Anatomy of Failed Design: Vampire

hyzmarca · Post by **hyzmarca** » Fri Feb 05, 2016 12:38 am

To understand how much Vampire lost by removing the Gaki, "giant multi-headed lightning-breathing lobster eagles" is a phrase that appears within the description of their signature discipline's powers. In what world would you not want giant multi-headed lightning-breathing lobster eagles? They shouldn't have gotten rid of that power, they should have reduced its dot level to make it more accessible.

A World of Darkness also had Cats. These weren't Changing Breeds. These were regular housecats who happened to be vampires and had human-level intelligence. They lacked vampire weaknesses, but could only feed off of sexually active people, and generally gave no fucks.

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Fri Feb 05, 2016 1:14 am

Even if you mindcaulked most of the setting fluff (pretty much necessary), the mechanical aftershocks of those bad decisions stayed with you too. Revised and V20 both tried a little bit to clean up the mess of the different disciplines, but even they threw their hands up in the air at some of the bullshit. Valeren in Dark Ages was one discipline with two paths, but in Modern Nights was two separate disciplines (confusingly called Obeah and Valeren) with powers that...didn't...quite...match. And that shit was all over the place. Are Voudoun Necromancy and Western Necromancy the same discipline? Who knows, because 95% of the books just call it Necromancy.

Longes · Post by **Longes** » Fri Feb 05, 2016 1:46 am

Ancient History wrote:Even if you mindcaulked most of the setting fluff (pretty much necessary), the mechanical aftershocks of those bad decisions stayed with you too. Revised and V20 both tried a little bit to clean up the mess of the different disciplines, but even they threw their hands up in the air at some of the bullshit. Valeren in Dark Ages was one discipline with two paths, but in Modern Nights was two separate disciplines (confusingly called Obeah and Valeren) with powers that...didn't...quite...match. And that shit was all over the place. Are Voudoun Necromancy and Western Necromancy the same discipline? Who knows, because 95% of the books just call it Necromancy.

Much like Vampire and Werewolf are different settings, Vampire and Dark Ages: Vampire are different settings that don't allign. People on Onyx Path forums will tell you that disciplines being different is a feature, not a bug. Rites of Blood for V20 tried to streamline all the blood magic disciplines (Thaumaturgy, Necromancy, Koldunism, Akhu, etc.) by making them a single "Blood Magic" discipline. There was a fucking riot. And not because of Tremere getting Necromancy - because such streamlining "kills the uniqueness" of shit like Serpents of Light. And of course DA:V20 that came out afterwards ignored Rites of Blood and is not compatible with it in any way.

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Fri Feb 05, 2016 3:16 am

Horse feathers. Declaring that all the WoD games are separate settings is patent nonsense. Even the writers made no conscious effort to separate the settings. There were entire fucking crossover products, and rules for werewolf abominations and ghouling changelings and shit. If there was ever intended to be a separation in the settings, it broke down before the ink was dry on the first edition.

Mord · Post by **Mord** » Fri Feb 05, 2016 3:58 am

Ancient History wrote:Horse feathers. Declaring that all the WoD games are separate settings is patent nonsense. Even the writers made no conscious effort to separate the settings. There were entire fucking crossover products, and rules for werewolf abominations and ghouling changelings and shit. If there was ever intended to be a separation in the settings, it broke down before the ink was dry on the first edition.

That's the genius of it - the official party line that "there are no crossovers" is excellent smokescreen for the fact that everyone is in fact writing ludicrously incoherent and incompatible crossovers in official products and offering no actual mechanical support.

When you go to the WW forums and ask questions about how crazy fuckers like Sam Haight are supposed to do X, Y, or Z, no one has to incur the cognitive dissonance that would come from realizing that there aren't actually any rules to do X, Y, or Z that make any sense. They just have to bust out the twin thought-terminating cliches of "there aren't any crossovers" and "your Storyteller will adjudicate as they see fit."

