Mark, Mike, Stephen and Ken discuss the new 20th Anniversary Edition of Vampire the Masquerade from CCP/ White Wolf. We were lucky enough to talk with Shane DeFreest, the CCP Community Developer for all things Vampire. Shane PWNs Mark’s “supposed” Vampire lore knowledge, without making him cry….to bad.
We have a copy of the 20th Anniversary Edition from CCP/ White Wolf (a $99.99 value) to give away! Use the Punchtab contest entry form below to enter the giveaway!
Also, we continued on with the Faxion Friday campaign and hosted the entire Development team from Faxion Online. They are launching this FREE to play PVP based MMO soon. We have hosted them before and plan to get more information at E3. Check them out if you are are a die hard PVP fan.
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I’ve never really been one for playing what I call “flat” characters.
I’ve always seen the generic gangrel, giovanni, Ventrue, et cetera. character archetypes as NPC’s. In my view player characters should all be unique snowflakes (to use a cliche)
anyway,
once my Sabbat Ravnos Larp character (a Michael Hayze) got trapped in the abyss, and after attempting to create an illusion of light (and anything else he could think to conjour) he realized the abyss wouldn’t let him. going slowly mad from sensory deprivation he started to focus in on himself. he started to create a world in his own head and reinforcing it with horrid reality, building his own world piece by piece.
That was the point that the Lasombra antideluvian took notice.
Mike found himself in a very ornate room and he was not alone.
Unsure of what was real and what was not at this stage he proceeded to talk to this elder, and brokered a deal with him, namely that Lasombra would kick him out of the abyss or “Let him go” if Mike would stop trying to create in a place of void, and also become one of his servants Mike agreed and sure enough he was Ejected at the point where he came in.
apart from a few derangements and the world ending 6-8 months later He was more or less fine from the incident. Though I dont recall how he got out of “Being a servant of Lasombra” though. I think Lasombra Lost the Struggle against the other antediluvians before that became important.
I began playing Vampire back when the 1st edition Softcover book game out around 91 or 92. The first character I created was a Gangrel who was nicknamed “Scarecrow”. We began in the game in St. Louis Missouri and of course we all played members of the Camarilla. Eventually The Guide to the Sabbat game out around 96 or 97, I believe and I convinced my storyteller to allow me to sort of ret-con his background so that he was secretly a member of the Black Hand posing as a member of the Cam and he was known among the Sabbat as “Sleepwalker”. It made for a very interesting game, with the other player’s never really suspecting I was one of the so called bad guys. We played this Chronicle every week, sometime two or three times a week depending on our schedules. Eventually White Wolf released The Dark Ages book and we began to explore the concept and game behind it. Age rules didn’t exist yet and almost all of us had envisioned our characters as much older than mere neonates, so again my awesome ST allowed me to re-con my background and explore just where Scarecrow/Sleepwalker came from. So I made him up as a Dark Age version of himself and we set out to explore this. I was inspired by a song by a band called Diamond Head called Am I Evil? With his mother being a witch burned at the stake and him seeking revenge against her killers only to be found by a much older predator who embraced him. We found out through this long campaign that Sleepwalker’s real name was Vladimir Valezarus and that the nickname was given to him by his mother, we found out how he came to join the Sabbat and many other great things. Eventually the group broke up around 99 or so but I kept the character around in my own game as a powerful npc. I even made a version of him for Requiem, though I felt a bit like Johnny Depp sometime, unable to let a fictional character go.The main point is thanks to Vampire, I got to explore and live a whole different life (unlife?) as someone else… and I am very happy to be able to once again relive it through the 20th Anniversary edition.
Was playing a chronicle in whih I was the last Gangrel left in the city after the pack abbandoned it due to a betrayel on behalf of the Toreador Primogen that caused the final death of our ancient.
After much work I was able to “make her” kidnap a little girl, daughter of a local Garou. She thus thought that she had the garou in her palm to go for the reign of her city. I was able to have a member of her clan nominated as Prince, but little did she know he was actually a Nosfe mole. After which I recuperated the little girl and had the Garou request she be handed over thus to avoid war.
