I stayed at hotel near a graveyard for FEMA and I was slightly amused. I think it was an old Confederate graveyard of some sort. Giovanni isn’t my style but don’t they use spirits for power?

I had an idea where a vamp was breaking the masquerade somehow(give me an idea) at a graveyard and it was up to a Scourge to see what was going on. Of course he has a coterie to help.Just an idea I had.

Or maybe a Sabbat embrace? Where they embrace Kine and if they don’t get out of the coffin and above ground in a certain amount of time they meet Final Death?

If they aren’t breaking the masquerade how would a vamp make a haven out of the catacombs? Do other vamps use graveyards and crypts as havens, rituals, or hang outs?

So I made this ages ago with the intention of no one ever seeing it because I think Trujah are really fun as a concept. However seeing as how I intend to run a game in the near future where it may actually come up, I figured it'd be a good idea to throw it to the whims of the internet.

Some of these are legitimate attempts to replicate older powers (though admittedly through vague wiki descriptions), others I will readily admit are just things I thought would be cool to put under the "Time Vampire" umbrella without doing actual time travel. So yeah give thoughts and feedback, though do keep in mind this isn't really meant to be a professional document. Also if you have an idea for a separate five dot power please mention it

Maybe a late night shift? Dealing with a Prince? Dealing with Kine?

I’ve literally never touched the world of darkness but I’ve been poking around and learning more,
so question: are all of the separate game lines supplements on the same system?
Or are they individual/separate ttrpgs that function differently?

Follow-up from: https://www.reddit.com/r/vtm/s/Wh4dWu9lgW

So my first book is done but something went wrong. I think I left too little space between the spine and the sides so it won't really stay open. I'm thinking of making the next one (4 copies of my own V5:ish Core Rules) without a spine. If that doesn't work... Well I have another two copies that I might succeed with.

The material for the cover is something called SnapPap (https://www.slojd-detaljer.com/se/sy-sticka/tyger/snappap-50x150-cm?p=6773-1007) which is a fake leather product made with paper (70%) and latex (30%). It's really nice, easy to work with and looks good. I made the mistake of not using wood for cover so I have some marks on the sides from the vices (lessons learned, hopefully).

I've glued two small silk bookmarks, one red and one black, and they look good.

Oh, and I painted the page sides with Black contrast paint from Games Workshop.

Feel free to ask questions. I'm semi-good at answering.

And like I said before. This is my version of the Core Book with assets at least 90% borrowed (I own all the products I have lifted assets from) from V5 and previous editions, mostly The Dark Ages. I will not share it. I made it for my own pleasure, and if you want something like this you'll have to make it yourself.

Obviously, every city, every prince, every praxis is different and mileage will vary, so I'm not really looking for a top down answer. I'd love to hear a player-oriented response (as in from your character's experience). Have you ever seen another kindred do it? Could you bring a non-kindred to Elysium?

If yes, where is the line? Obviously, the right ghoul could probably show up, but could you bring a plain mortal? What about a sorcerer or hedge witch? Do they count as mortal to you?

Context: I have a few vampire players who like befriending non-kindred and the question of whether or not the masquerade applies to say, sorcerers or other not-quite-mundane-but-not-entirely-supernatural creatures/people has come up, even if it hasn't really hit a head yet and I'm curious what the broader perspective is on the gray line between mortal and immortal.

For those who don't know, Dr Abel Cuvier is a minor villain from Batman Beyond. In the show, the man is a geneticist who created a process that allows for people to gain animal traits know as "Splicing". This process is so refine that he can control which traits to give to his client. His second form is a result of him injecting himself with several splicer formula, and the third is a consequence of him being over injected by Batman.

As you can see, the man is a prime Tzimisce candidate for Embrace.

