TheRPGSite

...for a 20th Anniversary Edition.

http://blog.vampirethemasquerade.com/

The book itself is looking really good, kind of a "Vampire: The Masquerade Rules Cyclopedia" compiling every clan, bloodline, discipline, faction etc. ever. Plus original Tim Bradstreet art, what's not to love?

Also check out the obligatory RPGnet thread (http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=566763) for some epic WW oWoD vs. nWoD butthurt.

I barely cared about V:TM because I thought the line was too big and there were too many story lawyers. Hell, a one with everything book is really appealing.

I've always liked the idea of running a WoD city and tried my hand at it now and then for Mage. This book might make me take a crack at Vampire.

Kind of hoping they leave out the essays on "here's how to tell a story", though, if they're aiming this at "experienced" gamers.  I'll take the system bits and do whatever I want with them, but I hate the whole "Vampire is different from regular RPGs...because we say so!"

Quote from: Peregrin;447177Kind of hoping they leave out the essays on "here's how to tell a story", though, if they're aiming this at "experienced" gamers.  I'll take the system bits and do whatever I want with them, but I hate the whole "Vampire is different from regular RPGs...because we say so!"

It kind of is though, and I think there advice is valuable. Game masters are like painters that never go to school to learn different techniques. They usually just find a shtick and stick to it. You know the type of painter I'm talking about, the one everyone thinks is great but is really a one trick pony.

Even though most groups just play Vampire like it's Heroes Unlimited or Shadow Run, doesn't mean that was the designers idea. They were trying to do something different with it and I can't blame them.

I'm not arguing against having a technique, I just think that their advice in particular makes for shitty games.  Illusionism is not fun, and just leads to power-play between bull-headed players and a GM with a "story."

If I want to focus play specifically on creating a story, there are plenty of story-games for that (much better ones, IMO).  Otherwise I'm going to treat the ruleset like any other RPG -- it models the world, and story is the product of play, rather than the goal.

Quote from: Cranewings;447180It kind of is though, and I think there advice is valuable. Game masters are like painters that never go to school to learn different techniques. They usually just find a shtick and stick to it. You know the type of painter I'm talking about, the one everyone thinks is great but is really a one trick pony.

Even though most groups just play Vampire like it's Heroes Unlimited or Shadow Run, doesn't mean that was the designers idea. They were trying to do something different with it and I can't blame them.

Speaking as a long time Vampire (Masquerade and Requiem) fan: I don't think the Storyteller games are any different, on a fundamental level, from other, traditional RPGs. Sure Vampire is as different from D&D as, say, Call of Cthulhu is different from Traveller. But the bits and pieces, the fundamental underlying assumptions, are the same. And none of them have been invented by WW, Mark Rein*Hagen's claims to the contrary notwithstanding.

But what most people take exception to is the idea that "Vampire is a new/revolutionary/superior/smarter/etc. breed of RPG", best expressed in the original WW slogan, "Games For Mature Minds". This was a bad idea, quickly recognized as such, and abandoned as soon as Mark Rein*Hagen dropped off (circa 1995) and WW started to shape up to be less of an artsy-fartsy gaming "studio", and more of a real, honest-to-God game company.

Nonetheless, even though they've abandoned any claims to intellectual or artistic superiority for nearly 15 years, a lot of people (Pundy for one) are still butthurt.

Quote from: Peregrin;447183I'm not arguing against having a technique, I just think that their advice in particular makes for shitty games.  Illusionism is not fun, and just leads to power-play between bull-headed players and a GM with a "story."

Aye, maybe because of the whole "storytelling" byline, the oWoD in general suffered from very bad, railroady set-piece adventures. Transylvania Chronicles is the only decent V:tM adventure I have personal experience with, and even then its quality is very irregular, with some good installments and some very lukewarm moments. And I say this as someone who used to be a big fan of the metaplot back in the day.

Which is a pity because supplements like Chicago By Night provide great framework for a "sandbox", do-as-thou-wilt game. Wanna stick it to Prince and ride with the Anarchs? Carve a little kingdom for yourself in some inner city shithole run-down neighborhood, and pay lip service to the Prince? Join the Sheriff's Hounds and bring Final Death to the Sabbat shovelheads? Play the Elysium game with the Harpies? Now imagine four players each doing one of these, and you have a good grasp of what my V:tM games were like. :D

Honestly, I haven't paid much attention to it. I worked in a game store from 96-98 where Vampire was big with a large goth crowd. There was a massive larp with about 50-60 people and it was very, very artsy fartsy. I was never butt hurt by it, but it always struck me as very different.

