General WoD Discussion #5: Chronicles of Duty: Modern Darkness

[The Jack]

The Banu Haqim who were upset about Islam stuck with Ur-shulgi and the main clan. The followers of Islam who were being persecuted by him are the ones who left and joined the Camarilla. Of course they're going to use Arabic.

I neither agree or disagree with anything regarding Germany. Every German person I know calls it Germany when speaking English.

Ur-Shulgi's got a thing against all religions and moderate assamites, so the choice of arabic still leaves a lot to be desired.

It's an example. The thing is Germany has a ridiculous variation of names names in different languages; Tyskland.Alemania, Saksa, Niemsky... whilst say England's always got Eng- or Ang- or Ing- in the name. This is because Germans haven't switched up tribe names, have been fractured, and otherwise less decisive about what to call themselves. So people've just stuck with the names they got on first contact. Assamites'd be like germany; Nobody's going to keep up with modern terms, the old one'll do.

Look, maybe I'm just a little sensitive because of the whole M20 fiasco where they all got their self-given names.

[Anonymouswizard]

There's still the Technocratic interference angle to consider. After the events in Bangladesh they have every reason to consider vampires a greater threat than before. Active efforts to help mortals cull their numbers is the least they'd likely implement into the Pogrom going forward. Vampires are an active threat to humanity's stability and must be destroyed.

And this edition is the one most likely to use meta plot elements, since the pitch was "one world of darkness" from the very start.

I mean, of course the Technocracy can hack into ShreckNet, it's a simple Correspondence+Entropy procedure. I'm just looking at it from the Vampire side, and I'm not sure the Technocracy are well known among the kindred. The Nosferatu might know that there's a nonvampiric conspiracy with it's hands in a lot of pies, but they likely don't know that they're mages.

Therefore I focused on anti-mortal measures. But I agree, I seriously hope that if there's more crossover the Technocracy hacks into Nossie comms.

EDIT: okay, I'm now trying to work out why the Nossies being ugly is a Masquerade violation. I mean yes, they look like cancer ridden hunchbacked lepers with an allergy to everything, but unless they're unlucky enough to get the Orlok features then they don't really look like vampires. Plus until they develop Mask of a Thousand Faces their weakness is already pretty crippling, unsettling almost every human you interact with and having distinctive features are fairly massive drawbacks. Although I suppose the fact that they can get away with heavy make-up in V5 means that's being downplayed now.

[The Jack]

They've been watching far too much Drag race, but you can't blame em for that.


The Nosferatu are supposed to have Orlok features, and then some. Earlier editions were filled with the most fantastic art, the Nosferatu are the coolest of dudes. There was a merit in LotC which gives you the face of an extremely ugly human....


Makeup transformations can be amazing, but really I think they're thinking from a requiem standpoint.

[Anonymouswizard]

The Nosferatu are supposed to have Orlok features, and then some. Earlier editions were filled with the most fantastic art, the Nosferatu are the coolest of dudes. There was a merit in LotC which gives you the face of an extremely ugly human....


Makeup transformations can be amazing, but really I think they're thinking from a requiem standpoint.

Eh, the Nosferatu are supposed to look ugly as ****, to the point where you ask 'is that human'*. But 'looks like Orlok' is an overstatement, because they look rather diverse, just ugly, absolutely covered in scar tissue, likely disfigured, with their skeleton and cartilege literally changing during the Embrace. While the V5 Nosferatu art is far too pretty (some aren't even noticably disformed!), I do think that most Nossies can probably use make-up and strategic clothing to pass as 'ugly human'. Not enough to be allowed into a bar, but enough to not break the masquerade.

The Requiem Nosferatu are much better looking, to the point where their deformaties can be things other than looks (although it's not like Masquerade Nosferatu smelt good anyway.

Wait, it's possible to watch too much of that show?

[Morty]

I do definitely prefer Requiem's version of the Nosferatu, where they're all terrifying or unsettling but without necessarily looking like they were dipped in acid. There's much more that can be done with that.

[Rater202]

If we're talking requiem Nos'. I really like the Bloodlines introduced in the first edition Ordo Dracul book.

You've got the Azerkatil: A bloodline engineered by a Turkish sultan-vampire who drastically misunderstood what Dracula was trying to do with the Coils(thinking that the Impaler had become a real dragon) and sanctioned a crap-load of experimental embraces, experimental bloodlines, and diableries until he had a combat specced bloodline with a discipline tailor-made for fighting dragons.

