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Froghammer
Sep 8, 2012

Khajit has wares
if you have coin

Chronicles of Darkness is at this point a decade old system and it shows

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Tulip
Jun 3, 2008

yeah thats pretty good


Requiem's better but Masquerade features in Vampire The Masquerade Bloodlines so who's to say.

Goa Tse-tung
Feb 11, 2008

;3

Yams Fan

Tulip posted:

Requiem's better but Masquerade features in Vampire The Masquerade Bloodlines so who's to say.

also every other computer game out right now

I'd love a Requiem game in the quality of Shadows of New York or Night Road, but if those inspire you you will def fare better with Masquerade

ZearothK
Aug 25, 2008

I've lost twice, I've failed twice and I've gotten two dishonorable mentions within 7 weeks. But I keep coming back. I am The Trooper!

THUNDERDOME LOSER 2021


Fuzz posted:

The overall power level of the Disciplines are about the same with random looney tunes powers in both games.

I'd actually disagree on that, I mean, both have powerful powers, but Requiem 2E disciplines in general are way stronger.

a7m2 posted:

I'm interested in running or playing Vampire, but it's not immediately clear to me if I should be playing Requiem or the Masquerade. Googling it brings up quite old answers. I loved the VtM:B games so I'm leaning towards Masquerade but if Requiem plays better then I'm super open to that.

For another take, if you want to play Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines: The Roleplaying Game, your best option is Vampire: The Masquerade 20th Anniversary Edition.

Both Requiem and Masquerade can be used for gonzo or moody games (in fact my Requiem games were probably way more on the gonzo scale than the Masquerade ones), the rules are of a similar quality, that being serviceable. V20, V5 and R2 all have their particularities, but none are crown jewels of game design if you're someone with strong opinions on the subject and combat sucks in all of them. These are systems that you use for narrative play, task resolutions, checking your ~humanity~ and throwing vampire powers around.

Fuzz
Jun 2, 2003

Avatar brought to you by the TG Sanity fund
A Vigil game would be so perfect. I got a copy of Reckoning and Vigil 1E is still way better and dammit why can't we get a sweet Vigil game where you're like, investigating some weird poo poo and things go completely mental and crazy.


Then again, I guess RE7 and 8 basically are Vigil styled games... :thunk:

TheCenturion
May 3, 2013
HI I LIKE TO GIVE ADVICE ON RELATIONSHIPS
Real Men play Vampire: The Masquerade 20th.

Real Roleplayers play Vampire: The Requiem 1e.

Loonies play Dudes of Legend.

Munchkins play anything by TSR.

GimpInBlack
Sep 27, 2012

That's right, kids, take lots of drugs, leave the universe behind, and pilot Enlightenment Voltron out into the cosmos to meet Alien Jesus.

TheCenturion posted:

Real Men play Vampire: The Masquerade 20th.

Real Roleplayers play Vampire: The Requiem 1e.

Loonies play Dudes of Legend.

Munchkins play anything by TSR.

Jesus, that takes me back.

Fuzz
Jun 2, 2003

Avatar brought to you by the TG Sanity fund
I can't deal with any of the 20th games anymore other than Dark Ages (solely because it's a beautiful book that is actually extremely well laid out and cohesive, still a bad system) and more importantly, Wraith, because it's the last option we have until Wraith 5E comes out (which apparently is on the table and will incorporate aspects of Orpheus maybe? No timeline or details other than it's being "explored" because they know people loved that game).

Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20
:blizz::gamefreak:

Fuzz posted:

A Vigil game would be so perfect. I got a copy of Reckoning and Vigil 1E is still way better and dammit why can't we get a sweet Vigil game where you're like, investigating some weird poo poo and things go completely mental and crazy.


