Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1041444Forgive me, but I understand the meaning of sabbat (holy day, Sunday, etc) so I find a society of vampire supremacists calling themselves that silly. I can say the same about lots of the bizarre names in WoD. Bruja is Spanish for "witch", la sombra is Spanish for "the shadow," Tzimiskes was a Byzantine emperor, toreador is Spanish for "bullfighter," gangrel and ragabash are British/Scottish English for "vagabond," tremere is Latin for "to tremble" (the present infinitive of a verb, and thus nonsensical as a name), etc.

Forgive what? White Wolf, if it's fans and detractors can agree on nothing else, is pretty widely understood to have been trying to name-drop its' designers' vocabulary throughout the game creation process. Forget names of clans, the powers and abilities were always 'Celerity,' or 'Vicissitude,' or 'Legerdemain,' or 'Chicanery.' You're either on board for the wacky (sagacious- or pretentious pseudo-intellectual-, depending on your interpretation) funhouse ride, or you're not.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1041444Shadowbane is a dark fantasy setting where the PCs are morally ambiguous at best. The vampires serve the Null, who are described as hive minds for the undead. Unlike in typical D&D, the undead are an effect of interruptions in the cycle of souls rather than a cause. Although vampires can join guilds with other races unless the guild's charter is racist.

Yeah that sounds do-able.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1041444I thought the progressive distinctive mutation (which provided functional benefits like armor or sonar) was a much more interesting way to distinguish the clans than "hit really bad by the ugly stick" or "paralyzed by images of [strike]Judy Garland[/strike] beauty." I could say a lot about how the WoD weaknesses are more silly than evocative.

Take the Toreador weakness, in either Masquerade or Requiem (I don't care about edition differences). They are paralyzed by images of [strike]Judy Garland[/strike] beauty, like a parody of the typical repulsion from crosses. What would be more evocative would be if they were obsessed with acquiring pretty things (art, cars, lovers, etc), then immediately lose interest in their newest possession to seek out another. If you're willing to abandon preconceptions, this could replace the traditional hunger for blood.

It's all in the gameplay. I emphasize heavy roleplaying in my WoD games (as well as brutal combat). I also try to give a lot of nuance to these weaknesses. What is "beautiful" to one character is not necessarily the same to others. These are details I try to establish at chargen very organically. I'm flexible too on how to play these weaknesses as well and see no fundamental problem with doing what you're suggesting as long as I put some in-game rationales for it.

The distinction in Rifts is one of taxonomy, and I believe similar distinctions are present in a number of other vampire fiction like D&D 3rd edition (and beyond), Stephen King's work and Syfy's Van Helsing show. Master/head vampires were created by pacts with a demon lord or vampire god (or is itself some kind of demon), brides/grooms/servants by infection, and feral/wild by flawed infection or starvation. The concept is obviously based on Dracula and his brides.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1041444In fact, the concept of vampires turning feral/wild through starvation shows up fairly often. In many cases starvation causes mental (and less commonly physical) deterioration that may or may not be restored by receiving sustenance. In Buffy the Vampire Slayer vampires can't die of starvation but if they starve too long they will suffer permanent brain damage. In Syfy's Van Helsing vampires need blood to survive, but they need human blood to retain their sanity; animal blood causes them to turn feral (and stop caring about their hygiene). In Warhammer Fantasy vampires that starve (or give into their hunger completely) turn into bat-like monsters with far greater physical prowess at the cost of their sanity.

Good point. I actually think this is a good concept that could be introduced into WoD's Vampire. Essentially this is the Gangrel clan weakness but done better.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1041444Forgive me, but I understand the meaning of sabbat (holy day, Sunday, etc) so I find a society of vampire supremacists calling themselves that silly. I can say the same about lots of the bizarre names in WoD. Bruja is Spanish for "witch", la sombra is Spanish for "the shadow," Tzimiskes was a Byzantine emperor, toreador is Spanish for "bullfighter," gangrel and ragabash are British/Scottish English for "vagabond," tremere is Latin for "to tremble" (the present infinitive of a verb, and thus nonsensical as a name), etc.

