#vtm lore dive

[spell-fox]

Ancient Nosferatu professional "warrener", travels around setting up safe warrens for Nosferatu, sometimes by manipulating kine to delve into the earth on false pretexts then modifying their efforts.

[centaurianthropology]

A ‘NY by Night’ Introduction, for All My Poor Followers with a Morbid Curiosity

I’ve been watching Ny by Night since episode 1, and I have to say that I’m obsessed with how good this show is!  Every player is at the top of their game, the main cast is fantastic (and distractingly lovely across the board), and the characters are so fascinating.  I watched the first few seasons of LA by Night, and though I enjoyed it, I never really fell down the rabbit hole with it.  But this show has exactly the right ingredients to get me deeply engaged, and the core of that is the main cast of characters.

For those of my readers who may not yet be watching NY by Night, it’s a live-play series that airs every Friday.  It’s set in the Vampire the Masquerade RPG system, which has lore that’s a bit too deep to get into here, but the simplest explanation is that all the characters play vampires.  The standard ‘party’ is called a coterie, a group of vampires, usually recently turned, that have been thrown together by circumstance to try to survive the nights they now find themselves in.  There are 13 different clans, or types of vampire that one can play, each playing into various folkloric beliefs about vampires.

I’ll probably be writing up my thoughts about individual episodes, but for the curious amongst my followers who might be interested in getting into a really cool new live-play series, I’ve written this as an introduction to the world, the characters, and at least briefly to the story so far.  This means that the intro contains loose spoilers up to episode 4, so for those who want to go in completely blind, maybe just dive in.  If you would prefer a simple non-spoiler intro it’s this: this is a great introduction series to Vampire the Masquerade, has a fantastic core cast of characters, and is a delightful watch for horror fans, goths, and anyone who wants to dive into a live-play series that tends to be a little darker than D&D.    

The coterie is particularly young and inexperienced in this campaign, which is great for the new viewer who might not know what’s going on.  The oldest of them was turned about 4 years ago, and the youngest having been turned barely 6 months ago.  This means that a lot of concepts and world-building need to be explained to these baby vamps either by the limited knowledge of their oldest member, or by NPCs. This acts as a nice introduction for the characters and an audience who might not be familiar with the World of Darkness or Vampire the Masquerade.

Our newly-formed coterie find themselves in The Bronx, which is currently controlled by the Anarchs, one of three major political organizations of vampires in this world (there are other minor political factions, but they haven’t come up in the story yet).  The Anarchs are, as their name implies, vampires that believe in self-governance and a lack of large-scale hierarchy and structure.  They tend to me more accepting than the other vampire political organizations, but their weakness is their lack of organization, which makes them easy to pick off.  In New York, they are very much the political minority.  

Across the river in Manhattan are the Camarilla, the dominant political faction, defined by meticulous rules and hierarchies meant to keep their members safe and secret. Their strength  is their organization and their unity.  Their weakness is their rigidity and their inability to adapt to changing times.  

Finally, in the shadows, having been kicked out of New York about 50 years prior to this story, are the Sabbat.  They are an organization that believes vampires to be so beyond humanity that they don’t need organization or rules or secrecy.  They are the most in touch with and accepting of their inner monsters, and range from uncontrolled and disorganized murder machines to a highly organized medieval death cult, depending on which group of Sabbat are in play. In most games of VTM, they are the antagonists.

In a world filled with older, far more dangerous creatures of the night, with huge political machinations they barely understand at play all around them, our coterie of baby vampires are particularly vulnerable.  Hence, these 4 very unlikely allies are now working together.

