Cyberpunk 2020 retrospective... from 2020

(Note: This is an old review from when I was writing for the now sadly lost Australian Tabletop Gaming Network. It came out just before covid went boom, and it's interesting reading back over it knowing that this guy had no idea of what was just about to happen; hoo-boy!

Apologies for the poor copy/paste effort and any issues with the pix. I have still yet to check out Cyberpunk Red, but I do have 2077 sitting on my video game to-play pile.)

The great thing about the year 2020 is the fact that we don’t have to see all those people making memes joking about not knowing what they’ll do next year because they don’t have 2020 vision. But it does seem somewhat appropriate to look back on the past, and an equally appropriate subject for such hindsight is that classic staple of sci-fi roleplaying futurism, Mike Pondsmith’s Cyberpunk 2020.

It’s been many years since I played any “see-punk” as we used to call it and the books on my shelf haven’t seen daylight for far too long. And though I know there was a third edition produced in the mid-’00s, a fourth edition called Cyberpunk Red released last year, and an upcoming digital game which has been pushed back to September, it is these second edition books published by R. Talsorian that became iconic and formed the game into one of the big guns of the RPG world. (The original box set released in 1988 is hard to find but is notable in that it was set in 2013, many of the rules were different, particularly combat, and hardly anyone played it after the second edition came out.)

Enough preamble! Time to jack in, chombatta, and dive in to the dark future of the distant year 2020.

The Year 2020

Welcome to the phone of the future. Note the funky “flip” design and the retractable antenna. Phwoar!

It is naturally amusing and somewhat quaint to see what people thirty years ago expected the future to be, and humbling to remember that I was there at the time. Reading through the timeline of the imagined intervening period is incredibly entertaining; African nations controlling the Moon and the intervening space seems laughably idealistic, and a major US war with Central American powers has the strong scent of the ’80s. And the technology so important to the setting veers wildly between hyper-advanced (cybertechnology is commonplace, cars no longer burn petroleum, AIs can prove to be powerful personalities) and practically archaic (characters will need to get to a fax machine to get a note from their employer, calling a friend in another country may require several minutes as you are transferred between phone companies, most people will need to plug into a wall to get internet, and getting an upgrade so your cellphone can keep a digital list of contacts is a pricey luxury.)

But reading through Cyberpunk 2020 now and noting how it diverges from reality doesn’t change the fact that it would be unfair to change it (apart from a few glaring social justice concerns) even though a modern player’s mindset would still need to be more retrofuturistic than bleakly speculative. The rulebook claims to be set in a “dark future” and it has all the hardwired, blade-running, snow-crashing neuromancy one can expect of a game based on the near-future digital dystopias of the time. The irradiated highways are ruled by outlaw nomad families, and cities are urban hellholes where wars are fought for control of streets, boardrooms, television audiences, and the virtual reality of cyberspace. 

Players take on the roles of the eponymous cyberpunks who are prepared to step into these wars hoping to make a change, or at least a profit. Most Cyberpunk games follow either criminal heist or detective/conspiracy story tropes, so characters tend toward those who’ll get their hands dirty or those who’ll try to uncover the truth. Of course, such tropes rarely result in a happy ending for the protagonists, who are lucky if they come out of the tale with their skin or soul intact.

Cyberpunks, the game helpfully points out, live by only three rules; style over substance, attitude is everything, and live on the edge. However, these principles are purely cosmetic because the real rules give only a passing nod to these themes.

System Shock

The Cyberpunk 2020 character sheet and its plethora of Skills. For a gamebook that had pretty solid graphic design for its time, you’d think they could have spent some effort on this thing, eh?

Cyberpunk 2020 uses R. Talsorian’s Interlock System (which would later be blended with Hero Games’ HERO system to make another generic system called Fuzion, which itself would go on to be used in many other games.) Characters have core Stats (Attributes) and Skills ranked up to 10. Roll 1d10 + Stat + Skill and hope the total beats the Difficulty Number. With most difficulties ranging in the teens you can fairly solidly expect that you’ll succeed on most challenges you’ve tailored your character to specialise in.

And yes, you will be specialising because at heart C-punk is a class-based system. After rolling or allocating Stats (GM’s choice) you’ll pick a Role covering one of the classic archetypes of the milieu (Cop, Fixer, Netrunner, Techie, etc.). The Role comes with a package of Skills available to you to spend a set of points on, and from there you are free to spend some more points on Skills from outside your package to round them out a bit.

Aaaaaaaand here’s where we can point out the first of Cyberpunk 2020‘s flaws, which is the standard one common to ’80s system design; too many bloody skills. You can find this problem in many games of the period (looking at you, Call of Cthullu) and it certainly continued into the ’90s. These days, broader skills and fewer of them have proven their worth, but back in the day the mentality was that more specialisation gave more definition and showed that you’d attended to detail. In practice, though, its a mess.

Consider Endurance. This is “the ability to withstand pain or hardship, particularly over long periods of time” but no number of points you have in it will help once the thumbscrews come out. No, for that you’ll need the Resist Torture/Drugs skill. Rockerboys have Wardrobe & Style, but only Corporates manage to combine it naturally with Personal Grooming. Persuasion will allow you to convince people to do what you want, unless you want them to open up and tell you an anecdote whereupon you’ll need Interview (which is different again to Interrogate, of course.)

Combat skills have similar amusement. Having ten points in the Submachinegun Skill will leave you flummoxxed when someone hands you an ordinary pistol unless you’ve invested in Handguns as well. The Melee Skill covers all weapons from baseball bats, to axes, to whips, but it doesn’t cover swords (for that you’ll need Fencing which covers all swords ever made) nor does it cover weapons used in Martial Arts.

