Think how could you even stop a celerity, Torry with insane senses that can sense beyond the celerity with a massive gun that it can basically make the bullets homing you at + accuracy with the extra bonus of being able to debuff you with charm!. Like just how...
@@carsonrush3352 Basically, as long as you can think of a way to justify an effect in terms of what type of magic or combination of types of magic you can do (Transmutation, Spirit, Life, etc), you can do it. It can get harder for some magic to do certain effects (healing via life magic vs healing via time/forces), but as long as you can think of a way for it to work, it can work. Also since there’s no set “spell list” so to say, you can get really creative in what you can do. For instance, I’ve seen people grow radioactive mushrooms in another person’s stomach as an attack, rip out someone’s soul and stick it in a playing card, manipulate probability in a way to give a car they’re chasing a flat tire while they’re chasing it, and make shirts that reflect attacks back at the opponent, just for a few examples.
@@Kholan95 Yes and even by Tzimisce standards, what they did was horrifying. Same goes for the Giovanni. They removed all the flavor to make it appeal to a wider audience.
I once played a French Malkavian Chef named Cyrille Arceneax. Since vampires can't eat it drives him into further insanity. He started a vampire food truck that managed to include blood into mundane foods to make them edible. It was great.
To those interested in trying out the game, you'll most likely play one of two editions: the 20th Anniversary Edition (V20) or the latest 5th Edition (V5). The 20th Anniversary Edition is an edition that is as close as you can get to the original system, with it being similar in vein or reputation to DnD 3.5E. This system by far is the one most filled with content, with a spin-off being made called Dark Ages V20, where you play instead in the medieval times. A companion game was also made called Hunters Hunted V2, where instead you play as mortals hunting vampires. V5 on the other hand is the latest one, with a fresh revamp of the old systems and a brand new shake up in the lore, particularly the Second Inquisition, where humans have discovered the vampires and wiped out a good portion of them. Each have their own advantages and disadvantages, which others can tell you. This is just to let you know what to expect when finding your first Chronicle or game.
Also also, what makes it a pain is that they spread the rule set for every single race across a separate book that don't have a lot of overlapping mechanics. So DM's (story tellers) have fun buying, reading through, and having to skim through 4+ books for your base game. Still love this game though, was my first experience into TRPG and my first experience of how outside drama can make games miserable.
Thank you! I was so confused, because I know 6 as the base difficulty with higher thresholds for bigger challenges, also the thing with 10's. Happy to hear that I wasn't completely off.
Some of the dice rules change between editions. V5, for example, has static number you need to roll, number of successes matters, 10's just count double (don't explode) and 1's don't subtract successes, they only determine if you botch (or in Vampire's case, Bestial Failure).
I appreciate you branching out and giving this game some love. That said, I -strongly- disagree with your criticism of the stories that serve to inroduce each chapter. To me, at least, the emphasis on story telling to set the mood is what helps it stand out as so immersive and moody. THAT said, I can understand if you've already got your own idea on what to do and just want to get to the player-facing mechanics.
I think it would be less of an issue if the books had better table of contents. Up until the first 20th anniversary books, it was pretty bad and showed only where chapters began but no detail at all. Only later 20th books and CofD books (the 2nd edition of the New World of Darkness) improved the table of contents to show the pages for each section inside the chapter.
@@kingcrimsonisconfusing8404 You can make your own lore, although usually what most Vampire players will expect is some (sometimes a lot) of fidelity with the lore. The pre written stories and plots a little less is expected (from my experience). Overall though, you don't need to unless you want to.
@@ZelphTheWebmancer Oh I see, I am just a GM for my friends and we are doing a campaign (it's a long term campaign) and we just got done with prologue So I was just wondering
So many choices other then vamp there's werewolf/shape shifter, mage, fae, hunter, mummy, wraith, and demon. There are also splat book's of expanded lore, rules for playing the badies plus medieval and wild west settings.
