I played a LOT of WoD back in the day. Starting with first edition of Mage and Changeling, and moving more toward Vampire and Werewolf over the years. I managed to collect all but three books from the series (Across all games) during it’s original run, to include different editions of the books and multiples of the core books.
When the NWoD came out, I was skeptical, and after playing a little bit of it I just couldn’t get into it. Our gaming group quickly abandoned the setting.
We still play occasional games of Vampire the Masquerade (Or more often, Hunter the Reckoning with my kids) but have hesitated to jump into this new version of Vampire the Masquerade.
What has changed since The End Times? I’m under the impression that the setting evolves around a new Inquisition? Does the setting stay true to the original, or have they made changes to the setting? Is the rule system similar to the original game, or have they adopted NWoD rules or altered the original rule set in some significant way? For that matter, is it possible to convert characters from the original game into this new edition?
Would love to hear people’s thoughts and impressions of the new game. I’ll likely be adding it to my collection before too much longer and figured I should find out if it’s similar to the original (And in what ways) before I start thinking about how much I want to invests into the game.
Well from what I can find reading the books and piecing it all together the Year of Reckoning happened but didn’t as well. There were elements that did carry over like the Week of Nightmares and the Red Star along with the Fall of the Ravnos Antediluvian but that was about it.
Since the Camarilla tried to use the Governments as a weapon against the Sabbat and that of course backfired and lead to the Second Inquisition. Some clans have gone into a "Rebranding " of sorts, like the Assamites becoming the Banu Haqim who joined the Camarilla, the Followers of Set which have become the Ministry.
The big thing going on now is the Elders are feeling a call and compelled to venture to the Middle East where they are fighting a war with the Sabbat who are there trying to find the Antediluvians so they can destroy them so the new “Elder” is no the Ancilla class. Thin bloods are becoming more prominent and the tension between the Camarilla and the Anarchs have escalated to in some cases and areas all out war.
Some events have happened to change the dynamic of some of the Clans, the fall of Vienna hit the Tremere hard, the Pyramid is in shambles, Venice fell and the Giovanni were scattered to the winds (No material on them as of yet.) And once loyal Camarilla members have jumped ship like Theo Bell to the Anarchs after he killed Hardestadt. A large group of Lasombra have left the Sabbat and petitioned to join the Camarilla, so yes Dogs and Cats living together mass hysteria. lol
From what I’ve pieced together yeah. But that being said I’ve had a Lot of fun playing in the game I’m in and about to start a game in a shared universe with my other game. The game I’m playing in is Neonate centered and my game is going the Ancilla rout.
To my knowledge the best way to understand the transition between the older editions and V5 is to read Beckett’s Diary and then to read the opening chapters of the V5 corebook.
For the most part, the game has pivoted to focusing on the dichotomy between vampirism and humanity morally, whilst playing up the conflict between them by also adding in the Second Inquisition.
This being said, the setting is still largely the one you’ll be used to. The bigger changes come in mechanical shifts, the way that hunger, willpower, humanity all work is a big step from how they used to work in V20 for instance.
I was looking at the downloadable character sheet and didn’t see a bloodpool. So that was much of what my curiosity stems from.
When we play, we still play 3rd/Revised edition from the original White Wolf run of the game.
What I’m leaning toward is picking up the core book, maybe the core bundle, then getting the book and reading it. Usually, I’d pick up two sets of the core bundle along with a couple extra copies of the core rulebook for a new game, just to make sure that I have books to go around for my entire gaming group.
I was actually thinking about trying to run a game where we use our original characters from 3rd edition and pick up years later with a changed world, but I’ll be wanting to make sure the rules are at least mostly compatible before committing myself to it.
Yeah that’s one of the bigger changes, instead of bloodpool you have hunger rated from 0-5, and the higher your hunger the greater your chance of getting a ■■■■■■■ failure which is kind of like a botch from the older editions.
I’d personally recommend the new edition, might be worth seeing if you can find some of the old sample PDF’s they released. They had the basic rules for free and were released just before the full game’s release as a sort of play test.
I will say its quite hard to convert old characters into the new edition. Disciplines work quite differently, many have in fact been amalgamated. E.g. Dementation and Quietus have been rolled into Dominate, and Obfuscate and Thaumaturgy respectfully. You also get fewer dots to spend on backgrounds during character creation and the merits and flaws system works very differently.