Of course, there are no vampires-turned-literal dragons, and the Azerkatil eventually defected and joined the Ordo becuase, among other things, they're an example of exactly the kind of rapid changes to the blood that the Ordo is interested in.

In the Azerkatil, the Nosferatu clan weakness(which here is abstracted to a penalty on social roles) manifests not as deformity, a foul stench, being more obviously dead than normal, or an aura of unease--they look, smell, and feel human--but an aura of menace and peril. No matter what, when you're in their presence it's like being in a room with a serial killer or a hungry tiger. Even if they mean you know harm... They also instinctively see other vampires as prey, giving them a penalty on interactions with vampires if their humanity is too low.

Basically, they look normal, they're just inexplicably terrifying to be around.

I think that's a good way of expanding out a curse like the typical Nosferatu weakness if you're looking to avoid deformity.

I also like how the Moroi handle it--the Moroi technically isn't one bloodline but two identical bloodlines born from the result of Romanian Nosferatu and Gangrel living in close proximity teaching each other their powers and occasionally feeding on each other--the Moroi can come from either clan.

In terms of Nosferatu, they're merely slightly yellow in the skin and slightly pointy in the ear. Nothing too unusual.

But they've also got the Gangrel clan weakness--animalistic instincts that result in a penalty on certain mental actions and that combined with the mild deformity is what results in the Nosferatu weakness.

Moroi are sworn to Dracula after something he did to help them in his early nights--their duel blood curses mean that they have to put in a lot of effort to be good as anything but fighters or manual laborers, but they're basically the best fighters and assassins becuase they've got the sneaky discipline, the super tough discipline, the super strong discipline, the "animals spy for me and do my bidding" discipline at in-clan cost and easy access to the "shapeshift for stealth and combat" and "scare the crap out of people, sometimes literally to death" discipline is easily accessible to them becuase most of them had one or the other before metamorphosing into the bloodline and the bloodline's tight-knit enough to easily justifiy discipline tutors.

[The Jack]

Nosferatu are described as monstrous,not just hideous. They have a Merit for just having part of them looking like an extremely ugly human. They look bad, they feel bad, they smell bad, they taste great mostly...


or look through this stuff by Lief Jones

And I can't even find my favourites (Punk looking Nos, and there's one where there's three of them highly stylized and looking like they're from a Wyrm book (because that is a few things from the wyrm books, but I'm sure there's a Nos lot in a similar style)

The only more-human stuff I can find of Masquerade Nos is live action nonsense, and Live action's the death of this game.

[raygun goth]

My players encountered this guy (who it turns out isn't a totally bad dude) through a vampire contact of theirs and one of the players whispered "Nosferatu" under her breath

and that was great

[The Glyphstone]

I would have assumed that was a Tzimisce under Horrid Form.

[The Jack]

No way, It's a protean form or some kinda Umbral thing.


Horrid form, I think, looks most like Arkham's Joker on Titan, a bit of Dota's lifestealer, then turn the bones black and make them look carapace like. Finally, throw on some grease.

[Fable Wright]

Question:

Joining a new Anarch game as a Caitiff who can survive and be active during the daylight hours with only moderate discomfort. Have an aura that reads human in all cases, so I can pass for human even to Tremere blood magic if necessary. Have access to Vicissitude, though I'm not aiming to do anything Masquerade breaking with it, mostly acting as the world's best plastic surgeon and maybe embedding a phone in my guts to send messages in a pinch. Or bonecrafting back any missing limbs that a ghoul might have lost. Those, and not being a Caitiff in the Camarilla, are my character's unique assets.

Does anyone have advice on how to get ahead in Anarch society? Useful things I can advertise, things that I should really keep hidden, general stuff like that? If it helps, I know that there's disproportionate Giovanni representation in the game, and they might want a ghoul to get a new face, but I get the hunch that they're more likely to kill a guy who needs the new face and use him as a wraith than keep him around for whatever reason.

Any way to put my character's monopoly on daylight hours to use?

[The Jack]

It's more likely the giovanni are going to string you up and poke around with your insides to figure out how you work. You're playing as a 15th gen with merits, that's the only way your character can work. You're Interesting, and vampires get all sorts of perverse with interesting. Your optimism will get you Dark Fate. In the daytime you don't have a sufficient advantage over a ghoul.

