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Vampire: The Masquerade: Difference between revisions
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Of course, these vampire powers range from those inspired by classic vampire tales (turning into bats, invisibility, [[Mind Control]], and so forth), to the truly bizarre (shadow manipulation, body-morphing, or the ability to drive others into insanity).
Recently, Crowd Control Productions, makers of [[
Vampiric society tends to be divided into a number of Clans, each of whom claim a different vampiric Antediluvian as an ancestor. Some of these clans are found primarily in the Camarilla, the society dedicated to preserving the [[Trope Namer|titular]] [[Masquerade]]:
* Brujah: [[Rebel Without a Cause|Rebels without causes]]. Fiercely independent vampires whose powers center around physical might and kicking ass. Nickname: Rabble. Weakness: Less resistance to blood frenzy.
* Gangrel: The [[Beast Man|beastmen]]. Wild and animalistic vampires who have the ability to command beasts and shape-shift. For several reasons including their wild nature and the awakening of a clan founder, the clan as a whole has left the Camarilla, but individual Gangrel still claim membership. Nickname: Outlanders. Weakness: Becomes more animal-like with each blood frenzy.
* Malkavians: [[The Mad Hatter|The madmen]]. Cursed with vampiric insanity, and the ability to see things that shouldn't be seen, or [[Infectious Insanity|pass that insanity to others]]. Nickname: Lunatics. Weakness: [[With Great Power Comes Great Insanity]].
* Nosferatu: [[Looks Like Orlok|Butt-ugly vampires]]. Usually dwell in sewers and forgotten places where they can dig up secrets, as their ability to hide in the shadows makes them into excellent agents and spies. Nickname: Sewer Rats. Weakness: Guess.
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* Inconnu: A sect housing some of the oldest vampires in the world, with just about nothing known about them to outside observers, and they are doing a pretty good job at keeping themselves in the shadows.
* The Black Hand: A sub-sect to the Sabbat who serves as the assassins of the sect, and an elite group of warriors within the Sabbat to call upon in times of need.
* True Black Hand: Another sub-sect to the Sabbat and the ones who essentially bring it order and structure from within, while primarily concerning themselves with the return of the Antediluvians, and/or a bunch of Antediluvian worshipping loons whose "conspiracies" and "infiltrations" run a mile wide and an inch deep. Introduced in a ''very'' controversial for the time gamebook (''Dirty Secrets of the Black Hand'') in Second Edition, made irrelevant and then wiped out during Revised Edition, and then reintroduced in the "metaplot-free" 20th Anniversary Edition.
* The Anarchs: Formally a Camarilla sub-sect, this sect is home to a great amount of younger vampires who reject the rule of elders that the main Camarilla body supports, and wish to see an equal vampire society where all vampires are equal or at least judged by merit rather than age. They tend to be composed mainly of younger vampires from all clans who don't like being treated like dirt by their elders. [[The Revolution Will Not Be Civilized|They're not very good at practicing what they preach.]]
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{{tropelist}}
* [[Actual Pacifist]]: Obviously varies from character to character, but the Salubri healer caste's Disciplines are all geared toward healing and they can only drink blood from willing victims, so your archetypal Salubri will probably be one of these.
* [[
* [[Addiction Displacement]]: Described as a common event among ghouls who lose their source of vampire blood.
* [[
** It's played pretty straight for the Tzimiszce, the Followers of Set, the Sabbat and to a lesser extent the Lasombra, all of which basically idolise this trope.
* [[Ancient Conspiracy]]: Vampires in general play this role to humanity. There are also multiple conspiracies within their own society.
* [[Animal Eye Spy]]: Animalism 4's ability.
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* [[The Artifact]]: Several.
** Clan Gangrel was created to tie "werewolf" legends into vampires back before [[Werewolf: The Apocalypse]] was thought up. They were later stated as having an "understanding" with the werewolves (mainly to counter White Wolf encouraging Storytellers to use werewolves as [[Beef Gates]] to keep vampires in the cities), until this was retconned out.
