Vampire: the Who What Now? (an orientation post)

[propergoffick]

Vampire is a table top role playing game, a live action role playing game, and at least three video games about pretending to be a vampire. And some card games and a board game which involve a bit less pretending.

It exists as two settings/product lines - Vampire: the Masquerade and Vampire: the Requiem - which use a lot of the same words and were worked on by a lot of the same people and essentially do the same thing in similar-but-different ways.

It was definitely created in 1991. By the turn of the millennium, things got a bit complicated, intellectual properties changed hands, licencing was involved, at least one attempt at an MMO was made, and most of the actual people involved had moved on in some way or another. The current shape of things is a bit like this:

Vampire: the Masquerade

TTRPG

First, second, third (Revised) and fourth (V20) editions are all licensed by Onyx Path Publishing. Books for second, Revised and V20 are all available via DriveThruRPG (where, just to confuse everyone, they're still under White Wolf's publisher imprint). If the cover has green marble, it's one of these.

Second, Revised and V20 also have a historical setting - Vampire: the Dark Ages, or occasionally Dark Ages Vampire (because Revised just had to be different). Both of these are, again, licensed by Onyx Path Publishing and available via DriveThruRPG (links are attached to the names 'cause it's a tiny bit clearer that way). If the cover has black marble, it's one of these.

Revised edition has another historical setting - Victorian Age Vampire. Yellowing covers with wrought iron bits on them.

There are also two localised settings. Kindred of the East is a compatible sister game for second and Revised edition which details the very different kinds of vampire found across China, Japan and associated territories. Kindred of the Ebony Kingdom is a localisation of Revised edition, which reskins and reinterprets the core clans, storyline and themes of Vampire for games set in sub-Saharan Africa.

Fifth edition (V5) is overseen by White Wolf Entertainment, a division of Paradox Interactive, who currently own the Vampire IP (and the greater World of Darkness IP of which it's part). Digital products are available from the World of Darkness webstore, physical books/dice/screens etcetera are available from Your Friendly Local Gaming Store or direct from distributor Modiphius. Onyx Path Publishing also releases supplementary material for V5, via Kickstarter. If the cover has white marble, it's one of these.

Hopelessly confused? No worries.

• For V20 (omnibus edition, plot-driven gameplay where your characters happen to be vampires), start here.
  
  
• For V5 (newest edition, character-driven gameplay that's very much about the experience of Being A Vampire), start here.

LARP

Live action rules are the purview of By Night Studios and again, books are available via DriveThruRPG.

Video games

2000's Vampire: the Masquerade - Redemption (available via Steam and GOG) and 2004's Vampire: the Masquerade - Bloodlines (again, via Steam and GOG). Both are published by Activision.

• Note: Redemption has the capacity to create and run multiplayer environments. How well this works eighteen years after release and several compatibility redesigns later I've no idea.
• Note: Bloodlines is barely playable without the Unofficial Patch mod by Wesp5. The GOG version comes with the latest Basic version of this mod by default. There's also a Plus option which makes changes to the game, adding subsystems and restoring cut content, some of which was better left cut if you ask me but never mind.

There's also Vampire: the Masquerade: We Eat Blood And All Our Friends Are Dead, one of two storylines included in World of Darkness Preludes. This mobile game with a PC port was intended to set the scene for V5 and establish the game's aesthetic. It's available on Steam.
2020 update: after the baggage surrounding Preludes writer, known asshole and accused rapist Zak Smith became too significant to ignore, Preludes was pulled from sale.

While it's not an official and licensed Vampire product, Dontnod's Vampyr (for PC, XONE and PS4) is a transparently obvious spiritual successor to the Vampire: the Masquerade titles. I'm not saying they went through Activision's bins and nicked off with everything that wouldn't get them sued, but everything from "aggravated damage" to "the Embrace" says this game's wearing its influences on its sleeve.

