My review of Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition

[CTPhipps]

Now about V5 about your review I respect your point of view and I am happy that you like the game but you are , it is an incomplete game with mechanics that just don´t work.

• Only 7 clans (Are the Thirteen clans a DLC , that´s really lame compared to V20)
• No Sabbat (Camarilla and Anarch sold in DLCs/Suplements)
• Lack of Disciplines (I am fine with serpentis being integrated in protean in fact I like that change)
• Bad Metaplot (The whole metaplot is an excuse to force you play the way the creators want and a lot of thing of it is)
• The Game is designed to make you play the ONE TRUE WAY OF HAVING FUN.
• Huge Mechanical mess (The Mechanics are not only poorly designed but are also opresive as the act as a mean to force one play style but are also contradictory with the themes of
• Price 59$

On the other hand I have V20 with

• There You Have Everything.With V20 you get All the Sects ,the Clans , the Bloodlines , The disciplines , The blood Sorcery etc.As 11twiggins said the Virtue of V20 is being a toolbox
• It´s complete in fact the point of V20 is to be the Smash Definitive Edition of the Mascarade.
• You can play it however you want , yes the mechanics are a bit messy but they allow you to have fun meanwhile V5 Mechanics are the Fun Police.
• Price 20$

V5 had potential as a concept but the released product itself isn´t worthy the money it cost when there is a better product out there and yes I am Talking of V20.

I'll address more of this but honestly, V20 was a disappointment to me. Not because it wasn't great and revived interest in the setting. It did.

It felt like an Omnibus of Revised without the Metaplot.

I was like, "Is there anything new?"

No.

It was a toolkit and I already own 40 V:TM supplements with all of its info.

Beckett's Jyhad Diary was the only thing I felt was interesting and exciting.

[Undead rabbit]

And what's new about the V5?
It's V1 all over again.
Same themes, same story, same setting, same clans, same disciplines, same personal horror.
It's like 1991 never went away.

The only things that are "new" are the thing that got more criticisms (hunger, morality).
V5 is a shameful thing, that try to force you into what Vampire was in 1991, throwing down in the sink 20 years of Vampire the Masquerade, because someone at White Wolf tought that V1 was the real true way of playing.

It's really not new. There is nothing new in V5, there is nothing new because is a sad mix-up of Requiem and Vampire the Masquerade first edition.
I

[CTPhipps]

And what's new about the V5?
It's V1 all over again.
Same themes, same story, same setting, same clans, same disciplines, same personal horror.
It's like 1991 never went away.

I think 1st Edition is BY FAR the best of Vampire so I may be biased.

Seriously, Chicago By Night 1st Edition is the Planescape Torment of Vampire.

No RPG will ever top it.

The only things that are "new" are the thing that got more criticisms (hunger, morality).
V5 is a shameful thing, that try to force you into what Vampire was in 1991, throwing down in the sink 20 years of Vampire the Masquerade, because someone at White Wolf tought that V1 was the real true way of playing.

Honestly, Vampire 5E feels like Mage: Revised.

It's a huge shakeup that pissed a lot of people off but once you give it a try, it feels really fascinating all the new directions you can take it.

I feel like the systems give a lot more for making vampires interesting in their nightly struggles.

[11twiggins]

Now about V5 about your review I respect your point of view and I am happy that you like the game but you are , it is an incomplete game with mechanics that just don´t work.

• Only 7 clans (Are the Thirteen clans a DLC , that´s really lame compared to V20)
• No Sabbat (Camarilla and Anarch sold in DLCs/Suplements)
• Lack of Disciplines (I am fine with serpentis being integrated in protean in fact I like that change)
• Bad Metaplot (The whole metaplot is an excuse to force you play the way the creators want and a lot of thing of it is)
• The Game is designed to make you play the ONE TRUE WAY OF HAVING FUN.
• Huge Mechanical mess (The Mechanics are not only poorly designed but are also opresive as the act as a mean to force one play style but are also contradictory with the themes of
• Price 59$

On the other hand I have V20 with

• There You Have Everything.With V20 you get All the Sects ,the Clans , the Bloodlines , The disciplines , The blood Sorcery etc.As 11twiggins said the Virtue of V20 is being a toolbox
• It´s complete in fact the point of V20 is to be the Smash Definitive Edition of the Mascarade.
• You can play it however you want , yes the mechanics are a bit messy but they allow you to have fun meanwhile V5 Mechanics are the Fun Police.
• Price 20$

V5 had potential as a concept but the released product itself isn´t worthy the money it cost when there is a better product out there and yes I am Talking of V20.

Agreed. The only problem with V20 is that when I ran my first game the huge influx of Bloodlines and Paths and Rare Disciplines meant that poor babbie ST me ended up introducing a tonne of random elements just because the concepts were cool. And the game was fun (very fun) but... it stopped having value as a story and started having most of its value as a game.

Which is fine, but I think that there's definitely a problem with V20 if you're reading it first time and keep getting drawn to the Shiny Things.

