[Fanon Thread] How to update the Sabbat to 5E

[Shakanaka]

your emphasis on violent revolution and killing princes is quite far removed from the origins of the game

I don't agree with CTPhipps with alot of things, but I disagree with this. To say violence isn't part of the game at all makes no sense considering the lore. Barring that, without violence Vampire society would never shift and lull. To say Kindred never or rarely fight is a misnomer, they simply wait for the perfect time to strike or when a full blown assault between sects launch out. You don't do Humanity rolls for EVERY single thing at all the time (YMMV for the ST you have however, but I recommend not even playing with those types that request Degen checks for every action), only for actions that truly grip at your thoughts or an extremely blatant violence. Vampires fight eachother all the time.

And I also disagree with the notion that the Anarchs are the same faction of the Camarilla at all. Sure they have more similarities in comparison to the Sabbat, but not much else. Anarchs within Camarilla territory that aren't hostile to the regime are just tolerated and not engaged on sight like Sabbat are. However in areas where Anarchs have their own domain, their "rules" (or however they inner manage themselves) are what goes. The Anarchs despite all their pomp also have their own Elders and even THOUGH they "claim" they're anarchic with no central authority, the Elders of the Anarchs want the Camarilla down.

Also the Camarilla are only the "normal" vampire society in the sense that their by far the most dominant all throughout the West; and yes, it very much is populated by control-hungry long lived Elders who are very snooty due to the pedigrees they have. Only the very young Camarilla Kindred are more loose and "normal" by human standards because they've just been inducted into Vampire-kind. Some stick to the Camarilla, but some decide to desert to the Anarchs which causes friction between these two Sects with a tenuous "truce" and not in open warfare like the Camarilla vs Sabbat. They Anarchs are only claimed to be "apart of the Camarilla" because the Camarilla needs to save face and to have their junior thorn to have some sense of subordination, but the Camarilla has no de facto influence or control at all on Anarch affairs. They aren't a faction within the Camarilla at all.

I suppose people think this way because they didn't have any high intensity conflict like with the Camarilla and Sabbat. That part of VTM conflict was the best for me since it aptly had a primary ideological war on feigning a false Humanity vs embracing your Vampiric nature. The Anarchs are simply a loose conglomeration of dissidents who just want the Camarilla gone. They claim its to take out the "Elders" of the Camarilla, but the Anarchs have Elders themselves within the sect so its just a war for domain and shifting the power base to the disfranchised Elders who started the 1st anarch revolt (who used to be neonates). They definitely aren't a faction within the Camarilla but another rival sect. It just didn't get focus because the main warring was between the Camarilla and Sabbat.

And no, the Camarilla haven't been the default faction for the entirety of the gameline. I don't know why you say that.

things to more of the sinister cults, alien morality, arcane rites, and other materials.

What are you talking about? The Sabbat already had all this. Not only that they were VERY distinct from the Anarchs entirely, the entire sect was. The only overlaps they had was the mutual enmity in the Camarilla, but nothing else. The Sabbat (before V5s wrecking ball) was much more organized, disciplined (barring the shovelhead induced Sabbat), and had much more protocol than the Anarchs. The only "problem" there really was that the Anarchs decidedly were very limp.

However I feel the new writers approach to going full pendulum swing and make the Sabbat even more limp and also empower the Anarchs out of nowhere make no sense. What would've been more better was the Anarchs gaining more and more power as neonates and thin-bloods join that sect, but nothing else. Now its going as exactly as you predict- the Anarchs are going to fill the niche of the Sabbat, while the Sabbat (one of the best and most interestingly written factions in oWoD) will be killed off because the writers seem to dislike them or just don't know how to incorporate them with the new imported morality system from Requiem. Now its going to be a red vs blue situation. V5 should've added more sects on top of what was already around to make VTM more interesting, not go this route.

