[Mind's Eye Theatre/Vampire: The Masquerade] The Arcane merit

[Greywander]

My sister and I are taking a break from our D&D 5e game to do some Vampire: The Masquerade. I've never played before, but she's played a lot, so I'm not as familiar with all of the rules. Mind's Eye Theatre seems to be a newer version of the V:TM system, so I'm not sure how familiar she is with this specific iteration of V:TM.

Anyway, we're having trouble agreeing on what exactly the Arcane merit does. This merit only costs 1 XP, so I wouldn't expect it to be too strong. Here's the text for the merit:

You are mystically shrouded from notice. People you interact with briefly will not remember your presence unless you have been specifically pointed out. Paper trails related to you disappear, and computer records randomly become corrupted, misplaced, or accidentally erased. This effect gives no benefit to Stealth and doesn't handicap people who know you personally, such as other characters, but individuals who you meet in passing have difficulty recalling details about who you are. This is both a benefit, and potentially a mild annoyance.

She's claiming that all pictures, films, audio recordings, etc. get corrupted/deleted. This means that security cameras are basically useless against me (especially combined with Obfuscation, which doesn't affect such recordings directly, but does affect people watching the recordings live or near-live). On the flip side, it means I can't have photo ID, and probably affects my ability to have a bank account, social security number, etc.

However, my interpretation is that the way Arcane affects tech depends on the person using the tech. If someone I don't know takes a picture that happens to include me, it will get corrupted. If someone who knows me takes a picture of me, specifically, then it would remain intact and wouldn't be affected by Arcane. I'm not quite sure how this would interact with something like security cameras, though. Would it depend on if the security guard knows me? Or if the person who owns the building knows me?

My feeling was that Arcane is meant to cover any loose ends that might be lying about, but it itself isn't supposed to be noticeable. If I talk to someone in passing, they simply forget about it. If I get caught on a security camera, that portion of the footage glitches out and can be handwaved as a simple tech fluke. If someone repeatedly tries to take pictures of me and they all get corrupted, they'll definitely notice that something is up.

What my sister is describing is a lot more than a "potential mild annoyance", it's basically "you don't exist as far as technology is concerned". I thought that last sentence referred to, for example, situations where you might need an alibi, but anyone who could have vouched for you has conveniently forgotten all about you. Basically, as an "always on" power, there may be instances where you'd want to turn it off (perhaps, or especially, retroactively), and you can't.

[Erulasto]

For starters, I didn't realize that Arcane wasn't still specifically related to Mages. It was originally a background provided in Mage: the Ascension as a way of keeping your existence on the down-low from the Technocracy.

But, in relation to the real part of your post, I've always read Arcane as being a sort of supernatural blurring. As it states in the blurb:

You are mystically shrouded from notice. People you interact with briefly will not remember your presence unless you have been specifically pointed out. Paper trails related to you disappear, and computer records randomly become corrupted, misplaced, or accidentally erased. This effect gives no benefit to Stealth and doesn't handicap people who know you personally, such as other characters, but individuals who you meet in passing have difficulty recalling details about who you are. This is both a benefit, and potentially a mild annoyance.

I'd agree with your sister on this one. People who know you; who are familiar with you on more than a passing level have no problems - but passing acquaintances would find their memories of you blurry. I'd say that it pretty clearly states that both paper trails and tech can't reveal your existence.

A Mage, for whom Resources are a non-issue (considering the possible uses of Magic to acquire wealth) doesn't really have much of a downside in this regard. But for a Vampire who still has to function through mortal society, it'd be a much bigger complication. That being said, I'd argue that for a Ventrue or Toreador it'd be a bigger problem than for say, a Gangrel or Nosferatu.

Hope that helps!

[The Jack]

Isn't MET for larps? I don't like their rules, because a lot of them seem to be limited to what players can actually do, rather than imagination.


Arcane
-Won't delete everything you've ever been in.
-Won't affect security cameras while people are looking through those security cameras. If they take note of you and decide to zone in on you, it'll probably stay in their databanks until they forget about you and your incident.
-If you do something heinous/outrageous, they will likely screw up describing you, but have a good chance of all remembering you when you show up again and interact with them.


It's a 1 point merit. It's convenient, especially when we talk about day-to-day feeding, but it's not something you should ever dream of relying on.


The real merit from Arcane comes in it's years. Eventually, things will get lost, and that's real helpful for the masquerade.

[Greywander]

I'd agree with your sister on this one. People who know you; who are familiar with you on more than a passing level have no problems - but passing acquaintances would find their memories of you blurry. I'd say that it pretty clearly states that both paper trails and tech can't reveal your existence.

So basically this unpersons me. This goes far above and beyond a "mild annoyance", and is also much more powerful than I'd expect of a 1 point merit. I could understand if it was a background rather than a merit, and you were only completely unpersoned at 5 dots. That would cost 15 XP, and only then because I'm a Neonate, otherwise it would be 30, rather than 1.

Isn't MET for larps?

This is the version she said she wanted to use. I suggested that we use a version that was intended for tabletop, but I think we're going to at least try this out and see how it goes. I'm assuming it won't be too difficult to convert my character to a different iteration of V:TM if I need to.

Arcane
-Won't delete everything you've ever been in.

I should hope not, otherwise, as stated above, I would be basically unpersoned. It's pretty clear on how it affects people, it's how it affects tech that we're having trouble agreeing on.

-Won't affect security cameras while people are looking through those security cameras. If they take note of you and decide to zone in on you, it'll probably stay in their databanks until they forget about you and your incident.

The Obfuscation discipline has me covered here. In fact, things like security cameras are one of the weaknesses of Obfu, as they'll still record you just fine, even if the people watching the cameras don't see you. If they go back and watch the recording, Obfu will have worn off and you'll be visible. So part of the appeal of Arcane was to help erase such recordings.

-If you do something heinous/outrageous, they will likely screw up describing you, but have a good chance of all remembering you when you show up again and interact with them.

I'm not sure about this. Based on the description, it sounds like they will either not remember me at all, or not be affected by Arcane. So yeah, they might remember that something happened, but they wouldn't remember who did it or be able to describe them, and if I show up later they won't recognize me. If I draw too much attention to myself, it might qualify me as being "known" by those people, and thus they would no longer be affected by Arcane.

It's a 1 point merit. It's convenient, especially when we talk about day-to-day feeding, but it's not something you should ever dream of relying on.

The real merit from Arcane comes in it's years. Eventually, things will get lost, and that's real helpful for the masquerade.

Right. If I desperately need to make sure my tracks are covered, I would probably want to make sure that any records were destroyed. But if all I'm worried about is leaving behind evidence that could crop up again much, much later, that's less of a concern. To put it another way, if I know someone checks the security footage every night, I probably need to insure it gets destroyed, but if they never check it and either delete old footage or put it in an archive, then I probably don't need to worry. By the time someone realizes that there might be evidence there, it will already have been erased.

In the end, I suppose it's up to my sister how she wants to handle it. If it unpersons me, I'd better ditch it. But if it just passively covers my tracks and makes people forget about me, then that's a nice bonus, particularly for a stealth oriented character.

[Chauncymancer]

Arcane used to be a tiered merit: taking it once was a neat trick, more than once would unperson you. It was more designed for games like mage and changeling, wherein it specifically stated that mages and changelings were just immune to Arcane and saw you just fine, so you could trust the supernatural society to have your back.