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Fri Feb 05, 2016 6:22 am

FrankTrollman wrote:Now, a lot of them were obscure bullshit like Changing Breed Book 8: Rokea

Would you say that's when they...

...jumped the shark?

Mechalich · Post by **Mechalich** » Fri Feb 05, 2016 6:30 am

The Rokea breed book is a fascinating microcosm of everything that is wrong with the oWoD and I am possibly sufficiently shark-obsessed to do an OSSR of it.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Fri Feb 05, 2016 10:53 am

Oh my assorted demons. The numbers in WoD really are super out of whack. Assuming the 1 vampire:100,000 humans thing*, there are 74,000 vampires in the modern night. This is just over 1/7th the population of Sacramento, CA, and less than 1% of the population of New York City.

However, if we assume that Tremere have a rigid base 7 pyramid hierarchy*, with each tremere having seven underlings, then there are 137,256 tremere alone.

That's hilarious. I'm not even particularly skilled with math and I was able to spot that problem in about five minutes with google and excel.

If we assume that the tremere number is an average for clans (which might not be unreasonable), there are something like 1.8 million vampires just in the basic 13 clans. Which works out to a bit more than 1 vampire per 4000 people.

*I'm not doubting, but if I could get a source for these figures, I'd appreciate the ability to point to them when someone says I'm exaggerating VtM's problems.

Longes · Post by **Longes** » Fri Feb 05, 2016 11:03 am

Even without apprentices and shit, just counting the upper management, Tremere have to be the largest clan ever. Or have a nearly empty pyramid which makes all the talk about mysticism of number 7 a bureaucratic wanking.

Me on Onyx Path forums wrote:Tremere structure is batshit insane. The one stated in the Lore of the Clans that is. Here's how it goes:
At the top is Tremere, under him are seven Councilors, under each of the Councilors are seven Lords, under each of the Lords are seven Pontifeces, under each Pontifex are seven Regents, under each Regent is an undertermined number of Magisters, Apprentices and Acolytes.
This posits existence of 49 Pontifeces, 343 Lords and 2401 Regents. This structure is problematic because it posits the same number of people running the United States of America and Moldova. And while US can theoretically support 50 Tremere in it (not counting anyone below Regent), Moldova bloody can't - it only has 3 million people in it. Austria has only 8 million people, which is enough to support 80 vampires tops, and apparently 2/3 of them are Tremere's upper management. Even assuming Tremere only lay claim to the 49 largest countries in the world, we are still talking about there being a Pontifex of the steppes of Uzbekistan, which has 30 million people (300 vampires), and one third of those vampires are supposed to be Tremere.
So either Tremere are the most numerous clan in the world, or their entire hierarchy is empty and filled with meaningless promotions from Lord 3rd rank to Lord 5th rank when you are the only Lord in Moldova. And we haven't even counted Magisters, Apprentices and Acolytes up to this point.

Lore of the Clans wrote:There are seven titles in the Clan: Acolyte, Apprentice, Magister, Regent, Pontifex, Lord, and Councilor.
...
The Regents are each master of an entire chantry, often making them the de facto leader of the Tremere in a given city and possibly a member of the Primogen. Moving up to a national level are the Lords, who are responsible for several chantries.
...
Above them are the Pontifices who rule entire countries. There are usually seven Lords for each of the seven Pontifices.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Fri Feb 05, 2016 11:11 am

Some Tremere Lord in Moldovia: "I've drained another hooker! Hurrah! I promote myself to Lord 6th rank!"
*camera pans to assorted statuary, furniture and home goods dressed up with rubbish-vampire faces drawn on paper plates in crayon. Cricket chirps.*
Tremere Lord: "CLAP DAMN YOU!!!!"
*Acolyte Bruttenholm falls over with a clatter softly muffled in threadbare velvet robes*

Schleiermacher · Post by **Schleiermacher** » Fri Feb 05, 2016 11:25 am

I can see why the writers wanted a scheme along those lines though - "the Pyramid" is a nice and ominous nickname for the clan. It's just the numbers that are hopeless, so what if you used a square pyramidal progression instead?

