Our Vampire: the Requiem game has been going on for several months now, and a lot has happened to our fair, little crew since our GM’s first post entitled Undead in Chicago, First Meeting. My character’s name is Lavender Ashe, a Daeva who was embraced in the 1920s in New York City. She’s a diva […]

Set in a New Orleans that never was, and certainly is not now, post-Katrina, this atmospheric work opens with a story that sums up the edgy infighting of vampiric unlife (provided you can read thin block capitals on a heavily-patterned background – better contrast would have improved my enjoyment of this bit!). The introduction following the story explains how New Orleans seems a city made for the gothic horror feel of Vampire: The Requiem, and explains how the material in the core rulebook perhaps represents common knowledge (and misinformation) about the city, while herein lies the real truth. Thus it is clear from the outset, that this book is intended mainly for Storytellers and not for general player consumption.

White Wolf popularized a concept nearly twenty years ago. They revolutionized gaming by permitting players to take on the role of the monsters rather than those who slay various supernatural critters. They now offer a deeper layer through their Night Horrors line. See, even the boogeyman is scared of something or some things. This lines opens up the urban legends and myths of the monsters. These are the monsters underneath the monsters’ beds.

I’m reviewing two comp copies from White Wolf today since they have a great deal in common. Both weigh in at 163 pages. Both hold to the same concepts. Both seem to have been given the same amount of creative energy.

It’s been too long since I took part in Live Action Role-Playing. It was the mid-nineties at Egyptian Campaign in Carbondale, Illinois. The Southern Illinois University’s Student Center was the perfect setting for a session of the Masquerade. There were outdoor and indoor sets.

Hectic Narrators bounced all around in attempt to keep the action controlled. It was a great night, but I’m reasonably sure there wasn’t a story to speak of. Yeah, I recall a handful of werewolves being found dead outside the building. There was also something about the Prince being mad. To be honest, the game was an excuse for the largest number of gamers at the convention to cut loose and have fun. After reading City in the Sand, I have to wonder how much better that night would have been with a story underlying everything. I guess I should say a “good story that people were interested in” underlying everything. City in the Sand takes an interesting bit of cinema’s history and applies a little Vampire bite to it.

City in the Sand is a new Mind’s Eye Theatre product from White Wolf using the Storytelling Adventure System. This is the first MET product using the SAS format and I was immediately curious about how the format would work in a live-action environment. Let’s just say I was impressed with the overall quality of City in the Sand and at the amount of cool stuff that was included in this product.

I contacted the folks at White Wolf and had the chance to talk to the authors (Eddy Webb, Kelley Barnes and Jess Hartley) about the design of the product and a bit about Mind’s Eye Theatre in general.

We recently started a new game of Vampire: the Requiem set in Chicago. Interestingly the players decided early on that they would all be members of the same Covenant in the setting, allowing for some common interests and history for the group at the start of play.

As the Storyteller for the game I’ve been reading and making use of the published material in World of Darkness: Chicago and the Invictus Covenant book.

Of course, I will be adding a few twists and turns to keep things interesting and more fitting to our personal style of play. I’ve built up a list of interesting NPCs and ongoing plot threads throughout the city. The player characters’ goals are the main stage of this story, but nothing happens in a vacuum either. The other Covenants have plots going on in Chicago (not to forget about other members of the Invictus as well).

Most players enjoy something tangible given to them in a game. It can be as simple as dice, poker chips, and a character sheet; nevertheless, the experience deepens when newspaper articles, photos, and varied memorabilia are also handed out. People are bound by their senses.

The more senses used during a game greatly intensifies the overall experience. Attack them all. While the Testament of Longinus (PDF $7.99) won’t smell like a centuries old text, it’s still a masterfully fun little addition to the World of Darkness (and you can always check-out an old book from the library to relate that old smell for your players). This psudo-document follows the story of a self-described “antichrist” as he moves from criminal to vampire to . . . something more.

White Wolf experiments with “ready-made player-characters” for those gaming groups on the go. Two such PDFs already exist, but I’ll only be talking about the Slaughterhouse Five. The PDF is 26 pages (no ads) devoted to the description of five player-characters and a bit of the world they live in. It’s an interesting idea, so let’s see how I felt it played out.

A few years ago, I wouldn’t have wanted to be fed a handful of pre-made characters to push onto my gaming group. It’s too much fun to make your own character. Right? Once upon a time, I would answered “yes” to that question without hesitation. I’ll now mend my answer to “yes, usually.” Why do I now permit myself to sacrifice creativity for availability? First, I no longer believe that question is even valid. The biggest reason why is pointed out by the blurb for the game.

Eddy Webb, Alternative Publishing Developer at White Wolf Publishing, brings us a new design essay today. Eddy tells us how New Wave Requiem was developed, what some of the challenges were and how the project came together.

Finding Horror in the Eighties

New Wave Requiem started as a joke. A bunch of us were clowning around in the Vampire office (where both the developer and art director had their desks) and joked about all the vampire movies in the eighties. The idea stuck in my head long after the conversation ended, and it led to me spending hours doing research, watching movies and constantly rewriting an outline until I really felt that we could do a Vampire product on America in the 1980s and still have it be a horror game.

There is a movie called The Man From Earth that could have inspired this book. In it, a man tells his closest friends that he is an immortal. In turn, the friends try to ferret out if he’s telling the truth or playing some strange game with them. The friends make one mistake countless times when they try to get specific information from him. He often responds with vague accounts that are little better than a history book’s recollection. His claim is that people who cannot remember were they were a year earlier shouldn’t demand centuries old answers. I constantly found myself thinking of this excellent film. White Wolf offers readers an obscure history lesson in their newest release, Ancient Mysteries. After reading the blurb, I thought I would like the first half the book (the “Fog of Eternity” appealed to me) and would probably trudge through the latter half (I always wonder if anyone uses the NPCs from the various books).

Ancient Mysteries isn’t the standard Kindred history book. What Kindred consider high points in history does not always coincide with the mortal populace. On page 100, the authors cleverly compare the “Fog of Eternity” to actual fog filling a mountainous valley. In essence, much of the past is forgotten just as the valley is blanketed in mist; however, there will always be peaks immune to the fog. The text gives a detailed look to a few of those mountains.

Flashpoints in the Fog

In a society made up of liars and murderers afflicted by a slowly eroding grasp of their own existences to date, who can trust the concept of history? Understand, then, that there is a scale upon which all Kindred are precariously balanced. As personal power weighs more heavily, the ability to rely on that monster’s memory of the past is lightened. How do the Kindred navigate this Mystery of Ages?

Ancient Mysteries is available at the Flames Rising RPGNow Shop.

White Wolf takes us back to the Eighties in New Wave Requiem (WW25320). The decision to turn back the clock nearly twenty five years seems to be a brilliant one (Yes, I did say TWENTY FIVE years). Sob. Vampire: the Masquerade hit bookshelves in 1991, so readers never really got a feel for the Reagan Era of gaming. This appears to be their attempt at remedying that issue. This slim supplement weighs in at eighty-one pages; however, it wastes no space with ads (an oddity considering the waste the 1980s created). There are a few pages devoted solely to pieces of art, but these terrific characterizations demand forgiveness as they summon images of The Warriors and an evil Susanna Hoffs.

Review by Todd Cash

They Win. They Always Win.

The Ventrue — ancient kings and cutting-edge moguls — have a simple reputation. They win. They always win. They are known as Lords, and across all the World of Darkness, wherever you find vampires, you’ll find Ventrue behind them, pulling the strings.

Ventrue: Lords over the Damned is a clanbook for Vampire: The Requiem.