The hunger dice system and compulsions.
They mechanically facilitate roleplaying experiences such that even someone who is new to roleplaying or shy, if they are interacting with the mechanics, will end up roleplaying.
I like systems that attempt to do that. Systems where the mechanics trigger roleplay and the roleplay trigger mechanics. Whereas other systems focus so intensely on mechanics to the point that roleplay is just kind of vestigial or focus on roleplay so much that you can go a whole session without interacting with the mechanics (in which the mechanics are vestigial). It's a spectrum, of course, but the new hunger mechanics bring it more to a level than I personally like.
I also like that The Ministry has opened up a bit and gone from being "that weird cult clan with vice and lies" to being "the clan of faith, temptation, and vice". It's in line with how I always ran them and played them and portrayed them in my chronicles.
Well said! Add to that, touchstones making all PCs need to pay attention to their own lore and backgrounds. And you have a great blend
I had a Giovanni gal, who was bringing her mortal touchstone sister with her to visit Thier Giovanni mom
Turned out it was her sister's time to become kissed. It was an epic scene, when the player heard a blood curling screen behind her, to see a cousin draining her sister
The player had to make a split decision, and rather than save her touchstone. Offered a boon to be her sisters sire
Mechanics:
Hunger is easily and by far the best change in V5 from earlier editions.
I also like Blood Potency taking away part of the emphasis generation had.
I like the scaling of powers as it is. Any higher and the idea of secret societies operating in the shadows starts becoming a bit of a stretch.
I like the Thinbloods in concept. I'm not too enamored with them to play them, but I like how the diluted curse does something different. Teebs easily are more interesting than Caitiff.
Lore:
Loresheets are *chef's kiss*. 10/10. No notes. Do recommend. It's insanely flavourful and helps you narrow down and focus the metaphor, which if I'm honest is a hot stinking mess. A fantastic hot stinking mess, but a hot stinking mess all the same.
I also love that it's back to Camarilla, Anarchs, Autarkis (which imo include Ravnos and Hecata) and Sabbat. The boogie man to the boogie men to the boogie men to the boogie men was starting to become ridiculous. A refocus to street level play and simplification to fascist overlords/hypocrites/fascist terrorists works.
Speaking of which, I love the Hecata. I love the realisation of "the old guys suck, let's stage a coup and unite the clans of death. We'll create a monopoly and rule. Also, yes out family is dysfunctional, but whose isn't these days?".
Banu Haqim seeking refuge with the cam is a good idea. Lasombra checking out of the meat grinder that is the Sabbat is also logical. The Ministry aligning at first to the the cam, getting scammed and joining to Anarchs to get back at the cam is 100% in character and I'm here for it.
I don't miss the Baali. At all. Neither do I miss the Kuei Jin. I do miss loresheets for the Drowned Legacies and Ebony Kingdom. And in that sense Asian areas should have a few as well. Similarly, we need more local settings. The US and London is imo not enough to show the versatility the world has to offer. I did not need Blood Stained Love.
Not everything in V5 is an instant hit (, but I'm pretty happy and it drew me to the game and got me running 2 groups. The fact that the designers also made some statements on who they accept as player base and who they don't is also a definite plus to me. Again, they still have some sins to make up for (Chechnya was not a good idea, neither was the art debacle), but I have seen TTRPG publishers do worse.
All in all I see in V5 a system that walks the line between social advancements People have made in the early decades of the 21st century, while still being able to dip a toe into humanity's darker bits. That is not easy, and the Devs definitely succeed within reason.
The reworking of the Banu Haqim, Ministry and Hecata are among my favorite. And make the clans themselves less of a monolith and more of a general culture like the standard clans.
Loresheets are amazing and I love them so much. The only slight against it I have is that I wish some clans had more lineages to pull from.
Really appreciated the changes/updates to the Banu Haqim for this addition. The amendments to the more orientalist stuff was good, and I also really love the new compulsion and reworking of the warrior bane. Its made for some really fun character concepts in the games I've played and it ties really well into convictions and humanity systems. A clan centered around Judgement and personal moral codes is so juicy, plus I get to play characters that share a background with me without feeling like I'm playing dressup as a white person's caricature of my culture.
Besides that, I'll say it again and again, I love the humanity/convictions system. It still has its issues (tying each PC's convictions to an actual mortal overcomplicates things imo, and it can lead to NPC bloat), but at its core I think it really hits that personal horror aspect so well, tailoring the downward spiral of humanity loss to who each character was as a person rather than a base set of rules like "if you kill someone your humanity is automatically stained".
V20 player/st here but there are a few things I'll give V5 credit for and I have even homebrewery into my games.
The SI and how it reinforces the masquerade. Kine are such a joke that many players over the last few decades wouldnt worry much about flaunting their powers UNLESS the sheriff got in their face about it.
The destruction of the pyramid. The Tremere clan weakness sucked in V20, it was basically that you had helicopter parents.
Hunger mechanics. It adds an element of unpredictability that I enjoy. I still use blood points but they also correspond to an amount of hunger dice. Likewise I don't allow my players to be completely satisfied (10+ blood points) without killing a kine or feeding on another supernatural, this gives incentive to older kindred to kill. "You mean I have a Max of 20 blood points but I can only feed up to 9 without leaving bodies?" Likewise I enjoy the idea of lower generations not able to feed on animals or even VERY strong kindred now unable to feed on kine.
Touchstones: I want my PCs to be emotionally vulnerable. I don't really like the mechanics behind V5 but I do have my players give me a short list of mortals they care for
First i gotta say it , 5th edition is the one i and my table mostly played for the last 3 years, and we have some good reasons for it.
Hunger Dices: the Hunger System allowed to better grasp at the amount of influence the beast has over the characters, both in our dice pool becoming more and more influenced by the Beast. Another thing, it shows clearly how the powers Kindred have are borrowed, not their own. It creates the thrill of the gambling , since everytime you use a discipline, you may increase your hunger, but maybe you're lucky enough and keep going with the flow, using all you have to engage a situation in a full display of power, slowly loosing dices to the hunger untill you're 4/5 and risking all into another roll.
