Also, according to Game Kastle, you'll still get the PDF code with the preorder through them, just like you would ordering through Mophidius. So it's really the best deal so far.
Re: The Ventrue
Here's what they said.
Q: Why is Amelina a pedophile?
A: She’s not. She has an obsession with young (recently embraced) Kindred and a feeding restriction that forces her to feed from children and young teens.
Even I admit it was written skeezily, but I don't think it was truly intended that way; a lot of the stuff in the Berlin playtest read like it was translated and concepts didn't transfer super well. The second playtest, Rusted Veins, is MUCH better and plays on a 1e plot thread, being based in Gary Indiana.
Here's my most recent rundown, after reading BJD and piecing things together.
-Setting Tidbits From BJD That May Be Referenced-
- Starts from Revised, rolling back some things.
- There is a potential Sabbat 4th Civil War, with different factions backing the Seraphim or the Regency, with Lucita a potential Regent being backed by the Inquisition.
- The Assamite schism happened, and the Camarilla may have inducted the Assamites during the last Justicar election.
- The Setites are debating petitioning the Camarilla for membership.
- The Giovanni are actively working on their 'tear down the shroud' plan, with various internal divisions along familial lines like the Pisanob or the Milliner.
- The Anarchs are still the Anarchs, though some examples from BJD are even more totalitarian than the Camarilla like Libertatia, where you're exiled or killed if you start exceeding the specific vampire population.
- Dracula is gearing up to kill Kupala, though Beckett apparently has the thing he needs to do so.
- The Cappadocians are preparing to wage war on the Giovanni. Cappadocius may be free and running around.
- There is evidence of native Cainites to South America called the Drowned Legacies, implied to have infiltrated the Sabbat and Camarilla in the area posing as regular Cainites.
- Rasputin confirmed as a vampire.
- The Ravnos are gearing up for a civil war between Ravana (who may be a Yama King-equivalent, leading armies of demons) and Hazimel (now complete with his eye) and Chandraputa, who may have to find their missing sister Mahabarashti in order to actually combat him.
- 16th Generation vampires are starting to appear, mostly in the Anarch Free States areas (particularly Los Angeles).
- The Tremere are unknowingly being lead by Saulot in Tremere's body, in the form of a White Worm. Things hint at a brainwashed Tremere Council of Seven, and the worm being a 'chrysalis' form for some terrible thing Saulot is becoming. There is also a faction of Tremere being gathered by an ex-Regent named Carna, who has a magic book that breaks blood bonds.
- The minor bloodlines are discussed banding together for self-protection.
- Malkav (or Malakai, his sister) may have been dug up under Jerusalem by a huge contingent of Malkavians, who drunk from the Antediluvian. No info on the fallout from THAT.
- Lasombra may have manifested in Castel d'Ombro.
- Other info implies more Antediluvians are waking up.
- One of the Second Generation, Enosch/Enoch may be up and about.
- Most of the Gehenna discussion points back to the 1e-style 'cyclical Gehenna' that happens when the vampiric population becomes too much to sustain, or other mystical impetus to start.
-Concrete Stuff From Interviews About V5/Mostly Confirmed Material-
- 5th Edition plans for a 'streamlined core' with things specific to those games being printed in those games. First books are core, Camarilla and Anarch. The Sabbat will get a book down the road.
- Vampire 5th Edition (or V5) will use Beckett's Jyhad Diary (see above) as a jumping off point for the new metaplot. In BJD, there's a lot of various plot threads, involving Beckett speaking with and interviewing a lot of different vampires for Jyhad knowledge. The overarching plot thread in this book is Beckett looking for/investigatng a Book of Nod-esque tome called the Book of the Grave-War, a text that details how the rising of elders heralds Gehenna. Ties heavily into what's going on with Elders in the game, with the Gehenna Crusade active and the Sabbat actively doing what they were built to do, fight the Antediluvians.
- V5 draw back the focus more to the street level. There has been a Beckoning of most Elders to the Middle East/ancient sites of the world to fight in the Gehenna War. Some Elders have resisted by gorging themselves on blood, or been killed or diablerized.
