Quote from: ShieldWife;1064099Players could, you know, actually role play their characters. Some of the most in depth morality related role playing that I've ever seen has been in games with no morality of alignment mechanics. Once Paths we're introduced, it was essentially an acknowledgement that Humanity didn't work, so why pretend after that point? It just created this ridiculous misperception that the Camarilla was supposed to be the Humanity Sect.

I find that argument not to work given the Paths make you automatically complete scum and barely human. Justin Achilli did a good job making it so only a crazy serial killer would want to follow one.

Quote from: CTPhipps;1064101I find that argument not to work given the Paths make you automatically complete scum and barely human. Justin Achilli did a good job making it so only a crazy serial killer would want to follow one.

If that is what it's like, then why bother? Just give Sabbat vampires low Humanity. Besides, Paths aren't necessarily like that at all, they allow self control much of the time. Their morality really doesn't make any sense.

Quote from: ShieldWife;1064104If that is what it's like, then why bother? Just give Sabbat vampires low Humanity. Besides, Paths aren't necessarily like that at all, they allow self control much of the time. Their morality really doesn't make any sense.

That's pretty much Justin Achilli said. He said that only about 1 in 100 Sabbat have the strength of will to have a Path and you have to be a combination, genius, scholar, and more to make the transition.

This is the description I made for a friend. Anything I should add?
====

Basically, it's a direct-ish return to VAMPIRE: THE MASQUERADE with it being set after V20 and Revised which are retconned into 3rd and 4th Edition of the setting respectively. The metaplot is then explained as having continued from Revised to 5E with the supplement BECKETT'S JYHAD DIARY.

I'd say it's a hybrid of V:TR and V:TM with basically Masquerade's setting and V:TR's rules. They've also made a move to break up the Camarilla with the Brujah and Gangrel leaving it (plus being joined by a revised Followers of Set who have abandoned EVIL for polytheism). The Camarilla is now more like the Invictus with it being an exclusive vampire old boy's club and the Anarchs being a massive organization that's much more militant.

Humans Took a Level in Badass and took out the Tremere Inner Council along with what's implied to be several thousand other vampires (not small numbers with a population of 1000) including the entire undead population of London. The Second Inquisition is an alliance of the heads of the CIA, FBI, SIS, Mossad, and the Society of Leopold. They're keeping it under wraps but the Masquerade is barely holding and vampires, it turns out, can't deal with drone strikes.

Capping it all off, the Methuselahs of the Camarilla have all felt a mysterious call to the Middle East and have gone there along with elders close to that range (800 or so) which have resulted in a massive power vacuum in the sects. The entirety of the Sabbat has gone down there to fight them and their presumed Antediluvian masters--which means the Sabbat is temporarily out of commission as well.
Oh and now Attributes, Skills, and Disciplines are limited to 5.

As Chicago by Night's previews indicate with its Prince embraced in the 80s, the vampire world is now the oyster of any Kindred who wants to take it.

Quote from: Doc Sammy;1064050To be honest, the Humanity mechanic was a mistake to begin with.

Humanity was the central point of the original game, of what Rein-Hagen imagined the game would be about.  Instead it turned into willing vampires in trenchcoats full of katanas and then Humanity just became a resource to manage.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1064804Humanity was the central point of the original game, of what Rein-Hagen imagined the game would be about.  Instead it turned into willing vampires in trenchcoats full of katanas and then Humanity just became a resource to manage.

I agree. The whole point of the game is to avoid vampires who are killing people and feeling nothing.

Sabbat style was meant to be an OPTION and people started making it default.

To be fair, Rein-Hagen's vision of the game was much more lame than the katana & trenchcoat thing.

I don't like V:tM as a game about vampires feeling angst over their declining humanity nor do I necessarily like trench coats and katanas, though I admit it's fun to kick butt once in a while in RPG's.

The kind of V:tM game I like is about political intrigues. Different vampires scheming against each other within the context of Clan rivalries and within the Clans too. The Godfather with fangs, with 7+ Clans instead of five families. Humanity can play a role in this sort of game, but more as a general guideline for how moral a character is, but not as a straight jacket that dominates a players options. In fact, speaking of The Godfather, Michael Corleone does go through a Humanity decline that adds an interesting aspect to the story, but he doesn't fall into a permanent frenzy after settles all family business.