The Martial Arts table. Too early for MMA or krav maga, no Brazilian jujitsu, but most egregiously no sumo wrestling.

Ah, yes, Martial Arts. The rules for martial arts were seemingly written by a group of teenagers who spent far too much time arguing about whether Steven Seagal could beat up Jackie Chan, or if Mike Tyson could last against Bruce Lee, and if Chuck Norris could bash up your uncle Bob. Unlike Brawling (basic street fisticuffs) Martial Arts gives you access to a slew of different moves, each with bonuses applied depending on what style of Martial Art you’ve trained in. Wrestling will give you bonuses to throws and grapples, but boxing will help with strikes. More expensive forms give better bonuses and in more fields, with Thai kickboxing and Tae Kwan Do being the ones that finally won the R. Talsorian office circle jerk. Honestly, it’s pretty sad, and anyone who’s had to endure martial arts fanboys arguing over which discipline is “best” (especially at the gaming table) will roll their eyes at it. It’s the “katanas are the coolest sword evah” argument all over again. 

But of all the Skills the most important one is your Special Ability, which is a Skill that only your Role can take. It is basically the first thing you’ll throw ten points into as it determines how good you are at your role and nobody wants to be the Solo with 2 Combat Sense. In short, making this aspect of your character a Skill was a poor move as you’re gonna have it at a high level or not at all and having an alternative system (rerolls or rolling a second d10 and picking the highest) would have made it more interesting.

Probably the most entertaining part of creating a Cyberpunk character is using the optional “Lifepath” tables, where you can roll up all kinds of details about your character, including their personality, family members, their clothing preferences, their friends, the political causes they care about, and even the hurdles they are facing in their love life. In a hobby where “building” the character you want has become the norm, “casting” yourself into playing a randomised concept is refreshing.

But in spite of these Stats, Skills, and Lifepaths nothing is as important and distinctly Cyberpunk as the final and most important step in creating a character…

Lets Go Shopping!

Without the cyber you’re just a two-bit punk. Many games make you buy some starting equipment (sword, armour, horse, rations) but in this game your gear literally defines you. The gun you carry isn’t just handy for killing folk, it is linked to the software you use to help you target, which in turn is tuned to the wires connecting your trigger finger to your nervous system and again to your artificial right eye. You don’t just wear armour, you have it woven subdermally into your flesh and have it highlighted with glowing neon gang tattoos. Your laptop and software are not just tools of your trade but extensions of your brain and a virus out of control can see your own body violently thrown into seizure.

Passing the book around so everyone can get their shopping done is undoubtedly the longest part of Cyberpunk character creation, but it is arguably the best as well and it certainly isn’t a step you want to hurry.

Chromebook 2. There’s a lot of things I could say about the male gaze throughout these books, but that’s a whole other 5000 word article

And you won’t want to either because the equipment is an area where the designers have spent a lot of time and effort, no moreso than in the exceptional “chromebook” expansions which are designed to read just like a shopping catalogue filled with glorious ads for all kinds of various goods and services. The chromebooks are Cyberpunk‘s game design at its best and you can easily allow players to treat them as an in-world item, letting them leaf through it in quiet times, showing off pictures of desired augmentations and firearms greedily to their fellows, and saving their pennies for that new piece of hacking software.

Of course all of this cyberwear has a cost, and it isn’t all financial. The more your character adapts their body the more likely they are to fall into the madness of cyberpsychosis. At best this means spending a lot of money on therapy. At worst it means turning into an NPC murderbot. Which is just like being a PC murderbot except you’re more likely to kill your friends. It’s very much like Call of Cthullu‘s sanity mechanisms in that the more your character gets too close to the edge the more likely they are to fall into it and never return.

Speaking of Call of Cthullu… and murder…

Now We See The Violence Inherent In The System

I remember first asking a friend of mine years ago about Cyberpunk and his pithy one-liner was, “It’s like Cthullu – take a spare character sheet.” He couldn’t have been more correct.

Cyberpunk‘s combat system (called Friday Night Firefight) is brutal. Characters that don’t dive for cover immediately will soon end up very leaky bags of meat. The health system comprises of ten ranks of severity and it’s rather telling that seven of them are various degrees of “dying” with the main difference being the speed at which it’s happening.

The lethal nature of combat in Cyberpunk gives it incredibly high stakes. Characters will always be on edge when approaching a suspicious situation and wary of getting into a firefight. If they must resort to violence, they’ll want to get the drop on their enemies and have a solid plan to work with.

And when that fight does happen, it is exhilarating in the way that only roleplaying games can be. I recently asked a mate of mine who played a lot of it back in the day what he liked about it and it was the drama of combat that he first mentioned.

In his words:

“Cyberpunk was the first game where I really felt the thrill and fear of danger. Being in that position where you’re pinned under fire all out of ammo and your friend slides a clip across the floor to you… and you know that’s their last one, too. It was tense. It was a life and death situation for the characters and it totally felt like it.”

The Hacker Problem

When discussing Cyberpunk, there’s one key issue that most players recognise as a big problem; the internet is a nuisance. House rules generally stated that netrunners would be NPC characters. That’s because diving into the virtual world was its own completely different game, and one where nobody else was invited.

