Vampire: The Masquerade 5E

I think this is a setting distinct enough from the Old World of Darkness to warrant its own page, especially as the developers keep running into controversy over their development of the line.

It's a good and bad time to be a vampire fan with Chicago by Night 5E having a kickstarter. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/200664283/chicago-by-night-for-vampire-the-masquerade-5th-ed/description

And bad news with the depiction of Chechnya and it's atrocities against queer people in the Camarilla book (I even made a petition about it) https://www.ipetitions.com/petition/remove-chechnya-chapter-from-the-camarilla

What do you guys think of it so far?

Why do you like it?

Why don't you?

I feel like I'm in a weird place because I love the idea of CBN 5E so much I donated money to get an NPC made of me—but I feel like it really is trying way too hard to be edgy.

Edit:

It has its own page now:

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/TabletopGame/VampireTheMasqueradeFifthEdition

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Nov 26th 2018 at 11:43:27 AM

For those of us who weren't following it, how distinct is this from nWoD and oWoD? Which does it more closely resemble, and which other White Wolf lines will join the new edition?

Basically, it's a direct-ish return to VAMPIRE: THE MASQUERADE with it being set after V20 and Revised which are retconned into 3rd and 4th Edition of the setting respectively. The metaplot is then explained as having continued from Revised to 5E with the supplement BECKETT'S JYHAD DIARY.

I'd say it's a hybrid of V:TR and V:TM with basically Masquerade's setting and V:TR's rules. They've also made a move to break up the Camarilla with the Brujah and Gangrel leaving it (plus being joined by a revised Followers of Set who have abandoned EVIL for polytheism). The Camarilla is now more like the Invictus with it being an exclusive vampire old boy's club and the Anarchs being a massive organization that's much more militant.

Humans Took a Level in Badass and took out the Tremere Inner Council along with what's implied to be several thousand other vampires (not small numbers with a population of 1000) including the entire undead population of London. The Second Inquisition is an alliance of the heads of the CIA, FBI, SIS, Mossad, and the Society of Leopold. They're keeping it under wraps but the Masquerade is barely holding and vampires, it turns out, can't deal with drone strikes.

Capping it all off, the Methuselahs of the Camarilla have all felt a mysterious call to the Middle East and have gone there along with elders close to that range (800 or so) which have resulted in a massive power vacuum in the sects. The entirety of the Sabbat has gone down there to fight them and their presumed Antediluvian masters—which means the Sabbat is temporarily out of commission as well.

Oh and now Attributes, Skills, and Disciplines are limited to 5.

As Chicago by Night's previews indicate with its Prince embraced in the 80s, the vampire world is now the oyster of any Kindred who wants to take it.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Nov 11th 2018 at 9:45:59 AM

I have the rulebook, and my tabletop gaming buddy from work is going to be running a game in the near future. Starting out in the Wild West, then timeskipping to modern day. I'm going to be a Brujah version of Doc Holliday, in contrast to my usual Malkavian character.

The Chicago By Night Kickstarter has gotten past its initial funding and has two stretch goals I'm interested in.

THE CHICAGO FOLIO: Which is a bunch of in-universe documents, conversations, and material which flesh out the characters from the Anarch and the Camarilla side of the war. They're trying to raise money now for a 3rd section about the Second Inquisition.

LET THE STREETS RUN RED: This is going to be a Chronicle book which contain rules on how to adventure in the setting plus pre-generated stories that will allow the characters to explore suburban Chicago and Indiana. If it gets high enough, it'll also do a revise to Milwaukee by Night.

Big news from Paradox Interactive: they're reining in the new White Wolf.

The Camarilla and Anarch books are going to be delayed for about three weeks, and now the WW hierarchy is going to be integrated into Paradox directly, rather than being allowed to function semi-independently.

Given the official apology to book ratio of V5 so far, I can't say this is particularly surprising, and it looks like that Chechnya sidebar was the final straw - again, not particularly surprising.

I am somewhat unsurprised given the propensity for A Swedish Edgelord to not understand the material he was dealing with.

So that's why my buddy's special edition has been so delayed - foolishness. I'm gonna loan him my rulebook so we can get the game rolling.

