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Lord_Hambrose posted:New Reckoning is too boring to even discuss. I mean the only good thing come out of it is hunter the parenting. Though I'd admit it shares more of its DNA with hunters hunted. Although I did hear that the supplment actually goes agenst the tone of the core books...
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Apr 20, 2024 00:27
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citybeatnik posted:I still can't quite get the "how dare they expect you to punch people when playing the Punching People Clan" outrage I see crop up. There's plenty of other things to be upset about. Being cursed by the Christian God should be a bit of a bummer sometimes! Being forced to be an unnatural predator isn't great for your self control.
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Apr 20, 2024 00:28
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I'm hoping someone can help me find some old game stories. They were by someone who either consulted for or directly worked on Mage the Awakening, were extraordinarily well written, and part 3 (where the narrative at the time stopped) had the veil of disbelief start to crumble after Koschei the Deathless launched a spirit rocket to pierce the heavens in part 2. Does that ring any bells?
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Apr 20, 2024 00:32
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Dave Brookshaw's influential Broken Diamond and Soul Cage actual plays, which preceded his rise to Mage the Awakening developer and design of Mage Second Edition? Edit: I knew I was forgetting a third one I Am Just a Box fucked around with this message at 00:45 on Apr 20, 2024 |
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Apr 20, 2024 00:41
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That's Dave B's The Broken Diamond, Soul Cage, and The Man Comes Around. I think there are PDFs floating around too, which is a better way to read them, so I'll see if I can find those. TMCA will forever be unfinished, IIRC the game ended for various reasons and the writeups stopped happening even before then, but The Soul Cage is genuinely maybe my favourite piece of Urban Fantasy fiction, all things considered.
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Apr 20, 2024 00:43
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citybeatnik posted:I still can't quite get the "how dare they expect you to punch people when playing the Punching People Clan" outrage I see crop up. There's plenty of other things to be upset about. We've - like literally you and me - discussed this at some length, but if you want to pretend otherwise, that's fine by me. In the first place, its just a poor game design; the mechanic is disruptive and annoying, and you can tell because people have scads of advice for how best to downplay or ignore it. But in the second place, it's extremely reactionary, and exactly an exponent of Ericsson's desire to return Vampire to a prelapsarian past in which men were men, women were women, and Brujah were whiny poseurs who protest all the time but just don't know what they even want. Over a de facto four editions, Masquerade took a bunch of pretty crude (in several senses) ideas and developed them into pretty interesting characters and factions despite the immediate source material. Swedracula sees this and recoils. It's too easy to play against type (and he doesn't even understand what the types are or to what extent they're diegetic)! Slap Ravnos with dice penalties unless they're clutching roses in their teeth!
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Apr 20, 2024 01:14
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cptn_dr posted:That's Dave B's The Broken Diamond, Soul Cage, and The Man Comes Around. I cannot express how sad finding out that the big apocalypse doesn't properly end makes me.
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Apr 20, 2024 01:15
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Ferrinus posted:We've - like literally you and me - discussed this at some length, but if you want to pretend otherwise, that's fine by me. We have discussed this in the past, yes. It was a shitpost at your remark to Fuzz since I continue to not see the actual issue being the one you're bringing up. It's lovely game design held together by how blood resonances influence game mechanics. We are in agreement there. I do not agree, using Brujah as an example, that the clan that has historically been "gently caress you" and would need to be feeding from choleric people to learn two of their clan powers still being "gently caress you" is the same as racism.
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Apr 20, 2024 01:26
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citybeatnik posted:We have discussed this in the past, yes. It was a shitpost at your remark to Fuzz since I continue to not see the actual issue being the one you're bringing up. Because the clan HASN'T historically been "gently caress you". It's historically been susceptible to anger frenzy. The radical politics of some Brujah were a result of historical contingency and prejudiced behavior by other vampires. V5 says, no, your personality is a bloodborne disease and the reason people stereotype you is that you just can't help yourself. Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 01:38 on Apr 20, 2024 |
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Apr 20, 2024 01:36
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Going all the way back to Triole bumblefucking around in the Second City it was as much self-control issues as anger. That's part of the interplay between the Idealists and the Iconoclasts. And part of that prejudicial behavior from vampires was due to, among other things, Triole's lack of self control turning Carthage in to a Baali playground. And, again, what the gently caress does any of that have to do with racism and it somehow being worse in v5?
