*torturing you* dude trust me, something really cool happens. you just have to reflect on it for a bit. i'm doing this because i want you to reach your full potential okay?
if like all of your vtm characters are white, I dont trust you! im sick of seeing white ventrue in a black suit #72 or white lasombra wearing a cassock #85. please broaden your horizons and consider why you only want to explore bland white men and why you only find them interesting. literally grow up
As our game stretches forward, the coterie finds themselves under stress and everyone has their way to deal with it. GaÅ”per tends to indulge in old habitsā¦
hi šš» new account here trying to get my footing back on tumblr (its been a while!! so much has changed!) and iām looking for maybe some mutuals or new people to follow for mainly Vampire the Masquerade or WoD content!
instagram is a hellscape, so hopefully i can post a wee bit of OC art and some personal research/notetaking on lore and info from the ttrpg!
Our little local community is putting together a Meet the WoD Artist! event. Like Meet the Artist, but focused on those of us who play World of Darkness TTRPGs and want to showcase not only ourselves, but also our characters.
All game lines and all editions are welcome from V6 to Chronicles of Darkness!
Invite your friends, spread the word, and join the fun! It's a great chance to see just how many of us there :)
The archive at the link above contains a template I made for you.
Inside you'll find several PNG versions for anyone who just wants to fill one out, as well as an editable template. You can change the colors, move the panels around, and customize it however you like.
You'll also find the fonts I used.
Making and sharing your own versions of the template is highly encouraged! And if you'd rather ignore the templates entirely and create your own layout from scratch, that's awesome too.
Where to post: Any soci
Posting period: The last week of August
Hashtag: #MeetTheWoDArtists
reading v6 and honestly? i am actually really enjoying a lot of its mechanics and presentation.
ive only arrived at the Clans so far and read some specific mechanics that piqued my interest, but i find most of this edition to be quite interesting!
some things need some refining and some things i disliked, but so far i liked more things then i have disliked.
i am actually making a sort of? chart? list? of things im liking and disliking and im updating ut as i go, if anyone is interested
i might also make some more posts with more thought out opinions once im done with everything
but overall im honestly enjoying it and a lot of its ideas, tho i find some of those to still needing some refining and needing to be thought out more
#tell us mooooore#give feedback itās time for it#definitely flaws but I like it overall
well, uhh i haven gone much past what i previously wrote, but im gonna put under the cut my opinions on what i did read and what i think of that
ITS A LONG READ FR FR
GENERAL FORMATTING AND WORDING
I really enjoy how straightforward the book is. For me its on par, if not easier to read then v5 and it explains itself better then v5 did in my opinion. Some parts definitely need some rephrasing and some polishing, but this is still the first Alpha of the game. Still, approaching the book pretending i dont know anything about VTM, i think the formatting and wording of everything works really well as an introduction to the games.
Actually from what i've read in this alpha, the game seems to really try to be approachable to new players, not only as a game for those already familiar with ttrpgs, but even for those that have never player a ttrpg ever, going into describing both for Actors and Storytellers what happens during a scene
i also really enjoy how often and persistently the game reminds the players that the ST is a player as well, even if they have a more 'burdensome' role.
in fact, in many parts of the game, such as character creation, specifically when it comes down to creating a sire and a coterie, the game asks the players to think of those themselves and not leave it as an extra thing the ST has to think about; and this thinking about what the sire is like and what the coterie is like is not just fluff, it actually asks you to build a small part of the domain (especially the coterie creation), taking that part as well as how the character have met off of the st shoulders
MECHANICS
I really really REALLY love the new humanity mechanic.
in previous editions humanity had 'mindless killer' on one hand and 'sainthood' on the other hand, claiming that to be human is to be 'good'. In this new rendition of it, the game asks you to pick a Nature, aka the kind of person you were at your core when you were human, and THAT represents your humanity, with both the good and the bad of that. on the other axis of the spectrum you have The Beast, which is not simply a 'mindless killer' like it was in previous editions, but actually changes depending on your clan
for example the brujah beast is rebellious, the ventrue beast wants to rule, the toreador beast wants to be seen, ecc
your humanity depends on wether you lean more into the person you used to be when you were alive or wether you indulge in the new instincts acquired with the embrace
AND I LOVE THIS SO SO MUCH
althoug they did keep the 'you cant have sex unless you're human enough' thing
I also really liked the [drama] and [quickening] mechanics, tho it really needs some refining and the writers need to think it through some more.
how that works is basically that: whenever you put a character in danger, suffer dire consequences for a failed roll, accept a devil's bargain (aka succeed at a cost on what shouldve been a failed roll) both the player and the st gain a token. these tokens can be expended on the player side thorugh the [quickening] and on the st's side through the [drama]
the [quickening] allows players to make a roll easier or gain a small success on a roll (tho you have to announce you're using the points BEFORE you roll)
the [drama] allows the st to make rolls harder for the players or to give advantages and outs to npcs
now all of this would be fine imo, its something my group has already been doing for a while through a bingo card (every session we play bingo, every time we get bing we get a point to spend as above), the problem with this mechanic is this specific table
to summarize, this table requires the st to spend points to move the story along through events.
