What's with all the V5 sour grapes?

[xguild]

I suppose experiences differ. In every game I have ever been in, Blood Pools and the concept of hunger were always house ruled to make them more relevant to the activities of the characters from session to session and more thematically appropriate to the concept of vampires and their thirst for blood. Which is pretty much what the new hunger system tries to accomplish. I would venture to guess this is more common than you (@heavy arms) suggest given the implementation into V5. Otherwise what your suggesting is that the designers redefined the blood pool system with the hunger system and no one asked for it? I have my doubts about the idea that this is how the designers approached the game they care for. It's clear to me that the hunger system is an answer to a common problem.

The other important issue the hunger system addresses is this aspect that the system can be played. Another words, with the new hunger system you can't out smart the mechanic, you can't manage your characters resource in a manner to ensure you never have negative effects as a result of good management, which is how blood pools works in all past versions of Vampire. With the hunger system, there is no such thing, you WILL be impacted by hunger and fairly often and you can't meta game your way out of it by carefully managing your blood resource. It's a darker, more in tune system with the thematic concept of the predators and monsters that Vampires are.

The last bit, the "your always hungry unless you drain someone dry", I personally can't think of a single more thematic thing that has been added to the game. To me, this is what a Vampire is... a predator who can only ever be fully satisfied if he kills. Even if I ended up sticking with V20, this is a permanent house rule, I WILL NEVER run a game of Vampire without this as part of the game.

[Lian]

Its not the same game. Now maybe it does meet all the conditions that the game should have had in 1990. But that's not what we've had for 30 Years or so. That's really it in a nutshell it doesn't matter that it might better suit its intent, people liked the warts, the sacred cows the wierdness. I will argue to the ends of the Earth that DND4 is a superior product to any itteration of 3, that its focused, tight, well balanced. And much of the "fixes" for all of DND that 4e tried made people feel it "wasn't D&D anymore"

Same thing is happening with V5. It may have continuity with V1-4 but its a completely different animal. It even has its "Spell plague" to take all the big npcs off the board. Completely rewrites the setting with the SI and the Gehenna wars. It doesn't feel like a game updated it feels like an entirely new beast. Its very much like Requiem in a way but unlike Requiem it claims continuity, it tries to use some of the old pieces.

[xguild]

As for some of the other commentary regarding Elders, I do fully get everything everyone is saying here and I totally agree. Without Elders in play this will be a very different lay of the land meta plot wise. But again, the very obvious point here that it doesn't really seem like anyone is opposing is that no Storyteller worth his salt would pick up any White Wolf book and run it straight and cold as written and rare is the Storyteller who runs the world of darkness as a whole anywhere close to as written. We adapt chunks of the meta plot where it fits our story... if the new meta plot of elders being called away doesn't work for you.. don't use it. It's really that simple. The Meta Plot is not the rules, you can't make a valid argument that says "Vampire V5 sucks because of X or Y meta plot I don't like" and have any role-player or storyteller take you seriously.. It's just hipster nonsense.

I have run games where the Camarilla never existed, I have run games where the population of Vampires was much smaller, I have run games where Vampireism is a curable disease, I have played in games in which the origins of Vampires were totally altered, I have even played in one where Vampires can walk in the day light. Meta plot, backstory, history.. these are all things that can be adapted. People play Vampire in a wide range of ways and I know there are some on the "designer and writer teams" who shall remain nameless who think they have some sort of license on "how people should play Vampire" to which I can only say.. your an idiot.

Generally though I think they get it.

[PMárk]

Its not the same game. Now maybe it does meet all the conditions that the game should have had in 1990. But that's not what we've had for 30 Years or so. That's really it in a nutshell it doesn't matter that it might better suit its intent, people liked the warts, the sacred cows the wierdness. I will argue to the ends of the Earth that DND4 is a superior product to any itteration of 3, that its focused, tight, well balanced. And much of the "fixes" for all of DND that 4e tried made people feel it "wasn't D&D anymore"

Same thing is happening with V5. It may have continuity with V1-4 but its a completely different animal. It even has its "Spell plague" to take all the big npcs off the board. Completely rewrites the setting with the SI and the Gehenna wars. It doesn't feel like a game updated it feels like an entirely new beast. Its very much like Requiem in a way but unlike Requiem it claims continuity, it tries to use some of the old pieces.

That's the gist of it, really.

The setting changed wildly, the rules changed wildly and lots of the rules are feeling half-baked, as Heavy Arms explained, or lot of people just doesn't like the premises of, aminly Hunger and/or Touchstones.

