Listen, the only proper way to play a vampire is a 13th generation Toreador named Annalise who is paralyzed by her need to feed on the living.

*Sisters of Mercy plays in the background*

Quote from: CTPhipps;1130329A little weird. 1st Edition is my favorite edition of Vampire, followed by 5th Edition.

You can be fans of multiple ones.

And at the end of the day, we're all vampire fans.

Mind you, I married a Goth girl.

Eh, V5 really rubbed me the wrong way with both the setting changes and the mechanical changes.

Like, it claims to be an homage to VTM 1e, but I feel Requiem 1E did better in recapturing the feel of VTM 1E.

V5 just felt like a shallow imitation of 1E's Anarch-focused approach but with all the horrid setting changes and metaplot largely kept intact save for a few specific points that would be impossible to keep as canon. Again, YMMV

Now, I do like to rag on the Goths a lot, but I'll admit not all Goths are bad and I do like the Gothic aesthetic in a lot of ways (the Punk not so much) and the non-pretentious Goths are actually pretty fucking awesome.

Mainly I dislike the tendency of both the Goth and Punk subcultures to be riddled with a lot of insufferable pretentiousness, purity contests, and "conformity pretending to be non-conformity"

Now, those things are problems in all subcultures to varying degrees. But it's extremely common and intense in the goths and punks, to the point that SNL did a sketch on it in the 90's.

Granted, that problem is worse with punks moreso than the goths, though.

Like, I love the spooky Gothic Tim Burton atmosphere in WoD but I don't care for wangst and pretentiousness.

Quote from: CTPhipps;1130329And at the end of the day, we're all vampire fans.

Speak for yourself

Quote from: CTPhipps;1130329Mind you, I married a Goth girl.

So did I, but she plays Traveller.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]4475[/ATTACH]

+ Noice one Jeff!

Quote from: Doc Sammy;1130338Eh, V5 really rubbed me the wrong way with both the setting changes and the mechanical changes.

Like, it claims to be an homage to VTM 1e, but I feel Requiem 1E did better in recapturing the feel of VTM 1E.

V5 just felt like a shallow imitation of 1E's Anarch-focused approach but with all the horrid setting changes and metaplot largely kept intact save for a few specific points that would be impossible to keep as canon. Again, YMMV

Now, I do like to rag on the Goths a lot, but I'll admit not all Goths are bad and I do like the Gothic aesthetic in a lot of ways (the Punk not so much) and the non-pretentious Goths are actually pretty fucking awesome.

Mainly I dislike the tendency of both the Goth and Punk subcultures to be riddled with a lot of insufferable pretentiousness, purity contests, and "conformity pretending to be non-conformity"

Now, those things are problems in all subcultures to varying degrees. But it's extremely common and intense in the goths and punks, to the point that SNL did a sketch on it in the 90's.

Granted, that problem is worse with punks moreso than the goths, though.

Like, I love the spooky Gothic Tim Burton atmosphere in WoD but I don't care for wangst and pretentiousness.

I think V5 made some good changes. Hunger is more thematic than blood points, and the multiple powers per discipline level should have been the case in first edition. Resonance is a good idea with nonsensical implementation: rather than being limited to blood, it should have been able to apply to the emotional resonance of places, actions, anything! Needing to feed on particular resonances of blood to learn all disciplines doesn't result in good roleplaying. If I want to learn protean, then I should roleplay something symbolic of the power I'm trying to learn: e.g. to learn how to meld into the earth or another substance I should be burying myself in dirt or taking soil samples! You know, like how we learn real skills?

In any case, I think your obsession with the canon is unhealthy. My past relationship with WoD wasn't healthy and that's why I left. That's why I prefer to focus on creating a new urban fantasy universe, one where I don't have to worry about toxic fans obsessing over canon.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1130392I think V5 made some good changes. Hunger is more thematic than blood points, and the multiple powers per discipline level should have been the case in first edition. Resonance is a good idea with nonsensical implementation: rather than being limited to blood, it should have been able to apply to the emotional resonance of places, actions, anything! Needing to feed on particular resonances of blood to learn all disciplines doesn't result in good roleplaying. If I want to learn protean, then I should roleplay something symbolic of the power I'm trying to learn: e.g. to learn how to meld into the earth or another substance I should be burying myself in dirt or taking soil samples! You know, like how we learn real skills?

In any case, I think your obsession with the canon is unhealthy. My past relationship with WoD wasn't healthy and that's why I left. That's why I prefer to focus on creating a new urban fantasy universe, one where I don't have to worry about toxic fans obsessing over canon.

But if I create my own urban fantasy universe, then I might as well play "Some Other Game" and at that point, Darren MacLerran and all the other pissant punk motherfuckers at Onyx Path and RPG.net win

Actively perverting the metaplot they treat as holy canon is way more infuriating to them and it hurts those toxic fans even more. Just giving up and playing "Some Other Game" is giving those toxic fans exactly what they want and letting them win.

