Traveller Actual Play: R.A.V.E.N. ep 8, "No Time For Tolls"

In this episode:

• Chrome recaps the events of the previous episode in-character, and I hope it's amusing!
• I make a Fortunate Son joke that's completely appropriate, and then a horrible pun, and then a Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow reference that no one caught.🙁
• and there's an air/raft chase, and rampant disrespect for toll booths, and a space battle!

This episode and the one previous are my absolute favorite. There's action, there's humor, and of course there's the usual Player Character nonsense. 

Traveller Tuesday: Jumpspace is Psionic

Don't consider this a return to regular Traveller Tuesdays; they might happen, they might not. But playing in All Ones' Traveller campaign has me thinking about the system and setting again, so here's a notion which I've had for a long time and I've finally decided to write out. 

My use of Traveller setting and dress falls under
fair use guidelines for both Mongoose and Far Future Enterprises.

The crux of my argument that jumpspace is psionic stems from two canonical pieces of information. I shall use links to the Traveller wiki to support my thesis.

1. Continuous observation of jumpspace has been known to drive intelligent beings insane, so starship viewports are shuttered during jump.
• Yes, I am aware that this sounds a lot like Warhammer 40,000's Warp, but WH40K came out in 1987 and Traveller came out in 1977, and WH40K has a reputation for unabashedly stealing ideas from elsewhere for their setting. 
  
  
2. There must be at least one living being (definitely sentient, presumably sapient) onboard a ship to successfully jump. 
• If this weren't the case, then player characters wouldn't get contracts to deliver mail to planets, because mail ships (such as X-boats) would be automated. Instead, the IISS has at least one human being aboard an xboat per jump. 
• Jump torpedoes were a thing which existed in the early days of Traveller, but they have since been de-canonized. J-torps would be perfect for delivering non-physical mail to systems. 

So this tells me that there's something about jumpspace which requires a living being to perform a successful jump. To me, the easiest answer is that jumpspace is a quantum state which requires an observer in order to collapse the wave function successfully, which engages the jump. 

Why? Again, the easiest answer from my perspective is that jumpspace is psionic in nature. This means that any species which is capable of manifesting psionics -- and so far as I know, that's any sapient (self-aware) species -- needs to observe the jump in some manner. 

That these observers don't themselves need to be psionic means that they aren't causing the jump to happen. This means that there's something about the nature of jumpspace itself that prevents entry to ships without a sapient observer on board, resulting in a misjump. 

This must be linked to jumpspace's quality to cause insanity, which is presumably a psionic effect of some sort.

(Whether or not a long observer in cold sleep would count as an observer is an argument I'm not ready to have right now. I could see it going either way, frankly.)

So why is jumpspace like this? The easiest answer for weird, spooky stuff in Traveller is "the Ancients did it." Considering that the Ancients were a powerfully psionic species, they may have invented jumpspace in order to speed their spread across the galaxy.

Traveller GMs: yes, I am absolutely suggesting that a powerful Ancient device (maybe the undiscovered Ancient homeworld) is keeping jumpspace active. Which means that jumpspace could be controlled... or amplified... or even turned off. 

Want to have an instant disaster on par with or exceeding the Long Night, but not the Empress Wave or Virus? Here's your solution. 

Have fun. 

Traveller Actual Play: R.A.V.E.N. ep 7, "Banquets and Beatdowns"

This is a very Chrome-centric episode, so of course I like it. He was funny, he was sneaky, he had a juicy role-play opportunity, and he was useful in a fight. (Next session will continue this trend, but with vehicles.)

Because All Ones didn't include the picture of what Chrome wore to the Aslan shindig, here it is in all its glory: 

https://amzn.to/4h2xA3U

As you can see, there's totally room for a stunner pistol down that codpiece!

Traveller Actual Play: R.A.V.E.N. ep 6, "Solomani Salami"

This is my favorite session so far, because this is the one where it feels like everyone's character clicked into place and we all started role-playing as a group rather than a bunch of individuals. Denton is in full Dr Strangelove mode, and his invention of "salami" as an insult to Solomani was inspired. 

Also, Merry Christmas! Chrome has a very special present for all of you in the first 2 minutes of the video. 

 

The intro and outro was done by my friend Jay Peterson,  a professional actor. You can hire him at jaythebarbarian.com. He also has a novel, Renfield Blues: The First Grunt's Grimoire, available for purchase at Amazon in both Kindle and paperback format. It's a fun, fast-paced, and intelligent story that's also amazingly well-written.

https://amzn.to/41QSIFy

If you're a fan of urban fantasy like Dresden Files or Monster Hunter International, feel nostalgic for 1990s horror RPGs from White Wolf, or just like stories with competent gun use and/or magic systems more involved than "I cast fireball!", then this is a book you will enjoy reading.  I'm eagerly looking forward to the sequel.

And here's a standalone version of that segment, for you to use if you want to send it to friends and fans of Traveller. 

 

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a safe Jump. 

Traveller Actual Play: R.A.V.E.N. ep 5, "Veterans Without Borders"

 

This session is basically just tying up the first act of the adventure and then beginning the second act. There's no action (wait until next episode for that!) but there's a lot of good character development, including what I think are many fun Chrome-isms. 