In no particular order (because I could never choose who is my favorite amongst the four, as they’re all amazing), the coterie consists of:

Margot ‘Fuego’ Walker – the youngest of the coterie.  Fuego is the most closely tied member of the coterie to The Bronx, having been born and raised in the area, from a sprawling family tied in with the borough and their politics.  She served on the borough council before a vampire from the Camarilla turned her and planted her back in her own community as an attempt to undermine Anarch control in The Bronx.  Her sire’s name is Rafferty, and he, and by extension she, are Ventrue, a clan that play into the vampires-as-greedy-controlling-capitalists trope.  Fuego finds herself torn between her love for her home and her community and her desire for power and control brought on by becoming a vampire.  She seems to be trying to square this circle by vying for power in The Bronx, trying to control it in order to protect it. She is intelligent, seductive, a master manipulator, and tries to appear less dangerous than she really is.  She is played by Aabria Iyengar.

Serif – Serif is a little older than Fuego, but acts younger.  She has a plucky, spunky attitude and a love for graffiti art. She is a well-known local tagger to the Bronx, where she as been living for at least a while.  She is not originally from the Bronx, and her background is shadowed in some mystery.  Her sire is someone named Argus, and they are Ravnos, an uncommon clan of nomads and artists. They play into the vampires-as-illusionists trope, and she can cast minor illusions and vanish into shadows. We recently found out that her mother is a ghoul, a human who is addicted to the blood of a particular vampire and acts as a servant to that vampire.  It seems likely that Serif’s sire is also the vampire that controls her mother.  Beneath her good humor, smiles, and easy-going demeanor, there is a lot of anger and resentment in Serif that I’m really excited to see play out.  She clearly wants a group to belong with, and she was the first to really embrace their coterie.  She is played by Mayanna Berrin.

Reyes ‘Rey’ Malcolm – Rey is about the same age as Serif as far as turning goes, but is physically the oldest of the group, being a ‘jogging in the morning’ 50.  He was originally from the Bronx, but moved to Manhattan to make his fortune.  It’s unclear what business he was in, but he was successful enough to have a penthouse. He also, at some point, got into money laundering, and was apparently well-versed in it.  Within the past year, Rey was ‘mugged’ in an alleyway, and crawled back to his penthouse to find himself changing.  He and his unknown sire are Gangrel, usually the ‘outlander’ vampires who are most in touch with nature and their animalistic nature.  It seems like his embrace was a touch of irony on behalf of his sire, and Rey has gone from a successful businessman to ending up back in the Bronx with his self-control shredded, massive anger issues, and a tendency to fly off the handle and try to confront every problem with fist and claw.  He’s a deeply conflicted character, wanting to be a gentleman (he regularly holds doors for ladies, stands when they enter the room, etc) and a smooth operator, but ruled by a beast that wants him to give into his basest nature.  He regularly makes poor choices, and is fairly easily manipulated.  Of all of the coterie, he is the least happy with what he has become, and has the hardest struggle with his monstrous nature. He is played by Joey Rassool.

Isaac Brooke – Isaac is the oldest of the coterie, and somewhat their de facto leader.  He was a member of a gang called the Midnighters, who are mostly street racers, though he was apparently more involved in a protection racket.  He got involved with people and things he didn’t understand, and instead of being killed, he was embraced about 4 years ago.  Since then he has made a meticulous study of his new existence, and has become the group’s best source of information about the world of vampires, about clans, and about the politics around them, even though his perspective and knowledge is fairly limited.  Interestingly, Isaac and his sire (a being called Vacla who is male or female or neither depending on their mood) are Tzimisce.  Like Serif and the Ravnos, Tzimisce are rare, but unlike Ravnos, who generally give off a neutral impression to other vampires, the Tzimisce tend to garner reactions that range from distrust to revulsion.  This has to do both with their close traditional ties to the Sabbat, for whom they acted as spiritual leaders, and also for their particular aptitude for the discipline of Vicissitude, or flesh-crafting.  They are vampires that lean hardest into body horror, and twist both themselves and those around them into whatever form suits them.  They are traditionally associated with torture and sadism.  Isaac, however, is both very young and seems to have been made outside the Sabbat, and with little understanding of his clan’s traditional place in that Sabbat or even of Vicissitude (or at least that’s what he claims).  He projects an eerie calm, a possessiveness that is common amongst Tzimisce, and a weird friendliness that seems at least part a push-back against the overwhelmingly negative reactions he gets when other vampires find out what he is.  Despite his clan and the very real danger it puts his coterie in, Isaac seems to care about them to some extent, and has gone out of his way to provide them with shelter and advice and as close to friendly help as he’s able to give. He’s played by Alexander Ward.

