Renegade publishes VAMPIRE 5E PLAYERS GUIDE

[MyWifeIsScary]

I like Caitiff, but I also really like clans. When I make a Caitiff character, the goal is usually the same as other characters: I want to get my own territory and accumulate backgrounds, make friends, undermine enemies and so on. Immediately B-lining towards freedom fighter is foolish. Caitiff are great for versatile characters, IE you want to get 3 or more dots in more than 3 disciplines, or when you want the disciplines near one clan but don't think the weakness matches the concept you have. Being the subject of discrimination is something you can mitigate if you're clever, and it's not like the Caitiff are the only subject of vampire discrimination.

Thinbloods though? Your only goal is to become a real vampire. You might as well be playing a Hunter.

[Ragged Robin]

Caitiff work as the "ordinary person." Or "I didn't choose to be a vampire" Vampire. You can fit them in elsewhere but it's a good angle to play. Theirs also a lot of angles that can be unique points: discrimination, disenfranchisement, low cultural capital, discipline layout, who exactly is your sire etc. Lots of interesting ingredients for the pot.

To give an example by last caitiff was a stray shovelhead who was saved by a tremere (a pc from another game) who recognised her as a person she knew (they were both in uni) she's the childer of an established Sabbat priest whose (also a pc) from another game. Her main discipline lineup is auspex, obfuscate, fortitude and Dominate which comes from mentorship by the tremere and living rough and her ultimate descent from malkavians. Her real gift is her tech skills and talent for larceny. She tended to cover a lot of logistical and unglamorous work in the anarchs (tremere had her smuggled to anarch domains) often cleaning up masquarade breaches and logistics.

Nothing about this pc couldn't fit into another clan but her caitiff status synergises very well here.

Thin bloods issue issue is their fulfill the same niche in game caitiff but mechanically they're clunky an awkward. Caitiff are effectively the same as clan vampires when push comes to shove but thin bloods operate under seperate mechanics, ecology and power level. It's like running a sorceror in a masters game vs running a craft mage in a tradition one.

[Knightingale]

Outstar talked about the V5 players guide last week and here's some extra information she offered there:

• It was in development for a long time and there were a couple different iterations of the book
• This time she called the Clans-sections and Discipline-sections a “reprint”
• But she also mentioned that some powers that were in the past books won’t be in the Players Guide if they require too much explanation
• Example: The Oblivion-ritual “Ex Nihilo” which allows vampires to go to the Shadowlands and the authors decided this required too much extra information
• They also added 40 new powers, though, as a trade-off
• No Disciplines that were found in the Sabbat Book either because it’s a Players Guide
• Collects all the Predator-types from the past sourcebooks plus four new ones
• Roadkiller-Predator-type won’t be included, though
• The new ones are “Grim Reaper”, “Pursuer” and “Trapdoor” (the fourth one I didn’t really understand, something like “Montaro”)
• Coterie-rules include Clan/Thinblood-Coterie Merits, Flaws, Coterie-Domain-rules and with an extra sheet to be used
• New Merits and Flaws, including ones for Caitiff, Thinbloods, Mortals and Ghouls
• One additional alternative Bane for each Clan
• There’s a revised approach for Touchstones, Memoriam and projects in the game
• There are some clarifications for how some Disciplines work and what rolls are associated with certain Discipline-powers are sometimes being revised in the Players Guide

[omenseer]

What's the Road killer predator type? Run people over and drink from them while their down?

[Knightingale]

What's the Road killer predator type? Run people over and drink from them while their down?

It was mentioned in the chronicle book Let The Streets Run Red:

Predator Type: Roadside Killer
You belong with the vagabonds, tourists, and truckers of the world — always moving, never at home. You know how to pick out the ones whose deaths are discounted as the risk of a woman hitchhiking alone, or who simply won’t be missed at all. You still have to fight to keep other vampires away from them lest the herd thins too much, though.

In life, you either were one of them, or you met these vagrants as they rested at your roadside stop.

[omenseer]

It was mentioned in the chronicle book Let The Streets Run Red:

Interesting. Can I ask what the skill, asset, and discipline spread is?