 

One of these days, the other players are going to think to ask Chrome why his sense of aesthetics is... whatever it is... but so far it hasn't happened yet. 

Also, here's the stand-alone "KOYNZ" commercial that originally aired at the end of Episode 3. Those of you who are familiar with my work may have noticed the script is from this blog post. 

KOYNNNNNZZZZZZ!!!!!!!!!

Traveller Actual Play: R.A.V.E.N. ep 4, "Prometheus"

This week kind of disappeared as interest in Operation Blazing Sword and the Pink Pistols exploded due to the election.

Anyway, episode 4 of our Actual Play series is out. Don't worry if you're behind, because we missed playing last week and will miss this week, so you have time to catch up. 

 

As Chrome's player, I want to make it clear that it was never my intent to blackmail the rest of the party and I hope it wasn't taken as such. Alice said I was basically threatening them with mission failure, and I can honestly say that was never on my mind. Instead, Chrome's feelings were like this:

1. The Leader and the other Warriors of his kroyloss (fraternity) seemed set on killing all the droyne on the planet. As the only droyne in the PC party, Chrome took that personally, and he also thinks that Denton-Warrior-Friend is more than a little deranged when it comes to orbital bombardment. 
2. Within droyne culture, droyne who cannot contribute are encouraged to engage in a painless suicide ritual known as krinaytsyu. A sport that is ignored isn't contributing much. 
   
   
3. Therefore, Chrome's last-ditch action was more along the lines of a samurai performing kanshi to protest the decision of Roberd-Leader-friend the best way he knew how: "Well, if I'm so worthless that you won't listen to me, just leave me there to die with the other droyne you consider worthless."

Dramatic and passive-aggressive? Yes. That's how a lot of things are in caste systems. But I, the player, wouldn't throw the rest of the players under the bus of "Do it my way or fail the mission," and I really hate that it came out that way. I made sure the rest of the players knew that. 

Traveller Actual Play: R.A.V.E.N. ep 3, "Kilts, Coyns, and Kukri"

 

Chrome now has a kilt! It's a pity that Hero Forge doesn't have the complexity for tartan patterns. But speaking of Droyne with kilts, here's a tartan that they'd love, as they use Base 6 and this pattern is hexagonal. 

https://www.spoonflower.com/en/fabric/10056924-trueblue-hexagon-plaid-by-tallulahdahling

For the bagpipe music played during the battle, I chose "March of Cambreadth" by Alexander Adams. 

Traveller Actual Play: R.A.V.E.N. ep 2, "Red Tape Rendezvous"

The hijinks continue!

Traveller Actual Play: R.A.V.E.N. ep 1, "Combat Lawyer"

I joined a Traveller RPG group that plays on Mondays. If you're interested in listening, this is our first episode.

I play Chrome the Droyne, a weird little guy who is the ship's pilot.  For reasons which may never be revealed, Chrome likes wearing Hawaiian-print shirts.

Another Gaming Story

So, who wants to hear the story about the Traveller player character who took an anti-tank missile to the chest?

My use of Traveller setting and dress falls under
fair use guidelines for both Mongoose and Far Future Enterprises.

This is the same group as in my previous story, but it was earlier by several years. The PC we will call "murder machine" was your typical murderhobo who, during the course of play, had sold his soul to Naval Intelligence, and in return his brain was scooped out of his body and placed into the highest tech cyborg body possible. He then acquired a suit of powered armor which further enhanced his abilities. Basically, he wanted to be a Warhammer 40K Space Marine, and he got pretty damn close to that. 

In this adventure, the PCs found themselves up against a squad of trained commandos and their transport, a VTOL gunship which also carries troops, rather  like a higher-tech version of the Hind Mi-24.

This is the picture I used. Looks mean, doesn't it?

The player characters were hiding and under cover. The commandos fast-roped out of the gunship and set up lines of fire in hasty fighting positions. The gunship then flew off to blow up a compound (where the PCs had just been, and who had triggered the alarm which brought the gunship there in the first place) to erase evidence and leave no survivors. 

Once the gunship flew away, the players executed a fairly well-orchestrated ambush against the soldiers who had pretty impressive armor and weapons. It was a tough fight, but the players won, mainly by being smart. Then the gunship returned because its troops were dying. 

I, an intellectual, figured that the PCs know that they can't shoot this thing down, because it's armored like an A-10 Warthog (and they KNOW THIS because I've TOLD THEM) and they have no anti-aircraft or anti-armor weapons, just small arms and one SAW equivalent. The smart thing is to run away, seek cover, try to find another way to defeat it, and they've been smart so far. 

That's when Murder Machine decided to go full-on "STAND AND DELIVER!" by walking out from cover and shooting the gunship with the SAW.

He rolled. He hit. He rolled damage. I consulted the craft's armor, because vehicle-scale is different from personal-scale. 

I say, "You've chipped its paint."

Then, because I love drama, I give them a little cutscene. "Cut to the cockpit. The pilot says "We're taking fire!" and the gunner says "Nah, it's just small arms, nothing to worry about," and pulls up a video feed of the PC." (Who is in Battledress, which is what powered battle armor is called in Traveller.) 

The gunner goes "Holy shit! He's wearing Battledress!" 

The Pilot says "Kill it."

