Vampire is/was the most popular game of White Wolf. Kicked off quite a small revolution in the 90s as it first came out. I mean until then you mostly played the good guys right? Now you suddenly could play a fiend. Well it isn't that easy. Vampire comes with a very nicely fleshed out background and storytelling tools. The main theme is: what if you could live forever, have awesome powers, but in change have to work every night for the rest of your undead existance to keep that little spark of humanity inside yourself, so you do not go become a gibbering blood hungry monstrosity. Vampires in the game are organized in shadow factions. which themselves consist of clans. You have the Camarilla, who want to keep vampires hidden from humankind, want to manipilate humans, but remain undetected. You have the Anarchists, who at large agree to the course of action of the Camarilla (because it makes sense) but reject the rigit elder centered structures. And lastly you have the Sabbat, who rejects everything like this, they have their own moral codes that help them to not become mindless monsters, yet allow them to commit anything that would push anyone with a human moral codex over the border. They see themselves as superior and humans are just prey to them. Below that structure each vampire is part of a clan. a bloodline, that can be traced back to caine (yes the first murderer from the bible, who got cast into darkness) himself. Every bloodline has its own special traits and abilities (disciplines) and a special drawback connected to that clan. Now if a vampire does not develop any of the typical signs of a bloodline. they are clanless. nothing more than vermin and get treated as such. Vampire Campaigns (Chronicles) are often playing in some sort of metropolis. Camarilla campaigns are mostly revolving around internal intrigue and infights about the ranks (which are rather important to them). Anarchist campaigns often revolve around survival as both the camarilla and the sabbat try to annihilate them. And lastly sabbat. Sabbat campaigns often look like religiously motivated crusades. They are technically at war with everyone else and try to prove that their belief system is superior. Now if i say crusade, do not get me wrong. This does not always involves fights. there are many levels upon which a war can be fought, and sabbat draws them all. in VtM all vampires have two distinct weaknesses: vulnerability to sunlight (UV light only makes them uncomfortable) and a stake through the heart paralyzes them. All other drawbacks sound like variations of traditional vampire story marks. So for example: Ventrue can only find nourishment from specially selected prey, Gangrel develop animal like features for everytime they fall into rage, Lasombra have no mirror image, Tzimisce have to sleep with two hands of their home's earth. And so forth. Likewise special abilitities, called disciplines, often depict traditional vampiric abilities. For example: high strength, fortitude or speed, invisiblity, shapeshifting, manipulation of flesh or shadows, or control over emotions and the mind. Many of these abilities get activated using so called blood points. the amount of your maximum blood points and also your maximum power level in the disciplines is determined by your generation rating. The generation rating basically shows how close you are to caine. the closer, the more powerful. This is just a quick overview. there is lots more. but yeah. this is the gist. it is certainly not twilight and surely not blade or somesuch. Yes you are a vampire, yes you suck blood, yes you have weaknesses in your body and your soul. you have to learn to deal with those. IE: you are not perfect. you have flaws, you have to deal with those flaws.
