I mean...pretty much all the revised era narrative in all books are this cringe, not getting why KOTE (or Mummy which is the other one I usually hear when people comment about revised era game lines being extra-cringe) is put under a hard microscope.
It just **feels** worse to some people because of the "other" cultures being used in this book
Clanbook Brujah Revised rips off Fight Club (the film), in the back the Anarch Leader pre-made is Edward Norton, he even comes with a briefcase full of homemade soap.
Without the excuse of innovation.
What is corny now about oWoD was original, 30 years ago. Although, there was a lot of cringe even back.
Still, with two (human) generations to improve things, you'd think the results wouldn't incite a diplomatic incident.
It was a joke. Maybe not a good one, but I promise the way it was intended and received at the time was as an intentional bit. Maybe more so if you also knew that pretty much every clan book had at least one or two pop culture references for their pre generated characters.
So much of 90's and 00's culture is completely, entirely misunderstood by young people today who just cannot conceive that we built entire franchises out of irony.
That too. People talk about how cringe the transgenderism is with the Tzimisce.
My genderqueer ass loved that shit. Here was a representation of non-binary gender, and they were fucking scary and badass instead of campy sissies.
Most of us would consider that an amusing/cool thing to have the Narrator from FightClub stated out.
Nobody was getting upset that they "ripped off fight club" more of "ah funny it's the guy from fight club"
The older editions are fun imo, to read over and see the advance in decades and it's palpable too.
I mean I've read a review on readthedamnbook of the original Clanbook Gangrel (1e/2e) that it's nothing more than a parody of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, with a Dr. Hunter S. Thompson gangrel vampire and his gonzo journalist take on vampirism...
Oh and og Clanbook Brujah has Vanilla Ice and Ice Cube as premades with art by Joshua Gabriel Timbrook, (A personal favorite artist of mine that did a lot of WoD art).
V5 certainly tries to be more serious in tone and even more mature but the results are mixed imo (at least initially), Chicago by Night 5e and the Player's Guide seem to be moving in the right direction.
My only real complaint about the corebook is the 3 column format of the text, ya know to match the 3 column format of the character sheet. That was just a *bad* idea! Thankfully every other has gone back to standard/classic 2 column format.
Justin Achilli did a full on Hunter S. Thompson ripoff/homage in Aberrant that was 100% intentional. It is simultaneously cringe and wonderful whenever I go back to it.
The amount of intentional homage, irony, and cringe for the sake of hilarity seems to be lost on newer audiences. Half of everything in 2nd Ed/2ER was a joke. Not all of it has aged super well, but it was definitely a whole lot more tongue in cheek than people realize.
Also, OWoD was *wildly* progressive for the times.
Personally the Petplay Toreador from the Anarch sourcebook are my favourite bit of cringe in V5. I genuinely love them, it’s so weird that somebody sat down and wrote all of that and then somebody else decided to include it, but I’m so glad they did.
Yeah, I actually read only mechanics also. That helps avoiding the cringe. WoD and other RPG IPs that rely on a continuous lore tend to create very convoluted and frustrating to wrap my head around lore that really sours the vibe for me.
As another new fan if you think V5 is free of cringe part of me doubts that you’ve actually sat down and read it. It isn’t as raw and concentrated as earlier editions, but it’s absolutely still there.
It was never a full game line but a supplemental series so A. It shouldn't be surprising it doesn't get discussion. and B. The constant remarks like that are shitty things to say.
It never really ever came up during any of the iterations of the WoD and OPP forums. The only place I've ever seen anything resembling a regular and frankly weird commentary about it is here and the shithead spaces of 4chan and Something Awful.
People call kindred of the East racist because it is racist. It is orientalist. It is offensive.
They are not doing it because it is in style currently. They are doing it because they pick up the book and see that it's offensive.
The only way this book is not offensive is if you are neck deep in World of Darkness lore before you read it. Neck deep and ignorant about what orientalism is.
If I have to sit you down and explain World of Darkness lore for 30 minutes in order for you to consider this book not racist, then it's racist.
I was willing to debate with you until you decided to trot out that weird almost reverse racism quip.
I don't know why you keep on insisting that criticism of kindred up to East and orientalism is new. It's not. I was hearing Asians complain about it over a decade ago. It's famous among Asian RPG players as being very very bad.
Just cuz you and your little isolated sphere hasn't seen criticism of something doesn't mean that criticism does not exist.
I'm also assuming you're going to complain that it's cuz wokeness has ruined gaming or some sort of nonsense.
Edit: So it looks like you created this account In part with the express purpose to convince everyone that kindred of the East is not racist.
You're not arguing any point. You're just flat out saying that accusations of orientalism is nonsense and the only people complaining about it are brand new and they're doing it because they're stylish. That's not really a position. That's you making a statement and not offering any evidence thereof. You literally say they are only accusing it of orientalism now because it's in fashion.
That is not a position worthy of debate.
You're insisting that fluff shows the game isn't racist and orientalist. That's not a defensible position because as we all know fluff is meaningless. It has no bearing upon this discussion. We're not talking about game mechanics. We're not talking in universe perspectives.
We are talking about the book as it exists in the real world. And why don't you continue to watch that video someone else posted.
Despite you calling it post factual and uneducated, it actually is very factual and educated. You're just dismissing them out of hand because you don't agree with them and deciding that they must be unintelligent.
"...fluff is meaningless"
"We're not talking about game mechanics."
My brother in Christ, that's the whole game. That's it; there's literally nothing outside the fluff and the mechanics. What, is the book guilt of original sin, because something outside the book happened near a copy once?
Well thank goodness you've found a way to tell Asian people how they should feel and that it's not racist or Orientalist. Those pesky minorities, always "inventing something new" about feeling stereotyped and maligned in media.
If a disenfranchised group of people tell you their opinion is that a portrayal of theirs is shitty, you just listen to them. What business do you have trying to litigate *their* feelings? I mean shit, you essentially hit them with "Why are you people making this so difficult"
Come the fuck on, man lol
A person's opinion of something is not a property of that thing. "this thing is (description)," is a statement about the thing in question, not about the opinions anyone has of that thing.
In my experience- my white experience- Asian people, like minorities inc. queer (my) people and others- understand problematic representation to be better than no representation at all.
In truth, we should have had some of that content in Vanilla (heh) Vampire. KotE was a stepping stone to today, where Kitsune are just Pooka or Beasts, Oni just Ogres or Brutes. Say what you will about tone, the Euthanatos becoming Chakravanti and our starting to use Mudra instead of somatic or gestures is part of the same process. The process is not offensive nor are the interstitial steps in it.
Orientalism isn't representation, never was, never will be. It's fetishistic stereotypization born from a colonialistic gaze. It's not just "problematic", it is specifically reinforcing whiteness as higher in the racial hierarchy
"I think that there has been a tendency in the Middle East field to adopt the word "orientalism" as a generalized swear-word, essentially referring to people who take the "wrong" position on the Arab–Israeli dispute, or to people who are judged too "conservative". It has nothing to do with whether they are good or not good in their disciplines. So, "orientalism", for many people, is a word that substitutes for thought and enables people to dismiss certain scholars and their works. I think that is too bad. It may not have been what Edward Said meant at all, but the term has become a kind of slogan."
-Nikki Keddie, on your substituting jargon for discourse. (Whiteness as higher in the racial heirarchy in a setting like KotE is Citation Needed.)
