The First Impression

    This is not the way you want your campaign to sound.

    But my first game? My second? My first campaign? Oh, God, did they ever. Sometimes, when I go to conventions, I still see this pattern, and the Storytellers never know why. I do.

    Let's try a psychological experiment. Lock six gamers' minds in a room...that is, a vaguely described setting where there's no one else around of importance. Give them a constantly depleting fuel supply and tell them they need blood to feed. Reward them if they eat the souls of others like them, and let them take powers that make it easy to enslave each other, kill each other, hide, or turn each other on with surrogate sex.

    Now...don't give them a plot. Just sit back and watch.

    The results are remarkably similar to a good night spent reading Lord of the Flies, and tell us a lot about human psychology. But they also tell us a lot about storytelling, about our fantasies, and especially about game design.

    Vampire, in my mind, broke more ground in the way roleplaying games were played than any other single game system has since. It aimed high. When people understood it, they thought it was fantastic; when they didn't, they called it pretentious. Whether gamers loved it or hated it, it was a far different flavor than the steady diet of fantasy, superhero, future or even horror games. It got personal.

We Begin With a Story

    Vampire declared, in mellifluous language, that it was not about rolling dice and making maps on graph paper. It was a story-telling game, which was, in a way, something entirely new. The designers over the years created an argument by example. It sounds something like this.

    "There will come a time in your life when you will want to put down roleplaying forever. Why spend four to sixteen hours of your weekend playing a game when there are hundreds of other easier pastimes out there? If all you want is to fantasize about killing things, movies and video games do it faster and better.

    "Therefore, if this RPG is going to be more than just a flash in the pan, the point of all this playing can't be just to fantasize. That is its beginning; the end is to make you into a story-teller. Not a writer, necessarily, but someone who can tell stories. Years from now, when you are twenty-five and someone at a party asks what you do to blow off steam, you will be able to launch into tales of all the things you have done in the game. And they won't be just about who had the largest statistics. They'll be about three-dimensional characters who loved and decayed and killed one another in terrible rages, and they will be as interesting and varied as real life.

    "At that point, you will discover what these hours of play were meant for, because if you do it right, you will sound intellectual and animated compared to everyone who did nothing last weekend but consume mass media and throw balls around. They won't call you a dork who never gets out of the basement. They'll say 'Wow. You made all this up?'"

    There's a reason Vampire made such a noise among gamers. There's a reason why it got so many converts and why so many systems now use "storytelling" as their model for explaining RPGs, and why the fantasizing approach pales after a while.

    It's because the designers were right.

But What Kind of Story?

    Vampire has tried exceedingly hard to get gamemasters and players rolling with its core rules. But here we meet the key flaw which has established the majority of  stereotypes about White Wolf games in the gaming community -- that they are style without substance. Too often, this borders on true. While the atmosphere is outstanding, and the set-up thorough, there is little useful advice given on how to turn that into a sustainable game. And the supplements, like sires with broods of neonates, simply hurl players into the world and watch them flounder.

    Let's take this paragraph on Plot in the Storytelling section of the main book:

    "The plot is what the story is about; it is the sequence of events and actions that the characters follow from beginning to end. The first question you should ask yourself when sitting down to design a story is what the plot will be. Like your chronicle, you need to have a clear idea of where the story will go and how you will build the action to a satisfying end."

    Not a bad definition, right?

    No...and yes. This is what is called a "sin of omission" rather than the "sin of commission." It's a definition of plot and some abstract advice on prioritizing, not instructions on how to make one. It doesn't sit down with the novice GM and say "Yo, here's ten adventures to try on your players, and if none of them are applicable, try this step-by-step advice for making up ten more."

    This sin of omission has plagued Vampire since its inception. The mood of the books is often compelling, and there is not much you can point at and say "this is wrong." It's only after a session or two that you wonder why what the book teaches and what players learn are so different.

    Let's try another paragraph on story ideas.

    "Perhaps they should be sent as an envoy from their sire to another powerful vampire where they might detect the first hints of unrest under the oppressive hand of the city's prince."