this SUCKS ASS. it makes storytelling clunky by having the st wait for players to do some crazy shit before the plot can happen, as well as being a lot less subtle then a lot of st want to be
it could easily be fixed by having this become a suggestion/help for newbie st, without asking them to spend any points to move the story along, but simply presenting these as ways of moving the story forward.
another thing that i enjoy, but that needs some refining is the condensed skills.
one of the biggest problems ive had with vtm, especially playing with in english wich is NOT my first lenguage, has been finding the skill i needed to roll. sometimes because the one i was asked to roll was pronounced similar to another, sometimes because there were so many skills on the paper that i couldnt find the one i was looking for.
having them summarized in, i think it was 10?, skills total reduces the risk of either or both of these things to happen.
that being said, as they are written rn i would be unsure of which skill to use for certain rolls as well as certaiin previous skills having been incorporated in a way i dont agree with (for axample i wouldve put stealth in either athletics or survival instead of subterfuge)
one thing about these mechanics i dont like is the fact that they made flaws basically irrelevant for game purposes, in the same way v5 made disabilities irrelevant within the game. That is to say there is little to no mechanics for it.
in this alpha not only there isnt a chart for different flaws to pick for your character, but your not required to give them flaws at all. if you want to give them flaws, they are supposed to be solely roleplayed, withe the only in-game consequence being that if you roleplay them well you might earn an extra [quickening] or [drama] point
this makes flaws completely irrelevent for game purposes and i dont like it. ive always wanted v5 to bring forth MORE flaws one can pick from, especially mundane ones like disabilities, instead i find myself loosing them completely :[
on the other hand i really liked how they turned some discipline powers that were more akin to merits into actual merits that are now clan specific and that you get by being embraced in said clan. it really helps characterizing clans more, especially for those clans that shared some common behaviours and disciplines and it really helps personalize the character while maintaining them in theme with the clan.
I also really enjoy the [lifepath] mechanic which is a sort of inherent merit in and of itself.
this mechanic has you pick the life your character with living (or un-living) up to the start of the game and allows you to increase your dice pool whenever you dont have a specific skill but, according to your [lifepath], you should still have some knowledge in it, thus reflectiing such knowledge even when stats wise you dont have it.
LORE
LOVE LOVE LOVE the way they are characterizing the clans so far. both the beast as well as the bane and the frenzying (which is just the Clan compulsions mechanic under a different name). for most clans this has either fleshed them out, given more liberty on what a character from that clan should look like or brought back old lore from the clans (nosferatu are supernatural again) (i will link again my post about why i wanted this to happen) that being said, not all clans are written in a way i like, and thus i think this needs a little refining
a thing they have changed about the lore that has left me perplexed is the ranking: traditionally in wod wether you are considered a neonate, anchilla or elder depends on age and/or experience (members of some clans being neonate for longer then others for various reasons), but in this new game this ranking is now connected to your generation.
now, yes, if youre a certain age youre more likely to be of a certain generation, but its not always so clear cut.
i think they should just roll it back into age and experience being the defining factors for ranking.
another couple of things they changed and that left me perplexed were the fact that diablerie can now be done through simple skin-to-skin contact and doesnt requiere your to drink your victim anymore (which seems kinda broken mechanically and lore wise, just think of a fledgling beating the shit out of another and having that being a hidden way to diablerize them, for example) (no fear of being discovered + making it an easier thing to do)
but also the fact that Caitiff do not have an easier time learning ooc disciplines anymore, when that was the major appeal of playing a clanless character
last thing i have to say is that they kept from v5 the thing where you have to drink another kindred vitƦ to learn an ooc discipline instead of simply needing a mentor for it like in v20
DICE ROLLS AND EXPERIENCE
I have yet to play an actual game of v6 with this alpha, so i really cant tell you if the dice system works or not in practice, but it is new and i am interested to see how it works in action
reading some more and... boy am i worried over the Devil's Bargain section...
honestly i was really hyped for it, i think the "succeed at a cost" mechanic was really fun when it was first introduced in v5 and i was looking forward to v6 exploring it more instead of having it as an optional rule at the side of the page.
unfortunately the way its been written out it seems pretty dangerous to me...
if the ST is supposed to rely on Drama instead of rolls (which. im not talking about rn, thats dice mechanics and i dont want to speak on those until ive actually tried them) having the ST, i repeat, HAVING THE STORYTELLER have to spend points THAT ARE NEEDED INSTEAD OF ROLLS to refuse the deal creates ground for a toxic environment to build up.
maybe its because ive met less then pleasant people in the past, maybe its the gm horror stories ive read, but as its written rn i worry it gives toxic players the possibility to strongarm the ST in doing what THEY want.
and yes the book encourages conversation over the terms of the deal, but the fact that the players have to set the initial terms mixed with the ST having to expend resources to refuse...
this is really just not it.
what i was looking for was examples or maybe a table of consequences the ST could propose the players
much like they have done for the Choose Your Pain section...
oh absolutely! honestly i am loving a lot of what im reading with only minor changes that would make it better, what i don't love i find really promising myself if thought out a bit more or proposed in a different way
i think i haven't read that part on humanity? or missed it?
i am mostly reading these before i go to bed, so im bound to miss some stuff...
but i am generally liking the idea behind the new humanity, will definitely have to read more / re read the section more carefully i think, but if that is what the text says it... definitely needs some changing
reading v6 and honestly? i am actually really enjoying a lot of its mechanics and presentation.
