Vampire: The Masquerade getting a new edition, more games coming too

White Wolf announced plans to publish a new edition of Vampire: The Masquerade, with more games "under consideration" for a future revamp. At Gen Con, current White Wolf creative director Jess Lanzillo announced that a new 6th edition of Vampire: The Masquerade is under development, albeit at least a year or more away. The new edition comes with sweeping changes to the game, including the combination of Vitae and Willpower/Health into a single track and a revamped Humanity tracker with customized poles based on clans and player choices. Character creation has also been overhauled and there are new mechanics to support player-driven failure states, assumably to inject more drama into games.

Lanzillo also announced several additional games under consideration for future development, including Vampire: The Dark Ages, Mage: The Ascension, and Changeling: The Dreaming. No further timeline were given for any of these projects, but they will assumably use the new 6th edition engine.

White Wolf announced last year that they were building up their in-house development team, after several years of relying on Renegade as their primary licensed publisher. The fate of Renegade's Vampire partnership is unknown, but they recently announced plans to develop a TTRPG based on the Anne Rice TV shows, which further brought the partnership into question.

 

[ngenius]

Vampire's sixth edition is the debut project for White Wolf's current creative director, former VP of the Dungeons and Dragons franchise Jess Lanzillo. "We're finally able to unveil that we're working on Vampire: The Masquerade 6th Edition, and that we have a strong creative vision guiding us", she says in a press release from Thursday.

White Wolf reveals Vampire: The Masquerade 6th edition, and it's "modernizing" the iconic TTRPG

The new Vampire: the Masquerade has "less book-flipping, quicker NPC creation, and more mechanics that support the tension at the table."

www.wargamer.com

With the 5th edition released in 2018, Lanzillo (a former exec at Magic: The Gathering and Dungeons & Dragons maker Wizards of the Coast) says now was the time for a new version — both from a business standpoint, and a cultural one. Among those pressing themes the White Wolf team is focusing on for the modern area are the evolving role of technology and the pursuit of “perpetual longevity.”

Vitae and Willpower/Health have been combined as a single resource, for example, which you can spend to temporarily raise a Discipline. Plus, Difficulty subtracts from a dice pool instead of raising a target number - a system tested out way back in 2004's Vampire: The Requiem. Additionally, Humanity has been revamped (pun intended) with an extra Beast/Nature tracker.

Other resources like Quickening and Drama add narrative depth to the scenes. Character creation, it seems, has been overhauled to focus on "lifepaths, natures, clan traits, and merits". The press release also says Discipline powers scale with dots and favor "rather than passive use".

 

[TwoSix]

They're also "contemplating" Vampire: The Dark Ages, Mage: The Ascension, and Changeling: The Dreaming as the next books for the V6 engine. A new version of M:tA does get me excited.

 

[ngenius]

They're also "contemplating" Vampire: The Dark Ages, Mage: The Ascension, and Changeling: The Dreaming as the next books for the V6 engine. A new version of M:tA does get me excited.

Thanks for highlighting those.

Strangely, nothing for "Werewolf: The Apocalypse" though that one is still young, 5th edition published in 2023.

 

[MGibster]

I liked the Hunger mechanic from 5th edition, but I'm amenable to a better system if they've got one. I only played one 5th edition campaign, so I'm not sure I'm in the market for a new Vampire game, but I'm interested. Maybe Dark Ages?

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

They're also "contemplating" Vampire: The Dark Ages, Mage: The Ascension, and Changeling: The Dreaming as the next books for the V6 engine. A new version of M:tA does get me excited.

MtA is even more challenging to bring to the 21st century than the rest of the WoD, IMO. Some of those splats have not aged well and most of them need at least a good once-over.

 

[TwoSix]

MtA is even more challenging to bring to the 21st century than the rest of the WoD, IMO. Some of those splats have not aged well and most of them need at least a good once-over.

All the more reason to do it! I’d love to see a 21st century refresh.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

All the more reason to do it! I’d love to see a 21st century refresh.

Personally, I would want to do Vampire 5E style drastic pruning, since there is a lot of cruft associated with it*, but yeah, it would be exciting.

* Ideally, Mage would be the WoD game people could use for urban fantasy games, but you suddenly have people throwing metaphysics, philosophy, history and particle physics books at players' heads. I would off-load most of that to supplements for people who want to go deep.

 

[Dire Bare]

I feel like V5 was just yesterday, and V20 a week before that, but I guess it's been 8 years . . .

But I'm VERY excited about new Dark Ages, Mage, and Changeling!

 

[ngenius]

Not a deep Vampire player myself, but guessing 20th Edition was a reprint of the original Vampire from 20 years ago, that coincided with the Modiphius 5th Edition Vampire. Personally, I liked the aesthetics Modiphius brought.