You've Been Playing Vampire The Masquerade WRONG 

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“It’s doesn’t have to be The Italian mafia” NOUp too late , I’m Tony Vamprano now . I own a bat management business 🧛 🚮

He never did have the makings of an antedeluvian....

Yes, we played VtM Godfather style in late 90s and early 00s. If the game is treated seriously, then it slides into Mafia themes efortlessly and on it's own. I'm actually amazed people didn't do this on daily (nightly) basis, Mark Rein-Hagen constantly talked about influence of Godfather on Masquerade. It was basically equal to Anne Rice's.

He was a misunderstood Székely nobleman. And in this house, Count Dracula is a hero. End of story.” - Tony Vampiro

This is fuckin sick!!!! BRILLIANT

can't believe the Giovanni had it right this whole time

So Vampire Underworld = Criminal Underworld. This clears up a lot of focus problems.

In all seriousness, this is the best advice I've ever seen for a vampire game.

"i did 200 years here" -vampire phil leotardo

Camarilla: “I’m gonna make them an offer they can’t refuse.” Anarchs: “CAN YOU DIG IT?!”

seeing that thumbnail i can't help but to imagine Paulie Walnuts maneuvering in the camarilla and im losing my mind with how hilarious that sounds

Never go agianst the Vamily

The Mafia parallel is truly perfect. You guys understand this game is more than gossiping in Elysium or hiding katanas under your trench in August. Great video guys, VtM was our main game for almost three years and it’s a blast.

Now im just imagining a bunch of vampires going "OOOHHHH" when someone screws up

Me who hasnt even seen The Masquerade been played: "Yes, yes, of course!"

I’m gonna guess the Sabbat is closer to a Cartel.

"As far back as I can remember, I've always wanted to be a vampire."

If I remember correctly they even mentioned that mob movies like Goodfellas, The Godfather, Casino etc. are great inspirations for VtM in every book in the early pages.

"What did he say about my brood mother? He's dead. DEAD!"

And the John Wick franchise is the perfect setting for Vampire, just replace "Assassin" with "Vampires"

Absolutely 100%. I've been saying this for decades. A Camarilla game should feel like a mafia story (Godfather, Boardwalk Empire). An anarch game should feel like street crime (The Wire, Sons of Anarchy) and a Sabbat game... well, they're terror cells. Or like playing GTA! BTW, you were fantastic as Nucky Thompson in Boardwalk Empire!

I accidentally made the association between the Camarilla and the Mafia while watching "Reservoir Dogs" one night, so I'm glad to see someone actually articulate that connection. (and on a related matter, can we all agree that the erasure of Clan Giovanni is one of the biggest crimes of modern VtM?)

"You want compromise? How is this, I spent 200 years in the coffin"

everyone, once in his life tried to play vampire as a personal horror / drama, until a guy told me that the curse of the vampire is that he will never find peace because to become powerfull you have to bend and break vampiric society rules.

Generation X-er and Vampire 1st ed. player here. We already played it like a mob game back then. It was pretty obvious even in the 1st edition. Mob culture with a veneer of punk, goth, occultism and corporate. The Sabbat is even more like a mob, an even nastier one...

I can’t wait for my new Kindred “Tommy Spaghetti.”

This almost 1:1 with cyberpunk. People think playing corpo is living life easy, were nothing could be further from the truth. Your surrounded by jealous cut throats, eyeing your opulent wealth. While your blind to your own fortune instead fixated on the swaying sword of Damocles above your head.

You want to see real monsters, look at the player base.

So… it’s not Mafia but I thought I found a good historical setting for the drama of Vampire, Berlin during the Cold War. With the iron curtain dividing the city, vampires care little for the territorial lines mortals drew, but night watchmen seeing vampires moving across the lines might set events in motion against them. Plus treating the conflict between Camarilla and Anarch as its own Cold War within the city

I bet Young Steve runs a mean VTM game. His tolerance for cringe is definitely much better than mine if he can read the entire V5 core set.

