The Inside Scoop on Gaming

My introduction to White Wolf was Vampire: the Masquerade, 2nd Edition. From some angles, it was a fantastic game - it had mystery, horror, intrigue, and great big imaginative dollops of the supernatural. In terms of sheer _atmosphere_, it was a ten. Unfortunately, it was weaker when it came to the nitty-gritty of a RPG, systems and detail.

White Wolf have put a lot of effort and a lot of their best writers into this new edition, and it shows. Most of the weaknesses of 2nd Edition have been addressed, without detracting from its strengths. A few well-placed rules tweaks, a lot more flesh to the setting, and a lot of information that always _should_ have been in the main book but previously wasn't. I'll mention its flaws as well, but most of them are comparatively minor and easily fixed.

Firstly, the rules. The text in 3rd Ed has been completely rewritten, usually for the good - not only is it clearer what the rules _mean_, but there's more advice on how to use them. A lot of minor things that irked 2nd Ed players have been fixed - in particular the issues of botching, multiple actions, and how humans deal with damage. The biggest remaining game-balance problem, IMHO, is that Thaumaturgy is still woefully underpriced.

3rd Edition now includes descriptions and rules for _all_ of the thirteen major vampiric clans, as well as Merits and Flaws - features that let you customise your character a bit further. In 2nd Edition, these were spread over two separate players' guides and the main book; bringing them together makes the basic rulebook more useful and more flexible. (It also leaves more room for other good stuff in the Camarilla and Sabbat books.)

Five years have passed since 2nd Edition came out, and the World of Darkness hasn't been standing still. There have been several changes in the setting during that time, some minor, some major. The Assamites have overcome the Tremere curse and gone on the rampage, attacking other vampires freely and drinking their blood. (Although the other clans are unhappy about this, particularly the Tremere, nobody seems to be _doing_ anything about it.) The Tremere of the Sabbat have been completely eradicated, literally overnight, which will probably annoy anybody who's been playing one. One clan is thinking of leaving the Camarilla (and eventually do so, according to the Camarilla book.) The Malkavians of the Camarilla have suddenly acquired the discipline Dementation from their Sabbat cousins, en masse.

More important than these minor changes in the setting, though, is the depth of detail that's been added. There's a history of vampirekind, particularly the last thousand years, presented from both Camarilla and Sabbat viewpoints. There's some useful information about how a typical Camarilla city functions, including the positions a Prince creates to help him run the city. This part is brief - for real depth on the Camarilla, there's another book - but enough to be useful.

Vampire uses a mechanic called Humanity to measure how close a vampire is to being completely overwhelmed by the Beast inside. As you do bad things, Humanity drops - the lower it gets the more bestial you become, and the harder it is to control your temper or to pass as a human. This works fairly well for the Camarilla vampires, but it doesn't explain some of the other sects - going by the scale of Humanity, every Sabbat elder should be a mindless ravening beast, but clearly this is not the case. Instead, they follow Paths of Enlightenment, different value systems which give them some control over the Beast. 3rd Ed includes several Paths, intended mainly as examples of how the non-Camarilla vampires get by.

One of the deficiencies of 2nd Ed which carries over here is that there's no adequate explanation of precisely _how_ these Paths help control the Beast and why they give largely the same benefits as Humanity. The Path of Metamorphosis, for instance, requires that its followers experiment on others, kill whenever they can learn from it, and abandon compassion. It's not made clear quite how _those_ values do anything to contain the Beast. At the high levels most Paths do call for dedication, willpower and self-sacrifice - but if that's all it takes to make a successful Path then why not the Path of Bird-Watching? The message seems to be that any demanding value system, no matter how nasty, will keep the Beast in check, even if that value system often _agrees_ with the Beast on brutalising others. I remain unconvinced.

