Is Anyone Still Playing Vampire 5th Edition?

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The New WoD line had similar books like Hurt Locker (which had two seperate editions), basically combat gear and feats/edges/merits.
Exactly. There was no ‘purge’ under Justin Achilli.

Indeed, I find the whole persecution complex about action- orientated styles of play so bizarre, when the vast majority of RPGs seem to cater for it. So when you get a game or game developer that suggests alternative modes of play, or even if it's not the primary purpose of a particular game, the backlash seems somewhat overstated.
 
You are either an idiot or arguing in bad faith.

Either renders this discussion pointless.
Well, I think comments like that renders this discussion pointless. I think you better have a nice cup of tea and a bit of a lie down, dear.
 
I'd be interested to hear more about that? For us, it felt very much like it existed at much higher power levels then anyone we knew was playing at.

We played quite a few games (LARPs, even, may God have mercy on my soul) using the Elysium rules for elders. When you’re operating at that tier, fitting in the True Hand is no biggie.

Out of interest, what do you think were the specific supplements that catered to an action orientated approach? Some stuff like the high explosives rules in the 1e player guide I think would qualify. But I can't think of actual books. More gonzo, yes, but that's a different matter. Although as I said I think you can make a better case there for 2e then 1e. Berlin by Night had more gonzo in a single book than the entire of the 1e line. (Jekyll and Hyde! Nazi Vampires! The Brothers Grimm!). And as I said, the idea that gonzo had disappeared by revised isn't true either. The Gehenna line especially. Although admittedly it didn't come close to Lucifer setting of a nuke for the lulz.

I did not mean to imply that the gonzo was 1e-exclusive, in fact I think it peaked under 2e; I did argue that it was definitely there from very early on.

The 1e books that stuck with me the most in this regard, as I mentioned elsewhere, are the Storytellers Companion (esp. the bits on demons and Dark Thaumaturgy), A World of Darkness, 1st edition (lots of historical figures as vampires and even a few fictional ones) and the Diablerie series (pretty much a dungeon crawl to find and diablerize an ancient vampire).

It would be, if it's what I'd said. What I said is that he has no interest in them from the perspective of playability, which is an entirely different statement. And one I stand by; his view on Vampire is very much based on whether he likes the setting fluff to read, not whether he thinks it would work well in a game. And I would argue that does lead to him not recognising playability issues where they are there. If he can get the original version of Temporis to work in his game all power to him. But I'm of the view that it's too powerful and I'm not going to change that if it's based on "it sounds cool though" rather than "actually, I've used it and it worked fine".

Fair enough. I stand corrected.
 
I don't really know anything about Achilli except that he played in 90s ska bands, it was more just "this book was also cool".
I thought that was a joke about ska bands?

Anyway, if you managed to inadvertently point out that Achilli’s stewardship of WoD lines included combat orientated books too, then great.
 
I didn't really think of Vampire as "gonzo" per se, so much as there was an attempt to include under it's umbrella every interpretation of vampires in media. Which led to the secrets of the Black Hand seeming like an attempt to adapt the concepts from Lumley's Necroscope series into the World of Darkness
 
I did not mean to imply that the gonzo was 1e-exclusive, in fact I think it peaked under 2e; I did argue that it was definitely there from very early on.
There was definitely some 1E weirdness where they hadn't settled into things. The adventure "Alien Hunger" has an undead Louis Pasteur literally cure vampirism with a serum, which would later be impossible without arduous personal development like Golconda*.

*As far as I know. Never certain with a lore this big
 
I didn't really think of Vampire as "gonzo" per se, so much as there was an attempt to include under it's umbrella every interpretation of vampires in media. Which led to the secrets of the Black Hand seeming like an attempt to adapt the concepts from Lumley's Necroscope series into the World of Darkness
Yep. And I think it is also the case that from 1st edition, White Wolf were still semi-amateur and were often trying to find things to write about in hastily written supplements as the game’s popularity exploded rapidly. Also, as a I said before, Mark Rein-Hagen wasn’t the developer after he wrote the core game, Andrew Greenburg was, although he still contributed to some writing in some supplements.
 
