pugbutter

Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition Interest Check - Still Recruiting! Ignore post count.

Yes, you'd all start as neonates. While the entire cast is going to be thin-bloods, the mechanics are in the core rulebook I have, so I would allow a player who wanted to play one to do so. That said, you will be suffering all the usual stigma, and I'd have to speak with the player about why they have not been hunted down.

@Necroes

Actually, I just caught this part, and this concerns me more than the other things. Ignore my previous post.

First of all, since you say we're following V5's mechanics, you should know it's impossible for a Kindred to be both a Neonate and a Thinblood. For the simple reason that for one to be a Neonate, he must be (at the youngest) from the 12th Generation. Anyone from Generation 12+ is a "Fledgling" by the book's nomenclature, which does overlap the Thinblooded (from Generations 14-16), but anyone from Gen. 13 or lower is considered a full-fledged Kindred.

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As you can see, it's impossible for us to be from Generations 12-13 and 14-16 simultaneously. So I'm confused as to what you want us to play. Is our blood the blood of vampires, or are we half-breeds? Are we allowed to choose Clans or are we all Thinbloods? Because there's no such thing as (for example) a "Thinblooded Ventrue." The Thin Blood by definition is so diluted and weak that it hasn't manifested the strengths and banes of any one bloodline.

Secondly (if I'm understanding correctly that you want us all to be Thinbloods⁠—please ignore if not), choosing our Clans for us is, by all accounts, a very bad idea. By making us all the same Clan you're basically assigning us the same niche within the group, because we all have the same Discipline spread to choose from at character creation: Thinblood Alchemy, and then whatever blood just happens to be available to us within the Scene. You're also hobbling us by making sure we can never go higher than 2 dots in any Discipline except Thinblood Alchemy. Or at the very least that it will take months, maybe years, to accumulate enough EXP to raise our Blood Potency to 1, then start buying Out-of-Clan Disciplines at the higher price.

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For example, if I want my Thinblood to reach level 3 Protean so he's somewhat viable in Brawl-based combat, he will need to spend 10 EXP to raise Blood Potency to 1, then another (7+14+21) EXP to bring an Out-of-Clan Discipline to 1, 2, and 3 dots respectively. That's 42 EXP. Instead of simply letting me play a Gangrel from the beginning of the game, you want me to spend most of a year shaping a Thinblood into an inferior version of the character I could've been playing from square one.

It's also a bad idea for the simple reason that ... this is a tabletop RP, where we want to distinguish ourselves within our coterie, and be the best in the group at something, and have our talents and weaknesses complement each other in interesting ways while we progress in this story. And by telling us what Clan we must choose at character creation I believe you're taking most of the fun out of this creative process.

I'm sure you have a strong idea of why you want us all to play Thinblood and how that group dynamic will best benefit your story. But I hope you will reconsider this choice because a tabletop RP isn't only your game; it's your players', too. And I can guarantee you that I'm not the only one who wants to play another Clan.

Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition Interest Check - Still Recruiting! Ignore post count.

VTM rules aren't particularly concrete, and thus aren't very interested in forcing us into resource management stuff. So I'm curious how you will handle abstracted rules like, for example, EXP acquisition, when the by-the-book wording (paraphrased) is "earn 1 EXP per session attended." What will "a session" mean in a play-by-post forum context?

Also, if you're taking votes for the Session Zero meta, here are mine:

Sect: Camarilla

City: A lot of options here, but my top three would be Miami, Philadelphia, and, for outside the US ... uhh, let's say Tokyo.

Coterie Type: Nomads (assassins sent behind enemy lines to silence uncooperative nobles? blood-hunters who track and kill the city's worst traitors? being crime scene investigators specialized in bringing still-warm evidence to the Prince would be awesome.)

Coterie Age: Neonates (Embraced 1940-2000, +15 EXP, Blood Potency of 1-2 depending on whether we're using the Companion errata)

KARSTS - A World Beyond Eons

Very mild godmoding in this one. Let me know and I'll remove it.

KARSTS - A World Beyond Eons

The girl couldn't believe how many species there were. Then again, she had only just learned that the whole world wasn't a glass plain like Tsercheg. The earth in most places (at least between there and here) had a malleable, gathering quality to it. It drifted on the wind when dry, and the rains turned it soft and pliant. The rotund, elongated little worms glid effortlessly through it, using their legs, their slimes, their mouths, their throbbing midsections.

Now that she'd had a better look, though, some of the "worms" which had joined the fray were actually caterpillars; slugs; even some kind of baby snake, its vestigial arms jutting amidst translucent skin. Just how many creatures crawled through this soil? What untold life had never even been seen before? She took turns picking up them all, and believed them just as harmless as back home: their spines tickled. Their vivid colors glistened in sunlight. Tame, gentle creatures. But when the girl picked up the one with the pincers in the front, it reared back from where she had gripped it. It bit her, and the pain shot through her finger as cleanly as broken glass through the bottom of a foot. It scissored through her skin; rubies pooled up around its pincers.

