V5 Players Guide is out

[Knightingale]

Can you guys explain to me why that particular description of the MInistry/Setites displeases you?

Well, even ignoring the old history of the Followers Of Set it contradicts the write-up in the V5-Anarch-book and let's limit it to one of the issues with that write-up: "Issuing a challenge to a prevailing set of beliefs doesn’t automatically make one a paragon of a contrasting perspective, however, and Ministry Kindred frequently — very frequently — succumb to the temptations of the transgressions they present as liberations."

They're supposed to be manipulators that entice other people to indulge their vices. And here's how the V5-Anarch-book described the struggle to keep this up:

Sins of the Ministry:
All clans struggle with vice, whether urged on by the Blood, or acting on depravities they possessed as mortals. The Ministry make a habit of cultivating those vices, but they are not out-of-control monsters. They carefully lure or lead other vampires into transgressive behavior to help them break out of patterns. They are enablers and promoters. Ministers claim not to take the drugs they deal, at least, not if they wish to remain in high standing within their clan. The sin that comes most easily to the clan is deception. Most Ministers lie to themselves about their self-control, and lie to those who come to them seeking spiritual guidance about the chances of success. It can be hard for a vampire encouraging others in vice to remain clear of it. The Beast is not silent, despite all the Ministry’s claims of mastery over it. It snarls in their ear to indulge, to manipulate, to despoil. Ministers cannot help but ruin beliefs, even those built after their own specifications.

Saying "Ministry Kindred frequently — very frequently — succumb to the temptations of the transgressions they present as liberations." is 1) not very subtle, 2) kinda defeats the whole image of them as manipulators and 3) "frequently - very frequently" is so over-the-top as a phrase that I'm wondering whether the writer hates this Clan or something.

[Nicolas Milioni]

Understood,i have ideas. will share them later

[The Gentleman Gamer]

Please can people refrain from copying and pasting chunks from books. You can make reference to content and synopsise it, but we don't want swathes of material copied to this forum.

[Mr Gone]

Just to say, I'm working up a new version of the Coterie sheet from this book. I had a Coterie/Domain sheet previously, but I'll be working up a new version to incorporate some of the things from the sheet in this book.

Should hopefully have it ready by Friday, assuming everything goes well... I'll keep you posted.

Hi again! I have the updated Coterie/Domain sheets ready now.

I'm pretty happy with how they turned out, so I hope you like them!


You can download them from the V5 section of my site here: https://mrgone.rocksolidshells.com/wod.html#v5


Here are some direct links should you need them:

https://mrgone.rocksolidshells.com/pdf/V5/Vampire_5thEdition_Minimalist_Coterie_Domain_Interactive.pdf

https://mrgone.rocksolidshells.com/pdf/V5/Vampire_5thEdition_Classic_Coterie_Domain_Interactive.pdf

[Welard]

Mixed feelings on this release. For new players it will be quite helpful but it seems very overpriced if you already own the other books. The alternate banes are hit or miss as well. I love the Salubri one but being able to buy out of your bane for 6xp as a Hecata feels... weird.

Some of the thin-blood merits are cool, but also contradictory with existing ones. I am, however, quite pleased with the offering of Caitiff exclusive merits and some of the new predator types.

[adambeyoncelowe]

My main issue with the six verbs thing is that they're just redundant a lot of the time. Nosferatu essentially have six different ways of being called sneaky. If they want it to work for cheat sheets and the like, they should be richer. The castoff ones are actually slightly better in that regard, and the coterie ones are much better.

I think I preferred the way Revised introduced each clan with a short paragraph before doing the double page spreads (1e and 2e did this, too, but Revised's were a bit stronger), but these would work as something at the back of the book for printing out if they just got them right.

The rules for making quick vampires look like they'll be useful. I haven't tried them out yet for balance or practicality, but as the V5 CRB chargen was a bit of a mess, this makes it easier. I also appreciate the archetypes in Shadowrun and the concepts in Essence, so this appeals to me.

