Rating: 
Summary: An RPG to last through the ages.
Review: Vampire: The Masquerade is by far, the best role-playing game I've ever had the pleasure of playing. Created by the amazing minds at White Wolf, this game is perfect for beginners to role-playing or veterans with years of experience.First lets explain exactly what V:tM is as a game.
Some of you may be familiar with the biblical story of Caine and Abel (and if you aren't, you will be after reading both, this review and the core-rulebook). Sons of Adam and Eve, Caine slew his brother Abel, and was marked by God and banished from eden. In V:tM, that mark was the curse of vampirism. Over the ages, Caine sired more Kindred, before he eventually fled the earth. These "Childer" of Caine began to sire more vampires, and eventually, they started splitting off into 'clans', thirteen of them. Each clan has it's own unique characteristics, and certain 'disciplines' that they are more attuned to. Disciplines are the vampires' powers in V:tM, and while some mirror the hollywood image of vampires, many are totally different, all creative and a wonderful tool for you to create powerful, intriguing characters that are apart from the normal mish-mash of much of role-playing. If you look at the second part of the title, you may ask yourself what is The Masquerade, and what's it have to do with Vampires? Well simply put, there are two 'sects' of vampires (as well as those clans who fall into neither sect), essentially the 'good' and the 'bad'. Who is good and bad is for you to decide. One, The Camarilla, focus's on the upholding of the Masquerade, the global act put up by Kindred so humans don't find out about them. The second, the Sabbat, cares nothing for the MAsquerade, and believes that Mortals should fear Kindred, and serve them as slaves, blood bags.. All this takes place in the White Wolf, World of Darkness, a techno-gothic punk sort of world, cruel, unforgiving, and extremely real. Now that that's out of the way, why should you buy it? So it's got a great story, a richly detailed setting with a huge amount of supplement books to enrich it even further, and endless opportunities for fun. On top of all this, as an appeal to beginners, the dice system is excedingly easy to learn, and one need only buy the core rulebook (where in things like Dungenons and Dragons you need to buy -three- books to have a game as successful as one book of vampire). The dice system uses only one dice, and a very basic, but extremely effective 'point' system that allows for any type of game you could desire. While it doesn't require a huge amount of dice rolling and stat checking, you can have a game that revolves entirely around social interaction, or, if battle is more your thing, you need not spend countless hours of rolling just to figure out a simple action. As an Experienced gamer, you'll find that Vampire: The Masquerade is loaded with creativity which can offer insight to your other games, as well as a vast amount of plot detailing in the core rulebook, definately enough to make a very in-depth campagin with whatever mood you want. In addition, the very way it's written, with examples being 'In Character' often, can be a huge push toward creating your own interesting campaign, an idea describing a simple skill can spark up an entire scenes creation. Above all else, it's just downright a great read. I bought this game when I had my group of friends that we could all RP with in highschool, but as college came the troupe split up. I still read this book, as well as a great many other books by the White Wolf team, and enjoy every bit of them, even if I don't even play the games. Besides...Amazon[.com] has a great price on White Wolf products, 30% off most (if not all) their titles..What have you got to lose?...I mean..aside from your time for being addicted to reading and playing this game.
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