Credible Masquerades?

[Mechalich]

As far as hunters go, if the hunters have to rely on questionable abilities that don't pass the smell test of modern society easily, then they may be no more credible than the monsters themselves.

This works is the monsters are suitably unobtrusive like ghosts or vampires and the powers necessary to stop them are religious or psychic in origin: Ghost Hunt might be a decent example.

Alternatively, it is possible that the masquerade is preserved by the Monster Hunters themselves - only the hunters are an incredibly powerful conspiracy of supers themselves who have their own reasons for preventing the public from knowing about supernaturals. This is actually the WoD approach - if the Camarilla fails to cover a breach the Technocracy will do it for them - and also found in things like the Laundry Files.

[Occluded Sun]

It matters whether the supernatural forces are the Secret Masters of the World, or vulnerable and imperiled.

[Mechalich]

It matters whether the supernatural forces are the Secret Masters of the World, or vulnerable and imperiled.

Generally, I think vulnerable and imperiled makes the masquerade much more credible as a concept, especially if the game is set in anything resembling the present day and the supernaturals have been around for a while. It's difficult to present a set of sustained circumstances that prevents the secret masters from leveraging their power into open mastery while still being credible.

Besides, if your supernaturals are the secret masters of the world, why hasn't the world developed very differently? I strongly doubt a post-Industrial Revolution world where vampires have ruled mankind since the beginning would even remotely resemble our own. That world could be a really cool one, but it doesn't gain the primary benefit of a masquerade setup: the ability to utilize the modern backdrop more or less as is.

[erik]

Option 3 after Illuminati and endangered would be they live apart from the world.

Monsters have their own troll markets and railway platform 9 and 3/4 and such. So monsters tend to congregate around their shadow gates, mostly in seclusion from the human world. But each have their projects, some reason to interact with the mortal world-
• accumulating a massive fortune
• quietly consolidating and holding power over a small region such as a city
• trying to slowly bring around human understanding such that monsters won't be killed when finally revealed
• trying to set up a doomsday weapon to bring back the good old days of weak humans
• hunting rival cults in their pocket dimension/temporal niches

[hyzmarca]

Option 4: They're rare.

Monsters aren't races, they're steves, and there are maybe a few hundred of them on the entire planet.

There isn't an active masquarade, it's just that with so few of them it's easy for them to go unnoticed.

[Occluded Sun]

And as long as no monster is captured and examined, any sightings are easy to explain away.

Especially if they're not like the commonly-accepted ideas about what 'monsters' are like. Most people think 'vampires' can't handle sunlight and have fangs, even though that's not what the historical mythologies say about them. Dracula had no problem with sunlight, although he couldn't exercise his mystic powers in it.

Assume that the mass mind is completely wrong, that the stereotypes and archetypes of supernatural beings have little resemblance to the actual creatures walking to and fro in the world. That helps a great deal.

[OgreBattle]

Playing a campaign set at the exact moment the masquerade crumbles can be fun, then players can influence how human civilization changes to this truth being revealed.

[Heaven's Thunder Hammer]

Bumping my old thread here:

Still curious after this fascinating discussion if anyone has new points of consideration?

I think a SFX company or companies that "compete" with each other for the most realistic SFX has some merit. The drawback might be when individual animators and other CGI artists can't figure out why none of them get hired at these places. (Which is how Bernie Madoff's scheme got figured out years before it went public - he wasn't buying Derivatives from any of the major dealers.)

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

Sure, the campaign I just started might be a bit relevant to this.

Basically, monsters were just discovered by the government a month or two prior to the start of the game, and the PCs are operatives who were given these monsters... because you probably know what kind of game I run. However, this is about 1 year before the literal fucking apocalypse happens and holes in the earth start appearing and monsters take over the world and inherit the earth, leading to my current day standard fantasy setting.

That means my setting is where OgreBattle mentioned - right before the masquerade is going to crumble. There's a civil war brewing, so each side has a vested interest in keeping monsters as secretive as possible, to use for themselves. However, they're slowly appearing in the wild and there's the fact that the PCs are using them. A huge masquerade violation is inevitable, even in this pre-digital society.

I'm wondering how to handle it. The government (who the players are working for) wants to keep things as under-wraps as possible and can be violent about enforcing that, but the player's Pokemon are all relatively passable in open society. But we've just started, what about when somebody gets a Steelix or an Exploud or something that's not low profile in the slightest? The PCs are ostensibly supposed to be keeping this secret. What about when people start talking? I considered giving them MIB-style memory wiping devices, since that's not far off from the mind control helmets they already have. That seems a bit too obvious, though.

