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 Clan of Death

In the mythology of Vampire: the Masquerade, there is a clan of vampires who did not achieve their position in the usual manner of "being a descendant of one of the 13 whom Caine embraced before the Flood." Instead, they diablerized the unsuspecting Antedeluvian of another clan, thereby becoming a clan in their own right, but this heinous act marked them as the enemies of the other kindred and to survive they needed to rely upon their magical abilities, subjugated supernatural soldiers, and their own tight-knit structure to survive. To this day they are mistrusted and seen as being only out for themselves. 

Quickly now: am I talking about the Tremere, or am I talking about the Giovanni?

Unfortunately, the answer is both. The Giovanni are just a re-skin of the Tremere, with Necromancy instead of Thaumaturgy and Potence instead of Auspex. The similarity was only reinforced in the 3rd edition (aka Revised) when Necromancy was given multiple magical paths in exactly the same manner as Thaumaturgy. I always preferred the Cappadocians, the original Clan of Death introduced in Vampire: the Dark Ages, who approached the study of the afterlife from a spiritual and scholarly aspect rather than from one of power and manipulation and whose disciplines were Auspex, Fortitude, and Necromancy. 

As it turns out, the writers for this version of VtM agree with me at least in part, because they have decided to rename the clan of death Hecata. I assume this is a reference to Hecate, the three-faced Greek goddess of magic (including necromancy) due to the fact that the Hecata are an amalgamation of the Giovanni, the surviving members of the Giovanni, and all the other death-related bloodlines like the Samedi and the Nagaraja. On the one hand, this is good because it ties up a lot of loose ends in the form of errant bloodlines tied to a meta-story. On the other, it's bad and lazy because, suddenly and magically, all of these bloodlines with their formerly disparate powers and weaknesses now all have the same disciplines (Auspex, Fortitude, Oblivion) and bane (the Giovanni weakness of dealing extra damage when feeding -- which, if used properly, can become a benefit in combat). 

What's worse is that the V5 writers have decided that the shadow powers of the Lasombra come from the same netherworldly source as the Hecata's necromancy, and now canon Lasombra have Dominate, Oblivion, and Potence. So now not only do the Lasombra resemble pre-V5 Giovanni, they also have access to necromantic powers... which rather puts the lie to the Hecata's claim as the "clan of death", doesn't it? Ugh. 

By the by, this is why I made my version of the Lasombra jettison the whole "shadow power" concept. Not only was Obtenetration reductive ("We're the clan called 'The Shadow' and we have shadow powers"), but it also opened a huge can of worms by making the Hecata no longer unique and giving the power-hungry Lasombra access to too much power. 

So, with all that said, here is my version of the Clan of Death. In terms of game heresy it's worse than my Tzimisce writeup but not as bad as my non-Obtenebration Lasombra. Much like in Cult of the Blood Gods it integrates the Giovanni and Samedi back into the mother clan but, if I may say so myself, my version does it less awkwardly by ignoring a lot of the metaplot-backstory baggage which caused all the problems in the first place. This also nicely explains how and why the Cappadocians have managed to get along without the Camarilla: they are effectively a sect in their own right, and much like the Banu Haquim of previous editions* they are too useful and too powerful to alienate but too insular and too disturbing to be kept close. 

Also, for those who are wondering about the Nagaraja, I left them out because I think they're too interesting to be a mere bloodline. I'm going to tweak their concept (and probably their disciplines) to see if I can't come up with a clan that has a distinct flavor of India and Central Asia. 

* I am NOT a fan of the Assassin Clan joining the Camarilla. I preferred them as NPCs who did awful things for payment in large quantities of vitae, not the Cam's new enforcement branch. 

Pathfinder Prestige Class: The Plutomancer

This is a re-work of a class I wrote in 2009. Hopefully this is a better version. 

Tangible rewards in the form of money are staples of dungeon adventuring, yet sometimes extracting those riches is a herculean task: art objects, luxurious furniture, multi-ton adamantine doors and dragon hoards filled with millions of copper and silver coins are all valuable, yet exceptionally difficult to transport for sale. Likewise, a struggling dungeon delver is often frustrated by his inability to sell his hard-won gains at anything near what they cost on the market; half price seems to be the default unless advanced haggling rules are used. And may the gods help you if your Game Master knows anything about economics and decides to rule that you have flooded the local economy with gold and driven up  the prices of even the most basic goods and services.

The solution to all of these dilemmas is the Plutomancer prestige class. Whether a cleric in service to a god whose portfolio involves greed, commerce, or thievery, or a mage who exemplifies the classic struggle to turn lead into gold, the Plutomancer is a welcome addition to any party by the simple expedient of acting as a force multiplier for looting.

(Author's Note: In terms of what this class brings to the table, i.e. mainly flavor,  non-combat skill bonuses, and more efficient looting of treasure, it ought to be a class archetype and not a prestige class. However, making this a compatible archetype for multiple classes is more effort than I want to go through, and I do want this available to arcanists, clerics, oracles, and wizards. Therefore I have made it a five-level PrC with a low entry that player characters can dip into as they see fit.)

Requirements
Feats: Skill Focus (Appraise), Skill Focus (Craft: Alchemy)
Spells: Ability to cast Locate Object, plus either Blood Money or Stone Shape and at least one other transmutation spell of 3rd level or higher.

Class Skills
The Plutomancer's class skills (and the key ability for each skill) are Appraise, Bluff, Craft, Diplomacy, Knowledge (Arcana), Knowledge (Local), Knowledge (Geography), Knowledge (History), Linguistics, Perception, Profession (Merchant), Sense Motive, Spellcraft, and Use Magic Device.
Skill Ranks Per Level: 2 + Int modifier.

Class Features
Hit Die: d6.
Weapon and Armor Proficiency: Plutomancers gain no proficiency with any weapon or armor.
Spells per Day/Spells Known: When a new Plutomancer level is gained, the character gains new spells per day (and spells known, if applicable) as if she had also gained a level in a spellcasting class she belonged to before she added the prestige class. She does not, however, gain any other benefit a character of that class would have gained. This essentially means that she adds her Plutomancer levels to the level of some other spellcasting class she has, and then determines spells per day, spells known, and caster level accordingly.

Class Abilities

Level	Base Attack Bonus	Fort Save	Ref Save	Will Save	Special	Spells per Day
1st	+0	+0	+0	+1	Bling, Mind on my Money	+1 level of existing class
2nd	+1	+1	+1	+1	Deep Pockets 1, Money on my Mind	+1 level of existing class
3rd	+1	+1	+1	+2	Moneychanger, Secret Chest	+1 level of existing class
4th	+2	+1	+1	+2	Deep Pockets 2, Pawnbroker	+1 level of existing class
5th	+2	+2	+2	+3	Fence From Beyond, Flesh to Ore	+1 level of existing class

Bling (Su)
The Plutomancer adds the spell Blood Money to their spell list if it is not already listed.

