Get Started With World of Darkness With The New Blood Starter Pack

There's a new starter set for Vampire: The Masquerade, called New Blood. It's a PDF bundle designed with GMs in mind, and teaches you how to play the new edition of Vampire: The Masquerade. It includes a rules guide, cards, pregnererated characters, and more.

You can pick it up for just £5 over on Modiphius' web store.

The Vampire: The Masquerade – New Blood Starter Pack is a print & play PDF bundle that embraces you into the World of Darkness and Vampire: The Masquerade. Designed with new Storytellers and players in mind, it features a new story that teaches you to play this new edition of the roleplaying game, a rules reference guide, printable enemy and victim cards, 7 player characters, and a relationship map.

You wake up in a meat locker with vague memories of what happened last night. Something about you is not quite right. As you come to your senses, you realize that you have a hunger you’d never experienced before. Gradually, you’ll come to realize that you’ve been Embraced into the world of Kindred – or vampires to those not in the know.

This story takes you through your very first steps in Vampire: The Masquerade. Whether you will be the Storyteller running this, or a player participating in the story, this product doesn’t require any previous knowledge of or experience with the game.

• This pack introduces you to Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition, whether you are new to roleplaying games, or a player of previous editions.
• The short story teaches you to how to play Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition, as you play.
• Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition is the newest incarnation of the classic storytelling game of personal and political horror, in which you portray a supernatural predator with all their powers and weaknesses, struggling with the loss of their humanity.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

I feel a love-hate relation with this IP. It has got a great fluff (I don't mind the crunch in the Storyteller System) but all these monsters are better together in a fantasy world as Ravenloft. If there are too many monsters then it is not gothic-punk urban dark fantasy but a Jurasic Park for Monsters from Hammer Films. My trick is most of monsters live in the "otherword" (like in Silent Hills), Metropolis (from Kult: lost divinity) or STEM knightmare kingdoms from Evil Within (1&2). There the masquerade is allowed to be broken, and petitioner souls are almos free blood-bags (they are immortal souls, always they return), but it is also a dangerous zone and easy prey for werewolves and other supernatural creatures.

Other troubles are because their point of view about our (real) world is too different. In my own WoD Pentex has got also a Russian and a Chinese "brother", mason lodges are controlled by vampires or demons, or Lasombra helped to cause the fall of the Spanish empire because we were the best vampire-hunters, fomorians can be healed by Catholic exorcists (and the main source of taint by banes are the illegal drugs), all thinblood vampires can be daywalkers, Gioconda is possible (if you rejects your "superpowers" and your faith isn't too small), there are more forest zones in capitalist countries(western shapesifters did better their work, and the hengeyokais need more help), and the demons aren't really from the true hell, but from other region and when they arrived to the material world their memories were rewritten by the main religious "paradigm" in those zone.

If your players know all the metaplot, I suggest to change this, using as source of inspiration "Mysteries of the Old Testament" by mystic seer Anne Catherinne Emmerich. (Disclaimer: Of course we aren't here to talk about our real world, but sometimes we can suggest or mention some things as potential sources of inspiration)

 

[Skywalker]

They are charging £5 for a quickstart preview of the game? Surely it would be better as a free preview if the intent is to get people to buy the full RPG.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Sticking neonates in a meat locker is sloppy work, Masquerade-wise. In a regular campaign, I feel like that's just asking for some awkward questions from the Camarilla.

 

[Von Ether]

I feel a love-hate relation with this IP. It has got a great fluff (I don't mind the crunch in the Storyteller System) but all these monsters are better together in a fantasy world as Ravenloft. If there are too many monsters then it is not gothic-punk urban dark fantasy but a Jurasic Park for Monsters from Hammer Films. My trick is most of monsters live in the "otherword" (like in Silent Hills), Metropolis (from Kult: lost divinity) or STEM knightmare kingdoms from Evil Within (1&2). There the masquerade is allowed to be broken, and petitioner souls are almos free blood-bags (they are immortal souls, always they return), but it is also a dangerous zone and easy prey for werewolves and other supernatural creatures.

It's a tricky line with a game like this. If the only worthy opponents and peers are other vampires, your game shifts that way and soon it seems the only NPCs you meet are vampires, even though you can see a whole city of normals outside of your penthouse window.

The GM has to constantly stress that while the large VIP room in the club is full of vamps, the rest of the club is filled with humans. (Everyone may assume it, but remember GMs, if you don't say it - it doesn't exist!)

Oddly enough, the same complaint doesn't pop up in superhero RPGs. Then again, a good supers GM will be reminding people about innocent bystanders and the consequences of collateral damage.

