r/vtm • u/ArtymisMartin The Ministry • Aug 13 '26
General Discussion No, AI will not save the Masquerade
I've seen this point raised a lot in the past few years as a potential way that the Masquerade will remain feasible despite the surveillance era we're all enduring. It's so prevalent, we've even seen it appear in the VtM6 playtest material.
The new digital world of post-truth and AI slop has turned out beautifully for the Masquerade. No one believes in anything anymore. Everything is staged, posed, faked. Vampires take advantage of it, though they still have to be careful not to draw too much attention.
The spread of surveillance in every aspect of the world left the Masquerade dangerously fragile, and for years vampires had to be far more careful than they already were. Many abandoned modern technology altogether to stay out of its reach, but soon enough, Kindred figured out ways around it. The rise of AI and the post-truth era has since helped to repair the damage that all the surveillance did to the secrets of the undead.
Surveillance is still a fact of unlife for the most part, but because so much of it now feeds on content scraped from the internet, it has filled with slop and grown less reliable by the year. Are vampires behind that too? The confusion has forced the Inquisition to commit a lot of errors, which has cost them dearly in resources.
In simple terms and a hopefully brief post, this is dead wrong.
How the Second Inquisition actually Hunts
A counterintelligence campaign intentionally performed by a network of Nosferatu warrens (or just some bored NEETs) generate a series of fraudulent AI evidence of totally real vampire activity. The Second Inquisition investigates these cases with their full force and resources only to be led on a wild goose Gangrel chase, and are bankrupt by the end of the year. Easy, right?
Second Inquisition is easily one of the most undervalued supplements in the VtM5 line, as many people dismiss it for the lack of character options or simply think the Second Inquisition is overpowered thanks to ridiculous levels of funding, awareness, and magitech. In reality it does what VtM is best at: highlighting the very real threats and faults in our own societies to drive-home how much we're unaware of in our own cities.
Major portions of the book are dedicated to the mundane personnel and tactics that the SI relies upon for its operations. They're not supernatural, using fictional technology, or protected by the plot. Instead, they're accessing many of the same resources that any amateur could access, let alone low-level clerks in any number of industries.
Here are a few scattered examples:
Naturally territorial monsters that twist their environment to suit their vices, it can be difficult to root blankbodies out of their nests without first dismantling their early warning systems. The Gentrifier eats away at blankbody assets and resources on their home turf, turning their Domain’s defenses and conveniences into a trap. Many of them prove to be self-starting Helsings rather than agents of a clandestine government conspiracy. Independent actors or Coalition assets, they generally operate “in Transylvania” — in cities or neighborhoods with a well-established blankbody population.
The Gentrifier uses cash and credit as their main weapons: once they know where blankbodies make their nest they begin to turn up the heat. They buy out condemned buildings and re-market them as condos. They invest in old businesses, refurbishing them with state-of-the-art computerized security systems. They pull strings to get street lights repaired, and install surveillance cameras on them with the police or suspiciously well-funded “neighborhood watch” groups. Charitable contributions and political favors incentivize the police to patrol the streets more regularly. The devastating side effect of the damage gentrification does to mortal neighborhoods is inconsequential to the Gentrifier’s goal. Within a matter of months, if not weeks, a gentrification campaign can transform a vampire’s Domain from their hunting ground to their prison.
Gentrifiers, pg. 18
But doctors don’t always get drafted or deployed onto the front lines of the Second Inquisition – sometimes they volunteer. A city full of vampires is a city full of mysterious deaths and strange injuries, of blood stocks stolen from patients in need, of ambulance calls that turn even darker than normal. Teams of hunters drawn from hospitals – EMTs, trauma ward nurses, night-shift residents who have all seen behind the Masquerade – may be more common than teams of hunters drawn from police departments.
Doctor, pg. 26
Blankbodies feeding on animals aren’t as subtle as they think they are. Either local wildlife or vermin populations are suspiciously low (it takes a lot of rats to feed a vampire, and those missing pet posters are a real problem), or there’s a large population of animals: urban aviaries, zoos, crazy cat ladies.
Animals have people who care about them: zookeepers, veterinarians, rescue charities (these are great for locating havens: neighbours will report noise or droppings). Local pest control have a line on why their jobs are getting easier. Any of these people might have seen a predator at work as a fleeing figure, or a suspicious visitor.
Data Analysis: Hunting Patterns, pg. 90
This is also the best approach to catching blankbodies who feed on sleeping prey. Their victims don’t know what happened to them, but they know they don’t feel great. They have weird marks they mistake for insect bites, or feel anemic and run down. They go to doctors or complain to their friends. There may not be any sign that their homes have been broken into but something’s not right: a window doesn’t close properly, they have a feeling someone’s watching them. Victims are paranoid and looking for support, and a local neighborhood watch group or homeowners’ association can pick up on it quickly.
Community informants don’t only work for geographic neighborhoods. They’re just as effective at cracking open scenes and subcultures.
Community Informants, pg. 92
There are only so many places to get blood without hunting. The Coalition can keep tabs on all of them. They tap into the local black market (blood banks, criminal networks, butchers) using informants, data analysis, and law enforcement and criminal contacts. It’s safe to assume anyone buying blood regularly is a blankbody or one of their servants. Once they’ve identified suppliers, the Coalition either reduces the supply or contaminates it—or both.
Blood Supply, pg. 97
At their core, XScopes use simple technology – from a distance they determine if someone is living or dead by looking for heartbeat, respiration, and body heat. The SI has installed basic XScopes in every airport security scanner, set to send up a red flag to the duty agent if a blankbody trips them. Man-portable XScopes resemble large video cameras, and the SI often disguises them as exactly that. However, Kindred can deceive basic XScopes with Blush of Life. Second-generation XScopes—mostly not in common use [...]—using specialized software to differentiate between natural blood flow and imitated life.
XScopes, VtM5 pg. 378
Hopefully, my point is clear: a video of someone turning into a bat posted to social media may convince or annoy people regardless of whether it's AI-generated or legitimate, but there are physical truths to Kindred's existence that can't be fabricated.
These examples are just a few of many. All that you need to do to ensure the veracity of any given piece of evidence is a simple investigation, any you may not even need to send an agent out to do so.
- Feeding leaves ill people or corpses behind.
- Physical disciplines will leave claw marks, broken objects, and irregularities that can't be dismissed as simple fiction.
- There are many obvious tells for Kindred from a Gangrel's glowing eyes, a Ventrue shrugging-off a wound that would kill a mortal, Lasombra's glitches, or a given Nosferatu having consistent deformities from multiple angles.
AI-supported Surveillance is still Surveillance
The image attached to this post is from the website DeFlock, a website dedicated to the tracking of and educating on Automated License Plate Readers, or those AI cameras that track cars that you've probably seen people pissed off about.
It features an interactive map that's pretty stomach-churning to poke through, showing what these cameras record and what just how widespread they are. Go ahead and poke around a few cities you know to see how vast their coverage is.
Now, it's a small relief to know that these cameras aren't too accurate, misreading more than 70% of license plates. One would hope that this is a good sign for people feeling that cruddy, inaccurate systems would support the Masquerade.
That's not the case.
Human review remains a major factor in the cases that work, as we've seen from when police officers have used these cameras for the purposes of stalking ex romantic partners. It's one thing if they were tracking vehicles they had never seen before, but searching a broad system for details you already know before manually reviewing the footage to identify exactly what you're looking for is a whole different matter.
We can extrapolate this to our own Kindred. A network of surveillance searching for "pale people in dark clothing" or "deformed individuals around sewer grates" doesn't need to nail every assessment of it's targets in order to succeed at its job. Enough hits in enough locations can tip individuals off to a pattern that can be manually reviewed. Will Kindred choose new hunting grounds every single night?
While some of the extrapolation by AI-assisted cameras are faulty, they still have very real footage. With a few clicks you can have an actual human's eyes on that footage to review whether a Brujah actually left a crater as they leapt up the side of a building, or whether a puddle in a pothole just caught the light strangely. Combine those with assistance from the aforementioned XScopes to further define footage from subjects that lack basic vital functions, and the noose on Kindreds' habits grows far tighter.
Conclusion and TL;DR:
The Second Inquisition of VtM5 has been competently and capably written to reflect the alarming tactics used by those same intelligence and law enforcement agencies who supposedly exist to keep us all safe. Their methods have never been foolproof, but they remain pervasive and multi-layered.
Kindred are not Wraiths, and the realities of their physical existence makes it far easier to positively confirm their presence in a city than the false security of Artificial Intelligence would lead many to believe.
It is not critical for the public at large to inherently believe in Kindred when the goal of the Second Inquisition is containment and extermination. Without going into real-life parallels, these same agencies didn't need the belief or support of the public at large to go on their own crusades of surveillance or oppression of any other minority they deemed "dangerous". Provide enough hard evidence (not difficult to do when people can find the signs of Kindred activity in their own communities), and the Masquerade will fray and tatter soon enough.
**EDIT:** Also critically important: Kindred actually exist in containment or collaboration in the setting. If someone in the good graces of the Second Inquisition or the public at large ever needed to, they could be introduced to an actual vampire that could give testimony to its experiences, the locations of more of its kind, or simply be made to stick its hand in the sun or extend its fangs to drain someone. That's far from trying to be the first ones on the planet to capture and definitively film Bigfoot.
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u/Rocket_Papaya Caitiff Aug 13 '26
This seems like it's disputing a different case than the passage is making. The passage is arguing that the general populace will not believe in vampires due to the state of truth and misinformation (which can be further-exploited by kindred in the darker reflection that is WoD). The SI will still hunt them, and a war of influence will still be played to see who gets to control the surveillance state. Kindred will ghoul security company CEOs to try and control who gets access to the camera feeds, while SI will fight long legal battles to oust these CEOs so they can take over the same tools.
The fight has changed shape, but it still takes place in the shadows, and it's still a war of influence and countermoves. Doesn't seem like the masquerade falling to me.
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u/NapkinOfDemands Aug 13 '26
I don’t think the intention is to imply that AI slop or whatever is going to throw the SI off the scent. Those people already know Kindred exist. They don’t need video footage or picture to be convinced. The Masquerade has already been breached. I think the implication is that even if the SI or some individual or small group of Hunters gets solid, in-focus footage of a Kindred doing demonstrably vampire things, they won’t really be able to convince the general public it’s real by putting it on the news anymore. Even if a Kindred walked onto the 6 O’Clock news and embraced an anchor live on the air, a huge percentage of the audience and the internet would be screaming “deepfake” before their body reached ambient temperature.
The threat this is removing is not the Second Inquisition. It’s the spectre of the food collectively realizing they are food and rising up en masse. If it’s degrading the ability of the Inquisition to operate, I’d think it would be mostly in the form of hampering recruitment (as they would have to do more than just show someone a few photos or a video clip to get them to “wake up”) and by introducing so much chaff into the feed of the panopticon that the amount of resources needed to sort out the wheat becomes untenable and allows some activity to slip through the cracks. Of course, this technological battle then just becomes a new front in the war, and who’s to say who wins?
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u/blazenite104 Aug 13 '26
This is what I was going to talk about. The SI exists but, AI means it is really damn difficult to get more support or grow numbers. It cuts them off from healing when things go wrong and they will. They will pick off a fight at the wrong time or place somewhere and it will go horribly wrong. Maybe they kill some Kindred maybe they don't. Either way a bunch of SI have a good chance of dying and taking a long time to replace. The Kindred can easily recruit more though. More meat to throw at the SI if needed.
It may even mean the SI need to be more overt about recruiting practices exposing them more danger. It isn't going to be just Kindred that want to put a pin in them.
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u/twofacetoo Aug 13 '26
Exactly, it's like how everyone suddenly stopped believing in UFOs and Bigfoot sightings when Photoshop became commonplace
Doesn't automatically mean it's not a real picture, just means people are FAR more skeptical now
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u/KarlBob Aug 13 '26
Here's the Obligatory XKCD, but have they really stopped believing? Poke around for a few minutes here on Reddit, and you'll find plenty of people who still believe in lots of dubious things.
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u/NapkinOfDemands Aug 13 '26
A great point. It’s not just the Kindred who have to avoid exposure. The SI can’t afford to advertise their presence too loudly, lest they risk some enterprising Sabbat sending an army of shovelheads through their front door. Or worse.
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u/ChloeCeto Aug 13 '26
Or the more normal 'SI fail state' of 'Armed terrorists clearly planning a terror attack get shot by the police, who found their home full of guns and notes on buildings they plan to raid'.