So I think morality is better role played than governed by rolls and numbers. When even the game designers thenselves completely reject their own mechanic, which is what introducing Paths is for Humanity, then you know it's flawed.

Quote from: CTPhipps;1064101I find that argument not to work given the Paths make you automatically complete scum and barely human. Justin Achilli did a good job making it so only a crazy serial killer would want to follow one.

I always felt taking a Path was the perfect example of a Vampire accepting their *lack* of humanity and embracing their condition. It implicitly makes them non-human. Calling them "crazy serial killers" is like calling a wolverine inhuman. I didn't allow players learn a Path willy-nilly - *especially* if they were non-Sabbat.

Quote from: ShieldWife;1065634I don't like V:tM as a game about vampires feeling angst over their declining humanity nor do I necessarily like trench coats and katanas, though I admit it's fun to kick butt once in a while in RPG's.

The kind of V:tM game I like is about political intrigues. Different vampires scheming against each other within the context of Clan rivalries and within the Clans too. The Godfather with fangs, with 7+ Clans instead of five families. Humanity can play a role in this sort of game, but more as a general guideline for how moral a character is, but not as a straight jacket that dominates a players options. In fact, speaking of The Godfather, Michael Corleone does go through a Humanity decline that adds an interesting aspect to the story, but he doesn't fall into a permanent frenzy after settles all family business.

So I think morality is better role played than governed by rolls and numbers. When even the game designers thenselves completely reject their own mechanic, which is what introducing Paths is for Humanity, then you know it's flawed.

I discussed this in the other V5 thread too. Long story short, Vampire is the wrong game. For pretty much anything people try to use it for. The rules are stuck in the 80s/90s rut that relegates anything other than character attributes and super powers to "roleplaying" and relies heavily on hitting players with a stick for playing the wrong way. Game design has come a long way since then.

If you want to have monster politics, Urban Shadows was written from the ground up to account for political dynamics.

---

[/HR]

I was originally going to post this in the other thread, but it is just as relevant here.

Although I cannot consider playing the ST systems after being exposed to superior indie games (or really, after learning the meanings of very simple game design concepts like "syntactic magic", "exception-based" and "heartbreaker"), I can still provide constructive criticism of the ST rules (however pointless that may be). V5 opening up the disciplines with a non-linear structure makes this so much easier than all past editions. (I still dislike exception-based systems on principle because they get lost in the nitty-gritty of restricting creativity when the purpose of having rules is to arbitrate disputes.)

I would expand on what I said earlier about the clans being too similar due to being the same species with the same disciplines. Principally, the disciplines named in the core rules should be treated as guidelines rather than ironclad rules and every bloodline should have unique manifestations matching their intended aesthetic. (I'd prefer not to have specific discipline lists at all, but at that point I'm not critiquing the same system anymore.)

For example, the shadow vampires are traditionally given mind control which works the same for all bloodlines. I propose that instead their usage be subjected to different restrictions: they require shadow contact instead of eye contact, with all the drawbacks that implies. Basically, they turn their targets into shadow puppets in reverse and that is the only way they can use mind control.

Disciplines in general

For the purposes of reference I will use the following terminology: "discipline" refers to the general vampire superpower skills/trees (extrasensory perception, super speed, animal magnetism, etc), "art" refers to individual powers within a discipline (clairvoyance, merge with soil, summon someone from afar, etc), "devotion" refers to a combination of two or more arts (whether from the same discipline or not), and "threnody" refers to a ritual that uses a discipline (e.g. abyss mysticism). I won't cover the subject of "blood sorcery" here since that is a can of worms deserving its own discussion. Past editions included merits that provided supernatural powers, but I will be treating these as arts. I will be referring to disciplines generically because they often have different names across editions.