Quote from: Cranewings;447180It kind of is though, and I think there advice is valuable.

Their advice is shit, the whole "storytelling" approach being like the green kryptonite of regular RPGs and sandbox play, as far as I'm concerned.

That said, I love Vampire: the Masquerade. It's one of the games I know best and ran the longest. To me, it's still one of the best RPGs ever made, despite the "storytelling" flaw. It actually is at its best in 'by Night' sandbox play, where you set up a city of your choosing, populate it of various groups, factions, NPCs etc, and unleash the PCs in the environment with goals on their own choosing (i.e. discovering who's behind what, make it as a major force to reckon with in town, find out "the truth" about this or that mystery in town, fulfill some revenge, etc etc etc).

Now, if only the actual game play advice reflected this excellence, instead of diverting the fledging GM into some sort of artsy railraody scenes chronicle artsy bullshit the authors fancy, that'd be awesome.

I still have most of my VtM books, so I'm unlikely to purchase this new book, unless it blows everything out of the water, comes back to 2nd ed rules with some specifically targeted fixes, includes the Player's Guide material, disciplines over 5 dots, Elysium rules, Sabbat and Black Hand material (though specifically separated from the rest of the work in chapters of their own, instead of everything mixed together like in 3rd ed), and so on, so forth. Then I might decide to get it at some point. No rush for me, though.

Quote from: Peregrin;447183I'm not arguing against having a technique, I just think that their advice in particular makes for shitty games.  Illusionism is not fun, and just leads to power-play between bull-headed players and a GM with a "story."

Totally. 100% spot on.

Hey, I prefer the sandbox style WW city to the spoon fed story game myself, but I've known a lot of people that eat up that WW story telling like ice cream on a hot day. They love it.

The system is based around encouraging the railroad anyway. If you have three dice and I have six dice, guess what, you can't beat me. There is no way around it. You can pretend it is a sandbox, but if I have six dice there isn't really a contest.

The ease with which the GM can stat characters so that they can't beat the players, or can't be beaten by them, is the whole fucking point of the dice system.

Quote from: Peregrin;447183I'm not arguing against having a technique, I just think that their advice in particular makes for shitty games.  Illusionism is not fun, and just leads to power-play between bull-headed players and a GM with a "story."

Only if your players don't want to play along. If your players want to play along, then it is awesome.

Quote from: Cranewings;447190Hey, I prefer the sandbox style WW city to the spoon fed story game myself, but I've known a lot of people that eat up that WW story telling like ice cream on a hot day. They love it.

Quote from: Cranewings;447191Only if your players don't want to play along. If your players want to play along, then it is awesome.

Dude, some people enjoy masturbating with their blow-up dolls. Doesn't mean that masturbating with a blow-up doll makes for a good role-playing game. It makes for good masturbation, maybe. If you're really, really lonely.

;)

Quote from: Cranewings;447190The system is based around encouraging the railroad anyway. If you have three dice and I have six dice, guess what, you can't beat me. There is no way around it. You can pretend it is a sandbox, but if I have six dice there isn't really a contest.

Now you're talking utter non-sense. By this same token, any character that has double your stats can't ever be beaten in a role playing game. This is completely ignoring that the game is not the rules, and the rules are not the game. Part of VtM is to be able to play at your level and build alliances, manipulate people who are tougher than you to act how you want them to, blackmail, blood bond, shift sects and allegiances when you have to, etc etc. If you're just gaming the rules, you're basically ignoring what makes an RPG an actual RPG in the first place.

I mean. Seriously. I remember a game where people made fun of me because I wanted to play a Nosferatu, I was 12th generation, the others where all in the 8th/7th generation range due to diablerie and other bullshit, and I took two of them out with my ghouls when they tried to invade my lair, and ended up blood-bonding a third. If you're starting with the assumption that because you've got three more dots than me in melee you're going to get the upper hand on me, you just wait. My buddies are going to kick your ass.

Now that said, if you think playing your way is enjoyable, by all means, keep on playing the way you enjoy, but don't tell me that every player is automatically railroaded by the game system. You railroad yourself as soon as you yield to some parameters of the rules, it doesn't have to be the case. It's not the only way to play the game.

Quote from: Cranewings;447190The ease with which the GM can stat characters so that they can't beat the players, or can't be beaten by them, is the whole fucking point of the dice system.