[Knightingale]

Interesting. Can I ask what the skill, asset, and discipline spread is?

• Add a specialty Survival (the road) or Investigation (vampire cant)
• Add one dot of Fortitude or Protean
• Gain two additional dots of migrating Herd
• Gain the Flaw Prey Exclusion (locals)

Predator Pool: Dexterity or Charisma + Drive, you feed by picking up down and outs with nowhere else to go.

What I forgot to add: The reason why this one won't be part of the Players Guide according to Outstar is that 1) not many people in the community used that Predator type and 2) it was already kinda covered by Alleycat.

[omenseer]

What I forgot to add: The reason why this one won't be part of the Players Guide according to Outstar is that 1) not many people in the community used that Predator type and 2) it was already kinda covered by Alleycat.

Thank you.

[elmerg]

In this regard, Justin Achilli really complicated matters, though, didn't he? V5 for all its changes still portrayed itself as a continuation of old VtM lore and as being part of that same narrative universe. But with W5 JA led with the explicit statement that W5 would not be a continuation and that 90% of the old lore from previous editions wouldn't be canon anymore. So, now what? Do you take that approach with all WOD5E stuff from now on...? Do you make V5 an exception?

Of course, Justin Achilli's already gone... So he created W5 with a very different premise than V5 althoug both should be part of WOD5E - and then he left.

There are supposedly loresheets in W5 but who knows what they're like and it certainly could've been the case that the V5 players guide was written when it wasn't even clear yet what W5 loresheets would be like.

You can't lay all that blame on Achilli though. We've been told that most decisions, like the antagonist-focused Sabbat or not worrying about legacy/metaplot dragging forward are PDX macro-level decisions. He's doing the things that Paradox has said they want/need for the line to support its transmedia property goals.

[Knightingale]

You can't lay all that blame on Achilli though. We've been told that most decisions, like the antagonist-focused Sabbat or not worrying about legacy/metaplot dragging forward are PDX macro-level decisions. He's doing the things that Paradox has said they want/need for the line to support its transmedia property goals.

And the evidence for that is... what? There are plenty of Justin Achilli's tweets supporting what I stated originally.

What you're alleging is a conspiracy where Justin Achilli has been pressured into making certain creative decisions.

After all, there are tweets and dev-blog.posts by Justin Achilli which I have based my comments on. And the only way I could see someone counter such a claim is that someone else made those tweets or those tweets were made under duress. So unless you want to claim something like that happened, I don't know why you would excuse Justin Achilli in his role as "Creative Lead"... unless you also want to argue that the position of "Creative Lead" was meaningless and/or powerless...

[elmerg]

And the evidence for that is... what? There are plenty of Justin Achilli's tweets supporting what I stated originally.

What you're alleging is a conspiracy where Justin Achilli has been pressured into making certain creative decisions.

After all, there are tweets and dev-blog.posts by Justin Achilli which I have based my comments on. And the only way I could see someone counter such a claim is that someone else made those tweets or those tweets were made under duress. So unless you want to claim something like that happened, I don't know why you would excuse Justin Achilli in his role as "Creative Lead"... unless you also want to argue that the position of "Creative Lead" was meaningless and/or powerless...

I love how you jump right to 'oh god conspiracy'. It's not. It's just a statement from Outstar, on one of the Discords, when asked about the state of the World of Darkness. Here's the quote.

We gave an interview to VentureBeat about a year ago that goes in detail into that subject, and I would say it didn’t age badly at all! Please check it out here: https://venturebeat.com/2020/08/02/f...ingly-digital/

The keywords are “media-agnostic” and “transmedia”. Since then, we’ve announced our Hollywood-adjacent partnership and plans of bringing WoD to small and big screens, which also explains it further. Our stories need to work at the TTRPG table just like they need to work in a video game, comic book, actual play, immersive experience or on the silver screen - and our approach to IP development treats this as a baseline. TTRPG corebooks become guides for our partners on how to work with our IPs, and when we write these materials, we keep this firmly in mind.

To give a live example - explanations on how antagonists in V5 Sabbat behave in detail, what sounds or gestures they would make - this is super helpful for storytellers at the tables, but also it would help TV writers nail this down in a script, or video game designers develop them well for in-game worlds.