Unless you were custom built to deal with the Net (ie. had chosen the Netrunner Role) you were pretty much helpless in cyberland. So in the event that your crew were hired to steal some files, for instance, only the player of the Netrunner would get to step up and have some fun while the rest of you twiddled your thumbs. “See ya later,” would say Nethead. “The GM and I are gonna go into another room for a while. Catch you in an hour or so.” When all is said and done, Netrunning as written forced you to break one of the cardinal rules of roleplaying; don’t split the party. 

Naturally the game tried to counter this. Maybe the Netrunner would have to be actually on-site while hacking, leading to the classic split scene of having to hold off a squad of armed goons while your hacker is doing their thing. Sounds like a pretty solid scene until you’ve done it for the twentieth time. And even worse when you realise that action rounds in cyberspace run on a totally different timeframe to realspace combat rounds. Yup, easiest just to outsource it to an NPC. 

A sample data fortress

Which is a shame because the actual Net rules are really quite interesting. Loading up your software combinations is a customisable treat and the crossword puzzle-based data fortresses are novel and full of possibilities. For GMs who love designing dungeons, floorplans, and other environments for their games, the Net of Cyberpunk offers a fascinating different spin on the method.

Certainly you could run a game consisting entirely of ‘runners, and you could have a lot of fun with that. Indeed, the rules explicitly state that most data fortresses require multiple Netrunners to attack them simultaneously. But once you start focusing the game in that direction you might as well play the card game Netrunner, which was originally designed for the Cyberpunk world. In fact, I’ve heard of some GMs who replaced the hacking rules with the card game for their campaigns but I’m unsure how apocryphal such claims are.

More recent games in the genre (including Cyberpunk Red) have made moves to counter this issue, and it is well appreciated. But in these classic editions it was a glaring problem. [I'm disappointed to hear that this is allegedly still existent in Red - 2026 Edit]

The Experience

The remainder of the core book deals with the setting and running the game. Night City, the iconic fictional metropolis custom made for the setting, and the various megacorporations are detailed. A good handful of “screamsheets” are supplied, which are nifty newspaper-like handouts for the players each with a mission for the GM to run for them on the back. 

And of course like every game in the ’90s there were sourcebooks. I’ve already mentioned the Chromebooks but there were many, many others. Location guides for Europe or the Pacific Rim. Megacorporation “reports”. A more complete guide to Night City, another going further into the Net, and yet another focused on the irradiated highways of what’s left of the USA. A book for Cops, another for Medias, and naturally one for the one-man army Solos. And of course as all these supplements came out the game inevitably changed.

A game designer friend of mine was running it at the time and noticed the shift. 

In his words:

“I was initially drawn to the “punk” aspect of Cyberpunk.  However as more supplements come out the super slick “Euro” feel, that was initially supposed to be alien to the ugly streets of Night City, became more and more the norm. The game became more about extremely professional super soldiers armed with mega-weapons taking on full borgs, hover tanks and powered armour. The weird gangs featured in Night City source book became odd curios of a by-gone era as players embraced an over-correction in the Cyberpunk 2020 gaming style.

“There was an attempt to steer it back with Nomad-focused narratives of quasi-techno barbarian biker gangs, which I enjoyed far more than mega-corporate warfare. I saw a couple of GMs flounder when it came to their storytelling ability and, partially in the latter stage of the game, with so much source material of really cool, massive, overpowered tech, struggle to find a reasonable threat level in their games.

… words elude me…

“The supplement Listen Up You Primitive Screwheads was a bit revolutionary, in that it attempted to move RPGs away from the murder hobo style of play that is across the RPG genre both then and to this day. It does add in some really good points, however it occasionally comes across as the author preaching to those beneath him that are ruining his game. “

He makes a valid point with Screwheads (or to give it its full title, Listen Up, You Primitive Screwheads!!!!: The Unexpurgated Cyberpunk Referee’s Guide. This somewhat divisive supplement is effectively a collection of articles by the Cyberpunk creative team on how to run games. Though some of it is tailored to the Cyberpunk game, much of it can be considered general GM advice.

But some of that advice is indeed rather patronising, preachy, even occasionally obnoxious. One chapter, written by the illustrious Mr Pondsmith himself  is reminiscent of the bad old days of adversarial GMing as the author takes great delight in detailing how he has engineered the deaths of multiple groups of characters.

Indeed, by the mid-’90s Cyberpunk had become a game of attrition and one-upmanship, less inspired by detective and heist storylines than ’80s action films. The Rockerboys, Medias, Corporates, and Cops became sidelined as crews became strictly Solo/Fixer/Tech/Nomad affairs (with the occasional NPC Netrunner associate to round out the party.) The last supplements for the edition were released in 1996 and then the game seemingly just jacked out and entered into the haze of gaming nostalgia, waiting for its time to be rebooted.

Legacy

The upcoming digital game stars Keanu Reeves, so they tell us

Probably – no, definitely the game that Cyberpunk is most compared to is Shadowrun, which was released in 1989 and thus is only slightly younger than it. Shadowrun‘s huge notable setting difference is that it blends the Cyberpunk model with fantasy rpg tropes including elves, dragons, and magic. Most people had a preference between the two, but it was essentially a matter of taste. Shadowrun fans claimed their game was more fun and had more variety available. Cyberpunk fans claimed theirs was more pure and had a sharper edge.

Looking back on it, it’s hard to say if there was a winner between the two. They both seemed to lose out when the World of Darkness line turned up and kicked everyone out of the contest for a decade (until Wizards of the Coast released D&D3 and flipped the market on its head.)

