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Ferrinus posted:In V20 and prior, Brujah had, specifically, a penalty to resist anger frenzy. They DIDN'T randomly want to overthrow things just because they stubbed a toe. "Haw haw those Brujah, so temperamental, if only they could be rational like us" was the self-serving rationale used by those in power to dismiss criticisms of the status quo. They were angry all the time about things in general and self-selected by going after people who were angry about a specific thing, thereby giving already angry people the powers to get even angrier thanks to the Beast. Their anger might make them lashout at any real or percieved injustice against them, which is how you end up with them upsetting the status quo in LA and setting up the Free State. Or being used as catspaws by others. I'm with you on the mechanics of the system beong hamfisted. I am with you that Swedracula caused some poo poo that needed to be fixed. I do not see "lonely wandering rear end in a top hat that does stupid/awesome poo poo" as a racial stereotype because, as mentioned in the guide and the dev diaries, the inspiration now are trickster archetypes who tend to be outside of society to start with, tend to be assholes, and tend to do stupid/awesome poo poo. I do not see how said archetypes and the urges inherit to them are just as bad, if not somehow worse, than "we have taken centuries of stigma and stereotypes against a wronged group and made pretendy fun time vampire games out of them". There are plenty of things that we do agree on and i think it's best for this thread as a whole and for us in particular if we end this conversation on what we agree on. Pre-nuke Ravnos were bad. The mechanics are clunky at best. Swedracula is an rear end in a top hat.
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Nov 2, 2022 02:25
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worm girl posted:It was so much better in Requiem that I'm surprised they didn't just lift the system entirely. Everyone gets the same three types of frenzy, and all that changes is your beast shows its true nature while it's out, so Mekhet tend to behave with sociopathic efficiency, Daeva make themselves the center of attention, Ventrue try to establish dominance, etc. but that really only adjusts the flavor of the frenzy, it doesn't force you to do something that makes no sense. Frenzy is supposed to make more sense than any other action you could take, at least in a short-sighted way. I think it all comes down to swede dracula wanting to make his larp the main storyline. If V5 had had Achille at the helm, we'd probably having something that looks more like WW5 where it's more of a refining and refocusing of the core concepts.
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Nov 2, 2022 02:41
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citybeatnik posted:They were angry all the time about things in general and self-selected by going after people who were angry about a specific thing, thereby giving already angry people the powers to get even angrier thanks to the Beast. Their anger might make them lashout at any real or percieved injustice against them, which is how you end up with them upsetting the status quo in LA and setting up the Free State. Or being used as catspaws by others. So you're wrong about pre-V5 Brujah. "They" weren't actually angry about "things" "in general" because the actual ineluctable aspects of being a Brujah were A) facility with certain Disciplines and B) a penalty to resist anger frenzy. Now, if someone has Potence and Celerity AND is especially likely to go berserk when slighted, that's going to affect how that person is treated, but it doesn't actually necessitate any special relationship of that person to power and the status quo. A Brujah Archon or Sheriff in V20 or Revised might fly into a fury and beat you to a literal pulp because you've broken the law or disrespected traditions, and conversely those in power might be especially careful not to disquiet the Brujah because Brujah are extremely dangerous to upset. There's two ways, given this, that the writer of a game might go. They might elaborate on the kind of thing I'm taking about above and write with the understanding that the stereotype of Brujah as naysayers and malcontents within the Camarilla is a product of historical contingency and, at best, a lossy abstraction of what's actually going on. Orrrrr they might elect to just plug a microchip into the back of every Brujah's head that gives that Brujah a 10% chance of entering gently caress-you-I-won't-do-what-you-tell-me mode. Which solution dovetails more neatly with actual conservative rhetoric about, like, protesters? Aren't those people, too, just inherently insubordinate and lashing out in their irrational anger? The V5 Ravnos compulsion is one that pushes characters to disruption and criminality, and - new to V5 - it's paired with a penalty for failing to be sufficiently nomadic. Soonmot is wrong about me: I think it, and the clan compulsions generally, are bad game design AND racist. V5's Ravnos are probably worse on balance than V20's and Swedracula, rear end in a top hat or not, employed or not, has won. Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 05:30 on Nov 2, 2022 |
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Nov 2, 2022 05:18
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Ferrinus posted:Is this actually any less a slur on "social justice warriors" or people broadly aligned with the political left? You know, those Brujah... sometimes I feel like they're just looking for something to lash out against, you know, they're just so obstinate. Oppositional defiance disorder, they call it. Don't they know that sometimes you should go along to get along? Yes because the radical left is the only one that does stuff like march on the capitol in a massive riot or argue about the invalidity of fair elections, saying that they're rigged, or refuse to wear masks despite a quarantine mandate, or oh wai Edit: to clarify, not commenting on the larger discussion, but this specific argument holds less water than a pregnant uterus in labor.
