mind-wipes. The general populace is also very, very oblivious.(Gargoyles)
-Occult beings have a tendency to look human anyway and therefore blend in fine, and often make use of their powers to keep hidden those that aren't (This one's pretty generic)
-People are aware of the occult, it's just so uncommon that it's still always surprising when it pops up, and they're not aware of just how much there is. (Danny Phantom, Marvel Comics)
-Almost nothing at all; pray your Illusion spell doesn't get screwed up (Young Wizards) This one creates some pretty funny situations.
Those are all good ways that groups can enforce the masquerade.


The second is a bit harder. Usually it's very simple concepts that can be hard to convey. For example, it might be because humanity isn't ready to know about everything, they're afraid governments might react negatively, they don't want to cause hysteria and pandemonium (which would ruin their favorite home/second home/vacation spot/alternate reality), or simply because not doing so would upset the natural order; it might not even be mentioned, they just don't, kinda like the unspoken "superheroes should be masked" rule.
These are reasons for an organization to maintain the masquerade, but does nothing to describe the individual's motivation.


I've always had trouble with masquerade type things. When the going gets really tough or you have nothing left to lose there doesn't seem to be a good reason not to blow it and figure out something new in the chaos.

My favourite instance was when I explained that I had set up a timer to send an email to many addresses detailing vampire society and if I didn't return home safely there'd be no way to prevent it from being sent.

Point is that there has to be a benefit of the masquerade that is really important to someone within the society that has nothing left to lose.

This is basically my problem as well. I can't rationalize why the masquerade stays in place beyond magic.

SuperPanda
2012-11-20, 07:28 AM
Considering the Trope namer for this is one of the old World of Darkness game settings I find it a bit ironic that Vampire: The Masquerade never really made the Masquerade high enough stakes to justify it for me to really get into it.

Mage: The Awakening though did a fantastic job at setting it up. You had a combination of powerful authority group which directly benefits from maintaining the status quo (MIB, Technocrats, CIA, Matrix's Agents, ect) other worldly horrors which could be awakened/angered if the Masquerade gets pushed too far (Call of Cthulhu/Dungeon Dimension/Paradox) and an in universe canon explanation for the supernatural.

The in universe explanation was that reality as we (normal) people perceive it is just a very thin veil pulled over a deeper truth and that all the supernatural phenomenon/creature/powers which exist come from understanding, and therefore manipulating, the real components of reality behind that veil. As such physics, and science in general, is one form of magic and it works largely because that is what most people believe in. The veil we recognize as reality is a collective psychic phenomenon created by "sleepers" (normal people who are unaware of the Masquerade).

Another fun point in the setting is that the authority figures (the technocrats) are definitely intended to be the big scary bad-guys without being evil. "Reality Deviants" (mages, vampires, boogy-men, what have you) weaken the fabric of "Reality" allowing for more funky stuff to happen (this would be their explanation for why these groups tend to gather around hot-spots - like a campaign setting). What's worse is that these "Deviants" might unknowingly or accidentally open the way for some eldritch horror to come rampage its way through the country-side because tampering with "reality" is inherently dangerous and people need to be trained in how to do it, but the Authority figures have been actively stamping out their competition.

So if you play from the Tech's side of things, then you are the good guys because you are protecting the world from panic and rioting and from demons/Monsters.

On the other hand, the Authority group has chosen cold, emotionless logic, as their tool for creating their techno-magic. As such, they exist and operate without ethical boundaries and to their own selfish interests at the exclusion of all other things. Dispersion mage groups represent all the other major philosophies of the world from Karma and Daoism to the Fringe division and hackers that believe they can reprogram the world (because they can). All these other groups exist in harmony with the fundamental spiritual energies of the world (which are presented in Werewolf: The Apocalypse, and some of them fit more than others). The Domination of Logic risks triggering a spiritual death of the planet because it is excluding the spiritual force of birth/creation/dreaming and not controlling/curbing/policing the spiritual force of death/malice/destruction.

The latter is a fun extra layer of fluff if you want to be on the other side of the Masqurade. So on the one hand you have a ruthless group of cold-blooded "heroes" protecting the world from potential dangers and potential supernatural terrorists, and on the other you have a hodge-podge of genuine terrorists, freedom fighters, spiritual leaders, and kiddies playing with nuclear matches.


------------------

Now, answering your questions:

Does the Masquerade exist without a giant conspiracy? Yes/no. There is a group of incredibly powerful technology-mages (basically people who already have access to almost anything from a sci-fi movie) whose sole purpose is to ensure that "Deviants" are tracked down and eliminated without anyone every finding out what happened or why. They also work as the secret service and military R&D firms for most of the world giving them the reach and visibility (and plausible deniability) for any tech they have to deploy to the field.

Is it a massive conspiracy: Yes.
Given the "stakes" they believe they are up against does it make some level of sense: I find that it works, and better than most equivalents.

History of the conspiracy: The Enlightenment. In the setting, there was a "behind the scenes" war between the many different philosophies in the past. This group won and will do anything to keep that victory. To keep that victory they have to keep "sleepers" unaware.

1) How could mystical entities, magic, and the weird remain hidden in a credible fashion?

The Authority group has memory erasing/replacing technology and people who can manage the media. On some levels this works as one of those grand conspiracies, on the other hand having a government source release "new evidence" of how the "hoax" was done along with some clever misdirection works well.

2) Why would everyone who is a part of the strange want to go along with the masquerade?

Firstly you have paradox. The setting directly punishes people for openly defying "reality". Paradox is the spiritual incarnation of a fundamental aspet of reality which can, and will, put the smack down on anyone trying too hard to mess with it. As such, the "strage" tend to get very creative about their manipulations so that Reality doesn't care.

Second, you have the Authority who are trying to kill you, and breaking the Masquerade brings them that closer to finding you. And since they can replace memories, its a good chance they can extract them too... so they won't just kill you, but everyone you know who is also part of the strange. That tends to motivate people-like creatures.

The eldritch abominations of that setting are only able to cross over into the material world when someone really screws up their magical mojo. So the Authority group (who are part of the strange too) are very highly motivated to keep "newbies" from figuring out there is magic inorder to limit the chances of some new and nasty monster breaking through.

Lastly, the authority needs to maintian the status quo because their magic will become significantly weaker if people's ability to believe that Science works were to start changing. The more people believe in the supernatural over the logical, the less their magic is capable of doing, the less control they'll have in policing "Deviants" and the more monsters will break through.


(and this is without getting into the Changeling or the Werewolf mythos of the setting which is also tied in there... Once I read the Mage, Werewolf, and Changeling fluff for the setting I was no longer able to understand why people played Vampire.)

Fable Wright
2012-11-20, 07:35 AM
For the second question, I like the TV show Grimm's way of handling it: There are people out there who see through the masquerade. People call them crazy, and usually rightfully so; evidence is circumstantial. However, these people feel obligated, for whatever reason, to hunt down and kill the creature in the masquerade. Announcing that you're a member of the Masquerade is essentially a death sentence; if you're giving the person hunting you and your kind down your name and address, you're getting killed. It's a pretty good reason to avoid breaking the masquerade for an individual.

