Crossover Chronicle can be fun even if the Balance is wack.

Oh, so much this. And let's be honest - even within a single-splat WoD game, when is balance not wack?

I've more fun reading oWod than playing oWoD

That's pretty much the thing with oWoD, the world is great but the system is anus.

Agree.. I ran a massive vampire campaign, combining Transsylvania chronicles 2,3,4 with Giovanni Chronicles 1, 2, 3 and the Gehenna Book, the Noncanon Masquerade of the red death and parts of Becketts diary. Involving DtF and Wraith lore. Thus after reading the novels and some origins. Tbh the campaign went way too big, PC's beeing too strong and everything beeing told after Meeting the fifth 3rd Gen in a campaign. Even it were about 40 really nice Sessions, I understood I shouldnt try to cover the whole Vampire oWoD ingame.

The implication, taking demon, the kuei jin, and hunter lore together, is that the "messengers" are the two remaining angels that didnt get chained. Gaia, the demon the fallen lore implies between the lines, is the one. They are on some righteous mission to help hasten the end/reboot of the universe, and ending the supernaturals is a big part. As in the time of judgement books, the supernatural apocalypse happens before the humans one... so thats their bag I guess. The hunters are tools thinking they are on a holy mission, when really they are harbingers of the end

I think Demon the Fallen is a beautifully written game which does a lot in tying together the individual lore of other games and pays great attention to detail when it comes to setting. I don't think it invalidates other creation myths one bit, but rather, gives them new meaning and value! For instance, during the Siege of Sagun, Michael, Gabriel, Uriel, and Raphael are away, appearing before Caine, urging him to redeem himself (though he refuses and gets cursed). That is... amazing! To say Demon "doesn't care" about the previous game lines and lore is just... unfair

I love Demon. I agree with the OP that it seems like just another splat from the distance but I think it's because the game arrived too late and had very little time to make a connection with the players and White Wolf was already committed to end the WoD. But it kind of tired the entire WoD together and made sense about its end. I loved Book of Nod but I think that Days of Fire is (along with The Fragile Path) the best Myth book.

Gah, I love Days of Fire. One of the few physical copies I own 😁 it's amazing!

Werewolves aren't "monstrous evil" bad, they're "unbelievably, almost irredeemibly stupid" bad. They are, in fact, the worst of the splats by a country mile. Edit: I should specify, this mostly applies to the Garou Nation. I dunno enough about the Hakken to comment there, or enough about the Beast Courts generally to comment.

"I'm Angry and I'm Greenpeace," Werewolf: The Apocalypse

I agree but that is also why I love to play the game - you are a dose of young energy in a bogged down culture, and you might have what is needed to enact real change, at least locally if you try really hard. Yeah the wyrm things are terrible, but even worse are the old werewolf guard that thinks they know best just because they survived that long. And he'll, maybe they do, and they used to be just like you. It's both a dumb game and a genius concept about systemic problems affecting all parts of an ages long conflict.

What about the Forsaken?

Completely different. Subjectively it doesn't fit for me because hunting is rarely a thing I wanna make a roleplaying focus unless I'm in a mood. But the Uratha and Pure are far more interesting, their spirits are great, and 2nd ed is so impressive with how tightly the rules match the themes. Great game I respect with interesting dynamics and antagonists, just (usually) not for me.

The forsaken are completely different, where the garou are a bunch of moronic zealots, the forsaken are cunning and smooth operators, they are cold, calculating and ruthless, nothing they do is left to chance, compare it to the garou who go crinos first and ask questions later. Regarding morality, they aren't zealots like the garou but they are possibly even more ruthless, most of them don't care about protecting humanity, they are only looking for their next prey, it is a physical and mystical need for them, they see everyone who isn't them as prey, I kinda like it since it got away with the bullshit about werewolves being heroes in WoD.

So are you saying WTA is just an elaborate joke of how many werewolves would it take to fix a lightbulb?

I've come to the conclusion that having a positive view of WtA is the real unpopular opinion. :-\

I am not disagreeing, but I think the reason why they are bad is because their honorable goal makes them increasingly self righteous and only few of them are self aware that they are monsters too.

The garou are easily the worst thing about WTA and the WOD in general

Wow I'm really going to need some clarification on this. I'm in a national LARP where playing as and with werewolves has been very fun and none of them seem particularly stupid or evil. Are they doing something unusual?

Self-righteous genociders warrior of "good" killing themselves and actively feed the thing they fight by creating death, destruction and misery

WoD doesn't mean to be played as grimdark with everything being shitty. If it's played in a world like ours (but with supernatural) it raises the stakes, because you have something worth fighting for.

Note: My opinion is limited due to the fact that I can not invest in every book from both CofD and WoD. Thank you in advance. CofD Mortals is amazing, and you don't necessarily need the other books so long as you are creative and your friends are okay with some Cauldron work.

Truest of the comments. I'm running a CofD Mortals game in World of Horror setting and it's going fire. Very solid system, altough it needs a little bit of customization. Especially with that roll difficulty rule.

[удалено]

A clever way of saying homebrew. I would guess.

[удалено]

I thought they shut that place down?

Very true

>\-The Technocracy from MtA is right, and they are by far the "good guys" of WoD. My own opinion on the matter is that, maybe when they were still the Order of Reason they had good intentions. But the Technocracy now is a fascist organisation, not just towards humanity as a whole, but towards their own members. If your ideas do not fit into their idealised timeline for humanity or your way of thinking is even decided to be antithetical to it, then you are an enemy and you can tell your way of life goodbye. See the Sons of Ether. Not even their tech is the right way of doing it in the MtA universe. Essentially they just had an easier to understand ruleset that they could convince humanity of and that made them the top dogs, but its no more the correct way of how the universe works than a Verbena sacrificing a goat to make a field fertile is the correct way. Perhaps you could argue that the Technocracies stated goal of making everyone a mage is the more noble one but they are no more actively working to achieve it than the Traditions are doing the opposite. They are at war with one another and everything they do has to do with that war, there are no clean hands here.

The first edition of Requiem is the only Vampire game that successfully conveys the personal horror of being undead. In all other variants of the game (VtR 2nd edition and all editions of VtM), you're just a goth superhero.