I still don't like "3 points per dot" as the stated cost of Advantages, because it reads to me like the fifth dot is three points and so is the first dot. Part of the confusion is that each level of a power or trait is also called a dot (first dot, fifth dot), and they're not using "dot rating" or even "dots" (plural) to distinguish between those different usages. It's a minor thing, but I know I'm not alone in that one. What it probably should say is "dots x 3" or "number of dots x 3" to clarify.

ETA: Or "level x 3", to avoid "dots" altogether.

I do like the Tarot selection for Embrace, even though it seems more like a MTAs thing. We might even get a VTM Tarot on the horizon (unless I've missed it)! I liked V5 BNS's card-based hunting rules, so something like that could be cool.

I would also like the Predator Types to balance the dots it grants -- e.g., only giving the first dot in a Discipline, so that you can't stack them in such a way that some people get their third dot and some only get their first.

Further along, the thesaurus strikes again with the coterie stuff: Plumaire, Questari, Marechal, Sbirri. I know some of those have been used elsewhere, but these feel like they should be in-character archaic terms rather than actual game terms. The same way kine are "canaille" if you're an ancient bugger, but fledglings would just look at you funny.

I'm not that interested in the stuff about how different clans form coteries, but I've been playing for 25 years now, so I'm entirely unrepresentative of newbies and can't say if they'd find it useful. I'm sure they would, though more crunch would've appealed to me.

"More Forms of Play" is mostly useful, but again not so much for old-timers. (More on that in a sec.)

I'm not sure about the "One per session" box near the beginning, though, as it seems to suggest I should be psychic. How can I put all the events that effect me on a card before I start play, if I haven't played it yet?

I think it means I should put down any plot threads and potential rules that may crop up and which may be relevant to me, but that still seems OTT. Better would be to state which events and rules you want to focus on in a given session, so everyone can see, and then using that as a guide. Copying out everything would be impractical.

I have done something similar with "beat sheets" in the past, though, so it can work. Everyone has Intimacies (stolen from Ex3, but rated 1-5 to make them more WoD-like), and the players and ST come up with a bunch of things related to those Intimacies which they'd like to see in the game (as well as things the ST wants to entice them to do because they know it'll move the story along). When you do one, you get a little reward (in this case, a beat as per CoD).

Anyway, back to the book. It would've been nice to give a nod to Ars Magica, the WoD precursor which championed troupe play, when they talk about that in the history section. It just sort of suggests it evolved from thin air. A minor thing.

For one-on-one games, they do highlight their intensity, but I would also flag that sessions a) move faster and b) should probably be shorter so the one player doesn't have to stay in "on" mode for longer periods.

We find we're exhausted after two hours, one-on-one, but we can also whizz through things. It also puts a lot on the ST to keep things moving if the player gets tired or can't think of how to react on their own.

You need to give more prompts and be willing to set things up in such a way that reaction comes naturally. Instead of "you see two armed security guards approaching, what do you do?" it's more like "as the security guards burst in, one of them raises his gun at you, the other at your ghoul -- do you save yourself or your trusty retainer?" Feed things to the player a bit more so they're not constantly driving the story.

The solo section is too short and should have some more ideas, I think, as that's potentially a very interesting mode of play for busy people, and it's not something VTM has given much time to previously (or now). Running an IC Instagram account isn't quite enough for most people, I think.

But I am pleased they give a decent chunk of space to online play, although since those tend to fizzle out, giving tools for maintaining engagement would be a handy addition. (Maybe that's my old age speaking.)

Most of the advice is decent, though, and I think newbies will find it helpful. The whole section is a lot less waffly than the similar section in the Revised PG, though the latter has a few things I do miss here.

E.g., I'd probably give more consideration to things like XP in troupe style play, so people don't feel they're losing out for playing the ghouls for a while. There's also a good section in Revised about "accepting story offers" which would've been good here.

Next there's a chapter on touchstones and convictions. The convictions are helpful, if brief, but the stuff about touchstones doesn't really add anything (or fix anything). E.g., there's still no real incentive to engage with Touchstones, let alone involve them in your dangerous lifestyle.

One-roll memoriam makes sense, though they talk about Difficulty being adjusted up by one "die" rather than one success. Another one for the errata pile.