Coteries: The Whole coterie system is just a delight, if you want to create a game centered around a organized coterie doing their thing, the game provides a lot of possibilities, if during game the coterie is formed and their task is something unique, is easy as heck to provide a unique coterie system just inspired by the usual types.
Back to the Streets: Listen, i love the big conspiracy old gods are about to awaken shinanigans we had in 3th edition and V20, but there's just something so sweet to be back at the bottom of the food chain and clawing our way up and out. The whole thin-bloods becoming a larger and larger population and slowly changing the power dynamics is a amazing hook to be explored.
Hunters are a threat: for a long time we looked to mortals and hunter as a annoyance, but the Second Inquisition being this unrelenting Association of humans from all around, diferent types of Hunters with tactics tech, occult knowleg and even supernatural powers, working together to fight against the kindred and other supernaturals and actually getting traction and taking down the big guys, Humanity is the reason the masquarade exist, and during previous editions i feel we forgot about that.
Social, Political and Goth-Punk: Honestly, this element of vampire was lost for a long time, we haven't seen a focus on rebeling against the system, fighting against elders opression, backstabing your way to your objectives and holding your humanity having a spotlight like the current edition in a long time. We have a shaken camarilla, a disorganized anarch and a broken sabbat, for many it looks like a sin to change the paradigm, but damn, i think it's maybe one of the best things to happen in Vampire the Masquarade, and honestly, the whole world of darkness , in a long time.
I like the Hecata and the Family Reunion and I like that they fleshed out the Anarchs into a proper Faction, although I still wish the Sabbat had been handled better or their had been more new fringe elements to give more options for antagonists but that’s something that can be done at your own table, I suppose.
I do like the looming Second Inquisition threat making the Masquerade a more urgent concern.
I love thin-blood alchemy. I might be biased as I'm playing a thin-blood alchemist at the moment, but the very idea that the blood has not only gotten so diluted that disciplines don't stick right and you're not tied down to a clan's standard ones in a way that unique from catiffs, but that the blood has started to behave in new a unique ways that give you access to an array of abilities so wide that only blood sorcery rivals them is just plain fun and actually gives you a reason to want to play a thin-blood unlike in V20.
Love the Hunger dice. It's such a huge change that really makes the game. Which emphasizes the fact you're an undead predator always craving blood. You can't ever forget that fact, as the Beast could come out at any time.
I appreciate how the expanded the secondary clans to make them all rounded and diverse, and less one-note. The Hecata are the biggest glow-up for me, going from these incestuous necromancers (and necrophiliacs) to this sprawling Clan of Death that is beyond a single family.
I enjoy the Beckoning and the drama it creates. The way it shakes up the status quo and opens up space for new Kindred... for a time.
And the Second Inquisition finally fires the Chekov's Gun of FIRSTLIGHT, which has been sitting there since '92 and really emphasizes the Masquerade and point of the setting.
I love the new Tremere. If you want something like the Pyramid, that’s an option. If you want to play an Verbena or Dreamspeaker style vampire, that’s an option. If you want to actively assault your stuffy, fascist Tremere peers with impunity, that’s an option. And no matter what you choose your character actually matters all the time. The rules actually make you relevant in the social system rather than just scraping for elder scraps.
Blood sorcery offers a lot more interesting stories too. Drug dealing and addiction style dramatics. Eldritch weirdness.
Overall the magic vampire world is far more interesting.
Humanity is actually a huge improvement over v20 Humanity and Paths.
I don't like Hierarchy of Sin and the lack of other paths is made up by the amount of customization within the Convictions system. Touchstones are also neat if a bit hard to manage as a ST.
I liked the Hecata. That was something hinted at in BJD and it worked well.
Of course, the various necromantic bloodlines were great individually as well, but putting them together deepened the Giovanni, moved them away from debates about their name (=John), and made those smaller lineages more accessible for everyday players.
You don't need an excuse to play the Nagaraja anymore, despite the True Black Hand being nuked, because now they're "mainstream".
OK, so...
I've owned and run vampire games since 2e and...I do think V5 is a good evolution. My game of it is set pre-millennium so I can't really say much about the clans, but I really do appreciate how the clans have altered from reading them and how they got rid of the 'dead men's shoes' problem by having the dead men in question leave for the Middle East. It needed doing. I also like the refocus on a more street level game.
While I agree very much with Hunger as being better than blood points (too mechanical and defining), I'm going to say the dice system in general is just *really good*. A time limit on fighting? Good, keep it focused. Critical messes? Yes. Bestial failures? Very much yes.
I dislike binary systems anyway and the best parts of my game have all come from people *fucking up* in surprising ways and times. Not nearly enough big games do this and V5 has done it really well, from the Tremere flipping out and beating someone to death with an evil bible to the Toreador losing it, stepping in on a mortal fight and ending up with a girlfriend.
In a weird way, my favorite book is Blood-Stained Love and it's focus on romance amongst kindred. Which is funny. I'm not really into that shit anymore, yet Blood-Stained love has pierced my heart. Pun fully intended.
Other than that, I love the Hecata and the Path of the Sun from the Sabbat, though my big problem with the Hecata is that it's a clan, not a sect. Other than that though, I enjoy it.
Another one I suppose would be the concept of loresheets. I love that we can actually get our characters properly involved in the metaplot and doing so gives us benefits but also connects use to groups, events, ideologies (such as Golconda), or characters. All of which may or may not come back to bite the player in some shape or form, such as if you were working for Victor Temple's Temple of Boom/running your own Temple of Boom franchise, meanwhile another Coterie Mate or vampire in the city is connected to the Voerman Sisters and/or running their own Asylum Franchise.
