Whats all the differences, and what happened to the masquerade?

Derek

I'd be interested in knowing this as well.

Several reviews of the new WoD have been posted to the RPG.net reviews section since its release - you may want to check those out, if you haven't.

I have both books, but haven't read the rules section in detail, and I only knew the bare-bones of V:tM in the first place, so I'm afraid I'm not too adept at pointing out the differences.

The masquerade is mentioned only once in the sections of V:tR that I read, and it's a throwaway reference, almost as if it wasn't supposed to be there. I may be missing other references in the sections I did not read, though.

I'm at the point were I refuse to give WW anymore money. I've been with them since First Edition V:tM.... I deserve a break...

But I would like to hear what folks who get the new books think.

Inquiring minds want to know.

More or less, it's the same game in a new coat. The books are pretty nice, and there are some new game mechanics that are pretty interesting, but until now, that's about it.

If you have vampire the masquerade books, the new ones are a waste of money, if you think about starting out on WoD, it's an interesting alterantive to other game systems.

As has been pointed out before, the reviews on RPG Net tell you everything to base your decision on.

The major change might have been the ability to alter (the equivalent of) generation without resorting to diablerie.

But, that was my favorite part.
To crack open a cold one...

I looked through one a bit. i noticed a couple things.

first, malkavians (except they changed the spelling one letter) are a ventrue bloodline?

Generation is now based on how long youve been active, and drops when your in topor for a long time. And if your active a long time, then you can only drink from vampires. Diablere lowers your gen regardless of relative gen.

it looks really nice, but would take a while to read, and you need both it and the WoD book to play the new edition. I suspect this is so they dont have to reprint core rules in every book, leaving more room for setting details.

On a whim, and thanks to a gift certificate my wife got me, I picked up the new WoD and the VtR over the weekend.

All I can say is personally, I much prefer the new system to the old.

One roll action resolution for combat. No more roll to-hit, roll to-damage, and then roll to-soak. No more juggling difficulty numbers. Successes are on 8 or above. All modifiers are applied to the pool of dice the person rolls whether beneficial or detrimental.

Its a fairly neat and clean system, and as far as VtR goes, they've toned down alot of the old powers, and wiped away all their old metaplot. Vampires are more inline with the various myths now. Its meant to be a complete replacement for the old system, and setting. In other words its not a change to the old World of Darkness, its an entirely new setting that just happens to be slightly similar to the old one.

Clans are more streamlined to fit the various archtypes of vampires... you have your socialites, your bestials, your monsters, your occults, and your power-mongers. (From reading the bits on the upcoming Werewolf book too, they did away with the whole Werewolves love Gaia thing as well, and made them more 'monstrous'.)

The old sects (Camarilla/Sabbat/Iconnu/Anarchs)exist somewhat, but basically they didn't divide vampire society. They're different factions within one big vampire society, and they're really more akin to philosophies combined into political parties. These covanents as they're called attempt to either provide the vampires with a way to live, or answer the "where am I from" question. The game acknowledges the various different origins of western vampires, and doesn't slap Caine down as the father of them all.

All in all, pretty neat.

So, more in line with the original Anne Rice world then?

(Anne contributed heavily to the Vampire mythos for WoD but a lot was changed)

Alot of how vampires actually work in general was slightly tweaked to make them more into "predator" creatures. For example, when two vampires first meet (if its unplanned), they have to check for frenzy. The one with higher blood potency for anger, the one with lesser for fear.

The key to understanding it, is that vampires are solitary teritorial predators, but require social contact to keep hold of what remains of their humanity and to keep from becoming entirely bestial. If you can keep that in mind, you can pretty much extrapolate everything else about the new vampires, and their society.

I wouldn't necessarily say that vampires are more Anne Rice than before. They're about the same, or rather allow for the same. I've always thought that the World of Darkness in general was very similar to that in Anne Rice's novels. They have a similar quality, but since I haven't read Rice's last eight books or so, I couldn't really say. Other than that Vampires in VtR can't fly.

(I pretty much stopped after Memnoch, and found I cared less and less for her books about the time she got full rights to the editorial process. The Mummy of course ties for my favorite along with the Witching Hour.)

Well, Anne Rice contributed heavily to the original WoD concepts for vampires. There is a reason why so many folks that are fans of both whenthey saw the movie went, so that's what a Malkavian looks like.

The Bruja(h!) reduced to a bunch of f***wit bikers is just wrong! Very wrong!

I agree, but if you look at the later books, that cover the Decadent period on Europe, the Brujah were much better.

Out of curiosity, did they bring back the Ravnos? And if so, please tell me they fixed them up...

Hehe, gotta love the Gypsy Suckers

So they're back?

Like I know? I haven't touched WoD in years

Ack! I got you confused with Erebus. That's what I get for not scrolling back up to refresh my failing memory.

I haven't seen any mention of the Ravnos, much to my chagrin.

Feh. What they did to the Ravnos is what drove me away from the game... it was a huge slap in the face to the fans, especially when the guy responsible for it specifically stated that he did it because he, personally, hated a handful of people who played Ravnos characters online. That's even worse than the reason FASA killed off Dunkelzahn. At least their excuse was that they were simply tired of writing about him.

Yeah, I lost pretty much all interest when that happened as well. I just had a chance to leaf through the V:tR book the other day. I'm not impressed!

I have the two new books, pressie from a friend (I'd have preferred some SR3 books, but she's a terminal goth and Vampire player <shrug> ).

My opinion so far:

From a fiction point of view, simply forget the entire WoD 1.0. It never happened, and the current WoD bears - as far as I can tell - little or no relation to the old. Caine? Who's he?

Clans are stripped right down. Some have made appearances as bloodlines of major clans - the Malkavians are a subset of Ventrue whose blood tendency to be a little... unstable... has rocketed out of control. Most vamps don't even know the Malkavians (sorry - MalkOvians, stupid fricking idea) exist outside of a few whispered rumours. Bruja got demoted to a single tribe of fruitloop biker types that are a subset of Gangrel (I think), and I am NOT impressed - whatever happened to the intellectual revolutionaries?

Disciplines have changed in number of ways, too many to go into here, but possibly the biggest impact will come from the fact that Celerity is no longer good for multiple actions. If this is to become the norm across the range, it has major repercussions for the threat level of mortals - the one thing that made Awakened types so deadly was their access to multiple actions.

The actual rules changes in general, whilst still being playtested in my group (sporadically, since my move) are basically good; however, I object to the base target number of 8. Actually, I mean the target number of 8 period - modifiers are now to your dice pool, not your target number. Frankly, I feel this was highly ill-advised, especially since you need so many successes to make some things work. Combat, in particular, will be at least as drawn out an affair as before and (based on games played so far) much more so. Expect to see that house-ruled by local groups, possibly to the extent that it gets errata'd.

The format of Core Book (WoD) and Sourcebook (V:tR) is good, and is how all the WoD players I know thought it should have been in the first place. Hopefully the various Awakened types will be able to interact more smoothly now that the whole thing has been designed as a complete piece.

I look forwards to seeing where the world goes; frankly, we all know the real reason they caned the old WoD. They'd FUBAR'd it completely, so they wiped it (don't talk to me about Gehenna. I have always objected to mandatory character death, especially for characters that have been around for years).