wolfbad replied to your post “wolfbad replied to your post “i just got into CritRole and watch the...”
so uh i dont actually know shit about VtM and its lore, so i have no idea what 90% of what you said means. i had no idea what anyone was talking about re: the gang being houses or clans or whatever. could you break that down for me cause it sounds cool
hOOO boy well... “Vampire: the Masquerade” is a biiig universe, and i am mostly familiar with the 20th anniversary edition - which you can find here, amongst .pdfs of probly half the books ever written for this setting (it’s. a big setting, there’s maybe two, three hundred books all told).
so, first off, you know how you have races/classes in dnd? “clans” are basically kinda both of those things in one. all vampires are vampires - they burn up in the sun, have to drink blood to survive, are somewhat wonky on the whole “morals” thing - but clans are sort of sub-races of vampire. for example, different clans get different powers, the “magic” stuff you saw the guys do in game - if you want to learn a power (or “discipline” as it’s officially called) that doesn’t belong to your clan, it’s more difficult / costs more xp. clans also have their own specific weaknesses - some get entranced around beautiful art, some are hideously ugly, some have refined tastes and can only drink a certain kind of blood, some are more likely to go into a bloodthirsty rage called “frenzy”... and, as a result of these things and their histories, each clan has its own general profile for the people they embrace. ie. toreador are artsy hipster vamps and tend to embrace artists, gangrel are werewolf-y vampires and tend to embrace loners and wanderers, brujah are kinda spoiling-for-a-fight vamps and so tend to embrace bikers and gangsters, etc.
generally, you get your clan from your sire, the vamp that bit you. so if your sire was a ventrue (fancy vamps, basically), you’re gonna be a ventrue (or a caitiff, if something goes wrong - caitiff are like shitty clanless vamps). however, the gang were all different clans, which means gary couldn’t have been the sire for more than one of them. where did he get the blood to turn them from, then?? it’s a mystery. maybe he had other help. maybe he stole blood from other vamps. idk. (it was a dumb idea on his part, tho, because part of the bonus of feeding your blood to your baby vamp is something called a “blood bond”. basically, if a vamp drinks another vamp’s blood, they become kinda... emotionally attached to the owner of that blood. the more times they drink, the more attached. fledgling vamps are born with a low-level blood bond to their sire, to make them more obedient and biddable.
irl!taliesin played a malkavian who was the prince of la, if i remember correctly. which means that he essentially runs the city (”prince” is the gender-neutral title for camarilla-controlled leaders of a territory. “camarilla” is just one of the political factions in vtm, they’re about as close to “nice” vampires as you’re ever going to get. well. nice is a bit of an exaggeration, but they believe in keeping vampires hidden and not just mauling / murdering humans at every opportunity). malkavians are... well. to put it tactfully, they’re the patron clan of the mentally ill and mentally unusual. they tend to embrace psychiatric patients, the homeless, seers, prophets, anyone a little bit... out there. their clan weakness is that they have a “derangement” that affects them - there are various different ones, mostly modelled after various mental illnesses. their powers are all based around fucking with people’s heads and emotions. they tend to be somewhat unbalanced, and a well-played malkavian is both terrifying and a delight to watch. it’s an... interesting though not particularly surprising choice for tal, tho i feel sorry for the vamps in la being ruled by him lmfao. but anyways, based on that, i was assuming thursday by night!tal was also a malk.