Deliberately running a counter-canon chronicle that blasphemes their little holy canon is much more satisfying in my opinion, especially if the game turns out to be a fun one.

I sense....anger.

Quote from: CTPhipps;1130403I sense....anger.

Eh, I'll admit I have a bit of anger but a lot of the resentment is intentionally overblown and now tongue-in-cheek at this point.

Again, I'm fond of self-deprecating humor and I've had a big chip on my shoulder about White Wolf in the past. But I think it's best to let go and just play the damn game more than anything else

Box Crayon Tales has an actual vendetta against White Wolf and World of Darkness

Me, I think later White Wolf and Onyx Path suck and they actively promote the more toxic parts of the fanbase a lot of the time, but overall I'm not too angry in actuality

Darren MacLerran is still an utter douchebag, but that's neither here nor there.

Mainly, I want to do the "World of Darkness Counter-Canon" as a creative gaming endeavor and a good "What If?" chronicle more than anything else

If I can get some players, I'll start it up

Quote from: CTPhipps;1130333Listen, the only proper way to play a vampire is a 13th generation Toreador named Annalise who is paralyzed by her need to feed on the living.

*Sisters of Mercy plays in the background*

I miss Annalise. I wonder where she is now.

*Dead Can Dance plays in the background*

Altering canon is one of the most interesting aspects of WoD for me these days. What if this Clan was in this Sect, a Bloodline replaces a Clan, the relationship between the Garou and Triat is different, etc. Those sorts of ideas really interest me.

Which is actually kind of unfortunate for my relationship with who ever is publishing new WoD material, because I'm not really that interested in building upon Revised metaplot and I don't really need new books to come up with games in alternative WoD based settings. So while I still love WoD and the ideas it inspires, I'm not sure if I will be their customer anymore.

Quote from: CTPhipps;1130329A little weird. 1st Edition is my favorite edition of Vampire, followed by 5th Edition.

You can be fans of multiple ones.

And at the end of the day, we're all vampire fans.

Mind you, I married a Goth girl.

I love Goth girls as well, especially the true ones from Romania, they are soooooo Hot!

However I'm not a Vampire fan. Not even remotely. It was one of the worst games ever made, It completely caused a backlash against legitimate GMs, with "Storytellers" subjectively applying the game rules.

It was even worse with the LARPS where they pitted covens and enclaves against each other in brutal win/lose competitions. You know what the worst thing in the world is for a partially emotionally developed emo-goth teen who joined a clan or coven, and who comes from a completely dysfunctional home life, or broken home. Having someone in their own clan backstab or betray them, or finding themselves on the "losing" side of another conflict.

No, Vampire, and its spinoffs were a complete disaster except for a few narcissistic oligarchs and predators that found it perfect ground to exercise their particular talents to the detriment of everyone else.

Quote from: ShieldWife;1130409A look tentative canon is one of the most interesting aspects of WoD for me these days. What if this Clan was in this Sect, a Bloodline replaces a Clan, the relationship between the Garou and Triat is different, etc. Those sorts of ideas really interest me.

Same. I like to place the Setites and the Giovanni in the Camirilla, the Nosferatu as independents, and the Sabbat consisting only of Antitribbu clans (no Lasombra or Tzmisce) making them a mirror image of the Camirilla. And most of the weird minor clans (Daughters of Cacophony, Kyasid, etc.) don't exist.

Over in the Onyx Path forum, I did a couple of posts that I think explain why I really love Vampire: The Masquerade.

QuoteWhy feel guilt about being a vampire?

Because you're a monster.

But I am actually not going to be flippant with you about this because it's a topic that I've actually spent a great deal of time thinking about. The answer is best described in terms of the early THE VAMPIRE CHRONICLES. One of the interesting things about them is INTERVIEW WITH A VAMPIRE was written during the worst period of Anne Rice's life and when she at her most distant from her religious faith.

The primary element that underscores Interview and, to an extent, The Vampire Lestat, is the lack of any underlying moral justice in the universe. God may or may not exist but it is utterly irrelevant to the atheist Lestat and very relevant in his absence to the fallen Catholic Louis. If God is nonexistent or uncaring, that leaves the morality of a vampire squarely on the shoulders of the protagonists as well as the terrible things they do. The full weight of all of your actions and their consequences weighs on you.

Louis hates himself because he's ruined countless lives and doesn't have the decency to kill himself to stop it. Lestat rationalizes the experience and tries to get enough joy to ignore the empathy most people feel for others.

You don't have to play the game like this but my games have always had their player characters having accidentally killed innocent people in their backstories. Maybe they were left alone during their Embrace and ripped their family apart during a frenzy, maybe they were pushed too far and woke up over a corpse, or maybe some asshole Sheriff tied them up in a room with a little girl because fuck you, Anarch. Blood is on your hands and in your mouth.

