I have been a fan of the WoD tabletop games for a long time. I grew up with seeing some of my family and extended family all playing tabletop games together. They all played several different games, but the most memorable ones were the Vampire games. I was fascinated by how deep the lore went, especially all the ties to Abrahamic history/mythos.
My first experience with the WoD outside of hearing the stories of my family’s tabletop sessions, was the video games Vampire the Masquerade Redemption, and then Bloodlines. Loved Redemption’s main character Christof Romuald, a 12th-century French crusader who gets killed and turned into a vampire. The Diablo-like style of gameplay always took me back to the days playing Dark Stone on Playstation 1.
Bloodlines, however, took me to a whole other level of experiencing the Masquerade world set. In Bloodlines, set in a modern time, you can create your own character with a good portion of the clans from the tabletop. The game also had character sheets based from the tabletop, so there were RPG elements to it as well. I loved playing a suave social Toreador clan vampire, but always found myself coming back to a stealthy Nosferatu.
As much as I cherish both those games (and eagerly look forward to Bloodlines 2 coming out next year even though Nosferatu aren’t playable), I have loved the tabletop game more. I take what the games had offered in knowledge and mindsets and easily translated them into my very own campaigns and characters. Obviously you can build whatever kind of world you want in a tabletop game, but as a fan of the original metaplot, I wanted my games to follow that as close as possible, including things like the worry of Gehenna (an end-time prophecy that most vampires worried about), and notable characters from the lore and video games. Strangely enough, I have never played a Nosferatu in the handful of campaigns I’ve been a player. I have had NPCs in the ones I’ve run, but they were never at the forefront.
Now, just this past year, WoD released a new edition to the Vampire the Masquerade. 5th edition or sometimes called V5 has updated the metaplot to the world of vampire. From what I can gather from what I’ve read both in book and on the wikia, it seems could easily be a post-Gehenna world or even the days leading up to the climax. Some organizations have discovered vampires exist and are hunting them after a “second inquisition.”
I am extremely excited to play in this new edition world set. Though I am not going to be the one Storytelling(or being the Dungeon Master to those who play D&D), I am finally ready and willing to play a Nosferatu. Though they definitely look a lot different from the previous versions(which I assume might just be either artists interpretation or the Clan’s blood is so thin it doesn’t impact features as much), I am still excited. Hoping perhaps after this upcoming campaign, I’ll have more knowledge in this new metaplot and be able to run my own campaign. We’ll also see what Bloodlines 2 offers when it comes to the lore. Even though it is a sequel to the original, from what I’ve seen so far, it could easily be in the V5 metaplot.
What tabletop games are you playing? Does any one have a favorite? And if you play WoD games, which is your favorite? Have any favorite clans?
Brandan Chapman 