EDIT: Ah, after fully re-reading the thread, I see this similar scenario was brought up on the last page. Who can keep monsters secret while using them in the arms race for domination that will be rendered irrelevant anyway?

[deaddmwalking]

Everyone should watch Dr. Strangelove. No matter what you're discussing, it is always relevant. Specifically in this case because the Soviet Union built a doomsday device that would automatically be triggered if they were attacked. The problem is, they didn't tell anyone about it, so it had no impact as a deterrence.

Assuming you want to avoid being attacked, you need your opponents to KNOW that you have a credible defense. It's okay to lie or exaggerate, but it’s generally not a good idea to look completely defenseless.

You don't want people to know exactly how capable you are - so keeping the exact number and disposition of your forces unknown is key.

Effectively, you want people to know that monsters ARE REAL, but much rarer than they actually are, and more controlled than they are.

So, you say your Biolab using Crispr-9 nanobots has developed super-weapons, but they are safe and controlled. People will accept that the government has been developing animal-hybrids without batting an eye if they think that it won't affect them.

The big lie - that we invented them and we're in control - can't be destroyed because someone sees one. But it can provide a plausible cover for what happens next. Once on Pokémon goes rogue, you blame a Rogue agent or saboteur. When it happens again you blame Chinese spies stealing the technology and unleashing it without proper safeguards.

Don't worry - even when you say it is real, 25% of the population will insist that it is all a hoax. Some people will say it is animatronic-robots and some will say it is aliens. You will of course promote these alternate theories in dark corners of the web because confusion is helpful in preventing a coordinated response.

[Thaluikhain]

That way would work, but it's not a masquerade then, it's something else. It allows vampires to use magic in public occasionally, for example. Not saying that you always want to have hunters/Camarilla hunting people who do that, but you might decide that's good for your setting.

[deaddmwalking]

I'd argue that once governments are wielding a shadow-war against each other using monsters as super-weapons, you're not really advocating for anything that resembles a masquerade to begin with.

If the intention is to maintain a credible masquerade, supernaturals have to be able to blend into society more-or-less perfectly. X-Men is sort of a good example of how this does and doesn't work. When the number of supernaturals is small, they look normal, and they try to avoid attracting attention you can have a masquerade. By the time you're animating the Golden Gate Bridge, your masquerade is over.

[Dogbert]

There was a world before 9/11, and there is a world after 9/11.

Our transition into a global surveillance state made of pretty much all Urban Fantasy an impossibility so you have one of two choices:

1) Defacto abolish the genre: Revisionists and puriteens haven't stopped in trying to remove from the superhero genre nearly every single trope that comprises it, from the individualism that comes with self-realized terrestrial gods to the power fantasy elements to, yes, all the dynamics related to secret identities... so if you ask that people, they'll probably say something along the lines of "just don't have a masquerade because FaNtAsY mUsT bE rEaLiStIc."

2) Forget all pretense of Urban Fantasy happening "in this world": Yes, it's true, our current world has no more room for whimsical Sekrit Squirrel Clubs, the question is... is it an imperative you use THIS world? Just use a different a world with technology like our own but without a 9/11 (it worked for Gears of War, no one thought "hollow earth is dumb").

The genre may be obsolete, but that doesn't mean it has to disappear. Just treat it as you do your garden-variety fantasyland, with the same expectations.

[deaddmwalking]

I don't think that it's IMPOSSIBLE to do a masquerade in real-world 2021. Just like it's not IMPOSSIBLE to get away with murder. The fact that observation is so common would mean that you absolutely CAN'T hulk out unless you know you're in a safe place, but maintaining such safe-spaces has to be one of the major commitments of the Masquerade Guidance Committee (or whatever has orchestrated the agreement).

I think it's pretty obvious that 'if one person can ruin the masquerade' that's a bit of a problem - especially if that person has ANY incentive to do that. What World of Darkness wanted to suggest was that you'd be content living in a crappy apartment fronting as a Subway employee - but if you go more John Wick sequels with a network of high-living benefits, keeping the secret is something you will want to do.

Being a supernatural ought to get you into the club. The club has a clubhouse where you can do the things you want to do. Even if cameras catch someone disappearing into your clubhouse and never coming out, if you can take on a new identity and 'melt away' the masquerade can continue and we just have another missing persons case.

[Kaelik]

I don't think that it's IMPOSSIBLE to do a masquerade in real-world 2021. Just like it's not IMPOSSIBLE to get away with murder.