Then again, I guess RE7 and 8 basically are Vigil styled games... :thunk:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YKd2cwWBPM

(The outer two fingers on the monkeys paw crumble into dust, revealing only the middle finger)

Froghammer
Sep 8, 2012

Khajit has wares
if you have coin

I distinctly recall 4 player co op whipping rear end in Hunter: The Vigil

I was also 16

joylessdivision
Jun 15, 2013



Kurieg posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YKd2cwWBPM

(The outer two fingers on the monkeys paw crumble into dust, revealing only the middle finger)

I will dispel everyones fond memories of the original Reckoning video game.

It's basically unplayable single player.

The first level is doable, but the graveyard is impossible to gather all the keys and escorts the stupid kid to the end without them dying if you're alone.

I know because it's back compat on Xbox and I own it. Deeply disappointed.

MonsieurChoc
Oct 12, 2013

Every species can smell its own extinction.

ZearothK posted:

I'd actually disagree on that, I mean, both have powerful powers, but Requiem 2E disciplines in general are way stronger.

One of the reasons I prefer 1e over 2e for Requiem.

Lord_Hambrose
Nov 21, 2008

*a foul hooting fills the air*



joylessdivision posted:

I will dispel everyones fond memories of the original Reckoning video game.

It's basically unplayable single player.

The first level is doable, but the graveyard is impossible to gather all the keys and escorts the stupid kid to the end without them dying if you're alone.

I know because it's back compat on Xbox and I own it. Deeply disappointed.

I am going to have to push back on this. Single player you could sometimes get to the Werewolf (Warden?) boss who was impossible.

Dang, I would play that again in a second if it was on a modern system.

Kavak
Aug 23, 2009


I recall beating it on a Gamecube emulator solo. I may have been cheating.

Free Cog
Feb 27, 2011


Fuzz posted:

Wraith 5E

This is the one I'm most curious to see how the current creative team will tackle. Well, that's not quite true, I was most curious about how they'd do 5e takes the metaplot-focused trilogy of lines (Hunter, Demon, and Mummy), but considering that the answer to "how do the Imbued fit into the established status quo set by V5?" is "we're not doing that," I'd be very surprised if we ever saw D5 or M5 (My5? Mum5?) in any form.

One of the few places where H5 has explicit WoD ties is with the Wraith side of things, what with the Orpheus Group being an antagonist organization for driven Hunters. Its description seems to imply that it's the org just before the events of the gameline, which, along with W5's hook being that the Apocalypse came and went, could imply that Wr5'd be set after the Sixth Great Maelstrom. That'd be fitting for WoD5's emphasis on more flattened and unique political structures, since Wraith society is upended in a huge way. But, that also eliminates regular Stygian society as something to contend with, which would also be in keeping with what this edition wants to do. Also, unlike Ericcson, Achilli isn't super interested in addressing previous metaplot or doing new metaplot and isn't afraid to chuck things out the window if it doesn't match the determined focus of the game.

I also wonder if Wr5 would have Shadowguides at all. I could easily see a Spite or Angst dice system similar to Hunger or Desperation and in-game incentives to allow a player to be their own Wraith's Shadow, but on the other hand the indie game scene's made something like Shadowguides less of a big ask and game safety tools are robust enough to cover a lot of pitfalls. There's a lot of really cool design space a Wr5 could have, especially if Projectors, Mediums, and Risen are brought into the game as potential members of a Wraith PC group. But this is all probably years and years out, so who knows!

a7m2
Jul 9, 2012


Thank you all for your input. I haven't decided yet but it's probably going to be VtM V5 simply because I'm already somewhat familiar with the background of it.

I'm thinking of doing a duet initially, just so I can get used to everything. Are there any good pre-made modules that also cover the embrace of the player? I prefer using (and adapting if necessary) a pre-made module for my first time running something.

Free Cog
Feb 27, 2011


a7m2 posted:

I'm thinking of doing a duet initially, just so I can get used to everything. Are there any good pre-made modules that also cover the embrace of the player? I prefer using (and adapting if necessary) a pre-made module for my first time running something.

There aren't a whole lot of V5 modules, and the ones that exist, to the best of my memory, don't have Embrace scenes.

