General WoD Discussion #5: Chronicles of Duty: Modern Darkness

[Fable Wright]

So idle speculation but : how are Vampires, particularly the Sabbat, feeding during the current lockdown ?

Short answer: Poorly.

Long answer: There's only a few essential businesses open right now. At least where I am, that includes liquor stores and grocery stores. Also, there's more than a few instances of socially-deprived people just flat-out ignoring the rules; as of just a week ago, some of my coworkers have seen street basketball games by people not fearing the virus. I imagine that vampires are going to have to encourage people to blatantly ignore government orders to create a scene to feed at; or wield political influence to convince holdout governors to keep things open for at least a while longer.

It's not a great scene. Blood banks are rapidly running out of stock, stores are closing earlier for disinfection, and if/when crackdown on illegal gatherings happen in a vampire's area? It's bad. If you've got people around the house (ghouls, hired/mind-whammied staff) you're making off OK, but if you're a thinblood? You need to get groups of people to break the law if you want to feed unseen.

Not sure of Camarilla elders are supporting the lockdown to crack down on thinbloods and Sabbat, or trying to open things up to resume their ability to politic.

[Anonymouswizard]

So idle speculation but : how are Vampires, particularly the Sabbat, feeding during the current lockdown ?

For those with high Stealth or Obfuscate and decent Larceny? Not too shabbily, especially Sandmen, they solve the problem of moving about during lockdown and getting access to people. Kindred who live in residential towers or blocks of flats and are able to get into them probably aren't having too much trouble, the same for those who are able and willing to feed on animals. In fact animal feeders might come out of this fairly well.

Ventrue have a big problem, due to their feeding restrictions, but most Ventrue probably moved their Herds into their homes before the lockdown happened, just in case.

A strange benefit is that most kindred are going to find themselves running on a single Blood Point/feeding a night, due to the lack of a need to use their powers. This makes things much easier for them, possibly even moreso in the Southern Hemisphere (where as it moves into winter being outside for an hour after dark becomes easier to pass off).

A big potential problem is kindred spreading the virus, even if the virus is utter bot blood borne a kindred can still pick it up and move it around, and if they are using Blush of Life it's possible that they can spread it in the same way as an infected person.

In 5e canon the upper ranks of the Camarilla face a big problem, with being unable to gather and politic, and even running messages via ghouls becomes difficult. After a couple of months the Camarilla begins either reembracing technology or going into very hard lockdown, with the few members and ghouls able to move around freely tasked with 1) running messages, 2) breaking up gatherings of kindred, and 3) interfereing with local Anarchs to stop them gaining too much strength while the Camarilla is at a standstill. If we use earlier canon the upper ranks of the Camarilla grumble but begin hosting meetings over Ventrue-owned VPN services.

Whatever happens there's a stronger clamp down on Anarchs and Caitiff, as well as thin-bloods, to reduce the possibility of detection by reducing the number of vampires on the streets, but less active hunting of them. Embraces are illegalised in the Camarilla, even for Princes, and information on a few Anarchs per city is leaked to the Second Inquisition, as well as any problematic Camarilla members, in an attempt to reduce suspicion. Handing information to the SI becomes a temporary replacement for the Blood Hunt, always through several layers of ghouls and mortals with the occasional sacrifice if the SI seems to be getting too close.

The Anarchs don't care that much. They're already fairly adapted to modern technology, and they start moving from direct confrontation to preparation, organising strikes against the Camarilla and hitting only the highest value targets. Some Barons introduce curfews and restrictions on Embracing, many of them are replaced in one way or another. Most Anarchs go to ground, especially if Second Inquisition activity begins to rise, the activity on various Anarch Facebook groups explodes, but it's mainly them sharing memes instead of anything serious. Techniques for remain fed are shared, Anarchs begin doing better as a group after a month or two of lockdown.

The first few months after lockdown ends sees a lot of chaos as politicking begins again. Elysiums move location, positions shuffle, some high ranking Camarilla members who slipped into Torpor are found and either revived (and ideally Blood Bonded if the riverer can manage it) or diablerised. Everything shuffles back into place eventually, but there have been changes.

At least, that's my take on it. I expect a lot of kindred who realise that they don't have the resources to make it through several months of lockdown to barricade themselves in specially prepared cellar rooms and enter voluntary Torpor (can you rise from that in Masquerade? I forget).

[137beth]

So I don't know if anyone else here has already heard (or cares), but Paradox announced that they have licensed indie studio Choice of Games to make three text-based video games based on V:TM. CoG makes text-based games that play like a hybrid between a CRPG and a choose-your-own-adventure novel. They have over 120 such games, all of which can be played in a browser (though most of them also have downloadable versions for Steam and smartphones).

I'm a bit surprised that both companies agreed to such a deal. On the one hand, I'd have expected Paradox to be more interested in licensing graphical video games than text-based games, since the former has more mass-market appeal. But, maybe the fact that Vampire is a pen and paper game first made them more willing to consider a text-based video game than they would be with another franchise.

On the other hand, up until now Choice of Games has been a supporter of creator-owned game content, which goes out the window when dealing with a big media publisher like Paradox. Maybe the owners of CoG didn't care about author-ownership as much as they previously claimed to. Or maybe they just really like World of Darkness. Hopefully they'll at least still pay the writers royalties.

IMO, there is a very large variance in the quality of existing CoG games: some of them are good, others are quite bad. I don't have any idea where on that scale I expect the V:TM games to fall. At least one is supposedly going to incorporate some WoD mechanics, while at least one of the others won't.

[tonberrian]

So. Playing a big group shared city crossover Tokyo CofD game. We're all separate at first, but we'll crossover eventually. I'm a mage, an Obrimos Mystagogue hopeful who remembers an alternate timeline looking to get some Matter going as well. My first task given to me by the Mystagogues to level up my ranking was to spend the night in a dead Guardian's old house.