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Nov 2, 2022 13:06
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Soonmot posted:I think it all comes down to swede dracula wanting to make his larp the main storyline. If V5 had had Achille at the helm, we'd probably having something that looks more like WW5 where it's more of a refining and refocusing of the core concepts. Although I've come to find out a lot of the big story developments were Hite's doing. Blowing up the head Tremere Chantry in Austria, for at least one.
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Nov 2, 2022 13:22
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Dawgstar posted:Although I've come to find out a lot of the big story developments were Hite's doing. Blowing up the head Tremere Chantry in Austria, for at least one. The Vienna Chantry falling down and go boom is something I have a hard time being upset with, if only because the various chats i've helped with have soured me to the clan.
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Nov 2, 2022 13:37
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I'm working on starting a V5 chronicle for three friends, set in our hometown. The presence of a centuries old university and the city walls still being a major part of the city's geography has made setting up the general Camarilla power structure and territory very easy. The coterie will start out with their haven in the basement of the local cat café, with the Gangrel running the place as their main source of information.
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Nov 2, 2022 15:51
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citybeatnik posted:The Vienna Chantry falling down and go boom is something I have a hard time being upset with, if only because the various chats i've helped with have soured me to the clan. The Tremere get everything the deserve for being a bunch of assholes. gently caress them.
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Nov 2, 2022 16:18
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The Pyramid exploding was honestly one of the better lore changes in V5. The old Tremere loving sucked and had so much overhead baggage they were absolutely miserable to play or even include in a game without major revisions, so actually smashing all those shackles and giving players actual options to stretch out and try whatever concepts they want and not have a godawful and stupid Bane are good things. It is still one of the most baffling design decisions of oWoD that they straight up tied players' hands at every opportunity to make some stupid niche gimmick or hyper specific metaplot point to canonize some poo poo that read like it was just the plot summary of their own personal campaigns. Taking away agency from players to play the way they like is always dumb design. V5 still has quite a bit of it but thankfully a ton of it has been thrown out the window and the vast majority of what's left is more like string tied around your wrist instead of shackles hanging you upside down over lava. Fuzz fucked around with this message at 16:39 on Nov 2, 2022 |
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Nov 2, 2022 16:37
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Fuzz posted:Yes because the radical left is the only one that does stuff like march on the capitol in a massive riot or argue about the invalidity of fair elections, saying that they're rigged, or refuse to wear masks despite a quarantine mandate, or oh wai Ferrinus isn't saying leftists are innately angry and unreasonable unlike conservatives, he's saying that the mainstream liberal stereotype is that leftists are unreasonably angry and should relax. Like, the fact that it's an unrealistic stereotype that media's been playing up for the past thirty years is the point, it's not Ferrinus making an argument for January 6 apologia. EDIT: Just trying to defuse the worst of this political argument before it progresses more. Lurks With Wolves fucked around with this message at 16:46 on Nov 2, 2022 |
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Nov 2, 2022 16:43
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Lurks With Wolves posted:Ferrinus isn't saying leftists are innately angry and unreasonable unlike conservatives, he's saying that the mainstream liberal stereotype is that leftists are unreasonably angry and should relax. Like, the fact that it's an unrealistic stereotype that media's been playing up for the past thirty years is the point, it's not Ferrinus making an argument for January 6 apologia. That wasn't what I was arguing at all, though? Specifically citing the rebellious compulsion as being coded for anti-liberal bias, which was his implication, is nonsense.