If you don't mind creating your own Embrace scene to bolt on it, you could try running "Power Prey" from Let the Streets Run Red, a book of modules for V5 set in Chicago. It's straightforward, it ties in a vampire's mortal life, and it can be placed in almost any city in the planet with some tweaking.

There's also The Monsters if you want a free adventure, though the reception seems mixed from the DTRPG reviews and New Blood, which seems to have a better reception and would be cheaper than Streets. I haven't read them, so I don't know if those have Embrace scenes. You might have to bolt one on for these as well if you go this route.

Dawgstar
Jul 15, 2017

Froghammer posted:

I distinctly recall 4 player co op whipping rear end in Hunter: The Vigil

I was also 16

Reckoning. And your 16 year old self was astute, because it did.

Fun fact: Reckoning had the biggest widespread name recognition over even Vampire thanks to the video games according to a study either OPP or Paradox did.

Soonmot
Dec 19, 2002

Entrapta fucking loves robots




Grimey Drawer

joylessdivision posted:

I will dispel everyones fond memories of the original Reckoning video game.

It's basically unplayable single player.

The first level is doable, but the graveyard is impossible to gather all the keys and escorts the stupid kid to the end without them dying if you're alone.

I know because it's back compat on Xbox and I own it. Deeply disappointed.

I know I beat it back in the day solo

CottonWolf
Jul 20, 2012

Good ideas generator

Aoi posted:

It's excellent, yes. I mentioned it in this thread a while back, but got no replies, so figured it wasn't the cuppa. It's fascinating to see the refinement of alfabusa's art style now that pretty much no official art can be used as a basis to work from anymore, for the better, I would argue. At the same time, the greatest strength is in the writing, and the podcast episodes, with their reduced animation, have been even more delightful than the full ones (though the third ep was one hell of a wild ride, don't get me wrong).

It might take me a while to get over the line "Don't platform the Anteluvian concept of clans" from a Sabbat. "Kant was not a Noddist philosopher!" was also very good.

a7m2
Jul 9, 2012


Free Cog posted:

There aren't a whole lot of V5 modules, and the ones that exist, to the best of my memory, don't have Embrace scenes.

If you don't mind creating your own Embrace scene to bolt on it, you could try running "Power Prey" from Let the Streets Run Red, a book of modules for V5 set in Chicago. It's straightforward, it ties in a vampire's mortal life, and it can be placed in almost any city in the planet with some tweaking.

There's also The Monsters if you want a free adventure, though the reception seems mixed from the DTRPG reviews and New Blood, which seems to have a better reception and would be cheaper than Streets. I haven't read them, so I don't know if those have Embrace scenes. You might have to bolt one on for these as well if you go this route.

What about older VtM modules that do have it? I don't mind adapting stuff to fit the rules, I did that with a Cyberpunk 2020 module to Red and it went just fine even though the rules are different and the setting has advanced. I'm mainly interested in using a module that captures the tone and unique concepts of the setting.

I'll look into Power Prey regardless, thanks.

TheCenturion
May 3, 2013
HI I LIKE TO GIVE ADVICE ON RELATIONSHIPS

Soonmot posted:

I know I beat it back in the day solo

It's a hard thing for some of us to recognize and admit that our reflexes and video game skillz just aren't as elite as they were ten, twenty, thirty, forty years ago, but here we are.

Ferrinus
Jun 19, 2003

i'm finding this quite easy, i guess in part because i'm a fast type but also because i have a coherent mental model of the world

Fuzz posted:

I'd say of the two latest editions for both games, Requiem is actually more of the vampire as superhero game now, solely because of the V5 Hunger system being often really loving fickle and your Beast just making GBS threads all over your best laid plans trying to do some social manipulations and overextending yourself. The overall power level of the Disciplines are about the same with random looney tunes powers in both games.

