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TheAnomaly posted:The Sabbat were removed because they ate up all the antagonist space, the religious space, and anti-stereotype space. They were bad in Vampire because they kept other groups from having a real niche; now the Serpents get to be a real group in the Ministry that focuses on the return of old faiths to vampires, and the Anarchists get to be the Cam antagonists and anti-clan stereotypes. The humans get to be the big bad monsters hiding under the bed instead of the Sabbat, and they make better antagonists. The Sabbat were an excellent vehicle for stories of their own with a flavor you couldn't have in the Camarilla and there being a competing sect was good for the setting, especially one who embraced (sort of) the vampire creation myth instead of ignoring it. You could tell a lot of different stories in a Sabbat game than a Cammie one. And honestly you talk about how the setting is decentralized right after talking about two sects which are both 'all this one thing.' It all just feels like they're gone because Ericsson didn't like it - and that's fine - but also being Martin he didn't have a good idea on how to replace it or even why it should be gone. With Achilli leading the charge there is certainly potential but right now, the whole thing's kind of a mess especially with stuff like Fall of London that's essentially a giant adventure more than a London book (which could have been neat) and doesn't even let the players be central to what should be this big story because it's written around pre-generated characters. From admittedly personal experience, the antagonist space in a typical Vampire game was taken up way more by other Cammie vampires than Sabbat. Also should the Anarchs who ostensibly want to change the system be the antagonists? That plays into the 'Camarilla are the good vampires' line which, no, they're not. At least the Sabbat are honest. It's cool you dig V5, it honestly is, and you're not coming at it like oberst so that's also a big plus but for me it's still got a long way to go.
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Jul 15, 2020 02:53
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wiegieman posted:The modern intelligence/security apparatus is something the vampires are completely unprepared for. They think they're the worst thing in the world, but they have no idea. Care to expand on this, I'm curious. 
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Jul 15, 2020 04:24
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I can't remember if it was a fan story or not but it basically involved a vampire being caught on a thermal camera and the government(UK I think ?) freaking the gently caress out at the revelations vampires are real and hold considerable power in society and immediately investing hard into kill squads with phosphorus rounds and installing thermal cameras everywhere while using it's considerable power to hack into basic rear end vampire sites to hunt them down.
ChaseSP fucked around with this message at 04:37 on Jul 15, 2020 |
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Jul 15, 2020 04:32
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ChaseSP posted:I can't remember if it was a fan story or not but it basically involved a vampire being caught on a thermal camera and the government(UK I think ?) freaking the gently caress out at the revelations vampires are real and hold considerable power in society and immediately investing hard into kill squads with phosphorus rounds and installing thermal cameras everywhere while using it's considerable power to hack into basic rear end vampire sites to hunt them down. No that's essentially what happened in V5. The Second Inquisition involves world wide governments running vampire elders asses down like animals. Schrecknet was blown wide open, the UK is a total no go zone, the main Tremere Chantry got a hellfire rocket crammed up its rear end and the whole chain of blood fealty is broken now for a lot of Tremere, etc.
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Jul 15, 2020 04:44
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There was already Project Twilight in the rpevious editions so this didn't come out of nowhere.
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Jul 15, 2020 04:57
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lolling at the image of a crew of bearded tier one operators with oakleys and chew busting through the doors with flash bangs and coolly smearing a powerful 400 year old Tzcmisce elder across his baroque dining room using automatic weapons with holosights and phosphorus rounds before he can even think "what the gently caress"
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Jul 15, 2020 04:59
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Tzcmisce all live in disgusting flesh houses with butt sphincters for doors and geodudes rolling around and I feel like the smell would have given that game away a long long time ago.
