White Wolf
Released in 1992, the second edition of
Vampire the Masquerade capitalized on the popular, "personal horror" focused system and the
World of Darkness game line it founded. The game gave players a chance to act out the tragic, doomed lives of vampires. In
Vampire the Masquerade, chances of redemption are slim in the bloodthirsty political struggle between the creatures of the night.
Set in "a neo-gothic vision of romance laid atop today's hyper-kinetic MTV world," the game drew from a variety of historical and cultural influences, though not all of them are strictly vampire related. Every chapter starts with song lyrics, poetic verses, and more general quotes. Jung, Lost Boys, The Cure, Ice T, Lord Byron;
Vampire the Masquerade has a variety of inspirations and they're at the forefront. The game is already distinctly a product of the 90s and such a prominent base of references draws further attention to that, no matter how varied it is.
The vampires themselves are a collection of various bloodsucker tropes, though White Wolf built its own brand of them. Often called Cainites or kindred, they are the descendants of the biblical Caine
and owe their abilities to his curse. Divided into "clans" based on shared bloodlines, these groups have their own unique set of abilities, united by their undead state and bloodulust. Even as the kindred grow weaker with each new generation, their founder's fratricidal tendencies never go away. Every vampire is locked in the eternal civil war known as the “Jyhad,” fabled to end with the oldest Cainites awakening to devour the rest when Gehenna comes.
Vampire the Masquerade is just as much about learning to live- and die -with your fellow undead as it is a tale of struggling with a new monstrous existence. To top it all off, even the most elite vampires fear that the mortal "herds" they prey on will learn the truth. The inner turmoil has to be kept away from prying eyes, as part of the ruthlessly enforced "Masquerade" that stops vampires from falling victim to their own excesses.
Even at release,
Vampire the Masquerade was far from a perfect game but it came with a strong hook, a thick atmosphere, and a ruleset that put story before anything else. Later attempts to expand this blockbuster RPG often ended badly for White Wolf and more recent efforts to modernize a world so firmly rooted in 90s counterculture yielded disastrous results.
2nd edition would later lead to a nearly impenetrable metaplot and some tasteless decisions. But Reading through this era's
Vampire the Masquerade rulebook
makes it obvious how the game managed to rival
Dungeons & Dragons and even find some mainstream success.
Night's Dark Terrors
White Wolf
For better and for worse,
Vampire the Masquerade's rules often feel like an afterthought, as the game's priorities are immediately apparent. Second edition opens with a drawn out, ten page letter from "V.T." a fusion of Bram Stoker's Dracula, his cinematic incarnations, and the historical inspiration. Besides pushing the most obvious question out of the way, ("Where the hell is Dracula in all this?") it also puts the setting as a whole in perspective.
V.T. calmly explains the vagaries of vampire life, the more important social dynamics, and their murky, largely mythological history. It's an evocative piece and the vagueness added by the in-universe storytelling creates a strong, atmospheric understanding of what
Vampire the Masquerade is all about. Even if the concepts covered are explained at length later on in the book, they often fall short of V.T.'s more uncertain view of the kindred's world. Dracula's letter omitting certain information out of either ignorance or even genuine fear set a certain tone, that even the most elite had to tread lightly.
With that substantial primer to the setting,
Vampire the Masquerade gives an overview of its very specific but also open ended approach to "storytelling." The description of role playing comes off as more than a little pretentious but that's offset by childish comparisons to games like "Cops and Robbers." The latter would be condescending in almost any other context. The fundamental message is sound: storytelling is a uniquely human trait, RPGs are an evolution of it, and rules should aid the story, not the other way around.
The subsequent overview of what
Vampire the Masquerade's intended tone and atmosphere is better covered by the opening letter, a recurring issue throughout the book. Dispelling any remaining doubts, it's plainly stated that this is a game about being the bad guy.
In
Vampire the Masquerade, you're supernatural bloodsuckers that barely get along with each other much less their unfortunate victims. The players' "fledglings," the term for newly created vampires, have to confront the beast within or succumb to it. A character is a good person in spite of being a vampire, never because of it.
