Is Anyone Still Playing Vampire 5th Edition?

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No it doesn’t. I mean, we have already had the thread that established you weren’t actually born when the original Vampire game came out, that Justin Achilli had nothing to do with the design of V5 and that your own peculiar take on Vampire led you to fall out with a bunch of LARPers at some point.

When you talk about revisionism, your own facts take precedent in establishing what you know about the history of the game or not.

To be fair, the "weren't actually born" stuff isn't an issue with proper research and in this case textual analysis.

I can talk pretty authoritatively on Treasure Trap LRP despite the fact it closed when I was 11. But that took actual work to get to that point which it's what's missing here.
 
To be fair, the "weren't actually born" stuff isn't an issue with proper research and in this case textual analysis.

I can talk pretty authoritatively on Treasure Trap LRP despite the fact it closed when I was 11. But that took actual work to get to that point which it's what's missing here.
Fine. Except in this case, it isn’t based on research, it’s based on prejudice.
 
Not the point I am making. It is a given that, around your own game table, you can interpret a game however you like and play it your own way. It isn’t a given, however, to ascribe motivations to particular game designers you don’t know, or tell everybody who has known the game since its inception that everything you know about its history is ‘revisionism’.
Especially stuff like "Mark Rein-Hagan only put the stuff about gothic punk in for marketing and really he loved katanas and trenchcoats".

It is unusual for Mark to be accused of a lack of pretension.
 
No it doesn’t. I mean, we have already had the thread that established you weren’t actually born when the original Vampire game came out, that Justin Achilli had nothing to do with the design of V5 and that your own peculiar take on Vampire led you to fall out with a bunch of LARPers at some point.

When you talk about revisionism, your own facts take precedent in establishing what you know about the history of the game or not.

Actually, my own "peculiar take" on Vampire didn't emerge until after I had my disagreements with the pretentious goth LARP'ers.
 
Actually, my own "peculiar take" on Vampire didn't emerge until after I had my disagreements with the pretentious goth LARP'ers.
Ok, what facts or textual analysis is it based on? Not the stuff about "this would make Vampire cool" which is obviously a subjective judgement. (And I've said already I actually think some of your ideas would be great if you ever ran a game with them).

But stuff about how the early game was played or the development of the Vampire line are factual claims so are worthless without evidence.

It's not like I don't have issues with Achilli and his relationship with the LARP community. I've talked about those before. But I've directly quoted him when doing so. It isn't based on some kind of weird attempt to use Auspex and read his mind in real life.
 
Actually, my own "peculiar take" on Vampire didn't emerge until after I had my disagreements with the pretentious goth LARP'ers.
So, I can imagine you turning up with your Happy Days gear, telling everybody how the game is supposed to be played, then having a tantrum when they turn around and say “um, no”. Are you sure they problem wasn’t you?
 
Ok, what facts or textual analysis is it based on? Not the stuff about "this would make Vampire cool" which is obviously a subjective judgement. (And I've said already I actually think some of your ideas would be great if you ever ran a game with them).

But stuff about how the early game was played or the development of the Vampire line are factual claims so are worthless without evidence.

It's not like I don't have issues with Achilli and his relationship with the LARP community. I've talked about those before. But I've directly quoted him when doing so. It isn't based on some kind of weird attempt to use Auspex and read his mind in real life.

Part of my views on the history of Vampire comes from reading the actual books from 1st Edition and early 2nd Edition and how starkly different they were from the Achilli era or the later stuff from Nu-White Wolf and Onyx Path.

Reading 1E, it really feels like MRH wasn't entirely sure what he wanted.

Like he wanted both the personal horror angle but also have the "badass trenchcoats, sunglasses, and katanas" as well and that the two weren't seen as mutually exclusive like the revisionists and the Onyx Path Forums/RPG.net crowd would have you believe.

Some of the people who were there in the 90's, including the LARP'ers who I'm still on good terms with can back me up in this statement. There was a lot of mystery in the early days and the idea of action-heavy games that were low on pretentious angst and pseudo-intellectual bullshit and were unironically cool weren't seen as heretical like they are now.

So, I can imagine you turning up with your Happy Days gear, telling everybody how the game is supposed to be played, then having a tantrum when they turn around and say “um, no”. Are you sure they problem wasn’t you?

I'm sure of it. Because I didn't do any of those things.

Hell, back in the day when this happened, I was a bit of a goth myself, albeit not one who met the constant and inane pretentious purity standards.

There were a lot of in-fighting and schisms even within the LARP scene and sides were drawn.