[MyWifeIsScary]

Rather than address your interpretation of history

Oi, I resent that. For the most part I'm spitting straight facts, and at worst I'm oversimplifying (few initially wanted independence rather than just more rights as british subjects. The independence idea became a bigger deal as the war went on)

I will, however, give you the Tommy Lee Jones side-eye meme, though at the idea the Sabbat are doing the "heavy lifting" like the French since the Anarchs and Sabbat do not share the same goals

The Sabbat are quite secretive and few outside the sect really know what goes on inside it. The people who do talk about the Sabbat to outsiders tend to be unreliable.

The Anarch free state could not exist without the Sabbat.
The Anarch free state also can't continue to exist due to the Sabbat and Camarilla doing the whole Dutch/Dylan man-shake when it comes to destroying anarch states.

I am a young, young, young man, filled with sweetness and innocence, who wasn't around for the early editions and their zeitgeist. From reading these early books, I've felt that players are meant to begin the game as members of the Camarilla, with the anarchs as a faction they are likely to have sympathy for and potentially join. The sabbat were initially monsters you don't join.

Starting as anarchs and fighting for the cause you were embraced into... eh, that's a flat character arch, and not the good kind.

[PJ123]

I was around since 1E. Can't speak for other groups, but we started playing as straight up Anarchs. Mind you, not like for the cause, more like , 'we're not part of the Camarilla, so I guess...'. The Camarilla always seemed like a losing proposition. Entrenched Elders, no way to get your own, rules stacked against you... And then, we were blessed with the Players Guide to the Sabbat.

I really hope when/if they rewrite the Sabbat, they will go back to that Guide and take inspiration from it. I re read it not too long ago, and came away thinking the Sabbat portrayal there was distinctly more inhuman than the Revised treatment they got. I'd love to see them come back from the Gehenna War with various factions for variety of play (previously mentioned, but listed here):

- the disillusioned Crusader, trying to find purpose and meaning
- the hunter, seeking to wipe out those taken over by Diablerie and Infernalists
- the Infernalist, trying to keep Sleepers asleep or wake them
- the ones who stayed back, trying to keep their domains
- the defectors, both Camarilla and Anarch

What I don't want is the Revised treatment that all vampires are essentially the same, they just each have unique kewl powerz that make them Anarch, Camarilla, Sabbat.

[Elphilm]

And no, the Camarilla haven't been the default faction for the entirety of the gameline. I don't know why you say that.

What I wrote was that the Camarilla was the default player faction for the entirety of game's original run (circa 1991-2004). Here's how the original core book describes the Camarilla:

A global Conclave of Vampires, in which all Kindred may hold membership. Its rule is far from absolute, and it serves as a debating-chamber more than a government.

As for the relationship of player characters with the Camarilla:

The seven Clans from which the players can choose are all members of the Camarilla. There are others, but they exist either in their own sects or on the outskirts of Kindred society.

The following are the seven Clans, the Vampire Lineages, that make up the Camarilla. These are the Clans from which a player can choose for their character. While there are many other Clans among Vampires, these are the only ones who support the Camarilla and are thus part of the normal life and society of the Kindred.

Status: You have something of a reputation and a Status within the community of Kindred (which in the character's case almost always means the Camarilla).

(All emphases mine, obviously.) The same holds true for the 2nd Edition core. Revised Edition was, of course, the first edition to include all 13 clans in the core book, but I don't see how Revised doesn't treat the Camarilla as the default all the same. The seven original clans are repeatedly called "the clans of the Camarilla," they are presented front and center in the book, and they are the most obvious fit for the default assumptions of play made in the Storytelling chapter. Rules critical to the Sabbat and many of the independents are found only in the appendices.

All of this seems rather cut and dried to me, but what do I know.

As for the rest of your post, I don't think we're nearly as much in disagreement as it might have appeared to you from my earlier posts. Of course violent conflict -- or at least the threat of it -- is inherent to a world as dark as the setting of Vampire: The Masquerade is meant to be. In the interview I timestamped above, Mark Rein-Hagen even discusses how the Humanity rules are kind of made to be broken, because ultimately they are there to generate drama, not to turn player characters into NPCs.

