Decline So Vampire: The Masquerade 5e is going to be a thing.

[Havoc]

Who'd want to play that? I admit there's a chance I have somehow misunderstood the setting, though.

You haven't, it's Captain Planet but with more bestiality.

Ecoterrorism. Killing "possessed" corporate board members. Battling ancient evils, that somehow look human, but still ancient evils. Fucking a vampire's day (night). Getting owned by anything with silver, even your mom. Showing who has a bigger dick, under the name Glory, Honor or Wisdom. Going on acid trips, called also Umbra. Making normal people go apeshit and get a ticket straight to straitjacket, because he saw you naked. Fucking bitches for your race to survive. Mages are fine, unless they are the technological variant, so don't start with either - they fuck you without silver. Ghost like you and will gift you stuff, but only some, the rest will fuck you over. All in all, everything is out to get you, because you are a furry. At least you can play a hardcore emo, because you cutting yourself will do jackshit with that regen speed. Unless you are really suicidal and use silver knives, you rich fuck.

 

[Matalarata]

...true dat, but the first time you roll a ~30 damage dices attack it's all forgiven!

I had so much fun with my Might of Thor abusing Get of Fenris, although admittedly, the Coup de grâce gift of the Black Furies had higher damage output on the single attack. Good times.

 

[Night Goat]

Playtest Impressions

 

[Delterius]

And then there's MtA - oi lads, enlightenment! Ascension! Or Age of Reason! It was optimistic as fuck in comparison, and quite dissonant.

Was it? As I remember it, the looming danger of Mage was that the triumph of the Technocracy meant absolute stagnation. Without the ability to dream, the consensus became skeptical of even the Technocracy's own ability to steer mankind. Imagine if every single bet we make that technological progress and innovation is capable of solving our problems -- climate change, the issue of work, the ageing of entire countries, and so on -- end up worse than blowing on our faces, but simply fizzling out.

 

[Rahdulan]

Playtest Impressions

The number of attributes has been reduced from previously 9 to 3.
The remaining attributes are: Mental, Physical, Social
They have got a range of 1 to 5 points and are able to be specialized.

My opinion & thoughts::
YEAH! I considered the nine attributed of previous edition way to much.

Well that party ended quickly.

 

[Havoc]

The more I read about this version, the less I like it.

 

[hivemind]

imo 5e edition is looking good in everything other than the new take on the setting

white wolf games were never some pinnacles of tactical stat-autisming so them moving towards a more narrative focused streamlined rules system is good

the new hunger system sounds p great

 

[Excidium II]

Any new RPG is garbage.

 

[Lambach]

The general principles are:
The target number to beat will always be 6.
The difficulty is defined by the minimum number of successes.
The „rule of one“ is gone, rolling a 1 on a d10 hasn’t got an effect.

The results are measured in three different stages:
Success: The minimum number of successes as been achieved or exceeded.
Failure: There has been at least one success, but the minimum number of successes hasn’t been met.
Critical failure: Not a single success has been rolled.

A critical failure should result in complications and a more intense situation. Yet it shouldn’t be as dire or harsh as a botch in previous editions.

Dropped.

EDIT:

The number of attributes has been reduced from previously 9 to 3.

Get fucked, White Wolf. Go bankrupt.

 

[Excidium II]

I don't understand why even bother keeping the pretense of an RPG system. Just do rock paper scissors.

 

[hivemind]

Excidium II
remove the retarded rating or I will fucking kill you

 

[Excidium II]

remove streamlining praise and I will.

 

[lightbane]

Firearms are still auto-win in most situations.

Therefore, punks with Uzis and Shotgun-wielding Celerity vampire/s are more dangerous than lone werewolves and other supposedly deadly stuff.

 

[Stainless Veteran]

Playtest Impressions

Jesus Christ, this is some turbodecline. Ultradecline. I don't even have the proper words to describe this shit. Not that I thought that after Paradox have bought them something good will come out of it, but damn they've managed to exceed my expectations.

 

[Rahdulan]

I think they just want to merge the roleplaying game and MET, or whatever they call their LARP scene days.

 

[Lambach]

Firearms are still auto-win in most situations.

Therefore, punks with Uzis and Shotgun-wielding Celerity vampire/s are more dangerous than lone werewolves and other supposedly deadly stuff.

I don't think Celerity affects the rate of fire. So someone with Celerity and a melee weapon could still get a double-digit number of damage die per turn (25+ in more extreme cases), while someone with an automatic rifle is still stuck with only 7 IIRC. Plus, the wolves soak and regenerate like mad on top of having OP Gifts and Rage, so they are still murder machines in direct combat, unless something significant changed from the last time I bothered checking what White Wolf are up to.

 

[lightbane]

Dunno with Masquerade, but in Requiem 2nd edition, only Celerity-based Vamps could dodge bullets, even werewolves are vulnerable to them (unless they transform into a certain form which I'm not sure if it was the Garou one). Everyone else who lacks some kind of force-field or speed-based power is assumed to stand around like a retard and be shot.