** Clan Tremere was originally tied to [[Ars Magica]] (which has a House Tremere in its version of the Order of Hermes).
** In general, most of the bloodlines and independent clans were "one trick ponies" to show off cool new vampire powers and then became an albatross around the setting's neck.
* [[Ascended Demon]]: Golconda.
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* [[Aura Vision]]: The Auspex discipline has the ability to do this among its powers. In particular, vampires who can read auras can tell if someone is a Diablerist (their auras have nasty black veins running through them).
* [[Authority Equals Asskicking]]: Vampires' supernatural powers, as a rule, grow and develop with age, and positions of authority are, as a rule, again, occupied by old vampires, so...
* [[Ax Crazy]]: The Sabbat vampire sect is infamous for being full of [[Ax Crazy]] young vampires, who brutalize humans for fun and eat non-Sabbat vampires for fun and power (older Sabbat members are generally those vampires who grew out of this - into calm and calculated [[Complete Monster|monstrosity]]).
** Any vampire in a frenzy is a mixture of this and [[Brainwashed and Crazy]], due to the influence of the [[Enemy Within]].
* [[Badass]]: Which "signature characters" are this and which are [[Canon Sue]]s is debatable.
* [[Bad Boss]]: More abstract parts of fluff, such as descriptions of vampire society in core rulebooks, imply that most vampire elders treat their progeny and other underlings like this. Specific examples of elders provided by city books are ''usually'' much more rational and prefer to mix carrots with sticks.
* [[Beethoven Was an Alien Spy]]: And Cain was [[Monster Progenitor|the first vampire]] (spelled Caine when referring to him as a vampire). Many modern-day vampires think that this is a myth. They are wrong. Many other people from history and mythology were/are vampires too, from Helen of Troy to Rasputin.
** Rasputin's origin was deliberately muddled for a [[Metaplot]] that never took off—various [[Old World of Darkness]] books describe him as a mage, werecreature, and at least three different vampires. The idea was that Rasputin was a powerful alchemist and Ventrue ghoul who mastered mystical blood magic and distilled the blood of all his vampire allies into the Blood of Caine. Ingesting it caused him to become a "clone" of Caine - with the powers and attributes of all vampires - who would show up as the [[Big Bad]] of a Gehenna scenario where killing Rasputin would prevent Gehenna because the universe would be fooled into thinking Caine died. Since it was a relatively happy ending for the game ([[True Art Is Angsty|and God forbid that]]), White Wolf rejected it and Rasputin remained in limbo.
*** Really, the Rasputin references were just thrown into every clanbook as a joke, because early White Wolf was very clearly a place where no one took themselves very seriously. Once the game became "High Art" and fun was replaced with "tragic angst", multiple retcons were created solely to justify why Rasputin was apparently a member of every clan.
* [[Beware the Nice Ones]]: Tremere (the clan founder, not the clan) decided to gain the power of an Antediluvian and establish his followers as a full-fledged clan by {{spoiler|consuming the soul of Saulot, founder of the most pacifist vampires in the setting}}. Maybe he should have kept researching and noted that {{spoiler|Saulot also founded the uber-evil Baali}}.
* [[Biblical Bad Guy]]: Most prominently Cain(e), the first vampire, but Lilith shows up as part of his backstory, and Elimelech ([[Ascended Extra|a minor character from the Book of Ruth]]) is one of the leaders of the Sabbat.
* [[Blessed with Suck]]: This seems to be the general idea. Many books from the first and second editions tend to disregard it.
* [[Blood Bath]]: One of the sacred rites of the [[Religion of Evil|Sabbat]]. Although it isn't about rejuvenating youth or beauty, like in other depictions, but more a ritual of baptism and consecration interpreted through the Sabbat's "Crusades-era Catholicism on PCP" lens.
