Camarilla as Crew sheet?

[RenleyRenfield]

<This is a question for folks very familiar with Blades in the Dark and maybe Vampire the Masquerade too>

So I am running Masquerade again, and I have been playing a lot of Blades in the Dark of late. And it made me wonder =

If we treat the Camarilla as the overall 'high concept of vampire self organization' . In which the Camarilla book contains the agendas and values and ideals of the faction. But.....
...Instead of a monolithic mechanic where the player characters have to fit into the Camarilla in Chicago "overall" (as in, so does every other vampire in the city too)....

What if we let the players pick a Crew sheet of: Camarilla, Sabbat, Anarch, etc etc.
- which has on it the typical BitD stuff: claims, abilities, ghouls(cohorts), contacts, upgrades, haven(lair), tier, quality.

And the idea here is that the terms and benefits of the Abilities and Claims create emergent roleplay of the chosen crew type (in this case: Camarilla)

By that I mean to say, we have the pure narrative of what Prince and Primogen are up to - that's plot and setting stuff, GM controlled like the "Bluecoats".
- But we get a nice "focus" play on the way the player epitomize the Camarilla based on how they advance the 'Camarilla' but in context of focusing on the player characters contributions. (i.e. gaining Claims and raising in Tier). Heck Tier could even eventually mean unlocking "Primogen" or "Prince" ranks as player positions, (thus new Abilities).

Note that the typical "gain XP" triggers are what is theme/narrative tied to Camarilla. So in this case, it would have players gaining XP and upgrading their Crew sheet via all the things that epitomize the Camarilla. The idea here is that the function and agendas and progress and plots of the Camarilla emerge though roleplay (attempting to hit XP triggers)

While I think this works as a general play thing... some questions come to mind I am hoping folks here can help me explore and expand on =

* Does this give a strong playloop of clear 'we are playing as Camarilla' ?

* What does this change about how we typically play characters of Camarilla ?

* Does this make any of the things we were doing more clear, to claim power via our faction? (gaining turf, using locations for specific purposes, etc)

* Does this clarify how "shared" assets work with a PC group easier ?? (making purchase and expansion of Background merits like "haven" )

* Other ideas on how this affects the narrative or progression of plots over time?

(note that all of this could also apply to Sabbat, and so on)

 

[JConstantine]

I don't think the Sects of Masquerade really translate that well into crew types. A more fitting equivalent would be the Coterie types (pg. 197 of V5 core book) - they already have distinct agendas, as well as certain associated merits that could be converted to claims.

The Camarilla would be more akin the government of Doskvol, with the Prince and Primogen being parallel to the City Council. The high clans would be on par with the big 6 noble families, the sheriff and hounds effectively Bluecoats, etc.

Trying to tie the sect into it, I think can be done via Tier and Stash. This would be a bit more abstract than V:TM typically plays, but if you treat Boons as Coin, and Tier as Status within the Sect, then you're incentivised to accumulate boons by performing jobs for members of the Sect.
So, for example, if:
trivial boon = 1 coin
minor boon = 3 coin
major boon = 5 coin
life boon = 10 coin
The coterie performs a task for, say, the Sheriff that would grant a major boon, they can bank that in their stash or call it in (i.e. spend it like Coin in vanilla BitD). Once they've banked enough Boons (Coin) in their Stash, they've demonstrated that they're willing to play the Jyhad and gain Status within the sect (i.e. increase in Tier)