Want to Playtest Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition (V5)?

White Wolf has just announced the Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition "pre-alpha" playtest, which you can download and play right now! The company also has an attached survey for playtest feedback. "Today we are sharing with you the Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition (V5) pre-alpha playtest kit, which includes the V5 pre-alpha rules and a special V5 pre-alpha scenario, The Night After. We invite you to download the kit and try it out: invite a few friends to play through the scenario together, talk about it, and then share your opinions with us through the online survey. We appreciate your feedback and value your input." The survey closes on August 1st, so you have about six weeks, after which WW will release the next iteration, the "alpha playtest".

The announcement continues:

We recommend strongly that you play the scenario and not just read the rules document. Actual play is the best way to experience and understand new rules concepts. In fact we suggest that you play it more than once, making different decisions each time to experience the full scope of the rules.

This version of the rules is pre-alpha. That means it’s not feature complete, and the designers have not made final decisions about what rules and features will be included. It was created specifically to test the new Hunger Dice mechanics for a live playtest at the World of Darkness Berlin fan convention in May. Much will change between this version and the Alpha, Beta, and final release versions.

We understand that you may be tempted to use this material to test the rules in ways that aren’t intended (such as trying to reverse-engineer the rules into your own scenarios, or published scenarios). We don’t recommend this: the pre-alpha rules were created specifically for The Night After scenario, and aren’t even close to final. We strongly recommend using them only to play The Night After scenario.

The Night After is a scenario that was designed specifically for these pre-alpha rules. It provides a glimpse into the tumultuous and destructive events that occurred in Berlin in May 2017, as told in Enlightenment in Blood, a VTM LARP event at the WoD Berlin convention. The scenario takes place on the evening immediately after Enlightenment in Blood, but no knowledge of that LARP or its events is necessary to enjoy the playtest.​

[video=youtube;43VXwCS42O0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43VXwCS42O0&feature=youtu.be[/video]
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[Dannyalcatraz]

3) Amelia's Character Sheet: Child Connoisseur, really? You mean Pedophile. In this day and age there should have been a) a Trigger Warning or b) Maybe a totally different character that won't turn off a large number of people.

At the very least, the euphemism for pedophilia is...off-putting. It gets into NAMBLA apologist lexicon territoty. If you want the game to be dark, be dark- don't play cute with it.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

So every Saturday night we play using the 20th anniversary rules. 2 weeks of my mage game, then 2 weeks of my friend matts Vampire game right now (although we both bounce back and forth from the 2 rule sets). Last night we talked pros and cons of the new system and could reach no consensus.

1) blood pool. I like the hunger dice and having to feed from creatures to feed the inner beast, but some of the guys said it would annoy them because drinking from blood banks has been such a vampire thing for years (blade, forever night, ect)

2) Physical disciplines. I love the new rules...I am completely alone in this. I never realized how much my fellow player like the simplistic way you just 'add dice to stat'. In fact one of the players said he would like mental and social versoins of the V20 physical disciplines... something that adds to perception checks, or give auto manipulation successes were his 2 examples.

3) Combat. I was weary of the change but almost everyone like the idea because it would make it quicker.

then not so much a disagreement, but an agreed hope. SInce there are no tremer, giovonni, lassambra, or Tzimisty in the rules we don't have blood magic. We all hope it goes 1 of 2 ways... 1) make all blood magic just that, blood magic thaum blood magic sorcer blood magic obtinbration, ect following the same rules and format, or the one we like better 2) BREAK THAUM UP...

right now thaumaturgy is the best discipline in V20, spirit thaum does things better then necromancy. Thaum also has 1 unfied system (spend blood roll willpower) where other magical discipline need multi stats (necromancy often needs blood AND willpower spent then roll stat+skill) making tremer a bit too sought after.

At the very least, the euphemism for pedophilia is...off-putting. It gets into NAMBLA apologist lexicon territoty. If you want the game to be dark, be dark- don't play cute with it.

I have to ask (since I still havn't read the scenero because I'm hoping to play it) is this a mortal or a vampire...I ask because if you play a venture in Owod you get a feeding restriction, you could have it be "Only feed on prepubescent children" and the character not be a pedophile. in fact most vampires I've played over the years (except for the youngest of new bloods) have out grown sex to the point of almost in humanly not understanding it.