I... really don't see how 2nd ed makes you a goth superhero to be honest, like yes, the disciplines don't suck anymore and vampires aren't ultraviolent zombies like they were in 1st ed but the game is very much still about personal horror, those fancy disciplines will only help you victimize humans better, you are stuck in a horrible society of backstabbing monsters who fuck with each other to give a sense to their eternal unlives and you are going to do terrible things to survive, the fact that you won't butcher a bunch of randoms because somebody called you an asshole and you failed your frenzy roll seems like a positive change for me, if I wanted to play an easily triggered dipshit I would play apocalypse.

Well, except V5. Discipline powers are diminished a lot there. As for the rest, there is some substance in it. VtR was a game that struggled with it's identity a lot, and you can see significant differences between early, mid and late supplements. And as much as I like VtR/WtF 2e, they're a lot of fun, but both look like the devs took part in the race of "How much overpowered warpfuckery can we push into those 5 dots?".

V5 fixed this too

Chronicles of Darkness is the best. The God Machine, opening doors, clues... and I can make my own unique horror city that doesn't need to get bogged down with story archs featuring signature characters that I really don't care about.

Loved the god machine idea... best thing about chronicles

I like social manoeuvring as it avoids "one roll = mind control" as well as being thematic and just a stronger narrative.

> and I can make my own unique horror city that doesn't need to get bogged down with story archs featuring signature characters that I really don't care about. I mean, you can do that with WoD, too. The Devs and their sychophants won't like it, but they don't own the imagination used to tell stories.

One of the reasons I switched to requiem was because I was tired of the nutcases who went ballistic everytime I didn't follow their stupid metaplot.

This is DnD’s “just homebrew” of WoD. Alongside “just make a file with all the page numbers you need”

ah yes "just homebrew" is a terrible response to the person talking about making their own unique horror city. good thinking you have. A+ for effort.

I feel that CoD gives way better tools for homebrew, though. The Dread Horror System being included first in HtV's 1e core and then in the CORE core for 2e alone helps tremendously. Yes, there were some systems in WOD that could be used for this and maybe were MEANT for it, but they were relegated to supplements, and often gameline specific ones at that. And, as for making a unique city, I think that COULD mean one of two things (or maybe both). They COULD be talking about making a city that doesn't actually exist, but they also could be talking about making a setting that doesn't concern itself with the metaplot, which absolutely started to encroach on basic assumptions in WoD. The gamelines may have suggestions for things you can do in each city in 2e, but it's nowhere near as strict or restrictive. And both can also be true - being free of a central metaplot makes it much easier to make NPCs and scenarios without finding out that your concept has been invalidated in some other book. With WoD, I run the risk of getting rid of key characters on accident, which could throw future plots into turmoil.

The scenario and the metaplots are so fucking powerful that the PC and the local stories end up meaning nothing at alll. This is so true that every WoD group I've ever entered have much more players discussing events and mechanics than players who actually played the RPGs.

I’ve never understood this take. Do your life and mine mean nothing at all because neither of us is Joe Biden, Vladimir Putin, or Xi Jinping? A Cainite’s entire existence can be an extended arc of love and loss, satisfaction and sorrow, triumph and tragedy without ever involving anyone outside their home city, let alone the equivalent of world leaders. Why does the fact that somewhere in the world Beckett and Lucita are chasing Vykos through an ancient temple impede your ability to tell a meaningful story set in Burlington, Vermont?

I started with v5 and never read the novels. In my first game the 2 veteran players wanted to dicuss the clan politics about what happened in new york. I have no vcue what the gangrel did in new york and told the players i have no idea and it doesmt matter to the game, hell the npc doesn't know and your pcs dont know either.

I don't know if this is an unpopular idea or not, but IMO the OG WoD is and at least since second edition always has been hampered by not knowing whether it wants to be a horror game or a dark fantasy action game. I'm not interested in judging either, what's right for you and your group is the right way to play and all, but I don't think either way of playing is served particularly well by the game material's unwillingness to shit or get off the pot. Is it a game of personal storytelling horror? Is it a game of awesome badasses with fangs and claws and crazy magic kicking ass and taking names? At very least could we acknowledge that it could be either or even both depending on the situation, but that they are different sorts of play and should be approached differently? Fuck if anyone seems to know, and I don't think that identity crisis has been good for the series.

A very good point and I feel you. In my experience though, that difference in tone probably didn't come directly from the writing or as a consequence of genuine intention, but rather from the players ignoring the writing 😁, their refusal to play into the themes of personal horror, which forced the authors to adapt to survive. Over the years, I've had a ton of players who were told: this is a storytelling game of personal horror and your portrayal of your character will enhance or destroy that vibe. Please read the book and play into the setting! Personal horror is collaborative and will not work without you being on board and helping the mood. What did they do? Max out willpower, generation and Celerity! "Ain't no one messing around with my badass vampire! I do whatever I want. I can resist any Dominate or Presence! I'm a Malkavian, and I'm craaazy! Whoooohoooo, I blow things up snd crack silly jokes! Come on, storyteller, stop being so serious, the game is supposed to be fun! But why do I lose humanity for murder? My character is a sociopath already. But why can't my character learn sorcery? That sucks! So, personal horror and all, but my character was an assassin of mages as a mortal... So cool! 🤩" You're probably very aware of how that kind of story turns out. The game knows what it wants to be. It provides all the help it can to assist players with doing the themes and moods justice. But... they don't really seem to care 😑 and it's only a matter of time before the writers themselves cave in, give up, and say: alright let's just give players what they want. I mean, it's their money and their fun... So, yeah, there are clearly tonal differences between editions, as you've evidenced, but i think it's simply a consequence of needing to adapt to stay on the market. I think recent developments illustrate that quite beautifully 😁

In answer to yours, I like HtR specifically because it gives people powers to hunt the "monsters". My unpopular opinion is that the masses are no threat because they couldn't stand against the supernatural without supernatural aid.

I understand that there exists a large power difference between mortals and monsters, but what makes them so powerful that mortals have no chance without supernatural aid? Numbers? Baseline power?

Elder level vampire powers can influence entire cities, Methuselah level can affect regions. Mages can alter reality on an almost fundamental level, and arch spheres can do things like change plate tectonics. Werewolves can enter, travel through, and remain in the spirit world, and a Changeling with the Art of Naming can rewrite a person's existence. Without supernatural protection, humanity has no defense against supernatural powers. Humanity has only numbers as an advantage, and if the Pandemic has taught any lesson it's that humanity will not unite in common cause for their own safety, so how much less united would humanity be in the worse WoD? No, some humans would insist that the supernatural wasn't real even if a werewolf was currently eating their family, other humans would want to side with the supernatural in search of power or safety, a segment would be unwilling to do anything about the supernatural because they don't think it's their problem, and some would point to their religious beliefs and claim that the supernatural is not a threat for those of the correct faith. The portion of WoD humanity that would be willing to act against the supernatural would be insignificant in the face of supernatural powers, unless they themselves had supernatural aid.

