(Vampire: The Masquerade/White Wolf) What Were The Old Days Like?

[Doc Sammy]

So, anyone who knows my RPG opinions will know that I am a HUGE fan of the very first edition of Vampire: The Masquerade (and to a lesser extent, the second edition as well) and I generally dislike the changes made by the game's Revised Edition and its successors such as nWoD/CofD and the upcoming 5th Edition of Vampire, though V20 was fairly decent by virtue of being a metaplot-neutral "Greatest Hits" compilation game.

But the thing is that I am looking back on the old editions not out of a sense of nostalgia but rather because I just like the old fluff and setting. In terms of being there for the heyday of World of Darkness (both tabletop and LARP), I am very late to the party. I was born in 1993 and didn't fully get into White Wolf's stuff until 2010 during my junior year of high school. I missed out on Vampire back when it was popular and most of the gamers my age that I know in real life tend to hate Vampire and White Wolf mainly due to either associating it with the now-culturally irrelevant and cringe-worthy Twilight books OR because of the pretentiousness and edgelord tendencies espoused by the later White Wolf materials and the more purist members of the WoD fandom, who tend to dominate the discourse on WoD on both Onyx Path's forums and a certain nameless purple forum.

I wasn't there when Vampire first came out. I missed out on the game being groundbreaking, popular, and cool. By the time I came to the scene, the thematic purists had ruined the games and sullied the reputation of the World of Darkness, mainly due to said purists taking over White Wolf/Onyx Path's staff and player-base. I missed out on First Edition and Second Edition, and therefore couldn't experience the awesomeness of seeing Vampire and Werewolf hit the scene and taking everyone by surprise, or the height of White Wolf LARP culture in the 1990's, or even the time when Dirty Secrets of the Black Hand wasn't universally reviled just because Justin Achilli told the fandom to hate it.

So feel free to discuss Vampire: The Masquerade and the World of Darkness in its early days (1991-1998) before Revised Edition hit the scene and the metaplot got out of hand. I welcome all discussion of both tabletop and LARP as well as the main White Wolf games from this era (Vampire, Werewolf, Mage, Wraith, Changeling, and Street Fighter).

I want to hear the stories of the glory days of Vampire, as well as some Storyteller tips on capturing the old-school feel of early 1990's White Wolf, as I would love to one day run an old-school game of either Vampire 1e or Werewolf 1e. I want to know the culture of the era that I missed out on, and how best to emulate the era and its gaming styles in this day and age. It may be the late 2010's but I would love to run a Vampire chronicle in the style of the early 1990's.

So, all discussion of this era is welcome. The parameters are 1991-1998, and I welcome discussion of both tabletop and LARP, and while I am mainly focused on Vampire, I welcome discussion of Werewolf, Mage, Wraith, Changeling, and even Street Fighter.

 

[Aglondir]

Hi Doc,

In no certain order, here are some random, fading memories:

The Feel: You know how the OSR crowd talks about "gonzo?" It was a bit like that. Not in the Hunter S. Thompson sense, but in the "we made up stuff we thought was fun" sense. It was a mix of Anne Rice (back then it was cool), The Lost Boys, that movie with David Bowie, and that movie with Lance Hendrikson.

The Clans: Back in my day, there were only five clans! And we liked it! But in all seriousness, the game worked better before the others were created.

Adventures: Sometimes we were secret agents for the Prince. Other times we were the Sheriff's hit squad. Sometimes we were the vampire Suicide Squad. Usually we solved mysteries and hunted monsters (mummies, demons, aberrations, gargoyles, Cthulu creatures) and we just made all of it up.

Angst: Yeah, we did this. Once. Then we just played the game and had fun. Not really superheroes with fangs, more like 1990's twenty-somethings with fangs and guns. We actually did the Humanity track. It was like a game of Blackjack: we were trying to get to the sweet spot of Humanity (was it 5 or 6?) where we could kill with relative impunity but not go full monster. Never go full monster.

The Jyhad: The original premise of the game wasn't the Camirilla vs. the Sabbat. It was supposed to be between rival Methusalehs: ancient, inscrutable vampires who were pulling the strings of the Elders. It was implied they were more like Plot Elements than NPC's you could actually fight. Later, they would all be stat-blocked and the Antedilluvians became the big bads. (Edit: It was also about the Anrachs vs. Elders, but that neve really did it for us.)

The Elders: There was a brief mention that the Elder vampires could not be sustained by human blood, so they hunted younger vampires. I think they did away with this idea quickly.

The Sabbat: Back then, nothing about the Sabbat had been written. They were the unknown evil, and as such were much scarier than they would later become.

Rasputin: White Wolf authors loved this guy. I have no idea why. They kept making different versions. One was a Malk, one was a Nos, I can't recall the rest.

Nosferatu: Back in the days before smart phones and the Web was a thing only a few people did (the online explosion was around 1994 with batang batang screeeeech You've Got Mail!) the Nos made sense as information brokers. Now, not so much.

Dread Gaze: In the 2nd edition, Dread Gaze was pretty much useless. It didn't work on vampires, only mortals. And the way it was written was an automatic breach of the Masquerde: "you bare your fangs and reveal your vampitic nature in all of it's terror."

The Giovanni: When they did write a book about the Sabbat, there was an odd factoid that the Sabbat went to war with the Giovanni in NYC and lost. Think about that-- these guys were supposed to be a threat to the Camirilla, but they can't win a war against a single clan! This was later retconned out of existence.

Golconda: It was really meant to be a Thing, even though we all ignored it. There was a really strange rule that if you killed your sire, and killed his sire, you would turn human again (!)