    What this doesn't say is what the signs of unrest are or how to show them to your players without giving the game away in the first encounter.  Nor does it mention how the role of the players should shift so their protagonists become something more than "detectors." Getting sent as an envoy and smelling unrest is not a story. It's a premise. Hell, it's part of a premise.

What's New in the Night?

    The good news is that Third Edition gives the reader a far better picture of the game than First or Second. There's a lot of advice and some well-done patches and rules changes to answer frequently-asked questions. In case you haven't seen the book and are feeling dubious, let me spoil most of the changes for you. The new edition helps so much I bought it anyway.

    What I especially like are the distinctions drawn to separate itself from Vampire: The Dark Ages. In the modern nights, Gehenna approaches, the Time of Thin Blood is at hand, and the thirteen clans are at each other's throats more than ever before. As Chess would sing it, nobody's on nobody's side.

    The Gangrel have seceded from the Camarilla. The Tremere now study technomancy alongside their ancient blood rites (though this is in the Camarilla book, it is one of the core supplements and it was a major attraction for me). The Malkavians now use Dementation rather than Dominate, a far more in-character Discipline, and the Assamites have broken the power of the Ritual of Thorns and are once again addicted to the blood of other Kindred. In other words, there's no more "good assassin/bad assassin" and "good nutball/bad nutball" dichotomy. Like in real life, everybody will treat them with suspicion, fear, and manacles.

    The combat rules have added "bashing damage," which in one swoop makes guns feared by mortals and laughed at by Kindred. Mortals can only soak bashing damage with their Stamina: knives and guns will tear right through them. Bullets' damage is "bashing" to Kindred, and the damage is halved. The "bashing" effect has the added bonus of allowing vampires to beat a mortal up a little before draining him of a few points of blood; the meal doesn't need emergency surgery the way he would under Second Edition rules. Weapon Difficulties to hit are now a base of 6 as opposed to the bizarre 4 through 8 numbers previously used. Willpower, in freebie points, is finally as cheap as it is in all other Storyteller games, at 1 point per dot.

    These are the initial signs that the authors have played Vampire a great deal. And there's more. Every single skill and attribute is highlighted with decent fiction bits showing why a protagonist would triumph because of that particular aspect. I, for one, hadn't thought of poisoning vampires by drugging up a sweet young thing and presenting her as an appetizer. But here, it's just another reason to have a high Perception.

    Third Edition, through a big basic book and nice pair of core supplements (The Camarilla and The Sabbat) breaks down the three major factions of vampiric society -- the Camarilla, Sabbat, and Independents -- and their customs for keeping social order. This is important for the GM and players to understand, because the social order is what makes the game sustainable. There was a reason all the long-running games in my neighborhood were Sabbat games: the Sabbat had a reason to work together and a social hierarchy based on who kicks whose ass. The Camarilla has always worked the same way -- it's just that people thought it didn't. Now it's clear.

    Sound good?

    Hold off. I omitted something. And so did they.

    There's no introductory adventure in the book.

What If You've Never Played Vampire?

    Since the book is a little lacking in the intro department, let me throw out a few hints from experience, because -- attention, please -- you don't play this the way most people play AD&D.

    One key thing to realize is that blood in Vampire is like money. There are a hundred ways to spend it, but you don't realize how hard it is to come by until you're out. And here the "monster" metaphor does indeed show most players the uglier side of themselves...namely, that most of them wouldn't survive in the wild.

    There were and are a number of limitations inherent in the system to discourage an overly violent game. There's the Humanity trait that descends whenever you start committing crimes, and the ugly fact that starting player characters aren't equipped for mass mayhem, even if they think they are.

    Fighting and "action" usually leads to low blood, which leads to frenzies, which leads to drinking the blood of whoever's closest...which is not usually a mortal as the game suggests, but another PC. If torpor or death doesn't result in the struggle, it starts the vampire down the road to Blood Binding. Worse, if you do take it out on mortals, hungry vampires are not cautious vampires, and any breach in the Masquerade will make the Prince want to stake you for the good of society. Or here come the hunters and uh-oh...sunrise.

    This is the difference between a wonderfully attractive game and a wonderfully sustainable game. The book is great. It's the initial learning curve that's tough.

