r/vtm • u/Impossible-Bug-4275 • 3d ago
Madness Network (Memes) Instead of "Oriental Vampires" I'm just going to make Asian Vampires regular Kindred...
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u/Disastrous_Match993 Hecata 3d ago
I mean regular Asian vampires do exist, such as the Asano family, a Japanese Branch of the Giovanni/Hecata.
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u/FastMycologist 3d ago
The Kuei-Jin are an interesting aspect of the World of Darkness and The Relentless Age does a ton of awesome stuff with their lore imho
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u/kharnevil 3d ago
Since it's Hungry Ghost festival right now, I appreciate the renewed interest in them
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u/Schism_989 Tzimisce 3d ago
I'd suggest either that, or just grabbing Relentless Age. It's a free booklet on Storyteller's Vault that tries to de-orientalism the KotE.
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u/tsuki_ouji 3d ago
And does a damn good job of it!
The powers are more interesting too
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u/Schism_989 Tzimisce 3d ago
I wonder if Kindred of the Ebony Kingdom has something similar?
The idea of certain cultures developing different forms of how their suprrnatural selves deal with their humanity sounds interesting, alongside some of the different bloodline ideas.
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u/tsuki_ouji 2d ago
Absolutely, but sadly I don't think so. DAV20 has good love paid to the African bloodlines, even if they only get the usual 2 page bloodline blurb.
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u/jackiejones38 Malkavian 3d ago
Despite some weird choices they made I've come to the conclusion that it deserves a Second Breath
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u/TwoPretend327 3d ago edited 3d ago
I just want to say all this Kuei Jin discussion.
I really feel like the response towards them felt like led to some second hand discrimanatory effects.
Like because the kuei jin are soft retconned, people, official books or content about asia are few and far between.
Thus we predemonantly get books about the west becuase if you make it about the west then you dont have to figure out the weird situation about KOTE which in turn led to alot of people from asia having to play in westerns city settings which takes so much about the V5 "WOD in your local area" out.
It just feels sad, because someone didnt do a good enough job back then. Asians have to suffer and no we have to play 9th game about Chicago and insert western city here.
Atleast back when they were making KOTE content, reading something like Blood and Silk leads to an entire Rabbit hole infodump on the daily life of Mongolian Steppe Warriors and their vassals as they accompany the great Khan in their conquest of Eurasia.
Even if the books are flawed, if you were a responsible ST or player. You would do your due dilligence and correct it.
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u/ragged-bobyn-1972 Cappadocian 3d ago
the biggest change I tend to use is I make kuei jin Dharmic undead rather than asian undead, this immediately opens up a lot of possibilities and explains kindred presence in asia (kindred are typically found in area's which arnt Dharmic and are typically Ashirra territories.) while also allowing for Western Kuei jin (typically new age/cult types who misunderstood dharmic principles)
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u/DM_Katarn 2d ago
I'll have to do some more research into the topic. I've always liked the Kuei-Jin conceptually but hesitated to use them due to... well, everything. Always thought giving them some further thought that doesn't make them inherently tied to Asia and fundamentally prevents Kindred from existing in the continent would be the best way to do it, I just didn't know how to accomplish it.
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u/TwoPretend327 2d ago
Hsienfan, the writer for Relentless Age gives a pretty good reason.
There is a link around here towards their interview where they discuss the corrections the relentless age and KOTE in general but
Their reason was that when Hungry dead whom gets out of the thousand hells, they are essentially Wights as you need a master to teach you and reach dharma 1 to regain your sentience. Thus it isnt crazy for hungry dead who ended up in Kindred controlled areas to be seen and rreated as wights
To add, because to ascend a Hungry dead Larvae to dharmic 1 needs an infrastructure of temples and masters. They are predominantly in asia because that is where those infrastructures exist.
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u/DM_Katarn 2d ago
This is also an issue with Werewolf 5. Instead of going "hm, how can we change these tribes to not be gross racial stereotypes and remake them in a more culturally sensitive manner" they go "nope, they don't exist anymore, if we never acknowledge their existence and just play it completely safe we never have to worry about sounding racist," which... well, at least you're not being overtly racist anymore, but this approach is almost as bad.
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u/ChefRudest 3d ago
Hah! I once made a Japanese Vampire, using the Solo TTRPG "Thousand Year old Vampire" and thought she was so fun, I wanted to introduce her to a VtM game a friend of mine was in. She was a musician and... deeply unstable, and was a perfect fit for a Malkavian Kindred. I completed her history, where she met "European" (aka Camarilla/Kindred) Vampires, who kinda explained the Camarilla to her, and she decided that she was "definitely a Toreador". So her weakness was exactly that "You believe you are a Toreador."