Thinker
2012-11-20, 08:44 AM
**wonderfully detailed post about the workings of WoD masquerades**
Thank you for your post. It was interesting to read. It is still a bit difficult to believe that there would be a conspiracy that helps control the dissemination of how reality works that has existed for 500 years and maintained the status quo. In the real world there are schisms and revolts against authority. In 500 years there hasn't been a single Spartacus or Martin Luther or Chairman Mao to challenge these folks? They wouldn't even have to win their war to change the way the normies see things.

It breaks down similar to how other conspiracies break down. They're great as long as everyone is working together. I think that having a fundamental force is probably a better way to handle this.


For the second question, I like the TV show Grimm's way of handling it: There are people out there who see through the masquerade. People call them crazy, and usually rightfully so; evidence is circumstantial. However, these people feel obligated, for whatever reason, to hunt down and kill the creature in the masquerade. Announcing that you're a member of the Masquerade is essentially a death sentence; if you're giving the person hunting you and your kind down your name and address, you're getting killed. It's a pretty good reason to avoid breaking the masquerade for an individual.

I like Grimm, but their masquerade also relies on a giant conspiracy. The show seems to have that masquerade slipping though, with Hank knowing what the Wessen are and Nick's Wessen friends actually aiding a Grimm. Except for Nick, the Grimms seem to basically be agents who uphold the conspiracy by aiding the royal family and hunt down those who threaten the masquerade and their authority.

Ozfer
2012-11-20, 09:07 AM
Yea, I've always disliked the nonsensical explanations for masquerades. One that actually made sense to me, was in The Secrets Of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel series.

All of the entities stayed hidden basically because it was a major advantage on their agenda.

Also, read those books, they are awesome.

SuperPanda
2012-11-20, 09:56 AM
Yeah, each of the four canon games (which I know about) in the old World of Darkness settings have their own masquerade like rules which overlap if you want them too. The Changelings I know the least about. The Vampires basically just advance their own agenda. The Werewolves have it be "magic!" but provide a wonderful spiritual level. Mage though I really liked and I personally pretend its the setting the rest of them are guest staring in (whereas most people I know try to ignore Mage because of the cross "game" rules).

On the "revolutionary" thing: One of the interesting things with the Technocracy is that there have been splinter and break-away movements. I can't remember any of the names of the different orders, but the hackers were part of the Technocracy and broke away dealing a major blow to the establishment recently (as of the time I last checked with the setting, which was years ago) and they'd been on damage control. The Technocracy handles these groups largely through their media outlets. Fund and release a movie like the Matrix and people will assume someone trying to say that the world really is a computer program is just really gullible and didn't realize it was a movie. Use news papers and news reels to tell people about "crazies" who think they saw big-foot and most people will assume that anyone who sees bigfoot is one of the crazies.

The "reason" for the conspiracy being so powerful is that it won a bloody and deadly war against the other factions and brought a "better" world for the average person (whether or not it is still better now is up for debate, since there have been recent break away groups) and then back when it was still a small and mostly humanitarian/egalitarian movement it allied with many major governments.

I think in that setting the other factions backed the third Reich in WWII (Hitler had a fascination with the occult in real life, extrapolated into an alliance with mages in this world) probable the steam-punk mages which broke away from the Technocracy in the Victorian age.

Not sure about the cold war, but I think its fair to assume that alot of the technological advancements during that time and the expansion of the military industrial complex (within that setting) is when they started stepping from the shadows into a more direct/domineering role.


Long story short - the idea of the conspiracy plays with history and the nature of story telling (literature, mythology, philosophy) in different time periods. The world is set such that the current time is just about overdue for the next major attempt to break away from the establishment, though the consequences for the common person could be dire if its done poorly.

Still incredibly complicated, enough that I'm sure I've gotten several things wrong (but I like my version better). On the other hand, the whole system has an organic feel and an internal logic which I like.

Vorr
2012-11-20, 02:46 PM
1) How could mystical entities, magic, and the weird remain hidden in a credible fashion?
2) Why would everyone who is a part of the strange want to go along with the masquerade?

1)They don't. They hide in plain sight. And most people don't believe it, and most don't care anyway. The average factory worker, doctor or fireman just lives there life and does not worry about strange stuff. And oddly, this is so much like the the real Real World. After all, the average normal person knows all about vampires, werewolves, witches and so on...and does not think they are real at all. And even more so the real Real World is full of people that just 'play' at being vampires, werewolves, witches and so on...but are not 'really real' ones. And that does not even all the fringe people like the Ghost Hunters and Cryptozoologists. And that does not even count the really, really crazy people with tin foil hats.....

So even when a normal person sees a real, real fantasy magical thing...they only not believe it, but they also don't care.

2)There is no gain in coming out. A vampire could go on national TV, but what could they really gain? They can be rich and famous other ways. And even if they tried to come out, they know few would believe it. No matter what they do, people would always think it was a trick.

Plus you'd have the other evil magical beings...and the good ones.

The Walrus
2012-11-20, 07:14 PM
I've been thinking about this problem for a bit myself, while tossing around some ideas for a Call-of-Cthulu-esque game. My idea for why everyone wants all the strange monsters and magic and such to be kept under wraps is as follows:

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far, away, there were two species of aliens engaged in a total war. The goals and values evolution had given them were mutually exclusive, and neither could be satisfied unless the other were totally exterminated. After years of war, one side - let's call them the Exterris - developed a weapon capable of destroying entire planets, which they soon put to use on the home world of thier enemies, the Nothu. But before they could, many of the Nothu escaped through a giant portal they had built to another galaxy. Using the knowledge of Nothu technology their spies had gleaned, the Exterris narrowed down the number of worlds that the Nothu could have fled to. This number was still far too vast to search each planet thoroughly, but the Exterris didn't need to. For there was a flaw in the Nothu portal technology, which had been fixed in the Exterris' forms of travel: The portal altered the fabric of space-time around the world it led to in such a way that it would alter the laws of physics for that world and allow many strange extra-dimensional creatures to enter it. All the Exterris had to do was send a few spies to every likely world and look out to see if any strange events had been occurring there lately. When they detected a world like that, they could use their planet destroying weapon on it and be rid of the Nothu forever.

The planet that the portal had opened up to was Earth. When the Nothu arrived, they communicated with several of Earth's governments and impressed on them the importance of keeping any 'supernatural' events out of the mass media. Those who didn't buy the Nothu's story were convinced by some extra-strength 'impressing'. There are a number of factors that help maintain the masquerade:

1. All the governmental departments dedicated to maintaining the conspiracy are given the most boring names possible, like the Bureau of Regulatory Development Statistics.

2. Depending on what you mean by 'modern', it's more or less easy to maintain a masquerade. Having your game set just 30 years ago avoids camera-phones and widespread internet usage.

