!!TOP!! Vampire The Masquerade 5th Edition Core Book
Vampire: The Masquerade is a tabletop role-playing game in the World of Darkness series, in which players take the roles of vampires. It was originally released by White Wolf Publishing in 1991, and with new editions released in 1992 (second edition), 1998 (Revised Edition), 2011 (20th Anniversary Edition), and 2018 (fifth edition),[1] each of which updated the game rules.[2] These have been supported with supplementary game books, expanding the game mechanics and setting.[2][3]
!!TOP!! Vampire The Masquerade 5th Edition Core Book
The supplements include the By Night series, each covering a city as portrayed in the setting; the Clanbook series, covering the vampire clans; guides to the game; sourcebooks for sects and factions; and various other books.[3] The supplements often introduce gradual change to the game's setting, advancing the overarching narrative.[2] Adventure modules have been released, but only rarely, as White Wolf Publishing has preferred to let storytellers[a] construct their own adventures, an uncommon choice in tabletop role-playing games that they could afford due to the World of Darkness series' success and longevity.[7] In the mid-1990s, new World of Darkness books were often top sellers,[2] and by 2001, Vampire: The Masquerade was the second best selling tabletop role-playing game after TSR, Inc.'s Dungeons & Dragons.[8]
This book details the alliance vampires call Second Inquisition between government agencies and Vatican secret socities ready to burn any vampires that step out from behind The Masquerade. This book is built as a book of enemies but it includes several excellent tools and techniques vampires can use in their struggles. Most people expect vampire hunters to use stakes and crosses, but what about gentification?
Sabbat illuminates the most radically changed sect in the most recent edition of the game. Once a dark mirror to the Camarilla, these vampires have given up politics with a renewed religious fervor to terrorize human and mortal alike until Caine returns. As such, they are framed as antagonists in the book, though an enterprising Storyteller might yet tell the tale of a Sabbat pack tonight.
There are more sourcebooks and accessories available such as specialty dice that speed up game play and PDF sourcebooks that include deeper setting info and additional stories but this is a good start. Vampire also thrives in the realm of actual play. New York By Night currently tells the tale of two different groups of vampires, one Camarilla and one Anarch in the City That Never Sleeps.
Last year, we were treated to a pre-alpha playtest of the upcoming 5th edition of the Vampire: The Masquerade pen and paper RPG that allowed us to take the new and updated World of Darkness ruleset for a spin. And now, we finally get word from Modiphius Entertainment that the pre-orders for the long awaited 5th edition are live, and the rulebooks should begin shipping this August. These rulebooks come in a variety of editions, armed with a number of supplements, that all promise a return to the game's original vision but with a bit of a modern 21st century spin. As far as I'm concerned, these new conflicts, conspiracies, and mysteries are all ripe for a video game adaptation, so let's hope that it will happen at some point. For now, we have this announcement to check out:
The latest 5th Edition Core Book for Vampire: The Masquerade shook up the game's setting with new mechanics to capture the essence of the struggle between man and monster, coupled with updates to the story which destabilized the vampire's societies and gave them new threats to contend with. Paradox Studios has publicly drawn from this new edition to refine the flawed gameplay of the original Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines... and it's likely they'll also be taking cues from the game's metaplot as well, introducing or highlighting new and returning enemies and threats in the story of Bloodlines 2.
So what do you need to play a game of Vampire: The Masquerade? Well, we used the corebook, A character sheet each then a pad of paper and pencil with a handful of dice. Ordinary dice (You can buy Vampire: The Masquerade themed dice but are not mandatory)
So we managed to get through two stories, I messed up many times and arguments were commonplace but at the end, we all sat down and evaluated it. (More to help me with content for this review) We came to the consensus that whilst we still had a few niggles with mechanics and when and when not to do tests, The actual core game and world building were superb. The book gave everyone enough information that they could either run stories from the book or acts as a really solid foundation for you to build upon.
