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For no reason whatsoever I feel like dropping a link to Hseinfan's excellent V20 compatible Kindred of the East: The Relentless Age available a reasonable price of "pay what you want" from the Storyteller's Vault.
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Jul 28, 2023 01:00
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Man all this poo poo should have been left in the 90s. I get WoD5: The Search for More Money but Jesus it’s astounding how bad this all is.
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Jul 28, 2023 01:15
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Divorcing the Furies from feminism because of TERFs is like divorcing the Ratkin from disease because of covid denial. These are sites of contest, not spots to just yield to the enemy, and frankly I don't think we should be giving Muammar any benefit of the doubt with his history.
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Jul 28, 2023 01:25
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Winter's Teeth is a great name for Younger Brother. If I ever ran Werewolf again, that's there's name. And maybe... I dunno, let's say Wolverine their patron.
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Jul 28, 2023 01:42
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Ferrinus posted:This is Vampire: the Requiem, in which a nocturnal cannibal of some description is broadly what you get when you corrupt and disfigure someone's humanity, but modern-day vampires are more a result of convergent evolution than unbroken descent from some singular founder to the point that not even, like, Mekhet and Nosferatu are strictly speaking exactly the same sort of creature. This is my favorite bit of Vampire: the Requiem, bar none.
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Jul 28, 2023 01:43
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Dawgstar posted:Winter's Teeth is a great name for Younger Brother. If I ever ran Werewolf again, that's there's name. And maybe... I dunno, let's say Wolverine their patron. I too would take Hugh Jackman as a patron. 
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Jul 28, 2023 01:54
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ulmont posted:This is my favorite bit of Vampire: the Requiem, bar none. Not only is the suggestion that a Mekhet and a Nosferatu are not fundamentally the same type of creature in origin, but there is a suggestion that even a Mekhet and a Mekhet do not always share a lineage to a shared predecessor. There are likely multiple circumstances which can generate a vampire with the traits recognized as those of a given clan. It might even be that there are clans with slight distinctions that are so phenotypically similar that they are treated as a single clan. And, of course, even when some number of vampires do share a shared original predecessor, that original predecessor may not necessarily have been anything we would even remotely recognize as human. Whatever they were in the past, what we have now are Kindred. What they share isn't a family tree. It's a wound. This is what humans trend toward becoming when they die and yet stolen life permits them to walk.
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Jul 28, 2023 01:56
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much like a promethean, a vampire is just a human missing the thing that would allow them to be a mage and has some weird gunk in there instead
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Jul 28, 2023 02:03
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Plot hook for a VtR game where everyone's chasing down a book of embrace lineages that proves no one's more than 4 generations old and most of the older entries are made up anyway
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Jul 28, 2023 02:04
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I Am Just a Box posted:Whatever they were in the past, what we have now are Kindred. What they share isn't a family tree. It's a wound. This is what humans trend toward becoming when they die and yet stolen life permits them to walk. Yup. It's taking the OwoD concept that "in these days, immortality can only be achieved reliably by becoming a vampire" and going one or two steps further: dead human animated by stolen life force = recognizably vampire. Tuxedo Catfish posted:much like a promethean, a vampire is just a human missing the thing that would allow them to be a mage and has some weird gunk in there instead Also like a werewolf in the OwoD (fragment of Gaia, IIRC) and probably a Changeling too?
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Jul 28, 2023 02:10
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Chernobyl Peace Prize posted:Plot hook for a VtR game where everyone's chasing down a book of embrace lineages that proves no one's more than 4 generations old and most of the older entries are made up anyway this made me recoil in horror. bravo.
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Jul 28, 2023 02:11
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Ferrinus posted:No, look. Your basic proposition, "they were regular Kindred all along", constitutues a western-chauvinist cultural erasure. Why aren't we learning that the Cainites were regular wan kuei all along? Why aren't we hearing apologism about how Convictions are actually just poorly-understood Dharmas? How come vampires aren't all spawned by the Second Breath, and all these legends about "the embrace" are just people confused by the fact that one way to die while touched by corruption is to be eaten or drained to death by a vampire? Does the idea that the species known as homo sapiens arose from a particular location, spread across the globe, and, despite being near identical in terms of physiology, nonetheless define themselves by cultural markers stretching back generations make you equally hysterical?