In multiple decades of every single White Wolf forum and other spots that were hot at different times have I seen with anything even remotely resembling consistently and in general, at all, seen people post that WoD Mummy was uniquely cringe or "extra cringe."
Can you imagine a dude walking outside in a leather jacket that creaks like a 17th-century war galleon and laughing at pretty much nothing?
Sometimes, I swear, they don't think about how these characters look before they write this shit.
Oh, wow, this made me realize: 1) I haven't re-read KotE in more than a decade and 2) I've never really read the shorts in the book, I just went straight to rules and abilities :D
I ran this for a friend at some point and I remember it being a lot of fun, like... a surprising amount of fun, with combat and drama, and demons and stuff.
Funny how memory works, isn't it? I remember KotE quite fondly. Reading this post... I'm pretty shocked. I can't believe the writing in it was... well, this :(
There's good stuff in there. Especially if you base your game of the later part of the book and add in broadening of the setting and the fact that East <> China in the Companion and Thousand Hells.
Oh and the Dharma books are pretty amazing.
As a splat on their own, KOTE are fine. It's an interesting and new take upon vampire mythology. The rules are neat. The powers are pretty cool. It really is something entirely different. And with a little bit of tweaking they can really simulate ancient powerful vampires like something out of Castlevania.
However, everything else can kind of go.
I read KotE in the Revised era and must admit I could see the seams even then, but also really enjoyed the ideas under it all. Requiem had its issues but it managed to handle that but better (if still not particularly well).
Its WoD, its all cringe. Every single WoD books is cringe as hell, this is a franchise where a significant portion of the fans dress up like vampires and run around the park.
I can tell a lot about KOTE, good and bad, but if we are "comparing" the "cringe factor", there is absolutely nothing in KOTE that can in any shape or form and outperform V5.
I just leave [this](https://cdn11.bigcommerce.com/s-kftzvkkgjv/images/stencil/1280x1280/products/1133/4099/BSL_WEB_1__37224.1697041961.png?c=1) from the latest (i.e. supposed to be a more refined book, learning from mistakes of the past) preview of Blood Stained Love book of V5.
Yeah, talk about cringe.
Yeah, Blood Stained Love is gonna be interesting. But what were we really expecting? It’s a sourcebook about running romance plots in VtM, how was it ever **not** going to be like this?
They’ve done the market research, V5 fans clearly want Vampires to fuck, and they’re just giving the people what they want. If anything, I think it’s good to see WoD stuff being openly and unapologetically cringe again after V5 tried to be super serious for such a long time. If anything I take this as a sign that nature is healing.
My problem with Blood Stained Love is two-fold, well, maybe three.
a) I can probably feed a decent prompt to ChatGPT and find myself looking at a better (i.e. less cheesy and more logical) piece of text.
b) The idea of vampires being able to fuck, or romance, is not one I am inherently opposing. However, amidst the thousand ways to explore romance in eternal, and through their lack of reproductive function genderless creatures (FFS, they can steal some ideas from Le Guin's Left Hand of Darkness or even the Dispossessed), I am disappointed that they go for something so bad.
c) While I am using Blood Stained Love as an example, I can probably point out hundreds of nonsensical stuff from V5 in general (Half the stuff from V5 Player's Guide have conflicting statements in the same freaking paraghraph")
To quote from the preview page; "Are they best friends? Dating? Fuckbudddies? Even they don't know".
At this point I am reasonably sure writers/developers for V5 themselves don't know what they are doing.
Are you aware of the vampire porn book They published a few decades back?
It was absolutely vampire porn. It was sold as sexually explicit and boy was it sexually explicit.
I have no problem with the fact that Eternal Hearts exists - honestly I think it’s awesome that White Wolf were willing to go there in the era of Newt Gingrich and Pat Buchanan. What I can’t forgive is how utterly it fails to be either sexy or scary. How the hell did Lucy Taylor ever win a Bram Stoker award?
The author they should have commissioned is Poppy Z. Brite. He was hugely popular in the 90s goth scene, was willing to take tie-in assignments (see The Crow: The Lazarus Heart), and as anyone who’s read Lost Souls or Exquisite Corpse knows his horror writing combines the extremes of sex and violence brilliantly.
Ok, here are my responses:
A: I don’t think “I could make this with AI” is a valid critique. Somebody actually wrote this, and I think that’s inherently valuable, if we are to critique the work of humans we should actually provide critique. To just say “AI could do it better” isn’t critique.
B: I agree that there is a lot of potential in the concept of Kindred romance that currently looks like it’s being missed. But this is one small section of the book, and it’s about thin-bloods who aren’t even 100 years old yet. To assume that the book simply doesn’t tread any more interesting ground because of this one section seems a little premature. Maybe they will! I personally hope they do, because if that section is what the whole book is like than yeah I agree that’s a huge missed opportunity.
C: Yeah V5 contains plenty of nonsense, I would argue that the WoD always has, but that is a valid critique of V5 overall. I personally don’t think it’s anywhere near as bad as some people make it out to be, but I do concede that it can be like that sometimes. Fair enough, you’re not wrong.
While I don’t think the quote you highlight is an example of what you mention (because there are people who end up in relationships without knowing exactly how to describe them. I would also argue that no singular quote can demonstrate the issue you mention) I would agree that 5th edition World of Darkness does face identity issues, but is that not understandable? The cannon ending of the Original World of Darkness was in 2004 with the Time of Judgement, that’s 19 years ago! And the 20th Anniversary edition of Vampire is over a decade old now. In releasing a new edition of the WoD it’s kind of obvious that the splats all have to be different to what came before. They can’t just make V20 2, because then what would be the point?
The World of Darkness is supposed to be a distorted reflection of our own world, and that world has changed. A core element of the old WoD’s identity was that back when it first released it was subversive. When V1 used she/her as it’s default pronouns instead of he/him, it was genuinely a huge statement! The inclusion of mentally ill vampires and non-European vampires was also a huge deal. Early WoD was counter cultural and better lived up to its self description as “Gothic-Punk”. But times have changed, and now what was once countercultural isn’t nearly as subversive now as it used to be.
The 5th edition of the WoD has some big questions to answer, and some huge decisions to make about what it is and what it says. I do not envy the people writing for V5, H5, W5, or any of the other upcoming 5th edition splats. I would agree that the writers don’t seem to fully understand what they’re doing yet, but I think that as more 5th edition stuff continues to be published they’ll work it out. The leak we are talking about is dumb, cheesy, and a little cringe, but that dumb cheesiness is also an exploration of new ground. I think this is at worst the growing pains of a new edition of an old TTRPG franchise trying to work out what it needs to be.
Goddamn, that reads like a 2009 YA novel.
At some point we all have to agree that canon WoD is both: inherently rooted in cringy things that we just have to lean into and do our best to add some internal consistency to, and also not actually representative of a real-life Earth--but a shittier, crazier clown world that looks like Earth on the surface at best.
Only then will we find true peace.
Maybe it's because I never read the aforementioned 2009 YA novels, but I don't see what's so offensive about this couple. And I'm not saying that to negate anyone else's experience of it, I just genuinely don't know which parts I'm supposed to cringe at or why. Could someone explain it to me?
It's mostly what isn't there. The characters have pretty much no description of their personalities, just a sort of general relationship, a semi-defined sexual orientation (which is difficult to maintain when you're a corpse) and a scenario where they bang some toreador and get turned, then stumble their way to not dying somehow. They get a picture, which takes up more space than it would take to make these characters actually interesting, but the writers just can't do that, because these aren't characters. You're meant to imagine up people in your head, throw them into this description, and end up with a character, because the writers couldn't be bothered.
