Howdy Gamer

I have, and I am Not A Fan.

It's less about the specifics and more about the broad general approach.

Let me explain: I liked v5. Not as much as I like v20, but I think that's an unfair comparison. v20 was essentially the fourth iteration on its framework, right? where they had been able to refine the vampire 1e mechanics over three more editions to get the very fine tuned end result that is v20, because they had the benefit of a lot of hindsight after seeing it in play. And, of course, material from 1e is still basically compatible with v20, as is material from the other wod gamelines up until that point.

So. v5 came out, and v5 is very much a break from this iterative process that lead from 1e to v20, right? It creates a new game engine with new structures. It's got some really interesting ideas, but it's also got some very heavy flaws. So, I like v5 a lot, but unlike v20 there's a lot of things in it that I think are obvious fixes in a new edition. So for a long time, my stance on v5 was "I look forward to the better version of this we'll get in sixth edition."

And sixth edition comes along, and I have been really excited to see how they'll build on the foundations v5 laid down, and...

instead, no, they're starting over from scratch all over again, with a system that's even more divergent from either v20 and v5 than those are from each other.

I am upset about the v6 previews less for what they are, and more for what they are not; they are not the iteration on v5 I have wanted.

But, okay, here's the thing. People talk about the lore changes v5 made, and I think that they massively overstate how much v5 changed the setting. The changes to the setting in v5 take basically 3 forms:

moving the timeline forward from the end-point at the end of Revised, and the result of events that happened in that extra timeline. The formation of the Hecata is the result of an in-fiction event that unified the various scatted Cappadocian bloodlines (and also the Nagaraja are here). The tremere's changed clan weakness is the result of the Vienna chantry getting blown up. Et cetera.

Consolidating things together. Most notably, with disciplines. Things like Serpentis being a form of Protean, Dementation being folded into Dominate, and so on. The one that makes people most angry is folding Obtenebration and Necromancy together into Oblivion, but I actually think this makes sense; both are overtly magical disciplines drawing power entropic from the dark umbra and the spaces below it (if they had included Daimonion in v5, it would also be a variation on Oblivion, because it likewise draws power from Spiritually Below). Likewise, rolling various bloodlines back into their parent clans and so on.

Expanding on things hinted at in earlier editions of v5 but not fully explored. A good example of this is Thin Bloods; there had always been talk about the very high generations being semi-mortal and having the ability to use the blood to create new vampiric powers; the thin-bloods in v5 are simply building on that.

So v5 is not actually that divergent in its setting from earlier editions; no more than the divergence between 1e and 2e, say. It exists in a continuity with them. Yes, the Giovanni have a new discipline spread now; this is the result of an in-setting event that shifted the nature of the Giovanni, similar to events like The Great Prank for clan malkavian or the Giovanni themselves becoming a clan and shifting away from the Cappadocian disciplines. Yes, vicissitude is part of protean now, but the vicissitude powers are still there.

Where I like v5, I like it because it's ultimately an extension of 1e-v20, just with new mechanics. The mechanics could use a new edition to tighten them up, but when I run a v20 game in the modern day, I use v5 fluff.

As much as the mechanics were new, the setting was still an iteration. Translating from 1e-v20 into v5 and visa versa took a little effort, but was doable.

Now. From what I've seen of v6, this is far less the case. From the - admittedly limited - preview materials, it seems like they're much more willing to play fast and loose with the setting and to change things for the sake of changing them.

I could list a bunch of specific changes they've made that seem incredibly stupid (eg: why do they imply that koldunism and chimerstry are the same discipline?) but that's not the point. No one change is the problem here, and some of their mechanical ideas seem good. Not all of them - doing an anti-wassail if your humanity goes too high is Fucking Stupid - but some of them could be interesting.

No, my problem is that they seem to be changing a lot of things extremely recklessly, meaning that I don't think v6 will exist as a continuiation of 1e-v5; the basic facts of the setting will be too distorted with little in character justification, meaning its setting is not compatible with the setting described in the earlier editions.

