Note: This is my first review for rpg.net, so please tell me what you think and how they can be improved. I will read all your feedback. Also while I’m aware that this is the 3rd edition of
Vampire. I haven’t played the first two to compare.
First Impressions
Picking up
Vampire rulebook the first thing I noticed was just how good it looks. The green marbled effect together with the image of a rose on the cover made me take notice of the book. The cover art doesn’t seem particularly relevant to a game about vampires, however and the mock-quotation on the back seems very pretentious.
Upon opening the book, the first thing the reader is presented with is a 16-page first person perspective story introducing them to the general themes and concepts of the game’s world. I thought this was a neat touch, as it manages to evoke the mood the author’s had in mind for the game without the need for long dry explanations in the main text.
After the credits and a disclaimer that really shouldn’t be necessary we reach the introduction. This begins with an overwrought paragraph informing the reader that vampires are not myths in the World of Darkness, as the setting is called. We then get a mercifully short ‘what is a role-playing (sorry Storytelling) game’ which is no better or worse than any of the others I’ve seen. The introduction then summarises and explains the concepts mentioned in the introductory story in a less biased manner. The introduction closes with a superfluous list of influences on Vampire. (Basically any vampire book or film you’ve ever heard of).
Setting
The World of Darkness detailed here lives up to its name admirably, evoking a real gothic atmosphere where the supernatural has clandestine influences on every facet of mortal politics and history.
Vampire is designed to be set in large cities where larger groups of mortals, or kine, are available to feed on. Readers are told that vampires fear to leave the cities due to the presence of werewolves who would kill any vampire they can find. The characters are essentially trapped in the big cities, which can lead to population pressure…
There is also apparently a meta-plot that is detailed over a number of game supplements. However the game is playable straight from the book and the meta-plot doesn’t really intrude on the rulebook that much except as flavour text. I’m not a huge plan of meta-plots so I’m pleased that the one in Vampire seems eminently ignorable.
Society
Vampiric society is made up of two sects, the Sabbat and the Camarilla who are waging a war based on freedom and survival. Many vampires don’t subscribe to the ideal of either of these sects and are independent. Of the sects the Camarilla are nominally the ‘good’ guys, but in
Vampire nothing is that clear cut and there are several shades of grey in both sects outlook. Vampire’s are further divided into 13 clans, their clan being determined by the clan of whoever made them. Each clan has different powers, ‘Disciplines’, in the game and also has a different image. Typically members of Clan Ventrue are politically minded, but again the reader is advised not to play their clan stereotypically.
Character Creation
Character creation is a points based system, and as such it takes quite some time to create a character. Initially players are advised to come up with a concept for their character such as ‘outsider’. The next step is to choose a clan, which is the nearest thing to a class that
Vampire has. The clan determines what disciplines a character has, as well as detailing a major character flaw. Next is deciding on the nature and demeanour of the character (self-explanatory). Then it’s time to choose attributes. These are divided into three categories, with each category having three attributes for a total of nine. Each attribute is rated from one to five and the player has to decide how they want to prioritise as this determines how many points they have to spend in each category. Skills are dealt with in the same manner except more are available. Next come advantages, which are a catch all for clan disciplines, virtues, and backgrounds. Virtues are quite central to
Vampire as they determine Humanity which is used to see how monstrous the character has become, which is good for angst-bunnies. Backgrounds all have varying effects on the character such as people/vampires they know, how much cash they have and so on. Unfortunately one of these backgrounds, Generation is far too powerful as increasing this allows increases to the upper limits on many other aspects of the character.
System
The Storyteller system is a dice pool system, where each task requires a number of d10 (typically attribute skill) to be rolled. Each of these that is equal to or more than a Storyteller (GM)-determined difficulty number is a success. With the number of successes determining how successful or otherwise an action is. It’s a simple system but it seems to work well enough.
Conclusions
Vampire is a very good game although sometimes it seems to be pretentious for the sake of being pretentious, and the internal artwork varies from great for most of the full-rendered art to dire for some of the line art sketches. So it gets a substance rating of 3 (What’s there’s good, but it just doesn’t feel enough) and a style rating of 4 (The atmosphere is excellent and the in character tales throughout are superb, to the point that you would think the system was an afterthought.)
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