The opening paragraph of the revised projects section reads a bit garbled to me. E.g., it suggests that because the Projects system may be too complex for some, a streamlined system based on Projects might work better. I think they meant to replace the second use of "Projects" with something else.

The third sentence is worse: "However, it still benefits players from using this system without developing a complicated pathway to accomplish their goals with the Storyteller."

Do they mean: "Players can still benefit from this system, but without the need for a complicated pathway to accomplish their goals"? I think so, but it's late here and my hayfever is getting worse, so maybe I just can't read anymore.

More to follow later.

[adambeyoncelowe]

Okay, I've read Projects now. It's definitely a better system, but I was thrown because they call successes "milestones".

I was expecting milestones to be like those in Exalted Essence or StoryPath, where they're steps on the path to completing something, with each one requiring one or more successes to complete. But they're actually just successes, so I'd have called them successes for clarity.

It was only once I read the example that it sunk in. Until then, I was wondering how you reliably meet 2-6 milestones with only 1-5 rolls.

The system is simple -- it's basically an extended test with 1-3 Hunger Dice added in, and a limit on how many times you can roll before you fail/timeout or succeed. The Hunger Dice add in complications and costs, and sort of hints on an alternative application of Hunger Dice that would've been much more up my street -- something like Shadowrun Anarchy's glitch dice (or SR6's wild die), rather than Alien's stress dice.

[adambeyoncelowe]

And I've got to the end. There wasn't actually much after that chapter, as it mostly compiles a bunch of rules. It's 95% reprinted stuff.

There's a small change to the Samedi in their Loresheet (now the Nasyon san an), but I think that may have been in the reprint of Cults of the Blood Gods, too.

For those wondering, though, it's just the Hecata Loresheets here. There aren't any new ones. I thought they might have more bloodline loresheets to cover the last few missing lines, but sadly not.

I like most of the art for these sheets, though the Lamia looks more like a Lhiannan to me. I did wonder if that was intentional or not.

[AkatsukiLeader13]

And I've got to the end. There wasn't actually much after that chapter, as it mostly compiles a bunch of rules. It's 95% reprinted stuff.

There's a small change to the Samedi in their Loresheet (now the Nasyon san an), but I think that may have been in the reprint of Chicago by Night, too. The Pisanob also have a name change (to Children of Tenochtitlan), so ditto.

For those wondering, though, it's just the Hecata Loresheets here. There aren't any new ones. I thought they might have more bloodline loresheets to cover the last few missing lines, but sadly not.

I like most of the art for these sheets, though the Lamia looks more like a Lhiannan to me. I did wonder if that was intentional or not.

Children of Tenochtitlan was the title of the Pisanob Loresheet in CotBG with it also being a nickname for the Bloodline. As for missing Bloodlines, I'm assuming you mean missing Giovanni lines. But outside of the really minor Giovanni Families that little written about them, we have between CotBG and Children of the Blood, all the major Giovanni Families/Bloodlines have Loresheets.

[adambeyoncelowe]

Children of Tenochtitlan was the title of the Pisanob Loresheet in CotBG with it also being a nickname for the Bloodline.

Gah! You're right. And I meant CotBG upthread, not CbN. CbN was the Lasombra's V5 debut, not the Hecata's. Which, I guess, is part of the problem of scattering clans and bloodlines across random books (though CotBG makes more sense than CbN, and I'm glad OPP found a way to get them in).

As for missing Bloodlines, I'm assuming you mean missing Giovanni lines. But outside of the really minor Giovanni Families that little written about them, we have between CotBG and Children of the Blood, all the major Giovanni Families/Bloodlines have Loresheets.

I meant the non-Hecata bloodlines. There are still a few bloodlines that haven't made it into V5 at all, although I can see the argument that they're NPC only and so should go into an ST book.

However, the Nagaraja were also in an ST-only book in Revised, and they've managed to make them PC-worthy in V5, so you could do the same with the others.

I'm of the opinion that making NPC-only clans and bloodlines is the wrong way to go about it, and you should probably just rewrite them until at least some of them are playable instead.