Of course if you think thse are in fact, good changes and you like the new take on the setting more, you won't get the "sour gripes". For the rest of us, the game doesn't really feel like the continuity of VtM and it's the problem, because:

a, We wanted that. Not the game to be exactly the same (what would have been the point of that?), but not these wild changes either.
b, V20 is stopped at this point.

So it's basically Requiem all over again, or the Avatar Storm, or D&D 4e, for a lot of us, where we feel that the game (including the setting) is too different from the game we liked and at the same time the game we liked is discontinued.

So yeah, it's a sour grape, because we've likely lost our games again in the name of "progressing" and "opening up space for players" and "modern game design".

We wanted new, we eanted progression and up-to-date rules, but not a game and setting this different. That's what you get, when you make sweeping changes to a thing lots of people liked, a divide in the community and the fanbase. I'd have think we've seen it already enough during the early 2000's, when everyone wanted to make sweeping reforms, for now to know better, to realize that people bought a thing, because they like dit and tehre's no guarantee that they will on board with a radically changed new version. I guess I was wrong.


And yeah, "you still have the old stuff" is as much of a fallacy as the "rule zero" one.

[Herbert_West]

The Meta Plot is not the rules, you can't make a valid argument that says "Vampire V5 sucks because of X or Y meta plot I don't like" and have any role-player or storyteller take you seriously.. It's just hipster nonsense.

Good to know half the forum arent role-players or storytellers, then.

[Undead rabbit]

As for some of the other commentary regarding Elders, I do fully get everything everyone is saying here and I totally agree. Without Elders in play this will be a very different lay of the land meta plot wise. But again, the very obvious point here that it doesn't really seem like anyone is opposing is that no Storyteller worth his salt would pick up any White Wolf book and run it straight and cold as written and rare is the Storyteller who runs the world of darkness as a whole anywhere close to as written. We adapt chunks of the meta plot where it fits our story... if the new meta plot of elders being called away doesn't work for you.. don't use it. It's really that simple. The Meta Plot is not the rules, you can't make a valid argument that says "Vampire V5 sucks because of X or Y meta plot I don't like" and have any role-player or storyteller take you seriously.. It's just hipster nonsense.

I have run games where the Camarilla never existed, I have run games where the population of Vampires was much smaller, I have run games where Vampireism is a curable disease, I have played in games in which the origins of Vampires were totally altered, I have even played in one where Vampires can walk in the day light. Meta plot, backstory, history.. these are all things that can be adapted. People play Vampire in a wide range of ways and I know there are some on the "designer and writer teams" who shall remain nameless who think they have some sort of license on "how people should play Vampire" to which I can only say.. your an idiot.

Generally though I think they get it.

Then why buy a new edition at all?
If rule zero is your argument then why are you buying V5? If you want solid rules and a general toolkit kit you have Chronicles of Darkness.
Why did people bought V20 or Revised? Or 2ed? They already had the toolkit kit with 1ed

Why bother?


That's the question: why are you buying Vampire the Masquerade 5th edition instead of doing everything you suggest in V20 or Requiem?

[Schwann145]

We wanted new, we wanted progression and up-to-date rules, but not a game and setting this different.

That sounds like an unwinnable position for White Wolf to be in, honestly.
How do you do one without the other?
New, but not really new. Progression, but not too much. Sounds like what we already had: V20.

[Chesh]

Here's the thing though - Hunger, as a mechanical concept, never existed in past editions. Never. The developers are even on record stating that it was a flaw of the old system that they specifically felt needed fixing.

That's a problem, though, because it sounds like there's something the developers simply haven't taken into account. Allow me to set the stage before making my point.

VtM, and V20 in particular, are popular. Insanely popular. The fans that it gains, it tends to keep, and those fans can be fairly devoted. Even a relatable, modernized alternative like VtR did not manage to dilute the VtM fanbase in any meaningful way, as far as I can tell. That's a remarkable thing for a tabletop.

Here's what I don't think the developers took into account: Fans fell in love with the game that was released, not the game the devs wished they would have made instead (and did eventually make with VtR). It honestly feels like the devs, in deciding which parts of the core game concept needed "fixing," completely ignored the game they actually made - the ones old fans already came to love. We didn't get V20 to play their intentions. We got it to play the finished product, whether they like it as much as we do or not.

