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Well, in honor of Changeling: The Lost arriving in August, I decided to go over the other “main” monster books in the new World of Darkness, not counting Promethean, which I don’t have. Maybe by the time Changeling actually comes out, I’ll have saved enough money to buy a copy for review. But of course, the first line to start the new series was the new version of VAMPIRE, now called Vampire: The Requiem.
THE BOOK: The actual book, like the core rulebook for the new World of Darkness (nWoD), is very impressive physically. The cover is a lush red velvet color with little glossy rose petals falling down the length, and a deliberately hazy picture of a taloned hand either hanging off the edge of something or dipping into a pool of blood. The pages are bound in at nine places and are good quality paper. Most art and graphics are either black-and-white or in a sepia tone, but the text headers are in a flowing ‘handwritten’ script in red ink. The overall result maintains the sense of antiquity that was stressed in the books for the original Vampire: The Masquerade (VtM).
Prologue: Dance of the Dead introduces the reader with a selection of in-character narratives of varying degrees of pretension. (‘I arrived nervously but on time, and it was there that I met the men and women- no, these others- who would be my fellows in the eternal pageant that I was oblivious would follow.’ Stake me now.)
In the Introduction, the authors present the VAMPIRE World of Darkness as a “Modern-Gothic World” that is actually more violent and barbaric than our own, decorated with dark, ancient buildings and art, a setting where “(a) sense of dread and fear looms on the face of every passerby.” It borrows from traditional vampire stories but deliberately adapts them for roleplaying purposes by focusing on a “coterie” (the group of PCs) rather than the solitary villains and antiheroes of tradition. The circumstances of unlife itself force the characters together in a web of intrigue, in ways that are further detailed in Chapter One. Thus while many things about Vampire: The Requiem (VtR) are quite different from the previous game line, the essential premise is really unchanged. If one is already familiar with VtM, that point will probably determine your opinion of the new book.
Chapter One: Society of the Damned further elaborates on the setting. Whereas VtM may have been a little too specific in tying the origin of vampires to the Biblical Caine, VtR deliberately makes the origin of vampires a mystery, although there’s certainly a Judeo-Christian slant in the core game’s use of Virtues and Vices, not to mention the fact that two of the “name” vampires in game history are Vlad Tepes and Longinus (the soldier who pierced Jesus’ side at the Crucifixion, thus being cursed with immortality, or in this book, vampirism). Another reason for the mystery is that the memory of elder vampires becomes rather fluid over time (see below). Metaphorically speaking, the vampire’s existence is a “Requiem” for his former life, with the interaction of vampires as a group given the apt name “Danse Macabre.” In almost all cases, vampires gather together in urban environments almost against their will, but drawn to the city for various reasons, such as the existence of worse monsters in the wilderness, the logistics of travel when sunlight is deadly, and the simple fact that the city has a great supply of human feeding vessels, enough so that no one will miss a few here and there. The forced proximity of these unnatural predators in turn forces them to develop their own rules of society, which center largely on trinkets of position, feeding rights and internal politics.
In case White Wolf veterans think this seems very much like Vampire: The Masquerade… well, that’s obviously the idea. The book says it is “inspired” by VtM, and gives credit to its author Mark Rein-Hagen. Many, many of the book’s capitalized concepts and terms (like the political terms in this chapter and the slang terms at chapter end) are taken straight from VtM, as are the names of three of the five clans. Most of the vampire powers (Disciplines) function in a similar manner to how they did in the old rules. At the same time, the old World of Darkness (oWoD) metaplot is completely scratched. The removal of Caine and “Cainite” lineage changes a large part of how vampirism functions, and likewise the new political factions are not quite as monolithic or antagonistic as the Camarilla and the Sabbat (which is not to say they aren’t antagonistic, just that they can exist in the same city, sometimes).
So obviously the book borrows heavily from what has gone before, but is a completely separate setting. At the same time, those links to the oWoD mean that the book cannot be considered as an original creation. It’s probably best to think of Requiem as neither an original vampire RPG nor a sequel to the Masquerade setting, but more like a “re-imagining” of the premise, much like the new version of Battlestar Galactica. Or that Starsky & Hutch movie starring Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson.
