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Disclaimer
This review is bound to draw some fire. Its critics will complain that I don't know jack about the whole Vampire: the Masquerade product line, that I haven't researched it, that I don't seem to care about it at all, and that I am, hence, not in a position to comment on the Vampire: the Masquerade Introductory Kit. They will not take kindly to a review of a booklet written to promote a whole line of products that doesn't promote the line as well, that even tries to steer people away from those products. And they will say that by encouraging readers to use, and continue to use, a freebie or cheap promotional version condensed out of the original product, I'm robbing the authors, who put their time and money into it.
Well, what can I say about that? Guilty as charged. Actually, I feel a little shame about the robbing part. But on the other hand, White Wolf is said to be one of the better off companies in the business. And just about every time the subject came up in just about every conversation I had with just about every game designer, he told me how deep he'd be wallowing in cash if he got a real job.
As for the promotional angle, I have decided to (re-)view Vampire: the Masquerade Introductory Kit as a separate product. For starters, I really don't know jack about the rest of Vampire: the Masquerade, but the real reason is that I intend to use the Introductory Kit standalone, and I maintain that it is a complete, full-blown (if small) role-playing game in its own right. This may become a little clearer below. Please bear with me.
My misconceptions about Vampire: the Masquerade and its players are the common misconceptions of the non-Vampire: the Masquerade world. Gilly and Walden. Gen-X self-pitying aging (by now) goth kids whose only source of non-bliss is their uniform non-conformism. Don't we know them. This is a field I couldn't be bothered to research. And I didn't do much research on what I say below, either, so as long as it isn't confined to the Introductory Kit, it's mostly conjecture. I asked around a bit to get the facts right, and I've put an old Sisters of Mercy album in the CD player, so don't tell me I haven't prepared for this review.
Anyway, it would have been a shame to let the picture rot in a German backwater RPG wiki, wouldn't it?
Vampire: the Masquerade, or: Fear and Loathing in Bielefeld
I've always steered clear of Vampire: the Masquerade. I didn't like the stereotypical weltschmerz that's said to come with the game, the pretentiousness and the endless atmospheric fluff texts. And I didn't dig the hype about Anne Rice either. Since its release in 1991, Vampire: the Masquerade has nevertheless stirred up the role-playing world. Granted, Mark Rein¤Hagen wasn't the only one fed up with classical games such as AD&D, but he was the most successful, as far as I can tell. Considering the emphasis on storytelling in White Wolf games, it's ironic that, to my knowledge, they made most or their profit with "crunchy bits" like splatbooks.
That said, it may come as a surprise that I bought a, or rather the, Vampire rule book. Some Saturday in May I entered my friendly local gaming store to comb the sales bins for old copies of RPG mags. There weren't any, but instead I found the Vampire: the Masquerade Introductory Kit. When I checked it out, the clerk wished me good fun with it; I think he was being sarcastic, but the booklet turned out to be rather good.
Vampire: the Masquerade Introductory Kit
It's not perfect, though. E.g. the character sheet has blanks for the "physical", "social" and "mental" traits, but "psychic" is missing, although the rules refer to it explicitly, like in the Malkavian affliction of "mad fits" or in the spell "song of serenity". The few character sheets I downloaded from White Wolf's website don't have "psychic" either, and the usually omniscient Wikipedia says the Storyteller system only has the first three traits (but expanded somewhat). It goes on to tell how Vampire: the Masquerade uses ten-sided dice instead of the normal six-siders the Vampire: the Masquerade Introductory Kit works with. Meaning the Introductory Kit is a dumbed-down demo version of the game. Not that I care.
