Quote from: TrippyHippy;922347It is new material, with original writing and new supplements.

I will simply direct you to others

Quote from: tenbones;922349V20 - I don't consider it a new edition. Just a revision. I still prefer NWoD mechanics, but settingwise - meh. I can pick and choose easily. I prefer OWoD for the setting. But nothing is sacrosanct about it.

who have said the same thing.  You are going to keep a death grip on your favored conclusion no matter what though.  That's one easy way to spot people who arrive at conclusions based on emotional reactions and then reason backwards to justify those conclusions.  The argument may shift and change as logic or evidence contradicts parts of it but the conclusion never, ever changes.  Regardless of what logic or evidence is brought to bear, there is always some ad hoc reason why the favored conclusion is still right somehow.

Quote from: yosemitemike;922374I will simply direct you to others

In other words, no, you haven't read them.

Quote from: TrippyHippy;922378In other words, no, you haven't read them.

If I say that I have read part of it (and I have), you will say that I haven't read enough and that I have to read the whole thing.  If I said I had read the whole thing (which I haven't), you would say that I didn't "get it" or something along those lines.  No matter what you will keep a tight grip on your favored conclusion.

Quote from: yosemitemike;921978It just seems completely baffling and insane to me.

It is.

But one of the biggest mistakes made in economic models is the assumption that people are rational actors who always act in their own best interests.

Quote from: Doc Sammy;921998You're lucky, you've had good experiences with Goths, all of the ones I dealt with were elitist douchebags who listened to Sisters of Mercy and Type O Negative and generally treated me and my younger brothers like shit.

What's funny is that's exactly how most Goths probably felt about Jocks and Preppies. And what this highlights is not that one group are bigger assholes than another, but that group identities themselves are what lead to this kind of bullshit.

Really, it's funny how Vampire Clans are basically High School Cliques.

Quote from: yosemitemike;922390If I say that I have read part of it (and I have), you will say that I haven't read enough and that I have to read the whole thing.  If I said I had read the whole thing (which I haven't), you would say that I didn't "get it" or something along those lines.  No matter what you will keep a tight grip on your favored conclusion.

You could just be honest, and admit you haven't read it rather than trying to seek out some perceived debating strategy. I have read it, and own it along with all the previous editions. It is originally written from base, as are its supplements.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;916230What was playing Vampire: The Masquerade like in the earliest days of the game?

Basically around the time of its first release and rise in popularity, when it was all raw and fresh, before splatbooks and the ballooning of the world of darkness, before the 90s had fully asserted themselves and the likely shape of the 2000s was perceptible. What did people make of it coming off of other games?

I'm no longer sufficiently sober to resist this, so..

I played V:TM tabletop on and off, and later participated in a LARP, from around '95 to '97.  Before that, the crew I played with pretty much always stuck with some version of D&D.  As teenagers, I and my friends treated Vampire as a license to do every antisocial thing we could think of that we'd always talked about but didn't do in D&D because people relentlessly fucking with the world and one another would screw up the whole 'heroic adventuring party' thing.  Humanity points were lost with abandon, and we tended to treat the Masquerade as a guideline rather than a rule.  Whoever the local Prince was in a given game learned to hate our characters names and either shuffle them off to die stupidly against an enemy of his, or had the bailiff whoop the characters until we'd pretend to play ball... which is pretty much what we expected from the setting.  We almost always played like shovelheads, despite usually not playing shovelheads.

There was no angst or waangst, we paid lip-service to that sort of thing for maybe five minutes per session, before we got back to the business of stealing all the trench coats from Goodwill so we had something to cover the windows with wherever we were crashing for the day.

The LARP had more to it, but also a bunch of silly crossover characters such as a Highlander and some human with numina that could disable disciplines, and a lot of drama that I entirely ignored personally in favor of dipping out to 'hunt' and eat pizza.  One of my friends was into it and I tagged along so he'd have an extra Brujah with ambi and the agg-fists power.  I don't think the storyteller thought much of that, while there were a lot of fights, they tended to work out in a way that my character was of limited relevance.  There were some funny moments though, like the drive-by soul stealing, ambi-throwing a bunch of molotov cocktails at a Tremere and missing every one (hello, cauldron of blood), discussing who had 'dibs' on diablerie when the Sabbat came to town, and hiding out in a pine tree for like an hour listening to some crazy shit with werewolves go down only to find out later that the scene was somewhere my character could not observe.  After I left some dude convinced the storyteller to let him crash a puddlejumper full of gasoline into the Sanctuary.  Apparently he tried to chill it out a bit after that, got a guy to play an archon, who was diablerized, so they brought him back as a more senior archon or maybe justicar (can't remember), which worked for a while then the storyteller left for college and the chronicle ended.

Quote from: TrippyHippy;922407You could just be honest, and admit you haven't read it rather than trying to seek out some perceived debating strategy. I have read it, and own it along with all the previous editions. It is originally written from base, as are its supplements.

So you are going to say I haven't read it even though I said I have read some parts of it.  Well, you were going to say that regardless so that's not surprising.  That's your current chosen rhetorical tack so you had to say that no matter what I or anyone else said.  Never mind the others here saying the same thing.  Never mind what I actually said.  Never mind anything but what you want to believe.

TrippyHippy welcome to my ignore list as you add nothing to any conversation you had ever been in.

So, this thread has made me realize that maybe I've been too hard on Goths and Punks overall, especially considering the fact that all my experiences with them were with people like Darren MacLerran and a bunch of washed-up thirty-and-forty-something Gen X burnouts I had LARP'ed with in the early 2010's when I was in high school.