    So how do we wrangle it into shape?

    Let's rewrite that above "Prince's Envoys" idea with something that sounds generic, but is also pretty likely to work for you.

Patch # 1: My Instant Vampire Demo Adventure, "Check-Up"

    The Premise: The characters are six neonates Embraced a month ago because they know what computers are (Skill of 1? There! You qualify!) and can educate their ancient fuddy-duddy sires. The Prince, who has been watching them and found they're well-behaved, decides to send them as envoys to Kansas City. While they're there, they find out all is not as they were told, and conflict commences.

    Scene 1: The troupe are in Elysium and heading downstairs to talk to the Big Man himself. Various servants scuttle by, courteously take their weapons and electronic items, and not-so-subtly hint they take a swim in the indoor pool to insure they aren't bugged. The Prince enters and watches before revealing himself. He does not swim.

    The Prince impresses upon them that he has a small matter at hand, but one that must be taken seriously. An associate in Kansas City, Morgan Heller, has recently become the Prince, and is therefore responsible for maintaining the Masquerade. She has asked for help in creating a secure server for vampire e-mail. The characters' programming skills will be very useful. In return, she'll owe about two hundred gallons of blood from the stockyards which the Prince will keep for emergencies. The characters are outfitted with a few things they need: computers and a big refrigerated truck. Who wants a share of the ol' Blood Humor wagon for future stockpiling?

    I thought so.

    But before they go, he makes them recite and explain the Six Traditions. Why? Because in-character, he wants to make sure his representatives don't look foolish in front of another city's Prince. Out of character, it means your players will get grounded in their head during their first session that this is the stuff that separates you from the idiots who would not survive the Embrace. Once they're feeling all clever, start 'em driving. By isolating them on the road, where they'll only meet are mortals, you can give them an "us against the world" feeling, drawing them together.

    Scene 2: Their meeting with Morgan has a far different tone. She meets them at the stockyards to show off the jewel of her city as far as Kindred are concerned. While this may seem impressive, perceptive PCs can notice there are lots of vampires running errands that ghouls do in their home city, and a lot of the locals just drink animal blood...not great stuff, especially for Ventrue PCs. Traditions? Yeah, right, traditions. They know at least, um...two?

    Scene 3: While some of these vamps drive them around to show off what passes for night life (dancing, mailbox baseball, and other fun dice-rolling stuff to keep your hands busy) the troupe are stopped by cops. Everything goes all right unless the PCs are boneheads, but the vampires mention afterward there's ghoul cops everywhere these days ever since Orsephus, the Tremere, hosed it for everybody. None of the vamps the troupe are hanging out with are locals...as it turns out, this place is the Camarilla's equivalent of Siberia. You mess up at home, and you're sent out here where any moron can feed easily.

    Orsephus had some personal angst problem, they hear. Seems he met some preacher type with True Faith and got all nutty about the monster he became and went on a self-destructive killing spree. Morgan ghouled half the cops in order to take him down.

    Which makes one wonder...why didn't the local vampires?

    Scene 4: The characters set the computers up in a few hours, only to find their test message not reading what it should. Instead, it says something like, "Help. Trapped. Prince evil. Never look in her eyes." Uh-oh. Trouble.

    There's a brief conversation with the ghost in the computer. It's the ghost of Orsephus, who used to be the computer geek around here...before he found out too much about Morgan. The True Faith story is a lie. Morgan has Dominated people left and right and erased their memories. Suspiciously heavy-handed for a Prince, yes?

    Since this is a one-evening adventure, what the hell. If they keep talking, they find out Morgan is a Giovanni who replaced the Prince. 'Cause if she's the lowest-generation girl in town with Dominate 3, who'd ever know?

    Scene 5: There's a convenient inconvenience: namely, either Morgan, her childe, or her ghoul wander by to see what the characters are up to. What do they do?

    If they can't talk their way out of it, there's an alarm and a big fight in the slaughterhouse, where there's lots of blood to re-fuel. But there's other options: they could make deals with her, they could pretend to know nothing, they could get Dominated if they're not careful...but the main thing is, the ball is in their court. Their Prince will be anxious to hear about all this. And they may not decide to tell him, especially if there's signs he (uh-oh) already knows.