The big change in setting and mood is the imminence of the Final Nights. In 2nd Ed, Kindred believed that sooner or later Gehenna would fall upon them, the Antediluvians would wake, there'd be a final battle, and so on. In 3rd Ed, the Kindred believe this stuff is going to happen very soon - if it hasn't already started happening. Between this book and the new Camarilla and Sabbat books, one gets the impression that an awful lot of powerful elders have woken up lately and might not be in a very good mood.

Although this sense of impending doom is nicely handled, I don't actually like the idea. One of the things that always appealed to me about Vampire was the theme of immortality - what do you do with it, how does it change you? Young Kindred, looking at their elders and despising their coldness and realising that in time they'll grow into something very similar. But if the world is about to end, you lose that theme - "immortality" doesn't mean much if you're going to die in the next few decades anyway. This sort of thing can also encourage powergaming ("Gotta get my stats up now, before Gehenna happens, or I'll be toast!") Still, it's not too hard to ignore this element if it doesn't fit in with your game.

The information in the book is well-organised, so you don't have to go hopping all over the place to run one combat (or whatever). Alas, the generally high quality and well-written nature of the book doesn't extend to the index. As with most of White Wolf's books, the index is poorly thought out and not very helpful.

For instance, suppose you want to look up 'Conscience', an important character trait. Guess what? It's under 'V', for "Virtues: Conscience". Leadership is under 'A', because it's an Ability.. If you're looking for Disfigured, which you happen to remember is a Flaw, it's under 'M'. None of these are cross-indexed, which would help immensely. To find this sort of thing from the index, you need to know what section it appears in first - and if you knew that, you probably wouldn't _need_ the index in the first place.

These gripes aside, it's a good book. Apparently the authors have taken a good hard look at what worked in 2nd Ed and what didn't, and acted on that; the result improves playability without sacrificing atmosphere.

Style: 4 (Classy and well done)
Substance: 5 (Excellent!)

