Sell me on 5th edition

[LordOfAsh]

Ive been buying Vampire products for 30 years now, I still remember coming across the 2nd edition book in my rpg store 30 years ago (I still have this copy and its in almost-mint condition). I was also a fan of NWoD as I believe it was refreshing and did streamlined the rules. I havent bought any of the 5th edition yet though - there was 'scandal' around the time of release and Im not a fan of the artwork, It just seems like random people standing around in leather, makeup and rubber fangs (though the cover for second inquisition looks cool). Artwork is extremely important to me as it helps set the mood.

My question is: can someone sell me on 5th? Is the artwork that bad? Has it improved? Are the rules superior to V20?

[Newb95]

Ive been buying Vampire products for 30 years now, I still remember coming across the 2nd edition book in my rpg store 30 years ago (I still have this copy and its in almost-mint condition). I was also a fan of NWoD as I believe it was refreshing and did streamlined the rules. I havent bought any of the 5th edition yet though - there was 'scandal' around the time of release and Im not a fan of the artwork, It just seems like random people standing around in leather, makeup and rubber fangs (though the cover for second inquisition looks cool). Artwork is extremely important to me as it helps set the mood.

My question is: can someone sell me on 5th? Is the artwork that bad? Has it improved? Are the rules superior to V20?

Well, let me start by saying that I play requiem so I don't have a dog in this fight, the artwork is subjective, me personally I think its hideous and ruins the mood of the game, little to do about that unfortunately since its there to stay, regarding the rules, it is much faster and more narrative driven than V20, the hunger dice is an interesting idea (Its basically the atrocity dice from danse macabre for requiem, only with hunger at the base of it) but could have definitely used more polish, overall I would say that it is faster than V20, nothing to be amazed of but is an improvement, regarding the lore and the clans, well, lets just say that I'm not personally impressed, especially with the way blood sorcery was handled, there is a players guide coming that should fix some of this so I would wait for it before buying anything, in the end, its not a bad game but it lost a lot of the things that appealed to a lot of people back in the day. Just my opinion.

[SetiteFriend]

If you are a fan of refreshing takes and streamline rules I believe you'd enjoy 5th edition. I'm not that familiar with the rules from 20th, but combat is significantly streamlined and much quicker to play overall.

The rules in 5th edition are easy to grasp, I particularly like that Disciplines are now Attribute + Discipline, so you can get more creative with Character builds.

On the artwork, the photographs are only present in the "First Era' of 5th Edition, that being Corebook, Camarilla and Anarch, and even so there is still a lot of drawn/painted artwork, especially in Anarch. Every posterior books completely ditches it and has much better artwork.

[CajunKhan]

I love the Messy Critical and Bestial Failure mechanics and the idea of succeeding at a price, and the mechanics in general are cleaner. Hate the changes to the meta, especially my beloved Sabbat, but there is plenty of homebrew out there to fix that.

[MyWifeIsScary]

You should look at the Storyteller's vault if you want better Vampire content.

[Hades]

I treat V5 like I treat Matrix 2 and 3, and the new Tool album: to preserve my love for the original I fell in love with, I disregard the travesty it became.

[Heavy Arms]

I'm not really one to sell anyone on V5, but the art is getting better. It also helps that the layout is getting better as well (great art can easily be ruined by bad layout, and the subjectivity of art makes strong layout even more important).

I might be a bit biased, but it helps that the OPP licensed V5 products are much more in-keeping with the art and layout styles of OPP, and the better reception to them seems to be pushing main V5 books in a better direction.

Regarding the rules... I'll repeat myself yet again: V5 is full of good ideas, but bad executions (somewhat frustratingly, not entirely hard to fix ones, which means those of us that reported them during the playtests only to see them not get fixed are even more disappointed in the final product). If you're excited to see the good foundations underneath a fixer-upper house, you might love it and put up with the renovations you'll do (like most V20 fans already do for V20).

[Spencer from The Hills]

It's about what happens after Revised. Revised featured harbingers of Gehenna and V5 describes the decline of the Renaissance establishment and social diversification that follows, with the Masquerade starting to break down from the top. It's the sequel era to Dark Age: Vampire's prequel. Some people don't like sequels but if the world building was worth a damn, I want to know what happens next and elsewhere.