These four are still early in their story, having established domain (a very small area that they have been given to control by older and more powerful vampires in their area) of the neighborhood of Port Morris.  They face a run-down new home, an eye-sore of a high-rise building project meant to gentrify the area that Fuego especially wants to detonate, and a ‘monster’ that seems to bode very ill for the coterie and for all the vampires in New York.

Because if that monster is what they think it is, the Sabbat are back.  And both the Anarchs and the Camarilla are in huge trouble.

[awakenedsalamander]

Hey so as a new DM getting into WoD (coming from D&D and Cyberpunk) where would you recommend starting for reading up on Mage?

I’ve got both VtM and HtR and there good sourcebooks but I’ve been told Mage has all the ‘deeper’ lore. I just don’t know where to start.

[Note: I answered this question in typical long-winded fashion, so you can skip to the numbered list at the end for a somewhat shorter summary of how I’d get into Mage, if you prefer. Also, this is my own opinion— I can’t promise it’ll work, but I know it worked for me, at least when I started actually doing it intentionally.]

This is a relatable problem!

So, I got into Mage by picking up pieces of the lore from a distance over the course of a couple years, and then diving into the M20 corebook while they were offering it for free during the pandemic. I read the intro, then skimmed the book, with a focus on parts I was interested in, and over the course of the past three years I’ve read almost all of it by now. It’s almost 700 pages of weird, dense material and while if I wanted to I could have gotten all of it read much quicker, it still would have been quite the task, which is not ideal for a game.

Alright, how should you do it then?

Okay, first, put aside the notion of “deeper” lore at least for the moment. Don’t let the fans of Mage who wax lyrical about how important and wild and vast the implications of the Ascension books are. While Mage does get pretty out there, it does not and should not overshadow the other games. Gehenna’s still coming, for instance, don’t let the incident with what was *maybe* the Ravnos Antediluvian take away from that.

Seriously though, it’s easy to get intimidated by certain Mage fans. They can be kind of a snobby crowd, frankly, and not just in the fun pretentious way. Enjoy it at you own pace, those guys think they know the game— nah. A lot of them just know the metaplot, and that does not a game make.

Approach Mage more like an all you can eat buffet, and you’re getting from it what you want. As much or as little, as big or as small, as focused or as broad as makes sense for your interests. You take the parts you want as you like, and go from there. There’ll be time for the rest when you’ve found your footing.

So, if I were to do it all over…

1st— Get ready to take the plunge—but carefully, and with some intent. Steel yourself with some deep breaths, and grab a book to get started with. I do actually recommend the 20th Anniversary Edition to get started, but it is a lot, so if you’re worried about getting distracted or overwhelmed, Revised should work too. (I personally think Revised is just a bit too limited in its take on the setting, but that’s really subjective.) Don’t start reading quite yet, though, just pick the book you want to start with.

2nd— Be ready to ask questions. I’m putting this up early not because you’ll necessarily have questions immediately, but it’s always intimidating to be confused and have questions, so just know that there are folks in the community who will be polite in answering questions.

I’ve had luck with r/WhiteWolfRPG in the past, but I haven’t dipped in there for a while so they may have gotten worse. The Onyx Path forums are generally fairly nice, though. And here on Tumblr I have to think there are people, though I’m new here. Still, I can speak for myself and say— I love questions!