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Jul 15, 2020 05:02
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Back Hack posted:Care to expand on this, I'm curious. Basically, what happens when the kind of people who spend all their time kicking over socialist governments in South America and drone striking weddings find out that there are actual vampires infiltrating and corrupting their countries? When the military industrial complex that fought an entire regional conquest and 20 year occupation and barely felt it in the budget diverting soldiers to go to work on real-life, holy poo poo monsters? If the The Second Inquisition (who call themselves FIRSTLIGHT) sends a team, it isn't going to be a small town priest and a few of his burlier union member parishioners with two revolvers between them trying to expel the evil they don't understand from their community. They're going to track the vampires to where they sleep, blow up the buildings, light the ruins on fire, and riddle anything that's still moving with incendiary bullets before carting the survivors off to a black site in the Arizona desert to be experimented on. They won't blink for even an instant at violence, extreme force or collateral damage and they're very heavily armed. They're not going to worry about the cops getting in the way, because civilian law enforcement is an even bigger joke to them than it is to the bloodsuckers. The vampires' worst nightmare - the humans getting wise and getting organized about it - has come true. They've pretty much cleared out London, Paris, and a bunch of other cities. They didn't just missile strike the Tremere in the Vienna Chantry, they followed up the airstrike and stormed one of the most secure vampire strongholds with a bunch of special forces guys who had extensive training from the Vatican and the Society of Leopold and killed everyone inside (they said they were shooting ISIS.) It was basically a textbook military operation, because it was carried out by the military. Blood magic may be as powerful as a rocket launcher, but so what? Those are everywhere on a battlefield. That's not to say the vampires can't win - they absolutely can, because worming their way into human power structures is what they do best - but they now have a huge problem on their hands.
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Jul 15, 2020 05:19
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Halloween Jack posted:Imagine being some centuries old Sabbat voivode with a body count in the hundreds and being all proud of that, then Henry Kissinger comes along and kills more people in one lifetime than you ever did. That's stupid. Because Kissinger is a Sabbat vampire anyway.
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Jul 15, 2020 05:19
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Caidin posted:Tzcmisce all live in disgusting flesh houses with butt sphincters for doors and geodudes rolling around and I feel like the smell would have given that game away a long long time ago. clearly you've never been to Hollywood
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Jul 15, 2020 05:20
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wiegieman posted:Basically, what happens when the kind of people who spend all their time kicking over socialist governments in South America and drone striking weddings find out that there are actual vampires infiltrating and corrupting their countries?
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Jul 15, 2020 05:26
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wiegieman posted:Basically, what happens when the kind of people who spend all their time kicking over socialist governments in South America and drone striking weddings find out that there are actual vampires infiltrating and corrupting their countries? When the military industrial complex that fought an entire regional conquest and 20 year occupation and barely felt it in the budget diverting soldiers to go to work on real-life, holy poo poo monsters? this and also every single IC agency from every single country would get involved with it. its a very easy excuse to basicaly unite the world against a bunch of monsters from hell. i mean whats the vampire count. 1 vamp for every 1000 or so humans?
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Jul 15, 2020 05:28
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Halloween Jack posted:Send them a resume? Holy poo poo, imagine what the military, police, and intelligence services might do if they realized there was a small class of incestuous elites fattening themselves off the life-force of the entire human population,
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Jul 15, 2020 05:36
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Ferrinus posted:Holy poo poo, imagine what the military, police, and intelligence services might do if they realized there was a small class of incestuous elites fattening themselves off the life-force of the entire human population, "hey, thats our bosses job, stop doing that".
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Jul 15, 2020 05:45
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It kind of just sounds like the vampires demise will be the same as 99% of all other species that had the misfortune to temporarily co-exist with humanity. Thermal cameras and fertilizers are destroying vampires' natural habitats and they're now endangered. Where are the People for Ethical Treatment of Vampires? I suppose Werewolves are kind of hosed in the same way, right? Are Mages doing okay in our modern era, have they figured out e-magic yet?
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Jul 15, 2020 05:47
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Khanstant posted:It kind of just sounds like the vampires demise will be the same as 99% of all other species that had the misfortune to temporarily co-exist with humanity. Thermal cameras and fertilizers are destroying vampires' natural habitats and they're now endangered. Where are the People for Ethical Treatment of Vampires? I suppose Werewolves are kind of hosed in the same way, right? Are Mages doing okay in our modern era, have they figured out e-magic yet? It's really, really loving important to remember that the cosmology and setting of the WoD is absolutely batshit insane and corrupt. Like nuclear power plants don't just run off of fission, there's literally chained evil spirits of decay inside of them and the monolithic company that runs just about everthing through its twisted subsidiaries has meetings set aside specifically to decide how much toxic waste they should release at any given moment. It's all cartoonish and stupidly over the top. Also in the setting Washington D.C. was basically flooded with homeless refugees and the Sabbat took over the city because
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Jul 15, 2020 06:17
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ChaseSP posted:I can't remember if it was a fan story or not but it basically involved a vampire being caught on a thermal camera and the government(UK I think ?) freaking the gently caress out at the revelations vampires are real and hold considerable power in society and immediately investing hard into kill squads with phosphorus rounds and installing thermal cameras everywhere while using it's considerable power to hack into basic rear end vampire sites to hunt them down. edit: apparently it had Idris Elba in it, which I had forgotten https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultraviolet_(TV_serial) Zephro fucked around with this message at 09:21 on Jul 15, 2020 |
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Jul 15, 2020 08:13
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guerrilla war where you play vampires being hunted by the government is such a cool idea, don't think it's ever been pulled off in a game before. I mean also at the strategic/logistics/morale level too, not just a glorified stealth/batman game with a vampire coat of paint.
