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. 

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. 

About that IN/VtM Crossover...

Like I mentioned in my recent State of the Erin Report, I'm working on converting In Nomine to V5 mechanics. This rather necessitates some changes in the setting as, for example, both settings have vampires and the existence of Lilith (Adam's first wife, according to Jewish tradition) but there's disagreement on how they interact: in In Nomine, Lilith is a powerful Princess of Hell who creates demons (the Lilim) for other Princes, and vampires are soldiers of Hell who sacrifice their souls via a dark ritual for immortality and power here on Earth; meanwhile in Vampire:the Masquerade, vampirism is the blood curse God lay upon Caine for murdering Abel, and all other vampires descend from him... except there's some lore which claims that no, actually Lilith may have been the first vampire, and she turned Caine into one and taught him how to use those powers, only to have him betray her in a turn of cosmic irony.

(Honestly, if you think all this is complicated, do not -- I repeat, DO NOT -- research angelology. You will find so many contradictions that it will drive you mad.)

So I wanted a way to tie In Nomine into Vampire: the Masquerade, and doing all that requires a lot of work and I'm nowhere near done with it. However, in the interim I can give you a taste of something related.

This is one of the things which I wrote for my very first IN-hacked-to-VtM campaign as a way to tie the two games together thematically. I wrote this over 20 years ago (!), and it shows. I hadn't been writing for very long at that point, and... well... I had good intentions, but lacked the skill. It's not as shuddersome as a journal full of teenage poetry, but I look at it now and go "Oh, I should have done this, and this, and this. I could have done it so much better."

Anyway, I hope you enjoy it, even though it likely won't make total sense to anyone who doesn't know both games.

The Third Thing

She traveled east across the barren wastes. he was hungry, but she did not cry out. She was thirsty, but her pace did not waver. She was cold in her nakedness, but did not shiver. For to do these things would be to admit weakness, and she was a prideful and vain creature.

She was Lilith, the first woman, and she was dying.

Not from exposure, or from hunger, or even from thirst, but from the emptiness of her soul; a great, aching emptiness that tore at her spirit like the rocks at her feet. Paradise had been hers, and she had left it on principle, simultaneously abandoning it and God. It was that abandonment which ate at her, made doubly painful by the knowledge that, if given the choice, she would do it again. Her pride demanded no less.

And so, she hated. It was an easy enough thing to do, a cold comfort of the mind to accompany the cold winds of the eastern wastes. She hated Adam for his superiority; hated Eve for being her replacement. But greatest of all was the hate she harbored for God: for allowing Adam to treat her so, for acquiescing to his demands for a new mate, and worst of all, for not stopping her from leaving.

She hated herself, too, but would not admit it. And that was why she was dying.

"Lilith." The voice seemed to both surround her and tickle her ear with its warm breath. She looked to see who had addressed her, naked and alone in the cold wastes of Nod. She tried to speak, but her mouth was dry and her throat was parched, and no sound could escape her cracked lips.

"Lilith." The voice came again, this time from a point in front of her. And as she watched, an angel of the Lord appeared before her in all its glory: his hair black and luxurious, his eyes as blue as the rivers that ran through Eden, garbed in a shimmering robe of a green more vibrant than the foliage of the Garden. He was barefoot, and where he walked grass grew, the earth turning fertile in each footprint. His wings sparkled like morning dew, and droplets fell from the tips of his feathers into small pools of the purest water. He smiled at her, and in that smile Lilith saw a radiance that rivaled the sun itself. He held out his hands to her, and cupped them, and they were filled with cool water. "Drink," he asked of her.

She hesitated. "Drink," he said again, "that I might speak with you." And so she drank from his hands, and the water cooled her throat and eased her thirst, and did not diminish from his hands until she had drunk her fill.

"What is your name?" she demanded.

"I am but a servant of my Lord, and so, you may call me Eli." the angel responded. "I am here because the Lord has not forgotten you, nor has He rejected you. I have come to bring you succor and peace." And Eli gestured about him, for a fertile oasis had blossomed from his feet.

Lilith shook her head fiercely. "I do not need your mercy, Eli. Neither do I need God’s, for He saw fit to cast me out of Eden when I chose not to be a slave to my husband."

Eli clucked softly. "Lilith, Lilith… you left of your own accord. The Lord did not cast you out, nor did He require such an act on your part. He simply allowed you to leave. The two are not synonymous." He shook his head and turned to regard the lake that was forming behind him. "That is something you will learn, given time." He turned back to her. "And I am here to make sure that you have that time, Lilith. It is a very important lesson. You could say it’s the most important lesson in the world." Eli smiled at her then, and within that smile was both joy and pain. "And when you have learned it, you will teach it to another."

Lilith blinked at him, uncomprehending. "But that is a matter for another time," the angel continued. "For now, your survival is most important. Behold, I have created a home for you: food to eat, water to drink, shelter from the elements. Your life will not be as easy as it was in the Garden, but it will be long and full. You will need to learn many things if you are to survive. Three of them I teach to you now."

"First, you need clothing if you are to keep warm." With that, Eli removed his robe and placed it upon Lilith. The green clothing shimmered, and shifted, and wrapped about her so perfectly that she could no longer tell where she ended and the clothing began. "Second, know that you are never without the Grace of God. If you were, you would have died here today." Then he fell silent.

"And what is the third thing?" she demanded, her voice bitter, her eyes defiant. "I did not ask for your charity or for your counsel. Tell me this, angel, that I might be done with you and left in peace again!"

"The third thing," Eli said, smiling as he faded away, "is that you owe me a… we shall call it a favor for all this. And one day, I will come to collect it in full. So be not proud and cast away what I have given you, for you will one day repay my service, measure for measure." He winked at her. "So you might as well make use of it."

And Lilith pondered this, by the shores of the newly-made sea.

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.