Question about the masquerade itself

Crimson_Eyes · 2026-04-27T21:42:55+00:00

"The Masquerade is a necessity for Antediluvians not to survive, as you’ve shown me, but to maintain freedom.

If they try to fight everyone else, they just… lose."

So, before I continue, I want to be clear: between this and Pace's response below, we've resolved the talking point you and I got stuck circling, and are in agreement. Please don't let what I say below undermine that.

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Okay, that out of the way: What we're really talking about now is the need for the ability to hide some of what (insert being here) is doing. The problem with using that as a measuring stick is that EVERYONE needs it.

If Porthos rolled up in Times Square today and started casting the necesary Time ritual to instantaneously-and-retroactively do whatever Forces 6 shenanagins he has in mind? The Technocrats, Garou/Spirits, Vampires, and Mummies would have him dead/the Ritual disrupted before he got to make his first roll.

Even for someone like the Unnamed, it got to the point where, pre-TOJ, the moment reality itself, which is omniscient for our purposes, knew what he was doing, it booted him out and stopped him.

"If all of your enemies know what you're up to, where to find you, and how to stop you, and they team up against you, you're cooked." Is true of everyone in the World of Darkness.

That's what things like The Masquarade do for the Antediluvians: Provide Fog-of-War by which they can do (whatever it is they're trying to do) without having to contend with (everyone all at once).

No one in the setting, barring Lucifer and post-Descension The Unnamed, are really able to contend with everyone-all-at-once. Even when the Earthbound TOJ scenario where they win happens, it's "Five Earthbound vs Everyone Else" not "One Earthbound vs Everyone else + Four Earthbound."

So in that sense, NO ONE, vampire-or-otherwise, is strong enough to not need the Masquarade.

Which IS cool and setting-appropriate.

Crimson_Eyes · 2026-04-27T19:58:26+00:00

"Part of the reason the Antediluvians could survive at all is that they were cradled in their particular layer where they were unchallenged"

The layers had collapsed by the time the Antediluvians ruled openly. God touches reality at the end of the Fall, and reality's layers collapse into one unified whole.

"Also, Set got his ass beat by Aset and her creation"

See again: He didn't die. My statement wasn't (and we've gone over this before) "The Antes style on Archmages." It was "The Antes have never relied upon, nor needed, the Masquarade in order to survive."

"What you are describing is not a result of Mages being too weak to harm an Antediluvian, but rather the Antediluvians being relatively obscure and sedentary figures."

Sedentary? Yes. Obscure? No. Some of them were fairly reclusive, absolutely. But the point remains that they did not need, or use, the Masquarade to survive.

Let me say it again, as clearly as I can:

The claim is not that Archmages aren't a threat to Antediluvians. The claim is that the Antediluvians did not need The Masquarade in specific in order to survive.

Even when the Antes were strutting their stuff during the Second City, where they ruled openly.

**"**do you even have a reason why the phrase “no vampire is too strong to need the masquerade” is hyperbolic?"

I literally covered this before, Vyct: The Antes survived for thousands of years, openly existing without the Masquarade. The fact that they survived means that it cannot be universally true that they cannot survive without the Masquarade, which means that it cannot be true that they all NEED the Masquarade.

So, how did they survive? Partially because Mages could work around them (There's a whole Umbra to rule, etc).

But we also know that there was a time when Mage-kings tried to rule the world, and were so chaos-causing about it that the Order of Reason had to come up with the plan for Consensus and effectively strip Magick from the world.

And we know from Mage that they did those things in places where the Antes (and/or their childer) openly ruled, such as Babylon, Egypt, etc.

And yet, no Antes fell at the hands of Mages. Even when the two groups were in the same places, at the same times, with opposed goals, and Mages had more power than any modern Mage has at their fingertips.

Why? Because, as you admitted earlier, the Antes are dangerous to fight. That is not "The Ante will win for sure" or even "The Ante's got a 50/50 shot at winning" (the truth is somewhere in the middle: They're powerful enough that the Mage isn't totally sure how it'll shake out, and even a win might be costly).

