VtM Bloodlines v8.8 unofficial patch by Wesp5

HARK! YOU PEOPLE ARE TALKING OF CLASSIC WORLD OF DARKNESS AND SOME OF YOU SEEM TO BE UNAWARE OF IT'S GLORIOUS RESURRECTION! HERE I GO ONCE MORE TO LIST EVERY FUCKING BOOK SO FAR RELEASED IN THIS LINE!

http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/94815/Vampire-The-Masquerade-20th-Anniversary-Edition?src=s_pi
http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/105584/Children-of-the-Revolution?src=s_pi
http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/102130/
http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/96535/Dust-to-Dust?src=s_pi
http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/produ...Edition?term=Werewolf 20th&manufacturers_id=1
http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/produ...d-II?term=Hunter hunted II&manufacturers_id=1

AND REMEMBER! FROM DRIVETHRURPG YOU CAN ALSO HAVE SOME OF THE OLDER BOOKS PRINTED ON DEMAND AS WELL!
http://forums.white-wolf.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=54733

PRAISE BE THE 20TH ANNIVERSARY!

And the quote of the day is:
"Nobody tells me what to do... Actually a lot do, but here's where I get even!"

 

Chimestry basically creates illusions even at high levels. Mages can actually change reality. With the right spheres the mage could turn a vampire into a chair, open a portal to the sun and fling the vampire through, render a vampire's attacks powerless by converting kinetic energy into light, travel through time and kill the vampire while they were still mortal, or pretty much anything else you can think of. Of course all of those examples I gave would be practically impossible and would also induce a shitload of paradox.

Tremere himself was a mage (order of hermes) in the middle ages who was researching immortality and ended up (accidentally) turning himself and all his followers into vampires. He found out that since he was undead now he couldn't perform true magic because of the way that works, so he studied Thaumaturgy (the Tzimisce probably discovered it first) and eventually diablerized Saulot, the antidiluvian of the Salubri - the only "good" vampires. Then they enacted a campaign of misinformation against the Salubri and hunted down and killed all but a few of them, so there are practically no Salubri left.

Mages and vampires don't tend to fight directly. Well, that's a little complicated as well - there is a group of mages called the Technocracy who essentially run everything everywhere and are responsible for the entire industrial revolution and all technological development since, and they don't like any supernatural entities, so they fight vampires when they find them. Unfortunately the Technocracy handbook is really vague about how much they actually know about vampires. The other main sect of mages, the Traditionalists, don't really interact with vampires all that much.

Malks in PnP are more like Therese/Jeanette or Grout and less like the PC. Insanity is a big part of the clan, but exactly how insane they are and how it manifests really varies depending on the player.

 

Of course we discovered it first. And the Usurpers were only capable of learning it because of *how* they turned into Vampires. They used stolen Tzimsice blood! And they will pay, oh they will.

 

The highest level Chimerstry power (9 dots, Mayaparisatya) can alter reality quite substantially. Granted, in some games there might not be anyone able to use it, given the state of clan Ravnos.

 

Do they win often?

So there are fewer "seer" malks out there than it seems to be implied or do all malks have this "seer" quality that remains dormant most of the time and insanity brings it out sometimes?

I know most people speculate about malk mental illness to be a sort of manifestation of Malkavian as a madness network that connects all members of its' clan (that may be overly romanticized by me, iirc the wiki says they just believe Malkavian is still alive and lives within the madness network itself) since Malkavian's childer diablerized him or something. Idk, i really liked the prospect of a borg-like hivemind that manifests itself through madness, especially since there's a lot of speculation on whether Malkavian had a special divine seer gift before he was embraced so i thought that the madness is either people simply not handling Malk's gift that well OR divine gift + divine curse = error (madness).

Reading through the 20th edition book Protean really seemed like one of the cooler more powerful disciplines, especially at epic levels (6+) which is a shame because in the game itself - for the 5 levels you get there - i think it's one of the shittiest disciplines D:

Ye, i read the same about high level chimestry so i thought there was a connection with mage power given Xor's description of it.

Also what is the current state of Ravnos? D:

P.S. Do hunters every employ the services of mages or have any within their ranks or do they just hunt/hate mages too?

