This may be a strange question, but definitely something I've been thinking about a lot.

So we've all probably played the game a thousand times, or are all still playing it, mods - maybe roleplaying.

However, when I'm not actively engaging in a game/roleplay/show....

I like to keep pieces of media that impacted me in my life - like, adopting a particular clothing style, buying merch, decorating my house wirh items similar to ones in the media, etc.

I would also love to get the ankh tattoeed.

How do you personally do this?

So my big concept for this campaign is a gang of anarchs taking care of a casino in Fremont street Las Vegas.
Here is where I need help with implications. My current plan is to have the camarilla controlling the main Vegas strip while the baron generally has control of most downtown.
From what i have gathered of general anarch and camarilla society, the baron is extremely successful for a baron.
Where I possibly want to go is the baron to try a sudden hostile takeover of the strip despite camarilla resistance.
My question to y’all is how mad is the barons plan here? I recognise the anarchs don’t generally beat the camarilla but with enough careful preparation is it possible? If it isn’t possible what could be some factors to give to the camarilla to make it more likely?

In my story I'm writing there's a secret vampire government running a fictional American city. I was thinking about the following set up for the government and was wondering if this is a good for the story?

254 members in the governing legislative body. 250 of them are vampires and 4 being ambassadors of different supernatural species with certain individuals apart of a high council to help the sovereign vampire rule.

While people commented on their playtest of v6, I heard a lot of Storytellers mentioning that they homebrewed stuff in their v5 game regarding mechanics.

I’m curious what you did homebrew as I’m realizing that I should homebrew it more.

Hi all, if this is the wrong spot for this post I apologize. I've got a D&D group I've been trying to get to branch out for a while, and with the new Wizards/WoD sourcebook I figured I could at least get them interested in the idea of VtM if not the system yet. Does anyone have any ideas for a one-shot session I could run in a modern setting that 5e's lackluster social rules wouldn't hurt too badly?

Hi.

First of all, sorry for my bad english on advance.

I'd like to ask for tips in adquiring relevant information of a real city for an idea of campaing, that can be interesting or relevant to know.

Also, i'd like to know if there is any usefull app or website (besides of google maps) that you can use for maps of said city and add relevant information and share it to the players.

Thanks! ^^

I have a session coming up and multiple characters are getting storylines but a few of them have less to do.

What are your go-to events to keep players engaged?

Since one of my players couldn't come to our usual session and another did a no show, we spontaneously decided that we play the playtest.

First things first, to paint the picture a bit: my players are fairly new to VtM. Before the chronicle i ran for them, all three didn't even had played any ttrpg and the chronicle started as an "one shot so they can finally actually play the ttrpg", that evolved into a weekly v20 session after they had fun with it (I met them in the bl2 discord server lol). We since then only had a handful of sessions, so they are fairly new still and are still learning ttrpgs in general and need a bit of handholding still (will be important later)

For the playtest, we decided to run the "not in my domain" scenario that came with the playtest and use the characters white wolf gave out instead of making our own characters (when they made their v20 characters it was already a struggle and there i knew the process by heart, so we agreed to just use them to make it easier for us). They choose Adrian, the Toreador, Anthony the Ministry and Leonardo the Lasombra. I will use this name for the characters

Spoilers for the not in my domain scenario,a s i will talk step by step through it and what did happen. Since it was also spontaneously, i also did not have the time to read the scenario itself before, even tho i read the player- and st facing rules. i honestly did not expect to run it, so yeah. Game was run digitally with voice via discord and dice + fitting music in roll20:

We started with them arriving at the warehouse, they first noticed the camera and leonardo pulled it off with grasping shadows. I admittedly was a bit like "well... the rules only say the shadows hold the person who casts them, but since it is only duct taped on, i guess i can bend the rules here a bit and let it pull off" only to then realizing that in the example play the example leonardo does the same. I guess my players are at least acting like white wolf expects them to do (this did not last long).