Additionally, all spells give more expensive-seeming results: Create Food and Water will make a sumptuous feast with fine wine; Mage Armor garbs the caster in finery, etc. This is an Illusionary effect.

Mind on my Money (Ex)
The Plutomancer may use their Wisdom or Charisma modifier instead of Intelligence for the Appraise skill. Additionally, when selling items they may gain +10% resale value for each level of Plutomancer. If they choose to do so they cannot use alternate means to increase the sale price, such as through the use of Diplomacy or spells. 

Example: a Plutomancer wants to sell a 100 gp item. Normally that item sells for 50 gp. A 1st level Plutomancer sells it for (50+[10%*50]) or 55 gold, a 3rd level Plutomancer sells it for 65 gold, and a 5th level sells it for 75 gold.

Deep Pockets 1 (Su)

The Plutomancer is immune to encumbrance effects from coins, gems and jewelry; they effectively weigh nothing. Futhermore, extradimensional storage items such as Portable Holes and Bags of Holding weigh 50% less and can carry 50% more (both weight and volume) when within 50 feet of a Plutomancer. If a magic item which is packed beyond its base capacity leaves this radius, it disgorges items at random until the weight and/or volume overload is equalized. 

A Secret Chest loaded with this ability is an exception to this rule and does not disgorge its contents when sent to the Ethereal Plane.

Money on my Mind (Ex)
The Plutomancer gains a bonus equal to their caster level to all Perception skill checks for finding treasure, or for detecting another's use of Sleight of Hand to steal from them. Additionally, when buying items they may subtract 5% from the purchase price for each level of Plutomancer. If they choose to do so they cannot use alternate means to decrease the sale price, such as through the use of Diplomacy or spells. 

Example: a Plutomancer wants to buy a 100 gp item. A 1st level Plutomancer purchases it for (100-[5%*100]) or 95 gold, a 3rd level Plutomancer purchases it for 85 gold, and a 5th level purchases it for 75 gold.

Moneychanger (Sp)
The Plutomancer adds the spell Stone Shape to their spell list if it is not already listed. 

A number of times per day equal to their level in this class, a Plutomancer may transmute currency and gems, but not other types of valuables, into other forms of currency and/or gems. (For example, 40,000 copper coins become 40 platinum coins; useful for hauling away a dragon hoard). Any amount of currency may be transmuted in this manner, but it must all be touching and the Plutomancer must be able to touch at least one of the valuables. 

The transmuted coins, bank notes, trade bars etc. all retain their other characteristics such as size, weight, portraits, etc. of their country of origin; however, a successful Linguistics skill check will change these characteristics into whichever details the Plutomancer desires, be it the design of another country or even a wholly original design. 

Secret Chest (Sp)

Once per day, the Plutomancer may summon and dismiss a Secret Chest as if they cast the spell. The masterwork chest and its miniature replica must still be purchased, although Money on my Mind may be used to reduce the cost. Unlike the spell, the chest does not disappear after 60 days, although it is still lost if the miniature chest is lost or destroyed. 

Deep Pockets 2 (Su)

Coins, gems and jewelry have neither weight nor volume when a Plutomancer loads them into extradimensional storage, such as a Portable Hole, Handy Haversack, Bag of Holding or a Secret Chest. 

Pawnbroker (Sp)
Once per day a Plutomancer can, with a touch, convert up to 100 pounds per caster level of non-living objects into their worth in gold coins, as determined by an Appraisal skill check (magical items get a saving throw vs. DC 10 + one-half spellcaster level + spellcasting attribute modifier; living items and artifacts are unaffected). 

Note that this value is based upon intrinsic material worth, not weight or artistry; even a ton of stone is still only worth 1 gold, and a masterpiece painting is nothing but pigments on canvas, so converting objects of art into coins will yield less than their cultural worth. 

Pawnbroker only affects free-standing objects and not those which are attached to, and therefore could be considered parts of, a larger object. Furthermore, a large  item cannot be partially converted; the conversion must be all or nothing. 

Pawnbroker may be used to convert a Flesh to Ore victim into currency.

Fence From Beyond (Sp)

The Plutomancer always has someone they can call to help facilitate commerce. Once a day they can conjure (calling) a mercane (for magical items) or a witchwyrd (for more mundane valuables) for buying or selling goods. This ability is a variant on summoning, not calling, and the summoned creature will only trade with the Plutomancer. The Plutomancer may use Mind on my Money and Money on my Mind to try and improve any deals; the Fence's attitude starts out at Indifferent. 

Whether or not a Fence From Beyond buys the Plutomancer's wares is at the GM's discretion, as is if the Fence has any rare or magical items for sale. Highly specific or unusual requests may require the merchant to "get back with the Plutomancer on that one" (GM's discretion whether the merchant is successful or not). A Fence From Beyond will not buy living creatures, or creatures that were once living but are no longer, such as those converted by Flesh to Ore.

The Fence will not engage in combat or do anything else except buy or sell, and will leave the moment they are attacked. A Fence From Beyond injured or cheated by the Plutomancer or their associates will leave and not return, spreading the word that the Plutomancer is not to be trusted; an atonement at a rate of 1,000 gp per character level is sufficient to buy back the Fence's indifference. A Fence From Beyond killed in such a manner, or by being summoned into danger, requires 2,500 gp per character level of atonement. 

Flesh to Ore (Sp)

Once per week, the Plutomancer may cast Flesh to Ore as a Spell-Like Ability (DC 10 + one-half spellcaster level + spellcasting attribute modifier). This is nearly identical to Flesh to Stone, but there are veins of gemstones and precious metals (gold, silver, platinum, etc, but not special materials like mithril or adamantine) worth 300 gp per caster level throughout the stone. 

This gold cannot be removed without destroying the statue.

V5: Ground Anchor

There's too much stress in my day job, so it's time again to geek out about something I like: vampires and role-playing games. 

In Vampire:the Masquerade, there's a vampiric Discipline (suite of supernatural abilities) called Potence. In previous editions, Potence was boringly simple: each point you had in it (and Disciplines run from 1 to 5) gave you an automatic success* at any strength based test, including damage.

* OK so short version: You have a pool of dice which you roll, typically your attribute plus your skill. Each of those has a rating of 1-5, so player characters end up rolling between 1 and 10 dice depending on how buff and how skilled they are. The average difficulty is 6 or better on a 10 sided die, so that's 50% chance of success on each die. The more dice you roll, the greater your chance to succeed and the greater your chance to succeed well, as 1 success is "barely" and 5 is "amazing" and 10 is probably "godlike".

