Credible Masquerades?

[Kaelik]

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.

My point was more about my hypothetical world where various revolutions and forces are pro lifting the masquerade so people can protect themselves from monsters, specifically the Cuban revolution. Since the USSR significantly supported Cuba it would have to mostly either 1) Believe the Cuban claims about vampires and not be run by vampires or 2) For some reason just tie itself relatively closely and risk possible nuclear war to protect a crazy guy screaming about how there are vampires amongst us.

[deaddmwalking]

If real-world events are largely driven by vampires, you're only a tiny step away from blaming real-world atrocities on vampires. Whether caused by or directed in response to vampires, it eliminates culpability from the real-world leaders responsible for those events. Maybe it doesn't bother you if it's Castro and the Cuban revolution, but it probably does if it is Andrew Jackson and the Trail of Tears.

An effective masquerade would have largely evaded notice during historical events. As soon as a real-world political leader is aware of the presence of supernaturals, all of their actions can be evaluated through that lens.

We know that there are historical figures who believed in monsters. That's enough - a small number of people who are thought of as crazy is good - an empire spanning 1/7 of the world's land-mass less so.

[Kaelik]

If real-world events are largely driven by vampires, you're only a tiny step away from blaming real-world atrocities on vampires. Whether caused by or directed in response to vampires, it eliminates culpability from the real-world leaders responsible for those events. Maybe it doesn't bother you if it's Castro and the Cuban revolution, but it probably does if it is Andrew Jackson and the Trail of Tears.

This is an incorrect criticism. Analogies don't erase the thing being analogized, they emphasize it. Hypothesizing "The real world, but with vampires" where the vampires do less evil things than your average person in power and no vampires are allowed to be people in power is both very uninteresting and undermines the vampire fiction.

Playing a TTRPG where you say "and then Bill Gates, A VAMPIRE, prevents people from getting Covid vaccines, because ongoing covid deaths makes it easier for vampires to get away with murders" doesn't eliminate culpability for Bill Gates's real life mass murder for profit campaign, because it people know that Bill Gates is not actually a Vampire because vampires don't exist, and so they will in fact talk about the fact that Bill Gates does mass murder at the gaming session and not think that he's cool for doing it, or that he didn't really do it.

To address the specific example, if in your hypothetical supernatural world the supers existed in the past, and actually, Andrew Jackson was part of a tribe of Strogi who wanted to clear out the land for agriculture and cities so they could have population increase in his food supply or because the Native Deva Alliance was his enemies, or because Natives just didn't let him personally walk up and drink their kids blood so he was mad, and he did the murders for it, this does not absolve Andrew Jackson or the people who elected Andrew Jackson in either the fake or real world or in the minds of anyone playing a game about Andrew Vampire Jackson genocides.

It's especially funny to hear you, the world's leading expert in arguing against culpability for atrocities.

We know that there are historical figures who believed in monsters. That's enough - a small number of people who are thought of as crazy is good - an empire spanning 1/7 of the world's land-mass less so.

Again, the point is to talk about how the masquerade can't be maintained by no one noticing, but can be maintained by powerful figures not wanting the status quo challenged. In that metric, all sorts of people who challenged the status quo can be people who correctly deduced monsters and wanted to fight back, only to be shut down by the people in power who, much like you yourself, consider a drastic reordering of the world more dangerous and in need of fighting then the ongoing mass murder of millions of people. Those people can be as powerful as they were in the real world, because "Actually if you think about it, saying the worker is entitled to his labour is pretty much the same as stealing, let me, the billionaire who owns all the TV stations tell you" can be easily replaced with "Actually if you think about it, saying the worker is entitled to his labour and their are vampires eating people is pretty much the same as stealing and also definitely not true, no vampires exist, let me, the billionaire Vampire who owns all the TV stations tell you."

[Thaluikhain]

If real-world events are largely driven by vampires, you're only a tiny step away from blaming real-world atrocities on vampires.

This.

Since the USSR significantly supported Cuba it would have to mostly either 1) Believe the Cuban claims about vampires and not be run by vampires or 2) For some reason just tie itself relatively closely and risk possible nuclear war to protect a crazy guy screaming about how there are vampires amongst us.

