Vampire: The Requiem

You can Danse Macabre if you want to, you can leave your friends behind.

 

The first of the supernaturals to have been released by the new World of Darkness line, Vampire: The Requiem was also the first of the supernaturals I played. This was back when Twilight was still a big thing and boy, oh boy, was I not a big fan of vampires. I was getting really sick of all of the re-imaginings and all the revisionist viewpoints on what vampires were supposed to be, I was getting sick of all of the superpowered vampires that are immune to a lot of, if not all of the traditional weaknesses, and I was getting especially sick of seeing vampires everywhere, even in my online roleplaying communities where you'd have teenagers trying to be edgy by playing as vampires in universes where vampires are either not clearly defined and they naturally decided to make the vampires super invincible with no weaknesses, or are so clearly defined that a player character could never play as one.

So when a friend of mine approached me with the opportunity to play a game whose entire premise was playing a vampire, I will admit that I was skeptical, even reluctant. However, I was itching to try out more tabletop games and it was promised to me that I would be walked through the character creation process for both the vampire character and the human new World of Darkness character for London Fog. 

When I got around to reading it, there was actually quite a bit to like about it, and enough to get me interested in playing a vampire character seriously. It kept a lot of the vampire tropes I liked and did away with the ones I didn't– namely the fact that super-powerful vampires are just a thing that happens commonly and they would just go around announcing to everyone that they're bloodsucking powerhouses. So let's dive right into Vampire: The Requiem and see what it did for a skeptic like me.

Mechanics

This game uses the nWoD core system with a few additional features attached. Being a vampire, you have to feed on blood. Blood that you drink is converted to Vitae, the mystic fuel that's used to empower a vampire that also has addictive qualities when consumed by mortals. Vitae can be consumed to heal wounds and also be used to fuel Disciplines, abilities that basically amount to vampire superpowers– enhanced perception, enhanced speed and strength, the ability to conceal yourself, the power to dominate the minds of others, etc. You can get by consuming animal blood early on, but eventually, your Blood Potency, the measure of a vampire's power, will increase and demand that you start consuming human blood in order to be sated. Going too long without eating may cause your character to frenzy, when they go on a panicked killing spree to satisfy their hunger.

The act of feeding itself comes with a few perks. The vampire will drink up from the mortal's blood, and it produces a near-orgasmic sensation for the subject in question, and the act of feeding becomes a rather intimate one.  In addition, when a vampire licks the wound that they bite into, they seal it back up. From my understanding, it's a sort of subconscious act of using a minute amount of vitae to seal up a wound and avoid detection.

Humanity takes the place of Morality in VtR, and essentially outlines how well-connected to their previous state they are. The further removed from being human they are, the more they begin to resemble the blood-sucking monsters of myth, both in behavior and, on occasion, in outward appearance. Additional breaches of humanity are added to better fit in with this mechanic, and it even ends up saying that the average vampire, while you always start off with humanity 7, has a humanity of 5. 

Vampires do not simply spread around with a bite, but siring a new vampire requires a concerted effort known as the embrace. When the embrace is performed, the mortal subject needs to dying, or very recently dead. At that time, the prospective sire drips some of its own vitae into the new vampire's mouth, and then bam. New vampire. While this will be discussed with more depth in setting, there's a reason that vampires aren't often embraced, not the least of which being a new, competing predator in the fold. Making a new vampire is not something done lightly.

Character advancement works about the same way, spending XP to advance other traits as well as occasionally buying more Disciplines or increasing Blood Potency on your own if you'd rather not wait until you drink a whole lot of blood to get that power boost and that increase of appetite. By the way, while Vampires are not repelled by running water or by garlic, they will die in sunlight and will die incredibly quickly if they're set on fire. While being staked through the heart won't kill them, it sends them into a state called Torpor, in which a vampire remains dormant for an amount of time dependent on their Blood Potency and humanity, which can range from anywhere between a day to centuries. As the folklore dictates, the stake does still have to be wooden. Vampires may be repelled by crosses, but not because of the symbol itself; the book says that it rarely ever occurs that way, and when it does, it has more to do with the person using it or whether or not that cross in particular is some sort of magical artifact.