* [[Blue and Orange Morality]]: Some vampires abandon the Humanity [[Karma Meter]] for Paths of Enlightenment, which don't follow any human sense of right and wrong.
** There's a bit more to it, but this is the basic idea. The rest of the story is that vampires are no longer human, and trying to stick with the path of Humanity will lead to derangement, and the Paths of Enlightenment are modalities that actually fit with vampire "biology" and instinct. It is telling that any Camarilla vampire over a certain age has a diminished Humanity score and a derangement, whereas Sabbat—regardless of age—are derangement free so long as they have an alternative Path of Enlightenment. Reading the rules for these Paths, however, reveals them to basically be derangements of choice instead of random craziness. Still, if this is how vampires turn out no matter what, this is [[Blue and Orange Morality|alien psychology]] by the very definition.
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* [[Cain and Abel]]: The Biblical ones, although here Caine became the first vampire as a result, and Abel wound up as the first Wraith... probably. Also, a number of clans vs. other clans, any clan and its ''antitribu'', and the Ventrue and Lasombra clans get this feel a lot in the flavor text. "Brothers' Keepers," "mirror images/dark reflections," etc.
* [[Cannibalism Superpower]]: Diablerie, the act of devouring the blood and soul of another vampire, is primarily used by vampires to gain power above what is normally possible for their generation.
* [[Chainsaw Good]]: Talbot's Chainsaw is a legendary and very powerful weapon. The chainsaw is also present in the card game and quite devastating. Sabbat members enjoy regular old chainsaw mayhem as well.
* [[The Chessmaster]]: Almost every elder vampire who isn't dangerously insane.
** And most of the ones that are.
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* [[Deaf Composer]]: Any vampire cooks, by virtue of having normal food taste utterly rancid.
** Unless they have the Eat Food merit, which does allow them to taste the food in addition to not having the food turn to ash in their mouth.
* [[Deal with the Devil]]: Sometimes this is what makes you a vampire in the first place. Sometimes it's what happens when you try to make deals with older (smarter) vampires. A ghoul's relationship to his or her master often takes this form too. Literal deals with actual devils are possible, and they usually turn out about as well as can be expected (later versions of the game strongly discouraged the use of literal demons since it adds an element of [[Black and White Morality]] that undermines the game's central themes).
* [[Defector From Decadence]]: Inverted. The Salubri turned their backs on the violent lives of vampires, and as a result were largely obliterated. The Salubri antitribu are defectors ''to'' decadence - Adonai, their founder, got so pissed off by Salubri pacifism that he stormed out of the bloodline and joined the Sabbat.
** Adonai's problem wasn't pacificism so much as restraint from taking bloody vengeance on the Tremere. He was the founder of the Vengeful Salubri faction from the Dark Ages.
** This is technically one of the reasons why many vampires go anarch, particularly Lasombra who believe that the Sabbat has become everything the original anarchs were trying to resist in the first place, only much worse.
* [[Deus Angst Machina]]: A common, though by no means exclusive, approach to the game.
* [[Distracted by the Sexy]]/[[Distracted By the Shiny|Shiny]]: Clan Toreador's weakness. It might sound lame until it comes up at the worst possible time, say if it clouds their judgement, or if they're driving...
* [[The End of the World as We Know It]]: Gehenna, usually envisioned as the time when the godlike Antediluvian ancestors of the 13 vampire clans will rise to devour their progeny and royally thrash the world in the process.
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* [[Evil All Along]]: [[Your Mileage May Vary]] with Saulot thanks to the [[Darker and Edgier|clusterfuck]] [[True Art Is Angsty|of]] [[Retcon]]s since first edition. According to rumours, he was basically a saint who helped the poor, healed the sick, and farted fairy dust, who may or may not have reached a state where he didn't even drink blood anymore. [[The Chessmaster|This was all just part]] [[Depending on the Writer|of the plan to take over the world]] and he might have {{spoiler|created the Baali, the Wu-zao and Nkulu Zao}}.