After that schism, I began to rethink things and decide to take a new stance on WoD, one that was anti-goth and anti-punk. A backlash against pretentiousness.
 
Part of my views on the history of Vampire comes from reading the actual books from 1st Edition and early 2nd Edition and how starkly different they were from the Achilli era or the later stuff from Nu-White Wolf and Onyx Path.

Reading 1E, it really feels like MRH wasn't entirely sure what he wanted. Like he wanted both the personal horror angle but also have the "badass trenchcoats, sunglasses, and katanas" as well and that the two weren't seen as mutually exclusive like the revisionists and the Onyx Path Forums/RPG.net crowd would have you believe.

Some of the people who were there in the 90's, including the LARP'ers who I'm still on good terms with can back me up in this statement. There was a lot of mystery in the early days and the idea of action-heavy games that were low on pretentious angst and pseudo-intellectual bullshit and were unironically cool weren't seen as heretical like they are now.
The LARPers are still on good terms with you when you insult them? Ok...

So, when Mark Rein-Hagen, who is actually quite active online incidentally, came in to the V5 team to establish how he wanted the game to be designed, he was wrong about his own intents?

And really, what we have here is just a confirmation bias regarding your take on the first two editions.
 
After that schism, I began to rethink things and decide to take a new stance on WoD, one that was anti-goth and anti-punk. A backlash against pretentiousness.

It wasn't a backlash against pretentiousness though. It was a backlash against some people that had hurt your feelings. How long ago was this? Shouldn't you have moved on with your life by now? I suspect not a single person in question even remembers who you are and yet it feels like you think about them every day. That... doesn't strike me as you beating them.
 
The LARPers are still on good terms with you when you insult them? Ok...

So, when Mark Rein-Hagen, who is actually quite active online incidentally, came in to the V5 team to establish how he wanted the game to be designed, he was wrong about his own intents?

And really, what we have here is just a confirmation bias regarding your take on the first two editions.

1. Some of the LARP'ers are the ones I'm on good terms with. The others who I'm on bad terms with are the ones I insulted.

2. Mark Rein-Hagen was probably wanting to have his cake and eat it too when it came to "Personal Horror vs. Cool Badasses" at the time

Years later, when he was older and the WoD fandom began to take its current shape, he took the stance of always wanting VTM to be personal horror only, as opposed to the dual combo of personal horror and action horror.

It wasn't a backlash against pretentiousness though. It was a backlash against some people that had hurt your feelings. How long ago was this? Shouldn't you have moved on with your life by now? I suspect not a single person in question even remembers who you are and yet it feels like you think about them every day. That... doesn't strike me as you beating them.

I've largely moved on IRL from those specific people (the LARP'ers I had a falling out with) and I still keep in touch with the cool LARP'ers who I sided with in the schism and those are the ones I'm on good terms with (because I didn't fall out with them). Not the pretentious ones who I sided against and cut ties with.

It doesn't help that you have communities like Onyx Path Forums and RPG.net who have that same smug pretentious attitude and crank it up to eleven.
 
Some of the people who were there in the 90's, including the LARP'ers who I'm still on good terms with can back me up in this statement. There was a lot of mystery in the early days and the idea of action-heavy games that were low on pretentious angst and pseudo-intellectual bullshit and were unironically cool weren't seen as heretical like they are now.

Having done a bit of research myself, if I look online for Vampire and trenchcoats & katanas the main hits I'm getting are your posts elsewhere. Admittedly, I haven't done a proper deep dive into archived sites, but that does suggest it's a playstyle that primarily is promoted by you and nobody else.
 
Having done a bit of research myself, if I look online for Vampire and trenchcoats & katanas the main hits I'm getting are your posts elsewhere. Admittedly, I haven't done a proper deep dive into archived sites, but that does suggest it's a playstyle that primarily is promoted by you and nobody else.

Mainly because White Wolf and forums like RPG.net have been demonizing that playstyle for the better part of two decades and declaring it to be "the wrong way to play". It used to be one of the main playstyles back in the day, otherwise you wouldn't have a lot of the 2nd Edition books that came out.

But you are correct and I need to put my money where my mouth is and run the game of my dreams in full. I've ran one-shots IRL and on Discord, and so far it worked but I have very small groups when I do that.
 
Mainly because White Wolf and forums like RPG.net have been demonizing that playstyle for the better part of two decades and declaring it to be "the wrong way to play". It used to be one of the main playstyles back in the day, otherwise you wouldn't have a lot of the 2nd Edition books that came out.
Which 2nd edition books specifically are you thinking of here? And I thought it was 2e that abandoned the 1e playstyle rather than promoted it?
 