ive only arrived at the Clans so far and read some specific mechanics that piqued my interest, but i find most of this edition to be quite interesting!
some things need some refining and some things i disliked, but so far i liked more things then i have disliked.
i am actually making a sort of? chart? list? of things im liking and disliking and im updating ut as i go, if anyone is interested
i might also make some more posts with more thought out opinions once im done with everything
but overall im honestly enjoying it and a lot of its ideas, tho i find some of those to still needing some refining and needing to be thought out more
#tell us mooooore#give feedback itās time for it#definitely flaws but I like it overall
well, uhh i haven gone much past what i previously wrote, but im gonna put under the cut my opinions on what i did read and what i think of that
ITS A LONG READ FR FR
GENERAL FORMATTING AND WORDING
I really enjoy how straightforward the book is. For me its on par, if not easier to read then v5 and it explains itself better then v5 did in my opinion. Some parts definitely need some rephrasing and some polishing, but this is still the first Alpha of the game. Still, approaching the book pretending i dont know anything about VTM, i think the formatting and wording of everything works really well as an introduction to the games.
Actually from what i've read in this alpha, the game seems to really try to be approachable to new players, not only as a game for those already familiar with ttrpgs, but even for those that have never player a ttrpg ever, going into describing both for Actors and Storytellers what happens during a scene
i also really enjoy how often and persistently the game reminds the players that the ST is a player as well, even if they have a more 'burdensome' role.
in fact, in many parts of the game, such as character creation, specifically when it comes down to creating a sire and a coterie, the game asks the players to think of those themselves and not leave it as an extra thing the ST has to think about; and this thinking about what the sire is like and what the coterie is like is not just fluff, it actually asks you to build a small part of the domain (especially the coterie creation), taking that part as well as how the character have met off of the st shoulders
MECHANICS
I really really REALLY love the new humanity mechanic.
in previous editions humanity had 'mindless killer' on one hand and 'sainthood' on the other hand, claiming that to be human is to be 'good'. In this new rendition of it, the game asks you to pick a Nature, aka the kind of person you were at your core when you were human, and THAT represents your humanity, with both the good and the bad of that. on the other axis of the spectrum you have The Beast, which is not simply a 'mindless killer' like it was in previous editions, but actually changes depending on your clan
for example the brujah beast is rebellious, the ventrue beast wants to rule, the toreador beast wants to be seen, ecc
your humanity depends on wether you lean more into the person you used to be when you were alive or wether you indulge in the new instincts acquired with the embrace
AND I LOVE THIS SO SO MUCH
althoug they did keep the 'you cant have sex unless you're human enough' thing
I also really liked the [drama] and [quickening] mechanics, tho it really needs some refining and the writers need to think it through some more.
how that works is basically that: whenever you put a character in danger, suffer dire consequences for a failed roll, accept a devil's bargain (aka succeed at a cost on what shouldve been a failed roll) both the player and the st gain a token. these tokens can be expended on the player side thorugh the [quickening] and on the st's side through the [drama]
the [quickening] allows players to make a roll easier or gain a small success on a roll (tho you have to announce you're using the points BEFORE you roll)
the [drama] allows the st to make rolls harder for the players or to give advantages and outs to npcs
now all of this would be fine imo, its something my group has already been doing for a while through a bingo card (every session we play bingo, every time we get bing we get a point to spend as above), the problem with this mechanic is this specific table
to summarize, this table requires the st to spend points to move the story along through events.
this SUCKS ASS. it makes storytelling clunky by having the st wait for players to do some crazy shit before the plot can happen, as well as being a lot less subtle then a lot of st want to be
it could easily be fixed by having this become a suggestion/help for newbie st, without asking them to spend any points to move the story along, but simply presenting these as ways of moving the story forward.
another thing that i enjoy, but that needs some refining is the condensed skills.
one of the biggest problems ive had with vtm, especially playing with in english wich is NOT my first lenguage, has been finding the skill i needed to roll. sometimes because the one i was asked to roll was pronounced similar to another, sometimes because there were so many skills on the paper that i couldnt find the one i was looking for.
having them summarized in, i think it was 10?, skills total reduces the risk of either or both of these things to happen.
that being said, as they are written rn i would be unsure of which skill to use for certain rolls as well as certaiin previous skills having been incorporated in a way i dont agree with (for axample i wouldve put stealth in either athletics or survival instead of subterfuge)
one thing about these mechanics i dont like is the fact that they made flaws basically irrelevant for game purposes, in the same way v5 made disabilities irrelevant within the game. That is to say there is little to no mechanics for it.
in this alpha not only there isnt a chart for different flaws to pick for your character, but your not required to give them flaws at all. if you want to give them flaws, they are supposed to be solely roleplayed, withe the only in-game consequence being that if you roleplay them well you might earn an extra [quickening] or [drama] point
this makes flaws completely irrelevent for game purposes and i dont like it. ive always wanted v5 to bring forth MORE flaws one can pick from, especially mundane ones like disabilities, instead i find myself loosing them completely :[
on the other hand i really liked how they turned some discipline powers that were more akin to merits into actual merits that are now clan specific and that you get by being embraced in said clan. it really helps characterizing clans more, especially for those clans that shared some common behaviours and disciplines and it really helps personalize the character while maintaining them in theme with the clan.
