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sabinetzin) wrote2021-02-14 06:59 pm
sabinetzin) wrote2021-02-14 06:59 pm
Entry tags:
Masquerade hasn't looked like a word since I was a kid
So this is the story of the dumbest challenge I ever faced as a player in a TTRPG.
This is not a story about trying to do something literally impossible, like the time me and Spell Bro couldn't get up a cliff because our strength scores were too low and Spell Bro damn near killed hisself because he tried like six times anyway. It is also not a story about doing something in a really dumb way, like the time me and Spell Bro killed another party member because we were working under the assumption that being inside a T-rex would provide insulation for lightning and fire damage, which we probably should have rolled a check about instead of just deciding it was fine.
Most of those stories involve Spell Bro.
Instead this is a story about the first time I played Vampire the Masquerade, when a combination of game mechanics and the ST meant the story could barely even get started.
A key player in this situation was a friend we will call A. She was... weird, and she was married to a dude who was weirder, but she was sweet and he'd sneak you into the dollar theater and give you free popcorn (they have since divorced, which is better for everyone). They were exactly the kind of people who were upset when oWoD became nWoD. They kept pet rats, they had a weird house that had the vibe of either a fortune teller's carriage or a place where someone got murdered, and completely incongruously A loved caramel appletinis, which were very big at the time. If you've never had this beverage, it is radioactive green, sweet enough to make you die, and kind of feels like what drinking a glow stick must be like. It just goes with the ambiance to say we were drinking them.
So I don't know why it came about, but we- me, Lizzy, and Lizzy's ex D- were over at A's. VtM came up, and it was decided we'd play a one-shot. My memory is fuzzy on who all was playing and who was the ST, but I'm pretty sure A's husband was the ST, and the two players important to this story were D and me.
I pick a Nosferatu, because of course I do. D, as I recall, picks a Malkavian, because that was basically all he played. The scenario was that we had both independently been sent out to investigate, idk, a person or a macguffin, that was in this office building. I believe that we knew someone else was also investigating, but nothing about them.
Now, in the original VtM, the rules for the Masquerade used to be tighter and matter more. If you were in the Camarilla, you could be summarily executed for a Masquerade breach. I think you still can in V5, but there's much more of a sense that you can just be penalized or let off with a warning, especially if you're not actually in the Camarilla. It was, of course, essentially still mandatory to be in the Camarilla in oWoD, and we were newbie players, so of course we hadn't got into all that shit.
Crucially, under the old rules, though I think these were eventually revised in a supplement, if a Nosferatu showed their form in public under any circumstances, it was an immediate Masquerade violation. That was the tradeoff with Nos, and still is: you're incredibly powerful but you have to stay in the shadows or else.
They're still the best clan and I will fight you for the honor of the Nosferatu.
So I'm playing a Nos, and I have to go above ground, which is a bad start, but I'm wearing the traditional Nos uniform of a black hoodie and a hunted expression. I've been told the office building is empty, so it's not too big of a deal to get in and get where I'm going.
I get to this office, I start on the lock, and this other guy kinda sidles up. He looks perfectly normal, and I, Sabine, know it's D's character. My character, who I actually think may have been named Lily, which is deeply ironic, has no idea, and is very cognizant of the fact she could have to kill this guy if he gets up in her business.
"I'll introduce myself," D says.
"Remember," the ST says, "you can't break the Masquerade."
"Uhh," I say. "But we're completely alone and I can just kill him."
"She's right," D says.
"It's still a breach of the Masquerade," the ST says.
So D and I are just kind of fumbling through this cloak and dagger style, because we're both trying not to reveal that we're vampires doing something illegal, when both the characters and the players know it. According to the ST, we couldn't even say the word "vampire" or "Masquerade" without breaking the Masquerade.
What made this such a dumb challenge that was not fun and stuck in my head was that, one, having now STed for this game I know that it is not a Masquerade violation to reveal yourself to another vampire and insisting it is is an asinine interpretation of the rules, and two, the inflexibility of the ST in not accepting a solution that was perfectly logical and in keeping with the setting made it suck. If I'd broken the Masquerade, I'd just have fuckin killed him. I'm a Nos! I literally eat mortals for breakfast! The Nos are known for their humanity but buddy roe I will kill kine who get in my way when I'm trying to do Camarilla business. The Camarilla also do not possess some kind of detection system for breaches of the Masquerade; they find out from the results and vampires snitching.
After several minutes of this, I broke. "I pull down my hood," I say.
"You can be executed for that," the ST says, and I do it anyway.
D's character, being a vampire but also being a Malk, is repulsed by my character, but now I've proven my bona fides and we can actually start working on this mystery.