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Jul 15, 2020 08:37
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crepeface posted:guerrilla war where you play vampires being hunted by the government is such a cool idea, don't think it's ever been pulled off in a game before. The last few books have become more and more about political commentary on current events and I don't think they've aged well, but the first half-dozen or so would make a good mine for ideas.
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Jul 15, 2020 09:26
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Zephro posted:If you want inspiration you could do worse than checking out the Laundry Files books, which are basically stale-beer spy fiction meets supernatural gribblies. They aren't always entirely serious but the intelligence-agencies angle is generally done well (ie sometimes they're competent and sometimes they're not and there's bureaucracy and infighting and a lot of the supernaturals end up brought inside the tent via various means, etc). One novel (the Rhesus Chart) is basically about what happens when an old vampire decides he's had enough and picks a straight fight with the government (it doesn't go well). One thing I like in that series about vampire 'society' is that there's a sort of Highlander approach to it. Every vampire who learns about another vampire tries to kill them, because if they could learn that somebody else is a vampire then it's also possible for a human to learn that, and they know that they're not powerful enough to stave off the entire modern world if it mobilizes against them.
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Jul 15, 2020 10:14
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crepeface posted:guerrilla war where you play vampires being hunted by the government is such a cool idea, don't think it's ever been pulled off in a game before. If they'd leaned into that, that could have been interesting. Sadly what we get is 'do everything you normally do in a Vampire game and also sometimes a SWAT team with phosphorous rounds shows up.'
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Jul 15, 2020 13:40
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Zephro posted:If you want inspiration you could do worse than checking out the Laundry Files books, which are basically stale-beer spy fiction meets supernatural gribblies. They aren't always entirely serious but the intelligence-agencies angle is generally done well (ie sometimes they're competent and sometimes they're not and there's bureaucracy and infighting and a lot of the supernaturals end up brought inside the tent via various means, etc). One novel (the Rhesus Chart) is basically about what happens when an old vampire decides he's had enough and picks a straight fight with the government (it doesn't go well). Or you could check out Night’s Black Agents/Dracula Dossier, which is literally spies vs. vampires.
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Jul 15, 2020 23:37
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citybeatnik posted:It's really, really loving important to remember that the cosmology and setting of the WoD is absolutely batshit insane and corrupt. Like nuclear power plants don't just run off of fission, there's literally chained evil spirits of decay inside of them and the monolithic company that runs just about everthing through its twisted subsidiaries has meetings set aside specifically to decide how much toxic waste they should release at any given moment. It's all cartoonish and stupidly over the top. This is awesome ands I really love hearing about it secondhand, don't have the chops to go through it myself, but torture nuclear decay ghosts is way rad. P.S. What's the phosophorous-vampire weakness from?
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Jul 15, 2020 23:40
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Khanstant posted:This is awesome ands I really love hearing about it secondhand, don't have the chops to go through it myself, but torture nuclear decay ghosts is way rad. It's a flame weapon, phosophorous is super duper flammable.
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Jul 15, 2020 23:45
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Khanstant posted:This is awesome ands I really love hearing about it secondhand, don't have the chops to go through it myself, but torture nuclear decay ghosts is way rad. It's touched on more in Werewolf, since radioative stuff is part of the big bad Wyrm. The Pentex subsidiary behind all of that just shoved a bunch of angry spirits in to the reactors and are basically waiting for the go signal to have them all blow up.
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Jul 15, 2020 23:55
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To what end? Failsafe if their plans fail? General desire for global destruction or what?
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Jul 16, 2020 02:32
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Khanstant posted:To what end? Failsafe if their plans fail? General desire for global destruction or what? The Wyrm is the big spirit of entropy, but because werewolves hosed everything up, it's gone mad and now instead of destroying stuff that's served it's purpose and needs to be removed, it wants to destroy everything.