I also really enjoy the [lifepath] mechanic which is a sort of inherent merit in and of itself.
this mechanic has you pick the life your character with living (or un-living) up to the start of the game and allows you to increase your dice pool whenever you dont have a specific skill but, according to your [lifepath], you should still have some knowledge in it, thus reflectiing such knowledge even when stats wise you dont have it.
LORE
LOVE LOVE LOVE the way they are characterizing the clans so far. both the beast as well as the bane and the frenzying (which is just the Clan compulsions mechanic under a different name). for most clans this has either fleshed them out, given more liberty on what a character from that clan should look like or brought back old lore from the clans (nosferatu are supernatural again) (i will link again my post about why i wanted this to happen) that being said, not all clans are written in a way i like, and thus i think this needs a little refining
a thing they have changed about the lore that has left me perplexed is the ranking: traditionally in wod wether you are considered a neonate, anchilla or elder depends on age and/or experience (members of some clans being neonate for longer then others for various reasons), but in this new game this ranking is now connected to your generation.
now, yes, if youre a certain age youre more likely to be of a certain generation, but its not always so clear cut.
i think they should just roll it back into age and experience being the defining factors for ranking.
another couple of things they changed and that left me perplexed were the fact that diablerie can now be done through simple skin-to-skin contact and doesnt requiere your to drink your victim anymore (which seems kinda broken mechanically and lore wise, just think of a fledgling beating the shit out of another and having that being a hidden way to diablerize them, for example) (no fear of being discovered + making it an easier thing to do)
but also the fact that Caitiff do not have an easier time learning ooc disciplines anymore, when that was the major appeal of playing a clanless character
last thing i have to say is that they kept from v5 the thing where you have to drink another kindred vitƦ to learn an ooc discipline instead of simply needing a mentor for it like in v20
DICE ROLLS AND EXPERIENCE
I have yet to play an actual game of v6 with this alpha, so i really cant tell you if the dice system works or not in practice, but it is new and i am interested to see how it works in action
reading some more and... boy am i worried over the Devil's Bargain section...
honestly i was really hyped for it, i think the "succeed at a cost" mechanic was really fun when it was first introduced in v5 and i was looking forward to v6 exploring it more instead of having it as an optional rule at the side of the page.
unfortunately the way its been written out it seems pretty dangerous to me...
if the ST is supposed to rely on Drama instead of rolls (which. im not talking about rn, thats dice mechanics and i dont want to speak on those until ive actually tried them) having the ST, i repeat, HAVING THE STORYTELLER have to spend points THAT ARE NEEDED INSTEAD OF ROLLS to refuse the deal creates ground for a toxic environment to build up.
maybe its because ive met less then pleasant people in the past, maybe its the gm horror stories ive read, but as its written rn i worry it gives toxic players the possibility to strongarm the ST in doing what THEY want.
and yes the book encourages conversation over the terms of the deal, but the fact that the players have to set the initial terms mixed with the ST having to expend resources to refuse...
this is really just not it.
what i was looking for was examples or maybe a table of consequences the ST could propose the players
much like they have done for the Choose Your Pain section...
Y'all ready for my thoughts on the playtest? Obviously only so much of the game that can be experienced in a one shot but I have some THOUGHTS after seeing the game up close.
Anyone who sent me feedback they had to pass along, I have done so. Thoughts below are on mechanics as I saw them up close
Quickening: GOATED, it's amazing. This is basically the replacement for spending Willpower to get an automatic success/higher chance of success. In previous editions you'd burn a point of Willpower, emptying your mind-gastank a little, and get a bonus. Quickening is a more interesting system than that, where either being Hungry or Starving, or getting strong successes on your rolls gives you points of Quickening, which can be spent in increments of 1-5 for bonuses on rolls, anything from an extra dice, to an automatic success, to a shift in the entire scene. It added an awesome sense of momentum to the table where success would build on success and give this awesome energy to the physical and social conflicts. You can also spend points of your own Quickening on helping members of your coterie with their rolls, which was such a fun way of encouraging cross-table engagement and play. This mechanic will be the defining feature of V6 and it's so peak
Humanity Scale: Good news? It was pretty unobtrusive and when it did come up, it made sense. Just drained a guy dry? Gain a Beast point. Act our in accordance with your Nature? Nature point. But I never saw anyone swing either direction on the scale, and I imagine it'd need multiple sessions to really draw on. That being said I found it pretty easy to understand when it did come up. Which raises the question as to why it was written so confusingly in the playtest book
Drama: Uhhhhhhh this one was weird. I still don't feel like I'm clear on how Drama works. The Storyteller gets Drama from various mechanics like Devil's Bargain and Painful Failure, but mostly it seems like they spend it to go "actually this Test that would have been difficulty 2 is now difficulty 4." And it's like... okay? I never saw a Story Trigger come up, but like, story events still happened at a steady rate so I'm unclear as to what Story Triggers are even supposed to do. That being said, the psychological effect of watching the Storyteller accumulate Drama points and smirking evilly was fun. I can't say I cared for the mechanic, but it was so unobtrusive that I'd be lying if I said I had anything negative to say about it other than "huh, that's kind of weird"