The themes are also similar, the main differences between the games when looking specifically at the latest editions and nothing else is that Requiem overall has a much simpler core system with much simpler character creation, but your vampire is also sorta just a street rando everyman open world video game protagonist unless you really put in some effort and try to tie it directly into whatever setting the GM made up. The setting itself is a lot looser without much detail to specific cities at all and a lot more onus and work on the GM's shoulder to build a cool city using the many mostly interesting factions and deciding on which ones are actually important in their version of the Requiem world, which could be a crapshoot as a player. You may really wanna play an Ordo Dracul savant but then the entire city and setting are focused on a war between the Carthians and the Lancea, so some communication with your GM is key to get what you want out of the game.

Masquerade draws from a more rote lore and the character creation has a lot of nuts and bolts added into the basic premise, which is only complicated by Loresheets which are special backgrounds you can take that tie you directly into the setting to ingrain you a little more in the world. These are great if you're experienced, and honestly can be easily mimicked in Requiem, but to a new player just learning the lore ahahaha holy poo poo they can be overwhelming and the fact that the clans are broken up into 13 main ones initially makes choosing what the hell to play actually pretty daunting. This is only an issue in Requiem if you're allowing Bloodlines, at which point it similarly becomes really stupid, really quickly. There are fewer major factions in the game and like Requiem it's focused on the street level night to night survival, it's just the scope of the politics and who else is at your table and how grognardy and lovely they are about inserting old baggage and bullshit into the game really will dictate how much you enjoy it - it's honestly best played with people that know relatively little about the old stuff other than like, Bloodlines and the basics, because the weeds are a horrible, horrible place.

In terms of the gameplay, Requiem is way simpler. The dice pools are easy to compute, you're not factoring in blood Potency or surges or your hunger dice, etc. Blood is just mana, and you can roleplay the hungry vampire if you want or just ignore it and be blood powered superhumans.

As we have discussed at length, Hunger is also just mana. Worm girl correctly points out that constant penalties and frenzy risk are in fact part of both games (they just make more sense in Requiem because they're triggered by IC "what is going on around your character" rather than OOC "has the ST asked a PC to pick up and roll some dice" factors). Requiem Disciplines are on average much stronger than VtM Disciplines, though, even down to the level of average dicepool-based success rate. Masquerade 5 really crushes down vampire power in a pretty funny mirror of what Requiem 1e did years ago. Still, it's Masquerade vampires who get to use their superpowers without any consequence half the time; their play pattern really resembles that of mages casting vulgar magic, where you throw your power, hold your breath as the game rules determine whether it has a backlash or not, and then sigh with relief when it doesn't (or sigh with exasperation as it does and the scene gets derailed).

Sadly, Requiem does not have a simpler core system, so V5 gets the advantage here. It did in 1e (which might be what you're thinking of, and I don't blame you, since there's a lot of 1e I prefer to 2e), but, and worm girl again beat me to it here, the preponderance of fiddly extra stuff here makes Requiem 2e more annoying to play overall even though it's more annoying in specific to figure out how much mana one of your V5 Disciplines costs. A Requiem 2.5 or 3E would benefit a lot from the kind of stripping down and streamlining the core rules in V5 got! On the other hand, the actual themes of the game are not that similar. V5 can't forget its globe-spanning methuselah conspiracy plots and extremely specific signature character escapades... it just pushes you down into the gutter where most of that stuff is definitively out of your reach.

joylessdivision
Jun 15, 2013



Lord_Hambrose posted:

I am going to have to push back on this. Single player you could sometimes get to the Werewolf (Warden?) boss who was impossible.

Dang, I would play that again in a second if it was on a modern system.

If you have an Xbox 360/One/S or X it'll play via backwards compatibility with a disc or digitally(I think it's $20)

joylessdivision
Jun 15, 2013



Soonmot posted:

I know I beat it back in the day solo

I don't believe any of you who claim this. I have tried a couple dozen times and that graveyard is a loving nightmare :colbert:

Free Cog
Feb 27, 2011


a7m2 posted:

What about older VtM modules that do have it? I don't mind adapting stuff to fit the rules, I did that with a Cyberpunk 2020 module to Red and it went just fine even though the rules are different and the setting has advanced. I'm mainly interested in using a module that captures the tone and unique concepts of the setting.