@@DreadSlash765 true, but you dont play hunter to powergame, you play it because your just a dude who's seen some shit and gone out to fight it, essentially your a Winchester
I've played this game before. And my character's clan was Ventrue and my character's personality was that of the noble who believed that the right to rule didn't belong to the strong, or cunning but to the one who would actually go out of his/her way to help out the people, and take their burdens as his/her own and let's just say my character's personality led her fellow clan members to say to her multiple times "It's noble and honorable of you to help the commoners out you certainly have their loyalty but you're also taking a very dangerous and unnecessary risk as while your heroics are good and of a honorable nature it's also a good way to get your head cut off."
WoD's sister-system, CofD, is my all-time favorite system. Not only do I just love the modern setting, I absolutely love how rp heavy the game can be. As someone who takes great interest in character dynamics and relations far more than any combative aspect of a system, CofD totally fits my playing style. It was especially fun as my ST (CofD's equal to a DM) was super communicative with the players, and with our proactive group, it felt so much more like we were crafting a story together.
I've been having a blast helping my friend make Blade in Vampire: The Masquerade. What we settled on was a Banu Haquim (middle eastern judge vampires with weapon magic) and a vendetta against the prince.
(Eyes narrow) Waitaminute. If a crazy Gangrel throws a chainsaw at your friend and botches, please don’t suck the soul of the poor Irish bah’stad that gets insta-torpored...
@@collindouglas8188 Nah, just a situation I found myself in my first LARP. (Someone else botched their “roll” and my character was put out of the story instantaneously)
I'm interested to see if he'll cover Shadowrun. Its rules are a pain in the ass, but the world as well as the player options are just so incredibly bonkers, more people have to know about it.
I love this thread. I love cypher systems (current version of numenara) and shadowrun. Also stars without numbers is a sweet system that is free and great for all your pulpy space western needs.
I see Davvy isn’t quite up to date with VTM V5. Successes in that game are a 6 and up, dice don’t explode but multiple 10s multiply, he didn’t even mention the hunger mechanic, and the way you do stats is not totally different
While your theory is fascinating, even admirable, I am afraid you are incorrect, fellow Cainite. For you see, there are two clans, you are indeed correct. However, the two clans happen to be the Tzimisce and guinea pigs. Perhaps you’d like to lay down on this table for me, “Lasombra?”
To be fair not ALL of White Wolf's games are as flamboyantly written as Masquerade, just most. The Hunter the Reckoning game gets to the point much quicker.
How fitting that as I’m catching up in the early episodes of Critical Role I find this video! Yet another system I thought of picking up recent Christmas
Obsessive theater kids are friggen great. I played a Lasombra that was obsessed with making a piece of music that adequately described the experience of exploring the Abyss. Was also a hoodie goblin because aesthetic.
Davvy if you would cover Mage The Ascension I think it would be great. MAGE is the reason I dont really play magic users in DnD, because I cant make a vampire killing holy boombox or turn gravity at right angles.
Mages in the World of Darkness are literally reality warpers. True Magic is the act of imposing your will upon reality, so the stuff mages can do is limited only by their own imagination.
This game: exists Every Belmont: it's free real estate! Also, as a big fan of vampires and gothic horror this is a game I should've played already lol.
It's not really gothic horror and more like punk horror. There is a dark ages version but nobody plays that even though people say the splats are generally pretty good. You are rarely ever the big horror of the week but rather the unwitting henchmen of the horror of the week even if you do really well.
@@DreadSlash765 and yet Vampires of much lower generations got their butts handed to them during the inquisition and the elders became terrified of humanity when the world wars started popping up. I recall certain books explaining that low gen elders put themselves to sleep to escape man's wars. I would call lower gen vampires extemely hard not nearly impossible to deal with. Even mechanically bring enough shotgun shells and explosives and pretty much anything higher in generation than an antideuvian or Cain himself will die. There are several reasons why the masquerade exists but humanity kicking their asses again is one of them.
In general, the fear of humanity during the Inquisition was more due to the fact that Faith was a more powerful force back then as well as the fact that vampires had been acting quite openly before then, so too many havens were openly known and... sensitive to being burnt down during the day by unwashed peasants.
as a fan of your dnd content, im so relieved to find this video. My group is switching to this system and while im definately excited, im glad to have a primer before session 0
I heard of Vampire: The Masquerade but was more than surprised to find out that Alfabusa's Hunter: The Parenting is based off of the world of darkness which is this. It's really awesome to be more familiar with a game that takes up a sizable portion of rpg horror stories.
