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Well, I've run a few games in the past, whilst I've never had any criticism about it, I was wondering about feeding. How long do other folks allow or get allowed to go hunting, feed etc? I am aware that the process isn't so easy for many clans, masquerade to be maintained, mess to be covered up, avoiding killing if you want to maintain your humanity and retain your character, the personal horror aspects to consider.

How much leverage should this be afforded? Reduced to a simple roll for success and taking an hour off the time of night to continue adventuring? I don't want it dominating or distracting from the greater plots but I don't like making life so easy as to say (as I have in the past) 'roll d10 and dont get a 1'.

What do you say folks?

No one out there playing or has played Vampire the Masquerade or Requiem?

MGS! Sorry, man - I've played it LOADS! Here are my advices;

i) Have a WHOLE DAMN SESSION about it. Seriously - put all your plots on HOLD for the first session. And then have a session where the coterie has to feed. Go into all the details - roleplay and roll dice for it, discuss it, play the parts of the victims. And require ALL the rolls - Obfuscate and seduction and Self-Control and so forth. Make it a BIG DEAL for this whole session. Have the players THINK and realize. Have the Humanity rolls. Describe the horror. Go ALL IN!

Also, you can have them meet the various people in the city that way - the enforcers, the Justicar's Archons, the Prince's bitch etc. etc. This can be a cool way of showing who is who.

ii) Then, next time they feed, reduce it to a few simple rolls and a bit of description. NEVER allow them to go to the "special vampire bar" where they can buy blood or whatever unless you want to make that a major plot point (I had the "special vampire bar" where the Brujah methuselah added a drop of her OWN blood to every glass . . . yeah. She was a total freaking nightmare . . . ) That makes it too easy.

iii) Then, when they are comfortable, and deep into a plot, and they "just need to fill up" ...... spring the WHOLE SESSION thing on them again! Have it go wrong, describe the thing. Require all the rolls and the roleplaying!

Feeding needs to be horrifying - and horror is weakenend by familiarity. So, the best way to deal with it is to make it HORRIFYING!!!!! once - and then make it mundane ..... and then ratchet the horror back up to 11! That will jar them and scare them.

It is all about changing it up.

Thanks Dark, I had in the past reduced it to dice rolls for success to reduce its impact on the running story, however I was always left thinkin I was denying the players an important aspect of the personal horror faced by the embraced. Players always seemed to regard it as a chore so I'll see how it goes, I do like the idea of varying it each time though.

Players should never regard it as a chore - they should see it as a horrible thing they really want to avoid. It should be risky, dangerous and unpleasant - unless they are complete monsters.

If you keep the blood available low then they will be less lavish with their BP expenditure, and the gothic punk aspects of the game will be more pronounced.

The other thing I was wondering on was the taking of life vs humanity.

One of the characters in our last coterie was a gangster, old school 'Lock Stock' kinda east end villain. Now I'm telling him if he off some guy he's going to lose humanity to the point where he will be lost to the beast in a handful of sessions. We came to the accord that his old school villainany was kinda like one of the sabbat paths of enlightenment, say the Path of Honorable Accord and that therefore offing folks he considered bad news was not a humanity test but detonating the orphanage would have been. Another player commented that this gave a very large advantage to those who created underworld or armed forces type characters. I argued that this was balanced out by advantages such as the gumshoe/hack reporter having a wide network of contacts and so on, he argued that those sorts of thing are covered in the backgrounds and paid for by the player, this was not.

Thoughts?

To be honest MeanGreen I think I like your idea a lot. One of the weaknesses of Vampire the Masquerade is the assumption that the Vampires are of better stock than the Sabbat, are all desperate to cling to humanity.

If you have a character that doesn't give a damn about who he kills it's a massive disadvantage being Camarilla as a young Vampire. Even Caitiff's are better off than you rules wise, and the there seems little reason for it fluffwise either. The Camarilla's Elders quite often are not described or are acting like Vampires trying to retain Humanity.

In fact I'd need to check but I seem to remember Elders work differently when it comes to Humanity due to the increased age, and disconnection to Society. So there maybe an argument that Humanity is an odd system on one lvl, designed for folks embraced and trying to regain their humanity, while some folks really wouldn't care.

Oh and no I don't think that would mean the Camarilla hounds them out. Hmmm, I'm sure there was something about taking Paths outside the Sabbat/independants somewhere, would need to go digging through Sourcebooks though.

I like the idea anyways and would probably use it that way in the future as well.

That's why you have the Herd Resource.
Characters don't need to kill to feed, and the Herd is a good example of how squeamish characters can bypass the whole "eww, I just ate that guy" aspect of the game.

Also there are blood banks, ghouls, and animals.
Or for the very daring .... Diablerie!!!
Find a lower generation vampire, shoot him alot (unless your character is awesome), then have a go at sucking them dry.

...Insert Paranoid "what happens when the Prince and/or Primogen find out" scenario....

Or what happened to one of my characters -
He had been seriously hammered by some Sabbat and then was accosted by what was thought to be a lower generation member of a rival clan, and threatened with punishment for damaging the Masquerade in the combat (true enough).
He was down to his last BP and the nature of the threat (dragonsbreath rounds in a shotgun) caused a Frenzy check.
shortly afterward my character was full of blood and there was no one else around.
He had no actual knowledge of what had occurred, but figured he was totally screwed.

Steve78 wrote:
Or what happened to one of my characters -
He had been seriously hammered by some Sabbat and then was accosted by what was thought to be a lower generation member of a rival clan, and threatened with punishment for damaging the Masquerade in the combat (true enough).
He was down to his last BP and the nature of the threat (dragonsbreath rounds in a shotgun) caused a Frenzy check.
shortly afterward my character was full of blood and there was no one else around.
He had no actual knowledge of what had occurred, but figured he was totally screwed.

And he must have looked pissed as hell when he walked into Elysium and every toreador, malk and anyone else who picked up auspex all blinked and then started whispering down mobile phones til the Scourge kicked the door down and wiped your guy out.

Diablerie shows up on radar...

yeah, (hence he figured he was screwed) but it did make for interesting roleplaying.

Actually that character died to vampire hunters.

The storyteller was running several games in the same city and one was using Hunters Hunted. My characters' lack of subtlety allowed the intrepid hunters to track him down.

'Tis not a good thing to have your haven burnt to the ground at 7AM.

Ouchie, the pain of sucking another vamp dry.... reminds me of the time one of the players upset the wrong Elder.

He wakes up after a beating to find himself in the middle of the desert in nevada, the dawn lingering on the horizon ready to break. He makes a joke about his luck, sits on a nearby rock lighting a cigrette and sits there till the sun claims him.

It was so in character it was painful, but no one in the group forgot that session.


A good character death can sometime invigorate the game, not that I do it often. Think I can count actual player deaths in the past 10yrs on one hand. Three of those being in Apocalypse which is typically bloody.