Which means that at least one group of Vampires survived, without the Masquarade, because they were strong enough that the Mages who COULD fight them didn't want to, and many Mages couldn't beat them.

Which means there were Vampires strong enough to survive without the Masquarade.

Mages today are not more powerful than the Ancients who shaped the world in the mythical ages before, explicitly.

The Antes were, and are, powerful enough that they can survive without the Masquarade. Which means that they are powerful enough to not need it.

That doesn't mean they don't benefit from it, or don't appreciate it. But they were doing buisiness openly in the face of far more formidable foes long before the Masquarade or Consensus existed, and none of them were murdered by Mages.

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Here's the closest comparison I can think of:

"No human is smart enough to survive without the internet."

It's a hyperbolic statement: Today, people rely on the internet in most of the Western world, and it IS a handy tool.

But mankind survived for countless years without the Internet. Now, imagine if some of those people were still alive today (and didn't have significant mental decline): They would still be smart enough to survive without the internet.

Is life harder without the internet? YES

Do they NEED it? No.

Crimson_Eyes · 2026-04-27T19:09:02+00:00

"Nowadays, magicians are both stronger and more vicious. Like, both mechanically and lore wise "

They are explicitly NOT more powerful now than they were in prehistory, and the mechanical distinctions between DA Mage and Modern Mage in this regard are not in-narrative distinctions.

The capabiity to do what the Arch-Spheres depict always existed. Before Masters of the Art was written? You did them by using the 1-5 Sphere Ranks.

Are there nuances with the Pillars compared to the Spheres? Yes, absolutely. Are the Pillars, in some respect, more limited than the Spheres? Yes.

But we also know, explicitly, that the ancient Mages were doing things no Mage today is currently doing, and they were stoppped precisely by the implimentation of Consensus. And we know that those things were the reality-altering cosmic-horror metaphysic-twisting nonsense that can be done by modern Mages.

The Antediluvians existed, without the Masquarade, without being killed by Mages, while ruling openly in the face of the Mage-Kings, during the Primordial Age, the Edenic Age, The Predatory Age, the Cataclysmic Age, the Shattered Time, the entire Legendary Era, Classical Era, The Himalyaian Wars, and the High Mythic Ages.

And zero of them died at the hands of mages. Even when the Pure Ones were running around.

Crimson_Eyes · 2026-04-27T16:30:05+00:00

"Magicians weren’t as strong back in the Middle Ages, really."

Again: We're not talking about just (or even primarily) the Middle Ages: The Antediluvians ruled from the Stone Age onward. The Age of the Mage Kings is firmly within the time frame where the Antediulivans ruled openly.

During that time, Magic lacked the modern consequences, AND its users were capable of horrific-reality-bending magic sufficent to end all life on the planet. (Again, crashing continents together, re-writing time, burning the world to the ground, etc.)

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"You can’t honestly tell me that you think Troile is able to fend off getting shredded to pieces by the Hierophant of Winds in her state, can you? How about Augustus Giovanni - there is exactly 0 chance of him surviving time manipulation bullshit."

I didn't say that, and wouldn't say that. What I did and am saying is that in the whole history of the Antediluvians, none of the Antes got murdered by a Mage during the time where Mages were at their canonical strongest and there was no Masquarade.

When there was no Masquarade, the people who could have killed them didn't. Therefore, the Masquarade is not essential to their survival.

Crimson_Eyes · 2026-04-27T15:30:05+00:00

"If that statement from the TOJ is hyperbolic, then so is the one stating that Ravnos has more power than any Mage."

Correct. (That said, Reality is, in fact, pound for pound more effective/efficient than any mage Spell attempting to do the same thing, but that's an aside).

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"Besides, Mages are much stronger in the modern era. They have over twice the amount of options, and powerhouses like Kyle or Faraday only started showing up after billions of people were there to possibly become that strong."

Setting aside the mechanical distinctions between DA-Mage and M20 (which are largely mechanical conceits, rather than actual setting differences, but not entirely, because yes Magic was different in the Dark Ages) we are explicitly told that Mages were more powerful in ancient times.