Of course, who said you
had to be good...
The subsequent chapter is even more focused on the setting, establishing the warped mirror image of our world it takes place in. Things are bleak even before you get to how vampires secretly make everyone's lives worse.
Generational Conflict
White Wolf
Considerable focus is given to the Camarilla, the "primary" vampire faction. They have all sorts of complexities and offices but the central premise is simple. Camarilla controlled cities are ruled by various older vampires, though none are as important as the central "Prince." In addition to holding up the Masquerade, the Camarilla also maintains a set of six traditions meant to hide their existence and prevent the kindred from destroying each other.
In practice, the Camarilla is a blood fueled pyramid scheme where more powerful, low generation vampires lord over their weaker, high generation offspring to forward personal agendas. Their often lethal political games do little to stop even the elders from being manipulated by the oldest vampires, to the point where many don't even realize they're being used.
For all their influence, the Camarilla don't have the final say, even within their own circles. Their foil is the Anarchs, who living up to the faction's name are structureless collections of young vampires who see the rigid Camarilla as an oppressive, unnecessary hierarchy. The Camarilla tolerate the Anarchs' existence but are quick to clamp down on any perceived threats from them.
Other factions, like the inhuman, reckless Sabbat and reclusive, independent Inconnu, are also detailed. Unfortunately, none of them are as detailed or compelling as the Camarilla. As intentionally unwieldy as their power structures get, it still provides more to the players and storytellers (this system's term for game master) to work with than the free-for-all that is the Anarchs.
Whereas the Sabbat and Inconnu benefit from a shroud of mystery, the Anarchs suffer from that same vagueness. This rebel faction is so undeveloped that it undermines the literal generation conflict that informs much of
Vampire the Masquerade. Anarchs would get more focus in the endless slew of supplements from White Wolf's peak but here they have a lot less to work with than the Camarilla.
There's also an exhaustive list of the terminology used by elders, younger Camarilla members, and the vulgar Anarchs. They get pretty hammy and ridiculous but it gives a good sense of how to distinguish each group and convey how vampire's have developed their own culture. Verbal cues like this also do a lot to make a setting feel more genuine, even if
Vampire's own vocabulary can be over dramatic and dated. Of course, that's part of the charm.
The Enemies Everywhere
White Wolf
Regardless of how much they fight each other, the various factions of vampires still have some shared fears. The book offers a range of potential threats to remind the kindred that there's a world outside of their little games, and it hates them. In a more connected 20th century society, avoiding humanity's notice is only really possible in the crowds of the city. The immensely powerful, vengeful werewolves inhabiting much of North America also leaves few other options.
Even urban sprawls are hardly a guarantee for safety. A Vatican backed inquisition, the Society of Leopold, constantly pursues vampires of all stripes. The vastly more influential Camarilla decided they're easier to avoid than confront directly.
Vampire the Masquerade leaves it ambiguous how much governments around the world really know but it's never far from most kindred's minds.
In a good early example of White Wolf's often contradictory writing, it's briefly but definitively stated that not only was the USSR controlled by vampires but communism itself was a kindred plot. That's an absurd plot point, even for
Vampire the Masquerade. It also conflicts with the V.T. Letter's in and out of universe assertion that no matter what, humans still have agency. Dracula gives the reader a humbling reminder that vampires are not secretly responsible for every major historical event.
Storytelling
White Wolf
The Storytelling and Chronicles chapters cover how to craft a
Vampire the Masquerade story and campaign. These sections gets very in depth and offers some useful advice. Much of it is just basic story structure, like mood, tone, timing and setting up a climax. However, it takes the unique nature of RPGs into account and how player agency will affect the flow of any story.
While there's good advice specific to this system, most of what's written can be applied to just about any mainstream RPG. Even if you have no interest in running this or any other
World of Darkness system, I'd recommend aspiring Game Masters give the book a read through. I can name very few games that give this much attention or care to structuring a story around this medium's spontaneous nature.