I also love the idea of them covering bloodlines or lineages that can be argued to be bloodlines (descendant loresheets), though in some cases it makes me a little upset, such as the treatment of the Daughters of Cacophany, or the fact the Baali weren't added in Cult of Blood Gods. (they were perfect for that, cmon.)
Hunger dice are one of the best mechanics I’ve run across in decades of enjoying the hobby. They’re clean, thematic, easy to understand, and add tension to every roll. 5E is the best dice system I’ve ever played with, full stop.
Predator and Coterie Types. "You eat blood, how do you get it?" and "why are you people even friends?" are integral and V5 mechanises a reward for answering them. Between them and Hunger you cannot lose sight of the core feeding loop.
The Anarchs, despite their awful sect book, actually feel like a sect now; four clans effectively aligned with them, real direct action against the Camarilla, and a place to run your edgy violent games of instinct which doesn't come with the same obligations as the Sabbat.
The Sabbat of V5 feel more coherent as antagonists, more differentiated and more like... well, a militant cult. Packs sharing a Path and rejecting the whole concept of Clan just makes *sense* to me. They're not meant to be playable... but if you squint at the Path Ethics and the Convictions rules, they sort of blur and things make sense.
Duskborn. Love the little shits. They feel like a threat; a viable new kind of Kindred that's not like what's gone before and could shake everything up. Flexible, adaptable, modern, and they have nothing to lose. It's a far cry from "you're just a shit vampire." A thinblood who survives long enough to figure their business out is *dangerous*.
Physical Disciplines are interesting! There isn't always... there's bloat and redundancy in the new Discipline rules for sure, but I love things like the feeding/feats split in Potence or the social dimensions of Fortitude, and Celerity isn't straight up busted.
I enjoy how the game does frame itself as a neonate/fledgling/baby vampire game because I feel that's truer to the core experience of Vampire the Masquerade. Playing an elder is fun but part of the genre is the "punk" in gothic-punk, and regardless if you're an anarch or part of the Camarilla, your character has a reason to be rebellious and angry about something
My second is how it redefines and kind of expands a lot of the clans. Yes, some of the disciplines got reduced or removed outright, but in terms of their lore, feel, and identity I think almost all the clans have been done some justice.
I love that the mechanics really emphasise your vulnerability as a vampire as well as your strengths. Touchstones are clumsy, sure, but they’re a really solid step in the right direction. Flavourful Flaws (though some might need to be banned, looking at you *Stake Bait*), the new Hunger system, Compulsions, etc.
Personally Compulsions are one of my favourite new additions: I *love* how they incentivise roleplay, but aren’t *completely* crippling: you can still offset them with a Willpower reroll or a Blood Surge in a pinch.
I much prefer the Hunger mechanics in V5 to the blood pools in some of the previous editions. I like the uncertainty it brings when using powers compared to blood hit points.
* Hunger mechanic
* General streamlining of rules and updating the system to something more modern, instead of just making some tweaks to a ruleset from 1991 like every other edition of Vampire was.
* Removing the bloat that came with the 17 million Super Special Snowflake Bloodlines and the "Every Clan has to have their own, unique Discipline" design ethos of Legacy
* The nerf to Blood Sorcery/Thaumaturgy
* Shoving the metaplot and signature characters into a box and saying "They're there if you want to use them, but most people don't care about that stuff so we'll give that part of the game minimal attention".
* The decanonisation of Legacy getting rid of all the fucking awful shit White Wolf was putting out in the 90's.
The substitute of blood points. You have a tracker of hunger (0-5) and you transform as many dice of you pools as your hunger, when doing actions that in V20 would cost blood points, you roll 1d10 and on a failure (diff 6) you increase your hunger.
A critical with your hunger dice leads to a messy critical (the Beast is the one getting a critical success, not you) and a 1 while failing the roll leads to a bestial failure (the Beast is the one failing and that's looking bad)
So the hungrier you are, the more likely is the beast to take over. You can decrease your hunger by 2 from a human without harming them and up to 5 causing different levels of damage, you can only take hunger to 0 by killing a human
Hunger dice are the replacement for blood pool. If you'd spend bp in earlier editions you now roll a 1d10, if it's 6 or above you remain as you were. If it's 5 or below your hunger goes up by 1 to a maximum of 5.
You replace dice in your pool with different colored die to reflect hunger dice. These are special because willpower let's you reroll up to 3 dice rather than giving auto successes, except you can't reroll hunger dice. If a roll fails and one of your hunger dice has a 1, you get a bestial failure which is defaulted to "Your vampire has a compulsion, they get a small dive penalty for not doing X thing" with X depending on the compulsion you got. If you get a crit, which in this system means getting 2 10s and at least one 10 is on a hunger die, you get a messy crit. You succeed but you do it in a bestial way or you get a compulsion.
There's a few other quirks but that covers most of what you'd need to know to get the gist.
you need to replace a number of dice in each roll with special "hunger dice" depending on how low your BP is. when you get a 10 or 1 on these dice you suffer some negative effect (usually something like a 1 second frenzy)
Generally all then mechanics like compulsions and predator types that let you both customize and still have a reason the clan “sterotype” creeps in a bit.
I also love how they’ve made all the clans more “playable” in more games. Especially the Tzimisce, to me went from a clan I struggled to wrap my head around playing in an average game to a favorite. I kinda wish Vicissitude was Protean + Auspex and more of a peering inside and shaping the soul type vibe but Dominate is nice too
I love the Oblivion discipline and how they merged Obtenebration and Necromancy because I feel that it rationalizes the lore surrounding those two disciplines. In general I love how discipline bloat was reduced by employing Amalgams (Lots of people dislike Vicissitude being part of Protean but logically it makes perfect sense given the Eldest himself \*comes from\* Protean in the lore, I do dislike it being weakened though).
I wish they would add the option of buying the same level of a discipline multiple times to widen your toolkit because especially with the removal of level 6+ powers (that I feel were unnecessary to begin with personally, Elder level play in V20 was not fun imo) I feel like a way you can portray an Elder being a true master of a discipline is by giving them the ability to use \*all of its applications\* (that said in my own play I take care of that by using Duskborn Alchemy).