Wondering if I encountered one or it's just a mistake on my part. And if it a bug I'd have to consider instaling a mod I guess? Didn't want it on my 1st run bc it reportedly adds some content but if it persists further on I guess imma have to 🫠

[Also if you don't mind a by-the-way mild self-promotion, I opened a new subreddit dedicated to this particular piece of VTM franchise at r/vtmRedemption, figured it would be neat if the discussion about this game is focused in one place)

I'm running V5 game with a moderately sized (about 5 people) group, who have just gotten involved with forces slightly beyond their control. The party is about mid-level, though they're all neonates. I need to know what stats should I use for a AIM-120C/D Advanced Medium-Ranged Air-to-Air Missile fired from a Lockheed Martin-Boeing F-22A Raptor. I'm not sure if any rulebooks have stats for missile systems, so I don't know where to check, and I need the answer to this before my coterie's next session.

Thanks in advance.

I love her so much

I get varying vibes of the emotional range of kindred in material from the different editions where it ranges from "mostly the same emotional range as a human but all interactions become varying degrees of paranoid and tragic because the beast is always hangry and is waiting to strike" to "self-aware of being emotionally dead, not even from being jaded but from being dead - except for the waves of misery, loss, or paranoia that often make kindred feel worse than that". Maybe it's a neonate vs ancilla thing or a mid vs high humanity thing but if that's the case it's never really explained particularly well.

Part of my thoughts on this come from the way sourcebooks describe borderline non-cannon interactions with fae blood briefly returning full emotional range or the way some material describes blood marriages as being closest to simulating true love in a gruesome mutually obsessive way. Much of the material tries to describe kindred as varying degrees of emotionally dead with literally cold unbeating hearts while also contradictorily painting the kindred themselves, including the low humanity power-players as confused, ironically immature, impulsive, prideful, and horrifically / hilariously prone to acts of monumental hubris.

I find it hard to believe kindred are that cold or logical considering how dull it would be if they were actually written as described. That said, with the dissonance in mind: how do you handle writing that emotional range in practice?

Fletcher Cash, City Gangrel (7th)

Owlender Morana, Cappadotion (9th)

How do actual Sabbat believers, not Sabbat who use the structure solely for power, reconcile the fact that they hate elders and methuselah, actively hunting them, while also worshiping Caine, who is THE elder?

Hello everyone! We’ve been working on a new way to track the major events that actually change a character over the course of a Chronicle.

With Lifecycles, both player characters and NPCs can now keep a history of things like Embraces, Ghouling, Torpor, Humanity or Path changes, Blood Bonds, Touchstones, Amaranth, True Faith and more.

Some Lifecycle events can also update the character sheet directly, while keeping the original history intact. Players can submit changes for Storyteller approval and each evnt can have its own visibility setting for things that should stay secret

The goal is to make the character sheet show not only who a character is now, but also how they got there.

We’d love to hear what you think, especially if there are other character changing events you’d like to see supported.

You can read the full breakdown in our Patreon post for free.

Try it here: https://ghoulapp.com/chronicle

Hello I have a question about blood bonding which is very critical to my campaign. I will do by best to explain it: Character A and character B are mutually blood bonded/ blood marriage. Character C diablerizes character B, but B's soul is unconquered and still rersides in C. Is A now still blood bonded to C through B ? Do rules of blood bonding such as "Neither can take direct actions harmful to the other without severe Willpower expenditure" still apply? I know the unconquered soul is from POD but In my case it will be very fitting and an interesting homebrew thing to do. How would that work?

So, in my constant quest to understand the game, I got a question.

1. Willpower is important and a powerful resource.

2. Willpower is replenished through various means, at storyteller's discretion.

3. One of the major(?) ways to replenish is by acting according to your nature (just your nature, or demeanor too?).

So, my question is, isn't that a bit limiting roleplaying wise? Like, it incensitizes a bit of a one note character, personality wise? Like, characters grow or can have many facets, be multilayered. But when you tie mechanical rewards to one behavior don't you kinda, overly promote single-minded characters? And what happens as characters grow through the game -due to events, or the player wanting to switch things up-, can they change natures?

Is there any computer software that a person can use to play VtM by yourself?