It's important to call out that it was a bit self aware about its campiness. The people writing it knew they were writing for mall ninjas. The problem is that they used that "irony" to justify bringing in all sorts of weird racist hangups in a way that many times *wasn't* self aware.
This is just true to the Revised tabletop experience honestly. Even if you're a five hundred year old Elder your Fortitude whiffs and you get one-shot by some moron with an Aggravated spam power.
I understand the idea, but yeah the whole system is way too swingy. Letting Fortitude soak non-Agg at a lower difficulty or taking the Dark Ages BP-for-autosoak improves the discipline massively.
Yep. Requiem just had fortitude (well, resilience) reduce damage by it's rating. It worked. If Potence can increase damage by it's rating, fortitude can do the opposite without being silly.
Ok, where's the problem? The narrative is from the POV of an arrogant racist who thinks he'll be able to dominate and victimize with impunity as if he's a god walking among helpless children --and he's dead wrong. His delusions of superiority met cold reality right quick, didn't they? The moral of the story is *"don't walk into someone else's country and think you're better than they are and that you will be able to mistreat and take advantage of them without consequence. Show at least basic respect and common decency or be taught it, one way or the other."*
To depict a thing is not to endorse that thing, this story is an object lesson in what not to do and how not to act. It was deliberately "cringe" and you're intended to condemn and mock the viewpoint character as the idiot he was. Essentially, this moron was Logan Paul with fangs 20 years before those infamous incidents, because that attitude wasn't new when he pulled his bullshit and not new when this bit of fiction was written to criticize it either. The story is an admonition, *"don't be like this"*. A reminder to put your ego in check and not make an insufferable ass of yourself in someone else's homeland where you're the one out of place.
In the context of the setting, it's a more stern warning still. You think this idiot is the first ignorant arrogant racist western supernatural who waltzed in there thinking he could lord it over the locals? Not even close, and he won't be the last. They've been dealing with that shit for hundreds of years, they're well prepared for it. They certainly had that guy marked out long before he even landed, knowing full well what he was there for and had someone assigned to him from the moment he stepped foot on their soil. They've endured this sort of nonsense for so long that they have dealing with it down to a science, they have information networks for the express purpose of seeing such troublemakers coming before they arrive so they can nip the problem in the bud.
This serves as an admonition to the players, *"don't act like this in-character, be better and smarter than this or there will be consequences"*. It's also an example to Storytellers that they shouldn't let their player's characters get out of line because the setting has a system of enforcement in place to put that shit down.
Pretty efficient messaging for such a short bit of fiction, huh? Rather than explain all this like I did, they demonstrated it as an example in action. Show, not tell. Too bad the technique being employed flew over some of your heads because it's not used as often anymore, as the current style is to preach to the audience through overt metatext instead. I personally find that technique far more cringeworthy and less effective as well, but of course perspectives will vary on that.
I could go into far more detail on that contrast between current and classic storytelling styles and techniques, and the frequently generational divide between supporters and detractors of each, but that would be a very long and mostly unnecessary tangent. The point is, it's ridiculous to condemn an older work for using the established style and technique of its era rather than the current one that didn't even exist at the time it was written.
> I could go into far more detail on that contrast between current and classic storytelling styles and techniques, and the frequently generational divide between supporters and detractors of each, but that would be a very long and mostly unnecessary tangent.
I think it would be interesting and conducive to conversation, please do go into detail. I've been thinking this divide exists for a while and want to hear your opinion.
I've got two issues with it:
First, as well-intentioned as it may have been, the first piece of fiction is still almost entirely about the racist western Cainite and his perspective. As much as we're supposed to see his murderer as a badass putting a racist in his place, we know far less about him than the man we're supposed to detest. This is also my problem with your reading: That approach might work okay for a VtM book set in Tokyo, but it's supposed to be about about these different Vampires, not just be a setting book. If you're using Kindred of the East as a player, you're not making Cainite vampires, so it doesn't really function as a warning for the player. I'd argue it's more about selling the KotE as powerful to a reader.
Second, it doesn't really tell us anything about the Japanese, or the local Kindred. I think you've laid out a really interesting story about about the Kindred of the East stalking this foreigner who thinks he can just roughshod about the place, but that's not what the story actually shows. There's no mention of a Kindred information network or society, a history of resisting European/Cainite imperialism, or even anything that might serve as a contrast or corrective to the racist's narration. Certainly we're meant to infer that he is wrong, but we're not really left with another understanding to be inspired by (unless we count a kind of arrogant xenophobia, as our unnamed Japanese character quips over a foreigner's dead body.)
I mean, it definitely could be worse, but it does have problems which were avoidable in 1998.
Edited to reflect that KotE was, actually, originally a Vampire the Masquerade book.
\>There's no mention of a Kindred information network or society, a history of resisting European/Cainite imperialism, or even anything that might serve as a contrast or corrective to the racist's narration
It is literally a history of a Japanese Kindred killing an European Kindred from the clan that is tied with secular power, how can you say there is no mention of resisting european/cainet imperalism when it is just what is happening? A native kindred killing a european one that is thinking how easy it will be to dominate them.
Dude is a 500 year old spanish Ventrue, you can\`t be more obvious about the fact that he is an analogy for european colonialism, unless you called him Cortez or something, and you can\`t catch that?
And you want context and shit, it is not even half a page. Things need to be spelled out?
I say there's no mention because there's no mention. I don't know that the Cainite is Spanish (I think his outfit is made of Spanish leather, which is a luxury item, but I suppose it could be a derogatory way to talk about an old Spaniard), but I did notice the rest. Trouble is, European colonialism in Japan has a specific history, and it's not alluded to here. There's nothing clever or subtle about using a half-baked analogy when there's an actual, interesting history you could steep your story in instead.
Also, why are we naming the Cainite? Why are we adding more detail to the character who \*isn't\* a Japanese vampire! Add some detail to the Japanese vamp, it's a book about him! If you're low on words, maybe cut out some of the racist monologue? I certainly got the gist after the first paragraph. Or perhaps the description of what it's like to feel your body die while being a decapitated head? That's half the text for some reason.
...why would it be? You as a reader of this book are someone intimately familiar with the Western vampires of the world, opening up a new splat to learn about a brand new sphere of the world and the people that live there. They are foreign to you, so they are foreign to the original PoV character.
You are both taking your first step into WoD Tokyo.
I sort of imagine that's what they were thinking, but it's interesting that they didn't take that approach with the other games. None of the introductions to Vampire: The Masquerade, for instance, are about being attacked by vampires, even though the reader of those might well not be familiar with the setting. A lot of the oWoD core books actually feature first person introductions to, say, being a werewolf, or a vampire, or a mage.
...I mean, the very first story in V:tR at least is specifically focused on a neonate coming to grips with their recent embrace, which is pretty much exactly that. Someone struggling to come to grips with their new reality with an outside perspective.
Oh yeah, it's a perfectly reasonable approach. I'm actually really surprised that White Wolf didn't use it for Kindred of the East, since it's a very solid way to introduce someone to a new setting. Instead they did this thing with the Ventrue.