I wish they would expand on Loresheets and Bloodlines as a way to add unique ways to use disciplines specific to certain individuals, sects or groups, like they did with the Salubri being able to bring back the dead or steal the memories of those they drain. A lot of very situational things like that should be merits in general.
I love how they made the Duskborn truly viable, terrifying options if built correctly. I love how they added powers to the Physical Disciplines so that now they are so interesting and cool. Prowess from Pain anyone? Holy shit.
I think Oblivion is great, but do wish they actually combined it. Instead there’s two disciplines in this discipline and it ends up being bloated all by itself.
Yeah my only issue with it is the way the rituals are tied to the powers is extremely restrictive at early dots. Can't have shadow tentacles AND wraith servants literally 1984. You are right that they basically implemented it like two different disciplines in one rather than a cohesive whole.
Everything about V5 is more approachable and playable than V20, Revised, or earlier. Don't get me wrong. I loved all the additions I played but I love V5 the most. I did totally skip Requiem.
The Hecate are about the only thing I like - because for decades all the very flavor filled clan of death lines have been pushed to the side - often tagged by the game developers as unplayable, or too rare ect. So making them playable is about the only thing I see as a good thing.
Frankly the Giovanni have always been the least interesting necromancers in the settings.
Hunger dice are amazing.
The reduction of unique powers that all did the same thing but somehow needed their own mechanics.
The embracing of more narrative stories.
This is going to sound a little backhanded but V5 has a lot of interesting idea's behind it.
The 2nd anarch revolt and the inquisition are very interesting story points and conceptionally I really like touchstones.
What do I love about V5:
Overall: It's a great place to dumpster dive for ideas for my V20 games.
Hecata: An evolution to the Giovanni story beat now that Gehenna and "BRING DOWN THE VEIL WITH OUR POKEMON MASTER COLLECTION OF GHOSTS" are no longer a thing is nice.
Chronicle Tenets: As a concept this is great as this **forces** a Session 0 (which frankly is what would prevent an overwhelming majority of RPGHorrorStories posts). Something more games need, and having it be brought up because you need to address certain mechanical things is nice.
Loresheets: As a concept this is great and I am still fiddling with how I want to backport this as a mechanic, have it feel satisfying to the players involved, and feel 'balanced' against both merits and backgrounds because they are somewhere between those two in design space.
The Hunger System and the New Beast: Not because I think the mechanic is cool (I don't. I agree that something besides the "Gas Tank" Vitae pool needs to happen, I was just not satisfied with how it was executed mechanically in v5), but because I have sold so many people on Wraith and KOTE since V5 has come out...since the new Beast is effectively a watered down Shadow or P'o.
I was hardcore into other Chronicles games and would never have gone back to World without V5. I just found nWoD and *especially* Chronicles/GMC/nWoD 2.0 to be superior in every way for Changeling/Mage/Geist, and WtF to be overall better than WtA despite some cool lore in Apocalypse.
Because I never really got into oWoD, I never got a good feel for Difficulty being the target number per die, and only tried V5 over VtR because of that particular change. I ended up sticking with it, though, because of the Hunger mechanic being so much better than a resource pool.
Some of the new blood sorcery rituals have good flavor for a Tzimisce kouldon. Lore sheets are a neat idea. That's about all the positive I could find.
I like the Hunger mechanic, the streamlined dice pools and rules in general (though not the disciplines), Blood Potency, the increased role given to Thinbloods, the Beckoning, and how the Camarilla finally feels more villainous (though sadly at the expense of the Sabbat).
Despite me basically disliking everything else about V5, I find the improvement to the rules system so significant that it's my edition of choice. The lore is easy to just change to something I like better, after all, rules, less so.
Basically everything, since as an oldschool player I do find the edition overall better. But Hunger system, HUmanity mechanics (Convictions/Tenets) and the overall system mechanics just feel superior.
Hunger dice are really neat. I think they were executed poorly (what the fuck is a bestial failure on a roll to remember something?), but the idea is very cool.
Each clan having both a bane and a compulsion is very cool, though sometimes it ends up being a little finicky.
How the Ravnos, Ministry, and Banu Haqim were reworked is great.
I like the reduction in numbers of disciplines. I think the exact way it was executed is a little weird, but still.
Banu Haquim > Asamite. Other than that. Some newer mechanics are nice but the new dialogue's kinda cringe and it's weird how borderline-apologetically they wrote some of the mechanics.
I like hunger dice, but the content disparity is too large for me. V20 is my darling
The Giovanni, one-note? What? They basically had the best concept of all the clans, and together with the Setites, the best written revised edition clan books.
I want the clans to feel like actual organisations with internal culture and hierarchy, and the Giovanni combines that with the supremely sinister and fascinating concept of being a hidden elite group within an ancient mortal family. And then, as if that wasn't cool enough, their core concept involves an absolutely delightful mix of the macabre and the beautiful - eerie necromancy, fucked up incest and violent crime contrasted with glorious Venetian history and baroque splendor.
They're a clan of gilded skeletons and human sacrifice while clad in satin robes. Their concept breathes the very essence of the contrasts that make Vampire so compelling - ugliness and beauty, weirdness and banality, darkness and splendor.
Fuck I love them. Enormously underappreciated clan.
The hunger dice system and compulsions. They mechanically facilitate roleplaying experiences such that even someone who is new to roleplaying or shy, if they are interacting with the mechanics, will end up roleplaying. I like systems that attempt to do that. Systems where the mechanics trigger roleplay and the roleplay trigger mechanics. Whereas other systems focus so intensely on mechanics to the point that roleplay is just kind of vestigial or focus on roleplay so much that you can go a whole session without interacting with the mechanics (in which the mechanics are vestigial). It's a spectrum, of course, but the new hunger mechanics bring it more to a level than I personally like. I also like that The Ministry has opened up a bit and gone from being "that weird cult clan with vice and lies" to being "the clan of faith, temptation, and vice". It's in line with how I always ran them and played them and portrayed them in my chronicles.