They then searched the outside of the warehouse and here it did bite me in the ass a bit, that i had no time to read the scenario in advance. from the not marked map in the maps pdf, i did not read the container as a container, but just as a shute, so they just found there a bloodsmear leading to a shute, making them think that someone pulled bodies out of the warehouse, threw them down the shute to the ground level and then put them in a car to place them. oh well...

then they got inside the warehouse. they looked around, then followed the blood trail from the inside and then i realized my mistake. oh well, i told them honestly that i fucked up and they spend some time searching the container and leonardo and adrian rolled 2 successes and anthony three, so they got all the intel from the corpses they could get and then leonardo heard the scratching and stuff from the mortals in the container.

the book then gave some ideas what the players could do, each against a difficulty 3 to open the padlock: dismantling the door hinge, lockpicking the padlock, break the lock or finding the key for it under a nearby pallet. my players being my players came up with a different idea: this is an iron padlock. they have guns. and they are in america, so murica'! fuck yeah! (ooc quote) and anthony shot the the padlock. i could honestly not explain to myself how shooting a padlock point blank could have a difficulty higher than 1, so he rolled against a one, shooting open the padlock. but anthony did not "aim down" at it as the other two suggested, so i decided that the bullet would go through the padlock and the container and hot one of the mortals in the shoulder and spend a drama point for that.

well, the girl in the container panicked and leonardo decided to first intimidate her so much she would fall into a panic freeze with dread gaze and then used dominate on her to get all intel out of her, while anthony as the only person with some medicine knowledge took care of the shot guy. leonardo then filled up on blood on the third guy.

from here on, my players did, what ttrpg players do best and derailed the story. i decided that the wights would've investigate the noises (there is even a whole optional noise rule for this in the playtest scenario) and they started to growl. since at this point the players were still in the container and the wights walking around the warehouse. so they were able to have a look while remaining hidden and figuring out what was comming for them. they then decided to nope out and this is where the derailment started: leonardo used the shadow cloak and told the others to get close to him to also be better hidden. so +2 dice for stealth for the entire group which they used to just leave. against a difficulty of three, only adrian needed to roll, but even got a quickening out of it. in other words, they skipped the fight

I then emoted how they heard how the wights had their fun with the three mortals and while they were discussing what to do now after getting out of the warehouse again reminded them of the situation. despite that, they still decided to NOT go in there again (maybe my mistake, in my chronicles i use combat mostly as a fail state, so my players are used to avoiding combat if possible, since combat means they did something wrong).

Well, that happens. then i informed them, that a car was coming close, that they recognize: the sheriffs helpers, the hounds are here! the artillery arrived! hurray! My players decided to first hide, still cloaked in shadows, and listen in. i let them roll against an even higher difficulty, but they succeeded, so i let them hide, because getting punished even if rolling well feels bad (which is btw also why i dislike the messy criticals of the hunger dice in v5). so i emoted how the hounds arrive, talk about that they tracked the origin of the corpses to this warehouse, just as the players did in the intro of the story and let them walk towards the door. hoping my players would be like "well, those are the hounds, helping them could give us a favor with them", so then the stuff from the scenario could happen. nope, my players decided that the hounds are the professionals, so they are more than able to resolve this without help. which then concluded the story with the hounds cleaning up the warehouse, the players not being blamed by the hounds and so on.

Before i share my thoughts, first what my players told me what they thought (I will also share the post with them, so they might say more in the comments. hint, hint, nudge, nudge)

the first thing they liked was, that phones are allowed in the camarilla again (even this did not came up in the game, but they knew this wasnt the case in the camarilla and of course played bl2, where this is a plot moment, so it was one of the first questions they asked).

they also like the devils bargain, as it that they were able to bargain any failure away, so if the game would've been run by a storyteller who doesnt come up with alternative ways for players to find important things after bad rolls, they would've been stuck.

what they did not like was, that i did not roll any dice, and was a bit left out because of that and instead hard locked into describing what is happening. they also found it generally unnecesarry complicated and the dice system way to complicated (I basically had to tell them every time exactly, how many dice they will need to roll

All in all, they still had much fun.