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Jul 28, 2023 02:18
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joylessdivision posted:I too would take Hugh Jackman as a patron. This is hilariously appropriate since the Werewolf design in van helsing is considered an accurate portrayal of the crinos from (as far as reddit is concerned). Heh I could see a pack seeing the movie on a slow day while drinking literal galleons of alcohol and ripping into it on how much it got wrong. Ghost Armor 1337 fucked around with this message at 02:27 on Jul 28, 2023 |
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Jul 28, 2023 02:21
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Pakxos posted:Does the idea that the species known as homo sapiens arose from a particular location, spread across the globe, and, despite being near identical in terms of physiology, nonetheless define themselves by cultural markers stretching back generations make you equally hysterical? "Hysterical"? Ooooh the Black Furies are gonna be so mad at you for- wait, never mind. How come it's so important that the particular location vampires arose and spread across the globe from was Genesis 4:8?
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Jul 28, 2023 02:27
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ulmont posted:Also like a werewolf in the OwoD (fragment of Gaia, IIRC) and probably a Changeling too? I'm partly shitposting, but to take it seriously for a moment: nWoD Changelings, yes. oWoD Werewolves, I don't know enough about to say, but based on your characterization, yes. nWoD Werewolves -- probably not. A Requiem vampire isn't the Beast; it might metaphorically represent their worst self but it's also literally a supernatural parasite that needs an undead being as a host. The Azoth within a Promethean isn't even metaphorically part of their identity, it's an alien force acting on and through them. But a werewolf is two very different types of roughly equal beings (a human and a spirit) merged into a single being. Also, on a separate tack, the spirits that empower werewolves used to be Pangaeans, who are (or were) capable of wielding Supernal power; arguably werewolves qualify as Sleepers, incapable of magic but only because of more immediate obstacles rather than because they lack the basic prerequisites. Long story short, a Werewolf-Mage makes more sense than just about any other possible combination of nWoD splats, and if anything would simply represent one of Father Wolf's successors taking the first step to reclaiming the throne he lost. Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 02:31 on Jul 28, 2023 |
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Jul 28, 2023 02:29
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Ferrinus posted:"Hysterical"? Ooooh the Black Furies are gonna be so mad at you for- wait, never mind. Lol fine. To soothe any stawpersons who might have been offended, is the idea of equality so threatening to you it deserves such a demented response? WW decided the anchoring premise of their gameline was their weirdly gnostic bible study on Genesis 4:8, and then to violate that premise just to ensure the reader understands just how 'Other' foreigners are is racist, dumb and bad.
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Jul 28, 2023 02:49
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Pakxos posted:Lol fine. To soothe any stawpersons who might have been offended, is the idea of equality so threatening to you it deserves such a demented response? Sorry, I just don't agree that it's racist, dumb, or bad to posit that the mythological creatures of the east or south aren't all from the same Bible verse. Insisting not only that there must be exactly one kind of vampire the world over but that that kind of vampire has to basically be a 1:1 match to a particular slice of Western pop culture, such that anything that stories to the contrary from across the world just stem from foreigners being confused or excitable, does not really put you on the moral high ground as far as representation and cultural sensitivity are concerned.
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Jul 28, 2023 03:01
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If vampires are derived from an event in the Bible, this is saying that Christianity is objectively/factually true in a way that other religions or attitudes are not, which is, shall we say, somewhat contentious. Now if you want to say "the Caine story may be accurate on things like 'it started in the Near East' and 'Caine received a powerful curse,'" then that's fair; and it's a fictional game so you can assert that yeah, it's a vampire game, this Christianity fan-fiction is true, while it's obviously horseshit if you're playing a werewolf game.
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Jul 28, 2023 03:10
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Did someone light the “Hot Takes Here” signal, or does the guy trolling the thread keep forgetting which account he used last? 
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Jul 28, 2023 03:11
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Nessus posted:If vampires are derived from an event in the Bible, this is saying that Christianity is objectively/factually true in a way that other religions or attitudes are not, which is, shall we say, somewhat contentious. 
