Question About Starting Vampire: The Masquerade

[Snownine]

I have wanted to try Vampire: The Masquerade for a long time and have reached a point where I want to actually make it happen if I can get enough of my rpg buddies on board. The thing is, I know next to nothing about the game and was hoping to get some opinions on what you guys see as a good place to start. Is there a particular edition of the game that is considered to be the best? Would a pre-written adventure be a good way to help my group get our feet wet with the system? If so, any suggestions on that front? I would love to get some feedback and these and anything else you think if worse knowing.

[Anonymouswizard]

There is basically a divider between V20 and V5. V20 is basically a compilation of everything that came before, on the plus side all the Clans, Bloodlines, and Disciplined are all in one place. In the surveys it's a terrible ruleset.

V5 is more of a soft reboot, and what I personally own (so small amount of bias here, I like it). It returns to the Anarchs versus Camarilla focus from 1e, although the Anarchs are now a Sect instead of mostly being Camarilla rebels, and with three full Clans claiming membership in the movement it's lost a good bit of the 'young versus old' it used to have. The Sabbat has been kept offscreen for the moment, with the Anarchs teaching on a few of their traits (notably now having a significant number of pro-diablerie members), but are coming back soon.

There's also been other shakeups. The Tremere have split, with House Tremere going independent, House Goratrix resurfacing inside the Sabbat, and House Carna remaining with the Canals as they start to abandon Hermetic Thaumaturgy for a number of more nature-focused traditions. Maybe House Carna will matter in a few decades. There's also House Ipssismus, who joined the Anarchs and welcome any and all magical styles, but they're mostly a footnote.

For other Clans it's mostly been a melding, the various Necromancer Clans now operate under one banner, whole the Banu Haqim castes are more social distinctions than separate bloodlines, with the Viziers absorbing the Sorcerers. A lot of Banu Haqim have joined the Camarilla, mainly Viziers, which means that the Cam has some actually competent Sorcerers as well as House Carna. Oh, the Lasombra also joined the Camarilla, but I don't want to play as one as much.

Disciplines have now been combined together but are more versatile, with multiple Perez to pick from (at all levels). Quietus is now Boots Sorcery, for example.

Blood Potency is now only limited to Generation Icarus's of being strictly based on it. Each Generation has a minimum and maximum value, and then it waxes and wanes with time spent anyone and in Torpor.

Finally vampires are a little bit weaker, and some government agency directors have found out about them and teamed up with the Vatican. Hunters are a bigger deal again.

If the amount sounds good to you get V5, if not get V20. Nothing wrong with being either side of the fence.

[Mechalich]

The best edition of VtM is probably still the old revised edition from 1998. V20 is just a compilation cash grab by Onyx Path and the recent V5 is a barely extant product that's already been pulled back upon by the actual owners of the IP (video game company Paradox Interactive) and is not broadly supported. None of the rule sets are actually good, by any reasonable estimation, but the oWoD storyteller system is at least well known. There are no good pre-written adventures, White-Wolf never wrote a decent adventure module for any game ever.

The key to making VtM work, especially for a new group, if to simplify. The setting is massively overstuffed with unnecessary elements that aren't central to the drama at all and just make things complicated in ways that are not helpful. Making it work involves cutting out things you don't need. In general, a useful operating principle is to work only with the core vampire clans of the Camarilla: Brujah, Gangrel, Malkavian, Nosferatu, Toreador, Treme, and Ventrue (if any player asks to play a Malkavian, say no). Don't involve the Anarchs, Sabbat, or any other less faction at all, the internal politics of seven Camarilla clans is more than enough for any one city. Do not involve other types of supernaturals, they are allowed to exist, in a nebulous way, but PCs should not encounter them. Don't involve weird powers or abilities. The disciplines in the core book are more than enough to play with for a new group. Backgrounds are massively unbalanced in every storyteller game there has ever been, be aware of this. For a first time group, do not use merits and flaws (or frankly anything with the word 'optional' in front of it).

VtM's central structure is the city, which is actually a [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_area#:~:text=A%20metropolitan%20area% 20or%20metro,sharing%20industry%2C%20infrastructur e%20and%20housing.]metro area. You should pick a city that is known to you to develop as the city for your game, as familiarity makes it much easier to bring to life. You probably want the city to feature 50-100 vampires (divided between 7 clans, this gives each clan 7-14 members, a good number). You want the ratio of vampires to humans to be between 1:10,000 and 1:100,000. A metro of 1-3 million works well for this. For example, Pittsburgh, at 2.3 million, hosts 76 vampires at a 1:30,000 ratio.

VtM does not provide a natural reason for its parties (called coteries) to work together, especially when they consist of multi-clan groups. The single most important part of VtM campaign design and session zero play is to provide a reason for why the coterie functions as a unit and to present an overarching plot they are dealing with that all the members have some legitimate reason to care about.

In terms of campaign ideas and flow it is useful to think of VtM as a game about criminal conspiracy. The Camarilla operates quite similarly to a mafia network or drug cartel, it's just that all the major players are immortal blood drinkers.

[fishyfishyfishy]

V20 is just a compilation cash grab by Onyx Path

This is objectively false and I can prove it. Onyx Path Publishing didn't publish V20. They published the supplements afterward and turned it into a full fledged edition of it's own.

To answer the original question: V20 is probably your best bet if you plan on playing the system for any length of time. It's got everything you need, and has a multitude of additional materials. I highly recommend the core book and Beckett's Jyhad Diary for every Storyteller.

[opaopajr]

I see the edition drama already started. :smalltongue:

Anyway, I say try out the QuickStart version of the game. Should still be free out there, and on .pdf in DriveThruRPG Storyteller Vault. It starts you as Camarilla, and of the original 7 clans. Once you learn those 7 clands, and the typical "starting 3" in-clan disciplines of the basic 10 disciplines, you're good to go.

After that Run Chicago By Night as a sandbox with some adventures in the back and you are golden. Easiest way into the game.

Biggest Hint: Discard the Rule of One (where each rolled 1 removes a success). It messes with probability in 'stoopid' ways where high dice pools become a liability for increased botch chance.

The advantage of Storyteller dice pools is it's a bunch of dots for the math-phobic. Unfortunately a lot of the ideas they initially threw out there reinforces how math-phobic the designers were... and it effects everything from probability (e.g. Rule of One), action economy (e.g. Celerity), time definitions (e.g. tabulating rounds & scenes), and experience progression (e.g. XP inflation rate). And the rest of the game line has been trying to kit-bash these flawed foundations into something less loosey-goosey and unbalanced whimsy for decades now.

Enjoy the product for what it wishes to be and unclench from what it really is. It's a beanbag chair of aspirations, not a sturdy chair of heirloom. :smallwink:

[Anonymouswizard]

V5's advantage is that, well, the mechanics work. They might not be the best, but the old system jyst didn't work.

Plus you'll see a lot of the arguments against V5 boil down to 'it's not Revised'. This is a good thing, revised was made for a somewhat different audience and trying to continue from it runs a large risk of alienating new players. V5 ramps everything back massively, puts the focus back on the 12th-13th generation* instead of the 8th to 4th, and kicks the harder to play Clans out of the rulebook.The downside is that the Revised fluff was legitimately good, and the new edition still hasn't found it's feet.

Plus there's been a lot of drama with changes to who is developing it, I haven't bothered to keep track of who is on the team.

I personally like it, I like most of the mechanical changes (but not the addition of Blood Potency), I like the new fluff in the broad strokes even if it needs tightening up around the edges (the Second Inquisition needs to be toned down a bit, while the Camarilla should soften their anti-tech policies), and I like not having forty plus Bloodlines each with a unique discipline in addition to half the Clans getting them as well. Yeah, combining Vicissitude into Protean or Blood Sorcery makes the game easier, especially if we actually bother to balance the powers.

Don't listen to people telling you V5 is bad, have a look at the changes compared to revised and decide for yourself. You might decide the Revised fluff sunds better, in which case you should pick up Revised or V20 instead.

* Yes, 13th is still the standard assumed generation. Duskborn in the core rulebook just allows you to scale down if you want, but they're not intended to be the focus.

[Mechalich]

This is objectively false and I can prove it. Onyx Path Publishing didn't publish V20. They published the supplements afterward and turned it into a full fledged edition of it's own.

Okay, fine, if you want to split technical hairs, the V20 corebook did come out while the the corpse of White-Wolf was owned and operated by CCP (a video game producer responsible for EVE Online, White-Wolf has been owned by a TTRPG house since 2006), but that happened literally months before CCP terminated the existence of White-Wolf and let Rich Thomas publish books made by freelancers and 'White-Wolf' was literally two people at that point plus a bunch of freelance contributors.

That's not really important though. The real issue with V20 is that because it's primarily a compilation/rewrite of material created in various earlier Vampire materials it includes tons of material that is actively detrimental to making the system useful for new players because it includes a whole bunch of options that you don't want to bring into a new game. Paths of Enlightenment, Minor Bloodlines, rules for creating methuselahs? These things have negative value to someone just getting into the game.


Plus there's been a lot of drama with changes to who is developing it, I haven't bothered to keep track of who is on the team.

That's an understatement. Paradox functionally canceled V5 and absorbed their version of 'White-Wolf' back into the core company, fired the main creative director, and gave publishing control back to Onyx Path.

V5 may very well have superior mechanics to VtM revised (this isn't exactly a high bar). I don't know. I have no interest in the game given the mess surrounding it.

[Anonymouswizard]

That's an understatement. Paradox functionally canceled V5 and absorbed their version of 'White-Wolf' back into the core company, fired the main creative director, and gave publishing control back to Onyx Path.

V5 may very well have superior mechanics to VtM revised (this isn't exactly a high bar). I don't know. I have no interest in the game given the mess surrounding it.

To Modiphius. I know it's confusing because Onyx Path was the one releasing books but it wasn't OP with the licence. There was supposed to be a Player's Guide this year, nothing came out of it.

Of course Paradox has now taken control back, given the licence to some other company (who publish Kids on Bikes or something). But Parawolf2 is writing the books, and they've put the Grontar: the Frutang guy in charge.

As for the mechanics, they're basically nWoD but slightly better/worse (delete according to taste). The game actually functions now and doesn't cause skilled characters to botch more, but yeah it's not exactly great.

[Mechalich]

As for the mechanics, they're basically nWoD but slightly better/worse (delete according to taste). The game actually functions now and doesn't cause skilled characters to botch more, but yeah it's not exactly great.

My understanding is that the best mechanics ever made for Vampire is actually the officially licensed GURPS port of the system, which is both hilarious and tragic at the same time.

[Snownine]

Thank you, everyone for your replies, I really appreciate the information. I have been involved to a lesser or greater degree with D&D for almost twenty years so it is comfortable and known. This holds true with the people I play with most of the time as well. We have dabbled with other games, but only a bit and not much since 5e came out. I am really antsy to play something different and I love the flavor of Vampire but it is a little intimidating getting into a franchise with decades of lore and rules. Is the Vatican and government agency stuff in all versions? If so, to what degree? To be honest that aspect does not interest me at all.

[Anonymouswizard]

My understanding is that the best mechanics ever made for Vampire is actually the officially licensed GURPS port of the system, which is both hilarious and tragic at the same time.

Yes, but that only lasted for two books and IIRC didn't cover all the Clans.

Like, the original system isn't hard to beat in terms of design, and the new system isn't much better. But to me the new system is good enough to but houserule like I did the old one. It's a matter of taste.


As to the Church and Government Agency stuff, religious hunters have been important since 1e, and major institutions new about vampires, while kindred would occasionally run into government agents who mostly wouldn't be in the know. A big part of 5e's metaplot is a small number of highly placed agents finding out, deciding to keep quiet about it, and making an agreement with a particular group of religious hunters to pool resources. Hunters provide the knowledge, which is then used to direct government strike teams to take out vampires. They destroyed the primary Tremere chantry, killed the majority of kindred in London (probably only took six months for more to show up, if that), and might be the reason Giovanni HQ is no more.

But the Second Inquisition is strictly 5e only.

[Mechalich]

Thank you, everyone for your replies, I really appreciate the information. I have been involved to a lesser or greater degree with D&D for almost twenty years so it is comfortable and known. This holds true with the people I play with most of the time as well. We have dabbled with other games, but only a bit and not much since 5e came out. I am really antsy to play something different and I love the flavor of Vampire but it is a little intimidating getting into a franchise with decades of lore and rules. Is the Vatican and government agency stuff in all versions? If so, to what degree? To be honest that aspect does not interest me at all.

Vampire hunters of various sorts exist in all editions, and are indeed a classic part of the lore and part of the reason behind the titular masquerade. A unit of vampire hunters associated with the Catholic Church has also existed in pretty much all versions of the game, because this is something that it makes sense would exist, but it's importance and value varies considerably.

In the oWoD (which for purposes of VtM encompasses Revised and V20), Vampires were both massively more powerful than ordinary mortals (well, if you took the right abilities anyway), and also the weakest major supernatural splat. In particular Mages were just more powerful than anyone else, and the technological mages, the Technocracy, who got to play with all the really fun government goodies, could basically annihilate an infinite number of PC level vampires without even trying. This was a major design issue for a whole bunch of reasons.

The big thing with regard to hunters, other supernaturals, and government attention all rolled together is that it's called 'the masquerade' for a reason. It's important that, if masquerade breaches start to pile up, pressure from outside sources (and also fellow vampires who recognize you as endangering them too) pile up as well, kind of like the wanted meter in GTA. It's doesn't really matter what you use for this purpose, and the amount a given party can get away with will vary significantly based on things like campaign tone and also location (because things like variation in murder rate and the level of government of authority matter in this context), but you can't just rampage.

[Snownine]

Thanks again for the info. I will talk to my potential players and maybe nudge them to do a little research of their own and figure decide what they think sounds best. It will probably come down to my choice since I am the one most interested in it and will almost certainly be the gm.

[opaopajr]

Thank you, everyone for your replies, I really appreciate the information. I have been involved to a lesser or greater degree with D&D for almost twenty years so it is comfortable and known. This holds true with the people I play with most of the time as well. We have dabbled with other games, but only a bit and not much since 5e came out. I am really antsy to play something different and I love the flavor of Vampire but it is a little intimidating getting into a franchise with decades of lore and rules. Is the Vatican and government agency stuff in all versions? If so, to what degree? To be honest that aspect does not interest me at all.

Yeah... that is all part of the duct tape and pvc piping grafted onto the beanbag chair... the later editions added rules & setting creep just as it always does to every game in an effort to "ground" the freewheeling energy of its 1e.

There is a reason I suggest the Quickstart rules, which mostly ignores all of that cruft while still selling some of that 1e energy. :smallsmile:

I like 1e, but it is very much a heady product of its time (which makes its fun all the better to me). It is still wholly workable for a GM who can master their game system & setting & table as long as the trust flows. If you got 20 years of GMing under your belt I assume you eventually learned that "the rules are more like guidelines~!" and can handle your own.

(2e is... OK. I have nothing good to say about Revised beyond offering extra clans & sects around the world. Vampire: the Dark Ages is amazing, but not what you are wanting. V20 is a great compiler but is the deep end of the pool. V5 is a functional reworking but is a gutted reset that leaves me utterly uninspired and disinterested. So that really leaves me 1e and Quickstart.)

But getting a 1e book might be more than you guys need to jump in. So I say Quickstart for simplication & clarity. :smallwink:

[Anonymouswizard]

I'd recommend 2e over 1e, it came out a year later and it's basically the same book, but has some tweaks that makes the game work better.

[fishyfishyfishy]

That's not really important though. The real issue with V20 is that because it's primarily a compilation/rewrite of material created in various earlier Vampire materials it includes tons of material that is actively detrimental to making the system useful for new players because it includes a whole bunch of options that you don't want to bring into a new game. Paths of Enlightenment, Minor Bloodlines, rules for creating methuselahs? These things have negative value to someone just getting into the game.


This is honestly the first time I've ever heard someone express this opinion. To say it's in the minority would be an understatement. Most people love having everything they'd need to run the game available from the start. Not to mention every single one of those additional options is presented with the context that it's optional and players should consult with their storyteller if they wish to use it. Long time and new fans alike love V20.

Edit: I also want to address that you straight up lied, or were very misinformed about V20, and stated that it's a cash grab and then doubled down on the hate after being called out. You don't have to like it but at least don't make things up about it. Nobody gets into the ttRPG industry for money.


To Modiphius. I know it's confusing because Onyx Path was the one releasing books but it wasn't OP with the licence. There was supposed to be a Player's Guide this year, nothing came out of it.

Of course Paradox has now taken control back, given the licence to some other company (who publish Kids on Bikes or something). But Parawolf2 is writing the books, and they've put the Grontar: the Frutang guy in charge.



Actually, Modiphius doesn't have Publishing rights any longer. Renegade Game Studios are the publishers for core content going forward and Onyx Path Publishing maintains it's agreement with White Wolf to publish other products.


Thanks again for the info. I will talk to my potential players and maybe nudge them to do a little research of their own and figure decide what they think sounds best. It will probably come down to my choice since I am the one most interested in it and will almost certainly be the gm.

This is the best decision you could make. If you're open to it I'd even suggest trying multiple versions to see which one you like better.

[Snownine]

I think I will order a copy of the revised edition and give that a read. It is my understanding that I just need the one book for both players and gm? I am looking on Amazon and seeing used copies of the hardcover for $43 but might just buy the pdf at drivethrurpg for $18. It is the one with the green cover and the lone rose on it, yeah?

[Aliess]

A fairly easy "in" to the setting that I've run a couple of times is to have all of the PCs be new vampires who are being presented to the Prince for recognition into society.
After a quick scene between each character and their sire to get that relationship down and impress on the player how important this night is the PCs are taken to Elysium and;
Immediately get told they owe the Prince a life bin just for existing.
Get to recite the traditions.
Get pointed to the sheriff who has a job for then to start paying off their debt.
Meet a couple of primogen/important members of court.
Head over to a student party where a couple of 14th gens live.
"Deal" with the students however they see fit (under the watchful eye of an obfuscated scourge). Usually I have one of the 14th green up in their room panicking after accidentally murdering their partner while trying to get off them for extra complications.
Go back to court and report.

It's a nice contained story, you're already managing about a dozen NPC's, the PCs have a reason to work together, they're in debt to at least one member of court (two if the scourge needs to help/cover for them) which lets you put in story hooks for them to follow. It's all camarilla focused so you don't need to worry about global meta politics and the PCs are just as green as the players do don't need to have memorised every book in existence.
And it's totally edition agnostic so you can run it with whatevers to hand.

[fishyfishyfishy]

I think I will order a copy of the revised edition and give that a read. It is my understanding that I just need the one book for both players and gm? I am looking on Amazon and seeing used copies of the hardcover for $43 but might just buy the pdf at drivethrurpg for $18. It is the one with the green cover and the lone rose on it, yeah?

