World of Darkness Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 from Hardsuit Labs and Brian Mitsoda

Delerious is kinda correct. Either way all games are power fantasies. Read my signature.

As for VtM, it exists to deny a direct power projection to the player. If you are playing it like that then guess what, missing the point. The job of the DM, through humanity, masquerade and through world structure, is to deny turning the game into a full blown super hero adventure. Whenever possible the DM must present a bleak and paralysed world that the PCs can not change. The best they can do is to maintain status quo. Like Soviet Russia, in VtM things only go from bad to worse.


There are many other quite good settings to be a super hero in. So why muddle this one with that is beyond me.

 

Y U DISAGRE

 

That's why the big twist in Werner Herzog's Nosferatu: Phantom Der Nacht is:

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Dracula doesn't die even if he is killed, he reincarnates, because he is cursed to live forever surrounded by death, not to drink blood.

It's also a sort of thing you can't really do if the vampires are numerous and actually like a subculture. This actively undermines any sort of attempt at suggesting any sort of alienation when there's a clearly functioning clearly very human society, albeit with superhuman powers. The Elders "who think candlelight is a cutting edge invention" are basically mythical creatures in Vampire, they have never actually had success trying to genuinely present it (and the goddamn White Wolf obsession with supernatural secret societies).

Really, there's a reason why What We Do In The Shadows is one of the best vampire movies, because the idea of approaching the whole concept of vampires through a lense of banal mundanity is brilliant counterplay to how vampire fiction has evolved.

And most of its gangbangers too while at it. And honestly, you have to go out of the way to actually lose Humanity in VtMB, most of the time the best possible solutions to quests also gave you humanity points. It might as well have not been there, since all it really did was give you frowny-frowns if you were being a dick (though being a commando gear packin' two-fisted yojimbo is never against morality; and it would be absolutely terrible if it was).

I would say none at all, since power fantasy is important to make them fun and engaging. It's mostly just grating when WW tries to pretend VtM isn't about, to quote, "a power fantasy mixed with being emo pretending to have a curse that actually turns you into the coolest, sexiest, meanest motherfucking predator ever." It's okay to be a power fantasy. I mean, we'd all go insane without power fantasies.

 

No, that's just V5.

All of the good ones.

 

And this is when I played PnP Vampire and Werewolf I didn't find any fun or purpose in playing Vampire. Werewolf on the other hand way fun. Now that is a real power fantasy game with no real negative.

 

How is this conveyed to a vampire?

 

You don't have to convey anything, you just have to truly believe that "salt is salty" and no vampire can hurt you.

 

This would suggest there is some higher power truly protecting certain people but not others, because it really gets off on people believing in something.

 

Why would it have to be a higher power in a universe with magic?
Theoretically all magic could just be channeled forms of true faith.

 

What a weird spell. "This will protect you, but only from vampires. A grizzly bear will still kill you just fine."

 

It protects everybody. If "true faith" can be believing in whatever, vampires can't hurt anyone because everybody "truly believes" stuff like "when I hold my breath, my lungs feel weird". YOU CANNOT HARM ME ABOMINATION

 

There is nothing to debate, it is just a cope out to accommodate atheistic beliefs into what should very well be only about one god religions.

 

One god religions, no. Religions in general maybe.

 

It is clearly a cop-out to be inclusive. I didn't even read the actual rules but my impression is they could have worded it much better. All they had to say was something like "whatever belief system is appropriate for your campaign"; they didn't have to do dumb shit like say all belief systems could work in every campaign.