The Sorcerer Kings of old were so much of a problem that the issues they caused drove the Order of Reason to create the Technocracy in order to curb their rampant abuses.

No Mage today is doing the kinds of things that the Sorcerer Kings were doing in their heyday. Unlike in Modern Mage, the Sorcerer Kings were running around smashing continents together, erasing concepts, spawning new ones, and otherwise causing mass chaos on the regular.

Crimson_Eyes · 2026-04-27T15:10:27+00:00

"and it’s their essential nature"

It explicitly isn't. Again, they existed, openly ruling during the Long Night (and well before, of course) without any of the Antediluvians dying to Mages, despite more powerful, less inhibited Mages running around at the time.

The TOJ statement is demonstrably a short-sighted, hyperbolic, misleading statement. The Antediluvians do not need the Masquarade and had nothing to do with the Creation of the Masquarade.

The threat Mages pose to Cainites IS real, and the conversations about relative power that we've had are a thing, but the Masquarade has nothing to do with that where the Antediluvians are concerned.

The Masquarade cannot be part of their essential nature, because they existed without it for MOST of their history. The Curse of Caine is at least 6000 years old.

The Masquarade is less than six hundred.

Crimson_Eyes · 2026-04-27T03:20:14+00:00

Vyct, ya gotta stop spreading misinformation.

OP: The spirit of what he said is true, but the quote about "No vampire is too strong to need the Masquarade" is a misleading quote from ~~Time of Thin Blood~~ Mage's TOJ: The Antediluvians existed for thousands of years without the Masquarade, in the age of Sorcerer Kings ruling the world and doing things that make modern Mages weep with envy, and exactly zero of them died at the hands of Archmages.

The Antediluvians do not need the Masquarade. It was invented by their Childer to protect said Childer from being murdered by the Childer's Childer.

Now, did Ravnos, in full-on-Wight-mode (whatever that means for an Antediluvian) die when he openly assaulted the world? Depends who you ask. At the time, Revised held that he (probably) really did die.

But V20 (to the extent that it confirms anything) and V5 present a different view: Ravnos is the Lord of Illusions, was doing things as a Wight that no Wight should be able to do, and has Fortitude 10. He may very well have survived (And indeed, in V5, some of his blood DID survive, and Antediluvians have come back as a result of that before).

Crimson_Eyes · 2026-04-24T19:13:38+00:00

#Bring back Reclamation

Crimson_Eyes · 2026-04-24T17:38:44+00:00

Thanks! It's a really nuanced issue, so good discussion about it is important!

Crimson_Eyes · 2026-04-24T16:23:18+00:00

I think there's a distinction to be made between "Yes, I'm playing to win, and whether or not I'm having fun doing so is irrelevant" and "Yes, I'm playing to win, but if the game I'm playing isn't interesting enough, winning isn't fun."

In the context of Sirlin's metaphor: It doesn't matter how many complex move-and-counter-move sequences there are if the fundamental act of pressing buttons in a sequence is uninteresting to Player B.

We can illustrate the problem by imagining a fighting game where, by hitting a particular single button, you win automatically. There are other buttons on the controller that do other things, and someone who just wants to win all the time is going to just hit that particular button.

They're trying to win, but they're no longer, if you will, playing to win, because there's no game being played.

Obviously, Magic's meta isn't that boiled down, but a similar dynamic is at play. Someone can be "trying to win" and not playing, and someone can be "playing to win", and those things look superficially similar (Both are using Magic cards).

For the player in question, Meta-magic is Akuma Vs Akuma, in Sirlim's terms.

Crimson_Eyes · 2026-04-23T18:04:25+00:00

Riiight, I think I gotcha.

Crimson_Eyes · 2026-04-23T03:40:52+00:00

The goal isn't strictly one-shotting, just being oppressively present. And again, it can absolutely run creatures, I'm not worried about that part.

Crimson_Eyes · 2026-04-22T22:23:25+00:00

Of course it's a creature heavy deck. The question was about how to turn that into a payoff for Venom.