My point was simply that the game that Rein-Hagen envisioned didn't celebrate violence, which is the impression I often get from CTPhipps's repeated stance that killing princes is always a good thing. Maybe that's hyperbole for comedic effect, but personally, I don't see the appeal of setting up irredeemable villains that only exist to be knocked down by the player characters. I'm not interested in a Camarilla that has zero redeeming qualities, just as I wouldn't be interested in irredeemable anarchs or whatever. Even the Sabbat, as batshit crazy as they are, should have several strong and correct points to make about vampiric existence. The game is simply more fun -- for me, at least -- when there is no obvious right side for the players to take.

[Shakanaka]

Like I said, the Camarilla WASN'T the default for the entirety of the gameline, only for parts of it. Of course the Camarilla is put that way because its merely a corebook, but way after 1st edition there have been other books for the Anarchs and Sabbat- so no, the Camarilla weren't the default for most people.

The seven Clans from which the players can choose are all members of the Camarilla. There are others, but they exist either in their own sects or on the outskirts of Kindred society.

Yes this blurb just says most of the "main" clans are in the Camarilla and that's it. It also mentions in the same length that all said seven clans are also in the other Sects or Autarkis so this doesn't mean much.

The following are the seven Clans, the Vampire Lineages, that make up the Camarilla. "These are the Clans from which a player can choose for their character."1* While there are many other Clans among Vampires, these are the only ones who support the Camarilla and are thus part of the normal life and society of the Kindred.

1* So? It just told you that seven Clans make up the organization, so you have to pick from them. It doesn't mean the Camarilla are the default across the gameline for the entire playerbase.

While there are many other Clans among Vampires, these are the only ones who support the Camarilla and are thus part of "the normal life and society of the Kindred."2*

2* Yes and the only clans before V5 that didn't support the Camarilla wholly were the Tzimisce, Lasombra, and Giovanni due to neutrality (as a matter of fact even before V5 Lasombra were in the Camarilla too now that I remember it). Beyond that said clans also support the other sects too (Anarchs and Sabbat) so this is the normal (un)life and society for Camarilla Kindred, not everything else.

Status: You have something of a reputation and a Status within the community of Kindred "(which in the character's case almost always means the Camarilla)".

This is just conjecture.

On the violence part, sure its not to be celebrated at all. Violence brings heavy change to whoever it is inflicted on or inflicted by, but its a reality of the setting within VTM and WoD as a whole like you said. To have none of it in the first place would to mean there would be no setting however. CTPhipps is decidedly correct in this- the only way for the Anarchs to advance in their agenda is to take out the Elders from the enemy sect. That's what revolution is. Straggling along makes their powerbase wane even with the flux of neonates in their ranks. There is no right side to begin with, Anarchs (and by how CTPhipps also clamor for) saying its "good to kill Camarilla Elders" doesn't display the Anarchs as good. It shows the struggle of wanting power.

The Camarilla, atleast at the high echelons, have villainous areas in some aspects; but it doesn't mean they don't have any qualities at all. Part of their Elder elitism is what makes their quality and which conflicts with the Anarch ideals. If they were so easily changed than their would be no Anarchs at all.

[Elphilm]

Why... why are you commenting on the bolded parts as if I wrote them? All of the passages I quoted are literally printed in the book, I just emphasized parts of the text to make my point clearer. If you're going to call sections of the core rules "conjecture," I doubt there's anything more to discuss here.

[Shakanaka]

Because your using sources from the 1st edition. You brought them forth as proof to show that "the Camarilla have been the default" "entirely" of the gameline when that isn't the case at all. My commentary is a refutation to that because its 1st edition as to what I clearly said beforehand "And no, the Camarilla haven't been the default faction for the entirety of the gameline. I don't know why you say that.. It hasn't been since a year after its first release with "Players Guide to the Sabbat" if my wiki-fu is correct, straight after 2nd edition- then Anarchs came sometime later. Yes it was the "default" in the beginning because the game had just started, but after that not at all. You're correct to conclude there isn't anything more to discuss here.

[CTPhipps]

What are you talking about? The Sabbat already had all this.

