I love vampire and werewolf, always wanted to try hunter as well. I’m actually in the process of starting a vampire game with some friends but they are super hesitant to try systems they don’t know
A note on the "taking control away from the player" you mentioned when Sam kills Max: This is an integral part of Vampire. If you get too hungry or get close to fire (which is VERY bad for a vampire's health), you will sometimes "frenzy" and "The Beast" will take over, and The Beast will do ANYTHING to survive. So yeah, sometimes you might lose control of your character.
yeah, The Beast is just that, a beast, it has next to no humanity and it's well within the GM's right to say what a character might or might not be willing to do when a character is reduced pure instincts of fear and hunger
Talisen’s done a great job replicating the kind of logic of a nightmare. Taking places that are familiar and twisting it in such a way that only you seem to find strange.
In regards to the loose rules in the game: that's how it's intended to be run! The rule books say specifically that you should ignore any rules that get in the way of the story
Re: Matt and Marisha: I seem to remember - I think it may have been in a now-deleted Talks Machina episode? - that they both had some familiarity with VtM and recognized the particular vampire clans that Taliesin had assigned them. And that, since they knew they had the hard out (and had discussed with Taliesin beforehand), they deliberately made choices that they knew would lead to their characters' deaths
Hey Mike j leaving this comment to say your videos have really helped me pull through this year. A lot of stuff has gone wrong, and aside from it all I never have time to play. I’ll spare you the trauma dumping and diagnoses but suffice to say there are days I cannot eat or get out of bed. Now I don’t mean to throw any pressure on you or make it sound like I’m totally dependent, I just want to thank you for being such a champ about this upload schedule. Having something to look forward to every day is nice. I hope you find time for a well deserved break whenever that is, though. Congrats on the kid, too!
I don't have much familiarity with VtM but, iirc, your hunger is personified as The Beast, an overwhelming feral force that gets represented by your hunger die. There's something akin to critical success and failures that are enacted by The Beast if they're rolled with your red hunger die; your drive check succeeds as your foot slams on the gas with incredible and pushes past the pedal, tearing through the car itself and meeting the open road, making you drive... faster.. somehow.. or you failed the sneaky lockpick check so The Beast comes out and, very loudly, rips the door off its hinges, or something like that idunno This would help to explain some of the urges Taliesin gives them and the actions he has them take, like Sam, in the blink of an eye, leaping to fully draining Max despite that being a very bad idea.
Depends on the edition. VTM5 uses hunger dice, but other editions just represent hunger through what is essentially a pool of mana points. Unfortunately no one ever seemed to find a good way to combine VTM5's more evocative hunger with VTM20 or VTR2's more evocative everything else.
Yay! Thanks for doing this vid Mike! I super enjoyed it! I know your schedule is busy, well done for getting this out on Halloween! 🧡 Medleyrose aka Meesta
This one shot definitely got me interested in learning more about VtM. I only had heard of it, knew it had decades of lore and history and had played some of the text choose your own story games set in the universe. It’s definitely intimidating! But the one shot was a great mix of spooky body horror and fun hijinks
A VtM hosted by Talisan??? Oh heck, I am watching this. I've never played strictly VtM but I've played a fair bit of World of Darkness (you can see the WoD logo at the bottom of the book you show, Originally it was just VtM way back in og VtM which was technical pre-WoD) which is just the expanded universe essentially, same system but more creatures (though I mostly played Chronicles of Darkness technically, basically WoD 2e but its not that drastically different.) None of us were Vampires though, so we used Sin-Eaters (what I was), Changelings, Demons, and Werewolves, as well as fighting monsters and meeting NPCs from many other books/worlds but we hadn't made it to any Vampires besides briefly in passing. That said I have a copy of old-school Vampire the Masquerade and I've had a lot of fun making characters in the OG style even though I have never actually played it. As for "is a Frankenstein monster a thing' yes. Honestly, most things are things. They are called Prometheans and they arent even just a side ting in a book they have their own book/system "Promethean the created". The ending is funny but its extra funny to me and also a little weird that he's the one who 'set all this up' when I'm pretty sure he didn't have anything to do with Vampire The Masquerade? So it's so funny and weird that the game that is in a very completely different system is the one with him there.