By far, this essay is one of The Best(( if not THE BEST ))overview of VTM and especially The Camarilla!! The parallels are shown in crystal clarity and with the elegance of a faultless mathematical formula... WELL DONE!! That said, I'm looking forward to your subsequent explorations!!

This is why the Giovanni Chronicles is my favorite intro for new players and why all clan Hecata stories work in a group session. Well done and I will be sharing. Please keep up this content. I would love to see a video for each clan viewed through this thematic lens of what the clan and camarilla expect of them.

i was a hardcore WoD player in the mid 90's, and had an exceptional crew of players and storyteller that followed this ethos to the letter, even back then. Sometimes it would get a tad silly, but generally speaking, if we had the right motivation, and the right understanding of our connection and purpose, it made for some magical stories that even 30 years later, I look back on with fondness. I really miss those games.

good to hear that animal tony blundetto is alive and well playing elf games in texas

Our WOD: Vampire the Maskarade sessions always turned in to "Dracula: Dead and Loving It" every single time 😂

I had never been interested in vampire, but with this exhibition I feel interested for the first time....and in seeing the Godfather trilogy, thank you, great video!

Actually, Werewolf 5th is the most Godfather game ever. What other game has made so many people say: "Look how they massacred my boy!"

How did I not think about this? How had I not considered….the GABAGHOUL GANG! You’ve awakened me to the possibilities, dude. Great work.

Great video by Yung Steve here, the 90's Kindred Vampire show had some of this Mafia feel, I think its an under appreciated gem

"you're clan will get you into trouble" reminds me of a section from the old Judges Guild module "Wilderlands of High Fantasy", on page 17: "In any mixed crowd, NPCs can get you in hot water - 50% of all encounters are caused by NPCs, and they usually choose to insult 1-6 levels of hit dice higher than their own. The victim of the insult will usually have 2-12 'friends'... check Reaction of the group" Everyone wants to have henchmen, goons, low-tier shitkickers beneath them who can do the dirty work for the PCs, but the sorts of guys willing to do this are generally going to be the sorts of guys you wouldn't trust as far as you can throw them. Thralls, children, etc. can and should absolutely get you in trouble and cause problems with people bigger and scarier than you. Very good stuff

I've been thinking for a while that Miami Vice would make a fun backdrop for Vampire

Excellent video, thank you for pushing forward tabletop gaming for the next generation.

Just finished a year-long VtM chronicle and this is making me realize I missed a lot of potential to use the structure of the Camarilla. It'd be great if you made a video about running an Anarch chronicle.

👍👍, “foppish, political drama that goes nowhere” As soon as you said that, my immediate thought was that that’s the current game I’m running holy shit! This… More please!

Guy seems like he only wanted to play Giovanni pre 5th Edition.

Awesome vid. LCN is just southern Italian feudalism being forced to operate inside the threat of modern law; and vampires love their feudalism. Of course the mafia is the missing link between Dark Ages imperial majesty and Masquerade. Why didn’t I think of that? Why didn’t any of you tell me this earlier? Heads will roll for this!

The first character I though about when I heard about the lore of Vampire the Mascarade and character creation the first though I had was about the cartel chainsaw beheading video.

im very happy with the vtm videos that are coming out . i have never heard these perspectives in my 15 years as a storyteller . please keep making vtm videos. you are actually making original content on the subject.

This is spot on, now where is my sabbat episode?

I love this series on the fundamentals of Vampire. By far, it's the best take on the game to be found on RU-vid. Looking forward to the video on the Sabbat.

Did you change thumbnails? Or am I going crazy?

There's actually a third type of VTM can become - the trash/absurd one, where vampires lose their minds from suddenly gaining power and start doing most random stuff possible. But I honestly don't know if it applies to other communities outside of Russian one.