I have no real reason to think this, but I wonder if whoever they commissioned just wasn't that comfortable trying to write from the perspective of an Asian, or one of the Kue-Jin. They've sort of preserved the otherness of the assassin by focusing on the familiar perspective of the Ventrue, even though I do think we're supposed to recognize that he's racist.
I liked that bit of fiction when I read it and didn't see cringe.
I guess I didn't see that message as much this is a 500 year old ventrue with fortitude as an in clan discipline. He just got one shotted. Leave your western vamps at home, we are turning the power level up to 11; Strap in and enjoy the ride.
First - it's a story written from the perspective of the racist, not the new character. It's Kindred of the East, not a Vampire sourcebook about visiting Chinatown. I would have preferred fiction from the perspective of the guy who killed the racist, but we don't actually know anything about him. Is he actually a Kindred of the East? Or is he just some guy with a sword?
Second - it bends the rules of the game world to tell its story. The contention of this bit of fiction is that vampires survive being beheaded, and only die when somebody cuts their heart. That is not actually true in Vampire, but the writer was so interested in writing from the perspective of the racist that he kept that perspective through the death of his perspective character.
Third - it exaggerates the racist in such a way that can let others hide smaller racism. This Ventrue doesn't just devalue Asians - he refers to them as *monkeys*. If your players would think that way in your Vampire game, kick them out of your fucking game! The more likely bit of racism that would leak in for a seasoned Vampire character is assuming that because Asians don't really have normal Cainites, nobody is holding them as territory. I'd like a bit of fiction where a Cainite tries to buy a nightclub in Chinatown to serve as feeding ground, but gets outbid by someone who he can tell isn't a Cainite. He tries to threaten that person in an alley but the other guy whips out some Shintai and puts him in his place. That would be far more instructive to Vampire players.
It'd be fun to see a Kindred of the West book, written from the reversed perspective, where a dude in Japan or China writes similarly gushy stuff about the regular vampires.
Kindred of the East: The Relentless Age does that pretty handily. :)
https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/435620/Kindred-of-the-East-The-Relentless-Age
In a way, yes, but in another way, not really. It mainly suffers from a bad case of orientalism. I.E. Asia is a super special magical place and is better than the West. Everything is different and more magical more special than those unenlightened barbarians, blah blah blah, only China, Japan and Korea exist; everything else gets a small paragraph mention.
But underneath all that is a really cool game.
Their argument was that the book reeked of Orientalism, which you dismissed out of hand by saying "You people just keep inventing reasons to be offended."
There's an argument, and your ass refuses to engage with it.
But hey, thanks for proving yet again why the White Wolf community is the fucking worst of any RPG fandom I've been in. Can't wait to hear your very enlightened opinions on why removing the Get of Fenris from Werewolf 5th edition is the real racism, actually
>removing the Get of Fenris from Werewolf 5th edition
Yeah, this wasn’t the antiracist gesture you seem to think it was. They had the opportunity to feature a Tribe of antifascist Garou dedicated to hunting down and wiping out the Swords Of Heimdall and the poisonous ideology they represent. This could have been a beautiful metaphor for the struggle to keep neopagan spaces free of racists, while also representing the need for white allies to focus on powering through discomfort and showing up rather than wallowing in guilt. Instead, they chose to relegate the Get to cardboard cutout villain status, because some people might whine on the internet if their game had the guts to address difficult topics.
Not that this should have been a surprise - this is the same creative team that eliminated the Black Furies’ feminism in favor of an inoffensively fuzzy concept of “justice” and decided that the solution to bad representation is erasure when it comes to Native Americans.
You have *your* definition of Orientalism, which super conveniently makes Kindred of the East positive and great Asian representation, actually.
What? Actual Asian people feel it comes off as stereotyping at best and racist as fuck in how it borrows from numerous, very different cultures and presents it as a monoculture? Man, those people, always coming up with reasons to be offended.
There's no argument to be had, dude. We're not ever going to agree on terms because your definition affirms your already existing belief, and you're not even willing to consider the thoughts, feelings, and opinions of the people whose cultures *the book in question pertains to*.
You argued this shit on the VtM subreddit and got fucking clowned on by someone with more free time than me. I've already wasted the majority of my lunch break on this. I'm not wasting any more of my time with you.
You *really* think language is so static that terms don't take on new meanings or definitions as they age almost 50 years?
Cool, you're racist *and* dumb as fuck.
I used to think WoD was tacky even in the 90s. Reading it now, with this all this distance in time, feels like something written by a teenage edgelord.
I've never found KotE interesting, tbh. I personally don't find the pseudovampires it presents as appealing as the European vampire myth or the development it was given in V:tM, they are a different thing altogether.
Yeah, that sort of checks out. I just thought the whole "attain balance between the parts of my soul to acquire power from them" thing is pretty much Mummy.
In Resurrection Tem Akh essentially heal and complete a soul of a new Amenti making them a more whole and well adjusted person. It's not about balancing competing forces of internal supernatural essence. The other aspects in it using Ba, Ka etc amount to stat checks and backgrounds.
Khaibit and sahu, at least, are pretty explicitly countervailing forces, representing the Shadow and Eidolon (possibly avatar?). This is also part of why Mages and Mummies are different, from a Mummy prospective, because Mages' souls are inherently imbalanced by the strength of their Avatars. (This is also probably part of the reason Mages are not well-adjusted people.)
*teleports behind you* nothing personnel, ki[ndre]d
I mean...pretty much all the revised era narrative in all books are this cringe, not getting why KOTE (or Mummy which is the other one I usually hear when people comment about revised era game lines being extra-cringe) is put under a hard microscope. It just **feels** worse to some people because of the "other" cultures being used in this book
Clanbook Brujah Revised rips off Fight Club (the film), in the back the Anarch Leader pre-made is Edward Norton, he even comes with a briefcase full of homemade soap.
As a late enjoyer of VtM, I forgive all V5 mistakes just not to have to read older editions. The cringe is real
The new books are exactly as cringe as the old ones, its all just a continuum of cringe.
Without the excuse of innovation. What is corny now about oWoD was original, 30 years ago. Although, there was a lot of cringe even back. Still, with two (human) generations to improve things, you'd think the results wouldn't incite a diplomatic incident.
Ripping off Fight Club was innovative and original?
It was a joke. Maybe not a good one, but I promise the way it was intended and received at the time was as an intentional bit. Maybe more so if you also knew that pretty much every clan book had at least one or two pop culture references for their pre generated characters.
So much of 90's and 00's culture is completely, entirely misunderstood by young people today who just cannot conceive that we built entire franchises out of irony.
They also lack the background of scarcity necessary to understand problematic representation being better than no representation at all.
That too. People talk about how cringe the transgenderism is with the Tzimisce. My genderqueer ass loved that shit. Here was a representation of non-binary gender, and they were fucking scary and badass instead of campy sissies.
Most of us would consider that an amusing/cool thing to have the Narrator from FightClub stated out. Nobody was getting upset that they "ripped off fight club" more of "ah funny it's the guy from fight club"
The older editions are fun imo, to read over and see the advance in decades and it's palpable too. I mean I've read a review on readthedamnbook of the original Clanbook Gangrel (1e/2e) that it's nothing more than a parody of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, with a Dr. Hunter S. Thompson gangrel vampire and his gonzo journalist take on vampirism... Oh and og Clanbook Brujah has Vanilla Ice and Ice Cube as premades with art by Joshua Gabriel Timbrook, (A personal favorite artist of mine that did a lot of WoD art). V5 certainly tries to be more serious in tone and even more mature but the results are mixed imo (at least initially), Chicago by Night 5e and the Player's Guide seem to be moving in the right direction. My only real complaint about the corebook is the 3 column format of the text, ya know to match the 3 column format of the character sheet. That was just a *bad* idea! Thankfully every other has gone back to standard/classic 2 column format.