But rereading this classic old game and discussing it with veterans also reminds me that it was also one of the most “min/maxing” games around. With the likelihood of character death so likely, players naturally tried to find a way to survive and this invariably meant optimising your character for best performance. The nature of the game system even encouraged it. Your character’s Role determined exactly what Skills you would be maxing out, especially your chosen weapon, which in turn would be influencing what equipment you’d be taking to synergise with them. Reflex and Body were essential Stats if you were considering going into combat (in that order) but every character was expected to boost Empathy otherwise there was no way you’d be able to rock that oh-so-important cyberwear. After all, you’ll be choosing as much cyberwear as you can because it also provides a host of funky bonuses, and if we don’t modify our PC as much as possible aren’t we playing contrary to the spirit of the game (or, even worse, just asking to be killed?)

The latest edition, Cyberpunk Red, seems to have made an attempt to curb some of these issues. Fewer Skills clog up the sheet, Netrunners now seem to be a valid character choice, and the new combat system (Thursday Night Throwdown) seems to require far fewer ranks of “knocking on death’s door.” The setting has also been updated to 2077 and a jumpstart kit and a boxed set are available in stores right now.

But I get the horrid feeling that the game will simply once more degenerate into a dungeon-hack in skyscrapers with assault rifles and software standing in for claymores and spell scrolls. In this regard, I guess Shadowrun won one round in the fight because it at least wasn’t pretending to be more sophisticated than D&D in mirrorshades.  

A final point. I’m really surprised that they bothered rehashing the old Interlock system at all. If you really wanted to have a class-based system whilst emphasising ‘Style over Substance’, where ‘Attitude is Everything’, where you are living on the ‘Edge’, why wouldn’t you choose Powered by the Apocalypse?

After all, that’s what the cool kids seem to be playing.

Vampire 5th edition (review)

 (NOTE: This article was first published by Australian Tabletop Gaming Network back in about 2018. Republished here for love and posterity.)

Probably the biggest problem Vampire: The Masquerade 5th edition has to overcome is the game’s legacy. Vampire has a rich and successful pedigree, with all the inbred frailties that go with it. White Wolf could have taken the easy way out and gone the same route as the 3rd and 4th (20th Anniversary) editions; make an encyclopaedic condensation of the game with a few tweaks to the rules and some updated lore. Maybe take some of the rules and ideas from Vampire: The Requiem and Chronicles of Darkness to clean things up a bit. The fans would have complained that there was nothing new and interesting, but they would have lapped it up.

But from the moment you see the vibrant pink cover for the new edition of Vampire you just know they’re gonna be trying something different. Previous editions have all rested on the tried and true red rose on green marble covers, but the 5th edition seems to be declaring that they’re not your grandaddy’s Vampire, kid. No way, this ain’t your ’90s hip and edgy Vampire now bloated, blinking and shuddering through middle-age irrelevancy, this is an altogether newer, hipper and edgier Vampire for the late twenty-teens with all the… style and savviness and… modern ironic counter-counter-cultural sensibilities and… and… street-smart elegance that we’ve come to expect from… from…

From a suburban mid-life crisis, is actually the best analogy I can come up with. Because although Vampire: The Masqurade (and indeed the entire World of Darkness) can do with a new lease on life, there is something going on here that is ultimately a bit embarrassing. It isn’t all bad, of course; it’s nice to see Dad getting back out in the dating scene, buying some new clothes and trying to expand his outlook. But seeing him squeeze into a pair of jeans three sizes too small for him whilst discussing his newest hobby of attending gay feminist cinema (where he’s seen maybe two films and is now suddenly an expert) just makes you want to cringe.

It isn’t that it’s all bad, despite what many would have you believe. It’s just that it’s a mess. A well-intentioned mess, I must confess. It wants to change, but there’s so much baggage weighing it down. It wants to do something new, but it also wants to remain true to its past. It wants to be brave and groundbreaking, and yet it’s too afraid of disappointing its old fans. It wants to strike out in a bold new direction, yet just ends up dawdling aimlessly in circles. It wants to offer us a new way to play, but ends up being bogged down by the same design problems it always had.

Worst of all, however, there is so much that is good here. Great, even. For all that it has maxed out its Flaws it has also balanced them with some really solid Merits, and it’s simply a shame that all those good elements will be overlooked and ignored by those who so desperately want it to fail.

The simple truth is that this is probably both the best AND the worst edition of Vampire: The Masquerade yet released.

Sinking The Teeth In

Let’s get the simple stuff out of the way.

V5 is an update of the classic World of Darkness flagship game for the modern day, including a new Storyteller system that pays homage to all previous editions (including “new WoD”/Chronicles of Darkness/Requiem) whilst adding a lot of new features. Players take on the role of vampires coming to terms with a dangerous new phase in undead history. The once-unconquerable Camarilla and Sabbat have each lost their stranglehold on the Kindred population and are in damage control, leaving the Anarchs and Autarkis free reign to fill the power vaccuum. The Masquerade is fractured and a loose network of allied intelligence agencies, secret societies, and paranormal investigators have formed a covert Second Inquisition to counter the vampiric threat.

The core book contains a summary of the setting, overviews of the seven major Clans that comprise most of the Camarilla and Anarchs (as well as Caitiff and Thin Blooded), character creation, the Storyteller ruleset and a bunch of rules relevant to Vampire, and finally a bunch of tricks, tips, and tools to help you run the game. The book contains full-colour artwork, heaps of photography, and clocks in at just a touch over a whopping 400 pages. Two upcoming books detailing the Camarilla and Anarchs have been announced. The Sabbat and independent Clans largely remain ciphers; rather a surprising similarity to the first and second editions, actually.