Again, the new clans deliberately invoke the old ones, with Gangrel, Nosferatu and Ventrue being straight from VtM and Clan Daeva being basically the Toreador with the emphasis on their hedonist side. A primary difference is that there are only five true “Clans” with other variants being bloodlines of the originals; the designers explain that this was deliberate in order to concentrate the focus on five vampire archetypes: Daeva (vampire as seducer), Gangrel (vampire as beast), Mekhet (vampire as creature of the night), Nosferatu (vampire as nightmare monster) and Ventrue (vampire as lord). Of these, the Mekhet are probably the most interesting; their focus on darkness resembles that of the Setites and Lasombra but the clan seems a bit more scholarly than malign.
As mentioned before there are new political factions, five in fact, which means that unlike either VtM or the American political system, players have more than two choices. These are: the Carthians (modern vampires who stress social equality) the Circle of the Crone (neo-pagans, essentially), Invictus (the opposite of the Carthians, they stress organization and hierarchy; naturally Ventrue tend to concentrate in this sect), Lancea Sanctum (followers of Longinus’ dogma, which is basically: You are a monster, but if God permits you to live as a monster, then acting in that role fulfills His purpose for you on Earth) and finally the Ordo Dracul, followers of Vlad Tepes, who held that vampirism is a transitional state to something that transcends the limitations of both human and vampire. Again, these sects can exist in the same city, but that isn’t always the case, and a city dominated by one faction tends to have the local “codes” follow its rules (for instance, New Orleans is currently run by the Lancea Sanctum). A player should consult with the Storyteller in this regard; the implications of who runs things are dealt with further in Chapter Four, the Storyteller’s advice chapter. According to Chapter One, in most cases the default is a codified rule of the strongest, in which a “Prince” maintains control by personal power and the other vampires agree to this rule so that they do not have to fight amongst themselves. To build his authority, the Prince often creates an arrangement of “subinfeudination” where he grants certain loyalists regency over different sections of town, or even unconventional domains like the city health-care system. This process also leads to various sub-offices, like Herald and Sheriff, which again will be very familiar to VtM players.
Much of vampire history is a fog because of how vampirism works. In the old game, a vampire’s ultimate power was a factor of how many generations he was removed from Caine, and thus he could not advance past a certain point without artificially raising that generation by consuming another vampire in an act called diablerie. Diablerie, in addition to being forbidden by sensible elders, also has certain spiritual consequences (as Tremere, for one, could attest). In the new game, vampiric power is not so much static as cyclical; a vampire’s power increases naturally over time, or (for PCs) by buying up a vampire Trait called Blood Potency. Blood Potency is the equivalent of the Generation Advantage from the old system; it allows a vampire to optimize his use of blood (effectively allowing him to store more ‘points’ in his body), spend more per turn, and at a certain level increase his basic Traits above the maximum of 5 dots. Potent blood is not necessarily good, though. A Blood Potency Trait of 3 means the character can no longer feed off animals and must prey on humans; a Trait of 7 means he can only feed off the blood of other vampires. In addition, high-powered blood tends to warp the mind, and the elder vampire soon feels the need to enter the near-death state of torpor, which causes the blood to “thin” in a process that might take years or even centuries. During torpor, the vampire dreams, and these dreams are vivid, bizarre and often violent, especially if the vampire was forced into torpor by injury. Thus when the vampire awakes, he might end up insane, and in any case, is not only out of touch with the present day but sometimes with his own memories.
