Authors: Ari Marmell, Dean Shomshak and C.A. Suleiman
Release Date: 2004-08-01
On Sale: Yes
Price: 34.99
ISBN: 1-58846-247-1
Product Type: Core Book
Product Style: Hardcover
Page Count: 304
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Review by: Charles Phipps
Rating: 8/10
Vampire: The Requiem is an impressive work....
Vampire: The Requiem is a remake of Vampire: The Masquerade. Given that V:TM was the most popular game that White Wolf had, it should be unsurprising that they didn't try to re-invent the wheel. Remakes are always a dicey affair since you need to keep them recognizably the same story while adding your own spin on things. Dracula has been remade on a dozen occasions, each version adding something of its own slant. On the other hand, gamers might fear something like the Psycho remake. Something where everything is the same but somehow worse. Thankfully, Vampire: The Requiem is the former rather than the later.
The first and most important thing to understand about V:TR is the fact that its Gothic Horror rather than Gothic Punk. This pervades the entire book. The old gameline was one that constantly reinforced a 'fight the man mentality.' This was the basis for the Anarch movement, much of the Brujah mentality, and the Sabbat. Hell, you could argue that Gehenna was fundamentally about the 'old vs. new' mentality that was the chief theme of V:TM. When you remove the Punk elements from the setting, that causes a drastic change in tone. Gone are the vampires out to overthrow the elders with dragonsbreath rounds and katanas. Instead, the world of vampires is motivated by Kindred trying to live a day to day existence.
It's still the same old World of Darkness. According to V:TR, the entire world is crap and things are not getting any better. The cities are mostly slums, all the teenagers are Goths, and the rich are isolated in their own little world. In other words, two out of three things are identical to our world. The difference is that vampires wield tremendously less influence in this reality. Due to a quirk in the rules, gone are the Queen of the Damned demigods and nuclear bomb immune Ravnos founders. Vampires are no longer able to dominate humanity with their vast mental powers. Indeed, all the vampires that are awake were embraced in the last thousand years or so.
These changes leave me with mixed feelings. It eliminates the chief impetuous of much Munchkinism. The player characters could track down a 2000 year old Aztec god of death in his tomb to diablerize him but it's unlikely they couldn't take him in a fight anyway. With disciplines 'capped off' at 5 if torpor ever happens, vampires are powerful but encouraged to diversify their abilities. On the other hand, it also removes a lot of the ready made plots that spring to mind when running Vampire. My players were always gung ho about fighting alien elders but the truly twisted nature of them is very downplayed in this version. They're callous bastards but more Enron than Lex Luthor.
Next, sect warfare is also eliminated. The Camarilla existed in V:TR but it was a Roman institution and collapsed over a thousand years ago. Instead of a Camarilla, every city that vampires live in is an independent feudal territory. A nation unto itself in vampiredom. The closest thing to the old sect is the Invictus. The Invictus are the Camarilla without Justicars, Archons, the Sabbat to scare people, or the Anarch threat to unit the Kindred. In other words, it’s a network of arrogant elders that like to pretend they're the rulers of the vampire world.
Oddly, the Sabbat seem to have two analogues. The Lancea Santcum takes all the crazy Catholic titles of the Sabbat, the weird religious rituals, their faith of being better than humans, and makes it into a genuine vampire religion. I rather like them even if I miss the old Sabbat Paths of Enlightenment. The psychotic rabble role seems filled by Belial's Brood that are Satanist vampires. I can't say that I liked this last bit. The Sabbat are greater than the sum of its parts when it's a loopy religion over a bunch of psychotics. Nevertheless, maybe I'll be more impressed when I get the Covenant books.
The Anarch's analogues in the Carthians are almost unrecognizable. Basically, recently embraced or ancilla Kindred that want to use their 'modern' ideals (like Democracy, civil rights, appeals, etc) to update the vampire world. It's like all the Anarchs died in a horrible fire only to be replaced by the Brujah idealists. I must confess, even knowing the Punk element is gone, it annoys me that the violent rebel is no longer a mainstay of this setting.
The Tremere and Tzimisce clan have been merged into their own sect as opposed to bloodline. The Ordo Dracul runs the risk of being somewhat silly since their founder is supposedly Dracula. Nevertheless, a sect devoted to improving the vampire form without fleshcrafting's freaky elements and crossed with the Tremere's occultism is something that appeals to me. I imagine that this group will recieve a lot more treatment as 'just this close to world domination' in people's games than ever was intended by the authors.