Yeah stipulated. I'm pretty sure this is a nod to Anne Rice and later rationalized through the practices of the Lasombra whose clan structure is closely tied to Catholic ecclesiastical hierarchical titles (which is why the organization of the Sabbat is structured like the Catholic Church with a few positions moved around). That aside the Sabbat are not just "vampire supremacists" - which is silly, that is an element of their cult which if taken a little too literally gets stupid very quickly - because it's pretty trivial to destroy the Masquerade when one assumes this AND the GM doesn't put the actual controls implied by the game into effect. That being - Humanity *will* purge the world of Vampires. This is directly why I say the GM has the responsibility to enforce those population controls as they see fit and that means putting those controls into place with ruthless precision. The PC's *need* to understand that.

The other aspect of the Sabbat is that they see themselves crusaders against the minions of the Antediluvians which happens to be the dolts of the Camarilla. Heh they're the alt-right of the Vampire world.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1041444Forgive me, but I understand the meaning of sabbat (holy day, Sunday, etc) so I find a society of vampire supremacists calling themselves that silly. I can say the same about lots of the bizarre names in WoD. Bruja is Spanish for "witch", la sombra is Spanish for "the shadow," Tzimiskes was a Byzantine emperor, toreador is Spanish for "bullfighter," gangrel and ragabash are British/Scottish English for "vagabond," tremere is Latin for "to tremble" (the present infinitive of a verb, and thus nonsensical as a name), etc.

A) They're not vampire supremacists; that's the stereotype lumped on them by the Camarilla. Their stated goal is to destroy their ancestors; the Antedeluvians and all their puppets (i.e. the Camarilla, whose official policy is that if the Antedeluvians ever existed they're long dead... so of course the group trying to destroy the non-existent beings are fanatical nutjobs to them). Most notably, the two main clans who lead the Sabbat are known to have explicitly murdered their founders (kind of... its hard to make it truly stick with 10,000+ year old vampire gods... but whatever is left of them isn't exactly a vampire anymore either).

B) The Sabbat leadership makes a mockery of the Catholic Church as part and parcel of membership. They have twisted versions of Baptism and Communion and mock the Catholic Church with their names just as the Satanists refer to their rites as "Black Masses" and similar.

C) The Clans weren't always called by their current names. There's a reason most texts refer to the founders as [Brujah] or [Malkov]; its because no one knows what the hell they were originally called 10,000+ years ago. Most vampires outside of a rare few are just a few hundred years old at most. The presumption is that each of the clans has been called many things throughout history... their current names are just that, current. The Brujah probably picked up their current name during the Spanish Inquisition (which a pretty big deal in VtM Lore... called The Burning Times... and the point where both the Sabbat and Camarilla were formed (ETA: and the concept of the Masquerade established). Likewise the Lasombra (whose primary discipline is manipulation of shadows) and Toreadors probably picked up their current clan names at about that point.

The Old Clan Tzimisci ruled the area that once the northern reaches of the Byzantine Empire for millennia (Vlad the Impaler is of their clan)... almost like they were emperors of their respective lands or something. Gangrel and Ragabash probably picked up their clan/tribe names the same way many outcast ethnic groups do... they were named for what their neighbors called them. Tremere was the name of one of the Houses of the Order of Hermes and one of the core precepts of their paradigm was that True Names have power and thus all true Hermetic practitioners hid their true names with a Craft Name... Tremere is just that... the craft name of House Tremere's founder.

In other words, most of the stuff you claim is silly and nonsensical is actually just stuff you are judging from a position of complete ignorance.