I can back Doc Sammy Doc Sammy here. "Supers by night" was pretty much the default mode of play in my circles in Brazil back in the 90s. The adventure format was something like 1. get introduced to local prince, or summoned by him. 2. Get briefed in current problem. 3. Spend 3 or 4 sessions resolving the problem by breaking into places and mugging opposition with your superpowers. 4. Repeat. All the while doing atmospheric goth descriptions so PCs look cool. :shade:

I must have played a couple dozen sessions of it, with at least 3 groups who didn't know each other, and I never saw a single session about personal horror. It was supers action first, politics a distant second, personal horror never. And by the talk in online forums, it wasn't much different for other groups at the time.
 
Which 2nd edition books specifically are you thinking of here? And I thought it was 2e that abandoned the 1e playstyle rather than promoted it?

Nah, it's 3e. Revised was Third Edition, not Second.

You want specific titles from 1st Edition and 2nd Edition that are more T&K and less "woe is me" personal horror wangst?

Elysium: The Elder Wars
Dirty Secrets of the Black Hand (at this point, it's only hated because WW/Onyx Path has spent the better part of two decades telling people to hate it)
Chaos Factor (ditto)
LA by Night (to an extent)
Chicago by Night 1st Edition (This book is very much both personal horror AND T&K coolness at the same time)
Awakening: Diablerie Mexico
Alien Hunger
Dark Alliance: Vancouver

1st Edition (1991-1992) was very much an edition with a foot in each door on the "wangst vs. coolness" divide. Like, it was both at the same time and they weren't seen as mutually exclusive like they are nowadays.

2nd Edition (1993-1997) leaned more on the coolness side

Revised Edition/3rd Edition (1998-2004) was all about the pretentious wangst, "personal horror" and an apocalyptic metaplot that seemed contradictory to the goals. This is the era of the Achilli regime and is when we see the premise of "Personal Horror is mutually exclusive to T&K coolness and T&K coolness is the wrong way to play the game"
 
Not the point I am making. It is a given that, around your own game table, you can interpret a game however you like and play it your own way. It isn’t a given, however, to ascribe motivations to particular game designers you don’t know, or tell everybody who has known the game since its inception that everything you know about its history is ‘revisionism’.
Well we are talking about Vampire, heh. I happen to know several of the original designers, and I don't think even they would ascribe any overt historical motives in/out as we're discussing now to Vampire. But it certainly is a more modern issue - in the sense that people are literally looking back at the history of the game and making those observations.

The problem Doc has, that many people react to differently is that part of creating more content for a setting that is as old as Vampire, often demands recontextualization. It's bound to annoy people that preferred it a different way. I don't know of a single edition of any game that hasn't had this issue to some degree.

See: Cyberpunk Red, Every iteration of D&D, Warhammer, etc. etc.
 
Having done a bit of research myself, if I look online for Vampire and trenchcoats & katanas the main hits I'm getting are your posts elsewhere. Admittedly, I haven't done a proper deep dive into archived sites, but that does suggest it's a playstyle that primarily is promoted by you and nobody else.
Well, it’s just a point of fact that V1 and V2 have lots of illustrations in them - and even some that have people wearing trenchcoats, going along with the general gothic-punk vibe - but actually there isn’t a single illustration of anybody wielding a sword or having a sword fight. Many of the illustrations have captions which give an example of play, but these illustrate social interactions and basically stalking a target. In fact, if you want images of katana wielding vampires, the first one that appears in any core rule book only first comes in Vampire Revised.

I can back Doc Sammy Doc Sammy here. "Supers by night" was pretty much the default mode of play in my circles in Brazil back in the 90s. The adventure format was something like 1. get introduced to local prince, or summoned by him. 2. Get briefed in current problem. 3. Spend 3 or 4 sessions resolving the problem by breaking into places and mugging opposition with your superpowers. 4. Repeat. All the while doing atmospheric goth descriptions so PCs look cool. :shade:

I must have played a couple dozen sessions of it, with at least 3 groups who didn't know each other, and I never saw a single session about personal horror. It was supers action first, politics a distant second, personal horror never. And by the talk in online forums, it wasn't much different for other groups at the time.
So all that means is you took a game and played it your own way, which is fine. The text of the game itself doesn’t encourage you to play it that way though - it is your own interpretation.
 