Some of us very much like the fact you're a vampire means that you're a BAD GUY. That you are a person who makes the world a worse place by your presence. You can try to avert this, do good things to make up for the bad ones, but you've ruined at least a few lives. You don't want to die. You want to live. You want to continue drinking blood, hanging out with your friends, and maybe living the life that was unfairly taken from you.But even if you're VERY careful about who you feed on, people get caught in the crossfire or get sick or die.

And that can be really fucking emotional and satisfying to play if you're sick of being the Good GuyTM in other games.

Also, what kind of vampire should you play:

QuoteI encourage my players to strike a balance here between Nick Knight/Angel and hideous inhuman monster, with the sweet spot being somewhere around Al Pacino. No, that's actually not a non-sequitor, I mean Michael Corleone and Tony Montana. Mobster and crime movies are a good inspiration fodder section for PCs. There's nothing wrong with the Friendly Neighborhood Vampire (especially if they fail at this) and I've had many a player go with it. However, I prefer if player characters tend to land on, "I'm a good person to the people I love but do horrible things elsewhere in my life that ends up splashing on the people I love despite my best efforts." Michael ends up making his family's life worse because his attempts to go straight cause him to do even more awful things. Tony gets his loved ones' killed because apparently cocaine results in Vampire murder frenzies.

Part of why I always liked Original Recipe Lodin from CBN was that he was only 95% an asshole. He'd kill your PC's families, torment them, and murder anyone who got in the way of his power. However, dude had loved ones. Lorraine and his favorite humans that would get endangered by, well, being the Prince.

Quote from: CTPhipps;1130403I sense....anger.

Since we're on the free speech formums and not Onyx Path's I say without reservation that V5 sucks sweaty donkey balls. V5 makes D&D 4E look like a love letter to past players of D&D that tried hard to keep beloved game elements intact by comparison.

It's layout is pretentious; better suited to one of those coffee-table tomes on art or geography that no one reads with way too much white space coupled with fonts that are too small for comfortable reading and far too much relegated to artistic side bars.

The first 36 pages are pure fluff designed more to appeal to people who are never going to actually PLAY the game. They spent more pages on "Kindred Fashion" than they did on the Sabbat.

Literally half the page count of the Clans section was pretentious artwork that looks like what you'd find in a clothing catalog. Do we really need a full page of eight random people in various outfits for each of the clans they included? They could have fit the rest of the clans into the core book if they'd just left out the fashion spreads.

If they wanted to make a VtM coffee table book... they succeeded on all counts. If they wanted to make a useful RPG rulebook, they failed utterly.

They also gutted the mechanics. The d10 is literally meaningless since a 6 or better is a straight 50% chance. If their intent was to be accessible to new players they should have switched to d6s or, heck, flipping coins (use dimes for regular and pennies for hunger dice) and the mechanics would have been identical. But they wanted the nostalgia appeal of d10s so they dumbed down the mechanics for easier access, then insist on needing harder-to-find dice to actually play it.

They replaced functional game mechanics (the virtues) with touchstones and convictions that force the GM to work around various mortal NPCs that are supposed to be important to you because they want to make sure the game is an emo wangst-fest and the only option they want you to have to play is the "just been turned" newbie Anarch who's down with the social justice struggle.

I could go on about the banality of mashing groups who hated each other for centuries and stripping out much of what made those groups unique in the process (i.e. Clan Heceta) or merging disciplines for no reason (ex. Necromancy and Obtenebration into "Oblivion") or how you can't actually use basic Potence to just lift things (jumping really high and dealing aggravated damage though... no problem; and people said 4E D&D played like a video game), but suffice it to say calling V5 a dumpster fire is an insult to burning garbage.

I just hope that OP can get the Technocracy Reloaded and a couple other books out for M20 before TPTB make them convert to M5 and ass-rape that setting to death with a chainsaw too.

Quote from: Chris24601;1130440I could go on about the banality of mashing groups who hated each other for centuries and stripping out much of what made those groups unique in the process (i.e. Clan Heceta) or merging disciplines for no reason (ex. Necromancy and Obtenebration into "Oblivion") or how you can't actually use basic Potence to just lift things (jumping really high and dealing aggravated damage though... no problem; and people said 4E D&D played like a video game), but suffice it to say calling V5 a dumpster fire is an insult to burning garbage.

Oddly, I agree with most of what you said [while still loving V5 if you want to hear why] but the Hecata makes perfect sense. It's just no one seems to be bothering to read WHY it happens. The Samedi, Cappadocians, Harbingers of Skulls, and Giovanni sub-families teamed up to exterminate the mainline Giovanni clan and their Elders. The main family that remains is composed of Neonates and Ancilla not involved in the abuses of the Elders.

Even then, they're on a short leash.

Augustus Giovanni is Antediluvian 2# to go down.