Tests: New dice roll system! Now you roll your pool of D10s in the hopes that at least one of them will be an 8 or above, and if you roll a 10, you get a point of Quickening. Rolling a 1 doesn't subtract successes like it does in V20 and prior, but rolling a 1 while also having no successes gives you a Painful Failure. Difficulty now subtracts from your Dice Pool. So if you have a Strength+Fighting pool of 7 and roll at difficulty 3, it means you have a dice pool of 4. On table I actually thought it worked pretty well. There's a system called Overqualified where if you have a dice pool of 4 or above after subtracting difficulty, you can take a Basic Success, which treats the roll as if you'd gotten one single success, but without the chance of Extra Successes or gaining Quickening. I thought that the dice roll system was pretty solid and liked it a lot more than I thought I would. People were rolling Painful Failures pretty often, but were succeeding more often than I thought they would too. It's pretty good, a solid base for a dice system
Painful Failure: If you roll a 1 and no successes, you get a Painful Failure, the equivalent to a Botch or a Bestial Failure in earlier editions. But in this edition, a Painful Failure gives you an event called "Choose Your Pain" where you can pick from several possible bad options ranging from losing some points from Vitae or Willpower, giving the Storyteller a point of Drama, losing Quickening, and so on. I thought this was a pretty solid iteration on the Botch and Bestial Failure System. I like that you get to choose what happens, and it makes failing feel more interesting, but I could see some players meta-gaming this and always picking the mechanically least-bad option, so your mileage may vary
Devil's Bargain: GOATED mechanic. If you roll a failure, (but not a Painful Failure), you can propose a Devil's Bargain to the Storyteller or she can propose one to you, where you get a success on the roll but the Storyteller gets to change something about the scene to make the situation more difficult. This was super fun, no notes. It was just a super fun mechanic that was enjoyable every time it came up.
Skills: Only having 13 skills is weird, but didn't actually play as badly on table as I thought it would. Since your dice pools are normally smaller and it's common to be rolling a dice pool of like 2 or 3 even with only 13 Skills, I can see why they cut the skill list down. It played good in my one shot, but I do feel like there should still be a handful more skills. A sweet spot would probably be like 17
Social Combat: I won't lie, I found it a bit confusing, but it wasn't that bad. It's basically a mechanic that comes up with you're in a tense social situation where both sides stand to gain or lose something. And you take social combat actions to attack the other side or defend yourself, making accusations, justifying yourself, and so on, until one side is reduced to enough Willpower that they give up. There's a system of Terms here where you can set the terms of what happens if one side gives in, and they might accept or might not, but I didn't get to experience it a whole lot. Still, I think it could be fun with some refinement.
glad to hear that the parts of it i thought were interesting actually play well in game!
i am now more curious to try it out myself and to read more into it :)
i want to experience the dice system myself but from how you're describing it it seems very interesting, also interested in social combats as that was not something i played much in v5 either, as in the damage to willpower that wouldve brought in v5 (my v5 st simply didn't use it)
as i figured the drama system needs some tweaking and refining
reading v6 and honestly? i am actually really enjoying a lot of its mechanics and presentation.
ive only arrived at the Clans so far and read some specific mechanics that piqued my interest, but i find most of this edition to be quite interesting!
some things need some refining and some things i disliked, but so far i liked more things then i have disliked.
i am actually making a sort of? chart? list? of things im liking and disliking and im updating ut as i go, if anyone is interested
i might also make some more posts with more thought out opinions once im done with everything
but overall im honestly enjoying it and a lot of its ideas, tho i find some of those to still needing some refining and needing to be thought out more
#tell us mooooore#give feedback itās time for it#definitely flaws but I like it overall
well, uhh i haven gone much past what i previously wrote, but im gonna put under the cut my opinions on what i did read and what i think of that
ITS A LONG READ FR FR
GENERAL FORMATTING AND WORDING
I really enjoy how straightforward the book is. For me its on par, if not easier to read then v5 and it explains itself better then v5 did in my opinion. Some parts definitely need some rephrasing and some polishing, but this is still the first Alpha of the game. Still, approaching the book pretending i dont know anything about VTM, i think the formatting and wording of everything works really well as an introduction to the games.
Actually from what i've read in this alpha, the game seems to really try to be approachable to new players, not only as a game for those already familiar with ttrpgs, but even for those that have never player a ttrpg ever, going into describing both for Actors and Storytellers what happens during a scene
i also really enjoy how often and persistently the game reminds the players that the ST is a player as well, even if they have a more 'burdensome' role.
in fact, in many parts of the game, such as character creation, specifically when it comes down to creating a sire and a coterie, the game asks the players to think of those themselves and not leave it as an extra thing the ST has to think about; and this thinking about what the sire is like and what the coterie is like is not just fluff, it actually asks you to build a small part of the domain (especially the coterie creation), taking that part as well as how the character have met off of the st shoulders
MECHANICS
I really really REALLY love the new humanity mechanic.