 

The Ravnos are a greatly depleted, if not a dying breed thanks to the week of nightmares.

Taken from the White wolf wiki.

 

Vampires aren't that scary when you have an army of terminators, space ships, magic nukes, laser guns, you yourself have cybernetics, you control all the world's goverments, and you can control the very fabric of reality (although you don't see it that way).

Malks don't have any particular insight mechanic that other vampires don't have. Dementation doesn't give any insight by itself, either. There might be references to dementation giving insight in fluff material (I say might because if there is, I can't remember where), but it would be completely up to the storyteller how (or if) that manifested.

From what I remember it was revealed somewhere that dementation is Malkav, and he controls the entire clan through it. Or something like that. Doesn't make much sense because other vampires can learn dementation and use it just as effectively as a malk, but whatever.

Protean is pretty shit in Bloodlines but a lot of the powers are really useful in PnP. 2 dot ability lets you do agg damage, which is always nice. 1 dot ability can save your life if you find yourself in the dark. The 3 dot ability is amazing and I have seen it save multiple characters from dying to the sun.

I wasn't really clear before. Here's a more thorough description.

A mage awakens when he realizes that all of reality is defined by those who observe it, and with the right frame of mind one can change that reality to a desired result. The exact form this takes depends on the mage's paradigm, and that usually follows from the faction the mage belongs to - there are 9 Traditionalist groups and all see the world very differently. While a vampire might seem to defy the laws of physics when he uses celerity to outrun a bullet, from the mage's perspective everything the vampire does fits within the bounds of reality. Vampires can do crazy shit because the general consensus is that vampires have superpowers, so they do. When a mage does something significant, they are acting against the consensus - the collective will of mankind - and doing that is very difficult, but with the right understanding they can do literally anything. The result of bending reality too far is called paradox, which is basically a backlash from reality itself bitchslapping you. Paradox can cause a wide variety of bad things to happen so mages tend to avoid it as much as possible (the section on how paradox works basically can be summed up as "you're the storyteller, go nuts"). Generate enough paradox and you'll end up getting banished to a prison dimension, or just explode in a puff of anti-logic.

Because Chemistry follows the consensus, it doesn't produce paradox for the vampire when he summons a meteor to strike someone, but a mage doing the same thing (even as an illusion) would.

When we were discussing an antidiluvian roaming around India and fighting the Technocracy, two kuei-jin bodhisattvas, etc, for multiple days, that was the Ravnos antidiluvian (whose name escapes me at the moment). The moment he woke up, all the Ravnos in the world went insane and started killing each other. This lasted for a good two or three weeks until only a handful of Ravnos were left, then the madness lifted and they were left wondering what the hell just happened. See the Week of Nightmares. They've basically gone the way of the Salubri.

Edit: Echo Mirage's post gives a more accurate explanation. I'm pulling this stuff from memory and it's been a few years since I played Vampire.

Hunters generally hate mages as much as they hate every other supernatural, but there might be individual exceptions. I've never seen it happen. Then again we didn't usually interact with hunters unless we were playing Hunter, because hunters pretty much completely suck and don't make good antagonists.

 

It's sad that hunters were treated this way in WoD. I know this is basically a "I want to be a Vampire !" game, but having a powerful hunter hunting you would be pretty cool. Even in bloodlines the hunters are presented as religious zealots gone bonkers, I would have much preferred a faithful, intelligent scholar, instead of Grünfeld Bach... even though his over-the-top performance was amusing. Aren't hunters supposed to have divine protection/resistance to vampire powers ? Do they get at least any powerful paladin spells at high levels ?

 

Getting a form of werewolf-like proportions, spectral form + inward focus which sounds like a combination of very high level potence + fortitude + celerity that stacks with said powers and with the werewolf-like form, i'm thinking this makes proteans one of the best duelists versus other supernaturals of power. Is there any other discipline that's better for 1v1'ing than this in your opinion?

Also how strong are kuei-jin generally? Was surprised when i read that 3 elders actually manage to fight an antediluvian, i take it there are some kuei-jin out there who are even stronger than those 3?
And is Ming-Xiao a bodhisattva as well or is she just an older slightly more powerful kuei-jin?

