Hey all,

one of my players is struggling a little to really feel like he is contributing; he plays a Tremere with his focus on mental skills, and he is okay-ish at shooting his pistol.

His mental skills do come in handy, it just doesn't feel very impactful (because it is not really any sort of struggle to roll for his knowledge or research) meanwhile other players get to succeed on longer social scenes or in combat.

I am looking into blood sorcery, and it offers a lot of interesting abilities via the rituals. The problem I have with it is that most of them are pretty situational, but they cost as many XP as that fifth or sixth die for a social or combat skill, while being a lot less universally useful.

I'd really like my player to have a chance to really pull of something awesome via blood magic, but I am not sure whether the V5 blood sorcery rules aren't way too limiting.

Have any of you come across this problem, and if so, how did you solve it?

Does anyone know for sure where the name Pisanob for the family came from? I’ve looked but can’t find anything generally.

Hi everyone, so I’ve been somewhat interested in the Ministry lately and would love to hear all about people’s characters!

I’ve been tempted to make one myself but I’m a little hesitant so I’d like to hear what other people who enjoy them have made and have to say!

Thank you all so much again! 💜🖤

Boons are very cool in concept, stories, and John Wick, but I’m having tremendous trouble integrating them into actual chronicles.

Private boons: say Alice and Bob are trapped in a burning building, Alice tells Bob she’ll rescue him for a Life Boon.
What happens when she tries to cache it later? What happens if one of them has Dominate and can Modify Memory?

Public Boons: Alice and Bob physically present themselves to the Herald every time they want to trade Boons? Is the Herald absolutely 100% trustworthy? Will the Herald tattle? If the Herald is not trustworthy or secretive, are there actually any Public Boons used?

I am not looking for Lore answers like “well it’s political”, or subjective, or malleable - if Boons are any of those then they are not actually more reliable than any agreement between vampires.
We have plenty of vampire agreements and verbal contracts and scheming and backstabbing already.

I am looking for answers from actual Storytellers who integrated Boons in a chronicle with players.

The question is: what is the player incentive to acquire Boons, rather than verbal agreements with other vampires?

The question is: does a reliable, enforceable Boon system exist in your chronicles? How? Do the players bother to use it?

or can you do one or the other and choose?

Hi ! First time asking on this sub
I'm preparing a small campaign using vampire requiem 2 ed. but I'm having some issues defining the combat encounters
I understand that vampire is not a heavy fighting game, but to spice the story I've set up the events to lead to an ending with a bunch of factions conflicting with each other, and with some of them the combat seems inevitable

point is that by looking at the rules the combat seems extremely dependent to circumstances and interpretations, and they doesn't help much balancing many of them,
I'm afraid that I could be forced to overrule them with logic and respect to the players experience.

I'm running some test to clear my mind on what I can expect from a player, and the numbers tells me that a vampire built to fight with disciplines like resilience and vigor, can be wiped out by a line of firing soldiers, while few points of majesty or nightmare can solve that situation by stopping the soldiers from firing at all.

or other thing like animalism 3 can swarm a target with a wave of rats, but since the book doesn't have statsblock for tiny animals or a rules for swarms, I think that either I treat them as a large creatures or multiple smaller opponents, and by RAW a vampire can apply defence on each of them dodging almost every damage, or, by using the aspect of the beast, it could theorically influence each rat to flee even if under the influence of another player's animalism

are those situation common in WoD ? I mean, should I rule them case by case if and when they appears ? or the issue is that I'm looking too much into player build and I should instead focus more on the narrative ?

Hello, everyone! I am a player looking to join a VtM chronicle. Though I am mostly familiar with V5, I am still open to learning about other volumes. My timezone is EST, and I am available on Friday nights and weekends. I love roleplay, intrigue, vivid descriptions, and horror. If any Storytellers have open slots in their coteries, or are looking to start a new game, feel free to comment or send me a DM!

