In Defense of Vampire: the Requiem

As it becomes increasingly obvious, I’m starting to think White-Wolf has more interest in roping their lapsed Masquerade fans back into the fold than in making Requiem a complete gameline. The writing is certainly on the walls. Their upcoming MMO (assuming it doesn’t remain in a permanent state of vapor-ware) is based on the older Masquerade license; they’ve recently released the 20th anniversary edition book of Vampire: the Masquerade, and they are starting (restarting?) a game line called ‘Onyx Path’, which is previously unreleased Old World o f Darkness material.  No, no, that doesn’t prove anything. Yes, I’m doomsaying, which everyone has been doing since the White-Wolf slipped over to an exclusive PoD/PDF sales model. But the resulting internet buzz got me to thinking.

See, all I keep hearing is all this weird nostalgic stuff about Masquerade, because you know, people are thinking back on the line and what they liked about it. What comes along with that are criticisms – direct and indirect – of Requiem. And I wanted to address that. So in no particular order, here are some of my defenses of what I consider to be the best horror game out there:

1.) “I’ve always felt like Requiem is too dry. Masquerade had a much more engaging backstory.”

This is the most polite way I have heard, to comment on WW’s decision to include no metaplot in Requiem. I have always felt – still feel – that Masquerade was as much a comic book as it was an RPG. Each book progressed the story. There were people, many people, who were more interested in that story than in game, ferreting around in the books in an attempt to put together some grand riddle, like it’s an ARG or something. I think that Requiem, being a toolbox game, was always supposed to approach Masquerade in terms of its rich plot – but only with the help of individual Storytellers, not from the gameline. Here’s what I mean. In Masquerade, you knew each sect’s territory, had at least two dozen NPCs perfectly capable of handling every threat the PCs would ever care to tackle themselves. You had the vampire origin question more or less settled, an end of the world scenario, vast-world-wide conspiracies, and milennia old mysteries.

Why can’t Requiem do that?

Simple answer: It can. That’s the thing. Most STs don’t do the work required to build a universe around their game, but all the tools are there to decide on your own vampire origin story, what world-wide conspiracies are happening, and so forth. Requiem was always intended to be more flexible, and allow each ST to custom-build their own setting, with very little in the way of assumed constants in that setting. One ST builds a global game. One ST builds a local game. One ST decides Judas was the first vampire, and another decides it was Gilgamesh. If the book is dry, it’s because it’s an instruction book, not a serial novel that also happens to be a game, if you’re into that kind of thing.

2.) “I just don’t feel very strongly about the clans as they are presented in the core book.”

This one has some validity to it, particularly when you consider that most of this camp is coming from Masquerade. In that game, you almost automatically know what you’re getting into just flipping through the book. Gangrel – animalistic types, gut instinct. All Gangrel deal with the animal side of vampirism, full stop, or else they have good reason for being contrary, but either way they interact with the stereotype. If you play a Brujah, you rebel against something. If you play a Malkavian, you’re crazy and use crazy to solve mysteries, and so forth. The character archetype is baked right into the Clan, such that flipping through the book is almost like looking at a catalog of personalities. That’s not to say everyone played a Toreador the same way (although, there are plenty of you out there), but rather that it was easy for a new player to pick a character off a page, make that character, and immediately know how to play her and what her goals are.

In contrast, Clans in Requiem have never represented that. They don’t really represent how to play or what kind of personality you might have or what your goals are. Clans in Requiem are a unique, mystical expression of the Curse, and much more closely model what tools a character has available. Mekhet are sneaky, but not because they are the “sneaky clan” (see: Assamites), but rather, because their tools (Obfuscate, Auspex) are good at gathering information and maintaining concealment. There is so much wiggle room within that context that there is almost no guideline whatsoever as to what to do. And moreover, there is no Mekhet Clan structure (at least, by default) to tell you what to do or what your personality is like. Covenants go some of the way towards resolving this, but Covenants only tell you what your ideology looks like, not what your personality is like. If you’re a Mekhet Sanctified, it means you’re a believer (probably) and you have access to information gathering powers. It doesn’t immediately tell you as much as say, playing a Malkavian might.