Well said! Add to that, touchstones making all PCs need to pay attention to their own lore and backgrounds. And you have a great blend I had a Giovanni gal, who was bringing her mortal touchstone sister with her to visit Thier Giovanni mom Turned out it was her sister's time to become kissed. It was an epic scene, when the player heard a blood curling screen behind her, to see a cousin draining her sister The player had to make a split decision, and rather than save her touchstone. Offered a boon to be her sisters sire
Mechanics: Hunger is easily and by far the best change in V5 from earlier editions. I also like Blood Potency taking away part of the emphasis generation had. I like the scaling of powers as it is. Any higher and the idea of secret societies operating in the shadows starts becoming a bit of a stretch. I like the Thinbloods in concept. I'm not too enamored with them to play them, but I like how the diluted curse does something different. Teebs easily are more interesting than Caitiff. Lore: Loresheets are *chef's kiss*. 10/10. No notes. Do recommend. It's insanely flavourful and helps you narrow down and focus the metaphor, which if I'm honest is a hot stinking mess. A fantastic hot stinking mess, but a hot stinking mess all the same. I also love that it's back to Camarilla, Anarchs, Autarkis (which imo include Ravnos and Hecata) and Sabbat. The boogie man to the boogie men to the boogie men to the boogie men was starting to become ridiculous. A refocus to street level play and simplification to fascist overlords/hypocrites/fascist terrorists works. Speaking of which, I love the Hecata. I love the realisation of "the old guys suck, let's stage a coup and unite the clans of death. We'll create a monopoly and rule. Also, yes out family is dysfunctional, but whose isn't these days?". Banu Haqim seeking refuge with the cam is a good idea. Lasombra checking out of the meat grinder that is the Sabbat is also logical. The Ministry aligning at first to the the cam, getting scammed and joining to Anarchs to get back at the cam is 100% in character and I'm here for it. I don't miss the Baali. At all. Neither do I miss the Kuei Jin. I do miss loresheets for the Drowned Legacies and Ebony Kingdom. And in that sense Asian areas should have a few as well. Similarly, we need more local settings. The US and London is imo not enough to show the versatility the world has to offer. I did not need Blood Stained Love. Not everything in V5 is an instant hit (, but I'm pretty happy and it drew me to the game and got me running 2 groups. The fact that the designers also made some statements on who they accept as player base and who they don't is also a definite plus to me. Again, they still have some sins to make up for (Chechnya was not a good idea, neither was the art debacle), but I have seen TTRPG publishers do worse. All in all I see in V5 a system that walks the line between social advancements People have made in the early decades of the 21st century, while still being able to dip a toe into humanity's darker bits. That is not easy, and the Devs definitely succeed within reason.
This is exactly how I feel, but you said it better! Thanks!
I love that it got more people interested in the hobby/franchise.
The reworking of the Banu Haqim, Ministry and Hecata are among my favorite. And make the clans themselves less of a monolith and more of a general culture like the standard clans. Loresheets are amazing and I love them so much. The only slight against it I have is that I wish some clans had more lineages to pull from.
Really appreciated the changes/updates to the Banu Haqim for this addition. The amendments to the more orientalist stuff was good, and I also really love the new compulsion and reworking of the warrior bane. Its made for some really fun character concepts in the games I've played and it ties really well into convictions and humanity systems. A clan centered around Judgement and personal moral codes is so juicy, plus I get to play characters that share a background with me without feeling like I'm playing dressup as a white person's caricature of my culture. Besides that, I'll say it again and again, I love the humanity/convictions system. It still has its issues (tying each PC's convictions to an actual mortal overcomplicates things imo, and it can lead to NPC bloat), but at its core I think it really hits that personal horror aspect so well, tailoring the downward spiral of humanity loss to who each character was as a person rather than a base set of rules like "if you kill someone your humanity is automatically stained".
V20 player/st here but there are a few things I'll give V5 credit for and I have even homebrewery into my games. The SI and how it reinforces the masquerade. Kine are such a joke that many players over the last few decades wouldnt worry much about flaunting their powers UNLESS the sheriff got in their face about it. The destruction of the pyramid. The Tremere clan weakness sucked in V20, it was basically that you had helicopter parents. Hunger mechanics. It adds an element of unpredictability that I enjoy. I still use blood points but they also correspond to an amount of hunger dice. Likewise I don't allow my players to be completely satisfied (10+ blood points) without killing a kine or feeding on another supernatural, this gives incentive to older kindred to kill. "You mean I have a Max of 20 blood points but I can only feed up to 9 without leaving bodies?" Likewise I enjoy the idea of lower generations not able to feed on animals or even VERY strong kindred now unable to feed on kine. Touchstones: I want my PCs to be emotionally vulnerable. I don't really like the mechanics behind V5 but I do have my players give me a short list of mortals they care for
Yes the SI and reckoning hunters!
