No modern work of fiction has handled the vampire mythos better than Vampire the masquerade. Prove me wrong Veeky Forums

Spbp

I liked the template and idea GURPS Black Ops had for vampires. Used that for one NPC, went over great. I've become way way more into simple limited vampires without any of the excess mysticism and bullshit.

Vtr had shit fluff. It was "what if vampire head a crappier setting and better rules?"

I don't like that they all have bouts of Alzheimer's hibernation. That's retarded.

I like it for vampires. Fuck perfect eternal vampires. Let vampirism be a horrible fucking divine nightmare.

Now that I think about it, she did have different vamp clans and came up with the whole progeny thing.

"He might be a thousand years old, he might be a hundred. Who knows. Either way he's a weak little bitch with the memory of a goldfish."

It's like they were drunk.

Scary ancient vampires is the point of having a setting with vampires.

That's the point. You're not thinking it through.

"Might be a 100, might be a 1000, memory of a goldfish who cares"

You pop the tomb. It was 10,000 years old. It is insane, ravenous, and does not remember it was ever a human.

It's also as weak as a fucking fledgling because it lost most of its BP and skills and disciplines and whatnot.

It limits every vampire to a maximum amount of memory and skills and abilities.

No thanks. Played it for a two years about a decade ago. I can say I have it an honest shot. I have very little use for it as a setting.

As a system, it has many things that were notable improvements over the original.

I could maybe see using the conversion guide, and hand converting over missing content, but I can't see myself ever running or playing requiem again. Pass.

Oh. System problem then, not setting. I'd ditch half of that, yeah. Fuck by the rules dude, just custom hack it and have fun.

>It's also as weak as a fucking fledgling because it lost most of its BP and skills and disciplines and whatnot.
No. At least, in the current edition it looks like they do keep all their inhuman attributes, impossible skills, and supernatural powers. They'll have less blood to spend on the latter and their frenzy will have less bite, but that's still kinda dangerous.

I'd probably not use the setting from either, by the book.

>Core rules from nwod
>Main vampire fluff and origins (but not most history) from vtm/vtda, but drop the daytime sleepiness/helplessness. Change the antediluvians, if you have them at all.
>Clans/bloodlines cherry picked from all of the games but primarily the older game. No clan/bloodline dichotomy. Bloodlines as smaller clans.
>Homebrewed history and factions, cherry picking some ideas from both games.

If I'm gonna do it at all, it will be quite different, at this point.

Hell, I've been considering running my next vampire campaign with GURPS, using the GURPS owod supplement as a starting point, because of how much easier it would be to customize the game.

If you read in Russian, I can give you my GURPS Blood&Smoke conversion. Or you can try to read it through translator anyway.

>it lost most of its BP and skills and disciplines and whatnot
In 2e you keep all of it, except BP.

Gotcha. Yeah, it has been about 10 years. That's an improvement I guess, I still don't much care for the rest of the nwod specific vampire stuff though.

My Russian is Rusty as fuck but, Я нeмнoгo гoвopю пo Pyccки. Between my very rusty Russian and Google translate I'm sure I'll figure it out. I'd appreciate that. Thanks.

It's for GURPS4e, yeah?

>It's for GURPS4e, yeah?
Of course. Here it is: docs.google.com/document/d/1KWklTtRRhcxXe0W6sfIzqgwacQc_QEB11tTglKSZVSo/edit?usp=sharing

Thanks!

She wrote some great books, especially the first one. But VtM built a great world, and I think it's telling that derivative works, especially books/tv like Twilight and True Blood, pick up a lot of "game mechanics" from Vampire the Masquerade. Sure, they each add their own stuff, and much of it has its ultimate origin in other fiction like Rice's books, but at least to my eyes it seems very clearly to have been filtered through VtM's take on it. Which makes sense considering how big VtM was with the the literary artsy set in the 90s. It was an era when the kinds of people who wouldn't be caught admitting to be gamers now were playing VtM as a matter of course.

Not even just goths, I mean like actresses, writers, poetry types. VtM had a big impact on how people perceived gaming. In those days, the archetypal goth wasn't a trashy landwhale, it was someone who was attractive, intelligent, artistic, and stylish. And creative: pre-Hot Topic, girls pieced together their own gothic wardrobes (New Wave had done the same in its very early days). The Cure doing a song about a Jean Paul Sartre story launched a legion of followers finding excuses to quote High Literature. Especially romantic era.

VtM played on that, and then later followed goth into its decline.

>Prove me wrong Veeky Forums
Yupiel-sama no Geboku

Bloodborne.

Aristocrats called the Cainhurst Vilebloods began drinking forbidden blood given to them by a scholar, which corrupted them.

Nah fuck that.

Just because VtM shit out a baker's dozen books and became 'expansive' in the process doesn't mean that 80% of the setting isn't complete liquid trash oozing out of a dumpster.

