morskittar said:

I agree with you on the need to avoid Star Trek. Also, you're right that inconsistency and "dumbing down" are not the same thing. However, they sometimes occur together. For example, when Middenheim had to become the capital of Middenland, because not having it so would be too confusing, that I consider 'dumbing down' and conscious inconsistency. The same goes for renaming the Faustschlag into the Ulricsberg, because the former name would be 'too foreign' for an anglophone audience. I mean, really? Are these really things that are going to make the game sell better or worse?

morskittar said:

Having a degree in history I'd say I don't find real world history remotely contradictory about facts or timelines. It's hard to dispute dates of when wars occured, cities were sacked, who was involved, etc.... but I do admit contridiction and differences occur for reasons like was the Civil War about slaves or states rights? This might be where this discussion is headed.

I'm reminded of a recent arguement where it's been widely accepted for 100s of years that the medieval time period was a time where people didn't take baths. A historian wanted to disprove this arguement by finding evidence of people taking baths. He found several references to barrels of water being used by nobles inside the castles to take baths in. Problem is, that hardly disproves the general arguement, like they want their book to disprove. For starters did pesants have access to these barrels, where did the get the water? How many people bathed in one barrel? How often did they bathe? Was the barrel really that clean? Utimately this sort of historical research is just tripe, because the fact remains, not matter how much you slice it, by our standards today, medevial people were dirty smelly people that didn't take baths. And by not taking baths I don't mean they NEVER took baths, I mean, by our standards, we'd be constantly telling them to take a bath, daily. I think this is where a lot of modern day historians are screwing up, so busy attempting to prove isolated examples to overturn accepted historical viewpoints for book selling agendas. Certainly this is where revisonist history starts occuring.

What I'm getting from this debate is that everyone is in agreement that in the fictional world of warhammer the humans are xenophobic and the witch hunters are "above the law" and deal with evil brutally and quickly. What most of you are convinving me of, however, is that the society is also weak willed, fragile, corrupt, and selfish, and I might not be considering that angle enough. It's very possible after 400 years since the last war with vampires, society has been altered enough to accept them for personal gain, or simply not care about the clear and present danger they represent. That's food for thought.

Sinister said:

Yet during the Middle Ages themselves, there were many dispultes about when wars occurred, when cities were sacked, and even where cities were precisely. (Think about the widespread acceptance of Mandeville's travels!) IF we've reached consensus on basic facts today, which I'm not sure that we have when it comes to ancient and medieval history, it's only because information is so easily shared. The Warhammer world would be much closer to the Middle Ages than to today in terms of how information is shared and debated, so it's entirely likely that there would be huge gaps in even the most basic questions about what happened.

Sinister said:

It's still some mental gymnastics to rationalize around GW's inconsistencies (intentional or otherwise), but yeah, that's the direction I'd go in. Hell, that could create quite a few fun adventure seeds. Give the players a Genevieve-like vampire buddy; one they don't really suffer any negative social consequencies for consorting with (they *are* adventurers, after all). What do they do when the Witch Hunter comes calling? Defend their friend? Or own up to their faith and turn her charred bones over to the Templars?

I don't follow any sort of WFRP backstory stuff - to me it all comes from the original WFRP core book (hooray for a feeble Emperor!). I read zero novels and zero battle books, so I can't speak to that. However, the issue with the contradiction concerning aversion towards running water is (I believe) explained in the Night's Dark Masters sourcebook from v2.

IIRC, each vampire has different weaknesses (some are driven by the type, others by their progenitor - but I may be misremembering how they were determined).

HedgeWizard said:

Post-4th edition (WFB) background (Night's Dark Masters, Liber Necris) assigns the odder weaknesses to Nagash cursing the various progenitors (which define the type) of the bloodlines, as each betrayed him or failed to help him against Khemri. Or, they're natural results of the Vampires being, essentially, animate Dhar, having sustained their spirit on those of their victims' and gradually being infused with raw, controlled, Chaos-stuff over the centuries.

