What will the Player's Guide bring?

So… Tomorrow is Christmas.
Any news?

On their Facebook they replied we will see the players guide in 2020 so no PDF/preorder this year.

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Ah, sadness :frowning:. Oh well, hopefully this will given them a little time to tighten up the Players Guide and I’ll admit I’m REALLY hoping we’ll see the Old Clan/Tzimisce in the PG, so I don’t begrudge a little extra time to fix anything that’s needed

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Well that is two positive notes for me:

  1. They said something to us to let us know there is a delay.

  2. They will have more time to work on the book so crossing my fingers for Ravnos.

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As far as the PG is concerned, what I most look forward to, is ease of character creation.

The only book I haven’t been able to secure yet is Chicago By Bight, and I truly enjoy the wealth of information in each of them. My players, on the other hand, get lost in all the extra information.

What I am hoping for: to have a guidebook that is easy to follow, provides just enough information to get you started, and makes character creation as painless as possible.

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I’m hoping for something between the new V5 corebook, and V20’s Lore of the Clans and Lore of the Bloodlines. Lots of fluff on all the clans, some stuff on the sects (including the Sabbat), a nice clean summary of character creation, then all the merits, backgrounds, loresheets, disciplines, rituals, ceremonies, etc, in one well-indexed book.

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We have been told it won’t supplant the corebook, it will be stuff to add on to it. So I don’t expect to see a character creation retread, especially since the core book is pretty easy to follow anyway.

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That’s not what any of the devs working on ti have said. It won’t be a corebook version 2, it’s going to be stuff to add on to and use with the core book and other existing books .

So it’ll have the clans (and we’ve seen some snippets outside of the playtesting, which indicate the clans will have writeups in the vein of the corebook, a few pages and not a mini clanbook) we won’t see anything on the Sabbat (considering Sabbat Tzimisce is in part why the Tzimisce got kicked back for edits, from what Dawkins said in an interview and other parties have talked about wanting to do a Sabbat book), and you shouldn’t expect to see reprinted material from the core book.

It will have more clans, discipline powers, new merits flaws and backgrounds, and such like that based on what we’ve been told by the devs directly working on it.

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That’s a shame I think, the issues with the current approach is that if players want access to all the options they’ve so many different books they have to buy.

I mean to get all the clans you need:
Corebook
Camarilla
Anarch
Chicago
Cults

That’s daunting for new players and new ST’s alike. Something that gives players a central touch point where they can get everything conveniently in one place strikes me as something we’ll need going forward.

RE: The Sabbat, mind sharing the interviews you make reference to? I’m a big fan of the Sabbat so I’d be interested in following up any mentions that have been made.

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It’s the common argument. The counterargument, however, is that the core rules actually have a tighter focus and sets up the core themes of the game well, before moving on to more supplemental detail. The original game only detailed the seven core clans too, and as with 5E you only needed the core rules to play.

It gives good 'fan service’ to include all the clans in one book, but as we’ve seen with a recent Star Wars movie (ahem), good fan service doesn’t always make for a good story.

From a business perspective, the supplements need to sell to keep the game as a whole selling - and the new Clans (or at least new Clan perspectives) help to sell them. In some senses, the V5 supplements is just following the pattern of releasing splatbooks, in that sense. However, each new supplement presenting a new Clan can add to the quality of that Clans lore to a degree - putting the Hecate into the Cults of the Blood Gods book fits perfectly, for example. I’d look forward to a new Sabbat book detailing the Tzmisce on the same basis. Beyond this, I’d really like to keep The Sabbat and Tzimisce rare, exotic and mysterious, rather than an easy players’ option anyway.

In all, I think the overall number of supplements that V5 will get will be limited anyway. Games don’t generally make as many supplements as they did in the 90s - the business models used nowadays have changed. We may not have many books to collect in order to be ‘complete’.

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I can see the counter-argument, it certainly does help keep the game going 'cause major fans will keep buying all the new books, even if only for the clans.

But at the same time I think we’ll need something to consolidate things eventually. There’s a reason the V20 Corebook, Lore of the Clans and Lore of the Bloodlines are great, and it’s because they serve to condense a lot of the essential information presented in other books into something more accessible.

I reckon the Tzimisce will get the same treatment the Lasombra, Settites, and Aasamites have had. I.e. they’ll go Anarchs or Camarilla. I don’t think going forward the Sabbat’s going to have a unique clan, unless their antitribu become something very distinct.

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I agree with both Keros and Trippy :dizzy_face:

From a player or storyteller perspective, it’s a lot of material to have to purchase. To have a “complete set”, that is. If you are only interested in the core clans, then it’s no big deal, but if you want to have everything available…that’s a different story.

