Vampire: The Masquerade – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Vampire: The Masquerade is a role-playing game (RPG) created by Mark Rein-Hagen and released in 1991 by White Wolf Publishing as the first of several Storytelling System games for its World of Darkness setting line.[1]

It is an RPG set in a fictionalized "gothic-punk" version of the modern world, where players assume the roles of vampires, who are referred to as "Kindred", and deal with their night-to-night struggles against their own bestial natures, vampire hunters and each other.[2] In 1992, Vampire: The Masquerade won the Origins Award for Best Roleplaying Rules of 1991.[3] The game line was discontinued in 2004 followed by a revision of the setting in Vampire: The Requiem.

A 20th Anniversary Edition of Vampire: The Masquerade was printed in 2011 and the game was officially revived as part of White Wolf Publishing's shift to a print on demand business model,[4] and multiple new Masquerade products have been announced.[5] All of White Wolf's tabletop roleplaying games are now owned and published by Onyx Path Publishing, including Vampire.[6]

Several associated products were produced based on Vampire: the Masquerade, including dice, collectible card games (Vampire: The Eternal Struggle), video games (Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines and Vampire: The Masquerade Redemption), and numerous novels. In 1996, a short-lived but successful television show loosely based on the game, Kindred: The Embraced, was produced by Aaron Spelling for the Fox Broadcasting Company.

The game uses the cursed and immortal vampiric condition as a backdrop to explore themes of morality, depravity, the human condition (or appreciation of the human condition in its absence), salvation, and personal horror. The gloomy and exaggerated version of the real world that the vampires inhabit, called the "World of Darkness," forms an already bleak canvas against which the stories and struggles of characters are painted. The themes that the game seeks to address include retaining the character's sense of self, humanity, and sanity, as well as simply keeping from being crushed by the grim opposition of mortal and supernatural antagonists and, more poignantly, surviving the politics, treachery, and often violent ambitions of their own kind.

Vampire is based on the Storytelling System. In addition to the general Storytelling rules, it uses a number of specific mechanics aimed towards simulating the vampiric existence. A vampire has a blood pool signifying the amount of human blood or vitae currently in their body; this blood can be spent to power abilities and perform supernatural tricks. These tricks simulate many of those portrayed on film, such as turning into animals or mist, sleeping in the ground or having unnatural charisma and powers of hypnotic suggestion.

Close to the central theme of the game is the Humanity mechanic. Each vampire has a Humanity score, measuring how closely in touch with his human nature the vampire is; as it decreases, the vampire becomes more susceptible to his Beast, the feral side of the vampiric soul that is driven entirely by rage and hunger. Brutal, immoral actions risk lowering a vampire's Humanity score. If the individual's Humanity drops to zero, the Beast takes over and the vampire is in a state of constant frenzy known as Wassail.

The actions taken during gameplay are expressed using ten-sided dice. The number of dice used correspond to the player's current skill level, often based on two different skills that together represent the player's ability. For example, to land a punch, the character's dexterity and brawl skill are combined. The resulting number is the number of die rolled to perform the task. It is up to the story teller to set how high a dice roll must be to be considered a success (usually 6 for standard actions).

In the World of Darkness, most vampires in the game refer to themselves and their race as "Kindred" although some vampires, specifically members of the Sabbat faction, refer to themselves as "Cainites" as the curse that transforms them into vampires is said to have originated from the blood of Caine. The term "Kine", an archaic term for cattle, refers to humans.

Characters within the Vampire setting are members of one of the vampiric clans or minor bloodlines and usually belong to factions associated with these or that reflect a general ideological stance the characters happen to share. For example, a vampire of the Brujah bloodline might identify as a member of the Camarilla, Sabbat or Anarchs sects but very few Tremere vampires would be found among the Sabbat and even more rarely among the Anarchs. Some clans and most of the minor bloodlines declare themselves independent from any sects. A vampire who rejects all associations with any sect and clan is known as "Autarkis". Laibon, called Kindred of the Ebony Kingdom by Western Kindred, are not so much a sect as a cultural group bound together loosely by a powerful spiritual bond to the land and the people of Africa.

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Vampire: The Masquerade - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Reviewed and Recommended by Erik Baquero