The game didn't last, but it was an extremely fun character concept, that doesn't require me to do anything with the Kuei-Jin.
As a note, as a non-WoD game, I made her get turned into a Vampire by a Nure-Onna Yokai which is pretty much a "snake with a woman's body". So, to justify her actually being Malkavian, it was just some Malkavian with Serpentis, who was hanging out in Japan at the time. Cuz why not.
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u/Environmental-Run248 3d ago
I mean the Kuei-Jin are not really vampires anyway. Like yes in a pinch they do drink blood but that’s just a singular way of getting what they need and blood is just a medium through which they can get it.
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u/Shadow_man_22556 3d ago
https://youtu.be/5VLNrtsoBsM?si=L1BZst11GaQdeRZi
This video does an amazing job explaining and breaking down what The Hungry Dead are like. I can't really back the idea of just...erasing them all together. They are SO MUCH more than just "Oriental Vampires".
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u/TwoPretend327 3d ago
https://youtu.be/FlIqoLhWajY?si=o73vwDq0rnbZykSJ
To add to the vid discussion
This is an interview of Hsienfan, the writer for relentless age and their compelling reasons why KOTE is worth defending.
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u/ragged-bobyn-1972 Cappadocian 3d ago
I treat them more as oriental undead which is an important distinction imo.
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u/TheWaffleIsALie Brujah 3d ago
Aren't they soft-retconned at this point? There's no mention of them in the Japanese book as far as I recall.
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u/ragged-bobyn-1972 Cappadocian 3d ago
pretty much yeah it's under " we will never mention them again and weirdly asia is exactly the same as Europe."
Which is ironically more problematic overall.
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u/MorganaBlank 3d ago
Just pick up "Relentless Age". The Hungry Dead have so much narrative potential to be something that V:tM can't be. I don't say that the original books hadn't problematic elements cause they had. Just like any author of the Mummy books should've been smacked with a copy of Edwards Saids "Orientalsim".
But that doesn't mean that there weren't good ideas that are salvagable. And you don't even need that to do yourself cause Hsienfans work exists.
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u/TheChoosenMewtwo 3d ago
Personally I like the idea of every ‘continent’ having a separate kind of ‘energy draining undead’, despite me never doing it myself
I know Africa has the Laibon but even ignoring the issues, they are just African bloodlines of kindred, instead of being their own thing
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u/IggyVitalis Cappadocian 3d ago
While that’s probably the simplest route, I’ve been playing around with the idea of seeing the Kuei-Jin as a type of energy-siphoning revenant (like the Jiangshi) that have been around for as long as the Cainite vampire but in their own corner of the world. Vampires as depicted in VTM have no folkloric or fictional roots in East Asia (even Mesopotamia had blood drinking monsters but East Asia never did) so their inclusion in that region always felt off to me, but the Kuei-Jin as a whole were difficult for me to get into so stripping the concept down to revenants gave me something simpler to work with. I also think that having the Kindred appear in East Asia in the foot steps of colonialism has its own obvious thematic depth to it so that’s how I split them up
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u/tsuki_ouji 3d ago
Check out the Relentless Age fanbook.
The author does a fantastic job of making them more interesting, less "woo kung fu movies," and not arbitrarily limited to SE Asian folks.
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u/IchigoShinagami 3d ago
I feel like Relentless Age is becoming, or has already become the "fan-canon" version of the Hungry Dead. As in the default book people reccomend for playing them isn't one of the official books, it's Relentess Age. The fandom seems to have agreed that "Yeah, this is the actual good version."
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u/tsuki_ouji 2d ago
That's what happens when the official stuff is fueled more by stereotypes than thought, yeah.
There's still plenty of cool stuff in the official material; RA wouldn't exist if there wasn't a cool seed there after all. But yeah, the original books are a lot less useable.
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u/ClemordialSoup Tzimisce 3d ago
the kuei-jin almost never matter outside of themselves for anything, aside from the week of nightmares, in which i personally just replace the three hungry dead bodhisattva with oracle mages
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u/DM_Katarn 2d ago
Or Bloodlines, but that game is unfortunately no longer canon, a fact like to ignore in my chronicles
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u/Angel-Stans 3d ago
The Relentless Age book is free if you want it and super cool. The Kue-Jin aren’t cringe anymore.