I'll look into Power Prey regardless, thanks.

In that case, your best available option would be Alien Hunger, an adventure from the first edition of VtM, an edition that V5's first developer claimed the current edition would be closest to. In theory, that's true, but in practice the two editions are very far apart. It also has a very unique Embrace by default. The protagonists are kidnapped subjects of an experiment by an Elder to seek a cure for Vampirism, which in this adventure not only exists, but is an obtainable object that the protagonists could use at the end of the adventure to restore their humanity! There's going to be some very early edition weirdness that you'll need to sync with V5's tone, but that shouldn't be much different from what you've already done with old Cyberpunk modules.

You'd also need to do a bit of conversion. V5's engine assumes standard target number on a d10 is a 6 or higher, while earlier editions had varying target numbers in addition to needing certain amounts of successes. Previous editions defined Difficulty as the target number a die would need to have for a single success, whereas V5 defines Difficulty as the number of successes a character needs to achieve on the dice pool roll. A suggested conversion system I saw online says to take every Difficulty you see in the adventure, divide it by two, round down, and that's the V5 Difficulty for the task. That seems solid enough, though honestly I'd suggest reading throught the adventure and applying V5 Difficulties using your intuition.

Until recently there was Blood Nativity, a 1e adventure that might be the only official English language suppliment not made by White Wolf until OPP/Modiphus/Renegade (that isn't a GURPS conversion), but it looks like that's out of print, probably because of recent licensing changes. Apparently it's short and not that great so that's not a total loss.

If you don't mind putting in even more work and doing some serious conversion from another game entirely, you could swipe the story of the Vampire: The Requiem Demo (the first edition one with that exact title, not Reap the Whirlwind which is for second edition), since that has some dedicated Embrace scenes if I recall correctly, as well as Scenes of the Embrace, which...well, does what it says on the can. Requiem is a totally different setting from Masquerade, but V5 has just enough similiarity to VtR 1e that swiping what they have and coverting them to V5 might be worth the effort. If you do this, just remember to apply V5 Difficulties using your intution, and you'll need to hot swap some Disciplines that are present in one game but not in another (Requiem's Nightmare and Awe are kind of the two halves of V5's Presence power tree, for example, and Theban Sorcery/Cruac are probably things Blood Sorcery can do with enough elbow grease). You might be able to get away with taking any printed required successes, adding 1 (maybe 2 since the static target number in VtR is 8 and above?) and then having that be the V5 Difficulty, but I haven't run the math on that to be sure. I'm not sure if I recommend this route, but it is an option!

It's actually fascinating how few Vampire adventures start from the very beginning, now that I'm putting it all down. It seems like they either assume a character's well into their unlife or just skips over the Embrace entirely.

Free Cog fucked around with this message at 19:30 on Jul 6, 2022

Dawgstar
Jul 15, 2017

joylessdivision posted:

I don't believe any of you who claim this. I have tried a couple dozen times and that graveyard is a loving nightmare :colbert:

Beat it with Kassandra the Martyr. GG EZ git gud scrub. :smuggo:

(Also I had no social life at the time and nothing else to do at the time, so I had time to practice.)

a7m2
Jul 9, 2012


Thank you so much for that.

I want to start pre-Embrace because my wife, who will be the sole player (at least initially), knows nothing about the setting. If it goes well I'll play with other friends who are very familiar with the setting, which is why I think I'll pick V5.

She's got experience playing role playing games, but since she doesn't know much about the setting I thought it'd be a really neat idea to have her start as a human who doesn't know vampires are even real, and have her learn about the world and what it means to be a vampire alongside her character.

What attracts me most about the setting is the stuff like trying to hold on to your past, struggling to come to terms with your new nature, and clinging on to your humanity as you turn more and more into an inhuman monster. It's not just the personal horror, but also the melancholy of life as a vampire (whether a young one who feels out of place, or an old one that can't keep up) that I'd like to explore.