Nope. That may be the outlook of GMs who choose to suck, but that doesn't have to be the case. :hatsoff:

Benoist, (; you know I don't like story gaming enough to defend it right.

Quote from: The Butcher;447175Also check out the obligatory RPGnet thread (http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=566763) for some epic WW oWoD vs. nWoD butthurt.

Checked the thread. Information about the contents is blowing me away I must say.


What’s in it?

• All thirteen original clans, clan variants and bloodlines, with their signature Disciplines
• Rules for character creation and advancement from Neonate to Methuselah
• All the Disciplines from level one through nine
• Updated setting to the modern nights
• New full color original art by Tim Bradstreet & other classic “Masquerade” artists
• An “open community play test” development process

Apparently, this includes all bloodlines and rules, including Dark Ages, the only bloodlines being omitted being the Ebony Kingdoms clans, the Kuei-Jin, and the Bushi/Gaki. Which is awesome. No Kuei-Jin = Win, to me.

Impressive.

Quote from: Cranewings;447197Benoist, (; you know I don't like story gaming enough to defend it right.

I have to admit I was counting on it. ;) :D

Put me in the camp that loved the rules, setting, feel, et al of Vampire and Werewolf but could do without the "how to play" advice. Sort of like how they wrote an introduction to the Aberrant Player's Guide that stated, "This is not Superfriends."

You're right. It's not. It's whatever the fuck I want it to be.

We didn't play Vampire like gothic superhero club-goers. We played it our way and liked. (We did play Werewolf like we were furry superheroes, cause fuck... werewolves can rip shit up.)

I still own a lot of Vampire stuff, so wouldn't need a compendium, but I still think it's a pretty cool idea. Especially if they were to use the nWoD rules in the process.

Quote from: Benoist;447187It actually is at its best in 'by Night' sandbox play, where you set up a city of your choosing, populate it of various groups, factions, NPCs etc, and unleash the PCs in the environment with goals on their own choosing (i.e. discovering who's behind what, make it as a major force to reckon with in town, find out "the truth" about this or that mystery in town, fulfill some revenge, etc etc etc).

To me, this is the essence of Vampire and describes exactly what I picture when I think of a good Vampire chronicle/campaign. It's also the game I've always had the most fun prepping for when GMing. Even campaigns I started to work up and the game later fell through, I had a great time putting together elder vampires and neonate rivals, etc.

Quote from: The Butcher;447175...for a 20th Anniversary Edition.

http://blog.vampirethemasquerade.com/

The book itself is looking really good, kind of a "Vampire: The Masquerade Rules Cyclopedia" compiling every clan, bloodline, discipline, faction etc. ever. Plus original Tim Bradstreet art, what's not to love?

Also check out the obligatory RPGnet thread (http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=566763) for some epic WW oWoD vs. nWoD butthurt.

I will be checking this out, definitely.

Man, I am on this book like white on rice. The early Vampire years were great gaming times for me.

I want one for Werewolf: The Apocalypse.

Best WW game ever.

I want a 20th anniversary Mage that combines both Mage, and Mage Revised.

... because seeing a book spontaneously split itself in half and burst into flames would be fascinating.

Quote from: Kaz;447203To me, this is the essence of Vampire and describes exactly what I picture when I think of a good Vampire chronicle/campaign. It's also the game I've always had the most fun prepping for when GMing. Even campaigns I started to work up and the game later fell through, I had a great time putting together elder vampires and neonate rivals, etc.

Dude, totally. And the charts with the feelings NPCs have towards one another, the relationships between the coteries, and all that stuff. And digging into the history of a city and picking up NPCs, wondering if they were just what history knows of them, or if they were something else, or manipulated by something else, and why. If they're still around, or have long been burried.

One of the most fun NPCs I had in Paris was Maximilien Robespierre. I mean, he was an arrogant, extremist douchebag, but he wasn't very high up in the food chain, so to speak. But MAN. The players LOOOVED to hate this guy, and I would give them all the reasons in the world to hate him. This was like a running gag after a while.

This will probably be the first money White Wolf has gotten out of me in close to a decade.

EDIT: Wow. RPGNet is stupider than I remember it being.

As long as they dont use a version of the old rules i'll grab a copy...fuck it i'll more than likely get a copy anyway and port the nwod rules over instead, im pretty sure it wont be too hard to do with abit of a tweak and a few crowbars to nudge stuff into place :)

Quote from: Patrick Y.;447211Man, I am on this book like white on rice. The early Vampire years were great gaming times for me.