If you've played StarCraft 1, where there's a cinematic involving a Terran saying "Kill it!" and launching a missile at a damaged Protoss thingie, and when it explodes he goes "Yeah! YEAH! Feel that hot love right up your tailpipe!".... you've got the right idea, because the gunship is Not Fucking Around and launches what is basically a Hellfire at Murder Machine.

To our great surprise, Murder Machine DID NOT DIE. The anti-tank missile hit, and ablated his battledress armor to basically nothing in the chest area, but his augmented cyborg body is still functioning. Badly damaged, mind you, but  still functioning.

I said "The blast knocks you flat on your back. Your helmet is blaring all sorts of alarms as it suffers critical failure. But you're still alive, thanks to [all this stuff], although barely. In the gesture of universal defiance you shakily raise one hand skyward, then extend your middle finger." There is much laughter. 

I, an intellectual, figured that this has sent the proper message to Murder Machine who will decide discretion is the better part of valor. Murder Machine, a Marine, decides "I aiten't ded yet", so he STANDS UP AND TAKES ANOTHER SHOT AT THE GUNSHIP. 

Between his wounds and the full-auto penalty, he misses.

I decide that this stupidity must be punished. The gunship, now well and truly freaked the fuck out that someone survived an anti-tank missile, decides FUCK THIS and pulls a Kylo Ren on him. They launch another missile and follow up with the chin turret gun, which I think is a full-auto rotary-barrel grenade launcher.

They hit. The damage, when converted from vehicle scale to personal scale, is obscene. To use a D&D-ism, this would be well over 100 hit points worth of damage. 

I don't precisely remember what I said , but it was along the lines of "You explode into a fine red mist." Then I crack my knuckles, and in my cruelest Game Master voice I croon, "I've killed one PC. Who wants to be next?"

The other PCs wisely choose to learn from his example and unass the area immediately.

Post-Script: Murder Machine wasn't really dead, because a dead PC just means the player rolls up a new one. A crippled PC, on the other hand, is amusing and a learning experience.

Later on, the surviving PCs found that an emergency locator beacon was transmitting. Upon investigation they discover Murder Machine's head inside the battledress helmet, which ejected to safety and put his head into cryosleep. The thinking here is "Save the brain, and the body can be cloned later." Of course, that depends upon access to cloning technology, which the PCs don't have and is damned expensive, so they have to improvise. 

By "improvise", I mean that when they get back to the ship they assemble a basic life support system for his brain (remember, everything else on him was cybernetic) and mount it and his head to a maintenance robot, which is basically a Roomba with manipulator arms. Think one of the skutters from Red Dwarf, crossed with 790 from Lexx. 

What followed was a nearly year-long side quest where the PCs slowly upgraded can't-call-him-Murder-Machine-anymore's body into a less impressive, but at least bipedal humanoid cyborg, frame. 

To the player's credit, he learned his lesson and was much less foolish after that. Also to his credit, he had a sense of humor about being the ship's Roomba for a while. He's a Marine in real life, so he can laugh at himself. 

V5: Sumerian Vampire Clan Names

So yesterday I had a bit of the Blessed Madness come upon me, and when that happens I must drop everything and chase it because it happens so rarely, and when it does it always gives me really good material. 

So in the lore of Vampire: the Masquerade, the first vampire was Caine, the son of Adam and Eve, and vampirism was his curse for murdering his brother Abel. There's no date on when the first clans emerged, but they are mentioned as developing in the "First City", as in "the first city to ever exist". 

One of the things which has bothered me about V:tM is that even though the vampire clans date back to the dawn of civilization, the names for those clans are very modern in comparison. Toreador, Brujah, and Lasombra are Spanish; Gangrel is Middle English; Ventrue is French. The Latin Salubri is respectably old, and even though Egyptian mythology is older than Roman, the -ite suffix in Setite is Greek. 

In other words, in my extreme nerdery I wanted vampire clans to have names which were as old as they were, even if those original names weren't used any more due to linguistic drift (and the fact that players probably couldn't, and definitely wouldn't, like to use them). So I looked up which language was the oldest, and as it turns out the oldest known written language is Sumerian. This was ideal for my purposes because Sumeria was in the Fertile Crescent of the Middle East and therefore meshed perfectly with the Abrahamic origins of V:tM. 

Did you know that there's an online Sumerian dictionary where you can search for words in English? You do now. What's more, most of the words there have pictures of them written in Cuneiform (the written script of the Sumerians, among others -- sort of like how most of the Western world uses the Roman alphabet) and they are delightfully archaic and creepy. You know how in the Blade movies the various vampire houses had cryptic sigils? Well, Cuneiform looks older and creepier, and because it's an actual language it looks more legitimate as well. 

So here are the clans of Vampire: the Masquerade as I think they would have been named during the time of the First City. Because I am a hobbyist scratching at something deeper than I can imagine, I have probably gotten some things wrong. But that's okay, because we aren't looking for accuracy (because vampires don't exist), we're looking for things which are fun and flavorful. 

Canonical Clans

Banu Haqim: Sagaz

Sa-gaz (“Robber; murderer”) 

The Banu Haqim (formerly known in previous editions as Assamites) are a clan of vampires who lust after the blood of other vampires and, in previous editions at least, hired themselves out as assassins who would take as part of their payment the blood of their victim. Therefore, someone who robs and kills seems an excellent fit here. 