Finally, there's the Circle of the Crone that seems to be yet another attempt to insert Bahari style Lilithism into the setting. I hated the Secrets of the Dark Mother when it came out and loathed Lilith whenever she was alluded to in the game. Thankfully, the Circle of the Crone seems to be more a type of vampiric Verbena. Given the Traditions no longer exist over in Mage and everything is from Atlantis, this uncluttered paganism might be quite appealing for players berift of their wizards.
There's also the VII that seems to be a mysterious Black Hand/2nd edition Assamite substitute. Nothing is revealed about them in this book save they really hate other vampires. It was rather disappointing. According to this, any VII appearance will consist of them trying to kill my players for no reason before revealing nothing. Good work there White Wolf, not. I can make my own mysterious assassins with no past if necessary.
The Clans are drastically shortened as well. Having removed the Tzimisce and Tremere, they also eliminated all the clans that were too similar to other clans, and they also combined what was left in most cases. Despite the similarity in names, no clan is remotely resembling to what it used to be. The Gangrel are now Brujah/Gangrel hyrbids, filling the role of the violent outlaw Kindred. The Daeva are Ravnos/Toreador hybrids with tremendous addictions but also the sexiness. The Mekhet are a kind of Lasombra/Cappadochian hybrid with the role of being the Damned's resident nerds. The Nosferatu are well.....still the Nosferatu. The Nosferatu aren't automatically the creature from the Black Lagoon though, just unlikeable by nature. Finally, the Ventrue clan is the Ventrue and Malkavians being fused together.
The result is surprisingly effective. It takes some getting used to since so much of one's identity in V:TM was tied to your clan. The Embraces here are much more widespread and no one can really control the nature of the Damned. So, no one would really bat an eyelash at a Wrath suffering Daeva that was an utter badass in the same way they would a Toreador. However, none of this would work if not for the Bloodlines that apparently exist by the hundreds in the vampire world. At least some of the ones mentioned in the clans are direct analogues of the ones 'lost' between Editions. For example, a Mekhet bloodline is the Sangiovanni that is a bunch of inbred Venetian necromancers.
Disciplines are changed drastically. The physical disciplines are toned down to the point that vampires are very powerful but don't have the comic book levels of invulnerability that they used to have. I have a few complaints like the Ordo Dracul not having their own version of Thaumaturgy and the fact that Obfuscate no longer has the Mask of a 1000 Faces. However, I like that Protean 4 is no longer limited to just a Bat or a Wolf. Overall, I'm very pleased with this and think that the system has been much improved for Kindred abilities.
The end of the book gives a couple of ‘adaptation’ clans along with some new bloodlines. The Bruja, Toreador, and Malkovian bloodlines are a joke on the reader that isn’t particularly funny. Instead of the nuanced portrayals before, they took the stereotypical way that gamers played them to the extreme. The Bruja are just a bunch of biker punks, the Toreador are idiotic social butterflies, and the Malkovians are the Uncle Festers that the Ventrue lock up when it’s tea time. Really, White Wolf, can’t you be a bit more mature about this sort of thing?
A couple of other random comments. I like that diablerie now provides you a permanent increase in disciplines and a skill point. We've known it should for a long time to justify all the fuss that Kindred show over it. Also, Blood Potency is an excellent substitute for Generation since it provides most of the benefits from it but also rewards a Kindred that survives a very long time. Sadly, the concept also precludes Thinblooded unless there's a gross accident in Embrace. Sacrificing a permanent point of willpower to create a vampire means that there's no more 'shovel heads' either.
Overall, Vampire: The Requiem is a very satisfying read but it is heavily skewed towards games involving Lost Humanity and inter-Kindred politics. There's no "evil" clans here for the players to fight and violence is no longer the solution to everything. Thus, its a good deal more difficult for me to come up with plots off the cuff of my head. That is a negative since ease of play is something that I would have preffered. Plus, the fact that the book is not self-contained but a supplement to World of Darkness bugs me. The old style books were much preferred. Still, Vampire: The Requiem is an impressive work that gives all the necessary information for creating a complex political structure amongst the damned. I think it's fully the equal of its predecessor.
Score: Eight out of Ten Drops of Blood