You can't bonecraft back limbs. Actually, Having Vicissitude, you're probably going to attract perverse interest from Tzmisce.

I would blood bond you as an interesting retainer, that's the best you're gonna get. You're a thinblood, you don't have rights. Better be under the heel of someone nice than free and awaiting a heel of indeterminate cruelty.

[Fable Wright]

It's more likely the giovanni are going to string you up and poke around with your insides to figure out how you work. You're playing as a 15th gen with merits, that's the only way your character can work. You're Interesting, and vampires get all sorts of perverse with interesting. Your optimism will get you Dark Fate. In the daytime you don't have a sufficient advantage over a ghoul.

You can't bonecraft back limbs. Actually, Having Vicissitude, you're probably going to attract perverse interest from Tzmisce.

I would blood bond you as an interesting retainer, that's the best you're gonna get. You're a thinblood, you don't have rights. Better be under the heel of someone nice than free and awaiting a heel of indeterminate cruelty.

In this case, we're using Minds Eye Theater rules, so I am actually 11th gen, and one blender of a Celerity focused ghoul has my back. Bonecraft in this edition has five modes, one of which is Extra Limbs. If I can give someone two extra arms, I can give someone with one arm a second.

That said, you're 100% right about needing a patron. That should really be my first point of business.

[Anonymouswizard]

Stay away from the Camarilla. Going out in daylight hours? Sounds like a Thin-blood.

Seriously, your character sounds a lot like what a V20 16th generation would theoretically look like (which is cool, V5's Thin-bloods aren't something I really like*). 15th generation kindred could already function fairly well in sunlight, it stands to reason that a 16th generation might register as 'human' to supernatural things.

* They're too static for me, we get to the 14th generation and then the weakening of Curse of Caine just stops and vampires have random blessings and curses.

[Jeivar]

So I have some questions about the V5 systems. A few months ago I was messing around with some changes to the 20th Anniversary ones to get rid of some things that annoyed me, and make changes to some Disciplines (such as making Protean more flexible).

I understand V5 borrows some things from the NWoD systems. But since I don't want to buy an entire book to get a look at them (my group has some real issues with getting together), I was hoping someone could give me the basics.

*Humanity: I understand it has changed the breaking points to be more personal, rather than a universal set of precise sins.

*Blood points: Have these really been eliminated and replaced with a hunger rating? How is that handled?

*Difficulty: I like the idea of all dice rolls having the same target number, and hard rolls just mean subtracting dice before rolling, but how does it all work?

[Fable Wright]

*Humanity: I understand it has changed the breaking points to be more personal, rather than a universal set of precise sins.

Yes. Whenever you do something that transgresses your character's personal boundaries, you get a 'stain' on your humanity, and you need to roll to rationalize it at the end of the sesssion to see if it becomes permanent.

*Blood points: Have these really been eliminated and replaced with a hunger rating? How is that handled?

This is the one neat change. You start with one Hunger. Whenever you use an ability that would cost a point of blood, you roll a rouse check (roll 1d10 and on a 1-5, you gain one more hunger.) Mechanically, when you assemble a dice pool for any action, you substitute in a number of 'blood dice' equal to your hunger rating out of your regular pool. (So if you'd have three dice, and two hunger, you roll 1 regular die and 2 blood dice). If you botch a roll (get 1s on one or more of the blood dice and no successes) it's a Bestial Failure, and your GM takes control for a bit. Terrible things happen. If you roll a 10 on two of the blood dice, you get a 'messy critical', where your actions succeed better than they usually would... in the most monstrous way possible. Strength without control.

Whenever you feed, you can choose to reset to either 1 hunger (feeding to take the edge off), or you can kill the person to go down to 0 blood dice until the next time you take a rouse check.

In cases with a lot of people, blood in the air, or other circumstances, the GM may have people at hunger > 2 or hunger > 3 need to make a rouse check due to the effort to keep the beast in check.

In the end, this makes feeding mid-session a much more prominent activity, as every vampire has fewer reserves to work off of, and at hunger 3+ you're an active danger to the Masquerade.

*Difficulty: I like the idea of all dice rolls having the same target number, and hard rolls just mean subtracting dice before rolling, but how does it all work?

6+: You get a success.
If you have more than one 10 in your pool: Each 10 counts as two successes. (Beware messy crits, when your blood dice contribute to said crits.)
Roll a 1 on a blood die and no successes: Bestial failure.