3. The government encourages the profusion of various false conspiracy theories. After all, if the people talking about the Area 51 conspiracy and the Illuminatus conspiracy were wrong, why should I listen to the people talking about the Extra-Dimensional Monsters conspiracy?

4. Admittedly, this one is sort of a 'mystical force causes people to forget' type explanation, but here it is: Seeing magic or extra-dimensional creatures causes insanity, making your stories that much less credible. You might attempt to justify this by invoking Godel's incompleteness theorem: The extra-dimensional creatures act as sort of a Godel sentence which forces the mind to confront the fact that it can not prove its own consistency. (Essentially, the data representing the monsters comes out something like "This statement is false" when translated into mentalese).

5. Even if you don't go mad with the revelation, you might very well think you've gone mad, however briefly, and decide to keep your ideas to yourself. After all, if you briefly saw some many-tentacled horror outside your bathroom window, would your first thought be "aliens have invaded the earth" or "I must be hallucinating"?

6. The Nothu left their planet a long time ago, but only arrived on Earth, distorting its space-time and causing the appearance of monsters, a little while ago. A conspiracy maintained for the last 20 years is a lot more plausible then one maintained for the last 2000.

Desril
2012-11-21, 01:24 AM
For the 2nd question, I like the way the Dresdenverse handles it. The reason that no one has made public to the human populace the existance of magic and faeries and demons etc is very simple. The humans would go to war. And they could win. Magic is powerful, demons are deadly, faeries are guileful and the vampires are just dangerous...but humanity has a knack for warfare, sheer numbers, and if it comes down to it, nuclear weaponry. The reason the masquerade is kept up is the same reason that no one in the modern world wants to launch a nuke. It'd be MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) for everyone. And there's always something left to lose. When there's really nothing left at all, you don't really have the option to speak, let alone break the masquerade.

Thinker
2012-11-21, 03:46 AM
I'm starting to think that having a masquerade in place has to be a fundamental force if it's going to work.

Threatening certain doom to keep people in line only works if everyone believes the threat. There are always people pushing the boundaries to see if the threats are real. There are always those who seek fame and glory, disregarding their own well being and the well being of others.

kieza
2012-11-21, 03:51 AM
My take on a modern-day masquerade:

The masquerade is held in place via a sort of mutually-assured destruction: humans who find out about the supernatural might want to break the masquerade, but supernatural entities (particularly predatory ones) don't want to see that, because there are lots and lots of humans, and some of their weapons are nasty enough to bring down even something supernatural. (Incendiary bullets for vampires, holy-oil-flamethrowers for demons, cold iron bullets for faeries.) So, once the masquerade is broken, it's open season on the supernatural.

Thus, there's a gentlemen's agreement between the supernatural entities and the clued-in mortals: if mortals break the masquerade (or make a concerted effort to stop supernaturals from hunting humans), every supernatural critter out there will drop everything and do as much damage to mortal infrastructure as they can before they die. If anything supernatural tries to take overt control of the mortal world (e.g. vampires try mass-infecting people or demons start the apocalypse), all of the clued-in mortal organizations (wizards, monster hunters, the Vatican) will break the masquerade and disseminate the weaknesses of every monster out there over the internet. The only way to maintain your way of life is to maintain the masquerade, and make sure that your comrades do too.

This way, both sides have reason to carefully police their own. The mortals have an interest in tracking down witnesses and explaining the situation to them, and the supernaturals keep quiet (and/or leave no witnesses) because every time they show off they risk the mortals deciding enough is enough (or worse yet, some bystander will get cellphone footage and break the masquerade without knowing the consequences.

Kelb_Panthera
2012-11-21, 04:14 AM
Since we're talking supernatural here, why not go whole-hog.

All sides maintain the masquerade because the gods said to. They also mentioned something about how failing to do so would render this experiment a failure and they'd have to wipe the whole thing clean and start over. This edict is enforced by the gods' agents (read; outsiders), because the gods don't want their experiment to fail.

NichG
2012-11-21, 04:39 AM
Honestly, I think its tricky to do this both believably and in a way that doesn't make players resentful (e.g. punitive reinforcement). Supernatural is probably the easiest way - every day at midnight in the local timezone, all evidence both physical and mental is erased from time. Its unsatisfying, but its also hard to really disrupt on a personal level - you either take out the ritual or you get away with anything.

Another solution is a layered reality - the supernatural exist in the realm of dreams, of doubts, of story, etc, and so people might encounter it and then go back to a normal life explaining away nearly anything trivially; this can be defeated by someone clever enough to realize that some people have common dreams that can transmit information.

A really weird solution is: everyone knows the truth, but its so awful that almost everyone pretends it isn't happening in order to keep on with their lives. Those that break this facade aren't hunted down or harmed or whatever - they're pitied. Better in older times than a modern setting - think of the village that knows the guy up on the hill is an ancient and powerful vampire; life sucks enough with starvation and plague, so they don't talk about the vampire since its just depressing and terrible.

DaedalusMkV
2012-11-21, 05:12 AM
My own modern fantasy game features such a 'Masquerade' heavily as an extremely important central element. The basics of why it exists and how it works:
1: The more people who know about and believe in a particular supernatural element, the more powerful a connection that thing has with the mortal world. If everyone believes in magic, it will basically become a high fantasy setting and magic will become commonplace. If everyone believes in Vampires, Vampires will become more common and more powerful. This applies to everything supernatural, and one thing tends to lead to another.

2: There is a sort of 'continuum of reality', which the mortal world exists as one side of, seperated by fragile 'veils' that seperate different levels of existence. As the mortal world grows more and more magical, the veils between it and the more fantastical levels of reality begin to weaken and travel between them grows more feasible. There are lots of things out there that you really, really wouldn't want to meet.

3: Because 1 and 2 were basically holding humanity back and resulting in horrible things happening to people, a conspiracy was formed with the express purpose of annihilating all belief in the supernatural, safeguarding the veils and destroying any supernatural entity that threatens mankind.

4: Over a millenia of clandestine warfare, they've become a major world power. With a virtual monopoly on magic (if you have to know about it to fight it anyways, you might as well use it while you're at it) and a knack for collecting secrets of every kind, they've managed to develop an extensive international powerbase. The fact that they've got assassins who can literally walk through walls and turn invisible doesn't hurt either.

5: As such, the Masquerade is maintained willingly by both sides of the conflict. The Conspiracy, which changes names whenever it's convenient, does so as its primary mandate while the supernatural elements do it because the alternative is to draw the attention of the Conspiracy and get ruthlessly stomped into the dirt. The entities who weren't willing to operate 'quietly' were long ago wiped out, leaving only those with a talent for subtlety.

That's the gist of it. As I see it, any Masquerade needs to be based on necessity. If there's nothing at stake, why bother going to the extra effort?