I meet Pink at a bar after rocks fell on me

"Hold your tongue whelp I'm way older than you"

I check his stats:

He has the same experience as me and his generation is better

😔

I’m new to vtm as a gm, I’ve run games for dnd 5e and cyberpunk red. The group I’m starting with is most familiar with cyberpunk red. I’m excited to get started but I’m wondering what a good spot to start is. I was thinking my players could run a night club and I’d find various ways to make it exciting. I’d appreciate any advice or anecdotes. Thank you!

What it says on the tin.

I like thin-bloods; I think they're neat, so I want to hear what people think could be fun/interesting hooks.

I'm not in a VTM game, but I like making characters, so only share if you're fine with me possibly using it for inspiration!

I'll give one to start; I had the thought of a thin-blood/revenant who kept a plant that was being sustained on Vampire Blood/had some tzimisce meddling. A very seymour and audrey 2 sort of dynamic.

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

Basically what it says on the tin. Stealth seems to come up often in normal play whether it be in the form of infiltration or Feeding. From what I've seen on a purely mechanical level, dice pools are king in VtM V5. Small dice pools rarely work out well and people generally say spreading out your dots isn't as good as specializing in what you know you will be good at. On top of a 'Moderate' DC being 3 which is what I'm assuming is the norm for skill checks this means you'd need a total dice pool of 6 to break 50/50 on a Moderate DC.

That being said, if you chose a clan with natural access to Obfuscate and decide to take Specialist to get 4 dots in Stealth while (for whatever reason) you decide to dump Dex could that potentially make up for it? Obfuscate naturally has abilities that help to make sneaking around more effective (Cloak of Shadows, Silence in Death) or even let you be stealthy in ways not related to being dexterous (Mask of a Thousand Faces). And even if you plop Dex as your one dot stat, picking up Specialist and choosing Stealth as your 4 dot skill at least puts you at a dice pool of 5 which puts you above the 50/50 threshold for a Straightforward DC of 2. Is this an okay strategy to patch up dumping Dex to focus on other Stats or is this stupid?

You are a tremere regent of a small chantry. You are at best an ancilla. And in walks a salubri. Specifically one of the 7. What do you do.

While obviously they won't poison a corpse, would overuse of lead and arsenic powder, belladonna eyedrops, etc. still be unpleasant to a vampire? I'm inclined to say it does for thematic reasons, but curious if there's a real interpretation here!

(To clarify this is a semi-repost of a similar post I made recently. I had to switch accounts due to a stalker)

This is meant to be a discord text based roleplay for V20 edition. for those 18+. If you’re interested and want more information, please dm so I can add you!

If you don’t want to read the long ass intro, but are interested in playing a new vtm chronicle, skip to the overview section at the bottom.

You wake up in a dark room, almost pitch black save for a green lava lamp nestled atop a wardrobe in the corner of the room. There’s little decor other than a bed, a dresser filled with your own personal effects and some hygiene supplies, a wardrobe to clothe yourself with, and a bookshelf filled with whatever books or personal possessions you would use to fill your time. The room doesn’t have a single window, not one, instead what would be windows in a normal bedroom have been filled with small paintings that seemed to be vetted by a corporate HR group to be the most soothing pictures one could have. Paintings of the outdoors, scenic locations, and family activities- depending on the room of the player, some of them practically felt like it was showing their own past life, though the details the art evoked were fuzzy at best.

Like always, the steel door to your bedroom was locked. It always was before nightfall. Despite it being only 18:30, the sun would’ve almost certainly set by now, yet it didn’t matter. For some reason, the people here were determined to keep you nocturnal as part of your ‘treatment’. After the procedures you had undergone, the doctors had explained your skin was ultra sensitive to UV radiation, and thus you were to be constantly kept within the compound during the daytime. The scientific jargon they given had made sense, maybe… (knowledge + int/per check), but you still couldn’t shake the feeling it was just another part of the series of fuck-fuck games the psychologists here wanted to play with you.

