V5 is hot garbage compared to V20. V20 is probably the best iteration of Vampire Masquerade. It introduces the tools you need to play, but it rips out all the metaplot bullshit, so you can just keep whatever stuff you want, without the whole thing collapsing.

Is there any setting stuff included in V20 at all? With that tome being over 500 pages I would have imagined it being full of lore.  I also have read people describe the mechanics as clunky.

I had heard good things about the humanity mechanics in V5.

They're clunky in the sense that there's two axis of dice resolution mechanic. You have the dice pool, which is straightforward stuff - you roll X number of dice and then Y is your target number. The other one is the target number modification. The standard is 8, but depending on certain Merits, Disciplines, the target number could go as low as 4 for some rolls. In our V20 game set in Washington DC, one of our players, the Assamite, had that for visual perception checks. Other than that, I'll be entirely honest, I saw no clunkiness. It has some suggestions on how to best run a Vampire game, but it doesn't say like "So and So is the Prince of NYC opposed by these factions." That's left up to you.

Unless you really want mechanics for the humanity aspect I'd suggest Buffy/Angel. 

I've played it before and I think it matches your needs for rules-light.  You already know it can handle other supernatural creatures (vamps, werewolves, witches, demons, etc). 

In addition it can also handle different power levels of those within a single group.  The drama dice mechanic it uses allows lesser powered PCs to be able to pull their weight.  It gives them tools to work with so they can still be useful when they are physically outmatched.

Quote from: Batjon on July 11, 2022, 07:49:34 PM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on July 11, 2022, 11:33:17 AM

Quote from: Batjon on July 11, 2022, 04:24:30 AM
I am interested in playing/running a campaign about one or possibly more vampire characters struggling to deal with their immortal existence and what it entails while trying to hold onto whatever humanity remains desperately and possibly even trying to pay back society for the wrongs they have had to commit given their affliction.  The idea is heavily inspired by the old tv show Forever Knight and would allow for some other PC and NPC types like Werewolves and such.

I think I have it narrowed down to 2 games:

Angel RPG by Eden Studios (Cinematic Unisystem) or Nightlife RPG 2nd. Edition by Stellar Games.

Which would you choose? Which is the superior game? I tend to prefer rules lite to medium games.  Which is more rules-lite?

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/124387

I recommend this one instead. It's similar to Nightlife in premise (I did a conversion on my blog a while back, it's easy), but the humanity system is vastly refined. Also, it's free.

I actually own this game, both PDF and physical.  I have not fully read it yet but it seemed to me while looking through it that it was basically more of a vampire construction kit rather than a fully fledged game.  I also do not think you can make other supernatural types with it.

Am I wrong? Are you able to tell me more about it?

Don't worry, it is a fully fledged game. It include 4 sample settings with wildly different takes on vampires, a chapter on trends in vampire fiction since gothic times, and many plot hooks scattered across the book. There's a donors supplement with human NPCs, and a youtube channel (altho been silent for years). The author didn't produce any further books for it (it was funded on kickstarter), but it's a complete game.

The rules are definitely flexible enough to support other kinds of splats. There's aren't any special mechanics for them (I'm currently trying to rectify that by working on some), but you can create them with vampiric impulses a la Nightlife and it works fine. I wrote some conversions on my blog that you can use.

Quote from: Batjon on July 12, 2022, 12:33:09 AM
Is there any setting stuff included in V20 at all? With that tome being over 500 pages I would have imagined it being full of lore.  I also have read people describe the mechanics as clunky.

I had heard good things about the humanity mechanics in V5.

Like V5, V20 is 99% setting. That's the whole appeal of WW games. As with D&D, it suffers from being hugely self-referential and sucking at replicating any vampire fiction outside of that. In fact, Feed was originally made because the author felt that way and says as much in the preface.

