Decline So Vampire: The Masquerade 5e is going to be a thing.

[Caim]

That fucking font.

At first I thought it was Korean or some shit.

 

[Xathrodox86]

Ahhh the best and brightest of the World of Darkness. The only organisation with a semi-righteous agenda. Peace through absolute control.

 

[Stainless Veteran]

Ahhh the best and brightest of the World of Darkness. The only organisation with a semi-righteous agenda. Peace through absolute control.

Yep, I never liked Traditions. Some lacked the defining characteristics - to this day I don't get the significant difference between Dreamspeakers and Verbena. Some were downright retarded (fucking Hollow Ones, mate!). And mage players always tended to cheese already broken system, and instead of telling an interesting story with challenging fights I needed to constantly shut down their latest munchkin attempts of breaking the game. Technocracy was way more intresting, structured and logical in comparison, I always used them in my various campaigns as one of the main NPC factions working from the shadows (or openly in some cases).

Technocracy had the same overlying problem as all MtA though, it never really fitted in the mood. Take VtM - loss of humanity, manipulative elders, creeping shadows, looming Gehenna. WtA - Gaia is dying faster and faster, Wyrm is winning, and although you are a huge killing machine - you can't outbreed most races and probably doomed to perish in Apocalypse anyway. WtO - well, you're dead, most of the creatures who can see you will enslave you, Oblivion awaits. Kuei-jin - you're a literal hungry ghost in a dead body, Yama Emperor comes, wheel of ages may be broken permanently. HtR - fucking monsters everywhere, and you don't have the support system, you're new kid on the block, and you sense that soon the shit will blow up. CtD and DtF were faggots though, so I won't even outline them.
And then there's MtA - oi lads, enlightenment! Ascension! Or Age of Reason! It was optimistic as fuck in comparison, and quite dissonant.

 

[Havoc]

Depends. It made sense for me, because it was actually a war of belief. "Is magic real? Is science real? What do YOU believe?" That's why Technocracy vs Traditions is one of the most important wars in the oWoD (and lack of in nWoD makes it less interesting there).

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Speaking of faggots, the NWoD version of Changing Breeds is hilariously bad, and you should read this blog about how bad it is: http://destroythis.blogspot.fi/2014/07/the-man-your-man-could-kill-like-vs.html

(Selected article for The Man Your Man Could Kill Like, the hero WoD needs)

 

[Irenaeus]

Why is DtF faggots? Reading from the wiki it seems cool and shit.

 

[Stainless Veteran]

Why is DtF faggots? Reading from the wiki it seems cool and shit.

I'm kinda biased, I guess. Mainly because virtually all people who wanted to try DtF when it came out were literal faggots, for some reason both CtD and later DtF attracted the worst of oWoD players here in early 00s. Also my first line in oWoD was VtM, and playing and Storytelling quite a few Sabbath campaigns with Infernalism hunts, playable demon race kinda held no appeal, because of preconceptions.

 

[Andhaira]

They should've set this in the 90s. The Masquerade wasn't plausible even then, but it was a lot more so than it is now.

Eh, they just need to tweak old "vampire and mirrors" rule, handwave it as a psychic effect on mortals rather than on tech, invoked by some Methuselah or other - and voila. No problem with state surveillance. Or say that the Technocracy indirectly supports Masquerade, to enforce the mundane reality and strengthen Paradox. Just a couple ways for Masquerade to work even in our surveillance based society. Of course a common Cainite need not to know it, and Masquerade can still be breached, it's simpler for non-humans to avoid detection.

It's always kind of worked like that, since the original Masquerade game. If any vamp is recorded by a camera all it shows is a blur when viewed again.

Anyhow, it always been annoying to me their retarded focus on exploring vampire psyches/souls whatever. And shoving all supernaturals into the same setting. This seems like more shit.

Vampire the Dark Ages is the only one remotely interesting to me.

 

[Irenaeus]

Agree that the emo part is too overused in this GAME. Attracts some insufferable dipshits and repels good people.

 

[Stainless Veteran]

They should've set this in the 90s. The Masquerade wasn't plausible even then, but it was a lot more so than it is now.

Eh, they just need to tweak old "vampire and mirrors" rule, handwave it as a psychic effect on mortals rather than on tech, invoked by some Methuselah or other - and voila. No problem with state surveillance. Or say that the Technocracy indirectly supports Masquerade, to enforce the mundane reality and strengthen Paradox. Just a couple ways for Masquerade to work even in our surveillance based society. Of course a common Cainite need not to know it, and Masquerade can still be breached, it's simpler for non-humans to avoid detection.