This is kind of a bad example because if you don't kill your spouse or SO, you have like an 80% chance of getting away with murder.

Feel like a Masquerade would be harder to keep up honestly.

[deaddmwalking]

Yeah, so if real world murders don't get solved, you can kill and drain some victims without breaking the masquerade. Don't kill people on camera. Don't hulk out or turn into a bat on camera. Assume there are cameras everywhere unless you know otherwise. That's a lot of constraint on the power of supernaturals, but if normal humans can get away with actual crimes including murder, the existence of supernaturals isn't completely impossible in the modern world.

Money and power can buy a lot of seclusion and privacy. Being careful about when you 'let it all hang out can allow a Masquerade.

You just can't have supernaturals fighting openly in public and ALSO have a masquerade.

[Dogbert]

but if normal humans can get away with actual crimes including murder

...here's the thing, all that crime and murder people get away with? It happens on camera too, the system just doesn't care and files it under "statistics and lunchtime news" unless either the victim is high profile or for some reason the crime warrants enough societal pressure.

...or unless the criminal happens to turn into a monster on camera and there are too many of them happening. The net doesn't forget. Unless you live in Planet China, you can't just scrub George Floyd off the zeitgeist. Your Masquerade would need the Camarilla running the whole thing tip to top, and the puppetmasters would need to run the system with a totalitarian control, point at which you're no longer on Earth, you're on Planet China, and we go back to my earlier post. If we're already doing Alternate History for Living In Double Hell, then why not just applying the same WSOD to a Living in Not A Police State Planet, somewhere those things can still happen?

[Omegonthesane]

imagine thinking the USA isn't a police state already

Come to think of it - for the world to look different as the result of a broken masquerade, those in power have to acknowledge that the masquerade is broken and alter societal expectations accordingly. Which is unlikely, because the idea that some of the horrible monsters that prey on humans happen to have fangs or claws instead of just bank balances just isn't enough of a game changer to riot over. The internet can keep remembering as long as it damn well pleases, if the problem isn't widespread enough to cause riots then the government will dismiss an infinite amount of evidence if acknowledging it would require them to change the status quo. Like they did with climate change and AIDS.

[Thaluikhain]

imagine thinking the USA isn't a police state already

Come to think of it - for the world to look different as the result of a broken masquerade, those in power have to acknowledge that the masquerade is broken and alter societal expectations accordingly. Which is unlikely, because the idea that some of the horrible monsters that prey on humans happen to have fangs or claws instead of just bank balances just isn't enough of a game changer to riot over. The internet can keep remembering as long as it damn well pleases, if the problem isn't widespread enough to cause riots then the government will dismiss an infinite amount of evidence if acknowledging it would require them to change the status quo. Like they did with climate change and AIDS.

True, but that only works if the monsters are eating the right sorts of people. If a vampire thinks up a magical get rich quick scheme, there'll be peasants with pitchforks if the vampire is targeting the currently rich, instead of the peasants. Socialist werewolves would make quite a mess of things.

[Kaelik]

imagine thinking the USA isn't a police state already

Come to think of it - for the world to look different as the result of a broken masquerade, those in power have to acknowledge that the masquerade is broken and alter societal expectations accordingly. Which is unlikely, because the idea that some of the horrible monsters that prey on humans happen to have fangs or claws instead of just bank balances just isn't enough of a game changer to riot over. The internet can keep remembering as long as it damn well pleases, if the problem isn't widespread enough to cause riots then the government will dismiss an infinite amount of evidence if acknowledging it would require them to change the status quo. Like they did with climate change and AIDS.

This makes me think about a Masquerade in which various pressure groups and revolutions and official bad guy countries are all constantly saying that there are monsters amongst us murdering at will, but the powerful establishment figures like US backed dictators, comfortable center left coalitions in Europe, the US installed dictator who no longer obeys the US like Putin, various rich and powerful multinational capitalists and their owned media aparti, and basically everyone in power in the US in any capacity, media, political, or financial openly mocks them and calls them conspiracy theorists whenever they say anything.

Because the people in power like the system just find and own enough of the media and armed paramilitaries and militaries to make sure that no drastic change is taken which MIGHT create a better world, but would DEFINITELY cause the current people in power to lose power (probably by Werewolves eating them.)

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

It sounds like we're recreating W:TA without the dog-rape.
I always liked the "supernatural eco-terrorists waging gorilla warfare on corporations" angle of that game. It was one of the dumbest parts, but also one of the best. What's stopping supernaturals from going all Captain Planet on corporate America? Besides, uh... guns.