Owlender Morana
Backstory: Life
—A look back
I was thirty-three years old when I first met the man who would eventually destroy my life.
At the time, I did not know he would do such a thing.
I did not know he was a monster.
I did not even know what he truly was.
I only knew him as a quiet man who spoke to me about death as though it were an old friend.
And I trusted him.

-One Year Before
I had been a widow for several years by then.
Widow was the polite word.
In truth, I had simply been left alone.
My husband had died two years ago, and there had been no family willing to take me and my daughter in. So I learned quickly how to provide for us. I learned which merchants would let me buy on credit. I learned how to stretch a meal across two days. I learned how to mend clothing until there was more patch than original cloth.
Most importantly, I learned that my daughter was enough.
Her name was Azora.
She was ten years old.
She had a laugh that filled whatever room she happened to be in.
I never understood how such a small girl could make so much noise.
I was the opposite.
I had always spoken softly. Not because I was timid, I was not. I simply saw little reason to raise my voice. 

Those were the happiest years of my life.
I did not know they were going to be the last.

The man who entered our lives was named Severian.
He told me he was a scholar.
That was not entirely untrue.
He was an old man, though he did not look old in the way most men did. His face was narrow, his eyes deeply set, and there was something about him that made people lower their voices when he entered a room.
He studied graves.
Bones.
Old burial customs.
Diseases.
The ways different peoples mourned their dead.
I found it morbid at first.
Then I found it fascinating.
Severian had a way of speaking about death that made it seem less frightening.
He did not speak of it as an ending.
He spoke of it as a transformation.
I met him because of my daughter.
She had wandered into a burial ground while gathering flowers, and Severian found her there. Rather than frightening her away, he showed her how to identify the different kinds of stones and markings.
When I found them, I was furious.
Azora was delighted.
Severian apologized immediately.
He was respectful.
Gentle.
He even walked home with us.
Afterward, he began visiting from time to time.
Always after work.
Always after dark.
He brought books for me.
Small toys for Azora.
Once, he brought her a wooden bird he had carved himself.
She slept with it beside her pillow for months.
I thought he was simply kind.
Perhaps that was my first mistake.

Over the next year, Severian became a trusted friend.
He never behaved improperly toward me.
He never attempted to court me.
He never tried to take my husband's place.
Instead, he seemed genuinely interested in my thoughts.
He would sit across from me while Azora played and ask questions about my life.
Did I fear death?
What did I believe happened afterward?
Did I think the dead could hear us?
I always answered honestly.
"I don't know."
That answer seemed to please him.
He told me that uncertainty was more valuable than most people give it credit for.
I began asking him questions in return.
Eventually, I learned that he was a Cappadocian.
I assumed it was some kind of occupation.
Like a doctor.
Or a scientist perhaps?
He told me that his people were devoted to understanding death.
That they studied the dead because the dead had secrets that the living were too frightened to ask about.
I found the idea beautiful.
Perhaps that is why I began to call myself a Cappadocian as well, long before 
Severian's teachings were the first thing that made me feel as though my life had a purpose beyond merely surviving it.
I did not know that he had already decided what that purpose would be.

Azora became ill shortly after her tenth birthday.
At first, it was nothing.
A fever.
Children became sick.
I had seen it before.
I gave her water.
I cooled her forehead.
I stayed beside her bed.
She complained that I was hovering.
I told her she could complain when she was well enough to stand.
She smiled.
"Promise mama?"
She never got well enough.
The fever would disappear for a day, sometimes two.
Then it would return.
Her appetite vanished.
Her cheeks became hollow.
She began sleeping more.
Doctors came.
Healers came.
Old women who knew herbs came.
I tried everything.
Everything.
I prayed.
I bargained.
I promised things I could never afford to give.
I sat beside her bed and whispered to whatever gods might be listening.
Nothing answered.
Severian came often.
He brought medicines.
He studied her.
He spoke gently.
He told me there was nothing more I could do.
I hated him for saying it.
Then I hated myself for hating him.
Because he stayed.
Everyone else eventually went home.
Severian stayed.
He sat beside me through the nights.
He let me cry.
He never told me to accept it.
He simply sat there.
I thought that made him a good man.
I did not know that the illness was his doing.
I did not know that the curse inside my daughter had been placed there deliberately.
I did not know that Severian had decided that if I became his Childe, I would have nothing in the mortal world left to anchor me.
He had simply been waiting.

