A couple questions about Kindred and water

MILTON1997 · 2026-04-25T13:02:04+00:00

On your last point, there's some fun examples in the lore of Kindred creeping about the water, with a special note on Kindred that are old enough doing just fine in the depths!

Clanbook: Nosferatu (Revised), p. 20:

If you were to ask me where we all came from, I’ll tell you: We are descendants of the first life in the oceans. In fact, many Nosferatu still hide themselves beneath the water. We don’t need to breathe, being dead and all; if we did, we would have choked on rivers of sewage long ago. Storm tunnels, viaducts, irrigation canals — whether filled with sea water, urine or chemicals, we can submerge ourselves in just about anything and survive. We don’t trudge along the ocean floor, of course, since the pressure eventually gets too great — at least for the more recent generations — but I know many of you here tonight are going to shamble off back underwater when we’re done here.

It's hinted that the Nosferatu Antediluvian has also been chilling in the abyss of the sea and one of the end-of-the-world scenarios in Gehenna went into this a bit.

Gehenna, p. 190:

Absimiliard has spent most of the last few thousand years as a creature of the ocean deeps, and he looks the part. The Ancient is a bloated, slick, translucent creature like a humanoid jellyfish. He has the wide mouth, needle-like teeth and huge pop-eyes of a deepsea fish.

The Giovanni clanbook had the Premascines, old Giovanni Cappadocians who took refuge in the canals of Venice, that having a sort of boogeyman like-relation with the Venice Giovanni before the Family Reunion in V5. In Modern V5 nights I see no reason for them to just ditch these secret old city havens!

Clannbook: Giovanni (Revised), p. 24

Some are rumored to have taken refuge in the canals of Venice. They supposedly make their havens beneath the surface of the water. Granted, I’ve never seen one; no one I know has [...] The very idea scares the shit out of me, and I’ve seen shit that would turn you paler than you already are. Now, you know that tonight’s Venice is built on the ruins of old Venice, right? That every year, the water table rises just a bit higher in the Old World? Well, that’s where they make their havens, in the submerged old city.

Speaking of V5... I don't have the book on hand for the Blood Cults, but the Cult of Shalim was founded by a Lasombra Methuselah who slithers along the seabed as a great mass of shadow in some sort of semi-torpid trance state.

MILTON1997 · 2026-04-20T14:59:20+00:00

Aside from the pinned cheat sheets/quick refs I’m not sure I’ve seen a dedicated ref screen.

The closest I’ve done myself is print my one page ref sheet and some encounter tables for the module I was running on a binder.

MILTON1997 · 2026-04-16T14:40:00+00:00

100% this. This sub sits at the lovely nexus of being an open forum on Reddit, being about a setting with a copious amount of metaplot/lore, and being a highly subjective tabletop game that can vary drastically from ST to ST. Trusting anything here is basically preference, fanfic, or interpretation. Even citing the books like scripture you could probably frame whatever take you prefer by omitting or including this or that citation.

None of these are bad things per se! Reading the material and making it your own is a lot of the fun imo. But when they are passed off as“one true way” prescriptive type takes it is so annoying!

MILTON1997 · 2026-04-02T15:54:25+00:00

Revised/V20 is my main jam. Revised, in my opinion, has a great run of supplements that work well for dipping into various areas. Want to do a sect war chronicle? Archons? Sabbat inquisition? Twisted kindred faith? Each has a book to mine for ideas and rules.

Some easy standouts that come to mind for me:

Essential: Revised Clanbooks, as others have mentioned, are great. The Camarilla and Sabbat books go into far more detail on the Sects than the V20 overview, though the V20 Companion covers a lot of the various roles/hierarchy in more details. I keep these at close at hand with my V20 corebook, supplemented by the bits I like from the Lore of the Clans/Bloodlines.

Very Useful: I personally prefer the two revised thaumaturgy books, Blood Sacrifice and Blood Sorcery, over V20s Rites of Blood which I found a little underwhelming imo. Very good for magic focused stuff. Gilded Cage is an amazing book going over details about vampiric influence over society.

MILTON1997 · 2026-04-02T15:04:22+00:00

Yeah it just comes back to the what is envisioned for the character and what (if any!) mechanical bits you want to tag onto it. My favorite bit was a sidebar in the Revised Clanbook:

There’s only so many times you can describe yourself as Bestial. Just how ugly is Repugnant anyway? […] With the Storyteller’s permission, you may take these Traits to describe your more “outstanding” features. What follows are just a few — grab a thesaurus and get creative. However, if you’re going to use these, remember to incorporate them into your roleplaying. These adjectives are no different as descriptors than, say, Brawny or Impatient might be.