And maybe if I was more inclined to view it charitably, I'd be more open minded about the sledgehammer being taken through the setting. But on a fundamental level, I was never inclined to view it that charitably, because by being what it is, it actively shuts of the possibility of an improved v5, which is something I'd been actively looking forward to for a while. Conclusively shutting down that possibility gave it a much higher bar to clear for me to like it, and it didn't clear that bar.

Like in the vamp community, you see this talking point where because the vamp playerbase is split between v20 and v5, they had no option they could pick that would please everybody, which isn't untrue. But I like v20 AND v5, and building on either of those would have made me happy, and instead they've picked the secret third option which makes nobody happy.

On the lore thing I also totally agree, I genuinely struggle to understand how the changes they're making for v6 can be reconciled with the existing setting. This feels like as much of a reboot as CoD was compared to the WoD, in that they're using some names and concepts but doing new things with them that seem unrelated to the old, or at least I can't see how they'd fit given what info we have on v6 lore as of now.

I kinda no longer want new things. When a new thing comes along, I probably won't like it, and it probably displaces something older that I did like, so I kinda just want things to Stop.

This is much more of a problem with non-professional guitarists but it is everywhere.

while realism means--exactly that, adherence to the specific logics of actual reality and its physics, logistics, etc.

There's a particular recurring discussion of "realism" in media that goes something like this: "okay, but realistically the heroes would always win because they'd just shoot the villain while they're monologuing" – while refusing to acknowledge the obvious follow-up question: "wait, but if monologuing reliably gets you shot, where do all the monologuing villains come from?"

i.e., what we're really discussing is not a milieu which has adhered to some notional model of "realism" ab initio, but one which was apparently governed by the conventional tropes of its genre right up until the moment the character the person framing the scenario wants to win walks into the room, whereupon "realism" asserts itself.

Heck, there were folks doing this song and dance in the notes of the post this one is following up on, trotting out hypotheticals like "in a realistic fantasy setting the twelve-year-old chosen one would always lose because experience trumps skill and the power of friendship isn't real", implicitly taking it as given that in a milieu where this is true, people would still be handing out magic swords to twelve-year-olds.

Uma Musume style horsegirls introduced to the Forgotten Realms; setting's lore revised so that they've always been there.

Advancement rules now stipulate per-session XP bonus based on lifetime D&D Beyond purchase history.

Compendium of exclusive feat trees for specific gender and sexual identities. Bisexuality receives no feats of its own, being mechanically implemented as "half gay"; the resulting synergies are disgusting.

Editorial error in revised Dungeon Master's Guide accidentally refers to Dungeon Masters as Hasbro's employees.

"Noble savage" coding of barbarian class walked back, refocused on European folkloric touchstones such as the Ulster Cycle; all barbarian characters become Irish stereotypes.

AI-based DM service trained exclusively on work of Ed Greenwood launched; withdrawn a week later citing "guiderail issues".

Expanded discussion of navigating player expectations frames "not showing up at all" as a valid playstyle.

I made a zine for bungie's Marathon, the extraction shooter released this year! It's an essay/exploration of the game and the girl playing it. It's 48 pages and features a ton of virtual photography of the maps and stuff. The essay is very lyrical and analytical and yeah yeah yeah.

Dark Fantasy. This is just regular old adventure stuff with gothic or death metal aesthetics.

Urban Fantasy. This is just romance and action movies with werewolves and vampires.

Monster Hunter/Occult Investigators. Scooby-Doo mysteries with varying dials of grittiness.

When was the last time you picked up a plain old regular horror novel? Something by Barker, King or Koontz? They don't really resemble any of those things. Like what RPG would you play The Shinning With? Especially if you consider that Jack Torrance might be a player character?

My thoughts around this started when I re-read Dracula and couldn't help but notice that Dracula is hardly in the novel. After Harker's experience in the castle which is practically it's own novel, about 3/4s of the book is taken up by his assault on Lucy and everyone attempting to deal with it. And they deal with it mostly by trying to keep her alive while also coping with like their own problems (Arthur's dad dies, Seward trying to deal with Renfield (which for most of the book is treated like a medical case), Mina fretting about Jonathan's obvious PTSD). They aren't really doing anything about Dracula at all. But they're INVESTIGATING! Aren't they? Actually no, not really. The only one investigating anything is Van Helsing and he does it entirely elsewhere. In fact, Van Helsing kind of drops the ball because he refuses to tell anyone what he's up to because he's NOT the "seasoned monster hunter" some interpretations would make him out to be. He's just a guy with some solid folk lore background an he can't quite bring himself to believe what he suspects and he certainly isn't going to tell anyone else because that would be CRAZY. He doesn't tell anyone what he thinks until it's too late and Lucy is dead. He just uses everyone for proxy experiments. "Hang garlic everywhere and see what happens." And everyone else just does it assuming it's just strange folksy medical advice.

It's only the last quarter of the novel where everyone kind of gears up and goes on this "monster hunting" thing that so many RPGs basically model their gameplay on. (If fact, I think a lot of problems with RPGs is that they tend to model their rules on capturing the climatic feel of the last act of pop media instead of the dynamics of the middle act where all the interesting uncertainties are, but I digress). My point is every "Monster Hunter RPG" is just the last 50 pages of Dracula over and over again.

By shear coincidence I happen to read some Ray Garton novels right after Dracula and I noticed the same thing in play. Very normal people encountering something very weird and really only turns into "investigation and fighting" after someone close to them gets horribly victimized by whatever threat the book was about. If you like B-Horror movies I recommend Ray Garton because he never saw a horror film he didn't think he couldn't crank up to 11.

Around that time I started I started noodling around with an RPG idea I half jokingly refer to as "Middle-Class Professionals vs. Evil". Because that was something most of these books also had in common, including Dracula. They're about doctors, teachers, lawyers, graphic designers, real-estate agents, prison guards and so on. These are not Fearless Monster Hunters and Intrepid Investigators. These are guys having the worst lunch hour of their careers.

Then I had the chance to play @anim-ttrpgs's Eureka! Although Eureka still frames itself as an urban fantasy investigation game, it's really not in the way say Candle Obscura or Vaesen are. It's much closer to a Ray Garton novel or at least it can be. I got to play James Wakefield a high school teacher in their FORIVA scenario. And no point did I ever feel like I stopped playing "just a high school teacher". And no point to James become a Monster Hunter or Occult Investigator. He was just a high school teacher who wanted to know why bad things were happening to some kids at his school and that turned into the worst long weekend of his career.

I realized that Eureka was probably already about 90% of what I wanted "Middle-Class Professionals vs. Evil" to be, so I kind of stopped thinking about it for a while. Then for unrelated reasons I was reading up on Romance Scams and how difficult they are to stop once the victim is pulled in because the perpetrator is so remote and the victim quickly comes complicit in their own victimization. I was struck by how much it reminded me of the Lucy portions of Dracula (again 70% of the book). I thought, "This is what it should feel like to fight a vampire in real life. It should be this unknowable, mysterious presence you can't ever confront directly and all you can do is tirelessly attempt to shield the victim but you can't ever pull the victim out either."

And then last night I had a horrible bought of insomnia. Like, didn't got to bed until 5am insomnia. And in that sleepless fit a whole game just arrived in my head all at once (this is common for me). It's a GMless game about ordinary people desperately trying to defend a mutual connection from an assault by a supernatural creature they don't understand and can't ever confront.

It's literally the scariest game I have designed. Just imaging the procedures in action was seriously giving me a low-key anxiety attack which wasn't helping the insomnia. I managed to get it all down in the notes app on my phone and am working on transferring it to my computer properly. It requires a custom deck of cards which I threw together this afternoon and ordered a prototype off a POD card printing service so I can play this thing as soon as possible.

Absolutely not. This pressure to “be in control”, “‘maintain the illusion” and “be a magician” style advice is precisely why people are terrified to GM.

You have one job as a GM at the table. ONE. Play your NPCs and other situation elements with the same earnestness as the players play their PCs. That’s it.

The “plot” is what happens when your toys and their toys meet and uncertainties between them are resolved via the game at hand.

You are not responsible for anyone’s fun.

You are not responsible for anyone’s entertainment.

You are not there to stroke the players egos or service their fantasies or “story beats” or whatever self-insert wish fulfillment BS they have projected onto their characters.