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.

Chapter Six
This chapter explains the mechanics of the game. There are explanations of physical (combat), social, and mental actions. The chapter ends with an example of play in both story form and how it would be in an actual game setting.

Chapter Seven
This chapter gives more information about the Setting of the World of Darkness. It talks about the Clans, Bloodlines, Social Distinctions, City positions like the Prince, The Traditions, Sects, a section on Generation, and Antagonists. The Chapter ends with a Lexicon specific to the game.

Chapter Eight
This chapter gives us an overview of what a Chronicle can be or should be. It gives you the basics for creating and running one by having the Setting, Characters, Antagonists, Plot, and Motif. It gives the potential storyteller some example concepts for a Chronicle and ends with the first piece of the overarching megaplot for most of the Vampire: The Masaquerade books: Forged in Steel. This will be expanded on more in the revised hardcover version of this book.

Background Information
The first mention of the LaSombra is here on p.178. They were mentioned as a Bloodline in a quote from a William Bisogne (Chicago, 1968)

"There was what could only be described as a metaphysical stench about him.  It was quite odd.  I'd sensed him almost as soon as he'd entered the hall.  It took me only a few moments to find him, standing off to the side, obscured by a sea of signs and placards. I'd have thought that the emotions within and without that place would have concealed him; that effect was certainly what I was counting on.

Nonethless, there he was. I was cautous and quickly came to believe that I was all but invisible to him, though his body language told me he knew he was being watched. I took him to be old, and powerful, but there was something else.

It was only later, after consulting with some others, that I realized what had occured. He was of the bloodline LaSombra; one of the Black Hand. I had sensed the Devil's touch on him. I have wondered since if he had anything to do with the horrible things that happened out in the streets that night."

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.

- Advertisement

I think of isolation and abstinence, and how each is so cruelly dependent upon the other. There are times I cannot stand to resist any longer, yet when I do feed, I cannot abide the sight of the blood that is upon my hands.

- Tamalary, Personal Recollections

Oh I miss the kiss of treachery the aching kiss before I feed teh stench of a love for a younger meat and the sound that it makes when it cuts in deep.

- The Cure, Disintegration

Remeber Doc, when the will is invoked, the recuperative powers of the human body are incredible.

- [http://FBI Agent Cooper FBI Agent Cooper], Twin Peaks

And when the rain came down, he heard a wild dog howl, there were voices in the night - "Don't do it!" Voices out of sight - "Don't do it!" Too many men have failed before.

- Chris DeBurgh, Don't Pay the Ferryman

There's a red under my bed and there's a little green man in my head he said you're not going crazy, you're just kinda sad cause there's a man in you, knawing you, tearing you into two.

- The Kinks, Destroyer

So now ask yourself, what is human and what is truth? Ask yourself, whose voice is it that whispers up to you from the cellars of your homes. From the tops of your city roofs? Ask yourself, whose voice is it that whispers unto you?

- The The, Good Morning Beautiful

Should the whole frame of nature round him break, in ruin and confussion hurled, he, unconcerned, would hear the mighty crack, and stand secure amidst a falling world.

- Joseph Addison, Translation of Horace, Odes

Live baby live, now that the day is over I gotta new sensation, in perfect moments impossible to refuse sleep baby sleep, now that the night is over.

- INXS, New Sensation

It's the jewel of victory the chasm of misery and once you have bitten the core you will always know the flavour the split second of divinity.

- Faith No More, The Real Thing

Blood and Fire are too much for these restless arms to hold. And my nights of desire are calling me back to your fold. And I'm calling you, calling you from 10,000 miles away won't you wet my fire with your love, babe?

- Indigo Girls, Blood and Fire

Set the world as it used to be when you used to be in it when you were alive and when you were in love and when I took it from you. I won't let you forget the hatred I bestowed upon your neck with a fatal blow.

- Faith No More, ''[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCdUfAE5Rz8&list=PLgaOwAsY2V6Q0XpngSVmayPG8-9xvyTLW&index=38 Surprise! You're Dead]''

That which does not kill us, makes us stronger.

- Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzche

No one move a muscle as the dead come home.

- Shriekback, Nemesis

I'd like to kiss you, let my lips caress you sending sparks of passion up your spine. But doing so means saying no and even the thought would be a crime.

