Hm, I seem to have accidentally started something. I apologize for my grievous error(s). None of what any of you have said has convinced me, at all, to consider Requiem anything more than a Monster Manual equivalent focused on vampires, however.

I knew that young vampires could already eat animals. For all of what, a hundred years, assuming they don't want to consciously strive for more power? Eventually, people become the only option, and that's detrimental to every vampire on the planet. That's a century that every vampire should spend learning how to look as friendly as possible. I didn't find any fluff on animal blood not tasting good, though I know it's less nutritious.

How long does the Willpower spent to appear in photos/mirrors continue to work? I know you don't get a supernatural warning that you're passing hidden cameras, so this Masquerade breach waiting to happen is only not a problem as long as every Kindred remembers and is able to spend a point of Willpower every time they go out in public. I've also heard that photos and video footage will revert to blurriness after the spent Willpower wears off, though I can't find that bit.

Anyway, debating the fragility or lack thereof of the Masquerade is pointless; White Wolf themselves point out all the ways things could come crashing down in both the core book and Mirrors. My original point, lost in all this, was that Vampire: the Masquerade, following Anne Rice, set the stage for later, "friendlier" depictions of vampires by presenting vampires as protagonist material who could avoid being monstrous or were monstrous in a "cool" way. Compared to most classical depictions of vampires, the protagonists of both Vampire games are more powerful and have fewer weaknesses,* and Requiem's are far more capable of peaceful coexistence with ordinary humans even before the Coil of Blood comes into it.

The fact that vampires in V:tR are too busy infighting to take advantage of this fact doesn't move me to respect them more as antiheroes, it just gives me the impression they're too dumb to live. Great NPCs and antagonists for Geist chronicles, but I wouldn't want to run a game focused on them.

I'm not going to respond to this line of discussion anymore. I've clarified my positions now. I'm pretty sure continuing to debate back and forth past this point with neither side giving ground would lead to people getting angry for no good reason, and I don't want an infraction for getting the rest of the thread riled up.



*Ironically, the most obvious and exploitable weakness of Vampire vampires, sunlight, isn't a major weakness in the vast majority of vampire myths. Generally, when it's mentioned at all, it's just to say that say that they don't like it. None of the major 19th century vampires that influenced our modern conception of vampires (Varney, Ruthven, Carmilla, Dracula) burned in sunlight, although Carmilla seems to get weaker in it, and Dracula can't use Disciplines shapeshift during daylight hours. This means that if I'm a hunter, and I do my research on what I'm hunting, I'm totally going to dismiss the second easiest way to kill a WW vampire, unless the Storyteller rules the World of Darkness has alternate vampire legends or I metagame. I find this amusing.