Erm, how is that different from China supporting NK? Or any number of other nations supporting weird dictators. Doesn't really matter what their leadership thinks if they are useful, surely.

[Omegonthesane]

If real-world events are largely driven by vampires, you're only a tiny step away from blaming real-world atrocities on vampires.

This.

Nothing to say to Kaelik's rebuttal then? You quoted him so I can reasonably assume you don't just have him on ignore.

To address the specific example, if in your hypothetical supernatural world the supers existed in the past, and actually, Andrew Jackson was part of a tribe of Strogi who wanted to clear out the land for agriculture and cities so they could have population increase in his food supply or because the Native Deva Alliance was his enemies, or because Natives just didn't let him personally walk up and drink their kids blood so he was mad, and he did the murders for it, this does not absolve Andrew Jackson or the people who elected Andrew Jackson in either the fake or real world or in the minds of anyone playing a game about Andrew Vampire Jackson genocides.

[Thaluikhain]

Well, I was going to, but my disagreement is purely subjective. It seems disrespectful to me to claim fictional reasons for real world things, especially atrocities. But even without that, if, say, a zillionth generation person in Britain wants to claim that it was not their ancestors that built Stonehenge, but aliens, that something I always cringe at. Obviously nobody few people are going to take the alien stuff too seriously, but even so, I feel that sort of thing is something best avoided.

Evidently, Kaelik does not feel the same way.

[Omegonthesane]

The reasons that are laid out in Kaelik's example for why Andrew Vampire Jackson might commit atrocities for vampire reasons are unsubtle analogies for the reasons why Andrew Human Jackson committed atrocities for human reasons in the real history. The notion that aliens built Stonehenge is not a remotely fair or, frankly, relevant comparison, because it doesn't serve as commentary on the real world events that really happened.

For the weapons-grade example in European history - saying that vampires did the Holocaust as a failed giant blood ritual to satisfy Caine with a feast would be contemptuous of the actual victims of the actual atrocity; saying that vampires supported the Nazis to stop humanity from uniting against vampires would instead be just a literal description of why the rich supported the Nazis to stop a united working class from forming and taking power, with vampires substituted for the rich. You'd probably want to hire sensitivity readers, but the fact it involves inserting horror movie monsters into real world atrocities does not on its own render something unsalvageable as a pitch.

[Thaluikhain]

The reasons that are laid out in Kaelik's example for why Andrew Vampire Jackson might commit atrocities for vampire reasons are unsubtle analogies for the reasons why Andrew Human Jackson committed atrocities for human reasons in the real history. The notion that aliens built Stonehenge is not a remotely fair or, frankly, relevant comparison, because it doesn't serve as commentary on the real world events that really happened.

Well, yes, I was using that as an example of my position.

For the weapons-grade example in European history - saying that vampires did the Holocaust as a failed giant blood ritual to satisfy Caine with a feast would be contemptuous of the actual victims of the actual atrocity; saying that vampires supported the Nazis to stop humanity from uniting against vampires would instead be just a literal description of why the rich supported the Nazis to stop a united working class from forming and taking power, with vampires substituted for the rich. You'd probably want to hire sensitivity readers, but the fact it involves inserting horror movie monsters into real world atrocities does not on its own render something unsalvageable as a pitch.

Adding fictional vampires as Nazi supporters is something I don't see anything inherently wrong with. Turning real people into fictional monsters, or replacing real people with fictional monsters, is something I feel that is different.

By way of example, way back in the 90s in Wolf3D, ep 2 the player had to kill the fictional Dr Schabbs to stop them making zombie mutant things, which I don't really have an issue with. If they'd called him Dr Mengele instead, IMHO, that would have made a difference. Yes, they used power armoured Hitler in ep 3 though.

Now, sure, people might draw the line somewhere else, I'm only saying that's where I'd draw it.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

Is power armored mecha-Hitler where the line is? What if mecha-Hitler was also a wizard and a werewolf?

[Thaluikhain]

IMHO, while it's a bit dubious (he's treated not unlike Hans and Gretel are, and they have joke names), Hitler owning power armour and miniguns (and lurking in a bunker presumably just giving orders rather than being on the front line) doesn't change him too much. His personality and motivations and evil are the same.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

So you could have Werewolf Hitler, as long as him being a werewolf doesn't affect his motivations and fucked-up-ness too much?