There are some very novel recommendations about adding common, non-RPG storytelling elements. There's ideas for bringing in flashbacks, B stories, and even dream sequences. These are difficult to implement in an RPG, to the point where this is the first time I've ever seen these elements addressed. While the collaborative, improvisational nature of the medium make sequences like these difficult to pull off,
Vampire the Masquerade brings it to the table and gives some good ideas on how you might approach such a daunting but vital part of storytelling.
A Character Building Experience
White Wolf
Vampire the Masquerade 2nd edition sports an intensive
character creation system. It's relatively simple mechanically but not
something you can do in ten minutes. Players are expected to go in with a
character in mind and generate stats to represent them, rather than
the other way around.
Players are instructed to establish their character's lives before they were embraced. In the absence of a career or class system, that's what establishes a character's skill set. There's nothing stopping you from producing shoddy builds like social Nosferatu and pushover Brujah, as the book puts the emphasis on crafting complex personalities.
Otherwise, character creation can be rigid, in that outside of a small amount of "freebie points," there's a hard cap on how much a player can invest in most areas. Unless points are shelled out to lower a Vampire's generation, they can't raise most things past 5 pips.
Attributes and abilities, which represent inherent traits and learned skills respectively, are both divided into three groupings. The available options are what you'd expect from a gothic horror game with a modern setting, with some interesting additions like "acting" and "finance."
The choices get even narrower as character creation goes on. Characters only receive three points to spend in their disciplines, which are determined by your choice of clan. More interesting is the virtue section, in which the characters ethical values are gamified into Conscience, Courage, and Self-Control. Some of the more consistently important stats, namely the
Willpower, Humanity, and Blood Pool are determined according to a character's virtues. Unsurprisingly in a game of personal horror, these come up a lot.
Background Check
White Wolf
Virtues serve an interesting mechanical purpose but the Background section is the most unique part of
Vampire the Masqsuerade's character creation process
. Creating a character's backstory is probably the most important part of writing any protagonist, in RPGs or otherwise. In my experience it's the part of character creation players consistently ignore the most, assuming they don't outright refuse to do it.
Vampire the Masquerade gets around that by giving the character's backstory tangible mechanical effects.
When investing points in background, players have the choice of giving their characters anything from a vampiric mentor, mortal friends and family, boosting their reputation, or just stacks of cash. They can prove extremely valuable but the player also needs to have names, backgrounds, or explanations for all these purchases.
Following the rules as written, they can't just throw that onto the Storyteller. I think this is a great system and helps make the character feel like a part of the world. The player is given gameplay incentives to work their backstory into the campaign, instead of leaving it as this nebulous set of past events that rarely come up.
In theory, a player could bang out a
Vampire the Masquerade character in a few minutes but the game makes its intentions clear. For all their supernatural powers, characters should feel like real people and players should approach the process accordingly. This should be true in any game but for all the mechanical unwieldiness,
Vampire the Masquerade at least actively encourages meaningful back stories instead of just politely asking for them.
Family Tree
White Wolf
Most of a character's personality is informed by the
player's choice of clan. Representing different bloodlines with unique
dispositions and abilities, most of the seven encompass most of the classic vampire
stereotypes. While the inspirations are apparent, clans are one of the more fondly remembered aspects of
Vampire the Masquerade, and with good reason.
Brujah are quick tempered outsiders, at odds even with each other since
they're obsessed with rebellion rather than a specific ideology. Ventrue
are influential, socially adept dominators that are arrogant even by
vampire standards. Toreador have similar high society and charismatic
stylings but an obsession with art and beauty leaves them less
motivated. Gangrel keep out of cities, as they're physically and
mentally in touch with their animalistic side. The insular Tremere are the
only vampires that wield something close to true magic, thanks to the thaumaturgy that
helped them "steal" their vampiric abilities. Nosferatu are supernaturally hideous due, meaning they need to be even more
clandestine. Malkavians are all insane and have accordingly erratic behavior.
