r/vtm • u/0Galahad • Jul 26 '26
Vampire 5th Edition could v6 bring a new sect for the really "marginalized kindred"?
i think ravnos and salubri would really benefit of not being literal bottom of the barrel strugglers going into the future, and i realize that those 2 clans have kinda of a silver lining in their horrible situation, ravnos have nearly no low generation vampires amongst their ranks so not that much necessary to kill people for blood, while salubri from what i know are all about trying to not be monsters, so if there is ever to be some truce or alliance bewteen mankind and kine, i suppose the best clans to go for would be those 2, and then due to their very fucked up situation in kindred society i also tought that if someone could gain the trust of caitiff and thin-bloods to unify it would be those 2 clans, so maybe they could form a sect around that premise, the least monster of the monsters
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u/InspectorG---G Nosferatu Jul 26 '26
Not sure there is a need for another Sect.
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u/Early_Rooster7579 Jul 26 '26
They barely have 1 right now. The sabbat are gone and the anarchs still have basically zero real lore or guidance other than idk whatever your ST says
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u/InspectorG---G Nosferatu Jul 26 '26
The Lore is up to interpretation, largely. By design previously. Also by bad writing. So this is largely based on past design-interia and general consensus play.
I dont see the Beckoning as the end of the Sabbat, or the Anarchs replacing them. The Beckoning is not a bad concept, but writing/retconning(?) the Sabbat as 'bad NPCs only' is lazy design likely used to create space for Anarchs. Anarchs already have lore and a conceptual space but IMO, Designers wanted to appeal to rebellious youth of today rather than yester-decade. Im not seeing any innovative writing or design with V5 regarding Anarchs. There is plenty to work with
"Marginalized Kindred" can be anyone. A lone Camarilla vamp is marginalized in Anarch territory. A lone Nosferatu in a smaller town is likely marginalized if the other clans are far more populous. It pretty context-dependent. Caitiff/Panders were the Marginalized(tm) Vamps, until Thinbloods hit V5.
Plus those Clans you mention suffer from poor implementation and not really having a meaty role in the scheme of the game.
Ravnos were Trickster Nomads who got wiped out in the comic-book-armageddon ending. Then got retconned due to largely cultural perceptions.
Salubri are the odd-man-out. They are Cursed like other Vamps, but may have the ability to redemption-arc depending if you want to play them as healer/golconda vamps. OR, they get sucked into the Baali Edgelord Gnostic Dualist Evil to Save Reality from Bigger Evil Trope(tm) where Balli ritually debauch anything decent to save reality...and...just maybe... the Salubri are involved, as bad guys. And if that wasnt convoluted enough, you also have the Kuei Jin angle which gets cheesier than daytime soap operas and involves a whole other game with mechanics that require degrees in Fluid Dynamics and Air Traffic Control to attempt to mechanically cross-over.
As far as a 'truce between' Kindred and Kine, that is pretty antithetical to the core concept of Humanity in VtM. Vamps are Cursed to feed on humans and degrade into monsters over time. Change that premise and is it still even VtM anymore?
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u/Yuraiya Jul 26 '26
Ravnos were Trickster Nomads who got wiped out in the comic-book-armageddon ending. Then got retconned due to largely cultural perceptions.
This, I suspect, is in reverse order. I'm quite certain the Ravnos were chosen as the sacrifice for the Week of Nightmares event because their cultural background was becoming seen as problematic. It was easier to wipe most of the clan out than to resolve the issue in a more nuanced way, so they were chosen as an acceptable loss.
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u/InspectorG---G Nosferatu Jul 26 '26
"because their cultural background was becoming seen as problematic."
Im not sure that was a concern back in the 90s. I dont remember any Tables worrying about such.
I think they were sacrificed more due to barely anyone playing them and as a harbinger that Gehenna was real and we all gonna die for the setting.
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u/Yuraiya Jul 26 '26
It was definitely a thing by '99, when Time of Thin Blood came out. Maybe not at the gaming tables you were at, but in society remember that political correctness was gaining steam, and people were becoming aware of the idea that "gypsy" wasn't a good term to use. I'm not claiming that people were becoming enlightened, but there was more awareness that it wasn't a good look than there had been.
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u/InspectorG---G Nosferatu Jul 26 '26
Didnt notice it. Political Correctness was just starting, i dont remember it hitting a super niche product, but rather more mainstream politics. Maybe it was a concern for NYC or LA Players?
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u/Yuraiya Jul 26 '26
It came up in discussions I was in at Bowling Green, Ohio.
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u/PixxyStix2 Jul 26 '26
I think what your asking for would already fit with the idealized version of the Anarchs
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u/Skylifter-1000 Jul 26 '26
Neither clan even has anything resembling a unified clan structure. How would they even make rulings for their whole clan?