 

[Sunseeker]

It's still a work of fiction, and unless you are prepared to also imply that fictional writers are sick for including the points of view of characters who are morally questionable, then it really isn't different to hold role-players to task for playing challenging characters also. They are not committing crimes for engaging in their imaginations.

The way you dance around the issue amuses me. I'd hardly call playing a pedophile a "challenging character" and I'm really not even sure why you would attempt to frame it as such. If the goal is to not do bad things when your brain is giving you bad impulses that's one thing.

Who mentioned crimes? You've taken an awfully large leap in logic from what I wrote, which can be summed up as encouraging people to analyze the inclusion of sensitive content as relevant and valuable to the setting as opposed to being there merely for shock value, to suggesting I am playing thought police.

Now, I don't know about you, but I've played lots of "gritty", "dark" and "horror" games and enjoy reading gritty, dark and horror material (when it isn't campy), but I'd raise an eyebrow at any player who wanted to play a character who had an attraction to minors, or an inclination to rape the dead (or living, or living dead). RPGs may be a place to let our imaginations run wild, to try things we never could in real life but that doesn't mean that everything is okay.



'

Dark' is just a convenient descriptor,

Yes, that was exactly my point, and the problem. Perhaps you were unclear on what I wrote? People are using a "convenient descriptor" to justify the inclusion of shocking and sensitive subjects, without providing any real value to their inclusion.

but as said before, the very motif of a vampire includes a lot of unsavoury, antisocial aspects regardless. Bram Stoker's Dracula included such things also

My copy of Dracula is sitting on the shelf directly behind my desk. To my recollection, Dracula himself never fed on any minors, though Lucy did, which was included not because feeding on children is enticing or shocking, but more as a demonstration that even in death the strongest desires of the living get played out even in death. There was a reason for the inclusion of feeding on children, which while it may have been shocking that someone would harm a child it was A: not sexual and B: supported by the story. It was NOT mere shock value.

but people seem to have become inured to the effect of having sanitised, sparkly vampires in the mold of Twilight these days. To try and reclaim the 'dark' descriptor in fiction as solely being about survival is simply untrue.

You're welcome to go off on some wild rant about sparkly vampires, but kindly do it somewhere else, since I neither mentioned them, nor implied anything about them. You just assumed/I] that because I disagreed with the inclusion of shocking material for shock's sake, that I must be a fan of "sanitized" material.

By all means, insist on having disclaimers and being forewarned, but the bottom line is that fictional writers shouldn't be restricted in what they do based upon individual taste.

This isn't an argument. It is first and foremost, not how real life functions and if games intending to deal with real life issued (such as terrorism, ISIS and islamism) do not model real life in their approach to a subject, they come off as insulting to the reader, demeaning to the subject and displays a degree of crass arrogance towards well, pretty much everything that it astounds me that it can be defended. Writers, artists, even players should always be challenged on why they included any given sensitive element in their creation. It doesn't have to be a 40-page essay justifying the inclusion, but some demonstration that the element is not just there to shock and disturb can go a long way. And I'll further argue that providing a justification for the inclusion that is fitting with the setting material can enhance the shocking and disturbing element, rather than devaluing it by having no reason.

So, I'll repeat since my message is apparently unclear: If your argument for the inclusion of an element is "because it's dark" then you don't have an argument.

 

[TrippyHippy]

The way you dance around the issue amuses me.

Well, let me put it into plain language for you then.

You're being prudish and over-reacting about an aspect of a playtest game that is clearly aimed at a mature audience from it's subject matter, and always has been. If you want to read into allegorical aspects of any detail from the playtest as encouraging anything whatsoever, then I'll leave you to cope with your own imagination.

You make the point that the feeding on children's blood in Dracula wasn't sexual and to do with the story (which is your own interpretation), but that it is sexual in the Vampire game - again your own interpretation, as it doesn't actually say that in the text and it is absolutely to do with the story of that character in the context of the scenario. So you are dancing around the issue in one, but condemning the other for having exactly the same thematic content.

Moreover, all the sanctimonious pontificating in the world won't change the fact that no laws have been broken and that you are merely attacking freedom of expression in others who are able to differentiate between fiction and reality.

In short, I really couldn't care less what you think, nor whether you ever play the game.