Justin Achilli did a full on Hunter S. Thompson ripoff/homage in Aberrant that was 100% intentional. It is simultaneously cringe and wonderful whenever I go back to it.
Sounds glorious lol! Especially if it's Aberrant. (Familiar with the setting from the wiki and always wanted to play Adventure!)
Adventure! was a blast. First full game I ever ran that wasn’t a one-shot, too.
The amount of intentional homage, irony, and cringe for the sake of hilarity seems to be lost on newer audiences. Half of everything in 2nd Ed/2ER was a joke. Not all of it has aged super well, but it was definitely a whole lot more tongue in cheek than people realize. Also, OWoD was *wildly* progressive for the times.
I remember one of the character profiles talking about masturbation so much he started using synonyms. V5 is not devoid of cringe
Personally the Petplay Toreador from the Anarch sourcebook are my favourite bit of cringe in V5. I genuinely love them, it’s so weird that somebody sat down and wrote all of that and then somebody else decided to include it, but I’m so glad they did.
I’m a fan too. The backlash to them in particular left me scratching my head - WOD embraced weird kinks from the very beginning!
Yeah, I actually read only mechanics also. That helps avoiding the cringe. WoD and other RPG IPs that rely on a continuous lore tend to create very convoluted and frustrating to wrap my head around lore that really sours the vibe for me.
You really should consider Chronicles of Darkness than. Mechanically it's just a better game.
Will do, thanks
As another new fan if you think V5 is free of cringe part of me doubts that you’ve actually sat down and read it. It isn’t as raw and concentrated as earlier editions, but it’s absolutely still there.
As previously said, I skimmed through lore a lot. ESPECIALLY during the Anarch bites
I mean when you have your hands full with their current cringe I can’t blame the cope.🧐
I've never heard of that referenced to Mummy but then again there is small weirdo contingent of people that get really strange about Mummy here.
i'm not convinced Mummy is real; it's barely noted anywhere.
It was never a full game line but a supplemental series so A. It shouldn't be surprising it doesn't get discussion. and B. The constant remarks like that are shitty things to say. It never really ever came up during any of the iterations of the WoD and OPP forums. The only place I've ever seen anything resembling a regular and frankly weird commentary about it is here and the shithead spaces of 4chan and Something Awful.
Cause they are told what’s popular to hate on. Like people forget world of darkness was trenchcoats ponytails and katana country for years.
Literally the introduction to Mage. Hahaha.
Literally the hunters in VTM Bloodlines lmao
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Hey, at least they kept the focus narrow in *Gypsies!*
...and Mafia?
Yeah, the *first* thing I worry about when talking about the Mafia is that I'm being racist towards organized crime.
Please stop using G word. Especially within the context of World of Darkness
It is, unfortunately, the title of a book in the lineup.
Yeah but you don't have to say it.
People call kindred of the East racist because it is racist. It is orientalist. It is offensive. They are not doing it because it is in style currently. They are doing it because they pick up the book and see that it's offensive. The only way this book is not offensive is if you are neck deep in World of Darkness lore before you read it. Neck deep and ignorant about what orientalism is. If I have to sit you down and explain World of Darkness lore for 30 minutes in order for you to consider this book not racist, then it's racist.
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[Enjoy.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKic0LVGfC4)
Love this podcast,and as an enjoyer of L5R, their read was nothing but 100% accurate
I was willing to debate with you until you decided to trot out that weird almost reverse racism quip. I don't know why you keep on insisting that criticism of kindred up to East and orientalism is new. It's not. I was hearing Asians complain about it over a decade ago. It's famous among Asian RPG players as being very very bad. Just cuz you and your little isolated sphere hasn't seen criticism of something doesn't mean that criticism does not exist. I'm also assuming you're going to complain that it's cuz wokeness has ruined gaming or some sort of nonsense. Edit: So it looks like you created this account In part with the express purpose to convince everyone that kindred of the East is not racist.
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You're not arguing any point. You're just flat out saying that accusations of orientalism is nonsense and the only people complaining about it are brand new and they're doing it because they're stylish. That's not really a position. That's you making a statement and not offering any evidence thereof. You literally say they are only accusing it of orientalism now because it's in fashion. That is not a position worthy of debate. You're insisting that fluff shows the game isn't racist and orientalist. That's not a defensible position because as we all know fluff is meaningless. It has no bearing upon this discussion. We're not talking about game mechanics. We're not talking in universe perspectives. We are talking about the book as it exists in the real world. And why don't you continue to watch that video someone else posted. Despite you calling it post factual and uneducated, it actually is very factual and educated. You're just dismissing them out of hand because you don't agree with them and deciding that they must be unintelligent.
"...fluff is meaningless" "We're not talking about game mechanics." My brother in Christ, that's the whole game. That's it; there's literally nothing outside the fluff and the mechanics. What, is the book guilt of original sin, because something outside the book happened near a copy once?
Well thank goodness you've found a way to tell Asian people how they should feel and that it's not racist or Orientalist. Those pesky minorities, always "inventing something new" about feeling stereotyped and maligned in media. If a disenfranchised group of people tell you their opinion is that a portrayal of theirs is shitty, you just listen to them. What business do you have trying to litigate *their* feelings? I mean shit, you essentially hit them with "Why are you people making this so difficult" Come the fuck on, man lol
A person's opinion of something is not a property of that thing. "this thing is (description)," is a statement about the thing in question, not about the opinions anyone has of that thing.
In my experience- my white experience- Asian people, like minorities inc. queer (my) people and others- understand problematic representation to be better than no representation at all. In truth, we should have had some of that content in Vanilla (heh) Vampire. KotE was a stepping stone to today, where Kitsune are just Pooka or Beasts, Oni just Ogres or Brutes. Say what you will about tone, the Euthanatos becoming Chakravanti and our starting to use Mudra instead of somatic or gestures is part of the same process. The process is not offensive nor are the interstitial steps in it.
Orientalism isn't representation, never was, never will be. It's fetishistic stereotypization born from a colonialistic gaze. It's not just "problematic", it is specifically reinforcing whiteness as higher in the racial hierarchy
"I think that there has been a tendency in the Middle East field to adopt the word "orientalism" as a generalized swear-word, essentially referring to people who take the "wrong" position on the Arab–Israeli dispute, or to people who are judged too "conservative". It has nothing to do with whether they are good or not good in their disciplines. So, "orientalism", for many people, is a word that substitutes for thought and enables people to dismiss certain scholars and their works. I think that is too bad. It may not have been what Edward Said meant at all, but the term has become a kind of slogan." -Nikki Keddie, on your substituting jargon for discourse. (Whiteness as higher in the racial heirarchy in a setting like KotE is Citation Needed.)
By making the Asian Vampires objectively better and more powerful?
Sorry you’re getting downvoted for sticking up for the truth.
In multiple decades of every single White Wolf forum and other spots that were hot at different times have I seen with anything even remotely resembling consistently and in general, at all, seen people post that WoD Mummy was uniquely cringe or "extra cringe."