 

Well the main thing the wording is trying to convey is that it is 1) not something caused by the religion itself or any other outside source, 2) but rather that it's a kind of mind over matter thing. True Faith isn't so much a power granted (unless one goes theorycrafting around the entire metasetting and interprets it as a rare function of the divine spark; and even then you run into places where it just makes no sense with that explanation like Ferox), but the power of an individual derived from unwavering and absolute conviction. It really isn't enough to just see supernatural or the like, heck even evidence of a religion being true wouldn't be enough to grant True Faith. True Faith is not based on either and cannot be affected by the opposite either. You can tell Ferox until you're blue in the face that he's a goddamn vampire and not a fallen angel, and he will never believe you no matter what evidence you present. Jesus himself could come down just to tell him that, and Ferox probably wouldn't change his mind. And if he did, he'd probably lose True Faith entirely, because it is not granted by an outside source but by unwavering inner conviction. Bach is also kind of a good example, since he comes off as unhinged (and someone with completely unshakeable conviction probably would), even if it's kinda murky if he's supposed to have True Faith or Hunter Edges.

Now, True Faith is obviously meant to be and coded to be around religion, particularly Christianity (since, you know, the entire context is Western), and it's reflected in the standard abilities (and they do suggest that a Buddhist with True Faith would ward off a vampire with prayers instead for example). But if you honestly decided to have True Faith just in the free market, it'd have to be something entirely different and would really only work as comedy because of what bizarre nonsense the abilities of free market True Faith would have to be (spontaneously generate a business of vampire hunters to charge you extortionate prices? At higher levels spontaneously generate MULTIPLE businesses of vampire hunters to compete for your money?).

 

While the whole invisible hand thing would quickly end up in a joke, eg throw your wallet at the vampire and a bunch of thugs spawn to kick its ass, a non-religious based true faith could still work in a more serious setting.

For example the character could have true faith in the sanctity of the right to bear arms for instance. That could translate in whatever gun he is carrying inflicting aggravated damage on the vampire. Or true faith in multi-level marketing could translate as being able to talk your way out of the vampire encounter.

 

yes, because true faith has consensus altering power
True Faith is absurdly powerful and generally only NPCs ever have it, not PCs.

 

The definition posted here some pages ago of True Faith have this line: "Faith can manifest in any _religious_ form." So religion is needed, whether one god or more, but there is no mentioning of just believing in anything! Or has this been changed in VtM V5?

 

define:religion

 

In the novel series Tome of Bill there's this really autistic toy collector who's faith in the resell value of his G1 Optimus Prime turns it into a weapon of faith similar in many ways to how True Faith works in VTM. I always assumed it was the faith that mattered. Not the religion.

 

Yeah, and in Jim Butcher's "Dresden Files" a Star Wars fan creates a lightsaber out of a destroyed magical sword, but then I think Jedi is accepted as a religion in the US anyway ! Also a lightsaber is a magical weapon so there is a connection. I don't see anything special about an Optimus Prime toy except maybe the vampire is so stunned, that he buys it to play with it and forgets about eating the collector .

 

True Faith: Weaponized Autism.

 

I think that is the best way to describe it succinctly; "True Faith has consensus-altering power". And for those that know absolutely nothing about World of Darkness (and I mean this not no denigrating way whatsoever), World of Darkness is a "consensus-based reality", which is why mages are able to alter the currents. Most normies are just adrift in this flow of reality, but everyone can nudge it a little by their beliefs; if enough people would believe that vaccines cause autism, congratulations, vaccines are going to start causing autism.

People of True Faith, however, seem to be able to override this to some degree, in some manners, without even realizing it. While it's never explained exactly how or why this happens, my own theory is that they anchor themselves in the flow, or exert some form of instinctive direct control, like spergs with retard-strength or femoids that rip doors from cars unaware of how it fucks their body, and essentially swim against the current if necessary. This is what I meant earlier with them achieving a form of semi-Awakening, except it's faith-based rather than a genuine understanding of the forces of the reality.

 

Not necessarily. Most magic skirts within the extremes of consensus, even at times of technocratic supremacy. That is what sorcery / hedge wizardry / linear magic is described as. Assuming that true faith is some kind of ignorant savant isn't that much of a stretch either, its what Mages believe after all.

 

So uhm... my True Faith acts as a mind control power on a vampire (the fucker starts believing he can't hurt me), or I literally alter the makeup of the vampire so he can't hurt me (whatever makes the vampire a vampire is suppressed in the face of my True Faith)?