Yes you only need one book.

[Rule-Of-Three]

From a player of the original WoD series of games, I'm partial to them specifically. There is plenty of.excellent.and more knowledgeable advice above to lean on regarding current iterations.

I'll through in that for players coming from D&D, Vampire: Dark Ages might be a easier transition thematically. The political divisions are less complex, and the genre feel will be closer to what your players are already used to.

[Yora]

Now I want to look get a real look at the game as well. (I'm going with revised, I think.)

Are there any resources for the old World of Darkness in Northern Germany and Denmark?
Can an old World of Darkness campaign work being set in 2020? (Even if it's an alternative timeline where the apocalypse never happened yet?)

[Rule-Of-Three]

Now I want to look get a real look at the game as well. (I'm going with revised, I think.)

Are there any resources for the old World of Darkness in Northern Germany and Denmark?
Can an old World of Darkness campaign work being set in 2020? (Even if it's an alternative timeline where the apocalypse never happened yet?)

Could old WoD be ported into 2020? Almost certainly yes, although you'll have to make some big creative license calls about how the societies of supernaturals change.

How does the Masquerade work (or Delerium) in a world where everyone has the ability to livestream feeding or supernatural behavior? Does your New Orleans by Night sourcebook make sense post Katrina, or New York by night post 9/11? You'll have to imagine and adapt the material to accommodate, but it's not such a stretch. You can even introduce new major theme dilemmas like the availability of CRIPR technology has foisted an identity crisis on Cainites (Kindred for you posers), as you can now lab grow human blood. Have fun.

[Yora]

I am imagining John Wick with vampires. :smallcool:

Actually even more like Drive and Hotline Miami, but John Wick also has similar aesthetics and a ridiculous secret underworld hiding in plain sight. I feel 90s gothic is very much past its sell by date (unless you deliberately want to run a retro campaign), but more recent neo-noir feels like an aesthetic that would work quite well as a modernized alternative.

My concern was primarily if there's something in the mythology that definitely states that Vampires all have to go extinct in 2000, or something like that. But it seems like at least the earlier sources treat the upcoming end of the vampire world as a fringe hysteria and not something that's actually expected to happen.

With modern technology, I think the vampires just have to be more vigilant. Don't assume that you can't be seen just because you don't see anyone observing you. Do your monster stuff only when you're certain there's no line of sight from other nearby places. Have the Nosferatu spread well made but easily identifiable fake videos on the internet. And maybe when you have vampires and ghouls starting to show hints of going rogue, take them out primitively instead of waiting until they break the masquerade.
I'm going through the revised rules, and they state at the beginning that The World of Darkness is not just the real world, but with vampires always having been hidden in the shadows. It's an alternative version of the world that has always been influenced by the supernatural. Superstition and urban legends, as well as human disinterest are somewhat different than in reality. It's not like a video of a vampire attack appearing tomorrow would be something completely new and unexpected. It would exist as just another small piece in a long line of vampire documentation that has been going on for centuries, and which people are used to as normal. And let's not forget what silly nonsense people believe today because they heard it on the internet or even the news, and most people just shrug and consider them deluded idiots.
Vampires being real sounds no more delusional than the ghost of Hugo Chavez manipulating elections in the US. There might be millions of people who correctly believe that Vampire sightings are real, but the masquerade would still be intact because the other humans tell them to shut up with that nonsense.

[Mechalich]

I am imagining John Wick with vampires. :smallcool:

Actually even more like Drive and Hotline Miami, but John Wick also has similar aesthetics and a ridiculous secret underworld hiding in plain sight. I feel 90s gothic is very much past its sell by date (unless you deliberately want to run a retro campaign), but more recent neo-noir feels like an aesthetic that would work quite well as a modernized alternative.

Unfortunately, VtM was not designed to facilitate this style of gameplay. In fact the design team denigrated such 'katana and trenchcoat' type games as 'Vampions' and worked directly to counter the playstyle. If you want to make a neo-noir urban fantasy street level superheroes game involving vampires and other creatures of the night you really should use something else.

The system is both bad generally and specifically bad at things like functional combat. The action economy is a terrible mess and always has been and minionomancy is both directly supported by the fluff and also impossibly OP - one player can spend literally every last point they've got to become a bad*** vampire warrior and another can spend 5 points in 'backup' and the latter will have significantly more force to through around. Mechanically it makes sense to pick a system that runs low-level supers (what VtM vampires functionally are) well rather than use VtM.

Likewise, the fluff...isn't actually good, there's just a lot of it. If you want a generalized modern urban fantasy backdrop, there's no real advantage over choosing VtM versus say, The Vampire Dairies or some other recent franchise as a basis for the fluff. In fact, for a neo-noir action-heavy take I'd specifically suggest looking at the Underworld film franchise, campy and ridiculous as it is, rather than VtM.

[Rule-Of-Three]

Hard to sell an Underworld setting as an improvement on WoD when it was such a blatant ripoff of White Wolf IP. The only reason the studio got away with it was a small RPG company is too poor to successfully litigate.

[Mechalich]

Hard to sell an Underworld setting as an improvement on WoD when it was such a blatant ripoff of White Wolf IP. The only reason the studio got away with it was a small RPG company is too poor to successfully litigate.

It really wasn't. The reality is that very little in Vampire qualifies as 'original' itself. Most of the clans are directly traceable to other kinds of vampires in other kinds of vampire media that circulated in the decades prior to VtM's publication, and all of the general concepts - the universal monsters, the blood magic, how vampires are made, etc. trace to public domain sources like the titular Dracula. Which is why people have continued to make exceedingly popular urban fantasy settings using all the same monsters and tropes as the WoD (go to Amazon and browse 'Paranormal & Urban' in the fantasy section for a few pages) without any problems.

VtM took a bunch of extremely classic ideas, mixed in some 'gothic-punk' stylizations and packaged it all together in some books that were very well put together for the time (if you compare WW productions to the other gaming texts on the market in the 1990s the quality variance is obvious) and threw out an appealing package that happened to resonate with the needs and desires of the TTRPG community and its adjacent fandoms at the time.

Look Underworld isn't good, it's not nearly self-aware enough to be campy and not nearly restrained enough to not look ridiculous, but it does have action-focused Vampire superheroes. The thing it shares with Vampire is, really, the fashion sense. But so do the Blade films, the Matrix, and a whole bunch of other early 2000s movies. The key point though is that VtM, as a game, is not about playing Vampires as street level supers and if you try to do that using the VtM system - something so, so many people did, myself included - you will have to fight the system basically every step of the way.

VtM manages to just barely work, if you understand its foibles and wrestle with it a bunch, for the sort of tightly-knit goth-tinged soapy vampire politics it was intended to produce. Not only does it share the problem typical of most RPGs that it struggles outside of its specific design wheelhouse, but the people behind the game were openly against playing it 'the wrong way' and worked to actively cripple any ability to do so.

Ultimately the only real reason to recommend VtM is because its well-known due to being, very briefly, the world's most popular RPG and therefore it's easier to find people willing to play it. But it's not a good game in its own right, it's not even the best game or most playable game in the oWoD. To basically any GM familiar with running a decent generic or universal system it makes way more sense to put together their own urban fantasy variant (plenty of the more popular settings already have homemade versions floating around the internet) rather than using VtM.

[Snownine]

Overall this thread really put a damper on my enthusiasm for the game. Are there any other games with the same feel that run better? I have no experience with generic systems and where things in my life are right now I don't think I have the drive atm to build my own game out of a generic system just to get a little vampire fix, it sounds like way more work than using an already made game.

[Aliess]

That's sad to hear. As a counter to some of the podts above, we used to play second addition, and have played some 5th edition out of the box and never experienced any problems. I wouldn't say we're the sort of group that push the rules though so I'm happy to accept groups that take the gaming aspect of an RPG seriously may have different experiences.
Setting wise... Ignore the Meta is my suggestion. Read whatever main book you get and throw in anything you find on forums, wikis and elsewhere that you think sounds fun regardless of edition. There is so much material out there that you're never going to get a 100% canon game, and most of it is irrelevant to your game anyway.
LA by night on YouTube is a mostly canon 5e game run by one of the game team which is worth a watch to get an idea of how the game plays.

[Morty]

Overall this thread really put a damper on my enthusiasm for the game. Are there any other games with the same feel that run better? I have no experience with generic systems and where things in my life are right now I don't think I have the drive atm to build my own game out of a generic system just to get a little vampire fix, it sounds like way more work than using an already made game.

I don't think it's worthwhile to listen too much to people who respond to a thread inquiring about a game with "don't, it sucks". If you want to try it, try it. You'll like it or you won't and you can proceed from there. If you do want another vampire game, there's always Vampire: the Requiem, from the "new" World of Darkness, later rebranded to Chronicles of Darkness. It's superficially similar to Masquerade but with a different feel and focus.

[Yora]

As someone who's still reading through the revised edition rulebook: Are there any guidelines on designing the vampire underworld for your own city?

The only number I've found being thrown around is that the Camarilla tries to keep the vampire population for an area to 1 vampire per 100,000 humans, or 10 vampires per million (1 vpm). When you look at metropolitan areas and not just strictly cities, that actually gets a pretty decent number of a few dozen vampires.
(You could take this map (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/df/Karte_Metropolregionen.svg/800px-Karte_Metropolregionen.svg.png) as the territories of vampire prices in Germany, each supporting some 40-60 vampires. And with low traffic at night, it would only be an hour car ride to the center even from the more outlying areas.)

50 vampires (for a region of 5 million humans) is pretty good pool of NPCs, but if you split them among eight or nine clans, you end up with average clans of only 6 vampires. That's not enough to have just one vampire for every generation from 6th to 13th. Is it assumed that all the major clans have a presence in each city, or is it common to have only three or four clans (plus the occasional loner from other clans)?
Is there anything on which clans are more numerous and which ones more rare? (I'd guess Brujah might be quite common, while Gangrel and Nosferatu would be more rare.)
Are younger generations more numerous than older ones? Nothing should stop a primogen to make more 8th or 9th generation vampires instead of leaving it up to 11th and 12th generation progeny to create new members.

And do ghouls count as vampires? (They need permission from the prince to be created, but they don't put a drain on the local blood supply.)

[Eldan]

I don't think there's anythign as such stopping vampires of the stronger generations from procreating.

I suppose it's largely paranoia. If you're an elder, a bunch of thinbloods and neonates are much less of a threat to you. It would probably be very difficult to ensure someone's loyalty through the transformation. You'd have to find a human and make them loyal to you in a way that still applies once they are powerful and immortal.

[comicshorse]

As someone who's still reading through the revised edition rulebook: Are there any guidelines on designing the vampire underworld for your own city?

The only number I've found being thrown around is that the Camarilla tries to keep the vampire population for an area to 1 vampire per 100,000 humans, or 10 vampires per million (1 vpm). When you look at metropolitan areas and not just strictly cities, that actually gets a pretty decent number of a few dozen vampires.
(You could take this map (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/df/Karte_Metropolregionen.svg/800px-Karte_Metropolregionen.svg.png) as the territories of vampire prices in Germany, each supporting some 40-60 vampires. And with low traffic at night, it would only be an hour car ride to the center even from the more outlying areas.)

50 vampires (for a region of 5 million humans) is pretty good pool of NPCs, but if you split them among eight or nine clans, you end up with average clans of only 6 vampires. That's not enough to have just one vampire for every generation from 6th to 13th. Is it assumed that all the major clans have a presence in each city, or is it common to have only three or four clans (plus the occasional loner from other clans)?
Is there anything on which clans are more numerous and which ones more rare? (I'd guess Brujah might be quite common, while Gangrel and Nosferatu would be more rare.)
Are younger generations more numerous than older ones? Nothing should stop a primogen to make more 8th or 9th generation vampires instead of leaving it up to 11th and 12th generation progeny to create new members.

And do ghouls count as vampires? (They need permission from the prince to be created, but they don't put a drain on the local blood supply.)

1 per 100,00 is the ideal. Most cities actually have between 1 per 10,00-50,000 depending on how popular/ overcrowded they are. ( Also depending on how much plot you want to build around competition for Hunting grounds ). The Sabbat are by canon much worse at keeping these numbers down than the Camarilla.

Brujah are indeed generally considered to be the most numerous clan. Nobody outside the Nosferatu knows how many Nosferatu there are :smallsmile:. I'd say the smallest clan by sheer numbers would probably be the Gangrel.

Cities usually have some Clans that are more numerous than others. For most cities this is just because of chance or groups of Kindred forming around a powerful Elder of their clan. Or even that members of that particular clan just like that city for its cultural background ( For example if you are in Paris you are going to be constantly tripping over Toreador. )

The younger Generations are definitely more numerous than Elders. This is variously described as because Elders lose the urge to spend time on helping their Childe/ don't want to create potential rivals/ will have enough experience to not accidentally Sire

Absolutely something would stop a Primogen creating new Vampires. The Prince. Arguably keeping the Vampire population down is his most important job.

Ghouls do not count as Vampires because as you said they don't put a strain on the Blood supply.


Posted by Morty

I don't think it's worthwhile to listen too much to people who respond to a thread inquiring about a game with "don't, it sucks". If you want to try it, try it. You'll like it or you won't and you can proceed from there.

Seconded

[Snownine]

I will go ahead and buy the revised edition and give it a read. I just wanted to get a good idea before I took the plunge, entertainment money has been harder to come by this year so I have been more conservative with purchases like this of late. Thank you, everyone, for your responses.

[Yora]

The younger Generations are definitely more numerous than Elders. This is variously described as because Elders lose the urge to spend time on helping their Childe/ don't want to create potential rivals/ will have enough experience to not accidentally Sire

Yeah, you need pawns who are useful, but not strong enough to challenge you. Most of the Camarilla laws seem to exist to keep the younger generations from rising up against the elders.

While I've not seen it explictly mentioned yet (either in the book or when looking things up on the internet), the tension between older and younger generations seems to be a really major element of the setting.
The whole story of the Antedeluvians and the Methusala is about which ones are going to eat the other first. Supposedly, ancient vampires have to feed on other vampires, and younger vampires can get the power to escape that fate by feeding on their ancestors first.
And if the world doesn't end any day now, the same thing will happen to the younger generations of today in a thousand years or so.

Which brings me to another question: Is the world definitely going to end? It says the Camarilla, who are mainstream vampire society, believes it's all fairy tales and boogymen, with the Sabbat being a nutty doomsday cult. But at the same time it's always "Gehenna, Sabbat, Jyhad!" and "These are the end times".
If the world really ends in two or three years, then the whole thing about young vampires turning into beasts after several centuries, and the inevitable conflict with their elders becomes meaningless.

My early suspicion would be that this is a case of metaplot lore creep, with it being meant as a myth originally, and writer then getting swept up by the hype over the years and it becoming a certainty.
But what makes more sense to me is that a minority believe in the end times is putting enough vampires on edge to start causing widespread disruption, and the fear being the source of actual chaos that will cause a lasting shift to vampire society when it settles. Is that what the original intent was?

[comicshorse]

While I've not seen it explictly mentioned yet (either in the book or when looking things up on the internet), the tension between older and younger generations seems to be a really major element of the setting.


Yeah it was a very big part of 1st edition. Indeed I'd go as far as to say originally it was meant to be one of the two major themes of the game. As time went by it got sidelined in favour of conflict with the Sabbat and maintaining the Masquerade as the more important plot elements



Which brings me to another question: Is the world definitely going to end? It says the Camarilla, who are mainstream vampire society, believes it's all fairy tales and boogymen, with the Sabbat being a nutty doomsday cult. But at the same time it's always "Gehenna, Sabbat, Jyhad!" and "These are the end times".


Well as always its your game so if you don't want the Apocalypse to be more than a Kindred legend than that is how it is. And for the record in the many Vampire games I've been in only one ST chose to have it be actually happening and then it was the major thrust of the whole campaign as we were playing his adaption of the 'Transylvanian Chronicles'/ 'Giovanni Chronicles''
That said from the amount of print White Wolf dedicated to the subject (including the rather poor book of scenario's on different ways you could run Gehenna) I'd have to say they definitely meant for the world to end and in a real, no kidding Apocalypse not just social change to Kindred society

[Yora]

That does seem to defeat the purpose of the game, though. Elders mistrusting their own progeny, fighting over territory, trying to keep your humanity, maintaining the masquerade. It's all pointless when all vampires and humans are going to be dead in a few months.

[comicshorse]

That does seem to defeat the purpose of the game, though. Elders mistrusting their own progeny, fighting over territory, trying to keep your humanity, maintaining the masquerade. It's all pointless when all vampires and humans are going to be dead in a few months.

Well when the books first started coming out it wasn't a few months off just the new future. The first book came out in 1991 so assuming they were thinking the Apocalpyse was going to be at the turn of the millennium as was very popular back then. That gave them 9 years to play with before they had to think about whether they actually wanted it to be true.
Its also worth pointing out that while the End was definitely happening for Vampires the fate of humans was much more ill defined.
But in the end its up to the ST. If they feel the atmosphere is enhanced by having this mystical sword of Damocles hanging over everything, great. If not, it's just a legend only a few old and hide bound vampires believe in nowadays

[Yora]

I've looked around some more and found one really neat sounding approach to this.

Almost all contemporary doomsday cults in Europe and North America are led by ultra-conservative old men who believe that the modern world has become so corrupt that it's inconceivable to continue. They are people who find that the modern world is changing and the privileged position people like them used to hold in society doesn't count for that anymore. They don't fear the end of the world, they are hoping for it. Even if you take out the belief that they will find salvation in the afterlife, the end of the world would still at least proof that there was something wrong with the world, and not with them.
The elders of the 6th and 7th generation have been around since the middle ages. They might have been able to adapt to the 18th and 19th century, but now they really struggle to keep up with the changing times. They are already struggling to maintain their humanity simply because of their age, and now they are both struggling more and more to keep being invested in the human world. And on top of that, even the younger vampires are flocking to the Anarchs, leaving the Camarilla behind as an outdated relic from a bygone age. Many elders would feel that they will be fully combined by the beast soon. If Gehenna is real and would happen before that, it might not actually be that bad.
The World Wars and nuclear weapons gave plenty of support to the assumption that the end times might be near, and having gotten comfortable with the idea that Gehenna might be close, many elders actually wish for it to come and get it over with, even if they don't admit it to themselves yet. All this keeps fanning the flames within vampire society and sooner or later it's all going to explode. Elders either turning fully into beasts or disappearing to join the methuselah will leave a power vacuum and there will be lots of all out war between younger vampires fighting to full the void or overthrow remaining elders who are not yet ready to leave the world. When it's open war between vampires, the Masquerade will suffer and masses of vampire hunters will charge into the chaos.

For much of the kindred, it will be the end.

