Vampire: The Masquerade Rulebook

Summary
From the White Wolf catalog:


 * A Storytelling Game of Personal Horror


 * "No one holds command over me. No man. No God. No Prince. What is a claim of age for ones who are immortal? What is a claim of power for ones who defy death? Call your damnable hunt. We shall see who I drag screaming to Hell with me."


 * &mdash; Günter Dörn, Das Ungeheuer Darin

Introduction
The beginning of the book is a letter written by V.T. to W.H explaining the nature of vampires from their strengths to their weaknesses. Though not specifically said it is implied that the author of the letter is Vlad Tepes (Count Dracula) speaking to William Harker.

Chapter One
This is the introduction to the World of Darkness through the eyes of the Vampire characters. It talks about Storytelling, role playing, the Storyteller and aids. It touches on different kinds of role playing by a brief paragraph about Live Action (LARP). The chapter concludes with another overview of Vampires as depicted in the game itself.

Between Chatper One and Chapter Two is an excerpt from the famed Book of Nod.

Chapter Two
The Chapter covers the basic rules to playing the game. It is broken up into subsections that deal with Actions, Dice Rolling, and Game Terms. There is an example character sheet in this section.

Chapter Three
The chapter deals with the generation of a character and steps to take when creating one.

Chapter Four
Chapter Four is the explanation of the Traits used to create characters and the story.

Clans
Brujah - Rabble

Gangrel - Outlanders

Malkavian - Kooks

Nosferatu - Sewer Rats

Toreador - Degenerates

Tremere - Warlocks

Ventrue - Blue Bloods

Caitiff - This is shown in a picture but does not give any descriptions of them.

Archtypes
Archetypes were used to determine the character's Nature and Demeanour. They were useful in determining how a character regained Willpower during the course of a chronicle.

Architect, Bon Vivant, Bravo, Caregiver, Cavalier, Conformist, Child, Conniver, Curmudgeon, Deviant, Director, Fanatic, Gallant, Jester, Judge, Loner, Martyr, Plotter, Rebel, Survivor, Traditionalist, Visionary

Attributes
Mental: Perception, Intelligence, Wits

Physical: Strength, Dexterity, Stamina

Social: Charisma, Manipulation, Appearance

Abilities
Talents: Acting, Alertness, Athletics, Brawl, Dodge, Empathy, Intimidation, Leadership, Streetwise, Subterfuge

Skills: Animal Ken, Drive, Etiquette, Firearms, Melee, Music, Repair, Security, Stealth, Survival

Knowledge: Bureaucracy, Computer, Finance, Investigation, Law, Linguistics, Medicine, Occult, Politics, Science

Disciplines
Animalism, Auspex, Celerity, Dominate, Fortitude, Obfuscate, Potence, Presence, Protean, Thaumaturgy

Backgrounds
Allies, Contacts, Fame, Generation, Herd, Influence, Mentor, Resources, Retainers, Status

Virtues
Conscience, Self Control, Courage

Chapter Five
This chapter contains all the different ways a character can change and develop within the course of a chronicle. It explores Experience, raising Disciplines, Backgrounds, Personality, the use of Willpower and Blood Pool, effects of Injury, explanation of Frenzy, Derangements, Humanity, Golconda, Diablerie, the Blood Bond, and Ghouls.

Memorable Quotes
"Now, reader, I have told my dream to thee;  See if you canst interpret it to me  Or to thyself, or neighbor.  But take heed  Of misinterpreting; for that, instead  Of doing good, will but thyself abuse  By misinterpreting evil issues."

- John Bunyan, Pilgrim's Progress

My blood is running dry,  My skin is, my skin is growing thin  For everytime you find yourself  You lose a little bit of me, from within. It's just a raging cycle,  why can't we bring it all to the end of the line  From inside this existence,  time is not on my side.

- Indigo Girls, Land of Canaan

Therefore with the same necessity with which the stone falls to earth; the hungry wolf buries its fangs in the flesh of its prey, without the possibility of the knowledge that it itself is the destroyed as well as the destroyer.

- Arthur Schopenhauer

The Stage but echoes back the public voice,  The drama's laws the drama's patrons give  For we that live to please, must please to live.