Alternate arts were introduced in various forms long before V5, such as Dark Ages: Vampire introducing a "lie detector" art for the "extrasensory perception" discipline and Requiem 1e allowing users of the "merge into soil" and "shapeshift into animals" arts to buy additional options with experience points.

Devotions and threnodies sit in a weird spot mechanically since they were introduced in earlier editions to get around the restriction that each discipline level only had one art attached to it. In V5 they don't make as much sense given that disciplines have an arbitrarily high number of arts per level. Most of the devotions and threnodies introduced over the years probably make more sense as arts under V5. That said I am sure you could reintroduce them in V5 with clearer intentions or different mechanical benefits if necessary.

The basic idea behind devotions is that they combine two arts into a single effect. This isn't necessarily the same as simply using those arts in tandem, so it makes sense to introduce devotions if this wouldn't be covered by a standard art.

Threnodies are more difficult to place. In concept they are supposed to resemble traditional ideas of magic, with ritual and tools and sacrifice whatnot. The exact details varied across editions, with them being absent in Masquerade aside from "abyss mysticism." Threnodies are conceptually iffy because 1) there needs to be a justification for using threnodies over arts, and 2) similar themes of ritualism have appeared for standard arts before. Off the top of my head, the Oberloch bloodline had a devotion to reanimate dead animals by sacrificing something of value, Requiem 2e arts sometimes involved marking a target with blood to create the desired effect, the Vedma bloodline has a signature discipline resembling magic without being blood sorcery proper, the "mither seria" discipline had an art which drew a magic rune on an object to cause disorientation in those who saw it.

Short of rewriting the discipline mechanics to provide clear guidelines for the division between ritual and non-ritual, the best I can think of to justify threnodies would be to treat them as an add-on to the standard arts like rotes are for mage spells. Casting or learning an art as a threnody which requires ritual casting or sacrifice or whatever might provide a mechanical benefit such as cheaper experience cost, lower prerequisites, bonuses to rolls, or some such.

Blood sorcery

I won't say much about blood sorcery here because it is a huge can of worms, but I think V5 made a huge mistake by not adopting a syntactic model like that featured in Ars Magica (which inspired similar mechanics like the mage's arcana/spheres/practices, spirit's influences, Requiem 2e's blood sorcery, etc). As a matter of fact I think the syntactic model should have been adopted for all disciplines, or at least been used to provide guidelines for how to structure and balance the powers. Exception-based mechanics are simply more trouble than they are worth if you aren't GURPS.

Conclusion

The disciplines are fundamentally broken as a mechanic because they are exception-based, as opposed to following a central set of rules and guidelines like syntactic magic systems and point buy systems do. Exception-based systems are more trouble than they are worth, especially when the writers lack encyclopedic knowledge of past editions, have only provincial and rudimentary understanding of game design in general (so all they can ever make are recursive heartbreakers), and lack a clear vision for the future of their product years down the line.

Quote from: ShieldWife;1065634I don't like V:tM as a game about vampires feeling angst over their declining humanity nor do I necessarily like trench coats and katanas, though I admit it's fun to kick butt once in a while in RPG's.

The kind of V:tM game I like is about political intrigues. Different vampires scheming against each other within the context of Clan rivalries and within the Clans too. The Godfather with fangs, with 7+ Clans instead of five families. Humanity can play a role in this sort of game, but more as a general guideline for how moral a character is, but not as a straight jacket that dominates a players options. In fact, speaking of The Godfather, Michael Corleone does go through a Humanity decline that adds an interesting aspect to the story, but he doesn't fall into a permanent frenzy after settles all family business.

So I think morality is better role played than governed by rolls and numbers. When even the game designers thenselves completely reject their own mechanic, which is what introducing Paths is for Humanity, then you know it's flawed.

Exactly! This is how I always played it. Humanity was there... but the thrust of the game for me was always the intrigue and power-plays within the setting we played.

Quote from: ShieldWife;1065634I don't like V:tM as a game about vampires feeling angst over their declining humanity nor do I necessarily like trench coats and katanas, though I admit it's fun to kick butt once in a while in RPG's.

