I'm preparing for a short campaign using the new upcoming version of "Vampire:The Requiem" and got hold of one of the last major supplements released for the current version, "Danse Macabre".
This is more than a player or chroniclers guide. It's a collection of ideas and concepts for how to strip down and rebuild "Requiem" itself,boasting some great ideas, at least one of which I'll be leveraging for one of the core stories threads I have in mind.It also touches on other games in the "New World of Darkness" series.
The first thing the book does is to offer "Requiem" in three tiers or scales of game:Coterie,City and Global. This is very much along the lines of "Hunter:The Vigil" and offers scope and options to the game. The "Unknown Armies" RPG does the the same. Each of the covenants are interpreted at each tier, the global versions have different names and of course different agendas, with new roles that the characters can play. I think this makes sense especially for "Vampire", given that the characters can potentially live for a very long time. As they grow more powerful with age, they may well get drawn into a higher tier of the game.
The covenants are revisited with some nice bullet points presented to explain why a player might want to choose each one. Some are reinvented, "Ordo Dracul" for example is rehashed as "Brides of Dracula", a motorcycle gang! There are some new ones, one in particular (no spoilers for my players) will definitely be an important part of my campaign.
New rules are presented for social conflict, lessons clearly learned from the highly rated "Requiem for Rome" setting. Speaking of which, the Roman supplement,along with this one, are proving to be very influential on the new version of "Requiem" and it's fun to see how those ideas were already taking shape. The book ends with advice on how to run "Requiem" with different themes, such as "Noire".
Overall this is a superb supplement and one that convinced me to go with "Requiem" rather than "Masquerade". I just have to avoid spoilers now, as it's given me some outstanding material to throw at my players in August.
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