While, yes, there's going to be things the players don't know they don't know about any new setting - particularly in a new system - so most of the communication about a new campaign to get everyone's characters suitable is on the GM, I do think there's some questions players can ask going in to avoid a complete mismatch of character to campaign. "Hey I'm thinking of doing X, would that fit what you've got in mind?" being the most blunt force (though, also, group character creation during session 0 since some of that is making sure the PCs fit with each other), if there are some common motifs in a genre the campaign is set in and you're not entirely sure which of those the game is going for - If a Digimon inspired campaign is set in modernity or the 90s, for example - I've never met a GM to mind being asked that sort of question.
I'm so sad we don't have more Masquerade or Ctulhu with Tal. He's so good at setting up the atmosphere. When CR announced Candela Obscura, I was hyped - and then they announced that it won't be DMed by Taliesin and, well, I never watched it in the end.
I remember being super exited for this Oneshot, because I loved and played A LOT of Vampire (and still do). And Taelisin being the storyteller? Hell yeah! And I remember being super disappointed and hating it (quietly for myself). Listening to your recap I think I know now why: This is a a weird and fun horror game, but Vampire the Masquerade like I knew and loved it, it is not. At least not the first episode, I never watched the second one. This is all from my experience and your groups and experience may vary: Vampire is a lot more grounded. Yeah, weird and supernatural stuff can happen, but it doesn't so frequently and so extreme. It's more about the politics and intrigue and the horror of posing as a human, but not being one. Seeing your loved ones slip away. Having to cut all contact, or hiding that they exist. Clinging to your humanity. Being afraid that your beast takes over (that is what happened to Sam, its normal that the ST takes away player agency in that case, but it should be communicated beforehand) I think Taelisin mixed and matched a lot of different World of Darkness IPs (Werewolf, Changeling, Mage etc.), so it got really really weird. I think I would have been less disappointed, if they advertised it as a World of Darkness game, not Vampire in specific. Its not about the rules, because he said he would handle them fast and lose, its about the vibe. It's just a bad representation of the game imho. But hey, it was never a game intendet for me. So thats fine. If anyone who reads this, wants a better representation of Vampire 5th Edition, check out L.A. by Night lead by Jason Carl. Taelisin has a guest appearance there as well!
I haven't watched this particular episode yet, but I do know the setting includes both a clan of vampires that specialises in reshaping living tissue and werespiders that can split into a bunch of smaller spiders. The bit where Liam is unable to feed could be one of the vampire clan weaknesses that limits who you can feed off or it could be a sign he's forming a touchstone (someone/thing that connects a vampire to their old life, reducing the risk of them going feral). In the setting werewolves often find undead offensive to their religious beliefs, leading to them helping with vampire hunts.
I would suggest watching the LA by Night chronicle that was G&S and then transferred over to WoD. Jason Carl of White Wolf Entertainment is an excellent storyteller, knows LA like the back of his hand, and fully immerses the watchers into the story. Plus the main characters played by Alex Ward, Erika Ishii, Cynthia Marie, Josphine McAdam, Xander Jeanneret, and B. Dave Walkters are phenomenal. It's Vampire 5e, and you pick up the game mechanics like you would watching CR.
I found the most effective way to get people into VTM is just to introduce them to the "What We Do In The Shadows" TV series. It's a great insight into what "vampires as people" can be like, which is the most important part of the WOD Vampire games, because "Vampires as monsters" already comes pretty easily to most people. I wouldn't be surprised at all to find out that WWDITS is inspired by VTM. It does a really good job at showing vampires as this culture of people with monumental ambitions but, due to eternal life, absolutely no sense of urgency and therefore absolutely no follow-through. They're people who are playing at politics, playing at rivalries, and playing at life, just because they may as well do something, and because in a couple of hundred years, no one's going to remember who was in charge today anyway.
