Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition (VtM 5E)
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@thenomain Yeah. Just due to the nature of MUs, coteries, as a whole, are largely not a really feasible thematic element. You rarely see them at all on games, without even having the mechanical aspects to worry about. Since people come in and drop characters, flake out, just aren't around, etc. etc. etc. Vampire in a MU environment has, by large necessity, become a more individualistic sphere than it has been presented in any iteration of the tabletop game.
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@Thenomain Ahh still there are worse things to reveal in a book. I'm glad they've been made canon.
Sidenote: If this version of Vampire is about Sex and Monsters, then being Jeanette's favorite isn't necessarily a bad thing either given what can happen in that game.
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The outright reveal of the pair of them is... I guess it's because that's a spoiler to a game that's like 15 years old now? Basically, they assume that anyone who is reading the book is going to know those characters and that twist.
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Wait, we've finally got a game that tries to go back to the 1st ed way of thinking? That alone was enough to bring me out of torpor. Shame it won't likely ever come to a mush though. Love good oWoD mushing, or whatever it's called thesedays. Are we allowed to call it just WoD again or?
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Yeah. Loresheets are meant to tie into the overall metaplot in some way, ranging from being a descendant of some famous Kindred like Hardestadt or Tyler, being a member of a weird cult like the Bahari, having ties to major NPCs like Therette, or having been present in major events like the Convention of Thorns or the Week of Nightmares. The only problem I see with Loresheets on a MUSH is that it REQUIRES staff to do something with them; outside of a few things the 'big' core things they give have to be ST-adjudicated, like the Descendant of Hardestadt's Level 5, Hardestadt's Heir, which is 'You are Hardestadt's true successor and have documentation as such, and you can gain heavy control of the Camarilla' or Sect War Vetera's Level 5, Sect Agitator, which declares 'You know all the things to trigger a new sect war'. This requires a level of staff oversight and involvement that... well, people don't seem to try to put into things, or ends up by the wayside as games go sandbox.
Staff could build custom loresheets, but you'd really have to either 1) allow players to come up with these things for their backstory to want to buy and have staff approve them, or 2) have a set of them built, and as they're bought in chargen they disappear, and staff/volunteers who know the metaplot build more, or 3) make them more genericized and then lose part of what they're supposed to represent.
It's also not really like Status or other Backgrounds in that it's meant to be a unique access, and you buy them individually (IE: you don't have to buy levels 1 and 2 to have level 3, you just pay your 9 XP and get level 3).
Coterie rules are problematic for a MU* because V5 assumes that the players come in as an established coterie, not 'and you all meet in the tavern -- I mean, Elysium' and go out from there. The core conceptions of that really don't work on a MUSH in any meaningful manner without heavy tweaking or removal altogether.
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V5 has a lot of 1e stylings. The focus is more street level, and rather than 'youngers vs elders' or 'anarchs vs elders', it's now more 'Anarchs vs Camarilla' and 'everyone versus humans'. Everything was overhauled. I personally feel like it's breathed fresh air and ideas into the setting, and my brain NEVER stops running on making Vampire plot. The metaplot is moved forward, the majority of the Sabbat are off their asses actively hunting/fighting Antediluvians like they were made for, the Camarilla and Anarch conflict has cemented into a bit of a 'rich and powerful lording over the little guy and coming down on him, HARD, when he screws up' and the Sabbat are left and described for NPC use are back to the 1e infiltrator cells, clan imposters and terror from the darkness.
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@shelbeast said in Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition (VtM 5E):
The outright reveal of the pair of them is... I guess it's because that's a spoiler to a game that's like 15 years old now? Basically, they assume that anyone who is reading the book is going to know those characters and that twist.
Which is not a good assumption to make, which is probably why they said: Here are these characters, this is the situation, here's what's going on with them.
I'm slightly disappointed because the best part of them is the reveal. They're moderately interesting characters before the reveal, but what makes them great is going on, playing a fairly standard kind of game, pretty good writing, interesting setting, then BAM!
Written as they are for 5e, they're just not interesting, and that's too bad. (In the "oh well, that's too bad" sense.)
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This game sounds more and more like a step backwards to me.
“It is better to live doing the things that you like. It is foolish to live within this dream of a world seeing unpleasantness and doing only things that you do not like.” -- Yamamoto Tsunetomo.
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Why?
I mean returning to a previous edition’s ideology may be the point of this release, but the connotation of “backwards” here tends to be negative.
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I can't even with this. I look at my shelf and see the book where Vampire the Masquerade died. One of the things I most respected about VtM is they said they were going to end the world, and then they actually ended it. Talking about walking back things, they should have walked back this entire idea. Nothing was stopping anybody from running VtM games using Revised set before Gehenna kicked off. Blah.