Salutis Occultatio

Gildedragon
2012-11-21, 05:24 AM
Tough questions. Hard to answer, people have great ideas about the matter and the complexity of the question. The short answer is: depends on the scenario it takes place on.
I am inclined to disagree with NichG. I think there is a way to present it in a satisfactory manner with player involvement. Layered realities is one way to do it, and the layers don't need to be so separate as a dreamworld. "Neverwhere" is an interesting example of a reality askew from the mundane one.

I think something that is needed to produce a believable but satisfying masquerade is for it to be easy to maintain and hard to break. The masquerade is the natural way of things, and breaking it requires effort and may be dangerous.

Thinker
2012-11-21, 07:41 AM
Another solution is a layered reality - the supernatural exist in the realm of dreams, of doubts, of story, etc, and so people might encounter it and then go back to a normal life explaining away nearly anything trivially; this can be defeated by someone clever enough to realize that some people have common dreams that can transmit information.


I really like this solution. Instead of the supernatural being a persisting force in our natural world, it's a facet of a slightly different reality that sometimes intersects our own.

Let's apply this to some common modern folklore/fantasy creatures.

Vampires - Vampires are only empowered by returning to their coffin, which has an attachment to the Otherworld. Destruction of the coffin will weaken and eventually destroy the vampire if the vampire cannot locate another source. There is nothing to differentiate a vampire corpse from a human corpse after the Otherworld energy has decayed.
Werewolves - Their connection to the Otherworld only manifests when they transform and weakens the longer they are in a transformed state. Upon death, the Otherworld energy dissipates from their bodies.
Fairies - Fairies live in the Otherworld, but can enter our own for short periods of time. Eventually, they cannot maintain the connection to our world and wink out of existence from our plane, returning home. Upon death, they wink out of existence.
Ghosts - Ghosts are spirits that become trapped in the Otherworld after they die in our world. They can manifest themselves in our world, but only briefly and not reliably.
Magic - Magicians tap into the energy of the Otherworld, but this energy cannot persist in our world. This means that while a magician might appear to fly across the sky, there would be no detectable energy to show that it happened.


As a player, would this be satisfying to you? Does this make sense to anyone but me?

Ravens_cry
2012-11-21, 08:09 AM
I never liked conspiracy theories, so I've never been a big fan of masquerades in fiction either.
Personally, I think there is a lot of drama and plot to be milked off of, say, a forced immigration or failed invasion of the supernatural and life in the aftermath. How or even why may not be known, but everyone knows what happened and now has to deal with the implictions.

Mewtarthio
2012-11-21, 01:04 PM
I really like this solution. Instead of the supernatural being a persisting force in our natural world, it's a facet of a slightly different reality that sometimes intersects our own.

Let's apply this to some common modern folklore/fantasy creatures.

[...]

As a player, would this be satisfying to you? Does this make sense to anyone but me?

The trouble is, so long as the supernatural effects manifest in our world at all, you need the Masquerade to keep it hidden. It doesn't matter where vampires get their powers; if they rise from the grave, entrancing mortals and drinking their blood, someone's going to notice. The only way to disregard the Masquerade entirely is to set it up so that the supernatural only interacts with our world in subtle or indirect ways. For example, perhaps the only supernatural predators are invisible psychic entities (such as ghosts or demons) that can do nothing beyond influencing luck or implanting telepathic suggestions. Or maybe wizards wage their wars in the Shadow Realm, and the results of that war are reflected in our world in a way that appears perfectly natural. Or maybe demons only run rampant during the twenty-fifth hour of the day. Regardless, your heroes fight wars in that world to protect ours, but they cannot drag the things of the other world into our own for all to see.

Masquerades of necessity (eg "If you reveal the supernatural, you'll kick off magical WWIII!") don't do much from a logical standpoint, since there's always some lunatic out there who doesn't care about--or maybe even wants--the consequences. It does help out from an ethical perspective, though, and that may be enough.

Geostationary
2012-11-21, 03:14 PM
I'm starting to think that having a masquerade in place has to be a fundamental force if it's going to work.


Let me tell you about Nobilis.
In-setting, there are two views of Creation: Mythic and Prosaic. Mythic reality is the "true" version of reality, barring the Deep Mythic and Spirit World, which are not relevant to this conversation. It's an animate world where literally everything has a spirit, it has absolute locations, and the world is both flat and hanging from the World Ash. It works more or less how we thought the world worked before the Greeks and science got their hands on it, an various monsters and whatnot can be found, though they're generally the representation of some thing we can see in the Prosaic, such as the crime of Detroit being a hydra or something.

Next, Prosaic reality. The Prosaic viewpoint is specific to Earth due to certain past events, and is basically the modern world with science and all that jazz. This is the default human viewpoint. It's a lie, but it's rooted in Mythic reality, so killing the Detroit Crimedra would stamp out crime in Detroit. Changes in the mythic or magical things happening in the Prosaic are retconned by reality to fit into our scientific mindset, so if you cause an eclipse, not only will the Prosaic world see an eclipse, but things will change such that there would have been an eclipse predicted that day, or they would find that their math was wrong, or anything that would fit that event into our conceptual framework of how the world works. This also works in reverse, because the Prosaic view does interact with the Mythic- we just don't see it. Burning the headquarters of Coca-Cola, for instance, would probably weaken/hurt the spirit of Coke.

Prosaic reality is also imperfect- sometimes, people either get lost in the cracks or have some miraculous thing happen in front of them that Prosaic reality can't explain away, so they go mad, unable to reconcile the Mythic and Prosaic views of reality, perceiving bits of both. This leads to such things as holding conversations with your toaster and being unable to interact with people in functional ways. It's also possible to learn to shift your perspective between the two views, which allows a person to try and take advantage of the Mythic nature of the world. Alchemists are a group that use this to work magic in the world.

The masquerade is a function of humanity's flawed perception of reality, and it's mostly self-maintaining. Learning to see the Mythic is dangerous but potentially powerful, and the various monsters do exist, but they have specific functions or are explained away by the Prosaic as something mundane. Sufficently large breaches can break Prosaic reality, leading to madness for those involved, which makes it frowned upon/illegal in some cases.

Gavinfoxx
2012-11-21, 03:19 PM
Well, for one thing... set the game before 1982.

Hopeless
2012-11-21, 03:37 PM
1) Lycanthropes are only revealed during a full moon and only then, a very few have the ability to shift partly but do so because they're unstable and most weres are perfectly sane.
You can't become a were via infection that was a lie spread to insure they were hunted and most are as perfectly normal as the rest with their children being able to avoid inheriting the family legacy but often only because it skips a generation usually they're in low numbers to avoid being discovered.
Recently matters have grown worse as the new generation no longer respect the family nor their tribe the way they used to and thats whats causing the problems now, not an unfettered war against humanity but someone hunting them purely because they don't consider them human beings...