The controversy surrounding the mature content and difficult subject matter has been addressed with a brief introduction addressing the matter and an appendix particularly dedicated to considerate play.

That’s the basics, but it wouldn’t be a White Wolf game without some Merits and Flaws, and this edition has ’em in spades.

Style 

·         Art, Illustration (2pt Flaw): White Wolf raised the bar for gamebooks in terms of art, and other RPG companies quickly took note. For the first time this edition has gone full colour rather than mostly black and white, and unfortunately it doesn’t quite work. Street scenes are mostly fine, but anything to do with a human/vampire figure simply doesn’t have the quality we expect of a White Wolf book. In fact, they might have been better if they were monochrome.

·         Art, Photography (3pt Merit): Surprisingly, the photography in this book is mostly fine. Good, even. It certainly isn’t the embarrassment that we suffered through in Minds Eye Theatre products. I expected to absolutely hate the photography, but I ended up actually liking most of it.

·         Writing Quality (4pt Flaw): One of the great aspects of reading a good White Wolf book was that the writing was pretty solid. They certainly had their hits and misses, but you could generally tell there was some solid talent with a clever editor riding shotgun. The writing here (especially in the vital early sections) just doesn’t have the flair, cleverness, or eloquence of previous editions. It improves in the latter sections (as so much else does) but the substandard fanfic taste doesn’t leave the mouth. Compared to what we’ve come to expect, so much of the writing comes across as amateurish. (There was quite a bit of controversy about this edition in the lead up to its release and my honest appraisal is that critics were simply able to cherry-pick from some very poor writing. The designers weren’t looking to make a problematic game or appeal to the dregs of humanity, they were just unable to express themselves properly and suffered for it.)

·         Text Layout (5pt Flaw): This is probably the most egregious aspect of the book. Sentences carry over onto new pages for no valid reason at all, despite the fact that white space and sidebars easily allow for paragraphs or even entire sections to be finished cleanly. There’s no excuse for this in a modern publishing house and even the least pedantic of readers is going to find it jarring. Completely unprofessional.

·         Size (1pt Flaw): I like a good hefty rpg book as much as the next grognard, but there is simply not enough content to justify the 400+ pages here, particularly when we consider what was in the 20th Anniversary books.

Setting

·         Introduction and Overview (2pt Flaw): The opening pages look great, filled with letters, documents, transcriptions, photos, and other interesting ways to introduce us to vampires in the World of Darkness, but once again the quality of the writing falls flat. As we move further along, the pages that give us an overview of the game seem cobbled together by different authors. There is not enough to interest familiar players, whereas newcomers will find terms and ideas that are barely explained and then abandoned. The intention is to offer brief descriptions and teasers for later sections of the book (or even other supplements) but it is performed with a clumsiness unbecoming of a White Wolf publication.

·         Updated World of Darkness (2pt Merit): Though it is only briefly explained, the direction the World of Darkness has taken in the last 13 years offers a great premise for the Vampire game. The Sabbat and Camarilla have both lost a great degree of their power and mortal agencies have managed to crack the Masquerade, which leaves the street level Anarchs and Autarkis with more power and more danger than ever before. The grand metaplots are making way for more intimate stories centered around your players, and the concept of a world balancing on a “knife’s edge” able to tip in any direction is far more interesting than the looming doom of Gehenna. The Second Inquisition (despite its histrionic name and its links with the Society of Leopold) is actually a very interesting idea, though I wonder how it will be implemented alongside the Technocracy once Mage is released.

·         Mood and Theme (1pt Flaw): These old storytelling tools are gone, which is a shame. Even the old Gothic-Punk term seems to be considered the domain of previous editions.

·         Clan Selection (3pt Flaw): A nod back to early editions here, we have the basic seven of the Camarilla… Except two of them (Gangrel and Brujah) aren’t really in the Camarilla, and another two (Caitiff and Thin-Blooded) are hardly considered vampires at all. In fact, only the Tremere and Ventrue can really be said to be solidly of the Camarilla any more (kinda like how the Lasombra and Tzimisce are the pillars of the Sabbat, but that’s enough Sabbat talk). The justification is that we’re focusing on the main clans of the Camarilla and Anarchs, the two major rival forces of this core book, but it seems wrong to offer both sides of this conflict to player characters. What would have been best would be to focus this book entirely on the Anarchs and Autarks, allowing the Camarilla to become a more potent antagonist detailed further in the upcoming Camarilla book. In fact, if the Tremere and Ventrue were excised from the book and replaced with maybe the Ravnos and Assamites (now seemingly called the Banu Haqim) it would have made for a much more compelling setting and a more defined focus on what this edition is really meant to be about. (On a side note, I’m surprised that they didn’t include playing ghouls as a PC option.)

·         Clan Descriptions (2pt Flaw): Clans are given little more than a few rudimentary paragraphs in way of description. However, various character concepts are offered to illustrate the variety within each Clan, which is nice, and the way they express their identity through their Disciplines is a good touch. Sadly, the stereotypes each Clan holds against each other has been ditched; a terrible shame. All in all, the lack of depth is truly disappointing.