- Samuel Clemens

Childhood is the kingdom where nobody dies. Nobody that matters, that is.

- Edna St.Vincent Millay, Childhood is the Kingdom where Nobody Dies.

Life has confided so many stories to me, I shall have to retell them to people who cannot read the book of life itself.

- Etty Hillesum, An Interrupted Life

He don't give a hoot of warning  Wrapped in a black cat cloak. He don't go in the light of morning. He's split, the time the cock'rel crows.

- The Rolling Stones, Midnight Rambler

The dynamic principle of fantsy is play.

- C.G. Jung

But first, on earth as Vampire sent,  Thy corpse shall from its tomb be rent;  Then ghastly haunt thy native place,  And suck the blood of all thy race.

- Lord Byron

I forget how to move  When my mouth is this dry  And my eyes are bursting hearts  In a bloodstained sky  Oh it was sweet and wild.

- The Cure, Homesick

...with the absolute heart of the poem of life butchered out of their own bodies good to eat a thousand years.

- Allen Ginsberg, Howl

Devil and the deep blue sea behind me  Vanish in the air you'll never find me  I will turn your face to alabaster  Then you will find your servant is your master.

- The Police, Wrapped Around Your Finger

Mythology is a rendition of forms, through which the formless form of forms can be known.

- Joseph Campbell

Time is the moving image of reality.

- Plato

And the game never ends when your whole world depends  On the turn of a friendly card.

- The Alan Parsons Project, Turn of a Friendly Card

Oftentimes, to win us to our harm,  The instruments of darkness tell us truths;  Win us with honest trifles, to betrays's  In deepest consequence.

- William Shakespeare, Macbeth

Strong as I am  There's something about this thing that scares me. Strong as I am  Ther's something about this thing that dares me.

- The Prime Movers, Strong As I Am

Confusion will be my epitaph,   As I cross the cracked and broken path,   If we make it we can all sit back and laugh,   But I fear tomorrow I’ll by crying.

 - King Crimson, Epitaph



So slide over here   And give me a moment. Your moves are so raw   I’ve go to let you know   You’re one of my kind.

 - INXS, I Need You Tonight



The inquiry of truth, which is the love making, or wooing of it, the knowledge of truth, which is the presence of it, and the belief in truth, which is the enjoying of it, is the sovereign good of human nature.

 -  Francis Bacon, Of Truth



All the world's a stage And all men and women merely players They ahve their exits and entrances And one man in his time plays many parts.

- William Shakespeare, As You Like It



Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:  The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,  Hath had elsewhere its setting  And cometh from afar.

- Wordsworth, Ode: Imitations of Immortality



Each person is many persons: a multitude made into one person, a corporate body; incorporated, a corporation... the unity of a person is as real, or sureal, as the unity of the corporation.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:.5in;text-indent:-.25in;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops:list .5in">- N.O. Brown

I am what I am, and I don't think Betty Ford takes Vampires.

- Nick Knight

Between two worlds life hovers like a star,  'Twixt night and morn, upon the horizon's verge. How little do we know that which we are! How less what we may be!

- Lord Byron, Don Juan

His ardour smoulders * Phosphorus flies  He radiates with urgency to hypnotize  Stike the furnace * Feed his need  This thirst for fire is all he sees

- Siouxsie and the Banshees, Burn Up

What is the worst of woes that wait on age? What Stamps the Wrinkle deeper on the brow? To view each loved one blotted from life's page,  And be alone on earth as I am now.

- Lord Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage

This living hand, now warm and capable  Of earnest grasping, would, if it were cold  And in the icy silence of the tomb,  So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights  That thou would wish thine own heart dry of blood  So in my veins red life might stream again. And thou be conscience-calm'd - see here it is - I hold it toward you.

- Keats, Lines to Fanny Browne

She disappears at sunrise,  I wonder where she goes  Until then night comes fallin' down again  She shows up with her friends half-alive.

- Tom Petty, Zombie Zoo

Now darkness has a hunger that's insatiable  And lightness has a call that's hard to hear. I wrap my fear around me like a blanket  I sailed my ship of safety till I sank it. I'm crawling on your shore.