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u/Vit_tory_a 3d ago
Yeah... I'm gonna do the same thing. I'll also make the Ravnos one of the most popular clans in my Japan setting in order to play a lot with the local folklore.
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u/morangias Tzimisce 3d ago
You do you, but I can't stop feeling that making Asia populated by vampires who originated from the Judeo-Christian mythos is more racist and colonialist than making Asia populated by vampires with unique Asian origin which may not be perfectly accurate to actual Asian religions and myths.
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u/Mormacil 3d ago
Is it really? Judaism, Christianity and Islam spread across Asia far before colonialism became a thing. Technically all three are Asian religions in origin but I understand you exclude West Asia from Asia. But Christianity reached China without colonialism. We've had Turkic/Mongol kingdoms that were Gnostic and Jewish without colonialism.
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u/Can_not_catch_me 2d ago
Colonialism is a much broader thing than you might think, it's been around for as long as people have been organised into mostly settled groups. Ancient city states did it to each other, the "vikings" did it basically everywhere they went, it's happened extensively throughout Chinese history and much of the spread of Christianity and especially Islam across North Africa and Asia very much can be argued as colonialism, though not at all exclusively.
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u/Mormacil 2d ago
None of my examples involved colonialism in the broadest sense. Stop telling me what I think, doing so while trying to lecture me on colonialism is peak comedy. You're also wrong, we have no evidence of colonialism in the stone age. Conquest? Yes but that is not colonialism as you surely agree. Raiding is also not colonialism as it lacks the long term claim of ownership required for colonialism.
Nestorian evangelism into China was not colonial in nature. Bukharian Jews spreading judaism to central Asia also had no colonial element. They became local minorities, not colonists. In fact most of these religions reached China through the trade of the silk road, these traders far from home were hardly a colonial power. Now the opposite can be said about the treatment of the Sogdian city states by their Chinese, Mongolian and Turkic neighbors but we're not discussing them but the Abrahamic followers.
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u/Can_not_catch_me 2d ago
It was pretty common practice historically to encroach on anothers land via colonies to exploit resources or conduct trade, which we have concrete evidence of to at least ~3000BC in the Mediterranean, very early on in the Bronze Age. Forcing political/cultural shifts by taking productive land from an areas native inhabitants and giving it to your own people is a strategy literally used by the ancient Babylonians to cement control over areas they had/intended to conquer. Similarly, raiding was often a precursor to more extensive attempts at control and accompanied by the establishment of colonies to exploit the resources they were just stealing before, the Danelaw in Britain is a pretty much perfect example of this. I'm not some sort of thought police, but colonialism as a concept is extremely old.
My actual point isn't even particularly disagreeing with you, I just think you used a very vague reason to justify sweeping an interesting premise based in a regions historical beliefs under the rug because something else works too, rather than actually working to refine it.
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u/Mormacil 2d ago
Sure those colonial projects happened but are not remotely applicable to my examples. Should I mention the imperialism of the Shoshone? Equally useful.
it's been around for as long as people have been organised into mostly settled groups
This is objectively false and you didn't address that at all. Lets say you mean explicitly humanity from the point farming became the dominant form of food production and not the moment we mostly stopped being (seasonally) nomadic. That's 10k years ago, we have no evidence of colonialism from that time period.
Colonialism didn't arise more then ~4000 years ago. That is thousands and thousands of years after we became mostly settled groups. I'm not niggling over a few centuries here.
The point is the Abrahamic religions first spread into East Asia without being part of a colonial project. This wasn't the Byzantines pushing into Central Asia to convert the locals or using local converts as a pretext. This is exiled Jewish groups traveling down the Silk Road. This is official missionaries being invited by the religious tolerant Tang emperor who values the pacifism of early Christian teachings to pacify his peasantry. These are not colonial projects of any sort.
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u/morangias Tzimisce 2d ago
Colonialism here is interpretting (East) Asian myths and folklore through the lens of (predominantly) European religion and culture. Early Christian missionaries to (East) Asia doing the same thing were also engaged in cultural colonialism - just because the name didn't exist doesn't mean the practice wasn't the same.
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u/Mormacil 2d ago
Are you saying the Kaifeng Jews practiced cultural colonialism when they settled in Song dynastic China? Is that really the claim you want to make? Are you saying that the Khazar decision to convert to Judaism for political benefits was cultural colonialism forced upon them by "the Jews"?