2) Vampires sleep during the day and come out at night, their condition has the unusual benefit of slowing their life span but in return it makes them especially vulnerable to sun burns which can be life threatening.
Their condition requires they undertake a blood transfusion, they don't feed on others to do this and it has to be human blood because they are human.
Some develop unusual abilities because of their condition, they can for very short periods become much stronger, faster, hardier even more perceptive but at a cost because it drains them much faster but can temporarily recharge through normal eating and drinking, unfortunately thanks to certain films and books some of their number actually believe the hype or try to make use of that false reputation and often many don't live to regret it...

3) Mummies are the result of ancient curses used in ancient times and they wander around because some foolish people think they can replicate or control such creatures.
They drain the moisture from anything around them to remain conscious and are very dangerous as a result, the older they are the less sane as what was done to them is not just horrific but tragic as they're doomed to repeat their prior lives and react badly to being in the present.

4) Mages do exist most belong to the Magic Circle and are bound to keep the peace or at least fake their abilities rather than risk drawing the attentions of those that hunt the others.
There are renegades but they're just as careful and often hide their abilities using stage magic just to annoy their rivals.
Their powers depend on knowledge to work properly but some being of mixed heritage and even blood have certain powers that can't be explained and often frame others to avoid being hunted down by either the Magic Circle or the hunters who see them as much as monsters as the others...

5) Hunters an ancient order who look upon themselves as the true rulers of the world and seek to keep their power at all cost even though ultimately they live a lie.
The creature they hunt are considered monsters but in truth THEY are the monsters and a worse threat than the unfortunates they prey upon...

Mewtarthio
2012-11-21, 03:44 PM
various monsters and whatnot can be found, though they're generally the representation of some thing we can see in the Prosaic, such as the crime of Detroit being a hydra or something.

For the record, I parsed that lasts phrase as "the crime of (Detroit being a hydra)." Please tell me that there is some sort of setting, in any form of fiction, where that phrase would be relevant. :smallsmile:

Ambiguous language aside, this is the sort of thing I'm talking about. The only "realistic" Masquerade is one where the Muggles are literally incapable of directly perceiving the supernatural. That being said, I'm more than willing to supsend my disbelief and accept a handwaved justification for the Masquerade, so long as you can show me that the characters aren't all jerks for keeping the public in the dark. Take the Dresden Files for instance: I like that series, even though the Masquerade there is about as strong as a shoddily-made wet paper towel. I'm perfectly fine with the "Nobody wants magical WWIII" handwave, and Dresden himself is allowed to educate his allies about the threats, so I can accept it as part of the background. If the story were a complex political drama, I'd probably call foul, but it isn't, so I don't.

The only time a Masquerade really harms my enjoyment of the story is when the protagonists actively work to maintain the deception and no satisfying reason is given. If you can't tell anyone about magic because any disgruntled teenager could easily summon the Archduke of Hell, that's one thing; if you're going out of your way to suppress lifesaving information about nocturnal predators because it would make your life more uncomfortable if word of that stuff got out, then you're just a jerk.

In the case of an RPG, where the "heroes" aren't bound by the storyteller's dictates, you should probably come up with an ethical justification for the Masquerade, then work out a gentleman's agreement with your players wherein they agree to accept said justification (however grudging their characters may be) and not completely shatter your setting in that particular way, while you agree to not abuse that acceptance to cause them undue pain and suffering.

MukkTB
2012-11-21, 05:33 PM
I personally like the masquerade like this.

Magic is rare. Many monsters appear human most of the time (werewolf, vampire) and the ones that don't tend to be secretive. There can be a fairly large community of muggles that are in on the masquerade one way or another. Its just not common knowledge because magic is rare and inconsistent. In game be really sparing with the magic occurrences.

NichG
2012-11-21, 07:52 PM
Here's a concrete suggestion for the layered reality scenario:

The mundane world is called 'the Changing Lands' on the other layers. This is because it, of all worlds, has the weakest rules, the most tenuous causality. In the courts of the various supernaturals, there are iron-clad rules that cannot be broken - the laws of Hospitality, the laws of Karma, the Permanence of Deals, etc. These laws hold the world tight - beings are highly constrained in what they can do and how they can act.

In the Changing Lands, the laws become thin to the point where causality itself can be snapped by the imposition of a higher law. When a supernatural journeys to the Changing Lands, they have a faint aura of their higher law that disrupts the local rules. Within this aura, anything they do becomes causally disconnected from the rest of the world. So a vampire might journey to 1875 New Orleans to feed on someone, even as far as killing them, but that person will wake up the next day and continue to live as if nothing had happened - except that some part of them that touches the ephemeral, the higher layers, remembers that a fragment of their life has been stolen. They have nightmares, they become sick, etc.

The more damaging effect is when many supernaturals gather together in the Changing Lands. This can erase entire events from history, make places vanish and become nothing more than legend or dream. This is how Atlantis fell, and what happened to the colony at Roanoke. People too are often abducted from the Changing Lands, a bit of them torn out of one moment of their life while the rest marches on. The reason being, folk from the Changing Lands carry with them a bit of the weakness of their laws, something that supernaturals can use to slip around the laws that bind them.

Those that know of the supernatural and live within the Changing Lands are on an uncertain precipice at all times. All it would take for them to forget is for the right thing to be struck from history, for a supernatural to walk past the right moment in their past and then their knowledge is undone as if it never were. Or even for them to stay away from the supernatural for long enough that they fall into the background causality. The supernatural is discovered every day, but is forgotten every day as well. Only those who acquire a supernatural companion and never leave their aura can retain a memory of the rips that decorate the Changing World.

Aron Times
2012-11-21, 10:47 PM
Here's the oWoD Vampire perspective on why the Masquerade is important:

Back in the old days, vampires used to rule more openly. While they did not announce their undead state to everyone, neither did they make much of an effort into keeping their existence secret. After all, most people were illiterate and did not travel much, and were content living their lives not questioning the eccentricities of their nocturnal masters.

And then a funny thing happened called the Anarch Revolt, wherein the younger vampires rebelled against their controlling elders. This civil war among Kindred resulted in many Final Deaths, but the worse was yet to come. Open warfare among Kindred led to the Catholic Church learning of the existence of vampires.

The Church started the Inquisition to hunt them down. Most of the Kindred were destroyed, and the ones that survived went into hiding. Over the years, the vampire population of Europe would drop precipitously low, and fewer and fewer vampires would be exposed and destroyed.

That's when humanity got complacent. Because the remaining Kindred had hidden themselves so well, humanity in general believed them extinct. There were some who knew better, but over time, vampires became myth and legend.

The wiser Kindred formed the Camarilla, an organization dedicated to keeping humanity in the dark about its existence. The Camarilla is similar to the Technocracy of Mage: The Ascension in that it polices vampire behavior, ensuring that another Inquisition doesn't happen.

I mean, if humans could bring down vampire society with just swords and torches and pitchforks, imagine what mortals armed with DAKKA DAKKA DAKKA are capable of.