If you want to play Forever Knight, then Feed is tailor made to do that without unnecessary detritus like millennia of lore and high school clique politics getting in the way. The humanity and hunger mechanics are, imo, superior to WW games including V5. In WW games, humanity is just a statistic that abstractly measures how human you character is supposed to be: if you commit arbitrary acts, then your humanity gets dinged and you might develop arbitrary mental disorders. (This is how it has always worked since 1991 with minor tweaks, and the rules always go out of the way to give you methods to escape the consequences like "paths of whatever I was gonna do anyway", VTR2's banes, touchstones, and so on. The mechanic is just poorly designed IMO.) At the same time, you can develop a laundry list of superpowers while maintaining high humanity. Obviously, this is not how FK is structured: one of Nick's struggles is the temptation of using his powers and being inhuman by doing so. Feed doesn't have a humanity statistic, but rather divides your traits into vampiric traits and human traits. Losing humanity isn't framed as an arbitrary punishment for playing RPGs like RPGs. Instead, to lose humanity you need to actually alienate your human traits through roleplay. Similar to a lightside/darkside system, there's a temptation to gaining and using vampiric traits because they're just better than human traits. I feel this better evokes the feel of FK and other vampire fiction where a vampire's humanity is a big deal, rather than arbitrarily punishing characters with mental disorders. It also better evokes Nightlife's mechanic where using powers costs humanity, but without the swingy-ness.

Another benefit is that Feed lets you play ancient vampires out of the box. Because the rules are abstracted and aren't based on leveling up, you can just declare that your vampires are centuries old and have been struggling to maintain their humanity. That's one of the suggested plot hooks. It seems like a banally simple thing to do, I know, but other games don't work like that. The book also provides guidelines on keeping PCs balanced so that players don't outshine each other, and the abstract lite nature of the rules makes this much easier than a heavier more simulationist system.

You can also convert stuff from other vampire games like V5 if you need to fill out the setting. I did conversions for that too.

As far as dice go... Feed uses multiple types of die and a dice pool mechanic, but cuts down on dice bloat by capping traits at 3. You're rarely going to be rolling more.

If you want rules lite and you want a humanity mechanic that isn't swingy or arbitrarily punishing, then Feed is the best option.

Quote from: drayakir on July 12, 2022, 09:17:09 AM
They're clunky in the sense that there's two axis of dice resolution mechanic. You have the dice pool, which is straightforward stuff - you roll X number of dice and then Y is your target number. The other one is the target number modification. The standard is 8, but depending on certain Merits, Disciplines, the target number could go as low as 4 for some rolls. In our V20 game set in Washington DC, one of our players, the Assamite, had that for visual perception checks. Other than that, I'll be entirely honest, I saw no clunkiness. It has some suggestions on how to best run a Vampire game, but it doesn't say like "So and So is the Prince of NYC opposed by these factions." That's left up to you.

What about lore? At over 500 pages I'm sure there has to be a ton of lore/setting/metaplot.  Also, the bloodlines/clans are intrinsic to the setting.

Quote from: Batjon on July 12, 2022, 02:06:42 PM

Quote from: drayakir on July 12, 2022, 09:17:09 AM
They're clunky in the sense that there's two axis of dice resolution mechanic. You have the dice pool, which is straightforward stuff - you roll X number of dice and then Y is your target number. The other one is the target number modification. The standard is 8, but depending on certain Merits, Disciplines, the target number could go as low as 4 for some rolls. In our V20 game set in Washington DC, one of our players, the Assamite, had that for visual perception checks. Other than that, I'll be entirely honest, I saw no clunkiness. It has some suggestions on how to best run a Vampire game, but it doesn't say like "So and So is the Prince of NYC opposed by these factions." That's left up to you.

What about lore? At over 500 pages I'm sure there has to be a ton of lore/setting/metaplot.  Also, the bloodlines/clans are intrinsic to the setting.

I used to be a diehard fan in the 2000s, and I also read that book, so I can answer this easy. Each bloodline has several thousand years of lore that you're expected to memorize and religiously adhere to (or else!) in order to enjoy the IP. That's the key selling point of the IP. It's basically an extremely messy comic book setting masquerading (haha!) as a tabletop game setting. When people do play it, it's just high school clique politics with vampires. Each bloodline is basically a high school clique that determines your character's personality and superpowers, such as "sewer dwelling computer nerd", "patron of the arts," "rich kid that lives on daddy's money," "rebellious punk," "the weird kids," etc. (VTR is basically the same game with minor tweaks, more scattered nebulous lore, and additional batches of bloodlines that weren't covered by the other game like carnival freaks, BDSM freaks that can selectively turn off your senses, luckpires, freemasons with architecture magic, judas breed that cause suicides, demon hunters that venerate the Old Kingdom iteration of Seth, dudes with bone kinesis based on an obscure comic book, Balkan sludge vampires, etc. If you say anything positive about it, fans will come out of the woodwork to insult you for heresy.)