·         Clan Outfits (1pt Flaw): Here’s something new, which was a great idea that missed its mark. Even though the book stresses that it is a tabletop game, the designers are aware of the massive LARP following the game has and a few winks and nods shine through. There’s a page at one stage mentioning fashion and how Kindred meetings tend to become elaborate affairs and the subtext is basically “kit up and go wild, folks.” Fantastic. Now come the Clan splatpages – a page to each showing a bunch of Kindred and their various outfits. It’s meant to offer inspiration for LARPers and cosplayers I guess, and I adore the idea; indeed, well done on an excellent idea! But two things let it down. The first is that it suffers the “unfinished concept art” factor of most of the book’s illustrations. The second is that after a while they all look a bit samey. It’s a great idea poorly executed. Oh, and the models all have identical body shapes with minimal diversity.

Core System 

·         Fundamental Storyteller System (4pt Flaw): This one is gonna be subject to your preference. Very simply, the base Storyteller system is mostly familiar, particularly for those of you who played Requiem. Roll a number of d10s equal to Attribute plus Skill, count how many hit 6 or higher and see if that is enough to succeed. For some people, this will be great, but I see it as a huge shame. The problem is that this has the same problem the system has always had; it isn’t a storytelling system, it’s a task-resolution system. Conflicts are determined by character competency and not by dramatic relevance. In the 27 years since Vampire first came out so many amazing advances have been made in creating narrative game systems, many inspired by the more dramatic mechanisms developed by White Wolf products (I’m looking at Backgrounds, Virtues, and the Passions and Fetters of Wraith.) This was the chance for White Wolf to reclaim its title as the forefront of narrative storytelling, and instead they took the easy way out, frightened by the fact that the traditional player base would have a tantrum. Sadly, they had it anyway. The only reason this Flaw isn’t a higher number is as a concession to the many people who actually like it.

·         Custom Dice (1pt Merit): Since we don’t have to worry about scaling target numbers, custom dice are being released (see picture). They aren’t essential (such as those used in many Fantasy Flight releases) but they give hardcore fans something fun for the shelf.

·         Win at Cost (1pt Merit): Speaking of other gaming systems, it’s clear that the designers have been looking at ’em, and here’s some inspiration from indie darling Apocalypse World (amongst others, but AW seems to get a lot of the glory right now). If you get at least one success but not enough to actually succeed, you can get a sort of mixed success/fail effect. It relies on the Story Teller, but is a worthwhile inclusion.

·         Botches (2pt Merit): Gone, for the most part (but see Hunger rules).

·         Critical Successes (1pt Flaw): For every two 0s/10s rolled, you get a critical success, which treats the two paired dice as four successes instead of two. But if you roll a third 0, it is simply counted as one success; you’ll need a fourth 0 to double up again to eight successes. I have no idea why they didn’t just decide to let every 0 act as two successes, and I’d guess that it will become a house rule for most groups.

·         SPCs (3pt Flaw): Okay, we’re fine with Storyteller or ST instead of GM, but did we really need a new word for NPC? SPC is short for Storyteller Portrayed Character and not only does it sound stupid, it is also completely unnecessary.

Character Traits and Construction 

·         Attributes and Skills (0pt Merit/Flaw): Basically Requiem. As mentioned earlier, this is a missed opportunity to overhaul the basics of the system. On the other hand, the majority of fans will be satisfied. I still don’t see why Brawl and Melee need to be distinct Skills. More interesting is how points are allocated. There are several options presented, but some will dislike the lack of freedom. I don’t find it to be interesting or problematic and declare this a draw, but only because I’ve already deducted enough points from the base system and the choice of Attributes and Skills is an artifact of that design choice.

·         Nature and Demeanor (1 pt Flaw): When it worked well, Nature and Demeanor was an important guide for roleplaying. Losing it isn’t a huge loss, but it is a shame to see it go. This could have been a much worse Flaw if not for the fact it was replaced with more interesting mechanisms…

·         Ambition and Desire (3pt Merit): And here are those more interesting mechanisms. Instead of determining who your character is or what your character has done, we’re working out what your character wants. The best part of this is that it gives your character momentum and motivation; a reason to be proactive. An excellent addition.

·         Convictions and Touchstones (3pt Merit): And even more interesting character development! Convictions are beliefs your character has and Touchstones are mortals that somehow remind you of your Convictions. This is one of a few different mechanisms seemingly lifted from Wraith concepts and they are really welcome. Vampires in this edition cannot forget that they exist alongside humanity, and this is but one of many different inclusions to remind you.

·         Flaws (1pt Flaw): There are only a small number of Flaws available, which isn’t so bad except that you must take at least two points worth of them and the limited selection means games will see a lot of repetition.

·         Advantages (1pt Merit): Merits, Backgrounds, and Loresheets are all lumped under the Advantage monicker. Merits have the same limited selection Flaws do, but since you’re using the same point pool to grab Backgrounds it’s pretty forgivable. Backgrounds themselves run the familiar gamut of Retainers, Herd, Resources, etc. Loresheets show how involved you are in major plotlines, and I’ll go into them later. For now, I’m in favour of a mechanism allowing you to declare your investment in a plot right from the start (it certainly is much better than Lore traits).

·         Predator Style (4pt Merit): Absolutely wonderful, and one of the more controversial elements of the game. Your Predator Style is a descriptor of how you generally obtain blood, and the fact that this relates to the roleplaying of scenes that include deceit, seduction, stalking, violation, violence, and all manner of other topics that could do with a trigger warning or two is yet one more reminder that this is a game about monsters. Each Predator Style comes with a suite of traits, including Advantages, Flaws, Skill Specialties, and even a Discipline (which could be from out of Clan). It is a wonderful idea and one that previous editions failed to give any justice. Glorious!