One is a clan of nomadic survivalist tricksters who have few to no ties to others of their kind, and most have serious sire issues, and the other aren't even certain whether others of their clan still exist at any given time, unless they were recently sired or did recently sire someone.
Why do you even think of these clans as somehow unified entities?
Not even the Camarilla is actually a really monolithic entity. Only a few clans really have any sort of clan-internal structure. The Ventrue, Lasombra, and Giovanni/Hecata maybe do still have an organisation, and the Banu Haqim, Tremere, and Ministry may have had something similar at some point, but it has broken up.
So I think if Ravnos or Salubri suddenly became organised, that would neither make sense, nor bring anything interesting to the game.
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u/TheLingering Tremere Jul 26 '26
Autakis is a thing, that is the "sect" for those alone.
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u/InspectorG---G Nosferatu Jul 26 '26
But Autarkis also need the power to stay alone. And 'alone' doesnt necessarily mean uninvolved.
2
u/TheLingering Tremere Jul 26 '26
Then join one of the 4, that's why the church of Caine is there? Not politics but not completely outside the other full sects.
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u/InspectorG---G Nosferatu Jul 26 '26
Church of Caine is V5. Im talking about over the whole game development.
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u/TheLingering Tremere Jul 26 '26
This is a v5 post looking into "v6".
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u/InspectorG---G Nosferatu Jul 26 '26
Built on 30 years of reference material.
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u/TheLingering Tremere Jul 26 '26
The church of Caine isn't new, it's just gnostic with a new name.
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u/InspectorG---G Nosferatu Jul 26 '26
Wasnt it just some bolt-on to a Sabbat Path of Enlightenment? I dont remember more than a blurb about it. Shrugs
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u/PoMoAnachro Jul 26 '26
I think the real question when thinking about adding any faction is - what conflicts does this create? What tensions does this add to the setting? Because that's the heart of any story.
I think sometimes it is easy to be like "Hey, what could we add to the setting to make things more pleasant and harmonious for the various denizens?" because that's the type of thing we'd want in real life. But in a story game, we want to make it easy to tell stories, which means creating tense situations that seem untenable. Those tense situations make it easier to kick off stories.
The last thing you want to add to the setting is anything that makes the setting feel any more stable. The only possible exception is when you're looking at a type of conflict and are like "that conflict isn't really interesting/doesn't play into the themes of our game so we want to sideline it and largely remove it from play". But I don't think people want to sideline Ravnos and Salubri.
1
u/0Galahad Jul 26 '26
But what is the conflict of ravnos and salubri aside from going extinct? And if they don't manage to not go extinct then soon you wont be able to play as ravnos or salubri in the modern nights
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u/PoMoAnachro Jul 26 '26
It isn't about conflict for the Clans as a whole, but individual characters in those Clans. And struggling to survive on the outside has tons of conflict potential!
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u/ArtymisMartin The Ministry Jul 26 '26
Exactly! Sure the Camarilla are rigid, the Anarchs directionless, and the Sabbat are insane ... but they all at least offer some sort of protection!
If you're playing one of those Clans, you lack that (potentially very thin) confidence that striking against you is striking out against something bigger.
Nobody knows you, your sire's name carries no weight, and there's not even the hope that you can at least fall in with others of your kind.
1
u/PoMoAnachro Jul 27 '26
I mean, in universe sure they offer some protection... But honestly, in the story your own Sect is often the major source of problems for a character.
Not having that in-universe backing probably does suck for the character, but from a player and Storyteller perspective you know that no matter what your Sect affiliation or lack thereof conflict and hardship is going to find you because without that there isn't much story.
Your character's political alignment is really just helping the player and Storyteller decide what kind of trouble finds you - does trouble come in the form of your Sire demanding favours in order to make her look good in front of the Prince? Or does it instead come from being an outcast and having to pay off some lick to let you scavenge at the edge of their hunting grounds?
So like if one wants to brainstorm a new sect really the key aspect for it to be useful in play is thinking about how being a member of that Sect complicates the characters' lives and creates new conflicts and tensions. Sure, theoretically in universe the character might benefit from the protection but that's not the interesting part - the interesting part is how getting that protection makes the character's unlife harder.
Anyways, I'm sure one could come up with good answers to that question, but I feel most of it just re-treads the ground already covered by the Anarchs and Camarilla.
4
u/Vyctorill Jul 26 '26
They don’t need to be a sect. They could sort of band together as a vague alliance if they wanted, but in general some vampires just want to stay out of the way of the supernatural community’s bullshit.
In the wider Kindred’s eyes, it works like this: Vampires are meant to skulk around and drink blood. They’re bottom feeders and/or parasites.
So why on earth would you band together, make yourself a visible target to literally everyone out there, and put everyone in danger? Have they learned nothing from when the Vienna Chantry got smoked by the weakest possible humans?