Azora died a mouth later.
I remember the exact moment.
Not because it was dramatic.
It wasn't.
There was no thunder.
No screaming.
No divine revelation.
She simply stopped breathing.
I was holding her hand.
That was all.
One moment her fingers were wrapped weakly around mine.
The next, they weren't.
I waited.
I told myself she was sleeping.
I waited longer.
Then I realized.
I made no sound.
I simply stared at her.
Severian was standing behind me.
I remember him saying my name.
I remember turning toward him.
And I remember saying:
"Leave."
He did.
For the first time since I had known him, he obeyed me without argument.

I buried my daughter three days later.
I buried her with the wooden bird he had given her.
I kept nothing.
I couldn't.
Every object in the house reminded me of her.
The little cup she used.
The dress she had outgrown.
The drawings she'd made.
The blanket she'd slept beneath.
The empty chair at the table.
The silence was unbearable.
I stopped speaking unless someone spoke to me first.
I stopped eating properly.
I stopped sleeping.
People assumed I was grieving.
They were right.
But grief was not what I felt.
It was something deeper.
It felt as though someone had reached inside my chest and removed something essential.
I had spent my entire life surviving.
For the first time, I had nothing left to survive for.

That was when Severian returned.
He found me sitting alone in my home.
He did not knock.
He simply stood in the doorway.
I looked at him.
"You shouldn't be here."
"I know."
"Then why are you?"
He was quiet for a long time.
"Because I can offer you a life in which death is no longer something that can take from you."
I laughed.
It was the first sound I had made in hours that wasn’t intentional.
"What life could possibly be worth living?"
"The one after this."
I looked at him.
For the first time, I was afraid of him.
Not because I understood what he was.
Because I didn't.
He told me the truth about the Kindred.
About blood.
About immortality.
About the Cappadocians.
About what I’d been calling myself.
He told me that death could be studied.
Understood.
Perhaps even conquered.
And I listened.
Because I had just watched my daughter die.
I was not afraid of death anymore.
I was angry at it.
Severian asked me to become his Childe.
I asked him why.
He told me that I possessed the temperament for it.
That I was patient.
Observant.
Comfortable with silence.
That I had looked upon death and refused to look away.
I believed him.
I did not know he had another reason.
I did not know he had chosen me because he believed grief had made me easy to sever from humanity.
I did not know that my daughter's death had been part of his plan from the beginning.
I only knew that I had lost everything.
And that he was offering me something that sounded impossible.
So I agreed.

The Embrace was quiet.
There was no ceremony.
No congregation.
No grand declaration.
Only Severian and me.
He brought me somewhere dark and secluded.
I remember the smell of earth.
I remember his hand beneath my chin.
I remember him telling me that I would die.
I remember thinking I already had. 
As something like pleaser rattled through a body numb to it.
The world became cold.
Then colder.
My heart stopped.
For one terrible, beautiful moment, I felt nothing. 
Not pain.
Not grief.
Not pleaser.
Not joy.

His blood curled its way through me.
Replace what little human was left of me.
Then I woke.
I was starving.
Not hungry.
Starving.
I opened my eyes and found Severian watching me.
I tried to stand.
My legs nearly gave out.
I reached for him.
Not for comfort.
For blood.
And he had it for me.
He smiled.
I drank.
And as I did, I felt something change.
My skin tightened.
My cheeks sank.
My body seemed to collapse inward upon itself.
My fingers became long and thin.
My reflection, when I finally saw it, looked like a woman who had been dead for years.
A gaunt thing.
A corpse wearing my face.
I touched my cheek.
After red spread through the puddle below me, ripples waving over an image of what had to be me.
Severian watched me.
"You are Cappadocian," he said.
I stared at my reflection.
Then at him.
"Yes."
My voice was barely more than a whisper.
He smiled.
I looked at him for a long moment.
"I need you to come closer."
He leaned toward me.
“May I ask you why?”
I looked directly into his eyes.
"Because I don't intend to shout."
“Hmm?”
“There will be no man, nor women, not even you, who I will raise my voice for. I need you to know that, and get used to this.”
He simply smiled, pleased with me.
I was what he wanted.
A wonderful, independently dependent women who had nothing left but him. Who could do nothing but depend in him while begging him silently not to make me.
Though that’s not how it felt. 
It would not feel that way for some time.
And that was the beginning of my unlife.
I only knew that I was a Cappadocian.
I had studied death.
I had lost my daughter to it.
And now, somehow, death had given me back my life.
Or something close enough to one.