At the top is Tremere, with the Council of Four beneath him, then nine Pontifexes, sixteen Lords, twenty-five Regents (which means twenty-five Tremere Chantries worldwide, not counting rogue or abandoned ones, which seems reasonable enough considering that they're always portrayed as clan strongholds and regional power centers) and then however many ranks of lesser Regents, Magisters and Apprentices you like to add more Chantries and make up the numbers.

That means the upper echelon of the Pyramid (from Regents on up) is 55 people, and that many of the Lords and Pontifexes have job descriptions that include things other than upper middle management work, like being Justicars, performing advanced magical research and whatnot. Seems workable to me if you want to preserve the Pyramid theme.

Longes · Post by **Longes** » Fri Feb 05, 2016 11:40 am

The problem is two-fold.

First of all, the 7x7x7x7 progression is obviously unusable. But you don't actually need it. If you just say that clan Tremere is a pyramid and then don't specify how many people are on each layer - you won. Moldovan Tremere could have one Pontifex and one Lord, while US Tremere might have five Pontifeces and 50 Lords.

The second problem is that Pyrmaid scheme is how literally every clan works, just by virtue of being vampires. The writers had a chance to make Tremere unique by saying that only Tremere hold strict hierarchy and political unity, but they've squandered it when they decided that every clan has strict hierarchy and political unity. Which can't possibly work, but is somehow supposed to.

Schleiermacher · Post by **Schleiermacher** » Fri Feb 05, 2016 11:42 am

Well, I thought it was a givein that you'd do away with that second one.

koz · Post by **koz** » Fri Feb 05, 2016 12:38 pm

Longes wrote:...Pontifeces ...

That sent me into a fit of giggles for some reason.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Fri Feb 05, 2016 1:12 pm

The plural of Pontifex is "Pontifices." Pontifeces is exactly what it sounds like. But it's a common mistake. I have to stop myself from writing pontifeces every time I pluralize pontifex.

As for the Tremere, the numbers are unusable. But the declarations of the demographics are such that any numbers are unusable. There are so many minor gradations and conspiracies inside of other conspiracies and rare, rarer, and rarest bloodlines that the demographics can't work out. For there to be the four nested pie charts required for the Salubri Antitribu to have a clan symbol, the "common" things in the main pie chart have to get a slice that's bigger than the entire vampire pie.

Vampire: the Masquerade chops things up so finely that there simultaneously aren't enough vampires to make any of the secret meetings reach critical mass to not be embarrassing and there are too many vampires for the setting to accept without groaning and collapsing. Both of those happen at the same time because there are too many subdivisions and levels of special snowflakism.

-Username17

Schleiermacher · Post by **Schleiermacher** » Fri Feb 05, 2016 1:34 pm

Vampire: the Masquerade chops things up so finely that there simultaneously aren't enough vampires to make any of the secret meetings reach critical mass to not be embarrassing and there are too many vampires for the setting to accept without groaning and collapsing. Both of those happen at the same time because there are too many subdivisions and levels of special snowflakism.

Oh, totally. If the game is going to make any sense at all you'd have to seriously clean house. That's non-negotiable.

But after you got rid of all the bullshit, there would still be Camarilla Tremere. It's workable to talk in broad strokes about what they should look like under the tacit assumption that there are no Telyavels, Trimira, Salubri, Nagaraja or members of House Goratrix.

Mechalich · Post by **Mechalich** » Fri Feb 05, 2016 1:40 pm

Prak wrote:*I'm not doubting, but if I could get a source for these figures, I'd appreciate the ability to point to them when someone says I'm exaggerating VtM's problems.

From the VtM Storyteller's Handbook Revised, page 14:

How many vampires are there, anyway?

From a strictly Cainite point of view, probably around 40,000.
The Middle Kingdom has roughly 20,000 Kuei-jin, for a grand
total of approximately 60,000 – one for every 100,000 people
on the planet.