3rd— Alright, here’s what I’d do now. Read the first chapter or so, enough that you know what this setting even is, and then it’s time to find the parts that you are interested in specifically. For example, I’m really into alchemy, hermeticism, that kind of ceremonial magic, and mashing that into a modern setting— playing someone trying to do this old school classical wizardry in the 21st century, basically. So I’d jump into the relevant sections of M20– I’d read about the Traditions, the faction most into old school magic, then read specifically about the Order of Hermes, the Verbena, maybe a few other factions like the Children of Knowledge and the Hollow Ones, and go to any linked relevant sections I’m interested in, such as the write-ups for Alchemy and High Ritual Magick in M20. I would recommend doing something similar. If you don’t know where to start at all, I’d recommend looking at paradigms, the Orphans, and maybe Avatars. That’ll give you the kind of basic introduction a newly-Awakened mage would get. Also, probably stay away from the Umbra for now. It’s got a ratio of weirdness-to-size that makes it a tricky thing to grasp, at least at first.

At this point you might still be confused, just cause it’s a lot to reckon with, but you should be grounded in the details that you plan on working with. You’re building the foundation, hopefully in a way that’s not too confusing.

4th— Something I find helpful for getting to know a game is making my own character, so when you’re comfortable with that notion, I’d suggedt getting a character sheet and finding the section for character creation, then going through it and filling out that sheet as needed. You may never play this character, but in doing so you’re getting a feel for how the mechanics and setting interact, and you’ll probably start to get some knowledge of the basic Mage-specific rules. If you’re like me, you’ll naturally be curious enough to check out those sections, but even if not you’ll still learn more.

5th— Now I’d say to just widen out from where you are. This may take the form of just reading the whole damned thing now, straight through, but for me with M20 that was still kinda scary. There’s just so much. So I read about the things I felt that I knew about, but only vaguely. The Technocratic Union, the nature of Paradox, how paradigm works mechanically, Avatars, that sort of thing. At this point you’ll likely be familiar with your corner of the setting and get a view of how it fits into the wider whole. If you’re feeling ambitious, you might jump into some crossover stuff— what happens if a mage drinks vampire blood, or how werewolves and the Awakened fight over Caerns/Nodes… I was a little overcautious about weaving in the larger World of Darkness when I was getting started, but I know that’s how some new players get a foothold.

(Optional 6th— On that note, I find Mage is a lot easier to run if you’ve gotten some experience with other WoD games. Maybe run a one-shot of one of them, or even a quick mini-chronicle, just so you know the basic rules and find your grove for Storytelling in the setting. You might feel you’re ready to just dive into Mage, and you might be! But I learned that I needed more practice, so just a word of advice.)

I wish you the best of luck! You’re stepping into some weird and wonderful stuff— magic, mystery, and madness, all that— and it takes some time. I hope you enjoy your journey, and remember, it’s never wrong to have questions.

Other than that…

You’re ready.

It’s time to Awaken. Begin walking your Path.

[the-art-block]

I love all your VTM OCs! (And now I want to make one for my culture whoops) Do you have any fun facts about Merril?

Hey! thanks for the questions!! (Also you totally should, do it DO IT!! DO IT THEN SHOW ME)

Merrill Longriver Fun Facts!

In 1965, Merrill was deployed to Vietnam with other U.S. Marines, and would return in 1967 - short an arm.

He was living in Dallas, TX when he was Embraced in 1980. He encountered his Sire while waiting for a bus that never came to take him home from a late-night solo bar hop.

His Sire, a Salubri, known to him only as "Redder", did not remain with him for very long. Merrill recalls that Redder only stayed with him for a handful of weeks, long enough to issue key advice and warnings, before they vanished. He has not found Redder again.

Merrill has lived in many states since his Embrace, and moves every few years to stay ahead of local Kindred politics.

Whilst in transit to the Moonrise Nation in 2019, Merrill would nearly be killed by Sabbat that located his daysleep hideout. He nearly perished on the following sunrise, but was saved by Revenant "Diving Cat", an escort sent by the Moonrise to aid him.