So all that means is you took a game and played it your own way, which is fine.
Supers by night is supported by me and bunch of other testimonies on different discussion boards across the net. So, we can safely assume a lot of people played Vampire in this mode. The contrary though, personal horror, is rarely cited as a mode of play in these circles. I think that's indicative enough on how the game was used by consumers.

The text of the game itself doesn’t encourage you to play it that way though - it is your own interpretation.
As Tenbones said above, the text of the game didn't encourage people to play in any strong way. It was vague.

Nowadays games have their design goals stamped on their sleeves (well, most of them), but in the 90s it wasn't as common, and Vampire is proof of that.
 
But I'd say most people on here are primarily interested in how RPGs play rather than whether we like them as prose
Yeah Doc, maybe V5 or Revised read worse than V20 and so on. However around here Vampire was probably the most popular RPG (it still exceeds D&D) so I played in a lot of games and honestly V5 plays better because the rules are more about being a Vampire as depicted in most Vampire fiction. That said though most games I've been in don't take place in the World of Darkness setting and often the clans are reskinned as something else.
 
Yeah Doc, maybe V5 or Revised read worse than V20 and so on. However around here Vampire was probably the most popular RPG (it still exceeds D&D) so I played in a lot of games and honestly V5 plays better because the rules are more about being a Vampire as depicted in most Vampire fiction. That said though most games I've been in don't take place in the World of Darkness setting and often the clans are reskinned as something else.
I agree.

But Vampire is becoming like D&D, right? In that there's older versions still being supported and newer ones coming out, just like OSR and D&D5? This is good IMO as it allows the fanbase to pick the flavor they wish.
 
I agree.

But Vampire is becoming like D&D, right? In that there's older versions still being supported and newer ones coming out, just like OSR and D&D5? This is good IMO since it allows the fanbase to pick the flavor they wish.
I was actually going to edit in that it's exactly like that. GMs I know have been mixing in Undying and I think somebody was using "The Cabal". And of course mining the stuff you want out of V20 and Requiem (Ordo Dracul from Requiem are very popular). So it's very much a mix and match thing.
 
Well, at the very least I can back that "trenchcoat and katana" didn't originate with DocSammy.
It also didn't originate with Vampire.
And in the early aughts it was used to denigrate a certain type of player character on RPGnet, much in the same way that "catgirl stripper ninja" was.

It didn't really originate with "an alternate way to play Vampire", instead what it identified was a certain type of player that always made the same type of character, inspired by schlocky media, who was a "badass loner" and completely inappropriate for group play and refused to engage with the gameworld. Essentially, it was a variation of power gamer, albiet a very specific trend inspired by pop culture and exhibiting a particular form of self absorption.

The source of the trope was the Highlander TV series. As such, it didn't really exist circa VtM 1st edition (but there was probably an equivalent). It was also very much "of it's time", culminating with Blade and The Matrix films, which even by the early aughts, had slipped out of the Zeitgeist and seemed relatively ridiculous.
 
Nah, it's 3e. Revised was Third Edition, not Second.

You want specific titles from 1st Edition and 2nd Edition that are more T&K and less "woe is me" personal horror wangst?

Elysium: The Elder Wars
Dirty Secrets of the Black Hand (at this point, it's only hated because WW/Onyx Path has spent the better part of two decades telling people to hate it)
Chaos Factor (ditto)
LA by Night (to an extent)
Chicago by Night 1st Edition (This book is very much both personal horror AND T&K coolness at the same time)
Awakening: Diablerie Mexico
Alien Hunger
Dark Alliance: Vancouver

1st Edition (1991-1992) was very much an edition with a foot in each door on the "wangst vs. coolness" divide. Like, it was both at the same time and they weren't seen as mutually exclusive like they are nowadays.

2nd Edition (1993-1997) leaned more on the coolness side

Revised Edition/3rd Edition (1998-2004) was all about the pretentious wangst, "personal horror" and an apocalyptic metaplot that seemed contradictory to the goals. This is the era of the Achilli regime and is when we see the premise of "Personal Horror is mutually exclusive to T&K coolness and T&K coolness is the wrong way to play the game"
Again, it is just your own confirmation bias and interpretation. Chaos Factor was more of a Mage crossover book, incidentally, and it was reviewed at the time as being one of the worst publications put out for the game.

Thing is, Vampire and the World of Darkness had a huge number of supplements - about 50 a year at White Wolf’s peak - and there were lots of inconsistencies in the quality of what was put out. Now, as I say, with your own confirmation bias, what you are doing is interpreting and drawing out things you like to play - which is fine. However, you get the same options presented in Vampire Revised and V20 supplements over time too - both of which were developed by Justin Achill and, sometimes more overtly presented too.