Along with the mostly unofficial laws and traditions governing vampire society, there are three core Traditions that all vampires acknowledge because they are part of their very blood- Masquerade (thou shalt not reveal thy true nature to mortals), Progeny (thou shalt not create more vampires) and Amaranth (thou shalt not engage in diablerie). The thing is that each of these is enforced by game rules. The Masquerade is mostly a pragmatic concern given that vampire weaknesses are known or easily discovered. In the last two centuries, though, vampires have discovered that their images on film or similar media tend to blur, concealing their identities from the public. Given that this effect itself might draw attention, a character has the option to negate this obscuring by spending Willpower. With regard to Progeny, a “sire” discovers that by creating a new vampire “childe” he has to invest something of his core self in the new blood, leading to a debility of will that may take some time to recover from. In game terms, a vampire who “Embraces” a mortal has to spend a permanent Willpower dot to make him a vampire, and that dot only recovers by spending experience points. Finally, diablerie is no longer needed to advance in blood potency, but it still increases that Trait by one, and adds one dot to another Trait of choice besides. However, in the new system, the act causes the character to lose one dot of Humanity (Morality in the core rules), automatically, given that the prohibition is hardwired into the vampiric psyche.
Chapter Two: Character goes over the game rules for character creation; in the authors’ words, the character-creation system “is intended to offer a set of tools with which players can create fictive personas rather than a mechanical device that churns out generic, assembly-line stereotypes.” The rules mirror the core rulebook, using the same points for Attributes, Skills and such. At this point a player applies the vampire “template”: The character gets seven dots of Merits. He chooses a clan and (optionally) a covenant; choosing one of the ‘political’ covenants (Carthians or Invictus) allows a cost break on certain Merits, while the other covenants each teach a certain school of mysticism which is only available to a vampire with Status Merit in that covenant. When a clan is chosen, the PC must add a dot to one of two clan Favored Attributes, to reflect how the body takes on clan traits (e.g. if the Mekhet favor both Intelligence and Wits, a new Mekhet PC takes an extra dot in one of those two Attributes after the Mental Attributes for the core character are assigned). He gets three dots in Disciplines, and at least two must go to listed clan Disciplines. A new vampire starts with a Blood Potency of 1; this can go up one dot for three Merit points (up to 3 by spending six of the seven points). Again, the Vampire rules measure a character’s Humanity (which from this perspective is often an artificial trait) instead of Morality, and an interesting optional rule is that a PC can “trade in” up to two points of Humanity for five experience points each, reflecting some horrible experience in early unlife that educated the character but also eroded his morality.
As in the other WW games, the creation rules stress roleplaying “the Prelude” of the time just before the character became a monster, to get into the PC’s head and to reflect what it is that he has lost. This section also advises players to go over character background, motives, opinion on being undead, etc. Afterwards the chapter details vampire-specific Traits such as the rules for Blood Potency, and the new Merits for Haven (a safehouse or other headquarters where a PC can sleep, or potentially a coterie if points are pooled) and Herd (a reliable ‘stable’ of mortals the PC can feed from). After this the Status Merit is reviewed in terms of how it can be applied to clans, covenants and City (the latter case reflecting a character’s status and influence within the local vampire community as a whole).
Then the book goes over the specifics on each vampire clan; again there are only five of them, although each entry mentions sub-families or “bloodlines” for each. One result of the change is that it’s possible for each clan to have its own unique Discipline (in the same way that only Gangrel have Protean as a clan Discipline, now only Ventrue have Dominate as a clan Discipline). Also each clan has at least one of the physical (stat-boosting) Disciplines, which are here called Celerity, Resilience and Vigor (the Daeva actually have both Celerity and Vigor). In addition to Obfuscate, the Nosferatu now have a brand-new Discipline called Nightmare. Finally, each clan still has a weakness, but the Gangrel, Nosferatu and Ventrue weaknesses are not quite as crippling as before, or at least are more playable than “only feeds off of pure-blooded Italian women” (Al Capone’s actual Ventrue weakness in the old rules).