The grand political schemes are cool too and I like that they exist in the world, but that should be in the background until one has somewhat accepted their situation and I don't think that should be easy or quick to accept. Anyway that's my thinking right now while I'm still exploring the idea of running this. Perhaps my players would much rather jump right into international conspiracies or fighting werewolves, and that's fine too.

Lord_Hambrose
Nov 21, 2008

*a foul hooting fills the air*



joylessdivision posted:

If you have an Xbox 360/One/S or X it'll play via backwards compatibility with a disc or digitally(I think it's $20)

Oh awesome, thanks.

tatankatonk
Nov 4, 2011

Pitching is the art of instilling fear.

a7m2 posted:

Thank you so much for that.

I want to start pre-Embrace because my wife, who will be the sole player (at least initially), knows nothing about the setting. If it goes well I'll play with other friends who are very familiar with the setting, which is why I think I'll pick V5.

She's got experience playing role playing games, but since she doesn't know much about the setting I thought it'd be a really neat idea to have her start as a human who doesn't know vampires are even real, and have her learn about the world and what it means to be a vampire alongside her character.

What attracts me most about the setting is the stuff like trying to hold on to your past, struggling to come to terms with your new nature, and clinging on to your humanity as you turn more and more into an inhuman monster. It's not just the personal horror, but also the melancholy of life as a vampire (whether a young one who feels out of place, or an old one that can't keep up) that I'd like to explore.

The grand political schemes are cool too and I like that they exist in the world, but that should be in the background until one has somewhat accepted their situation and I don't think that should be easy or quick to accept. Anyway that's my thinking right now while I'm still exploring the idea of running this. Perhaps my players would much rather jump right into international conspiracies or fighting werewolves, and that's fine too.

One thing that might make you re-consider which one to play between Requiem and Masquerade is the other splats in oWoD and nWoD. I pretty strongly prefer Requiem over Masquerade, but understand that nostalgia and current support for the gameline will make a lot of people trend towards Masquerade. However, in my experience the quality of games like Mage: the Awakening, Werewolf: the Forsaken, Hunter: the Vigil, and Changeling: the Lost is just way way higher than their oWoD counterparts. If Masquerade sometimes suffers from 90s baggage then all the oWoD versions of mage, werewolf, changeling etc suffer from it ten times worse. All those other nWoD gamelines are also keyed into the themes you mentioned you're interested in exploring, and all the oWoD versions are even worse in terms of addiction to metaplot. If I was running a VtM game, I wouldn't even bother introducing NPCs from other splats. If I'm running a VtR game, it's unthinkable that I wouldn't have some NPCs from other splats, because the other game lines are equally compelling.

Ferrinus
Jun 19, 2003

i'm finding this quite easy, i guess in part because i'm a fast type but also because i have a coherent mental model of the world
Yeah one thing about Requiem is that it just has a much, much better setting, and a bunch of your players not feeling like they already know everything that's going on and generally finding goings-on comfortably familiar would probably be a plus.

MonsieurChoc
Oct 12, 2013

Every species can smell its own extinction.
My big problem with Wraith 5 theoretical;ly getting rid of Stygian society is that it was (one of) the best part of the game.

And the Lady of Fate gets namedropped in Cults of the Blood Gods.

Chernobyl Peace Prize
May 7, 2007

Or later, later's fine.
But now would be good.

tatankatonk posted:

One thing that might make you re-consider which one to play between Requiem and Masquerade is the other splats in oWoD and nWoD. I pretty strongly prefer Requiem over Masquerade, but understand that nostalgia and current support for the gameline will make a lot of people trend towards Masquerade. However, in my experience the quality of games like Mage: the Awakening, Werewolf: the Forsaken, Hunter: the Vigil, and Changeling: the Lost is just way way higher than their oWoD counterparts. If Masquerade sometimes suffers from 90s baggage then all the oWoD versions of mage, werewolf, changeling etc suffer from it ten times worse. All those other nWoD gamelines are also keyed into the themes you mentioned you're interested in exploring, and all the oWoD versions are even worse in terms of addiction to metaplot. If I was running a VtM game, I wouldn't even bother introducing NPCs from other splats. If I'm running a VtR game, it's unthinkable that I wouldn't have some NPCs from other splats, because the other game lines are equally compelling.
That's another point to expand for choosing between VtR or V5 play specifically too: Even though VtR and the nwod/cod/onyx path books are probably at the end of their lifecycle, that's still a lot of books. V5 has a couple V5 books, a pdf draft (or a blog post?) for Hunter 5, and nothing tangible for anything else yet, does it?