This is a pretty interesting take on vampires, mechanically speaking. They have plenty of reason to keep themselves hidden, since some of their weaknesses are not only pretty well-known, but are immensely debilitating, like sunlight preventing them from moving about in the daytime. Though they also have some pretty impressive powers, just to make them intimidating enough to be worthy of being feared by mortals. There's fear to go all around, so kudos, VtR. The mechanics here are pretty balanced and sensible.

Mechanics: 8/10

Character Creation

So the natural question that you ask when you're about to play a game about vampires is "What kind of vampires do I get to play?"

I should make a note: this is the thing I hear a lot about from fans of the original Vampire: The Masquerade, that this is the weakest point of Requiem– the lack of selection. While I can't really say whether I think Requiem is better than Masquerade since the only real exposure to Masquerade I've had was from the Bloodlines video game, I will say that the games are pretty different, especially in terms of character creation options. 

In Masquerade, most of what determined your vampire's character was their clan, which is essentially the breed or race of vampire you are. In both games, you inherit the clan from your sire, the vampire that embraced you. In Masquerade, your clan set up a hell of a lot of context for your character– their appearance, their temperament, their possible political affiliations, their personal inclinations, a lot was determined by what clan your vampire belonged to, and there were, to compensate for that, a hell of a lot of clans.

Requiem takes a different approach. Where there were 13 clans and only 2 defined factions in Masquerade, Requiem has only 5 clans, but also 5 factions called covenants (7 if you count VII and Belial's Brood, though players will generally not be part of either of these). 

 Clans 'n' Covenants.

Your clan determines what disciplines you have access to, some aspects of your appearance and some measure of your character's temperament. It also determines which disciplines your character gets initial access to– disciplines that are linked to your clan are given a discount when you buy them with experience.

However, a far bigger factor into your character's beliefs and actions is their covenant, a sort of socio-political, and sometimes religious, organization whose beliefs the character shares, to a degree. Of course, you could choose to not be a part of a covenant just yet– it's what I did when I played, I just remained unaligned until I figured out which one of these groups my character would want to be a part of, which was, weirdly enough, the Lancea Sanctum. Your covenant determines a lot of roleplaying factors, namely who your character will likely associate with and how other characters interact with you, and generally what sorts of things your character would be asked to do. The Ordo Dracul, Lancea Sanctum and Circle of the Crone also give additional benefits in the form of their own Disciplines, though they'll always be at the regular experience cost.

Something I'll get into more when I talk about storytelling is that Requiem is a very political game, in that your character's political affiliation will affect a great deal of the story. I feel like this game does a pretty good job with the dynamics of how a character's place in the game world will be shaped. Who your character chooses to align themselves with, or indeed, if they choose to align themselves with anyone at all, says about as much about who they are as the lineage of the vampire that embraced them to begin with. Equal influence of nature and nurture? Check.

Of additional note is the bloodline mechanic. While this isn't a mechanic that I used personally, it can make for an additional dimension for your character. A bloodline is a more specific lineage within a clan, often afforded extra powers, though at a price. I personally didn't use a bloodline for my character, and it's certainly an optional aspect that you don't have to use, but if you flip through the bloodlines and you find one you like, get the okay from your GM and make the character around it.

Overall, character creation is pretty strong. While I've heard the options are far more limited than in Masquerade, I feel like there's a lot to offer here, and it takes into account the nature (if it could be called that) of the clan they were embraced by, and the ideals nurtured by the covenant they identify with, if any of them. This is a pretty solid character creation system, with options that make a lot of sense.

Character Creation: 8/10

Setting

So we know what kind of world the new World of Darkness is, but what kind of world is it that the vampires inhabit?