Yeah, my point.

That should be the part of their niche that they emphasize.

The Anarch free state could not exist without the Sabbat.
The Anarch free state also can't continue to exist due to the Sabbat and Camarilla doing the whole Dutch/Dylan man-shake when it comes to destroying anarch states.

The Sabbat invaded the Anarch Free States within a few years of its existence.

I am a young, young, young man, filled with sweetness and innocence, who wasn't around for the early editions and their zeitgeist. From reading these early books, I've felt that players are meant to begin the game as members of the Camarilla, with the anarchs as a faction they are likely to have sympathy for and potentially join. The sabbat were initially monsters you don't join.

Starting as anarchs and fighting for the cause you were embraced into... eh, that's a flat character arch, and not the good kind.

Eh, I think you're pretty accurate here with the fact that the players are meant to be exposed to the problems of the Camarilla early on. ASHES TO ASHES starts with the player characters just going to Chicago to "register" with Prince Lodin and then get blamed for his death/kidnapping. Why? Because as Neonates they have no rights and are the perfect people to scapegoat for his death.

So they actually DO have to solve Lodin's kidnapping on their own in order not to blamed for it.

One of the most persistent things about city-based politics is the Neonates are not strong enough not to be used as the disposable minions of the Elder's politics. Which is why many develop sympathy for the Anarch cause (until they find out that they're just as much full of the same level ofs bullshit).

[CTPhipps]

2nd Edition vs. Revised Sabbat

One thing that I do think is noteworthy is there is a big disconnect between the Sabbat of 2nd Edition and the Revised version. The 1st Edition ones were nebulous boogeymen without much detail but I don't think that version actually lasted long enough to be that influential in people's minds. It was just Chicago by Night and Under a Blood Red Moon where they were some Humanity 0 monsters that kept their intelligence.

The 2nd Edition sourcebooks emphasized the Sabbat were posthuman moralists. They didn't consider human beings to be important and thought it was stupid that other vampires tried to keep the morality of Kine. There was a focus on Blue and Orange Morality with every Sabbat being on a Path and being removed from humanity. There was still signs they were evil bastards but it was implied the Sabbat were a valid alternative to the Camarilla or Anarchs. Perhaps even right since vampires acting human was unnatural.

The Revised version of the Sabbat put 90% of the Sabbat back on Humanity and emphasized that they were a degenerate bunch of football hooligans with a leadership core of deformed Cthulhu cultists and and nihilistic philosophers/mad scientists. It's the same Sabbat, really, but a vastly different view of how valid their approach is. Basically, Revised takes the view that they're fooling themselves that they're posthuman moralists and the majority are just assholes. It also emphasized how alien and difficult the Paths are so you couldn't jump onto the Path of Cathari or Honorable Accord without years of training. Also, that it was probably as difficult to live on those roads as Humanity in their own way.

("No, I musn't feel remorse for my sister's death! THAT WAY LIES MERCY AND MERCY IS THE MIND-KILLER!")

So picking which version of the Sabbat you want to emphasize is a very important question in discussing which way to take the Sword of Caine.

Which version do I like? That's a very interesting question because I actually like to mix them up. I tend to play characters who are more 2nd Edition who "get it." Hesha is a Setite but gives me a good inspiration for a polite, alien, educated monster who is close to a wolf or alien in human form. His ethics are not human ethics and humans are just background noise to him. I tend to make these Sabbat disgusted by Sabbat games and torture of humans the way that torturing animals is. Moncada, Vykos, and other Elder Sabbat tend to be like this.

However, I feel like the football hooligan Sabbat serve as a valuable narrative tool that most people do not GET IT. They embrace the Sabbat's cruelty, viciousness, and cappriciousness without ever learning the responsibility or depeer occult mysteries of their religion. They're the Sunday Christians who, in-universe, treat Paths as "whatever I wanted to do anyway." I actually emphasize them as a danger to the Sabbat as a whole as they're growing much faster than the erudite philosophers.