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Nov 2, 2022 17:30
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Looking at a rule or an argument and creating the most bad-faith interpretation of it to prove a point is Ferrinus whole schtick. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Nov 2, 2022 18:03
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Fuzz posted:Yes because the radical left is the only one that does stuff like march on the capitol in a massive riot or argue about the invalidity of fair elections, saying that they're rigged, or refuse to wear masks despite a quarantine mandate, or oh wai Do you think that the mainstream narrative regarding right-wing militants is that they're just oversensitive and need to relax? Do you, like, believe them when they say "Well we just don't like authority. We're against executive overreach."? Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 18:26 on Nov 2, 2022 |
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Nov 2, 2022 18:24
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Sorry for the double post, but I have more comprehensive thoughts on this after running some errands and it feels wrong to do an edit this major: "Some people are just inherently angry and rebellious" is indeed a political double-edged sword, but it's one that exists in a non-Euclidean space such that both edges cut left. On one hand, you have stuff like the rhetoric that surrounded Occupy Wall Street. Gosh, these kids just seem angry at things, in general! They don't even know what they want! They're just rebelling for the sake of rebelling! On the other hand you'll have a guy who has organized his entire social and economic life around one day, maybe, getting to shoot a Black person, and he'll be like yeah, you know, I just care about freedom, I don't like being told what to do, I'm anti-authoritarian. This is going to happen for every Clan Compulsion you look at too closely, and it's not because they were picked poorly or something. It's because the basic idea of types of people being bedeviled by intermittent but ultimately inescapable social pathologies is the bedrock of right wing ideology at large. Would a group of people who compulsively refuse orders and rebel against authority be good at, say, running a government or a military? Probably not. Probably they'd get taken over by someone more discipline and organized, and, hell, it'd even be doing them a favor-- EDIT: ALSO, and I'll edit this time, you could marshal the exact same defense of "Triggered". Hey, you know who's really triggered all the time? Conservatives, who are always getting the vapors when they see a person of color in a fantasy movie or hear about a book in which two boys hold hands or whatever. Maybe they need some "safe spaces" of their own, haw haw! This can be a fun rhetorical tack to take but you're shooting yourself in the foot if you take it seriously because you're still playing into some kind of genetic/civilizational dichotomy of shrill whiners vs. tough hombres. Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 20:22 on Nov 2, 2022 |
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Nov 2, 2022 19:12
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Gatto Grigio posted:Looking at a rule or an argument and creating the most bad-faith interpretation of it to prove a point is Ferrinus whole schtick. ...I feel like Ferrinus is not the one making bad faith interpretations here.
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Nov 2, 2022 20:26
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Fuzz posted:The Pyramid exploding was honestly one of the better lore changes in V5. The old Tremere loving sucked and had so much overhead baggage they were absolutely miserable to play or even include in a game without major revisions, so actually smashing all those shackles and giving players actual options to stretch out and try whatever concepts they want and not have a godawful and stupid Bane are good things. The WoD always had lots of aspects built in to it where the designers were doing their damnest to make you play the game they wanted you to play how they wanted you to. Lurks With Wolves posted:EDIT: Just trying to defuse the worst of this political argument before it progresses more. Might be a little late for that. Trying to keep my promise of disengaging though. joylessdivision posted:The Tremere get everything the deserve for being a bunch of assholes. gently caress them. The biggest issue with the Tremere was they didn't have their clan founder spending most of his free time stepping on rakes like Uncle Auggie.
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Nov 2, 2022 20:58
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To me the thing with the Tremere was that you got a dnd pure-progression spellcaster's level of versatility with Thaum paths and the tradeoff is that your ST is supposed to make the game more about your annoying coworkers, your annoying job, your terrible boss, their terrible boss, etc. Some real "RP penalty flaws to buy strong mechanical merits" vibes, before they even got into actual merits and flaws.
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Nov 2, 2022 21:02
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One of the other issues was that loving up a Thaum/Ritual roll never seemed to be played up. You gently caress up a Dominate roll? Oh no, you can't command this mortal for a bit. You gently caress up a magic roll? You get assaulted by demons. But a "well made" Tremere thaumaturgist would never botch most of their rolls so said drawback never really came up.
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Nov 2, 2022 21:09
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Anarch Tremeres were always the best anyway.
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Nov 3, 2022 05:13
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MonsieurChoc posted:Anarch Tremeres were always the best anyway. I think it was in the V5 An arch book of all places which talked about a new House Goratrix faction of Tremere. I also don't think we've heard anything about them since but odd there'd be this Tremere faction in the Anarchs who honor the most Tremere whoever Tremered. Love that bastard.
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Nov 3, 2022 05:19
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NikkolasKing posted:I think it was in the V5 An arch book of all places which talked about a new House Goratrix faction of Tremere. Anarch Tremere were in old 2e and Revised books, mostly revised. The first Blood Magic book was even in-character a book an anarch Tremere was printing to spread blood sorcery out of the clan that had been seized by main clan vampires. House Goratrix is probably led by a dude with a mysterious miror that talks to him. As much as an anarch faction can have a leader, anyway.
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Nov 3, 2022 05:22
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I think it's pretty funny that in VtM:B 2, which is never coming out, the proposed clan weakness for Tremere is that you take extra damage from all vampire attacks because they all loving hate you so much.
