Vampire 5E Playtest

ZombieGenesis

You can check out the pre-alpha stuff here:

Gonna try this with my TT group for sure. If people wanted to do it in an MU type environment I'd be willing to host it.

Not sure why but this has me very excited.

Deleted

I need to find a TT group in Austin. I see there's a few posted on Meetup who are playtesting the new 5E, but they're on days I work. I am a sad, sad panda.

Bobotron

@ZombieGenesis
Man, everyone is beating me to this today. I'd be up for it. I'm going to be running it before my LARP tomorrow.

Ghost

I played it this weekend and I loved it.

I miss Cam/Anarch/Sabbat. I miss the oWoD clans, I miss the old setting.

I also LOVE the new blood mechanic.

Short version:

Blood pool is gone
BP has been replaced with a 5 box Rouse the Blood section and a 5 box Hunger section.
Hunger represents the eternal vampiric thirst. On every roll you make, you add #d10 equalling your hunger stat to each roll. These can count towards successes, but if any come up 1, you need to either check off a box of composure or roll on a table to see what kind of temporary, vampire-type compulsion your vampire descends into
Rouse the Blood is your character using their blood to do things (waking, blush of health, Disciplines, etc). Each time the 5 box of rouse the blood wraps it adds a check to hunger
Feeding removes checks from hunger
The only way to have 0 hunger is to kill the vessel.
The hunger...will always return.

I love this. The amount of blood in a vampire was never a good representation of supernatural hunger, nor did it ever really reinforce playing VtM like an actual creature of the night. Now, this new mechanic reinforces occasional descent into a vampire mindset.

Example: I rolled a 1 on a hunger die and decided to opt into a temporary compulsion, which ended up being a need to feel predatory. So for the scene, my character went to a rooftop to look down over the kine (a la Batman, Spawn, Underworld) until the urge subsided.

So these temp compulsions arent exactly YOU LOSE YOUR SHIT AND EAT A BODY IN A CROWDED FOOD COURT, but more so...the predator in you stirs and for the scene you have a compulsion to stalk prey, whether you eat or kill anything isn't necessary.

I'm liking it so far.

Killer Klown

Same. I also liked the proposed way they were going to handle generation - in that it provides a bonus to the mechanic of how often you can safely Rouse the Blood, but a penalty to the amount of blood you 'regain' through feeding. Having your Clan Weaknesses play in to your psychology the way they do, as opposed to just being an outside mechanic, was also pretty cool.

Deleted

It all seems overcomplicated, to me. "Here, let's give you more artificial balancing acts! Forget having a cool theme/setting!"

Arkandel

@Admiral said in Vampire 5E Playtest:

Forget having a cool theme/setting!"

Those things aren't mutually exclusive.

kitteh

@Ghost It really sounds great to me.

Old BP was a very gamey resource meter, with a D&D 'the party rests' between encounter upkeep kind of feel. It was also very inconsistently important depending on how blood-hungry your disciplines were.

The new mechanic sounds like it will always be important. And if the hunger dice can give you successes you even get stronger as you get more ravenous, which is cool. My only slight doubt is on the whole check off dot vs. roll on table for a trait thing. I can see with multiple rolls at higher hunger how you could accumulate a bunch of these, and it could get a little comedic if you keep piling on traits. Are there any limits there?

Ghost

@kitteh Right? Because logically it isnt the amount of the blood in the gas tank that matters, but instead how the vampire utilizes it against their supernatural hunger.

Arkandel

@Ghost How are ghouls, territory and Herd affected thematically by this?

Bobotron

@Arkandel
We don't know. The playtest is literally 'here's all the Hunger mechanics, here is te combat rules, here's some Disciplines up to 3, go to town'. Generation is in there but as a tacked on 'this will probably break shit' mechanic. APparently we'll have a much better and more thorough full Alpha, not pre-Alpha, release after Gencon.

Ghost

@Bobotron said in Vampire 5E Playtest:

@Arkandel
We don't know. The playtest is literally 'here's all the Hunger mechanics, here is te combat rules, here's some Disciplines up to 3, go to town'. Generation is in there but as a tacked on 'this will probably break shit' mechanic. APparently we'll have a much better and more thorough full Alpha, not pre-Alpha, release after Gencon.