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Apr 20, 2024 01:46
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Troile's general issues with impulsiveness and lack of self-control DIDN'T redound on the rest of the Brujah, is the thing. Vampires, in-character, liked to say they did, because vampires are as likely as mortals to explain behavior as springing inevitably and inescapably from your bloodline rather than from your upbringing and material circumstances. But this wasn't true... until V5. Swedracula didn't like the kind of character diversity that sprang from taking a materialistic outlook on the setting, so he crushed it. Then some people with better PR instincts did a "triggered" -> "rebellious" find/replace. This is, on its own, racist in the same way as orcs are in D&D despite not literally mapping 1-to-1 onto any existing human ethnicity. It's just inherently right wing, and we know what right wing politics found themselves on. But then you notice that the Ravnos burn from inside out if they fail to be sufficiently nomadic and realize that V5 has cornered both sides of the market. Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 02:20 on Apr 20, 2024 |
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Apr 20, 2024 02:08
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Your arguments would make more sense with me if you went with "v5's development cycle and launch included some very reactionary themes that are deeply troubling, such as the compulsion being originally 'Triggered'." That tracks and I can follow and in fact agree. I would even nod and understand if you said that, due to said issues, you do not feel comfortable playing this edition. However. Clan is not a race or an ethnicity. It is a literal curse and a social identity. Your cultural heritage doesn't get overridden when you're Embraced and the dustfarters that have been around long enough to forget those mortal touchstones are both outside of character creation and presented as borderline monsters. Clan-as-Class is weak game design perhaps but if you want to easilly roll a punchman then you're going to look at the clans that specialize in punching dudes. Or you can look at a not-Punching Dudes clan and roll with that. Playing a Brujah is not like playing on orc. It is like playing a particular class. If for some unfathomable reason an orc (or, god help us, an Ork) got Embraced as one then all of the things that made them an orc (or elf, or human, or whatever) happened during their mortal days and thus were covered when you were allocating Attributes and Abilities. *That's* the part that you lose me at. V5 is reactionary as gently caress if not handled with care but it is nowhere near as racist as the editions that gave us Icebox the chubby 13yo LA inner-city kid turned dead-eyed Anarch Brujah enforcer. gently caress, didn't v20 still have the Giovanni minor family that were a literal cabal of Jewish bankers?
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Apr 20, 2024 02:34
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OPAONI posted:I cannot express how sad finding out that the big apocalypse doesn't properly end makes me. Yeah although my vison of a post apocalyptic wod is basically the City from the project moon shared universe so I'm a bit of werido.
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Apr 20, 2024 03:28
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citybeatnik posted:Your arguments would make more sense with me if you went with "v5's development cycle and launch included some very reactionary themes that are deeply troubling, such as the compulsion being originally 'Triggered'." That tracks and I can follow and in fact agree. I would even nod and understand if you said that, due to said issues, you do not feel comfortable playing this edition. "Triggered" never went away. V5's Brujah, and specifically V5's Brujah - not V20's or Revised's - are a direct, focused, and successful punch left, a marriage of radical politics to childish obstinacy. You keep saying "the punching clan", but that's not the issue here. Brujah are the punching clan because they have Potence and Celerity, and that's been true in every edition of Masquerade. There are better designs out there, but I don't care. It's fine that, and I am not complaining that, Brujah have high DPS and a penalty to resist anger frenzy (such that they're more likely to do that DPS at inopportune times). However, Brujah are also the utopian philosophy and radical politics clan. They are generally understood to chafe against the ruling political order, harken back to the supposedly-egalitarian society of Carthage, etc. In that new V5 supplement about blood sorcery, there's a line about some vampires thinking a magical computer will give them the formula to create a Brujah worker's state. Why is it a Brujah worker's state? Well, because while VtM features class-as-clan, which is fine, it also features class-as-political-party, -high-school-clique, and -race, and kind of kludges all those things together. Now, both players and writers of various editions of VtM realized that this is stupid. Why does every Brujah