Brujah: Ursag

Ur-sag (“Warlike; Hero, Warrior”)

Troile, the founder of the Brujah line, had a mighty temper and a preference for physical altercation. Modern Brujah see themselves as righteous rebels fighting against The Man, they clearly see themselves as heroes. Given all that, I couldn't have picked anything else. 

Cappadocians: Namus

Nam-us (“Death”)

The Cappadocians have always been known as the Clan of Death.

Gangrel: Umaam

U-ma-am (“Beast”)

A clan of shape-shifters who take on bestial features as their humanity slips. 

Lasombra: Gissu

Gissu ("shade, shadow; protection, aegis")

Yay, the clan whose name means "The Shadow" and which has shadow powers has another name which means shadow. Yawn. 

See below for what I picked for my highly non-canonical Lasombra. 

Malkavian: Namigigal

Nam-igi-gal (“Insight”)

I'm very proud of this one, as I couldn't find a translation for "madman" or "seer" or things like this. However, "insight" is a nicely vague word which both compliments their abilities and touches upon their madness (as in "seeing what others do not"). 

Nosferatu: Ludubgara

Lu-dub-gar-ra (“Hunter”)

Abisimilard, the founder of the clan, was known as a mighty and stealthy hunter. 

Ravnos: Dabariri

Da-ba-ri-ri (“Liar, Trickster, Con Artist”)

Regardless of whether you go by the official version of this clan or my own, the fact remains that the Ravnos are distrusted by the rest of kindred society, and so this fits. It's doubtful that the Ravnos themselves would call themselves this, but unlife isn't fair and so if everyone else calls you this, this is what you're called. 

Salubri: Abgal

Ab-gal (“Sage, Priest”)

The easy solution would have been to go with "doctor" or "healer" but I felt that pigeonholed this clan too much. Abgal gives them flavors of wisdom and holiness which were lacking from other names. 

Setites: Musgal

No, I refuse to call them "The Ministry". Go away. 

Mus-gal ("Great serpent")

Y'know, it's funny: the Setites have this whole snake motif going on, yet Set himself has the head of a jackal, not a snake. But then, I think this entire clan is stupid and I'm not going to waste any more time on them. 

Toreador: Ummia

Um-mi-a (“Expert, master craftsman”)

This was another difficult one. I couldn't find a Sumerian word for "artist" or "artisan", or even "beautiful". I found this, though, and I feel that it fits well, for no other clan are experts on art and beauty. 

Tremere

They don't have a Sumerian name because they didn't exist until 1022 AD. 

Tzimisce: Uzu

Uzu (“Flesh, body, entrails, omen”)

The Tzimisce are a clan of flesh-shapers, but if I'm being honest the real reason I picked this name is because the word looks like a body. 

Also, and I am not joking, there is an actual Sumerian phrase uzu zu kešda gu-mur which means "flesh tooth bind spine" and I can't think of a better way to describe Vicissitude than that. 

Ventrue: Lugal

Lu-gal (“lord; master; owner; king; a quality designation”)

The Ventrue are the Clan of Kings. Self-explanatory.

Non-Canon Clans

Ba'ali: Kurgara

Kur-gar-ra (“Cultic performer”)

As I've mentioned elsewhere,  I hate the Followers of Set and so the demon-worshipping  Ba'ali are the super-evil baddies in my V:tM world. "Cultic performer" is close enough to "cultist" for my taste, and I am tickled that the first character resembles Damien's triple-6 birthmark from The Omen.

Lasombra: Dar

Dar (“To break up, crush, grind; to split, split up; to cut open”)

This is for my non-canonical, not-having-shadow-powers version of the clan which are cancerous corruptors who blackmail people and hollow out organizations in order to control them. I feel that the meaning of this word perfectly encapsulates how I see the Lasombra operating. 

Nagaraja: Sugzag Gu

Sug-zag gu (“To destroy completely” with “gu” meaning “to eat, consume”)

This is for my version of the Nagaraja. The word is interesting because "sugzag gu" as a whole means "to destroy", but the component "sugzag" means "marsh edge" and "gu" means "to eat". This makes me think of a crocodile dragging its prey underwater, never to be seen again and to be devoured at its leisure. This really fits with how I envision the Nagaraja. 

V5 Loresheet: Father Dmitri

 How do I explain this other than by saying "Here's another thing I made for V5. If you don't play it won't make any sense to you"? I'll give it a try, though.

In V5, Loresheets are a special kind of background that you can buy for your character that links them into the setting of the game. For example, if your Vampire was related to someone important, or possessed special knowledge, or was connected politically, that could be represented with a Loresheet. Think of it as "More powerful than a typical background, less powerful than a Discipline."

Look, it'll make sense in a moment. 

Last week my GM concluded the Vampire: the Masquerade game which we began in the fall of 2019. It concluded because, well, my character had basically "won at unlife"; he'd accomplished everything I'd wanted him to accomplish and I felt bad for making the GM throw 404 errors by coming up with completely unexpected actions and/or out-politicking him. 

(Look, I know it sounds like a brag, but I was literally playing V:tM when my GM was in diapers and, well, I am quite wickedly creative and creatively wicked. To his credit, he never asked me to go easy on him and in fact challenged me to do my worst. Which I did.)