Then, Chapter Two covers the rules for Disciplines. In using these powers, one change from the old system is that in addition to applying an Attribute + Skill roll for the effect, the character’s dots in the Discipline are also applied, so the roll actually combines three Traits. In cases where the roll must be resisted, a vampire gets to apply his Blood Potency Trait to the resistance roll, and another supernatural would apply their “supernatural power” stat (in Werewolf, it’s Primal-Urge, and in Mage it’s Gnosis). This means among other things that it’s easier for a vampire to apply powers like Dominate against mortals than against other supernaturals, including other vampires. Most of these powers also require an expenditure of either Vitae or Willpower (in VtM, ‘vitae’ was an in-character term that might refer to either normal or vampire blood, but in Requiem it’s both a character and game term specifically referring to the supernatural vampire blood, or a unit of such, as in ‘this Discipline costs 1 Vitae per use’).
Other than the changed dice mechanic, most of the Disciplines are simply tweaked here and there. “Presence” is now “Majesty” for example. The new Nosferatu unique Discipline, Nightmare, seems to be just more and more powerful levels of scaring people, although those upper levels do present the chance to inflict insanity, permanent Willpower loss or even death by fright. What really got changed around were those physical Disciplines. Vigor (formerly Potence) doesn’t add automatic successes to Strength any more, but it does add it’s rating to the character’s Strength in a scene, which also increases the Speed trait and leaping ability. Celerity no longer allows for multiple actions, but it does add its rating directly to Speed and Initiative, and also adds its rating to dodge defense, even against gunfire. Furthermore the character can activate it “out of turn” and apply that dodge bonus immediately even if people still get to go before his boosted Initiative rating. What really got “nerfed” was Resilience (equivalent to Fortitude). Resilience costs 1 Vitae per scene, and adds its rating directly to Stamina, which also boosts Health dots. Furthermore, any aggravated damage up to Resilience rating is downgraded to lethal while the power is up (if you take four levels of aggravated damage from fire and your Resilience is 3, three of those four boxes become lethal damage, which is easier to heal). That’s the good news. Now here’s the bad news: The effects ONLY apply during that scene, and once combat time is over, those bonuses go away, and all that damage is inflicted retroactively, unless the vampire was able to use more Vitae to heal those wounds before the power wore off. So this is not the “elder vampire who can walk in daylight for a few seconds” ability, more like the “punk who can take more damage than a grizzly bear because he’s too hopped-up to know he’s dead” ability.
After the formal Disciplines, the book presents the covenant schools of mysticism: Cruac (the Circle of the Crone’s witchcraft), Theban Sorcery (the Biblical rituals of the Lancea Sanctum) and the Coils of the Dragon (secrets of the Ordo Dracul). Cruac is presented as a very dark school of blood magic, requiring both Vitae and material components to perform. The book says that it takes a toll on its practitioners, with one’s dots in Cruac subtracting from a character’s maximum of 10 in Humanity (5 dots means the magician cannot have a Humanity higher than 5). This is a bit odd given that the Circle is depicted as a fairly positive neo-pagan group in Chapter 1, but whatever. Theban Sorcery is similar in execution but has more of a “Hermetic Theurgy” theme. So if you miss the Tremere as much as I do, these schools of magic are good substitutes for the old Thaumaturgy. The Coils of the Dragon are neither true Disciplines nor ranks of sorcery, but secrets that a vampire can learn to alleviate his curse, presented in three groups with three ranks each: The Coil of Blood (allows the vampire to feed on human blood no matter how high his Blood Potency), the Coil of Banes (reduces the effects of fire and sunlight) and the Coil of the Beast (gives the vampire greater control over his monstrous side). The main limit on these powers is that they are all bought in total as out-of-clan Disciplines, so even though each Coil has only three levels, buying all nine points is as expensive as buying an out-of-clan Discipline to rank *9.*
Reviewing the Disciplines, it’s clear that just as the core rules all but eliminate the possibility of multiple attacks, the new enhancements, including the Coils of the Dragon, only allow a vampire to reduce the kind of damage he takes from sunlight, not eliminate that damage altogether (which was a possibility with Fortitude).
Finally, this chapter details the “Devotions,” which are actually a late-Masquerade era concept for buying “power stunts” combining the effects of certain Disciplines after buying a power stunt with experience. For instance, Quicken Sight requires Celerity 1 and Auspex 1 (Heightened Senses) and costs five XP, resulting in the ability to follow things that are too fast for the human eye to track, in game terms granting five dice to the observation roll. There are a lot of other great examples, but you don’t get any details as to the mechanics until the back of the Appendix One section.
