Vampire 5th Edition Pre-Alpha Playtest Feedback (Intro)

For info on the playtest, check out White Wolf's official blog post as well as the follow-up post with some clarifications about the scenario.

Over the last month I have run the V5 Pre-Alpha scenario three times. The first two groups were made up of veteran players from my core weekly Role-Playing group (except for Chad who is pretty new to table-top gaming). Despite being veterans V:tM is new to a few of them. My wife, Andrea, played in both of the first two groups. The third group was made up entirely of first-time role-players (except Nestor who is a part of our main group, but has little experience with V:tM).

Character	Session 1 Player	Session 2 Player	Session 3 Player
Amelina	Andrea	Chad	Karen
Amir	Lydia	Nick	Nestor
Nicholas	Keith	Dean	Patrick
Bruno (M) / Bruna (F)	Ken (M)	Andrea (F)	Ashley (F)
Cortina	---	---	Kate

I created Cortina to allow a 5th player to join the third game, and to give Amelina a childe she could actually have some kind of bond with (Amelina's Embrace of Nicholas really makes no sense). Cortina's feeding restriction is active drug users. As a mortal, Cortina was exploring the club scene to break the hold that shyness and guilt had on her (sorta the Kindred equivalent of the Black Mirror episode San Junipero). Amelina embraced her to have a shy, easy to control, immoral lover, but now Cortina sees Amelina as something more akin to an older sister. As a neonate vampire Cortina learned quickly how to "assume a character for any scene" and has become a social prodigy under Amelina's tutelage.

I also introduced the concept that each member of "Die Penner" was initiated into the group via their "sin against the Anarchs" that only their superiors necessarily knew about. Cortina had committed no such "sin" yet and was free to initiate herself into the group during the session if she saw fit.

Side note: None of my players (Andrea, Chad, or Karen) had a problem with Amelina as written. All of my players were on the same page and understood that the world would be dark, the theme would be mature, and there was a good chance their characters would all die horribly. They also understood quickly that the characters, with the possible exception of Cortina, probably deserved an unceremonious death.

Before each game I had all of my players read up on their character's background as well as a small lexicon of terms / abilities I prepared for them. Here are the pictures they found for their characters and the revised character sheets and descriptions. I also showed them a clip from the 40:11 to 46:06 mark of the Berlin 2017 Keynote which discusses the prelude to the Enlightenment in Blood LARP scenario just prior to the start of each session. I started each game with some "meditative dubstep" playing quietly through the speakers in the game room.

Next time, Session 1...