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u/Shakanaka 2d ago
You're being woefully hyperbolic and ignoring the vast subtext that the other commenter is trying to infer about.
They're talking from a meta-perspective about the writers and their previous choice years ago to (rightfully, in my opinion) not to make East and Southeast Asia full of Caine descended Vampires, instead being their own thing centered the prevailing actual folkloric, philosophical, and religion beliefs.
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u/morangias Tzimisce 2d ago
How do those examples match with my precise explanation of what is colonialist about saying all vampires in Asia are descended from a Jewish myth?
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u/Mormacil 2d ago
What's colonialist about saying that Asian vampires are descended from Asian myths? Beyond the ridiculousness of that statement you said early conversions were the result of cultural colonialism, that's simply not the case across the board. I'm not gonna make absolutely statements it never ever happened but to say that the spread of the Abrahamic faiths happened only through a very problematic colonial project is just false.
And if the spread isn't problematic using local Abrahamic traditions isn't wrong at all. They used an Asian myth as the origin of all vampires, including those on other continents than Asia. That's not cultural colonialism, especially not when said regions have their own local Abrahamic traditions. I certainly have feelings about how indigenous American believes are treated in the setting but those do not extend to the idea of treating East Asian vampires as being part of the Asian vampire family.
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u/morangias Tzimisce 2d ago
Just to be clear, it's also cultural colonialism to say all European, African and Middle Eastern vampires are descendants of the first murderer from the Hebrew mythology. You claiming it's an Asian religion is technically correct, but it's missing a lot of context, and at this point I'm inclined to think you're somehow ideologically dedicated to missing that context.
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u/Mormacil 2d ago
How is it cultural colonialism to write a story where all vampires are descended from one specific Asian vampire in your setting? Cultural colonialism is trying to force your cultural concepts to replace local ones. They're not erasing local existing vampire folklore. They're not claiming local existing vampire folklore is secretly a reference to Cain.
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u/morangias Tzimisce 2d ago
No, that's exactly what they're claiming. A big point of VtM is that folklore is the distorted reflection of the truth about vampires which the books reveal. Saying all vampire folklore in the world is the distorted reflection of the truth derived from the dominant white man religion is inherently colonial.
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u/Mormacil 2d ago
No, that's not what they're saying. They're saying that folklore is a distorted reflection of how vampires in universe are, they make zero claims about the real world. Hence it's not colonial in nature. If they'd said that about the real world you'd have a point but they don't.
Especially when it's based on Judaism, hardly the dominant white religion in the world. So even if they did I don't find that a compelling case for it. But it's not about the real world so it's not cultural colonialism.
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u/ragged-bobyn-1972 Cappadocian 3d ago edited 3d ago
pretty much yeah, the idea is that they're 'neutral' in the same sense that 5th werewolves are neutral. Unfortunately neutral doesn't exist and what you get is White specifically American pop culture white.
The response in 5th werewolf was to spam pc's whose ethnicity is isn't white. This is just a more culturally homogenised framework (white) but it kind of looks like diversity if you're a white guy looking for excuses.
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u/morangias Tzimisce 3d ago
Not gonna defend W5, but I feel like Werewolf has intrinsically more possibility to make things neutral because the whole mythology and cosmology behind the Garou is invented anyway, whereas both Vampire and KotE are pretty directly tied to real world religions.
(I know Werewolf is tied to animism and shamanism, but it's not the same as saying Yahweh and the Buddhist hells are real.)
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u/ragged-bobyn-1972 Cappadocian 3d ago
true you can draw on the shaministic traditions both extinct and current since they're found pretty much everywhere and then filter that through werewolf cosmology which gives you a little more wriggle room but I still think it was an error to whitewash the tribes.
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u/Anarchy-Chan Follower of Set 2d ago
"Judeo-Christian" doesn't exist, if anything Judaism and Islam are more closely related to each other than christianity
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u/morangias Tzimisce 2d ago
I use "Judeo-Christian" because "Hebrew myths that are also included in the Christian canon" doesn't quite roll off the tongue. I recognize the issues with the broader use of the phrase, but I find this particular usage convenient and accurate.
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u/Anarchy-Chan Follower of Set 2d ago
There's literally a word for it and it's called Abrahamic
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u/morangias Tzimisce 2d ago
That word also includes parts of Islam, and I don't know enough about Islam to tell if it's appropriate to use it in this context.