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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.



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.
Heh, I remember the politics and purity tests, who were the “Real Goths” and who were the Vampire-wannabe pretenders. Funniest part was that happened even in the Vampire Larps. Goths, Larpers, chicks who wore ankhs and drank your blood. I just agreed with them. :shade: :heart: :devil:
 
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.
Yep, that’s pretty much what I saw in groups that were existing RPGers. People who came in just for Vampire, ie. Goth and other Chicks, were much more into the personal horror and politics.
 
Yep, that’s pretty much what I saw in groups that were existing RPGers. People who came in just for Vampire, ie. Goth and other Chicks, were much more into the personal horror and politics.
Quite a significant observation, I think.
 
There was definitely some 1E weirdness where they hadn't settled into things. The adventure "Alien Hunger" has an undead Louis Pasteur literally cure vampirism with a serum, which would later be impossible without arduous personal development like Golconda*.

*As far as I know. Never certain with a lore this big

I don’t even know whether a concrete treatment of Golconda did come out — if it did, it was after I’d jumped off the supplement treadmill — but to the best of my recollection, it was often alluded to that Golconda was not a proper cure for vampirism but rather some sort of permanent armistice with the Beast. But I could be misremembering.
 
BTW, can we talk about why Ken Hite is no longer involved, or was it for <censored>?
 
BTW, can we talk about why Ken Hite is no longer involved, or was it for <censored>?

Ehhh...it's political, kinda, but not really volatile I think. apparently they based some vampires on some real political authorities in a foreign country, and that got back to those actual people and esentially caused a minor international incident.

Though that does go to show the 180 change in perspective from White Wolf of the 90s, who I can only imagine if they managed to cause an international incident would have plastered that all over their books as a selling point. C'est L'avie.

There's also probably some deeper levels going on, as far as behind the scenes stuff at White Wolf/Onyx Path etc, with some people just looking to get rid of Hite, but there we are getting into politically volatile stuff, and heresay at that.
 
I can see how the temptation there was tough to pass up. Malkavians at Downing St or what have you. I would have been very OK with that personally.
 
Ehhh...it's political, kinda, but not really volatile I think. apparently they based some vampires on some real political authorities in a foreign country, and that got back to those actual people and esentially caused a minor international incident.

Though that does go to show the 180 change in perspective from White Wolf of the 90s, who I can only imagine if they managed to cause an international incident would have plastered that all over their books as a selling point. C'est L'avie.

There's also probably some deeper levels going on, as far as behind the scenes stuff at White Wolf/Onyx Path etc, with some people just looking to get rid of Hite, but there we are getting into politically volatile stuff, and heresay at that.

Timeline is wrong for that I think. That all kicked off in 2018. They released his Camarilla book in 2019. Hard to say without seeing his contract, but it's entirely feasible he was only hired for the main books.
 
Timeline is wrong for that I think. That all kicked off in 2018. They released his Camarilla book in 2019. Hard to say without seeing his contract, but it's entirely feasible he was only hired for the main books.

It's entirely possible I don't have all, or even most of, the facts there. I'm just recounting what I heard at the time.
 
Ehhh...it's political, kinda, but not really volatile I think. apparently they based some vampires on some real political authorities in a foreign country, and that got back to those actual people and esentially caused a minor international incident.

Though that does go to show the 180 change in perspective from White Wolf of the 90s, who I can only imagine if they managed to cause an international incident would have plastered that all over their books as a selling point. C'est L'avie.

There's also probably some deeper levels going on, as far as behind the scenes stuff at White Wolf/Onyx Path etc, with some people just looking to get rid of Hite, but there we are getting into politically volatile stuff, and heresay at that.
Is the international incident thing the Chechnyan idiocy?
 
Is the international incident thing the Chechnyan idiocy?


That's the one. Reading up on it, apparently it was the nail in the coffin for Paradox to rescind the license to the studio that was doing Vampire 5th, but according to the article I'm reading, apparently this came on the heels of other public controversies regarding the corebook I can't really mention here.
 
Yeah, the Chechnyan authorities put out an official statement condemning it.
Without aiming getting political about it, they would wouldn’t they?