Also, they go on to note that the 13 clans constitute almost the entirety of that figure. Only about 2,000 vampires exist representing all the other lesser clans and weird bloodlines combined.

Considering just how many lesser clans and bloodlines were actually described, that means those groups are tiny, with maybe a couple of dozen members apiece scattered across the globe.

Sir Aubergine · Post by **Sir Aubergine** » Sat Feb 06, 2016 4:24 pm

This thread is great. Ｏ(≧▽≦)Ｏ

I have collected a few V:TM pdfs, but I was never able to convince my gaming chums to start a new campaign with me. This is a group that has happily played a lengthy Scion campaign, which is a game so horrid that the mere mention of its name fills Frank et al. with revulsion and disdain.

While my initial review of V:TM uncovered the overtly racist clans and the Tremere being conspicuously more powerful than everyone else, Frank has shown me the system's many other failings.

It boggles the mind that White Wolf did not take careful pains to ensure that characters generated from its various lines could work together seamlessly. It seems even more strange when one recalls that they failed to posit a plausible scenario in which vampires from different clans would work together even temporarily (at least until the Sabbat supplemental materials were published).

I wholeheartedly agree with the other posts arguing for a less onerous blood consumption schedule, if for no other reason than it allows for larger vampire populations both in the past and present.

What would everyone think of changing the distribution of powers so that every character has access to every discipline, the dots would not have to be purchased in order, dots of an equivalent tier would have different costs (i.e., Potence 1 costs less than Dominate 1), and membership in a clan would provide a discount on purchasing powers along a similar theme.

erik · Post by **erik** » Sat Feb 06, 2016 4:33 pm

Discounts aren't a great way to balance things. If there is an option to not take advantage of discounts then those characters are weaker for no reason.

Better would be giving a bonus free discipline that everyone in a clan gets.

Sir Aubergine · Post by **Sir Aubergine** » Sat Feb 06, 2016 4:52 pm

erik wrote:Discounts aren't a great way to balance things. If there is an option to not take advantage of discounts then those characters are weaker for no reason.

Better would be giving a bonus free discipline that everyone in a clan gets.

Wouldn't that mean that some clans still "win the lottery?" For instance, if Brujah characters get free Potence dots and Toreador characters get free Celerity dots, then we're back to the bad old days. If the free discipline was always one deemed to be underwhelming (Potence, Fortitude, Protean) your idea would work fine.

If I have misunderstood your point, then I apologize.

hyzmarca · Post by **hyzmarca** » Sat Feb 06, 2016 5:20 pm

Sir Aubergine wrote:
erik wrote:Discounts aren't a great way to balance things. If there is an option to not take advantage of discounts then those characters are weaker for no reason.

Better would be giving a bonus free discipline that everyone in a clan gets.
Wouldn't that mean that some clans still "win the lottery?" For instance, if Brujah characters get free Potence dots and Toreador characters get free Celerity dots, then we're back to the bad old days. If the free discipline was always one deemed to be underwhelming (Potence, Fortitude, Protean) your idea would work fine.

If I have misunderstood your point, then I apologize.

Everyone starts out with one free dot in every physical discipline. They also get 1 free dot in their clan-prefered mental/mystical disciplines.
Thaumaturgy and Necromancy Paths are now all seperate Disciplines and rituals are 1 dot backgrounds that anyone can take provided that they can justify learning them.

Brujah get their potence and celerity replaced with some magic paths. Toreador gets their celerity replaced by a thematically appropriate magic path. And so on.

This dilutes the Tremere's thing, but I really don't care.

Sir Aubergine · Post by **Sir Aubergine** » Sat Feb 06, 2016 5:49 pm

hyzmarca wrote:Everyone starts out with one free dot in every physical discipline. They also get 1 free dot in their clan-preferred mental/mystical disciplines.
Thaumaturgy and Necromancy Paths are now all separate Disciplines and rituals are 1 dot backgrounds that anyone can take provided that they can justify learning them.