Chapter Three: Special Rules and Systems detail miscellaneous rules concerning vampires, starting with the rules for using Vitae. In addition to powering (some) Disciplines, Vitae can heal wounds (in fact, vampires cannot heal wounds without Vitae), “counterfeit” life (allowing the vamp to pass for human, eat food, etc. for 1 Vitae per scene) and boost one physical stat by 2 dots per turn (the physical Disciplines are a lot more efficient, but a vampire might use this effect in combination with them). In addition, the vampire must spend 1 Vitae every time he wakes up at night.
The rules for vampire blood also concern blood addiction (which can affect either vampires or humans who taste Vitae) and the related subjects of diablerie, the Vinculum (an artificial love for the donor that used to be called ‘blood bond’), blood ties (a vampire receives +2 dice on certain Disciplines when they’re used on ‘relatives’ within two generations of each other, thus the tie applies to one’s sire, his sire, as well as one’s childer and grand-childer) and the creation of ghouls. As in the old game, a ghoul is a mortal who has been fed some of a vampire’s blood in order to create a valuable aide; the Vitae strengthens the mortal and stops him from aging, and the vampire has a servant who can act for him during the day. One change is that as with the Embrace, the donor needs to invest Willpower to create the ghoul, but this is only a temporary point. It’s also worth noting that once someone becomes ghouled, he can maintain his powers by getting Vitae from any vampire, and can spend the Willpower point himself. Wise masters shouldn’t tell their ghouls this. It’s also worth noting in this regard that three drinks from the same vampire usually (but not always) creates a full Vinculum in the recipient. This and the concept of blood addiction means that ghouls often live up to their name.
One minor but interesting new rule is “the Predator’s Taint,” which causes an immediate fight-or-flight impulse in a vampire as their “Beasts” recognize each other. Wisely, the authors recommend using this as a role-playing tool rather than a hard rule which may result in characters killing each other. One side effect of the rule is that vampires recognize each other automatically. However there are a couple of Disciplines that either mask or counter the effects of the Predator’s Taint.
Next, this chapter deals with combat effects. Again, a vampire needs Vitae just to heal, but he can heal 2 boxes in bashing damage per 1 Vitae, or 1 per 1 in lethal damage boxes. It’s also worth noting that vampires treat bullets as bashing damage because they don’t have “vital areas” (other than shots to the head or heart, which are still treated as lethal). Of course, in the new rules, enough bashing damage can kill anybody, and if a vampire takes enough damage to carry over to his last lethal Health box, he is forced into torpor (see below). As in the core rules, any damage past lethal is considered aggravated, and each box takes five Vitae to heal and two nights of game time. In addition, certain banes like fire and sunlight inflict aggravated damage automatically, the severity depending on the source of the damage and how much of the body is exposed. There is no defense against these banes, although Resilience will (temporarily) upgrade the wounds to lethal. But as the text says, “sunlight can sear even the mightiest Kindred to ash.”
After reviewing other sources of damage (vamps are normally immune to poisons, exposure, and lack of air, and cannot suffer from disease, though they CAN carry it…) the book details torpor, which is also caused by being “staked” by wood in addition to getting beaten to “death” or entering the sleep voluntarily. Again, the condition of torpor causes vivid dreams, and the body uses up any Vitae still in the system. So it’s really not a great idea to be near a torpid vampire who wakes up half-crazed and starving for blood.
Next the book details frenzy, the state in which the Beast takes over due to stress, hunger (Wassail) or fear of a bane or stronger predator (Rotschreck). On the bright side, the character gains 1 die to any physical dice pool, and ignores all wound penalties until rendered torpid. On the down side, he is berserk or in panic and totally out of control. In addition to putting a character face to face with his inner Beast, such outbursts cause practical crises, like a threat to the Masquerade or the death of a loved one.