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Jul 28, 2023 03:15
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AmiYumi posted:Just bring back Demon and its multifaceted reality at this point; Caine was simultaneously a real person from the Bible, a prehistoric vampire precursor/ancestor who inspired but did not live out those myths, and a metaphor for the sins of man or some poo poo
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Jul 28, 2023 03:20
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So, one of my players has gone and picked the Destiny background. Just 1-dot, so not a major focus, but still something I now need to consider because I really dislike how Destiny is implemented - its a background that vanishes arbitrarily with a somewhat muddled payout (roll its dots against difficulty 8, each success restores a point of willpower - okay? Why is it difficulty 8? There's no real balancing advantage to that over 6, since you can only do it once per session). It imposes extra work on the ST, which I don't actually mind, but the whole thing is... Unsatisfying. So: My current thinking is that Destiny automatically grows as the character involved begins to 'click' into their cosmic groove, embodying whatever role/archetype it is they're supposed to. In our case, they're a Welsh orphan who awoke spontaneously in a factory and was recovered by the Order of Hermes (hi J, stop reading this) before the Order of Reason could get their hands on him. I'm going to lay in a couple of hinted routes for them and whichever they decide to follow up will be the right one: 1. The son of a pair of Cabal of Pure Thought members who were murdered in the '37 Purge, whose mythic archetype is Peredur - an orphan who goes on to become a knight and avenge his family. 2. An alchemical homonculus created by the remnant Solificati in an attempt to restore Heylel Teomim to being, abandoned when it didn't work - with a hero's journey involving discovering his true nature, reconciling with it, and seeking the union of opposites via the overarching Return of the Craftmasons plot. 3. An oldschool changeling baby thrust back into the world of men after its fae master was deposed, with the potential to undergo the chrysalis and become a creature of terrible beauty hated and feared by the pretender changelings of Victorian Britain. 4. A secret, other, fourth thing that's here in case the player has a better idea. Whichever of the three, the more they lean into it, and the closer they come to the fateful moment respectively - avenging their parents directly; awakening as a kind of pre-Avatar Storm Anakim; undergoing a weird kind of Chrysalis, the higher the dot rating goes without more XP needing to be spent. When it does finally burn out, the initial dot + 2 points get converted into other rewards respectively - Legend as a background; a custom Anakim build; and access to DA:Fae Dominions but by then it'll likely be end-game anyway so I might play fast and loose with it. I have similarly 'hot drat' conclusions to each PC's personal storyline built up as well: - One will have the opportunity to alter time permanently by preventing his father's murder in the '37, as he's going down the Accidental Ecstatic route and the death of his father is his defining moment that set him on the road to addiction and dissipation. His alternative: accept his father's murder as necessary to the rise of Queen Victoria, who he essentially worships (to the extent he has True Faith in Her Most Brittanic Majesty's essential Goodness - it makes sense in full detail), and gain a couple of dots of Blessing that stem from the umbral reflection of The Crown and the Land. - One gets the choice to walk the leftest hand path possible and learn the Qlippothic spheres because they're basically playing the horror-show ecstatic route, or to permanently weaken the banes of addiction. (These two are fun as mirrors to each other: one is essentially a good and decent man with an addiction, the other is the guy who encourages the addiction because he enjoys seeing people spiral. He's also a heavy investor in the opium trade.) - One gets to hit Archmage spheres or sacrifice it to be reunited with their true love. He's a true Hermetic driven by the sheer love of wisdom, but a large part of that is that he nurses a broken heart and uses his quest to Know as an excuse for why he can't find a wife and move on with his life. In the end-game, unless something alters the plotlines dramatically, his lost love will be open to reconciliation and elopement at the same moment an Oracle (who will be strongly hinted to be Bonisagus himself, still alive in secret) opens their private library to him for a period of no more than a fortnight. If he juggles it right he might attain both. - The last either gets to become a kind of opium-demon (he's a complex character - motivated by revenge for what the British did to his family in Canton, he's attempting to cause a similar addiction epidemic in London. If he succeeds, he'll be empowered by it to the extent that it warps his Avatar, because its such a profoundly evil thing to do. I expect him to flinch at the reality and turn away, but we'll see.) or - with the Opium Trader above - permanently weaken the banes of addiction.
