Join Eviliv3 Play as we examine how to play @Renegade Studios’ Vampire The Masquerade 5th Edition in this episode focused on the Storyteller System’s Basic Rules. Originally created by Mark Rein-Hagen and released in 1991 by White Wolf Publishing as the first of several Storyteller System games for its World of Darkness setting line. In 2015, Paradox Interactive purchased White Wolf. Vampire: The Masquerade (also known as V5) was then released in early 2018. You can buy Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition here: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/256795/vampire-the-masquerade-5th-edition?affiliate_id=50797 and you can learn more here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vampire:_The_Masquerade.
Time Stamps:
- 0:00 Intro
- 0:43 Preface
- 0:59 Storyteller System
- 2:35 Simple Test
- 5:48 Contest
- 9:40 Healing
- 10:40 Afterword
- 10:52 Outro
About Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition
Vampire: The Masquerade is the original and ultimate roleplaying game of personal and political horror. You are a vampire, struggling for survival, supremacy, and your own fading humanity — afraid of what you are capable of, and fearful of the inhuman conspiracies that surround you.
The classic that changed roleplaying games forever returns! This fifth edition features a streamlined and modern rules design, beautiful new full-color art, and a rich story experience for players. Powered by the innovative Hunger cycle, the game also includes rules for creating system supported character coteries, Loresheets to directly involve players with their favorite parts of the setting and The Memoriam, a new way to bring the character’s detailed backgrounds and expand on them in-session.
V5 is a return to Vampire’s original vision, moving boldly into the 21st century. While the rules have been redesigned, this new edition honors the deep story of the original, advancing the metaplot from where it left off and detailing exactly what has happened in the world of the Kindred up until tonight. The terror of the Second Inquisition, the conspiracies behind the Gehenna War, and the rekindling of the War of Ages: these are the building blocks of the modern V5 chronicle.
Mature Warning: Contains graphic and written content of a mature nature, including violence, sexual themes, and strong language. Reader discretion is advised.
This PDF version of the V5 core book contains everything the physical book does, plus the implemented errata and a few bonus sections. These sections comprise 26 pages of added bonus material, and they include the following:
- More Loresheets: Descendant of Tyler, Descendant of Zelios, Descendant of Vasantasena, High Clan, Low Clan, Ambrus Maropis, Carmelita Neillson, Fiorenza Savona, Descendant of Karl Schrekt, Descendant of Xaviar.
- An Appendix on Standard Feats: A list of examples for various typical feats your character may do over their unlife, divided among Mental, Physical, and Social.
- An Appendix on Projects: Advanced rules with which your character can attempt long-term projects in order to accomplish goals that go beyond their night-to-night unlife.
- An Appendix on Considerate Play: Excellent advice on how to present complex topics in your game and to ensure everyone at the gaming table is having a good time.
Transcript
Cold Open
The thirst that from the soul doth rise, Doth ask a drink devine.
Intro
Welcome to Eviliv3 Play, a celebration of my favorite tabletop role playing games. This is a sister channel to Eviliv3. Subscribe if you’re new to the channel, because today we are beginning our How to Play Vampire the Masquerade V5 series with this episode Storyteller System’s Basic Rules.
Discussion
At its core, Vampire the Masquerade 5th edition or V5 is a horror based storytelling game, not an action packed monster smashing romp like Dungeons & Dragons. In fact, the name of the game system itself is the Storyteller System. The rules for Vampire the Masquerade are categorised in the following ways: Basic Rules, Character Rules, Clan Rules, and Discipline Rules. There are advanced modular rules which are optional, but they will be addressed in a future episode. The concept of this being a narrative based game is baked into its design, from the individual running the game being called the Storyteller, and the characters they control are called storyteller-played characters or SPCs, to the vernacular used to reference time. For example a moment of interaction is called a scene, an adventure is called a Story, and a campaign is called a Chronicle. Time itself is abstract, as are the details of the scene. You will not be using character tokens or a virtual tabletop or VTT and a battle map. Instead this harkens back to the old-school gaming technique of theater of the mind, and the system pays this framing off in its mechanics.
From time to time simply describing what you want to do isn’t enough. There may be external forces that provide complications based on your action. In these cases your actions are resolved with the rolling of dice. The dice used in V5 are all d10 or ten-sided dice. And you collect a number of them into what’s called a dice pool based on two traits used in the action. This may leave you traditionally with anywhere from one to ten dice in your dice pool. The basic mechanic is that any dice rolled showing a 6 or better is a success, and the number of successes determines the outcome of an action. There are two basic methods of resolution in V5, a Simple Test and a Contest. The process of a simple test is as follows. The player describes what they want to do, the Storyteller tells the player which traits will be used to form their die pool, the Storyteller then decides the difficulty of the action, and the player needs that many successes or more from rolling their die pool. There may be a simple check which requires only a single dice roll looking for a single success, this is traditionally only used to determine Hunger gain.
So now that we understand how the dice work and the basics of a simple test, what are traits and how does the Storyteller decide which two should be referenced? Traits are what define a character. They are comprised of Attributes, which define a character’s innate and potential abilities; like Strength, Charisma or Intelligence, and Skills, how characters most reliably apply the attribute’s potential; like Athletics, Intimidation, and Investigation. There are also Disciplines, Advantages and Flaws which may be used but the bottom line is that any two traits used are contextually relevant to the actions described. So if a character is canvassing a neighborhood for information they may use Resolve + Investigation, or if they are researching an occult topic they may use Intelligence + Occult. If a character has specialty in a skill, they gain an extra die in their roll.