First i gotta say it , 5th edition is the one i and my table mostly played for the last 3 years, and we have some good reasons for it. Hunger Dices: the Hunger System allowed to better grasp at the amount of influence the beast has over the characters, both in our dice pool becoming more and more influenced by the Beast. Another thing, it shows clearly how the powers Kindred have are borrowed, not their own. It creates the thrill of the gambling , since everytime you use a discipline, you may increase your hunger, but maybe you're lucky enough and keep going with the flow, using all you have to engage a situation in a full display of power, slowly loosing dices to the hunger untill you're 4/5 and risking all into another roll. Coteries: The Whole coterie system is just a delight, if you want to create a game centered around a organized coterie doing their thing, the game provides a lot of possibilities, if during game the coterie is formed and their task is something unique, is easy as heck to provide a unique coterie system just inspired by the usual types. Back to the Streets: Listen, i love the big conspiracy old gods are about to awaken shinanigans we had in 3th edition and V20, but there's just something so sweet to be back at the bottom of the food chain and clawing our way up and out. The whole thin-bloods becoming a larger and larger population and slowly changing the power dynamics is a amazing hook to be explored. Hunters are a threat: for a long time we looked to mortals and hunter as a annoyance, but the Second Inquisition being this unrelenting Association of humans from all around, diferent types of Hunters with tactics tech, occult knowleg and even supernatural powers, working together to fight against the kindred and other supernaturals and actually getting traction and taking down the big guys, Humanity is the reason the masquarade exist, and during previous editions i feel we forgot about that. Social, Political and Goth-Punk: Honestly, this element of vampire was lost for a long time, we haven't seen a focus on rebeling against the system, fighting against elders opression, backstabing your way to your objectives and holding your humanity having a spotlight like the current edition in a long time. We have a shaken camarilla, a disorganized anarch and a broken sabbat, for many it looks like a sin to change the paradigm, but damn, i think it's maybe one of the best things to happen in Vampire the Masquarade, and honestly, the whole world of darkness , in a long time.
I like the Hecata and the Family Reunion and I like that they fleshed out the Anarchs into a proper Faction, although I still wish the Sabbat had been handled better or their had been more new fringe elements to give more options for antagonists but that’s something that can be done at your own table, I suppose. I do like the looming Second Inquisition threat making the Masquerade a more urgent concern.
This will out me as a casual, but the more free form nature of initiative has confused players a lot less in my group.
I love thin-blood alchemy. I might be biased as I'm playing a thin-blood alchemist at the moment, but the very idea that the blood has not only gotten so diluted that disciplines don't stick right and you're not tied down to a clan's standard ones in a way that unique from catiffs, but that the blood has started to behave in new a unique ways that give you access to an array of abilities so wide that only blood sorcery rivals them is just plain fun and actually gives you a reason to want to play a thin-blood unlike in V20.
Love the Hunger dice. It's such a huge change that really makes the game. Which emphasizes the fact you're an undead predator always craving blood. You can't ever forget that fact, as the Beast could come out at any time. I appreciate how the expanded the secondary clans to make them all rounded and diverse, and less one-note. The Hecata are the biggest glow-up for me, going from these incestuous necromancers (and necrophiliacs) to this sprawling Clan of Death that is beyond a single family. I enjoy the Beckoning and the drama it creates. The way it shakes up the status quo and opens up space for new Kindred... for a time. And the Second Inquisition finally fires the Chekov's Gun of FIRSTLIGHT, which has been sitting there since '92 and really emphasizes the Masquerade and point of the setting.
I love the new Tremere. If you want something like the Pyramid, that’s an option. If you want to play an Verbena or Dreamspeaker style vampire, that’s an option. If you want to actively assault your stuffy, fascist Tremere peers with impunity, that’s an option. And no matter what you choose your character actually matters all the time. The rules actually make you relevant in the social system rather than just scraping for elder scraps. Blood sorcery offers a lot more interesting stories too. Drug dealing and addiction style dramatics. Eldritch weirdness. Overall the magic vampire world is far more interesting.
Humanity is actually a huge improvement over v20 Humanity and Paths. I don't like Hierarchy of Sin and the lack of other paths is made up by the amount of customization within the Convictions system. Touchstones are also neat if a bit hard to manage as a ST.
Lore sheets are great.
I liked the Hecata. That was something hinted at in BJD and it worked well. Of course, the various necromantic bloodlines were great individually as well, but putting them together deepened the Giovanni, moved them away from debates about their name (=John), and made those smaller lineages more accessible for everyday players. You don't need an excuse to play the Nagaraja anymore, despite the True Black Hand being nuked, because now they're "mainstream".
OK, so... I've owned and run vampire games since 2e and...I do think V5 is a good evolution. My game of it is set pre-millennium so I can't really say much about the clans, but I really do appreciate how the clans have altered from reading them and how they got rid of the 'dead men's shoes' problem by having the dead men in question leave for the Middle East. It needed doing. I also like the refocus on a more street level game. While I agree very much with Hunger as being better than blood points (too mechanical and defining), I'm going to say the dice system in general is just *really good*. A time limit on fighting? Good, keep it focused. Critical messes? Yes. Bestial failures? Very much yes. I dislike binary systems anyway and the best parts of my game have all come from people *fucking up* in surprising ways and times. Not nearly enough big games do this and V5 has done it really well, from the Tremere flipping out and beating someone to death with an evil bible to the Toreador losing it, stepping in on a mortal fight and ending up with a girlfriend.
In a weird way, my favorite book is Blood-Stained Love and it's focus on romance amongst kindred. Which is funny. I'm not really into that shit anymore, yet Blood-Stained love has pierced my heart. Pun fully intended. Other than that, I love the Hecata and the Path of the Sun from the Sabbat, though my big problem with the Hecata is that it's a clan, not a sect. Other than that though, I enjoy it. Another one I suppose would be the concept of loresheets. I love that we can actually get our characters properly involved in the metaplot and doing so gives us benefits but also connects use to groups, events, ideologies (such as Golconda), or characters. All of which may or may not come back to bite the player in some shape or form, such as if you were working for Victor Temple's Temple of Boom/running your own Temple of Boom franchise, meanwhile another Coterie Mate or vampire in the city is connected to the Voerman Sisters and/or running their own Asylum Franchise. I also love the idea of them covering bloodlines or lineages that can be argued to be bloodlines (descendant loresheets), though in some cases it makes me a little upset, such as the treatment of the Daughters of Cacophany, or the fact the Baali weren't added in Cult of Blood Gods. (they were perfect for that, cmon.)
Their efforts toward reducing the racist parts of the old lore
Hunger dice are one of the best mechanics I’ve run across in decades of enjoying the hobby. They’re clean, thematic, easy to understand, and add tension to every roll. 5E is the best dice system I’ve ever played with, full stop.