Sounds easy enough, right? But being a mage I investigated and found beneath the house was a supercharged Hallow and a powerful time Verge, themed on Dante's Inferno with the Christian stuff replaced by references to the Prophet, the Exarch of Time. Long story short, I ticked off the Prophet by not siding with him and declaring myself the head of a new Ministry of Time, and am now climbing back out of this metaphorical hell as it is imploding to the Supernal. Currently, I'm being attacked by Alexander the Great (or some facsimile thereof).

Just want to say how cool this all is to someone.

[Milo v3]

That is one hell of a "first task".

[tonberrian]

My ST thinks big.

Also i got shown visions of possible futures which involve all the other PCs, so I have reasons and capability to seek them out.

[Grytorm]

In Mage the Ascension is their such a thing as emergent behavior?

Edit: Will be done thinking about Mage the Ascension soon. But I thought of how I would imagine Global Warming as both a paradox effect and a result of Technocracy's actions. Growing population under the Technocracy paradigm was creating large amounts of "pollution" which may have been a manifestation of wyrm taint or something. The Technocracy tried to create an elegant solution rather than investing resources with an ever growing problem. Make the pollution just naturally dissapear into the elements taking the wyrn taint with it. This worked as a temporary solution but gradually paradox built up and eventually started to have consequences.

[EndlessKng]

In Mage the Ascension is their such a thing as emergent behavior?

Edit: Will be done thinking about Mage the Ascension soon. But I thought of how I would imagine Global Warming as both a paradox effect and a result of Technocracy's actions. Growing population under the Technocracy paradigm was creating large amounts of "pollution" which may have been a manifestation of wyrm taint or something. The Technocracy tried to create an elegant solution rather than investing resources with an ever growing problem. Make the pollution just naturally dissapear into the elements taking the wyrn taint with it. This worked as a temporary solution but gradually paradox built up and eventually started to have consequences.

In theory, yes, there could be "emergent behavior in the Consensus. This is part of what they Technocracy was supposed to prevent - they were trying to keep the Consensus, well, at a consensus. As the parts of society interacted, though, it's not impossible for something to manifest, especially if there is the injection of something else. It doesn't even require Paradox - if humanity has slipped out of the Technocrats' influence and they are interacting and generating a new Consensus, it could shift things unpredictably.

That said, IMO this is a good reason of why hardcore tying real-world issues to specific game components can backfire. The Technocracy were created as an absolute villainous group, a group of status dedicated to purging creativity and individuality and freedom to believe. Now? They've been modernized quite a bit, and the new version (and the version portrayed in the Guide to the Technocracy to an extent) is far more reasonable and could be argued to be right - but now, you have a world falling apart, because of reasons. If anything, it's arguable that the Technocracy as they see themselves aren't too far offbase from we need RIGHT NOW with all that's going on, when 25 years ago they were unequivocally evil. And yes, there are arguments for how the shift occurred, but still feels... weird to an extent.

[Ichneumon]

I'm currently designing a 'fantasy' medieval city, had this idea for a game of Vampire: Dark Ages set in a D&D/Game of Thrones-like setting. I am currently designing the fantasy city, but am having some trouble with deciding what districts a medieval fantasy city should have, especially ones that will be relevant for a vampire-like game. Do any of you have a good resource I might use for inspiration?

[sktarq]

Actually if you take the Damnation City book (for the Requiem era) and combine it with for example the 2nd DM Guide of the 3.5 edition (or other city builder book for 5e which I have not bothers to pick up) you can probably get a good idea of how to make districts that work for vampire in a more dark ages like setting....take the era of DnD, the Guilds, etc, and tone down the fantasy...and grab the exploits and view of territory from the Damnation City book...

it won't be perfect but they both give you starting frameworks to build your own in time.

[Sian]

https://twitter.com/VtM_Bloodlines/s...64749157167105

Bloodlines 2 have been further delayed to 2021

[Eurus]

https://twitter.com/VtM_Bloodlines/s...64749157167105

Bloodlines 2 have been further delayed to 2021

This is the second big reschedule/delay for that, right? That's a little concerning, guess we'll see how it turns out.

[Rater202]

This is the second big reschedule/delay for that, right? That's a little concerning, guess we'll see how it turns out.

Both times concurred with the halflife spinoff's sheual changing.

My thoughts: They really don't want to be overshadowed by/screwed over for a half-klife game again. And are probably taking the extra time to do more work on the game to avoid the mistake of the first game being published literally unfinished.

...It's amazing that a game that literally wasn't finished when ti was released managed to be so popular, yeah?

[Anonymouswizard]

This is the second big reschedule/delay for that, right? That's a little concerning, guess we'll see how it turns out.

Eh, better this than crunch, and while I've not been following the development I wouldn't be shocked if COVID caused some issues. But if this is because the devs have bit off more than they can chew I'd rather see a 2023 release date than something like the original Bloodlines pre-patches. Other games might be able to get away with patching it's later, I'm not sure Bloodlines will survive another sudden combat endgame.

Just really hoping that the Brujah aren't reduced to thugs and we get to see the Clan's scholars and orators.

[sktarq]

...
...It's amazing that a game that literally wasn't finished when ti was released managed to be so popular, yeah?

Wonderful 2/3rds of a game.
that's why. gave a real sense of the world and themes and was FUN.

of course it had issues (presence as a combat discipline? really?) but it also had highlights (honestly the malkavian dialog options are wonderful...so wonderful )

last 3rd of the game? I don't know what you are talking about I survived the blood hunt and got to the cab with the special driver...time to restart the game.