leim is likely a venture a group of vampires that has issues with feeding. they have a bane(every clan get one its why mat cast no reflection) called Rarefied Tastes. pretty much they have very high standards for what they will or wont eat and can fail to drink because of it (mat is also likely a lasombra a clan of necromancer vampires that cast no reflection. which also leans into my theory they are likely dealing with a kiasyd tzimizie becuase while losambra are independent they tend to have more connections with the sabat then anarchs or camarilla. the 4 big vampire factions. and tzimizie and kiasyds tend to be sabat plus all the confirmable clans i see line up pretty well with normal sabbat or sabbat adjacent clans
there is indeed a Frankenstein's monster in the WOD. It's called Promethean: the Created. You play a Promethean. Each kind takes on the traits of the progenitor, the first of their kind. The various Lineages of Prometheans take their roots from notable "Created" or "reconstructed" throughout folklore and fiction. So Frankenstein's Monster (like it says on the tin) and Tammuz (Golems), etc.
something I want to point out as a big cow and wod fan which is the larger group vtm is a part of. pretty much every monster in World of darkness gets its own core book. but the whole play yourself thing is actually a stock bit of advice from I belive 20th edition (wod edition numbering is just as weird as dnd, given there are 13 editions of dnd but we only count 5 for them. wod had its 4th edition be named 20th annaverisy edition so it calls v 20) it might be older than that but that was how I was introduced to playing vampire werewolf and mage in the system. there are some other monsters but they are all not for new players and don't really have that narrative option of being you. you could play a wraith as you but wraith is a weird game and you could do the same with changing but mummy demons and other templates just don't work well with this approach. i have always introduced people to the system this way. i was deep into chronicles of darkness(think the pathfinder to world of darkness excepted its owned by the same company but managed by a different company) before this episode came out. at the time cod second edition was the newest edition. this is why vtm and wod are hard games to talk about. so much weird here important but kinda not relevant but necessary information to talk about it.
I have seen neither of the two games, but from what you described and showed this game relates to VtM about as much as something from Hunter S. Thompson relates to a newspaper. That is to say while this could happen narratively in VtM, normally it would be a dream, hallucination or the like.
The most likely reason that Liam might not want to feed on someone is because that there's a flaw you can take in VtM that makes you largely unwilling to feed from specific people
Cognitive dissonance can really drive suspenseful fear because it plays on the fear of the unknown. When we see things happen that are incongruous to what we would consider "normal", we wonder why, and when there's no clear answer, that unknown becomes unnerving, potentially scary.
wait was he running Ashes to Ashes? It's a first ed VTM adventure. I'm a bit disturbed that Talisin ran a shovel party for their first adventure. Still it's a good way to start a newbie off...
FOr the record Liam was a a kind of vampire called a Nosferatu. THey are renown for being super ugly(on a scale of 1-5 with 2 being average and 5 being the best looking human in the world they are ALL a 0). vampire power-wise they are sneaky, strong, and good with animals.
so the murder is actually a core rule for vampires called frenzy. normal rolls are involved but losing control like that is a core part of vtm. vtm has a big resource management thing going on with humanity willpower and blood and getting low on these has bad and good effects. some clans intentional frenzy to get advantages. low humanity has some advantages but is generally bad. but this lose of control is a core part of the personal horror vtm is about. losing yourself as a monster is the horror of vtm,
so im 90% sure alot of what going on is kiasyd bullshit. kiasyd is a blood line(like a sub clan) for vampires touched by the fea and fea magics. they are weird and alot of whats going on lines up with weird shit themeticly linked to the fea. (technicly kiasyd isn't a generic term. pretty much a kiasyd wiped out all other kiasyds not of his line and then took kiasyd as the name for his bloodline but most people still call all fea-touched vampires kiasyd. the only ones who don't are kiasyds that aren't Kiasyd on account of the whole being murdered and hiding. bloodline are also weird becuase you aren't always born as one. kiasyd for example are often just normal vamps who get fea touched. the whole game gives a real tzimisce kiasyd vib the tzimisce being flesh crafter and sorcerer vampers the most famous of whom is Dracual. they had a whole old clan new clan blood feud thing where old clan practices demonic vampire magic(because there are multiple kinds of vampire magic) and new clan practices flesh craft magic tho they are both disciplines which means anyone can learn them and a lot of the powerful members of the new clan know both. two types of blood magic is better than one(note blood magic is it own thing practiced by the tremere one of 2 possible 3 clans for vampires who were created when a group of mages seeking immortality became vampires a) this is vtm the game i love where slightly advanced lore throws you into a rabbit hole of vampire politics and the night folk cross-contamination (night folk is a term used exclusively by mages to refer to all other monsters that are technocrats, technocrats are sify mages that refused to be called mages and instead use worlds like reality deviant because they are dicks harshing everyone mellow including their own.)
