Editing Vampire: The Masquerade (section)

====The Playtest & New Lore====
May 2017 saw the release of the first Vampire V pre-alpha playtest and... people were not impressed. Sure, it was only a pre-alpha, but the retooling of the game was significant. Major changes to how damage works, how the blood pool works, how Hunger works, how Frenzy and associated compulsions work, and what skills are like (the same physical/mental/social split of Chronicles of Darkness, instead of the Talents/Skills/Knowledges split of yore). And the Brujah clan's weakness was literally called 'Triggered.' Overall the game feels like a dumbed-down version of earlier editions, but since it was only a pre-alpha there was still hope.

As for the new metaplot... well, vampire society has gone to shit when NSA found out the vampires' parallel internet and the entire world's mortal governments ''found out the vampires exist''. The Second Inquisition, made up of the Leopold Society which now carries Papal approval along with every alphabet soup intelligence agency across the world, found out about SchreckNet and is now hunting the Kindred like dogs in a covert war. The intelligence agencies know what they're up against, though they hide it from the public and elected leadership by using post-9/11 anti-terrorism measures as cover for operations and red tape. 

After a massive raid and destruction of Vienna Kindred blamed on ISIS, the vampires are forced to hide even deeper, with the Camarilla closing it's doors to all but the most "exceptional" kindred, resorting to messenger birds, dead drops and graffiti for communication. The Anarchs aren't as low tech, opting for burner phones and throwaway emails and have become the most welcoming faction for any new Kindred without a home; the Sabbat, for reasons we mentioned earlier, got curbstomped hard (apparently the whole edgy "cattle Kine" rhetoric doesn't survive a welcoming shout of "[[Meme|FBI OPEN UP]]", followed by copious amounts of Willy Pete and napalm rounds by SWAT descending in broad daylight). 

And if all that mayhem wasn't enough, all the elders of 8th Generation or lower are suddenly being drawn to the Middle-East, where Sabbat survivors are fighting Camarilla and Ashirra (Muslim Kindred). [[meme|It's not the end of the world, but you can see it from here!]]

It's very much the beginning of a Nightshade situation, but much more drawn into it's own setting. The lore was mostly explained in the V5 corebook and Beckett's Jydhad Diary but the first taste was in the pre-Alpha test module "The Last Night". Unfortunately the test is one of the most god-awful [[railroad]]ed messes ever released by White Wolf, and that's discounting all the [[Skub|political nonsense]]. Not to mention that one of the premade characters for the scenario literally was a serial killer that could only feed from children. [[Beast: The Primordial|White Wolf has form in this.]]