Let's say you're a moderately fighty character with Strength 3, Brawl 3, and Potence 3. You would roll 6 dice, count up how many of them were 6 or better, and then you would add three because of Potence. Stupidly simple, but brutally effective as a combat focused character could end up rolling fifteen dice. 

But all of that is old style. V5 does away with that and replaces them with a suite of abilities which scale in power. For example, at Potence level 1 you could choose the power Lethal Body, which enables you to ignore increasing amounts of armor and deal deadly damage with your punches and kicks... or you can pick Soaring Leap, which enables you to jump 3 times your Potence rating in meters straight up and 5 times that horizontally.

Most of Potence is like this: you can pick an obvious combat power, or you can pick a utility "feat of strength" power. I like that, especially since the character I play is a priest who is trying really, really hard to be a pacifist.

However, there's only one second-level Potence power, which is Prowess and that basically repeats the old version of Potence of adding that value to their damage and feats of strength. I didn't want that for my character, so I came up with a utility power for second level:

Level 2 Potence: Ground Anchor

Channeling inhuman strength into their legs, hips, and back, the user can absorb the force of a landing after falling from a great height. This strength can also be used to resist being toppled or pushed back by another.
■ Cost: One Rouse Check
■ Dice Pool: Dexterity or Strength + Athletics
■ System: So long as the user succeeds on the Dexterity + Athletics roll to land on their feet, they can absorb without injury the impact of a landing up to 100 times their Potence level in meters. (Due to terminal velocity, at Potence level 5 the user can survive a fall from any distance.) However, this energy must go somewhere, and so whatever the user lands on immediately suffers the effect of falling damage, which is one level of Superficial damage per meter of fall (core book, p.409). The user may also add their Potence rating to any Strength + Athletics roll to resist being pushed back or knocked over by another; however, this does require a firm foothold to work.
■ Duration: One scene 

Google Docs version here. 

One of the things which I like about this power is that it segues nicely into the third Potence ability Uncanny Grip, which is where "Focusing their unnatural strength into their toes and fingers, the vampire grips and burrows their extremities into almost any surface, enabling them to climb and even hang otherwise unsupported from walls and ceilings." There's a logical progression: Leap far distances, then fall further distances safely, then spider climb or hang on. Yes, it sounds a bit super-heroic, but it makes narrative sense.

I also like the punny name. You can anchor yourself to the ground... or you can plummet to the ground and bury yourself into it, like an anchor hitting the sea floor. If Cassidy had this power in the first episode of Preacher, he wouldn't have ended up like this:



Finally, to answer the expected question: While I find it highly unlikely that you would actually be able to hit someone with this, as there is no effective way to steer while plummeting to the ground, there's always someone who is going to try it. Well, guess what? There's already a to-hit roll baked into the activation (Dexterity + Athletics). Set the difficulty to the target's Dexterity + Dodge and if you beat it, you hit!

V5: Vampire Values

This is something I made to help me with a  project* that never fully gelled. But it's a neat thing in its own right, and so I figured I'd share it with you. 

The Left-Right axis represents how much emphasis the typical vampire of that category feels towards his clan. The far left is "Leave me alone" and the far right is "We are brothers".

The Up-Down axis represents how much respect members of that clan have for rules, traditions, and authority. The very top is "Hidebound traditionalist" and the bottom is "Screw you, I do what I want."

Special thanks to my Lovely Assistant Adrian for helping me pretty up this graph.
Graph designed at www.desmos.com/calculator

From left to right, and top to bottom:

• Tzimisce: Traditionally, fiends want to be left alone to do their own thing, and they will fight anyone who makes them conform. However, they adhere so strongly to their own customs and traditions that they will fight a friend, or protect an enemy, rather than break them. 
• Lasombra: The magisters believe in order -- their order, to be precise. Unfortunately, so does every other Lasombra, and in a clan which believes in survival of the fittest, turning on each other is inevitable. However, one does not just wage war willy-nilly; no, there are proper ways to engage in internecine conflict.
• Ventrue: Don't try to separate the Ventrue from the Camarilla. The blue-bloods are the Camarilla, and they won't let you forget it. To attack them is to the attack the clan is to attack the Camarilla, and so if you want to take one down you had best be subtle, cunning, and have the backing of as many fellow Camarillians as possible. 
• Ba'ali: I hate the Followers of Set and so the Ba'ali are the super-evil baddies in my VtM world. Infernalists are hated by both Camarilla and Sabbat, and so the philosophy of "We must hang together or we will all hang separately" is definitely in play. Furthermore, even though demons are typically backstabbing individualists and therefore opposing covens may feud if they serve different masters, by and large the Ba'ali are fanatical servants to their masters and their causes. 
• Pyramid Tremere: Ironically enough, the Tremere built a tightly-knit organization much like Ba'ali to survive their first centuries as a clan due to all of the other clans wanting to kill them for their ursupation of Saulot's line. This organization further stratified when they helped form the Camarilla during the Spanish Inquisition. As such, they are very loyal to both clan and sect, but blood has primacy. 
• Non-Pyramid Tremere: After the destruction of the Vienna Chantry by the Second Inquisition in 2008, the Pyramid shattered and the clan was thrown into disarray. Without the strict internal hierarchy, individual warlocks compete heavily for the lore, artifacts, and secrets that the united Clan once possessed, fearing their clanmates as much as their enemies. Shattered Pyramid Tremere can and do exist in any quadrant, depending on which House they back and what they do to survive. 
• Toreador: The artistes and degenerates don't so much love the Camarilla the stability it brings. After all, it's hard to be artistic and indulge in bacchanalia when the city is burning and there's no one to appreciate your art. That said, there is frequent infighting between clan mates, as good adjectives for them are "catty, bitchy, and backstabbing."
• Brujah Idealists: Often as old as they are rare, the "intellectual rebels" of the clan hearken back to their old days as warrior-scholars and philosopher-kings of Greece. They are moderately conservative in terms of both clan loyalty and adherence to authority, which in an odd way makes them "bold, punk rebels" against the majority of their clan. 
• Banu Haqim: This position is more of an averaging than anything else. What was once a highly unified clan of strong Tradition has now schismed due to the rise of Ur-Shulgi, the reversal of the assassin's blood curse, and parts of the clan affiliating with the Camarilla. Weirdly, in an attempt to make them less of a Muslim stereotype, V5 has done just that by turning them into feuding groups a la the Shia and the Sunni. So they are highly loyal to their groups and traditions, but the groups and traditions of others are the enemy. 
• Gangrel: Pretty much the clan of lone wolves, the animals can best be described as "If we don't like the way things are, we'll just turn into wolves and live in the forests for a few centuries, and you can't do anything about it because we're outside your jurisdiction." They follow their own code, and to hell with you. 
• Malkavian: The lunatics are all over the board and cannot be pinned down in any way other than "unpredictable", so they exist at 0,0 because I needed to put them somewhere. 
• Nosferatu: The lepers are the canonical example of "my clan, right or wrong, and to hell with the rest" as from as far back as first edition they have been described as ignoring sect differences in favor of clan loyalty. Sabbat, Camarilla, Anarchs? Doesn't matter. A Nos is a Nos and they all hang together against the world, sometimes playing the sects against each other for the benefit of the clan. 
• Caitiff: "Everybody hates me and abuses me. I wish I could overthrow the system, but no one wants to associate with me and I'm pretty powerless, so I'm going to keep my head down and hope they ignore me."
• Hecata etc: First they were the Cappadocians, then the Giovanni, and now they're known as the Hecata. Named after Hecate, the multi-faced Greek goddess of magic, they are a sect in themselves and comprise multiple bloodlines (Giovanni, Harbingers, Samedi, Lamia, Nagaraja, etc) with all the associated infighting that brings. They're also not much liked by the other clans due their preoccupation with necromancy and the fact that a deal struck with one is not necessarily a deal honored by another bloodline, let alone the clan as a whole. In short, they fight among themselves like the Lasombra (only with less style and restraint) and try to keep their heads down like the Caitiff so they don't get slapped down by the larger sects... all while trying to increase their power, and that of their bloodline (and, unavoidably, their sect) until they are again a force with which to be reckoned.
• Inconnu: These powerful vampires have somehow managed to remove themselves from the eternal struggle that is unlife, and spend their nights doing their own thing (pursuing hobbies and studies, achieving Golconda, watching the other undead squabble like children, etc). They want to be left alone, and other than that no two are alike. Think Methos from the Highlander TV show, only far less personable. 
• Brujah Iconoclasts: This is where the vast majority of the rabble exist. "Burn it all down, man! Tear down all the structure, all the hierarchy that keeps the Man in power! Traditions are just rules that anchor you to the past,  and we live in the now! Only in anarchy do you find true equality, and if anyone says otherwise, beat the crap out of them! Especially those bastards of our clan who say otherwise!"
• Ravnos: Known as charlatans, thieves and liars, this clan is basically hated by everyone and blamed for everything that goes wrong, so of course they're going to stick together, thumb their nose at authority, and do what it takes to survive. You would think that would result in highly ritualized and codified clan traditions, but the paradox-seekers are just as likely to regard them as hindering nonsense which blinds them to the truth  of reality as the customs of others. 