From a business perspective, they are intelligent to continually add “extra” clans/discipline’s/loresheets. That’s what keeps people buying new product. Sure players around Chicago love that book and so do plenty of others, same with London, but there are a lot of people that are not interested in the city settings of places that they have never been. Even if these cities play a big part in the back story of the game.

In my area at least, players want to be able to buy one book, that has everything in it. If you can get them to buy that.

I agree, the only book you really need to buy is the core source book. But in my experience, there’s always at least one player that wants to play a different clan, not detailed therein. A condensed book, as previously mentioned is a great “hook” to get new players interested and buying more in depth guides later on.

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Eh. The original stated method for this by WW was to have the clans show up where their stories are relevant, so that they got the coverage they needed and deal with the metaplot updates. But of course, many in the fandom lost their damn minds because the V5 corebook wasn’t a kitchen sink.

The players guide should, when fixed, have all the clans but but the Ravnos, assuming Modiphius takes their time and fixes the things that WW told them to fix. It will obviate the need for buying the other books since it’ll have stuff like the Lasombra and the Hecata, though the stuff in the PG will be slightly different as far as powers and some of how they’re written (we were told they’ll be written with the same metaplot timeline stuff, like the Lasombra joining the Cam, for example); we were told it’s not just going to, for example, copy verbatim the Lasombra from CbN.

As far as the interview about it, Dawkins mentions the Tzimisce and Ravnos here, and mentions the Tzimisce getting kicked back: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/509295884?t=01h09m26s

Otherwise, he did another interview today with Gehenna Gaming where he essentially said ‘eventually there will be a Sabbat playable book, but it’s not on the anytime soon horizon’. So people will have ot be patient.

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Except the issue of having everything kitchen sinked has been discussed to death elsewhere, and it’s already something people are complaining about here and there; people want the detail, the minutiae, in addition to the dots. Shoving everything into one book won’t be able to cover that minutiae. Like, with the Tzimisce, we know that the playable options for them should be called the Old Clan, because of the Prince of Tokyo in the Cam book and some other things talked about by some of the devs on the V5 Discord. There’s a level of basic ‘here’s why these aren’t crazy alien-head-crest monstrosity Tzimisce’ but many people will clamor for minutiae in that detail.

Which would be sorely lacking if they shoved everything in the corebook, unless they want the corebook to be an unapproachable 2000 page tome. It’s why I find new players that I end up dealing with have so much trouble; they use V20 or Revised as a basis, and it’s kitchen sink with a lot of missing contextuals. And so you have the inevitable ‘I saw this Tzimisce thing and their power looks cool, why can’t I play it in your Camarilla game?’

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I mean that’s fine to start with when they’re trying to update the lore and ensure that the new V5 line is a success. All I’m saying is if you don’t want to buy all the extra books 'cause all you want is the crunch for say the Lasombra and the Banu-Haqim, then it’s a pain to have to buy entire separate books to allow for that.

I think the best compromise would be to have the centralised player’s guide that has the basic details everyone would need. (E.g. a summary of the latest lore for each clan, their powers, their merits, the loresheets, etc.) Then if people want more in-depth details the longer more specialised books are still there as well.

That ensures those who need the crunch can get it, whilst those that want the basics to get playing can get it without having to buy so many disparate books.

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Which is what’s going to be in the PG, so… yeah. :slight_smile:

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I think we might have been trying to articulate the same thing here and accidentally talking past each other a bit… XD

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We were, I was mainly trying to articulate the ‘here’s what the original statement was, and why it was set up the way it was’. :slight_smile:

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no edition of the game had everything in one book not even V20, because there is too much in VtM to put in one book. There are more Vampire Clans/bloodlines than the 13 and even they will not be in one book from what we are hearing. Its unfortunately what we are getting but at the same time it is always what we have gotten.

I hope they don’t try to put mass amounts of info in a single book with no minutia, That is how a game goes to die. If you could buy one book and be done with it then why buy anything else? this means no money for the company and a game that slowly dies.

this is why we see new editions, Game companies need to make money to stay alive and new editions make money because more people buy into them. As material is given out more and more people buy less and less of it because they have all they need and when it dwindles too low we see a new edition to increase sales.

Currently I hope they keep spreading it out as much as possible, it means we will buy more and that means the game will stay around longer. I would like the world more fleshed out with minutia before sales dwindle and we then have V6.

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Actually, something that could be brought in to the Players’ Handbook is some ready made template characters - in the manner that you used to get in the Clan books. They are always useful for me, at least.

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