BJ Zanzibar: When the web finally hit, but before forums existed, everything was static HTML. There was this website where people wrote up custom disciplines, clans, bloodlines, and sorts of other nonsense. I think you had to email it to BJ and he'd code it up. Some of it was legit attempts at house rules (e.g. fixing celerity), some of it was awful (disciplines that gave vampires wings) and some of it was "funny" (in the fish-Malk sense.)

The Secret Masters: The 1E Ventrue clanbook described the ultimate inscrutable group that was Really Really Pulling the Strings. The Ventrue (and I think, only the oldest Ventrue) knew who they were, but wouldn't tell. They specifically were not the Methusalehs or Antedeluvians. I've never been able to find out who they were, and I doubt anyone remembers the obscure passage where they were mentioned. The concept never came up again, as far as I could tell.

 

[Doc Sammy]

Hi Doc,

In no certain order, here are some random, fading memories:

The Feel: You know how the OSR crowd talks about "gonzo?" It was a bit like that. Not in the Hunter S. Thompson sense, but in the "we made up stuff we thought was fun" sense. It was a mix of Anne Rice (back then it was cool), The Lost Boys, that movie with David Bowie, and that movie with Lance Hendrikson.

The Clans: Back in my day, there were only five clans! And we liked it! But in all seriousness, the game worked better before the others were created.

Adventures: Sometimes we were secret agents for the Prince. Other times we were the Sheriff's hit squad. Sometimes we were the vampire Suicide Squad. Usually we solved mysteries and hunted monsters (mummies, demons, aberrations, gargoyles, Cthulu creatures) and we just made all of it up.

Angst: Yeah, we did this. Once. Then we just played the game and had fun. Not really superheroes with fangs, more like 1990's twenty-somethings with fangs and guns. We actually did the Humanity track. It was like a game of Blackjack: we were trying to get to the sweet spot of Humanity (was it 5 or 6?) where we could kill with relative impunity but not go full monster. Never go full monster.

The Jyhad: The original premise of the game wasn't the Camirilla vs. the Sabbat. It was supposed to be between rival Methusalehs: ancient, inscrutable vampires who were pulling the strings of the Elders. It was implied they were more like Plot Elements than NPC's you could actually fight. Later, they would all be stat-blocked and the Antedilluvians became the big bads. (Edit: It was also about the Anrachs vs. Elders, but that neve really did it for us.)

The Elders: There was a brief mention that the Elder vampires could not be sustained by human blood, so they hunted younger vampires. I think they did away with this idea quickly.

The Sabbat: Back then, nothing about the Sabbat had been written. They were the unknown evil, and as such were much scarier than they would later become.

Rasputin: White Wolf authors loved this guy. I have no idea why. They kept making different versions. One was a Malk, one was a Nos, I can't recall the rest.

Nosferatu: Back in the days before smart phones and the Web was a thing only a few people did (the online explosion was around 1994 with batang batang screeeeech You've Got Mail!) the Nos made sense as information brokers. Now, not so much.

Dread Gaze: In the 2nd edition, Dread Gaze was pretty much useless. It didn't work on vampires, only mortals. And the way it was written was an automatic breach of the Masquerde: "you bare your fangs and reveal your vampitic nature in all of it's terror."

The Giovanni: When they did write a book about the Sabbat, there was an odd factoid that the Sabbat went to war with the Giovanni in NYC and lost. Think about that-- these guys were supposed to be a threat to the Camirilla, but they can't win a war against a single clan! This was later retconned out of existence.

Golconda: It was really meant to be a Thing, even though we all ignored it. There was a really strange rule that if you killed your sire, and killed his sire, you would turn human again (!)

BJ Zanzibar: When the web finally hit, but before forums existed, everything was static HTML. There was this website where people wrote up custom disciplines, clans, bloodlines, and sorts of other nonsense. I think you had to email it to BJ and he'd code it up. Some of it was legit attempts at house rules (e.g. fixing celerity), some of it was awful (disciplines that gave vampires wings) and some of it was "funny" (in the fish-Malk sense.)

The Secret Masters: The 1E Ventrue clanbook described the ultimate inscrutable group that was Really Really Pulling the Strings. The Ventrue (and I think, only the oldest Ventrue) knew who they were, but wouldn't tell. They specifically were not the Methusalehs or Antedeluvians. I've never been able to find out who they were, and I doubt anyone remembers the obscure passage where they were mentioned. The concept never came up again, as far as I could tell.

All of this is awesome.

I would love to run a 1e Vampire game where only the core seven clans are playable and it's done in this style you are describing.

 

[The Butcher]

There was a considerable tonal shift from 1st to 2nd Edition.

VtM1 sort of assumes as a default that PCs will be Anarchs. VtM1 adventures often use “the anarchs” and “the PCs” interchangeably (like a D&D module would use “the adventurers”).

VtM2 does away with this pretense. I ascribe at least part of this shift to the rise of LARP. The Camarilla’s salons make a more interesting playing field for a LARP than... whatever anarchs do.

If you can read Spanish, Imperator has a very cool article about it, posted on his blog. Link.

 

[Coffee Zombie]

The thing about Vampire, and all the White Wolf games is: they are, and were, just games. Role-playing was still dorky in the 90s, even when more female players got interested due to the content of the games.

My experience with vampires, prior to 1E Vampire, had been Rifts: Vampire Kingdoms, and a few movies that featured them. I was in high school, but somewhat young and inexperienced, and to me this was just a chance to play some kind of heroic monster. But quickly I began to see the game was about a lot more. Power struggles, and the notion of what was right and wrong, and the consequences of evil choices. My first character was a Gangrel vampire, and the Sabbat was just an ambiguous concept. This meant, for the most part, that the antagonists were more often the other vampires in the city, and I personally feel the game was better in those days.