* The project was based on "If I have X amount of status within the Camarilla, how much status does that give me within my own clan and in the eyes of other clans?" I figured that before I could derive that I would need to see how much stock other clans put in status with the Cam, with others, etc, and that's how the chart came about.

I still think there's merit to this project, but it's too complex to turn into a simple formula of "If you are of X clan with Y status, then you have A status within B clan", so this chart serves as a sort of guideline in that regard. For example, a Ventrue would view a Nosferatu with high Camarilla status in the same regard that he would view a member of his own clan, but the Nosferatu clan would not do the same. They would, however, appreciate clan loyalty when they see it, and treat him with the courtesy of "He might be a bastard, but he stands by his own and I respect that."  A Tzimisce might arrive at a similar result via a different method ("You are petty and controlling, but you honor your traditions as do I"), a Gangrel wouldn't care and if forced to do anything would probably bugger off, and a Brujah would see him as The Enemy and give him no respect at all.

V5: Nosferatu and their Curse

After I posted my version of the Ravnos last week, a friend of mine asked me this:

And then I got to thinking, like I always do, but specifically because I am playing a Nosferatu in my Sunday night and, through circumstances which surprise even me, my character has become the face of the group.

I need to explain why this is hilarious. You see, in Vampire: the Masquerade, each bloodline of vampires has a specific weakness. Those of the Nosferatu clan are hideous, like the vampire in the Murnau film of the same name.

Back in previous editions, all Nosferatu were inhumanly ugly. As in "There's no passing for human, you are obviously a supernatural(ly ugly) creature." This is problematic because in this game, the most important rule that vampires have is The Masquerade, which basically says As far as the humans are concerned, There Are No Such Things As Vampires, and if you reveal our existence to the public we can and will put you to death for it. The humans almost killed us once during the Spanish Inquisition, and nowadays there are billions more of them with much better weapons. We will kill you before we allow you to kill us all.

As you are probably guessing, this is a Big Problem for Nosferatu because they can shatter the Masquerade at the drop of a hankie. Most players got around this by putting a lot of points into the discipline (vampire super power) of Obfuscate, which is a power that starts off as "You don't see me" and develops into "Now I cover myself in illusion and I can look like a normal human, so no problems here." This was kind of annoying for a lot of players because it meant that you either had to sink a lot of points into Obfuscate, or be a stealthy creepy type, or just not interact with mortals by living in the sewers and eating rats.

Fifth edition of the game changed that curse somewhat, in ways both good and bad. The good news is is that they no longer immediately break the Masquerade when seen by humans, but instead have the Repulsive flaw (a penalty of -2 dice to all social rolls which depend upon appearance) and can never look any better. So in other words they look horribly deformed, or maybe having suffered grievous injuries, but they don't look supernatural.

In addition, trying to hide their repulsive nature incurs a penalty equal to their Blood Potency, and this applies even while using Obfuscate to mask themselves. This last part struck me as odd, because if I have the supernatural ability to mask myself in an illusion to look like anyone, even a specific person, it seems weird that I would still be repulsive even if I looked like a supermodel. Admittedly, it's just a dice penalty to overcome and not a blanket "No", so it works well enough for most people. It still bothered me, though, and part of that is because the Nosferatu no longer had reasons to live in the sewers and other deep dark places of the work, which had become part of their trademark over the decades.

One of the core rules of V5 is the concept of "Bane Severity" and it is tied to Blood Potency. The short version is that the older a vampire gets the more powerful it gets, but so too does the power of its bane. In the case of the Nosferatu, that would be their hideousness... except not. They'll always be Repulsive, but that won't increase; only the difficulty in hiding their hideousness increases. So... they'll still be ugly as they become older and more inhuman... but they won't be any uglier... they'll just have a harder time hiding it despite their experience?