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Jul 28, 2023 03:44
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AmiYumi posted:Just bring back Demon and its multifaceted reality at this point; Caine was simultaneously a real person from the Bible, a prehistoric vampire precursor/ancestor who inspired but did not live out those myths, and a metaphor for the sins of man or some poo poo Unironically, my favorite line in any RPG is the one in Demon: the Fallen about the multilayered reality: "Michael’s weapon was a sword and a song and a carbonizing catalytic reaction. It was real on a thousand levels, a tool and a guiding principle and a fundamental element of mathematics — not just a simple weapon."
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Jul 28, 2023 04:00
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AmiYumi posted:Just bring back Demon and its multifaceted reality at this point; Caine was simultaneously a real person from the Bible, a prehistoric vampire precursor/ancestor who inspired but did not live out those myths, and a metaphor for the sins of man or some poo poo Reminding me of the cool scene in one of the Demon: The Fallen novels (and yes, they are, because Greg Stolze wrote them) where a demon winds up meeting a vampire at a diner and their reaction is both "I thought you were a myth."
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Jul 28, 2023 04:38
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I always liked Older Brother. Them and the Stargazers were my favourite tribes.Schwarzwald posted:For no reason whatsoever I feel like dropping a link to Hseinfan's excellent V20 compatible Kindred of the East: The Relentless Age available a reasonable price of "pay what you want" from the Storyteller's Vault. I bought it when previously mentionned, I like it a lot. Fuzz posted:How can you NOT put the White Savior front and center? I'm not sure I'd call Oliver thrace a white savior, since he's an ifnernalist who made a deal with Mikaboshi and ruins everything. A White Antechrist? There's gotta be a word for the reverse white savior who turns out to be better at villainy.
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Jul 28, 2023 05:05
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MonsieurChoc posted:I'm not sure I'd call Oliver thrace a white savior, since he's an ifnernalist who made a deal with Mikaboshi and ruins everything. A White Antechrist? There's gotta be a word for the reverse white savior who turns out to be better at villainy. 
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Jul 28, 2023 05:09
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Octavo posted:Unironically, my favorite line in any RPG is the one in Demon: the Fallen about the multilayered reality: "Michael’s weapon was a sword and a song and a carbonizing catalytic reaction. It was real on a thousand levels, a tool and a guiding principle and a fundamental element of mathematics — not just a simple weapon." Demon did some good stuff, had maybe the best ending of any line, and managed an impressive feat: Being insulting to literally every single religion on the planet. Are you part of the Abrahamic trinity? Congrats, your metaphysical patron is literally Satan! Do you hold any other religious belief? Your gods are demons! Are you an atheist? You are spiritually dead!
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Jul 28, 2023 06:47
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I Am Just a Box posted:Not only is the suggestion that a Mekhet and a Nosferatu are not fundamentally the same type of creature in origin, but there is a suggestion that even a Mekhet and a Mekhet do not always share a lineage to a shared predecessor. There are likely multiple circumstances which can generate a vampire with the traits recognized as those of a given clan. It might even be that there are clans with slight distinctions that are so phenotypically similar that they are treated as a single clan. This. The Mekhet are at least three unrelated sorts of Vampire who resemble each other enough to be called a Clan.
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Jul 28, 2023 07:18
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Chernobyl Peace Prize posted:Plot hook for a VtR game where everyone's chasing down a book of embrace lineages that proves no one's more than 4 generations old and most of the older entries are made up anyway This would even make a lot of sense considering the archetypes many of them embody aren't even as old as radio.
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Jul 28, 2023 07:36
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Nessus posted:If vampires are derived from an event in the Bible, this is saying that Christianity is objectively/factually true in a way that other religions or attitudes are not, which is, shall we say, somewhat contentious. Technically speaking the Cain and Abel story is not only a Christian thing.
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Jul 28, 2023 09:57
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It is a shame how little material there is about Vampire religions that are based on other religions than Christianity. There is that group of Muslim Kindred trying to find and protect vampires who were around during the time of the Prophet, and I think that's a really fun idea. It shows how a set of beliefs for humans gets changed when it has to fit the realities of being an immortal blood-sucker. I consider the myth of Caine to be a similarly syncretic. Early Christians finding their undead condition not fitting with their previously held beliefs, so they come up with new myths based on what they already believe. The myth of Caine is not more true than other vampire creation myths, but since most of the VtM media is Eurocentric, Caine gets more attention than other vampire creation myths. I'm not sure if all the published material supports this interpretation, but that's how I roll with it.