When the Storyteller wanted me to understand what Vampire was about, he had me read Interview with the Vampire. It was pretty obvious that good chunks of the game were lifted outright from Anne Rice's works (I read the next two books in the series immediately, and fast - I would read 2-3 novels a week in high school). What struck me was that one of the better inspirations for Vampire was, well, The Highlander movie.

The scene. Well, we were high school dorks and drama nerds, and vampires were becoming popular among all the drama kids, and most gamers. Everyone had tried it within the first two years of it being out. Vampires became popular. FFC's Dracula movie, Forever Knight on television, then later Buffy. More female players seemed interested in the game, but I think that's not because vampires were attractive to them, but rather that the plots were more attractive to them. It was the first time random female players actually approached our group (which had a female player well before we played Vampire) to join up. Again, it wasn't us, it was the game.

The LARP scene, which I got into when the LARP rules came out (the original LotN) was a thing on to it's own.

Advice for capturing an older school Vampire feel. Read the original Chicago by Night. Play the game hard and fast, but keep in mind that the Prince and Primogen relationships in older vampire were less refined. There was no formal court with Prince, Primogen, Senschal, Sheriff, etc. It was the Prince, and sometimes elders he could not ignore. Masquerade breaches were expected to be handled, not immediate grounds for death. Quite a lot of the fun was seeing what you could do in the game. Ignore the Sabbat. I know they're mentioned in the book, but seriously: those books were just stupid. The moment you had another faction to hate on and use as boogeymen, the game changed.

It's why Mage, for example, worked so well in early editions when the Technocrats were indeed tyrannical overlords to rebel against versus the moral mess that came later. The Traditions make more sense when they are the rebels and underdogs. The Kindred work better when there is no bad guy, except themselves.

 

[A Fiery Flying Roll]

This is a snapshot of my local LARP scene in Sunderland. I have no idea how representative we were.

We came out of 1e and had a healthy disregard for canon. Our Harpy was called a "Herald". We had National Elders found nowhere in the books. We took it and made it our own. Even as 2e came out, the only use for metaplot was to cannablise it and nick the bits our ref liked. (This is something that's heavily influence the Vampire LARP I run today. We even use the same old ruleset we used then).

There's this revisionism among some overly pompous old school White Wolfers that Vampire was a seismic shift and brought in all these cool club kids that wouldn't have dreamed of playing tabletop before. It's a load of bollocks. The vast majority of our players had been playing tabletop since school. It was just Vampire (and some other 90's games like Ars Magica and Unknown Armies) appealed to us when we were 19/20 in the same way that D&D appealed to us when we were 14. Even when it came to LARP, that was new to us, but an offshoot of the university tabletop society. (And we'd started with rubber sword quest LARP before playing Vampire). And when it comes to British goths at least, anyone who is surprised by the idea that they might have played D&D can't really know any. Most of my goth mates were properly geeky, even the non LARPers.

It is probably true that we saw a few more women, but they were geeky women and had just joined because it was interesting.

Were we sometimes a bit pretentious? Did we go clubbing three times a week? Did we run round randomly fucking each other? DId some of us take a metric fuckton of drugs? Course we did. We were in our late teens/early twenties. If you can't be a pretentious hedonist at that age when can you be? And Vampire didn't make us like that, we would have been like that either way.

Related to the last point, it is fair to say there were a hell of a lot more drugs flying around than in the modern LARP and tabletop scene. Although that might say more about who my mates were at the time than anything else. Looking back, I'd say only around ten of us were seriously into phet at the time. A handful of acid heads and a majority of boozers.

 

[A Fiery Flying Roll]

I would like to point out that I wasn't ever a goth though. I was a mix between a crusty and an old school indie kid. And at the time, that kind of distinction seemed important rather than hilarious.

 

[Doc Sammy]

This is a snapshot of my local LARP scene in Sunderland. I have no idea how representative we were.

We came out of 1e and had a healthy disregard for canon. Our Harpy was called a "Herald". We had National Elders found nowhere in the books. We took it and made it our own. Even as 2e came out, the only use for metaplot was to cannablise it and nick the bits our ref liked. (This is something that's heavily influence the Vampire LARP I run today. We even use the same old ruleset we used then).

There's this revisionism among some overly pompous old school White Wolfers that Vampire was a seismic shift and brought in all these cool club kids that wouldn't have dreamed of playing tabletop before. It's a load of bollocks. The vast majority of our players had been playing tabletop since school. It was just Vampire (and some other 90's games like Ars Magica and Unknown Armies) appealed to us when we were 19/20 in the same way that D&D appealed to us when we were 14. Even when it came to LARP, that was new to us, but an offshoot of the university tabletop society. (And we'd started with rubber sword quest LARP before playing Vampire). And when it comes to British goths at least, anyone who is surprised by the idea that they might have played D&D can't really know any. Most of my goth mates were properly geeky, even the non LARPers.

It is probably true that we saw a few more women, but they were geeky women and had just joined because it was interesting.

Were we sometimes a bit pretentious? Did we go clubbing three times a week? Did we run round randomly fucking each other? DId some of us take a metric fuckton of drugs? Course we did. We were in our late teens/early twenties. If you can't be a pretentious hedonist at that age when can you be? And Vampire didn't make us like that, we would have been like that either way.

Related to the last point, it is fair to say there were a hell of a lot more drugs flying around than in the modern LARP and tabletop scene. Although that might say more about who my mates were at the time than anything else. Looking back, I'd say only around ten of us were seriously into phet at the time. A handful of acid heads and a majority of boozers.

I was never big on the whole Goth and Punk scenes but damn if those days don't sound fun to me. I wish I could have been there.