The answer, in short, is a Machiavellian one. Vampires are creatures of contradictions, the most obvious being that of the living dead, but one contradiction that comes up even more often in this game is that they're solitary predators on one hand, but at the same time, they retain the human desire to be social animals on the other. The result of these two is a bizarre little society which combines their predatory nature with this yearning to echo the human life they came from.

Echoing their human society are the covenants– vampires have churches, they have power brokers, they even have activists. Also echoing it are laws in the forms of the Traditions, 3 laws that are known to all vampires everywhere.

1. The Masquerade: Don't reveal yourselves to non-vampires.

2. Progeny: Don't make more vampires.

3. Diablerie: Don't feed from other vampires.

Naturally, you can see how these laws can get broken all the time. How they're enforced falls to the local vampire power-holders, in the form of the Prince. The leader in a territory where vampires are prevalent is always called a Prince, regardless of gender. Just in case you thought I was exaggerating when I said that vampire society is Machiavellian, these Princes often rule by a combination of favors owed by powerful vampires and by maintaining fear in those who are not strictly their allies. Enforcement of the laws laid down by a Prince are almost always severe, and there are just as many times that a Prince will use the laws as an excuse to root out any political enemies he may have. Vampires refer to this practice as the Danse Macabre, a term to refer to the constant infighting that occurs in a vampire society that maintains constant order through fear of reprisal, that is, until someone becomes powerful enough to overthrow the previous Prince, but then the cycle begins all over again.

Compounding that is the longevity of vampires in general. While they'll eventually have to go into torpor, vampire society tends to favor the elders, and will often put them in power. After all, they've had the time to form all the social connections, and that's not even mentioning their own supernatural potency. Part of the reason the Carthian Movement exists is because vampiric elders hold a ridiculous amount of power, and it can very well take a vampire centuries before they even get any recognition or any say in their twisted society of the night (most elders would just tell them to play the game or get out). As a result of this, vampire society tends to be incredibly stagnant, never changing for centuries at a time– change never seems all that necessary when it seems to be working and the people in that society don't leave for hundreds of years. For the most part, the whole backstabby rule-by-fear institution is never really changed because the first thing most vampires think about is how to make that system work for them. There's also the covenants VII and Belial's Brood, groups of vampires that are dangerous to their society, the former because they actively hunt other vampires, and the latter because they risk massive breaches in the Masquerade, whose consequences are discussed in more detail later.

With this in mind, vampires aren't embraced lightly, as mentioned earlier. Adding one more predator to a brood of predators carries a lot of issues, not the least of which being another competitor for food and the fact that they're going to get mixed up in this Machiavellian mess, so why embrace other vampires at all? There comes that solitary predator/social animal paradox again, as sometimes, a vampire will get lonely and simply want to have the company of a childe, as a newly-made vampire is called. Of course, there are also more utilitarian purposes for such an act– in a society like this, you need allies, and what better ally could you possibly engender than a vampire that you embraced yourself? The choice for what kind of person to embrace usually varies between clans or between covenants, but generally, a sire will not choose to make a vampire that will turn against them– though that doesn't necessarily prevent the new one from doing so.

Of course, vampires aren't only afraid of each other. The other two core supernaturals, Werewolves and Mages, are of particular concern to them, too. Both are creatures they know very little about, other than rumors of unbelievable power that could be potentially hazardous to vampires. While you can certainly make a campaign about this, werewolves and vampires tend to keep their distance from each other, vampires because they believe werewolves to be a force beyond their control, and werewolves because they tend to find vampires repugnant, for reasons I'll discuss more in the Werewolf: The Forsaken review. Mages are usually treated like mortals, but with a great deal more caution because of the fact that they can probably magic up some fire to incinerate a vampire if they so chose (at least, that's what most vampires think can happen– better to be safe than sorry).