There is a little bit of unintentional cleverness in that the setting is so meticulously cultivated to cut off any avenues of being anything beside an edgy goth caricature that the only narrative justification is what they went with, that God is a cunt.

>not The Lost Boys
VtM was literally based on The Lost Boys.

Tsukihime

...

Never heard of it. Too small to compare.

You fail.

Masquerade's not bad, if a bit overburdened with fluff. Lot of good stuff, but lot of bad as well.

I like Dark Ages more though, because the Tzimisce weren't complete degenerates back then and addicted to Vicissitude.

>not "bite me"

user, you're a disappointment.

ngl the floating blood/wine glass in the mirror is cool as fuck.

What do I win?

Shouldn't his clothes and shit appear in the mirror as well?

The vampires are protagonists, so you're wrong. What do I win?

AD&D
done.

>He hasn't read the Twilight Saga
Laughinggirls.jpg

he's a vampire so no

What determines whether an object on a vampire's person shows up in the mirror or not?

depends on setting.

Greg Stolze short storey called Enzymes

Alao what your dm/gm/st rules if there isent a written rule
I rule lasombras cloths do show up on the mirror to use more as a joke or add a slight creep factor ( oh hes kissing my neck but i cant see him in the mirror i guess hes at an odd angle) or ( man hes kissing my neck why is there a disembodied leather trench coat fedora combo in the mirror)

>Too small

...

...

No. VtM ruined the vampire mythos. It basically codified the concept of vampires as global conspiracy, rather than being predatory monsters like they're meant to be.

justsayin

Requiem does basically everything better, Masquerade's setting is a clusterfuck and the approach to the vampire mythos is dumb as hell and based on stereotypes and restrictive Clans where you either play to the stereotype or you're a cartoonish deconstruction/parody/whatever. You're not allowed to be a character, you're Clan first and foremost.

The actual setting of Requiem is much better. You're confusing pointless backstory bullshit for setting, it's a common mistake that people who like Masquerade make.

Fog of Ages honestly never bothered me and I like it, but they got rid of it in 2e so the only reason you can't find a vampire from the time of Caine or whatever to tell you all about the bullshit is because they're probably dead.

Interview with the Vampire is quite nice.
Its a little bit homo sometimes and the following books become high-fantasy shit with godlike prehistoric psychic vampires made of living stone, but the first book Is bretty good. I really recommend reading the first book and reading the next ones only if you're curious.

You presume too much.

>You're confusing history with setting
No I'm not. History is one aspect of setting.

>Setting history is pointless.
I definitely disagree on that front. The requiem setting is ill defined. Part of that is due to the lax history, but it's I'll defined in general.

I also didn't care much for requiems factions. I don't care for masquerades factions much either, but I like them better than requiem's.

I don't like that it's I'll defined, and I didn't like most of what I read of the setting that /was/ defined.

I do admit it was 1e vtr I read, not 2e, however.

But that's also my general sentiment about the whole nwod world. Ill defined as a setting making it not worth using, and the things that are defined are codified creature rules and types that do not help me use it as a generic ruleset to run my own setting.

The old World of Darkness is kind of well known for the lore behind its world. Worldbuilding was fucking great. Requiem on the other hand is complete shit. It's like the people who wrote this just didn't have any ideas on how to build them up and they just made this sort of generic thing, with some stuff taken from oWoD. It's just an empty sandbox, when WoD should be far more than that.

>You're not allowed to be a character, you're Clan first and foremost.

That's bullshit though. If you're inept and can only think up characters within the constraints of their Clan (be they Sabbat or Camarilla), that's on you, not the game.

I think Peter Watts did it pretty good in Blindsight. Vampires are turbo-autists.

WW got complaints about owod having too much metaplot.

People were referring of course to the current day world shaking events.

WW, being an idiot game company, decided the solution was clearly to publish a game with minimal worldbuilding or history.

Nwod sales were far lower than owod sales, which is what prompted their parent company to tell they they *would* produce new owod content, whether they wanted to or not.

Simplification, but that's my understanding of what happened, more or less.

Being a goth has NEVER been cool user. But back in the day they were seen by outsiders as weirdos, not pathetic losers.

>t. butthurt roman

Some of that came from they decided they where going to end Rev with Gehenna and were revving up "THE END IS NEIGH!!!!!!!" and having to make all the "but behind the scenes!!!!" shit up and cram it in to give a sense of things happening in the metaplot.

Also, White Wolf had a business formula that could in some aspects be broken down into "You have to buy literally every book we publish to keep up with the metaplot. Miss one splat book and you'll be hopelessly lost." around that time and it was frankly cancerous.

...

Was it WW who decided that or was it Onyx Path?