[deaddmwalking]

If real-world events are largely driven by vampires, you're only a tiny step away from blaming real-world atrocities on vampires. Whether caused by or directed in response to vampires, it eliminates culpability from the real-world leaders responsible for those events. Maybe it doesn't bother you if it's Castro and the Cuban revolution, but it probably does if it is Andrew Jackson and the Trail of Tears.

This is an incorrect criticism. Analogies don't erase the thing being analogized, they emphasize it. Hypothesizing "The real world, but with vampires" where the vampires do less evil things than your average person in power and no vampires are allowed to be people in power is both very uninteresting and undermines the vampire fiction.

But Kaelik, most people aren't as smart as you. It's a subtle distinction between Hitler is a terrible person and a vampire and Hitler is a terrible person because he's a vampire.

And making a distinction between reality and the reality of the game is harder when you're repurposing aspects of history that seem convenient for your purposes. As the game history deviates further from real history it automatically creates an ambiguity about whether you're talking about the events that really happened or an alternate version of events that you're trying to communicate. Effectively, when you say 'like the real world, only every piece of historical knowledge may or may not have been replaced by a fictional version', you lose most of the benefit real-world history.

In that case you're better off creating an 'alternate time-line' like Deadlands or Shadowrun.

Assuming you want to use real history (because that's convenient), and real-world history doesn't feature wide-scale Vampire terrorism, it follows that you must posit a Vampire Society that coexisted with the events that have really happened without drawing too much attention to themselves. That still allows you to insert fictional characters that were INVOLVED in historical events for their own purposes, and allows you to explore current and historical events to INDICT them as evil without replacing real-world monsters with supernatural equivalents.

Even positing vampires as a shadowy conspiracy pulling strings is fraught.

[Kaelik]

As the game history deviates further from real history it automatically creates an ambiguity about whether you're talking about the events that really happened or an alternate version of events that you're trying to communicate. Effectively, when you say 'like the real world, only every piece of historical knowledge may or may not have been replaced by a fictional version', you lose most of the benefit real-world history.

As soon as you posit that vampires existed before yesterday it automatically does all this. The only thing deliberately pretending you never thought of what if a vampire accumulated power does is deny you the ability to communicate anything.

The players are going to wonder if Vlad the Impaler was a vampire or if Andrew Jackson was a vampire if they are relevant to the story whether you tell them those people are vampires or refuse to tell them if those people are vampires and saying "okay but here's the thing, every single senator and president and supreme court justice.... none of them were ever vampires. Every king and lord, even the ones that were specifically the origin of vampire myths? Also not vampires! Every single vampire in the entire history of the world was just some jack the ripper serial killer." is that your setting makes no sense on any level. It's not going to protect them from the hypothetical boogieman of thinking the Trail of Tears happened because Andrew Jackson was a vampire because no person could be this evil! Because it turns out that Andrew Jackson had like, assistants, and you forgot to tell them that every single military commander and adviser in history was also never a vampire.

[Thaluikhain]

So you could have Werewolf Hitler, as long as him being a werewolf doesn't affect his motivations and fucked-up-ness too much?

I guess, though I don't see how (or why) you'd do that. Being a werewolf is presumably a big deal, which is likely to be the point.

Though, upon further thought, I don't have a problem with Hitler being a brain in a jar in the Irregular Webcomic stories about him, so I might have to rethink my stance on this.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

Hmm. You could get extra weird with it and have werewolf Hitler be less morally repugnant than human Hitler. I'm not sure what that would accomplish, but that's a direction one could go in. A Jekyll and Hyde sorta thing, where Werewolf Hitler is abhorred by the actions of his alter ego.
This is stupid as hell, I think I'll stop now.