A heads up for people in the comments: V5 has somewhat changed around difficulties and how stats are allocated. Also, I hope savvy does a video on the rest of the world of darkness and how the systems interact
@@Nyrufa Honestly ive had a ton of fun with V5 honestly, but I didnt say anything specific other than the fact that something was changed, so I feel that doesnt justify hating it more. Youre free to dislike whatever you dislike, but still. V20 is a bit too overstuffed for me to really get into, while v5, while flawed, does provide a pretty fun experience.
@@urieldaluz250 Well, V20 was a compilation of the revised mechanics and rules built up over the game's 20 something year run time. It was more focused on explaining how to play the game, than diving into the lore and fluff of the setting. As somebody who came to the franchise very late, I bought it specifically so that I didn't have to drop hundreds of dollars on supplement material just to learn how everything was supposed to work.
@@Nyrufa And thats understandable, though from what ive heard v20 is also unbalanced as all hell. Though since I havent played it I dont know for sure. Its perfectly fine to have preferences, but as someone who didnt play v20 I find v5 to be a perfectly acceptable and fun game
You know - when you started describing your Toreador’s obsession with mirrors I was gonna make a comparison to the Cat from Red Dwarf, but then you mentioned the lack of reflection which thoroughly kneecapped that comparison.
@@micahgreenspoon6189 Not long after I mentioned it here, I remembered that Pathfinder 2e is getting an Automaton ancestry later this year (its in Guns & Gears, the one they're playtesting the classes from at the moment) and then I remembered that moment the boys from the Dwarf needed an improvised battering ram...
This was my first tabletop introduction. I played Bloodlines and thought "why isn't every game like this" than I was introduced to tabletop. I love DnD but this has a place in my heart.
I love this game. I was actually starting to get my friends into this game. This video should actually help significantly in explaining and getting them more interested in it.
One of my favorite campaigns (and the only campaign I've finished) was VtM, but to be fair the way we played it kind of turned into "pulp" vampire. Also science is broken in WoD.
My intro to White Wolf was Exalted, followed by Vampire the Masquerade, followed by Changeling the Lost (which is what I currently play). I can’t get enough of White Wolf games, and would love to see a Lost or Exalted video (preferably both)!
Well now, I wasn't expecting VTM content but I'm happy you're getting into it. More VTM-specific videos would be interesting to see in your format and perspective, like info on clans, disciplines, etc. Some are more sprawling than others, though... Celerity would hardly require a whole video for itself, while Blood Sorcery/Thaumaturgy and Necromancy would take quite a bit of dissection. NOT SURPRISED that you love the Toreador, though... The College of Glamour Bard is essentially a bard that maximized Presence and revels in it. xD
I already knew about vampire the masquerade i played vampire the masquerade bloodlines and i know a lot about the lore from a bunch of other vampire the masquerade youtubers outstar huddyvonschland the primogen but thank you for the video anyway i really enjoyed it.
Played a freakishly tall and skinny nosferatu who usually wore old suits (1920's), the story took place in the early 2010's and in game he got spotted thus giving birth to rumors that would eventually become the Slenderman myth.
My most successful character was a Malkavian, I gave him Obsessions: Medicine, Derangement: Paranoia, Addiction: Dead Flesh, and Negative Trait: Dark Aura. He only cared about performed and perfecting medicine, considering everything else to be a hindrance or an annoyance to that goal. He ultimately ended up being one of the few survivors of the group as the players had a tendency to back stab each other for power plays and no one was paying attention to me, which allowed me to go about doing what I wanted without being interrupted, leading to me becoming one of the most powerful characters when everything was said and done.
He isn't joking about White Wolf's pretentious writing style. The Wraith: The Oblivion (game where you play as ghosts) book has 78 pages before the table of contents.