Preventative Maintenance

    I wrote "Check-Up" in an hour. I'm sure many GMs have come up with something similar about as fast that worked and made for a nifty first table-top Vampire experience.

    But I've never met one.

    And in ten or eleven years of Vampire, I've never seen a printed adventure that works so well as an intro come out of White Wolf. Remember: you don't kill the Prince and topple the social order in the first adventure. You use those folks as an example of what not to do, and your players will back the boy until you decide it's time for a change.

Am I Smarter Than Most Vampires...

    Storytelling and campaign advice aside, the rules and premise of the game generally work well...with a few patches. My major problem with the rules as written comes from when I was a freshman in college. Our gaming group did as the Second Edition book recommended. We made character sheets for ourselves.

    An enlightening experience, to be sure. We had one player say "Oh, I have an Etiquette skill of 1! I know when to shut up." Every person in the room agreed he didn't. In an utterly humiliating moment, his girlfriend grabbed the pencil away and erased the dot off his character sheet.

    So, as honestly as possible, we carried on, and found I, an eighteen-year-old human with no special powers, required about 35-45 "freebie points" to exist, depending on how generous my definitions were. I didn't have the mightiest attributes in the world, but I had nearly every skill at 1 and a fair number at 2. This makes fifteen points for freebies look woefully scanty if you are trying to make a realistic character whose skills spread out instead of up.

    Patch #2: Try making sheets for you and your favorite TV or novel characters before you figure out how many points the GM sets as a limit. 30-point characters usually provide a nice pad of skills for someone who is reasonably young. There are Age rules in the supplement Elysium that I think are wonderful, but unwise players will hang themselves on the big point numbers. Use them at your discretion, and don't be afraid to say, "No, you can't play someone who's 200 years old. We'll do it next game."

...or are Most Vampires Really Dumb?

    The character creation system and the fact that the game is set in the modern world gives the illusion that character creation is easy. It is....but good character creation, like all good things, takes effort.

    There is a big difference between making a character you want to play and somebody who would be a good Vampire protagonist once Murphy's Law comes into effect. Let's start with the thorniest of questions that appears on page 109. Right now there's a single paragraph asking about your feeding habits.

    Let me shout it out. How do you feed every single night without endangering the Masquerade?

    A lot of players blow this question off. They mutter something about nightclubs or animals, but if you can't back it up with game mechanics, your character will get screwed. Observe the usual problems of why most combat-heavy characters can't hunt worth a damn.

    "I break into the pound," says our Gangrel vampire down a Blood Point.

    "Got a Security skill?" says the GM.

    "I'll force the door." He spends three Blood Points for his Strength...meaning now he's got to drink at least four or five to make the night profitable. The alarm goes off. Even if he gets what he wants, he ends up with a lot of bloodless dogs. He can't carry them. Cops show up. Serious Masquerade trouble.

    "All right," he says, "I go hang out in nightclubs and meet chicks."

    "Got any social skills?"

    "Uh...I work as an orderly in the hospital on the night shift."

    "So you'll be done when, two a.m.? Cool. What do the rest of you do until then?"

    "I find some guy and beat the mess out of him."

    "Okay, he runs. Got an Athletics skill? Got Brawl?"

    "Sure thing. But I don't want to kill him."

    "You gave him three Health Levels of damage beating him up and you want to take three Blood Points on top of that and not kill him? What if he remembers your face?"

    "Arrrgh!"

    Patch #3: Understand that you have to be able to deal with the mortal realm before you try to try anything fancy with Kindred politics and the supernatural menagerie. The characters should have reliable blood supplies, or they're going to spend more time hunting than on the story.

    Principle #1: if you have to spend blood to hunt, it's a dumb way to hunt.

    Principle #2: Know how to clean up your own mess. You want no witnesses and no chance of humans running and screaming to the newspapers. None at all.

    How do you eat?

    Animals: The Inoffensive to Animals merit or Animalism 2 and the Charisma + Survival dice to use it are well worth the points. Either combination solves many problems. No one misses rats, including your Conscience. Of course, Third Edition suggests making Willpower rolls to represent the difficulty of surviving on the vampiric equivalent of cafeteria oatmeal every night, but it's up to individual Storytellers how much they want to emphasize it.