[Grek]

Hoping to get onto a less stupid version of this question, Chronicles of Amber manages to provide a fairly reasonable excuse for a masquerade: There exists one (well, technically two) True World (which is run by powerful wizards) and a nigh-infinite number of Shadow Worlds which are copies of the True World which lack magic until a wizard decides to show up in one of them and start screwing with stuff. The Masquerade exists because you're on the outs with the Wizard Council/Fairy Queen/Hell/Atlantis/Fred and are hiding out in a carefully chosen Shadow World where as long as you don't do too much visible magic, history looks normal enough that they'll probably never find you. But if they do find you, there's a huge masquerade-shattering battle which possibly tragically kills your Shadow World loved ones and forces you to flee to a new world that knows nothing of magic.

[erik]

But in that scenario you're basically hiding out away from other supernaturals like hedge mage Ted Kazinski rather than masquerading with courts of vampires and mages.

[Thaluikhain]

You're also saying that your world doesn't matter, and all the cool stuff is elsewhere. Which is probably why in that series they spent little time on our Earth.

Now, you absolutely can do that if you want, of course, but you lose a lot of stuff people tend to like in Masquerades. Not much investigating masquerade breaches or hiding your own, for example.

[Grek]

This setup is intended for more of a Changeling or Mage setup, where part of the premise is that there exist powerful forces who want the PCs dead/captured and where they're covering up masquerade breaches out of more of a witness protection motive than out of a grand conspiracy motive. It doesn't work at all like the masquerade in Vampire, but that's because the masquerade in Vampire is A] honestly not that credible if you stop to think about it and B] does not allow for antagonists who are not on board with the grand conspiracy. Mages hiding out from witch hunters because they know if the witch hunters actually catch any actual witches in a public enough way, that's going to summon Melmoth the Witch King to fuck their entire planet in revenge? I'm down.

[erik]

If the supers are in hiding all in the same spot (so just one shadow world that they are invested in maintaining, not one of an infinite possible ones) from a big bad that has enough mojo to enforce the masquerade then that can work. Though you want to make it so that when a mage doomed or about to die they can't just ruin it for everyone out of spite in a majestic blaze of glory.

Could have kinda like a Laundry series situation where the more magic that is getting thrown around the more easily other people can perform magic, and once you hit a critical mass of magic use the great ones notice and then everyone has a bad day. So you not only want to limit yourself, you want to limit other people catching on and clamp down aggressively upon the spread of knowledge of magic.

[Thaluikhain]

Huh, just short of a year necro.

Anyhoo, been thinking about masquerades and watching horror films, was wondering if you could get the masquerade to work better if the monsters spend most of their time not quite in our real world. Not going for a full co-existing planar realm or whatever they are, but parts of the world that are only part of the world parts of the time. Villages lost in the mist that you can't find a second time, sub-sub-basements in buildings that don't have any, extra streets full of weird shops in cities, and that sort of thing. You could say they are magic places and that makes them more interesting to magic monsters so most shenanigans doesn't hit the streets full of normies, but they are still close enough that people can wander into the real world f they want to go clubbing or shopping or investigating or whatever.

Not quite a normal masquerade then, but might allow you to off-load some of the problems into somewhere not our world.

[deaddmwalking]

Yes, having the monsters exist somewhere other than the real world would be different than a masquerade. That'd be a fictional world that isn't like the real world. If that semi-similar world isn't like the real world, you have many of the issues of establishing how that world works and the fundamental question of whether it even makes sense to base it on the real world.

Think of it this way - if you're setting your campaign in Tokyo-3 instead of Tokyo, what benefit do you get from trying to set it in the Real World? Why not set it in Demon City Shinjuku instead?

[Dean]

Those sound like After Sundown Shallows to me. Creepy places that if you go into them you enter a place where the rules of your reality are replaced by those of the spooky plane you're entering

[Thaluikhain]

Those sound like After Sundown Shallows to me. Creepy places that if you go into them you enter a place where the rules of your reality are replaced by those of the spooky plane you're entering

More or less, yeah.

[Zaranthan]

I think it could work if you keep the Shallows, well, shallow. There isn't a whole world on the other side or even an entire village. The largest bits of Shadow Realm are things like Diagon Alley, but there's nothing on the other end of the alley but another street in the real world. Maybe one on another continent, so supernatural creatures have strange borders, but the point is there just isn't much room to get up to shenanigans where the muggles can't see. You have to live most of your magical life hiding, and when you have a big fight with another mage, it's probably going to happen in Manhattan, not Noir York City.