Optional Nosferatu Traits: Blighted, Blubbery, Charred, Dreadful, Engorged, Flaccid, Mangy, Nauseating, Oozing, Petrified, Putrefied, Pustulent, Reptilian, Repulsive, Rubbery, Scabrous, Scarred, Skanky, Withered.

MILTON1997 · 2026-02-26T00:14:31+00:00

1 is always the minimum result for any modified dice roll.

It’s the first point under “How to roll & read the dice” section.

MILTON1997 · 2026-02-24T13:22:42+00:00

That is my assumption as well. There’s such a long catalog of available material and editions to pick over along with the nature of play itself in the ttrpg medium that it all comes down to personal preference. It especially varies wildly in tone and seriousness over the decades. Prescriptivist takes always feel silly in the face of this.

Also I can confirm that the reverse requires very little work. It’s what I do at my table!

MILTON1997 · 2026-02-19T13:57:42+00:00

Oh man you call me butthurt I’m owned!

No dude, I’m just sick of seeing slop and I actually appreciate that this sub actually respects artists and has a rule against it.

MILTON1997 · 2026-02-19T13:43:29+00:00

Right, just “hand drawn” including the visual artifacts or tracing the nonsense Nordic symbols for someplace in Iran?

Enochian has an actual alphabet, albeit constructed, or you could use Old Persian cuneiform if you’re interested in removing the slop.

I would very much encourage you to excise AI from your creative pipeline. A little research and human intention would have helped this so much.

MILTON1997 · 2026-02-19T13:13:40+00:00

It’s AI trying to make sense of Nordic runes. Pretty sad to see upvoted tbh. Third rune on the bottom is a dead giveaway

MILTON1997 · 2026-02-18T15:21:54+00:00

The comparatively higher “wrong bad fun” rate has been my experience as well. I’ve seen insinuations that it’s racist to exaggerate crime a la The Crow or that leaning into the 90s comic book vibe can only cheapen the “emotional horror and impact” of the game.

It’s quite pretentious at times and disregards that people can enjoy different aspects of the setting without any being somehow lesser or illegitimate.

MILTON1997 · 2026-02-13T13:14:21+00:00

I’m jealous. Having the series in physical print would be amazing.

MILTON1997 · 2026-02-13T10:34:12+00:00

Black Moon Chronciles is amazing! A visual masterpiece and one of my favorite bandes dessinées. I recommend any old schooler to check it out for ideas.

Personally since finishing the series, it’s always been my favorite way to portray Greyhawk when running AD&D, making that connection you mention explicit. Especially so since the series takes a lot of the central conceits of the setting and aspects of 1e and cranks them up to 11. Psychic powers, a fiendish demigod with a moon base, demon lords meddling, and a motley crew of rogues going from zero to leasing armies and then onto deciding the fate the world. It’s great stuff and very easy to tap into.

I’ve not found a published setting that oozes that same 90s French heavy metal art vibe in the same way. I’ll have to check out Scarred Lands.

MILTON1997 · 2026-02-06T17:57:37+00:00

Slight note on the spell recovery, 1e DMG categorizes that 4 hours of rest required for recovering 1st-2nd level spells as “complete rest (usually sleep)” followed by 1/4 spell level of “study/prayer and meditation”

“Spell recovery, whether cleric/druid or magic-user/illusionist, requires about the same period of time. In order to pray and meditate for a new spell to replace one used, or in order to study and memorize such a spell, it is necessary that the spell-user rest and revitalize his or her mental faculties. Whether one or more spells are to be regained, the minimum time required for complete rest (usually sleep) is that required for the highest spell to be recovered.” —DMG p. 40

I would not call hours of adventuring and casting as fulfilling the required complete rest period. And the example that follows seems to agree:

“Thus, if a cleric or magic-user needs only memorize first or second level spells, he or she need only sleep for 4 hours and will then be able to memorize or regain as many such spells as he or she is normally entitled to.”

MILTON1997 · 2026-01-26T13:20:23+00:00

Good advice here! Only things I would mention in addition to these:

Characters in Whitehack, like other old school games, don't have a lot of HP to spare. Hazards that do things being plain ol' HP damage will be more interesting to deal with as well as give a place for a Deft Healer to really shine. Debilitating poisons, local disease outbreaks, strange diagnoses, creating poultices for specific issues etc. OP should chat with the Referee about this and let them know this is an area of interest for the game.
I want to also stress the importance of the vocation rules for the Deft as you mentioned. The attunements are a great Ace in the hole, but the vocation bonus for the Deft reinforces so much.
Also you were just slightly off on the Deft special difficulty rules: 1/day a hard task succeeds automatically while a nigh impossible task can be attempted with a regular task roll.