[Manfr]

Hi! For me, the huge PROs of 5th edition are:

-A wide number of narrative tools ("take half", "fail forward", "three rounds and it's done" etc.) and a set of streamlined combat mechanics make for a faster and more elegant game, in which you can focus on the important situations;

-The Hunger dice mechanic and its related Bestial Failures and Messy Criticals replace static Blood Pools with a dynamic tool that reinforces the themes of the game (the relevance of blood and feeding and the bestial nature of Kindred). In critical moments, or when you are pushing your luck, your Beast could manifest, and bring narrative consequences;

-Disciplines are streamlined too, reducing the power creep of earlier editions, but also transformed into "power trees", instead of fixed sets of powers: both PCs and NPCs become more mysterious, flexible and unpredictable. Also, Disciplines are decoupled from Abilities, allowing for greater customization of characters instead of forcing them into "the-ones-you-need-for powers" dot spreading;

-Chronicle Tenets mechanics allow for setting the moral tone of your campaign (you want a gothic game? you want a lovecraftian game, where knowledge leads to madness? you want a hack-n-slash gonzo game? you can tune your Humanity rules to your playstile), while Convictions allow for customized morality, ranging from personal ideals to the equivalents of old Paths;

-If you like street-level games, Thin-Bloods get a lot of love in the new rules, and are wonderfully customizable and unpredictable;

-Lore advancement: I really like the "societal collapse" vibe of the setting, which has been downplayed in some of the publications and reinforced more in others: widespread surveillance State and War on Terror led secret services and governments to discover the reality of Vampire infiltration, and a coalition of military, paramilitary and religious forces has started a Second Inquisition.

As the fires of Inquisition rage, the Camarilla retreats into its enclaves and becomes increasingly oppressive and militarized: old treaties are broken as Brujah and Gangrel leave the Ivory Tower in disgust, while new alliances are formed, as the Assamites and Lasombra defectors join. The Tremere Pyramid is shattered in a schism, after the Council of Seven is supposedly destroyed in an Inquisition strike.

A wave of Ancestor Worship and millenaristic religious zeal engulfs Kindred society. Nightmarish visions call the Elders to reach faraway places, from the Middle East to the jungles of Africa and South America, to lakes and icy mountains in North America, spreading apocalyptic terror and leading the Sabbat into a destructive Gehenna Crusade.

Discarded Camarilla weaklings, those Sabbat untouched by the call to religious conflict, abandoned children and Caitiffs, the ever-growing Thin Bloods, bolstered by Brujah, Gangrel and Setites, are the backbones of the Anarch Movement, who may be on the rise ... or just the biggest group of barely organized survivors on the streets.


As for art, it varies: in the corebook and in Anarch and Camarilla supplements, it's photo-realistic. OPP-licensed books use their traditional art style. Other supplements use an art style I can't properly define but that is very thematic, look at Mark Kelly's works for reference.

5th edition has rapidly become my favourite edition, in lore but also in rules: I'd never go back to older rulesets, as much as I love all of VtM.

[Ragged Robin]

The mechanics really shine in short but sweet campaigns. It's very punishing off mistakes which works well in terms of personal horror combined with the stripped down style.

[elmerg]

Here's a 'sell me' I wrote for some friends who were familiar up through Revised and MET Vampire the Masquerade. It focuses more on the changes from the initial layout (Core, Cam and Anarch) and goes over both mechanical changes and timeline advancement stuff.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...IUkU2_0EA/edit

This way you can at least see some side-by-side comparison for it.

[MyWifeIsScary]

I treat V5 like I treat Matrix 2 and 3, and the new Tool album: to preserve my love for the original I fell in love with, I disregard the travesty it became.

Bruh what's with these examples? The last Tool album's fine and doesn't affect the meaning of their prior works at all.

V5 is more like...
Alien movies after Alien 3. We can argue about whether 2 is a faithful sequel or 3 a good film (redeemed after it's initial cut) but we're all pretty sure that resurrections, AVP and prometheus are entirely different things. Probably the best analogue to V5 really.

Otherwise:
Terminator movies after 2.

[LordOfAsh]

Bruh what's with these examples? The last Tool album's fine and doesn't affect the meaning of their prior works at all.

V5 is more like...
Alien movies after Alien 3. We can argue about whether 2 is a faithful sequel or 3 a good film (redeemed after it's initial cut) but we're all pretty sure that resurrections, AVP and prometheus are entirely different things. Probably the best analogue to V5 really.

Otherwise:
Terminator movies after 2.

I was leaning towards buying a few books but this put me off - those movies are abominable 🤣

[Slasher]

It is a bad example.
I can say that D&D 3.5 is vampire 20th and vampire V5 is D&D 5.
I think those comparisons are absurd.

I think you should read the V5 core and draw your own conclusion.
If you don't like V5, you have a lot of material in V20.


*(Sorry. My English is very bad.)

[Vilenecromancer]

I recommend Cults of the Blood Gods, one of the few v5 books I still genuinely enjoy after switching to v20. Adds massive cult customizability, and give STs a great tool kit to better flavor any odd religion in one's game.