[fishyfishyfishy]

You're going to get an incomplete understanding unless you actually get the book. I recommend purchasing the pdf if you don't think you'll use the full system.

[The Jack]

Protean literally means changing often quickly', I'd encourage a lot of leg room when it comes to mixing up protean powers.

Protean is the purist form optimised by an unfiltered beast, Serpentis is what you can do with protean through the lenses of faith. Thanatosis is protean through death and decay. Viskeraticka is a focused protean of inhuman characters.

Vicissitude isn't protean, that's ridiculous. V5 conflating Vicissitude with protean is just a reason why you shouldn't use V5; The devs clearly don't know their own lore or metaphysics or don't care enough for it. They're fundamentally different disciplines

So if you're playing real VTM, I'd encourage a degree of liberalizing Protean.

1- A sensory power or trick related to the senses
2- a natural tool or infliction
3- a material merger or change; a minor transformation.
4- A big transformation
5- a thematically sound ultimate transformation
6+ do whatever you like.

Magic is shaped by perception; Settites are too religious to learn base protean, whilst most cainites aren't religious enough to learn serpentis. When someone blurs the line, such as the south american settites, all sorts of questions are raised and nobody wants the answers.

I'd assume a gangrel's first protean purchase would buy them Eyes of the Beast and, if they were the right fit, they could independently develop enchanting gaze for some XP, but it's not going to be a setite's enchanting gaze; they don't get golden snake eyes but rather the the most least-effort transformation the beast can come up with, which is probably dark blood patterns in the eyes that just seem to draw you in.

[Rater202]

The V5 tvtropes page says that Requiem's blood potency has been incorporated as a measure of power in addition to generation.

How does that work out?

[Anonymouswizard]

The V5 tvtropes page says that Requiem's blood potency has been incorporated as a measure of power in addition to generation.

How does that work out?

Generation caps maximum and minimum Blood Potency. Additional BP makes your Blood Surge and Healing better, and reduces the chance for Disciplines to increase Hunger, but makes it harder to lose Hunger (going all the way up to 'must drain a human dry to drop below 3 Hunger' at the highest levels) and increases Bane Severity. Thin-Bloods have BP 0, [s]lose all their Vitae every night[s], and gain a Clan and BP1 if they manage to diablerise a full Kindred. The time it takes to gain and lose BP is also twice as long.

Yeah. In some ways I don't mind Blood Potency in Masquerade, I don't feel like the way it's been implemented is the best. As it is I just switched it to being static Blood Potency bar Diablerie as before in my current set of House Rules, although I'm considering splitting the two so that Generation governs Discipline use and Bane severity, while Blood Potency governs your Blood Surge, Healing, and feeding restrictions (and has no relation to Generation).

[The Jack]

You gain a clan from diablerie... is that a maybe? I could see it work as a maybe. As a mandatory... I can see it metaphysically working as a maybe. But I've held the belief that caitiff who eat too much end up being their own bloodline, with blackjack and hookers. Without the influence of lineage Your way of working as a cainite eventually settles you on your clan disciplines and weakness. The higher the gen, the more you need to fit the mould of the clan to avoid caitiff blood. A Nosferatu-like person sired by a 9th gen ventrue would end up a blood caitiff, whilst a 13th gen progeny could avoid that fate by perfectly embodying the clan archetype. Someone sired by a methuselah is screwed into that clan, regardless of how well they fit in.

If my socially inept punk caitiff became a ventrue by eating one, I'd be livid.

I'm convinced V5 was made with 1 dot of intelligence and setting knowledge, the resulting roll giving us two 1's.

[fishyfishyfishy]

You gain a clan from diablerie... is that a maybe? I could see it work as a maybe. As a mandatory... I can see it metaphysically working as a maybe. But I've held the belief that caitiff who eat too much end up being their own bloodline, with blackjack and hookers.

...

Thin-bloods gain a clan from Diablerie. Thin-bloods and Caitiff are mechanically different things in V5.

Vicissitude isn't protean, that's ridiculous. V5 conflating Vicissitude with protean is just a reason why you shouldn't use V5; The devs clearly don't know their own lore or metaphysics or don't care enough for it. They're fundamentally different disciplines.

Vicissitude doesn't exist in V5 yet. As in, there are not rules for it yet. Your outrage here is a bit misplaced.