These days I get a lot of good out of the system and variety presented all in one book (with some truly optional extras like expanded stuff on Anarchs and Blood Magic in other books, which I do own but could have survived without), and I think what's really neat is that the system has accommodated all the different games I've run and worked for all of them, with different players and goals and focuses... you see what I mean?

And at the end of the day I like something fluid and versatile. I don't want to play a Vampire game which has a marriage of mechanics and themes baked into its core to ensure that you're Playing It Right. If I wanted that I would play Requiem; after all my opinion of Requiem has always been "it looks like a great game, but I don't want to play it".

If I did have a criticism it's that parts of Revised are copy+pasted when they should have been, well, revised (heh). Certain powers are copied verbatim despite there having been arguments about their meaning and mechanics for years. But while some of the Disciplines are still holding the old bugs, the core mechanics are a great base.

[Undead rabbit]

1) The big change in the setting of Mage were not done by Revised, but by the closing issues of 2nd edition.

The fall of Doissetep, the Spirit Nuke, the death of Porthos, the fall of the House of Helekar, the Fall of Horizon. This are things that happened in the end of the 2nd edition.

Revised just gave consequences to this.


2)Revised was new. Was a legitimate way of doing mage, a new way of interpretation. There wasn't something like Revised before. It might have been a shitty evolution but was "honest".

V5 is V1 all'over again. People played vampire in a given way since the closing issues of the first edition. And the authors choose to disregard what players liked. There is nothing new here, it's just what you had in 1991, the focus on personal horrors,the non-existant sabbat.
Mage the Ascension Revised was a new take on the setting, based on the metaplot choice of the previous edition. Vampire 5th edition is throwing in the sink 20 years of pubblication because someone liked how vampire was before 1992.

Mage Revised is a questionable interpretation, Vampire 5th edition is the Fun Police getting in and shouting "YOU SHOULD NOT PLAY LIKE YOU DID FOR 20 YEARS! THERE IS ONE TRUE WAY! FEEL THE HORROR!"

[CTPhipps]

Just a admission, I am completely unapologetically a 1st Edition Fanboy.

Chicago by Night 1st Edition is the greatest game setting of all time.

There will never be a greater Prince than Lodin.

Never someone more awesome than Sheriff for "fuck this guy."

Never a character as cute as Anita Wainwright.

Anarchs versus Camarilla over Camarilla vs. Sabbat.

Everything since has been downhill.

[Undead rabbit]

Yeah nice for you, but Vampire was 1ed for 1 year, 2nd ed lasted 7 years, Revised 6, V20 6.

And no it was not downhill, 2nd ed was it's best, and 2nd ed was the edition that made Vampire the huge success it was, not first ed.

If Vampire was probably the most important Rpg of the 90s, if Vampire is what it is, it's not thanks to the 1 year publication of the First ed. It's the second ed that defined what Vampire the Masquerade is.

So yeah, if you liked what vampire was for 1 year that's nice, good for you. If you liked what Vampire was for 20 years this is the shittiest edition in the history of shitty editions. The only things that compares is the 4th edition of Dungeon's and Dragons.

[Cifer]

Now about V5 about your review I respect your point of view and I am happy that you like the game but you are , it is an incomplete game with mechanics that just don´t work.

• Price 59$

On the other hand I have V20 with

• Price 20$

I'm sorry, are you seriously comparing the price of hardcopy V5 with the PDF of a system that's by now 7 years old? Because the V20 hardcopy at Drivethru is listed at 65$. (And the PDF is listed at 30 $ when it's not on sale while the V5 PDF costs 25 $)

[Leandro16]

I'm sorry, are you seriously comparing the price of hardcopy V5 with the PDF of a system that's by now 7 years old? Because the V20 hardcopy at Drivethru is listed at 65$. (And the PDF is listed at 30 $ when it's not on sale while the V5 PDF costs 25 $)

I am talking about V20:The Handbook edition that in my country (Spain) cost 20$.And yes I am comparing prize becuase the sheer amount of content and game options that V20 gives you eclipsates V5 by far.Plus Ultra the V20 system mechanics may have errors but are far better than the ones from V5 becuase they aren´t the fun police or contradictory with the themes of the edition as happens in V5

Being old isn´t equal to being bad.

[Monalfie]

I am talking about V20:The Handbook edition that in my country (Spain) cost 20$.And yes I am comparing prize becuase the sheer amount of content and game options that V20 gives you eclipsates V5 by far.Plus Ultra the V20 system mechanics may have errors but are far better than the ones from V5 becuase they aren´t the fun police or contradictory with the themes of the edition as happens in V5

Being old isn´t equal to being bad.

Their point is that one should expect a dated product to be cheaper (typically publications get cheaper as time goes on). So what would be fair would be to compare the hardcopy cost of V20 when released compared to the hardcopy of V5 when released.

Now, if you're saying V20 hardcopy in Spain was twenty dollars at release, that's pretty surprising.

[Heavy Arms]

It felt like an Omnibus of Revised without the Metaplot.

V20 was explicitly an omnibus edition of the game (though it includes plenty of 2e stuff).

