[V5] The Sabbat in V5

[Taggie]

Well, the most logic options would be Red Talons abandoning the Nation in extremism and Stargazers or Children of Gaia searching for new alliances, I suppose.

hadn't the Stargazers already done that? Moving to the Beast Courts ?

[Taggie]

Then the Sabbat is indeed a problem for the core of the game of Vampire. What's the point of being an horror game if you can totally ignore the horror part ? It'd as if in Call of Cthulu you could just have some plyers ignoring the whole alient horror of it all. And as I said, the Paths never seemed inhumans to me. They are merely a narrowing of the definition of human. Yes, even the Path of Beasts, since each and everyone of them could be followed by a human in the end.

And I say that as someone who wants the Sabbat to be playable, but not at the cost of the whole theme of the game.

The Sabbat are a different kind of horror, but still horror, Call of Cthulhu can be Cosmic Horror color out of Space style sci fi, or it can be body horror with the horrific Innsmouth mutants, or it can be slow creeping insanity, or it can be a hopeless war against cultists and old ones (The Laundry Files, or Delta Green for instance) all of those are contained inside the Mythos. Similarly the Paths offered a different take on morality, on self control and the nature of evil that Humanity doesn't and can't, Infernalism offers yet another view, who is worse, the Templar totally devoted to Honorable Accord or the Evil Revelations Cultist? Or Baali on the Path of the Hive? Or the Lasombra Abyss Mystic? Can some of those be called evil, or are they beyond that? So inhuman that they are no more evil than a hungry lion?

[Grumpy RPG Reviews]

The Path of Metamorphosis leans hard on body horror and the Path of Asakku leans hard on body horror and arguably cosmic horror and insanity.

[Taggie]

The Path of Metamorphosis leans hard on body horror and the Path of Asakku leans hard on body horror and arguably cosmic horror and insanity.

I like Asakku as a concept, but it is so, so abusable. But the it is Tal'mahe'rah so... yea.

[CTPhipps]

The Pre-Orders for the Sabbat book will arrive this month according to outstar,

[CajunKhan]

To be fair, humanity was never, from a game design perspective, a core part of the game.

Exactly. It was just one aspect of a flexible game system that could tell a variety of stories in a variety of genres. Now it's suddenly the "the core", the one thing you just must have or you are having fun wrong. It's like a burger joint insisting you eat your burger with pickles or you are scum.

[MyWifeIsScary]

Asakku just strike me as a weird variety of vampire Formor. I really like the whole "vicissitude is evil" shtick as propaganda and paranoia but not in actuality.

[CTPhipps]

Exactly. It was just one aspect of a flexible game system that could tell a variety of stories in a variety of genres. Now it's suddenly the "the core", the one thing you just must have or you are having fun wrong. It's like a burger joint insisting you eat your burger with pickles or you are scum.

If you mean Humanity (capitalized), it certainly was one of the central themes that divided the Sabbat and Camarilla as well as a major part of the rules system.

I also find it MORE flexible than less.

[Random Goblin]

Exactly. It was just one aspect of a flexible game system that could tell a variety of stories in a variety of genres. Now it's suddenly the "the core", the one thing you just must have or you are having fun wrong. It's like a burger joint insisting you eat your burger with pickles or you are scum.

I mean. Early Vampire the Masquerade was famous for telling you to do it one way or you're having fun wrong. At this point it's basically a punch line. Yes, V20 broke deliberately from that but... that took 20 years.

[CTPhipps]

Asakku just strike me as a weird variety of vampire Formor. I really like the whole "vicissitude is evil" shtick as propaganda and paranoia but not in actuality.

I mean they really have stuck to that hard.

"Vicissitude is soul eaers!"

"That's dumb!"

"Vicissitude is the ELDEST TRYING TO POSSESS YOU!"

"Why do you just want it to be evil?"

"FLESHCRAFTING IS EVIL!"

[Taggie]

Asakku just strike me as a weird variety of vampire Formor. I really like the whole "vicissitude is evil" shtick as propaganda and paranoia but not in actuality.

I like that they believe it and go all in, I don't like that they can break gen limits etc. If it stayed belief, an extreme version of Metamorphisis that would be great.

[Chris24601]

I mean they really have stuck to that hard.

"Vicissitude is soul eaers!"

"That's dumb!"

"Vicissitude is the ELDEST TRYING TO POSSESS YOU!"

"Why do you just want it to be evil?"

"FLESHCRAFTING IS EVIL!"

Personally, Vicissitude as soul eating entity/the Eldest prepping you for use as a meat puppet is fun for the same reason duking it out with the Space Fascists of Jupiter is fun and why some of the more interesting bits of the setting are where it brushes up against things that suggest a larger world (ex. the Tremere/Order or Hermes, Necromancy/Wraith, Baali/some variety of demon) without the need to make it a full crossover.

