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Characters are fledgling bloodsuckers engrossed in the Masquerade, a giant practical joke that vampires have played on mortals since the Inquisition. The undead keep their society secret, so that humans think the spooky neck nibblers are only legend and myth. But vampires are very real, and now you too can be one!
Overview:
Creating a vampire for V:tM is a complex process. It's not difficult, just drawn out. It’s very involved because of the system dynamics (more on that later), but it’s still just a step-by-step procedure.
Characters are designed with each player choosing a vampire Clan. Each Clan has powers that they’re most adept at, and has attitudes and appearances shared by the majority of the clan members. For example, Brujah are rowdy vampires such as bikers and skinheads, who often are physically powerful and blindingly fast. Gangrel are rustic, nature-loving blood drinkers with a bent towards shapeshifting. Ventrue are the aristocratic caste, good with money, and possessing a commanding presence. The Nosferatu are deformed, hideous monsters who excel at deception and stealth. There are many other Clans to choose from, all equally intriguing.
Each character then optionally chooses a Nature and a Demeanor. A Nature is simply an archetype personality for your vampire, such as caregiver, child, bon vivant, joker, loner, etc. A Demeanor is chosen exactly like a nature, except that the Demeanor is the personality you outwardly show towards other people, whereas your Nature determines your PCs true feelings about life.
The rest of your character’s info is rated by “points”; the more points, the better. (I’ll address the significance of points more a bit later.) Vampires have three Attribute areas: Physical, Social, and Mental. Players decide which area they’d like to be most, moderately, and least good at, and assign points to these attributes. The attributes are fairly self-explanatory, yes?
(Stick with me here…) Then, PCs have three Abilities, which are Talents, Skills, and Knowledges. Talents are tasks you’re naturally good at, Skills are things you’ve learned through training, and Knowledges are your book smarts and intelligence. Again, players decide which of these areas they’re most, moderately, and least good at, and assign points accordingly to these Abilities.
PCs then have a whole slew of specific Talents, Skills, or Knowledges underneath these three general Abilities to be proficient in. (The V:tM rule book doesn’t give these specific choices a name, so I’m gonna call ‘em “sub-abilities”.) These are things like acting, athletics, brawling, streetwise, firearms, driving, law, sciences, languages, etc. Players invest points allotted to them by their corresponding general Ability scores to choose the level of expertise they have in their sub-abilities. Allot your points wisely; spending several points in one sub-ability will make your vampire a kick-ass expert in that field, but the trade-off is that you won’t have many other sub-abilities, and therefore are a less well-rounded horror of the night.
To finish up your vampire, you may also use points to buy advantages such as having a mentor, being rich, being of an older generation of undead (older vampires are more powerful), having mortal servants, that sort of thing. But the areas you should give serious consideration to are your Blood Pool, your Willpower, and your Humanity. These scores dictate (respectively): how often you must feed and how fast you heal, how well you resist mental influences or stimuli that might adversely affect your self-control, and most importantly, how in touch with her human side your undead immortal bloodsucking fiend is.
You see, doing vile or evil things will lower your Humanity score. And a low Humanity may cause your vampire to succumb to the Beast, unless you have the Willpower to keep control of yourself. The Beast is the animalistic, savage side to vampirism, and if your Humanity ever drops to zero, your PC is out of the game, controlled by the GM as just a ravenous, mad creature of the night, lost to its eternal bloodlust. Eeeeww!
Now, your scores (points) in all these friggin’ attributes, abilities, sub-abilities, virtues, advantages, etc, etc, etc. are important because they dictate how many dice you’ll roll to accomplish various actions during the game. Vampire uses d10’s to resolve all actions. The GM assigns a difficulty number (2-10) for any task, and this is the number a player must roll on a d10 to accomplish that task. Your points determine how many ten-siders you roll, so naturally rolling more dice gives you more chances to get a success. The more successes you get (by rolling more than one die that beats the difficulty number), the better your vampire does at the task. Easy!
So, what’s the game about? Yes, your PCs are vampires, most likely new to the world of the undead. As in most vampire stories, PCs are far more powerful than the mortal human chattel they prowl through the midst of at night. However, they also have all the weaknesses; PCs can’t go out in daylight (or they become flambé), must drink blood to survive, and can be staked or burned by humans who discover their true nature. All this is well and good, but the life of a PC is usually even more interesting than that.
You see, the Masquerade hides vampires from humans, but it also hides the eternal Jyhad of the undead. The different Clans are constantly fighting over territory, honor, rights, power, you name it. Their plots against each other would shame Machiavelli. The masterminds of the Jyhad are the Methuselahs. These ancient vampires, millennia old, engage in the Jyhad to further their own diabolical ends, using the younger undead as their pawns. The PCs are likely at some point to be swept up into this eternal power struggle, as ambassadors, servants, soldiers, allies, or targets. What fun!
