Vampire the Masquerade 5th Edition Info

Bobotron

Welp. Here we are.

EDIT: Adding a link to the first video about it: https://youtu.be/yvwroDSLO3E

Becketts Jyhad Diary to be the setting and metaplot bible of V5

Format will be one slimmer than normal core rulebook with all the game systems for each line starting with Vampire but to encompass eventually one for all 5 original games

The lines will work together but whether they will be balanced to play together is unclear even to them at this stage. Nevertheless I am sure they will try to do so, for now they focus on what they need to develop.

Demon, Changeling, and all other lines that came later may appear in other media formats before their tabletop games arrive

In fact MET LARP rules for Changeling are now announced

The philosophy with KotE is that is if they find someone from the area who can do it they will. They want to avoid the problem of having people write about a culture when they do not know it themselves. So go for it if you live anywhere in Asia and love these games.

The fact that China is making moves around Africa was talked about as being very interesting from the point of the undead sects in those places now having interactions.

Setting material will be presented seperately in huge books related to specific groups the first two being Camrilla and Anarch setting and source books

The setting material will be the reference material for all creative projects from film to larp and tt - and there will be an online hub for sharing every aspect of the wod in every media. Contributors to this "storytelling vault" will be paid 50% of what their contributions earn.

Vampires first two setting books will be Camarilla and Anarch with Sabbat to come later (see below for the metaplot reasons for this). These will release with the core rulebook for V5

Art will involve much photography

Blood Pool is gone. It was described as a gas meter and thus not very sexy. In its place is an elegant and well thought out system relating how you choose to handle hunger to the likelihood of frenzy. You will have composure as a resource. You can opt to spend this when faced with a situation where you want to resist doing something eg feeding at the sight of blood. If you spend it however you get a red hunger die or more in your pools (for probably all your rolls) which will act to increase your chance of entering frenzy. If you dont, you do something you dont want to, avoiding compulsion, but you will have more composure when the chance you frenzy comes up, and less hunger, meaning less likely to frenzy.

Similar mechanics will replace Rage and other power supply traits in the core books for those games.

Over 40 books currently in development. Hopes for an adult tv show by 2020.

System will use dots and d10s and be recognisable to older fans. However some dice may be customised and the inclusion of hunger dice is a sign that further innovations of the d10 system are planned.

Kenneth Hite of Trail of Cthulhu is on the team as V5 developer

Vampires will have two looks, one for the mortal world and one for Elysium

The Masquerade more important than ever

Its so important the Anarchs have had to agree to join the Cam or be exterminated for not following the 1st Tradition

The 2nd Inquisition is underway after government agencies have discovered the truth. And its brutal and ugly.

The 2nd Inquisition ties in with the Technocracy AND Pentex but the vampires have yet to cotton on to how those spies keep outwitting their attempts to stay hidden...seems as if a new and truly ugly Massassa War may be brewing.

The 2nd Impergium is underway with the Garou finally having presumably listened to the Red Talons (and presumably grudgingly accepted the Ratkins purpose) that humanity must be stopped. Werewolves have realised that Gaia is almost dead.

The current world tensions between Islam and the west are in truth just the mortal facet of the Gehenna Wars

The Gehenna Wars have mysteriously called many elders to the east, in something called The Beckoning, the Sabbat have been especially responsive. Some elders are resisting the Beckoning.

Sabbat reveling in the chaos and war of our times and is now seeking out the ancients to utterly destroy them. This may be what The Beckoning relates to. The Sabbat situation is unclear.

Camarilla more secretive than ever and Masquerade strongly enforced.

V5 playtest tomorrow with Mark Rein Hagen in the house to give a keynote address (taking all 5 of my 1st eds to be signed!)

V5 beta test to be released soon after convention so everyone can try it
Documentary on netflix next year

Bobotron

More stuff...

every gaming format will get it's appropriate rulesets (good)
the Sabbat is definitely doing something in the Middle East, but I don't think they're behind the wars, per se
Martin dubbed it as "welcome to the new Dark Ages", meaning that the global organizations are giving in and much more isolated city-states are the norm (hmmm)
the Cam was forced to re-evaluate it's "everyone in" policy and effectively gave the streets to the Anarchs which are bound only by the 1st tradition, the Masquerade. Now, the Cam is more like an elite club, for which you'll get to be a member if you behave well and the main theme is "the privileged few against the unwashed masses" (I'm undecided on this whole thing, it could end in a more flexible setting, but one of the main things which differentiated Masq from Requiem was the global organizations instead of isolated clusters and I hope it'll remain to an extent, although I'm not necessarily against some curbing back)
the works of the art director lady seems good and she was in the same role during the MMO development and I liked those concept arts, so I really-really hope it'll be good. Obviously they're thinking that having a very strong visual identity is very important, which I can only nod and wait hopefully.