I oddly think Taggie would enjoy my Sabbat games but can understand why he thinks my version stomps on what makes the Sabbat cool.

To make a comparison, my Sabbat are suffering the same thing the Brujah did where they're going from being the Learned Clan to the Rabble.

[Lian]

The Revised version of the Sabbat put 90% of the Sabbat back on Humanity and emphasized that they were a degenerate bunch of football hooligans with a leadership core of deformed Cthulhu cultists and and nihilistic philosophers/mad scientists. It's the same Sabbat, really, but a vastly different view of how valid their approach is. Basically, Revised takes the view that they're fooling themselves that they're posthuman moralists and the majority are just assholes. It also emphasized how alien and difficult the Paths are so you couldn't jump onto the Path of Cathari or Honorable Accord without years of training. Also, that it was probably as difficult to live on those roads as Humanity in their own way.
.

I would argue that was part of the Revised ethos that most vampire are Deluded fucks and all of their socities are FUNDIMENTALLY corrupt. Even from the perspective of that society. The Camarilla is failed in its "humanity" the Anarchs are the Revolution that people don't get. The Sabbat are Blood bound fanatics aping philosophies they can't understand.

That's what.. made the PCs special? They took humanity SERIOUSLY. They were the Rebel who was in it for the cause. They REALLY GOT paths were something more than just "do whatever the fuck I want" If everyone gets it you can't be the one who kicks down the Archbishop's door like an angry martin Luther and scream "THIS IS NOT WHAT CAINE INTENDED"

Too much of the power gap of elders has been played up and I think the lack there of in 5e will be one of the major benefits for playing the Sabbat.

[Black Fox]

My point was simply that the game that Rein-Hagen envisioned didn't celebrate violence, which is the impression I often get from CTPhipps's repeated stance that killing princes is always a good thing. Maybe that's hyperbole for comedic effect, but personally, I don't see the appeal of setting up irredeemable villains that only exist to be knocked down by the player characters.

I've known a few players who actually played first edition Vampire. It was very much a game of personal horror - of the PCs navigating the world around them as new vampires and struggling with the curse of vampirism and the Hunger - because there was relatively little known about the game world. With second edition, we learned a lot more about the setting. The game became a lot less about vampires interacting with humans, and a lot more of vampires interacting with other vampires. The game switched from vampires dealing with their condition to one of vampires battling other vampires because of politics.

Once you had real antagonists in the setting, it is not surprising that combat began to be emphasized because this is what most RPGs are about and while early vampire certainly attracted new people into the RPG market, a lot of its customer base were players shifting over from traditional RPGs that were mostly combat.

And that is not necessarily a bad thing. There's a place in the setting for vampire conflict. And if you have conflict, it is very easy for STs and PCs to shift to a white hat/black hat style game. But it certainly hijacked the game so much that by Revised we had Sabbat Crusades everywhere. It forced almost every other aspect of the game out.

I agree with CTPhipps that there are many elements in the early game which presented the Anarchs sympathetically and the Camarilla as tyrants. But it certainly also included Anarchs who were simply thugs, criminals, and murderers, and Camarilla vampires who are sympathetic. So I actually think it's a wash.

I noticed that in early second edition material, which is when I started playing, that there was a tendency for PCs to become Anarchs or at least sympathize with them while playing Camarilla vampires. However, over a relatively short time that shifted and Camarilla loyalists became more of the default for most players. One reason is that the Camarilla system evoked more a sense of mystery and wonder - an interesting society to roleplay in. While the Anarchs always remained criminal thugs which loses a lot of the allure of being a vampire. This really seemed to pick up steam after Los Angeles By Night sourcebook came out which I think disenchanted a lot of players since its portrayal of the Free State wasn't that interesting.

[Black Fox]

My impression of 1st Edition and early 2nd Edition was that there was no default template for how Camarilla cities were to be structured, and the vampiric community of each metropolis might look very different from one another. I was always disappointed when it seemed like people wanted to make every Camarilla city look like Chicago, right down to turning the character of Thomas "Sheriff" Ewell into an official position within the organization!