those are not werewolves. they are probably gangrels. gangrel are a clan meant to evoke that wild vampire astetic. think how dracula could turn into wolves and bats and stuff. they are pretty much the closest thing to a werewolf a vampire could be without being an abomination (abominations are werewolfs turned into vampires because werewolves are born not made in wood. well you can make werewolves but not like a spreading virus like vampire way its a magic ritual that requires you to skin a werewolf or any changing kin(the name of all were creatures which includes the objectively best kin the were shark)) they could be abominations but its unlikely tho it is something some truly mad sabbat freaks experiment with and is definitely a tizmizie thing to do.
I think Taliesin didn't get into the details for the audience, the IRL fiction in play, but I think the feeding mechanic from Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines would genuinely just fail for me. Like, fully in-world to try, and then, ope, nope, that attempt failed. I may be misremembering that, as it has been at least a year since I played, but I remember just failing the QTE thing for it fairly often any time I spent too far away from the game.
Hey Mike, there seems to be a ringing in the Audio at the beginning, not sure if it was intentional or not. Just hit the tinnitus in a particular way. Much love for your work
Vote for the love of god, also describing Trump’s political campaign in a channel that usually discusses D&D stuff through me through a fucking loop. It’s weird. I watch a lot of traditional, political content and I watch your content a lot and for some reason this just this is fucked with my head in a way I wasn’t prepared for now. I’m just imagine Donald Trump playing DND and it’s I mean I think it’d be a better use of his time.
Talisen’s done a great job replicating the kind of logic of a nightmare. Taking places that are familiar and twisting it in such a way that only you seem to find strange.
Have you ever played Vampire the Masquerade?
One time. It was not my cup of tea, to be honest. I did, however, love Werewolf and Mage.
I love vampire and werewolf, always wanted to try hunter as well. I’m actually in the process of starting a vampire game with some friends but they are super hesitant to try systems they don’t know
A lot, wod is my favorite setting to play
I used to play a lot of white wolf stuff as a teen, my favorite clan was Gangrel
I've been running a VtM game for the last year! It's going great!
Mike announcing he doesn't really like Halloween might be the most controversial thing he's ever said on this channel
the way he said "I like Christmas" made me laugh lol
A note on the "taking control away from the player" you mentioned when Sam kills Max: This is an integral part of Vampire. If you get too hungry or get close to fire (which is VERY bad for a vampire's health), you will sometimes "frenzy" and "The Beast" will take over, and The Beast will do ANYTHING to survive. So yeah, sometimes you might lose control of your character.
yeah, The Beast is just that, a beast, it has next to no humanity and it's well within the GM's right to say what a character might or might not be willing to do when a character is reduced pure instincts of fear and hunger
In the game we play our DM lets us choose to play our characters when they Frenzy because they trust our ability to play that role
Same, though we usually get some vague direction. Exacts are up to us, but it's a back and forth.
Talisen’s done a great job replicating the kind of logic of a nightmare. Taking places that are familiar and twisting it in such a way that only you seem to find strange.
In regards to the loose rules in the game: that's how it's intended to be run! The rule books say specifically that you should ignore any rules that get in the way of the story
All RPGs do that though, even D&D, it's boilerplate.