** Well, depends which Gehenna version you go for. But even the nicest version of him is a [[Well-Intentioned Extremist]] at best.
** This is all muddied up to eleven since {{spoiler|he is the key to save the world and mankind and he very rarely survive the apocalypse, normally either destroyed or making a heroic sacrifice to take the other Antediluvians}}.
** If you decide Saulot is this trope, it makes the fate of the few surviving nice Salubri even [[Broken Pedestal|more tragic]] then it [[Hero with Bad Publicity|allready is]].
* [[Evil Feels Good]]
* [[Evil Tastes Good]]: The act of drinking blood is described as incredibly addictive and tempting to vampires. To further the analogy, vampires who are low on blood risk losing self-control and attacking people on sight to get a "quick fix" right now.
* [[Eviler Than Thou]]: Many Tzimisce, Lasombra and Followers of Set actually take pride at being [[Eviler Than Thou]] monsters, more often than not of [[Nietzsche Wannabe]]s variety.
* [[Evil Versus Evil]]: The default type of conflicts in this game, as vampire factions, with few exceptions, range from "deeply corrupt" to "demonically evil."
* [[Eye Remember]]: One of the Giovanni powers.
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* [[Funny Schizophrenia]]: A holdover from the very first edition, when Clan Malkavian was all about playing pranks on people and talking to faeries. Later editions' attempts to focus on the tragedy and seriousness of mental illness were often overshadowed by players playing "wacky" vampires.
** Every once in a while you do get someone who plays a wacky Malk and then proceeds to explore the more serious consequences of things like lack of inhibition/impulse control... but don't hold your breath.
*** In LARP parlance these "wacky" Malks are often referred to as Bunny Eared Malks, Fluffy Malks, or Fish Malks.
* [[Fur Against Fang]]: The natural enemies of the vampires are the eponymous creatures from the sister game ''[[Werewolf: The Apocalypse]]'', who are the reason most vampires other than the Gangrel are strictly urban dwellers.
* [[Gambit Pileup]]: And ''how!'' Many campaigns have become entirely self-sustaining (the Storyteller only serves as referee) because of this.
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* [[Hell on Earth]]: What would happen if a [[Omnicidal Maniac|Baali vampire]] managed to succeed in using the "Open the way" power. Fortunately this ritual is so complex, costly and likely to fail it never worked whenever it was attempted. And [[Too Dumb to Live|those who tried it]] got what was coming to them.
* [[Hemo-Erotic]]
* [[Sociopathic Hero]]: Among the favorite tropes of clan Brujah.
* [[Hero with Bad Publicity]]: The six surviving Salubri healers (if you believe they actually exist). The Tremere [[He Knows Too Much|want them dead]],so they convinced the Camarilla of the supposed horrible crimes comitted by the "soul eaters". In the extremely unlikely event a Salubri is discovered in a Camarilla city, a bloodhunt is quickly called. The Sabbat, meanwile would love to snack on their innocent but potent blood. And the [[Sibling Yin-Yang|Baali]]...best not to think about what they would do to them. But they are supposedly [[Friendly Neighborhood Vampire|pretty nice guys]] once you get to know them. They have to be since they can only get nourishment from willing donors.
* [[Hitler's Time Travel Exemption Act]]: The vampires may have run society from the shadows since time immemorial and had a hand in everything from Rome to modern politics... But it's explicitly stated that the Third Reich was all human-made. Not necessarily out of any moral consideration, mind you, but rather that they hate the idea of their food source killing itself off.
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* [[Horror Hunger]]
* [[Hypnotic Eyes]]: Dominate powers. Also the first level of the Setites' special magic, which is called "The Eyes of the Serpent."
* [[I Am a Monster]]: Really evil vampire factions also tend to use alternate [[Karma Meter]]s based on this trope, so that they may wreck shit and do [[Squick]]y stuff without instant degeneration into animals.