(This is all copy/pasted from someone who is at the thing).

Thenomain

@Bobotron

Are there any reports if Mark Rein*Hagen was consumed by his own ego for the thrill of hundreds at the event?

surreality

@Thenomain Best. Diablerie. Ever.

SunnyJ

Well, here's to hoping!

That is all I can say right now.

Bobotron

@Thenomain
No idea. That's probably on the docket for today in Berlin time since there's a playtest of V5 during the event today.

@SunnyJ
The original post is someone's posting on the topics; there's a less detailed one which is probably more accurate I'm putting below too. Less... fanboy-ish?

Link to the keynote: https://soundcloud.com/chris-handley/white-wolf-publishing-keynote

Over 13K responses to the WW survey. 56% say they play a physical game — board, RPG, card — at least once a week. (Side note: a picture of this data showed Malkavians with nearly double the number of players than anything else, no surprises there).
WorldOfDarkness.com, which they're planning to turn into a big immersive user portal for WoD game players of all kinds. (Starting with the LARPers, because audience.) Analogous to StarWars.com and D&D Beyond. Open beta this summer.
Storytellers Vault, a DM's Guild-like UGC program where people can publish fiction and game supplements—starting with all four prior editions of Vampire: the Masquerade. (50% author/publisher split of money; partnership with DriveThru.) Summer 2017.
Announcement of Tampa by Night (September 28-30, 2017), another in the series of WoD boutique events.
By Night Studios: Changeling the Dreaming (the next LARP release)
VTES Anthology — the first print set for the game in years — given to each attendee
There will be V5 playtests at Gen Con and other upcoming events.
Vampire: Fifth Edition will come out as one core rulebook—meant to imply cross-compatibility with other 5E games—and two standalone setting books: Camarilla and Anarch. - The setting books will be deluxe, photo-illustrated, and useful as a setting bible for WoD stuff all around.
The new Vampire continuity splits off with "Beckett's Jyhad Diary."
System focused on species-specific traits.
V5 tracks "hunger" rather than a blood pool.
The Elder vampires have felt the call to the East, summoned to hidden temples to fight the Gehenna Wars. (Save those who succumb to diablerie and gorging themselves to stay.) The Sabbat have stalked after them. But that's largely offstage now.
The Second Inquisition: Mortal intelligence agencies have discovered the nature of the Kindred and are using technology to hunt them down.
Anarchs have been exiled from the Camarilla, along with Caitiff and thin-bloods. A new emphasis on the masquerade. City hierarchies are even 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.
Werewolf: "Gaia is dying of fever." Impergium is "back on the table"
Mage: There's a reason why vampires have a hard time using modern technology and the internet… "Colliding worldviews." Mage will come 3rd. "In a world where some of the most fantastic things in the book can now be ordered online…we have to step up our game. And, if AI has advanced as far as it has in our world…who runs the Technocracy?"
Chronicles of Darkness: It continues. Ask Onyx Path, it's "their thing."
Demon: "We'd love to bring it forward. Bring your pitches." Some other lines, like Wraith and Changeling, may come out in different formats first.

System talk by Karim:

aside from what we already know, he actually mentioned the ideal possibility of satisfying many different gaming styles, from freeform/diceless to adding many layers of detail. (this could be good, if implemented successfully, I'd love it, but I'm not sure how they want to do it. WotC promised the same high-modularity with D&D 5e and not quite delivered it at the end. Still, I'd be okay with a simplistic core, if, for example a more detailed "combat handbook" will follow.)
dots remain, d10s remain (people love d10, possibility of custom d10s)
quite possibly fixed target numbers, counting number of successes for level of success (okay with that. Fiddling with TN has it's merits, it's flexible and gradual, but NWoD and SR 4e-5e went for the fixed TN for a reason)
simpler conflict resolution, ideally with 1 roll
should be 90% percent compatibility with statblocks in the old books, new people should understand those easily, or play by the old rules if you like and using statblocks from the new books
-I'm actually started to be getting sold on the new hunger mechanic's concept. It's more risk-management than resource management, which is good, though I'm still not sure how you suppose to fuel supernatural powers this way. (not me, the dude who posted it)

Trundlebot

I thought Changeling was one of the original five games? Or are they bumping it for Hunter or something.