- Indigo Girls, Closer to Fine

I've loved, turned to hate  Trapped far beyond my fate  I give, you take  This life that I forsake. Been cheated of my youth  You turned this lie to truth.

- Metallica, Harvest of Sorrow

I remember, before, my mother dragged me outto the shops with her. She often did. I'd been a good boy, for a change, and she'd taken me to the sweet shop for a couple of candied sticks, or some such. My reward, as it were. We were only there a moment when my mother spied a friend of hers in the shop too. She went to talk, as she often did, and left me standing there. It took me a moment, but I realized that I was alone. Me and the metal scoops of candy piled high. A lifetime of dreams, and no one to see me. No one to stop me.

When my mother returned, she found me standing there, shaking, my face red and hands clenched till they nearly bled. Oh how I'd wanted to just grab and take and stuff my pockets until they overflowed and thenfill myself up, stuffing the sweets inside me until I couldn't fit anymore. Only then would I stop.

But I was afraid. Frightened of being discovered, terrified of never being allowed into the sweet shop again, of not being able to stuff enough inside me to be happy forever. I was afraid.

I am not afraid anymore.

- Anonymous

It's an infection  It's a disease  But no reflection  It's gonna make your blood freeze  Oh you know how I feel when you set me free  Like a nightmare.

- Motorhead, Like a Nightmare

Let me go I can't breathe  Yes the desperate have no shame  My insatiable need  My uncontrollable greed  The pleasure is the pain. - Jane Child, Hey Mr. Jones

The good want power, but to weep barren tears. The powerful goodness want: worse need for them. The wize want love; and those who love want wisdom.

- P.S. Shelly, Prometheus Unbound

The beauty of these sublime creatures overwhelms me. So naive and fragile, so sensual - their every word and gesture only increases my attraction to them. Listen my love, the night air sings of my love for you, and of my lust for what is carried within your veins...

- Claudius Giovanni, Maelefactorium

As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light of meaning in the darkness of mere being.

- C.G. Jung

Cold late nights so long ago, when I was not so strong you know. A pretty man came to me, never seen eyes so blue. You know I could not run away it seemed we'd seen each other in a dream; seemed like he knew me, he looked right through me.

- Heart, Man Magic Man

It was many years ago that I became what I am. I was trapped in this life like an innocent lamb. Now I can never show my face at noon and you'll only see me walking by the light of the moon. The brim of my hat hides the eye of a beast I've the face of a sinner, but the hands of a priest.

- Sting, Moon over Bourbon Street

Only the free have disposition to be truthful,  only the truthful have the interest to be just,  only the just possess the will-power to be free.

- W.H. Auden, In Time of War, Commentary

Maybe there's no haven in this world for tender age my heart beat like the wings of wild birds in a cage my greatest hope my greatest cause to grieve and my my heart flew from its cage and it bled upon my sleve the cries of passion were like wounds that needed healing I couldn't hear them for the thunder. I was half the naked distance between hell and heaven's ceiling and he almost pulled me under.

- Indigo Girls, Prince of Darkness

The need comes upon me, a wash of lust and craving which I cannot resist. Like a tree against the storm, I do not bend but evenutally I will break. I may wait, contain my desire for week upon week, allowing the agony to mount, but eventually I can resist no more and I must kill again...

- Thomas Braundenburg, Soul Whisper

Why do your locks and rumpled clothes show tis more than usual sleep has made them so? Why are the kisses which he gave betrayed by the impression which his teeth have made?

- Ovid

And he that will this health deny, down among the dead men let him lie.

- John Dyer, Toast: Here's a Health to the King

Swift to its close ebbs out life's little day; Earth's joys grow dim, its flories pass away; Change and decay in all around I see; O Thou, who changest not, abide with me.

- H.F. Lyte, Abide With Me

Nothing determines who we will become, so much as those things we choose to ignore.

- Sandor McNab

Experience is the child of Thought, and Thought is the child of Action.

- Benjamin Disraeli, Vivian Grey

Be all that you can be. The greatest challenge of them all....Yourself.

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Characters
Shelzza- This vampire is shown in depections at the bottom of the pages and follows important points in her unlife. Speculation is that she is of Toreador or Ventrue descent. Shelzza is only in this edition of the Vampire: The Masquerade and is abandoned in subsequent volumes.