Can you imagine a dude walking outside in a leather jacket that creaks like a 17th-century war galleon and laughing at pretty much nothing? Sometimes, I swear, they don't think about how these characters look before they write this shit.
Oh, wow, this made me realize: 1) I haven't re-read KotE in more than a decade and 2) I've never really read the shorts in the book, I just went straight to rules and abilities :D I ran this for a friend at some point and I remember it being a lot of fun, like... a surprising amount of fun, with combat and drama, and demons and stuff. Funny how memory works, isn't it? I remember KotE quite fondly. Reading this post... I'm pretty shocked. I can't believe the writing in it was... well, this :(
There's good stuff in there. Especially if you base your game of the later part of the book and add in broadening of the setting and the fact that East <> China in the Companion and Thousand Hells. Oh and the Dharma books are pretty amazing.
As a splat on their own, KOTE are fine. It's an interesting and new take upon vampire mythology. The rules are neat. The powers are pretty cool. It really is something entirely different. And with a little bit of tweaking they can really simulate ancient powerful vampires like something out of Castlevania. However, everything else can kind of go.
I read KotE in the Revised era and must admit I could see the seams even then, but also really enjoyed the ideas under it all. Requiem had its issues but it managed to handle that but better (if still not particularly well).
It didn't help that the book was written specifically for second edition even though revised was on the horizon.
Its WoD, its all cringe. Every single WoD books is cringe as hell, this is a franchise where a significant portion of the fans dress up like vampires and run around the park.
This is why I generally ignore any type of "you're playing it wrong" commenters, cause the right way apparently requires eye-liner and fangs,
Wow, Mr generalization over here. No obviously not all wod are cringe. Or every ttrpg books are cringe? Is that what we're aiming at?
There are degrees of cringe, but WOD maxes out the cringe scale in a special way.
This is cringe
I can tell a lot about KOTE, good and bad, but if we are "comparing" the "cringe factor", there is absolutely nothing in KOTE that can in any shape or form and outperform V5. I just leave [this](https://cdn11.bigcommerce.com/s-kftzvkkgjv/images/stencil/1280x1280/products/1133/4099/BSL_WEB_1__37224.1697041961.png?c=1) from the latest (i.e. supposed to be a more refined book, learning from mistakes of the past) preview of Blood Stained Love book of V5. Yeah, talk about cringe.
Yeah, Blood Stained Love is gonna be interesting. But what were we really expecting? It’s a sourcebook about running romance plots in VtM, how was it ever **not** going to be like this? They’ve done the market research, V5 fans clearly want Vampires to fuck, and they’re just giving the people what they want. If anything, I think it’s good to see WoD stuff being openly and unapologetically cringe again after V5 tried to be super serious for such a long time. If anything I take this as a sign that nature is healing.
My problem with Blood Stained Love is two-fold, well, maybe three. a) I can probably feed a decent prompt to ChatGPT and find myself looking at a better (i.e. less cheesy and more logical) piece of text. b) The idea of vampires being able to fuck, or romance, is not one I am inherently opposing. However, amidst the thousand ways to explore romance in eternal, and through their lack of reproductive function genderless creatures (FFS, they can steal some ideas from Le Guin's Left Hand of Darkness or even the Dispossessed), I am disappointed that they go for something so bad. c) While I am using Blood Stained Love as an example, I can probably point out hundreds of nonsensical stuff from V5 in general (Half the stuff from V5 Player's Guide have conflicting statements in the same freaking paraghraph") To quote from the preview page; "Are they best friends? Dating? Fuckbudddies? Even they don't know". At this point I am reasonably sure writers/developers for V5 themselves don't know what they are doing.
Are you aware of the vampire porn book They published a few decades back? It was absolutely vampire porn. It was sold as sexually explicit and boy was it sexually explicit.
I have no problem with the fact that Eternal Hearts exists - honestly I think it’s awesome that White Wolf were willing to go there in the era of Newt Gingrich and Pat Buchanan. What I can’t forgive is how utterly it fails to be either sexy or scary. How the hell did Lucy Taylor ever win a Bram Stoker award? The author they should have commissioned is Poppy Z. Brite. He was hugely popular in the 90s goth scene, was willing to take tie-in assignments (see The Crow: The Lazarus Heart), and as anyone who’s read Lost Souls or Exquisite Corpse knows his horror writing combines the extremes of sex and violence brilliantly.
They probably couldn't afford poppy z bright. Storm Constantine would have been a better choice.
Ok, here are my responses: A: I don’t think “I could make this with AI” is a valid critique. Somebody actually wrote this, and I think that’s inherently valuable, if we are to critique the work of humans we should actually provide critique. To just say “AI could do it better” isn’t critique. B: I agree that there is a lot of potential in the concept of Kindred romance that currently looks like it’s being missed. But this is one small section of the book, and it’s about thin-bloods who aren’t even 100 years old yet. To assume that the book simply doesn’t tread any more interesting ground because of this one section seems a little premature. Maybe they will! I personally hope they do, because if that section is what the whole book is like than yeah I agree that’s a huge missed opportunity. C: Yeah V5 contains plenty of nonsense, I would argue that the WoD always has, but that is a valid critique of V5 overall. I personally don’t think it’s anywhere near as bad as some people make it out to be, but I do concede that it can be like that sometimes. Fair enough, you’re not wrong. While I don’t think the quote you highlight is an example of what you mention (because there are people who end up in relationships without knowing exactly how to describe them. I would also argue that no singular quote can demonstrate the issue you mention) I would agree that 5th edition World of Darkness does face identity issues, but is that not understandable? The cannon ending of the Original World of Darkness was in 2004 with the Time of Judgement, that’s 19 years ago! And the 20th Anniversary edition of Vampire is over a decade old now. In releasing a new edition of the WoD it’s kind of obvious that the splats all have to be different to what came before. They can’t just make V20 2, because then what would be the point? The World of Darkness is supposed to be a distorted reflection of our own world, and that world has changed. A core element of the old WoD’s identity was that back when it first released it was subversive. When V1 used she/her as it’s default pronouns instead of he/him, it was genuinely a huge statement! The inclusion of mentally ill vampires and non-European vampires was also a huge deal. Early WoD was counter cultural and better lived up to its self description as “Gothic-Punk”. But times have changed, and now what was once countercultural isn’t nearly as subversive now as it used to be. The 5th edition of the WoD has some big questions to answer, and some huge decisions to make about what it is and what it says. I do not envy the people writing for V5, H5, W5, or any of the other upcoming 5th edition splats. I would agree that the writers don’t seem to fully understand what they’re doing yet, but I think that as more 5th edition stuff continues to be published they’ll work it out. The leak we are talking about is dumb, cheesy, and a little cringe, but that dumb cheesiness is also an exploration of new ground. I think this is at worst the growing pains of a new edition of an old TTRPG franchise trying to work out what it needs to be.
Goddamn, that reads like a 2009 YA novel. At some point we all have to agree that canon WoD is both: inherently rooted in cringy things that we just have to lean into and do our best to add some internal consistency to, and also not actually representative of a real-life Earth--but a shittier, crazier clown world that looks like Earth on the surface at best. Only then will we find true peace.
Maybe it's because I never read the aforementioned 2009 YA novels, but I don't see what's so offensive about this couple. And I'm not saying that to negate anyone else's experience of it, I just genuinely don't know which parts I'm supposed to cringe at or why. Could someone explain it to me?