What he said. I wish they'd pick up the pace on the Nagash series. Book one was surprisingly entertaining. I am dying to see how they write out the Skaven corruption, the 'hero/foil' who nearly kills him and the spread of the vampires.

Man, I don't know what y'all are talking about. I loved Genevieve. Well, rather, I liked Drachenfels , which I think is the best of the Genevieve novels (they slowly go down in quality over time; Beasts in Velvet is good, but it's not really a Gene story).

That said, I think there's one important fact that's being overlooked: Genevieve is tolerated because she saved Karl-Franz's life . Vampire or no, when you save the life of the Emperor, people will make exceptions for you, even if they don't want to. That said, as the memory of those events fade into the past, people take more and more active actions against her, culminating in a large anti-vampire movement in the final story of the anthology.

Also, the part about the Crescent Moon is a bit misleading as well, since it's said in the novel that the location of the vampires' tavern frequently changes, specifically to avoid the attentions of Witch Hunters and people of more "devout" faith that might take exception to the existence of such a place. So no, vampires in general are still not widely-accepted; they're just as much a part of the underground as the crime lords and dock gangs, and like those groups they'll tolerate each other so long as they don't get in each other's way.

Lastly, I think there's a bit of misinfo on the supposed timeline, especially considering how in The Vampire Wars, Mannfred actually comes to Altdorf and sees a poster for a play about Genevieve (which makes him chucklesmall wonder).

Issues with the Genevieve stories aside, I really don't see what the big issue here is. Personally, I like both Genevieve and the Vampire Wars, and I don't particularly see how they conflict, although I would certainly be interested in knowing Gene's whereabouts during many of the highlights of the wars.

That's all.

Erdrick said:

2145 Battle of Hel Fenn. Manfred von Carstein, the last Vampire Count of Sylvania, is destroyed along with his Undead hordes.

2502 Crowning of Karl Franz, the current Emperor.

357 year difference.

Where you get manfred reading the poster is:

Centuries later Mannfred was resurrected by a petty necromancer named Schtillmann, who did not survive to see the fruits of his terrible labour (Schtillman was killed by the infamous Slayer, Gotrek Gurnisson, who cut him in two- the blood from his bifurcated body spilled on Mannfred's corpse, leading to his resurrection). By the time of the Storm of Chaos Mannfred was once again Lord of Sylvania, and remains a threat to the Empire.

She was super loved BEFORE she saved Karl Franz. After the first confrontation with Drachenfels men want to find her so she might drink of them. I mean I understand some people will come up with 101 reason why it works but the TONE of Genevieve kept making me say "That's silly, that would never happen". I just felt there were lots of problems with the story. For starters the emperor attending a play in an evil castle where several murders had just taken place days seems silly. But what seems even crazier is the idea he brings along ALL the elector counts. No explaination is given for them to stay at a multiple murder scene where the killer hasn't been caught. The emperor just goes along with it. You would think the man is better protected than that. The playwright's reasons for continuing is "the show must go on" but at what point do people say screw this? Sensible people would say "there's been a murder, I'm out of here" not one person in the entire show's caravan left. The one people that fled, the leading lady didn't flee till 5 minutes before show time. Then the plot device with Geneieve somehow reading the playwright's blood she drank of him, in order to know her lines? That was silly. Considering she once drank of the hero/villian that travelled with her to defeat drachennfels and didn't seem to know he out right hated Karl Franz.

It's very clear the author had a story to tell and be damned with "the sense" of it all.

I don't object to the genieve character at all but I found this book more unrealistic to the setting than the blood bowl novels. The story would have been much much better if they had just taken care of some glaring plot holes. Don't get me wrong, some of you don't think these things are plot holes but I do and I wouldn't run this story as an adventure as written because my players just wouldn't buy it, especially if I don't. In the end I think the NPC regular folk of this world would be downright afraid of vampires, so that's how I intended to run it.