Welcome to Vampire: The Masquerade

Vampire: The Masquerade is a roleplaying game. It is a beautifully illustrated, hardcover book that details the passions and powers of mythic vampires. It gives you rules for creating your own vampire character, and describes the dark and compelling world in which your vampire exists. What happens next is up to you.

This booklet is a simplified version of Vampire: The Masquerade. It gives you the highlights of the Vampire setting and rules, the information you need to play a game.

Try it out. If you like it, the rulebook is available in most book, hobby and comic stores. When you're ready, we'll be there - waiting for you to invite us in.

Storytelling

The rules pamphlet you hold provides an introductory look at Vampire: The Masquerade, a storytelling game from White Wolf Publishing. With the rules in this kit, you and your friends are able to take the roles of night-stalking vampires and tell stories about the characters' triumphs, failures, dark deeds and glimmerings of goodness.

In a lot of ways, storytelling resembles games such as How to Host a Murder. Players take the role of a character - in this case, a vampire - and engage in a form of improvisational theatre, saying what the vampire would say and describing what the vampire would do.

In a storytelling game, players take their characters through adventures, called (appropriately enough) stories. Stories are told through a combination of the wishes of the players and the directives of the Storyteller (see below).

Players and Storytellers

Most people who play Vampire are players. They create vampire characters - imaginary protagonists similar to those found in novels, films and comics. In each group, however, one person must take the role of the Storyteller. The Storyteller acts as a combination director, moderator, narrator and referee. The Storyteller creates the drama through which the players direct their characters. The Storyteller also creates and takes the roles of supporting cast - both allies with whom the characters interact, and antagonists against whom the characters fight. The Storyteller invents the salient details of the story setting - the bars, nightclubs, businesses and other institutions the characters frequent. The players decide how their characters react to the situations in the game, but it is the Storyteller (with the help of the rules) who decides if the characters actually succeed in their endeavors and, if so, how well. Ultimately, the Storyteller is the final authority on the events that take place in the game.

Example: Rob, Brian, Cynthia and Alison have gathered to play Vampire. Rob, Brian and Cynthia are players: Rob is playing Baron d'Havilland, a Ventrue aristocrat; Brian is playing Palpa, a Nosferatu sewer-dweller; and Cynthia is playing Maxine, a Brujah street punk. Alison is the Storyteller, and has decreed that the characters have been brought before the vampire prince of the city to face judgment. The players may now decide what to do: Rob, speaking as Baron d'Havilland, may try to smooth-talk his way out of the prince's ire; Cynthia, as Maxine, may angrily denounce the prince as a "fascist"; and Brian, as Palpa, may simply decide to use magical invisibility to flee the situation. Ultimately, though, it is Alison, the Storyteller, who determines the prince's reaction to the characters' words or acts; it is Alison, speaking as the prince, who roleplays the prince's reaction; and it is Alison who determines whether the characters' actions, if any, succeed or fail.

What Is a Vampire?

Storytelling and roleplaying games may feature many kinds of protagonists. In TSR's Dungeons & Dragons, players assume the roles of heroes in a fantasy world. In Hero Games' Champions, players take on the roles of superheroes. In Vampire, appropriately enough, players assume the personas of vampires - the immortal bloodsuckers of the horror genre - and guide these characters through a world virtually identical to our own.

The vampires who walk the Earth in modern nights are both similar to and different from what we might expect. It is perhaps best to begin our discussion of the undead as if they were a separate species of being - sentient, with superficial similarities to the humans they once were, but displaying a myriad of physiological and psychological differences.

In many ways, vampires resemble the familiar monsters of myth and cinema. (There is enough truth in the old tales that perhaps they were created by deluded or confused mortals.) However - as many an intrepid vampire hunter has learned to his sorrow - not all of the old wives' tales about vampires are true.

Vampires are living dead, and must sustain themselves with the blood of the living. True. A vampire is clinically dead -ÿits heart does not beat, it does not breathe, its skin is cold, it does not age - and yet it thinks, and walks, and plans, and speaks and hunts and kills. For, to sustain its artificial immortality, the vampire must periodically consume blood, preferably human blood. Some penitent vampires eke out an existence from animal blood, and some ancient vampires must hunt and kill others of their kind to nourish themselves, but most vampires indeed sustain themselves from the blood of their former species.

Anyone who dies from a vampire's bite rises to become a vampire. False. If this were true, the world would be overrun by vampires. Vampires feed on human blood, true, and sometimes kill their prey - but most humans who die from a vampire's attack simply perish. To return as undead, the victim must be drained of blood and subsequently be fed a bit of the attacking vampire's blood. This process, called the Embrace, causes the mystical transformation from human to undead.