Geostationary
2012-11-21, 11:56 PM
For the record, I parsed that lasts phrase as "the crime of (Detroit being a hydra)." Please tell me that there is some sort of setting, in any form of fiction, where that phrase would be relevant. :smallsmile:


...That could totally happen in Nobilis. And it would be awesome.:smallbiggrin:

hiryuu
2012-11-22, 09:51 AM
Here's the oWoD Vampire perspective on why the Masquerade is important:

I think we all know why it's important. I think what's being questioned here is how it's even possible in the first place, especially after 1982 or so.

The simple truth is this: the more people who are involved in your conspiracy, the more likely it is to get out. If vampires secretly ran the mafia, interpol and the CIA and the FBI would know. Which means they have to be in on it. Eventually it reaches this saturation point where everyone is in on it. It's so ridiculous every player I've ever had in a WoD game has figured out how to break the status quo within about five minutes of play.

I think it could work if the numbers of your conspirators stay small. There's only a hundred vampires in the world, maybe like four or five per city.

Ravens_cry
2012-11-22, 11:56 AM
Or . . .don't have one.
Imagine, for example, Fay suddenly emigrate en masse to the human world. Perhaps they have a lot of trouble depending on the definition used for 'cold iron' or perhaps not, but the really scary question, the really big question si, why are they here? Also ,as second generation fay are born in the human world, half breeds and changeling start changing the fabric of human society, conflicts of beliefs and ethics, you got more than enough drama and mystery.

hiryuu
2012-11-22, 12:19 PM
Or . . .don't have one.
Imagine, for example, Fay suddenly emigrate en masse to the human world. Perhaps they have a lot of trouble depending on the definition used for 'cold iron' or perhaps not, but the really scary question, the really big question si, why are they here? Also ,as second generation fay are born in the human world, half breeds and changeling start changing the fabric of human society, conflicts of beliefs and ethics, you got more than enough drama and mystery.

This is always my favorite. District 9 with werewolves would be pretty cool.

QuidEst
2012-11-22, 12:19 PM
• Whatever the masquerade is hiding twists those who know it to want to keep it hidden. Explanations could range from some intelligence to what they're hiding (eg. their power comes from communing with whatever, and whatever doesn't want to be found) to self-selection (there have been many masquerades, but the witches were burned, the werewolves executed and so on, back to things we don't even have records of, until only those sources of power that made people paranoid remained). Perhaps even a combination- the masquerade was altered during the witch-hunts to make people paranoid. If somebody does find out, they'll start out with an inclination to put off revealing it, whether to learn more or find the best way to profit. If they don't overcome this and reveal it right away, it grows stronger and stronger until they would die before giving up the secret.

• The masquerade fries the mind of the uninitiated. This is a little more Cthulu-esque. Only those who've trained and prepared themselves can grasp it. The uninitiated go 'round the bend if they just stumble on it.

• Wonky probability. There's some sort of "luck" that keeps it from getting out. You can try to bank on this, although results can be unexpected. Emailing the Pentagon a full description could get it marked as spam, could result in the Pentagon getting hit by a cyber-attack just then, or it could just crash and/or fry your computer.

RedWarlock
2012-11-22, 01:00 PM
I think the key to having a massive world-spanning masquerade is to not have just one, but many, one for each group. Stratify it in layers, have some hiding others, and from others. Nobody knows everything, and each organization works to hide their own.

There's plenty of precedent for the need to hide from the mundanes 'because they'll unite to destroy us', in concepts like the Inquisition and witch-hunts and so on.

It also helps to have that simple level of mundane obscurity: insanity and special effects. Any one person making claims would be quickly labelled as nutso and ignored. Anyone with actual proof is going to have a hard time keeping people from believing it's not special effects or a publicity stunt, with even firsthand witnesses being seen as in on it and thereby dismissed. You don't even need supernatural intervention, simple human cynicism does the job perfectly well.

The Walrus
2012-11-22, 01:03 PM
If you want to go the "layered reality" route, I'd suggest checking out the JAGS Wonderland setting for a good implementation of that. It's free, and you should be able to find it with just a google search of its name. The gist of it is that there are 8 layers of reality, called Chessboards. Humans and all that ordinary stuff reside on Chessboard 0, while all the weird stuff is on Chessboards 1 through 7, which are collectively called Wonderland. If any creatures from Wonderland come up to Chessboard 0, they have to careful. Chessboard 7 is occupied by the machines which create reality, and they're constantly scanning Chessboard 0 for any abnormalities. If a monster makes itself too conspicuous, the machines will notice it and edit it out of reality. The safe way to affect Chessboard 0 if you're a monster or want to use mutant powers is by going to Chessboard 1 and causing some mayhem there, and letting the changes be reflected back up to Chessboard 0. However, the more people who would notice some weird event occurring on Chessboard 0, the more likely the machines are to notice it and keep it from being reflected there.

Opposing the machines is the fact that Wonderland itself is sort of a sentient, infectious force. In a twist on the "seeing magic/monsters makes you go insane" idea, seeing Impossible Things in this game makes you go un-sane. When you're insane, you're losing your grip on reality, but when you're unsane, reality is losing its grip on you. Unsane people periodically have 'episodes' where they switch places with their mad counterpart on a lower Chessboard. On Chessboard 0, it seems as if they've merely gone insane. To the person having the episode, it seems as if everyone else has gone mad. As time goes on, the episodes become more and more frequent and send you to deeper and more dangerous layers of reality, until finally you might just disappear down there for good. When this occurs, there is a tendency for people on Chessboard 0 to forget you ever existed.

A major theme in the game is that the masquerade is failing, that the machines are becoming weaker and more people are getting infected with Wonderland and going unsane. There are conspiracies to break the masquerade as well as to uphold it. If you're not fond of conspiracies, the focus of the game can be on other things, such as unsane people just trying to survive Wonderland, or ordinary police trying to deal with the unexplainable happenings Wonderland is causing.

Ravens_cry
2012-11-22, 01:40 PM
This is always my favorite. District 9 with werewolves would be pretty cool.
I had an idea for a story, not a game world, where they Fay invaded Victorian England and lost handedly. Turns out 'Cold Iron' is just a synonym for 'cold steel'. The story was about a second generation fairy who literally lives in a hat box. I deal with conspiracy theorists on a daily basis, so I hate that kind of 'logix' that would be required for any kind of long-term masquerade to work.

QuidEst
2012-11-22, 03:17 PM
I had an idea for a story, not a game world, where they Fay invaded Victorian England and lost handedly. Turns out 'Cold Iron' is just a synonym for 'cold steel'. The story was about a second generation fairy who literally lives in a hat box. I deal with conspiracy theorists on a daily basis, so I hate that kind of 'logix' that would be required for any kind of long-term masquerade to work.

I love the summary, "Government is staffed with mostly well-intentioned but incompetent people. Conspiracy theorists reverse this: They think government is evil-intentioned but supremely competent."

hiryuu
2012-11-22, 03:21 PM
It also helps to have that simple level of mundane obscurity: insanity and special effects. Any one person making claims would be quickly labelled as nutso and ignored. Anyone with actual proof is going to have a hard time keeping people from believing it's not special effects or a publicity stunt, with even firsthand witnesses being seen as in on it and thereby dismissed. You don't even need supernatural intervention, simple human cynicism does the job perfectly well.

