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Okay, so what I'm hearing here that, since we are all "supposed" to know the end point (100% monster), all that matters is the journey.
For example, some folks focus on the internal struggle ("Emo" style), but others the external struggle and the giving in to temptations on that journey ("Morgana/Lyger" style).

Am I grasping the themes here?

The reason that I ask is that when I first read the MTG book I had visions of the "Morgana/Lyger" style (for which I can see a certain appeal), but when I have played MTG or watched it being played, players all seem to focus on one of three things:

• Super heroes with an allergy to light (love this turn of phrase)
• Emo-style (ignoring the other players)
• Power through the political structure/political games (and ironically, the players are typically not really very good at such games)

Hence, my confusion, and thus the reason for my original post.

The game mechanics also had issues with (which I note several of you commented on), but I'm setting those aside for now.

So, out of philosophical curiosity, do you all think that my gaming experiences are due to the varying portrayals of Vampires in print and film (thus different "templates"), or because the players are reflexively rejecting/denying the "evil within" or the very nature of their struggles?

Colour me strange, but I love the cross-over potential in the new World of Darkness. The problem with the old system was that you had a power-gaming munchkin's wet dream: Garou/Werewolves and a manipulating power-gamer's wet dream: Kindred/Vampire along with Bears with Balloons ala Changeling and nutso Sorcerers on steroids ala Mage/Traditions trying to off Mad Scientists ala Mage/Technocracy.

What they should have done with the new World of Darkness was revamp the good aspects (including the metaplot) and modify the bad. The Ascension War made no sense whatsoever as who is really going to want a world with Dragons where you're a poop-covered peasant when you would have access to technology that puts people on a level playing field.

They need to integrate the old World of Darkness into the new or at least give ideas/tips for merging them. There are a number of good fan adaptations so far to add Demon: the Fallen and Mage Technocracy into new World of Darkness - Demon: the Return and Genius: the Transgression.

Both. As the "sexy vampire" became more mainstream, vampires became desirable, and being a vampire became a matter of wish fulfillment, rather than a constant struggle to avoid becoming a literal monster.

But let's not forget that for many players, role-playing is more aspirational than strictly narrational. That is, the players inject themselves into their characters, and create people that they would want to be as opposed to simply telling the story of someone else.

While i vote at the outcome being a matter of taste and troupe, there is an inherent trouble with VtM. If you play it right, it can be too distressing and angsty.

Given that not all players are entertained by explorations of the ego and accepting their own insignificance, it is no surprise that some troupes will keep the atmosphere, the cool powers and maybe the exploration of isolation and play with that. As long as you are having fun why not?


I would not game that way but even i, with my mature and into psychology and philosophy troupe, have to make compromises: Half my players love it, some players do not really like it because you are constantly struggling with yourself and the too rigid hierarchy, -they role play amazingly though- and two players love it in the "wrong" way -they try to amass power and be awesome, or they enjoy the different morals. I mostly game for those who get it the way i do, but in trying to please everyone, i sometimes let them do things the game would not allow (they find true love, or rush into combat). The full experience, the 100 % psychological game, can be found only in one on ones -which i stronly recommend. They yield amazing stories.

Well, there IS something to be said for players, on occasion, conforming to the game, rather than making everything into some variation on a dungeon crawl. They might learn something. (But there is an interesting issue that seems to be unique to role-playing games. If we're playing Monoploy, for instance, and we change the game rules in some way, we generally understand that the next group of people we play with aren't going to have instituted the same house rules. But I've found that RPG players have a habit of expecting that they can take concessions from one group into others they encounter. The "The last GM let me..." syndrome.)

On the other hand, if your players want to have their characters stalk around in black cloaks, saying "I vant to suck your blut," that's cool, too.

But I've never had a problem with the game being too angst-ridden, so it was easier for me to excise the camp, emo and superheroics.

One of my favorite characters in Vampire (not one i played myself) came out of the emo/i-so-awesome camp. The player turned from poser to gamer in one session.