 

[Edgewise]

I briefly got a VtM campaign up for a few sessions, and this was before even Werewolf had come out. None of the people I played with had it, so I came up with a twist: everyone would play themselves. I had all the players stat themselves up in the game (using chargen...they didn't have to be exactly the same as real life) and I started the game by saying that the game world was the same as the real one, except tonight you went to a party with Pete instead of gaming tonight. And we took it from there, with all the players getting bitten in the first session, and subsequently dealing with their real-life families while navigating the occult underground of Madison, WI.

I really wish we had kept that campaign going.

 

[A Fiery Flying Roll]

I was never big on the whole Goth and Punk scenes but damn if those days don't sound fun to me. I wish I could have been there.

It's worth mentioning that in my experience the US and the UK goth scenes developed quite differently.

This may be confirmation bias but I've certainly found that American goths take themselves a lot more seriously. Whereas Brit goths are all about in jokes and dancing badly to Barbie Girl when they're drunk.

You might also find our rulebook interesting. It's near unchanged from the early nineties version and it's a pretty standard example of what a lot of LARP rulesets were like at the time - huddersfieldvampire.proboards.com/thread/62/rulebook-download

(The current LARP is general is an interesting mix. In terms of ages we run the gamut from the old bastards like me who were there from the start to a 15 year old and everything in between).

 

[Doc Sammy]

It's worth mentioning that in my experience the US and the UK goth scenes developed quite differently.

This may be confirmation bias but I've certainly found that American goths take themselves a lot more seriously. Whereas Brit goths are all about in jokes and dancing badly to Barbie Girl when they're drunk.

You might also find our rulebook interesting. It's near unchanged from the early nineties version and it's a pretty standard example of what a lot of LARP rulesets were like at the time - huddersfieldvampire.proboards.com/thread/62/rulebook-download

(The current LARP is general is an interesting mix. In terms of ages we run the gamut from the old bastards like me who were there from the start to a 15 year old and everything in between).

Sounds interesting. Here in America, the Goths tended to be pretentious burnouts who take themselves too seriously. This is especially true on Onyx Path Forums, Big Purple, and the now defunct LARP scene in Roanoke, Virginia.

 

[Shipyard Locked]

Nosferatu: Back in the days before smart phones and the Web was a thing only a few people did (the online explosion was around 1994 with batang batang screeeeech You've Got Mail!) the Nos made sense as information brokers. Now, not so much.

Interesting observation. How would you deploy them now?

 

[Necrozius]

Yeah another Vampire 1e (or was it 2e?) player in the late 90s (I was born in '81).

Back then: only 7 clans, everything was the Crow soundtrack, Nine Inch Nails and Ninja Scroll (love the avatar, by the way).

I was considered a goth, but my peers and I didn't consider ourselves anything like that. Sure we loved to wear black and listen to Industrial music, but we were self aware and regularly made jokes about "IT'S OH SO GOTH IT'S DEAD". We loved Anime (it was new and underground back then), so both pursuits weren't mutually exclusive.

I actually preferred the original, 7 clans-only setup. The others were just weirdoes that were typically villains or NPCs.

Let me reminisce some more and I'll make a better reply. Great thread!

 

[Baulderstone]

I started running back before Werewolf even existed. That's notable as Vampire was actually had reasonably traditional vampires. Their origin story was based in real world mythology. It meant that the World of Darkness felt more real to me back then. Werewolves and mages were already hinted at, but it seemed they were more traditional as well.

Vampire also had clear ties to Ars Magica, which I had already run and played, so it seemed clear to me that we were in the same world.

I think Werewolf was well put together game, but its imaginary mythology made the world feel less real to me. Mage: the Ascension had lots of interesting ideas, but they all sat poorly as a game that was part of a larger line.

On top of that, the larger the game line got, the smaller the WoD became. During the first year I ran it, I knew their were other supernatural beings out there, and I could add them as I wanted. Over time, everything became defined, not just to me, but to my players.

There was a considerable tonal shift from 1st to 2nd Edition.

VtM1 sort of assumes as a default that PCs will be Anarchs. VtM1 adventures often use “the anarchs” and “the PCs” interchangeably (like a D&D module would use “the adventurers”).

VtM2 does away with this pretense. I ascribe at least part of this shift to the rise of LARP. The Camarilla’s salons make a more interesting playing field for a LARP than... whatever anarchs do.

My interpretation was the anarchs were part of the courts as well. Early Vampire had the feel of a revolution that was about to happen. The anarchs and elders aren't fighting in Chicago by Night, but it is easy enough for the PCs to start that fight. It's one the reasons why the Sabbat were so enervating when they were added. The game went from one where war was about to break out to one where the war broke out 500 years ago and just went on and on and on.

The other reason I hated the Sabbat was that nobody seemed to see the obvious satire. The Sabbat are supposedly the free vampires, yet they all have are forcibly blood bound in packs with a commissar in the group to keep them ideologically pure. Meanwhile, Camarilla vampires can pretty much do whatever as long as they don't piss off the Prince. Yet every Larper would go on about how cool and edgy the Sabbat were, utterly blind to how repressive they were actually portrayed as being.

One thing that Vampire took from Ars Magica was having a code of conduct that involved a hard rule against killing. Ars Magica had its Code of Hermes that forbid mages from killing one another, and Vampire had the traditions. In early Vampire, killing another Vampire was treated as big deal. It was an even bigger deal if a larger conflict broke out.

Once the Camarilla-Sabbat War had been retconned in, vampires killing vampires was just Tuesday.