This is definitely true. I think a lot of this is due to LARPs and how the Camarilla defined in the Rules of the Night became commodified so that there were so many court positions and what they were, and that every clan had its primogen. The influence of that was soon reflected in most tabletop games. LARPs need an easy structure so that a large group of players, especially new ones, can make sense of things and navigate the game. But that is catering to the needs of the players, not characters.

But that was definitely not the case in the original city books. Chicago By Night famously did not have any Ventrue primogen despite being depicted as the most powerful clan over all. The Brujah had two Primogen and in fact at one point had three (the book mentions Procet and that Tyler killed him) despite the book saying the Brujah - since they were so divided - was the clan with the least influence. That was because the Primogen were not "representatives" of their clan. They were the most powerful individual vampires and recognized each other as peers, and therefore people they needed to work out deals with in order to preserve their power and control the city.

The Prince obviously needs enforcers so he had Sheriff (who was the obvious basis for the Sheriff position) and Neally (who was a prototype of the Seneschal). But of course Lodin had many others. Harpies as a concept were introduced in the first edition Player's Guide, but they were implied to be any Kindred who were interested or obsessed with status. It was more like successful popular people who dominated social life like the Heathers in the movie Heathers. It wasn't until DC By Night that we had our first characters specifically designated as Harpies. And then that turned into an official position and then given the task to monitor boons.

I do think talking about "positions" and how the Camarilla operates in practice is useful. But rather than one cookie cutter approach, it would have been best to show many domains with a variety of formal and informal roles so people understood every domain was different, although most of their needs were the same. How a Prince organizes his enforcers, and how the Primogen select themselves should reflect the composition and history of each individual domain.

[Damian May]

I've got to agree with Elphilm really. I started playing in 1992 and over all the intervening years, 5 different organised LARPS, 20 different tabletop clubs and 100s of individual campaigns across 3 continents 90% of them have been Camarilla games, 5% Sabbat, the rest Independent with only a couple being Anarch games.

But then until I started going online I never met anyone who cared about Chicago or Bloodlines among the thousands of active players I interacted with.

Now the big factor might be that I was active in Australia, Europe and Asia not the US so perhaps Anarchs were a massive thing in the US and the rest of us just ignored them?

[CTPhipps]

Oh, the Camarilla is tailor made for LARP. Being an Anarch is almost certainly better for video games or tabletop sessions given the intrigue of Elysium is pretty much the ideal setting of live action. Most stereotypical Anarchs are going to be considered disruptive unless you're the rare Idealist Brujah or a Maldavian caitiff.

One thing I think was a failure of Revised is the fact that they took the wrong nomenclature for the Camarilla while making some very good choices otherwise. Generally, I think that Chicago didn't have to be 100% the inspiration for vampire cities to generally have a very simple but probably inevitable idea of how a city would work.

Prince
I
Primogen
I
Elders-The Elite of the City
I
Sheriff
I
Deputies/Hounds/Scourge

In the original Chicago by Night, Thomas Ewell has the NICKNAME of Sheriff because he's just a thug the Prince employs to beat up people and harrass Anarchs. It's not an official position and he's considered a joke in the setting. However, the idea of the Prince having their own Darth Vader figure or Dragon (as TV tropes.org calls the chief henchman) is a blindingly obvious thing. You aren't going to want Prince Lodin or Queen Anne to go fetch people herself. You're going to need someone to be their version of Oddjob or Red Grant.

Likewise, the Primogen is just who is the most powerful vampires in the city. Them being the Clan Representatives is a side gig because it's really. "Who is too powerful in this city to ignore?" A Clan may be and probably is disproportionately represented in the city. There might be only one Gangrel in the city but if he's a thousand years old, you listen to what he says.

Calling the Elders of the City "Harpies" is stupid, though, because it's an obvious insult. I always just called them the Elders of the City even if they were Ancilla or even Neonates. Maybe sometimes I called them the Court of the Camarilla too. Technically, anyone who shows up at Elysium is part of the Court but there's really the In-Crowd and the ones who aren't.