So when Father Dmitri Ignatiev, my character, saved the city for the umpteenth time and was in a position of unassailable power and privilege, I figured it was time to retire him to NPC status and hand my sheet to the GM so that my character could be a quest-giver and pain in the ass to future players. 

And then I thought "I'd like to make a Loresheet for him, based on my actions within the game and with the abilities reflective of who he was." So I did, and my GM approved it. 

Some of this may not make sense. I'll try to explain more when I post Dmitri's character sheet.

There is also a PDF version on Drive here. 

The Gaki (V:tM 3rd edition)

Last week, I rolled a Natural 20 in real life. 

Over the past 6 months or so I've been looking for things which I wrote online 15-20 years ago, and while I've managed to track down most of them through the Internet Archive and backups of old mailing lists, there was one thing I couldn't find, and thought I would never find, because I thought I never shared it with anyone outside of my private gaming group. I had tried everything I could think of to find it and had resigned myself to it being lost to the mists of time. 

Last week I was Up Too Damn Late and the thought occurred to me to Google a specific text string. I knew that it wouldn't work, of course -- everything else had failed, so would this succeed? -- but I could honestly say I'd tried everything I could think of to find it. 

The first two Google hits were my missing creation: a writeup of the Gaki (a Japanese vampire) as a clan for Vampire: the Masquerade, written between 2001 and 2003. (Yes, I know about Kindred of the East. I never cared for it, mainly because V:tM is deeply rooted in Biblical mythology and KotE isn't. I also didn't much like the version of the Gaki which first appeared in the original 1992 World of Darkness sourcebook, but I used that as a jumping-off point.)

Have you ever read something and realized just how young the author was? This gives me a strange combination sensation of nostalgia, deja vu, and "Oh, you sweet summer child," because I was in my late 20s when I wrote this, and it shows. It's not just a matter of "I would have done this differently," although that's definitely part of it; there's also the fact that this piece feels like it's trying so hard to do everything right by explaining everything, instead of leaving things vague so that GMs can incorporate it into their games. Plus, it has that old White Wolf conceit of "Supernaturals did everything important in the world, so if you reference real world events there needs to be a supernatural link explaining how or why." It even has the obligatory Kewl New Discipline that every new bloodline needed to draw the players. 

At any rate, here's what I wrote 20 years ago. I'm showing it to you now so that when I update the Gaki for V5, you can see the difference between my writing styles of the then and now. 

V5: Nagaraja (my version)

https://tinyurl.com/p3dsktr4

Let's talk about predators.

Predators and prey always exist in unequal numbers; if there are too many predators, they end up eating all of the prey, and then the predators either starve or move elsewhere in search of food. Conversely, not enough predators means that the prey species ends up outstripping its natural resources and, again, either dies off or moves on in search of more food. As in all things, there is equilibrium.

Even vampires must obey this equilibrium or perish. While they have an advantage in that they do not need to kill in order to feed, which both reduces the drain on the prey population and allows for a greater concentration of predators in a smaller area, this is tempered by the disadvantage that vampires are not apex predators and that a suitably startled, informed, and brave percentage of the human population can and do take matters into their own hands to cull the numbers of vampires.

Furthermore, legend has it that in the days of the First City, when kindred ruled over the kine as gods, that there were havens within the High House of Caine for more than 200 vampires. Given the size of cities in the early days of human civilization, this is a great concentration of predators within a small space, and it is only by the strength and will of the First Vampire that the City did not fall to decadent bloodlust.

But think for a moment: 200 vampires, all ostensibly of the third generation as Caine forbid the creation of more; the third generation, from which come the mightiest vampire clans. Don't you find it likely that at least one of those kindred would have succumbed to the pressure of ecological equilibrium and developed a taste for other kindred?

After all, Diablerie had to come from somewhere.

The entire document may be found here.

Normally, this is where I'd place my justification for why I did what I did, but I don't know if anyone ever reads that part of my posts or not. I'll just leave this blank for now, and if anyone wants to know why I made these choices, I'll gladly answer. 

V5 Ghouls: Fatal Addiction

 Back in December I reviewed the V5 Companion, and when I talked about the section on ghouls as player characters I said that while I could understand why the writers didn't go into more depth, I might do so later.

It is now later, so please enjoy these expanded rules on ghouls (Google Document). Perhaps at some point I will combine these with the V5 rules and the V20 fluff into a single document, but right now I'm not willing to put in that much effort for such limited return. 

Please note that this is optimized for my Unknown Armies-style Stress Gauges for V5 system. If you aren't using that system then you'll need to find some way to measure addiction. 

Julius Jones, the ghoul of the vampire Maximillian in
  A Vampire in Broolyn

I really like how this turned out, because it presents an interesting dilemma for the players: Just how powerful, and how addicted, do you  want the people who know where you sleep? Who might even guard you as you sleep? On the one hand, you can get some pretty powerful soldiers fairly quickly, but you also run the risk of them becoming screamingly addicted and drinking your blood while you're helpless. Yes, they're blood bound to you... but does that matter when they're in the grip of a hunger frenzy?

So, just how hungry do you want your eaters of the dead to be? 