There's this revisionism among some overly pompous old school White Wolfers that Vampire was a seismic shift and brought in all these cool club kids that wouldn't have dreamed of playing tabletop before. It's a load of bollocks. The vast majority of our players had been playing tabletop since school. It was just Vampire (and some other 90's games like Ars Magica and Unknown Armies) appealed to us when we were 19/20 in the same way that D&D appealed to us when we were 14. Even when it came to LARP, that was new to us, but an offshoot of the university tabletop society. (And we'd started with rubber sword quest LARP before playing Vampire). And when it comes to British goths at least, anyone who is surprised by the idea that they might have played D&D can't really know any. Most of my goth mates were properly geeky, even the non LARPers.

It is probably true that we saw a few more women, but they were geeky women and had just joined because it was interesting.

This entirely matches my experience. I graduated in 1990, and my Ohio high school social circle was a web of nerds, goths, punks, metalheads, skaters, and hippies. And a lot of people I knew checked a number of those boxes over the course of four years.

That's one reason why Vampire was such an instant hit. All kinds of weirdos were already into RPGs, and Vampire was a game that acknowledged that. A lot of is simply that the early '90s were when we were getting games actually written by the kids that grew up playing RPGs in the '80s, rather than ones written by the previous generation.

 

[Edgewise]

I think Werewolf was well put together game, but its imaginary mythology made the world feel less real to me. Mage: the Ascension had lots of interesting ideas, but they all sat poorly as a game that was part of a larger line.

On top of that, the larger the game line got, the smaller the WoD became. During the first year I ran it, I knew their were other supernatural beings out there, and I could add them as I wanted. Over time, everything became defined, not just to me, but to my players.

God, this is so true. Without question, the original Vampire was the best of the line. One thing I preferred about it was that your character existed in a morally complex state (drink blood to live), whereas werewolves and mages were edgy 90's rebels against "The Man." Much more black and white, far less ambiguous and nuanced.

 

[Baulderstone]

God, this is so true. Without question, the original Vampire was the best of the line. One thing I preferred about it was that your character existed in a morally complex state (drink blood to live), whereas werewolves and mages were edgy 90's rebels against "The Man." Much more black and white, far less ambiguous and nuanced.

One of my favorite things about Chicago by Night is how you have layers of previous outsider who have become part of the system, like the union activist. Maybe the players will be the ones to overturn things, but most likely they city will find a use for them.

Letting players take over a city was always fun because no matter how idealistic they were, they were still blood-drinking, mind-controlling monsters that now controlled a city. Once you got the Prince out of the way as an obvious villain, it got a lot harder to keep pretending that you were the good guys.

I forgot to mention that we did the same thing you did with the players statting themselves up as characters and running the game in our town. I was living in Muncie, Indiana at the time, which is just a few hours from Chicago, so I was able to mostly focus on the local scene, but have Chicago there to occasionally intrude or for the PCs to visit.

 

[Edgewise]

One of my favorite things about Chicago by Night is how you have layers of previous outsider who have become part of the system, like the union activist. Maybe the players will be the ones to overturn things, but most likely they city will find a use for them.

It's like The Wire: Season 6.

I forgot to mention that we did the same thing you did with the players statting themselves up as characters and running the game in our town. I was living in Muncie, Indiana at the time, which is just a few hours from Chicago, so I was able to mostly focus on the local scene, but have Chicago there to occasionally intrude or for the PCs to visit.

Damn, we were both pretty close to that initial adventure location. Looking back, it's kinda strange that Indiana was the initial setting for a lot of Vampire adventures.

 

[Baulderstone]

Forgot to mention, I agree you, Edgewise, on the structure of Werewolf and Vampire. When Vampire came out, some people struggled to know what you did in the game, and I think White Wolf took that too seriously, giving every game from then on their own baked-in bad guys for you to fight. Retconning the Sabbat into Vampire was part of the same process.

As an Ars Magica fan, Mage was the game in the line I was most looking forward to. I can still remember reading the opening fiction to that book, and how omnipresent and powerful it made the Technocracy. It made it clear that rather than being a modern mage and doing your own thing, you were locked into a pre-constructed war that was unavoidable. There was some very cool stuff about Mage, but it one of those settings that made less and less sense the more you engaged with it. You can get away with that in a two-hour movie, but its a problem when you are making an RPG setting that people are supposed to walk around in and poke at.

There were a lot of issues with the Mage setting, but the biggest one was simply not having any way to affect what consensus reality is. Even if I accept that the game is all about fighting the Technocracy, the game gives you no mechanics for doing that in the only way that matters. Compare that to Deadlands where the core book gives you concrete rule for players lowering the Fear Level of an area.

I also could never buy the idea that the Technocracy has so much power in a world where reality was set by human belief. Where were they hiding all the coldly rational humans whose unwavering dedication to science was powering their paradigm? I certainly wasn't meeting many of them on a day to day basis. It seemed to me that Technocracy would be near the bottom in setting playing by those rules.

 

[A Fiery Flying Roll]

From my perspective, another issue with mage was this. Vampire offered something nothing else I'd come across offered. (Nightlife was the nearest and that was gonzo splatterpunk).

Whereas Mage had to compete with Unknown Armies for my "creepy modern magic" fix. And it did't really excite me in the same way.

 

[Baulderstone]

It's like The Wire: Season 6.

Well, going by strict chronology, it is The Wire: Season 0.
Damn, we were both pretty close to that initial adventure location. Looking back, it's kinda strange that Indiana was the initial setting for a lot of Vampire adventures.[/QUOTE]
Muncie worked really well as a setting. It was a college town, so it was reasonably cool with some good local bands that never made it, regular illegal warehouse raves, lots of cheap quality drugs and the expected keg parties. It had a largely abandoned downtown that peaked in the '20s when people came from all around to frequent its speakeasies that were supplied from Chicago. From a Vampire perspective, it was a prosperous little island surrounded by dark, ominous farmland. The PCs got to be big fish in a little pond, and they had Chicago to swim in when they were feeling more daring.

