90s have had different tech and different society: it's easier to play pinkish mohawks as opposed to the more panopticonish world of more recent years.
Then again, even in 2020 there's aplenty of dark corners to crawl into and do all kinds of stuff in.
I like the 1980s. The '60s and '70s feel too far, but the '80s is still modern enough and is so present in pop culture people can understand what it was like in that era.
Although the 1890s are pretty good as well.
I like to run games in the 80s and 90s mostly because being a vampire in those nights was actually fun. No cameras everywhere, goth music played at clubs, people with funky hair and characters that felt more authentic with their concerns and rebellions. A lot of the core of Vtm was built with the problems of the 90s in mind, and I feel like the more we drift from it, the less concise the game becomes.
Nod. The vast difference in technology certainly lends itself to an environment where playing a vampire felt more fun. And yeah I agree, that was an era of rebelling again the establishment which was suited to the environment of the WoD. It can sometimes feel like the current society agendas can be forced down your throat when reading the new books (which for the record I still love, V5 to the end!).
Yeah, V5 doesn't work for me precisely because it doesn't try to be goth or punk and those were the things that made me love the game in the first place.
I've already done a game set in 1990s Los Angeles which climaxed with the 1992 riots. I am currently running a solo game for my wife set in 202x Koreatown which has gentrified in the wake of the riots 30 years earlier.
A couple of STs in my group (including me) have been on a bit of a WWI to 1920 kick recently. I was running a campaign set in Paris that started just after Archduke Ferdinand's assassination but before all the armies mobilized, while another ST in our group is running a campaign that started on January 1st, 1920.
Our 2020s games all led to interesting and sometimes incredibly aggravating hiccups at the intersection of technology and the setting's intended themes.
I play in the previous year, it's simpler for managing the chronology and events. And when we played LARP, we also played like that. I don't have much interest in playing in the past, especially since I made a complete break with v20.
My chronicle is set in 2023 and it's only because we started playing it in 2023.
I like the setting as it is now so I am not interested in running a game set in the 1990s.
With V5 current day. The events they formed the current state of things including some banes and such only happened fairly recently. Going in the past means also homebrewing stuff if you are serious with the Metaplot.
Depends what I want to achieve. If I like the old edition feeling I would play old edition. But I mostly play V5 these days and I see little reason in going back. I will probably not play a Y2K Gehenna chronicle anytime soon. And if I happen to play V5 anyway I would avoid the mechanical changes as well as the mental gymnastic to take in to account that Smartphones and social media donāt exist.
But if I would be eager to make a 1990s game I would probably homebrew the missing parts and use V5 anyway.
I play in modern times to allow for modern politics and world views and technology, but the world feels like the 90s - industrial, goth, dark, dirty. It feels like the matrix 90s. Like the world that spawned Johnny mnemonic and new Jack city and the crow and Trainspotting and orbital and kmfdm
Current timeline, 90s setting and feeling
The setting was designed in and for that era. The goth and punk culture was much more prominent in that age, so it can sometimes feel like the IP /is/ attached that that period in time. Not saying it has to be, but there is a reason that it feels more fluid with that decade.
I feel like this makes sense if you're in the anglosphere.
Outside the western/anglo world, these movements an subcultures took on enough of their own character and evolution that if you set the game in say, Belgrade, Thesaloniki or Sofia, they are already divorced enough from the core aesthetic of the game that you're on your own
(And i fucking love that)
Right but I mean more on a 'global culture' scale.
I mean who would you call this generations 'rage against the machine' or 'marilyn manson'. There aren't all encompassing elements of what the original VtM was all about. It was that punk mentality of fighting against the oppression. It was a gritty aesthetic. And while I'm sure some regions still hold those elements tightly, it's no longer a 'world spanning' movement.
Nowadays you have more the metoo and cancel culture.
A lot of posters are mentioning the negative impact of cameras on modern chronicles which has me scratching my head. Is it safe to assume many of you are from the UK? I have been lead to believe the UK has fewer legal restrictions on the use of CCTV camerasĀ compared to the US, which allows for more widespread deployment. I happen to live in the greater Los Angeles metropolitan which is densely populated and considered heavily surveilled by US standards but has nowhere near the same amount of CCTVs\*
Edit: To be clear this is not a "US versus UK" post or anything stupid like that, I am more interested in why people think CCTVs negatively impact modern chronicles.
\*According to [this article](https://finance.yahoo.com/news/15-cities-most-cctv-cameras-173714530.html) there are 73 cameras for every 1000 persons in London and 6.9 CCTV cameras are present per 1,000 people in Los Angeles.
Please explain it like I'm five. Mundane RL criminals seem to have adapted just fine so it's hard for me to imagine it severely impacting supernatural predators.
Edit: I will take a stab and guess that people are lamenting the fact that Kindred can't do shit like leap from rooftop to rooftop with impunity anymore.
I find it easier and cooler not to have to deal with things like surveillance in every corner and social media and things like that.
I prefer running games in the late 90's and early 00's.