And also did the Lasombra antediluvian really get diablerized? It seems like every other story about diablerie is fake - Tzimisce faked his own diablerie/death and is alive(in an undead way) and well, Saulot is controlling Tremere's body and is also fine for the most part, Cappadocious came back as Ashur and made the baali apparently (or Saulot did, it seems to be debated a lot). It seems hard to believe that the Lasombra forefather got offed so easily.

 

He did, but as everyone else, he's still around during Gehenna scenarios as a shadow-creature in the Abyss, more dangerous perhaps then when he was in physical body. If he can reach Earth of course.

Edit: He basically arranged his diablerie and purposefully went to Abyss.

 

God dam where the hell do i find this info? Are there any e-books with vtm lore out there? I think i may find the book of nod in pdf format, anything else? Basically what are the main lore books i have to look for?

It would be a huge shame if people don't actually do some good games with vtm lore, it's really awesome.

 

Depends if you want to remove nothing from inventory, or willing to buy. oWoD pdfs are on sale still on sites like DrivethruRpg, but pretty expensive.

 

Reading through the thread, I can't help but notice that they have eventually gone completely bonkers on WoD.
Every setting on it's own is nice enough, but all of them put together, and frequent powerlevel>9000 characters used in what strikes me as a pretty cheap way, results in a big clusterfuck, imho.
Of course, nobody forces you to actually follow the official plot in PnP.

 

I have an impression, that each setting is mostly self-containing, and use creatures from others only as monsters to fight. Some products put them together, most famous is Ravnos Antediluvian awakening mentioned above, which had Vampire, Kindred of the East, Werewolf and Mage participants (each with it's own agenda), and maybe a few others, but most plot-lines develop in isolation from each other.

 

Which to almost every single Malk player I met means: "lel, I'm so random, gonna find a fish X D".

 

Obtenebration is really strong, assuming your opponent doesn't have access to fire. Thaumaturgy is much stronger, especially with path of the flame. Vicissitude is awesome and you can do all kinds of creative things with it.

The kuei-jin who fought the antidiluvian were supposed to be the most powerful ones around at the time.

No idea. I've never read kindred of the east. I would guess no.

 

I just wish that they released tools for the damn game.
Fucking mod tools would have been awesome.
Or Troika released via backdoors the source code or a mod tool.

 

Off-topic but since i saw mentions about this, seems like Onyx Path wants to kickstart a WoD project http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/200664283/demon-the-descent-prestige-edition?ref=category

 

Me too

Maybe the demon project getting funded so fast will make a few people realize the potential in putting out wod-themed games though so think of it as a positive thing.

 

There were several successful WoD-themed kickstarters already. Most from same people, but a few from other parties. I don't see any reaction on cRPG front.

 

That kickstarter is just for a printed version of the nWoD demon system. It's not a game or anything. And besides, Onyx Path has done a few of these kickstarters now, most notably Exalted 3rd edition. That got a decent amount of money and there still hasn't ever been a single exalted video game that I'm aware of, even though it would be pretty easy to systemize.

No, Obsidian won't ever get to make that Mage the Ascension game I keep wishing for. oWoD pretty much only lives on now in the groups who have been playing it for years and nWoD isn't popular enough to carry weight as a licensed product, so I doubt Onyx Path or whoever owns the rights to oWoD and nWoD this week is even interested in getting a game made, and is content to just let the license rot with CCP.

 

Speaking of Exalted games. What happened to the Exalted MMO tech demo thing that they had on Kickstarter a few months ago ?

 

Question here: How the fuck do Sabbat usually operate? It seems like if these guys are truly stark raving mad loons who pound their chest yelling "Look at me! I am a blood sucker!" then there should be at least one incident every week with these guys in some form of news showing off aspects of vampirism., either to show off or because the media caught on. I get some ideas like the Camarilla cover up their shit because hey have to and the one Ghoul family that work for the Sabbat, but I don't understand how the Sabbat aren't constantly running through the streets offing people with fleshcrafting and the what not.

Is it just the shovelheads that act that way or do the Elders in the Sabbat act this way as well? It doesn't make sense that a Sect that claims it is better than humanity and doesn't want to hide anymore isn't exposing itself indecently and just murdering a whole city.