How to run Vampire: The Masquerade

By

Cutch

Take a few moments let the idea of a vampire float around in your mind for a while. Creatures of the night, immortality, blood, seduction: All these are common when you think about a stereotypical vampire. But let your mind step outside these restraints for a little while and open it up to White Wolf’s World of Darkness. Vampire: The Masquerade is set in modern gothic fantasy that is a hollow reflection of our modern world. Cities are bland places where the days are filled with hoards of business conditioned people living their practically emotionless lives. Nights, on the other hand, bring out the freaks. A plethora of goths, gangs, criminals, and of course, vampires, make the nights an eerie and quite surreal setting. One of the best ways to envision this gloomy reality is to watch The Crow. (And if you’ve never seen The Crow, stop reading this silly essay right now, rent it, watch it, and be enlightened.)

Vampires are regular people like you and I that have been Embraced, and turned into Kindred, as they often call themselves. When a person is Embraced, his human soul is stripped away and replaced (or at least burdened) with a primal nature called the Beast. The urge to feed on living blood and the lusts of the vampiric soul are fuelled by this new soul. The newly Embraced childe, if he happens to have a generous sire, will soon learn the Kindred’s laws. Some unlucky ones are left to discover these details on their own.

Every vampire belongs to a Clan. Think of it as a familial race, determined by descent from a truly ancient vampire called an Antediluvian. Each of these clans is unique and all have different abilities and advantages — as well as drawbacks — to make use of in their unlives. For example, Clan Brujah can have superior strength and speed, but have short tempers and can easily fly into murderous frenzy. Members of Clan Toreador, on the other hand, can exhibit control over people’s emotions, but sometimes they are helpless when faced with true beauty. These clans also belong to larger groups in Kindred society. The first and most influential sect is called the Camarilla. This sect was formed long ago to protect and prolong Kindred existence and keep vampires hidden from mankind’s eyes. In order to preserve these goals, the members of the Camarilla have set up an integral codex of laws known as the Traditions. The Traditions outline the social behavior that Kindred should follow, including forbidding Kindred to kill others of their kind. The most important Tradition is called the Masquerade. The Masquerade clearly states that any vampire who reveals his undead status to a mortal can be put to Final Death. This pivotal law hides Kindred from mortal eyes and allows the undead to dwell in the mortal world unnoticed. Although Kindred are powerful, mortals still vastly outnumber them and could easily rid the world of vampires.

The second and next most powerful sect is the Camarilla’s counterpart, the Sabbat. The vampires of the Sabbat believe that they have no use for their humanity. They’ve been cursed to drink the blood of the living, and they enjoy it. Why bother covering up your true nature, they ask? Let it free, let it grow, and see where your new vampiric soul leads you. The Sabbat have no need for a pathetic Masquerade, they do as they please. However, they recognize, as does the Camarilla, that exposure to the human masses would mean destruction, and so the Sabbat remains hidden as well. They simply have tossed the last bits of their humanity aside to take on a new role in life, the predator. Both of the main sects in Vampire have a strict hierarchy of power. The amount of power than an individual can have is based on a few things. First, and certainly the most important factor, is age. The older a vampire is the more power and influence he’s likely to have over the members of his sect. Elders belong to this older class. A typical Elder can range from 200 to even 1000 years old. Other class distinction include Ancilla, who are usually a couple hundred years old, while Neonates make up the youngest of the vampire society. Advancement in this hierarchy is nearly impossible. Imagine working in a company, as a new employee, except your superiors never die, retire, or resign. Young vampires have to be very smart, diligent and patient to climb the ladders of power.

Vampire: The Masquerade is storytelling game with endless possibilities. One of the most obvious settings for a good Vampire story is pitting the Camarilla against the Sabbat, or vice versa. In such a chronicle, the players can assume the roles of young Kindred at the command of elders of either sect. Build up a detailed city and a web of alliances between these elders. Keep in mind that Kindred are practically immortal beings. They will spend years or even decades trying to set up their alliances and gain the upper hand. All-out brawls between these sects don’t happen as often as you’d think. Stick the players right smack in the middle of these twisted elder plots and let the players choose whom they want to trust — if the word “trust” can ever truly be applied in this manipulative world. Try to build up tension between sides in games like this. Give players subtle hints towards the real motivations of the elders and let then play detective in this war. They might stumble across some vital information that could truly aid one side or another. Maybe one of the people they are associating with is playing for the other side? Or if you want to try something more complicated, maybe one of the player characters is secretly a spy or double agent? This makes for excellent role-playing as the players discover the real motives of their elders and their fellow neonates.

Another idea along the same lines is allowing players to control elder Kindred. Let the players be the coordinators of this power struggle. Playing vampires that are hundreds of years old can be really fun, but much more difficult. Try having your characters consist of a group of elders in a town that’s both sects wish to control. Maybe the last group of elders failed and the characters are filling the void? Dealing with rambunctious youth can be dangerous and exciting. Let the characters interact with each other and the younger Kindred in town and watch how they try to establish a basis of alliance and power. Have the younger vampires react to their efforts, you’ll get a very nice chain reaction of plots.

One more game idea is using the Masquerade to create intricate plot. Maybe the characters fall into a situation where they’re forced to break the Masquerade. If they’ve done something very serious they can be put to the torch for it. How are the players (and their characters) going to react to living unlife on the run? When an entire city is out to get justice for a breach of the Masquerade, characters take drastic measures. Can the players justify their characters’ actions? Maybe they seek out outside help to protect them — like the Sabbat? Using the Masquerade or threats of the final death can fuel some really interesting, and complicated plots.