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Jul 28, 2023 10:18
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Unfortunately mostly because writers usually can't be arsed to do much research on their own and we've seen what happens when they bring on genuine cultural consultants. A pity because there's real interesting ground there, like the Castlevania show having the demon forgemaster who's a Sufi Muslim, and considers his craft with Muhammed's prophecy that one day Hell would be empty. Also because picturing vampires having doctrinal arguments is loving hilarious. The Lancea Sanctum and Circle of the Crone absolutely come out of their debates with some great new terrible ideas.
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Jul 28, 2023 10:36
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Lord Hypnostache posted:It is a shame how little material there is about Vampire religions that are based on other religions than Christianity. There is that group of Muslim Kindred trying to find and protect vampires who were around during the time of the Prophet, and I think that's a really fun idea. It shows how a set of beliefs for humans gets changed when it has to fit the realities of being an immortal blood-sucker. Yeah, I am currently doing that whole song and dance of "chronicle begins in VDA and has a chapter each century" thingie in Tuscany and I've had the Caine Myth as the dominant thing among Christian Kindred, but the Lancea Sanctum and their origin myth is also there and the pre-Christian vampires (and their more indocrinated childer) mostly believe they are descendents of Hellenic Gods (Venus being the creator for the Ventrue in their Requiem clanbook gave me this idea, also the Setites themselves). I am definitely having a lot more fun with it than if I stuck with the objective truth of Caine being the founder. I do kind of feel this is one of those things that were meant to be an option/example myth in early VtM (like the Prince city structure) that ended up becoming calcified as Truth as the line developed, but hey, at least it gave us Caine and Lilith holding a backalley goku-fight between their demigod kids, featuring Lucifer and Abel.
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Jul 28, 2023 11:04
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Nessus posted:If vampires are derived from an event in the Bible, this is saying that Christianity is objectively/factually true in a way that other religions or attitudes are not, which is, shall we say, somewhat contentious. I ran a game where this was somewhat avoided with clear links or historical evidence that matched the Book of Nod narrative a fair bit, but also the presence of undeniable/unexplainable features which indicated it's either less than a 100% accurate or that eventually something must have occurred after all those were written.
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Jul 28, 2023 11:10
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YggdrasilTM posted:Technically speaking the Cain and Abel story is not only a Christian thing. While this is true, if you think Masquerade cared or understood annything about Judaism at all, I have a lovely bridge for sale. It cared a bit more about Islam because Assamites, but understood none of it.
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Jul 28, 2023 16:24
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ZearothK posted:Yeah, I am currently doing that whole song and dance of "chronicle begins in VDA and has a chapter each century" thingie in Tuscany and I've had the Caine Myth as the dominant thing among Christian Kindred, but the Lancea Sanctum and their origin myth is also there and the pre-Christian vampires (and their more indocrinated childer) mostly believe they are descendents of Hellenic Gods (Venus being the creator for the Ventrue in their Requiem clanbook gave me this idea, also the Setites themselves). I am definitely having a lot more fun with it than if I stuck with the objective truth of Caine being the founder. Speaking of Lilith, I enjoy the Dark Mother book and all the cults which surround her, viewing her as the true origin of vampires and Cain as a rear end in a top hat pretender. Far as I know, VTM never settled on any canon about who/what exactly she is.
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Jul 28, 2023 16:38
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Mors Rattus posted:While this is true, if you think Masquerade cared or understood annything about Judaism at all, I have a lovely bridge for sale. It cared a bit more about Islam because Assamites, but understood none of it. It's not even super clear on Christianity.
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Jul 28, 2023 18:33
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I remember Veil of Night being clearly better researched than most previous Vampire book about Islam.
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Jul 28, 2023 19:46
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Dawgstar posted:It's not even super clear on Christianity. The whole thing was the byproduct of a Malkavian grave robbery, if I remember well.
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Jul 28, 2023 20:36
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MonsieurChoc posted:I remember Veil of Night being clearly better researched than most previous Vampire book about Islam. I might be mentally smooshing together the experience of reading rpg books while taking said classes, I honestly can’t remember
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Jul 28, 2023 20:38
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