What they see as "flaws," they should have seen as happy accidents, because they made something wildly successful that consumers love. V5 tears away a lot of what attracted, what was it, 2/3 of the fans? And yes, we'll always have V20, but the devs wouldn't make a new edition unless they were hoping to continue the gameline onward, and "hope we get enough new fans to displace all the old ones who don't want the new material" probably isn't what they had in mind, either.

[Undead rabbit]

There where plenty of ways to give progression both in the metaplot and in the rules without changing the core essence of the setting : the third Sabbat civil war, Mithras pulling england out of the Camarilla, Pieterzoon creating a new sect, the full return of the Cappadocian, Anosh war against the True Black Hand, caitiff creating a true faction, the problems with the schismatic being full fledged members of the Ivory tower, the baali return with Ur-shulgi,Eigermann rise...there where dozens of things you could have done that would have pushed the metaplot forward without killing the nature of the setting.

Same for rules, plenty of things you could take from requiem to give a more streamlined game, and your solution was Hunger dice, a combat system that lack depth and no Elder rules.

[Chesh]

That sounds like an unwinnable position for White Wolf to be in, honestly.
How do you do one without the other?
New, but not really new. Progression, but not too much. Sounds like what we already had: V20.

Whitewolf was at an advantage here. They already had an existing comparison to VtM: VtR. Two vampire games, similar but different mechanics, similar but ultimately different lore, different core concepts, all clearly different enough that the older game's big fans aren't willing to switch over completely. Anything that drove Masquerade too far toward the Requiem side of the scale should have been recognized as a sub-optimal strategy if they cared about appealing to older fans of the game. That's how you do one without the other.

[Herbert_West]

I would hazard a guess that the V:tM community would have liked a metaplot based on BJD, rather than what it got.

[Undead rabbit]

That's a problem, though, because it sounds like there's something the developers simply haven't taken into account. Allow me to set the stage before making my point.

VtM, and V20 in particular, are popular. Insanely popular. The fans that it gains, it tends to keep, and those fans can be fairly devoted. Even a relatable, modernized alternative like VtR did not manage to dilute the VtM fanbase in any meaningful way, as far as I can tell. That's a remarkable thing for a tabletop.

Here's what I don't think the developers took into account: Fans fell in love with the game that was released, not the game the devs wished they would have made instead (and did eventually make with VtR). It honestly feels like the devs, in deciding which parts of the core game concept needed "fixing," completely ignored the game they actually made - the ones old fans already came to love. We didn't get V20 to play their intentions. We got it to play the finished product, whether they like it as much as we do or not.

What they see as "flaws," they should have seen as happy accidents, because they made something wildly successful that consumers love. V5 tears away a lot of what attracted, what was it, 2/3 of the fans? And yes, we'll always have V20, but the devs wouldn't make a new edition unless they were hoping to continue the gameline onward, and "hope we get enough new fans to displace all the old ones who don't want the new material" probably isn't what they had in mind, either.

I even doubt that this strategy will pay in terms of revenue. I'm not completely sure that the second edition of Requiem has outsold V20.

[PMárk]

That sounds like an unwinnable position for White Wolf to be in, honestly.
How do you do one without the other?
New, but not really new. Progression, but not too much. Sounds like what we already had: V20.

No, V20 wasn't really a progression, more an errata and the setting progressed in very minor way (a bit more in some of the supplements, but still not mucj). It was a best of edition.

The later 20th books were more like new editions, especially onward from M20, though still not that much change in setting (or the core rules), but there were changes.

But do you want examples that didn't broke the playerbase in half, because they weren't felt a totally different something?

- D&D 3e. It was quite different from Ad&D 2e, yet, most people were onboard. Not to mention 5e.
- Any edition of CoC. Yes, the setting is pretty constant, that's the nature of the thing, but there were changes in the rules, though not radical ones.
- Shadowrun 4e and 5e. Lots of changes, some grumbling, of course, but most people were onboard.
- All the CofD lines from 1e to 2e. I might be wrong, I'm not folowing that closely, but most people seem to like the new ones.

Just from the top of my head. Yes, it's a fine balance, but there's a trick to it. You just rein in your ideas about how the game would be perfect for you because you aren't making the game for you, especially in the case of long-standing IPs. So, you compromise.

You are making rules that feels like the old game, even if you change things, so yes, even if you change the mechanics, you leave some sacred cows alone. I assure you, if the Hunger system would have been an addition somehow to the bloodpool system and not a replacement and if it wouldn't have been that harsh, people would have welcomed it a lot more smoothly. Same with Touchstones, for example. If you look around, most people from the naysayer group like Convictions, but hate Touchstones. Why? Because they are forcing a playtsyle and making character concepts unviable that were viable in the past. If touchstones were an ancillary mechanic, a merit, for example, tied to yur convictions, an optional thing, you'd still have it for people who want to play that kind of vampires but it wouldn't force it on people who don't.