If you're not interested in that and just want to do your own thing or emulate some other setting like FK, then there's no point in buying/playing the game. It lives and dies on its lore and clique drama.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on July 12, 2022, 02:49:33 PM

Quote from: Batjon on July 12, 2022, 02:06:42 PM

Quote from: drayakir on July 12, 2022, 09:17:09 AM
They're clunky in the sense that there's two axis of dice resolution mechanic. You have the dice pool, which is straightforward stuff - you roll X number of dice and then Y is your target number. The other one is the target number modification. The standard is 8, but depending on certain Merits, Disciplines, the target number could go as low as 4 for some rolls. In our V20 game set in Washington DC, one of our players, the Assamite, had that for visual perception checks. Other than that, I'll be entirely honest, I saw no clunkiness. It has some suggestions on how to best run a Vampire game, but it doesn't say like "So and So is the Prince of NYC opposed by these factions." That's left up to you.

What about lore? At over 500 pages I'm sure there has to be a ton of lore/setting/metaplot.  Also, the bloodlines/clans are intrinsic to the setting.

I used to be a diehard fan in the 2000s, and I also read that book, so I can answer this easy. Each bloodline has several thousand years of lore that you're expected to memorize and religiously adhere to (or else!) in order to enjoy the IP. That's the key selling point of the IP. It's basically an extremely messy comic book setting masquerading (haha!) as a tabletop game setting. When people do play it, it's just high school clique politics with vampires. Each bloodline is basically a high school clique that determines your character's personality and superpowers, such as "sewer dwelling computer nerd", "patron of the arts," "rich kid that lives on daddy's money," "rebellious punk," "the weird kids," etc. (VTR is basically the same game with minor tweaks, more scattered nebulous lore, and additional batches of bloodlines that weren't covered by the other game like carnival freaks, BDSM freaks that can selectively turn off your senses, luckpires, freemasons with architecture magic, judas breed that cause suicides, demon hunters that venerate the Old Kingdom iteration of Seth, dudes with bone kinesis based on an obscure comic book, Balkan sludge vampires, etc. If you say anything positive about it, fans will come out of the woodwork to insult you for heresy.)

If you're not interested in that and just want to do your own thing or emulate some other setting like FK, then there's no point in buying/playing the game. It lives and dies on its lore and clique drama.

That's wildly incorrect reductionist. You can say that about any RPG with factions involved in it. I suppose some turbo-autists play games about shapes moving in an empty void, but we'll leave them to that.

V20 is superior in the sense that it took a look at the metaplot and history of the game and tossed it out. Like for instance it doesn't mention the hatred between the Lasombra/Ventrue, and like one line of the hatred the Tzimisce have towards the Tremere. That's about it. Everything else is mechanics, mechanics, and more mechanics.  There is a tiny section in the back of the book regarding the setting, true, but you can freely ignore it (that's what I do -  localize the coterie to one city and exclude the other supernaturals).

There are other books that do go into those details, but you don't need them to run a full V20 VtM game.

Quote from: drayakir on July 12, 2022, 03:26:04 PM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on July 12, 2022, 02:49:33 PM

Quote from: Batjon on July 12, 2022, 02:06:42 PM

Quote from: drayakir on July 12, 2022, 09:17:09 AM
They're clunky in the sense that there's two axis of dice resolution mechanic. You have the dice pool, which is straightforward stuff - you roll X number of dice and then Y is your target number. The other one is the target number modification. The standard is 8, but depending on certain Merits, Disciplines, the target number could go as low as 4 for some rolls. In our V20 game set in Washington DC, one of our players, the Assamite, had that for visual perception checks. Other than that, I'll be entirely honest, I saw no clunkiness. It has some suggestions on how to best run a Vampire game, but it doesn't say like "So and So is the Prince of NYC opposed by these factions." That's left up to you.

What about lore? At over 500 pages I'm sure there has to be a ton of lore/setting/metaplot.  Also, the bloodlines/clans are intrinsic to the setting.