There's also the Princes of Darkness mod for Crusader Kings II, which is an unlicensed but popular simulator for the continent-spanning War of Princes that defines Vampire's Dark Ages setting. Personally, I can't stand it, but if you're into super-granular grand strategy games it's apparently brilliant.

Other stuff

Onyx Path also has an official Redbubble store, and has produced a card game about Vampire politics called Prince's Gambit.

A legacy board game, Vampire: the Masquerade - Heritage by Nice Game Publishing, was released in 2020.

A narrative board game, Vampire: the Masquerade – Chapters by Flyos Games, funded on Kickstarter in early 2020. Your moderator will be leaping on the late backer train as soon as it reaches the station...

There was a Living Card Game, Vampire: the Eternal Struggle, which Black Chantry Productions are bringing back into print... soon.

And, Caine preserve us, there was Kindred: the Embraced, a short-lived telly series which did the best it could under difficult circumstances.

Vampire: the Requiem

TTRPG

Vampire: the Requiem has had a relatively modest two editions. Both are produced by Onyx Path Publishing, under license, and both are available through DriveThruRPG. Red cover? It's Requiem.

First edition Requiem was based on the "New World of Darkness" core game. It's a toolbox for playing archetypal vampires - the least developer-driven of the Vampire games, and the most open to individual interpretation and creativity. You'll need the New World of Darkness rulebook and the Vampire: the Requiem rulebook to play.

Second edition Requiem introduces more complexity to the mechanics and adds backstory and metaplot, making it more of a traditional "we give you canon" RPG. It's compatible with the Chronicles of Darkness material (the new name for the New World of Darkness) but doesn't need it. Start with the core rulebook here.

LARP

Rules for live-action Requiem are published under the Mind's Eye Theatre imprint. Start here.


The Storytellers' Vault

The Storytellers' Vault is a DriveThruRPG spinoff site, curated by White Wolf Entertainment, for fans to create and sell content. Mostly game supplements, but there's demand for art packs, novels and resources. Sky's the limit, really. Guidelines and resources for Storyteller's Vault creators are here. The house particularly recommends the Style Guides for each of the product lines as well as Bite Me by Rose Bailey, the Vampire line's longest-serving developer.

I bet that's cleared up precisely nothing.

Comments

[cutecabaret]

I'm gonna be upfront and admit the things that had me squinting at Bite Me are entirely nitpicky (I also haven't read it more than once.) (content note for noncon)

1. The bit about how to never ever use the actual discipline names in game makes no sense to me - you're telling me vampire society which has been around since the fall of Rome at least, never ever came up with their OWN terms to call their superpowers?
2. That one bit about how Vampire is not and never will be a game about noncon irked me because first of all, noncon fantasies are a kink for some people, two, if you say your game has sex and violence as a theme, to try to prohibit the most common form of interplay of sex and violence seems like...I dunno, it made me squint. OF COURSE content like that should be opt in and everybody has the right to leave a table they aren't comfortable with but...well, it brings me to my next issue:
3. There seems to be a lowkey undertone of "this is how the game I worked on OUGHT TO BE PLAYED because I said so" and yes, I know there's tons of disclaimers of how these are all just suggestions and you can do what you want, but...I dunno, it bothered me. Like I said, I'm aware I'm nitpicking.

As for the book issue, I primarily use pdfs and play via roll20 anyway, so maybe you can try that route? I still haven't figured out how play by post ought to work with the ruleset or else I'd try my hand at that at some point.

[propergoffick]

I've read it once all the way through and then patchily again while referencing it. And this isn't me saying YOUR NITPICKS ARE WRONG AND YOU ARE WRONG ALSO or anything weird like that.

1) Probably thought of 'em, forgot 'em, made up new ones that were more with the times, and so on. V5's set of three or four nicknames for the Discipline probably did a better job of it. I think she wanted to avoid that thing where people put game terms in the fiction they wrote for the line, over and over again, and went a bit too hard on preventing it. (A couple of days ago, Rose tweeted about how she overexplained and overemphasised some things because she was trying to preempt certain kinds of response, and I wonder if this isn't an example of that tendency in action?)