- The Sabbat, some time ago, became aware of the awakening Antediluvians and followed both this beckoning and flood of elders to the Middle East to fight them. The Sabbat have their fingers in many conflicts, using them as cover for their activities in the area. The Gehenna Crusade is what the Sabbat call their activities in the Middle East to destroy the waking Antediluvians. They plan to eliminate the ancients once and for all, and are roughly out of the main stage of the game. The stage of 'elder conflict' has become the War for the Graves of the Antediluvians (there's some fluff talk about how such ancient blood is still potent and useful for vampires, even if it's just 'stored' rather than taken from a living vampire).
- The vampires are undergoing a Second Inquisition, which is spurred by a govenmental organized purge, even beyond the activities of Project Twilight. It's apparently very brutal and effective. A lot of the Second Inquisition, based on how the plots ran in Berlin at the playtest at the WoD Berlin convention, seem to be spurred by Anarchs fucking up, terror-bombing the Camarilla and drawing attention of the ABC organizations. There was some early-mention of the Technocracy being involved but this has not been referenced since. The pre-alpha scenario from WoD Berlin is explicit in it being a 'turning point' in the Anarchs fucking up by terror-bombing the Camarilla and drawing more government attention than just 'dead bodies walking around'. It was stated at one point that it's a pivotal event for V5's canon (this may have changed, however, but we won't know for a while).
- In the aftermath of the Second Inquisition starting up, the Camarilla cut loose or, in many cases, eliminated many Anarchs (and anarchs, notice the lower-case, and think about 1e Masquerade!), giving them free reign but demanding they follow the First Tradition, lest the pogorom continue. Through this, the Camarilla has become the 'secret society/old boys club' angle, and you have to earn your way into it. Anarchs have been exiled from the Camarilla, along with Caitiff and thin-bloods. A new emphasis is placed on the masquerade.
- City hierarchies are often more drastic. In the face of these challenges, Kindred society goes dark — vampire cities become more isolated, and there's a slow reversion to Dark Ages traditions in order to prevent the SI from tracking the vampire's movements.
-Mechanics, all Subject to Change-
- 9 standard attributes. A trimmed and pared down skill list. Rather than being divided by Skills/Talents/Knowledges, the skills are now divided by Mental/Social/Physical, which makes it easier to show what attrs to combine with what skills.
- Some changes to base Disciplines; Celerity, Potence and Fortitude are divided into individual powers, for example. These can be seen in the free Alpha rules, which I won't reiterate here.
- Still a d10 pool. 6-10 is a success, 1-5 is a failure, 10 provides half of a critical success (two 10s make a critical success). Criticals have some effects on the dice rolls.
- The Hunger Cycle replaces the Blood Pool. Any powers you activate roll Hunger Dice to determine if they rouse the Beast to hunger or not.
- Hunger is rolled as part of all dice pools and has the consequences/benefits 'messy criticals' and failures/compulsions where the Beast comes out. Messy criticals where you succeed but you give in to your vampire nature a bit (like, you won a fight but you broke the guy's spine in an unnatural way, or you try to silence a human and just tear out their throat). The Beast comes out through Compulsions, which are the Beast taking control or forcing the character to do something. They come in two flavors: general or Clan. They build on each other in severity. They can be suppressed with the expenditure of Composure.
- Willpower allows to reroll any or all dice in a dice pool.
- 2 types of damage: superficial (scrapes, bruises, sprains, minor injuries that heal quickly; very cinematic) and aggravated.
- Combat is streamlined; no more 4-roll. Standard combat is brawl/melee vs brawl/melee (representing an exchange of blows, so you guys that played LAMUSH will be familiar with this, so the 'defender' can damage the 'attacker' if they roll more success), brawl/melee vs dodge (allows an easier escape attempt) or ranged vs target based on range/cover. Armor changes agg damage to superficial damage. Damage is a flat rating + successes over the target. (This is likely to have changed, as Karim talked a bit about it on facebook once).
-Book Tidbits-
- Matthew Dawkins said there would be 7-8 clans in the core, and a couple more each in the Cam and Anarch books. Most people are expecting Cam7 plus Caitiff in the core, then adding Assamites, Setites and Thin Bloods in the others.
- A discussion topic on the WW forum implies that the book will support primarily high generation Kindred.
- Mix of photo art and regular art, looks like they're reusing a lot of the unused art from the MMO (such as on the storyteller's screen)