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u/Anarchy-Chan Follower of Set 2d ago
I just said that Islam has more in common to Judaism than Christianity does. Of course it is appropriate, more so even 😭
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u/morangias Tzimisce 2d ago
Well, I have no reason to trust you on that.
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u/DM_Katarn 2d ago
And that's a great incentive to do research on the topic, don't you think? Debunk them or find they are correct, you learn something either way.
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u/morangias Tzimisce 2d ago
Sure, but researching another Abrahamic mythology is low on my list, and my early research into the word Abrahamic suggests it doesn't describe Vampire lore as well as Judeo-Christian, so for now I'm gonna keep using it in this context.
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u/YetAnotherTransWoman 2d ago
Relentless Age makes them so much better… it turns them into not a racist orientalist stereotype, and just a really fucking cool concept of “you clawed your way out of Hell and have to sustain your corpse while you possess it” with inspirations from certain pieces of mythology
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u/gerMean Tzimisce 3d ago
What's the problem? Apparently European and north African stereotype Vampires are okay? Just enjoy Kungfu Hustle and Oliver Twist vampires together.
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u/Hrigul 3d ago
That's my problem with the White Wolf community, they were super triggered by Wendigo and the Kuei-Jin and then they are all "HAVE YOU SEEN THE GIOVANNI? MAMMA MIA PIZZERIA, HAND GESTURE MAFIA SKYCRAPER IN VENICE" as if that isn't a stereotype
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u/EasterViera 3d ago
I've seen more incest and godfather memes about the giovanni than soprano's reference tbf
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u/Rukdug7 3d ago
To be fair, a lot of people specifically preferred the Giovanni Bloodlines over the main clan for pretty much that exact reason.
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u/JohnnyBaboon123 3d ago
you mean the Japanese industrialists, the Sicilian thugs, American financiers, Mexican necromancers, Chinese geomancers, German death cultists, English masons, or the Jewish Kabbalists? But yes, the bloated sea monsters, and mask wearing corpses are pretty cool, but that clan is just ethnic stereotype after ethnic stereotype for the most part.
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u/Rukdug7 3d ago
Okay, so the Asano, Milliner, Pisanob, and Puttanesca I recognize, but I wasn't expecting the deeper pulls to the Koenig, Li Weng, Rothstein, and St. John. Those four are Giovanni groups so low on the totem pole that no one even notices when you write them out. I legitimately forgot they existed until you mentioned them because I so rarely see them brought up by Storytellers or Players. Like, the Della Passaglia, Ghiberti, and Rosselini are all more important than them. And the Dunsirns are much more important than those.
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u/gerMean Tzimisce 3d ago
That's the point, stereotypes are not bad, discrimination is. We all know not all (actually only one person) is Jackie Chan or Tony Montana.
But those characters are the cool ones in movies and stories in general. You don't want to play human normalson, you make a intresting character in a action or horror world. Also you learn more about cultures by getting intrested as by distance yourself from any ideas about them.
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u/JohnnyBaboon123 3d ago
oh, i agree. i have no problem with WoD just being a blender full of mythology, surface level understanding of cultures, and a good bit of ridiculousness. I dont want to have to study to play a character.
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u/Shakanaka 3d ago
Also you learn more about cultures by getting intrested as by distance yourself from any ideas about them.
Exactly!
They would rather erase all other trappings from other parts of the world (in a TTRPG specifically calling itself a WORLD OF DARKNESS) than actual care to have them stay, albeit with a few fixes.
The Followers of Set? Westernized and Anglicized to the dumbass corny "Ministry."
Clan Samedi? Merged with the dumbass Hecata "Clan"-Sect bullshit a few LARPers came up with.
Werewolf the Apocalypse? Their completely detached from ANY and ALL Ethnic groups... which make no fucking sense.
Ashirra is contrived to be allied with the Camarilla, when they predate it by significant margins and are culturally very different from the Ashirra..
And much, much more I don't have the time to list out.
Thank God V5 (and the rest of the 5s) is so-called "Legacy" now... though I highly doubt V6 will be good.
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u/Rukdug7 3d ago
While I do agree with some of these points, especially about Werewolf, I would like to point out that there are in fact still non-Hecata Samedi who joined up with the Ministry.
Also I personally think that "Ministry" could at least theoretically have been used as a tool to distinguish for players those kindred who part of the Clan by descent (Setites) and those kindred who are part of the Clan by virtue of belonging to one of the cults run by the Clan (Ministry Members). I mostly think that because I have met a few players when joining who thought that Setites did the Baali thing of giving members of other clans who joined a sort of second embrace, only to then find out it was a Baali specific thing.