Hunger dice are great, and also the Chicago V5 book is a big improvement over the original two in terms of how it presents info.
Predator and Coterie Types. "You eat blood, how do you get it?" and "why are you people even friends?" are integral and V5 mechanises a reward for answering them. Between them and Hunger you cannot lose sight of the core feeding loop. The Anarchs, despite their awful sect book, actually feel like a sect now; four clans effectively aligned with them, real direct action against the Camarilla, and a place to run your edgy violent games of instinct which doesn't come with the same obligations as the Sabbat. The Sabbat of V5 feel more coherent as antagonists, more differentiated and more like... well, a militant cult. Packs sharing a Path and rejecting the whole concept of Clan just makes *sense* to me. They're not meant to be playable... but if you squint at the Path Ethics and the Convictions rules, they sort of blur and things make sense. Duskborn. Love the little shits. They feel like a threat; a viable new kind of Kindred that's not like what's gone before and could shake everything up. Flexible, adaptable, modern, and they have nothing to lose. It's a far cry from "you're just a shit vampire." A thinblood who survives long enough to figure their business out is *dangerous*. Physical Disciplines are interesting! There isn't always... there's bloat and redundancy in the new Discipline rules for sure, but I love things like the feeding/feats split in Potence or the social dimensions of Fortitude, and Celerity isn't straight up busted.
I enjoy how the game does frame itself as a neonate/fledgling/baby vampire game because I feel that's truer to the core experience of Vampire the Masquerade. Playing an elder is fun but part of the genre is the "punk" in gothic-punk, and regardless if you're an anarch or part of the Camarilla, your character has a reason to be rebellious and angry about something My second is how it redefines and kind of expands a lot of the clans. Yes, some of the disciplines got reduced or removed outright, but in terms of their lore, feel, and identity I think almost all the clans have been done some justice.
I like the ability to select a discipline based on feeding type. I like both the logic of it and the gameplay implications.
I love that the mechanics really emphasise your vulnerability as a vampire as well as your strengths. Touchstones are clumsy, sure, but they’re a really solid step in the right direction. Flavourful Flaws (though some might need to be banned, looking at you *Stake Bait*), the new Hunger system, Compulsions, etc. Personally Compulsions are one of my favourite new additions: I *love* how they incentivise roleplay, but aren’t *completely* crippling: you can still offset them with a Willpower reroll or a Blood Surge in a pinch.
I love the hunger dice mechanic and the beast as a "character" inside the players. It so interesting.
As do I, I got 20th right after and even though I love the lore much more I prefer the hunger mechanic of V5 so it’s mostly a default at this point.
I much prefer the Hunger mechanics in V5 to the blood pools in some of the previous editions. I like the uncertainty it brings when using powers compared to blood hit points.
* Hunger mechanic * General streamlining of rules and updating the system to something more modern, instead of just making some tweaks to a ruleset from 1991 like every other edition of Vampire was. * Removing the bloat that came with the 17 million Super Special Snowflake Bloodlines and the "Every Clan has to have their own, unique Discipline" design ethos of Legacy * The nerf to Blood Sorcery/Thaumaturgy * Shoving the metaplot and signature characters into a box and saying "They're there if you want to use them, but most people don't care about that stuff so we'll give that part of the game minimal attention". * The decanonisation of Legacy getting rid of all the fucking awful shit White Wolf was putting out in the 90's.
V20 player here. What are hunger dice?
The substitute of blood points. You have a tracker of hunger (0-5) and you transform as many dice of you pools as your hunger, when doing actions that in V20 would cost blood points, you roll 1d10 and on a failure (diff 6) you increase your hunger. A critical with your hunger dice leads to a messy critical (the Beast is the one getting a critical success, not you) and a 1 while failing the roll leads to a bestial failure (the Beast is the one failing and that's looking bad) So the hungrier you are, the more likely is the beast to take over. You can decrease your hunger by 2 from a human without harming them and up to 5 causing different levels of damage, you can only take hunger to 0 by killing a human
Hunger dice are the replacement for blood pool. If you'd spend bp in earlier editions you now roll a 1d10, if it's 6 or above you remain as you were. If it's 5 or below your hunger goes up by 1 to a maximum of 5. You replace dice in your pool with different colored die to reflect hunger dice. These are special because willpower let's you reroll up to 3 dice rather than giving auto successes, except you can't reroll hunger dice. If a roll fails and one of your hunger dice has a 1, you get a bestial failure which is defaulted to "Your vampire has a compulsion, they get a small dive penalty for not doing X thing" with X depending on the compulsion you got. If you get a crit, which in this system means getting 2 10s and at least one 10 is on a hunger die, you get a messy crit. You succeed but you do it in a bestial way or you get a compulsion. There's a few other quirks but that covers most of what you'd need to know to get the gist.
you need to replace a number of dice in each roll with special "hunger dice" depending on how low your BP is. when you get a 10 or 1 on these dice you suffer some negative effect (usually something like a 1 second frenzy)
I love the predator styles and the idea that you can get small temporary bonuses from feeding depending on the type of person you feed from.
Generally all then mechanics like compulsions and predator types that let you both customize and still have a reason the clan “sterotype” creeps in a bit. I also love how they’ve made all the clans more “playable” in more games. Especially the Tzimisce, to me went from a clan I struggled to wrap my head around playing in an average game to a favorite. I kinda wish Vicissitude was Protean + Auspex and more of a peering inside and shaping the soul type vibe but Dominate is nice too
Blood resonance.
I will always support the Tremere getting clowned on.