Re: Matt and Marisha: I seem to remember - I think it may have been in a now-deleted Talks Machina episode? - that they both had some familiarity with VtM and recognized the particular vampire clans that Taliesin had assigned them. And that, since they knew they had the hard out (and had discussed with Taliesin beforehand), they deliberately made choices that they knew would lead to their characters' deaths
"Play fair. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . and have fun."
-Mike "the pauses just get longer every video" Christensen
😂
someday the "play fair" will be at the beginning and "and have fun" at the end
Hey Mike j leaving this comment to say your videos have really helped me pull through this year. A lot of stuff has gone wrong, and aside from it all I never have time to play. I’ll spare you the trauma dumping and diagnoses but suffice to say there are days I cannot eat or get out of bed. Now I don’t mean to throw any pressure on you or make it sound like I’m totally dependent, I just want to thank you for being such a champ about this upload schedule. Having something to look forward to every day is nice. I hope you find time for a well deserved break whenever that is, though. Congrats on the kid, too!
OMG, how did I not know they did a VtM episode??? I learned roleplaying with VtM: Camarilla!
And, thank you for reminding us to vote!!!!!!
"A wild vampire Matt Collville appears"
I don't have much familiarity with VtM but, iirc, your hunger is personified as The Beast, an overwhelming feral force that gets represented by your hunger die. There's something akin to critical success and failures that are enacted by The Beast if they're rolled with your red hunger die; your drive check succeeds as your foot slams on the gas with incredible and pushes past the pedal, tearing through the car itself and meeting the open road, making you drive... faster.. somehow.. or you failed the sneaky lockpick check so The Beast comes out and, very loudly, rips the door off its hinges, or something like that idunno
This would help to explain some of the urges Taliesin gives them and the actions he has them take, like Sam, in the blink of an eye, leaping to fully draining Max despite that being a very bad idea.
Depends on the edition. VTM5 uses hunger dice, but other editions just represent hunger through what is essentially a pool of mana points. Unfortunately no one ever seemed to find a good way to combine VTM5's more evocative hunger with VTM20 or VTR2's more evocative everything else.
Iirc that lose of control at max hunger is an actual game mech where the beast takes over
As soon as you brought up Matt dying instantly by ash I fully remembered that moment, I had forgotten about that completely lol
Thank you for showing "Stanima", based on Liam's "oh shite" I think he thinks they broke Tal 😂
You are a gentleman and a scholar sir, love your work.
Thanks, I never watched this one, it's fun to see them through you!
ps I like my birthday too, which incidentally is halloween!
Yay! Thanks for doing this vid Mike! I super enjoyed it! I know your schedule is busy, well done for getting this out on Halloween! 🧡
Medleyrose aka Meesta
FYI, some Vampire the Masquerade vamps have a limitation that they ca only feed on specific prey.
This one shot definitely got me interested in learning more about VtM. I only had heard of it, knew it had decades of lore and history and had played some of the text choose your own story games set in the universe. It’s definitely intimidating! But the one shot was a great mix of spooky body horror and fun hijinks
A VtM hosted by Talisan??? Oh heck, I am watching this.
I've never played strictly VtM but I've played a fair bit of World of Darkness (you can see the WoD logo at the bottom of the book you show, Originally it was just VtM way back in og VtM which was technical pre-WoD) which is just the expanded universe essentially, same system but more creatures (though I mostly played Chronicles of Darkness technically, basically WoD 2e but its not that drastically different.) None of us were Vampires though, so we used Sin-Eaters (what I was), Changelings, Demons, and Werewolves, as well as fighting monsters and meeting NPCs from many other books/worlds but we hadn't made it to any Vampires besides briefly in passing. That said I have a copy of old-school Vampire the Masquerade and I've had a lot of fun making characters in the OG style even though I have never actually played it.
As for "is a Frankenstein monster a thing' yes. Honestly, most things are things. They are called Prometheans and they arent even just a side ting in a book they have their own book/system "Promethean the created".