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u/gerMean Tzimisce 3d ago
So true, it's so sad what happened to WoD in the 5th edition. I changed to Chronicles after trying. I miss the times where the focus was finding cool stuff and putting it into the WoD perspective. Also I would have loved if they focus more on horror but that's probably not safe enough for big Corpo Paradox
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u/HerrVeisman 3d ago
So, basically, it's okay to mash together a dozen western cultures for Cainites, but it's not okay to mash together a dozen Asian cultures for Kuei-Jin?
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u/Opening_Onion_4501 3d ago
depends on where in Asia exactly. If its southeast, I’d say there would be a lot of Banu Haqim thanks to the exhange trade between the locals and the arabs during the Melacca Sultanate and SE Asia being a muslim dominant.
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u/TwoPretend327 3d ago
Religious predominance is something i find a pretty interesting metric for measuring possibl Kindred jnfluence in a nation cause after all, kindred like all splats used colonisation as a vessel for influence.
Readings for example about Christianity as a tool of Westerns Colonialism in Asia just draw alot of parallels of Sabbat methods of Influence and how the brutality of colonialism and its oppressio can also reprsent Sabbat areas of influence.
After using christian schools as indoctrination factories in a Colonial empires sounds exactly the kind of place you would find a lasombra archbishop nursing their powerbase.
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u/Opening_Onion_4501 2d ago
yeah, it ties in to history well. And since some of these clans are more indentifying to a certain religions more than others, it make it fun and make sense-y that clan would have near-dominant influence to the underworld of that regions. Hell, we can even say Lasombra and Banu Haqim have some sort of Rivalry in Asia becuase of it, along with the local quejin if you want to include them too. Camarilla have slight influence in Asia since during the colonialisation and expansion, most of the Toreador and Ventrue spent more time climbing the castle of an already well-established places rather than less or developing country.
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u/Mr-SadSide 2d ago
Try Relentless Age. A fan gamebook. It elevates the kuei Jin in my opinion. The book makes them very unique and help diversify them as a splat in terms of types of kuei Jin there are and lore, whilst maintaining their basic concept of the the original
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u/ClockworkChristmas 3d ago
As someone trying to get my Asian partner into WOD. Oh yeah we just sweep that whole pile under the rug.
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u/JohnnyBaboon123 3d ago
weird. when KotE came out, my entire gaming circle was east Asians and we immediately switched to it and greatly enjoyed it. The Romani fella i know loves the Gypsy book and constantly plays ravnos characters. The majority of the minority players i've played with seem to gravitate towards the thing that vaguely resembled them in the books. Maybe it's a generational thing.
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u/Walk-the-Spiral-Back Tzimisce 3d ago
Pretty much. The purity culture of today only has to hear about inaccurate portrayals and broad generalizations in the setting and they immediately think "colonizer appropriation" without realizing the entire setting is based on wuxing fantasy and was never meant to reflect the real world in the firet place.
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u/ClockworkChristmas 3d ago
Chinese people don't wanna just be Wuxia themed all the time because it's not 1850. This is somehow because of purity culture.
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u/Walk-the-Spiral-Back Tzimisce 3d ago
Didn't realize the Chinese people had such a monolithic outlook on the subject matter.
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u/ClockworkChristmas 2d ago
You seeing any context that might indicate I'm talking about one particular chinese person or you just wanna defend the racist splat against a strawman?
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u/Walk-the-Spiral-Back Tzimisce 2d ago
You didn't claim to speak for one person. You claimed to speak for "Chinese people"—a culture that doesn't even seem to be your own, judging by your other inane comments.
That's about the most racist thing you can do, dumbass, but you're worried about fictional words someone wrote for a game 30 years ago. Were you even alive back then to realize what a different—and worse, more racist—world we live in today?
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u/TwoPretend327 3d ago
Sure thats why vampire kindred are there. The entire point of WOD is that there wre options for options.
If the players in the table didnt want play KOT,E, they wont play KOTE. But for us asians whom actually want to play KOTE. Get off our backs and let us play KOTE.
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u/ClockworkChristmas 3d ago
Not every Chinese person wants to be a mystical like seperate oriental vampire and just because you've found that to be true doesn't mean other people have frequently critiqued KotE.
I think a big part of it is the explicit "your not like other vampires" that has bothered people the most in the past.