The Best of Clans, the Worst of Clans

I won't lie, I really adore all the clans in VtM. I love the dynamics between them, I think they've all really come into their own with recent lore updates, and I can think of interesting ways to play each of them.

That said

Nosferatu are the best obviously

I also really enjoy the Ventrue, Brujah, and Giovanni. Such fun such fun.

My least favorites? I feel like I don't really connect with the Tremere like I maybe should... Sorry warlocks. I also don't really vibe with all the random variants of Cappadocian. They've always felt really shoe-horned in, and in my opinion the offshoots aren't really that coherent with the rest of the canon.

Pisanob and Samedi should be their own damn clans, tbh. Indigenous folklore should be treated like it's special, not tacked onto the end of the italian mob clan like accessories.

[tzimiscecore]

Here is some completely unsolicited advice on filling out a character sheet for VtM and VtR games. I realize this may be applicable to other similar RPGs, but since these are the ones I’m more familiar with, I’ll stick to that.

I hope this is helpful for a situation in which the ST wants to get a chronicle started, or wants to run a one-shot but wants to let the players create their own characters. Sometimes you may notice the player is having a hard time deciding how to distribute the dots on the sheets, which may indeed be time-consuming, a potential "wall of awful” (and as ND, I’d say sometimes very annoying if you don’t have time to read through the book) that may end your game before it even starts.

First: someone could transform simple questions in a quiz that outputs a semi-ready sheet. While this isn’t out there yet, there are some apps that make filling out quicker and easier (like this one that includes even name generators) and there are interactive character sheets with PDF scripting (like MrGone’s and Nerdbert’s). (btw here are more name generators if this is the block)

I am assuming a completely novice player, meaning they never read the long description sections in the corebook but want to play without necessarily diving into a 200+ pages “introductory reading” task (the lore will probably lure them in later though).

Some storytellers say letting the players “suffer” through this is healthy because it “weeds out uncommitted people”. I say this is a game, not a startup; it takes a village. While everyone wants good players, and often those are the ones that read the book, we probably don’t want to lose them because they don’t have time to read the entire thing.

Approach 1: Use one of the character templates that are provided in core books. This is the easiest, quickest, and applies to most versions. There are a few character sheets with the dots already distributed, and all. You should check with the storyteller if that fits the player profile they need though (because they may have decided about the “age” your character can be, which impacts how powerful/resourceful you can be). Then you can go and edit the template to your taste/concept.

Approach 2: This is the most “story-driven” one, and fits better if you want to leave most of the details up to whatever happens in the story (I won’t say it’s random because it isn’t), also referred to as “normal” method, usually summarized like this in reference sheets. This is also what most character creation tutorials on YouTube will do.

You come up with a concept of a person to begin with, describe who they were while mortals. You may have a good idea of which style of character you want - if they are to be known for physical abilities (strength, dexterity, stamina), social abilities (charisma, manipulation, appearance, composure), or mental abilities (intelligence, wits, resolve). Based on this preference and on the life story you came up with, the storyteller may help you distribute the dots in skills/abilities. They may also help you pick a clan (or better, be picked by one) based on your profile. So, basically, the strategy that is described in the book: concept and character story come first and determine clan, sect/covenant, how many dots you will have in each trait, if any, background etc. Personally, I think unless this sheet is being done while narrating, it takes too long and is a pain for the player.

Approach 3: Fix the mechanical part first. This is a more strategy-driven approach, to try and avoid future frustration. I want to detail this one better here because I couldn’t find this information around. (I am pretty sure I saw some of this on reddit a long time ago; for example this one). Anyway here is the link for the reference numbers again, for comparison.

- You can pick your clan first, based on the “archetype” you want to play. At least that, you need to read. Do you want to be the pretty one, the scary one, the bossy one, the nerd one, the visionary one who nobody understands, the angry one, the shady one? Do you want to be closer to human society or something completely out of it? For this part, there are even some personality tests, like here , here and here.