I think most Princedoms will follow this structure just because it's the most convenient even if some Princes call themselves Warlord, Archduke, Duke, or King.

I've got to agree with Elphilm really. I started playing in 1992 and over all the intervening years, 5 different organised LARPS, 20 different clubs and 100s of individual campaigns across 3 continents 90% of them have been Camarilla games, 5% Sabbat, the rest Independent with only a couple being Anarch games.

But then until I started going online I never met anyone who cared about Chicago or Bloodlines among the thousands of active players I interacted with.

Now the big factor might be that I was active in Australia, Europe and Asia not the US so perhaps Anarchs were a massive thing in the US and the rest of us just ignored them?

I should note that my Anarch games by and large required the Camarilla. It's like suggesting, "We should do a Rebel Alliance game but the Empire doesn't exist." It can be done as we're having more Anarch-controlled cities these days but the default prior to V5 was that you would be an Anarch IN a Camarilla city. You'd have the Prince, the Primogen, and the Elders while being Neonates trying to survive.

Now is that a Camarilla game or an Anarch game?

I feel like a lot of games I ran had the PCs as survivors who might be affiliated with the Anarchs or friends with some but many were not "joiners" and tried to keep the Prince satisfied or at a distance.

To use Bloodlines as a shorthand, is the Fledgling/Los Angeles Ripper (as they're known in my game) a Camarilla or Anarch game protagonist? For most of the game they're under La Croix's thumb even as they're probably friendly with the Anarchs. They're also probably reasonably friendly with Strauss until the very end too. Yet in most games, you kill the Prince and Sheriff.

I would argue that was part of the Revised ethos that most vampire are Deluded fucks and all of their societies are FUNDIMENTALLY corrupt. Even from the perspective of that society. The Camarilla is failed in its "humanity" the Anarchs are the Revolution that people don't get. The Sabbat are Blood bound fanatics aping philosophies they can't understand.

That's what.. made the PCs special? They took humanity SERIOUSLY. They were the Rebel who was in it for the cause. They REALLY GOT paths were something more than just "do whatever the fuck I want" If everyone gets it you can't be the one who kicks down the Archbishop's door like an angry martin Luther and scream "THIS IS NOT WHAT CAINE INTENDED"

Too much of the power gap of elders has been played up and I think the lack there of in 5e will be one of the major benefits for playing the Sabbat.

I really believe in this 100%

I also feel like there was also a fact that it was implied early on that Anarchdom was something that very few Elders stayed with, Jeremy MacNeil being the exception because he was Connor Macleod (as my 14 year old self assumed all Scottish people to be, or at least immortals). Tyler is the Primogen of Chicago because she's 800 years old and gathering power is what an Elder DOES.

Juggler was a bit more tragic because he was probably a "normal" Anarch but eventually got Blood Bound so he's a pawn of the Elders and sellout whether he wants to be or not. Uriah, similarly, ends up as Lodin's slave and Gordon Keaton decides to trade in his Anarch bonafides to become a Tremere henchman. Which I kind of regret not seeing an end of that plot too.

There was a sense in the early books that time wore down Anarch idealism and you eventually became the villain (not that you started as such a great guy to begin with). We saw it also with Tara and others. Those die-hard "I hate authority so goddamn much it will last centuries!" Elders like Madame Guile or Lucita end up joining the Sabbat.

Now it seems we've reversed Tyler back to her Anarch roots and had other Elders regain their Anarch fury. I blame this on Smiling Jack because he presents an archetype that, "Yes, some Elders stay cool rather than sell out and become Camarilla Elders."

[Lian]

Now it seems we've reversed Tyler back to her Anarch roots and had other Elders regain their Anarch fury. I blame this on Smiling Jack because he presents an archetype that, "Yes, some Elders stay cool rather than sell out and become Camarilla Elders."

I've taken that more as the Anarchs are a serious faction once again so opportunist Elders are backing it. That by "winning" enough recently they have functionally lost much of their moral high ground its just upgrading the Jyhad game with a new patch.