CONTENTS 1 CREDITS Development and Additional Material: Justin Achilli Authors: Dierd’Re Brooks, Richard E

TM CONTENTS 1 CREDITS Development and Additional Material: Justin Achilli Authors: Dierd’re Brooks, Richard E. Dansky, Greg Fountain, Robert Hatch, Jess Heinig, Stephe Herman, Mark Moore, Clayton Oliver, Sven Skoog, Lucien Soulban, Cynthia Summers, Stewart Wieck and Fred Yelk Editor: Ed Hall Art Director: Richard Thomas Layout & Typesetting: Richard Thomas Interior Art: Leif Jones and Christopher Shy Front Cover Art: Brad Noble Front & Back Cover Design: Ron Thompson Proofreader: John Chambers the Oblivion, Changeling the Dreaming, Werewolf the Wild West, Trinity, Guide to the Camarilla, Guide to the Sabbat, Clanbook Nosferatu and Children of the Night are trademarks of White Wolf Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved. All characters, names, places and text herein are copyrighted by White Wolf Pub- lishing, Inc. The mention of or reference to any company or product in these pages is not a challenge to the trade- © 1999 White Wolf Publishing, Inc. All rights mark or copyright concerned. reserved. Reproduction without the written permission This book uses the supernatural for settings, char- of the publisher is expressly forbidden, except for the acters and themes. All mystical and supernatural purposes of reviews, and for blank character sheets, elements are fiction and intended for entertainment which may be reproduced for personal use only. White purposes only. Reader discretion is advised. Wolf, Vampire the Masquerade, Vampire the Dark Check out White Wolf online at Ages, Mage the Ascension and World of Darkness are http://www.white-wolf.com; alt.games.whitewolf registered trademarks of White Wolf Publishing, Inc. and rec.games.frp.storyteller All rights reserved. Werewolf the Apocalypse, Wraith PRINTED IN US CHILDREN OF THE NIGHT 2 TM TABLE OF C ONTENTS INTRODUCTION: HOW TO U SE T HIS B OOK 4 CHAPTER O NE: SCIONS OF THE S ABBAT 8 CHAPTER T WO: PILLARS OF THE C AMARILLA 40 CHAPTER T HREE: INDEPENDENTS AND I NCONNU 78 CONTENTS 3 VAMPIRE: THE MASQUERADE 4 INTRODUCTION: HOW TO USE THIS BOOK This is the kind of book that gives a game developer façades. Each mystery hides two more beneath it, and players hives. enjoy digging them up. No two Storytellers run their Vampire games the same As for the fact that it needed to be done, we had to look way. Far too many variables exist for every game of Vampire no further than the books on our shelves. Vampire is so rich to share common styles. Some Storytellers offer more expe- and complex that what we thought would be a simple cross- rience points to their players than others do. Some Storytellers referencing of the characters in various books turned out to are far more liberal in allowing strange bloodlines and Disci- be a Byzantine trek through the labyrinth of our back catalog. plines to the characters than others. Some chronicles allow Carlak? Who’s that? When was Petrodon justicar? Why are horror and mystery to take a back seat to action and adven- there two different regents named? To that end, we have ture. assembled the Vampire social registry. The Inner Council has selected a new cadre of justicars, who have in turn chosen Which combination is correct? None of them and all of elite archons. The Sabbat appoints new bishops and arch- them. In the end, Vampire is a game, and the only element bishops nightly, much to the Camarilla princes’ dismay, of any import is whether or not the troupe is enjoying itself. while the independents scheme and plot away from the sects’ That’s all fine and good, and quite lofty. But when it prying eyes. comes to a book of important characters, none of that means This, then, is the Roll of the Damned. Look upon the a damn thing. The moment this book hits shelves — the very Children of the Night. second Archon Theo Bell makes his appearance in a game — some combat-gumby twink with eight levels of Celerity and THE N UMBERS B EHIND THE F ACES a shotgun full of Dragonsbreath rounds is going to lay him to How do vampires come to be? How many dots should a waste. No sooner do you detail the Traits of a Black Hand Sabbat priscus have? How strong is the prince? White Wolf Seraph than some hyperactive knucklehead has his fourth- has an established system for creating setting-specific Vam- generation vampire space-alien character with 300 dots of pire Storyteller characters, and we’ll let you in on the secret. Disciplines chop said Seraph to flinders with a Scottish The formula, such as it is, for creating a vampire of a claymore. given age is quite simple. For Abilities, start with the standard Stuff like that makes designers and writers wince. battery of 7/5/3 dots and allocate two more dots for each Why, then, did we decide to do this