hate authority and long for revolution? The answer is, they actually don't. What every Brujah does is have a facility with Potence and a difficulty resisting anger frenzy. But they don't all automatically chafe against authority and rebel for the sake of rebelling, because that's ridiculous. In fact, when people rebel against authority, it is often because they have very good reasons, or at least have been backed into the kind of corner that leaves them with no other choice. The idea that rebels are just, you know, like that, they've just got oppositional defiance disorder, they just hate rules out of sheer childish petulance, is specifically held by right-wingers about BLM protesters, Occupy Wall Street people, and organizers against the genocide in Gaza. If we were in the era of Revised or V20, a critique of VtM could say something like "What, so all Brujah are anarchist rebels? Like being embraced just decides your personality? That's stupid." But fans of the setting could be like, actually, no, that's just a stereotype about the Brujah held by (some) other vampires, and in fact there are all kinds of Brujah, including Brujah who use their incredible strength and unstable tempers to defend power and the status quo rather than rebel against it. ...but you couldn't say that about V5. V5 smooshes the Brujah back in their 1e-just-came-out box. These rebellious punks really do just stupidly and pointlessly chafe against authority and refuse any orders or suggestions for no reason whatsoever. Ghost Armor 1337 posted:Yeah although my vison of a post apocalyptic wod is basically the City from the project moon shared universe so I'm a bit of werido. It's basically my group's cyberunk nWoD setting. Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 03:36 on Apr 20, 2024 |
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Apr 20, 2024 03:33
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It was something hammerred home throughout Revised that vampires are Vampires first, members of Clan second.
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Apr 20, 2024 03:46
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I'm going to be honest: None of this especially makes me want to pick up V5, because its all still mired in Swedracula's horse poo poo. I already have a lovely problematic vampire game to rehabilitate.
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Apr 20, 2024 03:47
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Ferrinus posted:Words What does any of that have to do with how v20 exists in a quantum superposition of being both less racist than V5 and still having, among other major issues, the Rothsteins? *edit* Loomer posted:I'm going to be honest: None of this especially makes me want to pick up V5, because its all still mired in Swedracula's horse poo poo. I already have a lovely problematic vampire game to rehabilitate. That's more than fair. The only reason I'm in the games I am using it is due to my long history with my fellow former New Bremen STs. *another edit* Your Uncle Dracula posted:If you two have gone through all this before, why relitigate it. Clearly nobody is going to change their mind. I mean, if Dracula himself wants me to drop it in the vampire thread who am I to disobey? (but yeah, solid point, i'll stop) citybeatnik fucked around with this message at 03:54 on Apr 20, 2024 |
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Apr 20, 2024 03:49
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If you two have gone through all this before, why relitigate it. Clearly nobody is going to change their mind. e: Iron Edict Your Uncle Dracula fucked around with this message at 09:12 on Apr 20, 2024 |
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Apr 20, 2024 03:52
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citybeatnik posted:What does any of that have to do with how v20 exists in a quantum superposition of being both less racist than V5 and still having, among other major issues, the Rothsteins? Even the Rothsteins don't have a bloodborne compulsion to amass wealth or corrupt people's morals. On the other hand, several of the V5 clans do! Now, obviously, I think it's best to just sweep this stuff away and play Requiem. But V5 doesn't sweep it away; in fact, it clutches it to its breast, and whispers reassuringly that it never need fear being critiqued or recontextualized again.
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Apr 20, 2024 04:11
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immortal foes repeating their ideological battle in a continuous cycle, neither learning nor yielding, as the world moves on around them? sounds pretty WoD.
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Apr 20, 2024 04:13
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Ferrinus posted:It's basically my group's cyberunk nWoD setting. Yeah let's talk about that setting Rather than going on about semantics. thatbastardken posted:immortal foes repeating their ideological battle in a continuous cycle, neither learning nor yielding, as the world moves on around them? sounds pretty WoD. Yes let's all agree that v5 suck and move on.