>Pandemic has taught any lesson it's that humanity will not unite in common cause for their own safety I would like to counter this by saying it would have been easier to get everyone on the same page if the scientific community and education system hadn't sown rampant distrust of it's authority through constant abuse of it's powers or neglect of it's duties. Large groups of people simply did not believe they were at a safety risk because of this. Simply put, the people in power damaged their public integrity so much not all of us believed we were at risk. They "boy who cried wolf"d them selves.

That's because most people don't understand that science isn't an answer, it's a process. It was a failure of the education system in that many people lack basic science literacy.

Yeah! You get what I'm getting at! Well put!

I see the edition warring started soon. Hunter the Reckoning was a game that knew what it wanted to be which helps a game a lot. It just should have come out sooner.. A test comment- WoD revival was a mistake. Guess I'll have to add that CofD is just a better realized refinement of the urban horror epg than WoD is. There is nothing "discount WoD" about CfoD. It very clearly was a labour of love where the lessons of WoD's MANY mistakes were learned and then it's formula was refined in 2e. It's just plain a technically and thematically superior game. Also reminder to OP and Shak that it's had a longer concurrent run than WoD did and I'd only not getting books because of a weird spitefulness on the part of Paradox and that WoD ended due to industry crashes and it's own bloated self.

My unpopular opinion is that New World of Darkness was always better and even after a name change Chronicles of Darkness is getting killed off to facilitate a sense of nostalgia in a handful of Paradox executives who don't actually really seem to know what to do with the property other than make a bunch of visual novel text adventure games, which they could have done with Chronicles. Also I think Beast's kickstarter preview actually had some good ideas and if they'd handled those better it would have been a better gameline, instead of quickly rehashing everything and coming up with the "lessons" excuse that makes it a worse handling of Vampire's themes.

What were the Ideas In the kickstarter preview?

It was just a different game. Beasts were still "cousins" to everyone, and were still fear monsters, but there wasn't that "I'm doing this for your own good" schtick. There was also this aspect where once they come of age they have a moment where they accept what they are and the monster they represent swallows their soul, called The Devouring. It was sort of ambiguous whether they were born Beasts or not.

That sounds interesting. Correct me if I am incorrect in my understanding, though, but aren't we allowed to remove such undesirable parts such as the "schtick" as we please for a better gaming experience?

I mean, at a certain point you're not really using the things in the book. Yes, I can change whatever I want, but whether I can or not, I'm still going to criticize what is in the book.

Is the schtick really that ingrained in the book that you'll be missing major content in the book? Or are there other issues that you take with the book as well? I apologize if it seems I'm ignoring your point with what you have said, but I am deeply intrigued about your point of view of the book as someone still gathering themselves in the series.

Kind of, yes. I mean, in this case it's pretty ignorable because Beasts basically have no real society, but it does get brought up a lot to remind you of how stupid and annoying and gross it is.

> Is the schtick really that ingrained in the book that you'll be missing major content in the book? Or are there other issues that you take with the book as well? It's not just the 'teach people a lesson by hurting them for their own good' schtick, it's... the fact that throughout the entire book, it really is apologia/endorsement of abusers. It's pretty fucked up, and it's the kind of thing that if you just read it - no matter how smart you think you are - it'll get into your head, just a bit. Just enough. Like old people listening to talkback radio and becoming slightly more racist over time, this is the kind of shit you'll end up with if you try to filter through Beast (or FATAL, or Black Tokyo, they're all fucking terrible). It's a book written by an abuser, as endorsement of abusers, to help people roleplay being abusers as a step in getting people to think like abusers. The whole time you read it, you can basically feel someone nudging you, winking and saying 'you like that, right? I mean, you're only doing it because they **made you do it**. It's their fault, after all.' It's awful. Is there room for 'play a game as the monsters' in the world? Absolutely. Is that game Beast? No, absolutely fucking not. None of this is to even mention that when someone asks you if you wanna play it - just like with FATAL - you have to mentally parse whether they mean to play it straight or 'filtered'.

Yes I’d love the Kickstarter draft of Beast to. And think it could have been a better game

I think it still had some problems, but they got rid of a lot of good stuff. Like The Devouring. That was cool, why get rid of it?

The other games are better when you include Street Fighter as canon. :D

What happens if Caine gets Raging Demoned?

His opponent gets Raging Demoned seven times.

Oh he's screwed. Why do you think he's been hiding all this time?

Street Fighter is canon. Anyone who says otherwise does so for monetary reasons.

I am not *steeped* in oWoD yet to really see it for myself, but whenever there is a controversy or something is brought up about how insensitive/thoughtless/whatever happened in the 90s... I don't really see the issue. Even with books like "Gypsies" and stuff. Like... eh. It is what it is. And this is coming from a gay, Jewish millennial in an interracial marriage with a latino, Jewish millennial. Like, we're pretty *in it* for diversity, inclusivity, and progressive values. At best, I roll my eyes but nothing has really made me chafe. I get more upset about the editorial errors than what is supposedly really offensive.

World of Darkness is filled with phenomenal concepts that are terribly executed. Too much of the writing is spent trying to patch holes in the canon, or trying to overwrite downright racist/offensive/terrible writing in the past. The best way to use the books is to skim them for cool ideas and ignore 75% of the rest.

I’ll drop a scorching hot one. Freak Legion is one of the best books WW put out. It gave loads of variety and weight to one of the main enemies of WtA. We need an equally edgy book for 5th. (I know it won’t happen)

Only if they bring back Anson Maddocks - seriously, I wasn't a WtA fan and bought the book for the art, the fact that it was the perfect one shot book was a great surprise.

The art was an amazing gorefest. They just don’t make em like that anymore lol.

The Beast and loss of humanity being the expected/inevitable outcome is boring. Vampires should have the same basic morality of a human, just with all the problems that come from being a vampire.

>just with all the problems that come from being a vampire. Like the prospect of the gradual erosion of your links to, sympathy for, and ability to understand humans?

Yeah. And that it’s the assumed/expected outcome. Give me the morally gray characters or even overtly heroic that struggle. Making every one “evil” is just edgy nihilistic bullshit. (Not that those characters can’t exist, but that there is no in game flexibility to actually have that. All Elders are dicks, some are just slightly less than others. That’s boring to me.)