[comicshorse]

That all sounds good though I wouldn't underestimate the number of Elders who may lip service to religious/social beliefs as the reason for wanting the End. When it really comes down to a buried death wish after being ground down by centuries of the same damn thing, over an over

[druid91]

Okay, fine, if you want to split technical hairs, the V20 corebook did come out while the the corpse of White-Wolf was owned and operated by CCP (a video game producer responsible for EVE Online, White-Wolf has been owned by a TTRPG house since 2006), but that happened literally months before CCP terminated the existence of White-Wolf and let Rich Thomas publish books made by freelancers and 'White-Wolf' was literally two people at that point plus a bunch of freelance contributors.

That's not really important though. The real issue with V20 is that because it's primarily a compilation/rewrite of material created in various earlier Vampire materials it includes tons of material that is actively detrimental to making the system useful for new players because it includes a whole bunch of options that you don't want to bring into a new game. Paths of Enlightenment, Minor Bloodlines, rules for creating methuselahs? These things have negative value to someone just getting into the game.



That's an understatement. Paradox functionally canceled V5 and absorbed their version of 'White-Wolf' back into the core company, fired the main creative director, and gave publishing control back to Onyx Path.

V5 may very well have superior mechanics to VtM revised (this isn't exactly a high bar). I don't know. I have no interest in the game given the mess surrounding it.

Honestly I would totally disagree with your assumption that the extra rules are a detriment to the game. The only reason I could see for not wanting them is wanting to run limited games, but having to explain that to the players is hard.

Paths of Enlightenment, Minor Bloodlines and Methuselah's are all part of the world, and therefor something that can come up in game.

[Yora]

But I think the important thing here is that the topic at hand is learning the game as new GMs and new players.
From what I understand, V20 is revised edition plus 200 pages of additional material, on top of the 300 pages that are in revised. That's 200 pages of material that have to be read, understood, and remembered. When you start with a blank slate, that is a very significant increase in workload that makes it harder to get a good grasp of the necessary basics.

[Mechalich]

Honestly I would totally disagree with your assumption that the extra rules are a detriment to the game. The only reason I could see for not wanting them is wanting to run limited games, but having to explain that to the players is hard.

Paths of Enlightenment, Minor Bloodlines and Methuselah's are all part of the world, and therefor something that can come up in game.

Extra rules are only helpful when those rules are good and provide useful additions to the world. if the rules are bad adding them reduces the overall playability of the system. Heck even if the rules are neutral, just adding more rules means adding more complexity to a system and unnecessary complexity is bad. For example, adding psionics to a D&D setting 'just because' is a terrible idea.

Paths of Enlightenment are unnecessary. They are only useful to advanced players. Everyone else is just fine broadly ignoring the humanity mechanic like they always do (since it's a bad mechanic that is not beneficial to gameplay) and moving on. Minor bloodlines are unnecessary - VtM has too many bloodlines as it is with just the 13 major clans. There is simply no need to have any member of any minor bloodline in the city in which your game is set. Methusalehs do not need stats. They exist. They have plot device level powers. Giving them stats is a waste of space in the same way that stating demon lords and Lords of the Nine in D&D is a waste of space.


But I think the important thing here is that the topic at hand is learning the game as new GMs and new players.
From what I understand, V20 is revised edition plus 200 pages of additional material, on top of the 300 pages that are in revised. That's 200 pages of material that have to be read, understood, and remembered. When you start with a blank slate, that is a very significant increase in workload that makes it harder to get a good grasp of the necessary basics.

This is very much true. New players to Vampire should start with a variant 'core only' approach, and V20 is very much not that. Even the base book for the earlier editions contains too much. New players should be in a Camarilla city. The Sabbat can exist, offscreen, but everything involved with it need never appear in game. The same is true of the 'independent' clans.

Ultimately you want a city with 50-100 Vampires, divided between 6-8 clans (~10 per clan really), with 2-3 political factions between them (the easy version is pro-prince, anti-prince, and leave-us-alone). The PC coterie represents members who are all part of one political faction and - and this part is really important - has some actual reason to be working together and some kind of functional goal. VtM as a game, is awfully short on campaign goals. It is very easy to build characters and even whole parties who lack incentive to actually participate in a campaign in any way (also there's a certain kind of VtM player that gravitates towards playing Malkavians who are actively detrimental to the party ever accomplishing anything).

[fishyfishyfishy]

Extra rules are only helpful when those rules are good and provide useful additions to the world. if the rules are bad adding them reduces the overall playability of the system. Heck even if the rules are neutral, just adding more rules means adding more complexity to a system and unnecessary complexity is bad. For example, adding psionics to a D&D setting 'just because' is a terrible idea.

Good and bad are subjective. There's no consensus on which version of the rules are better.

Side note: it's weird that you use psionics in d&d as an example when they've been present in the game since the beginning.



Paths of Enlightenment are unnecessary. They are only useful to advanced players. Everyone else is just fine broadly ignoring the humanity mechanic like they always do (since it's a bad mechanic that is not beneficial to gameplay) and moving on. Minor bloodlines are unnecessary - VtM has too many bloodlines as it is with just the 13 major clans. There is simply no need to have any member of any minor bloodline in the city in which your game is set. Methusalehs do not need stats. They exist. They have plot device level powers. Giving them stats is a waste of space in the same way that stating demon lords and Lords of the Nine in D&D is a waste of space.

I have never heard of anyone ignoring the Humanity mechanics. It's the entire point of playing the game. Your experiences seem to be far outside the norm for this series.



This is very much true. New players to Vampire should start with a variant 'core only' approach, and V20 is very much not that. Even the base book for the earlier editions contains too much. New players should be in a Camarilla city. The Sabbat can exist, offscreen, but everything involved with it need never appear in game. The same is true of the 'independent' clans.

Revised has all 13 clans in the core book as playable options, and has details on the Sabbat as a major player faction. It's been part of the core experience of VtM for the majority of it's existence as a game.



Ultimately you want a city with 50-100 Vampires, divided between 6-8 clans (~10 per clan really), with 2-3 political factions between them (the easy version is pro-prince, anti-prince, and leave-us-alone). The PC coterie represents members who are all part of one political faction and - and this part is really important - has some actual reason to be working together and some kind of functional goal. VtM as a game, is awfully short on campaign goals. It is very easy to build characters and even whole parties who lack incentive to actually participate in a campaign in any way (also there's a certain kind of VtM player that gravitates towards playing Malkavians who are actively detrimental to the party ever accomplishing anything).

Most people I interact with in various forums, discord servers, and social media prefer smaller locations with fewer vampires for their stories. There's rarely representatives from every clan. These same people also usually don't mind a variety of clans as a player option. V5 took this a step further and makes most clans dissociated with Sect. Anarch Tremere, Camarilla Hecata, and Sabbat Ventrue are more viable than ever before.

[druid91]

Extra rules are only helpful when those rules are good and provide useful additions to the world. if the rules are bad adding them reduces the overall playability of the system. Heck even if the rules are neutral, just adding more rules means adding more complexity to a system and unnecessary complexity is bad. For example, adding psionics to a D&D setting 'just because' is a terrible idea.

Paths of Enlightenment are unnecessary. They are only useful to advanced players. Everyone else is just fine broadly ignoring the humanity mechanic like they always do (since it's a bad mechanic that is not beneficial to gameplay) and moving on. Minor bloodlines are unnecessary - VtM has too many bloodlines as it is with just the 13 major clans. There is simply no need to have any member of any minor bloodline in the city in which your game is set. Methusalehs do not need stats. They exist. They have plot device level powers. Giving them stats is a waste of space in the same way that stating demon lords and Lords of the Nine in D&D is a waste of space.



This is very much true. New players to Vampire should start with a variant 'core only' approach, and V20 is very much not that. Even the base book for the earlier editions contains too much. New players should be in a Camarilla city. The Sabbat can exist, offscreen, but everything involved with it need never appear in game. The same is true of the 'independent' clans.

Ultimately you want a city with 50-100 Vampires, divided between 6-8 clans (~10 per clan really), with 2-3 political factions between them (the easy version is pro-prince, anti-prince, and leave-us-alone). The PC coterie represents members who are all part of one political faction and - and this part is really important - has some actual reason to be working together and some kind of functional goal. VtM as a game, is awfully short on campaign goals. It is very easy to build characters and even whole parties who lack incentive to actually participate in a campaign in any way (also there's a certain kind of VtM player that gravitates towards playing Malkavians who are actively detrimental to the party ever accomplishing anything).

... Yeah... This is a very particular set of house rules that seems unnecessarily restrictive and a tad bit lazy on the ST's part.

Methuselah's are not demon lords. A single Methuselah isn't going to destroy a plane of existence. Their powers are not 'plot device' level.

Now if you were talking about rules for Antidiluvians sure. But Methuselah's exist, they typically are prince of whatever city they live in. You need rules to make them because assigning them plot device powers is lazy and undermines your players from the start.

As for bloodlines, while certain bloodlines are problematic because of roleplay considerations, like the Asamites or Baali. Most are perfectly fine. The idea that you shouldn't play whichever sect you want and should automatically go Camarilla is also weird. There's nothing playing Camarilla does that teaches you anything important or makes it easier than playing Sabbat or Anarch.

[Yora]

Yes, but how many clans, bloodlines, sects, and paths should new players and GMs read up on before they get to make their first characters and make their first campaign?
Most players won't be doing homework. Simply starting with the Camarilla and seven original clans is fully sufficient to get started. Not necessarily the best or only smaller sub-set to start with, but I think the easiest to get the basic hang of it.

[Aliess]

Going to agree with you there Yora. For a first game I highly recommend a camarilla town or city. The core clans are written to work well together, there's plenty of overlap in disciplines and enough of an organization to provide easy npcs and rules to follow.
You could go anarch, but by their nature you'll have to put a bit more legwork into how the city is organised. The LA by night series on YouTube is centered on an anarch city and could give some ideas on how to run one (and the game on general).
I'd avoid sabbat as a first game as it is very easy to get them wrong and just turn into murder hobo town.
I'd also avoid bloodlines to start with, partially because it's just extra work. If someone wants to play a harbinger of death then you now need to go research them, the Capadocians and probably the Giovanni for good luck on top of all the common clans. Then you need to work out why one of these monsters has turned up in your city and is willing to work with the other pcs on mundane stuff. More importantly though whilst it's great that they can be run as pcs, savor the mystery of the setting for a while and keep one or two npcs from a bloodline that catches your fancy as an NPC for later. The game definitely loses something when you can point at any NPC that turns up and reel off their disciplines and supposedly ancient, mysterious background.

Not saying you shouldn't play any type of game you want, but for a new group that's be my recommendation.

[LibraryOgre]

Yes, but how many clans, bloodlines, sects, and paths should new players and GMs read up on before they get to make their first characters and make their first campaign?
Most players won't be doing homework. Simply starting with the Camarilla and seven original clans is fully sufficient to get started. Not necessarily the best or only smaller sub-set to start with, but I think the easiest to get the basic hang of it.

One option? Give everyone a capsule of the Seven Camarilla clans and, if they want to look into others, let folks pitch non-standard clans and such. Want to play a Ravnos or Salubri or Gargoyle? Do your homework and pitch it.

[fishyfishyfishy]

Even the newbie friendly V5 pitches 2 major opposing sects with a variety of clans in both. I don't think it's unreasonable for a Storyteller to research the organizations and vampire clans they want to portray in their story and then tell their players what choices they have to work with. Compare 13 clans and 3 organizations to say...D&D 5e with 9 races and 12 classes with 3 subclasses each in the core book.

If you're using an older edition there's over a dozen different settings to choose from (the "by Night" city books) that already does a lot of the work for you and gives you plenty of plot hooks to work with. Some of those books are Camarilla focused but there's also Anarch and Sabbat aligned locations that have their own setting book.

My point being that regardless of what version you choose to run there's tools and instructions for any starting storyteller to play with the entire catalogue of vampires and it doesn't really make a big difference at all

[Anonymouswizard]

To be fair, 'core' V5 includes the seven original Clans and nothing else, with the Tremere altered to be much more newbie-friendly. The two Sect Books then each add in one new Clan, although honestly the Banu Haqim in the Camarilla book are going to be easier for most players to grasp than the Settites/Ministry (that Clan needs a better formal name, I'm using Clan Typhon at the moment). It also pushes the Anarchs as the newbie friendly Sect, but it's arguable if that's true (it is, however, easier to be a Baron than a Prince).

But yeah, for a first game I'd recommend either Anarchs or Camarilla and limited to the original seven. Maybe one more if there's a particular Clan you want to include.

[fishyfishyfishy]

But yeah, for a first game I'd recommend either Anarchs or Camarilla and limited to the original seven. Maybe one more if there's a particular Clan you want to include.

Camarilla can feel stifling and harsh to new players. I feel like the Sabbat is better for new people. Majority of vampires in that sect follow Humanity anyway, and there's an actual game mechanic enforcing and incentivizing cooperation in the form of the Viniculum. You have a wider variety of clans to choose from and greater chance of violence, allowing people to learn that part of the mechanics. Their characters also have greater freedom and can learn the nuances of the setting by pushing boundaries.

[Anonymouswizard]

Camarilla can feel stifling and harsh to new players. I feel like the Sabbat is better for new people. Majority of vampires in that sect follow Humanity anyway, and there's an actual game mechanic enforcing and incentivizing cooperation in the form of the Viniculum. You have a wider variety of clans to choose from and greater chance of violence, allowing people to learn that part of the mechanics. Their characters also have greater freedom and can learn the nuances of the setting by pushing boundaries.

IMO the Sabbat Congress with a few problems for new players, particularly the fact that most try to be inhuman monsters. But I do get the problems with the Camarilla and Anarchs are probably the easiest Sect to deal with, due to not having the restrictive rules of the Camarilla but not with the widespread attempted monstrosity of the Sabbat.

Plus Anarchs have sports like bullet tag that means their likelihood of violence isn't that far behind the Sabbath's.

[sktarq]

(EDIT: summery at bottom I guess-this went longer than planned)
***Grumble grumble***

Okay I will say that I have history with VtM and have had a ton of fun playing. But have a very different take. And I'll toss out what I think are some of the risks and my thoughts are with starting VtM...this is mostly aimed the revised edition.

I think the system is pretty good actually. The real issue is the lore and expectations.

Firstly the lore...there is a TON of it. And with the big level stuff going on it is VERY easy for ST's to bleed so much of it in that it eats their own game. THis can quickly make your players group get sucked up into someone else's story. Also I find the lore pretty damn limiting in terms of what vampires are where they come from etc....So I'd recommend just figuring out how you want to deal with the lore and how your players are going to deal with this...a session zero can be very helpful here. Also the lore can be very tempting to use as a way to create the appearance of stakes and scale...this can somewhat work but is also not really attached to the PC's and players unless the they are either pretty invested in the lore already or the ST puts in the work to connect them personally with this bit of lore he is using. Overall I find it encourages lazy senses of "this is important" without putting in the work to get the players invested...its an easy trap. SO just be careful how you use the lore and thing before you add it. For some it really helps but it is no substitute fore building things up for your players on a personal basis over time. And personally I don't really like the lore...so ya know....tougher.

on the dice system...now I love the unpredictability of the dice system. I like the botches, the exploding tens etc. It both has lots of good drama potential and also has an interesting tie in with the game behavior. If things can blow up on you...it makes sense to play in a cagey way. to avoid risk, to use catspaws...hey sounds like how a classic elder vampire is presented..I like this. And for while many people say they dislike botches I personally love them...the amount of humour that has come up from such events is massive...and those exploding tens? well that encourages hail mary's and game shifting WTF moments...which kinda makes everything kinda unpredictable..and that makes the game hard to metam (from both the player's and ST's end)...and again makes playing in a classic elder style make logical sense. It does mean that planning is going to be upset easily...so again lean into it...the system rewards the ST being fast on their feet and good with ad hoc like few systems I've known which if that ISN'T something you enjoy is a bad thing but if you do it's gold. The basic Attribute+(Talent/Skill/Knowledge)+(Merit/Tool) Vs (Difficulty set by ST) is a pretty good one in the right hands it is wonderfully flexible and makes a decent model to reflect character strengths. Though it does mean the ST needs a personal wide breadth of knowledge in order to cover the ability to make good choices for difficulty on the fly. This is more true in non-combat than combat IMO. Learn the system well and give yourself a lot of room to improvise and the drama will make itself...try to set up the perfect moment and some weird dice result at the wrong moment will ruin it...luck runs both ways.

on mortals....the power levels in the game are such that mortals are kinda just speed bumps. This has lots of issues. It means that your players are basically just going to be dealing with other supernaturals unless you are really specific. So interactions with the whole mortal world get pushed into the background of the game unless the ST really makes an effort. THis can very much limit your cast of characters but also blur out things like the relations that the vampire can have....how does the vampire relate to his family, how she feels about her old high school (particularly when she can still pass as a student but the students she went with are now the grandparents of the students who are giving recitals, which can change the focus of the game...but you may notice something...a lot of the personal aspect is what can easily get lost when the game turns away from the mortal world and in revised book as well as other the game is described as "a game of personal horror"...which can be leaned against and have some really good stories but the games balance doesn't lead you there naturally. And with all that drive to basically ignore humans in general it has the contrast that "humanity" is presented as the greatest threat in the game...the point of the whole masquerade is for protection.

also there is a related issue...the game sells itself as a social driven game but because of the power of the vampires compared to most things around them and that several of the powers the vampires have are very much boosting their combat ability it makes hitting things a more obvious choice than talking. . . which can be pretty fun TBH but a lot of the set up is not aimed at that so well. and kinda why people have a degree of "superheros with fangs" view of this game....which if that is what you want it can play that way pretty well....but "personal horror" is not how most people play it, they just kinda ignore that part.