What I don’t like about you, however, is your continuous insults towards anybody who interprets the game in a different way to what you perceive - especially when your own interpretation is frankly, no more ambitious that demanding the game be played like a cartoon matinee.
 
Supers by night is supported by me and bunch of other testimonies on different discussion boards across the net. So, we can safely assume a lot of people played Vampire in this mode. The contrary though, personal horror, is rarely cited as a mode of play in these circles. I think that's indicative enough on how the game was used by consumers.

As Tenbones said above, the text of the game didn't encourage people to play in any strong way. It was vague.

Nowadays games have their design goals stamped on their sleeves (well, most of them), but in the 90s it wasn't as common, and Vampire is proof of that.
It did encourage you to play it a particular way - all of the examples of play included in the text for example. What was loose, however, was the rules being used.
 
What I don’t like about you, however, is your continuous insults towards anybody who interprets the game in a different way to what you perceive - especially when your own interpretation is frankly, no more ambitious that demanding the game be played like a cartoon matinee.
But he is shitting on the game and not the gamers, right? I don't see a problem with that.
 
Yeah I was just going to say the same thing. Trenchcoat Katana was very much a Highlander-inspired thing. I remember from the earliest days of Vampire 1e, people were riffing off of Duncan McLeod. How many people were trying to add Immortals from Highlander into their Vampire (pre any other WoD splat) games? It was there pretty early on.

I don't remember when it turned into Fanged Heroes... maybe when Forever Knight started to seep into a lot of people's thoughts? I think the zeitgeist for Vampire was suddenly *everyone* was mining vampire-media or anything angsty relating to immortal/supernaturals to bring into the game which originally was mostly concerned with Rician-style Vampires.

I personally chose to be more influenced by Rice and "Near Dark" more than anything else. Lost Boys may have contributed to the Superheroes with Fangs thing? Matrix? I always chalked that up to a Mage influencer that came much later. But certainly the other WoD splats also influenced later editions of Vampire. How could they not?
 
But he is shitting on the game and not the gamers, right? I don't see a problem with that.
Well, no he isn’t though is he. He has already personalized it discussing the LARP group who he describes as pretentious wankers and the like. He is also personalizing it with Justin Achilli. So no, he is going beyond just criticizing a game.
 
What I don’t like about you, however, is your continuous insults towards anybody who interprets the game in a different way to what you perceive - especially when your own interpretation is frankly, no more ambitious that demanding the game be played like a cartoon matinee.


It is sweet that Trippy is trying to rehash old arguments with Doc in an effort to create enough drama for him to abandon the Site and come post over here at The Pub more often...
 
Supers by night is supported by me and bunch of other testimonies on different discussion boards across the net. So, we can safely assume a lot of people played Vampire in this mode. The contrary though, personal horror, is rarely cited as a mode of play in these circles. I think that's indicative enough on how the game was used by consumers.

Going by people's personal testimonies and personal experience I don't actually think either personal horror or supers with fangs were the most common playstyle.

People wanting the former gravitated towards KULT. Those after the latter Nightlife or Werewolf.

I'm pretty sure if you'd surveyed groups at the time Tristam's "High School Cliques with fangs" would have been dominant by far. That's certainly what stuff like Chicago by Night supported.
 
Yeah I was just going to say the same thing. Trenchcoat Katana was very much a Highlander-inspired thing. I remember from the earliest days of Vampire 1e, people were riffing off of Duncan McLeod. How many people were trying to add Immortals from Highlander into their Vampire (pre any other WoD splat) games? It was there pretty early on.

I don't remember when it turned into Fanged Heroes... maybe when Forever Knight started to seep into a lot of people's thoughts? I think the zeitgeist for Vampire was suddenly *everyone* was mining vampire-media or anything angsty relating to immortal/supernaturals to bring into the game which originally was mostly concerned with Rician-style Vampires.

I personally chose to be more influenced by Rice and "Near Dark" more than anything else. Lost Boys may have contributed to the Superheroes with Fangs thing? Matrix? I always chalked that up to a Mage influencer that came much later. But certainly the other WoD splats also influenced later editions of Vampire. How could they not?
Yep - I think Vampire tapped into a lot of 80s media. They even reference inspirations in the back - including non-vampire movies like Blue Velvet and Bladerunner too. There was definitely a broad zeitgeist that Vampire managed to tap into.
 