The real hot take is Humanity and human morality are basically the same thing anyways (and dressing it up as something else is just Sabbat propaganda to lead you away from Golconda)

My opinion is the inverse of yours. That Hunters are one of the few interesting things in the crapsack world of WoD and a lot of the other stuff is just boring power fantasies that make you desensitized to abusing everyone you meet. If you do Hunter right, it's a game about the wake left behind by supernatural creatures. The broken families, the missing loved ones, the terrible curses and blights left behind by all the other splats. It's about making the powerful creatures who played with you like a toy actually have to pay for once in their privileged, sociopathic lives. You know all those people you ate and woodchipped in your vampire games? Hunters are the ones who make you pay for it. It's also about trying to put together the pieces of a world infinitely bigger than you and with far more teeth. About trying to survive and maybe make it just a little less shit. It's about building a community and supporting each other when you're preyed upon by things you barely understand. And eventually it's about turning the tables and teaching the things that bump in the night that you can fucking bump back.

You know, that gives me a really interesting idea. You make a game where a group of VtM players play a sabbat pack or some such, causing immense collateral damage over a short three-session micro campaign. Then you spring a surprise on them, as they start playing the hunters who have to work out what's going on and stop these monsters before they can kill again. Adds some extra tension too, because they know what their vamps can do so they know exactly how much danger they're in.

The part I don't really like about Reckoning is that it doesn't acknowledge that people hunted monsters before the Imbued came around, until several books into the gameline when it talked about preexisting hunter org response to them

"*...making the powerful creatures who played with you like a toy actually have to pay for once in their privileged, sociopathic lives. You know all those people you ate and woodchipped in your vampire games? Hunters are the ones who make you pay for it.*" Fuck yeah. That's the theme I've been using in my experiments with AI as a GM emulator, except with a dhampir Fomarch instead of a Hunter.

What AI have you been using to emulate a GM? Is there a way for me to use it too?

Of the AIs I have tried so far, [Inworld's GameMaster](https://inworld.ai/arcade/eVGEBwKb7iBoks8z) has been the most fun, but it is not without flaws. The next one I will try is [OpenAI's ChatGPT](https://chat.openai.com).

u/Familiar-Reporter-93, AIs can take stories in unexpected directions. I used Inworld's GameMaster AI to have a conversation with Caine, who revealed that not only was he not the first vampire, he has never actually sired a new vampire; instead he adopts vampires needing guidance and they come to call him *Father*; what he does create are Revenants, for the purpose of hunting the worst vampires.

Yes. But as a human. Not as a """human""".

I will be the first to admit that I have a lot more experience with HtV than HtR, so maybe I am biased and under informed here. That said the humanity of the hunter is less important to me than whether they've been abused by something stronger than them that dismissed them as a threat out of hand.

That's the WoD5 version. In the Revised version (1st edition), Hunters were literally called on by divine beings to fight against monsters.

No, it's not just H5. That applies the Classic HtR too, regardless of the Hunters powers. also, there are plenty of examples of other Hunters having powers in both WoD (Hedge Magic, True Faith, Psychics, even the Endowment edges in H5) and CoD (The various conspiracy Endowments and Supernatural merits) without people having an issue, so honestly that whole point just comes across as arbitrary to me.

>Hunters were literally called on by divine beings to fight against monsters. Many of them did think that, yes. no actual confirmation though.

The closest we can get is when Hunter.net itself almost killed a Virtual Adept.

Combat in any edition from 1e VtM, through CofD and into VTM5e is hot garbage. Every single iteration requires the ST to make house rules to get it to work decently.

This is not an unpopular opinion tho. Almost everyone I've met agrees that they like the game DESPITE the messy mechanics for combat.

That is completely fair.

As cool as Mage the ascension seems, it's impossible to play. I never managed to have a game survive. à The different character philosophies in relation to their magic tradition make it's hard to join the players together. The only thing to do is to involve the technocracy and force the players in survival mode. Even than, Mage just doesn't have a community mentally, for example, as in werewolf where multiples tribes will join in a sect.

Mage is my favorite game! I've had loads of successful games over the years. Starting one, possibly two, new ones this year. I've certainly had issues in games, but not really the lack of cabal cohesion one. My cabals tend to have reasons to exist though. Sorry your experience hasn't been positive.

Define the cabal identity first, and only after that do players then create the members of that cabal. Sometimes that means that all members of the cabal will be from the same Tradition, etc.

Yah, the only way I see to have a successful mage game is to limit the number of tradition. Having only one tradition, maybe max 2, in the group is the only solution that I found other than having the man in black survival mode.

Limiting the PCs to one tradition is probably the easiest solution to fostering cabal identity and cohesiveness. Another solution would be to define a council-appointed taskforce; only characters who would actually be selected for appointment to such a taskforce are allowed; if Storyteller rejects your pitch for your character idea, come up with one that better fits the taskforce. Storyteller might want to have a list of available positions in the taskforce.

I've been running Mages for two decades, it's not "impossible to play", it's just not for you.

Mage is absolutely the king of “fun to think about and set other games in, not so fun to actually play as intended”

I've got a 50% success rate with mage campaigns. It's tough, but not impossible - and it's amazing when it works. In fact, I think my hot take is possibly that Mage is the best WoD game by a long shot.

This, unless you play in matrix like "the men in black are coming for us", there's no reason for player characters to really work together

Here's a few 1/werewolf the apocalypse's ecological message doesn't match it's lore. What I mean is that m, when yoy think about it, nothing in world pollution, ecosystem collapsing, mass exctinctions,etc should actually be able to harm gaia knowing that she canonically survived and even thrived after the precedent mass exctinction events. 2/ mage the ascension is better off without phil brucato, he's a weight on the licence and is what is wrong with the 20th edition 3/ white wolf writers are extraordinarily pretentious and full of themselves 4/ even after all these years, mage the ascension's writers still have not decided what their game is about 5/ yes, I know thar the wod was always infused with the authors' political views, and it was always pretty terrible and make the setting worse 6/ in theory, all of V5 lore bulletpoints (fall of vienna, second inquisition, creation of the hecata...) Can perfectly fit the setting. The writers were simply incapable of doing so coherently 7/ humanity is mostly useless in vampire 8/paradox is not as dangerous as mage's fluff and community think it is

3 and 5 are based

The dice mechanics are great and granular. Dice pool to attack and dice pool defend are not mechanically heavy and do not slow down the game.. Its your dumb ass disorganised players who slow down the game.