Nothing makes a Baali with Obtenebration (or Oblivion, I guess) more appealing than saying they're verboten. People want what they can't have, and there will always be a player who wants to play the only good Baali with Obtenebration.

So instead, if you just rewrite the Baali so the good ones aren't such snowflakes, and so their powers are balanced, it takes all the bickering out of it and removes a little of the allure as well. You're more likely to get people who want to play those characters as rich roleplaying opportunities than those who just want to play something exotic and "naughty".

[Muad'Dib]

But outside of the really minor Giovanni Families that little written about them, we have between CotBG and Children of the Blood, all the major Giovanni Families/Bloodlines have Loresheets.

Which is good, normal, sensible, and of course as it should be. Certainly dedicated and specific chapters, pages, descriptions, books, and supplements are the treatment and the approach that the Giovanni Vampires deserve. This family, which is also a faction, is a very interesting and clearly defined group.

[Knightingale]

Please can people refrain from copying and pasting chunks from books. You can make reference to content and synopsise it, but we don't want swathes of material copied to this forum.

Sorry about that. Will try to keep that in mind from now on.

________________________________________________

So, here's a summary of the Ministry-writeup in the Clan-Section:

• Recruited from people who go against the majority of something
• Want to remake vampire-society by turning its taboos against it
• Despite fighting against a prevailing set of beliefs, they aren’t exactly perfect paragons for what they’re fighting against
• Ministry vampires “frequently – very frequently – succumb to the temptations of the transgressions they present as liberators”
• If Ministry vampires aren’t careful they’re falling victim to the urges of their Beast and develop expensive, sinful habits in the process
• The devout members of the Clan see themselves as guardians, protectors and even soldiers against some dark force
• While most Kindred ponder the riddle of “At Beast I am, lest a Beast I become”, the Ministry vampires believe in protecting vampires from the greater evil by tempting them to indulge in small evils (a vampire lounging around during the Night due to drugs is better than him being out there hunting or doing whatever)
• Ministry vampires wear religious symbols, jewels or snake-themed clothing/accessories as statements of earnest faith or irony.

Onto the chapter on Castoffs:

The first thing to note is that the "verbs" on the overview-page are in a lot of cases short phrases which are way more expressive than just using verbs. That's a plus in my book compared to the overview of the Clans (or tangentially related the overview of the W5 Tribes).

Caitiff

• Worthwhile write-up talking more about who Caitiff are that adds something to the write-up in the V5 corebook
• Camarilla, Sabbat and Ashirra are mentioned here actually and looking back at the Clan-chapter it's strange that the two write-ups that deviated the most from the original V5-presentation in other books (Hecata and Ministry) were also the ones that didn't mention Sects at all.

Caitiff Merits/Flaws

Mimic (3 point Merit)

• Drinking from another vampires allows you to use one Discipline power possessed by that vampire for a day but…

During this time, you mimic the donor’s clan bane with the same severity level as the donor.

• I think that drawback should take it to 2 points considering how imbalanced the Banes are

Befouling Vitae (2 point Flaw)

• Only issue here is what the ST is supposed to do with:

While these unfortunates are often too weak to be much of a threat (treat as a Ghoul; see Vampire: The Masquerade, p. 372), sometimes a trick of the Blood sees a real monster arise (treat as a Wight; see Vampire: The Masquerade, p. 375).

• So when does happen what then...? "Sometimes" is way too vague.

Debt Peon (2-Point-Flaw):

• Pointless since there’s already a Background covering this exact thing (giving a character a Debt based on the chart on pg 116 makes this Flaw redundant)

Thin-Bloods

• Says all thin-blood-chronicles are good for new players because “the characters don’t know any more about the world than you do!” and this “also allows players of older editions to painlessly reset their expectations”
• I think the complicated oppressed role of thin-bloods in kindred society plus thin-blood alchemy makes it harder not easier to get into this
• Thin-blood-alchemy needs to be more fun
• Beginning of the section on The Thin-Blood Chronicle just kinda keeps circling the drain repeating again and again that Thin-Bloods are outsiders in vampire-society and playing an all-thin-blood-chronicle is different to playing your typical vampires belonging to a Clan
• The “Organizing a Thing-Blood Chronicle” sub-section is sort-of useful to new STs here
• Organization and “Thin-Bloods and the Sects” are good player-facing info for new players (Personally I would’ve liked to see the same sections for Caitiff and all the other Clans in this book to add more depth to the Clans and more inspirations for player-options)
• Thin Blood section ends with random Mortal-stuff (seems to be an editing error)