Me too. Ditched my VtM stuff long ago during a move so an all in one would be most welcome. If I can persuade my wife. . .

Pete

From the RPGnet thread:

"Comparing White Wolf to Palladium to me is like comparing, oh, Shakespeare to Stan Lee."

Dude. It's sig worthy, in an ironic "LULZ WTF" way, of course. /done

PS: Official site has gone live. http://vampirethemasquerade.com/

Quote from: Benoist;447229From the RPGnet thread:

"Comparing White Wolf to Palladium to me is like comparing, oh, Shakespeare to Stan Lee."

Dude. It's sig worthy, in an ironic "LULZ WTF" way, of course. /done

I wonder if anyone is going to point out to this guy that Shakespeare was a popular writer of his day....kind of like Stan Lee is.

Bah, forgot to post what I was going to in the first place. Yeah! Certainly going to pick up this book. Might even revive my old D. C. by night campaign.

I'll have to pick one of these up.

Might never run it, but I'll feel better about myself for having it.  :idunno:

Not even 3 posts into the RPGNet thread and someone said nWoD is just as popular as oWoD. Hahahahahaha!

Quote from: danbuter;447252Not even 3 posts into the RPGNet thread and someone said nWoD is just as popular as oWoD. Hahahahahaha!

You can never compete with the popularity of teen goth gear in the 90s.

Rest assured in 5 years time I will be releasing an equally pretentious Bloodsucker: The Angst 10th Anniversery Eddition.

I'm there. I'll be purchasing one of these. Like many, I didn't find the advice useful, but the finest game I have ever run has been a Vampire game.

Seanchai

Since no one else has mentioned these extra details on the gameplan, I will:

•Currently called V20 for Vampire: 20th Anniversary

•Open Playtest a la Pathfinder Open beta

•This is a full conversion to nWoD

•Rules for everything in a single 400+ pg. book (Disciplines to 9•, Dark Ages, Bloodlines, etc.)


I am excited for this.

I also want to throw my money into the hat that provides me a W20 and M20.

Quote from: KrakaJak;447394S
•This is a full conversion to nWoD

Not sure what you mean by that.  It's the old setting, only assuming it's 2011 and Gehenna is still yet to occur.  Do you mean the system is going to be NWoD?

Quote from: CRKrueger;447395Not sure what you mean by that.  It's the old setting, only assuming it's 2011 and Gehenna is still yet to occur.  Do you mean the system is going to be NWoD?

I may be wrong or have missed some piece of information somewhere, but that is *not* my understanding at all. The system will be old WoD as well, but they want to fix what "doesn't work", and keep "what works." Hence the playtest.

Ah yes, "celebrating 20 years of having nearly destroyed the RPG hobby"...

RPGpundit

Quote•This is a full conversion to nWoD

Aaaaaaand I've lost interest.

This just proves they still don't get where they fucked up in the first place.

I'm sure jachilli will be along soon enough though to tell us how we're all idiots for not understanding his vision.

Quote from: KrakaJak;447394•This is a full conversion to nWoD

Achilli's blog specifically listed this as something that V20 is not.

To quote: "We've been listening to feedback for over a year since the 20th Anniversary Edition was a twinkle in a crackpot's eye. While the new World of Darkness's Storytelling System makes several refinements to the original Storyteller System, it does so by lowering the power level of its supernatural creatures, flattening the effects curve, and adding a bit of density to the ruleset. That's tonally at odds with the original World of Darkness, for which the system had a significant amount more open-ended wahoo. We're sticking with a refinement of the original ruleset that could handle -- and, indeed, encouraged -- everything from 'You notice that she's gazing longingly at you from across the room, and you can practically taste the loneliness in her life as you scrutinize her soul-aura' to 'HOLY FUCKING SHIT, HE JUST TURNED INTO A NINE-FOOT BAT-MONSTER MADE OF SENTIENT, POISONOUS BLOOD-ACID.'"

Quote from: KrakaJak;447394•This is a full conversion to nWoD

•Rules for everything in a single 400+ pg. book (Disciplines to 9•, Dark Ages, Bloodlines, etc.)

Awesome, awesome, awesome! Screw the "open playtest" AKA Big Motherfucking Trainwreck, but I'm excited about the rest!

Seanchai

Quote from: KrakaJak;447394•This is a full conversion to nWoD

You're wrong. But now lots of people will either gain or lose interest in this book because they read what you posted.

Quote from: GrimGent;447419Achilli's blog specifically listed this as something that V20 is not.