The problem here is that scientists in the real world do not work the way they do in Hollywood or in the minds of pop culture cynics. Credible evidence causes further study. Further study would create more credible evidence. Deliberate attempts to obfuscate or redirect the attempts to gather would cause a slow trickle to turn into a deluge. It's the nonscientific community that has trouble buying into empirical data (take a look at what are currently billed by the media as "hot topics" - most of them are no brainers among the scientific community).

Actually, I could see a world where the supernatural (in which case it would be "natural") is perfectly open and accepted in the scientific community but that nobody else believes it.

Scientific community: "I'm telling you, man. Vampires have no heartbeat. They're dead. Undead. We know perfectly well how they work. *piles of peer reviewed papers*"
Media: "Well, the jury's still out on that."

Ravens_cry
2012-11-22, 03:23 PM
I love the summary, "Government is staffed with mostly well-intentioned but incompetent people. Conspiracy theorists reverse this: They think government is evil-intentioned but supremely competent."

Or rather, they are as supremely competent as the 'plot' demands. Like, being able to subvert every astronomer and planetary geologist world wide, but forgetting to take a c off a stage rock, or digging a crater under a lander, or add stars in the sky if either should be there.
It's this mentality I deal with, and why I don't like it in my fiction either.

QuidEst
2012-11-22, 05:18 PM
Or rather, they are as supremely competent as the 'plot' demands. Like, being able to subvert every astronomer and planetary geologist world wide, but forgetting to take a c off a stage rock, or digging a crater under a lander, or add stars in the sky if either should be there.
It's this mentality I deal with, and why I don't like it in my fiction either.

Ouch. :smallannoyed: Yeah, I've never really gotten why people have a have a problem with landing on the moon. I wish you the best of luck in dealing with them, at any rate!

Ravens_cry
2012-11-22, 05:49 PM
Ouch. :smallannoyed: Yeah, I've never really gotten why people have a have a problem with landing on the moon. I wish you the best of luck in dealing with them, at any rate!
People like the idea of having Secret Knowledge™ that they are are better than the Sheeple™. Thanks though.:smallsmile: But enough, I've dragged this off topic enough as it is.

TheThan
2012-11-22, 09:30 PM
Don’t make there be very many of them to begin with. Instead of a vampire coven operating club where they spray blood from the sprinkler system; they are uncommon, I'd even go so far as to say that they are rare. besides, the body count caused by the presence of a 100+ vampires living in one city would not go unnoticed by the powers that be, or the rest of the people.

Immortal creatures like vampires would have to “die” off after a number of years and pick a new identity. Otherwise people would eventually start figuring things out (you’ve been the CEO of this company for 30 years, but you haven’t aged a day. why?). Unless they stayed out of the public light and lived “off the grid”.


Other non humanoid beings would also have to live off the grid, or find a way to explain why the don’t look human (circus freak shows are a good place to start).

enderlord99
2012-11-23, 03:35 PM
Here's a concrete suggestion for the layered reality scenario:

The mundane world is called 'the Changing Lands' on the other layers. This is because it, of all worlds, has the weakest rules, the most tenuous causality. In the courts of the various supernaturals, there are iron-clad rules that cannot be broken - the laws of Hospitality, the laws of Karma, the Permanence of Deals, etc. These laws hold the world tight - beings are highly constrained in what they can do and how they can act.

In the Changing Lands, the laws become thin to the point where causality itself can be snapped by the imposition of a higher law. When a supernatural journeys to the Changing Lands, they have a faint aura of their higher law that disrupts the local rules. Within this aura, anything they do becomes causally disconnected from the rest of the world. So a vampire might journey to 1875 New Orleans to feed on someone, even as far as killing them, but that person will wake up the next day and continue to live as if nothing had happened - except that some part of them that touches the ephemeral, the higher layers, remembers that a fragment of their life has been stolen. They have nightmares, they become sick, etc.

The more damaging effect is when many supernaturals gather together in the Changing Lands. This can erase entire events from history, make places vanish and become nothing more than legend or dream. This is how Atlantis fell, and what happened to the colony at Roanoke. People too are often abducted from the Changing Lands, a bit of them torn out of one moment of their life while the rest marches on. The reason being, folk from the Changing Lands carry with them a bit of the weakness of their laws, something that supernaturals can use to slip around the laws that bind them.

Those that know of the supernatural and live within the Changing Lands are on an uncertain precipice at all times. All it would take for them to forget is for the right thing to be struck from history, for a supernatural to walk past the right moment in their past and then their knowledge is undone as if it never were. Or even for them to stay away from the supernatural for long enough that they fall into the background causality. The supernatural is discovered every day, but is forgotten every day as well. Only those who acquire a supernatural companion and never leave their aura can retain a memory of the rips that decorate the Changing World.

I love this idea! Do you mind if I make a videogame with that as an important premise?

The genre will be one you probably don't expect, btw.

Aron Times
2012-11-23, 04:33 PM
I forgot to mention the low population of vampires in the world. The average worldwide population ratio is something like 100,000 humans to 1 vampire. In densely-populated cities, the ratio can be as high as 50,000 humans to 1 vampire. Camarilla cities tend to have fewer Kindred, while Sabbat cities tend to have more, though their lack of adherence to the Masquerade results in a lot of casualties from hunters and other hostile elements.

There are currently 311,000,000 people living in the USA. Going by the average human to vampire population ratio gives us 3,110 vampires, most of them concentrated in large cities. That's 0.001% of the population. There are more Asians in New Hampshire than there are vampires in the entire USA.

Let that sink in for a bit...

I'll be back. :smallwink:

Ravens_cry
2012-11-23, 05:02 PM
Even that few would still arouse suspicion over time.

hiryuu
2012-11-23, 06:29 PM
Even that few would still arouse suspicion over time.

Yeah - at long as we're talking about WoD vampires, if they're doing nothing but feeding, each vampire needs at least two people to feed from in order to prevent one from dying. If they're doing anything more than just trying to stay alive (using Disciplines, adopting the appearance of life, etc.) they will need to feed on more than just two people.

Remember, the more people you bring in, the more likely you run the risk of discovery.

If you kill someone (or someone goes missing near you), the risk of discovery increases dramatically.

I guess one way to do a credible masquerade setup is to start with something that not only looks and acts completely human but also doesn't run heavy risks while feeding or doing what it needs to do in order to survive. In WoD, the closest thing to that is a Changeling: as long as they're not using their powers, there is no visible sign that they're feeding or that they even exist. True Fae are even self-cleaning.

Aron Times
2012-11-23, 07:47 PM
If we're talking about the nWoD, then vampires have a few tricks to keep their existence secret.

1. Blurred Reflection

Kindred have a blurred reflection on reflective surfaces, including photo and video. This means that it is very difficult to obtain photographic or video evidence against the Kindred. On the flip side, well-informed hunters can use mirrors or cameras to detect the blurry image in the crowd, allowing them to identify the Damned.