in previous editions humanity had 'mindless killer' on one hand and 'sainthood' on the other hand, claiming that to be human is to be 'good'. In this new rendition of it, the game asks you to pick a Nature, aka the kind of person you were at your core when you were human, and THAT represents your humanity, with both the good and the bad of that. on the other axis of the spectrum you have The Beast, which is not simply a 'mindless killer' like it was in previous editions, but actually changes depending on your clan
for example the brujah beast is rebellious, the ventrue beast wants to rule, the toreador beast wants to be seen, ecc
your humanity depends on wether you lean more into the person you used to be when you were alive or wether you indulge in the new instincts acquired with the embrace
AND I LOVE THIS SO SO MUCH
althoug they did keep the 'you cant have sex unless you're human enough' thing
I also really liked the [drama] and [quickening] mechanics, tho it really needs some refining and the writers need to think it through some more.
how that works is basically that: whenever you put a character in danger, suffer dire consequences for a failed roll, accept a devil's bargain (aka succeed at a cost on what shouldve been a failed roll) both the player and the st gain a token. these tokens can be expended on the player side thorugh the [quickening] and on the st's side through the [drama]
the [quickening] allows players to make a roll easier or gain a small success on a roll (tho you have to announce you're using the points BEFORE you roll)
the [drama] allows the st to make rolls harder for the players or to give advantages and outs to npcs
now all of this would be fine imo, its something my group has already been doing for a while through a bingo card (every session we play bingo, every time we get bing we get a point to spend as above), the problem with this mechanic is this specific table
to summarize, this table requires the st to spend points to move the story along through events.
this SUCKS ASS. it makes storytelling clunky by having the st wait for players to do some crazy shit before the plot can happen, as well as being a lot less subtle then a lot of st want to be
it could easily be fixed by having this become a suggestion/help for newbie st, without asking them to spend any points to move the story along, but simply presenting these as ways of moving the story forward.
another thing that i enjoy, but that needs some refining is the condensed skills.
one of the biggest problems ive had with vtm, especially playing with in english wich is NOT my first lenguage, has been finding the skill i needed to roll. sometimes because the one i was asked to roll was pronounced similar to another, sometimes because there were so many skills on the paper that i couldnt find the one i was looking for.
having them summarized in, i think it was 10?, skills total reduces the risk of either or both of these things to happen.
that being said, as they are written rn i would be unsure of which skill to use for certain rolls as well as certaiin previous skills having been incorporated in a way i dont agree with (for axample i wouldve put stealth in either athletics or survival instead of subterfuge)
one thing about these mechanics i dont like is the fact that they made flaws basically irrelevant for game purposes, in the same way v5 made disabilities irrelevant within the game. That is to say there is little to no mechanics for it.
in this alpha not only there isnt a chart for different flaws to pick for your character, but your not required to give them flaws at all. if you want to give them flaws, they are supposed to be solely roleplayed, withe the only in-game consequence being that if you roleplay them well you might earn an extra [quickening] or [drama] point
this makes flaws completely irrelevent for game purposes and i dont like it. ive always wanted v5 to bring forth MORE flaws one can pick from, especially mundane ones like disabilities, instead i find myself loosing them completely :[
on the other hand i really liked how they turned some discipline powers that were more akin to merits into actual merits that are now clan specific and that you get by being embraced in said clan. it really helps characterizing clans more, especially for those clans that shared some common behaviours and disciplines and it really helps personalize the character while maintaining them in theme with the clan.
I also really enjoy the [lifepath] mechanic which is a sort of inherent merit in and of itself.
this mechanic has you pick the life your character with living (or un-living) up to the start of the game and allows you to increase your dice pool whenever you dont have a specific skill but, according to your [lifepath], you should still have some knowledge in it, thus reflectiing such knowledge even when stats wise you dont have it.
LORE
LOVE LOVE LOVE the way they are characterizing the clans so far. both the beast as well as the bane and the frenzying (which is just the Clan compulsions mechanic under a different name). for most clans this has either fleshed them out, given more liberty on what a character from that clan should look like or brought back old lore from the clans (nosferatu are supernatural again) (i will link again my post about why i wanted this to happen) that being said, not all clans are written in a way i like, and thus i think this needs a little refining
a thing they have changed about the lore that has left me perplexed is the ranking: traditionally in wod wether you are considered a neonate, anchilla or elder depends on age and/or experience (members of some clans being neonate for longer then others for various reasons), but in this new game this ranking is now connected to your generation.
now, yes, if youre a certain age youre more likely to be of a certain generation, but its not always so clear cut.
i think they should just roll it back into age and experience being the defining factors for ranking.
another couple of things they changed and that left me perplexed were the fact that diablerie can now be done through simple skin-to-skin contact and doesnt requiere your to drink your victim anymore (which seems kinda broken mechanically and lore wise, just think of a fledgling beating the shit out of another and having that being a hidden way to diablerize them, for example) (no fear of being discovered + making it an easier thing to do)
but also the fact that Caitiff do not have an easier time learning ooc disciplines anymore, when that was the major appeal of playing a clanless character
last thing i have to say is that they kept from v5 the thing where you have to drink another kindred vitƦ to learn an ooc discipline instead of simply needing a mentor for it like in v20
DICE ROLLS AND EXPERIENCE
I have yet to play an actual game of v6 with this alpha, so i really cant tell you if the dice system works or not in practice, but it is new and i am interested to see how it works in action
reading v6 and honestly? i am actually really enjoying a lot of its mechanics and presentation.
ive only arrived at the Clans so far and read some specific mechanics that piqued my interest, but i find most of this edition to be quite interesting!
some things need some refining and some things i disliked, but so far i liked more things then i have disliked.
i am actually making a sort of? chart? list? of things im liking and disliking and im updating ut as i go, if anyone is interested
i might also make some more posts with more thought out opinions once im done with everything
but overall im honestly enjoying it and a lot of its ideas, tho i find some of those to still needing some refining and needing to be thought out more
Can't believe I haven't Boren-posted on this account yet,,, They're my character for a Vampire: The Masquerade chronicle I'm in!