That brings up one element that felt more common to the game early on: What would you do if you were a vampire? As the game got weighed down by meta-plot and was with the Sabbat, the game became more pre-loaded with things you were supposed to do. That early game was fun because it was the players exploring what they actually wanted to do if they had vampire powers and also bumping into the dark horrific consequences at times.

On the "Vampire bringing in girls" thing, half my gaming group was already girls before we started Vampire. An earlier Call of Cthulhu game was where I experienced the boom.

 

[Shipyard Locked]

I think Werewolf was well put together game, but its imaginary mythology made the world feel less real to me. Mage: the Ascension had lots of interesting ideas, but they all sat poorly as a game that was part of a larger line.

What games handle werewolves more traditionally? Nightlife? I can't remember.

You can get away with that in a two-hour movie, but its a problem when you are making an RPG setting that people are supposed to walk around in and poke at.

This is part of why genres like superheroes can be so difficult to sustain on the tabletop. It's also one of the traditional undoings of high-level D&D.

 

[A Fiery Flying Roll]

What games handle werewolves more traditionally? Nightlife? I can't remember.

Nightlife does. There's also After Sundown, although that's pretty much a collection of someone's homebrew Wod rules anyway. Much more recently, there's Human(ish).

Those are the only ones I can think of. Most other games only have werewolves as monsters, not PCs.

 

[Baulderstone]

From my perspective, another issue with mage was this. Vampire offered something nothing else I'd come across offered. (Nightlife was the nearest and that was gonzo splatterpunk).

Whereas Mage had to compete with Unknown Armies for my "creepy modern magic" fix. And it did't really excite me in the same way.

Well, Unknown Armies didn't come out until five years later, but I am with you in greatly preferring the vibe of Unknown Armies. I complained earlier about Mage forcing you into an impersonal battle with the Technocracy. Unknown Armies is a game that is all about what YOU want to do. Unknown Armies was partly a response to the way humans were largely irrelevant in CoC and WoD.

 

[Baulderstone]

This is part of why genres like superheroes can be so difficult to sustain on the tabletop. It's also one of the traditional undoings of high-level D&D.

Well, I solved that in D&D by going back to B/X. I find 14th-level works perfectly as the cap.

 

[The Butcher]

This is part of why genres like superheroes can be so difficult to sustain on the tabletop. It's also one of the traditional undoings of high-level D&D.

Well, I solved that in D&D by going back to B/X. I find 14th-level works perfectly as the cap.

To be honest, I believe the omission of domain management rules from AD&D1 is the root of all high-level D&D evil.

It’s recently become fashionable in some circles to hate on ACKS, for reasons not to be debated on this forum, but no other game (that I know of) goes so far out of its way to ensure coherent and challenging campaigning at high levels.

Those are the only ones I can think of.

I really, really want to give Urban Shadows a try some day.

 

[Baulderstone]

To be honest, I believe the omission of domain management rules from AD&D1 is the root of all high-level D&D evil.

That's good point. Level caps for non-humans matter less as well. It takes the sting out of maxing at 10th-level if you now rule a magical forest where all the animals serve you.

Of course, complaints about level caps ignore the differing XP costs per level in B/X. An Elf caps out at 10th-level, but they need 600,000 XP to even get there. When the Fighter in the party reached 10th-level, he will still be at 360,000 XP.

Granted, the Halfling is a different situation. He caps at 8th-level, and he only takes 120,000 XP to get there. Still, depending on your ambitions, that makes them a fast track to getting a stronghold and beginning your plan for world domination from the comfort of your Shire while the rest of the party is still tooling around in dungeons like chumps.

It’s recently become fashionable in some circles to hate on ACKS, for reasons not to be debated on this forum, but no other game (that I know of) goes so far out of its way to ensure coherent and challenging campaigning at high levels.

I bought my copy years ago, so I can enjoy it free of moral qualms.

My only real complaint with it is feeling the need to adding a third system attack bonus and armor class. It's mathematically identical to the other systems, but just makes it slightly more of a pain to use, on top of the pain of already having ascending and descending AC.

The encumbrance system is great as well.

 

[Jan Paparazzi]

Sounds interesting. Here in America, the Goths tended to be pretentious burnouts who take themselves too seriously. This is especially true on Onyx Path Forums, Big Purple, and the now defunct LARP scene in Roanoke, Virginia.

I met one guy at the Onyx Path and Shadownessence forum, who completely seriously started explaining to me he wasn't a Gothic Punk anymore but a Gothic Industrial. It was very lengthy explanation and it didn't make any ffing difference to me whatsoever. Different types of gothic it's all the same to me. But apparently it meant a lot to him. Chris/Kris Ether is his name online. He also does that Darker Days podcast about the WoD. I always disagreed with the guy on pretty much everything.

 

[Edgewise]

At the risk of continuing to go off-topic, I think Butch is specifically right about how D&D fails to smoothly transition into domain management. After all, if you think about it, high level play doesn't even make sense. For a dungeon crawl, the dangers will come from traps and monsters. The only way these games adapt to higher levels is to turn up the numbers on HP, damage, DCs, etc. So what is the real difference between low-level and high-level play except for changing the names of the things you're fighting? Oh great, now all the locks are super hard to pick with DC 20...thank god I'm a 12th level thief with a +12 lock picking skill.

It all feels like a treadmill. That's one reason I got sick of Skyrim; it felt like difficulty was curated to the point where the entire game was always the same level of difficulty. There were no measurable rewards to leveling up in terms of the user experience; fights always took about the same amount of time with the same amount of risk.

