Top New Cults and Vampire Lore! - Forbidden Religions Review

[@nonamegiven202]

Yeah my favorite book from Cults's stretch goals, and in all honestly might be just below Cults itself for my favorite V5 book in general. Such a good range of cults/stories/tone you can run with it; like real cults experiences like the The Bloodless Pilgrims, to f-ed up rich people like The Penny Dining Club to the almost comedic aspect of The Whispers of the Dead. Still wish they could had done the original pitch of "errant houses of tremere", like i do love Praesidium and that loresheet really sell the "magical merc" concept they pitch back in the Core, but it is more just a "here's a die hard Pyramid option" instead of something new for V5.

[@caelb9764]

Definitely one of my favourite books for V5. It helped me immensely with fleshing out my version of Old Wounds from Trails of Ash & Bone by sprinkling in a few cults to add to the intrigue.

[@theenderdestruction2362]

So I randomly had a thought whilst reading the Wikipedia, the thought was "Christianity is the serpent in the garden of Eden" cause when you think about it, it does makes sense

[@John_does]

A simitchy butterfly can be interesting, physically changing those in his household to be more like he thinks humans are/ should be

[@Abyssal86]

*Tzimisce

[@erwin669]

I was thinking maybe a Ventrue making this something just feels crazy wrong Stepford family

[@vampireLFD]

I dont know why, but the concept of vampires and what we do collectively with it over time is always linked to spirituality, discrediting religion, and questioning authority.. you even say the word "enlightenment" within the first few minutes of your video.. It reverbs so much with the game i'm building 🌈🧛‍♂️☯

[@GraveRoda]

Waiting for them to add the Cult of Santa Muerté

[@samwilliams6820]

What does the first dot of the Orthia loresheet do?

[@bretthudson1474]

Completely off topic but have you seen new the swansong trailer

[@StrangeAdventures]

I have, it looks awesome! Waiting for more info on the game :D

[@Growls]

Bad stuff? Bah. No such thing. Berlin by Night was fiiiiiiine.

[@eccoeco3454]

The problem is that in true whitewolf tradition this book places the cult in almost totally random fashion, for example It makes little to no sense at all to have a cult of Artemis be placed in Lisbon, for what concerns the Ventrue and Artemis cult lores the Wood of Nemi would have been a much Better location but as Always wod authors don't research their topics that much...

[@pallasovidius3015]

I really like the Sheperds of Ur-Shulgi. It makes the ancient methuselah a real threat, especially for the Banu Haqim. Also, I guess I am biased, because the lore of the Sheperds supports my theory that Ur-Shulgi is actually just a puppeteered mummy, used by 5th and 6th generations who are discontent with the state of the clan and wanted to purge/purify it. Those methuselahs are most likely the 12 heralds elected by Ur-Shulgi to spread his word while he is mysteriously away on a pilgrimage to gain more power..?

[@overlordgames1394]

European Paganism has been forgotten...

[@pedropages6111]

Forbidden Religions is my least personal favourite of the Cults Collection. There is a lot of interesting stuff within it, the Shepherds and the Praesidium are the two most personally disappointing parts of it. Praesidium feels retreaded work as you said and hasn’t been mentioned before till this book. The Eyes of Malakai was something I was so eager to read more about but that it wasn’t included in this. Most of the merits and loresheets, along with other parts of the book is still worthwhile to use for any Chronicle.

[@Fellwinter]

Vampire the Requiem is the superior vampire game. Everything was moddable and the nwod felt more mysterious than anything owod did.

[@03dashk64]

I think there is a nice middle ground. Masquerade is dense with lore, characters, history, and meta plot. Requiem is…very diluted and watered down. To a point where it is boring with just the base book. At least the clans in Masquerade were interesting. Clans in Requiem are very dull. Without adding bloodlines and such.

[@ixis]

@@03dashk64 The truth is that Requiem solved the problems that players had with Masquerade, but the issue is that Vampire fans, 1) Don't know what they want 2) The things they say they want are bad Everyone talks about the metaplot, which is important, but more important is the fact that most troupes really just adapt the parts of the metaplot and game that they like, and mod the rest. So having a baseline game that doesn't create content that players will cut-n-paste around, or that doesn't conflict with how they want to run the metaplot, actually services the needs of the community more than most realize. However, no one hates WW products more than WW fans, and no fanbase is more myopic and suffering under Dunning Krueger than WW fans, so... /shrug

[@robertmasengale9366]

@@ixis I hated that there was a biblical metaplot to the game. I love in Requiem that they made history more abstract and subject to unreliable narrators because dreams distort over time, particularly in Torpor. That's going to be a guarantee even in my Masquerade games moving forward. My core issue with OWoD was literally that there were different meta plots in each game and none of those metaplots really worked particularly well together. Vampire, in particular, didn't work with the rest. That said, of the worlds, NWoD's Mage was the worst transition from a lore perspective. I much preferred OWoD's Mage the Ascension lore and setting over NWoD's Mage the Awakening lore. The mechanics in NWoD were better in almost every front, though I really like V5's focus on blood and personal horror. Funny thing is, OWoD's Mage is literally the one thing that could bind the realities of the rest of OWoD together, as all lore and myths could be both true and false simultaneously.

[@williamchristy9463]

@@robertmasengale9366 OWoD are separate games, though, all with an implication that none of their supposed histories are actually *correct*, at least regarding their supernatural elements.

[@williamchristy9463]

@@ixis No, I know quite precisely what I want. I want an interesting world with a multitude of different factions which all feel like they have history to play with. VtR does that poorly. None of the clans in VtR really accomplish that for me, and those that do do it worse than VtM . VtR is my personal least favorite CoD game. Werewolf and Changeling are vast improvements though.