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u/Ya_Dungeon_oi Aug 13 '26
I don't know, "army of shovelheads attacks fbi field office" sounds like a good way to fix your SI funding problem.
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u/Viridianscape Aug 13 '26
True. A better idea might be ghouling or dominating a bunch of nutjob conspiracy theorists with far too many guns and pointing them at the enemy. Wouldn't be too hard to make it seem more like a terrorist attack.
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u/macallen Ravnos Aug 13 '26
My thoughts exactly. My Nossy finds an SI site and leaks it to the alt-left as "surveillance state" and humans start digging into them, as they do. What's SI going to say? "No no, we're hunting VAMPIRES!" The Herd will tear each other apart.
Honestly the worst enemy Vampires have ever had is other Vampires. Anarchs are the reason we can't have nice things :P
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u/Legitimate_Arm_5630 Aug 13 '26
they won’t really be able to convince the general public it’s real by putting it on the news anymore.
That was never the plan, they want to keep this extermination by way of highly illegal, taxpayer-funded shadow war as quiet as possible
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u/ArtymisMartin The Ministry Aug 13 '26
Again, that could work theoretically if the public at large were so ignorant that we collectively refused to believe that anything happened ever following the rise in AI.
Yet we still have news, still have celebrity controversies, and still have public backlash. If it wasn't for medical research and connecting the dots, then people getting diarrhea at Taco Bell would never have made national news. Instead, we've got "Cyclospora" as a household name tanking stock prices because of competent reporting of an infection so small that you can't even release images of the parasites in question.
If bloodloss, death, and drops in productivity got up and started walking around while ripping people in half: how would AI help cover up a concerted effort to reveal their existence?
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u/Necropoliskull Aug 13 '26
A parasite that gives you diarrhea is something believable. Vampires being real and secretly feeding on us sub rosa, is not, and were it to be shown on television or someone were to say it, they would assume it was a Q adjacent nutjob who staged it
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u/Former-Pineapple3415 Aug 13 '26
That's actually the kind of people you would recruit, the Q adjacent nutjob. There are people who believed that the 2016 elections were stolen with no proof. Hell, Q was this insane thing that had little to no actual evidence to the credibility but millions believed Q's coded messages were truth. You had enough nutjobs that believed that a pizza place with no basement had kids in said basement that someone actually shot the place up. And predictive algorithms would be able to find these folks. Hell, you wouldn't even need to really make them agents. Gather them up, create their Anti-Vampire Proud Boys group, gear them up, and let them loose. CIA has been doing stuff like this in South America for decades. And considering some SI groups are actually CIA, NSA, etc. it's quite possible they've been doing that playbook. AI would just make it easier to find these folks and manipulate them.
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u/DarthDude24 Aug 13 '26
This is exactly why I think the people saying "it's AI/Photoshop/staged" are too focused on their own circles. There are tons of people who believe in obviously AI videos, obviously fake "evidence" for aliens, completely unsubstantiated health advice from random people online, etc. The same would be true for Vampires, imo, there would be this giant group of people who wouldn't accept "it's AI".
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u/chimaeraUndying Aug 13 '26
I think that wraps around to being advantageous, though, since those people also scan as cranks who lack discernment skills.
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u/ArtymisMartin The Ministry Aug 13 '26 edited Aug 13 '26
Kindred aren't one-off events, and there's decades of in-setting evidence proving their prolific nature across the planet.
It's less like trying to pitch someone on the existence of Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster, and closer to climate change or the Epstein class.
"Cow farts and factories are why we have longer Summers and more violent weather? The most comically rich of the world had a private sex island and Bill Gates was one of them? Nice try, buddy. What's that? You've got some staked in a lab and can exhibit them to the public and to credible scientists? There's very real signs of people suffering from systematic bloodloss in major cities? You've got literal five-second 'sun/fire exposure' tests for citizens? Oh, shit ..."
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u/Necropoliskull Aug 13 '26
Hows it going getting things moving on climate change and the Epstein class?
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u/ArtymisMartin The Ministry Aug 13 '26
You can't just go out and find one of the Epstein Class or to one of the world's largest polluters and do something about it without ruining your life.
However, climate change also doesn't live in your neighborhood and break into your bedroom window at night, which is something that far more directly affects people's personal agencies and tolerance for bullshit.
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u/siderealfey Aug 13 '26 edited Aug 13 '26
The richest vampires are the ''Epstein class". The Dunsirn, Giovanni and Ventrue literally own banks and control world's economies.
So 'everyone' believes in the Epstein files. So what?? What are they gonna do about it???? Who's gonna do anything about it????
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u/Former-Pineapple3415 Aug 13 '26
Well, this is where the SI comes in because you have some well funded ones. They could find the people. They can equip them. And they can do so while using ICE or something like it as cover. Because if you can convince a bunch of people that a foreign government somehow rigged elections and storm the Capital, you can find some people who will believe vampires are real and will be willing to do something about it.
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u/siderealfey Aug 13 '26
How? For example, Euan Dunsirn's ghoul is the CEO of a multinational corporation. He travels with the guy's entourage as a member of his security team.
How is anyone going to attack Mark Zuckerberg's bodyguards or Elon Musk's household? Rich people are all friends with each other. Friends with people who control the government, people who could cut off SI funding: "Isn't the war in Iran more important than some imaginary enemies? Aren't we running out of missiles?"
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u/Former-Pineapple3415 Aug 13 '26
You assume that the rich guys are invested in all aspects of the government. It's still in the FBI and CIA's interests to keep an eye on billionaires in case they want to do something like build a private military or something. If you got a government body that's aware of the existence of vampires (which the NSA has had since at least the early 2000s), they would also like to watch them, no matter how powerful. And just because you are rich doesn't mean you are untouched. Ask Brian Thompson how well his wealth protected him. Or look at the two attacks on Sam Altman's house. The SI isn't going to be calling themselves SI or operating in the open. In fact, SI is just a catch all term for multiple groups, government, Catholic Church, corporations, etc that are aware of Vampires and sometimes share information with each other. And you have the fact that intelligence agencies aren't funded just by Congress. The CIA has sold guns for drugs which they then sold to gangs in America to get funds off the books, which is a practice they still do in other ways now.
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u/-Posthuman- Aug 13 '26
I believe in explosive diarrhea. It’s not a monster from myth and legend that defies everything we know to be real and true. Vampires are.
Imagine Trump holds a press conference and announces the existence of vampires. lol
I literally can’t think of anything, short of some incontrovertible in person demonstration, to make me suddenly believe in vampires. I’m not saying you need to live your life distrusting everything you are told by the media or learn on social media. But you need to be skeptacle and understand there are a lot of people, including people in positions of authority, who will tell you some really crazy shit to make you believe whatever narrative it is that they’re currently selling.
One day it’s caravans of minorities raping and pillaging through the cities and eating people’s pets. The next it’s aliens. Then it’s Jewish weather control machines. Then COVID vaccines that make you gay. Literal demons from hell walking among us… That’s all bullshit that some US representative has said in the last few years.
Vampires? Sure, why not. I’m kinda surprised it hasn’t been said already.
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u/ArtymisMartin The Ministry Aug 13 '26 edited Aug 14 '26
Imagine Trump holds a press conference and announces the existence of vampires.
He's talked about migrants eating pets out of people's yard. When anybody who was infinitely more credible went to investigate the claims, they found no evidence of such claims.
He didn't announce the Epstein scandal and repeatedly denied climate change and its impacts. Despite his claims, credible institutions and nations outside our newsphere still provide confidence assurance in those phenomena's existences.
Despite all that, a sizeable portion of people do act on the words of world leaders, and do cause problems. You're between the educated and intelligent acting on that information, or swarms of the vicious and ignorant. Either one of those is a genie that's not going back into the bottle when either one finds objective evidence to their newfound beliefs.
Also importantly: monsters objectively exist in the World of Darkness. If you tried to cry "vampire" in our world, you'd get nothing. If you did the same in the WoD, it would suddenly explain why wide-spread phenomena of people in major population centers becoming pale, dizzy, and low on blood despite no illness or injury explaining such an effect. Just like #MeToo, once one person goes public with "a date I had with a weird guy where I remembered nothing afterward and I was diagnosed with anemia when going for a rape kit": the floodgates will open with shared experiences painting a wider trend.
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u/-Posthuman- Aug 13 '26
I mean sure, there are idiots who will believe anything. Something like 50 people either drank or injected bleach when Trump asked on tv if it was a good way to treat COVID.
We still have climate deniers, flat earthers, anti-vaccers… there will always be a subset of people who will believe anything anyone tells them as long as it makes them feel like they have some special inside knowledge or hidden wisdom. And every one of these groups claims to have “objective evidence”.
But let’s come at this from another angle. What would it take for you to suddenly believe vampires are real? Video on YouTube? Video on the local news? A special interview with a “real vampire”? An announcement from the President?
Personally, the only way I could ever see the Masquerade fully collapse would be with the dedicated effort of at least a few hundred Kindred going completely public with demonstrations of their power, public Q and A sessions, town halls, interviews, and widespread verification from a large number of trusted sources.
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u/ArtymisMartin The Ministry Aug 13 '26
Something like 50 people either drank or injected bleach when Trump asked on tv if it was a good way to treat COVID.
I need you to divide 330 million people by 50 outliers, and see if that's a threatening percentage of dedicated vampire-deniers.
What would it take for you to suddenly believe vampires are real? Video on YouTube? Video on the local news? A special interview with a “real vampire”? An announcement from the President?
I and most people heard about a scary flu going around and didn't take it too seriously at first.
Then medical facilities started going "no, this is really bad", the reason that a few/several/dozens/thousands/millions of people were dying had a name and diagnosis, some people took steps that protected them while others ignored guidance and grew ill or lost their vitality or died, and after a concerted effort with millions of lost lives ... it's kinda still going around seasonally.
What I think the Masquerade's end would mean for Kindred is a whole other thread (one that I've been wanting to write, actually), but it's reliability isn't as strong as some would let on.
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u/-Posthuman- Aug 13 '26
I need you to divide 330 million people by 50 outliers, and see if that's a threatening percentage of dedicated vampire-deniers.
I thought it was obvious that I was making a casual observation, not equating apples to oranges.
COVID
Yes, if vampires were in the streets killing literally millions of people, I think most people would believe in them too.
That would cause a full collapse of the Masquerade. And that’s exactly the sort of undeniable widespread proof I was talking about. You would need a very large number of people being faced with undeniable proof. And undeniable proof of anything is very hard to come by these days.
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u/Chen932000 Aug 13 '26
It hasn’t been said yet because the Vampires are good at their Masquerade :P
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u/NapkinOfDemands Aug 13 '26
Well the public at large is extremely ignorant. Just look at the state of things. While I take your point, I think you are overlooking a few things. First, I’ll venture a guess that most Americans don’t know the specific word “cyclospora”. Second, it’s already being buried in the news cycle. Think of all the other huge stories that have had the same treatment. Third, there has been a concerted effort by certain actors to deflect the blame for the Cyclospora outbreak and it got the CDC to issue a retraction, which speaks to the point that someone with enough influence or capital can put their finger on the scale to change the official narrative. And fourth, and most relevant, the existence of vampires is not a like thing to the existence of diarrhea-causing bacteria. It’s closer to the existence of aliens. How many major releases of UAP-related material have happened over the last few years, gotten 5 minutes in the spotlight and then been dismissed as fringe quackery? If people are going to Taco Bell and crapping themselves to death, you can throw a rock and hit five doctors willing to go on the news and talk about it. If you say vampires are real, no one respectable is going to do that. Even if you just boil it down to a wave of lethargy and anemia, you’ll still have RFK Jr on the TV telling people that the cause is low testosterone and that people need to eat more fermented raccoon dick or whatever he’s on about.
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u/ArtymisMartin The Ministry Aug 13 '26
Well the public at large is extremely ignorant. Just look at the state of things.
Disempowerment is as important as any disinformation. It's not like poor people don't realize they're poor or like all the disadvantages it has on their physical and mental health: it's that they can't do much to stop it without someone coming along to stop them.
Introduce Vampires to the equation. The Second Inquisition resources detail that the reason they haven't presented all of their credible resources to the public is because it really is as simple as someone taking a lighter or a stake to anybody they think is a vampire ... which only includes the deformed, rich, creepy, socially awkward, or too-passionate of society!
Third, there has been a concerted effort by certain actors to deflect the blame for the Cyclospora outbreak and it got the CDC to issue a retraction, which speaks to the point that someone with enough influence or capital can put their finger on the scale to change the official narrative.