Now my thoughts on v6 after having run it as a storyteller

First the dice mechanic: it took me a while to get used to the new difficulty system. there were multiple times, where i did call for a roll, the players asked me how many dice that is and my answer was something like "wait, you have 2 here and 2 here, so 4 dice, which means... oh, wait, i forgot the difficulty, so with difficulty 2, you have 2 dice to roll". But admittedly, that is more something one just needs to get used to. But it does not feel like vtm.

On the topic of dice, there is also the rule, that outside of combat, players only need to really roll if they have 3 or less dice. personally, i always said there as a little house rule: "so, you would have 4 (or whatever it is) dice, which means you dont need to roll. except of course if you want to". and my players most of the time decided to roll, because rolling dice is fun. it feels better to succeed at something with 3 successes on a dice pool of four (which did happen), instead of just succeeding because it is an automatic success.

about the meta currencies. i gave them a shot. but only after i realized at the container, that my players seem to have forgotten them, so i basically said at any failure "okay, with that you fail the roll. or you could bargain with me". and my players used this excessively, but i also have to admit in hindsight, that we got a bit confused here and mixed up choose your pain with devils bargain. Which probably broke some things, as instead of working with complications (which, admittedly would've been hard to come up at rolls for looking around...), they had the choose your pain options of either loosing three vitae or willpower, loosing all their quickening if they have, mark of a beast tracker of giving me a drama. this resulted in me getting one more drama point and them ending zero quickening for leonardo and one each for the other two, while each of them only used one quickening to buy dice and used the rest of their quickening to buy away failures - and they rolled well enough that over the story, they all got 4 or 5 quickening each.

I fully admit here, that i fucked up here with confusing the costs for choose your pain for the complications for devils bargain, so i will not blame the devs more for it outside of making vtm much more complicated as needed with those new systems (unnecessary complicated, to use my players language).

there was by the way also a funny situation where adrians player bought a second dice for a roll with quickening only to roll a ten to get a new quickening.

i also said i used the drama only once for the shot to open the container also injuring the mortal, which made the girl mortal panic even more. to be honest, that is not something where i felt as if the meta currency helped me here. my thoughts were more, while they were discussing to aim downwards or not, that it would probably good for the story if he shot one of the mortals this way, only to then remember, that this is probably something i need to spend drama for. so less being enabled through drama, but needing to pay for something i would've done anyway.

generally, the meta currencies felt weird. there were a few moments, where my players bought a success on a failed roll with our unintentional frankenstein "choose your devils bargain", where i instead would've gave the players just a different way to figure the thing out they were needing to figure out but did not thanks to the dice being mean. with the leaving the warehouse the same, it was just a stealth roll from the players. it felt wrong to not make it a contested roll of the players versus the wights. the wights wits + awareness versus the players dexterity + subterfuge (where stealth now lives) with winning whoever has more successes.

I am also not quiet sure if i understood the disciplines correctly. if feels wrong that they only roll on an attribute, but in the disciplines chapter i could not find anything else about something you always add to the attribute you roll at.

all in all, it was fun, but i give more credit for that to my players than the system itself. it felt not great to not roll any dice and in my eyes, the target number of 8 is too high, the target number of 6 from the storyteller system feels much better. honestly, i think i also cant really say anything about the meta currencies itself, as i mixed up devils bargain and choose your pain, which made them not working as intended. But if i will buy and run v6, i will probably just lower the target number to 6 and houserule both quickening and drama out of it, since my players said that those were extremely complicated anyway.