What makes Vampire special? Sure, there are secret plots and detective stories political battles, but what makes this game unique? If you really want to run Vampire and make it an exceptional role-playing experience, focus on Humanity. Humanity is a moral code for vampires. Effectively, it gauges how well the vampire holds on to his sanity and self-awareness. As time goes on the Beast will grind down the Humanity of a vampire, bringing him closer and closer to becoming a mindless parasitic animal. This struggle to maintain balance between the moral standards of society and the degrading monster that is the Beast makes for an incredible experience. As a player you get to explore a sinister side of yourself. And as the character you get the opportunity to fight a relentless internal battle with your own soul. The character’s mind and heart strive to preserve his humanity while the Beast tears at his spirit, dragging him in a downward spiral of anger and bloodlust. If the Storyteller wants to make sure the players enjoy a Vampire: The Masquerade game to the fullest, she should bring this struggle to the fore.

Bringing this struggle with personal humanity to the game is a difficult task. The Storyteller has to grill the players about their characters to find out what moves those characters emotionally and play off those emotions. She needs to know what the limits of the characters morality and ethics are. Kindred play vicious games where morality usually doesn’t apply. Are the characters ready to make that step and have their principles erode away? A characters history can play a vital role also. What happens when family and mortal friends get harmed because of Kindred games? Amidst all the mysterious motivations and thick plots that you can have in your Vampire game, if you also include the personal struggle that the Beast presents you will bring out the true essence of being a Kindred.

There are a few problems that I’ve run into while Storytelling a Vampire game. One of the biggest and most difficult problems to solve is simply, confusion. When you’re dealing with practically immortal beings that plot and manipulate over hundreds or even thousands of years it’s easy to make things more complicated than they need to be. As a Storyteller, try to avoid making your plots so complicated that you lose track of them. I’ve run games that have completely flopped because I mixed up plots so much that I confused myself and the players to the point that it just wasn’t fun anymore. The best way to avoid this kind of morass it to take notes often and early. If you have a tricky web of alliances set up, put it on paper. Keep track of what the players did over the course of the game. Suggest to the players that they do the same. (Shameless Plug: Make sure your players read BlackHat Matt’s essay What Makes a Beautiful Player?). Having thick, deceptive plots are key to making a great Vampire game, but be careful not to make them so thick you get lost in them.

Another problem comes when the Storyteller confuses a horror game for simple perversion. Vampire deals with mature subject matter and you have to tread lightly. The undead can do some pretty awful things — abuse, torture, murder, etc. But don’t go overboard. You want to test to limits of fear in a horror adventure but make sure you’re just not being so bizarre that it’s offensive. Also, try and avoid real-life issues your players may have. You could very easily offend someone with something that you considered part and parcel to a great horror game, but that they think is crossing the line. A good way to avoid this is to warn your players up front. Tell them this particular game is going to have some very graphic and mature elements. If they, or you as the Storyteller, think it’s too much for them you have two options. Don’t let them play (which rather defeats the purpose), or just tone it down. You can usually always tone things down enough to still make for good horror. In fact sometime the best horror games are done with subtle scenes that are just creepy. For example, I witnessed a scene once that turned out to be damn eerie. A woman was being beaten by an unknown man and instead of the Storyteller describing the thrashing, he moved the perspective to a child in the next room. The child was coloring a picture as he listened to the sounds of his mother being abused. The thoughts and the emotions that the child had were more disturbing than any simple beating.

One other possible problem: Vampire is huge. More sourcebooks appear every year for an already overwhelmingly rich game. A caution to Storytellers: Don’t feel that you need to buy every sourcebook available. The core book and either the Players Guide to the Camarilla or the Players Guide to the Sabbat are more than enough to run a chronicle with. Other sourcebooks can indeed be very helpful, of course, but make sure that the influx of information doesn’t drown you or your players.

My personal favorite Vampire chronicle that I ran was set in San Diego and lasted over a year. The city was Camarilla controlled and was constantly at war, fighting off both political and physical attacks from the Sabbat. The characters were key members in the battle for control. Just when things were getting very dangerous between the two sects tragedy struck the Camarilla Elders of San Diego. One of the other Camarilla Elders decided to declare himself the Prince. This made the current Prince more than slightly unhappy. (A Prince is the leader of the Camarilla in any given town, and there are rarely two of them at the same time.) This made for chaos among the players. While this political war was developing, I made sure to take time and focus on their moral degeneration also. One of the characters had a niece who lived with him. She was manipulated by other Kindred in town and in the long run was mentally and physically damaged. That character had to deal with the burden of her injuries. Another character was charged with the duty to destroy a newly sired vampire that was Embraced illegally (creating vampires without permission from the Prince is a breach of the Traditions). But when he found out that the fledgling was young child no more than seven years old, he couldn’t bring himself to go through with it. Not only did it make for a great sub-plot, but it made the character keep his Humanity in perspective. The players had a great time trying to survive and get ahead in this game of blood hunts, backstabbing, spying, deceit and personal tragedy.

So bottom line about Vampire: The Masquerade. This modern gothic horror game gives players and Storytellers both a chance to explore the dark side of human nature. Delve into the fears that lie in mankind’s subconscious and bring these creates of the night alive with some exciting role-playing. Try it….you’ll love it.

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Vampire: The Masquerade and all associated terms are property of White Wolf Game Studio and this article is not intended as a challenge to these or any other copyrights.

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