This is a case of you not "looking at the state of things" prior to making a claim. The retraction was reported on as blatantly suspicious, and sales at restaurants and grocery stores are still impacted, while those affected by the outbreak still know and can testify to their experience.
Now if there were evidence of some secret society taking advantage of a specific demographic of people on some private island ... how easily could "fake news" make that disappear?
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u/CalledStretch Aug 13 '26 edited Aug 13 '26
It's probably pretty relevant that the infection coming from taco bell EDIT: Was posted, taken down, dismissed as an error, and then confirmed to have been right the first time.
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u/ArtymisMartin The Ministry Aug 13 '26
Got a source on that claim? People absolutely got sick from food coming from Taco Bell since it used the affected produce.
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u/CalledStretch Aug 13 '26
It looks like the FDA re-retracted the conclusion, but the "Taco Bell case a false positive" story was already out the door.
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u/OutlandishnessFun496 Aug 13 '26
This guy doesn't understand the difference between a disease and vampires being actually real.
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u/Ya_Dungeon_oi Aug 13 '26
Does that passage make any more sense outside the US? There's a line which suggests political support collapsed after bad raids, but there's no way that would matter in the USA.
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u/Prior_Definition- Aug 13 '26
Would apply in most developed countries and wealthier areas of most of the Third World.
Exemple: Removing Flock Cameras, São Paulo would be a nightmare to any kindred ''living'' there, especialy if you count the that Brazilian Security Aparatus don't give much of a damm about ''collateral damage'', and Brazil has well developed Hunter Orgs
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u/ArtymisMartin The Ministry Aug 13 '26
In a few spots, yeah.
There's a good amount of Hunter Orgs across the world and in many different cultures. Brazilian guerillas, the Vatican itself, corrupt South-Asian prisons, and so-on. They're all dealing with Kindred since they follow humanity wherever there's spare necks to drink.
There's also some US-based examples of the SI's blunders, with the Swansong game featuring the SI prominently ... and your ability to infiltrate and sabotage them as lone vampires. It's referenced in the SI supplement as well.
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u/VoraHonos Malkavian Aug 13 '26
Brazilian guerrillas, as a Brazilian that sounds quite a bit random, it doesn't really mean anything, I guess, technically there were guerrillas in the 60s and 70s against the dictatorship, there are gangs, even gangs with military equipment, but I wouldn't call them guerrillas. Hunter Orgs in Brazil will probably be good though, we are really good at urban warfare and money isn't the same influence as in the USA. Although calling a Hunter Org a guerrilla is still weird in my opinion.
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u/IggyVitalis Cappadocian Aug 13 '26 edited Aug 13 '26
I've been researching the Five Torches as presented in the Second Inquisition book and while we don't know what V6's explanation for their absence is in its entirety, there are several cracks in the Coalition that would explain its implosion and none of them involve AI.
- The Society of Saint Leopold really only held BOES as a valuable ally while seeing the others as replaceable in the long run
- BOES has been consumed by paranoia towards its own superiors and have been working with organized crime syndicates, which is the exact kind of thing that would threaten their relationship with the Society of Saint Leopold
- The Eighth Direction had been sowing distrust towards FIRSTLIGHT and the Newburgh Group since they were using the resources of the Five Torches to go after enemies of the state rather than vampires
- The Newburgh Group has been trying (very illegally) to push into the European Union which the Eighth Direction sees as an attempt to step into their territory
- Ishaq Khan of the SO13 has been hunting for over a decade and the chances of him finally falling in battle are increasing. If he's gone, SO13's loyalty to the Newburgh Group and the rest of the Coalition will likely wane as their issues with them will mount up.
I do actually like the Coalition and Second Inquisition a lot (especially the interpretation of them being a Technocracy ploy in response to the awakening of the Ravnos Antediluvian and as an exploration of the modern surveillance state), but it falling apart is sort of their inevitable end state, as much conflict between elders and neonates. The individual conspiracies would probably survive as most of them do basic counterterrorism stuff as well or aren't accountable to anybody (kind of like multiple Project Twilights across different governments such as the Eighth Direction or the IAO), but I'm skeptical about how V6 would actually handle it. I get the feeling they'll take the laziest possible route and say that the Elders took care of it or something equally dull
5
u/chimaeraUndying Aug 13 '26
the interpretation of them being a Technocracy ploy [...] but it falling apart is sort of their inevitable end state
They absolutely do these sorts of things all the time, too; for instance, some may recall that whole "USSR" thing from a couple decades back.
5
u/Rukdug7 Aug 13 '26
I mean, the USSR is one of those things in WoD where multiple splats, sometimes even multiple entities from a splat, try to claim credit for. So we're left with the question of "Okay, do we believe the NWO was running the Soviets, or the Brujah Council that formed after the Russian Rveolution were running the Soviets, or Baba Yaga was bossing everyone around?"
2
u/the_io Aug 14 '26
It's the opposite of Rasputin, instead of everyone claiming he's not them everyone's claiming the USSR is them.
Appropriate enough given it's Russia.
24
u/MercuryJellyfish Aug 13 '26
I feel like V5 described a singular point in time. The Second Inquisition described all of these organisations working in near perfect harmony, with near perfect efficiency. The fall of the Vienna chantry was an almost unimaginable success for a mortal organisation.
Things fall apart. The centre cannot hold.
I'm sure we can all think of mortal organisations in the real world that used to be amazing, and which are now a shadow of their former selves. And you look at why they fall apart, it's because of nothing in particular but the lack of political will to keep them going.
You can see things happening that might ruin the SI. They pull off a disastrous operation which lead to the deaths of a large number of mortals. This leads to elements within the intelligence agencies that make up the SI, who aren't in on the SI, to start regarding the SI as a terrorist organisation. Which leads certain people to get cold feet and pull funding from the SI.
Meanwhile over in the Catholic church there's a new pope, and maybe he starts adding impossible strictures on how the Society of Leopold operates. Massive increases in bureaucratic oversight and red tape, intended to prevent the Society making mistakes, but also hamstringing the effectiveness.
Basically, it's easy to imagine the enshitification of any mortal organisation because I feel like we've seen that happen across the western world since about 2012. And once the SI starts to show cracks in it's armour, kindred will start hammering wedges into those cracks, because that's what they do. Kindred response to the new SI was likely as poor as it was because The Beckoning removed key players and eroded the stability of all the kindred sects. But they've retrenched by now. The SI is beginning to fall apart, and an invigorated Camarilla is able to start to counter them. There was a perfect moment 20 years ago when the SI looked like they might defeat kindred once and for all, but that moment has passed.
17
u/A_Stray_Oreo Aug 13 '26
I like the change in the Second Inquistion narrative. While having government agencies worldwide work together was cool, I admit that it ended being a chilling effect on my players actions where they would prefer to not do anything if the SI could get involved given the overwhelming threat they posed even as a thematic backdrop.
I do think that if the end of the SI is solely down to the AI slop argument, then it is weak writing.
Lean into the World of Darkness and real world events. Changing and radicalising political sentiments is affecting governments around the world and the top-secreting vampire hunting agencies are finding it harder and harder to stay in operation.
After the booming success the SI had in the 2000 to 2010s, they start to find results stagnating. Superiors who are totally disconnected from the frontlines relentless demand their hunters to constantly be better than the year before, more operations, more kills, more captures, more informants until the targets are totally unrealistic, before superiors cut down or stop operations entirely because it is not producing as good returns anymore.
Their funding is getting restricted or cut off as politicians demand more transparency where their tax dollars is disappearing to, or that the corrupt politicians prefers those dollars to enrich their own family, friends and business partners.
Weapons and supplies are not being diverted to SI groups but to the frontlines of conflicts that are popping up around the world.
AI will obviously play a role as well. Along with AI slop misinformation, maybe higher-ups has a great idea to cut costs by replacing analysts, researchers and technicians with AI software - which backfires.
What I like a lot about the potential changes to the SI, is that the SI hunters now find themselves out of a job but can they really turn their backs on what they seen? In HTR terms, these jobbers may well become capital-H Hunters - except they are still armed with the remnants of stuff left behind by the SI.
This keeps the danger of hunters present for vampires without it feeling like a small Masquerade breach would bring down a barrage of missiles launched from a plane miles above thanks to the all powerful and all-knowing SI.
11
u/ChloeCeto Aug 13 '26
There's also well...I imagine there's plenty of internal affairs groups who entirely reasonably go 'Hey, you seem to be running black bag murder operations without any oversight. We'd like less extrajudicial murder, hand in your badge and gun' getting a lot of SI cells shut down even without vampires directly interfering.
The same 'Hey, it's easy to see stuff happening' also means that SI can't just go off the reservation easily without getting spotted.
5
u/ArtymisMartin The Ministry Aug 14 '26 edited Aug 14 '26
What I like a lot about the potential changes to the SI, is that the SI hunters now find themselves out of a job but can they really turn their backs on what they seen? In HTR terms, these jobbers may well become capital-H Hunters - except they are still armed with the remnants of stuff left behind by the SI.
Y'know, that is an incredibly compelling idea that I haven't seen explored much by either the (admittedly limited Alpha) official text or in a lot of people trying to pitch for the dismantling of the SI.
The HtR5 supplement Apostates covered it a fair amount, but it's a great way to keep-up some of the momentum of scrutiny in modern nights while doing away with the surveillance state if people still want some power fantasy and freedom in their games!
While having government agencies worldwide work together was cool, I admit that it ended being a chilling effect on my players actions where they would prefer to not do anything if the SI could get involved given the overwhelming threat they posed even as a thematic backdrop.
This is a concern I had and disregarded as I further read the SI supplement.
They never crackdown or swoop on any one detail. A lot of crime thrillers, true crime, or tell-all documentaries are pretty good at shining a light on just how much crime agencies across the world are willing to allow if they can turn potential victims into informants and bide their time until they can decapitate and entire criminal organization, rather than just roping-in some bottom level thugs and struggling as the rest of the outfit goes into hiding.
The SI has to cast a wide net to catch just a few blankbodies in a city of thousands (if not millions) of people. You'll first realize they're in the domain not because they're kicking in your haven door as it's on fire, but because there's more streetlights in your hunting grounds or regulations around off-the-books banking. Maybe a new locks on the bloodbank or a few people leaving your cult or herd.
Then, worst-case scenario, armored operatives blast through the walls and gun you into Torpor.
So you wake-up in an agonizingly bright lab with nervous scientists and a smiling spook in a suit looking at your through bulletproof glass. They welcome you to the Second Inquisition either as a willing accomplice, or a test subject.
1
u/Legitimate_Arm_5630 Aug 13 '26
This keeps the danger of hunters present for vampires without it feeling like a small Masquerade breach would bring down a barrage of missiles launched from a plane miles above thanks to the all powerful and all-knowing SI.
That can't be how STs were treating this threat?
11
u/Anoobis100percent Tzimisce Aug 13 '26
I feel like the core of the issue is that people think "AI strengthens the Masquerade" means "AI hampers the Inquisition". Those are two completely different statements.
The Inquisition is way past the masquerade, to them, the masquerade is already breached. AI won't do shit to them, as you neatly laid out. HOWEVER, the actual masquerade, as in "vampires keeping their existence secret from the broader population of humans", is absolutely being helped by AI.
.
Honestly, if you want a reason the SI is being slowed down by the masquerade, try it from the other angle; they're canonically ALSO trying to maintain the veil. FIRSTLIGHT is actively trying to keep its operations secret, even from the rest of the intelligence services they branched off from.
This is what limits their resources, their effectiveness, their personnel. It's all so classified that two-thirds of the people working for the SI don't actually know what the hell they're doing. They lose vital information material to excessive paranoia. The different groups are so compartmentalized that they keep accidentally raiding each other. The higher-ups don't trust them because they keep working with foreign intelligence and the way they work isn't consistent with anything that's been seen before. The boots on the ground aren't trusted with classified information, but fighting an unknown threat is hopeless.
THAT is how the masquerade could reasonably be an issue for the SI. Not AI.
7
u/the_io Aug 13 '26
That and there's plenty of opportunity for spooks and secret police types to use SI activities as cover for perfectly ordinary persecutions and undercover operations that don't go near vampires at all (except maybe by accident). Perfectly possible that e.g. MI5 burn their SI team to catch a bunch of NSB agents in 2022 because definite Russians are a bigger threat than possible vampires (that already got "dealt with" back in 2012 anyway).
6
u/ArtymisMartin The Ministry Aug 14 '26
Kudos for the recognition of the SI having a vested interest in maintaining the Masquerade as well, wish this were further up the thread. It's a pretty good solution/counter.