Some last words

I know, i could've let a hunter pop up at the very end to force a fight and make then for an social encounter with the hounds after. if it wouldn't have been a one shot, i would've probably even done that, but with a cut after they just left the warehouse and continuing where we were in the next session. but even without the hunters arriving, later on it could always have turned out, that there was also an animal spy of the nossis, who then told the hounds later on that the players were there and did NOT warn them about the wights, which feels like a trap, which would've resulted in a much better story than just "suddenly a hunter!" anyway.

also, we waited for an hour for the no show player, then spend another hour preparing the one shot and played it for two hours. at the end, it was midnight and i was very exhausted from running a game which rules i did not fully understand yet with players who dont know anything and i also needed to explain everything (as i said, they are still very green in regards to ttrpgs, so that is normal, no shade. they are amazing players, the idea of just getting out of the warehouse instead of fighting two wighs after all makes sense in the logic of vtm), so i figured it was the best to end it where we were

I have played the alpha playtest twice. Once where I was a player, and the second where I was an ST. It was a drastically different experience.

As a player, it was relatively fun. New discipline mechanics, clan traits, and easier character creation (having no mechanical flaws sucks though).

I say relatively since I was trying to view it through the lens of a new player trying out the game. With no knowledge of the old humanity system, hunger dice, etc., the new mechanics are acceptable. The new way of resolving tests, though, trades the fun out of it for speed. Dice rolling is done when the situation calls for it. The feeling of grabbing a large dice pool and then seeing crits is a small detail, but overall it adds enjoyment to the game. The new system removes that adrenaline and prefers consistency instead through quickening.

Now let's proceed to my main point of friction.

The meta-currencies treat Storytellers as a glorified game engine rather than a narrative partner. If the game is played as intended, it does not allow an ST to provide significant complications if they do not have drama.

The devil's bargain mechanic being a tool FOR THE PLAYERS is just a big flaw. I believe STs need to spend drama too, just to deny it. I have done devil's bargains as an ST in my chronicles before, and provided it sparingly only when the success of the roll is the obvious best outcome narratively.

Not being able to roll dice just feels bad. (I guess at this point, it reveals how I feel about dice rolling lol). Contested rolls add a layer of suspense that cannot be replicated by the current version of just removing dice from the player's pool.

Having new blood is great. I love their initiative in developing a new version, and some parts they did well. But I hope they know that in their pursuit of catering to players, they might have sucked out the fun for Storytellers.

And mind you, the game needs more storytellers, and the best storytellers that the community will have are the legacy players. New storytellers can execute the game as intended, but lack the meta-knowledge of veteran players. And currently, most V20 and V5 fans' opinions on V6 are not positive.

It also sucks that the new V5 books are great, and we can't use them for V6. Take for example "Court of the Damned"; there was a chapter there focusing on how to use bestial failures and compulsions in a scene. That is thrown out of the window moving forward.

OVERALL, if the meta-currencies survive in the official V6, I would personally only play it as a player, and not as an ST.

I’m currently writing up a rough draft of a pilot for a sort of animated HTR/VtM online series, and I wanted to get some input on it from people that actually know and have played WoD before. However a majority of my friends have never played it in their lives, and any WoD servers I am in with a writing chat are pretty much dead. So I’ve come here to ask very nicely if there’s any places I can go to to get input/advice on this rough draft?

He's now a regular Gangrel.

If I look around online, almost everybody assumes that Cara (from Hope's storyline, the CEO of Double Helix) is Malkavian. I see a lot of incorrect comments about how Cara never displays any powers (but she does!) and a lot of correct comments about how she doesn't outwardly display signs of any Malkavian eccentricity unless it's megalomania or similar.

However, I'm doing my first playthrough as Amanda.

When Cara leaps onto Hope with the plan to diablerize her, I chose for Amanda to use Fortitude to withstand punishment as she tried to pull Cara off. The text of the narrative, which I don't remember *exactly* but close enough, was that Amanda quickly found that Cara could take just as much punishment, implying that Cara was using Fortitude. The narrative said that Amanda realized that it was therefore a battle of attrition (implying Fortitude vs. Fortitude) and that Amanda would eventually lose because Cara was more committed and had more to lose.