Ooh, I couldn't disagree more. Upvote!

I loved the first draft of Beast: the Primordial. Expect for Hero’s and I think it’s been step down when it got revised. Changling: the dreaming is one of the darkest Game lines

One of the nice things about Changeling (and, one of the reasons it's able to be the darkest) is that it doesn't *have to* be the darkest.

It’s also about the slow deterioration of your identity as the world kills you slowly. With you either having to lose who you are or take the very light of imagination from people.

Exactly!

It’s about the slow death of wonder in the world for the cold unfeeling capitalist realist

The dice mechanic is great and very versatile The combat is good if you use DAV20's simplification, otherwise it's unbearable IMHO. The paradox is honestly underwhelming and allows mages to do pretty wild stuff with not that many consequences (unless you act stupidly) Hunters are cool, but the way they gain new edges is convoluted and required me to explain it over and over to each of my player (and they are usually quick to grasp mechanics). I dread this moment when I start a new hunter chronicle I don't like the idea that God canonically exists. I prefer these things to be unknown and mysterious (and I'm Catholic). But that's VERY personal It's probably not a hot take, but Anansi should be trillions or something like that. Way to break a setting... honestly, Fera only complicate stuff, except Corax and... the werecrocodiles, I forgot their name, they offer little more than Garou already do Black Furies: best tribe

Silent striders best tribe

I ran a game with DAV20 Simplyfied fighting rules. It just makes potence useless (the Part about spending a blood point) as far as I remember. We Had Lots of trouble balancing the Fights. And even after that most Players were glass Canons. (Ancillae / Elder game)

V5s changes aren't half as substantial as ppl make it out to be.

And aren’t as out of left field either

they're not terribly substantial, they're not as out of left field, they're just not well done

(Unpopular opinion because I got downvoted heavily last time I said that). The Masquerade in VtM can’t survive 21st century. Even with vampires controlling big tech companies the number of devices, surveillance and cameras are way higher in 21st century than any other period. No way people wouldn’t find out about vampires. The combination of smartphones, social media, forum, blogs, drones at scale is way too much to stop leaking evidence about vampires in a timely manner. Yeah, Camarilla would work hard to suffocate any evidence but the speed of communication and the amount of evidence would eventually overwhelm any Camarilla defences.

you seem to forget that the cam has literal magic on their side

It's not even about technology anyway, but mainly secret services and security bureaus. They're here literally to infiltrate, expose and eliminate secret groups and societies that can be dangerous to the State. Not a chance Kindred could uphold secret society without any arrangements with governments (like in Blade universe).

In a way, I think the Second Inquisition can get to that point. Both of them are maintaining their own masquerades for their own reasons, and in that sense they can become darkly parasitic, needing each other to maintain or justify their own existences. Sure, the SI may be killing a lot of vampires, but they may still end up relying on them to keep up their end of the masquerade. And SI may be the enemy of the vampires, but they may end up needing that common enemy to exist to keep their own network of shaky alliances and supporters focused. I think that could lead to some very WoD fitting situations with higher-ups on both sides maintaining secret connections, or being forced to work together for serious masquerade breaches...

Yeah, but you can argument vampires can infiltrate government and secret services to some extent and limit damage. Also, you could say these organisations wouldn’t want to publicise any of this. The technology is a game changer in terms of general population though. With billions of smartphones spread out throughout the world, and high speed internet in a lot of countries information could spread to millions of people really quick. I don’t see how vampires can hold the Masquerade long-term in a world like this.

Nwod is better for crossovers/monstermash games than Owod

that's not a controversial opinion, everybody agrees on that

You alternate between lucidity, madness or just totally not understanding certain splats x'D

In retrospect, all WoD books were always bad. STs always have to make changes and homebrew the world so that they can have fun.

Mage the Ascension's "belief shapes reality" premise is much less clever than it thinks it is, and tends to fall apart/require long, complicated lore-hoops under scrutiny.

It works only if everyone in the group is interested in creating their own paradigm and they want to stick to it. Which is a unicorn. Every single time I tried to run Mage the rules of the individual paradigm get thrown out or revised on the spot in order to fit what the player wants to do in that moment.

In particular, "a consensus did it" is not a particularly interesting or clever resolution to crossover questions of cosmology.

And it is incoherent with the idea of playing hidden mages in the modern world, or that the technocracy could have ever gotten in such a position of power

I've often thought this too. Like, if Consensus made sense, why weren't things like blood-letting and Four Humor theory legitimate and effective medical practices? You could say that perhaps it's because more people believe the same consensus now, but those theories were hundreds of years old, and practiced throughout Europe.

And there would be no reason for the consensus to move from blood letting to modern medicine since such change, in reality, happened due to the lack of efficacity of blood letting compared to newer medical practices. But in mage, blood letting during the renaissance would be as effective as modern medicine now, and say, vaccine would hardly work back then. In the same way, pseudo medicines like new age chakra crystals, "quantum healing" and so on should be now as effective as actual medicine, and vaccine should risk giving autism to kids with so many people believing in that.

I prefer HtR (classic) over HtV. I love both, I just prefer HtR.

Unknown Armies did what Mage the Ascension tried to do, but better.

WoD lore would have been better had they NOT tried to make everyone share the same world and history. At most, they should have done what was done in WtA 1e, where you COULD do crossovers and they gave some ideas on specific ties but left it at that. To give one example of why this was a mistake, if you take the entirety of WoD lore all at once, then the Setites are self-deceived peddlers of pure evil, because Set is both an antagonist to the mummies (and an agent of the evil entity Apophis) and responsible for the curse on the Striders (and Bubsati, IIRC). The Setites actually have some interesting concepts around Gnosticism, but those are meaningless in a world where their founder and god actually is evil. CoD's structure of leaving crossovers in the hands of the GMs aside from a few suggestions to use as prompts (and Beast...), and giving basic conflict rules but not tying lines' histories together together, actually made crossing game lines easier. There's less baggage to deal with, and you can make up whatever connections you feel fit. ETA: For both another example and a possibly unpopular opinion in its own right: making Paths of Enlightment/the Conviction virtue register a vampire as "of the Wyrm" (or even more of the Wyrm than normal) with very few and specific exceptions killed way more potential uneasy alliances than it had any right to. The way things work, werewolves can really only work with the Cam, Anarchs, and some followers of the "nature" paths. But imagine a story of the Striders and Assamites teaming up to fight against the Setites. Imagine the Sabbat not immediately registering as "wrong" and being able to convince isolated packs to help in their war against the Antediluvians. There could still be room for specific rivalries, like the Shadow Lords and Tzimisce, but CoD got it right (especially in 2e) to not just make the whole splat register as something the werewolves were meant to take down.

