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[Reasor]

The Kuei-jin courts canonically have so much contact with eastern werewolves, mages, and fey that calling their core rulebook "Kindred of the East" looks like a cynical sales-boosting deception in hindsight. They should have been allowed to be their own thing instead of New and Improved Diet Baja Blast Kindred....

[Reasor]

The Halaku who built the Underworld could have just screwed up at it. The Fallen made a lot of bad hasty decisions that only made things worse in those days.

[Reasor]

I never had enough interest in playing a Lasombra or a necromancer to have an opinion on the mechanics of either discipline, but I appreciate how Oblivion settles the issue with the number of Abysses the World of Darkness had acquired over the years.

[Reasor]

In lore, Dominate and Presence have my vote for the great equalizers, the ones that allow a Vampire to hold their own in the World of Darkness. When other supernaturals think of the threat Vampires represent, they think of their influence over others.

In game mechanics, the nonsense blood sorcery disciplines are obviously the only serious competitors for the top spot, with possibly Celerity right behind them.

[Reasor]

I think Revelations of the Dark Mother certainly lends itself to that reading, but it's by design an unreliable enough narrative that something else could be just as true if that serves your narrative better.

[Reasor]

I like to think the question of whether Caine is even capable of dying would hinge on whether the Creator would permit it, which opens up all sorts of other cans of worms. If God or the August Personage of Jade really has abandoned the World of Darkness, or has died Itself, then maybe Caine's curse has outlived the One who uttered it, but maybe all bets are off and he's vulnerable again if there's no authority in place to enforce the curse.

The way in which a Storyteller chooses to use Caine can be an adaptation to whatever cosmology is already in place in your games. You can even...

[Reasor]

He started out in the mail room and worked hard to get to the top.

[Reasor]

I think Caine's fate is left deliberately ambiguous in order to give Storytellers maximum freedom. He could be the bartender you go to for sage advice or the majority stockholder of PENTEX. Whatever works for you.

[Reasor]

This is a genuinely great idea. Any number of clan weaknesses could be houseruled to get worse as one's score drops, and it would really heighten the nightmare of low Humanity.

A full development of the idea might be a solid idea for any Storyteller's Vault authors reading this....

[Reasor]

The need for a national mythology is a good explanation for a lot of the weird folklore the US has accumulated in its brief history (did Bigfoot ever get statted in a White Wolf game, or were sightings just chalked up to Delirium affects from werewolf sightings?)

I've heard it said of Tolkein that The Silmarillion was a similar attempt to create an English myth cycle, since Anglo-Saxon culture doesn't have the deep and ancient roots in the UK that the Scots, the Irish, and the Welsh have....

[Reasor]

I do have to hand it to the Tremere as a clan concept; as you say, these guys sat down, thought about it really hard, did the homework, and then sought out the vampiric condition. That's pretty gangsta....

[Reasor]

Most of the clans are pretty cool, but I have a loathing for any and all that are strongly associated with any form of blood magic.

Magic spell systems have the same problem in any RPG. Over the course of any given edition of any given fantasy game line, there will inevitably be books sold separately that contribute to nothing but power creep for the spellcasters.

We hates it forever.

[Reasor]

I know that lore questions that have either no answer or multiple conflicting answers drive some folks to distraction, but one of the reasons I enjoy them is that the added air of lost history helps to sell the age of the world. It's possible for there to be no one old enough to remember some answers, and any ancients who do remember are well hidden.

[Reasor]

There are quite a few who I think tried to transcend their curse by becoming something else, but it would be perfectly on brand for the World of Darkness if the best laid plans of even these ancient monsters to escape their fates amounted to nothing in the end....

[Reasor]

I was a pen and paper RPG player before 2nd Edition AD&D, and I've never seen a commercially published adventure whose attempts at railroading could survive the capricious unpredictability of players. I do like Transylvania Chronicles' system for advancing an aging vampire when a chronicle fast forwards through several decades of downtime, though.

[Reasor]

Not that I know of, and honestly I think that's perfectly fine. The vagueness gives you some wiggle room. Maybe the war's ongoing, maybe it's over, depending on what works for the story you want to tell at your gaming table.

[Reasor]

My headcanon casts the Malhim, Heaven's second wave of warriors described by a reminiscing narrator in D:tF, as being either the 10,000 Immortals or a prototype.

[Reasor]

Off topic, but you're not alone on the Malkavians. I was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder years ago, and shudder at the idea of someone pretending to have it as a game mechanic.

V:tR's Clan Mekhet is a much more interesting take on the Auspex + Obfuscate "seer who hides in the shadows" concept, but even that execution isn't a perfect fit for the clan of Cassandras that I want.

[Reasor]

Some time between 1992 and 1998, the years when respective publications of 2nd and Revised Edition began.

[Reasor]

The Fandom site's White Wolf Wiki subsite lists six different sources in its page on the Feast of Folly, but still doesn't have a precise year when the event happened.