They stalk in the shadows, moving gracefully and unseen among their prey. They are the blood-drinking fiends of whispered legends Kindred, Cainites, the Damned. Above all, they are vampires. Their eternal struggle, waged sicne the nights of Jericho and Babylon, plays itself out among the vampires' grand Masquerade is imperiled, and the night of Gehenna draws ever closer.

UNTIL THE END OF ALL THINGS
This new edition of Vampire: The Masquerade is an updated, revised version of the popular classic. In this mammoth volume can be found all 13 Clans, all major Disciplines, and a host of brand-new infomation on both the Kindred and the...things...that hunt them. This book compiles everything that a Vampire player or Storyteller needs to know about the Kindred and the World of Darkness for the new millenium. Plus, the new edition provides all-new information on the changes that affect the Clans, and on the beginning of the end of the Camarilla. Finally, the first of the Storyteller rulebooks is the best again!

If you have read this far, DO NOT TAKE THE SOFTCOVER VERSION. The ysoftcover editiony that Amazon.com advertises is a GURPS adaptation (GURPS stands for Generic Universal RolePlaying System). It tells you how to turn Vampire characters into GURPS characters, and how to run a GURPS campaign with Vampires engaged in the Masquerade. It is loosely a rulebook for the game, but its rules make much less sense if youyve never played GURPS.

Now, on to the rest of the gamey

The storyteller has the best time with the game. She runs the chronicle with the pride of a playwright, knowing that she touches her audience. She has all the power; she also has all he responsibility. The storyteller has to invent the chronicle, plotting out each weekys saga for the rest of you to endure. While the most rewarding, itys also the hardest job in V:tM. And somebody has to do it.

Youyll probably notice the oddness of the feminine pronoun (She runs, she has, etc.). The writers of this manual have distributed the pronouns in the book to be roughly 51% female and 49% male, to accompany the national division of the sexes. If youyre a male, itys a reminder of the alienation that female scholastics must endure. This book pulls that off flawlessly.

I have two complaints. The first is dice. Most pen-and-paper roleplaying games use dice, with the exception of Amber. AD&D uses seven different types of dice, and three to five of each. Shadowrun and V:tM are each more forgiving; they just use one. This is nice. Shadowrun dice are your normal 6-sided dice, which is awesome. In Vampire, the die is ten-sided, which is much harder to come by. This means no buying in bulk; Iyve simply found it impossible to get a package of 10-sided dice without extra AD&D dice added on.

My second complaint is that the book has almost no structure. Iyd recommend putting post-its in as tabs for the sections that you want to have quick reference to; character generation alone involves swapping between different parts of the book 5-6 times. God forbid you have a rule conflict in a game; my group partitioned the book into sections to skim through whenever people were uncertain about a rule.

Once youyve read the rulebook, though, you donyt need it in the game. The most Iyve ever done is have the lexicon open so that I have my terms straight; you get a feel for what each level of each vampiric power does, and you donyt have to look up Natures and Demeanors all the time. (Natures and Demeanors are personalities that youyre required to take. There is a list of 30 and you take different ones for nature or demeanor).

Overall, this game is splendid. It has advanced over other RPGs to give true entertainment. Focused, fast-paced, and fantastically horrid, some gaming might give you nightmares, depending on who your storyteller is. Some gaming will be a lot of jokes and mudslinging at authority. Either way, youyll scare yourself with how casually you say, yI suck down all the humanys blood and kill him.y At some level, the horror of catching yourself saying that phrase is what the game is all about.


The Start of RPGing for me   April 29, 2002
 12 out of 14 found this review helpful

Vampire is a very interesting game. When I was in 4th Grade me and my friends used to make up games in our heads but something was lacking a cohesive setting. By the time I was in 7th Grade we decided to buy an RPG book, just to get the gist of things. We ended up buing Vampire, and I must say it is great! I've bought 40 other books by White-Wolf in the last few years.

This game is a modern game in the Modern World, not a D&D type of Fantasy. Vampires are real in this game, they live in all the major cities, they pull the strings of politics. They hide from Humanity though, because they fear discovery. Yet they have to interact with humans, because as Vampires they eternally need blood to survive and even more to power their dark powers.

Vampires are arranged into clans, 13 to be exact all created by Ancient founders. These clans are divided into three groups. The first is the Camarilla, most obsessed with secrecy and having 7 of the Vampire clans. The next is the Sabbat, a group of Vampires who believe they should rule humanity and arch-Rivals of the Camarilla. They only consist of two clans but their are other clan members who have decided to join. Finally their are 4 Independent clans who try to avoid keeping any alligence to anyone.

The Rules of this game are simple as well. All a person needs is a copy of the sheets, a pencil and maybe ten 10-sided dice. The rule system is rather simple and the game doesn't revolve around pointless hours of combat but story purposes. This adds more enjoyment to the game, if your interested in weaving a story.

The Vampire game is a good introduction to White-Wolf RPG's and it is not only an interesting play, it is an interesting read as well. I have bought many books just to read them, and even if you don't have a group, their is a huge online community.


Vampire: The Game For The Prentious   June 27, 2000
 11 out of 44 found this review helpful

Do we really need a role playing game where the players get to portray poetry spouting eurotrash losers that all dropped out of an Anne Rice novel? I can be jerk enough in real life without having to role play one in a game, thanks! Do we really need a game that has inspired such dysfunctions as LARPing? Hell no! For those ignorant of this freak show, Larping, to the Masquerade crowd, stands for Live Action Role Playing...or as I see it, Losers And Rejects Performing. If you spot a bunch of 20-somethings in period clothes and lots of black wandering around the streets at 3 AM, they aren't coming from a costume party, they're Larping and no doubt on a special mission for their master vampire.

As for those who insist that Vampire focuses on characterization and story, just what the heck have the rest of us been doing playing all of these other games, picking our noses? Apparently so. This is such pretentious garbage, it's like the only real role players out there are Vampire players. Believe me, I haven't spent almost 20 years role playing and not figured out how to create good stories and complex characters. So don't let these black eye-liner wearing, LeStat worshiping pseudo-goths intimidate you.

Vampire: The Masquerade lets you play a vampire, and you get to caper around with all your vampire buddies, and make sure that humanity has no idea you're there. This doesn't seem feasible as there are dozens of vampire clans, all with their own special vampire abilities. Some aren't affected by running water or crosses or garlic, but they are all so woefully melodramatic that it makes 30's film noir piece look like a trip through Disney Land. It is also a good way for youths to get together and play more angst ridden and disturbed individuals than they actually are. Vampire: The Masquerade players also turn their noses up at every other role playing game out there, as if their's is somehow superior. For my money (and potentially yours), it isn't. Stay away from this at all costs and if you must play gothic horror, then go watch The Crow and play Call of Cthulhu.