Actually lots of the game's problem is that a lot of the rules are really easy to accidentally ignore. Most commonly ignored? Humanity and the beast. People tend to get wrapped up in the plot. Now this has issues as you can imagine. It takes ST's really focusing on this to make it work. It CAN work but it it not natural with the flow of the game if you are not used to it and there are only rare times it up and smacks you with the rules. Also the Beast is something described as a constant but that is not reflected in the rules in how most people play....remember the beast of the PC's is largely under the control of the ST (who can delegate to an extent but I only recommend that for advanced players) and this is something that most players and most ST/GM/etc are not used to...in most games the PC's are pretty inviolate. So again pay attention to it, talk with your players about it ahead of time and just work around it.

also issues with populations....well how many vampires do you need to make a good story? that is a hard one. few cities can support a population more than a handful at the 1-to-100K ratio...and this can bring stuff up...firstly means that even a single fatality can really shift things balance wise in a city. SO that means that investigating a murder of another vampire, getting into a lethal fight etc are a BIG deal if you actually play things out logically. So you either end up having to be pretty loosy goosy on who exists (with an implied larger population) have to play for non-lethal stakes (which I'd say is well matched to the theme and feel of the game but conflicts with sense of scale that the lore implies) and lots of players with characters who can (via Potence) toss a car around for a tiny amount of prestation or territory can feel off scale wise. So the need to husband your other vampires is a major driver a scale issues. and similarly if vampires are rare but also quite powerful it means that the PC fledglings are valuable which leads to the question of why the players have the relationships they do...classically they are largely free from most connection to the larger vampiric community. ANd leads to the question of why is the coterie together? Can this be dealt with? honestly pretty easy but it needs to leaned into. I recommend that ST's really focus on such things in order to both make sure the players having fun and maintaining the verisimilitude. I personally found I liked both boosting the WoD version of the city's population vs the real life version and also using a 1 to 30-50K number for my high population games but YMMV.

which kinda leads to clans....the real things is that the way the books are written it is easy to the think of the clans as actual things when they usually are not...They can be really restricting (Ventrue do X, The Gangrel react Y, etc) and that can cause issues in game. The various clan books help a lot with this IMO. And I'd say the two biggest things to remember is the clans are mostly families...most of the clan X in a city will be related to each other pretty directly. . . which can lead to questions of an elder's generation vs the highest generation (or the generation the player wants to play) coming into conflict with that limited population thing I mentioned which is a side issue...and so what THIS town's clan X looks like is going to much more based on what the local elder of the clan is like and how they behaved than what the overall idea of what the clan on a global scale is thought to be like (this is another place where the grand lore tends to bite people in the ass IMO)...this can lead to things getting very generic and can be combated by focusing on making sure the major influences in the town are well fleshed out as characters and not just "classic clan X"....And these family dynamics can be a great source of plot hooks. This sounds like a lot of extra work and is if you have a large population but if you only have say 35vampires in town besides your players (which would mean even a party of 4 is 10% of the city...again that can have effects that are basically unexamined) a quick sketch is all you need and is still only % members of each main clan on average. It is pretty doable at this scale...if you want a larger scale only focus on a couple power players and those your players will interact with a lot...

as for things like the Paths and the Bloodlines? Actually they are pretty good. But I wouldn't recommend jumping into them the first run through the game. The main clans work just fine. Perhaps a gargoyle or the like as a NPC or something is fine just to show that there are bloodlines but in the vein of KISS (keep it simple stupid) don't feel like you need some super-special set of characters right off the bat. That said they do give the game the ability to be built out in a more complex way later. can give you interesting visitors, and also make good replay value for later games once you are settled in. It can be hard to judge how best to use them as an ST if you don't have a baseline to work against. I would never recommend using them all in a since campaign just like I wouldn't recommend using your whole spice rack in a single meal but having the options can add a lot to the game. But I would work up to it as the base game has a ton to explore.
Similarly with the paths they are a great way to play with getting into some really interesting character corners but they do best with a lot of thinking and focus which is hard to give them when you are still learning how to just be a vampire. Paths are not just being a vampire but taking on a system of thought that is supposed to be inhuman...which can make the game really philosophically fun if you have a ST who likes giving philosophical choices and players who get into what those may mean and projecting into their characters....or they can be an excuse to turn the PC's into inhuman monsters who just run around using their cool powers without having to worry about the humanity mechanics and treating the mortal city as the background vegetation is basically tends to devolve to anyway (good for a light graze from time to time)....which in the right set up can be a ton of fun...beer and pretzels VtM. Not gonna say its playing it wrong.

as for the set in 2020...laughably easy. Just take the game as it was set up in early books (late 90's) and just shift the year to the current one....The lore is mostly divorced from. The newer stuff with pulling the elders to middle east and stuff is a harder sell on the surface but again you can just ignore all history from any given semi-modern date and shift that year to the current one because basically the vampire world lore has no connection to the real world history after about the middle ages. SO just reset the vampire timeline to whatever you want and play from there. ANd just ignore all the end of the world stuff as you want....The whole rise of Gehenna thing was always something that struck me as a major downpoint in the game TBH as again I found it another aspect of the "big" overall story that just got in the way of my or my players stories. I personally saw it toward the end as a way to end the edition and thus inspire people to buy all new books..... as for trying to kick the late 70's and 80's view of how city's work, urban blight etc and tone thereof...can be harder
As some of you can imagine who are familiar with the game, if this is how I felt even at the time you can guess I really liked the VtR version which I felt dealt with a fair number of these issues in a better way thus I have never really gotten back into the V20 o 5e versions that much. as I just don't find them as fun and have similar issues outlined above.


err..that got long...I'll try to sumerize
Out of all that? my biggest points would really be
on the having a considered relationship with how to deal with the wider lore of the game (it is too easy to let it become your story without you meaning to-it can be worked with well but needs to be done activly to be done well IMO)
on understanding that dealing with the human world needs a lot of work on the ST's part or it just becomes speed bumps and background noise and that should be planned for
that as much as it claims and the fluff is about personal horror it takes work to make it such. the humanity rules and the beast are some of the most unnatural to use in actual game play, are easily forgotten and many people just give them lip service and play superhero with fangs games....make your choice consciously about how your table should go and lean into that...it is very doable and lots of fun both ways.
that the games structure makes things easy to be generic and pretty flat lean against this and you'll be fine but it can happen if are looking at other things
that the dice are unpredictable-very much so. This has good and bad sides leaning into this will really help and it makes things hard to meta game and can lead to lots of fun-ad lib and seat of pants ST'ing is key here and some players won't like it...I also recommend playing it up as drama in your descriptions big time.

[Yora]

I think problems with humans being no real threat seem like they really are an issue of setting up situation in which the main challenge to accomplishing the goal is "there are lots if guards with guns who can shot us". That is indeed the main challenge PCs are facing in many RPG scenarios, like stealing money or wartime sabotage. But those are things that just don't seem like stuff vampires concern themselves with.
The game is set in a world of supernatural forces, like magic, monsters, and undead. Vampires don't worry about paying rent or planning to retire to a tropical island. Humans are not a problem because they can kill you, but because they can see you. The reason that vampires should avoid being caught is not because they could be killed, but because they could be seen. I guess the problem is how to have rules for consequences when they are discovered and word of it spreads.
I think unarmed civilians seem like much better obstacles than armed guards who shot at any intruders. Generally players don't really think too much about killing anything that attacks them. The typical solution of "we just knock them out and tie them up, and someone will free them in the morning" also doesn't work because they already saw things that they will remember and tell others. I think when an attempt to break into a place starting with the assumption that "if anyone happens to be in that place we didn't know about, they will have to die if we get spotted", it already creates it's own different type of tension. How many cleaning stuff and newspaper deliverer can you murder without losing your humanity?

[Mechalich]

I think problems with humans being no real threat seem like they really are an issue of setting up situation in which the main challenge to accomplishing the goal is "there are lots if guards with guns who can shot us". That is indeed the main challenge PCs are facing in many RPG scenarios, like stealing money or wartime sabotage. But those are things that just don't seem like stuff vampires concern themselves with.


Okay wait, humans are absolutely a threat to vampires in VtM in combat, in particular, the way the system works superior numbers destroy people. A character with Dex+Firearms of 5 (which represents a security guard or cop) will manage the single success necessary to hit a character almost all the time (84%), and if you attempt to dodge you don't get to attack (the rules for splitting dice pools make almost any effort that relies upon them not worth doing). And you only get to soak with your stamina (max 5 dice) plus fortitude (also max 5 but probably only have 0 or 1 dots to start). Vampires take reduced damage from firearms, but you've only got 7 health levels. Consequently, at even moderate numeric disadvantage vampires go down hard and fast (oh and people who know they're up against vampires can use incendiary ammunition, which does aggravated damage and can only be soaked with fortitude and triggers rotchshrek roles if you get hit). Celerity compensates for this to a point, by providing additional actions, but it's not enough. It just means it takes more enemies to kill you.

The most powerful supernatural abilities VtM provides characters are mind control and blood magic (the Tremere get both, which is why they were the most powerful clan). Actually fighting people yourself is anti-optimization in VtM, since you can easily get dozens or even hundreds of people to fight for you through backgrounds, ghouling, and mind control.


The game is set in a world of supernatural forces, like magic, monsters, and undead. Vampires don't worry about paying rent or planning to retire to a tropical island. Humans are not a problem because they can kill you, but because they can see you. The reason that vampires should avoid being caught is not because they could be killed, but because they could be seen. I guess the problem is how to have rules for consequences when they are discovered and word of it spreads.

Well, vampires do have to worry about paying rent, or at least property taxes, if they actually own property. And if they don't they're stuck sleeping in the sewers or something, which makes them awfully vulnerable. I mean, alternatively you can dominate the tax assessor to get your bills erased, but this only works on a small scale before it becomes a massive masquerade breach. Because VtM vampires basically cannot function during the day at all (as as their humanity drops their operational time at night lowers as well) maintaining monetary resources gets a bit tricky. yes once you pass a certain threshold you can just live on stock dividends for eternity, but it takes a lot of work to get to that point.


I think unarmed civilians seem like much better obstacles than armed guards who shot at any intruders. Generally players don't really think too much about killing anything that attacks them. The typical solution of "we just knock them out and tie them up, and someone will free them in the morning" also doesn't work because they already saw things that they will remember and tell others. I think when an attempt to break into a place starting with the assumption that "if anyone happens to be in that place we didn't know about, they will have to die if we get spotted", it already creates it's own different type of tension. How many cleaning stuff and newspaper deliverer can you murder without losing your humanity?

The number of people you can murder without losing your humanity, according to the game rules, isn't hypothetical at all, it's a probability function based on the hierarchy of sins and the number is actually probably a few dozen at most (I mean you won't technically lose all of your humanity just through murder, but dropping below humanity 4 makes a character basically unplayable).

[sktarq]

When I said human are not a threat unless you tweek things to MAKE them a threat?

A combat squad knowing that you are an enemy loaded out with semiauto long guns....is a threat.

But....that's not going to happen unless you already mess up or they are being directed by something that is actually a threat...mostly they are a sword wielded by actual threats. Or you are playing superheores with fangs and get seen.

i mostly ment it as a story effect. Humans are so easy to dominate, win over with presence, or slip by with obfuscate that they are no real story limiting factor. . . Nor are they a combat challenge unless they come outfitted for war...in which case come back tomorrow night or just ghoul their boss and misdirect them. Oh and Dom 3 which can basically set you up to do all that? Starting power for Ventrue, Tremere, and some Malks just within the base Cam....(oh yeah Malks who are still in the great Prank...are....so dangerous as to be laughable...like murderous giggle laughable) they are no threat on a plot level. So you can't use them on a plot level all that well unless your ST really sets things up just so.

I do like the - can't use your powers until you make the situation okay with it. Its usually too easy IMO.

Thats why most of your time ends up dealing with the other supernaturals of the WoD. And that limit things a lot.

As for the stealing money, corp sabotage, yeah....that's what they actually spend most of their time doing....to gain, maintain, and undermine that influence stat of their sheets...Fetching weird bits for the rituals of regent...organizing a rant or rave....making sure the actually good cop is not on your beat....is exactly what most vampires are supposed to be spending their time on...because if they are not none of how their society is set up makes a lick of sense. Its that scale thing I mentioned. The system is set up to promote small scale in some ways and epics in other ways...and thus has internal issues....which can be planned for.

As for murder....its not the total amount its the rate not total amount...you spend X amount of XP per (time period) buying back humanity you may loose to occasional murder....as long as your rate of earning XP is higher than your loss of humanity buyback rate you'll be okay...

[Yora]

Then what exactly is the problem?

[Schwann145]

There is so much jaded cynicism in this thread! So sad. :(


Overall this thread really put a damper on my enthusiasm for the game. Are there any other games with the same feel that run better? I have no experience with generic systems and where things in my life are right now I don't think I have the drive atm to build my own game out of a generic system just to get a little vampire fix, it sounds like way more work than using an already made game.

Don't let the thread bring you down, friend! Vampire: The Masquerade is an outstanding game and if it has caught your interest, then I think you'll really enjoy delving into it!
Let me give you some guiding help from the perspective of someone who considers the World of Darkness his favorite setting and has played in it, off and on, since 2nd Edition Revised rules:

•The Lore: The canon lore of VtM can be really good at times, and it can be really 3rd-rate-trash at times, and there's a LOT of both. You should absolutely feel free to take what you like and throw away the rest. Instead of worrying about the overarching story, concern yourself more with the theme and the stereotypes of the clans and factions and world itself, and build out from there. (There is a wooorld of difference between getting your fangs wet for the first time as a fledgling vampire who has a lot to learn and isn't sure who they can trust, and the techno-mages launching magic nukes at the elder vampire while focusing the sun directly onto it with satellite-mirrors like a magnifying glass over insects. Like I said, it can get dumb, lol.)

•The Mechanics: I enjoyed a lot of Revised and V20 play, and they're fun don't get me wrong, but they're pretty broken systems when you pick them apart. I'd suggest you go with either Vampire: The Requiem or Vampire 5th Edition as both did a TON of work to make the horribly broken bits go away and get a focus back onto the personalized storytelling elements of the Storytelling Game, with V5 being a bit better here IMO as they also were able to improve on the VtR rules.
(VtR gets a bad wrap because they scrapped all the lore and went in a new direction. Also, the powers got *heavily* nerfed to the point that many players, myself included, did not enjoy them as much. A version came out a bit later called "Blood and Smoke" which reworked some of the issues people had with the Discipline changes and it's generally a much better product, but it's still new lore. I enjoy both games' version of the lore, but V5 kept to the old VtM lore, so if that's the big draw for you, I'd definitely go with V5.)
What's important here, mechanics-wise, is the Disciplines (vampire powers) are MUCH more in-line with each other. The older editions of Revised and V20 had some powers that were utterly broken (didn't work right, were disappointing to use, or were basically impossible to roleplay - Demintation and Fortitude for instance), and some powers that were utterly broken (basically made you a god - Celerity, Thaumaturgy, anything that gave you access to Agrivated Damage, etc). They put a ton of creative thought into the new Disciplines and they all feel much better and more interesting than they used to, IMO.

Also, the older versions really didn't make you feel like a vampire most of the time unless you specifically roleplayed it that way. You were essentially a blood wizard superhero/villain who couldn't be out during the day; when you want to use your superpowers you spend your blood points - when you're low on blood points you feed on someone to refill and now you can use more superpowers. Repeat, ad infinitum. V5 makes the Beast the game is always talking about part of the core rules by incorporating your hunger directly into your dice rolls. You still have to roleplay it on your own, but at least the game finally gives you some direction. Vampires are supposed to be cursed with this unquenchable thirst that succumbing to robs you of your humanity, and the core of the game has always been trying to keep that beast at bay, with the personal horror and the clan politics as your direct antagonizing issues. "A beast I am, lest a beast I become," and all that. Older editions ignored this too often. V5 keeps it relevant with literally every dice roll.

•Setting Compatibility: In the older editions, there is none. Each WoD game is designed in it's own vacuum and they do not mix well. If you want werewolves and mages and whatever other supernatural friends/foes to play a part in your chronicle, the balance is going to break, pretty wildly so.
The flip side is that, while V5 is promising to play nice with it's contemporaries, they don't actually exist yet. Werewolf is up first and, currently anyway, slated for a 2021 release, but if you definitely want to play with non-Vampires in your Vampire game, you'll have to use whatever small thought V5 came up with, or go with an older edition and deal with the fallout of the imbalance on your own.


tl;dr - I think you'll enjoy Vampire regardless of which edition you go with, thought I'd suggest 5th for the variety of reasons above. Just ignore the grumpy grognards from earlier in the thread, grab whichever edition you end up with, and welcome to the World of Darkness. :smallsmile:

Edit to add: Just yesterday the devs dropped a free Companion .pdf that covers rules for the last 3 Clans that the so-far-released books didn't include (bringing us up to all 13 clans for V5), rules for playing mortals and ghouls, and some minor errata and rules updates. If you register on the worldofdarkness.com site you can pick it up. :)

[Yora]

Everyone always says Vampires is incredibly broken. But I've never seen anyone say how.

[Eldan]

Everyone always says Vampires is incredibly broken. But I've never seen anyone say how.

Disciplines. Depends on the edition, but some Disciplines are just flat out better than others, and some are hilariously strong. Celerity is the obvious one. It's the speed discipline. You get to move at bullet time, while also winning initiative every time and taking multiple actions per turn. From what I've read, Celerity wins every combat, except for some highly specific counters. If I remember correctly, every point of celerity was +1 action per turn. So, at, say, Celerity 4, I take 5 actions per turn, all of which are stronger, while my buddy takes one action.

It's also just that some powers are incredibly niche and you may almost never get to use them, but they cost the same amount of XP as powers which are both stronger and more general in use.

Also, just the general problem with how critical failures worked in some editions. Where the more dice you had in your dice pool, the more likely you were to get a critical failure. Pretty much everyone houserules that.

[Mechalich]

Disciplines. Depends on the edition, but some Disciplines are just flat out better than others, and some are hilariously strong. Celerity is the obvious one. It's the speed discipline. You get to move at bullet time, while also winning initiative every time and taking multiple actions per turn. From what I've read, Celerity wins every combat, except for some highly specific counters. If I remember correctly, every point of celerity was +1 action per turn. So, at, say, Celerity 4, I take 5 actions per turn, all of which are stronger, while my buddy takes one action.

Celerity breaks combat between small groups in small spaces. However, celerity doesn't allow victory against overwhelming numbers. Even if your have celerity 5, which means your character has functionally no other powers, you get six actions per round. If you're up against 10 guys, you're still dead, and it's trivial to acquire ten armed minions through backgrounds or just using Dominate. It also doesn't help you that much against the guy who snipes you the third floor. Fighting people yourself in VtM is a decidedly un-optimized approach. Not only are the points against you but most tables are going to rule that you'll lose more humanity for killing people in person than ordering other people to do it.

Functionally the disciplines separate into various tiers. Dominate and Thaumaturgy are at the top: Mind Control and Blood Magic. It drops off rapidly from there.

Beyond the disciplines, everything else in the system lacks balance. The attributes aren't balanced at all: Dexterity is king, Appearance is less useful than Charisma or Manipulation. The abilities are a mess, and it's extremely easy for starting characters to end up with crippling holes in important traits (the amount of starting VtM characters who can't drive a car or use a computer is stunning), and super-broad knowledges like 'Academics' and 'Science' have never worked ever. Backgrounds are super-broken and always have been. A Resources 5 character has the power of wealth for an absurdly cheap price. Generation is a shambles for Vampires specifically. Even willpower doesn't really work properly, and certain natures have massive advantages over others depending on what type of game you're playing in terms of regaining it.

[fishyfishyfishy]

the amount of starting VtM characters who can't drive a car or use a computer is stunning

You don't need points to do these things. Having points means you have some level of training. A person who drives for a living might have 1 or 2 dots. A professional driver is at 3 or 4. Without these points you can still do these things without needing a roll at all.