>Legacy of Kain
>Let The Right One In
>Hellsing(Manga and Ultimate)
>1st and 2nd Parts of Jojo's Bizarre Adventure

Jesus fuck, is this what they tell you in WoD general these days?

WW decided that before they were bought out. Onyx Path was more around the time when they were told they had to start making more owod stuff. Onyx path is the same people, btw. They just no longer owned ww, and started a new company and got everything contracted out to them. But it's the same main people.

Nah. That's recollections of events from a wide variety of sources, including old dev posts and such and old we forum stuff.

Haven't played a oWOD game since 2012, haven't played nwod since 2011. I don't go to WOD general.

Feel free to give a more accurate summary.

I think Let The Right One In is a great movie, but I don't think it is as interesting as a setting by any means.

But the vampire mythos in V:tM was dumb as hell.

I can't really think of a better one, but it was still fucking stupid.

Why do you think it is dumb? I think it's pretty cool.

>The requiem setting is ill defined.
It really isn't. Hell, it even has history, it's just not the same deep STPC backstory of the Antedeluvians and other big cool badasses. It's not really even ill defined, it's pretty clearly defined, it's just that there's more room within each of the definitions. Clan and Covenant both are much looser than Masquerade's very rigid system. A Gangrel in Montreal won't be the same as a Gangrel in Shanhai in Requiem, while Masquerade goes so far as to have Sect specific Clans.

The worldbuilding was not "fucking great", it was random bullshit that often doesn't fit the rules of a setting built on having rules, and mostly just fancy ST characters doing things too cool for school. Requiem isn't an empty sandbox, and I'm starting to wonder if the Masquerade fans who keep saying that have even read the damned thing.

>Nwod sales were far lower than owod sales, which is what prompted their parent company to tell they they *would* produce new owod content, whether they wanted to or not.
Cripes, user, you know the reason they moved to nWoD in the first place is because oWoD wasn't selling, right? The whole industry was failing. It wasn't the parent company that forced them to go back to publishing oWoD stuff, either, it was Onyx Path wanting to because they're fucking nerds and grognards.

If they didn't reboot the setting in 2004, they wouldn't have lasted until 2009 when they merged with CCP. While we've got no sales data, THAT much is certain, because I've seen people involved with the company at the time say as much.

Though comparing sales data wouldn't mean much, since the entire industry is different. This is probably why Dracula is going to fuck everything up. He's already burning bridges with fans, and writers as well by hiring Zak Sabbath to shit on everything with his emo stalker bullshit.

best vampires coming through

Not , but Masquerade is garbage. It's all big powerful dumbasses that the writers love being cooler and better than you and telling you to go do their errands, all with mechanics that complicate everything, when they don't forget to give you mechanics for the important things.

The actual vampire mythos being tied to Christianity is really awkward when you make a game that's international, and while the idea of different types of vampires is good, Requiem and even Dresden Files handles it better. Every Clan in Masquerade almost feels like that one Super Sentai or Kamen Rider character who's a cowboy with a hamburger morpher, or at least a Sentai character in general, wearing their theme on their sleeve. Things get complicated when you throw in non-Christian countries, which is why you get awkward things like Keui-Jin and Kindred of the Ebony Kingdom, or just shoehorning everything into the Vampire setting, where Baba Yaga is a vampire for some reason.
And that's just the backstory and set up. The way the Clans operate on some magical international communication level, where everyone of a specific clan is on the same wavelength as far as Sect goes, and anyone who disagrees is "Antitribu" with different traits, is just nonsensical. Entire clans being Sabbat or Camarilla is frustrating from both a game design situation and the narrative one. The whole concept of an international cabal of the Vampire Illuminati controlling everything and somehow having better communication than the rest of the 90s world is unnecessary and feels awkwardly forced into the setting.

Masquerade is a game where vampires are all cool awesome well informed badass Mary Sues with gimmicks, except for the player characters, who suck and are ordered around (unless you buy Generation or eat someone).

A lot of the Antitribu I looked at had pretty much the exact same traits as their opposite parts, with a few exceptions. I don't see how it doesn't make sense for clans to by and large stick to one sect, especially when you consider nearly everyone in the clan being heavily influenced by the choices of their sire. Being in the Sabat or The Camarilla offers an entire political ecosystem that a vampire is brought up in and develops assets and ties to. If your Sire is Camarilla there's a good chance you'll stay with them just because all of your interests are tied there. It makes sense to me.

I can agree with the Christianity criticism for sure, but since this setting is very urban and the people who made it were from the west, particularly North America. The way the envisage the game is very clearly from that viewpoint. You'd be right to say the Kindred from other geographical regions were shoehorned in though, I completely agree with that.

As a final point, I actually enjoy having the odds stacked against you when trying to claw your way up the ladder of Vampiric society. You have to get creative, and you have to take initiative. No one is going to hand anything of substance to you because Vampires are envious, spiteful creatures that horde all their power.