While I'm not exactly a fan of the music of Type O Negative or The Cure, I think the scene may have actually been fun to hang around in back in the heyday of Goth and Punk during the 80's and 90's or at least check out the Goth and Punk scenes in major cities while I am still young. The nearest major cities I can think of would be Richmond and Washington D.C., Roanoke is not a small redneck town by any stretch of the imagination, but it's definitely not a major metropolis either.

I'm actually kind of inspired to run a Vampire: The Masquerade game using only the First Edition core rulebook with that actual Gothic-Punk aesthetic. I may even make it a period piece set in the 80's or 90's. We would not recognize the metaplot or any other Revised Edition bullshit and even though the game may be Gothic-Punk, don't expect any "woe is me" personal horror either. Granted, I won't go full Trenchcoats & Katanas either, but instead find a suitable and decent middle ground between the two play styles.

Should I run it as a play-by-post game on this site and would any of you be interested in it?

Quote from: TrippyHippy;922353They already had a 'Revised' Edition back in 1998! But the point is, in both cases, they were not duplicates of previous editions but were written from the ground up and incorporated changes. In the case of V20, there were system changes from previous and the setting was designed for use in the 21st century. If you look at other games in the 20th Anniversary series, you will find that Mage: The Ascension is quite radically rewritten and expanded on previous editions and it's all original writing.

And what does Revised circa 1998 have to do with V20 as it pertains the mechanics vs. the Fluff of the game? Fluff change? Not much. Mechanics change? Nothing they couldn't put into a pamphlet. V20 consolidated everything. But if you wanna have an argument that it's somehow worthy of your brand of the word "Edition" - feel free to argue. To me it's rhetorical semantics.

Do you think NWoD is a new edition because they created the God Machine rules? They did exactly what I'm suggesting - they created a free PDF to outline the new rules. And yes for various reasons, not the least of which were financial - they repackaged everything into a brand series of books that covered everything they already bought with the pamphlet rules cooked in.

New edition? Revision? Upgrade? Evolution? "Who cares?" says I.

I care about the game. This point of debate is a silly sideshow, and I'm not quite sure what the point being made is? You want to call it a "New Edition"? I'll call it "New Kids on the Block20". See? Both happy.

So, this thread has inspired me to create a thread in Design about my aforementioned BESM conversion of Vampire. Check it out and let me know what you think.

http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?35297-Anime-Gothic-Vampire-The-Masquerade-for-Big-Eyes-Small-Mouth-(Feedback-Appreciated)&p=922520#post922520

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;922399What's funny is that's exactly how most Goths probably felt about Jocks and Preppies. And what this highlights is not that one group are bigger assholes than another, but that group identities themselves are what lead to this kind of bullshit.

Really, it's funny how Vampire Clans are basically High School Cliques.

Yeah this is a solid observation of what I generally saw in groups I felt "didn't quite get it."

I can see how it can be easy to slip into that very high-level obscure view about Clans-as-cliques it's certainly in there to a certain degree.

Quote from: Doc Sammy;922512So, this thread has made me realize that maybe I've been too hard on Goths and Punks overall, especially considering the fact that all my experiences with them were with people like Darren MacLerran and a bunch of washed-up thirty-and-forty-something Gen X burnouts I had LARP'ed with in the early 2010's when I was in high school.

Yes.  You're committing the fallacy of overgeneralization.

QuoteI'm actually kind of inspired to run a Vampire: The Masquerade game using only the First Edition core rulebook with that actual Gothic-Punk aesthetic. I may even make it a period piece set in the 80's or 90's. We would not recognize the metaplot or any other Revised Edition bullshit and even though the game may be Gothic-Punk, don't expect any "woe is me" personal horror either. Granted, I won't go full Trenchcoats & Katanas either, but instead find a suitable and decent middle ground between the two play styles.

The films Near Dark, The Lost Boys and Vampire$ all have elements of "being a vampire is a horrific thing" without getting all emo about it.  You may find them useful sources of inspiration.

First edition core has some balance problems, though, especially if you intend the game to have at least some supernatural action.  Celerity is the God Discipline and Potence isn't too far behind.  Also, if you strictly use the recommended stats for Elders in the back of the book and the experience rules for PCs, you'll find that PCs can top out Elders on Discipline dots very quickly. Depending on what tone you want, you may need to adjust this.

Quote from: PrometheanVigil;922309I've played Unisystem games: it's a more granular system that focuses on specific styles of games (combat, conventional skill use, maybe some stealth if you're doing AFMBE) which can be fun but ultimately its not great for worldbuilding or unconventional characters (even with point-buy) as much as playing settings pre-established (again, great example is AFMBE). It's D&D but not D&D. I can still deal, though. At least it's not godamm Burning Wheel, bloody hell...

I think it's more flexible and easier to apply focus. Nwod gives flexibility, but only within the confined space of the basic game concept. For example the chapter about that university in Mysterious Places. It gives you a university, but the GM has to fill in the blanks. The setting details. So it doesn't give you the full monty like Miskatonic university. But it also doesn't give you the possibilities to do wildly different things with it. I don't find that very exciting.

Quote from: tenbones;922519"New Edition"? I'll call it "New Kids on the Block20".

You sly mutha. Hah hah!

In fact, where's my New Jack Swing playlist at...? *goes to play it on shuffle*

Quote from: Doc Sammy;922512So, this thread has made me realize that maybe I've been too hard on Goths and Punks overall

Halle-fucking-lujah!