The kind of V:tM game I like is about political intrigues. Different vampires scheming against each other within the context of Clan rivalries and within the Clans too. The Godfather with fangs, with 7+ Clans instead of five families. Humanity can play a role in this sort of game, but more as a general guideline for how moral a character is, but not as a straight jacket that dominates a players options. In fact, speaking of The Godfather, Michael Corleone does go through a Humanity decline that adds an interesting aspect to the story, but he doesn't fall into a permanent frenzy after settles all family business.

So I think morality is better role played than governed by rolls and numbers. When even the game designers thenselves completely reject their own mechanic, which is what introducing Paths is for Humanity, then you know it's flawed.

Quote from: tenbones;1065640I always felt taking a Path was the perfect example of a Vampire accepting their *lack* of humanity and embracing their condition. It implicitly makes them non-human. Calling them "crazy serial killers" is like calling a wolverine inhuman. I didn't allow players learn a Path willy-nilly - *especially* if they were non-Sabbat.

Paths are a bad example. Touchstones are probably better, since their sole purpose is to let you violate Humanity without consequence.

As I said in the other thread, the entire mechanic is terrible and doesn't achieve what it was supposed to. The community only accepts its continued existence due to the toxic miasma of conformity, doublethink and general religious zealotry that permeates nerd culture.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1065646Paths are a bad example. Touchstones are probably better, since their sole purpose is to let you violate Humanity without consequence.

As I said in the other thread, the entire mechanic is terrible and doesn't achieve what it was supposed to. The community only accepts its continued existence due to the toxic miasma of conformity, doublethink and general religious zealotry that permeates nerd culture.

Mind explaining?

Despite my misgivings I actually think V5 is one of the best designed RPGs I've ever encountered, and most of the the problem points are where it lacks simplicity and focus. Also I find the art and layout so offputting that I'm unwilling to purchase it until a plain text version becomes available, if ever.

Quote from: CTPhipps;1063627I have the conspiracy theory the Assamites are being destroyed as an old concept because of Assassins Creed having made the concept untentable.

That's your theory of what made them untenable? Not that they were a walking stereotype which led to more racebending in LARP than I've ever seen? Not that they were a hairs breath from being undead Islamic terrorists? Not that their skin became darker (as opposed to lighter) as they aged (which was conceived of by a black author yet still called racist)?

Quote from: PencilBoy99;1063715Ken explained in an interview that V5 was about you playing a monster, which is why the removed Humanity.

Innnteresting.

Quote from: Doc Sammy;1064050To be honest, the Humanity mechanic was a mistake to begin with.

Quote from: CTPhipps;1064071I think it's the best idea if you actually want player characters not to be unrepentant murderers and action stars but guys trying not to kill people.

Humanity in VtM was nothing more than an excuse to punish a player if they became too disruptive. It did not inform play to any useful degree. It did not present moral dilemmas to confront.

Quote from: CTPhipps;1064807Sabbat style was meant to be an OPTION and people started making it default.

The reason it became a default is because it supported the concept of an adventuring party working together, and ironically the Sabbat are far less likely to betray each other than the Camarilla, which on a player harmony level is a huge win.

Quote from: ShieldWife;1065634I think morality is better role played than governed by rolls and numbers. When even the game designers thenselves completely reject their own mechanic, which is what introducing Paths is for Humanity, then you know it's flawed.

Mechanically speaking V5 presents only one moral choice: Feed or risk losing control. Everything else is run on autopilot, to the point that it actively distracts from moral choices which aren't.

But that's because the designers were so infatuated with their Hunger mechanic that they made the game about feeding and survival rather than Humanity. What Hunger should have done is force choices to be made over whether getting what you want was worth compromising your Convictions or endangering your Touchstones, and the fact it isn't is a huge missed opportunity.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;1065857That's your theory of what made them untenable? Not that they were a walking stereotype which led to more racebending in LARP than I've ever seen? Not that they were a hairs breath from being undead Islamic terrorists? Not that their skin became darker (as opposed to lighter) as they aged (which was conceived of by a black author yet still called racist)?

Yep.

They retconned most of that away for Assamite Revised.

But they changed the name for reasons of IP, IMHO.