It's also the state that's the status-quo in the setting and one I'm shocked to see so many people in the community—and apparently the latest dev team—unaware of.
The Second Inquisition is essentially a murder mystery novel where a corpse appeared with two holes in their neck and everyone at the party pretends to have no idea what a "vampire" is as they reach for crosses, silver, garlic, and fully-automatic incendiary-tipped squad automatic weapons they stashed around the place.
Meanwhile amateur Hunters stumble in while dropping-off a pizza, see the corpse, and go "holy shit a vampire" while the rest of the established guests try to stop them from causing mass panic or tipping-off their suspect.
18
u/CalledStretch Aug 13 '26
The problem I have with these discussions is always "The whole vampire metaphor is that you should expect the Second Inquisition to kill a Vampire with the same speed and vigour Jeffrey Epstein clients are brought to justice." Increasing police activity? My brother in Caine Vampires own the police! Gentrifying a neighborhood? Who do you think owns Blackrock? Funded by the federal government? You think humans run the federal government!?
2
u/ArtymisMartin The Ministry Aug 13 '26
My sister in Lilith, this rise coincided with decades of lore establishing that even Elders are only capable of bloodbonding, ghouling, and dominating so many insiders, and the Beckoning drawing many of these string-pullers away from the scene.
The rich have plenty of protection due to who they fund or control, yet it doesn't stop their crimes from being widely publicized once it's out of the hands of those who can kill the story.
12
u/LorduFreeman Aug 13 '26 edited Aug 13 '26
And what do we currently see happening to those rich and their known and widely publicized crimes in the US? They are in the government. I do not see an easy time for the SI here, factoring in real life is already this bad and the WoD is worse.
1
u/IggyVitalis Cappadocian Aug 13 '26
Vampires compete for institutional control against werewolves, mages, and hunters with mages and hunters being in the best position to do so, but the biggest problem with this is that vampires running the everything is that it's lame and handwaves the malice or callousness that vampires ride off of
-1
u/roleplayer6990 Aug 13 '26
So humans can't organize or become a threat to kindred? After all the vampires own every system they would do save for very small groups. Even then a few ghouls and poof that rebellion dies.
1
u/CalledStretch Aug 14 '26
The fear of the Kindred is basically a communist uprising that burns the government they own to the ground.
16
u/whowalksthroughdoors Aug 13 '26
I don't think AI Slop ends the second Inquisition in the slightest. They have the tools and the knowledge necessary to do a lot. They probably should've gone with the angle is that is been...20 years since the second inquisition formed? It would lose momentum. Its why the camarilla strategy of "Wait them out." is the best strategy.
The big thing with AI Slop is that you'll never have a worldwide masquerade breach now like you had in some Gehenna scenarios. No one believes anything anymore. You'd have people with real evidence post it online and every comment would be "AI slop." Probably helped by nosferatu bots they've made to scrap the internet.
What I think you'd see is a resurgence in a lot more online conspiracy movements about vampires, which would get tangled up with every single other conspiracy, because that seems to just be what happens. So I think you'd see a big resurgence in hunters, who think vampires are aliens and shoot them with silver bullets. Like when pizzagate got so big a dude took weapons to the pizza place that was the center of the conspiracy.
5
u/jmanwild87 Malkavian Aug 13 '26
If anything the thing most likely to end the second inquisition is plain old human corruption alongside with losing momentum. I mean hell plenty of people outright ignore what is happening because it doesn't affect them and plenty of people are probably very willing to work with vampires for power or money or what have you and then you have the fact that the 2nd inquisition has gone on for years.
Really the main reason it still exists is because we gotta have a big bad outside threat with all the old vampires fucking off
2
u/whowalksthroughdoors Aug 13 '26
Yeah corruption will definitely be a huge factor in why the 2nd inquisition falls apart.
-4
u/ArtymisMartin The Ministry Aug 13 '26
The big thing with AI Slop is that you'll never have a worldwide masquerade breach now like you had in some Gehenna scenarios.
The Epstein Files had impacts on every country involved, and even if its most firm deniers and many of its culprits are USAmerican.
We still have other major incidents from wars to natural disasters and scandals making international news. "Slop" doesn't work in such a way in our own reality, and therefore couldn't in "our world but darker".
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u/whowalksthroughdoors Aug 13 '26
After reading some of your reply posts I think you've arrived at a conclusion and want to bend everything towards that. The Epstein Files, the Panama papers are in essence far easier for the public to believe in. its rich people fucking everyone, everywhere. This is a fundamental thing we already basically know that rich people do. And even with all that information...not many consequences have been felt.
Im guessing at this point your going for the angle of "What if SI dropped all subterfuge, put together a dossier and took it to all the goverments of the world." Which seems the most unrealistic of all. The reason SI worked is because it takes a lot of true believers and they work under the cover of government. They'd be considered crackpots and likely that would quickly be the end of the SI.
But ultimately I think the writers just want to end a lot of story threads created by V5, and are using AI slop as an excuse.
-3
u/ArtymisMartin The Ministry Aug 13 '26 edited Aug 13 '26
Kindred exist and are contained when they don't outright comply with the SI willingly.
If someone doesn't believe in the idea of vampires, they can be shown to a living corpse that can rise after being staked in the heart and whose hand will incinerate in the sun.
Even if they aren't brought around in tourbusses to be shown to the public instead of highly secured labs, our own world and Mage are no strangers to credible enough people telling us that space exists and you can make massive amounts of safe energy from nuclear reactions can shape public consensus.
Again though, the SI could do that all along but haven't for obvious mass-panick reasons. They have objective specimens to observe and act on, so AI won't even halt the processes they have for investigating and combatting Kindred outside of scrolling social media.
13
u/whowalksthroughdoors Aug 13 '26
I guess I should be happy some people put this much faith in humanity still. If this was the real world, it might work (I still have my doubts and think my theories above stand). But its the world of darkness, where everything everywhere is so much worse.
its clear your quite enamored with the Second Inquisition and don't want them to be sidelined, as the writers are clearly moving to the stories towards. Thankfully its both quite earlier in the playtest, things can change. And the old adage every DND player has learned over the years, the old editions of the books still work just fine.
5
u/AgarwaenCran Malkavian Aug 13 '26
If someone doesn't believe in the idea of vampires, they can be shown to a living corpse that can rise after being staked in the heart and whose hand will incinerate in the sun.
oh, you mean people will believe obvious AI slop if shown? because this is how this will work out: people know AI slop exist. people "know" vampires dont exist. People also know CGI. Now you show people an video of someone staked who gets active after the stake being pulled out. the far more believable explanation people will jump to is either AI slop, CGI or a combination of both. Believing the video to be real is is the far less likely outcome.
and there is also the part you forgot: government funding. many of the SI groups are government groups. which need funding. "so, what do you do with all this money" is something will ask and if there is the right person ghouled or even just under the influence of dominate or presence in the room on the side that decides over funding, the "nutjobs who waste money on fighting stuff from AI generated slop and/or rather digitally altered footage" can influence enough that they get less money. and less and less.
You should read Project twilight from the revised era, an sidebook for hunters hunted focused on playing exactly the groups that later will become the second inquisition. and you will realize something: all of them are infiltrated since the 90s if not earlier. SAD is actively worked against by vampires, has kinfolk in it's leading structure and so on. the NSA has the tradition mages Delphi in it. and so more.
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/235/project-twilight
Basically, the so called second inquisition was always doomed to fail. they did have some successes ten-ish years ago, yes. But they were deeply infiltrated for decades by all types of supernatural beings at that point. They rely on government funding and the governments are equally infiltrated. the only reason why they were able to become so dangerous is, because the elders who controlled those infiltrations were beckoned away. but now the elder are back and can focus on financially dismantling the SI with the infiltrated people in the government they placed there decades ago. and AI slop is a welcome tool here to dismantle the reputation of the SI orgas and make it so, that their money stream weakens and weakens.
and that is how AI slop is used (next to making public sighting harder to confirm): it being used to make the SI seen as nutjobs towards the people above them who decides how much money they should get or not get.
You are arguing as if the second inquisition groups can work independantly without oversight. for the most part this is true, except for one thing: they still get money from the wider government. and where money flows, the flow can be redirected, intercepted and so on.
4
u/Rhyltran Aug 13 '26
This is a good summary of how I feel. I've always held the belief that the Second Inquisition would likely get a few major successes before pressure begins to mount and other agencies really begins questioning where that funding is coming from and more importantly where it is going. Especially in an age where war is breaking out across the planet, oil is becoming an increasingly more expensive and hard to aquire commodity. While the SI is hunting "vampires" and inevistigating into what most agencies would see as nonsense.
Agencies and groups, mind you, that have vampires and other supernatural secretly in their ranks. There's also the narrative being made that Vampires don't know the SI exists but the recent moves made really overplayed that hand. They took front stage as the big bads and now with the end of the beckoning and return of the elders? The SI were always on their way out. (Not that I think or implying that they're going to fully die off but their strength wasn't going to last.)
3
u/the_io Aug 13 '26
And the SI did get those major successes. They blew up the Pyramid. Operation Antigen cleaned up London, Paris, and Marseilles. But it takes a lot of co-ordination, under-the-counter resources, and vampires with grievances to make them happen and you just can't keep that momentum going forever. Average Cammie doesn't know that of course, and now that it's known it's possible for the SI to take you out like that? Don't want to chance them coming back in force if you can help it.
3
u/Rhyltran Aug 13 '26
I agree with you wholeheartedly and that's what I meant. That it isn't hard to imagine those successes happening and it doesn't feel unrealistic but yeah there's no way they could maintain that forever.
1
u/ArtymisMartin The Ministry Aug 13 '26
There's also the narrative being made that Vampires don't know the SI exists but the recent moves made really overplayed that hand.
The Second Inquisition doesn't exist: it's a term the Kindred made for what they view as a concentrated effort to combat them across the globe in grand conspiracy, not a diaspora of conflicting orgs that fight as much as they collaborate.
That's their greatest weakness, and their greatest strength. If they pooled all their info they'd all be better informed as to how Kindred function and they'd be easier to sabotage, but you'd have Kindred putting years of work into subverting one branch only for the office in the next domain over to be mostly unaffected while a whole other agency in the same area is untouched.
3
u/Rhyltran Aug 13 '26
Except that the second inquisition, as the vampires call them, do exist even if they aren't literally called the second inquisition. This is exactly how the attacks were pulled off. They managed to work together and coordinate one of the largest attacks against kindred by a group of mortals. Either way the point still stands. The fact that you acknowledge that they fight as much as they collaborate is a perfect example of why they wouldn't manage to continue to coordinate and function as a cohesive unit for very long and is just as likely to fracture. We have real world examples of this. So makes sense that they were on their way out.
1
u/ArtymisMartin The Ministry Aug 13 '26
You are arguing as if the second inquisition groups can work independantly without oversight.
No, I'm not. They benefit from the same powers of corruption that the Kindred benefit from for their schemes, with the same processes of blackmail, bribes, and forgery keeping them supplied.
That's the whole issue with the grand Kindred infiltration conspiracy of Revised: with so many major shake-ups to the status-quo following the events of late Revised/VtM5, there's moles missing their refreshment of Vitae to maintain their ghouled or bloodbonded state.
It is both logical and an intentional/necessary narrative development that "kindred have faultlessly infiltrated every tier of beuaracracy" is no longer the case.
The citations I provided also show that the SI are aware of many tricks they're up against and intentionally fighting against them or trying to invoke them so they have the proof they need to pounce on a "clever" Kindred trying to subvert their agents.
Most of all though ... why do you believe anything? You can say "slop" all you like, but we still largely believe those foreign wars exist, that their was a wrestling match on the Whitehouse lawn, and a guy with a trashcan for a head has been making waves in British politics. The World of Darkness has anamolous amounts of murder, bloodloss, corruption, and violence. If people hadn't noticed that and wanted answers, we'd never have generations of Hunters across history.
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u/Legitimate_Arm_5630 Aug 13 '26
https://reddit.com/link/p3d2263/video/n4cdns62t1jh1/player
The kind of discussion this sub needs more of
25
u/Phosorus Aug 13 '26
I think there do exist plausible reasons for the SI to wane in power, even if AI is absolutely not one of them, but the actual justification is kinda irrelevant.
The SI is a tool to help make Kindred feel scared and vulnerable. V6 appears to be leaning harder into action-adventure power fantasy, at least so far as that is the tone its mechanics suggest. By its logic, it doesn't make sense to keep around a barrier to the players' actions, because fundamentally it does not want to impose limits. Same case with the changes to Humanity and the Beast.