No. No, no no. I did not like this, so of course this meant I would need to re-work their bane so that the flavor and the lore would match while still making the clan more friendly to new players. I think I succeeded.

First I cherry-picked a neat bit from Vampire: the Reckoning*, which also featured a version of the Nosferatu clan. In VtR, the Nosferatu were repulsive, but not specifically when it came to looks; it could be "A palpable aura of menace, a charnel odor, or the undeniable manner of a predator is just as compelling as a twisted body," meaning you could absolutely have a Nosferatu who was average looking, even beautiful, but still be repulsive. Using that as my base, I decided that the bane of the Nosferatu would be a penalty equal to their Bane Severity for social interactions, and how that manifests depends on the nature of their repulsiveness.

If physically repulsive: Appearance is very important for first impressions, and the Nosferatu’s repulsiveness colors all social interactions (Bane Severity as a penalty to all skills paired to social attributes) the first time she meets any non-Nosferatu while not under Obfuscate and continues to until she manages to convince them (through good skill rolls, effective roleplaying, or demonstrations of sincerity) to look past her physical flaws and judge her on the merits of her character. Nosferatu with this bane effectively possess a modified version of the Repulsive Looks flaw and cannot take it again.

If socially repulsive: The Nosferatu is a gilded turd, gives off a serial killer vibe, or is otherwise odious in manner. So long as social interaction with him is kept at the superficial level everything is fine, but when he interacts meaningfully with a non-Nosferatu he suffers a penalty (Bane Severity to all skills paired to social attributes) unless he manages to convince that person that he is normal, or at least harmless, in a roll opposed by Wits + Insight and succeeding by a margin equal to his Bane Severity. Nosferatu with this bane effectively possess a modified version of the Obvious Predator flaw and cannot take it again.

In both cases, success in one encounter does not remove the penalty from future encounters unless that person has not left the Nosferatu's presence.

A Nosferatu wishing to help a non-Nosferatu acclimate to their presence must succeed at a difficulty of his Bane Severity. This cannot be done in a single sitting, but rather over a period of time, until the number of successful attempts is more than the Nosferatu’s Bane Severity. If the Nosferatu increases his Blood Potency, then he must start over with the new difficulty as previously acclimated persons must adjust to the new change.

Alternately, you can use my Unknown Armies-style Stress Gauges for Vampire 5e rules that I made a few months back and require anyone who interacts with that Nosferatu succeed in a stress check -- depending on the nature of the hideousness, I'd say Self or Helplessness checks for physical ugliness and either Unnatural or Violence checks for social ugliness -- with the difficulty of the stress check as Bane Severity/2. There's no need to "roll to normalize" because a Stress Check is exactly that.

Here's a Google Docs version for use in your game.


What I like about this system is that newly-made Nosferatu are just slightly hideous, and they don't have to spend points to hide it, which gives flexibility to new characters and makes the clan more accessible to new players. However, as the characters get older and gain power, they begin to look or act worse and worse, and so those characters have a choice: put points into Obfuscate/increase their social skills, or go live with the rest of the repulsive freaks underground. Not every Sewer Rat is going to want to learn Obfuscate; some may want to focus on Animalism or Presence instead, and now they have a reason to congregate in warrens, just like in first edition.


* Oh boy, how to explain? Short version: the publishers of Vampire: the Masquerade decided to end their game universe and release a game similar to but not the same as it, titled Vampire: the Requiem. It took a lot of VtM concepts and mangled them into different positions. It was... not well received by fans of the old game, in much the same way that 4th edition D&D was not well received by fans of 3.5e. I think it tells you all you need to know that VtM was rebooted into the 5th edition a year or two ago, whereas VtR has ceased publication.

V5 Ravnos & Chimerstry

More Vampire: the Masquerade stuff.

I confess, I don't grok the Ravnos as written. In previous editions they're "gypsy vampires" and they're "all criminals"* and I'm just going to hope that bit of racism is fixed when the clan is officially written for V5.

That said, I don't see anything unique about them other than Chimerstry, their clan-specific discipline of illusion, and I think this is a missed opportunity. Consider the following: Ravnos as the reverse-Gangrel clan.

You see, most vampires are loners and the Gangrel even moreso, given their affinity for the wild places of the world and their ability to transform into wolves or bats for travel and then meld into the earth during the day. But both Gangrel and Ravnos as written have some degree of wanderlust, and since the Ravnos are based off the Romani, who travel in caravans, shouldn't the Ravnos actually be anti-loners? Shouldn't they travel in broods or troupes or covens or whatever the term is, along with their living relatives and ghouled servants?

I think they should. That would actually make them distinct from other kindred, tie in to their Romani heritage without being racist, and make playing them more interesting. They're basically the carnies of the vampire world.

At any rate, here's my version of the clan and their discipline. You'll note that not only did I make their clan weakness (called a bane in this edition) less racist but it also hearkens back to the "aura of unease" weakness they had in first edition. I rather like that.

You'll also note that I made Chimerstry into a three-level amalgam discipline, just like I did with Vicissitude. I really do like that approach because it distills the essence of the discipline into its core components: Shape flesh, shape bone, turn into horrible monster. Anything other than that is just padding in my opinion, and since I folded it into Protean it doesn't need to be padded out further.

I applied the same philosophy to Chimerstry, whose main elements seem to be "Make static image, make moving/interactive image, hurt people with image." I don't think I'm missing anything more than that, and so it also gets the three-level amalgam treatment.

And honestly, the first two powers of Obfuscate could just as easily go to Chimerstry. Cloak of Shadows? "I project an image in front of me that I hide behind." Silence of Death? "I produce illusory countersound." Unseen Passage? "The image in front of me moves with me as I move."  Heck, Mask of 1000 Faces might as well be Chimerstry in that it's a moving image laid over the owner's body.

This focus on family is why I removed Animalism and Fortitude. Those are great disciplines for loners, but less useful when traveling with an extended family in a caravan or carnival. Instead I asked myself “What disciplines would be useful both for the carnies of today and the ‘gypsy caravans’ of yesterday?”  Presence is useful because not only is that great for the people who want to play up the stereotypical huckster and con man, but it’s also useful for protecting your family from angry mobs and  vengeful princes. It’s the silver tongue only helps bring in money and helps get you across borders to escape persecution. Between that and Obfuscate, it’s how you protect the people who protect you during the day… and because you have family to protect you during the day, you don’t need to forage for food in the wilderness (Animalism) or run screaming from Lupines and/or the sun (Fortitude).

As for Celerity, I confess that my decision was mainly based on “rule of cool” meets “gypsy stereotype.” I’ve seen too many movies where the Romani women were sensual dancers, the men were devilishly clever musicians, and they were all good with knives. Celerity both compliments and enhances this concept, and it also allows them ways to escape when they’re inevitably blamed for things going wrong in the city.