- Alternatively, decide what sorts of “powers” you would like to have. Do you want to be fast, or strong, or play with their minds, or become a bat, ...? Look up how they are called as “disciplines” and pick your clan based on that (there are reference guides in the books, but also here and here for example). Either way, each clan will usually give you 3 options for disciplines, and you can check which ones they are in their clan descriptions. Discipline choices are not necessarily a “closed deal” once the clan is chosen, because depending on several things you may want an uncharacteristic (”out of clan”) discipline, but for the sake of keeping things simple, it’s better to start with the “regular” until you are familiar with the clans, and all, see why below.

- Find out where are your priorities to put the traits dots in your sheet (the attributes and skills/abilitites). In approach #2, you would be filling those out kind of more based on how you think your character was as a mortal. Here, you backfill that into the story so that your powers can actually be used. :/ You will likely have a small amount of dots anyway, so why make things more difficult. To do this go back to the descriptions of the disciplines and see what rolls (dice pool) the power/level of each needs when it’s used, and mark them. Those will be the attributes and skills you want to put at least some dots in later.

Not every power will require dice rolls, but still. For example, in v5, suppose you want to have Animalism (basically talk to animals and the like), level 1, to interact with a ghouled animal. That may require Charisma + Animal Ken (meaning it would be frustrating if you had no dots in animal ken, out of all the available skills). For a level 2 power, “feral whispers” would require Manipulation + Animalism, or Charisma + Animalism (so now you know you know besides the 2 dots in animalism, you need to have decent dots in manipulation or charisma). So you mark them to prioritize them when distributing your dots.

- The same applies to whichever predator type you pick (V5), because there is a dice pool for each style of “hunting”. So pick the style, and mark which attributes/skills you need to not suck at feeding yourself.

- Now you go back to fill out your attributes and skills/abilities according to the instructions in the book (the amount of dots to distribute differs, for example 7/5/3 or 5/4/3 across attributes, this will be in the book). You will likely have a good idea about what you want for your character, on whether you want to be more physical, social, or mentally erm, talented. If it’s for VtR, you may already know which attributes are favored based on your clan so it’s decided for you. However, the things to keep in mind: there are trackers that depend on those dots, so it is in your best interest to not have them too low. For example, willpower (the sum of dots in Resolve + Composure), health (Stamina+3, or Size+Stamina+Resilience), humanity (in v20, you need to balance 7 dots among Conscience + Self-Control and Courage; the latter will determine your willpower and the sum of the other two, your humanity).

- You probably don’t want to be completely zeroed out in brawl, athletics and some sort of weapon.

TL;DR: decide your powers first, so that you know where your priorities are for putting your dots, and know what will you suck at (there is no way to not suck at something). After that you can go crazy creating your story and distribute freebie points, xp and so on.

[collectivenothingness]

One of the super weird things about WoD is that you can't actually reconcile all the game lines into a common universe if you believe what they tell you...

Like you can fit together Mage, Werewolf, Changeling, Vampire and Wraith sort of easily enough but Demon and Hunter don't fit anymore unless you make up a bunch of reasons why they have an incompatible cosmology.

Or you can fit Vampire, Wraith, Demon and Hunter together (and maybe Changeling if you do some mental gymnastics). But the rest doesn't fit again.

VtM fits everywhere because it speaks very little about the actual cosmology. All the lore is about various OCs and spooky stories about the origin of vampires that are never canonically confirmed aside from the Gehenna book...

Demon postulates a cosmology that is incompatible with Mage/Werewolf (and maybe Changeling), especially if you take the claim by DtF fans and to a degree DtF that its claims about the world and cosmology are true as gospel. And well Hunter is pretty closely intertwined with DtF in some ways... beyond that it could probably just fit smh... but if you deep dive into how the Messengers are angels and whatever it does get super ridiculous and the fault lines break open again...

And all this probably just happened because Demon was an incredibly rushed production... which is why it is so unsound from both a mechanical and lore perspective...