Of course, the greatest concern of all to vampires is perhaps the most innocuous and most plentiful– humans. The Masquerade is a practice that came about because vampires also fear mortals, even while they feed on them. To be more accurate, they fear what humans will do when they learn that they have predators. A long time ago, vampires were more overt about the fact that they were vampires and would lord their power over the cowering humans– after all, what could they do? The vampires got their answer when mortal hunters arose, wiping out a good chunk of them after figuring out that fire and sunlight can kill them. From there came the practice of the Masquerade, and it also came with an incredibly sobering notion: when enough mortals know you're around, it's all over. Vampire society is slow to change and stagnant, so the rise of hunter cells when the Masquerade is breached occurs at an alarming rate, and even more frightening to these creatures of the night is how quickly they organize and accomplish their goals. The book uses the term "ant-like" to describe the level of cooperation vampires see from hunters, and it fits. After all, humans don't like being on the prey end of the predator-prey relationship any more than vampires do. The key, most vampires believe, is to never give humans any reason to believe that they're on the prey end of that dynamic.

The fear of discovery by mortals shapes so much of why vampires do what they do. They tend to hunt in places where disappearances would go unnoticed, like in red light districts or on the wrong side of the tracks. They also tend to hunt in places where it's hard to discern what exactly they're doing, like in a night club or in a BDSM club. Even then, there's a lot of vampires who avoid drinking mortals to death, not necessarily out of sympathy or mercy, but because they don't want to leave a trail– all they have to do is lick the wound they bit from, and they're good as new, if a bit woozy, and no one's the wiser. Many particularly powerful vampires will form spheres of influence within mortal circles to add security to their feeding needs, able to sway mortals to help get them off of their trail.

Of course, these are the basics, but the setting for Vampire: The Requiem has a lot to offer. There's a lot going on and a whole bunch of dynamics mixing together and informing the actions of the characters therein. There's room for conflict all over the place, and room for many kinds of stories, and in a tabletop RPG, a great deal of options in a setting is always a good sign.

Setting: 8/10

Storytelling

As mentioned earlier, there are a whole lot of options for what you can do in Vampire: The Requiem, beyond the basics of any other sort of vampire story. A lot of what I've observed about this game is that there's a whole lot of politics and intrigue going on in this sort of a game, and that's not even beginning to talk about the issues of feeding, maintaining your cover, or even dealing with other supernaturals. With layers upon layers, there's a surprising amount of depth to a game that, to an outsider like me, might've just been about a bunch of undead bloodsuckers that may or may not be attractive to edgy teenagers. This has a lot of potential for a game and I've actually got one lined up whose lore I'm going to be using in another game.

Storytelling: 8/10

Additional Considerations

Geez, I've been giving Requiem a lot of credit, haven't I? This isn't even anywhere near my favorite nWoD game, but when people tend to really knock Vampire: The Requiem, it's in comparison to Vampire: The Masquerade, but I don't actually have that frame of reference to make that judgement. Still, I'm supposing I should be completely fair and think about something in this game I don't like.

Well... There's some instances where the font makes certain things in the book hard to read, and I'm not too big of a fan of the writing style. It feels like it's trying too hard to be both kind of street and accessible, and there's a ridiculous amount of jargon going into this game. The wording is sometimes a bit awkward and comes off as a bit pretentious, but honestly, when talking about the game systems, this is a pretty minor concern. I'll just ding one point off the total score.

Additional Concerns: Style

-1

Total Grade: 77.5% C

Vampire: The Requiem is a pretty solid start to the new World of Darkness line, and despite my personal misgivings about playing a vampire, it really won me over. Maybe when I finally get around to playing Masquerade, I'll think it's better, but as it is, right now, judging it on its own merits, Requiem is a great start in playing a supernatural race in a World of Darkness game. If you're not really sure what sort of supernatural creature you'd like to play, Vampire is a great place to start. 

Next time in the nWoD series, we'll be talking about Werewolf: The Forsaken. Timere Defectum, folks, and see you next time!

Vampire: The Requiem, Vampire: The Masquerade, Bloodlines, Werewolf: The Forsaken and World of Darkness are property of White Wolf Publishing.