this post was submitted on 06 Jun 2023
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Discussion of table top roleplaying games.
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I loved the Bloodlines crpg, but somehow I feel that in ttrpg the vampires/PCs will inevitably end up as edgelords, much better than ordinary humans. How can GM mitigate that?
While I love the Bloodlines game it's a very different beast. As all computer games it suffers a lot from "D&Dization" or in other words extreme focus on combat, not to mention that most computer games try to make you feel like you're special, you're THE dragonborn, THE ONLY person that can do X, you are powerful, you are unique, and if your character fails or even dies, you go back and try again, so on the cannon of the game you never fail.
TTRPGS can be very different, yes your vampire is very powerful and can take a bullet to the head and lift a car, you are superhuman.... too bad you live in an inhuman world, in the vampire world PCs are at the bottom of the pile, being "much better than ordinary humans" is as much of a threat to an older vampire as being "much better than ordinary ants" is to humans. To give an example the prince of the city that can tell you "you are annoying me, go take a walk on the sun", and there's absolutely nothing you can do to prevent your body from walking directly into sunlight.
Secondly Vampire is NOT focused on combat, as a GM you can give some combat against humans or lesser vampires to make them feel powerful once in a while, but if they try to face every conflict as if it were a physical conflict they will have a bad time. Older vampires don't play fair, they might throw hunters, werewolves or just simply money to deal with a problematic vampire, think about it this way you probably could beat Jeff Bezos in a fair fight, but you would never have the opportunity because if you even become a small annoyance he has enough money to make you disappear and make your life miserable, he can hire someone(s) to follow you around and buy every building you rent and kick you out of it, buy every store where you shop and close it, buy every taxi app available in your locality and ban you from it, find every single thing that you like and take it away from you, money buys power, and older vampires have infinite amounts of both.
Last but not least, Vampire is a game of personal horror, yes you are strong but that doesn't help you to deal with the monster within. Everyone you know is bound to get dragged to it, you don't just leave everything behind, what does it matter if you can survive a bullet to the head if the person is pointing it at your sister because you accidentally killed his sister and he knows you will survive a bullet. Even if you managed to keep them away from others, you are a danger, you can snap and kill them because you're hungry, you are a threat to every human that comes near you, but staying away from humans is not an option, since you will forget what it's like to be a human and you will loose yourself to the inner beast that is trying to take control. And while this last point might seem that players can just RP their way out of, Vampire has rules for humanity and newer versions have mechanics for keeping humans nearby as tokens of humanity, this makes it so that the player feels the problem of losing a sister and can't just say "oh well, I guess I don't have a sister anymore" because that means he has lost humanity, he has become more of a monster, and when the beast within wins the player loses the character.
Sorry for the long reply, but Vampire is one of my favourite RPGs.
That was a very good read, thank you for such thorough post