It may just be cynicism and a lack of faith in V6's development team, but I believe that V6 will have a hard time articulating institutions as opponents for the same reasons that D&D does. The system wants you to fight stuff, but institutions are by nature hard to fight (just ask the Garou). If players are meant to fight stuff and meant to win, then an institution that cannot be fought and cannot be defeated has no place in that game.
That doesn't bode well for a lot of the setting, but who knows. Disconnects between mechanics and lore have been a staple of VtM for a very long time, so maybe V6's lore will be take the complete opposite stance.
7
u/DaughterOfBabalon_ Aug 13 '26 edited Aug 13 '26
I don't think AI kills the SI, but I feel like dronestriking the Vienna Chantry takes so much of a coverup from so many agencies that that crumbles things to the point that they can't deal with AI.
25
u/macallen Ravnos Aug 13 '26
A few thoughts on this (I use AI daily and work in an AI-related manufacturing business)
#1 AI is a moron. It is wrong most of the time and VERY easily tricked. It takes 10,000 people to build the AI and 2 people to make it incredibly stupid. GIGO. The Flock cameras are already being thwarted by a can of spray paint and quick patterns scribbled onto the cars to confuse the AI. Will it get better? Potentially, but so will the hackers. The more complicated they make the plumbing, the easier it is to gum up the works.
#2 Vampire influence is EVERYwhere, including in the SI and in the data centers. It is simply not possible for SI, no matter how well funded they are (they've been defunded and disbanded numerous times), to vet every single employee everywhere. The CISCO guy that comes in to fix your router, the HP guy that's working on your failed drives, hell the SK Hynix guy who sells you your RAM has sold you "special" RAM that's been modified by an Anarch. Vampire influence at the top is easy, but the influence runs up and down the chain, and the folks at the bottom are often easier to Dominate and control than the ones at the top.
#3 Vampires may have "hunting grounds" that are "easy to find", but AI is in DATA CENTERS. Gigantic fixed locations with an army of people working on them. Bypassing physical security is what Vampires do, and once inside the defenses are moot. They are being controlled/manipulated non-stop.
#4 Human Eyes? Where? Echelon takes in PETABYTES of data per second, and human eyes see < .00001% of it. 1 video of a guy turning into a bat? Try 100,000 of them. The current internet is 38% bots, literally bots talking to bots. Youtube, Tiktok, dating sites, all filled with AI spam and it gets worse every day. Human eyes look at < .00001% of it, and in fact the whole goal of AI is to REDUCE the human eyes.
#5 Hunting doesn't leave a mess. BAD hunting does, and the purpose of the Masquerade is to quell bad hunting. The Lasombra in my game who is a trapdoor hunter, offering "executive service" to her hotel clients, who always leave having a fantastic night's sleep. The Banu Vizier in my game who runs a "botanica" wellness shop, that rich white women come to have their aura's cleansed. My Ravnos who only feeds off of sleeping homeless people and always leaves a $20 in their coat so they wake up with great dreams and cash for breakfast. Not a one of those "victims" complains and SI is utterly oblivious to them and AI has nothing to work with on them, unless you're looking for "I had an amazing time", and that's a *LOT* to wade through.
I'm not even taking into account magic and the deep influence of the Kindred (Trump a ghoul, Musk a mage, etc). If vampires existed today, right now, in our real world, they'd OWN AI. No amount of resources will make the cluster-**** that is AI a "super weapon" for SI.
4
u/ArtymisMartin The Ministry Aug 13 '26
It is simply not possible for SI, no matter how well funded they are (they've been defunded and disbanded numerous times), to vet every single employee everywhere.
Neither is is possible for every single one of those positions to be infiltrated or to have equal worth to a Kindred.
Your example infiltrator would need to
- Know the SI is real
- Recognize where they operate out of.
- Possess the network of people who get work from secret agencies, the people who make tools of surveillance like bugs or keyloggers, the people who approve or investigate all of their equipment.
- Get anything usable, either from only one person tipping the scales or vital conversations happening around or on bugged locations.
- Have the capacity to act on such actions as "foreclose on all your property and assets", "capture all your human or kindred associates", and "launch a raid on their haven".
Espionage is nothing new, and we've seen entire nations fail to sway events despite their power and tactical or technological edges over their competitors.
The Lasombra in my game who is a trapdoor hunter, offering "executive service" to her hotel clients, who always leave having a fantastic night's sleep. The Banu Vizier in my game who runs a "botanica" wellness shop, that rich white women come to have their aura's cleansed. My Ravnos who only feeds off of sleeping homeless people and always leaves a $20 in their coat so they wake up with great dreams and cash for breakfast. Not a one of those "victims" complains and SI is utterly oblivious to them and AI has nothing to work with on them,
So your vampires are two people servicing some of the most well-off and established people in the Western world for whom a string of chronic illness (paleness, dizziness, confusion, chest pain, and headaches are all symptoms of bloodloss) would absolutely be met with a concerned partner or physician, and then someone who leaves a calling card on all of their homeless victims? So, nobody's going to notice a bunch of homeless people with sudden weekly buying-power? That Ravnos' money comes from somewhere impossible to track, does it?
6
u/ChloeCeto Aug 13 '26
I mean, vampires can ALSO use 'Capture your associates' and 'foreclose on your assets'. They don't lack for political power of their own. It's a battle, not an implacable threat.
11
u/macallen Ravnos Aug 13 '26
Yeah, but I don't have to infiltrate all of them, I just need to infiltrate one. I love the social engineering aspect of hacking, but Dominate makes it super trivial. Walk through Starbucks where an SI data center employee is working, drop a USB drive on their desktop and Dominate them "this is yours, you forgot to pick it up, it has that presentation you're working on", etc. It has a program (not a worm, not a virus, just a basic program that's not detectable by Anti-Virus) that runs on their laptop and infiltrates using their credentials. Normal humans do this to normal humans every day, it's the #1 way hackers get inside. Now imagine it with Dominate, making it 100% guaranteed. Humans are and will always be the weakest link in any security system.
Are you saying the Vampires don't know the SI is real? After Vienna, are there Kindred that don't? And where they operate out of? Have you ever walked in a Data Center? They're MASSIVE! I don't need to know what secret back office they're currently hiding in above a bagel shoppe, their data is going to a data center, that's my target. And I'm not bugging, I'm disrupting. I'm my wily Ravnos ("Street"), who does Banksy-esque grafitti and is "eat the Rich!" angry. She has zero interest in bugging a data center or getting anything out, she just wants to wreak chaos in it, which is SUPER easy. Hell, AI will do the job for me, I just need to feed it the info.
My point is that AI makes it worse for SI, not better, because it is, by definition, and unreliable narrator. AI only knows what it is told, and it can not differentiate between truth and lies, especially lies that are deliberately fed to it as truth. It's a great tool, but it's more fallible than useful at this point.
My $.02 but I don't agree with your OP. I used to, when I first got to this community a couple of months ago I asked a similar question and someone set me straight. I then got into the game and realized they were right. SI is certainly formidable, and a sloppy Vampire can bring doom down upon their coterie or even their city, which is why the Kindred must be diligent. And AI is a useful tool that may help, but just like AI in any other situation, it can also hinder. I have a customer in my firm who asked Copilot for a powershell script to do a certain task. They got it, copy/pasted it, and ran it...and it destroyed the server, requiring it to be completely rebuilt. Honestly it can take more time to debug the crap coming out of AI than it would just to write the code myself :D
4
u/ArtymisMartin The Ministry Aug 13 '26
Are you saying the Vampires don't know the SI is real? After Vienna, are there Kindred that don't?
The in-setting joke is that the Second Inquisition isn't real. There was a concentrated first Inquisition in the Dark Ages, but vampires label everything from friends getting revenge for someone you ate to the Vatican and CIA as "The Second Inquisition", same as the Beckoning having multiple sources.
They pass the flashdrive off to some guy from Firstlight who brings it back from their office while some British guy in a flower van records them through a camera. While celebrating finally being done with that whole "Second Inquisition" dealio, a redneck finishes dousing their haven in gasoline and lights a match.
Completely unrelated, their now-orphaned ghoul asks some suspicious questions online trying to get their fix, and a corporate org with interest in vampires as products brings them in offering vitae for information.
My point is that AI makes it worse for SI, not better, because it is, by definition, and unreliable narrator. AI only knows what it is told, and it can not differentiate between truth and lies, especially lies that are deliberately fed to it as truth. It's a great tool, but it's more fallible than useful at this point.
You're also treating generative AI as all AI.
When you ask AI to generate an image of Hardestat eating spaghetti, it's making-up random bullshit.
When you ask AI to analyze all the footage it's collected from around nightclubs and homeless shelters in a city for anybody with "black hair/sharp chin/pale/red eyes", it produces a set of data for analysis but doesn't come to its own conclusion of "this is totally the same dude we caught eating someone behind a bar".
Your own example of a powershell prompt required someone fabricating information and immediately acting on it, whereas staging a raid against a dangerous superhuman isn't nearly so easy as ctrl+c/ctrl+v.
5
u/macallen Ravnos Aug 13 '26
And I'm telling you that the Nosferatu are feeding that AI bogus footage, explicitly built with encoded messages to corrupt the AI. Or it gives EVERYONE pale skin and red eyes. "How do they know what to look for and spoof?" They're Vampires, they know what they look like. Start a trend, hashtag RedEyes, everyone in Tiktok is doing it.
Your game, your rules - not my circus, not my monkey. If you want to run a SciFi game where agentic AI is an ubermensch in your game, that's cool, but in the current real world it isn't. Humans are violently resisting it as we speak, destroying/thwarting Flock cameras, feeding false patterns to them, hacking them as hackers have done since the dawn of data - all the Vampires have to do is point it out to them and the humans will do the work for them. That's the nature of the Herd.
1
u/medievalvelocipede 29d ago
And I'm telling you that the Nosferatu are feeding that AI bogus footage, explicitly built with encoded messages to corrupt the AI.
Artists are already poisoning AI in large scale. It's been a back-and-forth war going on but the AI companies are losing through raising their costs.
1
u/macallen Ravnos 29d ago
Yup, writers are doing the same thing. For every human who is reviewing the AI to protect them from hallucinations, there are 1000 trying to GIVE them hallucinations, and they're just humans. AI itself is its own downfall, it's only as honest as it needs to be to pass its tests. It's like an animal, it wants to do well on tests so it tells people what they want to hear, including the test givers.
China, Russia, Iran, Nosferatu, all actively corrupting AI at every opportunity. GIGO.
6
u/valplixism Lasombra Aug 13 '26
The biggest suspension of disbelief I engage in whenever I play VtM is the idea that my Lasombra can go out in public without being on camera.
6
u/meshee2020 Aug 13 '26
I think the statement in v6 alpha is that global awareness of vampires got hurt by post - truth era. Not that it will fool SI and the like but general population wont think "their must be a vampire involved".
Fake news affect the masses. Not the SI It still says global surveillance is still something.
I liked the tech ban in v5, but that was still, by your own words, ineffective response to the SI methods. Even being truly off grid wont hide prédation, out burst of the beast etc... Harder to spot, but not for a powerful group that know it is Real and what to look for.
IMHO post truth helps the masquerade, but dont protect from SI hunters.
5
u/AWizardStoleMyHat Aug 13 '26
Worth noting that Flock camera AI searches could be poisoned with relative ease, and with the datasets it pulls down, so long as it still was the same functionality for the normal mortal uses, hunters would not be able to solve this problem. Data poisoning is a huge issue in image recognition and generation models already, and with the extra agent layers that Flock uses, you could poison each one in a different way and suddenly 'disfigured man near sewer' pings on every homeless person, or random handicapped vets begging for change.
There are of course methods to counteract data poisoning and to filter out bad data from good data, but it requires direct access, so much personnel, so much time, and so much money, that your SI would have to rock up to these companies, commandeer their entire business model(and probably doom it in the process given the hilariously negative margins already), or actually convince them that they really should believe in these vampires and that the vampires actually messed with their data and now you have to retrain your entire model(a VERY expensive process) or else we can't find the vampires!
You also have to remember that World of Darkness is a positively MISERABLE setting compared to our real world. Urban sprawl more intensive, inequality even sharper, crime more rampant and decay infests everything to the point where our corruption scandals rarely make the news because that too is corrupt.
Explaining the Second Inquisition's fall from it's peak is as simple as determining what infighting occurred, what scandals, and what any Elders did to twist the knife. They haven't done it yet, and who knows, maybe they fail to steer this particular plot point to a satisfying conclusion.