Brujah get their potence and celerity replaced with some magic paths. Toreodor gets their celerity replaced by a thematically appropriate magic path. And so on.

This dilutes the Tremere's thing, but I really don't care.

That is a solid schema. However, there is a problem. As Frank discussed earlier, even if the Giovanni weren't a racist clan, their clan discipline is too important to be unique to them. Since they are based on a distasteful stereotype, the Giovanni ceasing to exist as a clan is unlikely to upset anybody, which conveniently frees up the Necromancy Discipline for all.

The rub is what to do with Thaumaturgy. The Tremere, while having a silly organization, are not inherently problematic, so they shouldn't be swept under the rug without a second thought. If you allow everyone to take dots in Thaumaturgy, what would the Tremere's clan-preference become? Perhaps they would gain the ability to cherry pick dots in different Thaumaturgy disciplines as a way to emphasize their study of the tradition.

Lokey · Post by **Lokey** » Sat Feb 06, 2016 6:50 pm

Assuming you mean to build a new skill system and die roll mechanic and...?

If you have to rebuild the entire game from mechanics to fluff to make it playable, doesn't seem like such a big deal to take the part you like and drop into a workable system. Just put the names you like in AS or Pathfinder the Vampening and incorporate the part you like and go on with your life

Sir Aubergine · Post by **Sir Aubergine** » Sat Feb 06, 2016 7:02 pm

Lokey wrote:Assuming you mean to build a new skill system and die roll mechanic and...?

If you have to rebuild the entire game from mechanics to fluff to make it playable, doesn't seem like such a big deal to take the part you like and drop into a workable system. Just put the names you like in AS or Pathfinder the Vampening and incorporate the part you like and go on with your life

Well... you're not wrong.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sat Feb 06, 2016 7:25 pm

Self Criticism

So like many all Vampire players, I made substantial changes to the game's mechanics and setting. It's literally impossible to play this game straight because not only are many rules and setting elements "bad," but a lot of them are literally contradictory. It is not possible to reconcile the New York in Sabbat Player's Guide and the New York in New York by Night because they are blatantly different writeups that make fundamentally different assumptions. It is not possible to reconcile the Revised edition skill resolution with the rules presented for new traits in Ebony Kingdoms, because Ebony Kingdoms was very blatantly written by people who didn't know the latest incarnation of the rules and didn't care to read up on the subject. But I went a bit farther than most and made a reasonably complete somewhat reductionist Heartbreaker that I could and did IP scrub and call After Sundown.

Still, the V:tM DNA in my work is unmistakable, and sitting down for a thorough castigation of the old Vampire materials has given me time to reflect on things that I should have done differently. Both in things that I didn't change enough and things which I perhaps changed too much. It is still really hard to properly and objectively critique your own work, and I invite other people to send their five minutes of hate at me if you got them.

Goals, Starting a Game

V:tM stays very "hands off" as regards the creation of coteries. Why your group is together and what they want to do is a big question mark. With bands in After Sundown, I kept mostly to that legacy, and it was a mistake. While I created a social space in their society for groups of 3-8 characters who might or might not be from different cults or syndicates to exist, but I really didn't lay down the kind of strong "why are we here?" and "what are we going to do?" prompts that D&D, Champions, or Shadowrun enjoy. I could and should have done better here.

On the other hand, one of the things that set the mind on fire with V:tM and make you want to play it (and even fix it so that it could be played) was the lure of possibility. For that reason, I'm looking at presenting a number of co-equal game concepts.

New in Town
Life on the Road
Princes of the City
Troubleshooters

The idea is that you pick one of those when you're pitching the game, and then you have your motivation for why you're in the group and what you're supposed to do. In New in Town you're expats banding together for survival in a weird new place. In Life on the Road, you're adventurers driving around in the Mystery Machine. In Princes of the City you're the leaders of a junta or syndicate satellite program. And in Troubleshooters you're basically a team of shadowrunners who work for one of the syndicates.