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Companies want to make money. It's not like OWoD hasn't been back in active production since 2011 or whatever, with the 20th Anniversary lines. Personally, I'm super pleased with everything I've read so far. The metaplot is advancing in a new and unexpected way, the setting is changing in fresh ways, and the mechanics are generally pretty good (goodbye, FOREVER, four roll for one attack combat!!!!)
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@bobotron said in Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition (VtM 5E):
Companies want to make money.
This is why WoW changes up how the classes play, atop adding new content. It's the thing, to make money they have to keep changing things, or adding things, or both.
It's just how it works.
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@fortunae The thing is that, in the metaplot, the stuff from like the Week of Nightmares and all that did happen. It's more like the EotW scenario is starting to play out, with the ancients rising somewhere in the east, calling all their minions (Elders hearing The Beckoning) and amassing their armies/food in preparation for going to war with the Sabbat (who have given chase and are taking the fight to the ancients themselves, as is their entire purpose for existing), and each other.
I'll point out that these are vampires we're talking about. Vampires that have existed since before the Great Deluge, at that. It's not like they're going to wake up and just have a week of killing and call it a war. Their "battles" could take centuries alone.
In short, nothing in this book, or the metaplot as it is in 5th Ed really undermines or negates what came before. It just adds to it.
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Necroing this thread to draw attention to the recently announced plans of Paradox's WW.... for 5e.
They don't want to have to publish it anymore, because of a number of missteps on their part. unsurprising really, considering their last book was Cyberpunk barbie dolls levels of bad with some of their artwork... and couldn't avoid trying to be edgelords 24/7 and couldn't make up fake tragedies.... eh, 2018 is a very different climate than 1990.
Anyway, not familiar with Modiphius, they got a good reputation? -
Well.
- WW was only ever going to develop the core books in house, and everything else was planned to be licensed out to interested parties anyway. The only major change is that WW is now absorbed by Paradox and isn't its own self-contained subsidiary any more.
- They're still going to be brand managing, so they'll still have control of what's approved to be written. This will be managed by whoever Paradox hires into that position.
- Modiphius is now the primary publisher and writer for the tabletop material, and has announced on their own their plans to work with OPP as well.
- Modiphius has, from what I understand, a fairly large presence both as a writer and as a publisher. I believe they wrote Tales from the Loop, Conan and Star Trek Adventures amongst others, and have published/distributed others such as the most recent version of Kult. They were also chosen for their large physical distribution connections, which means that printed books can continue to get into stores.
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What I've read of Modiphius has not been... promising. Their Star Trek material in particular was eye-twitchingly bad.
Not to mention their hiring practices. Looking at you, Gareth Skarka.
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@admiral said in Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition (VtM 5E):
Not to mention their hiring practices.
Yeah, people forget that the best part of any game is the designer. The company will focus on a certain style and direction, and they can ruin anything by not being stringent with managing it (as White Wolf, Onyx Path, and whatever game studio made the E.T. video game can attest), but like comics you follow authors (and artists) as much as source material.
This is all a preface to say: I liked Tales from the Loop, and Fragged Empire, and I thought that Achtung! Cthulhu was well-received. I kickstarted "Space: 1889" but as an homage to the original, not because it was any good. It's okay.
Looking at you, Gareth Skarka.
Story time? Story time.
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@admiral said in Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition (VtM 5E):
Their Star Trek material in particular was eye-twitchingly bad.
I quite liked it, from what I've seen of the Geek and Sundry play through.
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My sole exposure to Modiphius is their excellent Fallout: Wasteland Warfare mini game. It is A++
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New book announced for V5 (and four others were announced by Modiphius as well).
From Modiphius:
- The Fall of London V5 Chronicle (Summer 2019) – London is burning. As the Second Inquisition put the city's Kindred to the torch, your characters wake from torpor. The sensible thing would be to flee now, but before you can leave the capital, you have one last job to do... This campaign is perfect to bring your Vampire players up to speed on the plot developments in Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition or as as a gateway for new players.
- V5 Players Guide (Summer 2019) – A guide to playing different styles of Vampire: The Masquerade to help you play the way YOU want to play, from gritty street level drama to romantic blood opera, complete with advice, new rules, and guidance on using the 5th Edition system to play previous editions of Vampire..
- V5 Starter Set - (Christmas 2019) - An introductory starter set containing rules to play a self-contained campaign, with premade characters, handouts, maps, tokens and dice.
- The Second Inquisition (Summer 2020) – Discover the plans, strategies, resources, and technologies of the highly secret organisations charged with investigating and eliminating the vampire threat, including Firstlight and the Society of St. Leopold.. This supplement for V5 will give Storytellers everything they need to know about these feared and fearless organisations to provide all manner of covert opposition for your Chronicle, along with advice for Storytellers who want to run chronicles featuring player characters as a well-equipped covert team of Second Inquisition operatives.
From OPP:
- Cult of the Blood Gods: Seems to be focusing on various Kindred worships, and will feature the Hecata, Bahari and Church of Caine as well as others. Just announced, so no real info yet.