2) I'm somewhat wary of this one because - yeah, noncon fantasies are a valid kink, and I think there's always something inherently dubconny about vampires in general, but I've been proper crucified in some communities for advancing that viewpoint and - OK, Rose claims Bite Me was written in retrospect and I think it's easy to make claims about what you never allowed in retrospect when on the job you were probably making more judgement calls on an "if in doubt say no" kind of basis? Maybe?

3) Yeah. But I don't mind that. I don't have to listen to the developers but I do like them to tell me outright how they think things should work. And also: it is a guide to writing Vampire rather than playing it, and I think saying THE ONYX PATH PARTY LINE ON MY WATCH WAS LIKE THIS is a bit different.

Book issue? I... don't think I mentioned one.

[cutecabaret]

Ah, no, I mean how you said that because VTM is the popular one, it's the one sold in stores. I buy all mine in PDF form online so I don't have the problem of not being able to find it in physical stores.

It's my opinion that those communities suck, then, because yes, vampires have ALWAYS had a noncon element. It's kind of part of the genre.

3 only irked me because current Onyx Path books, as much as I love them, have recently have had this trend of like...repeating the same warnings and content notes in side bars throughout the whole book, and it's like "I read this warning in the corebook, you don't have to tell me every chapter in the supplement." It's a personal nitpick, lol.

I do actually miss Rose as a developer because as much as I love req 2e, the most recent supplement books are kind of hit or miss and my chief complaint is that the writers keep mixing up editions and fluff and lore between requiem editions and even Masq vs Req or they have a weird ratio of fluff to crunch.

[propergoffick]

Ah, I get you. I was thinking a bit more broad than "running my game" - what I mean is that Masquerade has additional visibility that comes from actual distribution and store shelf presence, and so it's the one people are more likely to pick up and get into first and so on.

In my considered opinion those communities do indeed suck chodes and I'm glad to be out of them. Good people can be rubbish sometimes.

I can understand being pissed off by that level of cautionary sidebarring, for sure. All I can say in its defence is that you have to tell The Gamers (you know the ones I mean) everything five times before they pick up on it.

I haven't looked into any of the supplements for 2e yet, but that sounds... undisciplined. And not good. But I think a lot of the attention is on V5 at the minute, since Dawkins hath inherited the earth and is getting to do the Hecata/blood cults book he's always wanted to. (I'm not jealous AT ALL, especially not since I pitched my version the same week OPP announced theirs...)

[cutecabaret]

You know, I really want to give them the benefit of the doubt with being distracted by V5 but...this is literally the 3rd book in a row that's had the "we don't know what edition or game line we're talking about" issue. I'd say:

Secrets of the Covenants: The only real value imo is the last chapter full of merits and stuff, which you can find on WODCODEX with enough context to use them, really. It's styled like the 1e clanbooks except it's almost impossible for me to read the actual covenant blurbs because it's all weird font on collage art backgrounds. If you're short on cash, skip it.

Thousand Years of Night: Worth it, doesn't get the editions mixed up TOO bad, but it's skewed more in fluff on the fluff/mechanic balance and doesn't really give much info on methuselahs. Very easy to work around, though.

Half-Damned: also worth it! Has more of the edition confusion issue and is more mechanic heavy except it contradicts itself in the fluff a lot and never answers the very important question of whether vampire/human intercourse ALWAYS spawns a dhampir or not.

Guide to the Night: Skip this one. Has the worst edition kerfluffle and isn't even saved with anything useful because although the settings are intriguing (minus one I have issues with), all of the merits and mechanics are sort of only useful for those settings. The social combat system just....is another rehash of the multiple attempts to use social stats to attack with in specific contexts. The overview of how to run the clans and covenants are where we get the bulk of "do they even know what game they're writing for?" Honestly I kind of wish Drivethrurpg had a return policy for pdfs because I regret buying this one.