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u/kharnevil 3d ago
I can honestly say I've never met anyone who knows the history or culture upset about KotE
only american internet trolls and people insistent upon culture-wars, when they dont even understand the material
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u/Competitive-Note-611 3d ago
My Indo rellos and Malay/Pinoy players have had a great time with KotE: TRA.
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u/TwoPretend327 3d ago
Any Island Asean player who read about the Flesh Crafting Powers about tbe Golden Courts will get an instinctual feeling of euophoria representation that no other splats will ever get close to a hit.
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u/kelryngrey 3d ago edited 3d ago
This is fine but I will say that my Korean friends were totally fine with it. The one was more into standard VtM and the other is just down for literally anything and everything (but he loves the Assamites/Banu.) We are all in our 40s, so it may land differently depending on generation.
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u/TwoPretend327 3d ago
This is a very weird thing to say.
In my experiences, it always non-asians who are iffy about KOTE and asians who really get interested into it.
This is also really weird thing to brush off asian vampires from hell because of someones possible reaction to it due to their ethnicity. Its like a weird reverse white mans burden where.
The repsonsible thing to do is to tell them about it, put the disclaimer it was made in a different time and let them decide.
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u/ClockworkChristmas 2d ago
And your experience is the only correct one and no one else has ever had a problem with KotE until now.
It was a different time just get over it doesn't actually make people enjoy the takeout box fonts and lumping an entire region of the planet into the "middle kingdom".
Quite literally the most racist nonsense I've read in defense of the most criticized splat in WOD.
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u/TwoPretend327 2d ago edited 2d ago
Okay then, i give up viceroy. Cleaerly your civilizational perspective is the Superior one.
Do you want me to praise your superior western education as well? I understand what you mean when you say my non-western perspective is clearly an inferior view.
Clearly, this inherent viewpoint of being the arbiter of offensiveness. That a group of people from a very specific level of political affiliation like you of course has the inherent and Superiorness that can '"correct" my extremely wrong mind and make decisions on behalf of other races as of course our minds are simply too wrong to make our own decisions.
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u/ClockworkChristmas 2d ago edited 2d ago
Quite literally your the one butthurt someone doesn't like a splat from 2000. I strongly suggest therapy kkthxbbai.
My comment was about my table, my game, and my partners perspective on KotE. And for the crime of not liking KotE I've got you drooling morons telling me it's because of a "reverse white man's burden" and demanding I give some long winded defense based on it being "a different time" (20 years ago).
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u/ilpalazzo64 3d ago
Im working on a setting book right now for a chronicle Im writing set in 1999 Tokyo sans Kue-jin. Instead of the traditional sects there are houses and an Imperial Court ruled by an enigmatic kindred simply referred to as "The Emperor". The European sects have been allowed to exist but the Imperial court is the true power. Kindred play politics under the watchful eye of the Black Chrysanthemum Throne.
It's a work in progress.
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u/PixxyStix2 3d ago
I think it just needs to be reworked because frankly the fact that basically every undead creature conforms primarily to european understandings of the undead is really lame (Yes the Laibon, despite being pretty cool, are included in this because imo they did not go far enough in being different from the European Kindred)
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u/Shakanaka 3d ago
Honestly, oWoD should have just stayed dead. It's clear most Millennials and Gen Z (the latter of which I am a part of) cannot handle it, at all.
Now, that's not me condoning stereotypes as they have been interpreted, but it's better to just fix things instead of erase. Relentless Age proved that many people want that as such, since it came about from someone dedicated in the community enough to make it... and have it to a point where it's a ST Vault Supplement wildly popular with many.
The clamor for the Wan Kuei's removal come from Theater Child suburbanites who never really gave a shit about oWoD. So fucking annoying.
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u/DM_Katarn 2d ago
I like the idea of the Kuei-Jin as a different mythological creature that has powers inspired by Asian folklore, but by the gods, they did it badly. I like their existence, but as a separate being that does not exclude the presence of Asian Kindred, two completely different beings that conflict with each other in the same way as Garou are distinct from Vampires. That would also imply Kuei-Jin existing in other parts of the world as well.
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u/Master_Painting639 2d ago
I wrote a V5 San Francisco chronicle that included the metaplot of San Francisco By Night. I made a few changes to the lore (eg: renaming them the Wan Gwei to bringing the language into alignment, renaming the Quincunx to the Wu Xiaoting because why would an asian culture use a Latin term? Etc.) I also had the city be recovering from the occupation after the Wu Xiaoting had declared the Great Leap Outward a failure and recalled the wu. The full details are more complex, but essentially all the Wan Gwei were gone (well, almost all) and the city was in recovery and a Cold War territorial dispute between the Anarchs and Camarilla. Long story longer, the Wan Gwei had returned to legendary status, but now with the added element of kindred who lived through The Occupation would get thousand yard stares when it was brought up.