[Yora]

So despite the game saying it's a horror game on the cover, there doesn't actually seem to be anything about horror in the book. And despite looking far and wide, there's no actual talk or advice on that topic on the internet either.
If it's not a horror game and not a superhero game, then what exactly is the concept behind all of it? What's the intention for this game and setting existing? What is it for and why has it been popular and successful for such a long time?

[comicshorse]

Obviously that depends on what each group wanted from the game. One of the most fun games I was in started us of as mafia soldiers, moved us into being ghouls of the vampires in the Family before becoming Vampires ourselves. With each step 'up' introducing us into the wider world and presenting us with new challenges and opponents.
Many people ran it as 'superheroes with fangs' and if they had fun with that, more power to them.
I'd say that the designers mainly wanted it to be run as a game of political intrigue. (And certainly that's how I've seen it done most often). With the P.C.s trying to maneuverer there way up the power structure by doing favours, allying with other Kindred and bringing down their rivals by any dirty trick. (And as 'Game of Thrones' showed political intrigue done well is great fun)

[LibraryOgre]

So despite the game saying it's a horror game on the cover, there doesn't actually seem to be anything about horror in the book. And despite looking far and wide, there's no actual talk or advice on that topic on the internet either.
If it's not a horror game and not a superhero game, then what exactly is the concept behind all of it? What's the intention for this game and setting existing? What is it for and why has it been popular and successful for such a long time?

To an extent, the main book had a horror element in the Humanity trait... a decrease in your Humanity was supposed to have role-playing effects, including a loss of control of the Beast. But they undercut that by offering up different paths, which meant that your Humanity became irrelevant, if you wanted it to be.

[Yora]

That actually makes sense. And fits most things that are stated about vampire society.

The players are thrown at the very bottom of a rigid hierarchy of cold monsters where higher positions only become available when a superior gets killed. And those above them want to use them as pawns to get at their own superiors while also protecting their own backs against their own treacherous underlings. And the whole thing is only kept together by a pretence of civility and order.

That's also roughly what I thought to be the approach with the most potential. Wouldn't have been so hard for the rulebook to actually state that at some point.

And I can see how you could actually have personal horror in such a campaign. Discovering what horrible deeds your superiors made you do improve their own position, or screwing up and having to take drastic measures to hide the evidence of your crimes. Knowing that you're going to be the fall guys or your friends are to be sacrificed for the benefit of your best ally and protector. And every sin you commit to save your skin for another night gnaws away on your humanity. And there really isn't anywhere out. It's the same thing in every other princes' domains, and the only other option is taking your chances with the wolves.

[fishyfishyfishy]

I'd dearly love to know what precisely counts as "horror" to you if inhuman blood drinking monsters aren't in that category.

[Yora]

I guess at the most basic, it'd be anything that puts a character in distress and fear of what will happen next.
People getting attacked by vampires is certainly horror. But it's horror for the human, not the vampire. We don't consider it horror to eat a stake, even people who used to butcher the livestock they raised themselves. And it's less violent than that when you don't kill a human when drinking some blood.

[Batcathat]

I'd dearly love to know what precisely counts as "horror" to you if inhuman blood drinking monsters aren't in that category.

I don't think blood drinking monsters alone are enough to qualify something as horror (not in fiction, anyway). Vampires show up in action, romance, comedy, all sorts of genres. They certainly lean towards horror more than some of the other genres but hardly exclusively.

[sktarq]

So despite the game saying it's a horror game on the cover, there doesn't actually seem to be anything about horror in the book. And despite looking far and wide, there's no actual talk or advice on that topic on the internet either.
If it's not a horror game and not a superhero game, then what exactly is the concept behind all of it? What's the intention for this game and setting existing? What is it for and why has it been popular and successful for such a long time?

Thing is the horror stuff can be there.

The methuthela's should be horrifying . . . the fact they were once human only makes the depths they fall to more touching.

Each and every vampire who is on a path should be a horror show...as incapable of dealing with the human race they were born into as an un-obfuscated Nosferatu...and utterly inhuman by choice instead of alien creation...

The very futility of much of the machiavelian Jyhad should have a tragic-horror element to it.

As for personal horror....the realization that your character is not human in so many small ways...what happens when the stores, family members, etc that they were mortal with fade away and the world has actually passed them...what does that do to a mind...the nightly grapple with a deamon that lives under your skin, erodes your sense of self, threatens to take control of you....and may just know what to do better than you (I mean you do get bonuses and the beast does tend to be brutally good at what it does and oh so satisfying)...that should be horrifying......and just BEING a vampire should have the power to bring horror...the dread and fear of self where you loose the capacity to see humans and humans...demonstrated by those who have existed this way and thus bringing a sense of inevitable dread...where the human you once loved, were family to, or were bonded to via a shared sense of identity is now just valued for the hunger that they can sate...a vampire attacking a human should be threat to the sense of self of the vampire itself (and in theory should be represented by the humanity roles).
Personal horror should be horror of the self...of what one will do in the name of power vs morality...but if you lack power then your ability to protect your morality (via catspaws, being pushed into others dirty work, having stable and easy blood sources (to avoid hunger frenzies or needing to drain people deeply), or just paying someone off rather than killing them) is greatly reduced...that paradox is in theory at the heart of the game...

That's all great in theory.
But according to the rules? eh all that is from the fluff and is up to the ST to make sure happens.

This is a lot of what I meant by "expectations" is a major weakness in the game. But this very much can be countered by a skilled ST.

What Kind of game is it?
and it is an anti-hero game...a grey-on-black superhero-with-fangs game painted with lots of classic and movie vampire lore.
Think of it kinda like how Underworld (the first one) wasn't really a horror movie. It was an action movie in vampire skin (and skin tight pants) and much like the WoD almost totally lacked mortals (no seriously rewatch it..besides the couple subway scenes where they grab McGuffinBoy/LoveInterest and have the fight/not-fight pauses they are basically running around a city with no people in it...once you see it-it is weird)

[LibraryOgre]

I'd dearly love to know what precisely counts as "horror" to you if inhuman blood drinking monsters aren't in that category.

To an extent, it becomes kind of like shopping in D&D.

"Ok, we need to get on to the story, let's all go find food and meet up back at the tavern Elysium."

The fact that you're an inhuman bloodsucking monster can frequently become obscured by the fact that almost everyone you deal with is an inhuman bloodsucking monster, works for inhuman bloodsucking monster, or, rarely, is an uncontrollable mass of fur and rage.

When you're all monsters, doing monster things, the inhumanity gets glossed over as unimportant.

[Mechalich]

To an extent, it becomes kind of like shopping in D&D.

"Ok, we need to get on to the story, let's all go find food and meet up back at the tavern Elysium."

The fact that you're an inhuman bloodsucking monster can frequently become obscured by the fact that almost everyone you deal with is an inhuman bloodsucking monster, works for inhuman bloodsucking monster, or, rarely, is an uncontrollable mass of fur and rage.

When you're all monsters, doing monster things, the inhumanity gets glossed over as unimportant.

VtM also fails to enforce any inherent mechanics that make your character do anything monstrous or in fact even any bloodsucking. VtM vampires can drink animal blood, which you can just purchase commercially from a butcher in milk jugs. They can drink from blood bags too, which are trivial to acquire using dominate or just spreading around the benjamins in an appropriately creative fashion. It's hard to make a character to suffer the horror of being a bloodsucker if they never suck anyone's blood.

In the same fashion the game doesn't actually require you to do anything monstrous. The principle demands of the Masquerade and the Camarilla traditions are to avoid attention. You don't have to play the game, and in fact there are strong incentives not to because there are relatively few benefits to be obtained from playing the game. Heck, there aren't even that many benefits to winning the political struggle and becoming Prince. That just brings a lot of headaches and only minor benefits. Yes there's obviously some intrinsic hunger for social interaction, but going to Elysium a couple of nights a week or hanging around at whatever hangout your clan uses in the city doesn't carry much risk or require any monstrous actions.

And this is very much in line with the source media for Vampires in the 21st century. There are lots of vampire stories where the vampires are just immortals with superpowers and a weird diet/sunlight issue and the plots are driven by the same soap opera style romantic ridiculousness as regular soap operas (and this isn't limited to vampires, the CW has a whole cottage industry of doing it with actual DC superheroes).

[Yora]

Some ideas to have these things come up during play:

Two vampires have been killed and an elder tells the PCs to go kill all their ghouls to tie up loose ends.
Another young neonate calls the PCs because he had a little accident in a public space and needs to dispose of the bodies before they are found, if possible without his sire hearing about it.
The PCs are visiting a friend at home, who still has an empty body from last night lying in the living room, or rolled up next to the door for pickup. (Maybe appologizes and drags it from the couch before offering them a seat.)
Or to be really mean, having a half concious and half empty body in the larder he is saving for later.
A mortal contact or friend gets killed by another vampire, who doesn't see how that is an issue.
The PCs are part of a blood hunt for a vampire who has lost all humanity and is exposing the masquerade. Preferably someone they know and talked to.
To introduce diablerie, one of their friends gets diablerized. Possibly by another friend.

[sktarq]

Some ideas to have these things come up during play:
<snippy snip snip>


Yeah these are all the kind of thing that can really work. And what I mean by it is up to the ST to create and play into the themes of horror that the game's fluff pushes but the mechanics don't.

as Mechalich pointed out feeding from animals and blood banks is a thing...and has logical consequences...the idea that it is trivial or not to do so is mostly up to the ST running the game. And if you think about it it such a feeding style should be an issue in some ways...it opens one up to attacks from other vampires etc just like any over-reliance on a single blood source does. I personally think most ST's let this kind of thing slide way too easily to get on with "plot". I personally house rule that players who do so get a lot more of those beast being hungry moments and distract the player with scumptious mortals placed in their way...being moral should take effort. (and I may have run a variation of vitae addiction as human blood for those who avoid it but found players didn't need it if the descriptions were good)

Also since there is a mechanic for "I hunt" it is very easy to skip over basically all the act of getting blood. You can also make players actually roll out what they want to do. And in such vignettes an ST can do far more to play up the horror if they actually go into how the hunt works. Describe the taste of the blood, the scents of fear of the weakness caused by the feeding if appropriate, make the human fed on show flickers of the complete life the vampire is going in to disrupt (even if it just what is in the house visited by the cachumar style feeder)...these things do work and can get the players far more involved and attached to the visceral horror of what they are...but take ST work.

also just how you run lots of little things also matters...describing that a character's beast has something to say even if it doesn't need a frenzy roll to control...(growls, hungers, etc)...tripping someone up by needing to buy something not available in a 24hr store (combined with a time limit is good at making the fact they are separated from normal life more forefront in their minds)...but again this is ST driven nor rules inherent.

as for "Playing the Camarila Political game" being totally optional...to an extent this is true. But there is a logical cost. when you need help doing something involving government.
Edit: (called away from keyboard)
Or when you don't want to be hunted by the hound, or when you want a media story squashed but don't have the editor under your personal thumb....
It is a valid option for the PC's to take...but it is up to the ST to figure out what the consequences are for that choice and bring them into play.

Like the choice to drink animal blood this option is both a strength and weakness of the system...it is highly flexible but very reliant on the ST to work the consequences into the story...they are not intrinsic. That flexibility is great for playing in different styles and keep having fun in the same system for years or decades but it also means the ST needs to be aware of what they are doing be able to make those choices matter (which can easily be swamped by the lore and "plot" parts) and make that part of the game stand up well story wise...because it is labor intensive but not classically "challenging"...which is where those issues like scale and the power level of vampires comes into play. . . So in some ways you can think of it like playing eVE online where people spend lots of time running accounting and basic trade hops vs the classic space battle image...which is something that puts off a lot of people.

All that said with a good ST who understands these things about the games RAW issues not pushing the vibe and atmosphere of the game well and has a breadth of understanding the world so they can pick good difficulty levels of rolls it is a system that can be VERY fun. It is just not an EASY or OBVIOUS system.

i'll also point several of Yora's good idea involve the death or of a vampire...which would be fine if you have enough of them about but runs into that population problem I mentioned earlier...where even a single mid-level vampire's final death/long torpor upset the social and political structure because each vampire represents such a large percentage of their clan/faction/city. . . And so this tends to just be handwaved. . . Which leads to internal logic problems which weakens verisimilitude and engagment.

[comicshorse]

as for "Playing the Camarila Political game" being totally optional...to an extent this is true. But there is a logical cost. when you need help doing something involving government.

Or when you screw up, and everybody screws up sooner or later, having no friends, allies or favours to call in

[LibraryOgre]

Also since there is a mechanic for "I hunt" it is very easy to skip over basically all the act of getting blood. You can also make players actually roll out what they want to do. And in such vignettes an ST can do far more to play up the horror if they actually go into how the hunt works. Describe the taste of the blood, the scents of fear of the weakness caused by the feeding if appropriate, make the human fed on show flickers of the complete life the vampire is going in to disrupt (even if it just what is in the house visited by the cachumar style feeder)...these things do work and can get the players far more involved and attached to the visceral horror of what they are...but take ST work.


Which is part of why I compare it to shopping in D&D... sure, you can roleplay every encounter with a shopkeep, but, eventually, you just buy the rations and arrows and move on.

[sktarq]

Which is part of why I compare it to shopping in D&D... sure, you can roleplay every encounter with a shopkeep, but, eventually, you just buy the rations and arrows and move on.

It depends.

If the ST makes it interesting....I find players will go toward it. Now YMMV in that but I've played with several groups where it is true.
Several players have flat out said it is the core thing they end up remembering and building their characters around.
And when I've had ST's who do so for me when I'm playing I've also been drawn toward it....
So the game can work without it...but it can also be a gold mine of character development and table fun.

[Yora]

I think it's something that should be approached like "making camp" in a dungeon crawling game. You don't do it every night the party is staying at an inn in town, or even every single night during a long overland journey. But it is an important step when going to sleep in a dungeon or ruined castle. A single story probably isn't going to cover a period of time longer than a week or two before you make another time jump of several weeks, months, or years until the next story. (Of course, you can play continuous days by day if you want to, but I don't see that working.)
If there's no time pressure at all and the PCs are mostly going by their every night activities, I think feeding might not be worth getting specifically mentioned. They have the luxury to select their targets carefully and using the optimal methods they are most comfortable with, and if they don't have any luck they can try again the next night.
When characters are on a clock and can not just take a night off while there's important things that need to be dealt with right now, maybe make a roll to see if feeding was successful, and if not, if it caused some complications. (Maybe make success more difficult with higher humanity, and make complications worse with a low blood pool?)
And if the PCs are currently under pressure or in danger, every feeding has to be played out in full detail. Because there's dramatic tension and stakes if something goes south.

While I see how an Anarch campaign could be fun, I don't quite see why people complain about Camarilla campaigns being awful. That sounds to me a lot like simply being a case of railroady GMs who justify their railroading by "the Prince orders you". As I see it, the prince is not your leader. The prince is one of the main antagonist. One of the people who will both push you into trouble and who you can't afford to piss off. They are the biggest thumb the PCs are under, and one of the driving forces why they have to plot get up the ladder. I think the prince (and other elders) should be an NPC the players struggle against and they are supposed to try to cheat and get away with. Not someone to be obeyed without complaint. (Though of course, complain where he can't hear it.)

And that need to improve your station in the vampire hierarchy by getting influence and collecting favors is the reason the PCs have to do awful things. They need the approval and respect of horrible monsters, and do things that benefit them. If you look like you don't have a drive to be a predator, that's not going to happen and you'll always remain a punching bag.
If you're a happy anarch drinking cow blood in peace, what is horrible about being undead? If you only fight fanatic human vampire hunters and fanatic sabbat vampire in self-defense, you're not a bad guy doing bad things.

[fishyfishyfishy]

VtM also fails to enforce any inherent mechanics that make your character do anything monstrous or in fact even any bloodsucking. VtM vampires can drink animal blood, which you can just purchase commercially from a butcher in milk jugs. They can drink from blood bags too, which are trivial to acquire using dominate or just spreading around the benjamins in an appropriately creative fashion. It's hard to make a character to suffer the horror of being a bloodsucker if they never suck anyone's blood.

This is completely false. There's game mechanics requiring you to drink human blood or go into a blood starved frenzy. If you feed only on animals it gets harder to resist that frenzy. Eventually the sight or smell of a tiny amount of blood makes you frenzy. If your storyteller/gm allowed you to get away with this that's a fault on their behalf, not on the system.


In the same fashion the game doesn't actually require you to do anything monstrous. The principle demands of the Masquerade and the Camarilla traditions are to avoid attention. You don't have to play the game, and in fact there are strong incentives not to because there are relatively few benefits to be obtained from playing the game. Heck, there aren't even that many benefits to winning the political struggle and becoming Prince. That just brings a lot of headaches and only minor benefits. Yes there's obviously some intrinsic hunger for social interaction, but going to Elysium a couple of nights a week or hanging around at whatever hangout your clan uses in the city doesn't carry much risk or require any monstrous actions.

The point of VtM was never "become Prince". The struggle is between individual characters and the beast. The horror comes from your own actions as you spin down the inevitable spiral towards losing your sanity and becoming a beast. It's about surviving and living with yourself.


And this is very much in line with the source media for Vampires in the 21st century. There are lots of vampire stories where the vampires are just immortals with superpowers and a weird diet/sunlight issue and the plots are driven by the same soap opera style romantic ridiculousness as regular soap operas (and this isn't limited to vampires, the CW has a whole cottage industry of doing it with actual DC superheroes).

{{Scrubbed}}

That's not even getting into V5 and the Hunger system...

[fishyfishyfishy]

I guess at the most basic, it'd be anything that puts a character in distress and fear of what will happen next.

That's the Frenzy/Rotshreck and Humanity systems...

You slowly spiral down the track until you no longer recognize the person you once were.

[Yora]

I see the idea behind this, but I don't think it works. It's just like Sanity points or fear mechanics. Telling a player "the dice say your character is now afraid" does not make the player feel that the situation is scary, or what the GM is describing horrific.
Frenzy means that you temporarily lose control of your character. Not because of something you did, but because of the way a die landed. And the things the character does during the frenzy are outside the player's control. There is no real sense of "I did something aweful". Things in frenzy are not something that the character does, but something that happens to the character.
Players can of course choose to roll with it and decide to deliberate react in dramatic ways and take their characters down a dark path. But that is the mechanics giving the player a suggestion to create horror. The player can take it or leave it. Of course, all RPGs are consensus and players always have to respond to what's happening mechanically and create story around it. But the mechanics themselves can not create horror. Players can just as well respond to it in ways that don't create a sense of horror.

To really make players feel that their characters become awful people, they need to be put in situations where acting awful seems like the best option. Players need to feel that they had an option, and they choose freely to do something that is horrible. As GM, you have to create a world in which some things seem reasonable, practical, and necessary, which to the players looking in from the outside seem horrible.