    Herd: This is the easiest way out points-wise, but if you move from city to city, it's useless, and Herd 1 or 2 doesn't actually have enough vessels to use every day. Good prey zones to establish are big, anonymous congregations of people. Go for health clubs (where can you get better vitae?), homeless shelters (there's a lot less monitoring than goes on in a hospital), and noisy places like stadiums (where people faint all the time and can't find each other for half-hour stretches anyway). Train stations and airports also let you check out who and what comes into the city while you're prowling.

    Mister Sandman: Sleeping humans are the best kind, but you have to do it late at night. This is why my characters started going after nursing homes. Old people tend to go to bed early, there's a good chance they'll leave doors unlocked, there's medical assistance nearby in case you take too much, and little chance the vessel will have AIDS. You can get these snacks with Dominate 1, a decent Manipulation + Intimidation, and the command "Sleep." Better, though, to take Obfuscate 2, Stealth, and Security. With these, you become a breaking and entering specialist, which is invaluable because all the good stores are closed at night.

    For a really quiet meal, drop by the morgue, get in to where the corpses are, and drain them of blood. It's human and potent...just nasty. Even better if you can set up shop there and doctor autopsy reports to help the Masquerade.

    Sexy Vamp: If you're going to do this, get Charisma + Performance for Presence 1, or Appearance + Empathy for Presence 3. (I'd personally reverse the rules on what you roll...Presence 1 is a first impression and level 3 requires more charisma and acting...you know, the skills used when talking to someone for an extended period?) Presence means the invitation to leave can take ten minutes or so rather than a few hours of warm-up. Better still is the godsend of Dominate 3 and the Wits + Subterfuge to use it.

A Word About Botching.

    The first action I ever took in Vampire that required a dice roll was fast-drawing a katana.  I cut my own fingers off. I could go on here about relative probability of one die affecting the others and the "hubris effect" White Wolf claims to like because of its value in discouraging combat, but I'd prefer to make my point by getting an anecdote off my chest that I have carried around for ten years. It is an anecdote about rolling those lovely 1s that subtract from all your other successes.

    The second time I played Vampire, the Storyteller had Caine rise and attack the White House with a horde of his followers. Now, obviously, my narratively inclined friend was not the reincarnation of Homer when it came to epic drama, but I, with my 15-point neonate, was free for eighth period and wanted a game.

    Caine was spraying a tapestry with his own blood in his underground cave. He announced he had returned to lead his children in a terrible war, no more hiding from mortals, the lunar eclipse was nigh, Gehenna was at hand, Bill and Hillary were gonna be the party kegs, wooga wooga.

    So I estimated America's chances at being saved from the Forces of Not Too Bright Evil. There was me, and there was my buddy the Malkavian, who was trying to pierce his hand with an ear-piercing gun. I try to send him a signal with my eyes and do what any bad-ass protagonist would do. I smile at Caine, say it's a pleasure to be working with the father of all vampires and the sole living god upon this Earth, and I get him in a wrist lock so I can make him my bitch.

    The point is this. I had eight dice. Got one success.

    Caine tried to dodge with Dodge 10 and Dexterity 10: twenty dice, Difficulty 6.  He failed.

    I rolled my three dice of damage, plus one point for Potence. Two health levels.

    He tried to soak with Stamina 10 and Fortitude 10: twenty dice. Difficulty 6.

    He botched.

    Then the Malkavian pierced Caine's lip and gave him another Health Level of damage.

    Botching is dumb.

    Patch #4: My campaign takes out the rule entirely. If there are no successes, only then do any 1s make it a critical failure. This makes people able to hurt one another in combat, and it has an astonishing effect on highly skilled people. They start being able to do what they wanted when they designed the character.

Hmm, Attack or Defend, Not Both?

    Third Edition rules now claim that defensive movements are only available if you split your offensive Dice Pool up or spend an action dodging. This starts up the same Initiative-Is-Mighty situation that I wrote up in the Legend of the Five Rings review. I don't like Initiative being the most dramatic roll in the combat, which it is when a combat-heavy character who hits often and hard lets fly.