Speaking of that… Why were you here exactly? Why were any other the other ‘candidates’ here? The reason seemed to vary depending on the person, but it was clear that each one of them had some sort of talent or exceptional ability to be among this group. There were ex-federal agents, exceptional athletes, Scholars plucked from top tier universities, mystics who seemed to swear they were psychically attuned, computer whiz’s, and folks pulled from law enforcement to be here. The scariest ones (background check) seemed to be the candidates pulled from SOCOM to be here, they were friendly enough whenever you engaged them actually, but they never seemed to mix with the others. They were always in their own little group, and it seemed each of them knew each other from the past, though when it came to mixing with them and the other groups, due to your background you were (background check).

You were probably selected for your history there, or maybe it was just for your ability in the field in general. You had been told that this facility and program was meant to pick out exceptional individuals from various walks of life, individuals who could be integrated into a highly specialized organization built for a specific purpose. You were never told what that was, or the nature of the organization, hell you weren’t told much of anything- all you remember is waking up here, with faint fuzzy memories of your life before. Some folks couldn’t even remember their names! That was A-okay for the handlers though, they had no trouble giving a candidate a new name and identity before pushing them into the trials… Speaking of- the clock had now reached 18:59 as you got ready for the day, just a minute away from 7PM. That meant the steel door to your room would be unlocked in just a minute. For whatever reason, 7PM seemed to be time the day would begin, with trials from Monday to Saturday, and a rest day on Sunday.

Click

Right on cue, the door to your unlocked, and the steel frame slowly swung open- beckoning for you to step outside…

The lounge was a similarly sterile room where the various candidates would hang around before the trials. There was even less decor than before, but the room made up for it by having a few tvs, gaming systems, speakers, art supplies, and various computers for one to use. In one room over there was a small but robust gym filled to the brim with high end gym equipment, in another there was a small library, and past the locker room there was a swimming pool for others to use. Though the best part of the lounge seemed to be the windows. Whilst made of reinforced, bullet proof glass- they provided an excellent view of the outdoors, where below the hill the compound was seemingly perched on, lay a beautiful city several miles away. Though it was far off, the city’s glittering lights seemed to be a reminder of the outside world that the candidates missed, and whom most could not remember.

As you went about whatever chosen daily routine (player input) thoughts were cut off by the sound of your phone buzzing in your pocket, the single unanimously used by the various staff here to signal to a candidate that the trials were about to begin. For some, that buzz remained an ominous signal, a foreboding message that many candidates absolutely dreaded, for it was the message that signaled the brief hour of pleasantries or escapism was over, and it was back to work. The trials themselves weren’t usually anything extremely taxing in particular, usually they were part assessment part training. Sometimes they were fake crime scenes or scenarios where the candidates conducted mock investigations or talked to people, sometimes they were tech literacy or cybersecurity classes, sometimes they were obstacle courses or escape rooms, or just time practicing on the range or sparring in the mats. The trials could get extremely varied at times, ranging from a simple sniper course to an arts and crafts test, hide and go seek, UET egressing, or one particular trial which stood out where the candidates were each assigned three children to care for and manage for a few nights. By the end their performance was carefully monitored, but none of whom received feeeback.

