Vampire: The Masquerade 6th Edition might be on the way for fanged fans of sitting around a table and rolling dice to drink blood, like myself. To be perfectly clear, White Wolf would not say the words "V6" or even "Edition" to describe what we were looking at during our exclusive sit-down. My suspicion is that they're saving that reveal for Gen Con later this year, where they're booked to have a big presence. But the thing they are working on is certainly 6th Edition-shaped, in my estimation, and they did make it clear that what is being officially called "a new Vampire: The Masquerade project" is not simply a revised version of 2018's 5th Edition (usually called V5). It's something with a broader scope.
So what can we say for sure? Well, it's a tabletop roleplaying game with character sheets, of which we saw a small peek but weren't allowed to take pictures. There seems to be a lot more emphasis on a character's visual representation than any previous official VtM sheet, with a huge box for a portrait right at the top that takes up maybe a whole third of the first page. And it definitely looks to be running on some iteration White Wolf's in-house Storyteller System that they've been tinkering with since 1991. No surprises there. The current state of the project was repeatedly described as "pre-alpha," with community playtests set to commence some time in the not-so-distant future.
One of the biggest changes, and one I'm cautiously optimistic about, is that this new Vampire game is being made in-house. Since White Wolf was purchased by Paradox Interactive in 2015, they essentially served as a licensing and brand management operation. The 5th Edition books for Vampire, Werewolf, and Hunter were mostly farmed out to external studios with oversight from White Wolf. But now they've brought on a team including a lead game designer, editor, and art director. They've gone from being stewards and overseers to actually developing games again, which is exciting.
Dark Imaginations
In terms of what the next era of Vampire is going to look like, literally, it feels like a return to form from my perspective. V5 put a lot of emphasis on heavily edited photography to depict its nightcrawlers. White Wolf creative director Jess Lanzillo described the previous corebook as looking "like a fashion magazine." Going forward, White Wolf wants to focus more on illustration over photorealism with Vampire, which gives it a feel much closer to the classic corebooks from the pre-V5 era, including some evocative pieces from creative producer Marty "Outstar" Zych that showed strong and dramatic use of contrast to evoke a graphic novel-esque world of light and shadows. We're moving from an alternative fashion Pinterest board to something with Sin City vibes.
Going forward, White Wolf wants to focus more on illustration over photorealism with Vampire, which gives it a feel much closer to the classic corebooks from the pre-V5 era.“
It feels a little bit less pretentious, to be honest. V5 could, at times, come across as a group of nerds in vampire costumes holding a big sign that says, "We Demand to Be Taken Seriously!" like the magicians' alliance in Arrested Development.
The one bit of the pitch I'm not personally super thrilled about is a renewed emphasis on what has long been called the metaplot. Over more than three decades of Vampire: The Masquerade sourcebooks, fiction, and video game tie-ins, a rich cast of NPCs and an elaborate history has come into being that can dominate the night depending on how much your storyteller wants to engage with it. Even if you've never played Vampire before, you probably recognize Jeanette from the original Bloodlines, right?
2004's soft reboot, Vampire: The Requiem, almost entirely killed the idea of metaplot in favor of telling smaller, more localized stories. And my reaction to that specific decision was, "Good riddance!" I'll sneak a Beckett cameo in here and there, but largely I like to design my own cities and my own cast of NPC courtiers for my campaigns. So when White Wolf lays on the metaplot too thick, it can feel like a rival Prince honing in on my territory. How dare thee, insolent game designers! When I buy a sourcebook, and I'm thinking about my whole Vampire chronicle as a character, I want one that's going to give me more character creation options – not more pre-made characters to pick from.
It's a divisive issue in the fandom, but in the immediate future, White Wolf does want to bring the metaplot back into the spotlight a bit more. Lanzillo assured me that they will still support the types of storytellers, like myself, who want tools to create our own big conspiracies rather than having them hand-fed to us. But for the metaplot enjoyers among us, you should have a bit more to chew on. They want to return to thinking of the World of Darkness as a bespoke setting more than a platform.
Elders and Neonates
As far as what's staying the same, Lanzillo expressed an interest in keeping some of the best bits of V5. For her, that includes the focus on personal horror, the ability to run gritty, street-level stories, and the mechanical elegance of its rules. We both geeked out about how much we love V5s hunger dice, which cause your Kindred to behave in monstrous and unexpected ways on criticals and dramatic failures when they haven't had anything to drink for a while.
In the immediate future, White Wolf does want to bring the metaplot back into the spotlight a bit more.“
In terms of how the mechanics will evolve, White Wolf wants to focus more on player empowerment and the shared responsibility of storytelling. As a big supporter of Evil Hat's Fate game line, I'm no stranger to handing over a bit of narrative control to my players if they want to fork over a token or two, so that sounds interesting as well. We didn't get into a lot of specific new crunchy bits just yet since, as stated, the rules are still in pre-alpha and a lot of decisions are waiting on seeing how fans react to the upcoming playtests.
There's also a strong push for the corebook to be better organized, and group critical information in a logical way. While V5 is a beautiful hardcover and a true work of art, I had a player once tell me that it was so hard to find anything in it they wished they were actually dead and not just roleplaying as a dead person. And I can't really blame them! White Wolf has never been particularly good about this, what Lanzillo calls "user experience" in a comparison to video games, so it would sure be nice to get a Vampire book I don't need to stick 30 post-it notes into just to remember what page some really basic rules are buried on.
Vampire: The Masquerade 6th Edition – if that is what this project ends up being called – is not much more than a gloomy figure stalking us down a dimly-lit alley at the moment. And with the less than enthusiastic reaction to last year's Bloodlines 2, it's a game that suddenly has a lot to prove. Word in the seedy underbelly is that we'll learn a lot more at Gen Con in July.
Leana Hafer is a contributing freelancer for IGN with a specialty in RPGs, strategy, horror, and survival games. She has been reviewing video games professionally since 2010 and is one of IGN's most prolific contributors, with more than 100 reviews published. You can also find her work on sites like PC Gamer and PCGamesN.