* [[I Hate You, Vampire Dad]]: Even when a new vampire isn't created purely as a servant, and doesn't mind his new condition, his relationship with his sire often goes sour sooner or later, because vampires have centuries to get sick of each other and their unlifestyle greatly facilitates distrust and paranoia.
* [[It Got Worse]]: And then [[It Got Worse]] again. With [[The End of the World as We Know It]] on the horizon, that's the most logical direction of plot development, really.
* [[Karma Meter]]: One of the major sources of angst is the fact that you ''will'' lose points on your Humanity [[Karma Meter]], unless your Storyteller (as gamemasters are called in ''WOD'') is more lenient than the rules suggest (many Storytellers tend to not subtract points of Humanity for violent actions in self-defence, for example, but the rules as written say otherwise). And when you lose them all, it is game over. It is possible to stabilize at low Humanity level (most older non-player characters do this), as long as you abstain from acts of extreme cruelty, but a character suffers penalties for this.
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* [[The Missing Faction]]: The lost/extinct vampire clans: the Cappadocian and the Salubri. The Giovanni and the Tremere filled in the power vacuum they left behind in the Final Nights. Coincidentally, they both usurped the previous clans' positions.
* [[Monster Progenitor]]: Cain is the first Vampire.
* [[Moral Myopia]]: ''Extremely'' common among vampires, as psychologically distancing themselves from human herds makes their night-to-night unlives so much easier.
** It exists within clans, too. The Lasombra, the Giovanni and the Tzimisce are utter bastards to each other, but if anyone ''dares'' try treat them the way they treat everyone else, God help them.
* [[Nietzsche Wannabe]]: The Camarilla actually suppresses this mindset, as it is detrimental to [[Masquerade]]. The Sabbat and some other groups embrace it.
* [[Obfuscating Insanity]]: A common tactic of the saner Malkavians is to act crazier than they are.
* [[Obvious Rule Patch]]:
** The rules for creating abominations. Briefly: if you attempt to turn a werewolf into a vampire, the werewolf gets a skill roll. He wins, he dies peacefully. He loses, he dies horribly but his soul is free. He botches, he becomes an abomination, essentially a walking Game Breaker balanced out by crippling depression. Since there are all sorts of abilities in tWoD that can cause a skill roll to fail or critically fail, the editors in Revised Edition state that nothing short of divine intervention can affect the roll (except the werewolf spending a willpower point for an automatic success).
** When the creators broke down and allowed [[Half Human Hybrids|dhampirs]] into the game, they made a rule more or less banning them from [[Superpower Lottery|combining with any other supernatural type]].
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* [[Passive-Aggressive Kombat]]: The Camarilla. Half the people present are trying to be angry without offending anyone, and the other half are trying to get the first half to frenzy just for lulz. How to set this up:
## Take a bunch of Vampires who, in this setting, have to actively resist going into a berserker rage when injured, threatened, or humiliated.
## Put them in a building called Elysium, in which violence of any sort is forbidden and legally enforced by vampires old enough to remember (fondly) medieval torture.
## Have Fun.
* [[Poisonous Friend]]: ghouls can often become this.
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** Also Caine himself. The Book of Nod reveals that he was offered forgiveness and release from his curse by God three times and each time refused because doing so meant submitting to another's will. There are even hints that that offer is still open, that Caine could redeem himself and all other vampires at any time but still refuses to accept forgiveness until God asks him for forgiveness first.
* [[Prophecy Twist]]: The rise of thin-blooded vampires (most if not all of the 14th Generation and all of the 15; for reference, PCs are typically 13th-Gen) is supposed to herald Gehenna, the vampire apocalypse. However, no one knows that it's because {{spoiler|vampire Final Deaths disturb the torpor of elders regardless of how thin the dead vamp's blood is, and thin-blooded vampires, for obvious reasons, die easier than stronger ones}}. Oh, and [[Idiot Ball|guess how the Kindred are trying to prevent/forestall Gehenna?]]