Vicissitude as something truly alien adds a degree of cosmic horror that a Storyteller might want to play with. This doesn’t mean it has to be true in every campaign (in my current campaign it’s origin is just a particular path of Blood Sorcery and rituals), but dismissing it as universally stupid just strikes me as narrow-minded and closing off options just to close off options.

[Elphilm]

I mean they really have stuck to that hard.

"Vicissitude is soul eaers!"

"That's dumb!"

"Vicissitude is the ELDEST TRYING TO POSSESS YOU!"

"Why do you just want it to be evil?"

"FLESHCRAFTING IS EVIL!"

How many times have we been through this? When the original concept of Vicissitude is a set of abilities that is more like a disease than a normal discipline, and "fleshcrafting" is just a side effect of the infestation, of course Vicissitude is going to be framed as a very bad thing. You might as well be asking: "Why does Cthulhu have to be inimical to all human life? Why can't Cthulhu be a good guy? You just want to make Cthulhu evil!"

The Elder God Kthanid, created (ironically enough, considering the topic) by Brian Lumley, proves that obviously you can make a good guy Cthulhu. Just like you can easily turn Vicissitude into a generic "plastic surgery" power. However, at that point you've drifted so far from the original concept that I fail to see what the end result adds to the setting. Why does Vampire: The Masquerade need a generic plastic surgery power? Why is the existence of some form of Vicissitude in the setting taken for granted, and it's only the original implications that ought to be removed?

Protean has you covered when it comes to traditional vampiric transformation powers. What's the point of a generic set of powers called "Vicissitude" that has been stripped of all the context that was the sole purpose why it was added to the game in the first place?

[MyWifeIsScary]

I think you absolutely need the fear of Vicissitude so that you can avoid questions like "Surely some tzmisce should like the Camarilla" or "Why hasn't the Camarilla employed fleshcrafters to help with the masquerade". You can only really answer this with a fuckton of prejudice .

So V5 making Vicissitude a mere Protean amalgam? Well that prejudice is very quickly countered as the unknown has become known.

[monteparnas]

" NO MORE, I AM SICK OF YOU AND THE POINTLESS ENDLESS EVIL BULLSHIT!"

I totally dig this guy!

To be fair, humanity was never, from a game design perspective, a core part of the game.

A what?

To begin with, this is preposterous. Humanity is the main theme of the game and, as a mechanic, one of the most important since the first book. So much so that the Paths exist, it doesn't means humanity isn't important, it means it's so important that Humanity as a trait must be transmuted into something else precisely because it can't be simply ignored. If it weren't a core part of the game the Guide to Sabbat would simply say "members of the Sabbat don't have a Humanity score".

You mean instead that the Path of Humanity, specifically and to the exclusion of everything else, weren't ever meant to be the only option. And that is probably true, although I still contest it. They probably had and idea about the paths before publishing the first edition core, but since the very core book don't allow any way for you to change or ignore Humanity it is pretty much a core part of the game, the definition of such.

Path of Humanity don't have to be a core part of the game anymore. That's a sensible affirmation, and true. Bullshitting about the one true way is always a dick move. Unfortunately one that White Wolf was guilty of for practically its entire history, but BS nonetheless. As Paths and Roads were developed the game grew and offered more options, and this is good. Giving versatility is always just plain good.

But Ur-Than wasn't talking about it, either. They specifically said that they view the Paths as narrowing humanity instead of deviating from it, not that they should be seen as that. It was a statement of interpretation, not of the right way to play the game. And I totally agree, humanity, with "h", not "H", is the core theme of the game no matter how you look at it. The game is about human minds wrapping around the idea of being a vampire and fighting the Beast, and every Path is a way to achieve that, that pretty much human necessity.

How many times have we been through this? When the original concept of Vicissitude is a set of abilities that is more like a disease than a normal discipline, and "fleshcrafting" is just a side effect of the infestation, of course Vicissitude is going to be framed as a very bad thing. You might as well be asking: "Why does Cthulhu have to be inimical to all human life? Why can't Cthulhu be a good guy? You just want to make Cthulhu evil!"

Apples and oranges, and not totally true. First that it wasn't the first concept presented to players, the very first iteration of the Discipline have nothing to do with it being a disease. Second that Vicissitude being a "disease" that may affect the mind as described in Player's Guide to the Sabbat, as much as it probably was, in fact, in the original concept of the Discipline in the devs' heads, is a very different animal from Vicissitude as the Soul-Eating Body-Snatchers From Space presented in DSotBH.

One is a viable power with drawbacks and interesting story options. The other is a single story to be told, and that have been already told and Sigourney Weaver won.