That, combined with other statements about the IP from other WoD team about accessibility and not having to worry about lore or old material (such as the way the V5 wiki is sourced, ignoring things that aren't in a V5 book, for example), and mentions about not needing to worry about lore as tweets and statement from other WoD employees, and the way the books haven't worried about dragging lore forward under PDX's direct involvement, paints a pretty clear picture.

A creative lead still has to adhere to any mandates the IP owners have, and Achilli would obviously be working within the bounds that Paradox has set. He's responsible for some, sure, but probably not literally everything that people lay at his feet or literally every decision made about the line. Because on a macro level, he's not in charge of the direction and needs of the IP.

[Spencer from The Hills]

1) not many people in the community used that Predator type

So they say after publishing it in Let the Streets Run Red.

[Knightingale]

So they say after publishing it in Let the Streets Run Red.

I know... It begs the question: "based on what metric...?"

After all, if you're just gonna do a summary of all the player-options presented in various books that were presented before, why be selective now...?

It was okay before but now it isn't good enough for the Players Guide...?

[TwoDSix]

I mean, it's fully possible that JA was told to make W5 and H5 break away from old lore and everything and had no issue with it, or even agreed with it. It certainly seems to agree with what he wanted nWoD to be two decades ago. It's possible that he even went further than he was told to, unless somebody gains access to WW documents or conversations regarding this stuff.

I'll note that Vampire is the one where they're most likely to want to cling to old lore, due to it being the line with the most mainstream presence from Kindred: the Embraced and Bloodlines (particularly Bloodlines). Hence why it got the soft reboot back to a pseudo-1e status with hints of Bloodlines, whereas H5 and W5 got full reboots (the former so bad that my version of VtM now has the Malleus Maleficarum instead of the SoL). With V5 they wanted to use the more mainstream bits to draw people in, whereas Apocalypse and Reckoning are obscure enough to get as thoroughly cleansed of the right wing elements as possible (despite such elements being satire).

After you've done that Justin's job becomes clear: when you've taken away 90% of a game you've got to find something to put in the book.

[Knightingale]

I mean, it's fully possible that JA was told to make W5 and H5 break away from old lore and everything and had no issue with it, or even agreed with it. It certainly seems to agree with what he wanted nWoD to be two decades ago. It's possible that he even went further than he was told to, unless somebody gains access to WW documents or conversations regarding this stuff.

We have official stuff like dev-blogs and tweets from people like Justin Achilli... and anything beyond that is speculation sadly.

I'll note that Vampire is the one where they're most likely to want to cling to old lore, due to it being the line with the most mainstream presence from Kindred: the Embraced and Bloodlines (particularly Bloodlines). Hence why it got the soft reboot back to a pseudo-1e status with hints of Bloodlines, whereas H5 and W5 got full reboots (the former so bad that my version of VtM now has the Malleus Maleficarum instead of the SoL). With V5 they wanted to use the more mainstream bits to draw people in, whereas Apocalypse and Reckoning are obscure enough to get as thoroughly cleansed of the right wing elements as possible (despite such elements being satire).

After you've done that Justin's job becomes clear: when you've taken away 90% of a game you've got to find something to put in the book.

Well, I mean this description misconstrues what happened... It isn't like Justin Achilli had been in charge from the start... So what WOD5E started out as with the release of the V5 corebook under the direction of Martin Ericsson was different from what Justin Achilli wanted to do with WOD5E.

So of course V5 is different from H5 and W5. It has less to do with the nature of the games and more to do with the change in lead-personnel.

Justin Achilli's very different vision of WOD5E was announced with his W5-dev-blogpost last year by announcing that W5 wouldn't be a continuation of old WtA-editions and that it would it be safe to assume that anything from the old editions wouldn't be canon anymore.

So the reboots for H5 and W5 were Justin Achilli's decisions while the person responsible for V5's different treatment in that regard was Martin Ericsson.

And we all know why the switch in personnel happened... so let's not pretend there's some sort of smooth continuity between V5 at the start and what became of WOD5E these days with H5 and W5.