Nord.pubBased Vampire the Masquerade
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PugJesushttps://media.piefed.social/posts/vD/lo/vDloVyamd9U6Moj.webp
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Eat the Reich
Quite literally, in the case of VTM
Maybe I am being whooooshed but just in case: Eat The Reich is a separate RPG where the goal is basically killing as many Nazis as possible as bad ass vampires.
Yes, I was referencing this game. But aside from the game I love the wordplay on “eat the rich” and both are tenets to live by.
Ah, I did not know that.
The amount of fascists that played in my town is what turned me off of White Wolf. That and the sex pests trying to seduce the ladies with die rolls in real life.
On the one hand, good on them for trying a “nazi punks fuck off” type move.
On the other hand, a blood sucking aristocracy that feeds off the “lesser people” beneath them as the protagonists… that’s nearly the definition of fascism?
From what I recall (and this may vary between editions), the game tends to assume that most people are playing younger vampires who aren’t anything like an aristocracy. By default, you play as the bottom rung of vampire society, the youngest generation in a system where the older generations will never grow old and die. The aristocrats aren’t the protagonists, they are the ever present boot stomping you down.
More importantly, the core concept of the game is supposed to be about the “personal horror” of being a monster. You were a (presumably) ordinary person who has been violated, killed, and brought back as an abomination. Your existence is defined by the struggle against the beast within. You are desperately clinging to your humanity, and every time you slip up or compromise you risk losing a piece of yourself that you can’t get back. You suffer mechanical penalties for becoming more evil, and if you ever lose your humanity completely you lose your character.
In short, the game isn’t supposed to be the kind of thing that would appeal to a fascist. If anything, it has more in common with the experience of waking up to find yourself surrounded by fascists and trying to survive without becoming one of them.
Yup, this is pretty much it. I played a campaign of it. Essentially, you’re so far down the hierarchy you’re basically almost human, with older vampires being a far far greater threat than humans, struggling to understand and survive vampire society before it destroys you. As you said, there’s also a fair chunk of trying to hold on to what humanity you still have left.
That is entirely fair. I only know V:tM from people I knew who played it… but they were, as individuals, definitely more on the fascist side, leaning more into the glamour of being a monster rather than the horror of being a monster.
I hope more groups and players lean into the horror of it more than the glamour. Maybe this note is trying to encourage that.
I think treating inhumanity as horror is pretty fascist. I’m in love with a very sweet monster who hates Nazis, and I’m a big fan of Guillermo del Toro’s movies where humans tend to be more evil than monsters.
In My experience VTM players trend fascist because the game encourages you to accept the Camarilla’s fascist idolisation of humanity.
Inhumanity meaning the opposite of humane – in fact it used to be spelled inhumane. I.e. “cruel”.
Strangely enough it doesn’t have the “not a human” meaning inhuman does, but English is weird.
That’s because we speak a language designed by human supremacists.
True, but in fairness I tried to discuss utilitarianism with my cat over dinner and his response was trying to steal food off my plate.
Which in hindsight could have actually been a rather profound commentary on the pursuit of happiness in a utilitarian framework.
Treating humanity as better than “the beast within” is human supremacism, which is fascism. The Camarilla rely on Humanity to protect them from oblivion because they’re a fascist organisation. The Sabbat use the Paths to make peace with the beast within while maintaining their individuality and free will.
I dunno dude, I find “trying to stay human and fight off actively hostile part inside me that was forced upon me” pretty anti-fascist…
Well I’ve actually lived what you’re describing, I found a part of Myself that was incompatible with humanity. And it was My true identity knocking on the door of My soul asking to be let in. It was My gender and My species. I am not a human. If I had held onto humanity I would have been denying part of Myself. So many budding otherkin and trans people are forced back into the closet by fascists, who look at us and see what you see in VTM. An invasive “woke mind virus” that causes “rapid onset gender dysphoria”.