2. Dominate, a.k.a. Ventrue Always Win™

Dominate is your one-stop shop for fixing Masquerade breaches. Talented Ventrue can make a decent living cleaning up other vampires' messes. Dominate 2 can make the witness do something that will destroy his credibility, while Dominate 3 can alter the witness's memory.

Note that Dominate works on just about everyone, including the other player "races" (mages, werewolves, etc.). Yes, including spirits, though spirits are alien enough to bestow a hefty penalty on your activation roll to Dominate them, and the ones worth Dominating tend to be powerful enough to resist it even without the penalty.

3. The Vinculum

Also known as the Blood Bond or the Blood Oath, a mortal (or another vampire) who drinks the blood of a vampire once for each of three nights becomes that vampire's slave for a year. A domitor (the master) need only feed the thrall (the slave) his blood once a year to maintain thralldom.

I'm sure an undying, bloodsucking horror can find a way to hold a mortal for three nights it takes for the Vinculum to take root.

The main difference between oWoD and nWoD Blood Bonds is that the former automatically makes the thrall a ghoul (kind of like a halfway state between being mortal and vampire) of the domitor, which might pose a danger in the first and second nights when the victim isn't enslaved yet. In the nWoD, creating a ghoul requires a Willpower point in addition to the blood point.

4. Blush of Life

All vampires can fake life signs by spending a blood point. Until end of scene, a vampire reactivates his inert organs, making his blood circulate and allowing him to breathe and even eat mortal food. However, at end of scene, if the vampire has any food or drink in his system, he vomits it back up, so he better excuse himself so he can purge the inedible mortal food.

I think there are more, but these are all I can think of at the moment.

hiryuu
2012-11-23, 10:17 PM
If we're talking about the nWoD, then vampires have a few tricks to keep their existence secret.

1. Blurred Reflection

Kindred have a blurred reflection on reflective surfaces, including photo and video. This means that it is very difficult to obtain photographic or video evidence against the Kindred. On the flip side, well-informed hunters can use mirrors or cameras to detect the blurry image in the crowd, allowing them to identify the Damned.

You know, I've had a problem with this since they first introduced it. It means that any photo of you is an instant masquerade breach. "You can't be identified in a photo" aside, the instant a mob boss or CEO or politician or somebody important (again, we are talking WoD vampires, many of whom are apparently such big, important people; Ventrue, I'm looking at you) stops showing up clearly in photographs or the news or in those giant wall-sized mirrors that ballrooms are so fond of, their social life (and career!) is over. Not because they're a vampire, but because a guy who can't be photographed is a PR nightmare (can blush of life make you come in clear in photos? I don't remember, Vampire books tend to send me into desksmashing fits, so I haven't read one in a while.).

Dominate and the Vinculum aren't foolproof, and it's a mistake to think that the Vinculum can work in all cases (especially now, when it can be resisted and the ghoul can spend their own Willpower to steal vampire powers), just like it's a mistake to think that people close to the victim won't notice the odd behavior of someone under the effect of Dominate all the time, even though it will probably work a lot more often than it seems like it should (http://www.theinvisiblegorilla.com/gorilla_experiment.html).

Blush of life just means the vampire is expending Vitae (and thus feeding, and thus exposing itself) that much more often.

Essentially, watch a flower long enough and a bee drops by. Now imagine that every flower is a potential stool pigeon.

The New Bruceski
2012-11-24, 04:01 AM
There are really two ways to approach this. If you have powerful fantasy elements and want to insert a masquerade then you need an equally powerful way of keeping it in place, which has its own problems. The other method (if you're the one world-building) is to decide that there's a masquerade and think about what you could fit.

Werewolves for example: they could be stronger and faster than mundanes, but it would need to be toward the high end of "average" rather than the strength of ten guys. "You're stronger than you look" rather than "there's no way you should be able to lift that." Add in a way to control the transformation thing (make it mostly cosmetic and at-will for example) and small numbers and they could hide pretty well. Strong, but not strong enough to fight off the scared mob who grew up with horror movies, or even 2-3 of them. They'd be worried about revealing themselves because humanity's been trained to destroy them. Seriously, if a friend told you (and showed you) that he was a werewolf would your first question be "what's it like" or "is it true what they say about silver?" We don't need to intend harm, but we have defined our fantasy monsters in terms of how they are killed.

You still have the problem of rebellious gangs and some idiot with a cameraphone. If you keep their numbers small though, you have small communities in a city like any other ethnic group, with their fears of persecution encouraging them to pass that fear onto their kids and to watch out for each other. I could see their existence being a bit of an open secret, spread carefully among friends and EMTs (biology's gonna be different) and such but only surrounded by heavy warnings and after a lot of trust.

Another idea I've had is a bit of "luck magic" that works along similar ideas to Mage. People with this power could do unnatural things, but it was harder to do the more obvious it was. If a glass fell off a table, slowing it just enough that you could grab it on the way down would be doable, but making it stop itself before hitting the floor and hover there would be difficult enough as to be impossible. The main deviation between my view of this and Mage/other similar systems is that more blatant magic wouldn't destabilize reality or attract ghastly horrors, it simply wouldn't work. In this case maintaining the masquerade is natural, and luck wizards would probably wind up a "trade secret" among casino staff (where they'd be trained how to manipulate gamblers into spending more, just like everything else that exists in a casino). Others may find themselves in high-risk situations like cops or firemen, where they get a reputation for having a lot of close calls but are otherwise indistinguishable from their peers.

Prime32
2012-11-24, 09:33 AM
Taking a look at Mahou Sensei Negima (tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Manga/MahouSenseiNegima):

Most supernatural creatures live in the Magic World in another dimension; you can only enter or leave through airport-like complexes, and some inhabitants (mostly non-humans and people with non-human ancestry) can't leave at all. Spells exist to create pocket dimensions on Earth where mages can hide.
A lot of supernatural techniques are well known, just powerless in the hands of someone without the right potential (which is usually hereditary). You might know that someone is a master martial artist and that he trains to channel ki, but not that this lets him really shoot energy blasts.
Magic users don't ignore technology, and their science is actually more advanced than the rest of the world. Hence some of their implements can be mistaken for just supertech, and they have fewer issues with electronic information leaks.
Most supernatural creatures on Earth look human, or can take human form. And if they saw a guy with horns walking by, most people would just think it's a costume.
There is a subtle global-level hypnosis spell in place which tries to convince humans to come up with rational explanations for the supernatural, and it's particularly strong in the place where most of the story is set. Some people are immune, but they're ignored. If anyone does find out, memory erasure spells also exist.


The ending has the protagonists teaming up with Muggle governments to gradually reduce the masquerade, giving them advanced magitek on the condition that they use it to develop space exploration and terraforming, so that in a few years they'll have somewhere to evacuate the inhabitants of the Magic World (which is collapsing).