Edited by MarkVonLewis on Nov 16th 2018 at 6:51:47 AM

Also, they're officially turning all content development over to licensees. What that likely means is that OPP will end up handling all development, with brand ownership and veto being held by Paradox.

White Wolf dun fucked up, and it's a very positive step by Paradox when they admit this, take concrete actions to fix it and ensure that it won't happen going forward.

I got mentioned in a Crimean newspaper article about the whole thing.

"Ironically, the LGBT community, representatives of which are being persecuted in Chechnya, are also outraged by the game about Chechen vampires. The fact is that the persecution of gays is represented as a "smart media manipulation" to divert attention from bloodsuckers. Homosexuals consider this derision immoral. Science fiction writer Charles Phipps, as well as former White Wolf collaborator, game designer Joseph Carriker, agree with them."

- I'm not sure how to react to being at the center of an international controversy over depicting state torturers as vampires.

https://en.crimerussia.com/gromkie-dela/chechens-hate-vampire-the-masquerade-game-for-sultan-ramzan-character/?fbclid=IwAR2ibGrSgZHEnX8u8ZbyX__h1a-3_bWMB3BT0BNlfzSlC5A9Qk54yrTWMBM

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Nov 16th 2018 at 9:58:08 AM

Any tabletop game can fuck up, but when your fucking up causes an international incident, boy did you fuck up.

I feel doubly bad for the author who just wanted to honor his Chechnyan friend (who was gay AND tortured) but it got totally screwed up by editors who made his in-universe fiction into OOC statements and removed the sidebars explaining things.

I mean I don't think 5E has really been handling sensitive topics with the respect they deserve. For example Anarchs has one POV character talk about how the high embrace rate and abandonment of childer results in a high suicide rate amongst new vampires and presents this as a good thing for weeding out the week. No attempt at a counter view or anything to counter the idea put forth that suicide is good for people.

That said the fact that vampires are ruling openly or semi-openly in 5E makes no sense when the Second Inquisition is powerful enough to bomb major Tremere strongholds underneath cities and sends strike teams if someone on social media appears too pale yet somehow doesn't notice Vampires making all people in a country have ID cards that state their blood type to make feeding easier.

Yeah, I'd feel a lot more sad about this if it wasn't abundantly clear the new White Wolf was staffed to the gills with blinkered edgelords in positions of power.

I have had relatives attempt suicide and it is a monstrous horrible tragedy. My wife has lost friends to it.

BE THAT AS IT MAY:

1. The speaker is a complete piece of shit and it's fairly obvious author intent he is.

2. Vampires are damned monsters who feed on the living and suffer homicidal furies that regularly kill the innocent. Doesn't suicide as a vampire fall under the "Daleks and genocide" rule? I.e. that the Daleks are so far removed from a real life people or culture that arguments about the universality of genocide's evil don't apply to them.

In this case, suicide and vampires are utterly and completely removed from RL suicide that it's not remotely comparable.

Edit:

Mind you that this EVER WOULD BE CONFUSING implies the tone deafness of the Edgelord writers.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Nov 17th 2018 at 2:26:23 AM

Last I checked, vampires weren't dustbins with lasers taped to them.

Part of Vampire's DNA is that vampires, by their very nature, walk a tightrope between humanity and bestiality, a lifelong, uneasy struggle with the base desire to simply kill and feed. Many of the Clans take inspiration from real cultures, political movements or social groups, the Anarchs (just look at the name) being no exception.

So no, I don't think there's cause for exemption on Dalek grounds.

Fair enough. This is not a hill I want to die on. Just noting that vampires being unable to cope with their condition and the fact its a horrifying tragedy to be one is part of the game's DNA.

At the very least, it should have been spoken with an air of tragedy.

That people can't cope with the Hunger, paranoia, horror, and sadness of it all.

I feel weird consider the anarch usually are good guys, dicks and they cant compromise on anything(kinda like real anarchits) but using the drow logic of "it weed out the weak"(damn Im really hating that trope, even when I love dark elves), is usually hold to the sabbat or nasty part of the camarilla.

Also can someone explain to me the whole edgelord writer stuff?.