I was able to watch as she was ripped apart. Great revenge
Cant wait for the book to be released and have played Vampire the Masquerade for years table top and larp and love it
I was playing a Tremere with a Gangrel and Lasombra, I was tasked to get the Gangrels blood for some elders. First rule of tremere : DON”T QUESTION THE ELDERS. So I got the blood and was driving back to the chantry and I was rolling and fine until I botched and bam I crash into a police car.
The following took place in a series of LARPs which were the very first of my life, more than a decade ago:
I was a Toreador Antitribu belonging to a pack whose loyalty was for the Lasombra Bishop Nicolás Sánchez de Ibiza. There were three other Bishops in the city at that time fighting politically to become the leaders of the Sabbat in Madrid. Those other Bishops had their respective supporters.
However, my pack was the most astute, the most hardworking and the most resourceful. We managed to strengthen Bishop Ibiza’s position that much that the Camarilla took over Madrid… as Ibiza was actually an undercover Camarilla agent. Of course, as astute as my pack was, we didn’t have a clue about that.
The best VtM story I have was a anarch Brujah I was playing (cliche!) that eventually worked his way into the Cam’s good graces enough to take over being Sheriff of a city (I think the game was set in Vegas, but I don’t remember anymore). The city came under siege by the Sabbat during the course of the story and by the end of it my once rebel Brujah survived through some lucky rolls to be one of the few Cam left in the city that had any concept of how to run it. The story largely tapered off after that, but it was a fun run while it lasted.
I use to run a Sabbat game that lasted several years. My girlfriend was playing a Malkavian Antitribu and a member of the Black Hand. After we had been playing for about a year/year-and-a-half, I began introducing two NPCs, a human child and a coldblooded vampire killer. I discussed these NPCs with the other players (up to 7 other players at times), and told them that they only existed in the Malk’s mind but to act like they were there (their interactions with the NPCs were also only in the Malk’s mind). For between two and three years, my girlfriend (the Malk player) didn’t realize that these NPCs were in fact two personalities within her own mind. Slowly the player started to suspect, culminating in a scene where all three of her personalities sat in an abandoned schoolroom talking. The character never understood that these NPCs weren’t real, but it was a pretty big revelation for the player and resulted in some awesome scenes.
Vampire has given me some of my fondest gaming memories, and I cannot wait for V20 to make a big splash!
I’m eager to start playing. I saw my friends enjoying vampire-the masquerade while at university. What a better chance to initiate myself than having my own copy.
Mostly I end up being the storyteller. I’ve run a few chronicles in my time Including Lock Stock and a Gallon of Blood (the unholy lovechild of Anne Rice and Guy Ritchie) set in the East End of London. I also have run a Couple of Sabbat games as I have a soft spot for the sect. One of my more memorable moments was my multi arc campaign set in Vegas where each session they played a different group of vamps all running their scams and adventures on the same night. As a finale each player played a character from a different arc and I ran a 4 way battle for supremacy between the Camarila, The Sabbat, the Anarchs and the Giovanni.. There were riots in the street, the National Guard was called in, the Sabbat flew a plane into the Hoover Dam, the Prince was slain and the Giovanni emerged triumphant…
Good Times…
Lets hope my new chronicle featuring an Archon Kill Team is as much fun, I’d say more but my players might read this…
The First Story I ever ran with Vampire was Alien Hunger. However I change some stuff from the story. First I made every PC a Nosferatu. (2.) I made Prince Edward hates Nosferatu and he See them as Masquerade breaking. Denver was a kill on sight for the Nosferatu. So the player was trying to find out what happen to them and get out of Denver before the Prince kills them.
Also Kindred: The Embraced came out 1996 and The show was not dropped per-say.
Mark Frankel the main actor who played the Prince died for real.
In 1996, before the birth of his second son Max, Mark Frankel died in a motorcycle accident in Chiswick, West London, aged 34, not long after filming final episode of Kindred. And they Did not wish to replace him.
Couldn’t be happier that they’re releasing this update of the rules. I only hoper it’s followed with a Werewolf update and the World of Darkness MMO really soon.
who won?
I did.
As a side not, if you live in Europe and want to order a copy with the intercontinental shipping costs covered by CCP/WW, you might be interested in this initiative: http://www.v20-europe.com.