To quote: "We've been listening to feedback for over a year since the 20th Anniversary Edition was a twinkle in a crackpot's eye. While the new World of Darkness's Storytelling System makes several refinements to the original Storyteller System, it does so by lowering the power level of its supernatural creatures, flattening the effects curve, and adding a bit of density to the ruleset. That's tonally at odds with the original World of Darkness, for which the system had a significant amount more open-ended wahoo. We're sticking with a refinement of the original ruleset that could handle -- and, indeed, encouraged -- everything from 'You notice that she's gazing longingly at you from across the room, and you can practically taste the loneliness in her life as you scrutinize her soul-aura' to 'HOLY FUCKING SHIT, HE JUST TURNED INTO A NINE-FOOT BAT-MONSTER MADE OF SENTIENT, POISONOUS BLOOD-ACID.'"

My knee-jerk response stands corrected. Interest restored.

I guess someone there does get it after all.  The nerfing of nWoD was a major bummer.

Quote from: J Arcane;447448My knee-jerk response stands corrected. Interest restored.

I guess someone there does get it after all.  The nerfing of nWoD was a major bummer.

Though I like more the nWoD system, I think that those are solid reasons to keep the old system, albeit with some tweaking. So I'm glad they've decided to go that way.

Also, a solid marketing move, IMO.

Quote from: Imperator;447624Though I like more the nWoD system, I think that those are solid reasons to keep the old system, albeit with some tweaking. So I'm glad they've decided to go that way.

Also, a solid marketing move, IMO.

As long as they fix/remove the botch rule, I don't think much other tweaking is necessary. Any of the other statistical problems with the system would require a complete replacement of the die mechanic, and that's not really practical.

Quote from: Imperator;447624Though I like more the nWoD system, I think that those are solid reasons to keep the old system, albeit with some tweaking.

I'm okay with most of the old system, but what I want most is: the nifty breakdown of failure, success, and exceptional success and generation and stats to matter when it comes to using Disciplines.

Seanchai

Quote from: J Arcane;447638As long as they fix/remove the botch rule, I don't think much other tweaking is necessary. Any of the other statistical problems with the system would require a complete replacement of the die mechanic, and that's not really practical.

Quote from: Seanchai;447648I'm okay with most of the old system, but what I want most is: the nifty breakdown of failure, success, and exceptional success and generation and stats to matter when it comes to using Disciplines.

Seanchai

Good points, all around. The botch rule was the only that rally bothered me in game. The rest is pretty much OK. The ideas thrown by Seanchai are nifty, too.

Quote from: Imperator;447671Good points, all around. The botch rule was the only that rally bothered me in game. The rest is pretty much OK. The ideas thrown by Seanchai are nifty, too.

I actually really liked the notch rules for Mage. The idea that spells were more risky the more dice you choose was cool.

Quote from: Imperator;447671Good points, all around. The botch rule was the only that rally bothered me in game.

That's the main thing that would need revising. The botch rule is what makes rolling very large pools of dice a very huge risk, and let's face it, when you have a character built with Elysium rules rolling in the range of 15+dice, you shouldn't hesitate because the chance of getting critical failures is so huge. That doesn't make sense.

One should be careful revising this, however. Taking out the botch rules altogether would be a mistake. The nWoD has an okay solution with its rule of adding/substracting dice from the pool, but I always felt that the only opportunity to get a critical failure in nWoD by rolling a chance die (when pools are inferior to 0) is kinda lame. I wish there was another way to make it work simply, and still get an infinitesimal chance of critical failure for very large pools. Maybe they'll find it. That would be cool.

Quote from: Cranewings;447677I actually really liked the notch rules for Mage. The idea that spells were more risky the more dice you choose was cool.

True. That's actually one instance where the botch rules actually make sense, in context.

Quote from: Imperator;447671Good points, all around. The botch rule was the only that rally bothered me in game. The rest is pretty much OK. The ideas thrown by Seanchai are nifty, too.

The botch rule didn't bother us too much because we had a fix: you rolled various different colored d10s. Only d10s of a certain color counted toward a botch. The Storyteller or whatever that role is called would tell you how many botch-potential d10s to roll based on the botch-potential of the task.

What bothered me most was when I had a 4th generation Tremere unable to Dominate a PCs handily because of crappy rolling. It took him something like three turns. Lame.

It also seems to me that in any many-on-one fight, the one is fucked. I can't decide if that's a flaw or not.

Seanchai