This leads to a discussion of the Humanity (Morality) stat, which is threatened by frenzies as well as conscious evil acts that any character can commit. The difference between vampires and mortals in this regard is that the Beast is in many ways the character’s more natural state, given that over time a vampire finds it harder and harder to remember what it was like to be human. However, “the Beast” is exactly that: It sleeps as long as it can, feeds as much as it can, and runs from obvious threats like fire and sun. A vampire who has lost all Humanity cannot survive long, especially since he is a threat to the Masquerade. And in addition to the core rules for losing Morality (checking for derangements) there are other game effects of Humanity for vampires: Their Humanity is measured as a factor against Blood Potency for determining how long they stay in torpor (a ‘neonate’ with good Humanity and low BP will not stay in torpor long, but a powerful vampire with low Humanity may stay in sleep for centuries). The Beast sleeps in the day, and any vampire who stays up after dawn needs to roll Humanity as a dice pool to stay up; furthermore any other dice pools during the day are limited to no higher than the vampire’s Humanity rating. Finally, most Social rolls against humans are also limited to the character’s Humanity in dice, because as a vampire loses Humanity, his attempts to pass for a living being seem increasingly artificial. Again, vampires who “degenerate” in morality risk derangements like other characters, and Chapter 3 next goes over more detailed derangements, including vampire-specific derangements like “sanguinary animism” (the victims I drank are talking to me…).
Thus, with the prospect of having an eternity to lose one’s Humanity and sanity to the urges of the Beast, some vampires look for a way out. As in Masquerade, Requiem holds out the vampire fairy tale called “Golconda” as a chance for salvation. The legends of Golconda are all rumor with few hard details. The goal is alternately described as achieving harmony with one’s Beast (which might actually make one a more efficient predator) or actually becoming human again. The quest always implies that a vampire must cultivate his human traits like forgiveness and contrition. Given the incredibly personal nature of the quest, the authors do not describe the details, except to “follow whatever suits your sense of the mystical.” The main rules are that if the final trial (the Suspire) is failed, that vampire may never attempt to achieve Golconda again, and in order to achieve this state, the character must maintain a Humanity level of at least 7 and maintain this level after achieving enlightenment, or the benefits go away (assuming he remains a vampire instead of mortal). Naturally, this quest can become the focus of a character’s story arc, or even an entire campaign.
So that leads to Chapter Four: Storytelling and Antagonists. This of course is the “GM’s advice for running a campaign” section. One of the first bits of advice is: “Your players’ characters are the most important part of the chronicle. After all, the stories are about them. (If they aren’t, your players will be bored and probably won’t continue the chronicle for long.)” What this means in practical terms is that it’s best for the Storyteller to negotiate with players in terms of adapting them to his game as well as adapting his ideas to their character concepts. The book advises that players should build their characters with several Social Merits so that they can operate in a certain realm (law enforcement, journalism, etc.), which also helps to explain why a given sire Embraced a given character. It should also be pointed out that the game rewards social interaction more than heavy combat because the core rules do not make characters very durable in battle (to put it mildly). The book says that “Vampire is designed with drama in mind. Drama differs from action-adventure in that characters must make difficult decisions. ‘How do we stop the Lupine?’ is action-adventure. ‘What should we do about the Lupine? Kill it, hide, try to reason with it, or steer it at our enemies?’ is drama.”
Another aspect of this is that when you’re immortal, the things you DO have to fear, like sunlight, are not worth risking. Vampires tend to be both conservative and xenophobic, and Chapter Four goes into much greater detail as to the reasons why they tend to congregate in cities, like the existence of “Lupines” (werewolves) in the country and the simple difficulty of moving to a new city when you don’t know where (or upon whom) you’re allowed to feed. But obviously the spread of vampires around the world proves that they can travel, and the prospects for such are discussed (basically, you need to have mortals you can trust manage the trip, and have a steady supply of blood). The book also raises the interesting chronicle concept of a coterie that flees the city and conspires to make a small town into its personal “herd.”
