(oWoD) Just how do you play Vampire?

[Jeivar]

I REALLY want to contribute to the Deluxe V20 Dark Ages (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/200664283/deluxe-v20-dark-ages?ref=DTRPGMailer) book enough to get a copy, but,well...

While my friends and I have had an interest in the Vampire: The Masquerade setting for years but haven't played it much.

The need for blood limits the characters, especially when there's combat, they can't easily travel outside the city, and while the whole monolithic web of political backstabbing, manipulative elders and ancient conspiracies in which neonates are pawns makes for an interesting read it's hard to make good gameplay out of it.

So how does one do it? I would appreciate some advice on general approach and design philosophy for Vampire campaigns. What does one do with players who are at the bottom of the power scale and severely restricted in various ways?

[BWR]

Assuming you want to be the ST.

I think you're overstating the problems a bit. The important thing no matter what game is to make the PCs feel as though they have control and an effect on the game. The first Vampire game I ran we all started out as ghouls. Some of us died before even being Embraced. We were lower power and status than the standard beginning characters from the rulebooks because we didn't get the vampire-exclusive Backgrounds nor the free three dots in Disciplines. The ST basically set up a city, had a rough plot and shoved a few plot hooks at us and watched the chaos begin. He barely had to do any sort of planningand just reacted to what we did, because we made stories and messed things up just fine on our own. A nudge and a suggestion here and there and we started Gehenna at the end of the campaign. It was beautiful.

If you want to play up the political and social aspect of Kindred society, and you should, the same advice goes here as for any other socially heavy game: characters and motivation.
Make sure you know the personality and goals of all the other vampires in the area, how they feel about eachother and how they work and 'live' in the city. Once you have that, you know how to treat the PCs. Sires will treat their Children as at worst useful tools, at best beloved children. Rival vampires will treat PCs based on their Sires. Sires will often send neonates on gofer quests and minor missions. Said missions can easily be "There's trouble at the docks. Fix it." leaving the hapless PCs to find out what exactly the trouble is and how to fix it without breaking the Masquerade, without causing more trouble for the sire, without indebting themselves to other vampires, without bringing the attention of the authorities on them, etc.

[Thrawn4]

The need for blood limits the characters, especially when there's combat, they can't easily travel outside the city, and while the whole monolithic web of political backstabbing, manipulative elders and ancient conspiracies in which neonates are pawns makes for an interesting read it's hard to make good gameplay out of it.


The fighting system works good enough, but IMHO it is not suited for campaigns involving constant battle (like most fantasy campaigns do). Anyway, the blood limit has never been an issue in my campaigns, so I would not worry about that.

The political backstabbing is a more complicated issue, but its still easier than you think. Just think of an area and make up several NPCs with different agendas and let plot happen, e. g.:
the religious Brujah wants to promote his faith while the Ventrue prince wants to keep the status quo. The sheriff (also a Brujah) is torn between his conflicting loyalities, and nobody has asked the Gangrel yet what they think.
Politics and power is all about granting and denying other people what they want.

Also: Damn, I wish I had the money to get a copy as well :smallannoyed:

[LibraryOgre]

A useful consideration is giving the characters something of an umbrella... they're not IMMUNE to political machinations, but they have more protection than neonates might have otherwise. Make them Archons-in-Training under a Justicar, or give them a few free points of generation to make sure they have an influential sire... even if they HATE their sire, the fact that they're influential means people will think a moment before making the sire angry.

They still have to be careful, after all, but it prevents the higher-ups from immediately trashing them when they step over the line.