The Vampire: the Masquerade Introductory Kit is a well-rounded little affair. The usual half page of introduction to role-playing is followed by five pages presenting the setting, which is both internally consistent and complete — as far as I can tell, not being part of the Vampire: the Masquerade crowd. After that, one and a half pages of character creation and one page for each of the vampire clans availabe to the PCs (Brujah, Gangrel, Malkavian, Nosferatu, Toreador, Tremere and Ventrue). A list of spells and explanations of traits, blood- and hitpoints fill up another four and a half pages, after which the authors expound their nice little storytelling system on three and a half pages, followed by two pages of an abysmal introductory adventure. The rest of the 32 pages is filled up with illustrations, the character sheet and advertising.
The Vampire: the Masquerade crowd probably will not approve of the previous paragraph, because of the volume of information and my appraisal of it. Of course the Vampire: the Masquerade Introductory Kit can't reproduce the whole setting, which fills yard upon yard of shelf space in the shops, after all. But in my opinion, it doesn't have to. For one thing, its lack of content, compared to the "whole" World of Darkness, is not apparent to somebody who does not know about it. This is because the summary given in the Introductory Kit is entirely sufficient; it is offering a rich and diverse game world which is still open to interpretation and expansion by an enterprising GM. And if the lack of space to represent the "whole" causes some loose ends to dangle out of the fabric, I consider them more a source of inspiration than an incentive to buy the other books. In this respect, White Wolf may have shot themselves in the paw. Anyway, I don't care if the "real" Vampire: the Masquerade players see only a narrow ledge of the mountain that is Vampire: the Masquerade in the Introductory Kit, because it is wide enough for me to dance on.
Besides, the Introductory Kit might even recapitulate the ontogenesis of Vampire: the Masquerade — I don't know, but I think the following is at least a possible history: Way back in 1991, Vampire: the Masquerade started out with the seven PC-clans above. Later the players clamoured for more, so other clans were opened to PCs and the authors came up with more clans, partly as adventure hooks. Thus came into being this fungoid sponge Vampire: the Masquerade, whose green-veined growth passed for wallpaper in many shops not so long ago. In this sense, the Vampire: the Masquerade Introductory Kit may be something of a Vampire: Back to the Roots.
What's more, the booklet is pretty well put together. Prose is clear and largely free of mannerisms (e.g. "these nights" instead of "today"), and it obviously has put a charm on me for one. The authors have succeeded in conveying an animate image of vampires today (ok, in 1997), which invites me to participate. I've had this "must play"-feeling a few times after reading RPG books, and it was there when I put down the Vampire: the Masquerade Introductory Kit, too. Given my my distinct lack of inclination towards everything Vampire: the Masquerade, this is a feat!
The Rules
I don't really need to tell you about the rules and system, do I? Most of you RPG.netters will be more fluent in the Storyteller system than I am. However, as a matter of principle and style — Vampire: the Masquerade Introductory Kit as a separate product and all — and for the occasional bloke who doesn't know Vampire: the Masquerade and is really looking for a review, I'll try to sum up the mechanics.
Character creation is a breeze. Choose a clan, each of which has some special and supernatural powers and a weakness, rank the four traits mentioned above from 1 through 4 dice. Fill in starting values, name and make up a bit of personal background (optional), and Bob's your uncle.
The fundamental event resolution mechanic is the dice pool. Roll a number of dice equal to an appropriate trait (special powers may give you additional dice) and compare them individually with a difficulty number. Each die that comes up greater than or equal to the difficulty is called a success, and the number of successes determines if, and to what degree, the action in question succeeds. The storyteller (GM) sets the difficulty number and can demand more than one success if the outcome desired by the player is very unlikely.
With the exception of a few simple chance rolls (e.g. roll one die to see how many fits the Malkavian gets in an adventure), this fundamental mechanic is the basis of the whole rules of the Vampire: the Masquerade Introductory Kit. In opposed rolls, each character uses an appropriate dice pool and the one with the most successes wins. For those who are quite right in pointing out that PCs won't oppose one another very often, I have to note that the NPCs are treated just like PCs, so every nontrivial interaction with an NPC means an opposed roll. The book doesn't say so explicitly, though. In fact, it doesn't say very much at all about NPCs.