I used to be a diehard fan in the 2000s, and I also read that book, so I can answer this easy. Each bloodline has several thousand years of lore that you're expected to memorize and religiously adhere to (or else!) in order to enjoy the IP. That's the key selling point of the IP. It's basically an extremely messy comic book setting masquerading (haha!) as a tabletop game setting. When people do play it, it's just high school clique politics with vampires. Each bloodline is basically a high school clique that determines your character's personality and superpowers, such as "sewer dwelling computer nerd", "patron of the arts," "rich kid that lives on daddy's money," "rebellious punk," "the weird kids," etc. (VTR is basically the same game with minor tweaks, more scattered nebulous lore, and additional batches of bloodlines that weren't covered by the other game like carnival freaks, BDSM freaks that can selectively turn off your senses, luckpires, freemasons with architecture magic, judas breed that cause suicides, demon hunters that venerate the Old Kingdom iteration of Seth, dudes with bone kinesis based on an obscure comic book, Balkan sludge vampires, etc. If you say anything positive about it, fans will come out of the woodwork to insult you for heresy.)

If you're not interested in that and just want to do your own thing or emulate some other setting like FK, then there's no point in buying/playing the game. It lives and dies on its lore and clique drama.

That's wildly incorrect reductionist. You can say that about any RPG with factions involved in it. I suppose some turbo-autists play games about shapes moving in an empty void, but we'll leave them to that.

V20 is superior in the sense that it took a look at the metaplot and history of the game and tossed it out. Like for instance it doesn't mention the hatred between the Lasombra/Ventrue, and like one line of the hatred the Tzimisce have towards the Tremere. That's about it. Everything else is mechanics, mechanics, and more mechanics.  There is a tiny section in the back of the book regarding the setting, true, but you can freely ignore it (that's what I do -  localize the coterie to one city and exclude the other supernaturals).

There are other books that do go into those details, but you don't need them to run a full V20 VtM game.

The WW games are infamous for their bloated overbearing lore. That's the reason people buy/play it. Assuming they actually play it and don't just buy the books to read the metaplot, which is a real thing that fans do. I don't know what your experience has been (I'm guessing you don't frequent the online scene, and I wouldn't blame you because it's a cesspit), but my experience with the fandom is that it is obnoxiously and religiously obsessed with lore. The game simply isn't designed to evoke other vampire fiction, but only to play its own self-referential setting with all its baggage and idiosyncrasies. If you're not interested in all that, then there's no reason to play the game. Trying to make it work for other settings, such as Ricean vampires or Lost Boys, is more trouble than it's worth in my experience due to the complexity of the rules and the fact that they weren't designed to be tinkered with.

Also, Batjon asked for rules lite. I'd say all those mechanics get in the way. I personally found them more frustrating than anything else. The detail can get overbearing pretty quick; e.g. the section on mind control includes a sidebar on how to adjudicate targets without eyes. The powers are structured in a hierarchical ladder, e.g. to learn astral projection you first need to learn enhanced senses, aura reading, object reading and telepathy in that order and that's all you can learn. (V5 removed that limitation, for which I commend it.)

But if your goal to emulate Forever Knight or Nightlife, then Feed is the best way to go. In fact, I would say the system is better at playing WW games than actual WW games. Whatever the WW rules try to do, I think Feed does it better. Character creation in WW is overcomplicated with various attributes, skills, personality traits, backgrounds, merits, flaws, superpowers, etc. Feed simplifies all that by having everything run on the same abstracted trait mechanics.

In any case, this isn't an either/or argument. I posted the link to my conversion of WW if it's necessary to use anything from that. I don't think it is, but preparation is half the battle.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on July 12, 2022, 04:36:43 PM

Quote from: drayakir on July 12, 2022, 03:26:04 PM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on July 12, 2022, 02:49:33 PM

Quote from: Batjon on July 12, 2022, 02:06:42 PM

Quote from: drayakir on July 12, 2022, 09:17:09 AM
They're clunky in the sense that there's two axis of dice resolution mechanic. You have the dice pool, which is straightforward stuff - you roll X number of dice and then Y is your target number. The other one is the target number modification. The standard is 8, but depending on certain Merits, Disciplines, the target number could go as low as 4 for some rolls. In our V20 game set in Washington DC, one of our players, the Assamite, had that for visual perception checks. Other than that, I'll be entirely honest, I saw no clunkiness. It has some suggestions on how to best run a Vampire game, but it doesn't say like "So and So is the Prince of NYC opposed by these factions." That's left up to you.