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Apr 20, 2024 08:00
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quote:TMCA will forever be unfinished, IIRC the game ended for various reasons One of my players had a stroke. The AP stopped for writing workload reasons a out halfway through what we did play. The Cabal figured out the central Mystery - they were in a branch timeline created when the archmaster from Broken Diamond attempted to do his part of the big apocalypse end scenario from Soul Cage by preventing the Vegas Tetrarch of Mammon from becoming the Minister, which he was supposed to do by sacrificing the son he'd had with one of the pcs. Unfortunately, the agent the archmaster had recruited to be his kyle reese had gone significantly off message and made other changes, including making another PC not be executed as a Banisher, and he was periodically flashing jnto his proper temporal state (that of a two year old corpse). Two extra players joined, played by the people who were Wolsey and Kali in Broken Diamond. The gang were off to see the Aeons to see if they could figure out a plan, and then Wolsey's players' brain hemmorraged. (He's fine. It just took long enough for him to be so that the group moved on)
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Apr 20, 2024 08:47
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Ferrinus posted:However, Brujah are also the utopian philosophy and radical politics clan. They are generally understood to chafe against the ruling political order, harken back to the supposedly-egalitarian society of Carthage, etc. Here's my attempt to square the circle: A Brujah's flaw is tied to an innate rejection of how static vampiric existence is. Something about their specific flavour of the curse means that this stasis wears at what's left at their soul, and this frustration is turned outwards in a higher likelihood of frenzy. This also seems to have lead to an increased amount of Brujah with an interest in altering the world around them to fit an ideal - though of course no matter the ideal, it is always out of reach. From revolutionaries against the status quo, to midnight philosophers building Vampiric ethical frameworks, to heavy handed enforcers dedicated to stamping out rebellion against the Camarilla, many Brujah are dynamic figures attempting to impose their will on the world. Some whisper that this too is an externalisation of their curse, that the Brujah act as agents of change as a doomed way of soothing their unconscious frustration at their own undying state. There. Your Brujah hook is "I want to change things", and it's up to the player how exactly that's expressed (for example, perfecting an existing system is still change because perfection is impossible). Also whatever it is, it's probably a doomed and foolish endeavour anyway. Gravitas Shortfall fucked around with this message at 23:07 on Apr 20, 2024 |
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Apr 20, 2024 23:04
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Citybeatnik is right, Clans aren't races. Each clan has an archetype and personality because sires pick childe that match their own ideals. Fangz Mohawk isn't going to embrace some ultra-capitalist investment banker, they'd embrace the biker who protects their town from corrupt city officials or the investigative journalist exposing a major corporations crimes. It makes perfect sense that the vast majority of a clan would be aligned in their ideals. This isn't to say that you can't play an ultra-capitalist investment banker Brujah, but imo you'd need a pretty good explanation for why a Brujah would embrace someone who fundamentally opposes the ideals of pretty much every other Brujah ever.
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Apr 21, 2024 01:10
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Nephthys posted:Citybeatnik is right, Clans aren't races. Each clan has an archetype and personality because sires pick childe that match their own ideals. Fangz Mohawk isn't going to embrace some ultra-capitalist investment banker, they'd embrace the biker who protects their town from corrupt city officials or the investigative journalist exposing a major corporations crimes. It makes perfect sense that the vast majority of a clan would be aligned in their ideals. What do you think Brujah elders are?
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Apr 21, 2024 01:14
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MonsieurChoc posted:What do you think Brujah elders are? holdovers from the times when investment bankers were also revolutionaries
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Apr 21, 2024 01:15
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Mister Olympus posted:holdovers from the times when investment bankers were also revolutionaries
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Apr 21, 2024 03:01
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Nessus posted:This makes me imagine Adam Smith Embracing Karl Marx. Don't give away such good character concepts for free.
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Apr 21, 2024 04:11
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Dave Brookshaw posted:One of my players had a stroke. Oof, I'm glad he's doing well. That would kill a game stone dead, nothing but good vibes for all involved.