V5: the Vampire Companion

The 5th edition of Vampire: the Masquerade debuted August 1, 2018. More than two years later, players finally get to see the 5th edition rules for the Ravnos, Salubri and Tzimisce in this free book, the Vampire Companion. 

Executive Summary: Well... it's free. If I had paid more than a few dollars for it, I would be quite upset at the lack of quality in this book.  

Part I: The Clans and Their Aptitudes 

Ravnos

Well, the good news is that they've gotten past the racist "all Ravnos are gypsies and all gypsies are thieves" clan weakness that's been around since the early days of the game. 

The bad news is that the clan's new Bane and Compulsion are tied into 1999's Week of Nightmares where the clan founder died and nearly all Ravnos went mad and killed each other and then themselves. 

So, setting apart the fact that nearly every single VtM GM that I know of has said "Sod that, the Week of Nightmares was the result of the game publisher shutting down the game line. I hate what they did and I'm going to ignore that garbage"... what if your game is set pre-1999? This is a clan that's been around for thousands of years, and yet there's no provision for pre-WoN Ravnos characters. So if you want to play a Ravnos any time before, you're either stuck with a dumb weakness or have to make your own. That's not just sloppy writing, that's an outright failure of game design.

My Ravnos writeup is superior, as it allows you to play the Ravnos in any era. 

Speaking of my writeup, I am amused by how close the "official" Discipline mix came to my writeup. The original was Animalism, Fortitude, and Chimerstry (illusion powers); I rightly assumed that Chimerstry would be an amalgam of Obfuscate and Presence. I replaced Fortitude with Celerity because I felt it fit the concept better; for some reason, the designers felt that Animalism fit them better instead. I don't care for it, but I suppose I could live with it in a game. 

As for the amalgam powers themselves, they're also pretty close to mine except for the following:

• There are only 2 of them instead of 3. 
• The first is a second-level Discipline, which I dislike. 
• There is no high-level power where you convince someone the illusion actually hurt them. 
• They use Manipulation instead of Resolve. I get why they did that -- you are after all trying to manipulate someone into believing an illusion is real -- but given the difficulty in crafting an illusion which must be believable, and to some degree persistent, falls more under Resolve in my book.

Salubri

Thanks, I hate it. 

Here's a clan which, in canon, has a wholly unique power of healing, protection, and peacemaking. It's also one of the original clans. This means that more than any other, it deserves its own discipline, right?

Nope! the Companion replaces Valeran with Dominate, and you get three powers which are amalgams of Auspex/Dominate and Auspex/Fortitude. About the best thing I can say about this is that the authors thought to have a power which healed Willpower damage, and I didn't. My version is still better, though, as it gives you a lot more choices in how you want to build your character: healer, guardian, or peacemaker. 

Their weakness is similarly stupid. In previous editions they were portrayed as the most humane of all vampires, and and such if they fed upon the unwilling they literally damaged themselves. This made sense. However, their new V5 weakness is that their blood is delicious and if another vampire starts to drink, they find it very difficult to stop. 

I'll say that again: This clan, which lasted for THOUSANDS of years, somehow managed to do so with a giant "Eat Me" weakness. No. It's dumb. Go away. 

Their clan compulsion, at least, isn't terrible. But that's because it's close to what I use. 

Tzimisce

Sigh. 

Look, guys, this shouldn't be difficult. Nearly all of the work has been done for you over the past 20 years. Just convert them to V5 and make sure they are properly creepy, inhuman Dracula-type  vampires and you're good to go. 

Sadly, this isn't good to go. 

On the good side: They've given them the exact same discipline mix as I did (Animalism, Dominate, Protean) for exactly the same reasons. They've also made the Fiends' signature fleshcrafting abilities an amalgam of Dominate and Protean, like I suggested. This amuses me. 

As for Vicissitude, again the designers insist on making the amalgams start at level 2, which bothers me because these were signature powers in previous editions and so I feel they ought to be accessible early. That said, they have the same spread I proposed of "Change yourself, change others, turn into a monster," although some powers don't quite line up. I will go over this later in greater detail because I think there's some good meat on these bones that could be put to use in my version. I do think I covered more rule cases then they did, and so I expect errata for these powers will come out at some point. There's also a Level 5 Animalism/Protean amalgam, One With the Land, which I had not thought of and will cheerfully steal for my own use. 

On the 'meh' side: Well, I don't hate their Bane of "must sleep surrounded by something the define as theirs, be it land, a chosen kind of people, etc" and could live with it in a game. I think that it totally misses the point of a Bane, because there really isn't much of a penalty at all during play unless the adventure calls you out of town or the GM decides to screw with your haven, and it doesn't do anything with the notorious Tzimisce codes of hospitality. Again, I did it better. 

On the bad side: the clan Compulsion is stupid. "Hurr durr. We're called Dragons, and so our Compulsion is to covet and hoard shit like a stereotypical dragon on a pile of treasure." The writers are reaching too far and trying too hard to be cute. 

On the ugly side: Here are sample stats for Szlachta and Vozhd. No, there are no rules for making your own. Worse, apparently all Vozhd and some Szlachta require Blood Sorcery to make. Did I mention that Blood Sorcery is not one of the Tzimisce's disciplines?