I mean, if one was a journalist and produced an entirely factual report on them, they wouldn’t like that either.
 
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Ehhh...it's political, kinda, but not really volatile I think. apparently they based some vampires on some real political authorities in a foreign country, and that got back to those actual people and esentially caused a minor international incident.

Though that does go to show the 180 change in perspective from White Wolf of the 90s, who I can only imagine if they managed to cause an international incident would have plastered that all over their books as a selling point. C'est L'avie.

There's also probably some deeper levels going on, as far as behind the scenes stuff at White Wolf/Onyx Path etc, with some people just looking to get rid of Hite, but there we are getting into politically volatile stuff, and heresay at that.
There was a lot of other stuff going on - writers getting harassed online, for example - and I think ultimately, Paradox felt that the White Wolf set up they had was just getting too toxic to continue with. I think Hite was on a podcast where he said he was tired of the complaints. However, Hite was really onboard to design the core of the game in terms of themes and mechanics. The setting development and other supplements was with other writers.
 
Children of the Blood, a supplement for Cults of the Blood Gods just came out for backers: https://booknest.eu/reviews/charles/2222-childrenoftheblood

There's two more supplements currently in development at Onyx Path Publishing for V:TM 5th Edition.

That's in addition to the ongoing comic which has game rules in the back: https://booknest.eu/reviews/charles/2194-vampirethemasqueradewintersteeth

It's currently on issue #7.

They're currently working on THE SECOND INQUISITION and THE SABBAT sourcebooks with Justin Achilli writing both.

I try to keep up with upcoming releases here: http://forum.theonyxpath.com/forum/...e-the-masquerade/1441001-v5-upcoming-projects
 
V5 is bad and Justin Achilli should feel bad.

Change my mind.
 
You loved Achilli when he was doing V20, you big Achilli fanboy you.

No, I still hated Achilli even when he was doing V20.

Also, he had other people to rein him in when he was making V20.
 
I have it and I certainly want to play it, but I'm busy with other games and I know I'd have to be the one DMing it.

The Hunger Die looks real neat though.
 
I'm playing in my second campaign of V5 and so far I'm loving it. The hunger dice makes the existence of the Beast feel ever present more so than a humanity track ever did and the changes to the clans and discipline feel like improvements and upgrades. Overall the game feels more whole and organic than any of the previous versions.
We're looking at using it for a local Vampire Larp instead of using the new "V2" larp rules.
 
V5 is fine. Justin Achilli should feel bad because of his many and unspecified crimes against humanity, none of which are related to his work on Vampire.

Claims of pretension mean nothing to me, because I am a pretentious wanker, so thanks I guess?
 
What you have to remember is that the Vampire 5e and Justin Achilli that exist in Sammy's head are a platonic ideal, with no grounding in anything so vulgar as material reality.

Where most of us on here play and run RPGs, Sammy's hobby is having strong opinions about Onyx Path/White Wolf.
 
That's all fine, but I suppose the counter changemymind would be "Pretentious wankery is good, actually."
 
Justin Achilli had nothing to do with the creating of V5. He has just taken over as overall WoD developer and his output in that role for V5, so far, amounts to one free supplement.

Justin Achilli was the line developer of V20. There was nobody to 'reign him in' - he was in charge of it.
 
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V5 is bad and Justin Achilli should feel bad.

Change my mind.

I say with all sincerity that CHICAGO BY NIGHT 5th Edition and CULTS OF THE BLOOD GODS are easily two of the best supplements ever made for the World of Darkness. Fantastic books, fantastic art, fantastic characters, and a nice return to the gritty Gothic Punk personal horror atmosphere of early editions. I say this as someone who wasn't a fan of the Camarilla and Anarch books.

CHICAGO BY NIGHT 5E Review: https://booknest.eu/reviews/charles/1609-chicagobynight

CULTS OF THE BLOOD GODS Review: https://booknest.eu/reviews/charles/2199-cultsofthebloodgods

I also love THE CHICAGO FOLIOS and LET THE STREETS RUN RED.

Great aids to STs with Milwaukee and Gary, Indiana updated too.
 
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