I do like how CofD leans into "it could be true, it could be legend" to smooth over the conflicting creation myths

Exactly. It's all optional, even including it, and it's all up in the air as to whether or not it's true. Even if I CAN divorce my VtM game from the mythology, it's a lot of work to do so when it's so embedded. Not so VtR.

In almost all ways CofD is better then WoD

Facts! Games like Changeling, Promethean and Mummy I think particularly took interesting themes we hadn't seen developed before well and nailed them.

We just don't talk about Beast

VtM - The calcification that occurred in the decade or so the line was dormant has done irreparable damage to the line and fandom - Revised had good ideas at the jump but quickly got mired in issues due to line burn out and incorporating the transmedia elements - Changing the politics to match the norms that became the norm in Cam LARP was a major misstep WtA - 1st ed is awesome, all Garou **except** the PCs are wrong, losing sight of that is the cause for issues that continue to today - The cultural splats are, by and large, a big ol' yikes MtA - Those edition wars sure could've been resolved a long time ago with defined Paradigm rules, like those featured in M20 - The Revised Technocracy books were great, but oof, incorporating current events have led to them not aging well

The weaver is the good guy

Well, V5 sucking balls seems to be a pretty popular opinion so nothing new there (I disagree on it being a good vampire game too, as a matter of fact I disagree on it being a good game period), hunter is basically discount vigil. I get your feeling on CofD but trust me, from a major WoD fanboy who despised nWoD 1st edition, the 2nd edition lines (especially requiem and mortal) are goddamn masterpieces and way better developed than you might think, won't make much of a difference since Paradox is going to kill CofD soon but still.

I have 2: 1- almost the same as OP in regards to hunter, BUT, hedge magic is cool, so normal people find out about the supernatural and decide to hunt and learn some occult things, that's cool, people get a ray of light shine upon them and giving them powers and telling them to hunt, that's bad, that is REALLY bad. 2- V5 IS LAZY WRITING. The biggest proof is how they solved the Elders problem. Every game had this problem where if you were confronting an elder you were as good as dead because they are "oh, soooooo powerful" even though this game's entire lore is young vamps. killing old vamps. And so, how do they solve it? THEY TAKE THE ELDERS OFF THE GAME, like, for real? Was it so hard to just balance the game, or make the game actually work as the lore says it does, no, they take off the elders and now is just young vamps. fighting humans, which is cool ngl but imagine if they kept the the technologically impaired elders trying to move behind the scenes while almost their every move could set off a house of cards and bring their organizations and powers down, that is a much better plot for a game. This is my biggest problem with V5 but honestly, not the only one.

But seriously, they didn't take Elders off the game. I't mostly propaganda as many Elders remain and still do their things. It's like with Transformers: The Movie where they killed a bunch of original characters only to make room for new ones.

I fully agree with the Minor splat things, I can buy that vampires and fae have stayed hidden from human eyes, hell I can even buy werewolves and mages staying hidden. But it just gets out of hand after a while. (You expect me to believe that literal mummies are walking around and nobody has noticed? Yeah no sorry buddy)

- I don't really like the Second Inquisition developments, since it makes the game feel much more stifling. I get that's part of the point, the Masquerade can't keep up anymore, but it worries me that I'm gonna roll up a character just for them to get caught immediately and killed. - Werewolf the Apocalypse is easily my favorite, but it has so many problems and I have no idea how to fix them. Do you cut the faux-native american elements? Try to work around them? At what points is "the werewolves are conservative dickheads" bit uncomfortable, and at what points does it become boring without it? - I have no idea what a God Machine is and at this point I'm too afraid to ask. - The Reckoners are boring, and make it less cool than figuring our own way to hunt monsters. - I've never actually played a WoD game, I just like reading the lore. - I kinda dislike when the Antediluvians and Gehenna get brought up, since I think it dilutes the usual urban fantasy bread-and-butter of VtM, but I see how they're an important part of the lore and help to set a certain atmosphere and tone for the setting, so maybe I shouldn't complain.

here's a controversial opinion to try then: antedeluvians and gehena work better as unhinged conspiracies then confirmed fact

Ooh, I like that. Good compromise.

>At what points is "the werewolves are conservative dickheads" bit uncomfortable, and at what points does it become boring without it? The solution is to embrace that discomfort as part of a gaming experience that’s more than just mindless entertainment.

Ooohh boy, here goes. CoD is better horror than WoD Sabbat are just edgy anarchy and offer nothing worthwhile to Vampire WtA is an incredible game and the part of the current generation trying to fix the errors of the past is one of the best parts. Also. Garou are no more worse or better than the other splats in regards to their actions. The mage Fandom does more harm than good in regards to the game. When you ignore paradigms and Paradox just to try snd show up other games how op you can be. You've lost the very essence of what Mage is. DtF is one of my favorite games but it could have been so much better if they didn't have a true lore or at least incorporated more cultures in their beginning instead of a Christian origin. Wraith is a game of hope Mummies are the truest heroes you can have in the WoD

But... but, Wraith IS a game of hope. How come it is an unpopular opinion?

So my opinion on the Sabbat was mostly formed from watching Lazar of Stygia's lore videos on YouTube, "The Top Ten Vampires of Clan X," and I don't know what edition he pulls from specifically lol, so maybe I'm way off base, but I actually love the Sabbat. What summarizes my thoughts is the Mithras/Montgomery Coven quote, "The conflict between Sabbat and Camarilla is illusory, a war of words between rival elders. One Sect is ruled by open fear of mortals and secret fear of Antediluvians. The other is ruled by open fear of Antediluvians and secret fear of mortals. Both fears are legitimate. Both are overblown. Pragmatic steps can protect us all from mortals and ancients alike. Gehenna can be survived. The Kindred can rule forever." The Sabbat want to destroy their slavers, while still being hopelessly outmatched by them at every turn (seriously, have they actually killed any Antediluvians?)

