Vampire the Masquerade

[Desdichado]

I've heard that about Werewolf, but not Vampire. Or maybe it had more to do with the kinds of players it attracted. I always liked the background for Werewolf tons better.

 

[Tsyr]

I always liked the background for Werewolf tons better.

Agreed. Werewolf, Mage, Chageling, Exalted... those are my favorite of the WW games, personaly.

 

[the Jester]

Werewolf always looked the most munchkin to me.

The thing with Vampire is, you are NEVER as powerful as the next generation up the chain guy, so there's always an enemy who can hurt you bad. When I was in a Vampire campaign when it first came out, we had a lot of trouble with cops with shotguns.

 

[Sejs]

The problem lies in getting your Vampire into this position. I remember seeing enough powers and abilities available to vamps to allow them to hit and run your group to pieces time and time again.

See, that's the thing. Given their dietary requirements, most vampires will be alone at some point or another. Any concentration of them in one place for long will draw -alot- of attention from all the attacks on people. An area can sustain one vampire, maybe two and have them go reasonably unnoticed. But with a vampire needing 1 point of blood per day just to survive, not counting any they expend on disciplines, stat boosts, or healing, if you get 4 or more vampires in a single area people will notice. And that's the pinnacle of bad for your average walker in the night. And they know this.


Really, all it takes is a litle bit of cunning, and a good solid dose of patience. You may not get to the target today, but in a week, or a month.. you bet he'll slip up. Then you nab 'em.


As for disciplines, they're not as badass as you may think. Most arn't used all the time, becuase of the blood-per-use requirement they have. More you use them, the faster you starve. And alot of the powers that could help them avoid an ambush (most Auspex, for example) just arn't worth keeping up. Hightened Vision? First time a car with highbeams comes by, you're blind. And so on. Again ~ bit of cunning, lot of patience.

 

[cybernetic]

You should search for the World of Darkness Poutpourri (i know i can't spell) it had a fan created game called Church Knights that was really well done...very vampire hunter game..and best of all its free!..

 

[Ashtal]

They did make a whole game for human folks to hunt down the undead - called Hunter: The Reckoning.

 

[Tsyr]

They did make a whole game for human folks to hunt down the undead - called Hunter: The Reckoning.

'cept Hunters are only human in the same sense Mages are... They are More-The-Human humans. They are just as supernatural as anything else in World of Darkness (albiet lower powered)...

 

[Mouseferatu]

As a side question.

How popular is Vampire and the other such games by White Wolf since goth is no longer the craze it was in the early and mid 90's.

Talking to Craig at good old Games Plus in Mt Prospect he says the stuff barely moves off the shelf nowadays.

Games Plus is the exception, not the rule.

I don't have numbers (and if I did, I probably wouldn't be allowed to share them), but Vampire is still one of White Wolf's top selling games, and WW is still (behind WotC, of course) one of (if not the) biggest and best-selling RPG companies.

Any game can be munchkined, of course, but I don't think Vampire is anywhere near the worst offender. Sure, it needs a bit of DM/ST supervision, but what game doesn't, really? Even D&D3, for all their talk about an "unbreakable system," can be min-maxed like crazy if you get one powergamer amidst a group of roleplayers.

 

[Desdichado]

Werewolf always looked the most munchkin to me.

See what I mean? Anyway, not that I like munchkiny power-gamery play, but at least Werewolf had some action built in as an assumption with the campaign setting. As much as I like great story, sitting around with a bunch of wannabe method actors isn't very exciting. A good story is usually also action-packed, IMO. Thus my preference for Werewolf over Vampire.

 

[your_mother]

"Has anyone ever tried to use this system to run as a group of human hunters fighting vampires?"

Yeah. Vampires are powerful in the game Vampire; they're the protagonists. They're meant to crush puny mortals like the crunchy cheesy poofs they are. Playing a mortal using the rules presented there is intended to be challenging; read all the sections of the Player's Handbook (and other Vampire sources of Mortal stats) for disclaimers.

There's a White Wolf game all about playing Mortals as protagonists, hunting down and killing the Undead and other villains; Hunter: the Reckoning. Good game, but if you bring those characters into a game full of Vampire player characters, there will be issues. That's because Hunter is set up with the Hunters as the protagonists.

"Which leads to another question. Talking to some friends who played Vampire quite a bit they once told me that straight per the rules Vampire hands down was the most munchkinable of all the major games. Would you consider this accurate?"

Vampire, being a Storytelling-and Story-driven game, is going to be easier to 'munchkinize' than Rules-and Rules-driven games. It's they way it goes; the rules are intended to portray the character in an abstract fashion. If your player chooses high physical attributes, tons of combat skills and disciplines, and plays like a thug, it's going to be tough to balance him in combat with other player characters who choose not to allocate their points and behave that way. I wouldn't say that it's 'the easiest, hands down' but it is a game for mature (i.e. responsible, adult) players. Read the disclaimers / descriptions in the book.