As an Italian, I find this concept hilarious, and extremely accurate. I've been trying to say the same thing to my party 😂

I think we missed an opportunity with Fear City. Should have introduced vampires!

Brilliantly done, gentlemen. In general, the crime drama in its depth is underrated as inspiration for RPGs at micro scale. For vampire games and factions, though, it's a perfect correlation. Well done.

This really makes me wanna play this game... I only know the name from the game from the early 2000...

Great video - you have peaked my interest. If you haven't played VTM, where would you start?

Is Young Steve just saying this cuz he is Italian 😜

Bump

I've been running V:tM since '93. And I've skirted around this concept without realizing it, but also never fully went in. I did as he described in the beginning. And it made Vampire one of my least favorite of the line. This whole video was like a light bulb moment. Sir, I am humbled. As someone that does more cinematic style of game, with a focus on personal sub-plots, you view will tighten up my vampire world for all my players. I thank you.

What a fucking dope ass video. Great advice, expertly summarized and delivered so everyone can get something out of it. Ill share this with my german roleplaying buddies because i couls not say this better

So happy to see Vampire content that's not produced by the V5 Twitter crowd. I feel like the game got taken over by activists.

Shame V5 sucks harder than any Kindred ever could...

The mob angle is exactly how Kindred: The Embraced played it as a television adaptation.

This advice completely changed the way I think about running my game. Thank you for this.

Incredible video. I want to play vampire so bad now.

I wonder if this same mentality can be extended to the other games. Werewolf: the Apocalypse is basically Eco-Terrorism and you're part of a 'Green Mujahadeen', with your pack being an individual cell and your Tribes representing the different terrorist organizations (Fianna are the PIRA, Get of Fenris are Red Army Brigade, etc). The same could be for the Traditions in Mage: the Ascension in that you play what are fundamentally members of weird mystery cults and the Technocracy are governmental departments (CIA, FBI, NSA, the US Army etc).

And just like that, it finally clicks. I haven't ever had a group who was into WoD, so I have only read the books. I never understood what vampires basic structure. Werewolves have a built in purpose of protecting humans from spirits and cleaning up pollution and corruption, werewolves have a job. Thank you for explaining the vampires' job.