The clans'
mechanical purpose is relatively small but still significant. They each
have an exclusive weakness that'll make the character's lives harder, though some are certainly worse than others.
Each
clan also has three specific disciplines, blood fueled powers that represent
various vampire abilities. Some are rather obvious like super strength,
speed, hypnosis, animal based abilities. Others get very strange,
like Thaumaturgy and Auspex. Most of the powers are vaguely
defined, giving the players plenty of opportunities to use them
creatively or alternatively abuse them.
Regardless of the
occasional power imbalance, the clan disciplines adequately reflect each bloodlines' character traits. Clanless "Caitiff" can mix and match
disciplines as much as the players please but are hated pariahs and castoffs.
Most of the clans have something valuable to offer, though there's a pretty obvious weakest link, Malkavians.
Vampire the Masquerade touting
itself as being about the players confronting their "inner madness" is
already tasteless enough. But having a whole clan that's reminiscent of Jim Carrey's 90s roles and Joker memes isn't just a poor
representation of mental illness. It's also just not that interesting or nuanced, especially compared to what the other clans offer. Malkavians draw so many players solely looking to
derail the game with zany hijinks that it spawned the phrase "Fishmalks."
The
other clans have problems too but none are as disappointing as
Malkavians. The only thing that comes close is Gangrel's entry saying
that Romani are descended from their clan founder. Making a real world oppressed
group of people owe their heritage to a nightmarish monster is more than just regrettable. In other publications, White Wolf would somehow do
even worse, with the thief clan Ravnos
and the entire supplement
World of Darkness: Gypsies.
Mechanics
White Wolf
The story teller system definitely lived up to its name, as though lots of different mechanics are offered they're all resolved the same way. To accomplish a task, players assemble a dicepool based on the "pips" they have in the relevant skills, attributes, or values. They then roll these D10s against a target number. Each result matching or exceeding the target number counts as a success. A roll of 1 cancels a success, and rolling mores 1s than successes results in a "Botch," when things go horribly wrong.
There are rules detailing vampiric actions like stalking around, seducing people, and finding new prey, as well entries for each available ability. There's also more mundane stuff like investigation, lockpicking, and basic physical activities. The descriptions for all these mechanics are detailed enough to offer situational modifiers and applications but otherwise fairly vague.
According to the book a
Vampire the Masquerade session might have no rolls at all, should the storytellers and players decide the story is better served without them. There are some bare bones rules for "Live Action Roleplay" in the same vein, a prelude to the extremely popular
Mind's Eye Theater books White Wolf would publish for the setting.
Even combat is just a scaled up version of the dice pool mechanic, except the successes rolled translate to damage. Instead of wounds or hit points, damage is tracked with more nebulous health levels. Characters go down the ladder from bruised to dead. Even with that simplicity, combat is one of the more complex aspects of the game. There's a slew of modifiers, a substantial list of real world firearms, and special actions.
Each turn of combat represents about three seconds and every combatant declares what they're going to their turn in the initiative phase. This is an interesting, if at times bewildering system, especially since you can change your declared action by incurring a penalty. A character can also take multiple actions per turn but draws solely from the smaller of the two dice pools normally used. The discipline celerity, representing vampiric superspeed, ignores that limit, making it one of the more useful powers.
A lot of fuss is made about Vampire's rules and how easily abused they are. However, power gamers and minmaxers can drag any game down and if you're bringing that mindset to something as narrative focused as
Vampire the Masquerade, that's your problem, not the game's.
Overall, I'd say the rules work just well enough to run an action driven, mechanics heavy chronicle that the writers don't prefer even if they won't actively discourage it. As the book itself admits, the mechanics really are just a means to an end, as demonstrated by how easy checks can be skipped over with the automatic success rule.
Plenty of games put emphasis on the story but its rare for a system to
commit to it so fully while still offering a substantial rule set. The
actual mechanics are subordinate by the more narrative aspects of the
system. The storyteller system isn't the most graceful of RPGs ever
written but White Wolf managed to fully integrate the mechanics with the
story in this edition of
Vampire, without making major compromises.