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Apr 21, 2024 04:35
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Nephthys posted:Citybeatnik is right, Clans aren't races. Each clan has an archetype and personality because sires pick childe that match their own ideals. Fangz Mohawk isn't going to embrace some ultra-capitalist investment banker, they'd embrace the biker who protects their town from corrupt city officials or the investigative journalist exposing a major corporations crimes. It makes perfect sense that the vast majority of a clan would be aligned in their ideals. Giant homogenized blocks make for bad drama though. If anytime a Brujah comes on screen I know what they are about and literally what actions they might be forced to take, it lops off potentially interesting stories.
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Apr 21, 2024 16:33
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Gravitas Shortfall posted:Here's my attempt to square the circle: This is a good attempt and basically successful at its aims, but I think it's in defense of a fundamentally flawed premise and therefore bad in the final accounting of things or, at best, a waste of time. What I mean is, Swedracula writes his first draft and is like, Brujah are whiny SJWs, haw haw! I'll make them roll to save against getting triggered! Someone a little more self-aware takes a look at this, pinches their nose as they sigh to themselves, and puts a fresh coat of paint on it. Brujah aren't triggered, they're, uh, anti-authoritarian. They just hate being told what to do. They're very obstinate. They love freedom and independence. This, obviously, is still stupid. So you come along and basically perform the above function on its own output, such that the Brujah clan compulsion becomes one step more abstract. Now they hate stasis and love change, which incidentally makes them act like whiny, petulant children periodically but of course looks a lot fancier and more respectable on paper. But my question is this: why would we prefer any version of this to not having a clan compulsion, which is how Clan Brujah worked in V20, Revised, etc? Why is it better to plug a microchip into the back of every Brujah's head to make sure they act out their clan stereotype a minimum percentage of the time? Nephthys posted:Citybeatnik is right, Clans aren't races. Each clan has an archetype and personality because sires pick childe that match their own ideals. Fangz Mohawk isn't going to embrace some ultra-capitalist investment banker, they'd embrace the biker who protects their town from corrupt city officials or the investigative journalist exposing a major corporations crimes. It makes perfect sense that the vast majority of a clan would be aligned in their ideals. Okay, but you can construct a pretty good explanation for why a Brujah would embrace a stodgy investment banker. Now what? The answer is, of course, the writer + fan consensus developed over the lifetime of 2E/Revised, which distinguishes between the innate, bloodborne properties of the Brujah (like facility with Potence) and the typical personality and politics of the Brujah (which can be anything at all, because Brujah are people). But V5 doesn't like that, so it veers much more sharply back into the simplistic and unrefined 1e era assumptions that, in fact, your clan is (a proxy for) your race, as well as your political party, and religion, and economic class, and nation of origin, and high school clique, and career, and- Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 18:53 on Apr 21, 2024 |
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Apr 21, 2024 18:45
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Pakxos posted:Giant homogenized blocks make for bad drama though. If anytime a Brujah comes on screen I know what they are about and literally what actions they might be forced to take, it lops off potentially interesting stories. Not at all, like Citybeatnik said Clans are equivalent to classes in other games. It isn't bad drama to expect a Druid to be in touch with nature or a Wizard to study magic. That's literally what those classes are based on. In the same vein, Brujah are a clan made up of rebels. That's what the concept of the clan is based on and what helps people generate their characters based around that archetype. You pick a Brujah because you want to play as a rebel, nobody is forcing you to do it. Why are you playing a Brujah if you don't want to play as a member of that clan? If you just want Potence and Celerity without fulfilling the clan archetype, play a different clan that has those with an archetype you prefer. The selection is broad enough that you can easily find a clan you prefer if you don't want to play a Brujah. If you can play any kind of character with any clan with no justifiable reason then theres no point in the clans even existing. You might as well just pick the Disciplines you want and everyone is just a generic "Vampire". Which would make it a competely different, and far inferior, game. Though I'll note that option does exist if you really want it. Ferrinus posted:Okay, but you can construct a pretty good explanation for why a Brujah would embrace a stodgy investment banker. Now what? Sure, theres something to be said against deliberately playing against type. If someone wanted to make a Brujah who is such a rebel that he rebels against his own sire and rejects the very idea of what a Brujah is "supposed" to be to go work on Wall Street then that's great. But that only works as a concept because the Brujah archetype already exists. If the rules on playing a Brujah or any clan for that metter were "just play whatever you want, who cares" then that idea doesn't really work and the system falls apart. Incorrect, clan has nothing to do with race. It is group of hand selected people who were selected to share the same blood because they share the same ideals. It isn't a stereotype to say that all the members of the Big Butts Society love big butts. You literally have to love big butts to get into the Big Butts Society! Thats the only way you can get in! For the same reason, a Brujah wouldn't embrace someone who has nothing in common with the rest of their clan, they specifically go out and find people who are Brujah-material to embrace. The vast majority of Brujah therefore are rebels because the Brujah embrace rebels. Just like with every other clan. Nobody is born a vampire, you have to get picked to become one because you exibit traits your clan is looking for.