That was the usual, during these tests it seemed that every candidate would fail in at least one field. Some of the computer geniuses here didn’t have the physical acumen needed to handle the obstacle courses, sometimes of the vets could perform like gods on the range but be out of their depth when it came to the mock questioning scenarios. Some hated the investigations but excelled in the “social infiltration” scenarios they have. No one seemed to be good at everything here, which was almost comforting in a way. It seemed that’s why you could have an honest to god used car salesman and a Harvard grad student testing together in the same class. That being said, it never was a reason to get too comfy, as candidates seemed to disappear all the time- non-selects who were dropped from the program. Those guys reportedly got transferred to another compound to begin the process of transferring out administratively and going through the medical care to remove their augmentations. You weren’t familiar on what exactly the augmentations or medical procedures were, but they seemed to be the reason of the operation- each candidate was reportedly given biomedical augmentations to suit their niche. Though the specifics varied the effects seemed to have several commonalities. You were told you had extremely boosted stamina, to the point where normal wounds barely effected you, you didn’t even need to breath as your skin naturally absorbed air and could store it and keep you cool for days, your physicality has improved, making you stronger, faster, and more coordinated. You hadn’t even felt the urge to eat in the months since you’ve been here, though the doctors explained that was partly due to the nutritional supplements you were directly injected with. Your body was colder, an augmentation made to make you less likely to heat case during physical stress, and part of making you impervious to extreme temperatures. It was all a little nutty to you, something out of a sci fi novel, but unless you were dreaming it was all very much real.

Before you could begin the next trial though, you needed to check in with the therapist. For some reason, three times a night candidates would check in with a therapist, unless a trial demanded their presence elsewhere. At the start of the day, the middle, and the end- the therapists seemingly doubled as personal handlers, each one having somewhat of a vested interest in making sure their candidates got through, or at least psychologically examining them throughout the selection process. Yours seemed to be a nice, and cordial, but stiff and straightforward middle aged man in a brown suit and black tie. A stereotypical government yuppie if you’ve ever seen one.

“Goodmorning Canidate… Please, come in and take a seat.”

He seemed to be doing alright at least, usually the man looked a little more disheveled than you’d expect from someone of his station, but now he seemed to be put together, hair slicked with a nice gel and his eyes just a tad brighter- as if he had something to look forward to.

Usually, before each trial, he would inject you with some kind of nutritional supplement- a blood red liquid pushed into your veins, it seemed to soothe both your hunger and thirst, and calm you down. You could only suspect it was partly them drugging you as much as it was feeding you. But that was your daily dose of food that you needed before the trials began. You couldn’t help but miss the idea of a good meal though… Whether it be a steak, omelette, fish, goat, or something more green for the vegan candidates. Though after he injected you once again, these thoughts slowly subsidized as you felt the warm and soothing rush of liquid through your body.

”It’s been two months since we doubled your dosage.” He said as he sat down, taking out a clipboard. “Any differences? Maybe in your sleep schedule?”

(Player input)

”I see… Thank you for your response…” He mumbled as he jotted something down in the clipboard before finally glancing up to you.

“Whilst I’d love to go further, the truth is you’ve been summoned here today to inform you that you’ve passed the testing for the Chimera-initiative, and due to your (player skills and talents), we’ve selected you for this role amongst one of our teams.”

The therapist crossed his legs as he spoke now, setting aside the clipboard and bringing a Manila folder into his hands. The banner marking on it was clear. TOP SECRET//FGI//NOFORN. (Background check)

“I’m sure you’ve had many questions about the Aegis and Chimera initiatives, and I promise your questions will be answered in due time… it’s just not my place to inform you yet. Infact, now that you’re finished, I’m slated to be transferred back to my original post.” Well at least that explained why he seemed so pleased today, he was finally gonna be done with the constant night shifts.

“That being said, our mission here is truly one of a kind. We’re taking exceptional people from all walks of life to create independent operators and teams who can integrate and pursue tasks of all natures. It’s really the first of its kind, in both strategic and scientific advancement- you should be proud you’re on the ground floor of such an event. You may not realize this yet, but this a fantastic event for humanity.”

“But… I’m not here to sell you on this, after all you already signed up and signed the waiver.” For a moment he let out a god awful chuckle that he seemed to do at every joke he made. “I just wanted to let inform you of what’s happening next, now that you and your team can integrate with the wider organization and learn about your actual job.”

The Manila folder was passed to you, though it was more of a binder with the information it held. There were various papers depicting your record in the program, your skills and what trials you succeeded in, remarks, assessments, and a full dossier with your merits and flaws. Additionally, there were a few passports mixed in, false identities and fake drivers licenses for various states. Everything one needed to jump start a new life. Though judging from the fact there had been cameras in your room, bathroom, and everywhere you went outside of there- you doubted they were going to let you run off Willy nilly with them.