My two favourite WoD games were actually Wraith the Oblivion and Demon the Descent (which really riffs on the matrix). The latter unfortunately has very clunky rules but the concepts of the setting are amazing. You play fallen servants of a techno-gnostic machine-spirit who might be God.
 
It is sweet that Trippy is trying to rehash old arguments with Doc in an effort to create enough drama for him to abandon the Site and come post over here at The Pub more often...
Not sure what you are trying to say. I don’t post at the Site.

And regarding Doc Sammy, he came onto this thread to rehash his old arguments, didn’t he? I hardly invited him.
 
heh Doc has his well known rants. I'm used to it. I certainly don't take anything he says as shit tossed at people (unless he names them specifically) and even then I take it with a grain of salt.

When he runs hot, he runs hot, but I never feel like he really means it, with a few exceptions.
 
My two favourite WoD games were actually Wraith the Oblivion and Demon the Descent (which really riffs on the matrix). The latter unfortunately has very clunky rules but the concepts of the setting are amazing. You play fallen servants of a techno-gnostic machine-spirit who might be God.

I also love Wraith and Demon the Descent - and they're two WoD games I've never gotten to run.

My favorite is Werewolf the Apocalypse (much edited by me). But close second is Changeling the Lost, which I leave largely RAW.
 
Not sure what you are trying to say. I don’t post at the Site.

And regarding Doc Sammy, he came onto this thread to rehash his old arguments, didn’t he? I hardly invited him.


It's just that most of us have been around the circle with Doc so many times that we kinda just "let Doc be Doc" when he expresses his well-known idiosynchratic opinions about Vampire. So I was a bit surprised to wake up and find two pages of ths thread going back over this stuff again - it's like a flashback to a decade ago at The Site.
 
My two favourite WoD games were actually Wraith the Oblivion and Demon the Descent (which really riffs on the matrix). The latter unfortunately has very clunky rules but the concepts of the setting are amazing. You play fallen servants of a techno-gnostic machine-spirit who might be God.
Well, Wraith: The Oblivion is actually an interesting case. It received a poor review when it came out from Dragon magazine - who basically claimed it was the weakest of the WoD games released - and it also proved to be a weak seller. However, it was reviewed much more strongly in British journals and magazines - which claimed it was actually, at its core, the best artistic game produced for the WoD. What was a major standout point for the game was the Shadow play, which gave a full on mechanic for personal drama (and horror) and couldn’t be left to interpretation. In its first edition, notably, it didn’t include ’splats’ either - although the Guilds for each Arcanoi (powers) was referenced instead. The Guild splats were then used in the 2nd edition, when I think people were trying to repackage the game somewhat - but a number of gamers, to this day, say Wraith is their favourite WoD game - even though it wasn’t commercially successful.
 
Yep - I think Vampire tapped into a lot of 80s media. They even reference inspirations in the back - including non-vampire movies like Blue Velvet and Bladerunner too. There was definitely a broad zeitgeist that Vampire managed to tap into.

The more we talk about it... one can see why V5 has obviously different inspirations that are less fictional than reality. Perhaps that's the turn off since it is less juxtaposition and therefore less fun for some.

Which is weird - I would have guessed I would like it more for that reason since I inject a lot of reality into my WoD if only to contrast the sheer supernatural nature of the PC's. But it leaves me cold as if the supernatural aspects of their characters are more incidental to the mundane realities around them. There is something lost in that translation to me.

I could fix it. But it was easier for me to just go V20.
 
Having done a bit of research myself, if I look online for Vampire and trenchcoats & katanas the main hits I'm getting are your posts elsewhere. Admittedly, I haven't done a proper deep dive into archived sites, but that does suggest it's a playstyle that primarily is promoted by you and nobody else.
I have no idea about scope, but I can tell you that trenchcoats and katanas was very much the 90's style for VtM games in my wider gaming group in the 90s. I can't speak for LARPers at that point as that was never my thing. My first and longest running VtM character was a Bruja named Jack Crow who tooled around on a Harley with a hockeybag full of a guns and, you guessed it, a katana. He was fighting the man, and anyone else who came into range.
 
It's just that most of us have been around the circle with Doc so many times that we kinda just "let Doc be Doc" when he expresses his well-known idiosynchratic opinions about Vampire. So I was a bit surprised to wake up and find two pages of ths thread going back over this stuff again - it's like a flashback to a decade ago at The Site.
If a person keeps arguing the same thing every time an opportunity comes up, then I guess the same results come up each time too.
 
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