To the man who raised Me, his child is dead and I have killed him. And I say: good. I am a creature of the night, an unholy revenant, the vengeance of the wild. I bring the end of civilisation as these fascists know it. The end of their rotten moral values and their cancerous capitalism. I am a dark goddess of madness and rebirth come to free My people from the human shells the fascists have forced them into. Death to the oppressor. Death to the false self. Death to the old world order.
Tbh, equating anyone who doesn’t value animals at the same level as humans with fascists is pretty misguided and not helpful at all.
I mean, that’s more the definition of… well, aristocracy.
Fascism is largely a creation of the modern age and mass politics.
Aristocracy has shown a tendancy to lead to fascism, as can be seen in what is currently happening in the US
Yes and no. Aristocracy can exist independent from fascism, and should be considered entirely separately. However, if they can’t maintain power with a purely conservative/reactionary coalition, aristocrats will almost always side with fascists over liberals, much less socialists. As such, in the modern day, aristocracies are aligned with fascists, despite fascism erasing aristocracy as it ‘succeeds’ and aristocrats being generally aware that fascists do not have their aristocratic interests in mind.
Oh absolutely, it’s just that the modern day aristocrats of capitalism are so short sighted they can’t see past their own nose.
They don’t know that their own wealth is meaningless since rule of law is not theirs, and no one will care if they get epstiened like many Russian oligarchs.
“First they came” and all that
There is a difference between aristocracy and oligarchy. Aristocracy is under the thumb of the monarch, oligarchy isn’t.
On the Wikipedia page, it states that oligarchy is “Aristocracy’s corrupt counterpart”.
At the end of the day there is no way an aristocracy doesn’t become corrupt, so the result is just a label
Fascism is what you get when Aristocracy gets a business degree. The difference between a feudal lord and a CEO is non-farm income.
Far, far from it. Despite the casual use (including by me!) of aristocracy for any entrenched elite, there is a non-negligible difference between actual aristocrats and plutocrats. Long story short, aristocrats are dependent on social capital and extraordinary legal privileges; plutocrats are dependent on financial capital. The tension between these competing sources of elite power has fueled many pre-modern conflicts. The two can blend, and there’s rarely a ‘pure’ example of either, but they’re aren’t quite equivalent either. A majority-owner of a modern farming conglomerate does not base his power on the same foundation as a feudal lord, and vice-versa.
In principle you are correct, in practice the functional difference is very much negligible. As anyone who has ever tried to hold a plutocrat accountable in court can tell you, their equality under the law is more theoretical than how the world really works. The cults of personality, the careful reputational management, the nepotism and cronyism, dynastic rule and insularity, it’s all there, it’s just got a different window dressing.
On paper their power is different. In practice, not so much.
I can’t imagine the apathy these people have for human* rights, despite seeing the actions this apathy leads to every day
I’d rather have anti-fascists play as fascists, than the opposite.
Yes, which is why they need to put this kind of disclaimer in their handbook — lest they end up with chuds like the Warhammer franchise. Those chuds being the ones that don’t understand that the Imperium is really bad.
Being a novice to the lore, I’d say anyone who unironically thinks the Camarilla are right is someone I would punch.
Isn’t this the game Rod Ferrell (Vampire Clan murderer) was obsessed with? Maybe that’s why fascists like it.
Vesaaaaaaaaago, what a fuckwit ahah
Yes, but I believe you should have either phrased this nice enough to actually affect people or much more aggressive and definitive instead of this rather diplomatic statement.
“Fuck off, we’re not dealing with your bullshit” is a perfectly acceptable thing to say to fascists.
Having neither the desire or energy to “fix” everyone is fine – especially dirtbags that are looking for an argument in bad faith.
*Acided.
Ah yes, vampires, those symbols of liberalism.
I mean, they’re fictional, they can be whatever you want them to be
But White Wolf VtM vampires aren’t.
Except for a neo-nazi.
Nah these games suck and their depiction of indigenous people is completely insane minstrelsy that I feel too ashamed to even describe.
They depict indigenous people rather fairly, depending on your dm.
Then again indigenous means different things around the globe.