·         Coterie Creation and Chronicle Tenets (4pt Merit): Every WoD game had the idea of the small group of characters working together as a troupe, but apart from the pack structure of Werewolf it never really worked (well, maybe Sabbat packs and their vaulderie comes arguably close). Vampire had the concept of the coterie, and it is finally given some tools to help make it happen. Coteries will have a style and focus, along with their own Advantages and Flaws. These rules actively bring your characters together and give them common cause. In addition, your players will create a common set of Chronicle Tenets that determine the mood, concepts, and morality of the story. Yet one more brilliant design inclusion that was ignored in previous editions.

·         Disciplines (3pt Merit): All the basic Camarilla Disciplines are here (including the weird blood alchemy of the Thin-Blooded) and again the Requiem influence is noted (don’t go expecting Celerity to give you five extra actions, slugger). There are a couple of things that really stand out though. First there are multiple powers to learn for different ranks of Discipline; eg. taking rank one Dominate means you get to choose between the single word Compel power, or the Forget power (the other can of course be learned as well later). Another standout is Amalgam powers, which require training in another Discipline; eg. Potence’s Spark of Rage which requires Presence 3. Furthermore, some of the Discipline powers seem to prove support for the idea that some of the weirder, sillier, and less vampiric Disciplines are going to be abandoned or changed. For instance, Dementate has gone from a Malkavian standard to a Dominate/Auspex Amalgam power (Disciplines that the Malkavians have in-Clan). Likewise, Silence of Death is an Obfuscate ability which has interesting implications for what may happen with Quietus (and let’s be honest; Quietus was always a stupid Discipline with very little thematic qualities other than “it’s good for killing vampires.” I’m gonna guess that the Assamites/Banu Haqim are gonna lose it and gain either Potence or some form of Blood Sorcery/Thaumaturgy). And finally, the Discipline pages have the icons from classic CCG Jyhad/Vampire: The Eternal Struggle. Does this mean we’re going to be seeing a re-release of the card game? Are NPC (I refuse to use SPC) profiles going to make use of these icons? One can only wonder…

·         Freebie Points and Experience (2pt Flaw): Not balancing these two systems with each other was always a ridiculous oversight. There’s no reason not to.

·         Health and Willpower (1pt Merit): Willpower acts a lot more like Health, meaning you can have it suffer damage, including aggravated damage! So you can wear someone down emotionally until they are powerless to resist you. However, the poor writing shows its ugly head again here as weapons will “do points of damage” rather than the more evocative way they used to “inflict wounds.” It’s a simple change, but one classic line developer Justin Achilli would have have insisted any of his writers address.

Supplementary Systems

·         Hunger (4pt Merit): On the whole, the Hunger system is an excellent inclusion, despite a few issues. The old Blood Battery is gone and instead has been abstracted into the Hunger mechanic. For each dot you have in Hunger you replace a die in your pool with a Hunger die, which does wonderfully vampiric things whenever they roll 1s or 0s. This means every die roll can become a battle with the Beast, especially in stressful situations or when choosing to draw upon Disciplines or other vampiric powers which may increase your Hunger. Though the Rouse check to determine whether your Hunger rises is little more than a coin flip (boo!) the general idea of Hunger dice is fantastic and it is easy to see how it could easily be adapted to Rage, Paradox, and Shadow Dice in the upcoming WoD games. Where the struggle with the Beast was always given lip service, now it finally has come to the fore.

·         Blood and Resonance (2pt Merit): Apart from supernaturals and animals, every human used to be pretty much the same, but now every vessel will be a little bit different. Especially vibrant humans will have one of several Resonances, which allow you extra dice in certain situations or even the use of Disciplines you normally don’t have access to. Finding especially potent or powerful humans can prove a vital asset for a coterie and can provide a wonderful narrative hook. However, there just might be too many rules about blood and it can get a bit much after a while. Still, it’s great that a game about vampires reflects the importance of blood.

·         Humanity (1pt Merit): Much the same as it used to be. Violating Chronicle Tenets, losing Touchstones, Embracing children, and just generally being a pretty horrible person can see you losing Humanity. A rule stating that you can add a third of your Humanity rounded down to Frenzy tests is an example of one of the many ugly rules that sometimes creeps into this edition. Having a high Humanity actually makes you more human like, such as the ability to stomach food, stay awake during the day, heal wounds, or even engage in intercourse (yeah, there’s quite a bit of discussion on sex, but taken in the context that so much of this game has to do with hunting it seems relevant. Still, one page or so dealing with the matter might have been better than littering the topic throughout the book). In fact, it seems like Humanity seems to have similarities to Blood Potency from Requiem. Speaking of which…

·         Potency and Generation (4pt Flaw): So they’ve tried to integrate Generation and Blood Potency and it has ended up becoming a bloated mess. Each rank creates a whole heap of subsystems and derived statistics with a chart to catalogue them all. It’s ugly, awkward, and non-intuitive.

·         Combat (1pt Merit): Basic combat isn’t very exciting or interesting, but the advanced and alternate combat systems are actually pretty good. Treating social conflicts with the same system as physical ones is refreshing, and the “Three Turns and Out” rule reminds you that the game shouldn’t be about dice rolling. It’s a shame that the core systems don’t do this on their own, but you can’t have everything I guess.

·         Tick Words (1pt Merit): A throwaway idea mentioned as an alternative system for increasing Hunger seems to be the kind of thing that would work well in a LARP or freeform. Effectively, the Story Teller has a list of taboo words and actions. Any time a PC uses a word or performs an action they gain Hunger. It’s simple, but it’s intuitive and fun.