The ending is funny but its extra funny to me and also a little weird that he's the one who 'set all this up' when I'm pretty sure he didn't have anything to do with Vampire The Masquerade? So it's so funny and weird that the game that is in a very completely different system is the one with him there.
i relate to the stanima incident, words are so hard sometimes :D
While, yes, there's going to be things the players don't know they don't know about any new setting - particularly in a new system - so most of the communication about a new campaign to get everyone's characters suitable is on the GM, I do think there's some questions players can ask going in to avoid a complete mismatch of character to campaign. "Hey I'm thinking of doing X, would that fit what you've got in mind?" being the most blunt force (though, also, group character creation during session 0 since some of that is making sure the PCs fit with each other), if there are some common motifs in a genre the campaign is set in and you're not entirely sure which of those the game is going for - If a Digimon inspired campaign is set in modernity or the 90s, for example - I've never met a GM to mind being asked that sort of question.
Liam may not have been able to feed because of the type (clan) of vampire he was.
my guess was that he was ventrue
I'm so sad we don't have more Masquerade or Ctulhu with Tal. He's so good at setting up the atmosphere.
When CR announced Candela Obscura, I was hyped - and then they announced that it won't be DMed by Taliesin and, well, I never watched it in the end.
Happy Spoopy Day 👻 🧛 🎃 🍬
I remember being super exited for this Oneshot, because I loved and played A LOT of Vampire (and still do). And Taelisin being the storyteller? Hell yeah! And I remember being super disappointed and hating it (quietly for myself).
Listening to your recap I think I know now why: This is a a weird and fun horror game, but Vampire the Masquerade like I knew and loved it, it is not. At least not the first episode, I never watched the second one.
This is all from my experience and your groups and experience may vary:
Vampire is a lot more grounded. Yeah, weird and supernatural stuff can happen, but it doesn't so frequently and so extreme. It's more about the politics and intrigue and the horror of posing as a human, but not being one. Seeing your loved ones slip away. Having to cut all contact, or hiding that they exist. Clinging to your humanity. Being afraid that your beast takes over (that is what happened to Sam, its normal that the ST takes away player agency in that case, but it should be communicated beforehand)
I think Taelisin mixed and matched a lot of different World of Darkness IPs (Werewolf, Changeling, Mage etc.), so it got really really weird. I think I would have been less disappointed, if they advertised it as a World of Darkness game, not Vampire in specific.
Its not about the rules, because he said he would handle them fast and lose, its about the vibe. It's just a bad representation of the game imho.
But hey, it was never a game intendet for me. So thats fine. If anyone who reads this, wants a better representation of Vampire 5th Edition, check out L.A. by Night lead by Jason Carl. Taelisin has a guest appearance there as well!
No explanation is needed for vampire Matt Colville
This reminds me of the Star Trek episode of Futurama with Melvar (the toxic fan)
I also don't specifically like Halloween, but I do like Christmas..... and my birthday. Twinsies!
17:39 🪑🪑🪑🪑🪑🪑🪑🪑🪑🪑🪑🪑🪑
If someone hasn't ponied up for you to do a Demystified about "Song of the Lorelei", I may have to do that soon.
I haven't watched this particular episode yet, but I do know the setting includes both a clan of vampires that specialises in reshaping living tissue and werespiders that can split into a bunch of smaller spiders.
The bit where Liam is unable to feed could be one of the vampire clan weaknesses that limits who you can feed off or it could be a sign he's forming a touchstone (someone/thing that connects a vampire to their old life, reducing the risk of them going feral).
In the setting werewolves often find undead offensive to their religious beliefs, leading to them helping with vampire hunts.
I would suggest watching the LA by Night chronicle that was G&S and then transferred over to WoD. Jason Carl of White Wolf Entertainment is an excellent storyteller, knows LA like the back of his hand, and fully immerses the watchers into the story. Plus the main characters played by Alex Ward, Erika Ishii, Cynthia Marie, Josphine McAdam, Xander Jeanneret, and B. Dave Walkters are phenomenal. It's Vampire 5e, and you pick up the game mechanics like you would watching CR.