Honestly if they were going to dump one of the original five I'd think they'd start with Wraith though. I mean it was a cool game but it never had much interaction with the other lines.

ThatGuyThere

@Trundlebot
Changeling was originally the fifth full game put out. though from what I can gather it sounds like it is not getting bumped just getting LARP treatment while waiting it's turn to get the book out.
Honestly not sure how I feel about the changes mentioned the change of the fuel pools has me giving things the side eye, mainly because as a GM that was the easiest way to set the tone, if i wanted a free-er more supernatural game I make the fuel easy to get and more plentiful, where as if i wanted a more gritty street level feel I make getting the fuel more of a challenge/point of emphasis and my players would tend to adjust spends accordingly.

Arkandel

@Bobotron said in Vampire the Masquerade 5th Edition Info:

Over 13K responses to the WW survey. 56% say they play a physical game — board, RPG, card — at least once a week.

I'm frankly surprised physical players even outnumbered the (admittedly small) bunch playing online. It's been years since you could even find WW products in hobby stores at all, they were only available as print-on-demand, which must have taken its toll.

Thenomain

@Arkandel

I would have to see the survey for the wording, but I saw "played a board or card game once a week", not "a White Wolf etc. etc."

Jennkryst

Needs more Mummy. cracks whip

Bobotron

More on the game from the pre-alpha stuff.

Overview.

Ken Hite and the WW team showed a preAlpha build of the VtM5. It is by no means a final version. As such, I'll be recounting what I experienced as a ST and staying light on the details.

It was good. It's light and pretty straight forward and feels like a light version of CofD and CWoD. Easy to follow mechanics.
The system tracks hunger instead of blood points, which is a pretty neat mechanism, and the hunger is always present in your actions. You can control it, but there's a price, and it can be heavy.
Hunting is far more personal, with each victim being named and given a storybased boon along with the slaking of the thirst. These boons do not stack.
I had players thrilled as they understood how much more intense the hunt was intented to be.
Disciplines are still there.
Frenzy is still there.
Willpower is an important resource.

Humanity is still in the shop. But will be there.

In this incarnation, Hunger comes from Rousing the Blood. Max of that is five. At the end of each scene, you roll your Rouses, successes add to the Hunger track that goes to 5 as well.
Hunger is a number of dice on every dice pool that is designated with a special mark, triggering compulsions of the vampiric nature if they roll a 1. To ignore those, you can spend Composure. That is the same dice pool you use to avoid a Frenzy.
Hunger is removed by Feeding. The better blood, the more hunger you have. But you can never really sate the Hunger, unless you fully gorge yourself in blood.

(I find the concept of 'you're always assumed to be full unless you're not' to be intriguing, mostly because it's something I was bandying about for HotB.)

Botch is no longer a thing.
And if you only score a success beneath the required number, you can succeed at a cost.

Arkandel

@Bobotron Is Generation still a thing in any way that you know of, mechanically or thematically?

Ganymede

@Bobotron said in Vampire the Masquerade 5th Edition Info:

Werewolf: "Gaia is dying of fever." Impergium is "back on the table"

Apparently, Gaia just needs more cowbell.

I hope that they burn Changeling: the Dreaming to the ground. And this is coming from someone who's run these games a lot. It needs to go. ***It really needs to go ***.

Bobotron

@Arkandel
No word that I have found until this morning.

@Ganymede
If they use some aspects of C20 it might fix some things, like childlings not actually having to be physically a child. I was a little disturbed by the sheer amount of 'yes, we are addressing the pedophilia aspect' discussion came out of the MET Changeling announcement though.

Anyway, here's the newest layout of info from someone who did the playtest.