And now we come to the weakness. I changed it for three reasons:

1. It’s racist AF. “The Ravnos are vampire Romani, and all Ravnos are criminals, so by extension all Romani are criminals too.”
2. It’s not in tune with folklore. 
3. It makes them difficult to play, because now you have a character who MUST cause trouble and stir the shit. Moreso, this is a great way for a “chaotic asshole” player to ‘justify’ conning the other PCs and that could lead to inter-party strife. 

So instead, I used a variation on the “aura of unease” weakness from first edition, but changed it to reverse the racism. Instead of “All gypsies are thieves”, it’s “All Ravnos are blamed for everything that goes wrong, and so that scapegoating falls upon their families as well.” This is an in-game justification for why the Romani are hated and suspected of crimes. I suppose you could argue that this is moral whitewash which takes the fault of racism and xenophobia away from humanity and blames it on supernatural causes, and to an extent I guess that’s true. But it’s not explaining away ALL racism as the fault of vampires, just the racism towards this one type of people. Maybe you’ll think it’s awful, but I think it’s a hell of a lot more palatable than “Ravnos are criminals and Ravnos are Romani, so the Romani are either criminals themselves or tacitly permit the existence of such within their community.”

* No, seriously. From 2nd edition through 4th (aka V20), they all had a clan weakness which read something like this:

The Ravnos clan are all criminals; each Ravnos has a specific vice ranging from plagiarism to mass murder. When the opportunity to indulge that vice is present, Ravnos must succeed in a self-control check to avoid indulging it.

Now combine that with the "descended from Gypsies" line and you can see how a lot of people got really upset with that.

Psychokinesis: A Discipline for V5

Here's a weird thing about Vampire: the Masquerade: even though popular fiction is rife with vampires flying without turning into bats, there's not a single vampire clan or bloodline within the game which has this ability. Nor do they have any form of telekinesis, which has always been a popular vampire ability for setting the mood by opening books, closing doors, or snuffing candles remotely. The closest they ever came was in making the Movement of the Mind thaumaturgical path, which meant only those vampires who knew thaumaturgy could get it (and boy, was thau guarded jealously by the Tremere), and only as an afterthought. V5 doesn't even have that.

For a game that's supposed to embrace (heh) vampires in all their folkloric and pop-cultural glory, this seems like a huge gaffe to me, so I fixed it. I took Movement of the Mind and turned it from a V20 thaumaturgical path to a V5 discipline that anyone can get -- at least, in theory, as it's a rare discipline whose possession is seen as a matter of prestige (unless of course the GM changes that.)

Now your V5 game can have vampires who creepily glide over surfaces, fly like the Lost Boys, and who can telekinetically hurl objects!

Here it is in Google Document format.  Your feedback is most welcome.

Unknown Armies-style Stress Gauges for Vampire 5e

As you probably know, I'm a big fan of Unknown Armies. Even though the setting isn't for most gamers, there's just something about the core mechanics of the game which I find satisfying in its utility and adaptable to different genres (for example, were I run a game set in the Firefly 'verse, I would use UA).

I think the most evocative part of UA are the Stress Gauges, which were called Madness Meters in previous editions. They're like the Sanity system of the Call of Cthulhu RPG, only better, because not only are the sources of stress/madness broken down into categories like Violence, Helplessness, and so on, they also give you the choice of being unable to cope with the stresses (and therefore going insane) or become hardened to them (and risk becoming an emotionless sociopath).

In fact, I like it so much that I converted it to use with Vampire: the Masquerade, another of my favorite system. It was a fair amount of work, but I thought it was a great idea and so did my GM, so I did it.

That said, here's a Google Doc for Stress Gauges in V5. Not only did I re-calibrate some of the benchmarks because I didn't agree with them, I also added a sixth gauge called Addiction. Not only is this great for games without supernatural components (like the aforementioned UA Firefly game), but it's also a natural fit for Vampire where hunger for blood, itself an addiction, rules the player characters.

If you like V:tM and you like granular measurements of insanity and sociopathy, I think you'll like this adaptation.

V5: Gargoyles & Other stuff

A few things that I've been working on for the past couple of weeks.

First, here's the V5 version of the Gargoyle bloodline. I feel like most bloodlines in Vampire: the Masquerade are dumb, but I like the Rockheads because they are unique and have a logical place in the canon history. My V5 GM Adrian Rook and I made this cooperatively, although I admit I lifted the background flavor text straight from V20 because this is a conversion.

What's cool about this symbol is that it's the alchemical symbol for "earth" superimposed over
the sigil of House Tremere, and the gargoyles are rocky being made by the Tremere. 

Now some of you may be wondering what this "affiliated discipline" thing is, and it's just an idea that I'm fiddling around with. Sometimes it makes sense for a clan to have access to a discipline that that suits it thematically but is not one of its core three. This is known as an Affiliated Discipline, and members of that clan can purchase it (and only it) as if they were Caitiff. Not every clan needs an Affiliated Discipline, and a clan with one should have only one.

So for example, if you feel that Nosferatu in your game really ought to have Auspex, but you don't want to upend things by re-writing the entire clan readout, you can just say that Auspex is an affiliated discipline for the Nosferatu and give them a break on its XP cost. 

Finally, I’ve never understood why, in this increasingly complicated and paperwork-driven world, the Bureaucracy skill was stripped from Vampire in 3rd edition whereas the much more limited Finance skill continues to hold on in V5. If you ask me, Finance should be a specialization of Bureaucracy.

Oh, hey, here it is as a skill.

Bureaucracy 

This skill represents a character’s understanding of “the system” and their ability to navigate and abuse it. It is useful for bypassing (or creating) red tape, ensuring important things are “misfiled”, and simplifying ordinary life -- for example, bureaucracy will help you get in and out of the DMV at record speeds

•      You have good organizational ability and can file your own taxes. 

••     You understand power structures, specifically who is really in control. Your permits are always approved and on time.

•••    You can perform stalling tactics indefinitely and could be a professional bureaucrat. 

••••   Very little gets done without your approval. 

•••••  The Bureaucracy is a tool, and you are its master.

Specialties: Approvals, Business Management, Coverups, Denials, Finance, Forensic Accounting, Government, Information Requests, Hiding Paper Trails, Law, Money Laundering, Skirting Regulations, Speedy Resolution, Thwarting Others

Vampire 5: Non-Obtenebration Lasombra

It's amazing what a week away from home does for my creativity, as something which had been bothering me for a long time finally resolved into a solution in my mind. I now present to you a clan which I couldn't quite grok, so I cut pieces off it and stitched on others from different sources until I was happy.

