www.storytellersvault.com/product/261142/BITE-ME-How-to-Write-Vampire Rose Bailey managed and oversaw
Vampire: the Requiem's second edition,
Vampire: the Masquerade's twentieth anniversary edition, and God, tons of other stuff. She's the longest serving
Vampire developer by a good year or so, the one I always forget about because I wasn't paying attention to the development circumstances at the time, and - now that I've read her developer guidelines and the notes she's added five years down the line - she might actually be one of my favourites.
Basically: read this book. Read this book if you have the slightest insecurity about how you run your
Vampire game, the slightest inclination toward writing something for the Storyteller's Vault. It is very much a
Requiem product, but a lot of the style guidance and the specific cautions against key acts of shittiness can and should apply to
Masquerade as well.
Rose's point of view isn't definitive. But it is good to know. After all, if you know exactly what the line was trying to do, you know what it is you're trying to change, and that's always useful. And for me, as a scholar of the line, it's borderline essential.
Vampire is a game of personal horror. Personal means grounded stories we can identify with, as I’ve been saying a lot. But horror? Horror is that, when put in those situations that we understand, our characters do very bad things. A lot of the time, this means violence. Vampires rip out people’s throats or beat them ‘til they cry. But it also means manipulation. It means convincing your old best friend to hide that gun for you, even though you know he’s going to get caught.
Vampires exploit people. Viewing the world from their perspective means facing the consequences of that exploitation.
But you know what, maybe they don’t. That gun? Why are you planting it? The cops can’t hurt you, why not keep it in your own backpack? Just because you’re a vampire doesn’t mean you’re a relentless asshole. Plenty of Darkness to go ‘round this parts. Won’t be easy, but you can choose to be the light. And if you don’t have that chance, if players aren’t offered it, then the game is saying absolutely nothing meaningful or fun. Might as well play Galaga and pretend the enemy ships have crews or something.
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