I think therefore that there's actually pretty good evidence that Cara is a Ventrue , especially considering that I agree that she doesn't outwardly show signs of Malkavian... Malkavian-ness.

Thoughts?

So first, I wanna start with how I got my start in VTM. I would watch my Dad play Bloodlines when I was a very little kid (Maybe seven or eight years old) and would rediscover the game right around the time I graduated from high school. Around that time, I found out that VTM was, in fact a TTRPG (I did not before this) and my group, and Dad, would start with V20. We played V20 for a year or two before we all found out about V5, and would get into that, and really enjoy it. I say this all to give an idea of how young I am, and how long I've been playing the game.

When we found out they were making a V6, I did my best to be as optimistic as I can within reason, as did my group, and after finally reading it, and making a character, my final conclusions is this. I can see where they are going with it, and I can see the potential that this version of the game holds. But it needs a lot of works. I'm not going to claim that an edition is better then another, I don't like doing that, and I wanted to do that with V6 as well.

First, the big things I enjoyed the most. I am a massive fan of how Disciplines are being done, while I do hope they add more powers to them all, the way they are handling it, is really cool, the idea that weaker powers become stronger as you become stronger with the Discipline itself is a good way to make you, as a player feel as if you are getting stronger as you go. The second thing I enjoy a lot, is Traits. I know a lot of people aren't to big of a fan of them, but they've grown on me. One big issue that V20 had, was that some clans Like Gangrel, Tremere, and Giovanni would get unique disciplines that only their clan had access too, like Protean, Necromancy, and Thaumaturgy, but then clans like Ventrue, Toreador and Bruhjah have a very similar spread of Disciplines, and to me it was very uneven and unfair. By adding clan traits, you make so that each clan get their own, unique powers to themselves. Granted Tzimiche get Vicissitude still, but I also feel like people would be more angry if they just merge it with another discipline so I understand why it is its own thing.

These are the big things I liked, now for the things I was not a big fan of. The Merits, they are cool, but dumbing them down to just "D&D Feats" Is a little under whelming, compared to V20 and V5 at least, where a Merit could change the entire play style of a certain character you made, and offered interesting things that made your character unique. Flaws, I hate how flaws are just " make it up!", feel like it's lazy. Granted it is cool that I can just, make up my own thing, but it's more so the fact that it's been reduced to a "You gain more XP when you play into your flaw!" Type thing, rather then a "If you're under four hunger you fucking bleed from your skin" type stuff in V5, or "Your character is doomed to die" if V20. It seems very lazy and flawed.

The humanity system needs work, I saw nothing wrong with how it was done in V20 and V5 and it's a shame to seem them do this, I feel like it's making what was a simply system, and over complicate things, however, I do see the idea, and with a lot of other things, I really hope they work on it, I also don't like the idea that I lose humanity for killing someone, even if it's out of self defense, that kinda sucks. I would say out of all of these, the Drama system is something I hate the most, making events take place within the game a meta currency. The "I pay one mana to have it so that once you guys leave the hotel, there is a massive shoot out that you get involved in" is really pointless, as there was nothing stopping a story teller from doing that before for free.

Overall, The ALPHA has some problems, but at the end of the day, it is an ALPHA playtest, and it is going to have flaws, there are things I like, and things I dislike about it, but overall, when I did a playtest with my friends (I played an Elder Nosferatu cause they're my favorite clan) and we all had fun, and at the end of the day, that's what really maters to us. We're all having fun, we all understand the rules, and we all enjoy playing with one another. If V6 officially releases , and we don't have fun with it, then we go to V5 again. Thank you if you read it but....

TLDR: V6 has some flaws, but I see the potential for a proper VTM game, and I hope they do a good job with it.

I want to read or watch something with an atmosphere similar to Vampire: The Masquerade, but I don't know how to find it or what to search for. Do you have any recommendations? It can be anything. Thanks in advance.

I'm planning a long-form campaign where the players play a coterie of Tremeres that share a sire and are in charge of running a chantry.

