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It's official, a 6th Edition of World of Darkness is the on the way, starting with Vampire: The Masquerade.

https://www.wargamer.com/vampire-the-masquerade/6th-edition-announced

The playtest is being run on Demiplane. If you have a Roll20 account, you already have a Demiplane account effectively (they're the same company).

https://app.demiplane.com/nexus/worldofdarkness

As always, the announcement has been met with plenty of outrage but the proof in the blood pudding will be in the eating. At least White Wolf are developing in with community input! Have a look.

<fingers crossed>

OOh this might be on my to be purchased list! Thanks!

I'm planning to run a face-to-face playtest for Hallowe'en. I was originally planning to use VtM 5th Ed but since that's now defunct and since White Wolf are literally asking us to playtest 6th Ed... might as well! Mina, I'll let you know how we get on.

Thanks Nem! I would appreciate feedback before shelling out money for it!

I'm liking what I'm reading so far. It's more streamlined all-round, more focused on role-playing.

I have a couple of qualms. For the core test mechanic, you construct a dice pool by adding your Attribute to your Skill. That's fine, but then you subtract the Difficulty as defined by the GM. The maths is simple but in practice it feels... clunky.

You add Attribute to Skill, gathering your dice, then the GM tells you to put X dice back?

You could adapt to this by totalling Attribute and Skill in your head, asking the GM for X and subtracting it from the total, then gather your dice.

Sometimes a test only uses half your total of Attribute and Skill though. So, then you're adding, halving, before the GM tells you to subtract X and you finally gather your dice.

When you're handling physical dice I think it lacks elegance.

My second qualm is less tangible. There isn't a hunger pressure as such. Using your vampire powers and taking damage reduces your energy and you must feed to replenish your energy. In practice, that might be all the pressure needed. But let's say your vampire spends their nights chilling out, they technically won't get hungry and that doesn't feel quite right to me. What do you think?

You didn't even scare them with the character sheet.... You need to share that.

<waves to Pande>

It truly is a beast. Here's a link to the Nosferatu pre-gen:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1n-81l39noDd48icsGcxVcdobdL6eo6Y_/view?usp=sharing

5 pages for a pre-gen character!

But yeah, I ran the 6th Ed playtest with Gypsy and others a few weeks back and it provided an entertaining afternoon's gaming but felt like it was in very early stages of development. It is meant to be an alpha version, I guess.

Conceptually, I like how the characters are their own worst enemy, how they are the monsters they're really fighting against.

Mechanically, I like what I'm calling the Cycle of Horror:

To achieve action you must roll, rolling pushes you towards A Bad End, to retreat from A Bad End you must role-play, which allows you to achieve more action. And moving through every phase of the cycle involves horror.

But the game's still far too crunchy, imo. I'd put it on par with 6th-level D&D 5e. The game doesn't break down but the system and character sheets need serious study.

A big part of the crunch is simply having 9 Attributes and 13 Skills. I think this is a holdover from previous editions but is simply unnecessary.

The game's use of Powered by the Apocalypse-like moves is OK but there are too many of them. Frex, they have a separate Dodge and Parry move. Neither are needed in a PbtA move system.

I tried to submit feedback afterwards but Renegade had already closed it.

Darn, that's disappointing! It sounds like a fun background system but not a very playable one?

Not very cohesive at present, Mina, but it is only at alpha stage. I reckon they mashed two conflicting game styles together for the playtest intentionally. Based on the feedback I think they'll steer in one direction or the other, so I still have high hopes for it.

I really liked the gameplay loop, the Cycle of Horror as I called it above. Although it doesn't shine through in a short playtest, it should making playing a vampire feel like a struggle not to become a monster. If the designers build around that, it'll could be great.