    All else being equal, if you know the opponent has won Initiative, you must declare a defensive action (i.e. do nothing but dodge) in order to have an even chance of negating the opponent's successes. Or you can declare multiple actions -- blocking and hitting back -- and get -2 dice for the block and -3 dice for the counter-strike. Then the guy with the higher Initiative gets to decide what to do after seeing his prey's move.

    Option 1: Defender chooses to take it like a man and attack on his action. Attacker just unloads on him (beating him to the punch or gunshot). This is rarely a good option.

    Option 2: Defender does nothing but dodge, a 50-50 chance of not getting hit, and can try to win Initiative next round. This isn't as sour in my mouth as the L5R problem because no one has a significant Initiative-boosting technique. It's 1D10 + Wits + Dexterity. But the defender is taking their whole action and getting nowhere. Their turn gets sucked up by the guy with the higher Initiative. And if you've ever played a Storyteller system combat, you know it takes a few hours already. Anything lengthening it goes into the trash in my campaign.

    Option 3: Defender splits up his Dice Pool with a minimum of -2 dice for the defensive roll and -3 dice for fighting back. The attacker can now choose to whack the slow monkey (who he'll probably hit) or perform a multiple action with a -2 dice on the initial attack and then dodge the counter-strike with a similar -3 dice...or take the counter like a man and hit again with -3 dice. This is interesting, but much less of an even chance for the defender. It seems to be useful mostly on Initiative ties where both combatants suddenly realize they're going to hit simultaneously and one commits fully to the attack and one tries to get the best of both worlds; a half-assed block and a counter-attack against a non-dodging opponent.

    What's the explanation? "It's a given that everyone tries to avoid an attack -- that's why everyone makes attack rolls," says Page 209.

    Nice try, but to me, that's not what the attack roll represents. The attack roll represents how you aim and whether or not you hit someone in the right place and the right time under stress. Were it an assumption that everyone tries to avoid an attack, wouldn't the Difficulty to hit be based on their Wits + Dodge, representing that some people are better at it than others? Right now, it's just a 6.

    Patch #5: To me, winning Initiative is evil enough because the opponent gets to try to hit you first after he sees what you're doing. If you go defensive, he can choose to hit one of your friends because he doesn't have to worry about you. The multiple-action approach is practically giving away three of your dice to He With High Initiative as a regular part of the combat round.

    I run Vampire combat like I run L5R. Everybody gets one free Dodge. If you want more than one, it costs you according to multiple-action rules.

What's My Motivation?

    The GM should listen to what the players want, sayeth Third Edition, and their three-dimensional characters will have plots rolling in no time.

    Yeah, right.

    In your crew may be players or gamemasters who have only LARPed or played Second Edition and think they know the game. And they'll start playing without, oh, reading the basic book. If you nip that error early, it saves a lot of future headaches.

    You, as the GM, can do plot-based stories or character-based ones. Character- based games such as the majority of Vampire require very good characters, at which point the story unfolds simply because you show them the consequences of their actions. But a warning: just because you make an interesting three-dimensional character doesn't mean you, the other players, or even the GM will know what to do with it.

    Take, for example, the gamut of characters that are Rich Wimps.

    The Rich Wimp is an unfortunate casualty of creating sensible protagonists in the modern world. The best thing that can possibly happen to the Rich Wimp is absolutely nothing. She wants to carry on with her normal life or unlife and stay as far away from the PCs and trouble as possible.

    At first glance, Rich Wimps look like a neat characters...because they really are. Our last game set in Los Angeles featured Torr Yesman, a Ventrue talent agent who worked Hollywood since the 1930s and could only feed on talented people. This helped his career greatly, and he had more Backgrounds than you could count. He had an ocean of Contacts, Allies, Herd, Status, Influence and Resources, some Dominate and Presence. Torr could get you movie props, camera crews, police costumes...oh, he would have been fun.