My point was largely that when you take something as heavy as suicide and have someone you've written to be the definitive voice on the issue talk about it try to handle it with a bit of care. In previous editions the original White Wolf would use multiple characters or sidebars to handle these sensitive issues as well as others to show that clans/tribes/factions weren't some monolithic entity where everyone had the exact same views on every subject, and sidebars for OOC comments.

So my issue isn't that a shitbag character is expressing a horrible viewpoint, it's that the real life writers and/or editors decided that shitbag character's viewpoint was the only one presented in the book on the subject.

Eh, that's one of the controversies of the Anarchs in 5E as the book was designed (according to the developers I've talked to) with two goals in mind:

1. To make the Anarchs a legitimate 3rd faction in the game again. 2. Also to darken them up a lot.

In the case of the book, they're basically the Sabbat-lite. They're obsessed with freedom, have a lot of diablerists, are hypocritical, and sometimes include some very bad people.

This is pretty similar to their handling in LA By Night where it turns out that the Anarch Free States was almost entirely composed of murderous gangs rather than a Kindred utopia.

I mean it's made them more INTERESTING but I'm not sure, "more like the Sabbat" was a good direction.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Nov 17th 2018 at 6:48:14 AM

Particularly since there's already a faction that's a lot like the Sabbat, with a lot more of their support coming from being like the Sabbat, known as...oh yeah, the Sabbat.

There's not much value in having three factions if two of them are the same faction wearing different hats.

The developers have basically said they're going to make the Sabbat split.

The Anarchs will be the FREEEDDDDOOOM types and people who bow to no elder.

The Sabbat will be all Black Hand now with creepy rituals, Satanism, and elite diablerists.

Mind you, they're rolling everything back in Chicago by Night 5E (It's available to read):

1. The Anarchs and Camarilla aren't at Open War. Just much much more hostile. 2. The Second Inquisition isn't interested in wiping out all vampires—they want to kill some, control others, and monitor the rest. 3. The Sabbat aren't all wiped out or in the Middle East. 4. Many Brujah and Gangrel stayed in the Camarilla.

I'm sure they'll roll back the Sabbat plans now too.

National News Service, a Russian media agency, will hold a press conference on Vampire 5 tomorrow at 10.00 GMT. Among the participants are Dzhambulat Umarov, a minister of national policy, external relations, press and information of Chechnya and representatives of Studio 101, a company that publishes V20 in Russia. Details here. You know, if you read Russian, which I don't.

http://nsn.fm/press-center/kto-poselil-v-chechne-vampirov.html

I figured people might actually like to discuss some of the previews everyone can view.

I'm really impressed with the implications of a lot of these. FLYBOY has the biggest possible revelations as it says a lot about how and why the Camarilla was so completely ****ed by the Second Inquisition (and will continue to be so).

EDWARD NEALLY https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/200664283/chicago-by-night-for-vampire-the-masquerade-5th-ed/posts/2330905

ANITA WAINWRIGHT https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/200664283/chicago-by-night-for-vampire-the-masquerade-5th-ed/posts/2333196

Nikolas "Sweetie Pepper" White https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/200664283/chicago-by-night-for-vampire-the-masquerade-5th-ed/posts/2335437

LESTER KNIFE https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/200664283/chicago-by-night-for-vampire-the-masquerade-5th-ed/posts/2337658

BRONWYN https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/200664283/chicago-by-night-for-vampire-the-masquerade-5th-ed/posts/2339673

CEDERICK CALHOUN https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/200664283/chicago-by-night-for-vampire-the-masquerade-5th-ed/posts/2341862

NOAH "FLYBOY" GREHAL https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/200664283/chicago-by-night-for-vampire-the-masquerade-5th-ed/posts/2343911

ANNABELLE https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/200664283/chicago-by-night-for-vampire-the-masquerade-5th-ed/posts/2346030

FICTION

Red No. 5: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1qQoeiRR-ek8ErwV8RLogxUBK3VbSYIuX

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Nov 18th 2018 at 9:29:50 AM

So the sabbat will be like the sect of requiem that workship a goddess? because it feel they are taking away the terrorist aspect and transplanting to anarch while expanding more in the occult part of the sabbat.

Also I always feel the tremere should be their own sect, they were to diferent from others.