Right now, I am playing Cyberpunk 2077, and usually take out as many enemies stealthily and nonlethal as I can until I am, spotted and a gunfight breaks out. Killing or knocking out is mechanically identical, it's a purely cosmetic choice. You can knock out with guns, and when you grab an enemy from behind you can click the knockout or kill button, which do the same thing. You still get XP and the bounty. A dead or unconscious body are impossible to tell apart, except that when an unconscious body gets shot or explodes, you see the amount of damage you dealt it. If you kill or capture seems to be a difference that exists purely in the player's mind, it's not a mechanic.
Yesterday, I was quietly knocking out a whole group of gangsters hanging out between shipping containers, until there were only two left talking to each other, and I saw that one of them did not belong to the gang, but was one of the organ-harvesting Scavengers. I shot them both on sight, and after hearing banging from the shipping container next to them, I decided to do another round of the whole place to get all the knocked out bodies that I hid and shot them for good measure.
First I tried to bring every criminal in alive if possibly. After a few scavenger lairs, I switched to always killing them instead of knocking them out. And now I'm at killing anyone they do business with as well. Stealthily taking out street punks gets boring after a while, and more and more I find myself turning into Judge Dredd in low level areas, simply walking in on crime scenes through the front door and shoting everyone with a gun where they stand, even before they see me. And it's fun! I have no idea where this will lead to in another 40 hours down the line.
I think that's the kind of thing that GM's should be aiming for when running games about the PCs turning into monsters or madmen. Humans have an instinct to adopt the speec and behavior of the people around them to fit in. Have vampires talk about humans as objects, and look down on the PCs if they don't. Make it so that the players play along to humor important NPCs they are trying to such up to, and give them opportunities to show their loyalty and how serious they are about making it in vampire politics. In a game with no actual lives at stake, the inhibition to do bad things for convenience are already very low.

[Mechalich]

This is completely false. There's game mechanics requiring you to drink human blood or go into a blood starved frenzy. If you feed only on animals it gets harder to resist that frenzy. Eventually the sight or smell of a tiny amount of blood makes you frenzy. If your storyteller/gm allowed you to get away with this that's a fault on their behalf, not on the system.

There are no such mechanics in VtM Revised or V20, so I have no idea where you're getting this idea. VtM Revised has the following language "Vampires replenish Blood pool by taking it from others. "Others need not be human" on pg 139 of the corebook. V20 has the exact same language on pg 269. So no, vampires can subsist off animal blood. Nothing in the frenzy rules speaks about animal blood making frenzy more difficult to resist.

[fishyfishyfishy]

There are no such mechanics in VtM Revised or V20, so I have no idea where you're getting this idea. VtM Revised has the following language "Vampires replenish Blood pool by taking it from others. "Others need not be human" on pg 139 of the corebook. V20 has the exact same language on pg 269. So no, vampires can subsist off animal blood. Nothing in the frenzy rules speaks about animal blood making frenzy more difficult to resist.

It's actually hidden away in the elder discipline powers for Animalism. I've had the opportunity to clarify with the developers their intent over social media and animal blood is not meant to be a viable long term solution for feeding.

[sktarq]

If you are talking about "Animal Succulence" then I'd call hooey.

Because it claims to address a problem that is never created to exist...thus only allowing an implied idea.
Compare to something like VtR where it is clearly established what blood potency may drink animal blood and the cost of getting around it (Buy and maintain membership (not availible as a starting power) in the Ordo Dracul and the 2nd Tier coil of Blood). There we see limit and exception.
In VtM we see an exception to a rule I can never find. . . It doesn't even give you what it is like for elders without animal succulence to compare. . .

As for intent of creators....well that's very nice but if they wanted a rule they could have written it down. They had the option. In fact they did with VtR...Animal Succulence implies they were already thinking about it certainly...and maybe there is a rule in V5 as I have not gone into detail in that book. But for 2e I'd say it just WW being a bit hinkey in their book writing.

And since it says on page 140 that animal blood is less nourishing and thus must be made up for in volume....no mention of blood having differing value depend on who is drinking it. on any page in the core and camarilla book...which is where I'd expect to find them.

Now it is not as though WhiteWolf can't have these issues...they quite possibly do. i mean at times they claim a character and their sire are different clans (Chicago Book) or the whole mess of the Baali where it was rather obvious different writers had very different ideas at different times etc.

So the idea that some members of the team wanted elders in particular or vampires more generally to have problems with feeding on animal indefinitely makes total sense...as does the idea that somehow that doesn't really matter if they never got around to publishing that.



Oh I guess this brings up another issue with at least the e2 version of the game....splat creep...over time the addition of new skills/talents/knowledges as well a so so many more merits had an issue...it made the initial point budget a problem. Esecially as the new s/t/k were often just specialties if the splatbook wasn't being used...they didn't (or very rarely) added something that wasn't covered passably well before. . . And just upping starting point wasn't generally a good response (as then it made it too easy to concentrate points in a few traits and max things out) . . . Again it is a surmountable issue with the ST working with their players during character creation, being careful what splats they add, mentioning it during session zero, and some good faith all round...it can however trip things up and cause problems where the utility is being drained from some s/t/k by being diluted across multiple new traits etc...its nowhere the same scale of similar splat-creep issues (Hi Rifts) but does need some ST attention.

As for the whole idea that humanity and the whole personal horror stuff doesn't work because it happens TOO the player?
It can have that effect if not run well. Run well the sense that the player is losing control of their character or the character is losing their mind is a big boon...but it largely about focus and the skill of the ST's presentation.

Again it may sound like I dislike the game...I don't...I actually rather like it, especially when the lore gets used well and not as the main focus of the game...but I am aware it has issues.

[Yora]

As for the whole idea that humanity and the whole personal horror stuff doesn't work because it happens TOO the player?
It can have that effect if not run well. Run well the sense that the player is losing control of their character or the character is losing their mind is a big boon...but it largely about focus and the skill of the ST's presentation.

That is my point. You can make it all work. If you are a skilled (and I would argue experienced) GM, and you make up your own interpretations and solutions.
But the game does not say how it works or what it's supposed to look like. Aside from the actual crunch for dice rolls and disciplines, it's all like an early concept version of a game. A wish list of things that might be cool in a game. But this game has not yet decided what it even wants to be (though I hear it might have gotten around to that in V5), or even has any outlines for how it would be performed in practice. There is nothing (of any substance) regarding structure or procedures,

It's a game from 1991, and I actually applaud that most of the editions are actually new editions and not different games. That's from way back when AD&D 2nd edition was just out..
But I think if a game with this concept were to be made now, one would approach it completely differently. I talked with other people about it recently, and we agreed that if not for all the disciplines, Vampire is a concept that calls for a quick and dirty PtbA hack. (But the disciplines would make it anything but quick.)

[sktarq]

i mean i do agree with you.

i'm solidly a VtR (1e) guy myself. Which has a lot of the focus moved to a personal level. And some stuff in VtR 2e is good at that too on the personal level.

But I'm not sure having a really solid system would actually help or be desirable. One of the things about having this kind of soft-loosy-goosy system is that different GM's can grow in very different ways that all can work pretty well...or even the same ST can shift between chronicles in style really well...so this can significantly up the systems flexibility, internal variety, replayability, etc. For a starting ST it is a tough system.

So while the floor of ST skill to make a good chronicle is rather high...so are rewards.

[Ignimortis]

Personally, I do not give a crap about "personal horror" and such. My main character of three years had a killcount in the high double digits, and basically bagged at least one "character type" aside from demons (there weren't any) and werewolves (I kinda wanted to, but had no such option).

However, I still felt like I was playing a vampire, because I was doing vampire things - even if those vampire things were mostly just physical Disciplines and a few dots in Presence/Auspex, and being a middling figure in vampiric politics, not a pawn (can't be a pawn if you can single-handedly kill anyone in town aside from one or two elders who actually have combat powers), but probably not higher than a rook, either. Also those things about not being able to walk in the sun, being vulnerable to fire, and the Frenzy rolls, you know, stuff. Quite enough vampiric experience for me, no angst over spilled blood involved, though I did lose a few Humanity points (from 7 to 5).

[Yora]

i mean i do agree with you.

i'm solidly a VtR (1e) guy myself. Which has a lot of the focus moved to a personal level. And some stuff in VtR 2e is good at that too on the personal level.

But I'm not sure having a really solid system would actually help or be desirable.

System? No. I don't actually see much of a problem with the rules in that regard.

But any kind of suggestion what the creators of the game where thinking a game session would look like, or what kinds of activities PCs and antagonist would be doing during play is something that I see as the most fundamental thing that a rulebook needs to provide in addition to the rules.

Though I admit, almost all rulebooks are awful in that regard. I know only a single case of a game book that gives GMs advice and suggestion how to actually run a game, and that's the Star Wars d6 Gamemaster Handbook from 1993. Vampire is not alone in this, but seems like the worst example of not addressing "what does it do"?

[Morty]

i'm solidly a VtR (1e) guy myself. Which has a lot of the focus moved to a personal level. And some stuff in VtR 2e is good at that too on the personal level.


I consider VtR 2E to be the best take on the general concept Masquerade started with long ago, myself. Still not perfect and it's still pretty hard for a novice GM to get, but it offers best support for the kind of story it's meant to create.

[fishyfishyfishy]

There's literally entire chapters dedicated to explaining how to capture the right theme and mood for your story, and whole supplemental books dedicated to expanding on how you can tell a proper horror story. Those of you claiming it's not present are simply wrong. You may not think it's adequate, but that's an entirely different thing.

That said, I agree that VtR2e is generally better at this but that's only because it is necessary for the game to be functional. It doesn't have a meta plot to fall back on.

[LibraryOgre]

Personally, I do not give a crap about "personal horror" and such. My main character of three years had a killcount in the high double digits, and basically bagged at least one "character type" aside from demons (there weren't any) and werewolves (I kinda wanted to, but had no such option).


Had a blood-trash Brujah who took down a Garou, once. Player's Guide Knife-fighting rules, some potency, that one dot of celerity, and a silver dagger that a friendly Thaumaturge summoned and handed me... while the more powerful people tried to go face-to-face.

A few turns of several attacks of unsoakable damage, backed by automatic successes from Potence, took it down.

[Ignimortis]

Had a blood-trash Brujah who took down a Garou, once. Player's Guide Knife-fighting rules, some potency, that one dot of celerity, and a silver dagger that a friendly Thaumaturge summoned and handed me... while the more powerful people tried to go face-to-face.

A few turns of several attacks of unsoakable damage, backed by automatic successes from Potence, took it down.

Ah, Player's Guide rules. I didn't use anything like that, but my viking Brujah could've taken any NPC werewolf mano-a-mano. Thing is, "Fenrir's mangy spawn", as he used to call them, run in packs, and I could never verify whether they use NPC werewolf rules, or the busted PC werewolf rules with Gifts and such.

[Morty]

That said, I agree that VtR2e is generally better at this but that's only because it is necessary for the game to be functional. It doesn't have a meta plot to fall back on.

The lack of the metaplot is the opposite of a problem, but it does put a bit more work onto the ST in terms of creating their own setting.

[fishyfishyfishy]

The lack of a meta plot is a strength or a weakness depending on who you ask. I don't think either opinion is more right than the other.

I only bring it up because it is one of the key differences between the two settings that was relevant in the talk about world building advice. If you have a pre constructed setting you don't need as much in that regard.

[Yora]

Long before I ever considered learning anything about Vampire, I thought it was really cool that it seemed to have (back then) the premise of letting you play in a place near your home. Since most people don't live in New York, Chicago, LA, or London, making your own cities for your own campaign was a big part of the pitches that I was hearing for the game 20 years ago.
But even know, the more I read about the whole metaplot business now, the less I like it. When I started reading the rulebooks, they introduced me to a couple of cool concepts. Like "the only vampires you meet are those who want to meet" and that all vampires are prisoners inside the cities they can't leave because there's nowhere else for them to go. The idea of the Masquerade is that ideally no humans should know that vampires exist, and I thought desperately dealing with every single breach as quickly and ruthlessly as possible would be a central part of the game.
However the metaplot makes it sound like the global vampire conspiracy is pulling the strings around the world, and they are in an open shadow war with goverment agencies that use heavy military hardware against them. It all feels about as secretive as global organized crime. All that just feels very disappointing to me. It sounds like nothing of the isolation of living confined to the shadows that attracted me in the first place.

[sktarq]

Long before I ever considered learning anything about Vampire, I thought it was really cool that it seemed to have (back then) the premise of letting you play in a place near your home. Since most people don't live in New York, Chicago, LA, or London, making your own cities for your own campaign was a big part of the pitches that I was hearing for the game 20 years ago.
But even know, the more I read about the whole metaplot business now, the less I like it. When I started reading the rulebooks, they introduced me to a couple of cool concepts. Like "the only vampires you meet are those who want to meet" and that all vampires are prisoners inside the cities they can't leave because there's nowhere else for them to go. The idea of the Masquerade is that ideally no humans should know that vampires exist, and I thought desperately dealing with every single breach as quickly and ruthlessly as possible would be a central part of the game.
However the metaplot makes it sound like the global vampire conspiracy is pulling the strings around the world, and they are in an open shadow war with goverment agencies that use heavy military hardware against them. It all feels about as secretive as global organized crime. All that just feels very disappointing to me. It sounds like nothing of the isolation of living confined to the shadows that attracted me in the first place.

I really do see your point here.
in fact you are seeing some my issues with the lore and also scale...if the vampires are so powerful the only thing that is really threatening is when lots of people with blades and guns get together or another of their kind...where as if a human can be a threat the vampire is much more pushed into the shadow realm.

I'd recommend you take a look at Vampire the Requiem then. It is "nerfed" in a lot of ways but that is also the point. I like 1e more personally in part because 2e (Blood and Smoke) couldn't really pick between continuing the ideas of 1e's direction or blending VtM back in (power scale esp in combat, more defined clan histories etc) because it had been really popular. But that blend may also appeal to you.

[Morty]

I'd recommend you take a look at Vampire the Requiem then. It is "nerfed" in a lot of ways but that is also the point. I like 1e more personally in part because 2e (Blood and Smoke) couldn't really pick between continuing the ideas of 1e's direction or blending VtM back in (power scale esp in combat, more defined clan histories etc) because it had been really popular. But that blend may also appeal to you.

...Requiem 2E doesn't have defined clan histories. In fact, every clan writeup has several possible origins for them, which may or may not have any truth to them in any given game.

[Mechalich]

However the metaplot makes it sound like the global vampire conspiracy is pulling the strings around the world, and they are in an open shadow war with goverment agencies that use heavy military hardware against them. It all feels about as secretive as global organized crime. All that just feels very disappointing to me. It sounds like nothing of the isolation of living confined to the shadows that attracted me in the first place.

The oWoD metaplot and setting generally are a mess, in part because they glom together multiple games that don't use compatible rules, operate at different power levels, and were written by writers who didn't talk to each other. It's also weirdly backwards because out of the three principle games (Vampire, Werewolf, and Mage), Vampire was the most popular and significant by a huge margin, but Vampires were the weakest splat by an equally huge margin. The Mages are so much more powerful that's it's not even funny. This created a tail wagging the dog problem for the setting as a whole.

This is most obvious in the case of the Time of Judgment. The core Gehenna scenario just quietly kills all the Vampires off. The core Mage scenario End of Evangelion's the planet. The latter obviously makes the events of the former totally irrelevant.

[comicshorse]

[QUOTE=Mechalich;24861125

This is most obvious in the case of the Time of Judgment. The core Gehenna scenario just quietly kills all the Vampires off. The core Mage scenario End of Evangelion's the planet. The latter obviously makes the events of the former totally irrelevant.[/QUOTE]

Yeah but none of them is canon so that's hardly relevant

Also I'd say, having played all three games, Werewolves were the weakest. Though, yeah, Mages definitely the most powerful

[anthon]

I can't recall the fist time I ran vampire; I ran Werewolf the Apocalypse at a Convention in about 1993, and got into Vampire/Mage a while later. Since then I've had the psychotropic experience of playing many, many editions of darkness. Darkness Ages, Medieval Darkness, Darkness Comics Adapted to a World of Darkness; Rifts-esque Clive Barker inspired Nightbane Darkness, Chronicles, Tabloids, Angels, Fallen, Fallen Angels, Demons, Metal Demons, Cyborg Demons, Cyberdemons, Mr. Smith Demons... did I mention there were always, ALWAYS vampires in these games?

So here's some stuff I learned:

Mood is Free.

You don't need a rules set to set up a solid roleplaying experience if your focus is on Keifer Sutherland's leather jacket and how it compliments his Billy Idol Hair style while wearing contact lenses and custom porcelain fangs (I had some of those too). Lost Boys Sisters of Mercy Mood is entirely possible. You can dim the lights, pull up your mp3 playlist of Type O Negative, Invictus, or whatever goth stream band suits your fancy. You can go Vampire Hunter D and have it take place 7000 years after an apocalypse and have people riding cyber horses to giant vampire castles. Honestly, setting and genre are free.

Everybody knows what a vampire is.

Except, this is where rules sets really do matter.

Once you get over the idea of setting up your setting,

you run into the powers/stats and conflict resolution section. Stuff your Black Black Black No. 1 hair dye won't fix.

Take Celerity for example. Or "Vampire super speed". Super speed is CRITICAL to some vampire settings, like Ann Rice's movies staring famous dead musicians or members of Scientology... it's also essential in teen pop sparkly vampire shows from Seattle. But its practically a joke in some combat systems,

especially those which basically eliminate multiple actions, like V5 or Chronicles of Darkness (CoD).

Multiple actions in a 1v1 don't mean much, but become more useful when outnumbered.

Plot wise, being outnumbered is a common sign of strength. But mechanically, it can change how the players cultivate their characters. A political character could dump everything into the charm/dominate or presence/attractiveness mechanism, or jump through status/boon gateways and backgrounds to beef up their contacts/allies or goons.

What this ultimately leads to is someone spending 3-5 dots to replicate multiple actions in combat. "my 5 goons shoot you. Rock Paper Scissors." Unlike D&D, or even Shadowrun or Rifts or Cyberpunk, GURPS, etc., the Goon Squad Player Kill is entirely a thing in Incarnations of World/Chronicles/LARP of Darkness.

Seeing people pop Presence 5 or having a bunch of ghouls, or simply being so high status that a pile of other players glom around them like orbitter memes - this is fact. This isn't even rare. So when you start to size up which system you want to use, try to remember that "game balance" is two people spending similar points to get rough parity, and lacking parity, diversity. Bluntly, if people get +5 attacks per round with their presence/blood bond background, don't freak out if a player wants +5 attacks per round with celerity.


As to other disciplines, like Temporis, Flesh Warping Vicissitudes, Thaumaturgy, etc. You are going to run into World of Darkness' second major flaw:

Lore Conflict with Expectations of Stereotypes.