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Jul 16, 2020 04:34
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Khanstant posted:To what end? Failsafe if their plans fail? General desire for global destruction or what? To expand on Soonmot's point and get a lil' nerdier. The Werewolf pantheon basically has a Triatic god. Wyld - the force of raw creation (stuff unbound). Weaver - the force of order (boundaries on stuff). and Wyrm - the force of destruction (removing the bounds on stuff). The Weaver went nuts at some point because the Wyrm kept smashing her stuff and started tying him up which drove him crazy. And that changed him from 'necessary destruction' to 'corrupted ruination' and his minions are all aspects/spawn of the various broken parts of corrupted ruination that he became, so some of them want the world to be a toxic waste dump, some of them want to be gluttonous monstrosities, some of them want the world to be fully detroyed, etc.
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Jul 16, 2020 05:09
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Khanstant posted:To what end? Failsafe if their plans fail? General desire for global destruction or what? Pentex and its subsidiaries, which range from not-Purdue to Not-McDonalds to not-Enron to Not-Tesla to Not-BP and Not-White Wolf, are all literal Captain Planet villains. And at least three vampires either sit or have sat on its board of directors!
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Jul 16, 2020 05:28
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Khanstant posted:To what end? Failsafe if their plans fail? General desire for global destruction or what?
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Jul 16, 2020 05:34
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Okay, doing another playthrough of Bloodlines and... why is Gimbal calling the tattoo shop when you get in? He already has McGee, there's nothing that indicates he knows you're looking for McGee, so no reason for him to try and arrange your disappearance. Plus, the tattoo shop has the number and name of Gumbal Prosthetics on the wall, so you'd still have a clue as to where to go next.
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Jul 17, 2020 21:33
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Evil CEO steps outside of office, starts stomping a little weed growing through sidewalk crack "gently caress you, fduck you gently caress you"
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Jul 17, 2020 21:45
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Also it sounds like their needs to be a cosmic primal force of therapy because these three have some freaking issues and their toxic relationships are only hurting their bloodthirsty, zealous followers.
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Jul 17, 2020 21:47
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Khanstant posted:Also it sounds like their needs to be a cosmic primal force of therapy because these three have some freaking issues and their toxic relationships are only hurting their bloodthirsty, zealous followers. The lack of such a cosmic force is basically why wod is lovely.
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Jul 17, 2020 22:52
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to their credit, all mythologies are bad in that regard. Christian God needed a therapist and maybe a 101 class in ethics before Genesis, he was in no state to be a God during either of the testaments.
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Jul 17, 2020 23:16
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Soonmot posted:Okay, doing another playthrough of Bloodlines and... why is Gimbal calling the tattoo shop when you get in? He already has McGee, there's nothing that indicates he knows you're looking for McGee, so no reason for him to try and arrange your disappearance. Plus, the tattoo shop has the number and name of Gumbal Prosthetics on the wall, so you'd still have a clue as to where to go next. that's always puzzled me. Only explanation I can fathom is that he only just caught McGee, somehow got the notion that McGee's operating from the tattoo parlor and rings to see if anyone else is there looking for him. It's ... not really logical the way the game portrays it
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Jul 17, 2020 23:29
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It would make a lot more sense if there were cameras in the parlor and he's always ready to bait more people/get rid of investigators but as it is I think it's supposed to be a coincidence.
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Jul 17, 2020 23:32
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double nine posted:that's always puzzled me. Only explanation I can fathom is that he only just caught McGee, somehow got the notion that McGee's operating from the tattoo parlor and rings to see if anyone else is there looking for him. It's ... not really logical the way the game portrays it Could it have something to do with the person McGee was chasing? Maybe the Limb Lord got the name of the place off McGee and then did what you say.
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Jul 18, 2020 00:46
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Soonmot posted:The Wyrm is the big spirit of entropy, but because werewolves hosed everything up, it's gone mad and now instead of destroying stuff that's served it's purpose and needs to be removed, it wants to destroy everything. Captain Monkey posted:To expand on Soonmot's point and get a lil' nerdier. So... how did the werewolfs gently caress things up? That sounds like a God Problem.
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Jul 18, 2020 01:09
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I think part of had to do with the garou trying to kill all the other shifters, who had specific roles to play and trying to murder humanity. But I don't remember much of oWoD metaplot anymore.
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Jul 18, 2020 01:45
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