>>4883331Nope. Before I explain that the best thing to keep in mind for nWoD/CofD is this. It's a whole new thing totally separate from oWoD, it is heavily inspired by it but it is very much it's own thing. The best way to get the best experience from the nWoD stuff is to not treat it like a version of oWoD. In fact I'd say the biggest failings of nWoD are where it did stuff just because oWoD did stuff, but that is also where some of the the greatest improvements in CofD lie. CofD (nWoD2e after a rebrand) really took a step back and focused in one what made nWoD unique and refined and emphasised that.
So for nWoD games each splat tends to be broken down into x and y splats. These are usually something you fundamentally are, and then something you believe in. For vampires this is your Clan, and your Covenant (VtR's version of Sects). Basically every game includes 5 of each. So the 5 main VtR clans are Daeva, Gangrel, Mehket, Nosferatu, and Ventrue. You'll recognise three of those names but VtR Clans aren't VtM Clans and the similarities they share aren't really for quite the same purposes.
The 5 clans broadly fill each major archetype of pop culture vampire. Daeva are seductive social predators, they're the sexual/sensual side of vampire myth. Gangrel play to the animalistic nature of vampires, their savagery, and their shape shifting abilities. Mekhet are secretive and shadowy creatures, they're the vampires who lurk in the dark unseen yet seeing all. Nosferatu are the grotesque monstrosities, but also the unsettling or obviously inhuman vampires. Finally, Ventrue are the aristocratic vampires, vampires as a metaphor for the inequality of wealth and power that is often prevalent in myth, and those who bend you to their will. Each is designed to fulfill a clear archetype without tying you to it totally, you get an awful lot of flexibility in each clan so you don't have to worry about "staying true to the clan" or whatever.
The other original Camarilla Clans either don't fulfill an archetype, are overly restrictive in theme given VtRs push for more flexibility in how Clan is a facet of your PC, or their theme is so broadly applicable to any major archetype it makes more sense to be represent through Covenants. A great example is Brujah or Tremere, iconoclastic idealism or a bent for the occult shouldn't be the purview of a Clan. Covenants play a much larger role than sects in VtM and now offer a large secondary point of customisation. Your chosen combination of Clan and Covenant massively impacts who your character is. Clan is still super important but it's not quite the be all end all, and Covenants give a huge additional purview for RP and narrative expression. Some of the old Clans do come back as Bloodlines though. Giovannia being one of those, called Sangiovanni here but it's a similar deal.
The interplay between those x and y splats lend you a lot more customisation than any single clan does. Now the Tremere are back where they belong (as Mages) you are way more free to explore magic. There are two flavours of Blood Sorcery to work with, whether its the malevolent and wild Crúac that draws upon the Beast to invoke primordial gods, or Theban Sorcery that leverages the power of the Curse through zealous faith and deliberate ritual. Then you've also got the Ordo Dracul and their Mysteries of the Dragon that seek to transcendence of the Kindred form, mastery of their banes, control of the Beast, and more through occult alchemy and experimentation. So instead of that being just all one Clans thing you can now see how multiple clans would adapt to it. How a Gangrel might interact with those systems and philosophies is different to how a Ventrue might. So a Ventrue in the Ordo Dracul is very different from a Gangrel in there, and a Gangrel in the Lancea et Sanctum is different to both.
That's all true for VtR1e but even more true for VtR2e, and 2e has become my favourite thing in the entire Vampire franchise by a mile