Maybe they will make it Protean when it does come around with the Tzimisce clan - but who can say? It would be speculation at this point.

[The Jack]

Thin-bloods and Caitiff are mechanically different things in V5.
.

This has always been the case.

Thin-bloods gain a clan from Diablerie.

Their sire's or their victims?

[Anonymouswizard]

If my socially inept punk caitiff became a ventrue by eating one, I'd be livid.

I'm convinced V5 was made with 1 dot of intelligence and setting knowledge, the resulting roll giving us two 1's.

... You do realise that I said Thin-blood and not Caitiff, right? It seems to be a onc e time 'when you hit 13th generation' thing.

Also it's much better to think of V5 as a reboot rather than being the exact same setting. There's some major thematic changes that essentially manure it a new thing, while at the same time including far more of 1e.

[The Jack]

... You do realise that I said Thin-blood and not Caitiff, right? It seems to be a onc e time 'when you hit 13th generation' thing.

I did, but "they all look alike to me" is such a pervasive stance in the setting that the mixing of terminology's natural.

So if my thin-blood with a Nosferatu sire eats a Ventrue for some gen, do I become Nosferatu or Ventrue? Either option's a trap and Caitiff aren't a clan.

Also it's much better to think of V5 as a reboot rather than being the exact same setting. There's some major thematic changes that essentially manure* it a new thing, while at the same time including far more of 1e.

*was that a slip?

It's not trying to pass itself off as a reboot, so it's not a reboot. If it was, that wouldn't make it good.

[fishyfishyfishy]

You become the clan of the victim, so your example the character would gain the weakness of a Ventrue and be 13th Generation.

[Anonymouswizard]

I did, but "they all look alike to me" is such a pervasive stance in the setting that the mixing of terminology's natural.

So if my thin-blood with a Nosferatu sire eats a Ventrue for some gen, do I become Nosferatu or Ventrue? Either option's a trap and Caitiff aren't a clan.

Ventrue. Honestly I'm not overly happy with Thin-Bloods, they essentially turned them into Revenants from Requiem but without the suck.

So if you want to stay Caitiff, diablerise a Caitiff.

*was that a slip?

It's not trying to pass itself off as a reboot, so it's not a reboot. If it was, that wouldn't make it good.

Yes, my swipey keyboard is all over the place these days, I can't correct all the swipeos.

And my point is that the changes are, for the most part intentional. 'Soft reboot' and all that jazz.

[The Jack]

And my point is that the changes are, for the most part intentional. 'Soft reboot' and all that jazz.

I feel very strongly that they sacrificed too much story for game play, and then sacrificed some extra story/gameplay because they have their own ideas for society* and don't like the oppression that typifies the setting.


Some of the story changes only make sense because of the gameplay changes. For instance the second inquisition wouldn't be so rampant if they hadn't nerfed dominate and obfuscate.

Spoiler: *

Show

V5 doesn't seem to 'get' vampire. They see the events individually and don't get the context to them. It seems like they're writers who're experiencing Swedish problems* rather than most-of-the-world problems. Ivory tower social justice has overtaken the high-concept economic,sociological and political horror of rich elites parasitically preying on the less fortunate and corrupting the system to make it easier to feed. Instead we've predominantly got a theme of elites wrongly persecuted by the government and racist/religious extremists... Look, I just feel like that's some significant undermining of the core themes of vampire.

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

Now that spoilered explanation made me finally see what the big deal with the changes is, thank you! Now it makes sense.

[Anonymouswizard]

I It seems like they're writers who're experiencing Swedish problems* rather than most-of-the-world problems.

Because as we all know, the Old World of Darkness wasn't Americentric in the slightest.

Honestly, I say a more European World of Darkness, or one with a different viewpoint isn't strictly a bad thing. So the writing is from a more Anarch viewpoint instead of a Camarilla one, the main problem there is the lack of acknowledgement. And honestly, I see the same 'strong elite prey among the weak commons' as in the old books, there's just also now a firm middle group (who unfortunately have been given enough strength to no longer make them the underdog).

There's also the loss of the Camarilla/Sabbat war, which I'm honestly not sure what that added to the setting.

But honestly? Considering what's happening right now in my country? I have a lot of like for the reframed and refocused Camarilla/Anarch conflict.

The new thin-bloods are just awful though.