Crimson Dusk

The Crimson Dusk project is a major rewrite of the 2nd edition World of Darkness game, Vampire the Requiem. It will incorporate many suggested rules from Danse Macabre, as well as official rules from Blood and Smoke, as well as introduce an alternate discipline system and an alternate goal/experience system.

Summary of Changes

The new version of the original Masquerade game overhauled some key points, with varying degrees of success. Some of those changes will need tweaks to remain viable. Some new concepts will be introduced to solve old issues.

Combat: A new resolution system will be used that will not only provide a strong base for normal actions, but also keep outrageous dice pools from breaking the game. New relations between bashing, lethal and aggravated damage will make things simpler and easier to track.

Disciplines: Rather than a single path of powers for each discipline set, multiple powers will be available at each cost level, and players need not buy lower level entries to get the higher ones. The ability to use the powers (dots) are abstracted from the power choices.

Task resolution: Difficulty levels are introduced to provide a greater level of potential challenge.

Experience: A completely new experience system is used, which utilizes personal and coterie goals to earn experience besides those accrued for gameplay.

Willpower: The many disparate willpower mechanics are combined into a single ebb and flow mechanism, which can be customized for each character.

Combat

Combat will use a difficulty system similar to the task resolution system, presented following. Dice pools are compared between the attacker and defender to generate a relative difficulty.

Dice Pools

Dice Pools are created using the standard method as described in the Vampire: The Requiem main book. One attribute plus one skill, added together, creates an attacking dice pool. That dice pool is compared to the defenders defense attribute.

If the attackers combat dice pool is less than the defense of the opponent, he rolls 2 dice. If the attackers combat dice pool is equal to the opponent, he rolls 3 dice. If the attackers combat dice pool is greater than his opponent, he rolls 4 dice. If the attackers combat dice pool is double the opponent, he rolls 5 dice. For each further full multiple of the opponents dice pool, add one die. Modifiers for situations, conditions and GM assigned difficulty are applied before comparing the pools, while willpower adds are applied after for the attacker, or before if used by the defender to boost a defense ability.

Damage

Each weapon or attack type deals a specific type of damage. Weapon damage numbers do not affect the dice pool. Instead, when a success is scored the attack deals an amount of damage equal to the successes rolled multiplied by the weapon damage value, of the appropriate type of damage. On an outstanding success the attacker may choose instead to pay a willpower point and deal a number of damage equal to the successes, but of a damage level one type more severe (bashing>lethal>aggravated).

Resisting Damage

Damage can only be resisted under certain circumstances, such as with armor or defensive powers. Other situations may merit resistance at the sole discretion of the GM. More coming.

Disciplines

Each discipline (except the physical disciplines Celerity, Resilience and Vigor) has a list of powers that are associated with it as well as a level of mastery. A character can have any number of powers and devotions for each of their disciplines, but their mastery is limited by blood potency in the same way attributes and abilities are. Mastery is a number of dice added to any dice pool when using powers from that discipline.

New discipline and devotion list: Crimson Dusk Disciplines