Dawgstar
Jul 15, 2017

Ferrinus posted:

Yeah one thing about Requiem is that it just has a much, much better setting, and a bunch of your players not feeling like they already know everything that's going on and generally finding goings-on comfortably familiar would probably be a plus.

Also you'd get to let them read the Requiem clanbooks if they wanted to learn more about said clans, which are all a delight.

Pakxos
Mar 21, 2020

Chernobyl Peace Prize posted:

A pdf draft (or a blog post?) for Hunter 5, and nothing tangible for anything else yet, does it?
Hunter 5 book is out, but that is still only the core. Unless that is what you meant.

joylessdivision
Jun 15, 2013



Chernobyl Peace Prize posted:

That's another point to expand for choosing between VtR or V5 play specifically too: Even though VtR and the nwod/cod/onyx path books are probably at the end of their lifecycle, that's still a lot of books. V5 has a couple V5 books, a pdf draft (or a blog post?) for Hunter 5, and nothing tangible for anything else yet, does it?

There are a stack of V5 books available now (I think we're at 10-15 books now?) and Hunter 5 just released (my physical copy showed up last week).

I feel like folks complaining about the metaplot ties are being a bit dramatic. Nothing says you have to use the metaplots of any of the games. Every corebook has the same handwave "Use as many or few rules" thing so it's there if you want it or you don't. Metaplot is there for flavor, if it's not to your taste leave it out.

I don't recommend going back to 1st ed for any of the OWOD for playing because (having finished reading Ascension 1e yesterday) they are a god drat mess of 90's game design and some really cringey political and social stuff sprinkled throughout.

Worth a read? Yes and no, because for every cool or fun thing they slipped in, there's also a mountain of stupid or questionable poo poo sprinkled throughout.

Chernobyl Peace Prize
May 7, 2007

Or later, later's fine.
But now would be good.

Pakxos posted:

Hunter 5 book is out, but that is still only the core. Unless that is what you meant.
Yeah, that's what I was thinking of, thanks!

Free Cog
Feb 27, 2011


MonsieurChoc posted:

My big problem with Wraith 5 theoretical;ly getting rid of Stygian society is that it was (one of) the best part of the game.

And the Lady of Fate gets namedropped in Cults of the Blood Gods.

Yeah, unless it was specifically an Orpheus revival and not Wraith, I think there's got to be a Stygia or something like it in a proper Fifth Edition of Wraith. A good compromise might be a Stygia in redevelopment, it's been long enough since 1999. Also, that wouldn't be the first time something gets namedropped and then tossed aside in WoD5, lest we forget Camarilla's proposal that the forces of the Second Inqusition have an uneasy deal with the Imbued. Ultimately it's all up to what the WoD Brand Management team thinks the best parts of Wraith are, I suppose.

Fuzz
Jun 2, 2003

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joylessdivision posted:

There are a stack of V5 books available now (I think we're at 10-15 books now?) and Hunter 5 just released (my physical copy showed up last week).

I feel like folks complaining about the metaplot ties are being a bit dramatic. Nothing says you have to use the metaplots of any of the games. Every corebook has the same handwave "Use as many or few rules" thing so it's there if you want it or you don't. Metaplot is there for flavor, if it's not to your taste leave it out.

I don't recommend going back to 1st ed for any of the OWOD for playing because (having finished reading Ascension 1e yesterday) they are a god drat mess of 90's game design and some really cringey political and social stuff sprinkled throughout.