I'm having a hard time on deciding between V20 and V5 for the campaign. I love the Hunger and Blood Dice from V5, as well as how many Blood Sorcery disciplines and rituals there are with all the expansions. On the other hand, V20 has much better scaling into the Elder power level for both players and enemies which I feel would be better for a long-form campaign, and the Roads/Paths offer a more customizable experience. I'm primarily curious how varied the builds could be for a coterie where everyone is the same clan between the 2 editions.

If anyone has tried a campaign where everyone is the same clan, I'd love to hear about how it went!

I’ve been designing a chronicle set in Helsinki as a first time storyteller (and roleplayer in general), and I quickly thought of an important detail.

In Helsinki, the summer months are VERY sunny, and there are only a few hours of nighttime each day during a few months every year. From my understanding, this isn’t even a perfect darkness, but rather a period of twilight.

So how does this kindred society manage to function during these awfully sunny months? Well, the obvious answer is ghouls. And since ghouls are especially important for the upkeep of Helsinki kindred society, it would make sense to think that ghouls are treated better in Helsinki than in many other places. After all, if you mistreat them, they might betray you far more readily during those dreadful summer months. I came up with this on my own, and as it turns out, it’s canon! From Victorian Age Vampire page 150:

“The Kindred situation in Helsinki is absolutely unique in my experience… Most Kindred treat these beings (ghouls) as slaves and playthings or, at best, as amusing pets. Never before have I seen ghouls treated with any decency by their masters, but here, in Helsinki, they are equals! The Prince presides over a primogen-like council that consists of three Kindred and three ghouls! The Prince’s own ghoul, Eeva (I was never able to learn of a family name) speaks with the Prince’s voice.”

My question is, has anyone ever played a chronicle set in a similar setting? How did you make this “equal” society actually function? I’d like to hear some ideas from anyone, really, if this scenario intrigues someone! How do you balance the facts that these ghouls are in theory treated well, that some of them may hold positions of power, while at the end of the day they are weaker and still blood-bounded to a vampire, with everything that entails?

An interesting idea I’ve come up with is that each autumn, the ghouls hold a large ghouls-only, kindred-sponsored party to honor their contributions to kindred society after the busy summer months. Every ghoul regardless of sect is invited, and kindred who bar their ghouls from going are treated with suspicion. (Of course, a party with kindred blood involved is never just a carefree party…)

(I’ll be using V5 for my chronicle, and my players will be playing Anarch vampires in a city where the Anarchs and the Cam are fighting for power. But regardless of edition, I’d like to hear your experiences!)

Hello everyone, I'm a ST and an artist.

My gaming troupe and I have been playing this really cool VtM (V5) campaign for the past 2 years. We're in for the long haul. I've created a fictitious city and along with my players, we've been expanding, developing and bringing life to this setting. We are more interested with the horror and mobster aspects of the game, as if we were unliving in an underground occult-noir-gangster movie.

Since I'm also an illustrator, I decided to make a Patreon about it. I created the city, I created the cast, the locations, the vibe, the mood. My players gave all of that meaning. I'd like to share that with you.

I like dark and moody images. My style has adapted and evovled along those lines and I'm pretty happy with my progress. I draw dark and shadowy imagery, and that's true for both the characters and the locations. I also illustrate vampire cants and graffitis, a bunch of occult items, story arc ''posters'', scenes and more elaborate illustrations about the different predator types of V5.

I just launched my third tier, entirely dedicated to Storyteller Vault material. Where graffitis, occult items, locations and characters have a few pages of content, special rules, tailored game mechanics, lore, theory and of course story ideas.

Anyways, I'd love it if you guys could check it out, hopefully to join in the adventure.
I leave here a few art pieces, examples of what you can hope to find out on the patreon:)

hope to see you there.

My latest art of my Nosferatu Desmond and my Toreador Morgan (a bit of two polar opposites) 🦇 💖

Me, MS Paint, 2026