As you can see, the system isn't very realistic. Even the greatest wimp, klutz or jerk (1 die — in the appropriate trait) has a whopping 1 in 6 chance of suceeding in the hardest (difficulty 6) task. Or rather, you don't play a wimp, klutz or jerk but a character whose least developed trait (1 die) isn't substandard but mediocre. As dice tricks go, I like the Over the Edge system better, because it's more flexible with its bonus and penalty dice. However, both systems need strong GMs who are able to tell their players that some things are just out of the question, because the rules make it too easy to pull off just about any mad stunt.
Since the Vampire: the Masquerade Introductory Kit doesn't have skills, everything falls back on the attributes or "traits". These aren't the free form traits of Over the Edge but "natural" character elements as found in every individual: abilities to use the body, mind and spirit and to interact with other people. With just four traits, each of them has to cover a lot of ground. Strength, dexterity, agility and stamina are subsumed by the "physical" trait, so an olympic weight lifter is indistinguishable from a championship fencer, or a top marksman, or even a world-class mountaineer. And the same "social" trait is used where other games employ skills ranging from seduction to intimidation and fast-talking. So you don't end up with a fine-tuned character and a lot of special skills but instead get an outline character sketched in a few broad strokes. Whatever makes a Vampire: the Masquerade character unique won't be found in the figures on the character sheet.
On the flip side, the system is surely small enough for a person as lazy as I am. The mechanics are sufficiently generic to be applied to situations not foreseen in the Vampire: the Masquerade Introductory Kit. But in order not to overtax beginning GMs, the rules contain solutions to problems which might rise out of the pages, e.g. an "operator precedence" table listing the order of traits which raise initiative. Even if the nomenclature isn't exactly compliant with ISO 9815, the little book is suitable for beginning players and GMs.
Being essentially an outsize advert to haul in new customers, the Vampire: the Masquerade Introductory Kit lacks rules for character development. No drawback altogether, since the game emphasizes telling a nice story, or so They keep telling everybody who isn't up a tree at the count of three. So character development can be understood as the development of the connections among PCs and NPCs, entirely without numbers and quantifications. And if you must have figures, inventing the necessary rules won't be hard; gaining and losing experience points and possibly their relation to blood points (would a day of "torpor" cost you a level, then?).
Another thing found in practically any role-playing game but absent from the Vampire: the Masquerade Introductory Kit is a shopping list — there is practically no mention of economics at all in the rules, setting aside the fact that a Ventrue can tap his trust fund once every adventure. Again, this is easily remedied, because the game is set in our world (or at least in the 1990s), with the vampires hiding behind the eponymous Masquerade for fear of awakening the tiger, as Stolze and Tynes would have put it. This means you have an equipment list already, it's called a mail-order catalogue.
The text in Vampire: the Masquerade Introductory Kit is set in a clear and eminently legible font. Even in the headings, the designers refrained from using atmospheric typefaces. On the whole, the lack of typographic gimcracks is striking. Only the clan symbols appear as rather inconspicuous watermarks behind the print, the other imagry consists of clear greyscale shaded drawings, which illustrate the surrounding text and, most of all, don't obscure it. The seven clans each get one of the eight pictures total, they are (parts of) the covers of the 2000 revised edition clanbooks and the 1999/2000 clan novels, by the way.
If You Write an Introductory Kit, Don't Botch the Introductory Adventure!
The only things really bad in the Vampire: the Masquerade Introductory Kit are the introductory adventure and the four adventure ideas. The latter are appallingly weak and anything but original. "I'm turning into a vampire, how do I tell mom?" "I'm a newbie vampire, where do I get my blood?" "I'm a little vampire, why do the biguns always pick on me?" "Somebody is offing vampires, what do I do about it before he knocks on my coffin?" Even the most benighted of GMs could come up with all of them on his or her own within minutes of reading the setting information in the Introductory Kit. And teenager problems to boot!