But the book doesn't just need to talk about group goals, it also needs to talk about personal goals that are compatible with the chronicle goals. You wouldn't think that it needs to be said that a character having the goal of "become the captain of Minneapolis" would be incompatible with a Life on the Road game or that a character having the goal of "find the lost city of Qoz" would be incompatible with a Princes of the City game. But I actually did need to say that, and I didn't. Players should have been presented with an array of ideas for how to motivate their characters to maintain their position as ensemble lead in the cooperative story.

The Word "Kin"

I know this is a minor point, but in attempting to distance myself from the intellectual property of White Wolf, I stopped calling supernatural creatures "Kindred." This left me talking about "Supernatural Creatures" anytime I wanted to talk about player character types, and that's seven fucking syllables. As it happens, the game Nightlife straight up used the word "Kin" for supernatural creatures before Vampire: the Masquerade even existed, so that's something I really didn't have to worry about. I should just use the word "Kin."

Demographics and the Secret Histories

One of the the things I tried to do stylistically was to keep the vagaries of the murky hidden past. Not to have outright contradictions, but to leave many things as a series of broad hints. Years of Shadowrun and V:tM coming through, I think. This was poor form on my part. When FASA, White Wolf, or TSR is putting out books every month, something raising more questions than it answers is a good thing, when you're just one person and have other pans on the fire it's just dickery. Sorry about that.

So first of all, I need to crunch a lot more numbers of how many Kin are in the whole world and what types they are and what continents they are on and all that. Like a World Factbook entry for supernaturals. There's enough divination abilities that it's reasonable for a global headcount to actually exist, and in any case it seems necessary for determining how special your special snowflake actually is and the feasibility of political ideas.

That also needs to extend to more discussion of rural areas and smaller cities. Areas that do not have embassies from multiple Syndicates. Places where the player characters are going to be liaising directly with the Syndicate or homesteading new territory that doesn't have a Syndicate presence.

Now, leaving vast amount of history unsaid or implied is virtually a necessity. You don't want to end up like McWoD and spend time ranting about events hundreds of years before the first supernatural creature appeared. Nor do you want to fill page after page with WFRP style TL;DR timelines about what the Slaan were doing thousands of years ago. But laying down a framework for how many creatures alive today were alive a hundred years ago, five hundred years ago, and a thousand years ago is actually a thing that should happen. The Bumen Horde doesn't have to be gone into in any great detail because the organization is extinct. But the number of members of that former Syndicate still running around is important information that I needed to provide and didn't.

Roles and Role Protection

The endless vistas of possibility of V:tM are enticing, but ultimately stifling when it comes to try to get characters to work together. I relied heavily on the "whatever you want!" answer to the "what is my character supposed to be contributing?" question, and it's a bullshit answer and I was wrong to do so. AS D&D showed us, the roles don't have to be terribly complicated or even 100% true, but they are really useful for getting shit started. Shadowrun showed that a skill based system can just let people build hybrid characters performing duties of more than one "role" and still have the roles be useful for players to discuss characters and their capabilities.

I'm thinking that what I should do is discuss things in terms of Bruisers, Faces, Researchers, and Scouts; with each role having a brief outline of expected duties and each character having the baseline expectation of being able to pull their weight in at least one area. I think once that's been codified, a hard look at some of the types needs to be made so that there's something reasonable to be said for each of them. Some like "Werewolves make good Bruisers" may seem obvious enough, but base powers may need to be moved around a bit so there's something similar to be said about all of them. If someone decides that they want to play a Scout, there should be a pointer in the book that shows some easy ways to do that. I'm afraid some of the types just durdle around without disciplined choices of supplementary magic. And that's my fault for not putting in the work of making lots and lots of characters for all the types and comparing them to challenges.

Appropriate Challenges

I didn't make nearly enough enemy statlines. Also, there should really be a set of "standard obstacles" for how to make things easy, difficult, or hard.

Similarly, my hit chart is really vague. I fucked that up. It should be a full page and have a lot of examples.

That's not everything of course, but it's a start. Anyone else who wants to pile on should do so.

-Username17