The alternative is to let players feel their PCs power by not amping up the stats of everything. That's great for a sense of progress, but now you've removed all tension and danger as 15th level characters go around stomping goblins with bundles of discarded twigs.

I came to the conclusion that the only way to sustain such a game is to change the scale, and that's what domain management does. Presumably even a high level character is going to have trouble taking on an army of goblins, so the whole nature of play will change.

The latest version of my heartbreaker only supports advancement to level six. While 6th level PCs in my game are tougher than 6th level in D&D, they aren't equal to 12th level D&D characters. I don't want encounters with trolls to ever be routine, for instance.

 

[Shipyard Locked]

Video game background music for this thread:

 

[Shipyard Locked]

It all feels like a treadmill. That's one reason I got sick of Skyrim; it felt like difficulty was curated to the point where the entire game was always the same level of difficulty. There were no measurable rewards to leveling up in terms of the user experience; fights always took about the same amount of time with the same amount of risk.

*sleep deprived crankiness activated*
In most games, digital or tabletop, experience and leveling up is a futile illusion, a cheap trick played on the brain's reward pathways. I can understand why video games continue to lean on that crutch (though they don't have to, just look at the Legend of Zelda franchise), but I often feel tabletop systems with their wide open potential for goal-setting are unnecessarily hobbled by them. Character's don't need bigger numbers, they just need more options at roughly the same power level and in-setting glory. Don't fucking give me 6th level spells that will be fun for one session before they ruin the campaign, give me land to mold as I please, factions that obey my whims, cool monsters for me to tame into henchmen, etc. Oh, and a hook shot.

As a GM I'd probably ditch leveling up and do Zelda if I could get away with it, but that's a guaranteed hard pass from 99% of players, like trying to pry millenials from their phones.

That's one of the coolest things about Traveller, it's relatively low stat growth.

 

[Baulderstone]

I met one guy at the Onyx Path and Shadownessence forum, who completely seriously started explaining to me he wasn't a Gothic Punk anymore but a Gothic Industrial. It was very lengthy explanation and it didn't make any ffing difference to me whatsoever. Different types of gothic it's all the same to me. But apparently it meant a lot to him. Chris/Kris Ether is his name online. He also does that Darker Days podcast about the WoD. I always disagreed with the guy on pretty much everything.

As a teen of the '80s, I have to roll my eyes at that. Gothic Punk was just some buzzword Rein-Hagan came up with. It worked well enough, but nobody ever identified as a Gothic Punk.

It all feels like a treadmill. That's one reason I got sick of Skyrim; it felt like difficulty was curated to the point where the entire game was always the same level of difficulty. There were no measurable rewards to leveling up in terms of the user experience; fights always took about the same amount of time with the same amount of risk.

That was infuriating to me in both Oblivion and Skyrim because it was fixing something that wasn't broken in Morrowind. Yeah, Morrowind was an open world with vastly different levels of power. At the same time, if you stuck to quests largely in the order you encountered them, you were generally given things to do that were within your power to accomplish. However, you had the freedom to go to all the most dangerous places on the map. You would likely die, but if you didn't you could bring home some incredible treasure.

I remember playing Oblivion for the first time. As soon as I got loose in the world, I decided to ignore the plot for a while and just look around. I soon found a dungeon and went inside. It was all rats and goblins with small pouches of coins, so I got bored and kept looking. I found another dungeon. It was all rats and goblins with small pouches of coins. I realized the whole damn world was going to be like this until I leveled up. It was such a huge disappointment compared to what felt like a carefully handmade world in Morrowind.

The latest version of my heartbreaker only supports advancement to level six. While 6th level PCs in my game are tougher than 6th level in D&D, they aren't equal to 12th level D&D characters. I don't want encounters with trolls to ever be routine, for instance.

That sounds pretty good.

*sleep deprived crankiness activated*
In most games, digital or tabletop, experience and leveling up is a futile illusion, a cheap trick played on the brain's reward pathways. I can understand why video games continue to lean on that crutch (though they don't have to, just look at the Legend of Zelda franchise), but I often feel tabletop systems with their wide open potential for goal-setting are unnecessarily hobbled by them. Character's don't need bigger numbers, they just need more options at roughly the same power level and in-setting glory. Don't fucking give me 6th level spells that will be fun for one session before they ruin the campaign, give me land to mold as I please, factions that obey my whims, cool monsters for me to tame into henchmen, etc. Oh, and a hook shot.

I'm with you on more options. It's why I prefer a non-weapon proficiency system in D&D to a skill system. Skill systems tend towards players pouring points over and over again into a the same buckets to keep being able to do the same things as DCs increase. With NWPs, PCs widen in their options rather than just getting infinitely taller.

Having Henchman in play is another thing that got lost from D&D. Having henchmen gives you multiple characters at differing levels. It lets you experience different levels of play depending on what character on your team is the current focus.

 

[Doc Sammy]

I sort of want to run an old-school Vampire chronicle that blends the tropes and atmosphere of VTM First Edition with tropes, aesthetics, and atmospheric elements derived from Quentin Tarantino, 1970's Grindhouse flicks, and especially the ultra-violent anime OVA's of the 1980's and 1990's like Ninja Scroll, Mad Bull 34, Genocyber, Urotsukidoji, Angel Cop, and the like.

The setting would be the Chicago Metropolitan Area as it was presented in the original Chicago By Night, complete with the early 1990's as the period the campaign would be set in. I would also include Gary and Milwaukee By Night as part of the setting as well, and maybe Baulderstone's Muncie setting if he's cool with it.

If it were a movie, it'd have a sleek anime look and a dynamic oldies soundtrack, less Sisters of Mercy and Type O Negative and more along the lines of "K-Billy's Super Sounds Of The 70's" instead!