·         Relationship Map (3pt Flaw): This is a massive disappointment. V5 encourages you to make a Relationship Map of all the characters that have relevance to the PCs. It’s a similar idea to many other games, who may call them other names such as Character Webs or whatever. Unfortunately, this Relationship Map serves only as inspiration for the troupe and only the most basic advice is given in its use. Worse, there is no mechanical use for it in the game. Worst of all, no attractive template is given for it with only a hand-drawn example given. This could have been such a beautiful addition to the Storytelling toolbox, and instead it just shows one more time when the development team had a great idea and then had no idea what to do with it so they just threw their notes onto the page and called it a day.

·         Memoriam (1pt Merit): Also a disappointment, but this time not because it completely fails but because it only just manages to succeed. Basically this is a system to allow your character to revisit their past as a kind of playable flashback. Ideally this is a system for older vampires and should maybe have been reserved for the Camarilla book (ideally because it would have given it more development time). The idea is sound, but underdeveloped.

·         Loresheets (2pt Merit): Loresheets are basically the major metaplots of the game setting and taking points in them essentially invests you in them. Various books and supplements will add more Loresheets, and it is up to the Story Teller to determine which ones to allow or not. The core concept is great, but it runs the risk of making some characters more important than others, or introducing plots that only one character is interested in, or even giving players far more information than the Story Teller wants them to have. Worst of all, there are no tools or guidelines on how to create your own Loresheets for your own chronicle, which seems to be the obvious thing to include. It’s a really good idea, but not enough work has gone into it. Starting to see a theme here, folks?

·         50 Victims (5pt Merit*): The final pages of the book offer a list of 50 potential victims, each with an occupation, a couple of sample names, short descriptions on both who they are and what they want, and a Resonance option for their blood (including a justification as to why). For a game so dedicated to feeding on random people, this list is a vital appendix. Excellent work!

·         Appendix III (1pt Merit): By popular demand, advice for considerate play and dealing with difficult topics maturely has been added, along with some pretty clear comments opposing fascism and sexual assault. Practical tools such as X cards and the Lines and Veils approach are offered. Whether these will be useful to you will be a personal choice. I’m giving it a Merit point just because at least trying is a mark in its favour.

This leaves us with the grand total of 41 points in Merits compared to 40 points of Flaws. It might be a tight margin, but it seems that I have to call the book “of greater Merit than its significant Flaws might suggest.” Science proves it.

Going for the Throat

Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition succeeds in doing what every previous edition has claimed to do but failed at, whilst simultaneously failing to do what previous editions managed to actually pull off.

Previous editions of Vampire always claimed the same thing; it was “A Storytelling Game of Personal Horror.” Unfortunately, the game itself spent very little time dealing with the theme of personal horror at all. It was generally about super powered politics, and most fans of the game will undoubtedly regale you with tales of Player vs Player courtly intrigue and machiavellian subterfuge rather than anything remotely to do with romantic angst at the corruption of the self. Token mechanisms covering Humanity and Conscience were largely superfluous in most games of Vampire, and were entirely abandoned in Sabbat chronicles (where topics such as violence and violation tended to be treated either as par for the course or with all the maturity of a kindergarten food fight). They were really games of political horror where the strong consume the weak, the ruthless make the laws, and uneasy lies the head that wears the crown.

V5 changes the claim to “A Storytelling game of personal and political horror” which is actually only half true. Although it is nice to see that the political horror is finally getting the honesty it deserves, this edition has yet to follow through on it. The Byzantine Jyhad is given only the most cursory of overviews, teasing some interesting ideas but not giving enough detail for new players to become invested or for old hands to find anything new. In fact, most readers will be confused as to what this game is actually meant to be about.

The penny finally drops about three quarters of the way through the book. What V5 is actually about is those very themes the original game always claimed; modern vampirism and personal horror. This game isn’t meant to be about ancient feuds and clandestine intrigue. It’s about surviving one night at a time, finding victims to slate your unholy thirst, and dealing with the consequences of your own horrific actions. The way you hunt actually helps define aspects of your character, the people you feed on affects the quality of your vitae, and for the first time ever your coterie actually becomes a vital necessity in your nightly struggle for survival. The stories are meant to be street-level, personal, and confronting as you portray gutter-rank neonates in a city that rests on a knife’s edge.

If the book had kept this focus in mind, it would have been fantastic, but it seems the team got frightened by playtesters and tried to cover a few more bases. In doing so, they dropped the ball.

Unlike many other folks I know, I hadn’t already made up my mind to despise the latest edition of Vampire due to the various controversies surrounding it, so it was refreshing to finally get my hands on it and find that I could despise it for a whole heap of other reasons. Now I can join in with the cool kids and snicker away at the many issues with it. But if you cherry-pick away at it (which so many are keen to do) you can actually cobble together a pretty damn good hack of a Vampire game from this fifth edition and in years to come this will be considered a turning point for Vampire and the World of Darkness as a whole.

Probably the most important thing I can mention is that V5 has made me want to play Vampire again, and not just any Vampire. I want to play the Vampire game hidden between the lines of V5, straddling that keen and dangerous gutter-level knife’s edge where the Masquerade is hanging by a thread and the stories are personal, intimate, and filled with blood. I want to strive against my Hunger, succumb to my thirst, revel in the moment, and cry into the night for all I’ve lost. I want to conquer the night and run desperately for shelter as the first rays of dawn creep over the horizon. I want that experience of being a vampire that the fifth edition offers…

… that experience previous editions failed to deliver.