Vampire: the Masquerade 3rd Edition
Author: Lots of people at WWGS Category: game Company/Publisher: White Wolf Line: Vampire: the Masquerade Cost: $29.95 US Page count: 312 ISBN: 1-56504-249-2 SKU: WW2300 Capsule Review by Geoffrey Brent on 08/31/99. Genre tags: Modern_day Horror Conspiracy Vampire Gothic	My introduction to White Wolf was Vampire: the Masquerade, 2nd Edition. From some angles, it was a fantastic game - it had mystery, horror, intrigue, and great big imaginative dollops of the supernatural. In terms of sheer _atmosphere_, it was a ten. Unfortunately, it was weaker when it came to the nitty-gritty of a RPG, systems and detail. White Wolf have put a lot of effort and a lot of their best writers into this new edition, and it shows. Most of the weaknesses of 2nd Edition have been addressed, without detracting from its strengths. A few well-placed rules tweaks, a lot more flesh to the setting, and a lot of information that always _should_ have been in the main book but previously wasn't. I'll mention its flaws as well, but most of them are comparatively minor and easily fixed. Firstly, the rules. The text in 3rd Ed has been completely rewritten, usually for the good - not only is it clearer what the rules _mean_, but there's more advice on how to use them. A lot of minor things that irked 2nd Ed players have been fixed - in particular the issues of botching, multiple actions, and how humans deal with damage. The biggest remaining game-balance problem, IMHO, is that Thaumaturgy is still woefully underpriced. 3rd Edition now includes descriptions and rules for _all_ of the thirteen major vampiric clans, as well as Merits and Flaws - features that let you customise your character a bit further. In 2nd Edition, these were spread over two separate players' guides and the main book; bringing them together makes the basic rulebook more useful and more flexible. (It also leaves more room for other good stuff in the Camarilla and Sabbat books.) Five years have passed since 2nd Edition came out, and the World of Darkness hasn't been standing still. There have been several changes in the setting during that time, some minor, some major. The Assamites have overcome the Tremere curse and gone on the rampage, attacking other vampires freely and drinking their blood. (Although the other clans are unhappy about this, particularly the Tremere, nobody seems to be _doing_ anything about it.) The Tremere of the Sabbat have been completely eradicated, literally overnight, which will probably annoy anybody who's been playing one. One clan is thinking of leaving the Camarilla (and eventually do so, according to the Camarilla book.) The Malkavians of the Camarilla have suddenly acquired the discipline Dementation from their Sabbat cousins, en masse. More important than these minor changes in the setting, though, is the depth of detail that's been added. There's a history of vampirekind, particularly the last thousand years, presented from both Camarilla and Sabbat viewpoints. There's some useful information about how a typical Camarilla city functions, including the positions a Prince creates to help him run the city. This part is brief - for real depth on the Camarilla, there's another book - but enough to be useful. Vampire uses a mechanic called Humanity to measure how close a vampire is to being completely overwhelmed by the Beast inside. As you do bad things, Humanity drops - the lower it gets the more bestial you become, and the harder it is to control your temper or to pass as a human. This works fairly well for the Camarilla vampires, but it doesn't explain some of the other sects - going by the scale of Humanity, every Sabbat elder should be a mindless ravening beast, but clearly this is not the case. Instead, they follow Paths of Enlightenment, different value systems which give them some control over the Beast. 3rd Ed includes several Paths, intended mainly as examples of how the non-Camarilla vampires get by. One of the deficiencies of 2nd Ed which carries over here is that there's no adequate explanation of precisely _how_ these Paths help control the Beast and why they give largely the same benefits as Humanity. The Path of Metamorphosis, for instance, requires that its followers experiment on others, kill whenever they can learn from it, and abandon compassion. It's not made clear quite how _those_ values do anything to contain the Beast. At the high levels most Paths do call for dedication, willpower and self-sacrifice - but if that's all it takes to make a successful Path then why not the Path of Bird-Watching? The message seems to be that any demanding value system, no matter how nasty, will keep the Beast in check, even if that value system often _agrees_ with the Beast on brutalising others. I remain unconvinced. The big change in setting and mood is the imminence of the Final Nights. In 2nd Ed, Kindred believed that sooner or later Gehenna would fall upon them, the Antediluvians would wake, there'd be a final battle, and so on. In 3rd Ed, the Kindred believe this stuff is going to happen very soon - if it hasn't already started happening. Between this book and the new Camarilla and Sabbat books, one gets the impression that an awful lot of powerful elders have woken up lately and might not be in a very good mood. Although this sense of impending doom is nicely handled, I don't actually like the idea. One of the things that always appealed to me about Vampire was the theme of immortality - what do you do with it, how does it change you? Young Kindred, looking at their elders and despising their coldness and realising that in time they'll grow into something very similar. But if the world is about to end, you lose that theme - "immortality" doesn't mean much if you're going to die in the next few decades anyway. This sort of thing can also encourage powergaming ("Gotta get my stats up now, before Gehenna happens, or I'll be toast!") Still, it's not too hard to ignore this element if it doesn't fit in with your game. The information in the book is well-organised, so you don't have to go hopping all over the place to run one combat (or whatever). Alas, the generally high quality and well-written nature of the book doesn't extend to the index. As with most of White Wolf's books, the index is poorly thought out and not very helpful. For instance, suppose you want to look up 'Conscience', an important character trait. Guess what? It's under 'V', for "Virtues: Conscience". Leadership is under 'A', because it's an Ability.. If you're looking for Disfigured, which you happen to remember is a Flaw, it's under 'M'. None of these are cross-indexed, which would help immensely. To find this sort of thing from the index, you need to know what section it appears in first - and if you knew that, you probably wouldn't _need_ the index in the first place. These gripes aside, it's a good book. Apparently the authors have taken a good hard look at what worked in 2nd Ed and what didn't, and acted on that; the result improves playability without sacrificing atmosphere. Style: 4 (Classy and well done) Substance: 5 (Excellent!)

Vampire: the Masquerade 3rd Edition