"We'll come back to the Masquerade violation later," the ST says ominously. That never actually happened, because of course it didn't.
I actually still love Vampire, though I was always more of an nWoD person. This incident is not a reason.
This is not a story about trying to do something literally impossible, like the time me and Spell Bro couldn't get up a cliff because our strength scores were too low and Spell Bro damn near killed hisself because he tried like six times anyway. It is also not a story about doing something in a really dumb way, like the time me and Spell Bro killed another party member because we were working under the assumption that being inside a T-rex would provide insulation for lightning and fire damage, which we probably should have rolled a check about instead of just deciding it was fine.
Most of those stories involve Spell Bro.
Instead this is a story about the first time I played Vampire the Masquerade, when a combination of game mechanics and the ST meant the story could barely even get started.
A key player in this situation was a friend we will call A. She was... weird, and she was married to a dude who was weirder, but she was sweet and he'd sneak you into the dollar theater and give you free popcorn (they have since divorced, which is better for everyone). They were exactly the kind of people who were upset when oWoD became nWoD. They kept pet rats, they had a weird house that had the vibe of either a fortune teller's carriage or a place where someone got murdered, and completely incongruously A loved caramel appletinis, which were very big at the time. If you've never had this beverage, it is radioactive green, sweet enough to make you die, and kind of feels like what drinking a glow stick must be like. It just goes with the ambiance to say we were drinking them.
So I don't know why it came about, but we- me, Lizzy, and Lizzy's ex D- were over at A's. VtM came up, and it was decided we'd play a one-shot. My memory is fuzzy on who all was playing and who was the ST, but I'm pretty sure A's husband was the ST, and the two players important to this story were D and me.
I pick a Nosferatu, because of course I do. D, as I recall, picks a Malkavian, because that was basically all he played. The scenario was that we had both independently been sent out to investigate, idk, a person or a macguffin, that was in this office building. I believe that we knew someone else was also investigating, but nothing about them.
Now, in the original VtM, the rules for the Masquerade used to be tighter and matter more. If you were in the Camarilla, you could be summarily executed for a Masquerade breach. I think you still can in V5, but there's much more of a sense that you can just be penalized or let off with a warning, especially if you're not actually in the Camarilla. It was, of course, essentially still mandatory to be in the Camarilla in oWoD, and we were newbie players, so of course we hadn't got into all that shit.
Crucially, under the old rules, though I think these were eventually revised in a supplement, if a Nosferatu showed their form in public under any circumstances, it was an immediate Masquerade violation. That was the tradeoff with Nos, and still is: you're incredibly powerful but you have to stay in the shadows or else.
They're still the best clan and I will fight you for the honor of the Nosferatu.
So I'm playing a Nos, and I have to go above ground, which is a bad start, but I'm wearing the traditional Nos uniform of a black hoodie and a hunted expression. I've been told the office building is empty, so it's not too big of a deal to get in and get where I'm going.
I get to this office, I start on the lock, and this other guy kinda sidles up. He looks perfectly normal, and I, Sabine, know it's D's character. My character, who I actually think may have been named Lily, which is deeply ironic, has no idea, and is very cognizant of the fact she could have to kill this guy if he gets up in her business.
"I'll introduce myself," D says.
"Remember," the ST says, "you can't break the Masquerade."
"Uhh," I say. "But we're completely alone and I can just kill him."
"She's right," D says.
"It's still a breach of the Masquerade," the ST says.
So D and I are just kind of fumbling through this cloak and dagger style, because we're both trying not to reveal that we're vampires doing something illegal, when both the characters and the players know it. According to the ST, we couldn't even say the word "vampire" or "Masquerade" without breaking the Masquerade.
What made this such a dumb challenge that was not fun and stuck in my head was that, one, having now STed for this game I know that it is not a Masquerade violation to reveal yourself to another vampire and insisting it is is an asinine interpretation of the rules, and two, the inflexibility of the ST in not accepting a solution that was perfectly logical and in keeping with the setting made it suck. If I'd broken the Masquerade, I'd just have fuckin killed him. I'm a Nos! I literally eat mortals for breakfast! The Nos are known for their humanity but buddy roe I will kill kine who get in my way when I'm trying to do Camarilla business. The Camarilla also do not possess some kind of detection system for breaches of the Masquerade; they find out from the results and vampires snitching.
After several minutes of this, I broke. "I pull down my hood," I say.
"You can be executed for that," the ST says, and I do it anyway.
D's character, being a vampire but also being a Malk, is repulsed by my character, but now I've proven my bona fides and we can actually start working on this mystery.
"We'll come back to the Masquerade violation later," the ST says ominously. That never actually happened, because of course it didn't.
I actually still love Vampire, though I was always more of an nWoD person. This incident is not a reason.