They're a 495 year old vampire at the time of the chronicle, from Late Renaissance Florence. I have a bit more stuff of them I'll likely post after dumping some Artfight bits.
I kinda wanted her to see it on AF first before posting it, but honestly im so excited about this and so happy with the result i wanna share it now :)
Alexandra is so cool AAA and i knew visiting monumental cemeteries would be helpful at some point (other then just enriching me with the sight of beautiful tombs)
You have no idea how many RPGs I pick up where I end up thinking, āMan, you came up with a really weird way to do a less interesting dungeon crawl.ā Worse, Iām not even sure the designer is AWARE they made a dungeon crawl game.
This is especially true of horror RPGs and itās doubly true of Haunted House RPGs
Pro tip: Haunted House stories are not about room-by-room exploration. Try again.
I think one of the big disconnects here is the fact that these tend to be about going in to places with the objective of battling ghouls and battling some kind of terrifying ghoul, even if this isnāt done through tactical combat gameplay.
Call of Cthulhu has this āproblemā(itās only a problem for Call of Cthulhu because of misleading presentation), and Delta Green, very much a successor to Call of Cthulhu, fixes this āproblemā by just outright stating in its premise that PCs are always going to be semi-experienced ghoul-battlers.
I can think of at least one good āhaunted house storyā that actually is about room-by-room exploration, and thatās The Woman in Black (both the 1989 original movie and the 2012 version with Daniel Radcliffe. I have not read the book.).
For summary, in The Woman in Black, a lawyer has to visit a creepy old house on a secluded island just off the cost to sort out the estate of a reclusive woman who died there. The island is only accessible at low tide, and he repeatedly goes to and from the house as the tides allow. While heās there (and sometimes back in town) a bunch of spooky stuff happens to him as he tries to do his job and sort through the documents. While trying to find documents and because his curiosity gets the better of him, he does gradually explore more of the house room by room.
(Disclaimer for others reading: A session of TTRPG gameplay is never going to go exactly like a plot of a movie except by accident and most types of TTRPGs really resist written/conventional plots.)
Now I'm analyzing what makes me think of this movie as a āhaunted house storyā with room-by-room exploration. I can think of a few things.
A. The lawyer doesnāt know the house is haunted before he gets there except maybe for a few people very vaguely warning him.
B. The lawyer isnāt going to the house for any haunting-related reason, heās there to do the paperwork. Heās trying to do a mundane thing while getting harassed by the hauntings of the house. I think this especially is an element of āhaunted house storiesā that most RPGs (that I know of) donāt really cover. Most āhaunted house storiesā I can think of are about people trying to just live normal lives in their own house that they purchased but the hauntings of the house keep troubling them in some way. Sometimes they do explore the house and find a secret room or something but not always.
The following is of course very colored by my very ātradā design sensibilities and experience, but I think to actually make what I'm imagining a true āhaunted house RPGā to be, youād have to have character creation that emphasizes some of the PCsā own baggage, and then go all-in on *adventure module* design (something the majority of designers of any design school are absolutely allergic to doing unfortunately). You create houses and hauntings that the PCs can be haunted by after moving in to their mysteriously cheap dream homes and trying to live normal lives.
This immediately got me thinking about an actual haunted house TTRPG so I'm just gonna put down the scattered structural ideas and maybe someday I'll actually write some of it.
It'd be a short-campaign game, not quite a one-shot, but only a handful of sessions. The PCs are a group of people who live together (as family, partners, roommates, whatever) and the first session has the group collaboratively design a home through the framework of a realtor taking them on a showing. Maybe they also pitch ideas for signs the place is haunted, or local legends about the place, or maybe that's left secret (for the GM to know, pulled from content in the book) so the players are surprised, no idea. Maybe PCs also have themes, secrets, or struggles that can be reflected in the haunting.
Then the second session jumps to shortly after the PCs move in and the hauntings start. Probably designed for a total of three sessions or so, as things develop fairly quickly from there. Players whose PCs are removed from play (either by dying or through more esoteric means) join the GM's "team," able to play the haunts themselves, which naturally ramps up the intensity of the haunting as the mini-campaign develops. Eventually the "haunting players" outnumber the "resident players" or whatever the terms end up being.
I dunno. Maybe there's something there. Maybe it already exists! That'd be neat.
Totem ĆØ un GDR Horror narrativo dalle regole semplici e che ti farĆ rivivere le inquietanti atmosfere ispirate ai classici del tema spiritic
Its an italian ttrpg called TOTEM (it DOES have an English release!)
In this the players come together to design a haunted house with the Game Master adding supernatural elements and hauntings to what the players create.
In here the point isnāt to necessarily fight the spirit, you try and figure out what is going on with the hauntings. You may free the spirit, get possessed, die, etc.