Splat books (V20 is a compilation of many) help solve the "what about THIS kind of vampire?" setting, but you will run into the "i thought all vampires were super strong, tough, and don't have reflections? Why can't i turn into a bat/wolf/shadow like Dracula? Who the ^#@& is Caine? Where's Vlad? Silver doesn't Do Agg? Why can't I do what they did in Salem's Lot?"

Granted, when I started Vampire, we didn't have to worry about sparkly vampires, but that setting is otherwise weirdly closer to Vamp than you think. Like that over powered european political organization. Vampire secret societies keeping people's super powers and lore reveal in check.

But its up to you to pick which lore you like. Chronicles of Darkness is totally different Lore from V20/V5. V5 lore probably can't be easily supported by its nerfed disciplines. 3d6 mooks with grenades would likely make short work of a vampire kingdom. (Blade Genre?).

What lore you pick will probably decide what game system you have. Me personally, I'd pick my "type of vampire" first, then pick the game system that can support it second. Nothing sucks worse than coming into a game with preconceived notions about what you are going to be allowed to do with your Vampire, from your latest movie or graphic novel, (vampire knight anime? underworld franchise? so many vampires, so little time..) only to find out there's some moldy bible villain as your grandpa and you have to join the Vampire Art club to get ninja speed.

[Yora]

Any complains that I have are not as a game critic, but really purely as a fiction critic. Mechanics have not really come into any of my considerations yet. (Still working on learning those.) And while system certainly matters, it always comes down to what you do with mechanics as a GM.

It just always galls me when I see a really good fiction pitch and the storyline then going completely off the rails, dropping out all the interesting original ideas in favor of hyper-analyzing something that was originally just meant as a throwaway line or a one-off enemy. The work that comes out at the end can really have its own merits, but it's always sad to see a cool original concept getting abandoned.
Like Star Trek Voyager, which abandoned it's entire premise after the first episode and never looked back. :smallannoyed: Or Star Trek Deep Space Nine, that sneakily switched from Peacekeeping/Reconstruction to Mass Warfare halfway through it's run. Or Star Trek Enterprise which forgot it's premise three episodes into the show. (Damn Stark Trek!)

While I was looking around the internet for ideas and advice, I noticed that there really seems to be a huge amount of love for V5. I was looking more specifically what exactly is different, and I'm somewhat under the impression that a big part of it is making rules and mechanics for many things that previously where done freeform.
I assume it's nothing like the crunchification from AD&D 2nd edition to D&D 3rd edition, but is that generally a somewhat correct perception?

[Ignimortis]

While I was looking around the internet for ideas and advice, I noticed that there really seems to be a huge amount of love for V5. I was looking more specifically what exactly is different, and I'm somewhat under the impression that a big part of it is making rules and mechanics for many things that previously where done freeform.
I assume it's nothing like the crunchification from AD&D 2nd edition to D&D 3rd edition, but is that generally a somewhat correct perception?

No, not really. The mechanics are just somewhat different in places, but they don't cover anything that wasn't covered before. People who like V5 just say that the new rules make them feel more like playing a vampire. Personally, I find several decisions regrettable (how blood is done now, compulsions, some of the discipline and clan changes, bloody successes and failures), but some look nice (Humanity, other discipline and clan changes).

[Mechalich]

While I was looking around the internet for ideas and advice, I noticed that there really seems to be a huge amount of love for V5. I was looking more specifically what exactly is different, and I'm somewhat under the impression that a big part of it is making rules and mechanics for many things that previously where done freeform.


V5 was released in 2018, making it the first true new release for the VtM setting in 2004 (V20 is a compilation/reprint of VtM material with many of the core book pages copied word for word from VtM material). V5 ended up riding a big hype train as the first new version of Vampire in a long time, under control of a new company. So there's a lot of support on the internet simply because there's a lot more internet than there was in 2004.

At the very least simply updating the game from a 1998 baseline (when Revised was released) to 2018 is very significant because an awful lot happened in the intervening 20 years of great significance to the Masquerade. Cellphones and Google and Social Media and Amazon and numerous other technological innovations have a great deal of impact on vampire life and the masquerade. The addition of another 1.5 billion people to the planet is also not without significance.

Of course V5 still preserves many of VtM's most basic lore problems. The whole idea of Caine as the first Vampire is problematic...for a bunch of reasons that forum rules forbid discussing in any detail. The origin points and geographic distribution of the clans are equally problematic. The whole Kindred of the East issue remains present and has only become more and more difficult to accept over time (I cannot suggest strongly enough that if you actually run Vampire it should just be dropped and you should simply have Kindred in Asia like everywhere else).

In terms of general inspiration, here's what I'd take from the legacy of VtM:
1. The Masquerade. The idea that Vampires decided, at some point that humans grew too numerous and technologically adept to simply control outright and prey upon openly and that Vampire civilization had to go underground is probably the most important thing to come out. Vampires self-policing against these breaches and surviving via secrecy in the modern world is essential and pretty much every form of modern vampire fiction and most generalized urban fantasy adopts some form of masquerade as a matter of course now.

2. Clan/Bloodline structure. The idea that there are different subgroups of vampires with slightly different powers that are passed down by lineage is a solid one. People want to play different kinds of vampires and the bloodline system is a way for that to work and the existence of clans produces natural factions for a political game. At the same type, VtR does this better since it has it that anyone can found a bloodline and you don't have clans linked back ancient antiquity.

3. The Domain concept. Though it's never been implemented particularly well (do Princes collect a blood tithe? How does one city negotiate with another regarding boundaries? Etc.) the idea of vampire society structured around nominally independent metro areas each with their own political structure is solid. 'City X' is a functional unit for a setting that is extremely useful for players (and for the audience, many urban fantasy series are set in a single city for precisely this reason) to identify with and also useful for GM because it limits the area of setup for building a campaign. The idea also fits in well with traditional tropes conflating vampires with the nobility - notably Dracula as the ruler of Wallachia.

4. The politics of immortality. Vampires idea of politics grew out of the gothic/punk scene it originated in, which means that it's political structures aren't very well structures (the film What we do in the Shadows skewered this extremely effectively), but the central idea that vampires spend their unlives competing amongst their peers for prestige and power is a good one. It was just that the game never really gave a good justification for why that prestige and power was something all characters should want. In most small-scale human hierarchies being in-charge means more work and more frustration and a lot of people avoid it - for example, college professors are notorious for trying to avoid the position of department head - when there are not concrete benefits attached. In the business world people ascend the promotion ladder primarily for monetary reasons, but Vampire as a game never quite managed to come up with the vampiric equivalent.

[Yora]

I think the whole concept of the Anarchs revolves around the issue of power hierarchy among vampires.
In the Camarilla, the older vampires are telling the younger vampires what to do. Theh make all the real decisions, and when younger vampires don't obey, their elders can easily destroy them with no repercussions. And as stated in many places, vampires don't climb up the hierarchy with time. The elders stick around seemingly forever. After thousands if years, it's still the 6th and 7th generations that are in charge. And when they eventually disappear from public, it will be the 8th and 9th generations that will have all the power for many centuries to come. The odds for 12th and 13th generation vampires to ever be elders is extremely slim and way beyond any time scale they can imagine. The whole idea of the Anarchs is that they are done waiting and refuse to play by the rules that always favor the elders anymore.
The only way for young vampires to have power over others is to make new lower ranking vampires themselves. But the people who regulate this privilege are again elders, who only give permision when it benefits themselves in some way.
Vampire politics, as PCs are concerned, are about getting out of being a slave by becoming a master. Power does not come to those who wait. Iit only comes to those who make themselves indispensible to the people at the top, who have powerful allies, and can collect big favors. Or who might one way have a strong enough position to get away with killing elders.

And the elders know this. Their position remains secure only for as long as those vampires below them fear to rise up against them. They need to maintain crowds of younger vampires whose own fortunes depend on the continued authority of the elder. These loyal pawns need to be strong enough to be real protection, but must not become so strong that they don't need the elder anymore.

You could go with the idea that until the industrial revolution, this system was relatively stable for the Camarila. But since then cities have been growing massivey and transporation gotten much faster, causing the hierarchy of power to be in a constant state of change. Trying to maintain your position while new players come and go all the time is the heart of vampire politics.

[LibraryOgre]

I think the whole concept of the Anarchs revolves around the issue of power hierarchy among vampires.
In the Camarilla, the older vampires are telling the younger vampires what to do. Theh make all the real decisions, and when younger vampires don't obey, their elders can easily destroy them with no repercussions. And as stated in many places, vampires don't climb up the hierarchy with time.

Toppling a gerontocracy is always good, clean fun. (https://www.schlockmercenary.com/2002-03-29)

[sktarq]

Well in terms of "why vampires play the political game"
There are always the autukaris and in Inconnu...and they basically don't but IME are mostly ignored by most ST's...which is unfortunate, I think.

[Yora]

The question is, what would you do with them? Vampires who don't want to get involved and hide from other vampires don't really have much to do in campaigns.
Particularly with the Inconnu I really don't know what their purpose is supposed to be. Only thing I can think of is a mysterious old men appearing from a bush telling the players where they need to go to find the next clue if they can't find it themselves.

[comicshorse]

The question is, what would you do with them? Vampires who don't want to get involved and hide from other vampires don't really have much to do in campaigns.
Particularly with the Inconnu I really don't know what their purpose is supposed to be. Only thing I can think of is a mysterious old men appearing from a bush telling the players where they need to go to find the next clue if they can't find it themselves.

The Inconnu are, I'd say, quest givers. There the guys who have missions of stupendous danger with rewards that the Prince of your city couldn't give you. The tricky thing is figuring out are they approaching you because you have a great reputation for getting things done or you the suckers they recruit to get killed to disguise what they're really up to

[Mechalich]

One of the issues with politics in VtM is that the system lacks what I'll call a 'currency of conspiracy.' For a very literal example of what this is, see the golden coins of John Wick. Specifically, there needs to be some medium through which power can flow and exchanges can be recognized. Vampires doesn't have this. Worse, because of the necessity of the masquerade, the natural currency available - ordinary human money - is broadly severed from vampire operations. The Prince can't offer you a million bucks to do something, nor can he offer you a criminal or political post from which you could freely get your kleptocracy on and extract millions (you are of course perfectly free to just go and do this yourself, which further limits the leverage the elders possess).

Additionally, because the vampire conspiracy lacks any sort of ideological goal and is committed to nothing more than survival, there's no real reason for any character not interested purely in power for its own sake to try and ascend the political ladder of the conspiracy. WtA and MtA both have conspiracies with rather strong ideological goals (it's basically 'save the planet' in both cases, albeit for distinctly different values of 'save') and so reaching for the top means a PC gains the power to direct resources towards their preferred measures of pursuing those goals. Becoming Prince, regrettably, simply means you get to shuffle the deck chairs in terms of which vampires occupy positions of favor, but you can't actually direct your lessers to do anything, because there's no direction to go. The exceptions, in what will become something of a trend in this post, are the clans with access to blood magic, because they have magical goals they can pursue.

Yes the Prince and the Elders have the right to beat you down if you screw up, but that's just a stick, the systems is decidedly deficient in carrots. All they can really give you is the right to make new vampires. That's certainly very important, but it's not an everyday thing both because the Masquerade imposes a ceiling on vampiric population growth and simply because most characters aren't interested in producing potential equals and threats willy-nilly (if you want slaves, that's what ghouls are for). It also matches poorly with campaign timescales. The average PC might be interested in embracing one person over the course of an entire campaign.

Vampire really needs some medium through which the favor-trading can flow. Interestingly, the other big oWoD both have such things. Werewolf has Renown - in which your acknowledged social standing translates directly into your ability to acquire additional supernatural power. Mage has Tass, which is basically magic boost juice you can pass around. Vampire just doesn't really have anything like that. The exception is those clans with access to blood magic, in which case blood magic knowledge or mystical creations becomes a form of exchange. Giovanni, for example, can trade ghosts.

Thematically the medium for vampires ought to be blood. Certainly that works for blood magic using clans - because blood magic requires burning blood pool as fuel - but for everyone else having a giant surplus of blood simply means you need to put a bunch of refrigerators in your basement. Sure you can make more ghouls, but there's logistical and masquerade related barriers to having too many of them. Gorging on massive amounts of blood, meanwhile, might feel really awesome, but it doesn't bring any sort of concrete benefits, since blood binging doesn't provide any sort of power boost. Also, because of the various non-predatory means to acquire blood, especially animal blood (ex. ghouling a hog farmer and turning the hog shed into a blood bank) the blood supply is not especially constrained.

[comicshorse]

One of the issues with politics in VtM is that the system lacks what I'll call a 'currency of conspiracy.' For a very literal example of what this is, see the golden coins of John Wick. Specifically, there needs to be some medium through which power can flow and exchanges can be recognized. Vampires doesn't have this. .

Well they do, it's called 'Prestation' AKA good, old fashioned favours.
You do something for me and I owe you one.


The Prince can't offer you a million bucks to do something,

Why can't he do this ? Presuming you want money


Yes the Prince and the Elders have the right to beat you down if you screw up, but that's just a stick, the systems is decidedly deficient in carrots. All they can really give you is the right to make new vampires.

Or create ghouls. Or gift you the right to hunt in certain area's that might have been off limits to you before. Or even give you exclusive rights to hunt in an area. Or appoint you to a position in the city. Or just money or Prestation. Or if they owe you BIG the right to commit Diablerie on the next lower Gen. idiot who gets himself blood hunted. Or y'know anything you're character would value you can think of. I had a Toreador obsessed with Fencing who was rewarded for taking a dangerous mission with a original 16th Century fencing manual (both nice for my character and OOC training with it allowed my character to buy up his Melee to 5)

[opaopajr]

The question of "why politics & prestige?" was answered several times in its core & splatbooks fiction, with varying differences due to species (kindred or kuei-jin), sect, clan, faith, philosophy, and so on:

survival. :smallcool:

It's how you pass the time. It's how you stave off the beast AND torpor. It's how you follow your path. It's how you further reward loyalty out of finite resources. It's how you avenge slights without brinksmanship escalation.

It's how you derive purpose after a bargain you didn't fully understand: indefinite longevity. :smallwink:

The Virtues & Humanity/Paths are often poorly understood aspects of the system. It was the horror. It is watching your slow dive to final death, trying to juggle from them meaning out of immortality's smothering stasis. And smothered you are, where either needs wear away what you hold dear beyond survival, or time wears away sympathetic interest to an ever-changing world. "Monster I am lest monster I become," and "Survival is a b****." and all that jazz.

:smallsigh: These long topics bring back WoD flame war happy memories... It so passes the time. :smalltongue:

[sktarq]

On autukaris in games.
What can you do with them? tons. Basically this is a vampire who basically wants to do their own thing and ignore the larger political goings on. This doesn't mean they don't have goals, interests, knowledge All of these can be used in conflicts, allies, slaking horse threats, red herrings etc. That kooky Malk who lives under the overpass it seem may well have knowledge you need, may be territorial (about a space, the homeless, their mortal family), can be a buffer between other groups, be a masquerade threat, . . . an none of the political tool set you have set up are worth a damn because they don't value what you do...and in so doing they provide a strong point of contrast in order for the players to flesh out, decide, and show what they do value.
They can also just develop their own resources because they are not using the general setup the rest of the city is working with and those can be on interest to the players for various reasons. Also they can be any number of display cases of other ways of being a vampire. They are where ST's can get really creative and go wild...and then allow the consequences of that to go wild in order to drive new story opportunities. And if you get a coterie of them they may well be effectively your own mini covenant for that particular city. And for those who hide from other vampires? well they still have effects...and the players may well have to deal with those effects for good or ill...and for a group of players who generally like to be highly direct and deal with the troublemaker having a troublemaker who they can not FIND is both a change of pace and forces them to pull on new ideas and resources that the ST wants for other plot related reasons.

as for the Inconnu they can be more than just quest-givers. They can also be testers, deus-ex-machina, the shadowy hand behind the Fecal-tornado of problems they have been dealing with, a counter example of what it means to be an elder in order to make the other elders the players deal with more obviously monstrous by contrast, warning/omen givers, the shadowy presence in the dark that feeds the players paranoia, the red herring BBEG, the guy at the bar who asks questions about their history status of their soul etc that highlights the choices their character can make. Just as a few things off the top of my head.

As for vampires not climbing the hierarchy over time "Have you heard the good news about the coming of the Sword of Caine? Esbasts are on Tuesdays and refreshments will be provided to new visitors who wish to hear the good words of the Book of Nod"

While in the Cam. the currency of conspiracy is in theory prestation very few ST's pay it much attention because it not developed as a rule system...hell the Harpies power is in theory they act as keepers of this system knowing who knows what to whom...as for trading favor in blood...well you can but it is weird market...Ventrue passing favored vessels, herds/blood dolls in general, tasting clubs in general, supernatural blood, etc....no I have never kept caitiff chained up with bad blood being forced in and weak vitae being drawn out in order to trade for other favors...nor did he have enough on hand to survive gehenna..okay that is exactly what he did with it - plans for giving it to the ventrue members of a conclave were axed.

[comicshorse]

While in the Cam. the currency of conspiracy is in theory prestation very few ST's pay it much attention .

Other people's experiences may differ but I have never played in a game where Prestation wasn't a vital part of Kindred society.

[sktarq]

Oh it is almost always there...but it rarely seems to actually have any detail, it tends (IME) to be very handwavy or glossed over. . . As opposed to the more concrete idea of werewolf reputation etc. It kinda gets treated like V's familiar *poof*ing in only when the plot requires it and then promptly disappearing again.

[Mechalich]

The idea of prestation is fairly strong in the fluff, but there's absolutely no in-game system for how it should work, which means that in order for players to engage in it they have to trust the GM to not play favorites or screw them over unfairly and they're vulnerable to abuse by players who are simply better at fast-talking mother-may-I approaches than others (a problem that is endemic to TTRPG gameplay as a whole). This is a problem for many games, but it's particularly tricky in Vampire where the default assumption is that no one is acting in good faith and everyone hates everyone else. Which means Prestation is valid only insofar as another character can't get away with screwing you over, which in many cases means it has no value at all. This is highly appropriate for a criminal conspiracy, but it can be extremely unfun because it essentially means the game, much like life within an actual criminal conspiracy, is inherently unfair and it's extremely vulnerable to abuse because the GM has basically infinite capacity to bend said unfairness according to their whims.

An actual mechanic to govern favor trading would make a big difference in the viability of prestation in gameplay. Even one that's not especially good would probably be better, for great many groups, than not having one at all. Eclipse Phase has a favor-based mechanical system for it's 'Rep economies' and I suggest that porting a system of that nature over to a Vampire game would be very beneficial.

[fishyfishyfishy]

Other people's experiences may differ but I have never played in a game where Prestation wasn't a vital part of Kindred society.