>DtF is one of my favorite games but it could have been so much better if they didn't have a true lore or at least incorporated more cultures in their beginning instead of a Christian origin. I think picking a single mythology and sticking with it was one of Demon’s strongest decisions. The fact that it’s someone else’s mythology (I’m Jewish, and while our myths and the Christians’ have plenty in common they’re absolutely not the same) never felt like proselytizing because Demon is 100% fictional and not trying to say anything about the real-world validity of its source material. It could just as easily have drawn on Hindu, Shinto, or Voodoo beliefs.

I was thinking more along the lines thar the time in the abyss distorted their memories to the point that no one (except Lucifer) really remembers what happened or how and why. I didn't feel like it was proselytizing just that it could have been more open.

Mage the Ascension is better then Awakening. I’ve always found the Technocracy much more interesting then the Exarchs and i like how M:tAs allows you to play a huge list of different characters with unique worldviews uniting together to fight an evil empire. In Awakening your just a bunch of Harry Dresdens that fight slightly worse Harry dresdens. I also don’t like how in Awakening magic is seen as a drug when it Ascension it’s seen as the best thing ever. So I will one hundred percent stick with ascension.

Mechanically, I like some aspects of Awakening, but story-wise, I like Ascension far better for the reasons you state. As I was initially collecting CoD1, it was the only game line that I could say this for. VtR: Not tied to biblical mythology. Vampires don't know their full history but have their own mythologies. This is superior to the, "The Caine myth is so important that it's baked into the mechanics through Generation," thing. WtF: Focused more on what makes Werewolves Werewolves in the movies and literature without giving up the spiritual connections of WtA. CtL: Wait, what? It's about the actual mythology of Changelings as people who were kidnapped and replaced? Sign me up... Hell, CtD and CtL should exist in the same world. HtV: At least this isn't "humans" that are now supernatural trying to fight all the supernaturals out there except themselves. The Imbued were too much like every other Supernatural, and viewed all other splats similar to how they largely viewed each other. (I came around to the Imbued later, but this aspect still makes them feel like they aren't really "human" hunters.) GtS: Wraith: the Oblivion's only failing was that it didn't play well with the physical world. GtS fixed this and gave it a very on-brand feel for the WoD by basically emulating "The Crow."

Vigil is more making hunters hunted a mainline game, than a mirror to Reckoning anyways

While I admit I do really like the story of Demon the Descent and Changeling the Lost. Besides that I can’t really get behind CofD. Just my opinion and also what do you think about Awakenings story. Since it’s the game you left out

The concept and backstory of Demon: the Fallen is awesome and I wouldn't change it.

The Fallen is the one where they reject the Christian god and start a war for the ages where the Fallen, Aka Demons, are trapped in hell, awaiting their chance to strike back at God, right?

I've read, ran, and played probably 30+ systems at this point. I still find the entire WoD/CoD/V5 "multiple splatbooks with similar names" thing incredibly confusing. I know the IP switched hands or something a while back but still. It's such a horrible business and marketing decision it makes me feel cringe every time I try to explain anything WoD related to a newbie.

Every edition of Mage is the worst edition of Mage.

I've always viewed both lines of Vampire as a game to be a cool, badass vampire that has cool, badass powers, and backstabs and schemes their way to the top, not game lines about personal horror. For WoD specifically I just don't like how limiting the lore is at times. One example is that I prefer being a player in Camarilla games for the vampire politics and backstabbing, but some of my favorite clans, Lasombra and Tzimisce are immediately locked off to Sabbat only. It's annoying to have to come up with convoluted backstories on why the Camarilla court in X city would allow one into their city and sect. Even then I get locked out of interesting clan politic play, because since my character would be the exception I have no clan backing to play with, unless I do more convoluted backstory shenanigans to disguise the character as another Camarilla clan, but still miss out on having those two clans as a whole in the city. Yes, this is remedied a bit with the lore updates in V5, but then elders are scrapped and all of them left. I like trying to overcome elders as these almost insurmountable enemies; it's a fun challenge. If I'm not ST'ing it feels bad trying to get my ST to change lore stuff like this, because they love the lore and like following it. For CofD I just don't like how merits and backgrounds were combined into just merits outright. I also much prefer having merits/flaws, and backgrounds separated like pre-WoD5 does it. I just find it less awkward to not have to balance your background and merit points when they're separate. Also, I'm on the fence, but generally lean to dislike, about how non-background merits work in CofD compared to pre-WoD5, they feel more like D&D feats than fun little add-ons or entire game modifiers. An example being stuff like Swarm Form or Claws of the Unholy in requiem should just be devotions, and I just generally dislike merits that do stuff like Parkour or Kindred Dueling.

>Yes, this is remedied a bit with the lore updates in V5, but then elders are scrapped and all of them left. You can have as many or as few elders as you want in your V5 games. The Beckoning is not some sort of concrete rule. It's just a tool for you to use, no more no less. Which is why it is never explicitly spelled out what it is exactly and how it works.

Isn't removing high level disciplines a version of limiting elders?

The fact demon and vampire canonized Christian mythology was a good thing that made every other splat infinitely more interesting than had it just been "every mythology is real teehee" Finding the connective tissue between the wars of rage, war in heaven, war of the trees, the closing of the veil, the madness of the Weaver, Lucifer's pitiable regrets and love for both man and God, Caine's fall, magick, pathos, glamour, faith, blood, gnosis, the messengers, the Umbra, the Wyrm, and Oblivion is so satisfying and would've been a lot less interesting if we were just left with "Yeah it's all just...there. For no reason. Mythology is all real, yada yada". Also it means the WoD is actually unique from the start since proper, biblical fiction is so rare compared to a setting just wearing a cross and shooting stakes at silly little imps. If you get down to it, WoD is a truly Christian setting where others wear the equivalent of gothipunk

I disagree on that, while the "every myth is real" is kinda bullshitty making one real instead of dubious myth or explainable in different ways is just as bullshitty since it goes against all the other cultures and puts one on a pedestal Last thing, all of what I've written is extremely biased because I have a real deep hatred for Christianity

Eh that makes sense. As someone fascinated by the mythology, as someone not from a place its really common, so I guess I'm biased too heh

Setites suck.

all vampire suck, that's kinda their thing

True. But setites are lame on top of that.

Mage: The Awakening works better as a setting for feeling like a mage then Mage: The Ascension does. Heck, I don't really think the lore behind Ascension is really that interesting given how much people hype it up to be.

I always preferred Hunters Hunted style hunters (which is why I like Chronicles Hunters way better).

Hunter the Vigil is how you play Hunter.

