While Dungeons & Dragons stands at the forefront of tabletop RPGs, there are other great games, each comprised of different rules and genres to suit a gaming groups’ particular taste. For fans of horror, the go-to has long been White Wolf’s World of Darkness series. Each entry in the WoD allows players to assume the role of classic monsters. The most popular among these is White Wolf’s first game, the long-enduring Vampire: The Masquerade.
The first edition of the game debuted in 1991 and continues to be in print today, with the fifth edition of the core rules releasing in 2018. The premise of V:TM is simple — you are an immortal vampire vying for power in a complex struggle of politics and bloodshed as the end times rapidly approach. What makes V:TM stand out is the rich and complex mythology behind their vampires, which cast them as sympathetic, sometimes pitiable creatures without diminishing any of their powerful or monstrous nature.
In this world, vampires have existed for millennia and have spread their influence across the world, using the living to vie amongst each other for power. Their origins are literally Biblical in nature: the game presents vampirism as the curse God place upon Cain for killing Abel and committing the first murder. According to vampiric myth, Cain then sired other vampires, gifting them with his incredible powers, but also cursing them for eternity. Cain’s children, the Antediluvians, sired other vampires and established the thirteen vampire clans.
The clans are engaged in a never-ending ideological war. By modern times, most of the clans are split into two factions that have risen to prominence. First, there is the Camarilla, who believes in upholding the ancient Traditions (supposedly passed down by Cain) despite the Camarilla preferring to disassociate vampires from the Cain-myth. Chief among the Traditions is the Masquerade, the vow that a vampire will not take any action that would reveal themselves to mortal society. The Camarilla prefer to call fellow vampires Kindred and their human cattle Kine. This is to simultaneously downplay the Cain creation myth and encourage Camarilla members to remember their connection to humanity.
Opposing them is the Sabbat. Members of the Sabbat firmly believe in Cain and see themselves as his army awaiting his return. Sabbat prefer to call each other Cainites as both a sign of respect to their progenitor and a snub to the Camarilla. They believe Cain’s prophesied Gehenna is upon them, a time of reckoning that will see the return of the Antediluvians and spell doom for all vampires. While believing devoutly in Cain, the Sabbat also believes all Cainites are superior to humans and should openly rule them. Their members seek to shatter the Masquerade, something the Camarilla cannot accept. There are other factions as well, splinters of both the Camarilla and Sabbat, such as Anarchs and independent clans who stay out of the conflict.
Fledgling vampires are created through the act of the Embrace, in which a human is drained of their blood and then fed the blood of their Sire, transforming the human into one of the undead. Typically, their sire inducts them into vampire society, indoctrinating the Childe with whatever beliefs they are aligned with. The newly embraced discover they must feed off the blood of the living to survive, forever shunning the daylight lest they burst into flame. They must also struggle with the Beast, a primal predatory force within every vampire that chips away at their humanity and increases their bloodlust.
To top it off, a new vampire inherits their clan’s particular curse, whatever form that may take. For the Malkavians, the Embrace drives them incurably mad, the Lasombra find that they cast no reflection and the unfortunate Nosferatu are twisted into hideous abominations, unable to interact with human society ever again. Not all clan curses are as severe. The Ventrue are cursed to have selective taste, only feeding off of a certain type of person.
But in addition to their new weaknesses, they are granted immortality, and each clan can channel the blood they consume into unique powers called Disciplines. Depending on a vampire’s clan, they can turn into clouds of mist, move at superhuman speeds, grow claws, control minds and turn into giant bat-monsters. The only thing that limits a vampire is the potency of their blood. A vampire’s power is measured by how close they are in lineage to Cain, with those who are closer possessing greater strength.
Vampire: The Masquerade is a rich setting, and fans of pen and paper RPGs would be remiss not to try out this classic game. It’s seen adaptations in several mediums — most notably a TV show which lasted one season called Kindred: the Embraced, and the video games Redemption and Bloodlines. Paradox Interactive is currently working on a sequel, Bloodlines 2.