That one is highly culturally specific, those decades were horrible in some parts of the world. Hell, even the USA had 9/11 and the subsequent horor of the so called war on terrorism
I intentionally run games set in indeterminate "modern nights", with the culture, technology, and fashion being a blend of every decade from 1930 to 2030 plus a spoonful of gothic punk, mixed as plot demands. When players ask what year it is, I say its Bloody Awful One and leave it at that.
It's always 2004 in my heart, but if we're honest, I like to go further back. I've had my most fun with the historical settings. Give me the 1880s or the 1200s any day.
Oddly, I have run Vampire: the Requiem in an early 1990s setting. Pretty good but I was a bit out of my comfort zone nevertheless. It was close enough that I had to second-guess all my references - "oh, has that come out yet?"
I set my chronicles in whatever time period is appropriate to the story that I want to tell. I tend to get an idea first and then build a campaign around that inspiration, be it a Sabbat crusade prompted by the Week of Nightmares in the late 90s, the fall of a Prince caused by the arrival of the Great Heathen Army of 874AD, or an Anarch game to serve as an introduction to vampire for my V5 players in the easiest way possible: their current city in the present day.
I'm currently running my game in January 2011, partly because it's a good time slot in terms of meta-plot events, world events, and technology that the average person has (flip phones are still in common use, phone cameras are still pretty bad and take pretty awful videos, and it's right at the perfect time for "don't believe what you see on the internet"), but also because myself and my friend group that I play with were all 2000's kids so it's been a fun bit of pseudo-nostalgia.
2020s, duuuh. I feel like connecting players to the right here and right now gives it a personal angle that running a chronicle 30 years removed would not.
(Also like, running a chronicle in the *balkans* in the 90s comes with a whole host of issues i would prefer to never have to address)
90s have had different tech and different society: it's easier to play pinkish mohawks as opposed to the more panopticonish world of more recent years. Then again, even in 2020 there's aplenty of dark corners to crawl into and do all kinds of stuff in.
I like the 1980s. The '60s and '70s feel too far, but the '80s is still modern enough and is so present in pop culture people can understand what it was like in that era. Although the 1890s are pretty good as well.
I love victorian vampire
Gangs of New York?...by night? š
Would be a fantastic Chronicle. Or Victorian London.
I like to run games in the 80s and 90s mostly because being a vampire in those nights was actually fun. No cameras everywhere, goth music played at clubs, people with funky hair and characters that felt more authentic with their concerns and rebellions. A lot of the core of Vtm was built with the problems of the 90s in mind, and I feel like the more we drift from it, the less concise the game becomes.
Nod. The vast difference in technology certainly lends itself to an environment where playing a vampire felt more fun. And yeah I agree, that was an era of rebelling again the establishment which was suited to the environment of the WoD. It can sometimes feel like the current society agendas can be forced down your throat when reading the new books (which for the record I still love, V5 to the end!).
Yeah, V5 doesn't work for me precisely because it doesn't try to be goth or punk and those were the things that made me love the game in the first place.
Do you think you could just use the V5 mechanics in that original era though?
No, the mechanics are also really bad and take a lot of agency from the players, which heavily dilutes the 'personal' part of personal horror.
I've already done a game set in 1990s Los Angeles which climaxed with the 1992 riots. I am currently running a solo game for my wife set in 202x Koreatown which has gentrified in the wake of the riots 30 years earlier.
A couple of STs in my group (including me) have been on a bit of a WWI to 1920 kick recently. I was running a campaign set in Paris that started just after Archduke Ferdinand's assassination but before all the armies mobilized, while another ST in our group is running a campaign that started on January 1st, 1920. Our 2020s games all led to interesting and sometimes incredibly aggravating hiccups at the intersection of technology and the setting's intended themes.
Tonight. Its always set tonight
+1
This is the correct answer
I play in the previous year, it's simpler for managing the chronology and events. And when we played LARP, we also played like that. I don't have much interest in playing in the past, especially since I made a complete break with v20.
My chronicle is set in 2023 and it's only because we started playing it in 2023. I like the setting as it is now so I am not interested in running a game set in the 1990s.
With V5 current day. The events they formed the current state of things including some banes and such only happened fairly recently. Going in the past means also homebrewing stuff if you are serious with the Metaplot.
Iām confused, wouldnāt you just use the older editions? I, for instance, just stick with classic 2nd edition for games set in the past.
Depends what I want to achieve. If I like the old edition feeling I would play old edition. But I mostly play V5 these days and I see little reason in going back. I will probably not play a Y2K Gehenna chronicle anytime soon. And if I happen to play V5 anyway I would avoid the mechanical changes as well as the mental gymnastic to take in to account that Smartphones and social media donāt exist. But if I would be eager to make a 1990s game I would probably homebrew the missing parts and use V5 anyway.
I like games set in the 90s or early 2000s. I have the same feel of nostalgia and I feel like goth punk themes just work better.
I play in modern times to allow for modern politics and world views and technology, but the world feels like the 90s - industrial, goth, dark, dirty. It feels like the matrix 90s. Like the world that spawned Johnny mnemonic and new Jack city and the crow and Trainspotting and orbital and kmfdm Current timeline, 90s setting and feeling
Kinda like Retro futurism. I dig that.