It's a direct approach to gameplay but it gets around the problems with
quantifying mysterious, supernatural beings starring in personality
driven tales. That being said, all the dice being slung around can get tiresome to keep track of and I do feel Fantasy Flight Games did a better job with success based mechanics in their recent
Star Wars and
Genesys RPGs.
Not Invincible
White Wolf
For all the emphasis storytelling, I'd hesitate to call
Vampire the Masquerade "rules light." Firstly because that's a fairly modern concept. But mostly because there are a lot of mechanics to keep track of, the Storyteller is just given a blank check to ignore what won't work in their games. Even so, the more punishing aspects of
Vampire are thoroughly detailed, if only so players have a harder time ignoring them.
Even without all the adversaries and internal threats, being a vampire comes with a lot of dangers. The game doesn't avoid the obvious weaknesses but rather tries reinventing them. Garlic and running water have no effect. Stakes to the heart just paralyze a vampire and crosses only work for those of "true faith." Meanwhile sunlight and fire are dangerous enough that every Vampire has a deep rooted fear of them.
Even then, vampires are very durable, as most conventional forms of damage can't actually kill them. Certain "aggravated damage," such as beheading and large explosions, can permanently kill an undead. But anything less puts them into a state of "torpor," a deep sleep ranging from days to centuries depending on how much in touch with their humanity a vampire is.
With the infamous Final Death relatively hard to come by, the players are threatened in other ways by
Vampire the Masquerade. Kindred don't heal naturally, so Blood Points have to be expended to seal up even minor wounds. Those are drawn from the same Blood Pool as disciplines. Of course, with each passing night, another point is expended. There's only one way to regain Blood Points, consuming the blood of another living thing.
The thirst for blood, every vampire's sole source of sustenance and remaining pleasure in undeath, ends up driving them to some dangerous places. Drinking another vampire's bond creates a blood bond that leaves them subservient. Meanwhile entirely draining another kindred in the act of Diablerie kills them, raises your generation, and makes you a target of the Camarilla.
Written in Blood
White Wolf
The endless hunger for blood is also represented by frenzy mechanics, where a vampire can descend into a bestial rage when confronted with stressful situations or bloodletting. Usually both. The less Blood Points, the less dice they roll on the frenzy check. Failure results in the vampire launching into a rampage, where they'll do anything to feed.
Almost as important as blood is a character's Willpower, which like the Blood Pool is quickly drained but difficult to regain. Willpower is expended to force a character through stressful situations or certain disciplines, most notably Thaumaturgy. While this is one of the stranger mechanics, I find it does represent how jaded and broken down a human mind can get with the rigors of immortal life. Willpower is regained at the Storyteller's discretion, mainly through the optional Nature and Demanour rules.
If the Storyteller wills it, playing to your character's demeanor earns you a willpower point. Appropriately for the cutthroat world of the kindred, a character's true nature, their demeanor, isn't necessarily the same as their outward personality, their nature. While these rules are optional, it organically encourages a player to run their character consistently, without being as rigid as an alignment system. The mask-like role of the rules also fits the tone of
Vampire the Masquerade wonderfully.
As much as
Vampire the Masquerade is a power fantasy, these mechanics add a real sense of threat to a story. Even with their resilience there's still plenty a vampire has to fear and the various willpower based mechanics show the greatest danger comes from within. The Blood Pool also serves as a ticking clock and creates a need for a gruesome kind of resource management.
Focusing on the removal of agency rather than death or serious injury was a smart decision. It's hard to make such a character driven game if characters keep dropping dead or capture the sort of power wielded by a vampire. Through all this, the constant struggle for control becomes internal as well as external. Even if a character falls victim to these hazards, it opens up new avenues for the storyteller and the players as they learn eternal life means losing what really matters.