[ryttu3k]

oh! the way you got into VtM is pretty similar to me! 😆 except I was first introduced to it through some high school acquaintances trying to get me to join their LARP (and one scummy dude who wanted me to play his ghoul and he'd ~protect me~ 🙄😬). and then in college I had some friends who liked general world of darkness stuff, and we played a few short games of vampire, hunter, etc in-between longer campaigns of d&d, so I became a little familiar with the setting. (1/3)

but all of my experience with it came back from between 2000-2008, and once I stopped hanging out with those various groups I stopped really thinking about it, and switched back to focusing on video games. BUT I love the Choice of Games stuff and really follow it, and I was really excited for Night Road. I'm fond of Kyle Marquis' other CoG games so I immediately played it, figuring I'd enjoy myself, but it got really stuck in my brain! (2/3)

after I played Night Road I thought a lot about Julian and the Masquerade and current day technology. the last time I had played VtM, the iPad didn't even exist, and now we live in a society of constant internet communication!! PLUS I was like "what happened to the Tremere? and what's a Banu Haqim? and what's up with the Beckoning?" so the part of my brain that loves deep dives into silly lore went into overdrive. and now I have a huge pile of VtM hardcovers on my dining room table 😁 (3/3)

ahaha, that's it. sorry to ramble in your inbox like this. I just get excited to nerd out about things sometimes 😁

Haha rambling is no problem! But yeah, Night Road is a really good entry point, too, because it is so accessible. I understood it well enough as someone who had vaguely looked at VtM like 18 years ago, used the Journal part to familiarise/re-familiarise myself with the stuff I just didn’t know about (the Messy Critical achievement, for instance), and went on from there.

But yes, fantastic entry point and it’s brilliant and lore-packed for familiar players. Perfect game tbh!

[badass-at-fandoming]

In some minds, these might count as spoilers, but if you know VTM lore, Emma's family history has been apparent since book 1. Also, Beckett worries for Hesha and dives into danger for his, Emma's, and answers' sake.

From VTM - The Victorian Trilogy - The Wounded King, pages 195-199

First Meeting - Vienna Rescue - First Proper Conversation - Flirting - Shelter - Bestial Converstions in the Dark

The rest is under the cut. TW for period typical racism

[vintagerpg]

This is the second edition of Vampire: The Masquerade (1992). First off, check out how fundamentally different the cover art is from everything else that was on the market at the time. VtM enjoyed huge success in the 90s, thanks in part to its appeal with an audience outside traditional TTRPG players. I think the cover does a lot to signal what VtM is about.

Which is: Vampires. A complex, world-spanning society of vampires existing in the shadows of our world. Players take the role of young vampires – that is, less than a century old – and attempt to find a place in a world dominated by antediluvian forces while dealing with their own appetites.  There is a lot of angst, maybe a little bad poetry and the game generally takes thematic cues from the post-punk and goth bands on the late 70s and 80s. Surprising fact: White Wolf trademarked the term “Gothic-Punk.”    

It is a narrative focused game – the Storyteller system is light and easy to grasp. Games seem to take one of two paths – ones that focus on the day to day unlife of the players, or ones that dive headfirst into the vast web of politic machinations of the thirteen clans, their derivative bloodlines and the countless secret societies and factions. If you like lore, VtM has got you covered with its massive metaplot.

Honestly, Vampire never had much appeal to me as a game to play. It seems naturally inclined to soap opera style stories of high melodrama, which isn’t for me (just hearing about the local VtM LARP group’s corny antics in the 90s was enough to put me off for life). But reading Vampire’s lore is something else entirely. I am not one to get lost in lore, but VtM, with its endless splatbooks, struck upon a formula for lore that I don’t think has been matched since. Its crazy and intricate and stretches back to the dawn of humanity. It hews close to our expectations while also radically reimagining vampires. Although we’re talking about history that spans millennia, still manages to strike the tone of a catty gossip session.

Join us on Patreon!