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Apr 21, 2024 19:20
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Nephthys posted:Incorrect, clan has nothing to do with race. It is group of hand selected people who were selected to share the same blood because they share the same ideals. It isn't a stereotype to say that all the members of the Big Butts Society love big butts. You literally have to love big butts to get into the Big Butts Society! Thats the only way you can get in! For the same reason, a Brujah wouldn't embrace someone who has nothing in common with the rest of their clan, they specifically go out and find people who are Brujah-material to embrace. The vast majority of Brujah therefore are rebels because the Brujah embrace rebels. Just like with every other clan. Nobody is born a vampire, you have to get picked to become one because you exibit traits your clan is looking for. This is just flatly wrong. Vampires aren't actually hand-selected, but in fact get embraced for all sorts of reasons, like because someone got mad, or got drunk, or fell in love. It's not true, and has never been true, even from the very first release of the very first Vampire book, that every single Brujah was vetted to make sure they were some kind of petulant rebel poseur before they were embraced. To repeat myself, that's stupid. If we're going to take the setting seriously, we can't actually make that assumption, but need to ask ourselves what would actually happen in a world with vampires in it. But also, separately, this doesn't matter at all, because clan compulsions are mechanics for vampire characters, not human characters. Does an angry rebellious biker who's a mortal take -2 dice unless he refuses someone's orders? No. On the other hand, a stodgy investment banker who's embraced Brujah does (sometimes) take -2 dice unless he refuses someone's orders. Clan compulsions explicitly and expressly come from your vampire blood, not your mortal life, or else there would be mechanics forcing your character's personality to conform with the one they had as a mortal, which there aren't. So the stuff you're saying doesn't even relate or make sense in the context of this discussion. Finally, "fighter" is a character class, but "rebel" is not. Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 19:34 on Apr 21, 2024 |
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Apr 21, 2024 19:32
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From a narrative perspective, you can't really have characters that play against type unless there is a type to play against. Vampire is a roleplaying game of telling particular kinds of stories, not a simulation of reality. Not that everyone must slavishly adhere to the stereotypes at every turn, or for that matter reject every aspect for them. When an npc is wildly against type it is likely for a particular narrative reason, even if that reason is don't assume every Brujah is like your sire told you about .