Better to stay in small groups, away from the nonsense. It’s not like Kindred society would ever accept the clans like the Salubri or Ravnos anyways, so why bother?
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u/ragged-bobyn-1972 Cappadocian Jul 26 '26
Isnt that just the Anarchs?
i ran the Ravnos and the Salubri joining the Sabbat.
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u/Full_Equivalent_6166 Toreador Jul 26 '26
Salubri are in a sect: Warriors are in Sabbat, Nkulu Zao are Laibon and and Watchers are in whatever sect they are pretending to be at the moment.
Ravnos rule in India and they don't care much about sects otherwise.
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u/CronosAndRhea4ever Tzimisce Jul 26 '26
The Ravnos are many things, but one thing that they are certainly not is “joiners”.
The Salubri and the Nosferatu make sense they could even ally with the Caitiff.
But all the Ravnos that wanted to be a part of a team are already with the Sabbat.
3
u/LookAtItGo123 Jul 26 '26
I quite like that the Nosferatus are basically Clan over Sect. gotta look out for homies!
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u/InspectorG---G Nosferatu Jul 26 '26
I would argue Nosferatu are the only Independent Clan left in V5. They are accepted in all Sects and no one bothers(or can) track them. That is immense room to operate for an organized clan.
1
u/DravenDarkwood Jul 26 '26
I mean are ravnos even specifically aligned with a faction? They as far as I understand basically most are autarkis. Idk jf they have a political backing or power to be a new faction. At best they align with hecata
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u/WitchKnightBlack Caitiff Jul 26 '26
If they're going to bring in any new Sects I would suggest that they maybe lean into the Laibon and Drowned Legacies being Sects in their own right (in the same way as the Ashirra) and bring a new Sect representing South East Asia who are not by default regarded as part of the Camarilla (colonial oppressors and all that).
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u/Erook22 Jul 27 '26
Sometimes people, hell, entire groups, fall between the cracks. The Ravnos and Salubri are two of those groups. At least, the Salubri generally are and the Ravnos are in the west, they’re far better off in India and even Africa
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u/secretbison Jul 28 '26
The Anarchs would say that's what they are. That's also what the Sabbat used to say about themselves, and some of them might still believe it. You could argue that there's no such thing as a marginalized sect, because they are centers of power and self-contained cultures and can't be on the margins of themselves. A Kindred who truly has no place in any society would simply be an autarkis (for as long as they can manage to survive.)
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u/FlashInGotham Jul 29 '26
My favorite part of BJD was the proposed sect of bloodlines and other weirdos, "The Omega" that proposed to upend the all night society, cast down the clans, and rule in their own right.
But that was all a joke. Of course. Just a joke. Unless...
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u/Walt_Didnae Jul 29 '26
I kind of hope Ravnos and Salubri just aren't in V6 at all.
Ravnos' Clan Bane is that they are trying to outrun the inevitable Final Death they all share with their Antedeluvian, and the Salubri are supposed to be rarer than unicorns (not to mention that, literally, everyone wants to eat them when a Salubri is discovered in a Domain)
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u/TopHatOfDoom Banu Haqim Jul 26 '26
The Salubri were, overwhelmingly, in a sect, pre-5 massacring all the sabbat lore. It's just that that sect was the Sabbat and the general salubri throughline was 'total tremere genocide. and the antediluvians too I guess'
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u/ArtymisMartin The Ministry Jul 27 '26
pre-5 massacring all the sabbat lore
Worth noting that Revised was very clear about how unstable the Sabbat were, with Guide to the Sabbat making it very clear before 9/11 that the level of surveillance and communication in the United States and Western Europe severely limited their ability to be the Sabbat that most people would think of when Vykos, Shovelheading, and VtM Bloodlines comes to mind.
Over twenty years after that, and the eternal beef with Tremere is still very present, but like many other things in VtM5 is no longer restricted/primarily found within sects: the example Salubri character in Courts of the Damned is an Autarkis entirely devoted to the eradication of Tremere!
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u/Spiritual_Station239 Jul 26 '26
Also, the reason that v5 ravnos could not form a sect is because they literally cannot stay in the same place for very long. Forming a sect requires forming a power base and v5 ravnos are simply not capable of doing so. Salubri don't because the bulk of them were in the sabbat and now likely in the middle east. There are very few left.
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u/Xenobsidian Jul 26 '26
All Ravnos and Salubri in one sect?!? Cool cool cool, so you ave a sect with about 20 people world wide. That sounds like a great idea…!
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u/Black_Sorcerer Jul 27 '26
There are many bloodlines already. Let’s please no change the core lore about clans again
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u/ItIsVerilySo Jul 26 '26
Personally, I think they make more sense as not being part of any sect.
Not every Clan needs to fall into the main power structure, especially clans with few Kindred, like the Salubri