It's always kind of worked like that, since the original Masquerade game. If any vamp is recorded by a camera all it shows is a blur when viewed again.

Anyhow, it always been annoying to me their retarded focus on exploring vampire psyches/souls whatever. And shoving all supernaturals into the same setting. This seems like more shit.

Vampire the Dark Ages is the only one remotely interesting to me.

Dunno, I kinda liked GMing using the whole palette of their lines in my chronicles, except for Mummy and DtF. And I liked the metaplot, despite the convoluted mess it was. Using whole oWoD lineup instead of just focusing on just VtM, or WtA, or other NPCs in a story helped me to create more interesting stories. Especially if the players didn't know some particular rulebook, or my NPC wasn't easily identifiable. Of course, I used that elements and NPCs carefully, it's not that we had Sabbath packs with mages and Abomination or two. But as a shadow player behind the scenes, quest giver, occasional antagonist - it added flavour.

 

[Caim]

Technocracy had the same overlying problem as all MtA though, it never really fitted in the mood. Take VtM - loss of humanity, manipulative elders, creeping shadows, looming Gehenna. WtA - Gaia is dying faster and faster, Wyrm is winning, and although you are a huge killing machine - you can't outbreed most races and probably doomed to perish in Apocalypse anyway. WtO - well, you're dead, most of the creatures who can see you will enslave you, Oblivion awaits. Kuei-jin - you're a literal hungry ghost in a dead body, Yama Emperor comes, wheel of ages may be broken permanently. HtR - fucking monsters everywhere, and you don't have the support system, you're new kid on the block, and you sense that soon the shit will blow up. CtD and DtF were faggots though, so I won't even outline them.
And then there's MtA - oi lads, enlightenment! Ascension! Or Age of Reason! It was optimistic as fuck in comparison, and quite dissonant.

Changeling can be either bright or dark depending on how you look atit: it can be about bringing hope and cheer to a dark and dreary world, or about loss of innocence and how everything you loved as a kid has lost its magic and charm. Demon can have several themes: loyalty, redemption or spite, having a boundless love for humanity or an utter detestment for it. And nobody gives a shit about Mummy.

Why is DtF faggots? Reading from the wiki it seems cool and shit.

One of the core interactions for a Demon is with their Thralls. This is essentially a one-on-one roleplaying experience with the Storyteller so the other players can do jack shit while you're trying to coerce someone into Thralldom, or talk them into doing stuff for you. On top of that the books were rather poorly edited: plenty of references to the dreaded Page XX, or a three-dot power that, between release of the core book and the Player's Guide, could permanently increase all your Physical and Mental attributes to 5.

Additionally, the end game for Demons is world-shaking: finding Lucifer and continuing the Rebellion, uplifting humanity as was originally planned, making humanity into a servant race, reconciling with God and becoming an angel again or just hatefucking the world into oblivion. Far bigger than the goals of the Camarilla, or the personal ascension for Mages or not getting the world fucked over by the Wyrm.

Speaking of faggots, the NWoD version of Changing Breeds is hilariously bad, and you should read this blog about how bad it is: http://destroythis.blogspot.fi/2014/07/the-man-your-man-could-kill-like-vs.html

(Selected article for The Man Your Man Could Kill Like, the hero WoD needs)

And that's just the mechanics for the elephant men. It gets a LOT worse:

http://projects.inklesspen.com/fatal-and-friends/kurieg/changing-breeds/

 

[Stainless Veteran]

Technocracy had the same overlying problem as all MtA though, it never really fitted in the mood. Take VtM - loss of humanity, manipulative elders, creeping shadows, looming Gehenna. WtA - Gaia is dying faster and faster, Wyrm is winning, and although you are a huge killing machine - you can't outbreed most races and probably doomed to perish in Apocalypse anyway. WtO - well, you're dead, most of the creatures who can see you will enslave you, Oblivion awaits. Kuei-jin - you're a literal hungry ghost in a dead body, Yama Emperor comes, wheel of ages may be broken permanently. HtR - fucking monsters everywhere, and you don't have the support system, you're new kid on the block, and you sense that soon the shit will blow up. CtD and DtF were faggots though, so I won't even outline them.
And then there's MtA - oi lads, enlightenment! Ascension! Or Age of Reason! It was optimistic as fuck in comparison, and quite dissonant.

Changeling can be either bright or dark depending on how you look atit: it can be about bringing hope and cheer to a dark and dreary world, or about loss of innocence and how everything you loved as a kid has lost its magic and charm. Demon can have several themes: loyalty, redemption or spite, having a boundless love for humanity or an utter detestment for it. And nobody gives a shit about Mummy.