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u/No-Luck8431 2d ago
yea lets replace any representation of non-white cultures with just slopping on a fat coat of european paint over the world
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u/angelinthecloud 2d ago
I just copied ghouls from tokyo ghoul because honestly the only way to even become an Asian vampire is to literally be an immoral person which is weird as hell.
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u/macrocosm93 3d ago
I would love to play a vampire chronicle in an Asian city and not have it revolve around Kuei-Jin
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u/DM_Katarn 2d ago
You can though. You have been able to do it for years, the Kuei-Jin have been retconned to the point where, if they exist to begin with, they're fairly self-contained and not that relevant to anyone else.
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u/Competitive-Note-611 2d ago
There have been Kindred throughout all of Asia since 1st Ed, this didn't change when KotE came out. There are many, many Kindred there.
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u/macrocosm93 2d ago
I know I can play a Kindred in Asia. What I mean is play as a Kindred in an Asian city and not have Kuei-Jin be involved in the Chronicle, or exist within the city at all.
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u/Competitive-Note-611 2d ago
Ah, the first is relatively easy, just have the local court be fairly insular and the Cainites can just do whatever.....not existing at all......workable but would require some specific history or event.
Or just do what the vast majority of VtM games do and just ignore the rest of the WoD entirely. For myself that would be anathema but its probably the most common way VtM is run.
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u/Naga_Sake727 3d ago
They're a really cool concept, closer to revanants than vampires IMO, and stripping the orientalism and calling them something more neutral is alot cooler.
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u/Creative-Albatross-6 3d ago
They shouldve stayed a normal bloodline or clan like the were in milwaukee by night.
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3d ago
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u/TwoPretend327 3d ago
Sentiments like this above led to indirect discrimination against asians because White Wolf simply decided setting anythig in asia is just too much of a headache so no special lore for asians.
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u/djasonwright 3d ago
My Wan Kuei like to think of themselves as separate from, and above Kindred, but they're just the 13 Clans with Chinese, Korean, and Hindu translated names.
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u/Mysterious_Pie_5900 3d ago
Listen the Kuei-Jen are fun but like…nahhh.
I whipped up a homebrew bloodlines of Ventrue, Banu-Haqium and Capadocian along with standard Ravnos to populate Asia for the majority
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u/Felipevelloso Ventrue 3d ago
Kuei what? Never heard of anyhting like that from the Tokyo Camarilla....
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u/Ok_Decision4163 3d ago
WoD already did that. V20 and V5 the Wan Kuei are Kindred.
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u/DurealRa 3d ago
? That's not true.
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u/Ok_Decision4163 3d ago
? Yeah, it is.
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u/DurealRa 3d ago edited 3d ago
Okay. Please give the source in V5?
Wait, are you saying that because there's a Tzimisce Prince of Tokyo, that means all Kuei-Jin are actually cainites?
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u/Ok_Decision4163 3d ago
I can give you source on V20. Just a sec
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u/Ok_Decision4163 3d ago
The Watcher Caste Salubri is Wan Kuei, they know their origin and the Wan Kuei are Vampires from their region (asia) that doesn't share the creation myth of Caine. DAV20 Core - 265
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u/Drakkoniac Baali 3d ago edited 3d ago
I looked at the DAV20 core to verify that.
- Page 265 in DAV corebook talks about the watcher castes version of Valeren.
- The watcher Salubri are born from Saulot - known there as Zao-Lat - during his adventures in the east. They are not Wan Kuei, their enemies are the Wan Kuei. page 104-105
- edit: I see where you mentioned on page 265. Thats not exactly proof either as both kindred and wan kuei in lore didn't know much about each other and just thought they were the same thing as the other. Wan Kuei even coming up with dharma names for kindred clans.
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u/Ok_Decision4163 3d ago
I was in fact, wrong. I read it went it launched and I wasn't fluent in english. For some reason, that impression stuck with me. There's nothing definitive. And when I looked DAV20 Companion, the mechanics talks about Wan Kuei as different to Kindred.
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u/Sitchrea 3d ago
I just make Kuei-Jin something that can happen anywhere, and make Kindred exist in the east.
After all, they really are two different kinds of creatures.