[Omegonthesane]

What's stopping vampires from going Captain Planet is that the status quo suits them fine and they aren't actually any better than humans at taking the long view or changing with the times. Or, perhaps more cynically, they don't give a fuck if humanity is forced to live in a horrible post apocalypse so long as they get to continue feeding, and especially the oldest ones have seen catastrophes before so why should half the earth becoming uninhabitable be any different.

It's a bit prejudicial for me to mainly worry about vampires upholding a masquerade, but they're the ones from the property that gave us the term "masquerade" for supernaturals walking among us and hiding their true nature - and thematically, vampires as antagonists lend themselves well to thinly veiled condemnation of those currently in power under capitalism. There's a reason Marx directly compared landlords to vampires.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

I said "supernatural" and not "vampires" for a reason. I totally get why vampires would maintain the bloodsucking machines we've made for ourselves. But what about werewolves or Frankenstein monsters or other silly things from the WoD? Is something like a single ghost even capable of breaching the masquerade in a significant manner?

[Kaelik]

It sounds like we're recreating W:TA without the dog-rape.
I always liked the "supernatural eco-terrorists waging gorilla warfare on corporations" angle of that game. It was one of the dumbest parts, but also one of the best. What's stopping supernaturals from going all Captain Planet on corporate America? Besides, uh... guns.

I think the point here is that Batista is or works with all the supernaturals who all enjoyed mob run Havana, and Castro is human hunter faction who does a revolution and then warns everyone about the supernaturals but everyone ignores them.

Doesn't work really well with the USSR probably unless we are to believe that all of Eastern Europe was cleansed of the supernaturals (until all the fascists protected by the US and Canada returned) or the USSR was infiltrated, which doesn't make much sense with it's actions and then downfall. China of course makes perfect sense as a revolution against supernaturals that was co-opted by the great [not actually sure what the super type would be] Deng and his faction.

But luckily, in 2021 probably no one will realize that's a problem and you keep going with the sad pathetic Cubans and Bolivians trying to warn people while the vampires keep running things in the Continental/US nations

[Omegonthesane]

I said "supernatural" and not "vampires" for a reason. I totally get why vampires would maintain the bloodsucking machines we've made for ourselves. But what about werewolves or Frankenstein monsters or other silly things from the WoD? Is something like a single ghost even capable of breaching the masquerade in a significant manner?

Werewolves generally are posited as too feeble, organisationally, to risk exposing their existence and actionable intelligence on their powers to a world that has a problem with them. They also only pose an inherent masquerade risk if they either change shape on camera, or get caught in Crinos form rather than doggo form. As Crinos form doesn't lend itself to suborning capitalist society the way vampiric mesmerism does, werewolves have more of an incentive to stay low unless they're at the point of a hostile takeover.

Adam from Frankenstein wants to maintain a personal masquerade because as far as he knows he's all alone in the world and he'll be all the more all alone if everyone realises he isn't a real boy. It's deviating very far from the source material for a Frankenstein's Monster to have friends who are Animates (to use the After Sundown terminology), so they need not be considered as a group with significant numbers.

Ghosts do not universally have powers that are easily proven to be supernatural phenomena.

Fae are more explicitly defined by their distance from mundanity, so it's less obviously bullshit to just straight up claim that anything masquerade breaking they do never gets hard evidence outside the high-magic zones where they feel comfortable operating.

There isn't really a one size fits all solution if you want different supernaturals to have genuinely different motivations and organisations; but I maintain that vampires are the big one to explain away more intensely than the others.

Doesn't work really well with the USSR probably unless we are to believe that all of Eastern Europe was cleansed of the supernaturals (until all the fascists protected by the US and Canada returned) or the USSR was infiltrated, which doesn't make much sense with it's actions and then downfall. China of course makes perfect sense as a revolution against supernaturals that was co-opted by the great [not actually sure what the super type would be] Deng and his faction.

Without getting into sectarianism, I don't think that it's necessary for all leftists throughout history to have known about Team Monster and hunted Team Monster and desperately tried to leverage the state in the hunt against Team Monster for the idea of the Masquerade as a capitalist institution to hold up.

My initial pitch was that capitalism will cover for vampires in the post-smartphone world where there is overwhelming evidence of supernaturals the same way that capitalism covered for AIDS, climate catastrophe, systemic racism, systemic sexism etc. in the face of overwhelming evidence. This doesn't require that Stalin or Mao about vampires and acted no differently; it doesn't even require that Gorbachev or Deng (or Reagan or Thatcher...) knew about vampires while they were in a position to do anything with that knowledge.