For me it's "Seven is enough, but the list changes every campaign". For my current one I am very happy for banning Ventrue, Malkavian, Torreador, Brujah, Nosferatu and Hecate altogether.
To be fair I honestly prefer having a big messy canon to maneuver within over years long campaigns to design that prioritizes immediate pickup across the whole line.
I want a game designed like a good mansion. I want a beautiful accessible entryway and then endless haunted halls beyond that.
I wanted that years ago, but not for when I actually ran the games. For when I run/ play, I want tons of space left undefined to have the story emerge unconstrained by efforts to predetermine what 𝘮𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵 be a good direction for it.
I remember years ago, working retail, and moving through the service hallways pushing carts and shelves, imagining, "This neighborhood is Clan X domain," but then that felt limiting when I actually tried to do anything with it, like writing down every fact that could be true was gilding the lily.
And I should say I ideally want the canon delivered in a form that is player accessible. The hole I dug myself into with Victorian was trying to use canon I cared about that was entirely too arcane. I've avoided that since then. While it makes me sad player facing canon works better.
I didn't know anyone who cared enough about Daedelean canon to bring into the game at that point and I didn't have the heart to onboard two more players to the story I was building, which brings me back to I want canon so I just have to put window dressing on the world to get to a lived in state.
And bluntly I hate doing that work. I did that in a Victorian Technocracy game and then two of my players moved across country just when I was done with the world building, a year into the game. I was just planning the intro of the arc I actually wanted to run.
In my experience my players only ever know specific slices of canon unless they are also STs, and so long as I find out what those slices are I'm equipped to manipulate that perspective. This has created my favorite reveals. Toolkit games require me to build all of that at the table.
I tell my players that the Golden Rule is the only rule at my table, but then I encourage their characters acceptance of canon so I can tactically shatter it. I will give every player my copy of their splatbook to read, encourage them to dive into their full House chapter, etc.
The first thing I will do is decide what canon to treat as common knowledge that is in fact a lie, and there will ALWAYS be a lie, because the act of breaking someone's gestalt is deeply powerful when done correctly.
I know this isn't for everyone, but I have a strongly different experience. For one thing I don't care about truth. I live for unreliable narrator. As an ST I want canon to be what players bring to the table as their character's gestalt.
As if I didn’t have enough existential dread. I feel like my dad just told me I shouldn’t have been born or worse I should’ve been a gothy Italian Tremere.
Comments
Five was ok.
You and your first game problems.
I want a game designed like a good mansion. I want a beautiful accessible entryway and then endless haunted halls beyond that.