To begin, we have a Viking like guy who decided to play a delicate and romantic Toreador violonist in Victorian Age London. He asked for a humanity rating of 10. I had heard that his previous character was feeding on rabbits etc, but i do not go for that kind of rp so i asked him to keep it an 8.
He roleplays the sheltered debutante Sandra Irisec pretty well, covering the other players' mistakes and protecting the victims of the stories (the other gamers were also reasonably humane, so there was no conflict at first). At some point he botches the dice while feeding. He feeds on an incredibly handsome changeling, and we played during one on ones how his character got an unhealthy crush and ended up besotted wth the unseelie, dark changeling (and addicted to his blood).
The first humanity point was lost imperceptibly: she is traveling, she cannot partake of his fae blood, so he offers her a cage of birds... with a somehow human demeanor. She has her doubts, he assures her there is nothing unusual about the birds, and despite her suspicions she takes the cage -and neglects to check if they are indeed animals or something else. Drinking of them after all keeps her sane and going -and after all, they could just be birds.... So a point of humanity is lost without the player daring to go deeper, just as his character doesn't.

The second point was lost even more poignantly. Sandra had just visited her parents, and she had to use disciplines on them to prevent them from finding out her nature. She feels guilty and exhausted. Later that night, on a coach coursing through Prague, a snotty and cold Tremere neonate, Abigail, insults Sandra's intelligence.
Sandra angers and retaliates in kind, but then her humanity and manners overcome her. She feels guilty and apologizes. She even goes down on one knee, and extends her hand to Abigail saying "Friends"?

Then Abigail poignantly turns her back, ignoring her.

And the petite, delicate Sandra frenzies, grabs Abigail's head and crashes it through the glass nearly severing it.

The horses lost it, the coach fell into the river were the frozen water quelled the frenzy and Sandra's player did not even roll for humanity loss -jhe just said he felt no regrets, for that bitch was worth it.

So there you have it. A delicate Toreador artiste with a fairy lover -as corny as it gets- and out of that the angst and the ego and the ugliness got the character down in minutes. And on it went.

Favorite character and favorite example of humanity loss rolled into one .

My turn now.

I think I mentioned in my "introduce myself" posting I started V:TM as LARP first and went to the PnP later (revised edition with influences from 2nd edition).
I agree to some of the posters above me that the rules are far not the best. But fortunatelly for me LARP is more about skill points (as basic character boundaries) and my first PnP-Vampire-GM did care more about storytelling than about rules or dice roles.
In the following years I read a lot about WoD and vampire or werewolf myths in general.
So you can say my focus is far more the story part of Vampire or WoD.

BTW: I suggest you should try to get a copy of the "Masquerade of the Red Death" trilogy by Robert Weinberg or the 13 clan novels if you are realy intereseted in WoD.
Another one of my favourites is the "Gehenna trilogy". I don't remember the official name but the three books handle Gehenna (Vampire), Apocalypse (Werewolf) and the Mage equivalent
They feature - as well as the other mentioned books - a very nice story and lots of popular WoD characters.

Concerning my favourite V:TM character.

He was my first Vampire character at all.
At first he was a NPC for the LARP domain some new friends organized and over the time he evolved from NPC to PC and back to NPC to - in the end - get a little lost but was never really forgotten.
He still lives in a lot of story ideas that fly around in my mind and I keep telling me that I write them down one day.

Name: Gregory or Greg.
Faction: Sabbath, later independent and occasionally a little Camarilla
Clan: Gangrel (antitribu, Citygangrel)
Generation: initially 9th as far as I remember
Looks like: 25-30

Prelude
Gregory was born in the second half of the 19th century and he was embraced as a vampire somewhere between 1890 and 1915.
I cannot tell exactly because over the years I learned more and more about this period of time and since I chose more a kind of setting as his origin than an exact year.
(Today I would say his intended setting of origin was somehow like in "From Hell" from 2001 with Johnny Depp. But the character was created before. In '98 or '99.)

