There are four clans who fancy themselves independent: the Assamites, Middle Eastern vampire assassins the Followers of Set, vice-peddling schemers from Egypt the Giovanni, an inbred family of Italian vampire aristos and the Ravnos, nomadic, illusionist thieves. Oddly, there are only two clans wholly steeped in the Sabbat (with the rest of the ranks filled by outcasts from their parent clan): the wickedly stylish Lasombra and the cold, alien-minded Tzimisce. The Camarilla, the status quo power holders of the setting who emphasize secrecy and indirect control of the human world, initially boast seven clans in their ranks: the rabble-rousing, independent minded Brujah the aloof and wild Gangrel the bugshit insane Malkavians the disfigured and shadowy Nosferatu the artsy and passionate Toreador the magic-wielding Tremere and the refined but power-hungry Ventrue.Īt direct war with the Camarilla are the Sabbat, a sect of vampire anarchist religious fanatics who say to hell with hiding from humans.
Vampires are divided up into clans (loose "families" of related vampires with similar habits and traits), who in turn congregate in sects (broad-and warring-political parties of vampires who don't see eye-to-eye on a vampire's place in the world). The game presents the players with a finicky moral puzzle: committing too many evil acts feeds the Enemy Within (the animalistic urge that vampires call the Beast), endangering your Karma Meter and threatening to transform you into an unthinking monster, but the nature of vampirism and vampire society makes being a saintly do-gooder not only difficult but dangerous, and in that precarious balancing act - "Monsters we are, lest monsters we become" - lies much of the challenge of the game.
In this game, players take the roles of vampires (aka the Kindred, aka the Damned), undead beings gifted with eternal (un)life and superhuman power, but forced to endure compulsive bloodlust and the manipulations and predations of seemingly all-powerful elder vampires. White Wolf, the game's publishers, subverted many tropes of roleplaying games from the late 80s by making the player characters monsters (as opposed to heroes who hunt them) and installing a Karma Meter that makes violence a dubious solution in many situations. The tabletop roleplaying game that started the Old World of Darkness line.
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