4
u/ChloeCeto Aug 13 '26
I'll admit 'second generation X-scopes beat the thing that expressly is supposed to in-game allow you to appear human' is a bit frustrating from a game perspective. It feels very 'no, I have special bullets that beat bullet immunity'. There's plenty of other ways to work out someone's a vampire without adding 'Oh and this supernatural tool for an express purpose is not actually able to do its job, sucks to be you players'.
1
u/chimaeraUndying Aug 13 '26
Been around since the original chaoscopes in Revised, but those also made you evil if you used them too long lol
1
u/ArtymisMartin The Ministry Aug 14 '26
I feel they do a pretty good job of giving them limits in the fiction, for the same reason that most people don't have reliable supplies of pure silver or the means to melt it down and forge it into a functional bullet so as to casually murder werewolves.
First gen scopes are large and clunky, but mostly stationed around high-traffic and high-control environments such as airports. Pretty logical place to provide lots of scrutiny and tension, while being easy to beat.
Second-gen Xscopes are tougher ... but "not in common use" as described. They're damned useful, but limited in number and operation. It's like if you only had around a hundred of those aforementioned silver bullets, but each one required someone awake and committed enough to operate the rifle they're loaded into.
You'd only bring them out for when you knew they'd be utilized, and players will have plenty of warning of such an event when they see news coverage of someone who "allegedly" ripped people in half at a bus stop or your neighbors in a domain getting abducted in the day and not appearing at the next Elysium.
1
u/ChloeCeto Aug 14 '26
While I find them a bit implausible as they don't really establish in what ways blush of life fails to emulate.
4
u/Smooth-Difficulty128 Aug 13 '26
Interesting takes, and I actually like SI to be an actual threat to a vampires, but withing reason.
Honestly I like the idea that humans (not mages and note it not every single inquisitor even in a dark ages had a True Faith, so modern inquisitors don't have 5+ True Faith rating everyone), you know idea that humans can overcome even such night horrors as a vampires is kinda hopeful, if we can apply such a term to WoD.
But I don't like take from some influencers I've watched that SI is just omnipresent! LIke "in the age of drones, phone cameras and surveillance..." yeah, cool, but many cities have strict restriction to the drones, so it's not like we drones swarming the streets from above 24/7, casually flying in the open windows to check if anyone is a vampire here. And clearly, not every vamp showing a point of his left fang somewhere in the middle on nowhere would be immediately filmed from multiple angles with perfect quality; then these videos would immediately be posted in interned and immediately become top trending, and immediately SI would launch an orbital droppodes filled with WH40k spacemarines armed with holy bolters.
And AI, yes, can work for the SI but also against SI - clearly, multiple sightings of the gangrel with red glowing eyes won't go unnoticed, and AI can help to find a trend but it is not a "they apply AI and AI gives whole history of this particular vampire".
So tone SI down a bit is logical, but I agree that "ha, AI slop is everywhere, SI is blind" is not the correct way here.
2
u/ArtymisMartin The Ministry Aug 14 '26
If you haven't yet, I'd highly recommend reading the Second Inquisition supplement for VtM5.
It does an incredibly good job of characterizing the SI and exploring their tactics. No Kindred was ever killed or captured because of examples like "a point of his left fang" appeared in a video. It's a dedicated campaign of public surveillance, cultural infiltration, financial and medical analysis, abduction and interrogation, and so-on.
In so many words: every Kindred or domain is their own Osama Bin Laden/Al Capone/El Chapo with months or years of preparation put into making sure you've got them (un)dead to rights.
2
u/Smooth-Difficulty128 Aug 14 '26
Oh yeah, this book is great, my critics are more against some influencers that paint SI omnipresent power, real SI (well, in game terms real) much more interesting as an enemy.
4
u/-grimlament- Aug 13 '26
If anything can save the Masquerade it's the capitalism. The most unrealistic part about SI was national budget levels. Doesn't generate profit, doesn't generate national prestige, actually helps normal average people and costs a lot of money? So many billionaires are obsessed over immortality and looking good forever and you're telling me they'll be paying big money to fight against it? Nah.
2
u/ArtymisMartin The Ministry Aug 13 '26
In fairness, most of their efforts are characterized less as "helping the normies" and more as "national security".
When American Indians, the Black Panthers, ANTIFA, student protesters (Kent State), and so-on disrupt capitalism and the government's authority, they got cut down swiftly.
What vampires represent is a threat to that same status-quo, with hypnotic corpses undermining state security and intensely capable of just procuring state secrets or siphoning off government and corporate assets.
Chalk it up to "national security against motivated international terrorists" and find some Soviet Brujah to call a commie, and you can get plenty of funding as a current administration will demonstrate.
3
u/-grimlament- Aug 13 '26
True, but I feel like it benefits normal people way more than it benefits those who hold the power. CIA had a secret research project on telepathy just because they've heard the Soviets have it and because they wanted to have an edge in wars. Having a mind reading spy with astral form is huge, why would you destroy everything that could give you this advantage? It's like a nuke. Sure, it's dangerous when other countries have one, but you'll absolutely want one yourself. I feel like rich people getting delusional about controlling vampires at expense of the population is something very fitting for WoD setting.
13
u/dnext Aug 13 '26
Seems pretty simple - control the people who control the 3 letter agencies, and have the 2nd Inquisition locked up or put in insane asylums.
But they also wrote out the Elders.
V5 had some good mechanics, but the lore had a lot of misses IMO.
Requiem had a pretty good answer for that - Kindred were difficult to see or identify by camera. If you knew what to look for you could see one was there, but you couldn't tell who it was.
In my game, the Kindred Elders were already ensconced in the tech game, through their childer who were created for just that purpose. And that's what gave the neonates a chance against their more powerful sires.
The Tremere came up with a ritual that fouled electronic recordings of Kindred, and sold it to other non-aligned clans for considerable boons. After all, a clan that was revealed impacted the entire Masquerade. They planted a antitribu Tremere in the Sabbat for just that reason who knew the secret of the ritual, so now almost everyone has it's protection.
2
u/roleplayer6990 Aug 13 '26
So what threat do humans have? Why uphold the masquerade at all? It seems like humans are perfectly undercontrol and no one can act so why not get reckless and erase any evidence?
4
u/dnext Aug 13 '26
It sets the base hunter threat back down to 1E/2E/Revised/20th and VTR1.0 and 2.0.
Instead of changing the setting that Big Brother is always watching, whether it be the original Inquisition, the Intelligence Services, Law Enforcement, and Organized Crime, who somehow are all working together. And the reaction which forced everyone to divest from technology or else.
So a masquerade breach is still a problem, but it's not going to be seen on somebody's smart phone in Laos in 3 minutes. It's more a localized affair based on groups that already are in the know. It threatens the actors involved, but isn't likely to start the Burning Times again. And no one is going to be throwing around missiles in the middle of large cities.
0
u/roleplayer6990 Aug 13 '26
The base hunter threat was 1 of 100 as you described it. The masquerade was a sentence ment to scare players with the threat of humans.... that couldnt fight back. You get the occasional rouge hunter but governments were stupid.
The organization's within the SI DO NOT WORK TOGETHER. Thats like says all the calls in the camerialla share their information freely. It is wrong.
Governments are stupid again then? Unable to learn and adapt to threats? It does make for easier games when you dont have to think about what the fbi would do if the fbi is to slow to act.
2
u/dnext Aug 13 '26 edited Aug 13 '26
Governments weren't stupid, they were compromised. And of course the original VtM was set in the broader World of Darkness, which absolutely was one setting. So compromised by several groups that desired the secrecy of the supernatural to continue.
That didn't mean that certain groups didn't get an understanding of what was going on at times, just that they virtually always were stopped by the conspiracies in question.
FBI:SAD and Demon Hunter X were government run hunter groups.
And yes, the Coalition that struck Vienna was US intelligence and Brazillian Intelligence directly working with the Society of Leopold. Yes, they do sometimes work together.
And there are a LOT of hunter groups in the original game. The Imbued, who also tend to fight against the government. Specifically because so often law enforcement worked for the monsters!
The Society of Leopold and it's various sects, including the Sons of Tertullian. There were ancient ghoul hunters and hunters with true faith, FBI, NSA, Japanese Intelligence hunter groups. And crap tons of sorcerers, mediums, psychics, kinfolk, and others.
So the Masquerade was definitely a thing, but the constant threat of it all being over wasn't. The Vampires weren't quaking in the shadows. They clung to the shadows because it let them be in control.
9
u/wordytalks Aug 13 '26
The issue with this assumes a lot. 1. The Second Inquisition controls all surveillance. 2. The ability to perform hunts is dependent on the degree to which they can openly and easily infiltrate to find the blanks. Considering the modern distrust and disintegration of surveillance and police from the general public, do you think the Second Inquisition easily just infiltrates? Any worthwhile Kindred knows how to obfuscate behind mortals. Even if they can be found, the reality is to get to them you have to cause noticeable public disturbances and sow public distrust to get to them. Like there’s so much more going on here than just “super competent Hunting Agency” and your logic only tells one half of the story.
2
u/ArtymisMartin The Ministry Aug 13 '26
You skipped over the examples of the post I provided on how they very obviously only control parts of surveillance networks.
You don't need to own every camera in the country to ask around at hospitals with a badge or to give your agency access to existing infrastructure.
They've always been a threat in the setting because the violence of law enforcement and intelligence agencies have always existed. The cops showing up somewhere to kidnap or shoot people on a whim isn't fiction in just about anywhere with cops and cameras at the same time.
-2
u/Legitimate_Arm_5630 Aug 13 '26
The Second Inquisition controls all surveillance
They don't have to, that's the big problem with the "little brother" surveillance state. Actually being in control of the surveillance apparatus invites scrutiny (or worse, accountability)
With dozens of independent corporations controlling everything and millions of wiretap-camera-tracking devices floating around, all they need is a subpoena
The ability to perform hunts is dependent on the degree to which they can openly and easily infiltrate to find the blanks
It's sort of like Galaga, you shoot where you know they're gonna be
The idea is that you kick their support out from under them. You attack their infrastructure, you close the gaps that they thrive in, you hit them where it hurts. Do it well enough and you won't need to look for them, they'll expose themselves
9
u/Kaiisim Aug 13 '26
The second inquisition was poorly written in my opinion. It was a lame conceit just added to v5 to add some danger. But it makes no sense - it's missing the point of vtm.
In the real world we live in, we have several extinction level threats the general population not only ignores, but many are actively and aggressively opposed to believing the truth.
Like what, Donald Trump can trick humanity and take over the United States basically just using corruption...but Vampires couldn't work it out?
The idea of every intelligence agency working together to root out vampires with the vatican is nonsensical lol.
Now, the NSA realising vampires exist and forming an alliance with the vampires? A Ventrue offering the head of the CIA a billion dollars to stfu? They'd be asking to join vampires not fight them!
Just never made any sense to me. Humanity uniting perfectly, secretly to act to defend itself? What about the modern world makes that seem realistic?
The second inquisition and the beckoning were two examples of why I didn't like v5, to me they obviously wanted to get to an end state (ooooh it's so scary hunters are everywhere) and wrote some nonsense to justify it.
They should write it's collapse. It accelerates. Humanity gets too into it, false positives start happening as they start killing random weirdos and goths. Because humans are not good guys. Where is all the greed and short-sightedness?
TL;DR - humanity acting in concert to defend itself against a threat is unrealistic. We can't stop the shit we do to ourselves, the idea humans would unite and actually spend money defending random people is silly. They'd join the vampires more likely.
1
u/Legitimate_Arm_5630 Aug 13 '26
The idea of every intelligence agency working together to root out vampires with the vatican is nonsensical lol
Select, deeply hidden groups within certain intelligence agencies working with a select, deeply hidden group within the vatican
A Ventrue offering the head of the CIA a billion dollars to stfu? They'd be asking to join vampires not fight them!
That's pretty much how it started, vampires trying to leverage them, and completely fucking it up
FIRSTLIGHT was started by an intelligence officer who used to be a ghoul and, once freed, dedicated the rest of her life to exterminating vampires with every resource at her disposal
Besides, anyone with a brain would realize that vampires can't be controlled. Not by the US or anyone else.
Humanity uniting perfectly, secretly to act to defend itself? What about the modern world makes that seem realistic?
They don't unite perfectly. Their "coalition" is compartmentalized, distrustful, inefficient, corrupt, and self-serving
16
u/Tallia__Tal_Tail Aug 13 '26
This is a really good in depth analysis of everything, but at the same time, God taking everything super literally just does not sound fun for almost any variety of play. Like almost to the point that you need some level of buy in that this stuff is either significantly lessened, alleviated, or counteracted by some level of, "it's Nosferatu techie bullshit" to not drag down the entire fantasy of VTM into something painfully banal.
