Vampire the Requiem

To begin with, this is a review by a new player for new players. I like horror role-playing and picked this book up on a whim. I really love the system and the setting and have bought a lot of the White Wolf games since. But I've never played or read Masquerade, so I can't possibly talk about whether the changes have been better or worse. But I can relate to someone who is interested in trying this game for the first time and I'll try to make this review useful to you. To start at the very beginning, REQUIEM uses the Storytelling System, so you'll want to buy the WORLD OF DARKNESS corebook. This corebook runs through the basics of the system: each dramatic action has a number of 10 sided dice that you roll called your dicepool. Usually this number is the sum of an ability score and a skill, plus or minus situational modifiers. You get one success for each die that rolls 8 or above and you get to reroll 10's. Most actions succeed with a single "success", although many require a certain number of successes over time, or you compete against a target for the msot successes. This corebook explains how to make mortal characters, and other sourcebooks (like REQUIEM) have you start with a mortal character based on these rules and add "supernatural" elements to have a vampire, mage, or whatever. Some people are unhappy that more than one book is needed. I love it for 3 reasons: the corebook is awesome on its own and it allows you to play mortal horror games all by itself (which a great many people have discovered the joy of; I would now only run CALL OF CTHULHU using World of Darkness characters); if you buy more than one gameline, having character generation and the rulesystem repeated in every book seems a waste of time and money; and finally, REQUIEM is already a pretty big book and something would have to go in order to add the extra rules. It would be a shame to wedge in the extra rules since REQUIEM is so well developed its like a work of art. Speaking of art, I thought I'd note the high production quality of the book. Some people are embarassed that they like a book based on its cover. Not me - as a bibliophile, I like a book that looks nice on the shelf and holds up well in addition to being useful between the covers. REQUIEM is a gorgeous holographic red hardcover with tight binding that has held up well. The pages have a glossy finish to them that makes this tome really stand out in a crowd. I like how each of the game lines has a distinctive cover that draws your eye to which series a book belongs to. The interior art is all black-and-white; some is a little cartoonish, but for the most part it is good and gritty. So, what's so great about REQUIEM besides a pretty face? Well, the content is well laid out, is clear and orderly, and supports the theme of the game. Maybe the first quarter of the book is nothing but flavor text. This is important; a game designed around "storytelling" should itself tell a good story. Even i

I'd like to start this review by saying what many people seem to not understand: This is not Vampire the Masquerade, 3rd Edition. This is an entirely new game, albeit with similar terms and mechanics. That is an important distinction, because if you're looking for a newer version of Masquerade, you'll be surprised at this game. There are no longer any Generations, Antedeluvians, Methuselahs, Metaplot, or Caine/Lillith creation myth. Additionally, there is no longer any Camarilla/Sabbat fighting, or any Camarilla or Sabbat, for that matter. What these generally outward aspects are replaced with are the following: Five clans with a theoretical infinite series of bloodlines. These bloodlines are far more powerful than those in Masquerade, mainly because all Kindred (yes, the term has stayed the same) start with the same basic Blood Potency (sort of the new Generations- after about 350 years of careful feeding and no "naps," you're pretty much forced into torpor) and can change their blood after reaching BP 4... or can activate a sire's bloodline at BP 2. The clans are now more Archetypes than Stereotypes- no longer do you have to create a hideous info-mongering sewer-dwelling Nosferatu, or a leather-jacket anarchist Brujah (who incidentally are no longer a clan, but now a bloodline.) Now you're pretty much freed up to create a character that you feel will fulfill a more fluid role in Kindred society and in the chronicle. Additionally, there are now Five Covenants- One is the Ordo Dracul, an occult association dealing with Kindred transcendance (forget that whole "third eye of enlightenment" from Masquerade.) They believe their covenant was founded by the Dracula, Vlad Tepes, who was supposedly cursed by God for blasphemy and chose to follow his own path of transcendence of the Kindred condition. The second is the Lancea Sanctum, a covenant that holds Kindred purpose to be God's Holy Predators, to accept their place as damned and removed from God's grace, and to remind humans to turn towards God and ask for protection and forgiveness. They trace their origins back to the centurion who pierced Jesus' side with the Lance of Destiny. He was supposedly a truly awful human who nevertheless gained a purpose in undeath, preaching his word to other KIndred. The third is the Invictus, the inheritors of the Roman Camarilla (a defunct covenant that worked like the Roman Senate and collapsed with the Roman Empire,) who now consider themselves the nobility, the First Estate, among the Kindred. They offer protection at a price- centuries of service to an elder, but with the promise (generally delivered) of greater status, hunting rights, and influence with mortals and other supernatural creatures. The fourth are the Carthians. Though they haven't recieved a thorough treatment from White Wolf, they are generally explained as a covenant seeking to equalize the power relations within Kindred society. Their ideals were borrowed from the Enlighten