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Nov 3, 2022 05:32
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In Night Road you heal slower as a Tremere and that's gonna be the alternate Bane in the Players Guide, which is now delayed until Spring.
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Nov 3, 2022 05:49
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MonsieurChoc posted:Anarch Tremere were in old 2e and Revised books, mostly revised. The first Blood Magic book was even in-character a book an anarch Tremere was printing to spread blood sorcery out of the clan that had been seized by main clan vampires. One of the pregens in the Tremere book was an anarch and basically had the character really have to lean on the rep of Tremere being spooky all powerful nerds on the surface but inside essentially be a street hustler trying to use what little tricks they knew best they could. Cool concept. One of the other pregens was James Gandolfini as it was the era of 'sneak in a celebrity into the pre-made characters.'
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Nov 3, 2022 14:10
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NikkolasKing posted:I think it was in the V5 An arch book of all places which talked about a new House Goratrix faction of Tremere. Goratrix is mentioned in the V5 core. The Anarch Tremere are House Ipsissimus, who are unrelated to the other Houses.
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Nov 3, 2022 22:50
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Also House Carna has a bunch of Anarchs probably.
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Nov 3, 2022 23:17
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Fuzz posted:Also House Carna has a bunch of Anarchs probably. Basically. They're 'officially' Cam aligned but they're the loosest of all the Houses.
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Nov 4, 2022 16:36
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I really do wish that the 'split' between Cam and Anarchs was due to disagreements over established myths as much as it was over politics. House Carna's a pretty good example of that with their focus less on hermetic and more on pagan. You could have pure-strain Cam Ventrue that won't shut the gently caress up about Sparta/Rome contending with the handful of Anarch aligned ones snatching at things like the Danava for legitimacy (and getting it wrong). The Ravnos already do that now that the clan's been sundered and they can just make up their own thing.
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Nov 4, 2022 19:28
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Is it OK for a new player to come Kramering in with some questions about the game? I started a game of 5E only knowing what I picked up from driving my friends to larp back in college. I triggered my clan compulsion (nosferatu) and I need a way to get out from under it, because the penalty seems pretty severe, and my DM seems to be having trouble quantifying what a useful secret is. Also what's a good way to make a nosferatu spy network? My town seems to have like, two nos, so I just bought a bunch of burner phones to give out.
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Nov 9, 2022 03:45
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There aren't any actually independent intelligence services, or at least intelligence factions should have one obligation to a powerful patron they cannot ignore at the same time they provide less important services to clients they pick and choose from. All your character has to do is put themselves in between two powerful factions at odds with each other and offer to work for one side, monitoring the other. Then, you can branch out by moonlighting for (much less important and powerful) others, selling noncritical information elsewhere, etc., while building your own PCs/Clan's reputation and power.
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Nov 9, 2022 04:16
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Also, if both you and your GM find yourselves disliking having to observe your Clan Compulsion, feel free to ditch it. It's an optional rule that plenty of people don't like (I don't!).
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Nov 9, 2022 04:22
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WaywardWoodwose posted:Is it OK for a new player to come Kramering in with some questions about the game? I started a game of 5E only knowing what I picked up from driving my friends to larp back in college. This an EXTREMELY funny question in light of discussion about Clan Compulsions happening just a page ago or less. Getting out from under the Cryptophilia if you don't have a good setup of Skills or Disciplines for finding secrets sounds like a huge pain, especially since as far as I know Compulsions don't operate under any kind of "this fades on its own at the end of the session" metarule. I'd first and foremost just tell my ST that I'm not sure how best to proceed, and ask if they've got any advice for me. If they're unhelpful or uncertain themselves, I guess you want to lean on whatever amount of Stealth, Obfuscate, Animalism, or (though this is unlikely) Auspex you've got on hand to just pick up something and make it useful. For instance, you could spy on a business owner, politician, or just regular old mortal somewhere in your territory until you discover they're having an affair or whatever, and then you've got something in your pocket the next time you need to compel a favor. Even a random salaryman or retail worker could be useful in a pinch. As to forming a "spy network" with like two other guys tops, I'm not sure I'd bother. Nosferatu can make pretty good spies by turning invisible and asking rats what they've seen, but it's not like you're actually necessarily better at information gathering than, say, a Malkavian or Tremere might be (though you'd probably be better at doling it out). There's no special reason your character has to actually be a spy as, like, their job. That said, if you want them to, you've got both Animalism and the internet; even if there's just one, two, or three of you, if you make it a point to be on the good side of every pigeon on this side of town, and if you cultivate online relations through Schrecknet or whatever equivalent exists in V5, you can probably be pretty in-the-know even if you're short on manpower. Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 04:30 on Nov 9, 2022 |
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Nov 9, 2022 04:23
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With the spy network it's not just about the kindred you know, but their mortal networks too. I'm playing an ex-reporter Nos in a game, with a focus on contacts and influence in the media. He can stealth around and gather info on his own, sure, but can also plant stories and get them buried. Add that to a nos with a criminal network, and another nos with a police network and the group will have a lot of power. Any coterie can do this, sure, but the nos will also do it across sect and coterie lines. If you are playing a Camarilla coterie, you might be the one with an inside line to the Anarchs. For the compulsion, I would focus it on the scene during which it was earned. If you were talking to someone and got the compulsion then I would focus on trying to find dirt about that person. Their sire, a touchstone, conviction, haven details, whatever. It can be a small secret. Bargain for it, beg, get aggressive, stalk them if they leave. If a session has passed (and really, don't let it go this long), I would make it the character's Desire. Go after it, other things are on hold, and during that hunt you'll avoid any penalty. If it does go across sessions at least the ST will have plenty of time to come up with a juicy secret and work it into the story.