Perhaps Vamp GMs are afraid to do this because the answer maybe, "Let's make those bystanders 'disappear.'"

 

[TrippyHippy]

They are charging £5 for a quickstart preview of the game? Surely it would be better as a free preview if the intent is to get people to buy the full RPG.

That exists already - The Monsters Quickstart. The Monsters: A Vampire: the Masquerade 5th Edition Quickstart - Modiphius | Vampire 5th Edition | DriveThruRPG.com

This product is the PDF for the coming Starter box set.

 

[TrippyHippy]

I feel a love-hate relation with this IP. It has got a great fluff (I don't mind the crunch in the Storyteller System) but all these monsters are better together in a fantasy world as Ravenloft. If there are too many monsters then it is not gothic-punk urban dark fantasy but a Jurasic Park for Monsters from Hammer Films. My trick is most of monsters live in the "otherword" (like in Silent Hills), Metropolis (from Kult: lost divinity) or STEM knightmare kingdoms from Evil Within (1&2). There the masquerade is allowed to be broken, and petitioner souls are almos free blood-bags (they are immortal souls, always they return), but it is also a dangerous zone and easy prey for werewolves and other supernatural creatures.

Other troubles are because their point of view about our (real) world is too different. In my own WoD Pentex has got also a Russian and a Chinese "brother", mason lodges are controlled by vampires or demons, or Lasombra helped to cause the fall of the Spanish empire because we were the best vampire-hunters, fomorians can be healed by Catholic exorcists (and the main source of taint by banes are the illegal drugs), all thinblood vampires can be daywalkers, Gioconda is possible (if you rejects your "superpowers" and your faith isn't too small), there are more forest zones in capitalist countries(western shapesifters did better their work, and the hengeyokais need more help), and the demons aren't really from the true hell, but from other region and when they arrived to the material world their memories were rewritten by the main religious "paradigm" in those zone.

If your players know all the metaplot, I suggest to change this, using as source of inspiration "Mysteries of the Old Testament" by mystic seer Anne Catherinne Emmerich. (Disclaimer: Of course we aren't here to talk about our real world, but sometimes we can suggest or mention some things as potential sources of inspiration)

It’s an interesting argument.

However, for me, part of the appeal of Vampire: The Masquerade is being able to play in a world that is a close facsimile to the world we live in, here and now. The juxtaposition of a supernatural culture over real world places and events, which can be things you might experience everyday depending on your chosen location, gives a vitality to the game. It’s part of the fun to reimagine your own world from a different perspective, and lends itself well towards satirical themes and social commentary (which may not be to everybody’s tastes, admittedly).

 

[Mercule]

I feel a love-hate relation with this IP. It has got a great fluff (I don't mind the crunch in the Storyteller System) but all these monsters are better together in a fantasy world as Ravenloft. If there are too many monsters then it is not gothic-punk urban dark fantasy but a Jurasic Park for Monsters from Hammer Films. My trick is most of monsters live in the "otherword" (like in Silent Hills), Metropolis (from Kult: lost divinity) or STEM knightmare kingdoms from Evil Within (1&2). There the masquerade is allowed to be broken, and petitioner souls are almos free blood-bags (they are immortal souls, always they return), but it is also a dangerous zone and easy prey for werewolves and other supernatural creatures.

I think this is why, in part, my group ended up gravitating toward Mage and, to a lesser extent, Changeling. In Mage, you're still more or less human and, even though you have some lofty ambitions, you still have normal human drives. Some Friday nights, you just want to go to the pub, play pool, and knock back a couple beers.

Even many of the "lofty goals" still have mundane reflections. The Celestial Chorus member can summon food into existence, but still wants to reform the system so the homeless have someplace to go and shelter. The Akashic can beat any thug (or entire gang) into submission, but runs a dojo to train mundanes to defend themselves because she can't be everywhere. The Euthanatos has a slightly different take on the crime problem. The Verbena can, potentially, see where they're all fighting different aspects of the same problem. That problem doesn't even have to be supernatural, though there might be some spirits involved. The point is that it can't be solved by magic alone, even if subtle magic is a constant aid. If you want to occasionally pull out the stops, though, you can always put the group in a place where magic matters -- even sending them to the deepest recesses of some desert/jungle or even an ethereal realm.

You can do the same thing, to an extent, with Changeling, though that always seems to be a "just when I thought I was out" scenario. Werewolf is very situational. But Vampire so often boils down to running a soup kitchen (or whatever) out of boredom/ennui or just so that you don't become a monster, which is something of it's own, clinical, catch 22. For Mage, the mortals really are the point, in a lot of cases.