This is a great analogy and does indeed provide a perfect framework for any Vampire game and setting. And breaking it down, you can see how the various ages and ranks of vampires line up with the classic mafia titles and roles. Associates - Mortal servants and ghouls. The "boots on the ground" of any vampire group. Not officially "part of the family" but act as the catspaws and fronts that can be groomed for bigger things or disposed of without too much trouble if necessarily. Soldiers - Neonates and Fledglings. Younger, lower generation, or newly turned vampires who don't have much status but do much of the night to night dirty work. Capos - Ancillea. They have enough age, power, and respect to be trusted to run their own coteries and broods, but aren't power players yet. Might be specialists the higher ups call on to handle specific tasks or missions. Underboss/Consiglieri - Elders and primogens. They do most of the planning and organization. Dangerous and powerful on their own but typically avoid getting their hands dirty unless absolutely required. In larger cities, they probably run "crews" of specific clan types. Don - The Prince and their court. These are the top dogs, often the oldest and strongest of the local licks. Everybody else pays them fealty. One point I might expand on is if vampires, specifically the Camarilla, are like the mob, that raises the question of what "capital" it is they seek and vie for. In organized crime the usual end goal is money. From simple stickups and robberies to extortion and illicit trades (e.g. gambling, narcotics, prostitution, etc...) to even fraud and money laundering, the point of any crew or family is obtain money that is paid up the chain through the ranks to the boss. So what are a group of immortal blood suckers seeking in their games of power and privilege in the long lonely nights? What is their overall "goal" so to speak? 1. Money. I mean, this one is the most obvious. It makes the world go round, after all. And while basic necessities like food and shelter are relatively easy for a vampire to obtain, creature comforts and security are not and you can't just fill out a job application at the local fast food joint for part time job. Thus, vampires need some form of income that can't be traced or taxed. Therefor, like the mob, they set up fronts in the form of business and organizations run by vassals and fledgings that can generate passive funds. With vampires acting as silent partners or private investors who take an off the books cut of the profits for their own use. This can lead to proxy wars between mortal companies or criminal groups as their shadowy masters battle for market shares and territory. 2. Favors. This doesn't get much spotlight in the recent editions, but vampires place a great deal of stock in boons and personal debts. Trading them like currency in the halls of power and using them to create webs of contacts, allies, informants and associates. At first glance, this may seem silly since vampires are immortal supernatural beings who realistically can not be bound by any mortal law nor can be tempted by typical pleasures. But breaking your word or trust means you could quickly find yourself out in the cold should the Inquisition or Sabbat come knocking. And vampires have long, loooong memories. A slight or insult can give birth to a grudge that can last for centuries if not longer. Thus, sires load up their childer with debts of protection and support and are quick and harsh to punish those who welch on what they owe. Meanwhile, fledglings and ancillae squabble for the favor of elders and primogens in hopes of gaining potent boons they can then use for their own advancement. This makes most dangerous words you can ever hear a vampire say are "You owe me one." 3. Blood. This is, forgive the obvious pun, the lifeblood of the vampire existence. Vampires, by their natures, must feed to survive and in the modern age tapping a vein isn't as easy as just picking off a human who wandered too far into the night. So cultivating and maintaining feeding grounds becomes one of the paramount activities of vampires and finding unobtrusive ways to get your crimson fix is a nightly chore. Especially for those with cadres of ghouls to keep and rarified tastes. Thus, working in conjunction with the above two goals, vampires will find ways to maintain herds they can safely feed from without drawing undo attention. This is probably where the mafia comparison becomes the most apt. Aspiring ghouls and younger vampires act as shepherds and lures to mortals that can then be moved up the food chain to the elders and more powerful vampires. Screw up, fail to provide, or worse get caught and you're likely going to earn yourself a one way trip to a sunbath...or worse. Now, obviously, this isn't an exhaustive list and a vampire's own personal goals can and should factor in. But I think they provide a solid starting point and background for players and a way for them to get their heads around the night to night activities of vampires. The only question is how do they want go about it?

You've nailed the tension, intrigue and strife I yearn for when I play my first game of V5. Thank you.

Steve Buscemi explaining Vampire the masquerade lore is something I never thought I'd see.