I know that flat out some Antitribu don't even have their Clan's gimmick Discipline. Tzimisce being the one that comes to mind.
It's also worth noting that "fuck you, vampire dad" is a constant plot hook, so "you're in the Sect that your Sire was in" doesn't really jive with me. (The Sects are also stupid; I forgot to mention that. I don't actually like all the Covenants in Requiem, but they're a damned sight better than the Sects, and the fact that they're NOT globally homogeneous is a major bonus). More than that, it's just the whole thing where EVERY Gangrel decided to leave the Camarilla at once over the Week of Nightmares. Shit like that just fucking twigs me. It's so fucking stupid that an entire demographic would unanimously cut ties with the faction they're a part of because specific members have a disagreement. And that it would be ONLY that Clan that does it.

>since this setting is very urban and the people who made it were from the west, particularly North America. The way the envisage the game is very clearly from that viewpoint.
Well, first off, agnosticism is more common in the urban, and the setting is *supposed* to be international. I don't want to go off on a tangent about how racist oWoD is, but... well, it was pretty racist and written by a bunch of white guys. The Christianity is there for the same reason it's in Neon Genesis Evangelion, although at least the White Wolf writers were pilfering from mostly their own culture, if you squint.
That is to say, the Christianity serves no purpose other than to be a neat and somewhat foreign but familiar thing.

"Fuck you, vampire dad" happens but it's not as if every single vampire ever engages in it, and like I said, even if they hate their sire, they develop their assets in whatever territory they happened to be Embraced in. Vampires do move around, but not very often due to the dangers in between cities. I agree that every Gangrel leaving is totally retarded, however.

I just looked through my copy of V20, and I found that there are two Tzmisce bloodlines that don't have Vicissitude, but they don't even side with the Camarilla, they're either independent or in a tenuous alliance with the dominant Clan. I see what you're saying, the way the setting is presented is a bit rigid, but at the same time we have to keep in mind that the territory that matters in either faction, cities, are governed with a wide degree of autonomy. No two Princes have to act the same, no two Barons have to act the same, and no two Archbishops have to act the same.

I also don't have a problem if something is in a setting just for the sake of being cool, although I think the purpose of Caine and the Christian shit is to provide an endgame for the Vampiric race. Something an immortal race of manipulators has to fear as a whole.

Electro-shock therapy

gay

Not even remotely true.

Looks pretty gay.

It's weird and flawed for sure, but it's the first time in a while anyone's actually done anything interesting with vampires.

What exactly is interesting or new about this shit?

You're under read and pathetically misinformed.

Considering they took most of their inspiration from Tanith Lee's Blood series, it's pretty obvious the OP hasn't read anything interesting in his life.

>a cowboy with a hamburger morpher

Please tell me this is a thing.

>no witcher
Well

That's because very little is known about the vampires from the Witcher books.

I like VtR a bit more too, but because it's not so Christianised. I loved VtM too, especially for it's characters, lore and overall 90s feel. If VtR's setting becomes more fleshed out and has a better mythos, it will be great.

Isn't VtR pretty much abandoned at this point?

I know White Wolf is now being focused on making One World of Darkness.

She also came up with "age=power".
In most stuff vampires just HAVE their superpowers, age having nothing to do with it. Generally in fiction the older ones were just the last in the "hero kills this guy" pecking order because they were smarter, not because they were more powerful.
Dracula got his powers because he was literally a wizard who trained an an evil wizard school in the novel.

The games fleshed it out a bit more, and while they are relatively consistent with the books lore they aren't canon with it.
Though still the key feature of them is "really, REALLY hard to fucking kill".

Witcher vampires (or True Vampires anyway) seem almost to basically be unkillable because whatever strange physical laws that govern their existence in affect precludes "death" from ever happening to them.

You should check out Ultraviolet. The BBC series, not the abysmal and unrelated film.

White Wolf and Onyx Path are pretty resolved to doing their own things at this point, I believe. The former is doing their "One World of Darkness" and the latter will stick with what they're calling the "Chronicles of Darkness" now.

Whichever one supports Dhampirs

Yes youtu.be/59o15Od5-zY

Posting in this thread to:
A. Call you a faggot.
B. To state the superiority of the Vampire counts from Warhammer.
C. Learn about other cool vamp shit since Warhammer (fantasy) is dead.

Owod setting was bad because every single gameline tried to have its own story but then it turned into a fucking mess when you cram them together. Vampire and demon are about straight up Christian god, hunter is exalted tie in, werewolf has the weird ass Weaver wyrd and when, and then mage is all about subjective reality.

I tried giving VtR a chance, but I can't stomach the way the 2e core book is written. Is 1e any better?