I have been playing World of Darkness RPG's for over 9 years now, and I am very pleased with the latest system. The aspects that stand out in my mind as improvements from the old World Of Darkness, and Vampire: The Masquerade games are: * Greater balance of power accross different character types. * Improved settings that are more transperant and dynamic allowing Storytellers to personalise their games in any fashion they desire. * Crossover friendly. ie compatible with the other games in the new World Of Darkness series. * Smoother system mechanics. For old gamers it takes adjusting, but once you have experience the dice rolling is much quicker. The only drawback (which hasn't changed from the old game) is the amount of information not included in the core books, that is in supliments. This makes the series very overpriced.

I can't believe how much they fixed this version of Vampire. If you read my review of VtM, I panned the book for having a horrible system and setting, (...). This one got rid of all that. Players not withstanding While there are now only 5 clans, the definition of "clan" changed. A Clan is what race the character is "born" into, much like your or my ethnicity. Ultimately, not our choice, just fate. Then, you pick from 5 Covenants, which are basically your religion as a vampire, which also give you power. Some people need to do the math: You went from 13 Clans to 25 possible character templates, and they both have roughly the same say over the character's existence. Oops, you can also choose not to be in a covenant, so I guess that second number is 30. Did you hate how they did Celerity? Me too! They fixed it so a character can't have 47 attacks a turn. They also distinguished between Blood and Vitae, clarified the effects of diablerie, stuck Backgrounds and Merits together (who didn't see that one coming?), and fixed "Generation" so you didn't have to count backwards to get more powerful. Character creation is a bit more strict, forcing points to be spent in certain areas, and only allowing 3 discipline points for neonates. No more. Skills are defined into set categories which will be the same for all three WW games: Vamp, Mage, and Werewolf. Essentially, you use the WoD book to make a mortal, then assign a template. I just hope Were and Mage are written as well as this one was. This was a great buy, from a previous hater of the series, and I didn't even mention the innovation of Virtues and Vices. You'll just have to buy the books and see.

The new Vampire game is infinitely superior to its previous incarnations: It kept what worked, and discarded what did not. Requiem is more vicious and more horrific -- gone is the comparative safety of Masquerade; in Requiem, vampires are cold-blooded, megalomaniacal serial killers hiding themselves behind a veneer of civility (well, for the most part) and the game never lets you forget it. There are only five clans, each representing one of the archetypes of mythological vampires: Passionate Daeva, savage Gangrel, mysterious Mekhet, horrific Nosferatu and domineering Ventrue. Instead of limiting the options of character creation, the reduced number of clans increases them. These clans are much broader in scope than in previous games to allow for more variation. Bloodlines are a nice touch, but emphasizing them detracts from the fact that any vampire concept should fit into one of the five clans. To give you an example of the broader scope, take the Nosferatu. Instead of being limited to physical deformity as in Masquerade, Requiem's Nosferatu merely have a clan weakness that limits their social effectiveness -- and the player is free to come up with any reason as to why that is (anything from physical ugliness to rank odours to a 'general sense of dread'). Nosferatu can be earth-shatteringly attractive... if they have a foul odour or unpleasant presence to offset it. If you enjoy political games, Requiem shines: * No global politics -- everything is local, with vampires largely limited to their cities (imprisoned in their 'gilded cages' is a theme the game plays up). * Five major factions (called "covenants" -- the Carthian Movement, the Circle of the Crone, the Invictus, the Lancea Sanctum and the Ordo Dracul) instead of two (Camarilla & Sabbat), all five of which maneuver roughly equally through the Danse Macabre. City Princes can come from any covenant (it's no longer just a Camarilla thing). * Tenurial and unconventional domains; Princes can hand out Regent titles to vampires in their cities, granting them domain over areas or spheres of mortal influence (a Regent of the French Quarter, or a Regent of Finance). With more titles comes more jockeying for position, not to mention conflict. As the book points out, what happens when a crime occurs? Is it the responsibility of the Regent overseeing the location of the crime (Regent of the French Quarter, for example) or the Regent of Law Enforcement? The book doesn't answer that question, and indicates that there doesn't exist a hard and fast solution in-game -- thus, tons of conflict. * More fluid political power: Princes are common, but not the rule. Some cities are ruled by groups of Kindred, or even attempts at mortal democracy. Princes no longer have the authority of an umbrella organization (the Camarilla) to support their power; either they deserve to be Prince, or they're merely pretenders to the throne. The game certainly isn't as 'original' as White Wolf led us to believe (of cours