Right. So, to make these iconic servants, they need a power which isn't native to them and there are no rules for how to build them in the first place. Fuck you, game designers. This isn't just sloppy, this is outright insulting. 

Also, there is mention of the Sabbat and the Tzimisce membership therein, but nothing specifically about this sect. I can't really call this sloppy as the Sabbat really needs its own companion volume like the Camarilla and Anarchs received, but this absence of information about what the sect is up to in the V5 era is certainly conspicuous and jarring. 

Part II: Clans and Coteries

This is about 2/3rds fluff, 1/3rd crunch. That said, it's fairly good fluff and somewhat useful crunch; the fluff is "how stereotypical clan members act in coteries (read: PC party) and treat the other members (read: player characters)," which is good information for people new to the game and a useful guideline for the GM to show problem players.

The crunch is a clan-specific merit which benefits the coterie in a direct, mechanical way. While interesting in theory, some merits are more useful than others: the two point Tzimisce "Old World Hospitality" merit grants everyone in the coterie an extra recovered Willpower point if they stay the day in the Tzimisce's haven, but the two point Ventrue "Kindred Legacies" merit means that once per session a player can as the GM to reveal a piece of relevant information about the history of a single vampire with whom they’ve come in contact. If you ask me, the former is vastly more useful than the latter, and they both cost the same. 

Oh, fun fact: Despite being introduced in this very book, there is no coterie merit for the Salubri clan. Sloppy, sloppy, sloppy! There's no excuse for this. 

Part III: Mortals and Ghouls as PCs

Mortals

For the most part, this is exactly what it says on the box. Character creation is simple and to the point, and I don't know why this was left out of the main book. 

I would have enjoyed a more in-depth treatment of what is involved to make mortals who are vampire hunters, but there are already books like that out there in previous editions. What we needed was a mechanical update, and we got one. 

The most interesting thing about this is that the rules specifically state that even though humans don't have to worry about their bestial hunger driving them to commit acts of predation, dominance and cruelty like vampires do, they still have a Humanity Rating and that it can go down. Some of you are saying "Well, duh" but I recall more than one hard-headed Person Who Is Wrong On The Internet making the claim that all humans have a Humanity of 10 by virtue of being human. Yes, they really are saying that serial killers have a higher Humanity score than vampires who take pains not to hurt humans. Sit on this and rotate, jerks. 

Ghouls

Again, why was this not in the main book? We have some good fluff about what it's like to be a ghoul, how they interact with vampire society, and so forth. Character generation is almost identical to that of mortals, so I don't understand why it was repeated. 

There are some interesting ghoul-specific rules here, which are nice to see. I was curious how ghouls would work mechanically since the "leaky gas tank" system of previous editions is gone. I personally think more thought could have gone into this, but since a lot of games treat ghouls as speed bumps or staff to handle things offscreen, I can understand why they wouldn't go into more depth. (I, however, might do so later...)

Short version:

• Ghouls heal twice as quickly as mortals, excepting fire damage. Since they no longer have "blood points" to spend to heal, this is a nice simplification. 
• Upon ghouling, they get a level one power in any Discipline possessed by their master. 
• They don't actually have Disciplines, but are considered to have one dot for purposes of using the powers. 
• They can buy more level 1 powers for 10 points each, even powers their masters don't have. 
• They cannot buy powers in Disciplines their masters don't have.
• If they ever have to make a Rouse Check, they take 1 point of aggravated damage instead. 
• There is no specific ruling on what happens to those powers if their masters die or they get new ones. The Rule of Fair indicates that XP spent in such a manner should not be lost, but whether those points are refunded for reallocation or the old powers remain is left unstated.  

Finally, there are some ghoul-specific merits and flaws. 

This is by far the best and most useful section of the companion, and I feel that it should have been one of the first supplements introduced. 

Part IV: Errata and Rules Update

Why has it taken over two years for errata to have officially been released? That aside, here are the changes:

• Blood Surge increases by one for all Blood Potency values. 
• Bane Severity increases in the same manner. 
• Compulsions now canonically can result from Messy Criticals as well as Bestial Failures. (I say 'canonically' because my GM and others have been using this rule for as long as I've been playing V5.)
• Taking Half has been introduced as the V5 version of D&D's Take Ten. You count your dice pool, cut it in half, and apply that number as successes. 
• The "Lingering Kiss" power has been rewritten. 

In Conclusion

The content that most players were waiting for was done poorly, and the good parts weren't long enough. 

It's probably good that it's free, because if people paid money for this they'd be incensed. On the other hand, if it were a paid product maybe the publishers could have afforded to hire better people to write this farce. 

Padraig O'Malley

I have wanted, for quite a long time now, to make a halfling bare-knuckles brawler in either D&D or Pathfinder. I have wanted this mainly because I think it would be hysterical to play what is essentially the embodiment of the Notre Dame mascot -- for some reason, halflings always have Irish accents in my minds -- but also because it would be a challenge to make an effective fighting character when starting from the standpoint of "penalty to strength and lacks reach."

Unfortunately, the challenge proved too great for many years. The closest I could come was do dual-class between Barbarian (for the Rage) and Monk (for the martial arts), but those had the twin problems of conflicting alignments and reduced progression in both classes. I tried it with straight Fighter, but while the extra feats were nice, the standard D&D Fighter tended to be an armored tank, not a supple pugilist. 