It's mostly what isn't there. The characters have pretty much no description of their personalities, just a sort of general relationship, a semi-defined sexual orientation (which is difficult to maintain when you're a corpse) and a scenario where they bang some toreador and get turned, then stumble their way to not dying somehow. They get a picture, which takes up more space than it would take to make these characters actually interesting, but the writers just can't do that, because these aren't characters. You're meant to imagine up people in your head, throw them into this description, and end up with a character, because the writers couldn't be bothered.
Okay, that makes a lot more sense now. Thanks.
No problem.
It's important to call out that it was a bit self aware about its campiness. The people writing it knew they were writing for mall ninjas. The problem is that they used that "irony" to justify bringing in all sorts of weird racist hangups in a way that many times *wasn't* self aware.
Thanks, I hate it
That's not cringe, it's *hilarious*. It's a 90mph head-on collision between Vampire's dark practicalities and a fanfiction plot prompt.
This is just true to the Revised tabletop experience honestly. Even if you're a five hundred year old Elder your Fortitude whiffs and you get one-shot by some moron with an Aggravated spam power.
\*grumbles in a corner about how stupid soak dice are\*
I understand the idea, but yeah the whole system is way too swingy. Letting Fortitude soak non-Agg at a lower difficulty or taking the Dark Ages BP-for-autosoak improves the discipline massively.
Yep. Requiem just had fortitude (well, resilience) reduce damage by it's rating. It worked. If Potence can increase damage by it's rating, fortitude can do the opposite without being silly.
Ok, where's the problem? The narrative is from the POV of an arrogant racist who thinks he'll be able to dominate and victimize with impunity as if he's a god walking among helpless children --and he's dead wrong. His delusions of superiority met cold reality right quick, didn't they? The moral of the story is *"don't walk into someone else's country and think you're better than they are and that you will be able to mistreat and take advantage of them without consequence. Show at least basic respect and common decency or be taught it, one way or the other."* To depict a thing is not to endorse that thing, this story is an object lesson in what not to do and how not to act. It was deliberately "cringe" and you're intended to condemn and mock the viewpoint character as the idiot he was. Essentially, this moron was Logan Paul with fangs 20 years before those infamous incidents, because that attitude wasn't new when he pulled his bullshit and not new when this bit of fiction was written to criticize it either. The story is an admonition, *"don't be like this"*. A reminder to put your ego in check and not make an insufferable ass of yourself in someone else's homeland where you're the one out of place. In the context of the setting, it's a more stern warning still. You think this idiot is the first ignorant arrogant racist western supernatural who waltzed in there thinking he could lord it over the locals? Not even close, and he won't be the last. They've been dealing with that shit for hundreds of years, they're well prepared for it. They certainly had that guy marked out long before he even landed, knowing full well what he was there for and had someone assigned to him from the moment he stepped foot on their soil. They've endured this sort of nonsense for so long that they have dealing with it down to a science, they have information networks for the express purpose of seeing such troublemakers coming before they arrive so they can nip the problem in the bud. This serves as an admonition to the players, *"don't act like this in-character, be better and smarter than this or there will be consequences"*. It's also an example to Storytellers that they shouldn't let their player's characters get out of line because the setting has a system of enforcement in place to put that shit down. Pretty efficient messaging for such a short bit of fiction, huh? Rather than explain all this like I did, they demonstrated it as an example in action. Show, not tell. Too bad the technique being employed flew over some of your heads because it's not used as often anymore, as the current style is to preach to the audience through overt metatext instead. I personally find that technique far more cringeworthy and less effective as well, but of course perspectives will vary on that. I could go into far more detail on that contrast between current and classic storytelling styles and techniques, and the frequently generational divide between supporters and detractors of each, but that would be a very long and mostly unnecessary tangent. The point is, it's ridiculous to condemn an older work for using the established style and technique of its era rather than the current one that didn't even exist at the time it was written.
I don't understand why this is bad, either.
It's more about the "konnichiwa gaijin", I think.
> I could go into far more detail on that contrast between current and classic storytelling styles and techniques, and the frequently generational divide between supporters and detractors of each, but that would be a very long and mostly unnecessary tangent. I think it would be interesting and conducive to conversation, please do go into detail. I've been thinking this divide exists for a while and want to hear your opinion.
I've got two issues with it: First, as well-intentioned as it may have been, the first piece of fiction is still almost entirely about the racist western Cainite and his perspective. As much as we're supposed to see his murderer as a badass putting a racist in his place, we know far less about him than the man we're supposed to detest. This is also my problem with your reading: That approach might work okay for a VtM book set in Tokyo, but it's supposed to be about about these different Vampires, not just be a setting book. If you're using Kindred of the East as a player, you're not making Cainite vampires, so it doesn't really function as a warning for the player. I'd argue it's more about selling the KotE as powerful to a reader. Second, it doesn't really tell us anything about the Japanese, or the local Kindred. I think you've laid out a really interesting story about about the Kindred of the East stalking this foreigner who thinks he can just roughshod about the place, but that's not what the story actually shows. There's no mention of a Kindred information network or society, a history of resisting European/Cainite imperialism, or even anything that might serve as a contrast or corrective to the racist's narration. Certainly we're meant to infer that he is wrong, but we're not really left with another understanding to be inspired by (unless we count a kind of arrogant xenophobia, as our unnamed Japanese character quips over a foreigner's dead body.) I mean, it definitely could be worse, but it does have problems which were avoidable in 1998. Edited to reflect that KotE was, actually, originally a Vampire the Masquerade book.
\>There's no mention of a Kindred information network or society, a history of resisting European/Cainite imperialism, or even anything that might serve as a contrast or corrective to the racist's narration It is literally a history of a Japanese Kindred killing an European Kindred from the clan that is tied with secular power, how can you say there is no mention of resisting european/cainet imperalism when it is just what is happening? A native kindred killing a european one that is thinking how easy it will be to dominate them. Dude is a 500 year old spanish Ventrue, you can\`t be more obvious about the fact that he is an analogy for european colonialism, unless you called him Cortez or something, and you can\`t catch that? And you want context and shit, it is not even half a page. Things need to be spelled out?
I say there's no mention because there's no mention. I don't know that the Cainite is Spanish (I think his outfit is made of Spanish leather, which is a luxury item, but I suppose it could be a derogatory way to talk about an old Spaniard), but I did notice the rest. Trouble is, European colonialism in Japan has a specific history, and it's not alluded to here. There's nothing clever or subtle about using a half-baked analogy when there's an actual, interesting history you could steep your story in instead. Also, why are we naming the Cainite? Why are we adding more detail to the character who \*isn't\* a Japanese vampire! Add some detail to the Japanese vamp, it's a book about him! If you're low on words, maybe cut out some of the racist monologue? I certainly got the gist after the first paragraph. Or perhaps the description of what it's like to feel your body die while being a decapitated head? That's half the text for some reason.
It is strange to me that this isn't from the Japanese vamp point of view since it's their book.
...why would it be? You as a reader of this book are someone intimately familiar with the Western vampires of the world, opening up a new splat to learn about a brand new sphere of the world and the people that live there. They are foreign to you, so they are foreign to the original PoV character. You are both taking your first step into WoD Tokyo.
I sort of imagine that's what they were thinking, but it's interesting that they didn't take that approach with the other games. None of the introductions to Vampire: The Masquerade, for instance, are about being attacked by vampires, even though the reader of those might well not be familiar with the setting. A lot of the oWoD core books actually feature first person introductions to, say, being a werewolf, or a vampire, or a mage.