Hisses of the throat and clicks of the tongue escaped her as the pain snapped across her hand, shot up her arm. She grasped it firmly by the jaw and tugged, but it held fast, making the pain worse. Rebellious tears evacuated the girl's eyes even though she wasn't sad.

While the pincers were firmly sown into her skin, the insect's body wriggled and writhed. That gave her the idea. The more she thought about it, focusing through the discomfort, this creature had been one of many evacuating what it thought would soon be a rain-soaked burrow, too. The nearby pond was grey with depth, and green with algae.

Toddling over to the bank, the girl straightened her finger, and steeled herself, and dipped it in. It was cool, not scalding like the ponds back home; and though it stung inside the bleeding gapes in her skin, that could only mean the pincers had let go, and the stinging waters had soaked in. Sure enough she watched as the thing thrashed to keep itself afloat, and as thin ribbons of blood diffused into the pond. One could call it sadism, taking glee in punishing that which had harmed her first; particularly as she had been first to trick the insect, and then picked it up when it did not want to be fondled. Did that make her mean like Khurkhee? The girl didn't feel mean. But as she thought about it, and wrestled with herself to decide whether she'd done a bad thing, whether she should fish the thing out of the water and let it crawl away, something else robbed her of the choice. It emerged from the deeps of the pond as a yawning mouth, colored by the pond, but of its own shade of green, too, with a bobbing tongue and cartilaginous lips. The girl leapt back just in time to snatch her finger away from these new jaws, leaping back in alarm—"Eep!"—and not getting a very good look at it as it gulped down the meanie, smacked its tongue to its mouth, and flashed away.

Suddenly she felt a little sorry for her wriggly little playmate.

But the girl wasn't given much time to grieve, because by the time people were climbing the hill, she realized the feast must have been starting.

Some were scarier than others, but adults had a tendency to not understand why she didn't care about dirt under her fingernails, or going out with just a loincloth for modesty, or not preening the knots from her hair. They only seemed to get angry. So it was with a hushed and hissing timbre that the girl said, "Stay here, Khurkhee!" and abandoned him at the pond. She went back for the knife she nearly forgot, but didn't know where Bogavhaana was likeliest to find it, so she stuck it into a tree and trotted on.

At the same time ... in the village one never turned down an offering of food. The girl looked over to where her guardian (somehow) still slept unstirred. She debated whether to go and wake Bogavhaana, or to start without her. It was impatience, ultimately, which won out, a rumbling behind the girl's belly button.

She'd already taken a few slaps to the head for staring too hard at the others of the caravan. "Stop that. It's rude," rumbled Bogavhaana, low enough that most couldn't hear. The girl wanted to stare without being slapped, but with such sparse vegetation up the hill there were few places to hide. In fact, the slope of the hill almost looked sculpted to call attention to whoever was climbing it; to funnel them in. Maybe this village's hunters had had trouble with beasts stealing their livestock in the past. Or it warned them of other, two-legged beasts approaching.

Beginning her shy pit-a-pat up the ruddy slope, the girl began to fried greens, roasted meat, and most importantly, fruits. The rest of the village went wild for meat, but the girl didn't know what was so special about it; she ate it near every day, and frankly could get quite tired of it sometimes. But the fruits—fleshy ones, rind-ish ones, small, stony ones—these she had never seen before until Alu and Starfield went out on a forage and returned with small jewels plucked from the stems of plants. The juices bled into the hands, staining the former's fur and the latter's gills. They had offered her some. The girl had never known such sweetness.

By now she had crested enough of the hill to see just about everyone, or at least the tops of their heads. They weren't paying attention to her yet. Good. She could watch from a distance and pick up some of the manners and customs of this place before she went to the table. That way she wouldn't get in trouble again.

KARSTS - A World Beyond Eons

@Bork Lazer No, that's my fault. Apologies; it got put off due to job searching, and due to other projects. (Not on Guild, but I'm writing a book, I'm running that VTM game, and I'm also in other people's D&D games.)

I'm so sorry. I'll definitely finish it tonight after I get back from a hike.

KARSTS - A World Beyond Eons

And just to know that I read it correctly, the table is set up on a hill above the village; and it's outdoors, right? So we're not entering one of the adobes to join this feast, and everybody is heading in the same direction to join it.

KARSTS - A World Beyond Eons

OK, I'd gotten the generic part of my post done and was wondering who I wanted Ongu to interact with. So maybe I'll hold off until that person posts, like you are.

What Are You Listening To?

KARSTS - A World Beyond Eons

This one's been going since about June, and it's in its third or fourth Story right now. We have three regulars and one whose work schedule gets in her way a lot, and I can run up to five in a session I think, so if you wanna play an Anarch fledgling staging a coup against the Baron in the Final Nights, let me know!

KARSTS - A World Beyond Eons

My Vampire: the Masquerade game is on Mondays and this is the day I use to prep. But I'm starting the next post later into the week.