Generally, though, the default chronicle assumes an urban environment that plays to the strengths of the setting, with its heavily involved politics and quid pro quo arrangements between undead and the supporting cast. This also makes it easier to tie together the disparate player characters and the various reasons why their sires brought them into the Kindred community.
This chapter advises PCs and Storytellers to be florid in their role-playing and descriptions, given that a lot of the characters in Vampire will still be following the customs of days gone by, and gives further GM advice on tips like maintaining a sense of mystery and intrigue (for one thing, making NPCs too treacherous means that betrayal is no longer a surprise) and plot derailment, which every GM is going to need to deal with at some point. At the end, this chapter goes into some more game stats: There is a list of NPC types ranging from ghouled animal to Satanic cult vampire to “blood doll” vampire groupies. Finally, there is a table for awarding and spending Experience points, with some advice for the Storyteller about approving player choices (like ‘A character who recently burned down an orphanage, devoured his mother and tortured people for information just doesn’t qualify for improving his Humanity’).
Appendix One: Bloodlines and Unique Disciplines creates a wild-card element in the game. As mentioned above, there are only five true clans in Requiem, and the Chapter One description of each gives a list of separate ‘bloodline’ families. Some of these bloodlines diverge enough to develop their own characteristics.
The main points of having a bloodline are: You have to have at least 2 dots in Blood Potency and burn a Willpower dot to “activate” your potential; once that’s done, you take on a fourth “clan” Discipline and a second weakness in addition TO the weakness of your parent clan line. A given bloodline may or may not have a unique Discipline that its founders developed. One of the reasons for this is for the Storyteller to maintain a sense of mystery when PCs encounter rare bloodlines; it also presents the chance for a player to design new powers. Thus there is a section of good advice for Discipline design with respect to game balance.
While the bloodlines presented deliberately invoke the older clans of VtM, their conceptions make a lot more sense than they did in the original versions. For instance, the Bruja (note the correct Spanish spelling) are not radical philosophers but a Gangrel offshoot created by a Chicano biker. Likewise, the “Toreador” did not have their origins before the Great Flood, but were created by a Daeva bullfighter who had actually gotten to see Carmen in its original production and embraced the theme.
Appendix Two: New Orleans presents the main setting of Requiem (whereas the VtM original setting centered on Chicago and Gary, Indiana). Obviously things have changed in the real New Orleans since Requiem was released, with Hurricane Katrina and the official (non) response to it causing as much catastrophe as some of the later “metaplot” events in the old WoD. As presented in 2004, the city is a Creole mix of colonial French culture, Spanish heritage, a disenfranchised black population, political corruption, physical decay and decadence mixed with a Sanctum Spanish Prince, his Creole rival for supremacy, and a Cruac priest who leads a mortal voodoo cult. In short, it’s a perfect setting for Vampire: The Requiem.
SUMMARY
Of the current WoD game lines, Vampire: The Requiem is actually the one that least impressed me, despite all its flash and wealth of detail. This is because, compared to Werewolf: The Forsaken and Mage: The Awakening, it didn’t really change the conception of the game or the characters as much as tinker with the background and rules. Granted the other two games probably needed a bigger overhaul in conception, and there’s probably not much one can do to alter the premise of parasitic immortals living in human cities and plotting against each other to relieve the boredom of eternity. On the other hand, the fact that everybody “knows” what superheroes are like didn’t prevent something really interesting like Heroes from appearing, and again there’s the example of how the new Battlestar Galactica took old characters and completely re-imagined them. Maybe I just find the “political intrigue” concept of vampirism to be a bit limited, if not depressing. If it turns you on, VtR will certainly satisfy just as much as Vampire: the Masquerade, with the setting re-tuned and given a fresh start.
Style: 4
Vampire: The Requiem plays to the strengths of both the original VAMPIRE and the new World of Darkness setting, establishing a strong background for intrigue and personal horror.
Substance: 3
However, if you weren’t already a fan of the original VAMPIRE, Requiem doesn’t present a lot of reasons to play the new game.
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