Erin's Non-Obtenebration Clan Lasombra for V5

Author’s Note: Why are there no shadow powers?
I found them annoying and reductive.

Who are the Lasombra according to canon? Prior to V5, they were basically the Sabbat’s version of the Ventrue who had shadow powers. Now that V5 has had the Lasombra quit the Sabbat and join the Camarilla for… reasons…  they’ve lost even that evil mirror aspect and are just another highbrow clan. V5 doesn’t do a great job of explaining how they differ from the Ventrue, just that they do.

Perhaps the differences were made more clear in 2e and 3e’s clanbooks, but it’s literally been decades since I read those and, to be honest, most clanbooks were crap. I recall the Lasombra being overshadowed (hah!) by the Tzimisce, who could be summarized with the fascinating concept of “monstrous, transhumanist Draculas” and who therefore occupied their own distinct space within the game.

I was also bothered by the literalness of the name. They are literally named “The Shadow” and they have shadow powers? It was just too much for me, far too blatant a show of power and capability. Then V5 came along and turned Obtenebration into Oblivion, which was then linked with Necromancy, and I said “NO. Hard no.” If the Lasombra had access to Necromancy then not only would they exploit the hell out of it, they’d find a way to control or destroy the Cappadocians / Giovanni / Hecata / whatever they’re called these days. That seemed like a lot of work to me, and I felt it was easier just to keep them separate.

Then a heretical thought occurred to me:  What if I made a shadowy clan who didn’t have access to shadow powers? Then their name would take on a whole new meaning, highly symbolic instead of literal, and that felt exciting to me. But how would I re-invent them?

My Storyteller, Adrian Rook, came up with a great concept for them regarding control. It didn’t completely suit my purposes (mainly because they still had shadow powers), but I could respect where he was going with it and I knew I could live with it in his game. However, it didn’t satisfy me and I kept thinking about ways to change them to make me happy. His influence can be seen here in both the clan compulsion and in various aspects of their personality.

It wasn’t until I read the V20 book Lore of the Clans that the concept of  the Lasombra being cancerous corruptors who blackmail people and hollow out organizations to wear as a suit fully blossomed. Maybe that concept has always been there and I never realized it, or maybe this was a new interpretation on the clan, but I found it different and unusual and it shifted my concept of the Lasombra from “like the Ventrue, only with more asshole” to “powers behind the throne”. As I considered this, things started to make a lot more sense: they’d tunneled inside the Church and twisted it to their own ends, and then when the Inquisition started they did the same with the Anarch movement, suborning it into the Sabbat. The Tzimisce became their enforcers and figureheads while the Lasombra ruled it like viziers, the Cardinal Richelieu to the Tzimisce’s King Louis.

I also realized that this concept was stealing a lot of thunder from the Followers of Set, and frankly I was okay with that. The Setites annoy me for a lot of reasons, mainly because their concept seems to be “We are evil corruptors because we are evil and we like to corrupt, tra-la-la.” Evil for the sake of being evil bores me, as does corrupting others because it’s your religion. But corruption in the service of personal power? Now that’s interesting, and it fit perfectly within the concept of shadowy control freaks accumulating power through taking control of organizations because in order to do that, first you need to control the people within them. Also, if you’re a clan named “The Shadow” (and especially if you have shadow powers) you really need to have a weakness to sunlight. Since I was stealing from the Setites, I figured I’d steal that too.

So yes, the Setites are on the trash pile with this concept. I’ll try to replace them with a more interesting group of evil bastards when I have time. Meanwhile, the new Lasombra have a more interesting mix of disciplines which are well-suited for their role: Animalism to sense the desires of the Beast and to quash it, Auspex to get leverage, and Presence to make people like them, trust them, and/or fear them.

Ultimately it comes down to this: I like this new version of the Keepers, and that’s what is important. If you don’t, that’s fine; you don’t have to use them.

Insalubrious Basterds

More Vampire: the Masquerade nerdery.

As you may have noticed. we fans of role-playing are creative, passionate, and impatient. This means that when a new version of an RPG comes out and doesn't update a thing we like, then we will take it into own hands to make that thing ourselves so that we can have it for our game.

So just like I did with the Tzimisce, here are the Salubri for V5.

https://whitewolf.fandom.com/wiki/Salubri

A few notes:

• The clan bane and compulsion were crafted by my GM Adrian Rook, who I think got the ideas from various sources that weren't quite what either of us wanted, so we made a delicious jambalaya out of them to get what we wanted. 
• The same goes for Valeran; the list of powers and their levels were largely taken from someone else's attempt t make a V5 version but, oddly, they kept all the V20 mechanics which made me think it was just cut and paste from that edition. So honestly, I did more work converting them to V5 than the other person did. 
• Veterans of previous versions will note that this is a combination of the Healer's Path (Obeah) and the Warrior's Path (Valeran). I'm okay with this, because V5 already has 2-3 powers per level in all the other Disciplines and the writers apparently want to condense and consolidate the amount of old KNDs into a more manageable number. 
• Also, in my opinion, Valeran sounds better than Obeah. I don't think Valeran is itself a word; it's probably a derivation of vale, the Latin word for "farewell", because the power is about "saying goodbye to evil". Another possibility is that it is rooted in the Latin valeō, which means "I am strong / I am healthy / I have worth" and also means in New Latin "I leave, I go away" which brings us right back to farewell but in a more badass way. Please compare that to the word Obeah, which is "a system of spiritual and healing practices developed among enslaved West Africans in the West Indies" -- so basically, a religion. Yeah, let's not go and compare someone's religion with a supernatural power of a dead thing, thanks. 
• Also, fun fact: salubrious is a Latin word which means "wholesome, healthful, promoting health or well-being" which means that they already have the healing thing covered in their name and don't need a Discipline with another name for it as well. 

So, yeah. That's stuff you know now. 

Generation is Dumb. Blood Potency is Better.

Nerdspeak Warning: The following blog post will likely be incomprehensible to anyone who doesn't play tabletop RPGs. 

Ever since the first edition of Vampire: the Masquerade I’ve thought that “Generation as indication of power” was a terrible idea. For those who don't know what this means, in VtM the first vampire was Caine (yes, that Caine; vampirism was his punishment) and therefore was the First Generation. Any vampires he made were the Second Generation, and so on. With the game, player characters started off at a default 13th generation, and for the reasons listed below I thought it was a dumb idea. However, with the mechanic tied so closely to the game setting, I didn't know how to fix that problem... until fifth edition came along. V5 gives us Blood Potency (stolen from the Requiem game line and one of the few things from that setting of which I approve), which handily solves my problem by giving us the tools necessary to replace generation.