You're also misrepresenting it's approach tot he metaplot. It isn't that it doesn't have the metaplot or avoids references to it, but it doesn't advance the metaplot past the end of 2e/start of Revised, and the discusses the Revised metaplot events if you want them to happen. It doesn't move the metaplot forward, which is different than not having it at all.

[Kammerer]

There's your problem right there. The mechanics are completely incidental to the chapter. What *I* took from the Predator types is giving suggestions for the kind of herds you cultivate. It's a role-playing tool with suggestions on the way to make it easier for you to use them, not make it easy period. If I do a predator type of "Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders" then explain Resources and Presence, it's just a sign of how I do it not that it is.

The mechanics are in the chapter and are the primary means by which it's reasonable to judge a new RPG about vampires. It's been 30 years since VtM 1e and VtM 5e did not do any breakthroughs in the areas of vampire feeding. "Osiris" is literally a 1e term. If I wanted ideas for vampire herds, literally all of vampire literature is open to me.

I mean, the whole book is about how DIFFICULT it is to feed reliably.

Vampires must have a way of reliable feeding. This isn't something optional. It might be difficult to feed during an adventure and in times of chaos, but 100% of vampires must have a routine they follow for their feeding. They roll hunger checks every night to wake up - if you moved out of your sire's basement and ever time you get hungry is a crisis - you are not surviving the winter.

I keep coming back to the fact the Predator types are about less WHAT you feed on, than how. As again, it's about giving STs and Players the ability to figure out how they want to do this. It's about reading through this and going, "I want to play THAT kind of vampire."

My complaint, my entire complaint is that Predator Types crash and burn when it comes to answering the "how". Unless you are Osiris. A Farmer is a vampire who feeds on animals, but the Farmer package is nowhere near sufficient to feed on animals. Animalism 1 and Protean 1 are not sufficient to hunt animals, 1 die in Survival isn't either. And you don't get Resources to skip the whole thing and just buy mice for your snake. Consensualist package is not sufficient to get consent. Blood Leech package is not sufficient to hunt vampires. It, quite notably, does not include a herd of thin-bloods. Predator Types are all about the what when they should be about the how.

[Leandro16]

Their point is that one should expect a dated product to be cheaper (typically publications get cheaper as time goes on). So what would be fair would be to compare the hardcopy cost of V20 when released compared to the hardcopy of V5 when released.

Now, if you're saying V20 hardcopy in Spain was twenty dollars at release, that's pretty surprising.

Well the harcopy in Spain was at 59,99 euros in his moment (39,99 in some especialized stores) but i am not talking about the HARDcover but the SOFTcover

[Heavy Arms]

TSo what would be fair would be to compare the hardcopy cost of V20 when released compared to the hardcopy of V5 when released.

There isn't really a fair way to compare the V20 core book's initial release because it was a special optional extra for the Grand Masquerade that year. It wasn't until demand for it was obvious that they decided to do normal printing of the text. So even the first general print options would be subject to a certain amount of reduced MSRP as a second release rather than a first.

Though, since it's handled by DTRPG, the physical copies don't actually go down in price (baring sales) all that much because PoD isn't trying to clear warehouse shelves and dropping the prices on physical books to move them, PDF's get cheaper. So the current $65 for the standard V20 doesn't really represent a significant drop in price (the fact that PoD + PDF is only $67 does). And $65, considering the sheer amount of information in V20 compared to V5 isn't exactly something that dissuades from Leondro16's larger point. They're within $10 of each other, and V5 is going to need multiple supplements to cover what's in V20; all of which are slated to be at a similar price range to V5 core.

[Monalfie]

There isn't really a fair way to compare the V20 core book's initial release because it was a special optional extra for the Grand Masquerade that year. It wasn't until demand for it was obvious that they decided to do normal printing of the text. So even the first general print options would be subject to a certain amount of reduced MSRP as a second release rather than a first.

Though, since it's handled by DTRPG, the physical copies don't actually go down in price (baring sales) all that much because PoD isn't trying to clear warehouse shelves and dropping the prices on physical books to move them, PDF's get cheaper. So the current $65 for the standard V20 doesn't really represent a significant drop in price (the fact that PoD + PDF is only $67 does). And $65, considering the sheer amount of information in V20 compared to V5 isn't exactly something that dissuades from Leondro16's larger point. They're within $10 of each other, and V5 is going to need multiple supplements to cover what's in V20; all of which are slated to be at a similar price range to V5 core.

Sure, I don't necessarily disagree with these points. Just that the presentation of the facts was a bit off if we're really trying to assess these things. The current relative difference in spite of content amounts is a very good point. The broader point is fair, but just was taking issue with how it was being given since it seemed like the numbers were being put forth incorrectly.

Well the harcopy in Spain was at 59,99 euros in his moment (39,99 in some especialized stores) but i am not talking about the HARDcover but the SOFTcover

The point sounds irrelevant, given how Heavy Arms talks about the release of V20 anyway that they aren't super comparable in some release aspects.