Or the combat system: make mechanical improvements, sure. People aren't complaining about fewer rolls, they are complaining about things that they feel are taking away from the depth of the system, not from the unecessary overcomplications. Or they don't like rules that are just feel illogical.

Discipline: literally almost everyone likes the idea behind it, multiple powers, more varied physical powers. They have problems with the implementations and the losing of some disciplines.

The same with the setting really. there's a lot of grades between progressing the setting and changing the status quo and things like that and essentially a re-writing of it. BJD foreshadowed a lot of it and it was an almost-universally well-received book. But most of the V5 changes feel quite extreme and the end result is just, yeah Spellplague, where the outcome is wildly different

So, it's a hard position yes, but not an impossible one. You just have to take a good look at what people liked about the old stuff and change things very carefully. You know, scalpel, not hatchet. Because yeah, "bold new directions" will divide the fanbase and will divide it hard. You have to build on what came before, not tearing it down and building something new, even is you're using lots of the same pieces.

[PMárk]

As for some of the other commentary regarding Elders, I do fully get everything everyone is saying here and I totally agree. Without Elders in play this will be a very different lay of the land meta plot wise. But again, the very obvious point here that it doesn't really seem like anyone is opposing is that no Storyteller worth his salt would pick up any White Wolf book and run it straight and cold as written and rare is the Storyteller who runs the world of darkness as a whole anywhere close to as written. We adapt chunks of the meta plot where it fits our story... if the new meta plot of elders being called away doesn't work for you.. don't use it. It's really that simple. The Meta Plot is not the rules, you can't make a valid argument that says "Vampire V5 sucks because of X or Y meta plot I don't like" and have any role-player or storyteller take you seriously.. It's just hipster nonsense.

I have run games where the Camarilla never existed, I have run games where the population of Vampires was much smaller, I have run games where Vampireism is a curable disease, I have played in games in which the origins of Vampires were totally altered, I have even played in one where Vampires can walk in the day light. Meta plot, backstory, history.. these are all things that can be adapted. People play Vampire in a wide range of ways and I know there are some on the "designer and writer teams" who shall remain nameless who think they have some sort of license on "how people should play Vampire" to which I can only say.. your an idiot.

Generally though I think they get it.

That's fine and dandy, but you know, lots of us played this game, because, well, we liked the setting and enjoyed the story...

[PMárk]

That's a problem, though, because it sounds like there's something the developers simply haven't taken into account. Allow me to set the stage before making my point.

VtM, and V20 in particular, are popular. Insanely popular. The fans that it gains, it tends to keep, and those fans can be fairly devoted. Even a relatable, modernized alternative like VtR did not manage to dilute the VtM fanbase in any meaningful way, as far as I can tell. That's a remarkable thing for a tabletop.

Here's what I don't think the developers took into account: Fans fell in love with the game that was released, not the game the devs wished they would have made instead (and did eventually make with VtR). It honestly feels like the devs, in deciding which parts of the core game concept needed "fixing," completely ignored the game they actually made - the ones old fans already came to love. We didn't get V20 to play their intentions. We got it to play the finished product, whether they like it as much as we do or not.

What they see as "flaws," they should have seen as happy accidents, because they made something wildly successful that consumers love. V5 tears away a lot of what attracted, what was it, 2/3 of the fans? And yes, we'll always have V20, but the devs wouldn't make a new edition unless they were hoping to continue the gameline onward, and "hope we get enough new fans to displace all the old ones who don't want the new material" probably isn't what they had in mind, either.

That's a good point. I felt it when Requiem came out an I feel it now: some of the game's developers just have different views on the game than the fanbase, which is funny, since they did the game the fanbase loves.

Like, WoD writers were always prone to berate the fans for playing dark-action-antihero-conspiracy style games, instead of the daily struggles of neonates, clinging to their humanity. Thing is, that stuff is booooriiiing after a few session and a lot of people liked the dark-anithero-conspiracy-action stuff.


Or, it might be that some of them just really liked the core premises of VtM 1e and not that much what came after, while lots of the fans came onboard liking that. Like, elders, for example and age-old conspiracies. Wasn't a thing in the 1e core, but it was the core of Chicago By Night, the book that was the seminal book for later Vampire.