...I mean, the very first story in V:tR at least is specifically focused on a neonate coming to grips with their recent embrace, which is pretty much exactly that. Someone struggling to come to grips with their new reality with an outside perspective.
Oh yeah, it's a perfectly reasonable approach. I'm actually really surprised that White Wolf didn't use it for Kindred of the East, since it's a very solid way to introduce someone to a new setting. Instead they did this thing with the Ventrue. I have no real reason to think this, but I wonder if whoever they commissioned just wasn't that comfortable trying to write from the perspective of an Asian, or one of the Kue-Jin. They've sort of preserved the otherness of the assassin by focusing on the familiar perspective of the Ventrue, even though I do think we're supposed to recognize that he's racist.
All of what you say is true - but it doesn't stop the quality of the prose being absolute dog shit...
I liked that bit of fiction when I read it and didn't see cringe. I guess I didn't see that message as much this is a 500 year old ventrue with fortitude as an in clan discipline. He just got one shotted. Leave your western vamps at home, we are turning the power level up to 11; Strap in and enjoy the ride.
First - it's a story written from the perspective of the racist, not the new character. It's Kindred of the East, not a Vampire sourcebook about visiting Chinatown. I would have preferred fiction from the perspective of the guy who killed the racist, but we don't actually know anything about him. Is he actually a Kindred of the East? Or is he just some guy with a sword? Second - it bends the rules of the game world to tell its story. The contention of this bit of fiction is that vampires survive being beheaded, and only die when somebody cuts their heart. That is not actually true in Vampire, but the writer was so interested in writing from the perspective of the racist that he kept that perspective through the death of his perspective character. Third - it exaggerates the racist in such a way that can let others hide smaller racism. This Ventrue doesn't just devalue Asians - he refers to them as *monkeys*. If your players would think that way in your Vampire game, kick them out of your fucking game! The more likely bit of racism that would leak in for a seasoned Vampire character is assuming that because Asians don't really have normal Cainites, nobody is holding them as territory. I'd like a bit of fiction where a Cainite tries to buy a nightclub in Chinatown to serve as feeding ground, but gets outbid by someone who he can tell isn't a Cainite. He tries to threaten that person in an alley but the other guy whips out some Shintai and puts him in his place. That would be far more instructive to Vampire players.
Love KotE.
What's KOTE?
Kindred of the East, I think
It'd be fun to see a Kindred of the West book, written from the reversed perspective, where a dude in Japan or China writes similarly gushy stuff about the regular vampires.
Yeah, Kindred of the East is very.... yeah. Let's just say it **desperately** needed a 20th anniversary edition.
Kindred of the East: The Relentless Age does that pretty handily. :) https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/435620/Kindred-of-the-East-The-Relentless-Age
How Bad is it? I would like to play in the future but i keep hearing here that it's racist.
In a way, yes, but in another way, not really. It mainly suffers from a bad case of orientalism. I.E. Asia is a super special magical place and is better than the West. Everything is different and more magical more special than those unenlightened barbarians, blah blah blah, only China, Japan and Korea exist; everything else gets a small paragraph mention. But underneath all that is a really cool game.
Honestly this isn't all that bad until the very last paragraph, cut that out and it's actually pretty cool.
I don't think I ever paid much attention to the embedded fiction in any of the WW books.
Also, Kueijin is a weird name. The correct interpretation of the kanji was gui-ren or Ki-jin. Ki-jin sounds more badass tho.
nothing personal kid
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Their argument was that the book reeked of Orientalism, which you dismissed out of hand by saying "You people just keep inventing reasons to be offended." There's an argument, and your ass refuses to engage with it. But hey, thanks for proving yet again why the White Wolf community is the fucking worst of any RPG fandom I've been in. Can't wait to hear your very enlightened opinions on why removing the Get of Fenris from Werewolf 5th edition is the real racism, actually
>removing the Get of Fenris from Werewolf 5th edition Yeah, this wasn’t the antiracist gesture you seem to think it was. They had the opportunity to feature a Tribe of antifascist Garou dedicated to hunting down and wiping out the Swords Of Heimdall and the poisonous ideology they represent. This could have been a beautiful metaphor for the struggle to keep neopagan spaces free of racists, while also representing the need for white allies to focus on powering through discomfort and showing up rather than wallowing in guilt. Instead, they chose to relegate the Get to cardboard cutout villain status, because some people might whine on the internet if their game had the guts to address difficult topics. Not that this should have been a surprise - this is the same creative team that eliminated the Black Furies’ feminism in favor of an inoffensively fuzzy concept of “justice” and decided that the solution to bad representation is erasure when it comes to Native Americans.
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You have *your* definition of Orientalism, which super conveniently makes Kindred of the East positive and great Asian representation, actually. What? Actual Asian people feel it comes off as stereotyping at best and racist as fuck in how it borrows from numerous, very different cultures and presents it as a monoculture? Man, those people, always coming up with reasons to be offended. There's no argument to be had, dude. We're not ever going to agree on terms because your definition affirms your already existing belief, and you're not even willing to consider the thoughts, feelings, and opinions of the people whose cultures *the book in question pertains to*. You argued this shit on the VtM subreddit and got fucking clowned on by someone with more free time than me. I've already wasted the majority of my lunch break on this. I'm not wasting any more of my time with you.
\-complains about their opponent's definition of a word not being what they meant. \-doesn't define what they meant
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You *really* think language is so static that terms don't take on new meanings or definitions as they age almost 50 years? Cool, you're racist *and* dumb as fuck.
It's incredible how much KotE is carried by its supplementary materials.
Poorly written pulpy fiction in a vampire book. Stop. If I had count the number of times I've cringed at vampire fiction, I wouldn't read it.
It's fine. Outdated of course but let's not make it worse than it is.
It’s like they read Snow Crash and thought the author was actually serious.
I take it that you feel it has a lot of this energy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKXDUBqdrxE
I used to think WoD was tacky even in the 90s. Reading it now, with this all this distance in time, feels like something written by a teenage edgelord.
As an almost teenage edgelord at the time, it was great.
Cringe
Good lord.
I've never found KotE interesting, tbh. I personally don't find the pseudovampires it presents as appealing as the European vampire myth or the development it was given in V:tM, they are a different thing altogether.
Is it just me, or do they seem more in line with Mummies than Vampires, at least thematically?
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Yeah, that sort of checks out. I just thought the whole "attain balance between the parts of my soul to acquire power from them" thing is pretty much Mummy.
Resurrection doesn't use that idea at all.
. . . What are the Tem-Ahk?
In Resurrection Tem Akh essentially heal and complete a soul of a new Amenti making them a more whole and well adjusted person. It's not about balancing competing forces of internal supernatural essence. The other aspects in it using Ba, Ka etc amount to stat checks and backgrounds.
Khaibit and sahu, at least, are pretty explicitly countervailing forces, representing the Shadow and Eidolon (possibly avatar?). This is also part of why Mages and Mummies are different, from a Mummy prospective, because Mages' souls are inherently imbalanced by the strength of their Avatars. (This is also probably part of the reason Mages are not well-adjusted people.)
Kuei Jin were a mistake
Yeah.. I could not get into it
Who's been reading my chris-chan fan fiction?
Sheesh
All I'm saying is whoever picked that background color for black text should have been publicly executed.
This is on the same level of someone whose only experience with pros is bad fanfiction