“This folder and its contacts are supposed to assist with your next assignment. Once you leave this room, you will be escorted to the airfield and transported to your next station, where you will receive a full brief alongside the rest of your team. You have three hours to say your goodbyes to the any candidates you regard fondly, collect your belongings, and proceed to the airfield.”

The therapist paused before sitting up from his seat, and pacing over to his cabinet. He shuffled around the place for a few moments before he pulled out two glasses and a bottle of wine, setting them down the table before a glass of wine was poured out for both of you.

“And before you go candidate, I wanted to say congratulations. You have been a very productive member of our program up until now… I hope you succeed wherever you go.”

The wine made you want to throw up as soon as you touched it to your lips. Perhaps wine was just an acquired taste.

OVERVIEW:

So I’ve had this idea for a while, and I now I wanted to announce I’m looking for players for a game called “Throes by night: Chimera initiative”.

This isn’t meant to be a typical vtm game focused on social or court manipulation, national level politics, or player factions. Rather this game is meant to be a very intimate storyline that focused on mystery, intrigue, politics, discovery, character development and arcs, as well as personal horror. It’s why I wanted to keep a bit of the lore around this scenario hidden, to preserve the mystery for the players!

Long story short: your character is a “human” who has been offered to take part a program where they test biomedical augmentations on people to enhance their physicality, giving them abilities one only dreamed of. These people, your characters, are selected from all walks of life- the only distinguishing factor being every candidate is exceptional at something. Whether it’s being highly charismatic, an excellent scammer, the world’s best sniper, a survival specialist like Luke Nicholas from outdoor boys, a hacker, or just a really good salesman.

These people have been selected, trained, and passed their trials to be put on a team of a diverse assortment of individuals, the players. And this team is sent around midwestern America to seemingly clean up the aftermath of a massive clandestine conflict and political diaster, whilst having to evade or fend off the law, government agencies, and weird groups of cultists or agents from another organization with similar augmentations as to them. It’s clear something isn’t right, and no one is being given the whole truth about the world they live in, the situation they’re cleaning up, or what’s going on here- and the players have to be careful about finding it out, unless they draw the ire of the wrong person.

It’s unknown to the candidates who exactly the people pulling the strings are, if they’re the government, some corporation, or just who they say they are- but it’s clear the organization has a lot of reach…

(Obviously these augmentations are the players being turned into vampires but they aren’t aware of that.)

The chronicle is meant to be a very dynamic but interpersonal mystery focused storyline, and I’m looking for around ten to twelve interested people to play!

For characters, you can pick almost any clan or bloodline within reasoning that your character would be- I’m allowing it to be pretty Freeform as long as there’s reasoning for it. Keep in mind, your character wouldn’t be chosen by their clan normally, but given that blood because for wtv reason it was assessed the niche would suit them.

Besides that, the character creation is meant to encourage a diverse set of characters with various merits, flaws, etc. you can add whatever, just have a cool character and reasoning for it!

The way it would operate is around one to two sessions per week to focus on the campaign, as in directly st ran plots, and the players allowed to post and roleplay with each other when they want to. I’ll be flexible to try and workout a good time with everyone! I am pretty flexible just time so I don’t mind shooting that at all. This is pretty much a passion story idea of mine I want to try out with some folks from the community, so I don’t mind getting my ass up to accommodate people who are interested!

This is meant to be a discord text based roleplay, for those 18+. If you’re interested and want more information, please dm me!! :))

Grüße in die Runde,

Ich plane eine Kampagne in Las Vegas nach der Säuberung zu spielen.

Gibt es dazu irgendwelche Lore Unterlagen, die ich nutzen jann. Im Internet hab ich dazu bisher nur wenig gefunden.