The global blood opera of the Camarilla story continues. As the eldest vampires begin to vanish, the Ivory Tower starts to crack under the weight of its own decay. Once it was the mightiest faction of vampires in the world, a stronghold of immortality. Now it retreats into a maze of neo-feudal conspiracies to protect itself against the deadly threat of the Second Inquisition, struggling to enforce the Masquerade in the face of modern technology. Camarilla sourcebook contains information on the powerful vampire faction and its place in the modern world, as well as ruleset and lore for clan Banu Haqim (formerly known as Assamites).
At a whopping 430 pages, Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition goes over every single aspect of the game in near microscopic detail, which can be both good and bad for new players unfamiliar with the lore, and even for returning players. For starters, the number of playable clans has been reduced from previous editions, featuring the seven Camarilla clans (Venture, Toreador, Tremere, Brujah, Gangrel, Malkavian, and Nosferatu), the Thin-Bloods, and the Caitiff. The core book describes each of these clans in just enough detail to steer the player in the right direction for the rest of their character creation process. Figuring out the amount of distributable Attribute, Skill, and Discipline points is straightforward. Even if your only experience with Vampire: The Masquerade was the Bloodlines video game by Troika Games and Activision in 2004, then everything up until this point will seem old-hat. For Vampire: The Masquerade newcomers, this system will be relatively easy to pick up.
Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition further complicate things, as depending on what Disciplines, Attribute, or Predator style the player chooses, the core book may ask the player to add an additional Advantage or Flaw before they get to that section in the character creation process. For example, choosing the Bagger Predator style requires the player to take on the Iron Gullet Feeding Merit at three points, as well as the Enemy Flaw at two points. The Character Creation Summary does not specify the different Advantages, and the process can take much longer than necessary because of how the content is structured.
A small thing worth noting: when my group and I initially started our game; both the Storyteller screen and dice set were only available for pre-orders. The game can be played with standard 10ds, but the Storyteller screen includes reference tables, key rules, and a 32-page booklet containing tools and advice on creating and running a Vampire: The Masquerade game; it would have been extremely helpful to have this available when the game initially released instead of just the core book. For veteran players, this would most likely be a non-issue, but new players will appreciate (and in our case, need) any little bit of extra support.
Other stories in the series include Out for Blood by Jim Dattilo, Parliament of Knives by Jeffrey Dean, and Sins of the Sires by Natalia Theodoridou. Each one centers upon the experiences of a different vampire in settings that range from the Southern United States to Greece while being based on the fifth edition of the Vampire: The Masquerade tabletop game. Its text-based nature means that the visualization of its storytelling is left to the player's imagination, which in turn limits its overall appeal when compared to the other entries.
Like Dungeons and Dragons, Call of Cthulhu (1st Edition) has some roots in an older game, in this case RuneQuest (1st & 2nd Editions) which provides the Basic Role-Playing (BRP) which is the core of the mechanics. Call of Cthulhu (1st Edition) was published in 1981. There have been a total of six editions of Call of Cthulhu and the source material and changes in mechanics from versions 2 through 6 are so similar that RPG Geek considers them the same system.
Call of Cthulhu has provided many source and settings books allowing players to be occult investigators in any era from the Roman Empire to the future. The core setting is in the 1920's but other popular eras include the 1890s (Cthulhu by Gaslight) and modern times (Cthulhu Now). The six editions were published in 1981 (1st), 1983 (2nd), 1986 (3rd), 1989 (4th), 1992 (5th), and 2005 (6th).
Traveller was, according to the creator Marc W. Miller, an attempt to do Dungeons and Dragons in space. There are many hallmarks of that in the rules, not the least of which is a lack of a detailed setting in the core books. Traveller has had many editions, most of which used the same basic rules of the 1977 edition. That edition, now called "Classic Traveller" by some, is still in print today.
With the remarkable success of its core games, White Wolf grew rapidly producing hundreds of rulebooks and supplements. Ultimately not all lines were big sellers, and the publisher found they'd spread themselves too thin. Additionally the setting's metaplot had grown vast with the many interconnected games, and had evolved in complex ways over time. So when the company had a change in management, the World of Darkness was brought to an end in a global Armageddon (playable as a range of scenarios) bringing various in-game prophecies to fruition. White Wolf then rebooted with a cleaner, more streamlined New World of Darkness, inspired by but completely separate from the Classic WoD.