Vampire: The Requiem - Reaction

I know what you want. You're all desperately eager for me to continue my fascinating discussion of racial politics in Vampire games. Well, there is no need to keep you in suspense. I officially declare Vampire: The Requiem to be Not Racist.

Obviously, it's not perfect. It had at least one example of "no one knows what's going on in the mysterious East," which is less than ideal. Someone knows, White Wolf. The vampires that live there know. You, the authors of the whole damned universe, know. It doesn't have to be a thing. So why do you keep making it a thing?

That being said, one of the bloodlines was a Japanese offshoot of the Nosferatu. There are actual, named, black vampires. None of the clans is based off an offensive racial stereotype. A solid B+ all around.

Now that we have that unpleasantness out of the way, what about the book as a whole?

It's weird. Nearly every particular element is a notable step forward from its predecessor, but the book, taken as a whole, seems less than Masquerade. And I think I've identified the culprit - something I didn't talk about in my reaction to Vampire: The Masquerade. Something that I really should classify as an artistic and technical flaw, but which nonetheless gave the book a certain charm:

Masquerade would, occasionally, use metaplot to introduce errata.

I only noticed it a couple of times - with the Assamite clan weakness and the Malkavians having Dementation instead of Dominate - but I'm sure it happened a few more times under my radar. And the reason this matters is not (necessarily) that a few artful flaws can make a good thing better, but rather because of what this particular flaw says about how the game was made.

Namely, Vampire: The Masquerade, Revised was the product of White Wolf distilling a decade's worth of constantly-evolving game material, with an active fan-base who had a particular lived experience, and making it into a new introductory core book. Vampire: The Requiem was a product of White Wolf taking fifteen years of experience developing a vampire game and using it to create a new game from scratch.

Masquerade felt . . . weightier, like you were walking into the middle of a conversation. Requiem is probably the superior artistic achievement. It's certainly more confident in its moods and themes, and it has much less of that random weirdness that comes from your main inspiration being your own previous work. But it definitely loses something.

My recommendation is that if you're going core only, go with Requiem. If you're buying into the line as a whole, Masquerade is the way to go.

Although, now that I think about it, Requiem has a second edition. Maybe it too is late-stage vampire, drawing from an entire edition's worth of supplements to mutate into its own unique thing. Without knowing for sure, my recommendation has to be at least somewhat tentative.

Looks like I've got another candidate for my drivethrurpg wishlist. Maybe I'll order it about a month before I'm ready to read V:tM 20th anniversary edition, to repeat the comparison a decade later.

UKSS Contribution: Oh, this is a tough one. Everything good about this game is really specific, and everything stealable is really generic. I guess I'll go with the Morbus bloodline, vampires that can only feed on the sick, and who spread disease wherever they go.