I found the most effective way to get people into VTM is just to introduce them to the "What We Do In The Shadows" TV series. It's a great insight into what "vampires as people" can be like, which is the most important part of the WOD Vampire games, because "Vampires as monsters" already comes pretty easily to most people. I wouldn't be surprised at all to find out that WWDITS is inspired by VTM. It does a really good job at showing vampires as this culture of people with monumental ambitions but, due to eternal life, absolutely no sense of urgency and therefore absolutely no follow-through. They're people who are playing at politics, playing at rivalries, and playing at life, just because they may as well do something, and because in a couple of hundred years, no one's going to remember who was in charge today anyway.
leim is likely a venture a group of vampires that has issues with feeding. they have a bane(every clan get one its why mat cast no reflection) called Rarefied Tastes. pretty much they have very high standards for what they will or wont eat and can fail to drink because of it (mat is also likely a lasombra a clan of necromancer vampires that cast no reflection. which also leans into my theory they are likely dealing with a kiasyd tzimizie becuase while losambra are independent they tend to have more connections with the sabat then anarchs or camarilla. the 4 big vampire factions. and tzimizie and kiasyds tend to be sabat plus all the confirmable clans i see line up pretty well with normal sabbat or sabbat adjacent clans
LA By Night is really good if someone wanna learn the game from aktuel play :p
there might be some familiar faces.
@ 21:25, under certain circumstances in many of the WoD games, you can lose a lot of agency. A vampire under a hunger frenzy is one of those cases.
there is indeed a Frankenstein's monster in the WOD. It's called Promethean: the Created. You play a Promethean. Each kind takes on the traits of the progenitor, the first of their kind. The various Lineages of Prometheans take their roots from notable "Created" or "reconstructed" throughout folklore and fiction. So Frankenstein's Monster (like it says on the tin) and Tammuz (Golems), etc.
Additionally, if your interested in more VtM actual play, I would highly recommend PodbyNight's Stitch of Fate podcast. It's amazing.
mike are you telling us it was just a chair
HELL yes!
I need more of vampires ans Taliesin
something I want to point out as a big cow and wod fan which is the larger group vtm is a part of. pretty much every monster in World of darkness gets its own core book. but the whole play yourself thing is actually a stock bit of advice from I belive 20th edition (wod edition numbering is just as weird as dnd, given there are 13 editions of dnd but we only count 5 for them. wod had its 4th edition be named 20th annaverisy edition so it calls v 20) it might be older than that but that was how I was introduced to playing vampire werewolf and mage in the system. there are some other monsters but they are all not for new players and don't really have that narrative option of being you. you could play a wraith as you but wraith is a weird game and you could do the same with changing but mummy demons and other templates just don't work well with this approach.
i have always introduced people to the system this way. i was deep into chronicles of darkness(think the pathfinder to world of darkness excepted its owned by the same company but managed by a different company) before this episode came out. at the time cod second edition was the newest edition.
this is why vtm and wod are hard games to talk about. so much weird here important but kinda not relevant but necessary information to talk about it.
I have seen neither of the two games, but from what you described and showed this game relates to VtM about as much as something from Hunter S. Thompson relates to a newspaper. That is to say while this could happen narratively in VtM, normally it would be a dream, hallucination or the like.
The most likely reason that Liam might not want to feed on someone is because that there's a flaw you can take in VtM that makes you largely unwilling to feed from specific people
Marisha may or may not have drunk a little bit of The Eldest
Cognitive dissonance can really drive suspenseful fear because it plays on the fear of the unknown. When we see things happen that are incongruous to what we would consider "normal", we wonder why, and when there's no clear answer, that unknown becomes unnerving, potentially scary.
wait was he running Ashes to Ashes? It's a first ed VTM adventure.
I'm a bit disturbed that Talisin ran a shovel party for their first adventure.
Still it's a good way to start a newbie off...
Hey babydoll.