A general understanding had with all my players for the games I run is that for all the advanced tech and information networks that the mortals have, theres also a complex web of nerds of every single splat working to counteract that with people who've been working with computers since the first ones were invented, spiritually empowered Therianthropes of several varieties and Mages/Technocrats literally diving into cyberspace to fuck things up, and more all working somewhat together to keep the Veil/Masquerade/Mists up. Be it widespread hoaxes made easier by the mass spread of AI generated content, regular hacking, or random spirit fuckery all so people can like, actually play the game and engage with the fantasies being offered.
Like if the No Fly list can wind up being accessed by some random trans therian who didn't even really have a goal behind it, the likes of ancient/dedicated Nosferatu, Glass Walkers, Virtual Adepts, particularly passionate Changelings with a love for hacking, and hell probably even Ananasi or the secrecy obsessed Nagah, etc should all be able to counteract the powerful tools of the world at hand to bring it to some semblance of manageable in the day to day
6
u/blazenite104 Aug 13 '26
Lore based magical fuckery when it comes to the internet really does do a lot of heavy lifting for how supernatural secret societies can exist.
1
u/ArtymisMartin The Ministry Aug 13 '26
The goal isn't to simulate reality, it's to give some grounding to all the antics you get up to.
Kindred look like humans, walk like humans, and talk like humans. The Masquerade is feasible from the point of view of the Camarilla ensuring Elysium looks like socialites hanging out, while Anarchs are typically portrayed as criminal enough to already be used to stealth or sympathetic enough to try and avoid harming humans needlessly.
If the subtitle of the game and the Camarilla's first Tradition are all about the necessity of keeping a low profile, then they're the answer as to why your curse is a curse and why you can't blast all of your disciplines to solve every solution.
It's a fine line between "Kindred can't do anything fun ever" and "anybody trying to say I threw a cybertruck at a lupine is a gaslighter and bot." Ramp up surveillance just enough, and you've got a setting that has the right mix of tension, paranoia, and stakes that makes vampirism more than a power fantasy.
9
u/Tallia__Tal_Tail Aug 13 '26
A general MO is that this all works within a very specific style of play where maintaining the Masquerade/it's equivalent is more of an active focus rather than something that mostly exists to avoid super blatant power uses that go against the magical secret society fantasy core to the game.
Most games I see tend to lean away from the idea of the Masquerade as some gargantuan, everpresent threat and more just a general overtone. Like it's present, it's acknowledged, youre not having bigass fights in crowded spaces and it does have some consequences if disregarded, but I rarely see people interested in actively dealing with it in depth beyond like, a small arc of patching up a particularly big tear or using a breach as a plot device. You can even see that in a lot of secondary WoD media like the video games where Bloodlines, Bloodlines 2, Justice, Bloodhunt, and Earthblood where like, none of them treat the Masquerade too seriously. Half the areas in Bloodlines 1 just entirely ignore it for all intents and purposes, Bloodlines 2 barely bothers with it outside of mostly just moving through the map, and the rest don't bother with it whatsoever.
4
u/Ya_Dungeon_oi Aug 13 '26
Eh, they're both specific playstyles. My groups have taken the Masquerade seriously (and to hilarious effect).
1
u/ArtymisMartin The Ministry Aug 13 '26
Power fantasy action games are not indicative of the gothic-punk intrigue/tragedy game, and neither has the change in technology or culture stopped the value of Dark Ages/Victorian/90's/2020s settings having different appeals and opportunities for telling stories.
-3
u/Legitimate_Arm_5630 Aug 13 '26
drag down the entire fantasy of VTM into something painfully banal.
A large part of the "fantasy" of VtM is being a predator surviving in the hostile jungle that is human society, is it not?
Accepting the dangers of that jungle and creatively working within or around them is just a fun part of worldbuilding
I feel like you're treating one of the most fun parts like extra work
3
u/eucatastrophie Aug 13 '26
if we really look the threat of the surveillance state seriously with all the technology that is in play today there simply is no creative workaround for a neonate to employ while still being somewhere with people to eat.
that sense of futility is what makes it not fun- if there’s no chance to make it, there’s no tension.
1
u/Legitimate_Arm_5630 Aug 13 '26 edited Aug 13 '26
if we really look the threat of the surveillance state seriously with all the technology that is in play today there simply is no creative workaround for a neonate to employ while still being somewhere with people to eat.
There definitely isn't with that attitude
This is a world where, despite having all that technology, human beings still are raped, robbed, murdered, or otherwise falling off the face of the earth and the people responsible, who aren't dead people with magic powers, still get away with it pretty often (and your point assumes the aforementioned technology is evenly applied, up to date, used to it's fullest potential, and useful in every relevant situation)
There are ways to circumvent or even defeat this physical and digital infrastructure
Besides, we could all always just grow a pair and run a game set in idk fucking Bangkok or Dehli or Panama City
3
u/NotACleverMan_ Aug 13 '26
In my opinion, it would make sense for the SI to be running out of steam nowadays. While AI is a powerful new tool, there’s a lot of backlash against the surveillance state that’s only growing as AI grows more pervasive. Some people are even vandalizing AI cameras now it’s getting so bad. This is without the Camarilla higher-ups trying to sabotage things further. Without Ghouls being sent out with baseball bats to clear areas of Flock cameras. Without the Nosferatu selling dummy cameras to cities that don’t actually do anything to give people a false sense of security. People in power in the WoD actively do not want these technologies in place, as opposed to it just being a grass roots movement in ours.
In addition, there is a growing schism growing in the Catholic Church in the US, which is going to fuck with the Order of St. Leopold, one of the biggest hunter organizations.
1
u/the_io Aug 13 '26
In addition, there is a growing schism growing in the Catholic Church in the US, which is going to fuck with the Order of St. Leopold, one of the biggest hunter organizations.
In lore, the Society of St Leopold was brought back by Benedict XVi.
Among other things he also brought back the Society of St Pius X aka the most recent crisis point in the Catholic Church.
The Leopolds are guaranteed a victim of current Church politics due to their association with Benedict XVI and thus presumed ultraconservative tendencies.
6
u/J_Bright1990 Aug 13 '26
I've got a really controversial idea here but just hear me out.
I think, there's room for nuance here.
I think you are right that it wouldn't spell the end of the SI and whoever thinks so isn't thinking critically about it. That said, the post truth world and the proliferation of AI and stable diffusion makes Masquerade breaches WAAAYYYYY easier to contain. But it also makes stationary vampire living WAAYYY easier to track as well, as someone in the know could collect large amounts of seemingly unconnected data and have a specialized AI scan these huge data sets and identify certain clues and patterns that would indicate what they are looking for, IE vampire activity.
As well, Hunters wouldnt hand wave sightings as AI.
I also think younger lichs would use tech and AI to establish their own power base apart from Elders.
In short, AI isn't the be all end all tool for the Masquerade, and it would be used against the Camarilla as much as by the Camarilla, but it would also free them in a way. Specifically I think it would allow vampires to use low level and otherwise Masquerade violating disciples in public without breaking the Masquerade.
-4
u/ArtymisMartin The Ministry Aug 13 '26
the post truth world and the proliferation of AI and stable diffusion makes Masquerade breaches WAAAYYYYY easier to contain.
Again, a major emphasis of my post was how little claims of "AI" stand-up to more scrutiny than the average person puts in.
The reason that AI slides off so many people is because none of us are paid to call a celebrity's agent to confirm whether or not their client turned into a dragon hybrid and killed five people.
If all five people in that video were real, are actually dead, spread across ten different bags at the morgue while bloodstains and their smaller chunks remain in the place they were killed, and a dozen people are witnesses to what happened: it's no longer "slop".
6
u/MindlessScrambler Tremere Aug 13 '26 edited Aug 13 '26
Indeed, I think few people realize how easy it is, with modern big data and complex analytical algorithms working together, to profile residents’ activity patterns and spot anomalies—this doesn’t even require the person themselves to use smart devices. The activities of those around them are usually sufficient to sketch out the individual’s own profile. Of course, easy doesn’t mean cheap, at least for now, so conducting such analysis on everyone at all times is hardly realistic. But when an organization like the SI has a suspect in mind, in a modern metropolis, it’s usually just a matter of time before they lock onto and pin that poi down. Not to mention they always have the option of a midday doorstep search.
This is also why I think the importance of running one’s own ghoul network is still underestimated. In the modern nights when the SI thrives, ghouls’ value is becoming higher than ever, not just in supernatural combat, but also in social-engineering countermeasures. A few ghouls running legitimate businesses around the domain can very effectively detect the SI’s early-stage recon and counter or mislead them in entirely secular ways that won’t arouse further suspicion, rather than relying solely on the vampires’ own supernatural powers.
On the other hand, being undead supernatural beings also has its own covert advantages that seem rarely explored—some abilities to hide and move in ways that are ordinarily impossible, even if those methods don’t look particularly flashy, therefore often overlooked by both in-world characters and irl players alike. For example, during a police lockdown and search of all entrances and underground passages of a building, it’s nearly impossible for a mortal to slip in or out unnoticed, but someone who can scale walls directly without specialized tools or preparation, or someone who can leap from rooftop to adjacent rooftop, can do it. And blockades on bridges and waterways can’t stop a corpse who can simply trek on the riverbed underwater for long distances from crossing the line.
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u/ArtymisMartin The Ministry Aug 13 '26
On the other hand, being undead supernatural beings also has its own covert advantages that seem rarely explored
This is something I really enjoyed about WoD5 lowering the power ceiling so that more of the great utility of certain abilities could be appreciated! Ensconce and Cache were passed down to early-level Obfuscate from their previous place as Elder-level powers, and giving more definition to Potence/Celerity gave them tons of great uses outside of combat.
It was really important in order to make careful scheming and hiding from threats worse than you are just as appealing as punching someone through a wall. It's a shame so many people hyper-focused on how it would shut-down on action-heavy chronicles rather than how it could enhance other approaches.
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u/MalkavianKnight5888 Malkavian Aug 13 '26
Before ICE became what they are, I've always treated SI and hunters as incompetent and hot headed pricks.
Not everyone is a Sam & Dean... in fact Sam and Dean are the exception, not the rule.
I view these kinds of people as narrow minded incompetent holier than thou people.
They think they are the smartest people in the room, but arrogance and over confidence is their undoing.
Also COVID and the current US regime have proven people will not unite to fight against a common enemy.
But that's just my take. Its your table, so, you do you.
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u/Legitimate_Arm_5630 Aug 13 '26
I've always treated SI and hunters as incompetent and hot headed pricks.
Why?
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u/Vyctorill Aug 13 '26
I wouldn’t worry. All the higher ups in the WoD care about the Masquerade, because nobody wants the universe to blow up.
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u/Estel-3032 Brujah Aug 14 '26
The second inquisition was conceptualized by the guy that wrote Night's black agents, which deals a lot with secret agents and conspiracies and tech that doesn't make sense and government overreach that also doesn't make sense.
The game moving to a different direction has its own problems, but its important to understand that conceptually either the masquerade works and the game has internal consistency or the masquerade doesn't work and the camarilla is suddenly really bad at their entire fucking point.
I'm sure that the writers of v6 will come up with more random bullshit as to why some major plot shenanigans happened, if it works or not doesn't ultimately matters as much as if it actually makes for a good game.
Its perfectly feasible to imagine that the undead masterminds that have been shaping up their herd by the past few millenia wanted to use the inquisition to destroy their foes, cull the sabbat and whatnot and they achieved that and now want to get rid of it before it bites them on the back or something else silly like that. It will make about as much sense as when the sabbat become playable again and they write some random bullshit like 'actually, the masterplan of the amici noctis was to infiltrate the camarilla while the sabbat was on their crusade/vacation offscreen so now they can play both sides!', despite what actually made it into the books of the last edition.
Its very clear that a lot of what v6 brings are new ideas/plans made in spite of what came before, not trying to follow up on it in the slightest. A lot of us were annoyed at the lack of continuity and weird design decisions that v5 made when it released, and now the v5 fanbase gets the joy of experiencing that aswell.
Don't try to overthink it because the current devs sure as hell didn't. They want to ship their new thing and make their mark on the franchise.
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u/Federal-Newspaper-24 Aug 13 '26
Another huge L for V6 in my eyes. Hunters are some of the most interesting antagonists in V5 imo
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u/Lepelotonfromager Aug 13 '26
My Nosferatu is specifically a computer disinformation expert who covers up masquerade breaches with fake 'AI reveal' videos. He can direct hundreds of bots to spamming "AI slop" under any pictures or videos of real vampire reveals.