Oh, I played and even GMd CtD a few times, I'm familiar with it. It's just when people talk about VtM being emo, it got nothing on CtD. Drama, Rhapsody, all that creativity focus and harvesting, Unseelie shenanigans - all that attracted a very specific crowd.

 

[Caim]

Technocracy had the same overlying problem as all MtA though, it never really fitted in the mood. Take VtM - loss of humanity, manipulative elders, creeping shadows, looming Gehenna. WtA - Gaia is dying faster and faster, Wyrm is winning, and although you are a huge killing machine - you can't outbreed most races and probably doomed to perish in Apocalypse anyway. WtO - well, you're dead, most of the creatures who can see you will enslave you, Oblivion awaits. Kuei-jin - you're a literal hungry ghost in a dead body, Yama Emperor comes, wheel of ages may be broken permanently. HtR - fucking monsters everywhere, and you don't have the support system, you're new kid on the block, and you sense that soon the shit will blow up. CtD and DtF were faggots though, so I won't even outline them.
And then there's MtA - oi lads, enlightenment! Ascension! Or Age of Reason! It was optimistic as fuck in comparison, and quite dissonant.

Changeling can be either bright or dark depending on how you look atit: it can be about bringing hope and cheer to a dark and dreary world, or about loss of innocence and how everything you loved as a kid has lost its magic and charm. Demon can have several themes: loyalty, redemption or spite, having a boundless love for humanity or an utter detestment for it. And nobody gives a shit about Mummy.

Oh, I played and even GMd CtD a few times, I'm familiar with it. It's just when people talk about VtM being emo, it got nothing on CtD. Drama, Rhapsody, all that creativity focus and harvesting, Unseelie shenanigans - all that attracted a very specific crowd.

Oh, right. Well yes, Changeling has the Sluagh, whose entire shtick is being as emo as possible. Demon meanwhile can be a bit emo ranging from self-pity (chapter 3 of the core book comes to mind) to not giving a fuck (just go through City of Angels). And then there was the Time of Ending, which fucked everything up with just once sentence:

 

[ERYFKRAD]

So is the Hunter game any good? Not that I'd get a chance to ever play a game, but I'm partial to playing proppa 'umies and all.

 

[Caim]

So is the Hunter game any good? Not that I'd get a chance to ever play a game, but I'm partial to playing proppa 'umies and all.

Which one? Hunter: The Reckoning is too much fighting the superpowered with your own superpowers for my taste. Hunter: The Vigil I find to be the more interesting game, where you have to use your wits, connections, knowledge and traps to get something done. Sure, your gun might fire silver bullets, but if you don't have the werewolf at a disadvantage you're gonna get your head ripped off either way. Reckoning's Creeds are a bit too generic to my taste, but Vigil's Compacts and Conspiracties give all sorts of fun oppertunities and angles to roleplay.

 

[Stainless Veteran]

So is the Hunter game any good? Not that I'd get a chance to ever play a game, but I'm partial to playing proppa 'umies and all.

Quite good. For an optimal chronicle Storyteller needs to be familiar with most other lines, VtM, WtA, MtA, CtD, and probably KotE, WtO and DtF though.
I'm talkin about old HtR of course, never played nWoD one. Hunter: the Reckoning was my second favourite game after VtM.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Hunter: The Vigil

Right this is the one. Didn't know there were two Hunter games.

 

[Stainless Veteran]

Hunter: The Vigil

Right this is the one. Didn't know there were two Hunter games.

1d4 has some summaries on both oWoD and nWoD. You can read about games you're interested in, it's somewhat more friendly to newcomers than Whitewolf Wiki.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Yeah I read that stuff often, good site that.

 

[Rahdulan]

So is the Hunter game any good? Not that I'd get a chance to ever play a game, but I'm partial to playing proppa 'umies and all.

Which one? Hunter: The Reckoning is too much fighting the superpowered with your own superpowers for my taste. Hunter: The Vigil I find to be the more interesting game, where you have to use your wits, connections, knowledge and traps to get something done. Sure, your gun might fire silver bullets, but if you don't have the werewolf at a disadvantage you're gonna get your head ripped off either way. Reckoning's Creeds are a bit too generic to my taste, but Vigil's Compacts and Conspiracties give all sorts of fun oppertunities and angles to roleplay.