He lived on the northeast coast of the US and my city of choice was Boston although I did not really now much about this city.
There he worked as a mid-rank detective for the police department and he was investigating on some wuite brutal homicides when his life ended and his unlife started.

Greg was working some evidence on the murders for several consecutive nights. His wife tried to talk to him several times about something she only had mentioned as "important" but night over night and day over day he postponed the talk and kept on working.
Up to this one night where he got another hot tip from some informant.
His wife begged him not to go but he insisted on the importance of catching the killer.
As result his wife got mad at him and all he could was dodge what she threw at him while he left.

The tip lead Greg to a warehouse near the harbor.
Although he was a good cop and had quite keen senses and normally a clear head the fight with his wife shortly before distracted him enough to make a few fatal mistakes and get knocked out by an unknown attacker.
He woke up in a small and dark room with a strange stench of old blood and some other things Greg was not able to identify.
His hands and feet were bond, his head did ache like hell and his gun was gone.
After a few failed attempts to get free and one or two more bruises from the failed attempts he finally got free. Only to realize that the only door leading out of his prison was locked.
So he stayed calm and tried to listen for the things which happened on the other side of the door.
After some time he could hear footsteps approaching. Greg prepared to take his chance to overcome whoever was coming and he succeeded.
When the door's locked was opened he smashed down the handle and put all his weight against ths door. Once it was open he ran without looking back.
Only to be knocked down again from behind just before he could reach the door leading to the outside. The last thing Greg could see and hear before passing out again was the stalwart and a little wild looking guy who had knocked him down and a tall darkhaired woman speaking in a foreign language.

The next time Greg woke up he was feeling strange.
His arms and legs did hurt and something was burning inside his stomach like fire.
And... he was buried alive.

To be continued later.

he release of InFamous: Festival of Blood got us thinking here at the Community Team. What would some of our other favorite PS3 characters look like if they were bitten by a vampire? Help us find out in our latest event where you can turn your favorite PS3 character into a vampire!

Entering is easy, just choose from one of the followng PS3 favorites:

Kratos---GoW
Sackboy/girl---LBP
Jak---Jak & Daxter
Daxter--Jak & Daxter
Sly Cooper---Sly Series
Ratchet---R&C
Clank--R&C
Nathan Hale---Resistance 1&2
Joseph Cappelli--Resistance 3
Nathan Drake---Uncharted Series

And then with whatever paint/photshop/artistic program you might have (or sketched on a piece of paper and scanned) create an image of what you think the character would look like if they had been bitten by a vampire! Once you have it done, please reply to this thread and embed the picture for all to see. Once we have everyone's entries we'll look a them and judge the winner will receive a Cole figurine! The next two runner ups will receive XMB desk tops.

Thanks for helping us live our our PS3 vampire frenzy!

SUCKED SUCKED SUCKED


When vampires became monsters and create a environment of fearful than i like them....

Otto Chriek - Iconographer for the Ankh-Morpork Times

But what about your favorite Vampire PC?

Oops - sorry. Missed the point of this thread somehow.

I've never played Vampire: The Masquerade, though I've heard good things. I played Hunter once and Werewolf once. I don't know if I could get into actually playing a vampire - I'm more a Van Helsing kind of guy.

Oh well, then Hunter could be for you. It is supposed to be a great game. We never played it though, since we were playing Vampire and Werewolf it would feel as if we were hunting our own PCs .

I once played a in a game where DID get to hunt our own PCs for a while. We had 4 gaming sessions where two members were going to be gone so the GM handed us the villains sheets and told us to role play building the next trap for our PCs, which we of course then later had to walk right into after the two returned...

I played Hunters once. It was awesome! I played an old, semi-retired defrocked Minister Vampire hunter. Took out two vampires with a chopstick!

My Nathaniel/Malkavian vampire derailed a game once and became a villain. He felt slighted by the Vampire community and went on a killing spree. The other PCs were hunting ME!

I had a great time, but apologized to the GM afterword.