Our game was not like that. We started in 1415, the dawn of the Renaissance in Florence, and sure we had politics, mostly between city-states, the Papal states, France, etc. but not some foppish politics. We wove real world events and history, but we added moments were player agency could effect things. Like, say, we know a certain person dies in history, or even how he dies, and as long as that person dies the particulars might change, it also might not, but there was general freedom of player choice and agency. We also didn't devolve into vigilantes either. Instead, we had our own goals. I was a high humanity vampire and ultimate became a member of a bloodline. I started as a Papal librarian, member of the DE Medici family, and I was a Cardinal. Controlling the Papacy or influencing it was one of the many central concerns of the top leaders of our family and aligned Camarilla clans. We also had to walk a line with the fact the Church was dangerous and full of humans who could cause a lot of trouble too. Yet we traveled. I took a trip to India at some point and other points East and South in search of things I learned about and sought out. That brought us into contact with the Kindred of the East among other things. We played Vampire 2e, then 3e, and then 3e revised. That does make sense 'it is about the Mob'. If I were to choose a central plot or theme it was protecting our Prince, who was 5th generation, and the real head of the DeMedici family. We worked to advance the families interests, and protect our prince and yes we had opportunities to betray our prince, and once even to diabolize the prince. My vampire was a high humanity vampire and ultimately I would not do that. I was not seeking to replace the prince and become the new one. I also was not seeking to align with those who did have that goal. Mostly we did the opposite. We eventually held roles like the Sheriff and other high positions. Eventually, we were the ones responsible for enforcing the Masquerade and if anything that was challenging and that was something we did waiver on a few times, but ultimately, we did seek to maintain the status quo, with a few caveats. Eventually I retired that character and played a new female vampire from another bloodline from India, who was like a Gangrel but instead of wolf and bat she could become a Cobra and a Spider, and later a mass of smaller spiders, much like becoming a bunch of rats. She had a new discipline that allowed her to spin webbing and generate Poison that caused aggravated damage but didn't have claws like a Gangrel. Instead she injected her poison. I played her like a Black Widow style character, not high humanity at all. She was vicious, and ultimately, my two characters became enemies actually. What did we actually do in much of the game? Each player generated their own character's goals, based on their background and a lot of various ways to achieve that like guiding questions. My character was a Librarian, and loved knowledge, and ultimately sought forbidden knowledge, hidden and secret. That was not easy or quick to find, and was often fraught with danger, intrigue, and utilizing the resources I had, or had to acquire to achieve the ends I self-generated, or often was the cast, generated by a commonly held set of goals provided by the Prince or some other key npc or even another player character. We would help each other occasionally, but not always, and often there was a price to pay. I tried to keep my humanity at 7+, and mostly I was at an 8, and even was a 9 at some point, but eventually I got down to a 6. That prompted me to try and increase my humanity, when/if I could, however I could. That is not easy. It is much easier to lose your humanity in the game. To me then, this functioned as one of those vital generative reasons for my personal playstyle and goals. I would not go into a situation trying to kill or even shed innocent blood. My eventual replacement character, on the other hand, was a lower humanity vampire, but started off a bit higher. Shedding innocent blood was not a problem for her, thus the goals for that character, how I played her was very different.' I agree with the Camrilla as the Mob. Our Prince was Ventrue. Venice was a city ruled by something more Mob-like, some necromantic vampires. That city then was dominated by that clan, and was a rival city to ours. We also dealt with humans, such as one human who in history was part of a holy reform campaign. He had True Faith, and essentially introduced the Hunters to the game, and a cat and mouse game to weed out vampire influenced members of the Church and within cities like Florence.

I used to Narrate a game for 4 years. I don't know if it's because my obsessive love for History, or because I came from amateur acting before Vampire, but this that you are saying was always very, very clear to me. I was also very lucky that the hard-core of my players understood the message and were very aware of this. My Chronicle was very successful in this regard. They were Prince loyalists, after a war with the Sabbat, the Primogen tried to curb the powers of the prince, but my themes were very constant: There are Laws in the Camarilla and the characters and NPCs were essentially humans turned into monsters. They role-played it amazingly, their internal conflicts with their duties to the Camarilla. A Narrator can only do so far. If the players want to turn it into Batman, something must be done. And when I had new players joining the fold, I always explained the premises of what my game encompassed. When they kept doing it, I had a talk with them, even because the old players complained. And if they insisted, I just didn't invite them anymore and turned their characters into NPCs, some minor, some major. It was an absolute success. We spent entire 8-hour sessions, sometimes, without rolling a single dice, in character, having dialogues, or performing tasks for their overmasters, or individual sessions in which the characters had their personal stories unfold. It was AMAZING. I write all this still impressed about how well it went. In the end, everyone had a great time. We had to stop because I moved to another country to pursue higher studies. It's possible, guys! But a Narrator can't do it alone. The players must want to do it well.

Oh yeah if you play is that way in the TT version sure makes sense. If you do it that way in a LARP setting oh boy do people get upset when you wipe out a whole Clan because they spoke to you incorrectly and didn't give you the respect you thought you deserved. Politics leads to bodies being buried always

My GM always tried to convince us to play Vampire but always seemed too theatrical and too - for the lack of a better word - gay. Now I finally want to play it.