Although Celerity with melee also works if the characters still have the same shitty movement rates as usual. Also, since it seems there's no soak mechanic in the playtest, werewolves might lack it as well, I dunno.

They also kept the same godawful vices/archetypes that are basically unplayable but are there for reasons.

 

[hello friend]

Changeling can be either bright or dark depending on how you look atit: it can be about bringing hope and cheer to a dark and dreary world, or about loss of innocence and how everything you loved as a kid has lost its magic and charm.

Changeling: the Lost is a lot more interesting. It's about a world that hasn't lost it's magic and charm, and you better hope you never find out because at best it'll kill you and at worst you'll be charmed into spending the next 10 000 years slaving away in a terrifying trippy fae sweatshop, spinning fucking rainbows into cloth for the psychopathic nobility. And when you finally escape, you find out only 20 years have passed in the real world, you were replaced by a meatclone 20 years ago, and good luck convincing the people you knew that you're really you when you look way too young for it. Wanna buy some useful stuff from the goblin market? Sure, just sell me your best childhood memories, I'll accept one of your eyes as alternate payment. Grimdarkest WoD of them all.

Edit: Oh, and if your character becomes too powerful you go nuts.

 

[LESS T_T]

https://blog.white-wolf.com/2017/06/15/v5-pre-alpha-the-curtain-rises/

V5 pre-alpha: The curtain rises!

It’s Time!

Put aside the guesswork and feverish speculation: the V5 pre-alpha playtest is here!

Today we are sharing with you the Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition (V5) pre-alpha playtest kit, which includes the V5 pre-alpha rules and a special V5 pre-alpha scenario, The Night After. We invite you to download the kit and try it out: invite a few friends to play through the scenario together, talk about it, and then share your opinions with us through the online survey. We appreciate your feedback and value your input.

The Links:

Playtest Kit – https://whitewolf.box.com/v/v5prealphaplaytest

Playtest Survey – https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/v5prealphasurvey

V5 Presentation from WoD Berlin (video) – https://youtu.be/43VXwCS42O0

 

[Rahdulan]

I've skimmed through the rules and there's so much bullshit justification for what was a non-issue until now in regular play. It's not like Storyteller system needed to axe these parts.

Characters all have 3 Attributes measured from 1 to 5:

Physical
Social
Mental

Characters may also have one specialty in each Attribute, which describes an area of special expertise, focus, concentration, or luck.

Physical: Strength, Dexterity, Stamina
Social: Charisma, Manipulation, Appearance
Mental: Intelligence, Wits, Perception

A speciality grants a +1 bonus to dice pools (adds 1d10 to the dice pool). The Storyteller decides when and if it’s appropriate to include the speciality bonus in a roll. Exceptional characters may have more than one speciality in the same Attribute.

All of which is just plain dumbing down until you get to their rationale.

DESIGN NOTES

• We reduced the number of Attributes from 9 to 3 and created these specializations because this allows players to customize and personalize their characters. Some Brujah, for example, will have Dexterity as their Physical specialization; others will choose Stamina. Not every Brujah is the same!

As opposed to before where you could do precisely the same thing except you had more freedom not to mention it was clearly laid out? This essentially just changes the layout from:

PHYSICAL
Strength [INSERT VALUE]
Dexterity [INSERT VALUE]
Stamina [INSERT VALUE]

to

PHYSICAL [INSERT VALUE] (Strength, Dexterity, Stamina)

Why? I mean, aside from giving the ST opportunity to screw you over by saying your specialization doesn't apply in this specific situation or something? I'm sure someone more versed in these matters can comb through the rule changes better than I can because I'd like a second opinion here. Not to mention simplifying matters into just PHYSICAL, SOCIAL and MENTAL was already done... for random and no-name mooks you weren't sure your characters would interact with or who were expendable in the first place. It's certainly not the approach I would take to player characters aka stars of your game.

 

[LESS T_T]

https://blog.white-wolf.com/2017/06...elling-game-of-personal-and-political-horror/

Vampire: The Masquerade, A Storytelling Game of Personal and Political Horror


Last month we shared our Vampire The Masquerade fifth edition (V5) pre-alpha playtest at World of Darkness Berlin, with over 100 playtesters from 26 different countries. The reaction was overwhelmingly positive and did not raise any red flags about content or core systems. Last week we released it to the world, and we are grateful for all your survey responses, emails, social media comments, and reviews. Now we are working on the alpha playtest for GenCon 2017, but your feedback on the pre-alpha makes it clear that we need to provide some context for the playtest and for V5.

White Wolf, the World of Darkness, and Vampire: The Masquerade all share a long and proud tradition of exploring contemporary issues through a dark roleplaying lens. Throughout the development of the fifth edition of Vampire (V5), our goals have explicitly included the proud continuation of this tradition, while also supporting an incredibly entertaining roleplaying game experience. We strive to explore difficult and disturbing subjects maturely, but not gratuitously, building on the brave heritage of previous editions.