book? For two century of age the vampire has achieved (between all Abili- reasons: People wanted it, and it needed to be done. ties, not each section). Vampires older than a few hundred Of course people wanted it. Enthusiasts of the World of years should receive only one additional dot per century after Darkness are some of the most loyal and clever fans alive. the first five or so — when you’re that old, it’s very hard to They enjoy seeing each new book, peeling back its layers of improve your timeless body. mystery and opening the new puzzles beneath the grim INTRODUCTION 5 Abilities should accumulate in like manner — start with comparison is slightly misleading, however — the Methuselah the basic 13/9/5 dots and add five dots for each century of may have learned his eighth level of Dominate in that century, unlife the Kindred manages to survive. With Disciplines, so don’t take him lightly. take the square root of the time the vampire has spent undead Third (and finally), experience becomes harder to gain (which again reflects the difficulty of learning new things and expend the older a vampire gets. A veteran of a hundred when one has been dead for more than a millennium) and sword duels (assuming he survives them all) isn’t going to distribute that many dots wisely among the character’s pow- learn much from those confrontations unless he continues to ers. Concerning Backgrounds, Virtues, Humanity (or Path) fight people better than him. Little insight can be gained from scores and Willpower, consider the character’s role in the trouncing yet another upstart, as the vampire will have little story. Is the character a powerful prince? Stock up on Back- call to test himself to his limits, which is a requisite for grounds. Is the character an ancient wanderer? Set her improvement. Humanity very high or very low and add a significant Will- As a side note, consider the function of the Storyteller power Trait. Is the character centuries old and weary with the “dot” system. Dots are geometric increases in the character’s sins of unlife? Keep all of the aforementioned Traits low. prowess, not arithmetic increases. Five dots is maximum Elder characters who might be expected to have strings of human capacity for most Traits — a character with Com- derangements may instead have none, as part of their back- puter 5 is literally one of the most capable computer stories involve overcoming those dangerous mental states. programmers or power users in the world. Think about that (It’s also worth a mention that the act of adopting a Path of next time someone tries to justify another character with Enlightenment may sometimes have the same effect as a Firearms 5 who “spent time in ’Nam as a sniper.” Characters derangement, as any Path’s precepts are so radically different with scores of 4 in given Traits are rare enough, and the from the cultural norm. Who’s in a more precarious mental character with a 5 in the same Trait is far and away their state: the Malkavian with blackouts or the Lasombra who superior. Strength 5 is an Olympic weightlifter; Dexterity 5 is believes it acceptable to flay his ghouls and make them fight a professional ballet dancer. Traits of this magnitude are for their skins? This is not an encouragement to players to seek hardly appropriate for Anonymous Shotgun-Wielding Brujah Paths instead of derangements; rather it is an indication that Thug Number 312. Vampires are rare. Traits above 4 are rare. characters’ psyches have far greater depth than simple lists of Vampires with Traits above 4 are exceedingly rare — or Traits.) they’ve had the time to cultivate them, which doesn’t bode Naturally, there are exceptions to these rules of thumb. well for their lessers. Children of the Night contains several characters with potential far beyond that suggested by their periods of unlife. Some archons have spent almost all of their unlives in vigorous training, whereas a given priscus may have devoted centuries toward cultivating a strong network of Backgrounds. BACKWARD C OMPATIBILITY Certain paragons of vampiric terror may have developed a Every effort has been made to preserve the fearsome array of Disciplines. That’s just how it is. integrity of Traits for characters who have ap- How does this formula reconcile with the players’ char- peared in White Wolf books prior to Children of acters’ power levels? Quite easily, given a bit of consideration. the Night. Acting, for example, translates into First, the frenzied activities of the modern nights as Performance (acting), while Torture has effec- Gehenna approaches is a recent development. Whereas it tively become Interrogation. In some cases, might be common now for a vampire to engage in a firefight however, changes had to be made.

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