Vampires are monsters -ÿdemonic spirits embodied in corpses. False and true. Vampires are not demons per se, but a combination of tragic factors draws them inexorably toward wicked deeds. In the beginning, the newly created vampire thinks and acts much as she did while living. She does not immediately turn into an evil, sadistic monster. However, the vampire soon discovers her overpowering hunger for blood, and realizes that her existence depends on feeding on her species. In many ways, the vampire's mindset changes - she adopts a set of attitudes less suited to a communal omnivore and more befitting a solitary predator.

At first reluctant to feed, the vampire is finally forced to do so by circumstance or need - and feeding becomes easier and easier as the years pass. Realizing that she herself is untrustworthy, she ceases to trust others. Realizing that she is different, she walls herself away from the mortal world. Realizing that her existence depends on secrecy and control, she becomes a manipulative user of the first order. And things only degenerate as the years turn to decades and then centuries, and the vampire kills over and over, and sees the people she loved age and die. Human life, so short and cheap in comparison to hers, becomes of less and less value, until the mortal "herd" around her means no more to her than a swarm of annoying insects. Vampire elders are among the most jaded, unfeeling, paranoid - in short, monstrous - beings the world has ever known. Maybe they are not demons exactly -ÿbut at that point, who can tell the difference?

Vampires are burned by sunlight. True. Vampires must avoid the sun or die, though a few can bear sunlight's touch for a very short period of time. Vampires are nocturnal creatures, and most find it extremely difficult to remain awake during the day, even within sheltered areas.

Vampires are repulsed by garlic and running water. False. These are myths and nothing more.

Vampires are repulsed by crosses and other holy symbols. This is generally false. However, if the wielder of the symbol has great faith in the power it represents, a vampire may suffer ill effects from the brandishing of the symbol.

Vampires die from a stake through the heart. False. However, a wooden stake - or arrow, crossbow bolt, etc. - through the heart will paralyze the monster until it is removed.

Vampires have the strength of 10 humans; they can command wolves and bats; they can hypnotize the living and heal even the most grievous wounds. True and false. The power of a vampire increases with age. Young, newly created vampires are often little more powerful than humans. But as a vampire grows in age and understanding, she learns to use her blood to evoke secret magical powers, which vampires call Disciplines. Powerful elders are often the rivals of a fictional Lestat or Dracula - and the true ancients, the Methuselahs and Antediluvians who have stalked the nights for thousands of years, often possess literally godlike powers.

The Hunt

When all is said and done, the most fundamental difference between humans and vampires lies in their methods of sustenance. Vampires may not subsist on mortal food; instead, they must sustain their eternal lives through the consumption of blood - fresh human blood.

Vampires acquire their sustenance in many fashions. Some cultivate "herds" of willing mortals, who cherish the ecstasy of the vampire's kiss. Some creep into houses by night, feeding from sleeping humans. Some stalk the mortals' playgrounds - the nightclubs, bars and theatres - enticing mortals into illicit liaisons and disguising their predation as acts of passion. And yet others take their nourishment in the most ancient fashion - stalking, attacking and incapacitating (or even killing) mortals who wander too far down lonely nocturnal alleys and empty lots.

The Nocturnal World of the Vampire

Vampires also value power, for its own sake and the security it brings - and vampires find it ridiculously easy to acquire mundane goods, riches and influence. A mesmerizing glance and a few words provide a cunning vampire with access to all the wealth, power and servants he could desire. Some powerful vampires are capable of implanting posthypnotic suggestions or commands in mortals' minds, then causing the mortals to forget the vampire's presence. In this way, vampires can easily acquire legions of unwitting slaves. More than a few "public servants" and corporate barons secretly answer to vampire masters.

Though there are exceptions, vampires tend to remain close to the cities. The city provides countless opportunities for predation, liaisons and politicking - and the wilderness often proves dangerous for vampires. The wilds are the home of the Lupines, the werewolves, who are vampires' ancestral enemies and desire nothing more than to destroy vampires outright.

The Embrace

Vampires are created through a process called the Embrace. The Embrace is similar to normal vampiric feeding - the vampire drains her chosen prey of blood. However, upon complete exsanguination, the vampire returns a bit of her own immortal blood to the drained mortal. Only a tiny bit - a drop or two - is necessary to turn the mortal into an undead. This process can even be performed on a dead human, provided the body is still warm.

Once the blood is returned, the mortal "awakens" and begins drinking of his own accord. But, though animate, the mortal is still dead; his heart does not beat, nor does he breathe. Over the next week or two, the mortal's body undergoes a series of subtle transformations; he learns to use the Blood in his body, and he is taught the special powers of his clan. He is now a vampire.

Some vampire clans Embrace more casually than others, but the Embrace is almost never given lightly. After all, any new vampire is a potential competitor for food and power. A potential childe is often stalked for weeks or even years by a watchful sire, who greedily evaluates whether the mortal would indeed make a good addition to the clan and the line.