First my rant about the setting, then the game mechanics. A Google Document version of this post is here.

Why Generation is Dumb: an Essay
Humanity is old. No, older than you think. OLD. The oldest known civilization is the Mesopotamian Empire, which was founded circa 4500 BC, or 6500 years ago.

This out-of-game information gives us an in-the-game date by which the First City, Enoch, must have been founded, and therefore a rough idea of when Caine embraced his first childe, also named Enoch, as presumably the city was named after him.

Let us assume, purely for sake of argument and to make the math easier, that all of Caine’s childer waited 100 years before they created childer of their own and begat the Third Generation, and all their childer waited a century, and so forth. This gives us the following timeline:

• Second Generation created: 4500 BC
• Third Generation created: 4400 BC
• Fourth Generation created: 4300 BC
• Fifth Generation created: 4200 BC
• Sixth Generation created: 4100 BC
• Seventh Generation created: 4000 BC
• Eighth Generation created: 3900 BC
• Ninth Generation created: 3800 BC
• Tenth Generation created: 3700 BC
• Eleventh Generation created: 3600 BC
• Twelfth Generation created: 3500 BC
• Thirteenth Generation created: 3400 BC
• Fourteenth Generation created: 3300 BC

In just 1,200 years we have reached thin-bloods, and this is assuming very generous restraint on the part of sires... and yet we are to believe that thin-bloods are a recent occurrence, only happening now in the modern nights? Balderdash and bullshit. The lore and the rules aren’t in harmony.

There are ways to correct this, but each involves decoupling some parts of the lore from the rules.

1. Generation no longer matters (except as a point of prideful lineage to Ventrue and other snooty types), only Blood Potency. Except for your clanmates, no one cares that you’re Caine’s 66th grande-childer. This is the system I outline below.
2. “This has happened before, and this will happen again.” Gehenna is cyclical, with the Antediluvians rising periodically to feast upon their lineage before siring fresh childer and returning to torpor. This could easily happen every 1000 years or so, which nicely explains the death and doomsday cults which pop up every millennium or so. This is handy if you want to use the 1e-VRev notion of thin-bloods being a portent of Gehenna and you want to run a Final Nights campaign.
3. Want to go really dark with that last option? Assume that Elders and Methuselae know this, and are encouraging the creation of thin-bloods to form a herd for the Antediluvians. “Our clan founders periodically rise and feast upon kindred blood? Well, then, it’s a good thing we have cities full of weak kindred for them to eat. Have all our high generations, grandparents, and go back to sleep.”

Replacing Generation with Blood Potency
In V5, and contrary to previous editions, Generation is no longer a background to be bought; rather, it is more or less a bit of roleplaying fluff. What is important is Blood Potency, which is not purchasable during character generation, but is rather determined by how long your character has been undead. As a rule of thumb, BP increases by 1 for every 100 years of activity (time spent in Torpor doesn’t count), although there are shortcuts such as by spending XP (if permitted by the GM) and of course the every-dangerous but time-honored method of diablerie, aka drinking dry the body of a vampire older than you and consuming its soul in the process.

All of this leads me to wonder, Why even bother with Generation in the first place? I've listed my in-game objections to it above, and there's no longer a mechanical reason for it, so just jettison it altogether. Thin-bloods aren't the result of high generation, but rather what happens when a vampire with low BP tries to sure.

Name	# of years     undead	Min BP	Max BP
Thin-Bloods	Irrelevant*	0	0
Neonates	0-99	1	4
Ancillae	100-249	2	6
Elders	250-999	3	8
Methuselae	1000+	4	10
Antediluvians	All of Them	5	No Limit

 * Blood Potency cannot increase without Diablerie.

Absent the A Taste For Blood power, there is no way to discreetly test for Blood Potency, so a vampire who went into torpor 250 years ago as a Neonate will be treated like an Elder in kindred society… at least until it is shown that his blood lacks the strength to maintain that position. Some wags call this “The Big Effect”, after the Tom Hanks movie.

Mechanics
A Neonate who spends no XP on blood potency will, after 100 years of activity, have his BP increased from 1 to 2; a Neonate who spends XP to increase BP will find it capped at 4 until he puts in a century's worth of existence, at which point that cap rises to 6. Of course, diablerie changes all this.

Blood Potency and Diablerie
Given that V5’s rules on diablerie focus exclusively on Blood Potency rather than generation, there is no need to alter any existing rules and the mention of “If the victim was of lower generation, the diablerist lowers their generation by one” can be ignored. However, if the Storyteller feels that this is insufficient reward in the case of a hard-fought diablerizations against a potent victim, then the diablerist’s Blood Potency may further increase by one dot.

Blood Potency and Dominate
Make the following edits: “A vampire of lower higher (stronger) generation Blood Potency can resist Dominate attempts from higher generation lower Blood Potency vampires by spending a Willpower point, negating the effect completely.”

Blood Potency and the Embrace
There are three ways you can handle this, depending on how you want your game to run.

1. Age is All That Matters: Regardless of the sire’s Blood Potency, the childe always starts at 1, and only age (or diablerie) can change that. This avoids problems such as “If Caine Embraced a childe today, they’d be a Second Generation neonate” and requires either patience or aggressive ambition to rise in power.
2. Inherited from the sire: A childe’s Blood Potency is that of her sire -1. This gives the GM freedom to create characters for the story who are quite powerful in terms of vampiric strength but without the commensurate skills or disciplines -- in other words, an above-average opponent who won’t wipe your entire party.
3. Happy Medium: A childe's Blood Potency is 1/2 that of his sire. This gives a bit of both worlds without breaking things in either direction.

Thin-Bloods
Regardless of which of the above options you choose, Thin-Bloods are what occur when Blood Potency 1 vampires attempt the Embrace. Unlike in previous versions of Vampire, there is no existential crisis inherent with the existence of thin-bloods across the millennia. There is already a long and vicious tradition of older vampires manipulating younger ones for their own benefit and without concern for the neonates’ survival; the thin-blooded, being weak and easily intimidated by even neonates, are frequently used as disposable pawns by kindred society, and so they rarely last more than a few years of unlife.

Conclusion
I am aware that doing away with generation will upset many traditionalists. However, V5 has already slaughtered several sacred cows by dispensing with such concepts as Virtues, Blood Pool, and the Appearance stat. Each of those was removed in order to make the game more playable, and each was a far larger change than removing generation. My proposed system better integrates the mechanics of the game with its history.

But do as you like. I’m not the Prince of you.