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Apr 21, 2024 19:43
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Ferrinus posted:This is just flatly wrong. Vampires aren't actually hand-selected, but in fact get embraced for all sorts of reasons, like because someone got mad, or got drunk, or fell in love. It's not true, and has never been true, even from the very first release of the very first Vampire book, that every single Brujah was vetted to make sure they were some kind of petulant rebel poseur before they were embraced. To repeat myself, that's stupid. If we're going to take the setting seriously, we can't actually make that assumption, but need to ask ourselves what would actually happen in a world with vampires in it. As minor exceptions maybe, hence why I've been saying its the vast majority instead of all. And why I've been saying that there is nothing wrong with you wanting to play as a character who goes against your clans archetype if theres a solid and compelling reason behind it. It isn't stupid however to expect a clan of people where the vast majority of them were selected because they were rebellious, to mostly be rebellious. Frankly, it would be really stupid if they weren't and defeat the entire point of a "clan" in the first place. I'm actually curious on what you think a clan should be? Just a group of random people with no connection in ideology or personality at all? A book club where you don't even have to read books if you don't want to? Just a pure stat block of Celerity, Potence and Presence? I haven't mentioned clan compulsions because I don't give a poo poo about them and have no skin in that area of the argument. The only things I take issue with is relating clan to race and that clan archetypes are detremental and stupid. "In role-playing games (RPGs), character classes aggregate several abilities and aptitudes, and may also detail aspects of background and social standing, or impose behavior restrictions." Both Fighter and Brujah adher to this definition. Nephthys fucked around with this message at 20:10 on Apr 21, 2024 |
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Apr 21, 2024 20:07
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Nephthys posted:As minor exceptions maybe, hence why I've been saying its the vast majority instead of all. And why I've been saying that there is nothing wrong with you wanting to play as a character who goes against your clans archetype if theres a solid and compelling reason behind it. It isn't stupid however to expect a clan of people where the vast majority of them were selected because they were rebellious, to mostly be rebellious. Frankly, it would be really stupid if they weren't and defeat the entire point of a "clan" in the first place. I'm actually curious on what you think a clan should be? Just a group of random people with no connection in ideology or personality at all? A book club where you don't even have to read books if you don't want to? Just a pure stat block of Celerity, Potence and Presence? In 1st edition D&D, Fighter and Magic-User were classes. Someone might say to you, I want to play a Magic-User who doesn't use magic, can I do that? You'd tell them, what's your loving problem, buddy? The rules are right there. But here's the the thing. You know what else were classes? Elf and Dwarf. Someone might tell you, hey, I want to play an elf who doesn't use magic, can I do that? And you tell them the exact same thing as above. Because, in the beginning of D&D, class was race. "Fighter" was misleading. When you put "Fighter" on your sheet, what you were actually picking was "Human, Male Fighter" because it turned out there were a bunch of extra rules that applied if your character was an elf, or, even more outrageously, a woman. Now, as D&D developed and expanded, people started to ask questions like, but, seriously, does every elf cast spells as an Xth-level magic user? And the answer, obviously, is no, because it'd be stupid if they did, and that's how we get the disambiguation of race and class and background and whatever else that you see in modern D&D and D&D-likes. Then, on the other hand, you have the OSR, which will often have people being like "gently caress this, I want to go back to the days where 'Dwarf' was a character class and if you picked Dwarf then you're a grouchy heavily-armored fighter who holds grudges because that's what dwarves DO, okay, that's what they ARE, why would you play a dwarf if you didn't want that?" This is the essential project of 5th edition VtM. In Revised, you don't pick Brujah to "be rebellious". You pick Brujah precisely to be part of a lineage of vampires who, on the one hand, have certain inborn supernatural capabilities and weaknesses, and on the other hand, have a particular historical place in the setting that shapes other character's perceptions. It's for very good reason that Requiem clans are specifically about "what kind of vampire are you" rather than "what kind of person are you" because attempting to make artist clans, rich person clans, and Roma clans isn't just offensive but fundamentally even works; you will always get the equivalent of people asking why there aren't some dwarf wizards or elf clerics, and you will always get the kind of expansion and elaboration that VtM itself enjoyed for the majority of its lifespan, that is to say, people who are trying to disambiguate character class from other character aspects like gender, religion, race, or politics. But V5 smooshes them all back together, and uses "Brujah" as a character class precisely in the same way that Gygax used "Elf" as a character class.
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Apr 21, 2024 20:47
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Nephthys posted:As minor exceptions maybe, hence why I've been saying its the vast majority instead of all. And why I've been saying that there is nothing wrong with you wanting to play as a character who goes against your clans archetype if theres a solid and compelling reason behind it. It isn't stupid however to expect a clan of people where the vast majority of them were selected because they were rebellious, to mostly be rebellious. Frankly, it would be really stupid if they weren't and defeat the entire point of a "clan" in the first place. I'm actually curious on what you think a clan should be? Just a group of random people with no connection in ideology or personality at all? A book club where you don't even have to read books if you don't want to? Just a pure stat block of Celerity, Potence and Presence? My take on "clans as classes" is further colored by how you have poo poo like "paladins keep oaths" and "druids don't like wearing metal". And if you want to play against type you can, all it involves is working in the how and why into your back story. And i'm going to go out on a limb here and say that, no, crappy mechanics behind clan compulsions does not make an edition more racist than "here's a group of literal blood drinking Jewish bankers manipulating from the shadows".
