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Continuing our Chinese based review of the World of Darkness book line! Starting off with the big one!

Vampire: The Masquerade

As it’s the theme for World of Darkness, Vampire: The Masquerade starts off with 100 pages of lore before touching on the mechanics in any sort of detail.

Vampire’s lore is fascinating. It started long ago with Cain from the Bible. The Mark of Cain bestowed on him turned Cain into the first vampire. All other vampires trace their lineage to him through his vampire grandchildren, the thirteen Antediluvians. The thirteen vampire clans are descended from the Antediluvians. Each of these clans are struggling against each other to control the world. The two main sides are the Camarilla and the Sabbat. The Camarilla respect “The Masquerade” that the game is named for while the Sabbat do not.

The Masquerade is the lie that vampires have agreed to tell humanity. That lie being that vampires do not exist. Because vampires “don’t exist” all the awful crimes they commit couldn’t possibly be done by vampires. Thus humans don’t rise up and kill all the vampires. The Camarilla sect and their associated clans support the Masquerade while the Sabbat want to flex their vampire muscles and take over the world. The two sects are warring with each other to decide which strategy will be adopted with the Camarilla currently in the lead.

Character creation starts with choosing a clan. There are dozens of special vampire powers and each clan gives you cheaper access to three groups of those powers called Disciplines. Stats in Vampire and all World of Darkness games use what’s called the Storyteller system. All the books I read use the same system. So the steps for character creation are mostly the same between the different books.

World of Darkness uses a building point system for character creation. Stats mostly fall into two categories, Attributes which represent your natural strengths (Might, Dexterity, Resolve, etc), and Abilities which represent your training and background (Firearms, Investigation, Empathy, etc). Attributes and Abilities are both rated from 1 to 5. 1 is poor, 2 is average, 3 is good, 4 is exceptional, and 5 is world-class. Challenges are handled by adding together an Attribute stat and an Ability stat. You roll that many d10s. You score a number of successes equal to all the dice that are 6 or greater. Only one success is needed to complete your attempted action, but multiple successes increase the effect. The target number of 6 can be modified to adjust for harder or easier actions.

Each character has a personality type. The most important bit to pick is your Nature which describes what your character likes to do. World of Darkness characters have a Willpower stat which is your meta-currency pool. You can spend a Willpower point to automatically succeed on an action or ignore injuries or compulsions. Willpower is recovered by doing something associated with your Nature. So playing your character as they’re supposed to be personality-wise makes you more effective because you get more bennies.

Each different World of Darkness system has a few different stats to represent other parts of your character’s personality. These are often used to represent the struggle between the monster side of your personality and the human side. Most characters have a Conscience and Self-Control score to represent their ability to resist their monstrous impulses. The struggle between human and monster is tracked with a Humanity score which ranges from 1-10. A score of 7 is a normal human. Monsters must hold on to their Humanity, because if it slips to zero they become a savage beast (and an NPC) that goes on a rampage that probably results in their death.

For vampires they become more physically like an undead monster as their Humanity decreases. They also become more bloodthirsty possibly increasing their descent into beast territory. Humanity is typically only recovered by spending XP. But it is one of the cheapest things to increase.

Of course the big challenge is that vampires must drink blood to survive. Vampire bodies need 1 blood point per night which roughly translates to 0.5L or a tenth of the blood in a human body. Vampire PCs can hold 10 blood points in their body at a time, just like the human body contains 5L of blood. Vampires use blood to heal their injuries and to fuel their supernatural vampire powers. If they don’t have enough blood, vampires can enter a frenzy. Frenzied vampires will do anything to feed, causing a decrease in their Humanity score.

The final part of character creation is choosing your Disciplines. The magic vampire powers are varied. Physical empowerment, telepathy, mind control, summoning animals. Basically all sorts of stuff that’s been associated with different vampire myths over the years. Each use of a special power usually consumes 1 blood point.

The Storyteller system has very slow XP gain. At the end of each session you gain XP based off whether you had important moments during the session. It’s usually 1-5 XP per session. Most things cost at least 10 XP, with some upgrades costing way more. Outside of a very long campaign your character will typically be pretty flat in power level.

If you’re interested in the Vampire: The Masquerade Revised Edition you can check it out at DriveThruRPG: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/647/vampire-the-masquerade-revised-edition

But we’re here for a look at using World of Darkness for a Chinese setting. Vampire: The Masquerade is for vampire stories in the North America or Europe. What about Chinese vampires?