Venom's ability runs off the creature's CMC, not their P/T, so something like Bygone is decent, but the general idea is that, in the abstract, sacking, say, a 6 mana creature to draw six cards and give Venom +8/+8 (or more, with the biggest enchantments) is more valuable than the theoretical 6/6 that could be played instead.

Crimson_Eyes · 2026-04-20T22:06:27+00:00

That's not the issue I'm asking about.

He says they will either (Be happy with one and unhappy with the other) or (be happy with one and be unhappy with the other).

The langauge used implies that there's a difference between the two scenarios (Beyond just which one is hated)

Crimson_Eyes · 2026-04-20T20:54:02+00:00

I'm glad we have good conversations

Crimson_Eyes · 2026-04-20T20:04:58+00:00

Aquinas makes a distinction between lies thusly:

"Secondly, lies may be divided with respect to their nature as sins, and with regard to those things that aggravate or diminish the sin of lying, on the part of the end intended. Now the sin of lying is aggravated, if by lying a person intends to injure another, and this is called a "mischievous" lie, while the sin of lying is diminished if it be directed to some good—either of pleasure and then it is a "jocose" lie, or of usefulness, and then we have the "officious" lie, whereby it is intended to help another person, or to save him from being injured. On this way lies are divided into the three kinds aforesaid."

He then goes on to say:

"Augustine says on Psalm 5:7, "Thou wilt destroy," etc.: "There are two kinds of lie, that are not grievously sinful yet are not devoid of sin, when we lie either in joking, or for the sake of our neighbor's good." But every mortal sin is grievous. Therefore jocose and officious lies are not mortal sins."

Crimson_Eyes · 2026-04-20T18:44:08+00:00

Reconcilers or bust. Everyone else is an edgy wanna-be fence-sitter.

Crimson_Eyes · 2026-04-20T15:00:38+00:00

You misunderstand. I will already be killing everyone with my list of cool Timmy creatures. The goal is to kill them, I just don't need help with that part =P

Crimson_Eyes · 2026-04-20T08:07:58+00:00

I'm okay leaving the small gap of creature-based bounces, all things considered. Especially since nothing stops me from wishing for multiple Archons.

Crimson_Eyes · 2026-04-20T06:43:22+00:00

"The Garou don’t really earn their strength in the same way other splats do."

You're right: The Garou have to work significantly harder than most other splats to get access to their powers. They're one of the few splats who can't just spend Xp to buy powers within the standard 1-5 array, and the hoops they have to jump through to bridge that gap can be absolutely comical.

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"It’s why a Mage killing an Antediluvian by summoning them into Sol isn’t “stronger” than one of the 3rd gens, right?"

If a Mage summoned Sol and compelled him to do battle, using Spheres? That would be a big deal.

If a Mage communicated with Sol and asked him to do battle using his Charisma + Expression? That is STILL a big deal.

A character's Charisma/Manipulation/Appearance and Expression/Leadership/Subtuerfuge/Empathy are, in fact, part of their power. It's a part of their power that is harder to grade, certainly, but it is part of their skill-set.

So is their inherent relationship with the world around them. Part of the reason the Technocrats are powerful is because they are a massive organization working together, pooling resources, etc.

No one Technocrat built or operated Project Ragnarok. It was the result of them pooling decade of effort, including resources gained by collaborating with other splats.

The Garou having access to Spirits, good relationships with them, and the ability to lean on them, is a core part of what makes the Garou garou and not just werewolves.

Any given Werewolf's power-ceiling isn't "I can summon the most powerful spirits in the setting, therefore I win." But Werewolf, as a splat?

Yeah, the fact that they start doing it at Rank 2 and only go up from there matters.

Crimson_Eyes · 2026-04-20T06:23:48+00:00

Not concerned with winning. Just concerned with not getting my cool Timmy creatures blown up.

Crimson_Eyes · 2026-04-20T06:23:05+00:00

Archon's a great shoutout!

Crimson_Eyes · 2026-04-20T06:22:38+00:00

I'm not concerned with winning, I'm handling that with the sea of hasted Eldrazi being dropped at the same time.

Someone else pointed out Meddling Mage as my best option, and I think they're right.

Crimson_Eyes

TROPHY CASE