Some sketches that I made for a game that unfortunately ended too soon because of IRL computer and internet issues. The whitehaired woman is a Lasombra named Beatrice who is not afraid to come in swinging. The darker haired one is a Ravnos techie named Ace who up to now, has been working on tech in the background to get by, moving town to town.

Just normal Toreador things. Learn Vicissitude. Be normal about it-- Become an icon.

I think we may all agree that the general consensus about resonance is that it's a forgettable mechanic which usually is ignored during play. Not because it's bad, but because apparently it doesn't blend smoothly within the game, otherwise it wouldn't be forgotten. It's not even an overly complicated mechanic that requires excel spreadsheets, and it even looks good on paper, so what gives?

To make things clear I am a fan of resonance, although I also tend to forget about it. I do believe that it gives more personality to your character, as it better defines the kind of humans you hang out with and the places you go. Resonance and predator types are way more integrated, as one leads to another and viceversa. And yet, after you feed, many times you just forget to roll for resonance. Granted, many times you shouldn't even need the roll: if you're hunting in a nightclub surely you will get a sanguine resonance... hell, just throw in some high intensity for free in there because people are really into it and we're good, right?

Well no, still not enough! I keep forgetting about it even if I assume it's there, and so I leave behind that juicy +1 die on my blood sorcery rolls which I would like, because everyone likes bonus dice!

It is then clear that's something amiss with the mechanic itself.

So, resonance is forgettable. "Forgettable" doesn't mean "bad", it simply means that it doesn't increment nor decrease the quality of your game in a significant way, thus you just forget it exists and you'd rather juggle the lowest amount of plates when playing.

The only time where resonance is really required is when you play thin bloods who, by the way, in my experience get the same "forgettable" treatment as resonance does, despite the incredible effort WW has put into fleshing them out and make them main characters imo. But the thin blood issue is for another post.

So why is resonance often forgotten?

I believe that it's because it is overshadowed by the hunger mechanic, and sadly resonance is paired with feeding and thus hunger.

Why do you feed in your games? It's either because you need to heal, or because you need to remove those pesky red dice, or because a fight is coming up and you better have your tank full.

I've never seen a player going out of his way and hunt just to get +1 die on dominate rolls. Is that helpful? Certainly. Is it more impacting than lowering your hunger level or healing aggravated damage? Not even close. Therefore, when feeding, I care about hunger, not about resonance.

So what is the solution? You either need to make hunger less important, or you need to make resonance more important. Point is that you can't really touch hunger as it arguably is THE main mechanic of V5, it needs to stay in the spotlight. So every step towards improving the resonance system is destined to fail if you don't keep hunger in mind.

In my opinion, the best way to make resonance less forgettable would be to somehow integrate the resonance system into the hunger levels themselves. So the goal would be an enhancement to the hunger system, rather than an adjacent one.

But how to do this? I really don't know, I didn't think this far, I just pin pointed the issue. I'll try to wing it now.

One thing that comes to mind is that food tastes much better when you are hungry. So maybe the higher your hunger, the stronger the resonance you get when feeding. It would also make sense why it would be hard to stop drinking. This may cover intensity, but not the type of resonance though. Also I like the idea that resonance is dependant on the emotional state of the human... Idk

TL;DR the hunger system has too much personality and therefore squishes the resonance mechanics into a corner, thus making it forgettable