ALL OF THIS IS SUBJECT TO CHANGE IN THE FINAL PRODUCT

Only 3 Attributes - Physical, Social and Mental, 1-5 dots
Specialities for these Attributes like Strength, Charisma etc (the old atts) and others that were not old Atts add one die
Skills pretty much unchanged 1-5 dots
TN nearly always 6
Difficulty is now number of succs. needed
Disciplines are activated by "Rousing the Blood"
This means you add all your (red) Hunger die to the pool (they replace ordinary die). We started with 1 die.
Hunger die only added to skill based pools (including pools that use skills for disciplines) but not others like willpower.
Hunger die track 1-5
Hunger increased during play, but it happened to me only once and I cant recall the mechanical cause
Hunger went to zero when someone fed
Victims sometimes gave a small bonus to trait rolls (eg. the homeless guy gave a die for the next stealth roll I think). This was even when partially drained.
Each 1 on Hunger die triggers a Compulsion
Compulsions are clan based and the consequences situation based and were randomly generated. Our hungry Toreador walked into a burned out haven and became entranced by the beauty of the destruction. Police then crept up on him.
Compulsions could be overcome with Composure, but this left you with less Compusure to counter with should a Frenzy occur later.
Frenzy occurred when more 1s came up together (I think)
Willpower was 1-5 and could be spent to reroll all the failed dice, so long as there was at least one success
Humanity was in there at 1-10, but was not tested or afaik used in the beta, the focus was on other mechanics
Characters also had advantages like backgounds and merits, but these too were not a focus of play
The focus was really on how the mechanics and storytelling aspects of play integrated with one another
Im not going to give my views as I want that to brew for a while and to submit it to the offical feedback place first
The story was very dense - I dont think any table completed it in the 4 hours of play - and was a direct follow up to the events of the Enlightenment in Blood LARP which concluded the night before. The story became the first event of the new VtM metaplot.
It was set in Berlin in the current nights during an Anarch uprising that saw the final death of Breidenstein and numerous other vampires as well as follow up trouble coming from the Inquisition. We were all Camarilla neonates trying to find the vampire who had blood bonded us all. It was a clusterfuck. There were several classic moments in the story where the Hunger mechanics produced a genuine 'Vampire' moment.

I made one reporting error in my earlier post, the Anarchs are being forced out of the Camarilla, of course. But its a changed Camarilla, almost broken. The Anarchs are basically turning on a tyrannical, despotic organisation. The events in Berlin were the catalyst for a global change, as the Anarchs pulled the Camarilla to its knees here last week.
Generation was still in development but the idea talked about was that it would be less discernable and more difficult to know which generation your character or anothers actually was. Line of descent may be growing murky to the characters.
Gehenna (the actual events of any ToJ metaplot) was not revealed but my sense is that V5 will feature a selection of elements from ToJ blended togther into a new version of Gehenna which for now we only know as the Gehenna Wars.
The two looks for vampire I mentioned are cosmetic looks, nothing more. Vampires in Elysium dress (and act) differently. This I feel is a nod to the LARPers, who like to really go to town on a look that would often shred the Masquerade on the streets. Elysium is now a place where they can let their monsters show and relax.

BUT WAIT THERE'S MORE!!
on combat - oh yeah! mostly between the characters as the situation was really intensive and desperate.
You could rouse the blood to increase any Attribute not just Physical. Also to heal.
Damage was really interesting, it came as either Superficial or Aggravated. Anything that could conceivably kill you was Aggravated for you. Aggravated damage was also very slow to heal.
You didnt take any penalty or injury until a certain level was reached (5 I think) then you took a nasty consequence that was dependent on the type of damage used.
The fighting was between the coterie members, the coterie and the German armed forces, the coterie and some very well equipped dudes who were likely New Inquisitors, and the coterie and some Anarchs. It worked well and was entertaining.
By the way, a little bird sitting in the middle of the nest told me that EDOM from Nights Black Agents were being ported or adapted into WoD...check out The Dracula Dossier for more on that little insight...and you'll realise this could easily be and probably will be part or even the heart of the New Inquisition.

Of note:

The attributes/specialties is directly lifted from MET VtM.
Superficial/Aggravated Damage is lifted directly from MET VtM's Normal/Aggravated damage (though I like the term superficial).
Fixed TN is okay.
Hunger mechanic seems much less fiddly than I was expecting. I kinda like it.
I like WP rerolling all failed dice.
Hunting bonuses seem extremely fiddly.
I don't like almost-broken Camarilla, but it makes sense in terms of the Anarch morons in the setting. The shitty phone game was our hint that this was the case.