    But after the first session, we knew he was wrong for the campaign. The loosest cannon among the PCs was an Assamite who brought down ghoul cops and a gang war on his front lawn. Torr's bodyguards did what they should: they got him out of there. He didn't want his ghouls to get killed in this debacle (he had a high Humanity), and realized this would happen constantly, so he took off for Hong Kong. Next character.

    Patch #6: Before you get your heart set on making a social butterfly like the sample Toreador created in the basic book, ask yourself three questions:

    1) How do they feed every night?

    2) Why would they want to get along with and spend time with the other characters even if the other guys' bad decisions might get them killed?

    3) Why won't they just run away somewhere safe when the plot comes calling?

    This doesn't mean you need crazy adventure-seekers with death wishes to enjoy the game. But if you're making a character who doesn't like conflict, decide on something you can do to help when, before, or after combat happens. Because it will, and if you don't add anything to the team, you'll be bored, and other PCs will be resentful.

    My idea of a great non-combat character was the one my fiancée created: Lady Josephine Wordwright.

    Josephine was an Old World Brujah historian whom it was impossible to overshadow for a very simple reason. She was possibly the most useful team-player character in the entire World of Darkness. Josephine had some Empathy and Presence for dealing with mortals, and Auspex 2 so she could see auras. This is not incredibly unique.

    But her skills included Academics 4 (History), Kindred Lore 4 (Book of Nod), Camarilla Lore 4 (History), Brujah Clan Knowledge 4 (Political), Garou Lore 4 (The Wyrm), Sabbat Lore 3, Mage Lore 3, Occult 3, and Linguistics (Garou).

    In other words, Josephine could spot an NPC, know exactly what it was, and try to talk it down. If it was beyond reason... that's what the rest of us were for.

    Josephine, ostensibly Prince, was backed up by a Brujah and Gangrel who took down bad guys, alive or dead, a renegade Tzimisce doctor who analyzed epidemics, a Tremere to taste the blood of anything whose aura she couldn't recognize, and a Giovanni for funding, body hiding, and interrogating dead opponents.

    We then proceeded to colonize a Garou-held island, for the Camarilla to get a base of operations to smite the Sabbat and the Wyrm.

    'Cause if you found you had super powers and there actually were evil monsters bent on corrupting and destroying the world....wouldn't you?

So Until I Become a Great Storyteller, What's My Campaign?

    Other than ripping off Buffy episodes, which are dead ringers for well-run World of Darkness campaigns, I have a quick idea. It starts with the most basic motivation: survival.

    Wait, come back here.

    The campaign is called "Kindred In Black."

    No, not like that.

    To run this campaign, you need at least one character with Dominate 3. This Discipline lets you be the frickin' hero for all fangy people everywhere. 'Cause you're going to be playing Archons, or at least one Archon and five assistants: the clean-up squad for the Masquerade.

    Every neonate mistake, every botched feeding and frenzy, every Sabbat battle and Hispo pack and Wyrm beast and Vozhd abomination with ten heads that comes crawling out of the woodwork of the World of Darkness with every new supplement, you have to cover them up or the mortals will find out.

    You could run this campaign for about a million years.

    You'll have a boss who's not very forgiving. You'll talk to more colorful people than all Hell doth hold. You'll go to police stations, read FBI reports, CDC reports, and track down a whole lot of eyewitnesses, family members, coteries, and culprits. There can be violence or not; there can be convoluted plots or not; humor or not; deep characterization and romance...or not.

    When you run out of ideas and Angel goes off the air, drop by the Frequently Asked Questions at the White Wolf web site and see what people hose in their home campaigns. As soon as you spot one, that neonate gets a visit from the KIB. Start in one city, then go on tour.

    All over the world.

Conclusion

    Vampire, Third Edition is a serious improvement upon Second, but knowing what you're getting ahead of time will help you avoid pitfalls. There are a number of minor rule quibbles, but they are easy to restructure without hacking up the character creation system or dice mechanics to make them fit.

    Be warned: Vampire is designed to tell a lot of stories, not tell one kind of story very, very well. The core rules are like the bible for a TV series that the network hasn't decided if it will be a movie, a half-hour relationship show, hour-long action-adventure, or a mini-series. This set-up stays versatile enough to be able to create them all.

    The question is, can you?