- Living Colour; Under Cover of Darkness

The one thing about living in Santa Carla that I never could stomach, is all the damn Vampires.

- Grandpa, The Lost Boys

There is only one step from the subline to the ridculous.

- Napolean I, after the retreat from Moscow

She did not seduce, she ravished.

- George Meredith, Diana of the Crossways

Trisete, Italy - Gun-toting toughs hijacked a bloodmobile near the Italian-Yugoslavian border, stealing hundreds of pints of freshly drawn blood - and lawmen blame the rubbery on vicious, thirst-crazed Vampires!

- Weekly World News, Vampire Hijack Bloodmobile!

I woke last night to the sound of thunder. How far off, I sat and wondered. Started humming a song from nineteen sixty two. Ain't it funny how the night moves, when you just don't seem to have as much to lose. Strange how the night moves, with autumn closing in.

- Bob Seger, Night Moves

The beaten generation, the beaten generation reared on a diet of prejudice and mis-information. The beaten generation, the beaten generation open your eyes, open your imagination.

- The The, The Beat(en) Generation

He who fights with monsters might take care, lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.

- Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Jenseits von Gut und Böse

And the Lord said unto him, "Therefore whosoever slayeth Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold." And the Lord set a mark upon Cain, lest any finding him should kill him.

- Genesis 4:15

Stealing through the night like a wolf on the prowel. Not a bird, not a plane, I'm just a mean old night owl. Watch me...hit...run...gotta move on. Going wild in the night cause I'm hooked on the neon.

- Foreigner, Night Life

Most musical of mourners, weep again! Lamen anew, Irania! - He died. Who was the Sire of an immortal strain, blind, old and lonely.

- Percy Shelley, Adonis

Is this a dagger which I see before me. The handle toward my hand? Come let me clutch thee: I have thee not, and yet I see thee still. Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible to feeling as to sight? or art thou but a dagger of the mind, a false creation proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?

- William Shakespeare, Macbeth

Now this is the Law of the Jungle - as old and as true as the sky; and the Wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the Wolf that shall break it must die.

- Rudyard Kipling, The Law of the Jungle

Hurles headlong flaming from th' etheral sky with hideous ruin and combustion down to bottomless perdition, there to dwell in adamantine chains and penal fire.

- John Milton, Paradise Lost

She slipped up on daylight night is the best companion. I heard them talking.

- The JudyBats, She lives in a Time of Her Own

I am a brother to dragons, and a companion to owls. My skin is black upon me, and my bones are burned with heat.

- JOB 30:29-30

People try to put us down just because we get around. Things they do look awful cold I hope I die before I get old. Talkin' 'bout my Generation.

- The Who, My Generation

Sundown you'd better take care when I find you've been creeping 'round my back stair

- Gordon Lightfoot, Sundown

Because I could not stop for Death - He kindly stopped for me - The Carriage held but just Ourselves - And Immortality.

- Emily Dickenson, Because I could not stop for Death

All the vampires walkin'  through the valley move west down Ventura Blvd. And all the bad boys are standing in the shadows and the good girls are home with borken hearts.

- Tom Petty, Free Fallin'

Her lips were red, her looks were free her locks were as yellow as gold, her skin was white as leprosy. The NIghtmare Life-in-Death was she, who thicks man's blood with cold.

- Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Good morrow, masters; put your torches out, the wolves have prey'd; and look, the gentle day, before the wheels of Phoebus, round about dapples the drowsy east with spots of grey.

- William Shakespeare, Othello

The best things happen at the wrong time; the rest happens not at all. The conscientious historian will repair this defect.

- Herodotus

I am intense, I am in need, I am in pain, I am in love.

- Indigo Girls, Blood and Fire

It is precisely the soul that is the traveler; it is of the soul and of the soul alone that we can say with supreme truth that "being" neccessarily means "being on the way."

- Gabriel Marcel

Characters
Shelzza

Kyle - Shelzza's Childe

Malcolm - Gangrel, Example Character

Modius - Toreador; "Prince" of Gary, Indiana

In the example of play in Chapter Six, these characters were metioned:

Euclid (Nosferatu),  Malcolm, and Travis (Brujah)

Juggler, Kyle (not the same one from the Shelzza story), and Sheriff were all used as Non-player Characters