Sorry im not very good at explaining games, especially when im so excited, but!! It checks off most of the point you make about a haunted house ttrpg!!!
Also it has no dice rolls, most events where you need to ārollā are actually coin tosses and its also equipped to be played with a spirit board instead of coin tosses as well
Iāve played Totem more than once. Itās one of the games that inspired my original post. It is very much about room by room exploration with the primary focus being on getting rid of the ghost. Iām looking for Haunted House games that DONāT work that way.
You have no idea how many RPGs I pick up where I end up thinking, āMan, you came up with a really weird way to do a less interesting dungeon crawl.ā Worse, Iām not even sure the designer is AWARE they made a dungeon crawl game.
This is especially true of horror RPGs and itās doubly true of Haunted House RPGs
Pro tip: Haunted House stories are not about room-by-room exploration. Try again.
I think one of the big disconnects here is the fact that these tend to be about going in to places with the objective of battling ghouls and battling some kind of terrifying ghoul, even if this isnāt done through tactical combat gameplay.
Call of Cthulhu has this āproblemā(itās only a problem for Call of Cthulhu because of misleading presentation), and Delta Green, very much a successor to Call of Cthulhu, fixes this āproblemā by just outright stating in its premise that PCs are always going to be semi-experienced ghoul-battlers.
I can think of at least one good āhaunted house storyā that actually is about room-by-room exploration, and thatās The Woman in Black (both the 1989 original movie and the 2012 version with Daniel Radcliffe. I have not read the book.).
For summary, in The Woman in Black, a lawyer has to visit a creepy old house on a secluded island just off the cost to sort out the estate of a reclusive woman who died there. The island is only accessible at low tide, and he repeatedly goes to and from the house as the tides allow. While heās there (and sometimes back in town) a bunch of spooky stuff happens to him as he tries to do his job and sort through the documents. While trying to find documents and because his curiosity gets the better of him, he does gradually explore more of the house room by room.
(Disclaimer for others reading: A session of TTRPG gameplay is never going to go exactly like a plot of a movie except by accident and most types of TTRPGs really resist written/conventional plots.)
Now I'm analyzing what makes me think of this movie as a āhaunted house storyā with room-by-room exploration. I can think of a few things.
A. The lawyer doesnāt know the house is haunted before he gets there except maybe for a few people very vaguely warning him.
B. The lawyer isnāt going to the house for any haunting-related reason, heās there to do the paperwork. Heās trying to do a mundane thing while getting harassed by the hauntings of the house. I think this especially is an element of āhaunted house storiesā that most RPGs (that I know of) donāt really cover. Most āhaunted house storiesā I can think of are about people trying to just live normal lives in their own house that they purchased but the hauntings of the house keep troubling them in some way. Sometimes they do explore the house and find a secret room or something but not always.
The following is of course very colored by my very ātradā design sensibilities and experience, but I think to actually make what I'm imagining a true āhaunted house RPGā to be, youād have to have character creation that emphasizes some of the PCsā own baggage, and then go all-in on *adventure module* design (something the majority of designers of any design school are absolutely allergic to doing unfortunately). You create houses and hauntings that the PCs can be haunted by after moving in to their mysteriously cheap dream homes and trying to live normal lives.
This immediately got me thinking about an actual haunted house TTRPG so I'm just gonna put down the scattered structural ideas and maybe someday I'll actually write some of it.
It'd be a short-campaign game, not quite a one-shot, but only a handful of sessions. The PCs are a group of people who live together (as family, partners, roommates, whatever) and the first session has the group collaboratively design a home through the framework of a realtor taking them on a showing. Maybe they also pitch ideas for signs the place is haunted, or local legends about the place, or maybe that's left secret (for the GM to know, pulled from content in the book) so the players are surprised, no idea. Maybe PCs also have themes, secrets, or struggles that can be reflected in the haunting.
Then the second session jumps to shortly after the PCs move in and the hauntings start. Probably designed for a total of three sessions or so, as things develop fairly quickly from there. Players whose PCs are removed from play (either by dying or through more esoteric means) join the GM's "team," able to play the haunts themselves, which naturally ramps up the intensity of the haunting as the mini-campaign develops. Eventually the "haunting players" outnumber the "resident players" or whatever the terms end up being.
I dunno. Maybe there's something there. Maybe it already exists! That'd be neat.
Totem ĆØ un GDR Horror narrativo dalle regole semplici e che ti farĆ rivivere le inquietanti atmosfere ispirate ai classici del tema spiritic
Its an italian ttrpg called TOTEM (it DOES have an English release!)
In this the players come together to design a haunted house with the Game Master adding supernatural elements and hauntings to what the players create.
In here the point isnāt to necessarily fight the spirit, you try and figure out what is going on with the hauntings. You may free the spirit, get possessed, die, etc.
Sorry im not very good at explaining games, especially when im so excited, but!! It checks off most of the point you make about a haunted house ttrpg!!!
Also it has no dice rolls, most events where you need to ārollā are actually coin tosses and its also equipped to be played with a spirit board instead of coin tosses as well
I kinda wanted her to see it on AF first before posting it, but honestly im so excited about this and so happy with the result i wanna share it now :)
Alexandra is so cool AAA and i knew visiting monumental cemeteries would be helpful at some point (other then just enriching me with the sight of beautiful tombs)
