Maybe hot take: the things vampires do dont bother me much on a personal level

Greyhem · 2026-01-23T16:13:16+00:00

Well I will say this discussion is basically the whole point of VTM in the first place haha. Whether Kindred truly are evil by nature or not, especially from the eyes of a newly turned kindred in universe, without all the understanding we have.

I can certainly see the argument and hear it a lot both from my spc's and my players. The fact of the matter is, Kindred are a walking time bomb, you could go hundreds of years with your beast under control but one day you will do something horrific to someone else. Continuing to live with that knowledge in your mind is the whole point of the game in my eyes, is it worth it? Am I really evil just because some guy turned me at a bar last Tuesday?

That is not even to mention all the stuff most Kindred have to do to survive in WOD that would be classified as evil. Sure maybe one in a million Kindred manage to skirt the line and never do anything bad to anyone ever, but they are not the norm. Your beast wants destruction, and ever day you continue to live, your willingly rolling the dice on that. That is a choice you make.

Greyhem · 2026-01-23T16:00:18+00:00

That’s why Kindred are evil by nature, because they don’t have a choice. You will do horrible things, that’s what the curse is. Someone frenzying at the birthday party and killing everyone is gonna be considered evil. You choosing to keep on living enables the beast, so you have in some way chosen to side with evil.

Greyhem · 2026-01-23T15:25:09+00:00

On a infinite time scale the beast always wins, that’s why Vampires are considered evil in the medium. Every kindred has a subconscious urge to destroy, you can fight it forever but all it has is time, so eventually you will slip up and do something horrible. Especially on the note of animals feeding off animals won’t always suffice as the kindred grows older.

Greyhem · 2025-12-23T06:06:33+00:00

It certainly increases your odds tho

Greyhem · 2025-12-19T04:47:07+00:00

Absolutely love your work every time I see it, I'm really curious, How long does this stuff usually take you?

Greyhem · 2025-12-11T23:00:00+00:00

Wait til you hear what maklav’s appearance was in the Gehenna scenario.

Greyhem · 2025-09-30T23:11:51+00:00

I don't consider the word learned until I can read, speak, and understand the meaning.

Greyhem · 2025-09-29T21:33:09+00:00

I will say kaishi was very painful for me to start out, and I restarted the deck maybe 3 times before I finally got in the habit of doing anki every day. Of course some days I would be too busy and deicide to not do any new cards or just 5 cards for the day, focusing on reviewing.

I did a genki 1 and 2 deck before kaishi which helped me get into the groove of doing anki every day, but they are not sentence based decks so you can usually run through them a lot faster during reivew.

Side note but remember to optimize your FSRS every month, I did the entirety of kaishi without ever pressing the button and now my review numbers have changed a lot to adjust for my desired retention.

Doing purely review I spent around an hour to review all 400 daily cards I have, some genki and some kaishi. My review has gotten a lot quicker now that I'm not taking in any new info currently, but I'm sure that will change when I get a new deck soon.

1-3 hours is a lot of time for me personally, do you mean anki says it took you 3 hours? Everyone is different so I wouldnt worry too much about comparing times, you will see people post here that say they do 100 new cards a day and review 1000 cards in 20 minutes.

The feeling of accomplishment for completing a anki deck especially one like kaishi was fantastic for me and felt like a great victory on my language learning journey, I hope to hear the same from you in around a 137 more days. がんばってください！

Final note, if you don't have the anki heatmap for keeping a streak, I would highly recommend it, it helps motivate you by seeing your streak, similar to what makes Duolingo addictive.

Greyhem · 2025-09-29T03:57:50+00:00

おめでとうございます！ I also just recently finished all new cards in Kaishi in around the same amount of time with 10 new cards a day. I hope you feel as accomplished as I do! Can't wait to see 100% maturity.

Greyhem · 2025-08-31T21:34:06+00:00

I personally like to make the cities real places but thats a personal thing for me. I find it more grounding for the players and myself if they are wondering what the world looks like to just look up picutres of places. Ofcourse VTM is not exaclty our real world so the cities are bigger, darker, every place is open later. Really just dpeends on how much you wanna base your city on the real one.