For those not interested in Vampires but like the sound of the system, the (classic) World of Darkness also has games dedicated to Werewolves, Mages, Demons, Mummies, Changelings, Demons, Wraiths, and Hunters. There's also the new World of Darkness, now Chronicles of Darkness which contains both alternate versions of many of those games as well as some new additions (Promethean which is Frankenstein's Monster and co., Deviant which is about humans who are forcibly changed by mad science/magic/the occult, and Beast which is about fairy tale monsters essentially), and some of the old games got major changes; Demon went from "The Fallen" to "The Descent", a game about fallen angels of a God-Machine that must maintain cover and work against the machine's plans (the game describes it as Techgnostic Espionage). And Changeling went from "The Dreaming" to "The Lost" so now you too can learn exactly why the Fae are dicks.
It goes by Chronicles of Darkness now, actually. I'm also a fan of it, as I bought the books for Requiem and Forsaken first, before picking up V20 and C20.
I love VTM. I became Lodin's seneschal in Chicago after saving his ass from some rats. Though I do own a major boon after I accidentally drunk Harrison Ford and my ex-boyfriend sire saved my ass.
I love ars magica and it's style, so I'd like to recommend it to you. The ability to play as a squad of characters makes you feel like a tiny GM and the magic system is over the top!
Im a collosal fan of onyx path myself but my favorite games from them are scion and exalted and it would be awesone to see more popular creators like you talk about them.
Ya know, this is the problem with VtM- any time it gets mentioned people immediately try to change the subject to Mage or Werewolf. The 'playerbase' is inherently divided
4:26 Just wanted to point out that in the 20th anniversary edition (the last edition before the current 5th edition) the difficulty on rolls aren't 8 or higher. It's usually 6, but can be lower depending on the difficulty of the action for your character. Also, in the current edition (5th) it's always 6 or higher for a single success. No idea where 8 or higher came from.
I honestly downloaded the video game like forever ago looking for a hack-and-slash game like ‘BloodRayne’. I played about ten minutes of the Masquerade, put it down and didn’t come back for years. So I picked it back up like two weeks ago and I’m now obsessed. Beat the game, bought the players guide… also playing a toreador character… 😣 Looking forward to Bloodline 2. Hope its as long as BL1 as they usually chop these games down to afford the heavy graphics everything has to have these days…
The way my group played was pretty much just telling WW to jump in a lake with their angsty nonsense. My Toreador was Kurt Grey, rock star. At one point, we had to sneak into a factory, but Kurt Grey doesn't sneak. Instead, I played a sick guitar riff in the parking lot and blew up a car to distract everyone while the rest of the party sneaked in. That's called 'teamwork'.
Vampire the Requiem is a game about vampires and a better system. Vampire the Masquerade is a game about playing a specific type of vampire in a specific setting.
So, my friends and I finished a D&D game and we were going to try to play Big Eyes Small Mouth. But, as Davvy mentioned, the character creation was lost on us and the only video we found was over an hour-long with a preamble talking about some of the flaws in other systems. So we decided to go to our local BAM and pick up a copy of VtM, given that the guy running it was interested in playing after playing Bloodlines.
Fun fact. I played Vampire the Masquerade before I played Dungeons & Dragons My best memories involve playing a Victorian Nosferatu, and a medieval Tzimisce.
3:27 “A Nosferatu isn’t charming anyone into bed” Not with that attitude! Don’t hate, strut yo stuff! Just because there face looks like it got hit by a dump-truck doesn’t mean they don’t gotta booty like one too!
In defense of the Malkavians, people just don't play them to their full potential (like Pooka in C:TD). My favorite was embraced by another Malkavian whose inborn insanity meant he believed himself to be a Ventrue. So his Sire picked an up-and-coming ivy league med student from the wrong part of town, then taught his protege all about being a Ventrue...because he believed they were. Then Embrace made my bloodsucker a Psychopath with OCD, but not in a cartoonish way. He just came across as an uptight med student with a chip on his shoulder and everyone excused it (as well as his periodic absences) because he had worked his way out of the ghetto and had a hard life. He kept very busy with his studies...which included a warehouse where he conducted experiments on "patients." Nobody even realized he wasn't just an exceptionally cruel Ventrue for a good long while...