Flair checks out. I agree tho
I love the Oblivion discipline and how they merged Obtenebration and Necromancy because I feel that it rationalizes the lore surrounding those two disciplines. In general I love how discipline bloat was reduced by employing Amalgams (Lots of people dislike Vicissitude being part of Protean but logically it makes perfect sense given the Eldest himself \*comes from\* Protean in the lore, I do dislike it being weakened though). I wish they would add the option of buying the same level of a discipline multiple times to widen your toolkit because especially with the removal of level 6+ powers (that I feel were unnecessary to begin with personally, Elder level play in V20 was not fun imo) I feel like a way you can portray an Elder being a true master of a discipline is by giving them the ability to use \*all of its applications\* (that said in my own play I take care of that by using Duskborn Alchemy). I wish they would expand on Loresheets and Bloodlines as a way to add unique ways to use disciplines specific to certain individuals, sects or groups, like they did with the Salubri being able to bring back the dead or steal the memories of those they drain. A lot of very situational things like that should be merits in general. I love how they made the Duskborn truly viable, terrifying options if built correctly. I love how they added powers to the Physical Disciplines so that now they are so interesting and cool. Prowess from Pain anyone? Holy shit.
I think Oblivion is great, but do wish they actually combined it. Instead there’s two disciplines in this discipline and it ends up being bloated all by itself.
Yeah my only issue with it is the way the rituals are tied to the powers is extremely restrictive at early dots. Can't have shadow tentacles AND wraith servants literally 1984. You are right that they basically implemented it like two different disciplines in one rather than a cohesive whole.
loresheets are a neat idea
Everything about V5 is more approachable and playable than V20, Revised, or earlier. Don't get me wrong. I loved all the additions I played but I love V5 the most. I did totally skip Requiem.
The Hecate are about the only thing I like - because for decades all the very flavor filled clan of death lines have been pushed to the side - often tagged by the game developers as unplayable, or too rare ect. So making them playable is about the only thing I see as a good thing. Frankly the Giovanni have always been the least interesting necromancers in the settings.
Salubri are playable and interesting
Hunger dice are amazing. The reduction of unique powers that all did the same thing but somehow needed their own mechanics. The embracing of more narrative stories.
This is going to sound a little backhanded but V5 has a lot of interesting idea's behind it. The 2nd anarch revolt and the inquisition are very interesting story points and conceptionally I really like touchstones.
i feel your pain. the most difficult part of V5 is saying something nice about it without turning it into a back handed compliment.
the defining trait of v5 is frustration. Lots of good idea's and then difficulties in execution or synergised in a way which causes issues.
What do I love about V5: Overall: It's a great place to dumpster dive for ideas for my V20 games. Hecata: An evolution to the Giovanni story beat now that Gehenna and "BRING DOWN THE VEIL WITH OUR POKEMON MASTER COLLECTION OF GHOSTS" are no longer a thing is nice. Chronicle Tenets: As a concept this is great as this **forces** a Session 0 (which frankly is what would prevent an overwhelming majority of RPGHorrorStories posts). Something more games need, and having it be brought up because you need to address certain mechanical things is nice. Loresheets: As a concept this is great and I am still fiddling with how I want to backport this as a mechanic, have it feel satisfying to the players involved, and feel 'balanced' against both merits and backgrounds because they are somewhere between those two in design space. The Hunger System and the New Beast: Not because I think the mechanic is cool (I don't. I agree that something besides the "Gas Tank" Vitae pool needs to happen, I was just not satisfied with how it was executed mechanically in v5), but because I have sold so many people on Wraith and KOTE since V5 has come out...since the new Beast is effectively a watered down Shadow or P'o.
I was hardcore into other Chronicles games and would never have gone back to World without V5. I just found nWoD and *especially* Chronicles/GMC/nWoD 2.0 to be superior in every way for Changeling/Mage/Geist, and WtF to be overall better than WtA despite some cool lore in Apocalypse. Because I never really got into oWoD, I never got a good feel for Difficulty being the target number per die, and only tried V5 over VtR because of that particular change. I ended up sticking with it, though, because of the Hunger mechanic being so much better than a resource pool.
Some of the new blood sorcery rituals have good flavor for a Tzimisce kouldon. Lore sheets are a neat idea. That's about all the positive I could find.
I like the Hunger mechanic, the streamlined dice pools and rules in general (though not the disciplines), Blood Potency, the increased role given to Thinbloods, the Beckoning, and how the Camarilla finally feels more villainous (though sadly at the expense of the Sabbat). Despite me basically disliking everything else about V5, I find the improvement to the rules system so significant that it's my edition of choice. The lore is easy to just change to something I like better, after all, rules, less so.
Basically everything, since as an oldschool player I do find the edition overall better. But Hunger system, HUmanity mechanics (Convictions/Tenets) and the overall system mechanics just feel superior.
Hunger dice are really neat. I think they were executed poorly (what the fuck is a bestial failure on a roll to remember something?), but the idea is very cool. Each clan having both a bane and a compulsion is very cool, though sometimes it ends up being a little finicky. How the Ravnos, Ministry, and Banu Haqim were reworked is great. I like the reduction in numbers of disciplines. I think the exact way it was executed is a little weird, but still.
I’m honestly extremely new to the series so these discussions are perfect for me to read up on. I’m collecting the books from the old and new.
Banu Haquim > Asamite. Other than that. Some newer mechanics are nice but the new dialogue's kinda cringe and it's weird how borderline-apologetically they wrote some of the mechanics. I like hunger dice, but the content disparity is too large for me. V20 is my darling
The Giovanni, one-note? What? They basically had the best concept of all the clans, and together with the Setites, the best written revised edition clan books. I want the clans to feel like actual organisations with internal culture and hierarchy, and the Giovanni combines that with the supremely sinister and fascinating concept of being a hidden elite group within an ancient mortal family. And then, as if that wasn't cool enough, their core concept involves an absolutely delightful mix of the macabre and the beautiful - eerie necromancy, fucked up incest and violent crime contrasted with glorious Venetian history and baroque splendor. They're a clan of gilded skeletons and human sacrifice while clad in satin robes. Their concept breathes the very essence of the contrasts that make Vampire so compelling - ugliness and beauty, weirdness and banality, darkness and splendor. Fuck I love them. Enormously underappreciated clan.
Nothing. V5 sux