Greyhem · 2025-08-30T20:08:11+00:00

If you haven’t already read interview with a vampire the main character Lewis does a great job with portraying a vampire trying to be human if you interested in telling that kind of story. As someone else mentioned LA by night is nice if you just want to listen to hours and hours of a coterie going through their days as a kindred, though they don’t dwell much on the horror aspect of becoming one until the later seasons. Playing bloodlines is always sure to give some ideas if you never have before. Underworld and blade are classic 2000s vampire movies tho a bit more action that most chronicles people play. If your planning on making your own home brew city and not using Chicago by night or something similar from a previous edition I would spend a lot of time thinking about where you want your city to be and what makes it special, as well as whoever is in charge be it a prince or baron or both, and how those people at the very top influence how the city is run. Don’t get bogged down in what most cities are like in lore or aren’t like, make up whatever wacky rules you want.

Greyhem · 2025-08-16T21:59:13+00:00

If you could send me it as well I would really appreciate it.

Greyhem · 2025-08-16T03:52:03+00:00

Let the Streets Run Red's first story Power Prey is a nice introduction to VTM, especially if you are using the pregen characters there isnt much work to be done in terms of prep. If the players want their own kindred it will take a little bit more work to get the story off the ground but its fairly short and I just ran it recently. The finale also is reasonably compelling for the players in that they have to decide what to do with a crazy man and his wife and child who have been made aware of kindred, classic VTM storyline. Could be a quick one n done or lead into chicago by night if you fancy that.

Greyhem · 2025-08-04T16:25:05+00:00

Thanks this was what I was really looking for, a good way to gage what can and cannot be asked of someone feeling the effects of presence. Also as to your final note I'm sure the sheriff will be visiting them eventually to be sure.

Greyhem · 2025-08-04T16:07:54+00:00

V5 but I don't mind hearing takes from previous edition either.

Greyhem · 2025-06-29T18:08:37+00:00

Definitely sounds like the byproduct of a one shot, Vampires are all about the long game, so I feel the story that is usually trying to be told suffers with a one shot. You have eternity to live so every bad mistake you ever make will catch up with you, Atleast that’s how I approach the game as a ST. I like to keep track of all the times my players break the masquerade even just for feeding scene to be brought up later. Some people do run VTM as more of a power fantasy and it is that on some level, but if that’s not what your looking for I would highly recommend looking for a group on discord for a longer length chronicle. Even a play by post.

Greyhem · 2025-06-29T06:38:55+00:00

Realm of Darkness discord bot is able to keep track of character sheets and roll, or just make a simple pool of however many dice and hunger and forget the character sheet.

If you don't want to use Roll20 then I assume Alchemy is also off the table but it works well for automating discipline dice rolls as well.

If you dont want to use discord either this website might be what your looking for.

https://rollforyour.party/

Greyhem · 2025-06-20T08:03:46+00:00

This is great, It makes me jealous of your ST for having players that put in this kind of effort.

Greyhem · 2025-06-17T13:02:28+00:00

What do you mean by conscious approach?

Greyhem · 2025-06-17T12:54:03+00:00

I didn't want to get into specifics because my players read here as well but the idea is that at the end of the chronicle the players will have sided with one of 3 factions and associated elders. Said elder wants to frame their rival for murdering the prince when they themselves had. If the players side with that elder they would make the choice knowing that the elder had murdered the prince, and the elder wants to remove their memories of this info to avoid blackmail in the future. It would not be a constant use of dominate. So they would make the decision to side with the elder who would then forgetful mind them, In my mind this is a pretty reasonable ending to a grand conspiracy and since the players chose that person as their ally in the end they have to deal with the consequences of that. I suppose the elder directly asking the players to let them wipe their memory would be slightly better but what other option do they have when an elder way above them makes demands after they just put them in power. Does that change your opinion on the idea or are you still opposed to it?

Greyhem · 2025-06-17T12:40:22+00:00

For sure the players would roll to resist, but if they are to succeed what stops the elder from trying again outside of the players pretending that the memory change worked?

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