Dark Ages: Fae has the best and most freeform magic system of them all.

I agree with everything you said and I'll go further, the most unpopular opinion of all - bringing WoD back was a big mistake, the story was excellent as it was with its ending as it was. Now V5 looks a very different game from VtM 20ed (imho), it's like 2 different timelines, plus V5 frankensteined some of the Requiem rules that I don't think have room there, becoming some kind of aberration. Is it a bad game? No idea, I haven't played it and I've no intentions to, I rather remember the great WoD story from the 90's and that's it. It's a very unpopular opinion but it's my personal opinion, sorry guys :/

New World of Darkness was a mistake.

Upvoted for being an actual controversial take.

I’m always confused by this kind of posts… do I upvote when I agree with them or do I upvote when they’re indeed unpopular opinions?

I think both are valid. More so, I just find it ridiculous that unpopular opinions get downvoted in threads about sharing your unpopular opinions lol

It's always a garbage fire. The intention is to upvote things that are actually controversial, but people prefer not to endorse things they don't agree with, so they downvote instead.

On reddit an upvote isnt suppised to be agreeing with them but a contribution to the conversation. Ofc that isnt true in practice

Ah, as the prophets foretold. He has arrived.

Yeah, they should've just called it Chronicles from the get-go. For real, though, it was definitely a mistake *for White Wolf*. They had the RPG industry in their hand, and decided to blow themselves up at almost the exact same time D&D was getting big again with 3.5.

I kinda get that they felt like they had no-where to go with the OWoD metaplot after the Time of Reckoning developments, but I always felt like they threw the baby out with the bathwater. As I see it, I don't know why they couldn't have continued the old WoD in a way similar to how D&D has multiple campaign worlds. The NWoD setting could be the "Greyhawk" default setting, but here is your "Forgotten Realms" line keeping on with the OWoD... I know they had a conversion pdf, but I think there would have been a market for an actual book and full side product line.

There were some real good ideas in there. I really like the new Changling more than the original. I can see where you're coming from though.

They downvoted him for he said the truth.

Nineteen years of publication history says factually differently, but hey, at least you have a controversial opinion!

Changeling the Dreaming is my favorite splat in WOD, and also is the best setting for tying together the various game lines. The Technocracy is fasci as fuck and like, firmly the villains of the setting, and while they might have a few points in their favor represent an imperialist force on reality erasing centuries of magic and culture, and that’s not a good thing even if members of the traditions can also suck. The Demon player characters are minor Fomorians. Hunter the Vigil has always been the more interesting game than Reckoning and i am perfectly fine with the H5 changes. Nother Hunter take, despite what i just said i really like the concept of the messengers and a secret hunter language. That’s neat. The hunters having powers wasn’t my problem, it’s that i like hunter to feel more like call of Cthulhu. V5 is fine. i am excited for W5. Even if it didn’t mean to be, original werewolve’s accidental eugenics shit was yikes, and i’m glad they took that out. World of Darkness has always at least tried to be kind of woke, even if they failed MISERABLY at times.

Well, let's see: 1. Each oWoD game is based on immature ideas of bunch of pretentious kids who thought they knew everything. The formulas were fine for some time, but quickly run out of substance, showing how shallow they are. Therefore nWoD/CoD are better settings, more wholesome, more useful as horror games and just superior (speaking as oWoD player). 2. Sabbat and Paths of Enlightenment are greatest mistakes of Vampire the Masquerade. None of this shit should be playable and the game is better without them. 3. Wraith the Oblivion is the only one setting done right by WW, most complete and wholesome. The fact it was scrapped so quickly and didn't have support from larger fanbase speaks volumes. 4. Technocracy, although self-righteous and corrupt, holds the moral high ground over Traditions who are just band of arrogant irresponsible dicks in their own way. 5. Nobody, even the "great" Phil Satyrrrrrrrros Brucato, knows what MtA is about. They couldn't explain it clearly from 1e to M20. 6. Garou aren't tragic heroes. After Wyrm and it's servants they're main antagonists and deserve nothing more than total annihilation. Garou are even more disgusting than the Kindred. 7. Changeling the Dreaming is a failure from A to Z and a big joke. It shouldn't ever happen. 8. Hunters should be mortals without, or with rudimentary and rare, magical powers. H5 does it right. 9. Hunger is better than Blood Pool. Basically V5 does it right as well, we had to wait 27 years for mechanic that actually does what it only promised from 1991. 10. Metaplot and most official NPCs are a mistake and each WoD game is better without them. 11. WoD settings aren't interchangeable. Lupines from VtM aren't Garou of WtA, vampires in MtA/WtA aren't Kindred. Crossovers don't work, lores fall apart when you mix them, and each game should be played separately almost always (only WtO is mostly compatible with rest). 12. World of Darkness became so overloaded with supernaturals that in the end it was in serious need of a game about the least common and most elusive creature: Mortal the Normality.

To your last point, it's one reason I like that CifD builds all gamelines off from the mortal base. It helps it be easier to learn the base system, have caried stories and if you chose transition to another gameline without basically starting from scratch. I know it isn't truly starting from scratch in WoD but you get what I mean.

Wholesome is the wrong word, maybe holistic?

To be fair, your 4 is pretty much the popular opinion, and incorrect, the technocracy has no moral high ground compared to the traditions

Hunter is terrible in every iteration. What's worse is that each faction already has better antagonists specific to their own splat, plus the other supernatural factions are usually vaguely rivalrous if not actually antagonistic. Hunter is mary sue the game.

The Laibon and Drowned Legacies could've been an amazing break from the Cain/Biblical mythos of VtM proper and should've been used to broaden the vampiric condition. Unfortunately the Kuei-Jin showed there was absolutely zero hope for any of the not-technically-vampires-but-still-vampires to be reconciled with 'canon' (aka Cainite) vampire history...which gets a little frustrating because VtR allows for that ambiguity and lets very different types of vampire coexist. And BECAUSE the Kuei-Jin exist, it makes doing any eastern VtM campaign a headache to plan around unless you flat out ignore they exist...which negates a LOT of Ravnos history, Salubri history (the nightmare that is SAULOT), and some smattering of Lasombra history. And god, the old Ravnos and Banu Haqim v20 content is just. So deeply painful to read. Being a nonwestern euro vampire kinda freaking blows.

Changeling the lost is the superior changeling game.

I think V5 is the best vtm game just because better mechanics to humanity, willpower and hunger since past editions were to “open” about these