What about lore? At over 500 pages I'm sure there has to be a ton of lore/setting/metaplot.  Also, the bloodlines/clans are intrinsic to the setting.

I used to be a diehard fan in the 2000s, and I also read that book, so I can answer this easy. Each bloodline has several thousand years of lore that you're expected to memorize and religiously adhere to (or else!) in order to enjoy the IP. That's the key selling point of the IP. It's basically an extremely messy comic book setting masquerading (haha!) as a tabletop game setting. When people do play it, it's just high school clique politics with vampires. Each bloodline is basically a high school clique that determines your character's personality and superpowers, such as "sewer dwelling computer nerd", "patron of the arts," "rich kid that lives on daddy's money," "rebellious punk," "the weird kids," etc. (VTR is basically the same game with minor tweaks, more scattered nebulous lore, and additional batches of bloodlines that weren't covered by the other game like carnival freaks, BDSM freaks that can selectively turn off your senses, luckpires, freemasons with architecture magic, judas breed that cause suicides, demon hunters that venerate the Old Kingdom iteration of Seth, dudes with bone kinesis based on an obscure comic book, Balkan sludge vampires, etc. If you say anything positive about it, fans will come out of the woodwork to insult you for heresy.)

If you're not interested in that and just want to do your own thing or emulate some other setting like FK, then there's no point in buying/playing the game. It lives and dies on its lore and clique drama.

That's wildly incorrect reductionist. You can say that about any RPG with factions involved in it. I suppose some turbo-autists play games about shapes moving in an empty void, but we'll leave them to that.

V20 is superior in the sense that it took a look at the metaplot and history of the game and tossed it out. Like for instance it doesn't mention the hatred between the Lasombra/Ventrue, and like one line of the hatred the Tzimisce have towards the Tremere. That's about it. Everything else is mechanics, mechanics, and more mechanics.  There is a tiny section in the back of the book regarding the setting, true, but you can freely ignore it (that's what I do -  localize the coterie to one city and exclude the other supernaturals).

There are other books that do go into those details, but you don't need them to run a full V20 VtM game.

The WW games are infamous for their bloated overbearing lore. That's the reason people buy/play it. Assuming they actually play it and don't just buy the books to read the metaplot, which is a real thing that fans do. I don't know what your experience has been (I'm guessing you don't frequent the online scene, and I wouldn't blame you because it's a cesspit), but my experience with the fandom is that it is obnoxiously and religiously obsessed with lore. The game simply isn't designed to evoke other vampire fiction, but only to play its own self-referential setting with all its baggage and idiosyncrasies. If you're not interested in all that, then there's no reason to play the game. Trying to make it work for other settings, such as Ricean vampires or Lost Boys, is more trouble than it's worth in my experience due to the complexity of the rules and the fact that they weren't designed to be tinkered with.

Also, Batjon asked for rules lite. I'd say all those mechanics get in the way. I personally found them more frustrating than anything else. The detail can get overbearing pretty quick; e.g. the section on mind control includes a sidebar on how to adjudicate targets without eyes. The powers are structured in a hierarchical ladder, e.g. to learn astral projection you first need to learn enhanced senses, aura reading, object reading and telepathy in that order and that's all you can learn. (V5 removed that limitation, for which I commend it.)

But if your goal to emulate Forever Knight or Nightlife, then Feed is the best way to go. In fact, I would say the system is better at playing WW games than actual WW games. Whatever the WW rules try to do, I think Feed does it better. Character creation in WW is overcomplicated with various attributes, skills, personality traits, backgrounds, merits, flaws, superpowers, etc. Feed simplifies all that by having everything run on the same abstracted trait mechanics.

In any case, this isn't an either/or argument. I posted the link to my conversion of WW if it's necessary to use anything from that. I don't think it is, but preparation is half the battle.