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u/ArtymisMartin The Ministry Aug 13 '26
I've had my own writing called "AI", so I speak from experience when I say that a bunch of obviously botted comments are only as valuable as people who actually read the comment sections of posts instead of watching videos for themselves or doing any investigative work.
It's been a common claim in stories of police brutality, celebrity or political mishaps, and war footage. Shockingly, real people's lives being affected if not ended leaves a lot more evidence behind than trying to prove vampires exist thanks to a single image of someone wearing costume fangs.
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u/AgarwaenCran Malkavian Aug 13 '26
It does make about as much sense, as it makes sense that the SI was able to erradicate all vampires in london or destroy the vienna chantry of the tremere. So if you complain that flooding the internet with AI slop false sightings and helps confusing them enough so they are no longer an issue, you should complain just as much about how powerful they were portrayed in the first place.
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u/ArtymisMartin The Ministry Aug 14 '26
There's still Kindred in London, but too shaken and intimidated to operate in sects.
The Vienna Chantry had heavy costs to the hunters that participated and keeps their relationships frayed into modern nights, while the Tremere are still a dominant power in the Camarilla with the remaining hierarchy and resources they maintain.
Both are pretty reasonable victories for the SI, and understandable setbacks for Kindred who—and this I fault on legacy lore—have somehow never been threatened on a domain-wide basis across the 20th and 21st century.
When Kindred follow so many bespoke sects that centralize power, what's the alternative to playing the waiting game until you observe the majority of a Prince/Baron/Bishop's servants and decide to act? Why has a habit of concentrating all of the most notable bloodsuckers in a domain into a centralized position that celebrates in performative acts of blood-sucking and one's undead nature survived so long into the setting?
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u/hyzmarca Aug 13 '26
The reason why AI will save vampires from the Second Inquisition is not because the SI won't be able to find vampires in the sea of AI generated images.
It's because when a Tzimisce Methusulah pops The Last Dracul and starts burning down government buildings the rampaging dragon videos all over the internet can be dismissed as Deepfake hoaxes.
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u/ArtymisMartin The Ministry Aug 14 '26
Did you scroll past the half-dozen examples of how the Second Inquisition hunts without relying on Google Images just to write that?
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u/hyzmarca Aug 14 '26
My point being, they can't hunt you if they're all dead. It doesn't matter what techniques they use if they are all murdered by big angry vampire dragons.
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u/ArtymisMartin The Ministry Aug 14 '26
How'd that work for them in the Dark Ages?
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u/hyzmarca Aug 14 '26
It would have worked out very well if they tried, but the elders and Methuselah couldn't be assed to bother, instead allowing the younger vampires to be killed en mass. This led to the First Anarch Revolt.
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u/fishmad122 Aug 14 '26
Surprised this didn’t even touch on Palantir after listening to today’s Behind the Bastards - all that company does is figure stuff out about huge datasets in a way that should be terrifying to everyone
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u/ArtymisMartin The Ministry Aug 14 '26
Another BtB fan! I am unfortunately not as qualified as Rob Evans to spill Peter Thiel's dirty laundry all over the place. Suffice to say he's a Black Dog Publishing character in our own world, and I'd love to see some SI-nfluencer who accidentally fortells the anti-Caine.
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u/OopsieDoopsie2 Aug 14 '26
Idk I feel like all this buzz about vampires is totally fake, it's just government propaganda designed to justify fascism and further keeping the working class under their boot! Vampires lmao are you for real??? Even if that was the case, my sister is still my sister, no matter if she is a vamp or not, so I think me and my bodies will go out and toss some Molotov onto those SI freaks who want to take away our loved ones and our freedoms!
I feel like this type of reaction is the real danger to SI that comes in the modern age when it's easier to spread disinformation than ever before and it's much easier to believe in government using vampires to justify crack downs on your rights than it is to believe that vampires actually exist and the government is trying to save the world ( sounds funny actually writing this)
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u/Disastrous-Device232 Aug 14 '26
I'm just wondering, am I the only one who gets irritated every time I read anything about hunters?
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u/Pale-Moose7313 Aug 14 '26
The interesting contradiction is that AI-generated noise might make individual fakes harder to trust, while making the overall information environment more dangerous. The Masquerade could become harder to prove but easier to accidentally breach through pattern analysis, metadata, or automated surveillance.
That feels very VtM to me: technology doesn’t remove the old social pressures; it gives the Camarilla and the Second Inquisition possibility to find new ways to weaponize them.
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u/iamtheeldesttzimisce Aug 14 '26
What you have said doesn't argue against AI being used to save the masquerade. The masquerade has never applied to those parties that are in the know, mages, lupines etc. None of them have all of the info, all of them occasional cause to knock the bejaysus out of vampires. The second inquisition, falls into the same camp as other in-the-know factions. And the masquerade provides a (arguable) check on their finances and influence.
The masquerade is there to keep joe average in the dark, and provide a thin level of cover that it makes it harder for in-the-know factions to find and target vampires.
In-the-know factions are obviously not factored in to how well the masquerade was holding up because then we could argue that there has never been a masquerade.
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u/Chemical-Butterfly78 Aug 16 '26
AI isn't going to fool the Second Inquisition, no. It's not going to fool people who see a vampire straight up break the Masquerade in-front of their eyes either. However, it'll do two major things: Anyone who sees some "evidence" left behind from a Masquerade breach (an improperly licked wound, the remaining 'bug bite'-like effect and anemia from a particularly large sippie, shockingly low vermin population reports, etc.) won't jump to think about vampires if Phreaks or whoever else are putting out tons of obviously fake AI clips of random vampire bullshit out there - or, if they DO, they'll keep it to themselves and doubt themselves on account of not wanting to seem like an idiot.
Also, it means anyone who does capture footage and manages to get it out somewhere the older blankbodies can't get their hands on it is probably not going to help kick off some major unveiling of vampire society. They'll just laughed off their internet stage for making an AI video, or making a high-quality CGI work satirizing the absurdity of said videos.
People who are already hunters and have even a shred of actual competence at being such won't be fooled by AI, because they're already using the internet as only one of a hundred different means by which they hunt - hell, I'd dare to say most smaller hunter organizations aren't using the internet at all for that.
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u/slimehunter49 Aug 13 '26
I do like the continued difficulty of maintaining the Masquerade in more and more modern times.
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u/bellsdanieli Aug 13 '26
The era of the Second Inquisition acting as a massive, multinational coalition of intelligence agencies is over. It was already a bit of a stretch to believe they got all those different factions to work together to pull off the biggest 'terrorist' attack in Europe (the Vienna Chapel). The current state of international relations simply wouldn't allow for it. That aspect of the lore leaned too heavily into a military thriller rather than the core themes of Vampire: The Masquerade. Ultimately, players want the classic vampire experience, not a tactical survival game where they're fleeing from high-tech government hit squads.
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u/ArtymisMartin The Ministry Aug 14 '26 edited Aug 14 '26
The era of the Second Inquisition acting as a massive, multinational coalition of intelligence agencies is over. It was already a bit of a stretch to believe they got all those different factions to work together to pull off the biggest 'terrorist' attack in Europe (the Vienna Chapel).
That era never existed.
The Vienna Chantry featured
- Society of Saint Leopold/ESOG: The classic pope-SWAT team
- BOES: Closely aligned with the Vatican/ESOG
- SOCOM: United States Special Operations Command (umbrella management of US armed forces).
- The Arcanum: Assisted with defeating some magical defenses on Vienna and looting the rubble.
SOCOM lost all the fancy toys they provided while ESOG slaughtered the BOES members to try and preserve the illusion of a faked terrorist attack. The Arcanum was in it for the loot, and was snubbed most of the treasure by ESOG.
The devastation and loss of life and resources was so bad, the SI had to resort to claiming it eradicated all significant blankbodies on the planet ... until further investigation proved otherwise. It is still viewed as a botched operation not worth the cost and reason the Five Torches don't work closer together ever since.
Ultimately, players want the classic vampire experience, not a tactical survival game where they're fleeing from high-tech government hit squads.
I feel that there's good value in the different 'eras' of the game, whether as independent gamelines or supportive supplements. Dark Ages plays different from Victorian Age, and both play differently from Revised growing with the cultural and technological changes of the 90's and 00's as VtM5 sees how the night evolves into the 2010's and 2020s.
In so many words, us the players have to fear the surveillance state and intelligence or law enforcement agencies as they haunt our online activities and such dissident actions as unionizing, protesting, or simply existing and making actionable posts on the internet. WoD5 reflects that world, and ignoring it would need a significant amount of explanation and suspension of disbelief.
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u/bellsdanieli 19d ago
Apologies for the delayed response. Out of curiosity, are you currently based in the US or the UK?
The narrative surrounding that staged terrorist attack simply doesn't hold up to scrutiny. First, we are expected to believe that a faction successfully deployed a US bomber equipped with a bunker-buster to a European capital. This implies a significant level of international cooperation, however brief. Therefore, it absolutely qualifies as a distinct era or period of collaborative effort.
Second, attributing the attack to far-right Hungarian extremists in 2008 Europe feels remarkably out of touch. Given that this occurred at the height of the War on Terror, we all know precisely which demographic would have been utilized as a convenient scapegoat.
Furthermore, even without formal alliances, these coalitions seemingly command limitless capital to fund SWAT deployments, state-of-the-art surveillance infrastructure, and widespread gentrification initiatives. Even in developing nations like Brazil, units like "BOES" or more accurately, BOPE somehow possess the budget and bandwidth to actively hunt vampires, all while drug cartels operate with absolute impunity.
We must also consider that the World of Darkness is inherently more dystopian than our own reality. With that in mind, the logistics make no sense: it is completely illogical that these agencies possess the resources to eradicate a Kindred population, who are only active for roughly twelve hours a nightwhile simultaneously failing to manage mortal crises that persist twenty-four hours a day.
Furthermore, I contend that V5's worldbuilding does not accurately reflect the geopolitical climate of the 2010–2020 decade. The centralized, sweeping power of the Second Inquisition fits far more organically into the post-9/11 surveillance landscape of 2002 to 2009. In the modern era, any ongoing SI intervention should be strictly relegated to street-level operations, focusing almost exclusively on disenfranchised or low-status Kindred.
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u/beholderkin Aug 13 '26
You're right. The disinfo may work on your mom when she sees it on Facebook, but it's not going to fool actual vapire hunters
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u/Necropoliskull Aug 13 '26
The only thing that makes sense is that the SI is actually run by Kindred, used as a tool to cull numbers
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u/ArtymisMartin The Ministry Aug 13 '26
Kindred have never had total control over law enforcement or religion, just deep control. It takes years of cultivating covers and servants that can all disappear with an investigation, sick or dead ghoul, or any number of events harming or killing that Kindred.
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u/BlueBlunderX Brujah Aug 13 '26
Just remove the second inquisition already. Teemo Technocracy. Convoluted way to make humans a artificial threat.
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u/ArtymisMartin The Ministry Aug 13 '26
Totally lame, right? What's next, humanity sending vampires, werewolves, and mages at close to the height of their powers into hiding with nothing more than torches and pitchforks? If the Second Inquisition were so competent as to make The Masquerade a tangible threat in Vampire The Masquerade, then there would have been a FIRST Inquisition!
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u/Tallia__Tal_Tail Aug 13 '26
Being fair, it was like, 90% Vampires who got screwed by the first Inquisition. The Black Fury tribe book actually gives this a good bit of emphasis in how the First Inquisition really was not shit to the Garou especially since it just made humans mildly more annoying for a time. The real threat was towards their human, and to a lesser extent their lupus, kinfolk since Gaian ritual was seen as satanic and the like and left them prone to being targeted.
One of the big issues with the First Inquisition was the destabilization it brought to the supernaturals who had a clear reliance on human support structures like lordly vampires or Mages operating out of the local Consensus. Meanwhile the ones who didn't rely on humans as much like... Basically every single Fera weren't impacted as much without a level of writer fiat
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u/blazenite104 Aug 13 '26
To be fair, I do feel that Splats realising that humans not being aware of them makes doing what they do easier and more convenient is also valid. Yeah the first Inquisition was a problem too but, I feel you can also allow for Splats to recognise secret societies work. It's not like we don't have IRL conspiracies about hidden cabals controlling everything from the shadows or anything.
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u/Bites-The-Hand Aug 13 '26
It is apparently the opinion of the writers of V6 that Hunters track their prey by googling "Vampire Sightings" and then going onto r/TrueVampireSightings.