Then the Advanced Class Guide introduced the aptly-named Brawler class, and I knew I'd found my holy grail. A hybrid of Fighter and Monk, it gave me the best of both worlds: a good Base Attack Bonus progression, d10 hit points, and slew of class features specializing in unarmed attack (Improved Unarmed Strike at lvl 1, Flurry of Blows at level 2, etc). Then I discovered the Mutagenic Mauler archetype, whereby the Brawler would drink an alchemical elixir to make like Mr. Hyde and gain bonuses to a physical stat and natural armor. 

Then things got crazy. The campaign I was in used the World is Square rules, which does away with a lot of the annoying Feats that you have to take to get to the good stuff, like Weapon Finesse or Improved [Whatever], and that made the idea of a halfling Brawler not just viable, but downright deadly. Now I could make attacks based off Dexterity instead of Strength and being small was an advantage due to the AC bonus and the Underfoot alternate racial trait. 

But what made me laugh hysterically was the realization that my bare-knuckles brawler could also be a _wrestler_. Halflings with the Brawler favored class can get a +1 to the Combat Maneuver Bonus to Grapple... and I could take a feat at second level to make me a nasty grappler... oh, and did you realize that not only do Dan Bongs give you +2 to Grapple, but that bonus is untyped? Meaning that it stacks if you have a second dan bong in your other hand? And that all Brawlers get Two-Weapon Fighting for free at second level? And that there's no restriction on what size creatures you can grapple?

With that, I present to you Padraig O'Malley. He's currently 3rd level in our game, and if he can't punch it unconscious, he'll grapple it... and even if it's able to escape the grapple, that's a good way to tie up the enemy's actions so that your party can retreat/regroup/heal. Oh, and it's a REALLY good way to prevent spellcasters from casting spells. My ultimate goal is for him to grapple something ridiculously huge, like a dragon or the Tarrasque. He'll be the guy trying to headbutt it into submission as he clings tenaciously to its ear. 

Here's his character sheet (PDF).

Here's the image I used as inspiration:

And here's his backstory, as requested by the GM (he wanted plot hooks and why we were adventuring in a hive of scum and villainy. It's worth noting that this game is set in the World of Greyhawk. 

Padraig O'Malley was born in the Shireland, a halfling community in the Duchy of Tenh, to an impoverished family of farmers and sheepherders some 31 years ago. He was the oldest of three boys, and while not the strongest or the smartest of the lot, he was certainly the quickest. The rowdier boys in the Shireland did their best to pick on him, but they quickly discovered that he had a quick jab, a nasty right hook, and a wicked eye for shot placement, and he was soon left alone. 

However, his younger siblings were not as skilled as he. His middle brother Coinneach was fair of face and slender of build, and was often the target of jealous rage by the jilted suitors of the girls he was wooing. Ronan, the youngest, was small and weak but had a sharp mind, and his parents hoped that he could be apprenticed to the Church, or perhaps even to a wizard. They couldn't have seemed more like victims if they'd tried, and Padraig spent much of his early life trying to protect them both. 

One day, while driving the sheep to market, both Coinneach and Ronan were assaulted. Ronan was beaten unconscious, and  Coinneach had his face disfigured by a club. They both lived, but  Coinneach was blind in one eye and Ronan was left traumatized by the assault. 

In the words of Padraig, "This be where ah lost me fookin' temper." He went to the local tavern and... spent all the money he had on the most expensive bottle of liquor he could find. Then he went into the forest, found a faerie ring, and stepped into it. 

When he woke up the next morning, he was a different man. Older, meaner, sharper around the edges. The years spent in the faerie mound had taught him the secret fighting art of Boo-Tin as well as the knowledge of how to mix Poitín, a special liniment guaranteed to relax aching muscles and strip paint off walls (90% alcohol by volume). Padraig then went back to town, found the villagers who had assaulted his family in a nearby inn. He drank the Poitín, kicked the door open, and shouted "Me name's Padraig O'FOOKING Malley, and I'm here to kick the arses o' the blaggards what hurt me brothers!"

Padraig doesn't remember much after that. It's all a red-coated haze. He knows that he beat several of them to death, and one of them was the son of the local Sheriff, and so he regretfully went on the run. Several villages over, he settled in a part of the Shireland near the border to the Bandit Kingdoms, doing menial farm work.  He met a bonnie lass named Dægeseage (Daisy) and settled down with her. Padraig and found contentment. 

One day he came back from a hard day of work in the fields to find that the cottage he and Dægeseage lived in had been ransacked, the front door hanging open. He rushed inside, fearing the worst, only to find that the woman he loved was gone. The local constables weren't of any help, stating that it was likely a slaving party from the Bandit Kingdoms and that his wife was gone forever. 

Padraig quietly mixed a fresh batch of Poitín, locked up the cottage, tendered his resignation to his employer, and walked into the Kingdoms. He didn't know where to look, but that kind of thing never stopped him before. He'd walk until he found someone and ask them if they knew anything, and if they gave him any trouble he'd kick a mudhole in them. If he has to punch everyone inside the Bandit Kingdoms, that's fine with him; it keeps his mind off his grief. 

Why yes, I do speak with an outrageous Irish accent when playing Padraig. However did you guess?