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Nov 9, 2022 05:09
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Thanks for the input! I'm trying to get my DM to flesh out the npcs a little more. He wants to use our city since that's what they do in the larp he plays in, but i guess either Nos aren't played much, or maybe he doesn't know where to put them. Our city is pretty small, it doesn't have anything close to a New York/TMNT sewer system, and most of our unhoused population live in outdoor camps. Most of our vampire npcs are outside agitators trying to fill a power vacuum or mindless guys buried during the 70's. It's all very sandbox, with disparate PCs, and i'm kinda floundering once I got past character creation. I was kinda hoping i could bug a hotel or nightclub, but my skills are heavily social.
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Nov 10, 2022 02:41
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WaywardWoodwose posted:Thanks for the input! I'm trying to get my DM to flesh out the npcs a little more. He wants to use our city since that's what they do in the larp he plays in, but i guess either Nos aren't played much, or maybe he doesn't know where to put them. Our city is pretty small, it doesn't have anything close to a New York/TMNT sewer system, and most of our unhoused population live in outdoor camps. Most of our vampire npcs are outside agitators trying to fill a power vacuum or mindless guys buried during the 70's. It's all very sandbox, with disparate PCs, and i'm kinda floundering once I got past character creation. I was kinda hoping i could bug a hotel or nightclub, but my skills are heavily social. Your storyteller knows they can like....make poo poo up right? "Our town doesn't have a massive underground sewer system"  Bullshit it doesn't. It's a table top game, you can add whatever to a location you want. Hell I ST a V5 game set in the SF bay area and I absolutely make poo poo up because it fits the story and I live in the Bay Area. Does Oakland have a massive underground system of tunnels where a Nos hangs out with a full command center of electronics? No probably not but it's what I need for the story so now it does. Your ST should be thinking about what helps the story, not what's 100% accurate to a location.
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Nov 10, 2022 03:35
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Sneaking around and eavesdropping is just one way to learn secrets. Talking to people, getting them to confide in you, or getting them to do the sneaking and report back to you is just as valid.
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Nov 10, 2022 06:47
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joylessdivision posted:Your storyteller knows they can like....make poo poo up right? I mean, bonus style points if you make them old wildcat mine shafts and poo poo rather than Literally Sewers.
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Nov 10, 2022 08:27
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Nessus posted:It's an alternate world, there should be like Fixed it for you. The WoD is meant to be absolutely gonzo with stuff like that. As for tunnels the nosferatu are known to just dig them out for shits and giggles thanks to Potence, with bonus points for them actually spending the time to make then actual works of art at the nest.
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Nov 10, 2022 13:26
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Also go with literally any urban legend from conspiracy theories to poo poo you came up with in a dream and roll with it.
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Nov 10, 2022 14:18
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The point of the compulsion is to learn a secret, the exact nature of it is less important at that point. The GM can just say "You have learned a secret related to [person/place/faction/other]" and the exact nature of the secret can be hashed out between sessions or when dramatically suitable. In my game, the coterie found a collection of occult literature, and I can't be bothered to detail what exact information it contains. So for the time being, the books are a narrative justification-in-waiting. When the players want to learn a ritual, or study a specific occult topic; what a coincidence, that's exactly what the books are about!
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Nov 10, 2022 20:47
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