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Apr 21, 2024 21:26
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The blood drinking Jewish bankers are still in the drat game! Why else did Ericsson insist on returning to the version of Vampire that has Malkavians and Giovanni and Setites in it? It's conspiracies of lizardmen pulling the strings of world leaders all the way down, that's the big difference between oWoD and nWoD, between Masquerade and Requiem. 5 makes it worse by applying "you have -2 dice to all actions until you corrupt an innocent" or "you have -2 dice to all actions until you increase your wealth" status effects to certain kinds of character. "Paladins keep oaths" and "druids don't like wearing metal" are excellent examples of what we're talking about here, because all you need to do is compare what paladin and druid class restrictions look like in 4th or 5th edition D&D compared to 1st edition D&D to see what decades of fan feedback and design have done to typical D&D character classes compared to how those character classes started out. For example, back in the day, only humans could be paladins, so something being your "character class" also made that something your character's race! They don't do that any more. But Swedracula wishes they did!
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Apr 21, 2024 22:30
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Could you two just stop with the vamp talk and movie on to something else? Like what the hell would happen wod IP if/when bloodlines 2 flopped. I personally hope GW buy up the rights. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Apr 21, 2024 22:45
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Sorry, but talking about games is just more fun than talking about brands. If anyone wants something else to chew on, though, here's a progress report on my ongoing attempt to play an FF14 black mage in Awakening: Aspect Nimbus (Prime ••••, Patterning, Potency): Transfigure the nimbus, changing how spells interact with Mana. The caster chooses Astral or Umbral, and gains a benefit on the next [Potency] spells they attempt to cast. Once all its Potency has been consumed, this spell ends. Astral: The spell costs 1 additional Mana but gains +1 Potency. Umbral: On 3+ successes, gain 1 Mana upon casting the spell. Cost: 1 Mana +1 Reach: Choose on a per-spell basis whether to apply this spell’s effect. +1 Reach: Cast this spell reflexively, but only to change from one mode to the other. +1 Reach: Instead grant aspect the nimbus of another character, who may Withstand with Resolve. Enochian (Prime ••••, Patterning; Potency): Enter a trance in which one can think and speak only in High Speech, becoming able to use the High Speech yantra reflexively. At the subject’s choice, a number of times equal to Enochian’s Potency, a spell cast with High Speech enjoys the 8-again property and gains +1 Potency if at least 3 successes are rolled, as though on an exceptional success. If an actual exceptional success is scored, the spell gains +1 Potency and a second, different benefit. Cost: 1 Mana +1 Reach: Cast Enochian as a reflexive action, but only on the same turn that Enochian has granted a spell bonus Potency. +1 Reach: Instead grant Enochian to another character, who may Withstand with Resolve. +2 Reach, 1 Mana: Enochian can grant a ritual spell the rote action quality as well as 8-again, but doubles the casting time in so doing. Leylines (Prime •••, Perfecting/Weaving; Potency): Form magical energy into a circle of power that lasts this spell’s Duration. While in the circle, the caster can shape spells with unusual speed; their Gnosis-derived ritual time interval shrinks to its next category (one minute becomes thirty seconds), and, once per instant spell, they can trade a turn’s movement to incorporate a second reflexive Yantra into their casting. The circle’s visibility matches that of its user’s immediate nimbus. Cost: 1 Mana + 1 more Mana per Scale factor (or 5 more Mana per Advanced Scale factor). Withstand: The total Arcanum dots required for any spell the circle enhances +1 Reach: The spell enhances the casting of a different mage than the caster. +2 Reach: If atop an existing leyline node, cast the spell as a reflexive action.
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Apr 22, 2024 00:01
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