Carver? Is’at you? Lol
This whole thing sounds like it was orchestrated by a Malkavian.
FOr the record Liam was a a kind of vampire called a Nosferatu. THey are renown for being super ugly(on a scale of 1-5 with 2 being average and 5 being the best looking human in the world they are ALL a 0). vampire power-wise they are sneaky, strong, and good with animals.
I swear the pause between "play fair" and "and have fun" gets longer with every video
so the murder is actually a core rule for vampires called frenzy. normal rolls are involved but losing control like that is a core part of vtm. vtm has a big resource management thing going on with humanity willpower and blood and getting low on these has bad and good effects. some clans intentional frenzy to get advantages. low humanity has some advantages but is generally bad. but this lose of control is a core part of the personal horror vtm is about. losing yourself as a monster is the horror of vtm,
🎃🎃🎃
so im 90% sure alot of what going on is kiasyd bullshit. kiasyd is a blood line(like a sub clan) for vampires touched by the fea and fea magics. they are weird and alot of whats going on lines up with weird shit themeticly linked to the fea. (technicly kiasyd isn't a generic term. pretty much a kiasyd wiped out all other kiasyds not of his line and then took kiasyd as the name for his bloodline but most people still call all fea-touched vampires kiasyd. the only ones who don't are kiasyds that aren't Kiasyd on account of the whole being murdered and hiding. bloodline are also weird becuase you aren't always born as one. kiasyd for example are often just normal vamps who get fea touched. the whole game gives a real tzimisce kiasyd vib the tzimisce being flesh crafter and sorcerer vampers the most famous of whom is Dracual. they had a whole old clan new clan blood feud thing where old clan practices demonic vampire magic(because there are multiple kinds of vampire magic) and new clan practices flesh craft magic tho they are both disciplines which means anyone can learn them and a lot of the powerful members of the new clan know both. two types of blood magic is better than one(note blood magic is it own thing practiced by the tremere one of 2 possible 3 clans for vampires who were created when a group of mages seeking immortality became vampires a)
this is vtm the game i love where slightly advanced lore throws you into a rabbit hole of vampire politics and the night folk cross-contamination (night folk is a term used exclusively by mages to refer to all other monsters that are technocrats, technocrats are sify mages that refused to be called mages and instead use worlds like reality deviant because they are dicks harshing everyone mellow including their own.)
those are not werewolves. they are probably gangrels. gangrel are a clan meant to evoke that wild vampire astetic. think how dracula could turn into wolves and bats and stuff. they are pretty much the closest thing to a werewolf a vampire could be without being an abomination (abominations are werewolfs turned into vampires because werewolves are born not made in wood. well you can make werewolves but not like a spreading virus like vampire way its a magic ritual that requires you to skin a werewolf or any changing kin(the name of all were creatures which includes the objectively best kin the were shark)) they could be abominations but its unlikely tho it is something some truly mad sabbat freaks experiment with and is definitely a tizmizie thing to do.
Not liking Halloween. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, even when that opinion is wrong.
Based opinion on Trump. He needs to get fired
I think Taliesin didn't get into the details for the audience, the IRL fiction in play, but I think the feeding mechanic from Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines would genuinely just fail for me. Like, fully in-world to try, and then, ope, nope, that attempt failed. I may be misremembering that, as it has been at least a year since I played, but I remember just failing the QTE thing for it fairly often any time I spent too far away from the game.
Hey Mike, there seems to be a ringing in the Audio at the beginning, not sure if it was intentional or not. Just hit the tinnitus in a particular way.
Much love for your work
Vote for the love of god, also describing Trump’s political campaign in a channel that usually discusses D&D stuff through me through a fucking loop. It’s weird. I watch a lot of traditional, political content and I watch your content a lot and for some reason this just this is fucked with my head in a way I wasn’t prepared for now. I’m just imagine Donald Trump playing DND and it’s I mean I think it’d be a better use of his time.
Talisen’s done a great job replicating the kind of logic of a nightmare. Taking places that are familiar and twisting it in such a way that only you seem to find strange.