I was one of those GMs who was around with the original release and i always thought it looked cool but never could get the answer, what is this game really about. Kudos young man. Kudos. Now go home and get your fucking shine box

Absolutamente! Played VtM back in 1st and 2nd edition and this is how we tried to play it: like Goodfellas but with Vampires!

Ive always looked at VtM as an Omerta simulator. I mean, you can be a stoolie for the FBI.

Fucking brilliant video. It really cleared things up in my mind.

Fantastic video. I'm so excited for every video you guys make.

Damn. Makes me wanna run it for real! If I ever do I'll remember this.

Never heard this comparison before. Seems pretty cool

Im about to start a chronicle based out of Nawlins. Mafia is very much a part of it. Ive got Camarilla existing in a tentative peace with an Anarch Oil Baron and rouge Hecata voodoo practioners in the Bayou who never got the "we are reformed now" memo. All the factions are aware of each other and the power players at work, and are signatories to a peace pact. They are in basically a cold war, never open hostilities but all struggling to subvert each other through neonate proxie. All for the sake of becoming top dog and with their own motivations. Everything else is for flavor and that World of Darkness charm ❤

Who you callin’ BELOW human society!?!

This is a great base for improving and focusing Vampire game-running, thanks. I want to say, though, there's an interesting wrinkle. Vampires suffer supernatural, empirically-verifiable consequences for being too savage, too unremittingly shit-headed. That's wild in a way! There are human war criminals and serial killers who get away with far more than a Kindred could, and go home and have dinner with their families (for a media example, think of The Cleaner in Boondock Saints, but lots of real-life examples will do)... A vampire who acts like that will go permanently, terminally insane, and have to be put down by other Kindred... which in turn gives those Kindred a vivid, first-hand example of what awaits them if they have no brakes. It's as if mobsters were the only humans on Earth with undeniable proof of Hell, and yet they cannot stop being mobsters. They have to be mobsters who know exactly how their souls are marked by what they do. So I suspect that in vampire society, the threat of violence is everpresent, but the outbursts of it are rare. It's not hard to imagine that even fucking with another Kindred's touchstones, to the extent you could identify them, would be treated with... caution. For ye who fucks with the Beast may also be fucked with, and all of ye are suspended over a hungry and bottomless void.

One of the clans ARE the Italian mafia

Okay, THIS was an interesting perspective.

Finally someone explained this game in a way that I could start running it. Thank you!

You know what’s funny? I never laid it out this way… but you perfectly explained how I’ve run Vampire in every WoD game I’ve ever run. I took a lot of stylistic approach from Jim Butcher’s ideas as well. Which… welll… again. Basically the Mob. Which is why my Mages hunted them like freaking vermin.

ah like how dnd eventually is always fit for the benny hill theme

This is brilliant

"As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a vampire..."

I wanted some high class, well bred blood but I compromised and ate 12 rats off the radiator.

I respectfully have to disagree with this interpretation. Sure, the Camarilla may BASICALLY be the Vampire Mafia, but IMO the essence of Vampire is about not buying into the Cammie’s bullshit. The genre is gothic PUNK. Punk can be a lot of things, but at its core it’s about being told that your only choice is to reap what your forebears have sown, and then denying that premise. The game presents a world that tells you ar every opportunity that there’s no hope, that giving in to the beast is inevitable, and only by either submitting to monolithic institutions or embracing nihilism can you make a place for yourself…because it’s daring you to prove that world wrong. What I’m saying is, while you can totally play a Camarilla or Sabbat game and that’s valid, the actual thematic underpinnings are more in-line with the Anarchs - with playing a rebel fighting AGAINST seemingly insurmountable institutions, and denying the temptation to throw away that which makes you human in exchange for power and materialistic gain

I beg you make videos on the sabbat and anarch styles of play

30 years and 90s sound so wrong to my 27 year old soul

Thats why i call the Ventrue "The Ventrutti" 🤣

So what you're saying here is...we got a little situation

If the clans are different families, how do you best deal with a group made up of members of different clans (which is usually the case in any game)?