Path of the Vampire forum

I was kinda curious about how this works, to be honest. I mean, I know that if you, as a vampire, use one of your powers in a security 15 block you're pretty much toast, but my question is essentially how burned you should be depending on whether or not the humans in question are PCs or NPCs.

Let me put it this way:

'Pureblood' humans
I figure NPC humans are this as well as the handful of PC ones. NPC blood thieves, sorcerers and Paladins are all yellow enemies, so it stands to reason that the little white dudes are pureblood - that is to say, unclassed humans. These guys (or girls. Whatever.) probably won't know about vampire society or anything bordering on the supernatural. They're basic 9-5 humans, really. They have their gin, they have their smokes and they're ignoring the boot stamping on their face for eternity /Orwell.

Exposing them to vampire society/the supernatural in general should be a violation of vampiric secrecy.


Blood thieves
This one's pretty simple. By (dubious) virtue of the simple fact that they're blood thieves - which is to say humans who drink the blood of vampires - they already know about vampires, vampire society and the supernatural in general. For them to not know about it would be rather like saying that I'm not aware of steak or where it comes from. Logically, they simply have to know about vampires already, and so:

Exposing them to vampire society/the supernatural in general should not be a violation of vampiric secrecy.


Paladins
According to the Path wiki, these guys are basically vampire hunters with powers that allow them to better combat the undead. Or, y'know, vampires. Especially vampires, according to the wiki. It'd be a bit daft to say that vampire hunters don't know about vampires. So:

Exposing them to vampire society/the supernatural in general should not be a violation of vampiric secrecy.


Sorcerers
This one is a little trickier. As sorcerers they're clearly aware of the supernatural. They kinda have to be. If they're into the ritual side of things, they're also aware of the fae, so a logical follow on from that would be that they're also aware of what the fae hate - vampires. But not all of them are going to be doing rituals, potentially, so to assume that they all know about vampires would be a bit premature. That being said, sorcerers do have the Dark Theurgy power, the description of which states:

Using one of your physical weapons, attack any vampire no matter where they are. Cannot cause critical hits

So it's a safe bet, essentially, that they know about the existence of vampires. Or that power would be a little confusing for them. In short:

Exposing them to vampire society/the supernatural in general should not be a violation of vampiric secrecy.


Basically, what I'm getting at here is that the way the violation system works should have a little tweak to better reflect the RP mechanics of the class set up for humans if that's at all possible. If Ven shares his ID with a blood thief, that shouldn't be a violation. It shouldn't be a violation if he shares it with a Paladin. It shouldn't be a violation if he uses his powers in plain sight of either class. Or if anyone else does.

Discuss away.

I pretty much completely agree with all of that, except...

Dark Theurgy is a power that comes along when a human picks a double class. Sorcerers who go paladin, or paladins who go sorcerer, can obtain it. So sorcerers are still a bit tricky. Unless they pick paladin as their second class.

Sean asked me that same thing last night. He plays a human and wondered why if he was a Paladin he didn't know about vampires? He's a Paladin for a reason right?

Same for my human Grace. She's a Blood Thief, wouldn't she know about vampires since she kind of drinks their blood?

I like how you think but knowing squat dittle about coding, no idea how hard that might be. Like with some things on grid, just have to take them with a grain of salt ic. Same way we can't rp out bugs, some mechanics of how the grid works have to be a bit more generalized I believe. Like some powers that should get you a violation do not. Alex runs around the grid all day every day in her meaner things form (bunny), doing raids, B&E's, hunting npcs, in short everything. Minutes after daychange I use that power everyday for the extra energy and only when you first activate it does it check the security level. And sorry but you can't tell me that logically a human seeing a rabbit picking pockets isn't going to notice....

Yeah. They probably really should >.>

I have to agree with all of that. It makes no sense to be in violation when the pathed humans by default know about vampire kind because that's the nature of their paths.

Though I have to add the pureblooded humans should also be case by case when it comes to what is a 'violation' because my Pure Blooded Human, the way I play her does not believe in any of the 'vampire/supernatural' stuff. She's 'seen' a handful of vampires use powers or feed on the grid but because of how I rp her, she's not turned them in because she passes them off as nut jobs lol.

I don't think the mechanics need to be tweaked, because you're not going to get spotted in low security places. Humans are only part of what dictates security, so while I do agree with your logic, the on-grid mechanism encompasses other types of security (security cameras, surveillance systems, google maps trucks in the area.. >.>).

I did not know that sharing IDs was a violation? Is it?

Oh, granted. I'm just trying to work out how 'bad' each violation is and how much the alert level of the city should rise with each one. I mean, as it stands, sharing IDs with the classes that should already know about vampires raises the alert level presumably because you're telling humans about vampires even though they already know about vampires. And that's a bit of a spiral of illogical reasoning >.>

And sharing an ID isn't a violation violation, but it does raise the city alert. Which I get I just said twice, but you asked and I'd already typed that bit <.<

I think it is the way it is because it's impossible from a gaming standpoint to really identify how a character would use the information about vampires. I mean I guess a setting could be coded where a human character is violently opposed to vampires and wants to expose them - paired with a spycam or something that would make violations notices somewhat more legit, but that seems a bit excessive and convoluted?

I'm not explaining myself well.

The issue with being spotted in security 15 areas (for example) isn't that humans directly sight vampiric activity, it's that they are likely to have security cams rolling in those areas, or people are likely to have cell phones on them to take video, etc. That constitutes evidence of vampiric existence, because the 'he said she said' testimony of one, or even a few people is kind of miniscule in the grand scheme of things, but actual proof is slightly more difficult to refute.

So for example, a paladin might know that vampires exist, but that doesn't mean they have the ability to convince people on their own.

That being said, I totally am behind the system being more complex as it applies to vampiric secrecy, because I think it is a bit dumbed down as is. You kill a cop and that means your character /had/ to have used vampiric powers or strength? Why isn't there a roll in there for them to just have walked up behind the guy and pulled the trigger?

Of course, the problem then is that it would become more complicated for new players, so striking a balance between RP/Gameplay/complexity is really important. I generally think the violation system on the whole should be looked at. But I think what would be /really/ cool is if there were a faction out there, a kind of masquerade cleaning service that had the ability to mop up vampire messes before they ever went public, or even after they went public so that even when someone gets a violation - those violations can be removed through some form of team effort.

Like a hacker breaking into a system, combined with someone with high charisma or speechcraft doing some kind of mission, combined with a ritualist doing something to remove a violation from someone's record.