 Howdy how's it going? My name's Davy Chappy and it's time to suck the good suck because we are going over the most popular vampire book this side of Annie Rice, Vampire, The Masquerade. I'm gonna give a general overview of the game, explain how to make a character in the world of darkness, and give brief anecdotes about what you can expect in normal games. As always keep in mind that a lot of this is just my opinion, so if you feel that I'm just a poser, feel free to suck however you want. And real quick I'd like to give a brief shout out to my new patrons this month. A knight errant, gentlemen's pancake, Jamie Smith, Matt Richardson, Matthew Clift, Marshall Barrett, Robo Rotten. Thank you so much for pledging to my Patreon, your monthly donations is more than our government would give us. But with that out of the way, let's begin. So Vampire The Masquerade is a game about you living your angsty 12 year old fantasies of being a super strong, super fast, vaguely magical nightmare creature, who is also super attractive for some reason. It puts you in the role of a blood sucker and assigns you one clan out of many opposing vampire clans that now have to initiate turf warfare harder than JK Rowling. Each clan represents a basic stereotype of vampire media, and your existence throughout the game largely revolves around the struggle and the question of maintaining humanity in a world where you are distinctly not human. Originally released in 1991, it is without a doubt the premier vampire role-playing game in the entire world, so popular in fact that there are entire subcultures of LARP dedicated to acting out the game in real life, with varying results. It also has a sequel slash remake game called Vampire the Requiem, which is like the thunder cat's hoe of vampire games. And it recently had its own 5th edition come out in 2018, making changes to the system while still keeping in tune with the original game's rules. The main gimmick throughout every edition of Vampire The Masquerade has always been the clash of clans, since each clan has its own unique style of gameplay, and tying yourself to one clan is like figuring out which Hogwarts house you belong in. There are the manipulative, order obsessed ventrue, the wild-chaping gang role, the lost boys' brouhaha, the tire trope insane-o malcavians, my personal favorite artist, the toreador, and a bunch of others. With 13 in total for extra spookiness, if there is an obscure movie, book, or video game in fiction, there is probably a clan based around it, also that you can create the 2009 DeviantArt OC of your dreams. Lore-wise, the clan your character is tied to will be the same clan as whoever turned you into a vampire, and the clans tend to group up into larger sects to both dominate more territory, and also ensure that every vampire is upholding the titular masquerade. The masquerade is a list of rules that every vampire is meant to follow in an effort to protect the secrecy of vampires, because if we're being honest, as powerful as vampires are, with all their weaknesses, if humans knew about them and put their minds to it, they could reenact the end of Sheiky, and then the game would be over. For that reason, the masquerade is held up as absolute law, and breaking the law will result in the law breaking you. Any obvious use of their powers, random acts of sanguinary violence, or attempts to be too sexy will alert the humans that you're a predator, and if your sect doesn't deal with you first, the vampire hunters will show up with their prime ribbed stakes and wipe the whole place clean of undead. Speaking of undead, you're probably wondering how to get a game rolling in your own group, especially in regards to making your first character, and unfortunately for you, making a character in Vampire the Masquerade is a struggle of the highest caliber. As is the case with every tabletop game in the world of darkness, making a character in Vampire the Masquerade is the hardest thing in the world due to the tit-punchingly stupid way that White Wolf, the company, organizes their books. In their minds, the key to good formatting is predicating every chapter with a long, unimportant, and unhelpful story about somebody doing something vaguely vampire-y, to the point where, before you can even find the table of contents, you have to skip over 18 pages of fanfiction written by an overzealous D&D nerd who really wants to tell you about this cool world that they've built. But as far as making a character goes, to start with, you're gonna wanna come up with a concept of what you want your character to be. A's punk rock vampire, Victorian era dandy, this isn't a real step, this is theory-crafting. Keep in mind that one of the things about vampires is that they're sort of frozen in time, which is why they don't age, but also why they never adapt with the times. You can't teach an old bat new tricks. After that, you choose one of those clans that we talked about earlier to make up the major aspects of your character. Clans are like races, you're not beholden to the stereotype, but a nose for add-to isn't charming anybody into their beds. Other things you have to pick are your sect, your nature, and your demeanor, which are just background role-play titles that you'll apply to yourself so that other people can get a feel for you. They don't really matter stat-wise. The actual stats are the attributes. You'll