This means the whole game was just less accessible to new players; less accessible means less impressive formative experiences, and that means poor comparisons for people who played both. I found the freedom of Requiem incredibly refreshing; I liked being able to make a personality first and pick a Clan second, which was sort of rare in Masquerade. Anecdotal stories about Tremere or Ventrue chastised, OOC and IC, for “playing their Clan wrong” is about all I need to hear to know that distinction exists. A number of times, I would see new players flip through the book and stare at the Clans for an hour or more and still not feel immediately drawn to any of them, largely because Requiem asks you to do a lot of work with regards to coming up with your own goals and personality first. Character concepts that, in Masquerade, would immediately fit one Clan very naturally (“I want to play a Crazy Seer”, for instance, or “I want to play a Rich Businessman”) could fit 2, 3, or even all 5 in Requiem, which further muddied the waters.

3.) “Vampires are weaker in Requiem/Elders are weaker in Requiem.”

This one I can’t argue with, because mechanically there’s no question about it. Vampires are closer to mortals in Requiem than they are in Masquerade. It’s an objective fact. The trick is, I don’t especially care. Vampire to me has never been a game about self-empowerment. Vampires are not magicians, or superheroes, by default. They are mortals, changed, given a shot at eternal life and faced with the difficulty of survival and moral despair. Their perks – Disciplines, inherent benefits, etc – should operate to help reinforce those ideas, and give them the ability to enact some degree of change in the world. I do not consider it a failing that a modestly well statted mortal can kill a starting vampire with a baseball bat under the correct circumstances.

See, Vampires are supposed to be secretive and manipulative, and that’s not something I ever felt Masquerade really encouraged. If some 7th generation Prince has all his Disciplines at 5 and such, there’s really no reason for him to rule from the shadows, particularly if there aren’t any other 7th generation vampires in town. Sure, if the whole city decides to kill him, they might be able to, but let’s not kid ourselves – this guy can probably kill a couple of starting characters without a second thought. Why on Earth would he ever need such characters? It’s immediately deprotagonizing. Vampires in Requiem, particularly Elders, survive by making friends, because while they are personally more powerful than most given individual neonates, they aren’t stronger than all of them. Further, there are probably a dozen things a Requiem Elder can’t do himself, unlike the Masquerade Elder, who can do just about anything. Making an Elder vampire “unbetable” in Requiem takes thousands of experience. Considering the chart for giving XP to advanced characters stops at around 400, that seems untenable.

Vulnerable Elders – indeed, vulnerable vampires – help enforce the theme of political distrust. Vampires don’t trust each other, but they have to make friends to survive. No one of them is personally powerful enough, physically, to survive in a vacuum. I like that, I find it to be incredibly interesting.  9 levels up of untouchable NPCs who are both more interesting and more powerful than the PCs? Not so much.

To conclude: I know full well White Wolf probably isn’t closing the door on Requiem, and I hope that they do something great with the license. And I mean, I like Masquerade! I think it has some great perks, I played the game for years. But I love Requiem; I really feel it is a superior games for writing compelling stories about vampires. If I want to read a great story about vampires, or if I want to play in a game where the power scale trends towards the apocalyptic, or if I want to ease players into a game where they might not immediately know what they want to play, maybe Masquerade is a better choice. To me, Requiem is just perfect, and I guess even if the line were to end tomorrow, I would feel like the collection I have is pretty comprehensive. I only wish more die-hards had given it an honest shot, instead of reading through it in PDF or at the gamestore and thinking, “There’s no plot in this! I’m uninterested!” That’s never been the point. We make our own worlds, our own stories, our own grand mysteries, vampire origins, and our own end of the world, sometimes.

Tell me what you think in the comments!

~ by aatramor on September 29, 2011.