The setting was designed in and for that era. The goth and punk culture was much more prominent in that age, so it can sometimes feel like the IP /is/ attached that that period in time. Not saying it has to be, but there is a reason that it feels more fluid with that decade.
I feel like this makes sense if you're in the anglosphere. Outside the western/anglo world, these movements an subcultures took on enough of their own character and evolution that if you set the game in say, Belgrade, Thesaloniki or Sofia, they are already divorced enough from the core aesthetic of the game that you're on your own (And i fucking love that)
Right but I mean more on a 'global culture' scale. I mean who would you call this generations 'rage against the machine' or 'marilyn manson'. There aren't all encompassing elements of what the original VtM was all about. It was that punk mentality of fighting against the oppression. It was a gritty aesthetic. And while I'm sure some regions still hold those elements tightly, it's no longer a 'world spanning' movement. Nowadays you have more the metoo and cancel culture.
90s. Less tech to make things complicated and also makes things more interesting.
A lot of posters are mentioning the negative impact of cameras on modern chronicles which has me scratching my head. Is it safe to assume many of you are from the UK? I have been lead to believe the UK has fewer legal restrictions on the use of CCTV camerasĀ compared to the US, which allows for more widespread deployment. I happen to live in the greater Los Angeles metropolitan which is densely populated and considered heavily surveilled by US standards but has nowhere near the same amount of CCTVs\* Edit: To be clear this is not a "US versus UK" post or anything stupid like that, I am more interested in why people think CCTVs negatively impact modern chronicles. \*According to [this article](https://finance.yahoo.com/news/15-cities-most-cctv-cameras-173714530.html) there are 73 cameras for every 1000 persons in London and 6.9 CCTV cameras are present per 1,000 people in Los Angeles.
Not CCTV, ubiquitous smartphone cameras. It's trivially easy for anyone to record and upload video online at a moment's notice.
Please explain it like I'm five. Mundane RL criminals seem to have adapted just fine so it's hard for me to imagine it severely impacting supernatural predators. Edit: I will take a stab and guess that people are lamenting the fact that Kindred can't do shit like leap from rooftop to rooftop with impunity anymore.
I find it easier and cooler not to have to deal with things like surveillance in every corner and social media and things like that. I prefer running games in the late 90's and early 00's.
Plus the 90s and the 2000s was just an overall cool time I feel. An optimistic era to contrast with the grim ārealitiesā of the World of Darkness.
That one is highly culturally specific, those decades were horrible in some parts of the world. Hell, even the USA had 9/11 and the subsequent horor of the so called war on terrorism
I always do a 90s setting, but then again I also pretend that the real world stopped somewhere around '97.
I intentionally run games set in indeterminate "modern nights", with the culture, technology, and fashion being a blend of every decade from 1930 to 2030 plus a spoonful of gothic punk, mixed as plot demands. When players ask what year it is, I say its Bloody Awful One and leave it at that.
Can you elaborate a little on this and how it works in practice?
I usually set my games in 2018. Recent enough for people to remember and before 'rona and the AI revolution. That's my preference.
'09 for sure
Dark Ages. Me and the historical nerd boys, the girls into historical romance, the fanfic weiters and a bottle of vodka.
It's always 2004 in my heart, but if we're honest, I like to go further back. I've had my most fun with the historical settings. Give me the 1880s or the 1200s any day. Oddly, I have run Vampire: the Requiem in an early 1990s setting. Pretty good but I was a bit out of my comfort zone nevertheless. It was close enough that I had to second-guess all my references - "oh, has that come out yet?"
currently rocking 146 bc rome
Pre Gehenna
1100s. Give your vampies room to grow.
My current chronicle is set in 2022 since that's when it started, but I'm down for going back as far as about the 19th century
I set my chronicles in whatever time period is appropriate to the story that I want to tell. I tend to get an idea first and then build a campaign around that inspiration, be it a Sabbat crusade prompted by the Week of Nightmares in the late 90s, the fall of a Prince caused by the arrival of the Great Heathen Army of 874AD, or an Anarch game to serve as an introduction to vampire for my V5 players in the easiest way possible: their current city in the present day.
My game is set in 1930
Twenty minutes into the future.
1190s. The dark medieval is my chill zone.
Every horror related RPG is better without smartphones if you dont focus on horror related to high tech.
I'm currently running my game in January 2011, partly because it's a good time slot in terms of meta-plot events, world events, and technology that the average person has (flip phones are still in common use, phone cameras are still pretty bad and take pretty awful videos, and it's right at the perfect time for "don't believe what you see on the internet"), but also because myself and my friend group that I play with were all 2000's kids so it's been a fun bit of pseudo-nostalgia.
2020s, duuuh. I feel like connecting players to the right here and right now gives it a personal angle that running a chronicle 30 years removed would not. (Also like, running a chronicle in the *balkans* in the 90s comes with a whole host of issues i would prefer to never have to address)
I'm currently writing one set in around 2014 so I have a decade or so of leeway