Worth a read? Yes and no, because for every cool or fun thing they slipped in, there's also a mountain of stupid or questionable poo poo sprinkled throughout.

22 if you include Boston by Night (barely a book) and the Companion (not a book), so 20. Of those, 1 is aggressively terrible (Fall of London), 2 are excellent (Cults and Let the Streets Run Red), and the rest run the gamut in between from fine to filler. They're mostly horribly organized other than Chicago by Night (which still isn't great) and Cults (which is probably the best of them, organizationally), but yeah... it's not approachable in base format and the community has made a lot of handy tools to help parse it all specifically because people show up in the Discords and are like "hwha???" about various rules that are not fully explained in one place, then you have to turn to some other page to get more incomplete parts of it, then back to the first entry to complete the thought and have a full sense of what the rule is. White Wolf has always had crappy layouts, but in the last 12ish years both in CoD and V5 it has been a clusterfuck across the board.


But yeah, I can't agree hard enough that ignoring the gently caress out of the stupid nitty gritty metaplot and looking at the setting in broad strokes as sects and vague interplay between concepts of clan and whatnot is the way to go. Even back when I used to play Revised, as some of the people like Loomer and others that played in some of my old VtM games can attest to, we threw out whatever BS they shoved in and kept it pretty street level in dealing with night to night stuff and just setting up Sabbat/Cam how we liked. I honestly prefer V5 (outside of all the aggressive excising of racist poo poo, which I 100% prefer and basically didn't look at it until like 6 months ago when someone threw a bunch of the recent books at me) to the old poo poo because Anarch vs Cam at least is slightly more interesting and believable than cringe-rear end Sabbat running entire cities full of shovelheads apparently just murdering people with aplomb. Them being relegated to a crazy terrorist organization full of religious zealots that show up to be dickheads is fine by me, Dirty Secrets of the Black Hand is in the top twenty easily worst old VtM books, if not worst top 10.

In that respect, I liked what they did in Requiem 1E with the broad strokes and big picture of the setting being the focus vs all the little, "In 1487 Asshat the Unliving crafted a pile of festering dog vaginas and vigorously hosed them all to lay a curse on Pompous von Douchenstein, Prince of this whole country," type nonsense that was the bulk of old VtM. I've owned Revised for over 20 years and still haven't even read all the metaplot nonsense they shoved in the front and back, it's painful to read and should be summarily ignored. Some NPC comes up in a Loresheet in V5? Read the blurb. It's vague? Good, make up some poo poo and fill in the rest yourself, who cares, it's your campaign.

Where Requiem started to annoy me was the 100+ Bloodlines, each with their own special Discipline, because I hated that poo poo in VtM and they just quadrupled down on it unnecessarily when they could have gone the Devotion route and it would have been fine. V5 takes that idea and runs with it, but the amalgams actually replace basic powers and you have to pick and choose, which is pretty divisive though overall, I don't mind it that much. That said, even the one chronicle I played to completetion so far none of us got any Discipline above 4, so it didn't ultimately matter.

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Ferrinus
Jun 19, 2003

i'm finding this quite easy, i guess in part because i'm a fast type but also because i have a coherent mental model of the world
The problem with getting down to street level and just playing with broad concepts of clan and whatnot in the oWoD is that the broad concepts of clan in VtM - and, in general, the splats of all the various oWoD games - are just bad, a series of exercises in para-racial or actually-racial profiling. Also, "clan and whatnot" is misleading because "clan" is basically all there is; the sects are either enormous or tiny and marginal and have no real game-mechanical weight, so while Requiem lets you consider what a Sanctum Gangrel is like as opposed to an Ordo Gangrel as opposed to an Invictus Gangrel the oWoD is just, well, here's your animal guys, go nuts. And V5 has if anything doubled down on clans and clan stereotypes, because if you roll poorly on literally anything at all you could find your Nosferatu character suddenly becoming extra nosy or your Ventrue character suddenly becoming extra bossy because, well, that's just what they're like, isn't it?

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