* [[Psychic Surgery]]: Tzimisce. Seldom used for healing.
* [[The Punishment]]: Vampires came into existence as a result of God's curse on Cain, presumably aimed at making Cain repent. As you can guess, this worked about as well as most examples of [[The Punishment]].
** Well, he's retired into cab driving. Seems about as good as these things get.
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* [[Real Men Wear Pink]]: The Brujah ''antitribu'' wear purple on their clothes as a sign of clan affiliation. Mind, they are generally considered Sabbat's shock troops {{spoiler|but also actively recruit Camarilla's and Anarchs' lost youth into their sect}}. Badass indeed.
** So... The Brujah ''antitribu'' are [[Fridge Logic|really]] [[Saints Row|Saints]]?
* [[Retcon]]: Along with a [[Continuity Snarl]] worth of Comic Timeline. Each new editon changed things and the flavor of the verse. There were splats that confounded, sneered at or simply invalidated others, and the sheer amount of rumors was frankly ridiculous. There is a reason why Vampire is synonymous in RPG circles with metaplot... and railroading.
* [[Recycled in Space]]: There are settings for the Dark Ages, [[Queen Vicky|the Victorian Age]], the [[Far East]], and [[Darkest Africa]].
** Subverted by the unfortunate hype around White Wolf's later science-fiction game, ''Trinity'', which many players billed well before its release as "vampires in space". Oh how wrong they were. (Hint: It's a game about politics, psychic supersoldiers, and fighting mutants, spies, and crazy scientists)
* [[Religion of Evil]]: The Followers of Set. Their whole faith revolves around corrupting others, including each other. The [[Karma Meter|Paths of Enlightment]] provided for Setite characters in their splatbook include the Path of Ecstasy (sample moral precept: "To resist temptation is a great wrong") and the Path of the Warrior (sample moral precept: "You are a warrior; do not hesitate to kill").
* [[Resist the Beast]]
* [[Romanticized Abuse]]: supplement ''Ghouls: Fatal Addiction'', The Camarilla was played straight as this kind of organization. The theme of playing the social structure between vampires and ghouls as [[Romanticized Abuse]] is hinted in the core rulebook as well as many other supplements, but it's much more blatant in "Ghouls". (In this setting, a "ghoul" is a human who drinks vampire blood. The blood makes her superhumanly strong, make her stop aging, let her heal faster and increases her sexual urges, but it also enslaves her under the Vampire's will.)
* [[Scaled Up]]: Settites' powers revolve around turning into snakes. Gangrel can turn into any predatory creatures, but a significantly powerful one can turn into a dragon.
* [[Sexy Packaging]]: The cover of the first Tzimisce splatbook combines this with [[Covers Always Lie]]. It displays a voluptuous and scantily clad blond woman in a sexy pose.
** Which is clued in on [[Vagina Dentata|the back cover]], [http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic551595_lg.jpg which can be seen here (NSFW WARNING)].
* [[Sourcebook]]
* [[Society Marches On]]: The entire setting ended in 2004, one year before [[YouTube]] came alive. In the Camarilla sourcebook, it stated that the Masquerade was becoming more and more difficult to uphold (a real concern for the elders, leading to the creation of a more draconian watch force) because our society was a vouyerist with international instantaneous devices in the hands of the humans... now think about this and compare with the situation today where it's weird ''not'' to have cell phones with Internet, amateur video pages and reality shows. Or hell, 2008 to get the idea how long it would have lasted.
** The 20th Anniversary edition updates the setting to the 2010s, with all the potential that implies. The artwork vampire in the Giovanni section even has a smartphone in hand.
* [[Splat]]
* [[Stages of Monster Grief]]: All over the place. Some highlights: Most Camarilla vamps are [[Fully-Embraced Fiend|Fully Embraced Fiends]], with the occasional [[Ascended Demon|Golconda seeker]]. The Sabbat and Tzimisce in particular are fully into embracing their sadistic natures against humanity.
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