@Arkandel what Bobotron said.

We're talking PRE-Alpha, so the packet is bare bones, just enough to get a little bit of play in, but lacks the broader spectrum.

For now here's what we kind of know (subject to alpha/beta/live change)

It's back to the good ole Cam/Anarch/Sabbat setting with the old clans
No clue which clans are staying, but Ventrue and Toreador are in the module
The setting will revert back to before Gehenna
LOTS of mentions of the upper echelon being in some kind of war or disappearing (Elder types, Archons, ArchBishops, etc.)
It appears a lot of the old supertech references such as the Nosferatu DarkNet and all of the major IC web portal presence stuff might be pulled back from to support a new setting that is more "What is going on? What do we do now?" instead of "My political sect has a worldwide presence with safe houses, web portals, and I've got a million vampires on speed dial"

If I had to put my money on it, I'd say they might be going with a second inquisition concept where the sects have more reason to remain secret and underground, with less comforts, such as the territories are becoming harder to control.

Arkandel

@Ghost It sounds like it'll hit most of my buttons. A game-wide metaplot, the good ol' faction tripod suffering newly introduced instabilities, and catastrophes looming in the horizon.

If it really wants to do it for me they'll integrate/balance spheres against each other better than traditional oWoD did and re-introduce those series of novels that used to be a huge guilty pleasure.

Killer Klown

In truth, the Hunger mechanic feels like what they kept trying (and failing) to do with Paradox in Mage. It's an over-arching thing that affects everything you do, and becomes more threatening the more often you use your supernatural abilities. It's not a sliding scale or a meter, given that the hunger dice replace dice in your pool rather than being rolled separately or being added/subtracted from pool numbers. It's something that's always in the background, always a threat, and grows more intense the more often you call on your supernatural nature while,at the same time, not being limited to affecting just supernatural things.

Bobotron

@Ghost
I wouldn't call it 'back to'. OWoD and NWoD/CofD have existed side by side for a LONG time. This is just the 5E Masquerade. A couple of notes, though, separate from the packet, from the Berlin convention and such...

The core clans will exist. The starting 'core setup' will be Camarilla and Anarch as separate 'setting guides/books'. A Camarilla that is closed off, becoming an old boys club that you have to earn your way into after the Anarchs fucked things up. And Anarchs that are let to do what they want as long as they 1) don't attack the Camarilla and 2) uphold the First Tradition.
The setting is set during a Gehenna War, which has put a mystical compulsion on many eldeers of 7th Generation or lower to go 'to the East' and fight in it. It implies a huge shadow war (and in some places, open war) in ancient lands associated with the origin of vampires.
The Sabbat has followed, nearly en masse, followed the Elders to the East to fight in the Gehenna War, using the conflicts there as cover for their monstrosity. The Sabbat will not be initially playable in the core 5E documents.
Due to the Second Inquisition, the cities of the world are a bit more closed-off, and you can't easily just call up the guy in the next Domain over.

Oh, here's the stuff I transcribed from the Berlin interview.

5th Edition plans for a 'streamlined core' with things specific to those games being printed in those games.
Vampire 5th Edition (or V5) will use Beckett's Jyhad Diary as a jumping off point for the new metaplot.
V5 draw back the focus more to the street level. There has been a Beckoning of most Elders to the Middle East to fight in the Gehenna War. Some Elders have resisted.
The Sabbat, some time ago, followed thisbeckoning and flood of elders to the Middle East and have their fingers in many conflicts, using them as cover for their activities. They plan to eliminate the ancients once and for all, and are roughly out of the main stage of the game.
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.
The Camarilla cut loose or, in many cases, eliminated many Anarchs, giving them free reign but demanding they follow the First Tradition. Through this, the Camarilla has become the 'secret society' aspect, 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 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.
V5's first releases will be the core, Anarch and Camarilla books. The books will focus on the core Cam 7 clans (or maybe Cam8, they DID mention that the Assamite schism happened...), with mention of Independents in later supplements, harkening back to 1e Masquerade.

Other stuff is detailed out here: http://musoapbox.net/topic/1604/vampire-the-masquerade-5th-edition-info/6?page=1

SunnyJ

No Sabbat? Anarchs front and center? Not the Vampire for me!