But the heart of the game is keeping your vampire sane and preserving whatever shreds of Humanity you can hold on to, so as not to give in to the Beast and become a monster. This is done through roleplaying your PC’s motives, goals, demeanor, and unlife as sympathetically as you can. PCs are very powerful compared to the NPC mortals they live amongst, but destroying life sends a PC slipping towards the loss of Humanity. Considering that they must drink the lifeblood of these living creatures around them, that seems like kind of a tough deal, eh? Oh, did I mention that breaking the Masquerade and allowing humans to discover that vampires exist will bring down a Blood Hunt on you by every other vampire in the city, pretty much sealing your doom? Too bad, buddy. Nobody said the life of a vampire was easy.
I should note that it’s entirely possible to play Vampire in a non-traditional campaign. Your setting doesn’t have to be a dark, bleak, gothic, stereotypical vampire story. There’s nothing in the rules to prevent you from playing any nature of scenarios. Your vampire could easily be a renowned archaeologist, recovering lost artifacts by night. Or a superhero of sorts, protecting the innocent humans from other, more villainous undead bent on dominating them. Or a cop, who uses her superhuman abilities to catch the mortal bad guys. Whatever. Vampires don’t all saunter broodingly around mansions in New Orleans, after all.
The GOOD: The dice system is elegant. The task/ difficulty resolution mechanics are beautifully simple, and allow for quick determination of outcomes of any situation.
I’ve always loved vampires, so a role playing game devoted to them was a must-have for me (although it took a decade for me to pick up my own copy of the rules). The rules cover every bit of vampire lore and life thoroughly. While I have only the main rule book and the Players Guide, there are many, many sourcebooks out there for this game, adding to the number of clans, skills, and goodies you can slip into your game.
While the PC creation system is very involved, it turns out some truly interesting characters, with a wide variety of skills and personalities.
The Players Guide not only provides MUCH useful equipment (armored personnel carrier? Check!), new clans and powers, and variant rules, but also adds Flaws and Advantages to your vampire. These allow you to manipulate your points a bit more, and theoretically make for more developed or interesting PCs. [While I personally find “flaw/ advantage” mechanics trite and silly in practically any game system, those of you who enjoy this type of thing should be well pleased.]
The NEUTRAL:
The authors spend both great energy and amounts of text to explain that the World of Darkness your vampires live in is an oppressive, threatening, angst-ridden world, and that your vampire PCs are melodramatic, angsty souls tormented by their morbid existence and caught in the throes of spiritual crisis and moral ambiguity. And angst.
Yeah, ok, we get it. Lighten up, man, it’s just a game. What if my vampire is happy to be undead, cuz now he can spend 250 years beating level 26 of his Playstation Tomb Raider? I understand that most traditional vampire legends have a thick atmosphere of tragedy about them, but seriously, this is just a game. While I understand that White Wolf wants to create mood, there’s a difference between suggesting an atmosphere and beating me over the head with it.
The EVIL: What the hell’s up with the dots? On the character sheet, and in the rules, the points allotted towards your various traits are marked with “dots”, which you fill in, representing your score. What’s wrong with just writing a freaking numeral “5” instead of painstakingly coloring in five tiny dots? Especially since there are so many scores to note on a PC sheet. It’s like filling in some Satanic SATs or something. It’s not as easy to count dots anyway, as it is to just glance at a number for the purposes of making a roll. I suppose the designers wanted some snazzy mechanic to set their product apart, but taking a simple idea (writing down a number) and making it far more time-consuming and complex than it had to be (connect the dots!) is just dippy.
I also should note that while I like the vast majority of vampire Clans presented in the abundant sourcebook material, the Malkavians in the main rules seem like a simply retarded idea to me. The clan is (literally) insane, and characters have some chronically recurring psychosis or other mental quark that makes them unstable and unpredictable, even to allies. This clan just shrieks “Game Distraction”. I think they make for perfectly wonderful NPCs, but I would never allow any of my players to choose this clan. Bizarre that it was included, and kept, in the rules.
Being the vampire aficionado that I am, I would enjoy spending some time playing Masquerade on a regular basis. The basic system is smooth, and the game is creative while remaining loyal to mythology. I’m told by avid players that the entire collection of World of Darkness games [which includes such rpgs as Werewolf: the Apocalypse, Mage: the Ascension, Mummy: the Resurrection, and Doorman: the Bouncing) are generally compatible, so your vampire characters could interact with your mages or werewolves or changelings or what have you. So, from a support standpoint, there’s always room to expand your vampires’ world outside the V:tM rules if that sort of thing crackles your Krispies.
Plus, who could resist blurting out “Ah vant to suck yor bluuuud!” in an outrageous Slavic accent?
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