 

[Ronin]

I really, really want to give Urban Shadows a try some day.

A little away from the main thread subject. But I would like to try The Thin Blue Line, sometime.

 

[Baulderstone]

I would also include Gary and Milwaukee By Night as part of the setting as well, and maybe Baulderstone's Muncie setting if he's cool with it.

Any idea I share on this forum is free to steal.

[/quote]If it were a movie, it'd have a sleek anime look and a dynamic oldies soundtrack, less Sisters of Mercy and Type O Negative and more along the lines of "K-Billy's Super Sounds Of The 70's" instead![/QUOTE]
You can just roll your setting date back a couple of years and the whole Tarantino/retro '70s soundtrack trend will be in full bloom. Reservoir Dogs came out in '92, but things moved slower back then, so it took time for it to really soak into the culture.

 

[Baeraad]

To get back to (somewhere a little closer to) topic, most oWoD games make a decent job of avoiding the level-grind problem. You can start out maxed out in one particular area if you want, genuinely as good as it is possible to be without being a cheaty uber-NPC. As you spend XP, you're more likely to diversify your abilities than to enter an entirely new power tier.

Exceptions exist, of course - Mage and Hunter really do bar starting characters from all the really cool stuff. But Demon, my current favourite, is really good at letting starting characters max out their own particular area of expertise.

 

[Mankcam]

I remember White Wolf Storyteller in the 1990s, it was great, the biggest thing since D&D, quite revolutionary.
Vampire The Masquerade was brilliant, very much Lost Boys, The Hunger, The Crow, meets Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles; not to mention the whole alternative/goth/industrial grunge scene it had going.
The WoD canon became bloated by the end of the decade and rebooted itself for no apparent reason, so I bought just the core nWoD books then shelved them; they had lost the vibe of the earlier books. I still love my 1990s books as well as V20. Everything else just dont float the boat for me

 

[Coffee Zombie]

Doc Sammy, also consider this simple step.

Throw out everything you know about the WoD "canon" and make your own ideas up. Even if you don't reveal them to the players, having some different fundamental truths behind the world can change your outlook. Just think if, for example, you determine that vampires are not descended from Caine at all, but rather the Methuselah's (such that the 3rd generation is actually the first).

What if Vampires gradually grow stronger over time, and Generation "lowers", and part of the elder's paranoia and plans is to keep the younger vampires from ever reaching their own levels of power? (I actually did this in a game, ruling that all vampires eventually "lowered" to 8th generation over time).

What if the Traditions were actually handed down directly from the 4th and 5th generations, and the Inconnu is actually watching all Princes to make sure they enforce them? What if Lodin had earned their displeasure and the rebellion slowly growing in his city is because the monitor there is helping to guide it?

Also, consider having some major events going on in the mortal world, especially if you're going for the anime ultra violence. Maybe an all out gang war, with massive gangs on the scale of the Foot clan and the Mob (ie: unrealistically large), which is spilling over into Kindred politics? Definitely a blood cult, with a captured vampire at the centre of it. A popular board game that hits shelves which eerily mirrors the political reality of the Chicago vampire court, the author being a psychic who lives close to Helen's lair. Go gonzo, but don't let the gonzo show, and create tons of fodder for the characters to actually do things in the city.

 

[Doc Sammy]

Doc Sammy, also consider this simple step.

Throw out everything you know about the WoD "canon" and make your own ideas up. Even if you don't reveal them to the players, having some different fundamental truths behind the world can change your outlook. Just think if, for example, you determine that vampires are not descended from Caine at all, but rather the Methuselah's (such that the 3rd generation is actually the first).

What if Vampires gradually grow stronger over time, and Generation "lowers", and part of the elder's paranoia and plans is to keep the younger vampires from ever reaching their own levels of power? (I actually did this in a game, ruling that all vampires eventually "lowered" to 8th generation over time).

What if the Traditions were actually handed down directly from the 4th and 5th generations, and the Inconnu is actually watching all Princes to make sure they enforce them? What if Lodin had earned their displeasure and the rebellion slowly growing in his city is because the monitor there is helping to guide it?

Also, consider having some major events going on in the mortal world, especially if you're going for the anime ultra violence. Maybe an all out gang war, with massive gangs on the scale of the Foot clan and the Mob (ie: unrealistically large), which is spilling over into Kindred politics? Definitely a blood cult, with a captured vampire at the centre of it. A popular board game that hits shelves which eerily mirrors the political reality of the Chicago vampire court, the author being a psychic who lives close to Helen's lair. Go gonzo, but don't let the gonzo show, and create tons of fodder for the characters to actually do things in the city.

Oddly enough, a massive gang war is part of the plot I wanted to include in the chronicle.

 

[Shipyard Locked]

What if Vampires gradually grow stronger over time, and Generation "lowers", and part of the elder's paranoia and plans is to keep the younger vampires from ever reaching their own levels of power? (I actually did this in a game, ruling that all vampires eventually "lowered" to 8th generation over time).

I've toyed with the idea of confirming Golconda, and the last thing a vampire who achieves it does before vanishing to wander the earth is leave behind a blood elixir that lower's the drinker's gen. This is a gift intended for those who are also likely to seek Golconda, but of course less enlightened vampires will try to claim it for themselves or as a bargaining chip.

This would tie into my ideas about reducing the vampire population, increasing the vampire hunter population, ditching the Assamites and making the Salubri a significant modern clan.

Well, if I can get past my squeamishness about vampires and run a game of it again. Seriously, blood drinking and feeding blood to others gives me the willies. Made playing Bloodlines a very visceral experience.

 

[Doc Sammy]

In my games, when a Vampire achieves Golconda, they become human again.