notice that those are organized into physical, mental, and social groups, and you'll choose one group at a time to give seven, five, and three points to whichever stats you want within those groups. Each attribute starts with one point, so you're never completely screwed on something you don't wanna put points into. Once that's done, you do it again with your abilities. The abilities are grouped into talents, skills, and knowledges, and you have three, nine, and five points, but unlike attributes, your abilities don't start with anything, so choose wisely. After that, you'll pick up your disciplines, which are superpowers that your clan has, and you can cherry-pick the ones that you like, or you can be a rebel and spend extra points to pick from outside your clan. And finally, you have the option of buying merits to buff your character, or taking flaws that will debilitate your character but give you more points to spend on more things. Apply the bonus points to whatever you want, and boom, you got yourself a character. As with every game created by White Wolf, Vampire the Masquerade uses a D10 system, which means that you'll be rolling almost exclusively these 10-sided die with the intention of getting an eight or higher. For every eight up, you'll get a success, and every check in the game requires some amount of successes in order to be accomplished, usually just one, but harder things will take two or three. The amount of D10s that you roll are equal to how many points you put into whatever ability you're using, plus the points from one of your attributes. It's like using skills from 5e, but instead of giving a flat number increase, you just get to roll extra die, which is fun for dice goblins, but will leave you scrounging around for every last D10 that you have in your dice bag. Finally, also like D&D, rolling extremes on the die have consequences. Rolling a 1 will remove one of your successes, but rolling a 10 not only counts as a success, but it also explodes, allowing you to roll an additional dice, which has the chance of also exploding and furthering your addiction to rolling things. To give you an example of how a game of VTM is meant to be played, I present to you my last VTM character, Allister McAllister, a toreador vampire. Torridors are generally theater kids that hyperfixate on one aspect of art that they deem worthy of their attention, so of course my obsession had to be mirrors. Whenever I would see a mirror, I would drop everything and gaze upon its opulence, marveling over its architecture in a display of dramatic irony, since as fate would have it, one of my flaws was that I did not have a reflection, but the reflection would only get in the way of the true art, which was the frame, the glass, the way the light refracted upon the surface and bent to give the illusion of our own lives, but shown in reverse. What could it mean? This would go on for a while. The actual substance of the game I was in involved the squad being contracted by a Ventrue banker to take down a rogue vampire who broke the masquerade by showing up to a rave, getting a blacklight shown on him, and not being able to explain why he had so much semen on his outfit before he arrived. So the guy vamped out and bamfed out. After talking with the nightclub workers and using spooky hypnotic powers to extract information from the DJ, we made our way out of town to an old shack that the nightclub uses as what we'll call a secondary location, so that YouTube doesn't demonetize me. Inside we found Mr. Nightside himself, and after a short one-sided scuffle, we un-undeaded him and thought the job was done, until a group of vampire hunters that had also been following his trail burst out from all the furniture and kicked our asses. The rest of the party got away, but one of the hunters happened to have a silver mirror on his person, and I went down, chasing the high of cheap glass. That's the world that Vampire the Masquerade puts you in, dingy dark streets filled with meanness and debauchery, not unlike the world of Cyberpunk, but with less hacking and more snacking. To use the world of darkness tagline, it's like Earth, but with deeper shadows. And if you're not able to find friends enough to play the game with you, then you can still get the general gothcore experience with Vampire the Masquerade bloodlines. It's a video game set in the same world using the same system as the tabletop game, just tweaked around better to fit for a virtual experience. And it's a great crash course into the lore. If you get it on Steam, I'd recommend downloading some mods because it's one of those games that glitches out constantly, and while it does let you play non-combat builds to great effect most of the time, there are a few unstoppable boss fights that will punish you for maxing charisma. Also, it has a sequel coming out soon, TM, so that might be good. I recognize that a lot of people were already aware that Vampire the Masquerade as a franchise existed before this video, but I hope that for those of you looking for something spookier, I will have convinced you to keep calm and uphold the Masquerade. Buuuut then I'm about to do it! I hope you enjoyed this video, be sure to like, comment, subscribe, be sure to ring the bell to stay updated on all of your DAVY news, and maybe support me on Patreon, so that I can afford some cheap things in a plastic cape. But yeah, DAVY out.