I think Hunter: the Vigil is at its best if you keep your game at Cell level and never go upwards. Some Compacts and straight up Conspiracies get too zany and "high level", so to speak, to keep the whole "just your average Joe who refused to look away from darkness where others would run away" theme. When you start implanting yourself with parts of monsters, call on demonic heritage for power or become a hedonistic comic book villain, you've kinda lost something in the process. In my opinion at least.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

And that's just the mechanics for the elephant men. It gets a LOT worse:

http://projects.inklesspen.com/fatal-and-friends/kurieg/changing-breeds/

The blog I linked to covers all the creepy and hilariously ignorant racism too, just in different posts. It also has the deer dong.

 

[Caim]

1d4 has some summaries on both oWoD and nWoD. You can read about games you're interested in, it's somewhat more friendly to newcomers than Whitewolf Wiki.

Reckoning and Vigil are found here. Vigil is far more complete than Reckoning, which still needs a lot of work. I personally have added quite a bit to the Vigil article and a lot of the other WoD articles as well, but the work is never done.

I think Hunter: the Vigil is at its best if you keep your game at Cell level and never go upwards. Some Compacts and straight up Conspiracies get too zany and "high level", so to speak, to keep the whole "just your average Joe who refused to look away from darkness where others would run away" theme. When you start implanting yourself with parts of monsters, call on demonic heritage for power or become a hedonistic comic book villain, you've kinda lost something in the process. In my opinion at least.

That's the beauty of Vigil: it can work on all three levels. Want to play it more like you're playing vanilla nWoD? Sure, it's possible. If you want to have at least some idea about what you're dealing with, go with the Compacts. If you want to go all out, the Conspiracies are for you. You can be in a position where you have no idea what you're dealing with, know that there are werewolves on the loose or corner your local vampire and shout WHO IS CAINE?! in its face before staking it. It's all perfectly viable.

 

[Xathrodox86]

Ahhh the best and brightest of the World of Darkness. The only organisation with a semi-righteous agenda. Peace through absolute control.

Yep, I never liked Traditions. Some lacked the defining characteristics - to this day I don't get the significant difference between Dreamspeakers and Verbena. Some were downright retarded (fucking Hollow Ones, mate!). And mage players always tended to cheese already broken system, and instead of telling an interesting story with challenging fights I needed to constantly shut down their latest munchkin attempts of breaking the game. Technocracy was way more intresting, structured and logical in comparison, I always used them in my various campaigns as one of the main NPC factions working from the shadows (or openly in some cases).

Technocracy had the same overlying problem as all MtA though, it never really fitted in the mood. Take VtM - loss of humanity, manipulative elders, creeping shadows, looming Gehenna. WtA - Gaia is dying faster and faster, Wyrm is winning, and although you are a huge killing machine - you can't outbreed most races and probably doomed to perish in Apocalypse anyway. WtO - well, you're dead, most of the creatures who can see you will enslave you, Oblivion awaits. Kuei-jin - you're a literal hungry ghost in a dead body, Yama Emperor comes, wheel of ages may be broken permanently. HtR - fucking monsters everywhere, and you don't have the support system, you're new kid on the block, and you sense that soon the shit will blow up. CtD and DtF were faggots though, so I won't even outline them.
And then there's MtA - oi lads, enlightenment! Ascension! Or Age of Reason! It was optimistic as fuck in comparison, and quite dissonant.

True enough, I always liked the Technocracy as a faction that really lets you shine, when it comes to inventing plots and NPC's. You can do whatever the hell you liked with those guys, and it was awesome.

As for your comparison, I generally agree, especially on H:TR, my favorite game system from cWoD. I think that Demon had a very interesting potential, but just like with Werewolves, Demons were better as NPC's/Antagonists. C:TD I do not know, and was never interested in them that much. Lately I've been reading about Inquisition and Project:Twilight and am already thinking about a chronicle set in the 90's with some X-Files levels of creepy shit. It helps that I'm watching the X-Files right now.

 

[Kev Inkline]

Technocracy had the same overlying problem as all MtA though, it never really fitted in the mood. Take VtM - loss of humanity, manipulative elders, creeping shadows, looming Gehenna. WtA - Gaia is dying faster and faster, Wyrm is winning, and although you are a huge killing machine - you can't outbreed most races and probably doomed to perish in Apocalypse anyway..

For me, I always found that Greenpeace stuff of WtA downright repulsive, I quote wiki:

According to Garou oral history, it has always been their duty to maintain the balance of nature on behalf of Gaia

Who'd want to play that? I admit there's a chance I have somehow misunderstood the setting, though.

 

[Night Goat]

Who'd want to play that? I admit there's a chance I have somehow misunderstood the setting, though.

You haven't, it's Captain Planet but with more bestiality.