Oh yeah, I generally avoid "fandoms" like the plague. There's nothing of value to them. And I think what you're saying is true for the older editions of VtM, but I really gotta say, I'm skimming the book right now, and while there's certainly... I dunno, call it "setting flavor," there's none of the whole BS of old VtM of "Gehenna is right around the corner! Your characters aren't meaningful! Look at how cool our NPCs are!" So eh.

I will concede the rules light bit though.

I do like the idea of vampire bloodlines, but I think Nightlife is more creative with it. The different kin races have the freedom to be much more different from one another than WW's bloodlines are, whereas the latter are all forced to abide by the standard vampire template. Something as simple as the kin having different diets and origins goes a long way to making them feel more distinct than just cliques.

Does V20 eject the origin of vampires and all the lore that is associated with it?

Quote from: Batjon on July 12, 2022, 08:04:44 PM
Does V20 eject the origin of vampires and all the lore that is associated with it?

It does not. It still has all the lore about Cain, the city of Nod, the thirteen founders who survived the Flood, and the Final Nights.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on July 12, 2022, 09:02:38 PM

Quote from: Batjon on July 12, 2022, 08:04:44 PM
Does V20 eject the origin of vampires and all the lore that is associated with it?

It does not. It still has all the lore about Cain, the city of Nod, the thirteen founders who survived the Flood, and the Final Nights.

That is a lot of the lore/metaplot I am trying to avoid.

Quote from: Batjon on July 12, 2022, 09:44:52 PM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on July 12, 2022, 09:02:38 PM

Quote from: Batjon on July 12, 2022, 08:04:44 PM
Does V20 eject the origin of vampires and all the lore that is associated with it?

It does not. It still has all the lore about Cain, the city of Nod, the thirteen founders who survived the Flood, and the Final Nights.

That is a lot of the lore/metaplot I am trying to avoid.

It is, however, not nearly as pervasive as Box likes to tell everyone it is because apparently VtM murdered his puppy or something.

The extent of the lore isn't much more than what he already shared in his comment above and, in V20 all that is also treated like a Myth... like Adam and Eve and Noah and the Flood... rather than as THIS IS WHAT HAPPENED! i.e. the most popular legend for vampiric origins is they're descended from Caine through the founders of each of the Clans. But there's also stories that Lilith was the first vampire, or Ravnos was, or Set was.

He just really doesn't like anyone even looking at VtM as a prospect.

I'd also argue that the rules aren't especially heavy. Roll a number of dice equal to Trait 1 + Trait 2 and count each one that rolls at or above the difficulty (which defaults to 6 if not mentioned) counts as a success (i.e. if the difficulty is 8, each die that comes up as an 8 or better is a success). The more successes you achieve the greater you pull off the action.

That's pretty much the core mechanic right there... almost everything is just a matter of which traits you're rolling, the difficulty number and what the effects of success are.

You've got three sets of three attributes; a physical set, a mental set and a social set. You've got three sets of abilities; talents, skills and knowledges. Character creation is very strait forward; just picking a Clan and assigning points to each of these and a few other categories.

V20 can easily do many different styles of play including my personal favorite, a sub-genre referred to as "Vampions" (i.e. basically superheroes with fangs... sometimes also called Trenchcoats & Katanas). By contrast many of the others (including V5) seem to only have one way they want to have you approach vampirism... Feed, for example, is only interested in vampirism as an addiction narrative.

The biggest advantage of V20 is that while you don't NEED it to play a normal campaign, there is a lot of deep lore you can engage with to precisely the degree you're comfortable with. Want to keep it straight forward? Just use the main seven clans, generations 8-13 and Humanity only for everything in your city and it'll work fine as a typical US city with a vampire population that is competing over resources and control.

Want more? Then you can start looking at things further afield... Additional clans and bloodlines. Less common vampiric powers. Lower generation vampires (generations 4-7) and their elder disciplines and alternate paths of morality. If you wanna tell tales of vampires in the Dark Ages of Europe; there's whole supplements for that too. If lore's your thing you can deep dive into books like Beckett's Jyhad Diary or Lore of the Clans.

If you're really ambitious you can fold in things like mortal hunters, werewolves, mages and ghosts from their other game lines that are mechanically at least semi-compatible (though picking your cosmology in those cases matters as each has their own take on what version of reality is true.

But those are entirely optional. Take what you want; leave the rest. That's probably V20's greatest strength.