Vampire: The Masquerade Players Guide
Sep. 23rd, 2012 08:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroOne of the last books published in the Old World of Darkness Vampire line (seriously, it includes house ads for their Time of Judgment line that ended the world), this book sums up everything the authors had learned from a decade of the game’s existence in a super-verbose collection of details and advice.
Or in other words, this entire book can be summed up as “Vampire: Yer Playin’ It Rong.”
Okay, that’s not entirely fair, but a lot of this is encouragement to play the game like every stereotype Vampire player ever: Angsty, dramatic, gothier-than-thou. They have a dramatist playstyle that they feel is the optimal form the game, and give scads of advice (mostly in the form of essays in the latter half of the book) on how to get everyone involved and interested in that style of game. Despite being a “player’s guide”, this is an even mix of advice to players and advice to GMs, because in this playstyle every player is also a “storyteller”, and the theme of the campaign is something everyone needs to work towards.
There’s an entire section on designing and playing mortal characters in a Vampire game, and in-depth details (for both mortals and kindred) on what the “dots” really mean and how to get a real story out of the points you put into character creation. They go into significant depth about the different types of vampire factions (Do you know the difference between a pack, a coterie and a family, and how they different between the Sabbat and the Camarilla? I didn’t think so.) and the different purposes they serve and interactions they encourage. There are ideas for chronicles that span generations and how to set up “character pools” that players trade off.
And there’s a clever bit of psychoanalysis on different character/player types and why people would choose them, some of which I think is remarkably insightful and some of which misses the point entirely: Yes, some players who build combat monsters are terribly afraid of their character getting hurt. But some are just seeing a game that involves combat and are trying to build a character who can win it.
Overall: Really, if what you want is a deeply political, all-about-the-interaction, cooperative storytelling experience about modern gothic horror, this is a really useful book. If you roleplay with even the slightest sense that it’s a game that can be won, you’re going to find this annoyingly pretentious. (For generalized gaming advice, there are other published books and many, many online essays that get the same points across, but in a much more accessible tone. Hell, I’ve written a few of them.)
Or in other words, this entire book can be summed up as “Vampire: Yer Playin’ It Rong.”
Okay, that’s not entirely fair, but a lot of this is encouragement to play the game like every stereotype Vampire player ever: Angsty, dramatic, gothier-than-thou. They have a dramatist playstyle that they feel is the optimal form the game, and give scads of advice (mostly in the form of essays in the latter half of the book) on how to get everyone involved and interested in that style of game. Despite being a “player’s guide”, this is an even mix of advice to players and advice to GMs, because in this playstyle every player is also a “storyteller”, and the theme of the campaign is something everyone needs to work towards.
There’s an entire section on designing and playing mortal characters in a Vampire game, and in-depth details (for both mortals and kindred) on what the “dots” really mean and how to get a real story out of the points you put into character creation. They go into significant depth about the different types of vampire factions (Do you know the difference between a pack, a coterie and a family, and how they different between the Sabbat and the Camarilla? I didn’t think so.) and the different purposes they serve and interactions they encourage. There are ideas for chronicles that span generations and how to set up “character pools” that players trade off.
And there’s a clever bit of psychoanalysis on different character/player types and why people would choose them, some of which I think is remarkably insightful and some of which misses the point entirely: Yes, some players who build combat monsters are terribly afraid of their character getting hurt. But some are just seeing a game that involves combat and are trying to build a character who can win it.
Overall: Really, if what you want is a deeply political, all-about-the-interaction, cooperative storytelling experience about modern gothic horror, this is a really useful book. If you roleplay with even the slightest sense that it’s a game that can be won, you’re going to find this annoyingly pretentious. (For generalized gaming advice, there are other published books and many, many online essays that get the same points across, but in a much more accessible tone. Hell, I’ve written a few of them.)