Agreed. It's a major and vital part of the game, and ignoring it is a foreign concept.

[sktarq]

As the kind of player who looks for ways to use the prestation system to gain an advantage in play I have generally found very few ST's have much of idea of the system beyond the plot hammer aspects that come up as plot drivers/quest giving.

Like trying to do research on who owes what to whom, how trustworthy are various characters etc. most debts are to be paid of in the same story if not same chapter...they rarely hang. The harpies are rarely able to be called on to check the abuse of the system...when logically they gain most of their power from mostly playing because if the prestation system starts to be distrusted they loose all of their power as the watchers and recorders of it. Or when I start looking to do favors to build up prestation to use later...I get a blank look.

This is what I mean by handwavy...Its there, mostly in the background and often alluded to but when engaged with is like a mirage unless the ST is quick on their feet and has a good idea of the politics of the city...which does happen but is rare. The ST has to make up what is going on from the fluff...which if they are good enough really works (and doing this for VtM I think has made me a better GM in general for all games) but mostly doesn't. And I can't even say I consider it huge deal...It's a handywavy aspect I can live with but shows a place where the very cool fluff is hard for an ST to support in play.

[comicshorse]

The idea of prestation is fairly strong in the fluff, but there's absolutely no in-game system for how it should work, which means that in order for players to engage in it they have to trust the GM to not play favorites or screw them over unfairly.

Well yes but if you have have a GM who does that then no great rules or fluff is going to save the game. You're just screwed :smallsmile:


and they're vulnerable to abuse by players who are simply better at fast-talking mother-may-I approaches than others

If you think its bad in Vampire you should try early Mage. Where you're ability to bull**** the GM literally establishes what power level you are operating on

Posted by Skartq

Oh it is almost always there...but it rarely seems to actually have any detail, it tends (IME) to be very handwavy or glossed over. . . As opposed to the more concrete idea of werewolf reputation etc. It kinda gets treated like V's familiar *poof*ing in only when the plot requires it and then promptly disappearing again.

Again that is most definitely not my experience

[Yora]

No mechanics can force a GM to do anything. GMs can always do anything they want. If the dice say something that GMs don't like, they can make it happen as the mechanics say, but then handwave away any consequence right after that. Or just decide that they don't use the mechanic in their game. Or say the dice came up different than they did.

There are plenty of games that do such things these days, but I think if the players don't trust the GM, the campaign is already past salvaging. The assumption that the GM is working with the players to provide them an enjoyable game is the very foundation of all RPGs. A GM that need to be reined in is a lost cause, and mechanics don't help at all.

How to use favors and the intended structures for vampire politics is not sufficiently explained. RPGs certainly need to teach how the game is meant to be run. Which almost none of them do. Which is what I've been crusading for for years.

[opaopajr]

Gamelines struggle with putting out published linear Adventures that don't manacle parties to someone's precious authorial vision, let alone give good advice on different campaign-styles best practices. :smalltongue: I don't hold new GMs too much to a higher standard starting out. This ttrpg thing is still a very new game concept (arguably 1960s to 1970s in its recognizable Ur-form), so there is a lot of art and received best practices involved in its production.

As for this topic I don't want to scare away the OP or any others who are curious.

I will say the Coterie is a blessing to new GMs. The mission-based structure with freeform political sandbox between missions helps ground an otherwise 'frighteniningly' loose structure. People innately get playground "reindeer games" and its unpleasant complications thereafter. Adding a similar-aged cadre to survive the politics of cliques helps make the experience palatable -- barring circular firing squad PvP pathology. :smallsmile:

[sktarq]

If you think its bad in Vampire you should try early Mage. Where you're ability to bull**** the GM literally establishes what power level you are operating on

Posted by Skartq
.

Again that is most definitely not my experience

That's fair. I've had a wide variety of experience with it. From great to totally ignored. Good ST's have done wonders with the idea but they had to do the work to set up things themselves...bad ST's were always going to have problems with it and ignore/use it as a bad quest hammer only...but it is the muddy middle that I really take umbrage with and why I think it is a setting issue...people who are normally pretty good GM's in other setting had issues with this.
I think for a couple of reasons. Firstly most TTRPG tend to not be a socially focused or politically focused as VtM fluff claims to be...and so there is more familiarity with "combat rules", "stealth and movement" rules etc than social standing and bonds etc between PC's and NPC's etc. So there is just not that mental to-do list that helps keep that function running well.
Also it has tended to be a problem for ST's who get more wrapped up in the lore at scale than the city they are playing in. Correlations isn't perfect but was a trend I noticed. And I get it-it is hard to run the very personal politics and very large scale shadow conflict at the same time.
This is one of those things I think led to my earlier comments of things like the systems sensitivity to ST skill, ST work involvement (both in prep time and wide knowledge), weird mismatch of support to expectations, that the overall meta-lore tends to get in the way of the table play and story construction if not carefully watched.

Honestly my single most useful suggestion is put in a "boons payable" and "boons receivable" in whatever little NPC writeup the ST does for their dramatis personae for a setting/story etc. The fact it is isn't on the character sheet I think puts it in an out-of-sight-out-of-mind situation.


Somewhat in the same vein the Status merit is often similarly ignored. Not on purpose IME but often is none the less. Heck I'm pretty sure even the examples of use in the book forget to use it even if the parties involved should have the status merit due to their listed titles. So I get how that happens...but it can really shift things odds wise quite a lot and when used does tend to get players to act much more .... "proper"...to high ranking individuals. (sure they back stab them later but that's in perfect keeping with the setting or their make efforts to set themselves up with a ton of advantages ahead of time to level to playing field which again it wonderfully appropriate)...Do I think it a huge deal? nope. But it something I recommend new ST's keep an eye on as it is easy to drop it in the hurly burly of the table and it can be useful tool in building the setting verisimilitude.

Similarly glossed over? also how freakish elder Gangrel would be. Make any Nossie seem like a toreador. I mean think about it....even if a vampire frenzied once ever three years on average a 300 year old vampire would have 100 animal traits. And a 300 year old elder isn't exactly unknown in many cities in the WoD-almost to be expected in many people's games. Even ignoring the fact means basically all their social traits are gone just what would they LOOK like? maybe the very weirdest Fiends would be weirder but I'd guess on average the Gangrel would have them beat...there just wouldn't be enough human left to recognize. How they play politics? eh? they basically turn into an individualized horror monster in the woods. ManBearPig, mothman, etc....just without obfuscate (assuming country Gangrel) and big claws....Now do I think most people's choice to keep most elder Gangrel still semi-human to be one that helps the stories and probably the fun of the game? Yup...but it is one of those changes that seem to pop up again and again without it really being a thought out houserule or the like. Also such massive and obvious degeneration would have a major effect on clan structure and mentality...would probably THE defining pillar of mentality as they got older...I mean they get far worse than Nosferatu at being social over time and that is pretty core to the Nossies.

Now it isn't just a WoD thing...the application of feudalism to many D&D worlds is not very complete or logical either and just as often ignored except in a window dressing way.

and as for Early Mage....or even late mage... Yeah that was just so bad I couldn't play. Breaking the world by lawyering physics and thus second/third order consequences could be somewhat entertaining though.

I Kinda want to say STing WoD vs some other systems is kinda like driving a 1990's Porsche vs 1990's Toyota Camry. If you have the skills and put the effort into it the Porsche will give you amazing results but if you are not used to driving a manual gearbox with a heavy, stiff clutch you'll spend so much time crawling or stalled that the Camry will be faster.

[Poldon]

Honestly my single most useful suggestion is put in a "boons payable" and "boons receivable" in whatever little NPC writeup the ST does for their dramatis personae for a setting/story etc. The fact it is isn't on the character sheet I think puts it in an out-of-sight-out-of-mind situation.

There's a bit of an optional system for prestation and boons in the V20 Companion book. I've never used it in game, so I don't know how helpful it is, but there is a prestation system.

[sktarq]

Ah fair...I missed that...as V20 is mostly a reprint of stuff I already own I generally just used the the source material...

Have not seen it used but I'm glad they thought of it.

(Goes to hunt this rule to check quality)

[Yora]

I got a general question about one specific idea to start a campaign:

There's been trouble and some vampire deaths in the city, and the Prince decides to give all seven clans permission to create one new vampire each. Since more clans are supporting him than opposing him, this shifts the balance of power more in his favor while looking perfectly fair and balanced.
One year later the primogen are called to present the new fledglings they created. After the meeting, the primogen leave and some of the new neonates hang around to talk with others in the same situation as them.
The players will be playing three or four of these new neonates, with the remaining ones being NPCs that might perhaps show up again later.

I expect to run a group with mostly new players to the game who don't really know much about the setting. Those players who know a bit more simply had better teaching in their characters' first year, otherwise they were told very little.
My idea is that the players will geadually realize that there's a power struggle going on at the top and they have been created as expandable pawns to be used and discarded when more experienced vampires get taken out of action or a too valuable to put into real risk. Their role in the campaign is to either make themselves invisible and try to be forgotten by the elders, or make themselves too valuable to be risk needlessly. The goal is to survive and not get stepped on while tbe giants fight among themselves.

That faces me with two challenges, though:

Before the PCs meet and are introduced to each other, they each had about a year in which they were trained and taught the basics of being vampires. Depending on the clan, they would have had very different experiences and learned very different things about the city and vampire society. I don't want to run three or four session with only one player I don't really know myself yet. And after character creation, I want to start actually playing right away.
One option is to write a one page summary for each of the seven starting PCs that quickly sums up how they were turned and then stayed with their master for one year. The downside is that this won't include any specific details about the character's origins and personality.
The other option would be to spend maybe 15 to 20 minutes with each character in which I narrate the same information and then can incorporate the respective player's input on the fly. But then all four players will already know all the information that all four characters start with. I kind of like the idea of the PCs forming their party over the exchange of that information as they realize theh are all similarly helpless and lost but can benefit greatly from cooperating.
Which one of these do you think is better for the purpose, or do you have ideas how I could approach this part better?

Another thing is that I generally believe in being quite open about what the campaign will be like and what it all will be about. Players should know what kind of game they sign up to before they have to chose if they want to sign up. But at the same time, this idea for the campaign start is about the characters being thrown into a world they don't really understand, for reasons nobody is telling them. That should work best if the players don't know what is going on in the introduction.

When in doubt, I always want to err strongly on the side of caution. This innitial introduction phase will probably last only for three sessions or so at most, and probably be soon forgotten if the campaign ends up with a long run. But I think the odds for getting the campaign to a good pace where it keeps running increases hugely if the players have clear expectations of what they can look forward to.
If needed be, I am prepared to ditch the whole premise for the introduction and be fully up front about everything. But I also really like the idea and I think it would be cool if I could salvage some of it.

[sktarq]

such a group of "one year old who have never met" works meta wise but could feel very off forced or unnatural in game if you are not careful so I'd say you should lean into teambuilding and driving the WHY it makes sense to move out from their sires and team up.

okay my main questions that come up would be to ask the psychology about them going up together from both their and their clan's perspective. Those neonates new to their clan may well be seen as assets by their clan ancilla and elders as much as anything especially if deaths in the local ecosystem have left gaps they want filled and have status, social introductions before the prince and other neonates meet them, feeding rights etc to lure the neonates into cooperation. This is especially true for their direct sires (who would likely be allies of the prince or at least allies of the primogen if the prince gave the right-to-sire to the clan as a whole (which would probably leave the primogen to decide who uses it) instead of to a specific member of each clan the prince likes. I mean if they are meant to be expendable and manipulable you'd think they would want to be kept pretty close...
and why does everyone want patsies? I mean why doesn't one clan want a patsy, one want a soldier, one what a lure to catch the interest of certain block of vampires, one want a bridge to an allied clan, one to fill in from a fallen member, etc etc? Was their some sort of price or agreement that came with the right-to-sire that made "make a patsy" look like the best option for several clans? Because that could make a good way to link the PC's later on.

so why be together and why not attach themselves to a clan structure are two things you want to think about. Perhaps the prince is going to allow such neonates to feed (and perhaps one day claim) the territory of a vampire of note who died per-campaign or perhaps a developing area that may grow into something worthwhile later. Is there some sort of detante that would promote the clans giving the neonates some more space to grow together? Will letting them live directly under the prince's rule in part of his domain give them brownie points with said prince somehow? Is this instead a way to escape the more oppressive/demanding sires and strike out on their own (replacing the clan support with coterie support)?

this will also help develop those neonates that DON'T join this group...the same pressures fell some other way for them. Probably stay close to their sires, or at least clans, or possibly striking out as a second coterie (or even solo perhaps)

Also ask what the coterie DOES in vampire society or in theory will do. This will also help you guide to a degree the character builds so they have some kind of reason to stick together and quite possibly haven together. Set things up so the character drives push them together at least for a few years...(this also helps keep the PvP backstabbing down)


as for which version of what you said exactly....I'd do the second one. The specifics help people get a character going. And I'd recommend considering changing the info you give each one. This can give the players slightly different goals or at least views on a potential plot hook and those goals don't have to be opposing (which can provide good bits of early mutual backscratching)....but can also make it very clear early on how their different snippets of knowledge can add up together to be something stronger than they each start with which can be a good early team building exercise.

[fishyfishyfishy]

You should start a new thread instead of continually hijacking this one. I'm positive snownine would appreciate not having notifications pop up when it's not related to their question(s).

[Yora]

I don't think we're allowed to make duplicate threads.

[LibraryOgre]

I don't think we're allowed to make duplicate threads.

The Mod Ogre: The Duplicate Thread rule is more about having the exact same conversation in two different threads. For example, if I start a conversation about "What to do about Ogres" and no one responds, I cannot start a new thread about "What to do about Ogres" to try and get more attention. Far more common is with news events... Bob starts a thread about "Sean Connery has died!" and Sarah starts a thread about "Sean Connery has died!" and we merge the threads, because there can be only one. At worst, a duplicate thread is a Please Don't, and, TBH, I seldom bother to warn about it unless you're doing something really obvious... like two threads to talk about the same thing.

In cases like this, where we've had a lot of people chime in on the original question, I tend to regard what's been going on as "Thread Drift", which is fine... the original question has been answered, and we're talking about new and related things to it. If you wanted to start a new thread about your specific campaign ideas, that's fine; it's a different campaign, with different questions. We have omnibus threads (like General Shadowrun Questions (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?512983-General-Shadowrun-Questions-III-Ya-like-that-Chummer)) because it makes it easier for people to talk about things in one place; it's not necessary, just convenient. We had a general World of Darkness thread, but it went too long without posts, and none of y'all are Giovanni enough to bring it back from the dead. This thread, if it goes on long enough, may become a new omnibus thread; it's happened before, especially where people start talking about an upcoming computer game, then keep talking about other games and related games... The Elder Scrolls thread (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?611078-The-Elder-Scrolls-XVI-Sworn-to-Carry-Your-Burdens) is up to #16, and it started as "Who's Excited for Skyrim" back in 2011.

If snownine doesn't want notifications to pop up, he's free to unsubscribe from the thread (gods know I only subscribe to my Homebrew threads, which no one ever comments on). We do not consider a thread starter to have any special privileges in a thread, except in Homebrew.

[sktarq]

We had a general World of Darkness thread, but it went too long without posts, and none of y'all are Giovanni enough to bring it back from the dead.

Well Mr Sheriff, I have no intent to call down a blood hunt from Prince Rich or his officers on my own head thankyou very much.



Besides it's the idea of how to start a game exactly the description of the name of the thread? Names are important and the essence of the idea encapsulated. And is a good name...unlike Taco Bell...no bells involved. So if anything it seems to be the truth unless you wish to play at being Ankou as well (I don't recommend it he doesn't like competition according to the orphan gravestones) [/Malk]

[Aliess]

Could you make the players coterie the children that the Prince, and the player's sires have deemed most likely to survive past the first year? The Prince puts the various children into temporary coteries on presentation night and send them off with various tasks.
During the first few months I suspect three Prince will be trying to solidify the new voting lead by looking for any exist to get rid of the new kindred from clans that don't support him. Kindred from supporting cleans on the other hand might find they get punished harshly, but not outright destroyed for relatively minor infractions.
How does the Prince look on kindred who should be supporting him, but who didn't embrace? Many older vampires might not want a new Childe, especially not one they had to choose and embrace in a year. Younger kindred on the other hand may have jumped on the opportunity and made really has choices giving you plenty of chances for object lessons in what not to do and potential sessions where the players have to clean up the mess of a fellow new embrace.

[Glimbur]

I'd suggest a short session 0 with each player. They get a quick brief on the absolute basic rules of being Kindred, some flavor for their clan, a bit on other clans, and a couple choices to make. Like, the Venture would take their progeny out hunting and test their ability to pull prey. How they do that is a strong first note in how that character acts. A Bruja would have a different interactive bit, and so on. Keep the mechanics light or non-existent, and the sire is right there to prevent any serious bad consequences. This time. That gives them a chance to try and fail or succeed, and talk with their sire afterward.

Give them enough to avoid being an immediate embarrassment, some half-truths they can compare, and a chance or two to start acting their character.

[Slipjig]

I actually had a lot of fun playing VtM, 2nd Edition way back when. It's important to understand that it's supposed to be a horror game. All the original WOD games had a compelling reason why the PCs had to be careful in how they used their powers. For Vamps, it was the Masquerade, for Mages it was Paradox, etc. Vamps who try to do the "katana-superhero" thing are also likely to blow through their Humanity extremely quickly.

The system definitely isn't crunchy, especially if you are used to running something with 87 splatbooks and a 5 lbs bag of dice. But the simplicity of the system means that as long as everybody at the table is on board with the themes and mood of the story you are looking to tell, it allows you to focus on the characters and the narrative.

If you want to run V:tM in set in 2020, I think there are two major issues you need to address, both involving the Masquerade. First, the fact that almost every American has a camera in their pocket, combined with the ubiquity of surveillance cameras, mean that 2020 vamps will have to be MUCH more careful about maintaining the Masquerade than their 90's counterparts. Powers that blatantly break the Masquerade will be used much less often, and feeding in a dark alley is almost certainly out.

The second item deals with the rise of the internet and the proliferation of media. In the 90s, it was plausible that Elder vamps (and, once Mage came out, the Technocracy) exerted enough control of every major media outlet to suppress the evidence when their WAS a breach of the Masquerade. With social media and literally hundreds of different news sites out there, the idea that a massive cover-up can be maintained strains credulity.

If you don't want to completely stymie your players from using Masquerade-busting powers, I would suggest making Vamp-Truthers a well-known fringe belief, where 10% of the population believes vampires are absolutely real and are obsessed with them in both good and bad ways (some want to wipe then out, others are aspiring fang-bangers, and a few conflicted people are both), while the other 90% of the country thinks they are crazy (think QAnon). Any evidence that surfaces is written off as having been produced by the obsessed wackos.