Ghouls

• The sub-section of “The Role of Ghouls” correctly advises that you need a kinder version of the vampire-ghoul-relationship when the ghoul’s a player in order to allow the player the room to play
• Character-creation seems serviceable

Merits/Flaws

• Baneful Blood (1 or 2 dot Flaw)
• You get your Dormitor’s Flaw but it also says:

Your first domitor, the Kindred whose blood you tasted in order to become a ghoul, must be of Clan Lasombra, Malkavian, Ministry, Nosferatu, Ravnos, Salubri, or Toreador.

• Another instance where the writers realized that this doesn’t work with every Bane and so you get this restriction
• Better option would’ve been to simply not include the flaw (or maybe rethink Banes altogether to make something like this a playable, balanced option)

Mortals

• Playing a vampire’s Touchstone gets proposed but the Touchstone rules never get seriously discussed (especially in light of a changing dynamic where the Touchstone is now a player-character)
• The large paradox of this whole section is this philosophy expressed in a sidebar:

In a larger sense, mortals don’t actually have a Humanity score. Since they are human, they don’t have to pretend to be human. In other World of Darkness games with different thematic focuses, “normal humans” will have different ethical contexts — you won’t necessarily need to carry over the Humanity Trait into a different game.

• Aaand… the section just carries on to make the V5 Humanity-track a thing for human characters
• This was also the justification for why Hunters in H5 have no morality-mechanic whatsoever, so I guess it’s a bit of growth to realize you can’t just remove Humanity and replace it with nothing
• But it’s still really awkward as a mechanic to portray morality for a Mortal character

Next comes the new rules for Coteries...

[adambeyoncelowe]

I missed the "allows players of older editions to painlessly reset their expectations".

Which reads to me as "lowering your expectations is a good thing, and you should be grateful we've given you anything". Obnoxious Vampire never went away, at least!

There are so many better ways to phrase that. I'd have gone with "allows players of older editions to explore new systems and setting changes at a leisurely pace".

Which is at least more friendly!

[Knightingale]

I missed the "allows players of older editions to painlessly reset their expectations".

Which reads to me as "lowering your expectations is a good thing, and you should be grateful we've given you anything". Obnoxious Vampire never went away, at least!

There are so many better ways to phrase that. I'd have gone with "allows players of older editions to explore new systems and setting changes at a leisurely pace".

Which is at least more friendly!

It reads to me like the same writer who had this weirdly aggressive take on Loresheets in this book. That writer really doesn't seem to like the notion of anyone wanting to play with old lore or play VtM in the same way it was played in past editions.

[Asmodai]

Can you guys explain to me why that particular description of the MInistry/Setites displeases you?

Knightingale did her take already, but I feel I'd add my own couple of cents here. As I have the book myself, I went back to it.

In my mind, the whole theme of Followers of Set/Ministry is that they are master corrupters and glorious bastards at exploiting other people's weaknesses. After exploitation they turn their victims into their own product, hands on the street, herds or even new members - giving them a chance to rebuild themselves into a exploiter rather than a victim. But the only way a Setite can be weak and easily lead astray by the vices they provide is if they are unsuitable to the life of a Setite, and as such should not mar the bloodline of a God. I'm not a big fan of their stepping away from the core Set Cult, but the whole concept of the Ministry as taking the structures of Institutions and then perverting them from within towards their goals is brilliant, and totally in tune with what the Setites are about.

Now, my personal feelings aside, the writing is bad. It's a rambling statement about how the Setites are as likely to be users as they are to be the abusers. And then proceeds to claim alternately that they are awesome manipulators yet prone to failing to their own product. And then again cycle the descriptions. It's using a lot of words that provide little substance or actually analyse this dichotomy into something usable in a playable state.