Quote from: Willie the Duck;1041447Forgive what? White Wolf, if it's fans and detractors can agree on nothing else, is pretty widely understood to have been trying to name-drop its' designers' vocabulary throughout the game creation process. Forget names of clans, the powers and abilities were always 'Celerity,' or 'Vicissitude,' or 'Legerdemain,' or 'Chicanery.' You're either on board for the wacky (sagacious- or pretentious pseudo-intellectual-, depending on your interpretation) funhouse ride, or you're not.

Don't forget the made up names either, like chimerstry (chimerical chemistry) or mytherceria (mither ceria, "irritating ulcer"). The etymology can be pretty weird.

There has only been one good vampire RPG.

Early Vampire was awesome, but everything WW did after Revised Edition sucked and V5 is going to sink like the Lusitania.

Quote from: Doc Sammy;1041554Early Vampire was awesome, but everything WW did after Revised Edition sucked and V5 is going to sink like the Lusitania.

This sounds familiar. Quick look back...

Quote from: Doc Sammy;1037990I just can't wait to point and laugh when V5 inevitably fails and then I will tell all those Eurotrash Goths and Punks at NuWW "See, I told you so!"

Quote from: Doc Sammy;1037861V5 is going to be a bigger flop than D&D 4E. If it isn't, I will eat my hat.

Quote from: Doc Sammy;1037496killed the franchise.

Quote from: Doc Sammy;1036709I thought Revised Edition was the worst version of Vampire: The Masquerade, but it looks like V5 is going to take the cake.

Quote from: Doc Sammy;1036489See, I told you that V5 was going to suck.

Quote from: Doc Sammy;1036486V5 is definitely going to suck and it will sink like the Lusitania.

If V5 is actually enjoyable and not a metaplot-ridden wangsty Goth trainwreck, I will eat my hat!

Doc, I genuinely don't care, but I also can set myself a google calendar note. If V5 hits the market and sinks like the Lusitania*, and you start crowing about how you 'called it,' we can come back and validate your claim. We believe you-you knew ahead of time that it was going to fail. You don't have to come back and repeat the assertion every 5-10 days. We'll remember.
*note to self: go check whether Lusitania actually sunk in a spectacular way, or simply had far-reaching repercussions.

VtM 1st edition, Chicago By Night and other 1991 publications.

MtA 1ste edition, loom of Fate and an old adventure about London Underground in a magazine I can't recall

er that's it for me and WW

The Lusitania was just a straightforward torpedo attack.  He really should have gone with the Titanic because I don't think any external forces will sink V5 -- it'll be internal fuck ups.

I've been following this as the WW games are ones I've always loved in concept.  In application the games are almost always terrible.  The system is always too clunky.

Dice pools are not for me.

Most things in WW are rated 1-10 IIRC.

So a quick roll under or roll plus meeting DC will be the way I go, if I ever play again.

Quote from: Mike the Mage;1041563Dice pools are not for me.

Most things in WW are rated 1-10 IIRC.

So a quick roll under or roll plus meeting DC will be the way I go, if I ever play again.

Eh I'm a long time Shadowrun GM/player so dice pools are right in my wheel house.  The problem is that both WW and the Shadowrun team don't really seem to understand how math works and how to properly design game components to work with the basic game mechanics.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1041327What is your malfunction? I was just cherry-picking elements I liked for my own world building. Can you go even one second without shitting on every vampire story for not being WoD or whatever? God, this insane elitism over fictional characters is half the reason I quit WoD all those years ago. (The other half was WoD being shit.)

Hah hah hah hah, I'll let you live. I'm not telling you how to do you, I'm just saying what fits on a macro scale rather than a micro. I believe tenbones explored this in his post after yours.

Quote from: Chris24601;1041370Presuming you mean Clan + Bloodline in the sense of "Social Organization + Common Sire Line" then WoD did actually have that. The Clans are the "common sire line" part while Camarilla/Sabbat/Anarch/Inconnu/Tal'Maha'Re/Minor Factions/Independents are the "social organization part." (Ex. There are members of Clan Bruhah among the Camerilla, the Sabbat, the Anarchs, etc.).