Bobotron

And more...

The "big thing" that it seemed like this was a testbed for is the Hunger system as a replacement for Blood Points. The basic idea is that rather than decreasing the amount of blood you have you increase the amount of hunger you have. Rather than spending Blood Points you instead "Rouse the Blood" to accomplish a variety of things (basically all the same things you spend blood for under the current rules). A few subtle but important inclusions are that you must Rouse the Blood to awaken each night, any vampire must Rouse in order to not appear dead, and all uses of Disciplines require Rousing. You keep track of how many times you Rouse the Blood in a scene and at the end of that scene you roll that many dice. Any dice that don't roll a success add to your Hunger (a scale of 1-5). Any time you make a skill roll or skill-based Discipline roll you have a number of dice in your pool replaced by "Hunger dice," equal to your Hunger rating. These dice function like normal dice and can contribute successes, but if any of them roll a 1 you gain a temporary Compulsion from your Beast (note that 1s do not subtract from successes in these rules so you aren't getting double-whammied or anything). Compulsions are tics of your predatory vampiric nature that can vary in severity depending on the number of Hunger dice that rolled a 1. In the game I ran a Toreador was overwhelmed with strong emotion for someone in the scene, a Ventrue felt compelled to assert his dominance and leadership over the group, and another Ventrue felt incredible anxiety at the lack of order and structure they had without guidance from their superiors. These were all pretty minor Compulsions and we didn't have anyone fail badly enough to pull one of the nastier ones (though one character was walking around with 4 Hunger for a bit).
Hunger is reduced by feeding, shock of all shocks. There was a scale that told you how much Hunger was removed by feeding on what. IIRC animals removed 2 and feeding on a human without killing them removed 3. Feeding on a human and killing them in the process removes 4 and is also the only way to reduce your Hunger below 1 (temporarily), otherwise all vampires are assumed to always have at least 1 Hunger.
Honestly, it worked pretty well and everyone I talked to seemed to feel likewise. It needs refinement, something even Karim said in a couple conversations I had with him, but the core concept and system is actually surprisingly thematic and functional.

In this set of rules the extent of "you are what you eat" was getting small, temporary bonuses from feeding on certain people. They said this is something they want to continue with but are still developing a proper system for. At this point though assuming the final system for that has broadly similar outcomes to the listed effects in the playtest it doesn't seem like that addition to the system is going to be as huge and game-changing as some people were thinking.

The other addition that was generally a hit (with exceptions I'll talk about) was "Success With Consequences," wherein if the number of successes you rolled fell exactly one short of the number you needed you could choose to succeed but have the ST add in some complication or consequence. It only happened a couple times at my table and worked well both times. Other people I talked to reported similarly with the exception of one table where it apparently happened so often it became cumbersome to the flow. Seems like something that depends a great deal on the fall of the dice and the kinds of things the ST decides to throw in.

Misadventure

Hunger Dice remind me of Exhaustion and Madness Dice from Don't Rest Your Head. Affect every roll so they stay in mind for your fiction, and they are both a benefit and a liability.

Thenomain

@Misadventure said in Vampire the Masquerade 5th Edition Info:

Hunger Dice remind me of Exhaustion and Madness Dice from Don't Rest Your Head. Affect every roll so they stay in mind for your fiction, and they are both a benefit and a liability.

The descriptions so far have fingerprints of Indie Game Design all over it. Not Story Game, tho, but what can you do. Replacing the 9 Attributes with 3 Attribute Groups + Specialties, especially.

Bobotron

@Thenomain
One thing that was stated by Karim, the mechanical designer, is that they wanted to do some narrative ties to the mechanics. So we'll see, I guess.

Bobotron

And one more bit from the dude who played the thing in Berlin.

The situatation seems to be the Sabbat dabbled in the Middle East, playing all sides, and that this meddling kicked off the 2nd Inquisition, which in turn led to a night in Berlin in which careless Berlin Anarchs had messages intercepted by this Inquisition, leading to the catastrophic events of last Friday night here and the eventual expulsion of Anarchs from the Camarilla and its setup as a "closed room", a secret society you have to be invited into.