Into the Mouth of Madness
White Wolf
With a vampire's agency constantly under threat, even a well-to-do Cainite will find themselves with their share of regrets. That leads to the Humanity mechanic, which operates on a 1 to 10 scale. Morality systems rarely work in RPGs, but
Vampire the Masquerade gets around with the mechanci that it isn't lowered by bad actions, but rather remorseless wrongdoing.
That adds some much needed nuance, keeping in line with the
Vampire the Masquerade's theme of playing monsters that cling to what they were. Humanity has relatively few mechanical effects, besides reflecting a Vampire's descent into figurative and literal madness.
Losing all of your humanity does mean a character has become completely feral and is no longer fit for play. On this descent, they'll likely gain Derangements, representing their slip into insanity. I'm on the fence with insanity mechanics in general. I think they serve a purpose, particularly in Lovecraftian horror games, where the mind and body is pushed well beyond any known limits. However, it's questionable to even try sticking game mechanics onto mental health and the way it usually turns out doesn't help matters.
Malkavians often veer into what I dislike about insanity mechanics, where mental health problems end up as wacky gimmick or actively harmful stereotypes. However the actual derangements are left fairly vague, in addition to staying in the realm of failing to adjust to undead life.
Vampire the Masquerade never gives off the impression that its trying to be a serious take on mental health. I'm not certain if that's good enough of a reason and Malkavians aren't a token in their favor.
Dark Places
White Wolf
Likely due to the short time between 1st and 2nd edition's release,
Vampire the Masquerade recycles a lot of the original art. Thankfully most of it was worth keeping. Whereas the other
World of Darkness games had spotty art direction, White Wolf always gave their golden child
nothing but their best. It's a range of styles and artists but they all share a strong sense of atmosphere and personal struggle.
Some of the artwork, with its grunge influence, dated fashion, and obvious use of photo references, scream 90s. This was before
Vampire the Masquerade became embroiled in its metaplot and similarly the distinct visual style of the game hadn't quite developed yet. Like the rest of the system, the art of
Vampire the Masquerade 2nd edition was more rooted in reality than the labyrinthine
World of Darkness it laid the foundation for.
While this style isn't my favorite, I appreciate its consistency and how it conveys
Vampire's tone. The range of artists all capture the idea of playing characters who are both sensual creatures of the night and parasitic scum latched onto a broken world. There are some superb, extremely atmospheric pieces worked in here, particularly those by famous tabletop game artist Tim Bradstreet. There are some stinkers but by and large the black and white visions of
Vampire the Masquerade 2nd edition is everything I miss in tabletop game art.
Final Nights
Vampire the Masquerade 2nd edition isn't an easy game to run. As much as the book describes setting up and running a Chronicle, it's hard to visualize what an actual session looks like. The open ended rules require a lot of discretion from storyteller and player alike. The same goes for the narrative content of the game.
The kindred of
Vampire the Masquerade are carnal in every sense of the word. You're given plenty of incentives to be the villain and it's hard to be a hero when you hunger for the blood of the living. Vampires already invoke a few different taboos and it's even easier to veer into some truly objectionable territory in the
World of Darkness. White Wolf and their successors offered plenty of examples of this over the years.
Putting everything else aside, the
World of Darkness is firmly rooted in the 90s, with utterly corrupt authorities and the aimless, individualistic rebels that oppose them. It's almost impossible to remove the kindred from that era, even without figuring out how vampires would even work in 2020.
But this is also what makes
Vampire the Masquerade such a prize after thirty years. All of this can make something truly great if you can get a group of trusted friends to properly navigate it. White Wolf created an evocative version of our world infested with vampires and all sorts of horrors, pairing it with a system that successfully captured this energy.
While 2nd edition's supplements and successors would lead to highs and lows for all involved, this lone rule book likely marks the peak of the setting. Just enough is fleshed out to give people something to sink their teeth into but the real baggage hasn't piled up yet.
Vampire the Masquerade is likely my favorite interpretation of the titular monster, both as a myth and pop culture phenomenon.
Regardless of past and future missteps, you can take comfort in knowing that
Vampire the Masquerade got its day in the sun with this rule book.
