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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 9678504" data-attributes="member: 18">Aaaaaaaargh when Angel was good Angel was so good (and that was actually most of the time)! But yeah.Re: fluff, which fluff though? Because 2E has so much fluff! Even then, I disagree that physical conflict doesn't go in that list from fluff in the corebook, even if we ignore every other book, where it only becomes more frequent a topic (especially as we get into Sabbat territory).I think VtM actually kind of splits in a weird way.The majority of the actual setting fluff (including what the world is like, how vampire society works, etc.) is focused on inter-personal, political (in the sense of vampire politics) and essentially tribal conflict (Camarilla vs Sabbat, vampires vs werewolves, etc.). The same is true of the fiction pieces in the books/splats (rather than any novels or the like, I haven't read those) - it tends to focus on the inter-personal, political and tribal conflicts. Rather than any kind of horror, let alone personal horror/angst. Also these conflicts often involve physical conflict (threatened or actually happening), so we can't say it's not significant in the fluff. There is one subgenre of fiction within VtM where personal horror is played up - that's tales of people being turned and the period just thereafter, but that seems to be rapidly forgotten.But then you have what the game tells you it's about more directly rather than via fluff, where the personal horror/angst aspects are played up a bit but even then I think if you go back and look you'll see it's merely "in the mix" rather the the main theme. Just look at the chapter describing what themes and conflicts your campaign might have - they suggest 13 central conflicts and treat them as equally valid - really only 3 of 13 would center "personal horror" or "angst" - "Kindred vs victims", "Humanity vs the Beast" and "Sanity vs madness". The majority of the other ones are going to center conflicts of various - some likely to be physical, especially "Kindred vs hunters", "Kindred vs lupines", "Camarilla vs Sabbat", "Kindred vs Kindred" (which literally calls this "warfare" and mentions diablerie!) - most of the rest would favour intrigue/manipulation/spycraft essentially. They also talk about story archetypes and they split them into like three subcategories - which essentially boil down to "Adventure", "Intrigue" and "Humanity" (they call them "Mean streets", "Illuminati" and "Bourbon Street" just to be difficult of course). These aren't quite treated as equally valid - intrigue is the one they clearly favour, and the only one they call out as VtM being particularly good for. They also say focusing on humanity is the hardest to do well and "advanced" (which probably didn't exactly encourage people!).The rules support all three of those areas pretty well - there is definite focus on "kewl powerz" though, and surprisingly little exploration of how kewl powerz would dehumanize you - none that I can think of have inherent Humanity loss associated with them, no matter how bizarre, which is not an invalid take but an interesting one. So the powers primarily push combat and secondarily but almost as much push intrigue/spycraft. Personal horror is decently supported by the rules but not as well as combat or kewl powerz. It's not nothing though - and that's distinct from a lot of RPGs of that era!And as VtM 2E got more and more books, they didn't really come back to personal horror as a major theme - indeed, by like Kindred of the East, they seem to have largely forgotten about it or even intentionally abandoned it, but then Revised comes out less than six months later!Vampire: The Requiem (i.e. nWoD), when they had a chance to redo it all again, seemed to end up even more intrigue and vampire mythology-focused, I note, playing down all other elements.Anyway, sorry that's enough blather from me! I just find this steady progression in a certain direction and then this weird snap to a different style with Revised (then the abandonment of that with Requiem) to be fascinating.</blockquote>

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