We don’t plan to abandon this practice, which has been a core part of Vampire for a quarter-century: this is a roleplaying game about monsters.

Make no mistake, the player characters in the V5 pre-alpha playtest are monsters and villains. Through them, we intend for our players to view the Camarilla sect from the Anarch perspective, as a perverse and privileged class of old-school vampires and who adhere to an antiquated code of morality and obsessed by the realpolitik of staying in power at any price. The player characters are written as dictators and collaborators who deserve to fall hard, perhaps even deserve to die, as they are torn from power.

The nature of the Curse makes each sin vampires might inflict upon the world erode their souls. Yet vampires must live off the blood of humans. The longer they exist, the longer they visit their own evil upon the world, they become ever-more distant and alien to the world around them. Their actions have terrible consequences for themselves and others; some of them can be considered truly evil. This internal conflict has been been at the core of VTM stories since the game’s creation. That is the very essence of the Curse of Caine, and it makes the best vampire a struggling anti-hero and the worst a hypocritical monster like Amelina.

Our oversight, for which we apologize, was not providing this context so that our players could see why and how we made these decisions. We needed to clearly state again that the material was intended for mature audiences, and to label it that way. We should have stated again that our vision for V5 brings Vampire back to its roots as a morality tale about evil, set in the darkest places of our own world. Contemporary, real-world horrors and atrocities are an important part of the setting and by extension – its characters.

We’ll communicate this and other design-choices better as we go forward. We can and will make the game’s contents transparent for those who need them to be by giving you fair warning. We want our game’s dark tone to be truly earned, giving it meaning and the opportunity for our players to use it to tell stories of genuinely personal and political horror.

As we release future previews, you’ll see that V5 will include many relevant, timely story elements like the global migrant and refugee crises, drug abuse, human trafficking, urban decay, homelessness, government corruption, ecological crises and political instability. V5 characters will have the opportunity to interact with these topics through scenarios designed to prompt insight and critical thinking, while also being exciting, dramatic, and thrilling, as each Storyteller deems appropriate. Our goal is to allow our players to use these elements to explore tough topics through the lens of roleplaying, to the extent they are interested in exploring such ideas.

Our plan for V5 also includes providing tools and techniques for adjusting the game to personal tastes. There will be techniques to deal with difficult subject matter and strong emotions. We’ll give you the means to focus your V5 chronicles on any aspect of Vampire: The Masquerade that you’ve ever enjoyed, from terrifyingly intimate scenes of very personal horror to the repulsive global power plays of the Camarilla Kindred. You’ll get expert guidance helping you to shine the spotlight on ripped-from-the-headlines realism or insidious parlor politics as you choose.

If you prefer the bloody violence of a street-level drama set against the backdrop of vampire gang warfare and an Anarch Baron’s rise and fall, you can tell that story in V5. You can also join Beckett in his global quest to unravel hidden and forbidden Kindred secrets, or come face to face with the consequences of a modern intelligence community as instruments of government overreach while unraveling the horrifying intrigues of a Camarilla Prince. The V5 stories will scale downward, upward, and sideways as you decide.

Our next live playtest will take place at GenCon 2017 in Indianapolis, and we hope you will join us there, not only to celebrate this convention’s 50th anniversary, but also to participate in the shared creation of a game we all love, and talk about it with us in person. Looking forward to seeing you there.

Blood and Souls,

/ The V5 team


V5 Pre-Alpha QA
We answer some of the most common questions about the V5 Pre-Alpha. Feel free to send us more questions.

Q: Why is Amelina a pedophile?
A: She’s not. She has an obsession with young (recently embraced) Kindred and a feeding restriction that forces her to feed from children and young teens.

Q: Why did you use the term “triggered” to describe someone easily offended on ideological grounds?
A: Because that is the common usage of the term in everyday language, no disrespect intended.

Q: Why are so many characters children (“Club Kids”)?
A: The term Club Kid (at least in Sweden) means a youngish (roughly 18-25) person who spends all their free time at clubs, often under the influence of drugs.

 

[Havoc]

tl;dr?

 

[Delterius]

tl;dr?

The Beast takes over when people use the wrong pronouns.

 

[hivemind]

inb4 drumpf is a pentex executive in the 5e metaplot upgrade

 

[lightbane]

As expected, those that try to have fun as a vampire instead of being a permanently moody creature who whines about the curse of living forever in exchange of a few inconveniences are brutally discouraged.

Q: Why is Amelina a pedophile?
A: She’s not. She has an obsession with young (recently embraced) Kindred and a feeding restriction that forces her to feed from children and young teens.

Q: Why did you use the term “triggered” to describe someone easily offended on ideological grounds?
A: Because that is the common usage of the term in everyday language, no disrespect intended.

Q: Why are so many characters children (“Club Kids”)?
A: The term Club Kid (at least in Sweden) means a youngish (roughly 18-25) person who spends all their free time at clubs, often under the influence of drugs.

Plus the writers are way creepier and more disturbing than their written material, as expected too.