How does the Storyteller decide the difficulty of an action? The difficulty is based on the action itself. Is it routine? Then you only need one success. If it’s moderate, you may need three successes, and if it’s very hard you may need six or more successes. There may be external modifiers the Storyteller applies, and there may be opposition by a SPC. If there is opposition it would become a Contest which we will cover shortly. If the character’s dice pool is twice the task’s difficulty, it is an automatic win, no dice need to be rolled.
The margin of success in an action is determined by the number of dice rolled showing 6 or more, over the difficulty number. So if the difficulty number was 3 and you rolled five successes, five dice showing 6 or higher, the margin of success is two. This margin will come into play in Contests and describing the outcome of actions. Rolling two tens in your die pool equals a critical success and adds two more successes. This happens in pairs and you may roll multiple critical successes. At times you may roll some successes, but not enough to meet or exceed the difficulty number, in that case you may be offered the win at a cost option. It means you achieve your goal, but something happens to make things worse for you. You may also achieve zero successes making a total failure. In this situation something of dire consequence occurs. You may use teamwork to overcome certain actions as well, in this case you roll the largest of the character’s die pools, and add one die for each player assisting. You may also spend one Willpower to re-roll up to three regular dice on any one Skill or Attribute roll.
The second method of resolution is the contest. This is between two or more individuals like combat or manipulation, for example. Contests are resolved the same way as tests. You tell the Storyteller what you want to do, they determine your traits to use for your dice pool. The Storyteller then determines the opposers traits and die pool. You both roll. If you meet or exceed your opponent’s roll, you win the contest. The Storyteller will then describe the outcome. At times a Storyteller may have the opposition take half. This is a method that speeds up conflict resolution. You take the die pool of the opposition, divide it in half rounding down, and that determines the SPC’s number of successes. It’s that simple. However if your contest may cause damage, it becomes a conflict. And while it is handled in the same general way, it requires a bit more clarification.
Conflicts are Contests which may result in physical or mental damage. Again, this is all theater of the mind, so we don’t have to worry about who goes first and last, as much as what everyone does, and at the end of everyone’s actions it is considered a turn. All conflicts should be resolved within three turns to prevent getting bogged down in die rolls and game mechanics. At the beginning of a conflict, all participants declare what they will do, and the Storyteller decides what the SPC’s will do. Then the die pools are assembled based on the traits used. There is only a single action taken by each participant in a conflict. So if you want to dodge a knife while punching someone, you would use Brawl + Dexterity as the SPC may use Melee + Dexterity.
Of course you can always dodge a brawl or melee attack rather than attack with Dexterity + Athletics. Ranged weapon attacks are resolved as contests rather than conflicts when only one side has a firearm. You may gang up on an opponent. The defender of multiple attackers reduces their die pool by one for each attacker in turn. If you wish to attack multiple opponents, you will split your die pool in half and roll half for one opponent and half for the other. Whoever has the most successes after rolling wins the conflict and applies damage per the weapon or discipline and their margin of victory to either WIllpower or Health. So if you have a margin of 2, you would add 2 to the damage done.
We should also discuss the types of damage in the Storyteller System. The first type is Superficial Damage. These are bruises, sprains and the like. Kicks, fists for example cause superficial damage to humans and vampires. The second type of damage is Aggravated damage. This causes broken bones, wounds and life threatening injuries. Knives and firearms cause aggravated damage to humans. Only fire, sunlight or supernatural attacks cause aggravated damage to vampires. You track the types of damage taken by taking half of any superficial damage rounded up and mark a slash on the character sheet in Health or Willpower. You take full aggravated damage and mark it with an x. If you fill your tracker you become impaired and lose two dice from dice pools. Health affects physical, while willpower affects social and mental. SPC’s may become incapacitated. Further damage while impaired results in superficial damage becoming aggravated, changing slashes to x’s. When your health tracker is filled with aggravated damage, you are comatose or dead as humans and you fall into a torpor as a vampire. Your willpower tracker being filled with aggravated damages means you are both impaired and break down and lose face. You may lose social standing or be shunned and mocked.
Now we have learned the consequences of taking damage, how do you heal the damage taken? Well, at the beginning of a session, mortals can remove a number of superficial damage up to their Stamna rating from their Health tracker. Vampires may make a Rouse check per turn to mend superficial damage depending on their Blood Potency. To mend aggravated damage, the vampire must wait till the following nightfall then make three rouse checks in addition to the standard rise check upon rising. This removes one point of aggravated damage as well as a crippling injury. Only one point of aggravated damage may be mended per night. If your hunger rises above 5 due to the Rouse check, the vampire will fall into Torpor. I will go into detail in a future video about Rouse checks and hunger. For now, know that a Rouse Check is used for a number of reasons as a Vampire and it takes a single die roll. On a failure you gain one point of hunger.
That covers the basic rules of the Storyteller System. I will be returning with another video describing vampire specific game mechanics like Hunger Dice, Rousing the Blood and Blood Potency.
Outro
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