VAMPIRE: THE MASQUERADE
Introductory Kit - Section 1
Vampires
Bloodsucking corpses returned
from the grave to feast on the blood of the living. Monsters damned to
Hell who avoid their punishment through life unlawfully stolen. Erotic
predators who steal their sustenance from innocent, struggling - or, perhaps,
willing? - men and women.
Since time's beginning,
humanity has spoken of the vampire - the undead, the demonic spirit embodied
in human flesh, the corpse risen from its grave possessed of a burning
hunger for warm blood. From Hungary to Hong Kong, from New Delhi to New
York, people throughout the world have experienced chills of delicious
terror contemplating the deeds of the night-stalking vampire. The vampire
has haunted novels, movies, TV shows, video games, clothing, even breakfast
cereal.
But these stories are merely
myths, right?
Wrong.
Vampires have walked among
us from prehistoric times. They walk among us still. They have fought a
great and secret war since the earliest nights of human history. And this
eternal struggle's final outcome may determine humanity's future - or its
ultimate damnation.
Section 1 - Introduction
- What is Vampire: The Masquerade?
Storytelling
Players and Storytellers
What Is a Vampire?
The Hunt
The Nocturnal World
of the Vampire
The Embrace
Section
2 - Setting - Vampire History and Hierarchy
Section
3 - Character Creation - Making Your Own Vampire
Section 4 - Rules
- Playing the Game and Story Ideas
Because of the mature
themes involved, reader discretion is advised.
Based on the Vampire:
The Masquerade game created by Steve Brown, Andrew Greenberg, Chris McDonough,
Mark Rein-Hagen, Lisa Stevens, Joshua Gabriel Timbrook and Stewart Wieck
Check out White
Wolf Online at http://www.white-wolf.com,
alt.games.whitewolf and rec.games.frp.storyteller.
(c) 1997 White
Wolf, Inc. All rights reserved. White Wolf and Vampire the Masquerade
are registered trademarks of White Wolf, Inc. All rights reserved. All
characters, names, places and text herein are copyrighted by White Wolf,
Inc. The mention of or reference to any company or product in these pages
is not a challenge to the trademark or copyright concerned.
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 - its 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 - demonic 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.
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Copyright © 1996 -
1997
Created by 
Wolf
Pack Inc, Friday, August 29, 1997
Most recent revision Thursday, September 25, 1997
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