| Vampire: The Requiem | |
 Vampire: The Requiem cover |
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| Designer: | Justin Achilli, Philippe R. Boulle, Bill Bridges, Dean Burnham, Ken Cliffe, Michael Lee, Chris McDonough, Ethan Skemp, Richard Thomas, Mike Tinney, Stephan Wieck, Stewart Wieck, Fred Yelk, Aaron Voss, Pauline Benney |
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| Publisher: | White Wolf |
| Publication date: | August 2004 |
| Genre(s): | Personal Horror |
| System: | Storytelling System |
Vampire: The Requiem is a role-playing game published by White Wolf, set in the World of Darkness, and the successor to the Vampire: The Masquerade line. It was first released in August 2004, together with a new core rule book for the World of Darkness. Although it is an entirely new game, rather than a continuation of the previous editions, it uses many elements from the old game in its construction, including some of the clans and their powers. The game's title is a metaphor for the way vampires within the game view their life. Although it can be considered a full game in itself, Vampire: The Requiem requires the World of Darkness corebook for use.
Contents |
Clans
Similar to the previous game, Kindred are brought into one of five clans as part of their transformation into vampires:
Each clan covers a broad range of vampiric archetypes. The Daeva, for instance, are both seductive and predatorial, evoking the image of vampires who glide through society as debonair hunters, much like Lestat in Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles. The Gangrel represent the idea of vampires as solitary, savage hunters. The Mekhet are conspiratorial occultists, vampires who hide in the shadows gathering lore and knowledge while manipulating others from afar. Nosferatu vampires are the alienated or disfigured monsters of legend (such as Count Orlok of their movie namesake), while the Ventrue represent vampires possessed of an aristocratic, "lords of the night" sensibility, like Bram Stoker's Dracula. Within these clans are many sub-clans, known as bloodlines.
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World of Darkness |
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Vampire: The Requiem |
Covenants
There are also many political factions, known as Covenants. These include:
- The Carthian Movement
- The Circle of the Crone
- The Invictus
- The Lancea Sanctum
- The Ordo Dracul
- The Unaligned
For an Overview: Covenant (Vampire: the Requiem)
Powers and abilities (disciplines)
Kindred (the word vampires use for themselves) can use a variety of supernatural powers called Disciplines. These are special abilities associated with their curse which, like their undead bodies, are "fed" in a way by the living blood they take from mortals. Many of the Disciplines provide Kindred with preternatural means of ensuring their continued existence, or of easing the process of hunting and stealing blood from mortals. Disciplines can be broken down into four categories: common (common place among the Kindred and more than one clan has an innate knack for them), uncommon (the proprietary abilities of each of the five clans), covenant (possessed only by a specific covenant and never shared with outsiders), and bloodline (known only to the members of a particular bloodline within a clan). However, each Kindred has the capability to, given a tutor and the proper amount of time (sometimes years for powerful disciplines), learn a discipline that is not natural to their clan or covenant. In game mechanics, the experience point cost for such disciplines is higher than that of a clan discipline innate to a specific Kindred, and given the amount of time in a given storyline necessary to successfully master an other-clan discipline, many players never get the chance to fully master such things. However, some storytellers (the orchestrater and judge of the game) allow certain concessions, or "house rules", that enable players to learn out-of-clan disciplines more easily than is standard in the official rulebook; this allows for more powerful characters and decreases mechanical differences between the different groups.
Common disciplines
Physical
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- Celerity: The ability to move at faster-than-human speeds and with uncanny precision.
- Resilience: The ability to withstand damaging attacks with comparatively minor injuries.
- Vigor: The ability to manifest supernatural strength above and beyond even a vampire's naturally superhuman capabilities.
Psychic
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- Animalism: The power to commune with and command animals; related to a vampire's inner Beast.
- Obfuscate: The power to prevent others from sensing one's self by clouding their minds; related to a vampire's natural cunning and guile.
Uncommon disciplines
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- Auspex: Preternatural sensitivity and awareness and the ability to forsee and know things seemingly unknowable (practiced by the Mekhet).
- Dominate: The piercing stare that commands minds and the ability to break the will of others (practiced by the Ventrue).
- Majesty: Seductive or commanding sway of emotions and the predatory manipulation of the weak in this way (practiced by the Daeva).
- Nightmare: The ability to evoke sheer terror by revealing one's primal nature (practiced by the Nosferatu).
- Protean: The ability to assume a variety of forms such as a wolf or a mist (practiced by the Gangrel).
Covenant disciplines
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- Coils of the Dragon: Used to cheat the Curse, stripping away limitations and negative effects of the Unliving state (practiced by the Ordo Dracul).
- Crúac: Pagan blood sorcery (practiced by the Circle of the Crone).
- Theban Sorcery: Miraculous magic taught by, or in some interpretations stolen from, an "avatar of God" (practiced by the Lancea Sanctum).
Bloodline (Rare) disciplines
- The various Rare Disciplines are numerous and wildly diverse. While they are generally only available to their respective bloodlines, and highly specialized, there are a few which provide significant advantages in combat (particularly some published in the antagonists book, VII, and that of the Spina Bloodline from the Invictus supplement).
Antagonists
A vampire has many enemies, most from within their own clans and covenants. There are some that stand out as being opposed to Vampire society as a whole, and some of the most prominent of these are vampires themselves.
- Belial's Brood
- Strix
- VII
Books
- Vampire: The Requiem (August 2004)
- Coteries (October 2004)
- Nomads (November 2004)
- Rites of the Dragon (November 2004)
- Bloodlines: The Hidden (February 2005)
- Lancea Sanctum (March 2005)
- City of the Damned: New Orleans (May 2005)
- Ghouls (May 2005)
- Ordo Dracul (July 2005)
- VII (August 2005)
- The Invictus (October 2005)
- Bloodlines: The Legendary (January 2006)
- Requiem Chronicler's Guide (February 2006)
- Carthians (April 2006)
- Mythologies (June 2006)
- Circle of the Crone (August 2006)
- Belial's Brood (January 2007)
- The Blood (May 2007)
- Bloodlines: The Chosen (July 2007)
- Damnation City (August 2007)
- Requiem for Rome (October 2007)
- Fall of The Camarilla (January 2008)
Movie adaptation
New Line Cinema bought the rights to Vampire: The Requiem, and they plan to make a movie. [1]