No, nVamp segregated political identity from "genetic"/familial identity. In oVamp, only two factions really mattered as they held overwhelming dominance over the Earth. You usually didn't get a choice which one you were a part of: you lucked out and were sired Camarilla or you somehow survived being canon fodder -- i.e.  a "shovelhead" -- for the Sabbat.

nVamp used Bloodline + Clan + Covenant. oVamp did Sect + Clan.

In nVamp, importance placed on each element was roughly 40/30/30, in favor of Bloodline. This meant that there was a reason finally to have sire/childer relationships that didn't feel like sterile vetting periods because every Kindred now had a fairly good chance of being part of a particular lineage (in many cases, that was actually traceable). What this didn't mean is that Bloodlines overshadowed Clans or Covenants because you still were part of one archetype of vampires and you still were or were not a member of one of the policultural factions present in the city.

In oVamp, Clan just meant that you are part of

• army --  "ALL VENTRUE ATTACK TZIMISCE" blah blah -- which was the entire premise of Dark Ages: Vampire and that was very much driven home in both PC games as well. Your Sect, for the most part, didn't really matter. It might occasionally affect things in, say, the metaplot but by and large, each city was thoroughly dominated by one of the two major Sects. And if you weren't part of the dominating Sect, you were forcefully converted, exiled or -- most likely --  killed. Hell, in the Redemption game, one of your companions (Samuel) is almost killed by a local Pack because he won't join the Sabbat who are in complete control of NYC. All Toreador are Setites are Tremere -- your individual character or your character's lineage didn't matter.
  
  nVamp made it so that every vampire came under an archetype -- i.e. Clan -- but kept it flexible and loose enough that you could have genuine variety within that. You could substantially differentiate, say, one Daeva from another and the same for Ventrue and the system would encourage and support that. Your character could then inherit, adopt or found a Bloodline which are offshoots of one of the Clans. This meant you could explore a stereotype within the archetype. This meant there could be inumerable Bloodlines and this solved the problem of having to write new Clans just because one of the designers wanted a mafia-style lineage or a voodoo lineage (Giovanni and Samedi respectively) and also stupid shit like Blood Brothers. You could very easily write up a mafia-based Bloodline, insert it under a Clan for flavor and voila! You've got mafia vampires without any system or narrative baggage! In fact, I've done this myself several times for our current VTR game at the club: the Giacconis and the Zagratv-Kem are both Ventrue Bloodlines but one is mafia and the other are smugglers -- both are criminal lineages but they focus on a different stereotype.
  
  What oVamp did was use stereotypes in place of archetypes and then act like they were the same thing -- they weren't, the setting (and the system) severely punished you for acting outside your stereotype. This is one of the top complaints I hear from oVamp players about the game, especially from those who've joined us at the club and especially once they've played a couple seshes it just sounds night and day from them.
  
  

  Quote from: Chris24601;1041464In other words, most of the stuff you claim is silly and nonsensical is actually just stuff you are judging from a position of complete ignorance.

  
  Well said.
  
  Wasn't Tremere started by Goatrix or something? I think it was Troile who was Brujah and Zilla who was Toreador or something like that...

Quote from: KingCheops;1041564Eh I'm a long time Shadowrun GM/player so dice pools are right in my wheel house.  The problem is that both WW and the Shadowrun team don't really seem to understand how math works and how to properly design game components to work with the basic game mechanics.

Yeah, oddly I remember vaguely that Shadowrun 2nd edition didn't seem to have the same clunkiness.

I always found WW from the first game to be rather pretentious and having a fondness for taking random words and changing them into something else.  And they clearly were never game designers as their system was kludgy from the word GO!

Quote from: Mike the Mage;1041569Yeah, oddly I remember vaguely that Shadowrun 2nd edition didn't seem to have the same clunkiness.

I didn't start until 3rd.  3rd was where things started to slide off the rails but 4th explicitly went full nWoD and blew up.