The two-page adventure "Safe as Houses" is a trifle more interesting: The city's prince (vampire, female) sends the PCs to retrieve her plaything (mundane, male), who has been abducted somehow. Why the godfather (vampire speak seems to be unisex masculine) of the local vampire organisation has somebody as incompetent as newbie vampires go get her loved one escapes me. But it serves to insert the PCs into the local hierarchy, so I'll deign not to notice this tiny piece of railroading. More annoying is that the prince provides her blood donor's current abode and the identity of his abductors. This means every deft piece of detectoring the PCs can do will only uncover facts which are peripheral to the plot and/or have to be invented by the GM, and since the booklet really is an introductory kit, the authors ought to give the wet-behind-the-ears GM a little more support. Heck, the main villain doesn't even get a stat block! But the worst is the ending of the adventure, which is nothing but ridiculous and can be summed up by the words "only kidding". The players are bound to be disappointed by it, which is a crying shame, and, come to think of it, defeats the purpose of an introductory kit, doesn't it?
How I Stopped Feeling Angst and Love Vampire: the Masquerade
What I probably enjoy most about the Vampire: the Masquerade Introductory Kit is that you don't have to feel angst. Sure, you have to hunt and kill humans all the time to replenish your steadily decreasing blood points, but a vampire is a bloodsucking freak, isn't he, outcast and enemy of society, so it's all right if the rules force the characters to commit these crimes. However, apart from this rather mechanical fact, the authors don't say a single word about the whole torment of the vampire condition and all. Which rather surprised me, because I always figured this was one of the defining parts of Vampire: the Masquerade (the other being annoyingly pretentious verbosity, also conspicuously absent in the Introductory Kit). Not that I ever intended to play hack'n'slay Vampire: the Masquerade, but I resent having a certain mood pressed on me. With the Introductory Kit, this isn't the case. Perhaps this is due to the year it was released in, 1997. True, back then Buffy still needed little yellow sticky "this end toward fiend" notes on her stakes, Blade had not been released, and we had yet to see a good number of Halloweens go by til Underworld, but do I notice a development away from Interview with a Vampire?
Summing up, to me the Vampire: the Masquerade Introductory Kit shines out like a shaft of gold when all around is World of Darkness. It's a small RPG conveying a coherent and sufficiently detailed idea of a campaign world which I can fill to my heart's content. It doesn't impose artificial restrictions. It is complete and ready to play "out of the box" and doesn't need a trunk full of supplements and source books. And its authors don't get on my nerves by telling me their One True Style of role-playing. Let me put it this way: It's on top of my stack and it's bound to remain there for a while.
Ratings
Style: low 5. The Vampire: the Masquerade Introductory Kit is a RPG book almost exactly as I like them. It has a clear, readable layout, a good balance of text and illustrations, and imagry that fits into the text. The prose is matter of fact, doesn't veil the information in a verbal cloud, and doesn't come over as proselytizing. In short: nobody would give the book a second glance these days.
Substance: 4. You can't pack much into 32 pages, especially not much about the setting of a RPG. But the authors made the most of it, in my opinion. And it is, after all, a more or less complete RPG, engines running.
Notes
Somewhere on White Wolf's pages I found a file named "VTM_KIT.pdf", which I think, without having compared it line for line, is the electronic version of my print copy of the Vampire: the Masquerade Introductory Kit. The illustrations have changed in part or have been deleted, together with the introductory adventure. No loss.
There is an introductory kit for the new Vampire Requiem. I have only read it once, but is seems to be the complete opposite of the Vampire: the Masquerade Introductory Kit: a half-decent introductory adventure, but excess fluff text, badly presented rules, 365 Ways and Days to Completely, Totally and Fully Annoy Your Brother With Electronic Typesetting, etc. You won't see me recommending it.
I used a little Editorial License in the title illustration. For one thing, I didn't learn to love Vampire: the Masquerade, but only the Introductory Kit. And then, love, weell, it's more like the love of a man for a cuban cigar.