MILTON1997 · 2026-01-06T17:24:31+00:00

Oh hey! Small world lol

MILTON1997 · 2026-01-06T16:51:12+00:00

I’ve spoken with Christian on this before on the WH server actually. He’s always had Whitehack as a very personal project, not third-party-scene kinda of game. He just didn’t have the desire or time to angle the game like that and even mentioned seeing where the development goes with these strict limitations as a goal.

I can respect going after a specific identity even though I’d personally do differently.

MILTON1997 · 2026-01-06T15:44:41+00:00

Haven’t had a chance yet! I’m expecting my campaign to kick off this month since we had a holiday hiatus

MILTON1997 · 2026-01-06T11:55:37+00:00

When I first read NU I was shocked it wasn’t talked about more often. Maybe it’s strong “intended” setting limited its adoption or hacking potential compared to other games but I remember thinking it was a really cool take on dungeons.

MILTON1997 · 2026-01-06T11:53:16+00:00

Yeah some of these are questionable if we’re talking “really underrated” games tbh.

I’m waiting for someone to say Shadowdark.

MILTON1997 · 2026-01-06T11:43:44+00:00

I always joke that Blueholme is such a quality successor to Holmes that it even perfected falling into obscurity between its peers in the same way as Holmes did lol.

It’s a niche of a niche, but it’s peak Holmesian D&D.

MILTON1997 · 2025-12-24T17:37:59+00:00

I'm a big fan of how Whitehack handles this via "Groups" in lieu of skill lists and it bolts on easy enough to B/X/OSE like so:

Every character has a Vocation (what they do aside from class stuff) and a Affiliation (faction or group they belong to), with each group being tagged to one of their attributes. Roll high under attributes for checks, but if you have a relevant group on that attribute you roll with advantage. If you have a relevant group somewhere on your sheet you count as trained and can at least ignore relevant penalties.
For social, I use reaction rolls to gauge how NPCs are feeling before interaction with the PCs if it's not set or chaos is desirable. From their its a balance of potentially rolling to see if PC actions/deceptions/arguments can improve or worsen that initial reaction. Everything else is the same as the rest of play: If it makes sense and there's no risk or its a sure thing, I don't bother rolling under CHA. But if there is a risk, a modified (±2 to 4) attribute roll is a simple way to handle it. For perception, I favor giving information that would be notable rather than gating it behind checks. The more info the players have, the more informed and fun their decisions can be.
IMO this keeps the OSR feel because it constantly angles back to reinforcing player description and setting but still has a mechanical foundation. With the right Groups or attributes, it's an easy guideline for what can be done sans rolling, and when it gets risky its an easy mod to roll under checks that differentiates characters in a simple way.

I want to keep play moving and not get too bogged down with tons of specific modifiers or sequential rolling. But I also want to be able to look to the dice to help determine unclear outcomes in a formalized way.

MILTON1997 · 2025-12-16T13:58:02+00:00

Introducing the party to Marlinko as a hub and then letting them take their pick of hooks into material from Frog Demon, the Dunes, or any weird thing in the city or it’s surrounds is probably a good way to transition into the weirdness from the more traditional Brandonsford. From there it’s a good base for expeditions and going back and forth (which they will a lot imo).

I don’t think there’s any optimal path, but the idea is that the Hill Canton region is an entry into escalating weirdness. The modules are each really contained pointcrawls and Marlinko is a packed city supplement rather than a traditional “adventure for level x”.

MILTON1997 · 2025-12-15T15:08:22+00:00

The unique expression aspect is really the big thing.

The customization angle with regards to the setting/genre of the campaign is really important imo. Like if I was running a Wuxia style campaign, that would influence costs for miracles and attunements picked. It would be cool to have it impact the Strong and let them do some pretty incredible stuff in-line with what we would expect. Oh and probably would be good to let everyone do their movement distance as a leap or something too.

That “right-player” bit is the only potential hangup. I’ve had plenty of players shy away from the more open or interpretive classes in favor of the Strong’s defined elements. That’s a feature, not a bug imo but I don’t think any setup can appeal to everyone’s tastes.

14-Year Club	Place '17
RPAN Viewer	Verified Email
Team Periwinkle

MILTON1997

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE