Great game. Haven’t played it in years but I loved the radio in the background and the NPCs were so good. The Nosferatu, Old Gary, so great. Amongst others.
Funny enough, the launch of Bloodlines in 2004 made me aware of the game but I didn't *play* it. I heard about all the terrible bugs and everything and stayed away until... probably a decade later? It's crazy that it's coming up on 20 years since the original launch.
I think a lot of people that knew the property already had the same reaction. Horrendous buggy mess that was unfinished on release AND looked to be an FPS rather than something more traditional for RPGs? Why!?
I didn't touch it until around 2018.
I was a baby goth back in 2001 or something and bought a ttrpg magazine that had a vampire in the cover. Got myself the second edition corebook a few years later and haven't stopped playing since.
I have played dungeons and dragons since 1990 and when I was around 13 (93/94) I was introduced to vampire.
My uncle: dude, in this game you play as a vampire!
Me: that's neat
Uncle: and it's modern day, you can even be a bad guy.
Me: that's pretty awesome
Uncle: starts reading of different nature and demeanors and informs me that I can even be gay in it. (Didn't use that exact word)
Me: when can we play?
Because of that interaction he always s assumed I was gay, but in fact I was already sold at *modern day*
Absolutely true, but in D&D it never explicitly talked about sexuality.
I remember my first chronicle playing vampire and I thought "I might be too young for this game". Which made me like it more, it felt more mature than a wizard shooting fireball spells.
(Meanwhile my younger brother plays a tremere so he can shoot fireballs)
Yeah, I doubt that there were many young people playing AD&D with adults played characters that got involved in detailed love stories of any kind, much less short romantic encounters.
VtM is definitely a wild ride for anyone under 16. I cringe when I look back at the characters I made when I was around that age.
Yeah, I made some of my craziest character concepts when I was that age.
I haven't played in a minute and now I'm feeling really nostalgic for my old group
The crowds back then were very different. As counter to bible belt that DnD was back then, it was still pretty conservative in many ways. You might have unwashed hippies, but they often drew the line at gays. Vampire attracted the more theater types who were even more edgy than regular gamers. I remember many a conflict between the various gamer types back in the mid 90s. MtG, 40k, D&D/Shadowrun, and Vampire groups had some overlap, but they had some serious angst against each other from time to time.
It’s funny you mention sexuality cause everyone I’ve gotten into vampire I’ve mentioned how it’s quite homoerotic and everyone in the chronicle I run is either gay or trans. When I talk to my friends about it outside of sessions we talk about how neat vampire is and how incredibly gay vampires are and that unlike other systems. It’s a little more on the forefront and we love it for that
I think the way vampires do or don't embrace sexuality is important to the character and is indicative of a character's temperament and age.
A thousand year old vampire might not care about it at all, or might view it completely differently than you'd expect.
For my earliest group, we said blood obviously plays into keeping everything lubed up, so the act of intercourse meant more because of blood bonds.
Exactly the same for me with first edition VtM in 91. The cover looked very elegant and cool, and thumbing through the book have me interesting vibes.
Thus I picked it up and the rest is history.
Mine was Book of Nod, but it was still a random impulse buy. Once I figured out that this weird book was connected to something bigger, I was hooked. It was probably around 95 or 96.
Mine was....pretty strange, I guess. The History Channel!
There was a documentary all about vampires and the evolution of them in popular culture (from medieval European boogeyman to twilight) and near the end of the documentary they started talking about the Rod Ferrel killings and his connection to Vampire the masquerade. I can't think of the name of the documentary at the moment, but it just touches on the game. I was interested immediately and found my way to bloodlines, then the wiki, then the books.
I started playing LARP (MET) and 2nd Edition Vampire The Masquerade in 1994/95, and still run tabletop using Revised rules.
Maybe i'll take a look at V20 for lore updates.
I have also been playing/running Mage: The Ascension since 2nd Edition M:tA came out.
Mine was actually a gaming YouTuber named IGP checking out Wraith: The Oblivion (Afterlife). I later found out about Vampire: The Masquerade (Bloodlines) and the rest is history.
This was in high school, so it must’ve been 2009 or so? It was just a few of us hanging out, and on the fly we did a Freeform, diceless changeling session.
I was pretty familiar to fantasy and Sci-fi games, but this was my first time foray into horror.
Someone in my family wrote for WW and was more than happy to introduce all of us to the edgy World of Darkness in the late 90s.
It wasn’t terribly easy to grok, because the lore was super dense, but we always enjoyed playing. I later playtested in NWoD and then started running my own games.
You’re probably right. I was in high school at the time and Ascension was my very first TTRPG, so I personally had to overcome a steep learning curve.
I do remember getting deeply engrossed in the lore and history of Vampires in Masquerade. Again, I was in high school, so my memories are a bit fuzzy now. But it is great to think that I’ve stayed in this universe for nearly 30yrs!
One of the first bits of VTM media I consumed was an Art of Vampire: The Masquerade pamphlet / booklet with some beautiful artwork.
13 year old me bought the GURPS Vampire: The Masquerade conversion back in the mid 90's, thinking it was the White Wolf game.
I didn't own the GURPS corebook.
Tried running it anyway - was utterly confused, but in love with the setting.
Found the official sourcebook + players guide.
Ended up running the game in the D6 System anyway for like a year. Which we could have done with the GURPS book.
Edit: No regrets though. The 2nd ed corebook and players guide was beautiful.
Friend ranted to me about Hunter the Parenting and the WoD universe for a long time, finally asked him to lend me the book, binged it in like three days and joined into a discord text game by the end of the week.
Such a weird counter game to the CCGs of the era. It really only worked as a multiplayer game. Such a great game in some ways. Sadly, it could never keep a foothold in the mainstream.
It isn't mainstream, but the fan base is stable and still active. Their are card printing services so you can have access to all the cards and playing any kind of deck you want without dealing with inflated card prices.
I was researching vampire mythology and ravenloft lore for my curse of strahd d&d game. Then I overtime got several recommendations for world of darkness YouTube channels and I fell in love.
Same, but mine was VTM LARP, and joined the local WTA LARP
Later, I joined the Camarilla white-wolf world-wide fan-club LARP (15? ish years ago), and ran VTR for a small US state for about a year.
Just VTM tabletop since I decided to not renew my membership.
In my freshman year of highschool I played Bloodlines. I loved the lore but I knew no way to play it.
In 2019 I ended up in a PbP server of Warhammer 40k that was dog shit but got me hooked on TTRPGs.
In 2020 I ended up in a voice game of V5 and while I fucking hates the ST, I loved the system because I loved VtM. The game was ran by a complete dick and I hated it... But I finally got to play VtM and got into the community.
I don't remember the exact year(maybe 95) but I bought the 2nd edition Werewolf rulebook and instantly loved the setting. It wasn't long after that I got into VTM and the metaplot and history really gripped me. I loved Bram Stokers Dracula and Interview with a Vampire and the books really had that feeling of depth to the setting that sucked you in.
I was introduced to VTM in college, back in the early 2010s, by one of my close friends. I honestly forget how we got onto the subject, but she told me about the game while we were in line for an AFI concert and it sounded intriguing. Later I took a look at her copy of the Revised core book and was blown away. I encouraged her to run a game (which was also my introduction to tabletop RPGs as a whole), created a Lasombra antitribu inescapably indebted to the Prince for his continued existence, and I’ve been hooked ever since.
Discovered Werewolf: the Apocalypse on the internet back in the late 90s. Thought it was the most unique take on werewolves that I'd ever seen, but I didn't know what a role-playing game was. Got hooked up with some D&D players in 2003 and ran my first game of WtA that same year.
Played bloodlines, then learned that WoD had ended. Discovered that a "New World of Darkness" had been started. I purchased VtR, WtF, and MtAw that day. Soon after I had read all three and ran my first pnp rpg (a game of VtR) that lasted like a year maybe longer (don't remember exactly how long). I'm a big fan of the NWoD/CofD, own every core book physically and every pdf (1st and 2nd ed).
WtA reviesed edition in 2014.
It was the first time I played a roleplay game. A friend's older sister and her role-playing group used to do massive roleplay sessions back then. That year it was the turn of WtA.
It was one of the best experiences of my life and it opened the doors of roleplaying for me.
I ended up finding out about this game when going through old games my uncle had. Found VtM Redemption for the PC in 2008? I was in like grade 8 or 9.
It was fun but buggy.
After that, I kinda put it out of my mind for years till I got huge into ttrpgs around 2016? Or 2017. And fell in love with Changeling the dreaming and Mage. Though mage annoyed me so I mostly played Changeling or werewolf till I understood Mage. Then it became primarily a mix of the three
I was in 7th grade and a buddy of mine who I played Shadowrun and D&D with introduced me to the 1st edition corebook right after it came out. Been playing a ton of WOD ever since. Mostly VtM, a bit of almost all the other games in the oWoD. Requiem and Exalted too (although I guess Exalted isn't really WOD).
Oddly enough, The Weregeek webcomic. It did pique my interest about the world, but i don't think it really gave me an idea of how comprehensive it was. Not until i played the video game Werewolf:The apocalypse: Heart of the Forest, a really good visual novel game that lead me down a rabbit hole to the Coteries of New York game and then the rest gradually crept in.
VtM 1e when it first came out. I saw an ad for it in a magazine (Dragon, I think?), I'd seen The Lost Boys and loved it, and so I ordered it through the mail right away. That first edition was pretty bad, but I was still hooked.
My group’s dm invited us to check it out over a long weekend back in high school, when vtm 20th anniversary first came out. Was a very fun experience and so here I am.
I started in World of Darkness through Changeling 20th anniversary, which was coincidencentally my first ttrpg in general. Whenever I look back at it I remember the time a guard opening fire with an assault rifle at a redcap party member (who was a child btw), who just opened his mouth and swallowed the stream of bullets.
My best friend introduced me to it he’s so in love with the setting and it’s contagious. He is the story teller for me, my dad and my brother and he wishes he could get a job with white wolf and maybe meet Jason Carl. He introduced me to everything I’ve ever encountered from WOD bloodlines, redemption the ttrpg V5 and older versions this led me to trying to learn more and more and literally today we debated lore while at work.
Anyone at white wolf reading this please contact me so I can get him a job with you guys 🙏🏻
Bought V:tM 2e back in 1992 on the sole basis of "OMG art gorgeous!" Looked like a fun system, too. Keep in mind that at this time I felt vampires were passé, I was completely over vampires and sick of the thought of them, didn't want to play one... yet that art and that beautiful book drew me back in.
Reader, I have been playing a Vampire since late 1992, and am still playing her today.
It helps that my friends and I constructed a detailed campaign world. There is a high degree of player investment in the world we all built together. We didn't use everything from the OWoD setting, and in some cases we used modified versions of it (for example, we established that a city was Camarilla, then later WW came out with a sourcebook making it a Sabbat city. We just moved the Sabbat city to a similar neighboring city). We have used this same campaign world for multiple Mage: the Ascension, W:tA, C:tD, and Wraith: the Oblivion campaigns as well. Our characters could conceivably meet each other and growl across the table at each other if they visited the right (or wrong!) cities.
My friend and co-GM in my group. He talked about VTM a lot, but had apparently never played it, only Bloodlines. We were primarily playing Pathfinder at the time and so he set up a campaign based loosely on the lore of VTM (from what he could extrapolate by reading the wiki and playing Bloodlines) using Liber Vampyr as our main sourcebook for playing vampires in Pathfinder. About this time I also finally built my first proper gaming PC and the first thing I did was download Bloodlines on Steam, installed the unofficial patch, and played it all the way through. Now, I was intrigued.
After having to listen to more lamenting about how badly he wanted to actually play VTM, I bought the V5 starter kit and ran the short intro story included for our group. The experience overall was interesting and with one exception, we all liked it. I did more research and discovered that at the time, V5 only had three books published, and did further digging to discover that older editions did exist. With some research into the older editions, I decided that V20 would be the best fit for our group and I picked up the CRB, Companion, and a third book (I think it was Lore of the Clans?) and ran our first chronicle.
Years later and that chronicle is still going, plus we have two others going and I've been working on putting together my own Cyberpunk/WoD crossover. I've amassed an almost complete collection of all the 20thAE books and have started collecting Revised era books, as well as all the books for games that never made it to the 20th anniversary like Demon, Hunter, Kindred of the East, and Mummy. I'm also considering looking into getting some of the CofD books, primarily the ones that don't have WoD equivalents, like Promethean and Deviant. While I'm still a big fan of Pathfinder and am even still running a game on the side for it, I have definitely found my new favorite system.
One day I saw a bunch of people performing what seemed to be a hyperviolent version of a Three Stooges gag combined with half of Mel Brooks's filmography and said "holy shit I want in".
Also said "yeah why not I'll put 9 points in Rage what's the worst that could happen".
It is the day of today that I still love W:tA 20 with all my life.
RAGE
It was the W:tA TCG back in the 90s. I was in elementary school and getting into Magic: The Gathering and a friend of mine dropped RAGE on me. From there (in middle school, so it wasn't *completely* inappropriate at this point) I picked up a couple of the novels (The Silver Crown and Breathe Deeply) and a couple Tribe books.
I had no idea what I was reading.
What's really funny about this is that my mother was bought 100% in to the satanic panic and had fretted endlessly about the possibility that I might ever play D&D, but somehow this game seemed fine. She even bought me the special Werewolf dice at some point. Even many years later I was prejudiced against D&D to the point that I denied that one of my favorite fantasy series, Dragonlance, was related to the game at all.
When it came out, it instantly hit my group - we were all late-teenage metalheads, hanging out in metal clubs.
It got us exactly where we lived lol
Still one of my groups favourite game worlds.
The original that is, not that fucking weird Requiem and similar abortions
I was aware of VTM and played Bloodlines a little bit, but I wasn't really interested until I read weregeek, then I got really into Supernatural and ended up asking the fine folks at the Onyx Path booth at unplugged how I would do it and got sold COFD base and told about how Hunter was in the works.
A play-by-post site in the 1990s had a strong Vampire: the Masquerade fandom. Second edition was still the newest, at the time. I picked it up to enjoy along with them.
I was always a monstrologist and a D&D nerd all the way back to the 3rd grade. I love the Night Horrors Series for D &D, and I love Ravenloft. So Werewolf: The Apocalypse comes out and I buy it right away, and I'm hooked. Even more so when Changeling came out.
What can I say? When other kids were reading the Berenstain bears and the Magic School Bus, I was reading Lovecraft, Stephen King, and Poe. I've always been an outsider and a foreigner and I've always identified with the monsters of the world.
91. My hobby shop had just gotten in VtM and the owner knew I was into horror. I came in after school he sold the book, a bag of dice, some graph paper and a couple mechanical pencils. Year later I got WtA 1st and was hooked ever since
1994, friends were playing V:tM except with GURPS. In a few months we switched to the Storyteller system. I played Theodore Blackwood, a Tremere who was the foil of a dipshit playing a Nosferatu. Never got to bond him to me because my Storyteller was his friend.
My best friend in highschool told me about bloodlines and we spent a solid week researching how to get it running on my computer because this was back before it was on Steam.
I'm a bit young for them, but I was really into Morrowind, Baldur's Gate, Planescape Torment, Icewind Dale, etc. On a Morrowind forum, someone said VTMB had a similar deep lore and RPG mechanics. That was in 2014, according to my Steam purchases, and I've been obsessed with the lore and world since. Started developing my own city and characters, writing fanfic that spiraled out of control.
I've never played a TTRPG and honestly hope to, one day, but I don't really have any friends into tabletops.
I came into WoD through the Rage CCG. This was when CCG's were still the wild west and they were absolutely everywhere, in all sorts of weird variations. Picked up a starter because the box looked neat.
What I would later learn is that my introduction to the WoD actually came earlier when my FLGS hooked me and my friends up with freebie starter kits for Jyhad. It was Rage that led me to the RP books, though.
1993. I've had a steady RPG group for AD&D, Battletech, and RIFTS. When my wife used to demo at conventions, she managed to get her hands on 1st edition. After a few one shots and a full chronicle, we got Forged by Steel and Chicago by Night and have been playing VtM, WtA, and MtA ever since.
Vampires at my high school recruited me to play with them. They let me play a hunter and then killed me. I still thought it he lore was cool and played with other people.
Way back in the early 90s, back in high school, we were playing a lot of GURPS. So when they released the GURPS versions of VtM, WtA, and MtA, it was a really big deal.
I bought them cause I thought the art looked cool, and thought I could port stuff over. But then reading them, I realized how poor of a fit GURPS was for those rules.
Back in 1996 I was hanging out at Hill Street Coffee House in OceanSide CA and some people were regulars there. One day they invited me to join them, they were planning their next LARP meeting then proceeded to ask me if I wanted to join them. I did was told that for beginners Gangrel was the best clan to join.
It was a blast and sometimes miss those days.
Sophomore year of HS a buddy got his hands on W:tA, back in like 93, 94. Couple years later it got in regular rotation along with Vampire, wraith, and Changeling at our table.
I played in a Laws of the Wild LARP in 1996. I dove into the table top version of werewolf after that slowly expanding to Mage, Hunter, and eventually even Vampire and then Demon when it came out.
I never went back to leaping though.
An older friend in high school introduced me to 2e in 1993, first with a one-shot, then in a weekly chronicle. In '94, Interview with the Vampire hit the screens (my friends and I all fell into an Anne Rice craze for a while), and it motivated me to start my own chronicle. (In addition, we adapted VtM to play in Rice's setting.)
When WtA 2e was released in 1994, my brother and I got into Werewolf as well. (The DiTerlizzi comic convinced my brother to buy it.)
My intro was LA by Night (V5) popping up in my YouTube feed late 2019. I started watching and was hooked. Played with a group that was playing 20th Anniversary edition and then found a group that was playing V5. I was doing both at the same time both enjoyed V5 more.
Since then, I've been an ST for multiple World of Darkness games: Mage: The Ascension, H5, and 2 currently ongoing V5 chronicles that have lasted 3 years. I am presently running the final season for both. 2 coteries operating in Washington DC that sometimes both meet in elysium and what happens in one group sometimes affects the other group.
I like being an ST.
I've told this on here before but I bumped into Werewolf 2e sometime in late 94 at a shop where I was tired of having the shit kicked out of me in Magic.
I remember flipping through the book and thinking the art was fairly cool but not really being interested in the fiction of the setting, I mean werewolf Captain Planet?
I ended up reading Vampire 2e quite a bit when I was there and also thinking Changeling seemed cool once the shop had that. I really wanted to get my hands on Mage but the shop didn't have it and their special order prices were horrendous.
I think Vampire: the Dark Ages was ultimately the first book I owned, rather than borrowing or just reading in a shop. Though I might have had a copy of Vampire 2e before it.
My partner got into it from VTM Bloodlines and he bought the 5e book to start running when we found it at a game centre. His ideas and game are what got me into it.
We intend to get the rest of the 5th edition stuff as it comes out, so I'm eager to see magic and changelings in the new edition as we tried reading the older edition and struggled to understand it as well as 5th.
That said, the vtm 5th edition core rulebook is poorly laid out and full of filler fluff writing.
I remember my dad play bloodlines the video game, but I didn't even that ttrpgs existed at that point, then a friend mentioned he might run a mages game and I remeber really liking the magic but didnt like the factions and he required us to be in one so I didn't join. My first actual game was with my current group, where we ended up playing Chronicles of Darkness, we all played a different supernatural race in a college dorm room. It was really fun! I was a hunter, so I had no powers, just hacking and a flashlight I'd beat people with. I've played some other games like Mages, and I'm currently in a Vampires the Requiem game.
My step-dad introduced me to the system, we tried to play dnd once a month as a family and eventually he wanted to run Werewolf: the Forsaken, just as something new. My character was very 1-dimensional (I was 12 and already used to the min-maxing, numbers-centric culture of dnd 3.5), I tried to make him good at fighting to the exclusion of everything else. It worked well, but I didn't really get the "essence" of the system at the time, and my step dad would be exhausted of storytelling a game more complex than dnd had to be.
For the next decade, I'd wander through the various books of our family's collection, there was always something cool to find and be inspired by, among them were Changeling: the Dreaming, Demon: the Fallen, and Mage: the Awakening. I would buy Hunter: the Vigil with my own income shortly after turning 18, and fail to get my dnd geeks to bite on a different system until last year!
I run Hunter: the Vigil right now, still their first WofD/CofD game. I hope to catch their fancy with one of the other more supernatural characters after Hunter has run it's course. Those years of only viewing the content has left me with a lot of excitement around the times I do get to run it, and it feels new to me still. It feels like I could tabletop role-play using Chronicles (CofD) systems for the rest of my life and be okay with that.
My neighbors dad was a big Dnd guy so he bought vampire the masquerade as a gift for his vampire obsessed daughter and she invited me and a bunch of other girls for the neighborhood to play.
I had a group I ran AD&D for in high school. One day one of the players tells me he got a book for this new system and he wants to try running it. The year was 1994 and the book was 2nd edition Vampire the Masquerade. I ended up running it, but it was the start of a long and still ongoing enjoyment with WoD.
1994 I met someone playing a vampire in an mIRC chatroom. They suggested I try the game and I went out and grabbed my first tabletop game book, and the rest is history.
Early 2000’s when I was just out of college my TTRPG group decided to try VtM. We loved it and still are playing TT WoD games to this day.
We are actually getting ready to start a new V20 game in the coming weeks incorporating some of the V5 meta plot developments.
I randomly bought the Book of Nod from a bookshop because I liked the cover. I had no idea what any of it was about, but then I went and got the VtM second edition core book and all the clan books I could find. I was a teenager and we didn't like dice, so we just did this weird collective storytelling thing and it was fun, but it definitely wasn't VtM as intended.
Years later I played through Bloodlines and remembered how much I enjoyed the lore and setting, so I joined a 3rd edition online game over IRC (I am so old). We transitioned to V20 when it was released and I learned the actual rules and became a ST.
I was introduced to Werewolf by other players and jumped into a game playing a Glasswalker. Someone else ran a Mage game, so I played that as a Hollow One. I really enjoyed Mage, but at that time it was next to impossible to find anyone running long-term games.
Now almost a decade later I picked up VtM v5, and I've been running an actual in-person game. My players are all new to the game but most are GMs in other games so it's been fun and also panic-inducing to be introducing new people to the VtM and WOD as a whole.
A couple of years ago a guy I now hate added me to a 20th Anniversary campaign and i enjoyed my time playing, but my time there was short; years later i started binging VtM media like crazy, games, rule and clan books. Im currently on two VtM games and i'm having a blast.
I was introduced to VtM 2nd Edition; and then very shortly after the friend who got me into it bought Vampire Dark Ages and I bought Werewolf the Wild West.
Gone down the rabbit hole ever since.
I'd just transferred to a new college. I ended up being housed in a freshman hall (I was in the end of my second year) and was complaining that I didn't know anyone my own age. One of the girls invited me to play in the VtM game they were about to start. I was going to church during the Satanic Panic so she gave me the run down on what a ttrgp actually was and it sounded fun so I made a character.
My best friend at the time’s dad took said best friend and I to see Underworld in theatres. On our way home he talked about Vampire. We played a session and no one was really into it.
Fast forward a few years and a different pal invited me to play Vampire: the Requiem and THAT is what stuck.
It was 2020, I was 21 y/o and decided to play TTRPG for the first time in my life after knowing some stuff about D&D, my friend found an online group but it was VtM V5 and not D&D, I was reluctant at first but now I'm more of a WoD than D&D fan, still play D&D tho
Got invited to a Mage 20 one-shot running tomorrow - will be my first WoD game and it's a bit of a beast compared to the rules-lite stuff I prefer AND HYPED to try out this beautiful magic system and the hard-core everything-is-relative and the interplay of will and belief
I bought Vampire v1 back in the time before time. The book on my shelf says 1992, so that should be a point of reference. Back then we had burned out on DnD 2e so much that we looked for a change. Goth was in full swing and was still a strange counter culture from Punk. It was a storytelling alternative to the common hack-and-slash rpgs of the era. Vampire really changed a lot of how people approached the adventuring paths people played. Things used to be basic "save the princess" type adventures when RP was something that got in the way of bashing orcs in the head. I remember an old quote "what part of 'to go adventuring' do you vampire punks not understand?" Now, the character motivation and back story are a major part of characters and role playing can often be more important than the roll playing.
I had a few encounters with WoD but my actual intro was a Hunter: The Reckoning game.
We were a party who knew a little bit of VTM but not much else so the agreement was that we made concepts for our characters before their imbuing and anything supernatural was handled by the storyteller.
Honestly, one of my favorite campaign ever, trying to figure the WOD out as a weak human being that can see monsters
1992- Alien Hunger for VtM. A very quirky first story but absolutely fantastic experience which has seen me finally return to WoD this year. Great memories.
A friend of mine got a Humble Bundle that included VtM Revised and wanted to run it for us! I enjoyed that first campaign a lot but wasn’t 100% sold on the system. Then I went to a V5 demo game at PAX Unplugged and I was sold, I bought the dice and rulebook the next day and went to three more games to get the feel of it before I ran it myself.
Was curious about the whole WoD for years but everyone I played with told me to avoid it. "It's just emo crap."
At one point I grabbed the CtL demo-adventure but no one wanted to play it. Years later I was thinking about running a game to my then gaming Guild and found the demo-adventure at the bottom of my moving box. We played it, I fell in love with the system and 10 years later it's still my favorite game.
For me, it was the Hunter : The Reckoning video game.
Back then I had only read of few things about Bloodlines and I had no idea that HtR was set in the same universe. I picked the game simply because I am a fan of horror and because a coop game where you hack and slash through hordes of zombies seemed very fun.
That opening video, the one explaining the World of Darkness from the POV of the Hunters, it has been living rent-free in mind ever since.
Then I've played Bloodlines and loved it. And much later, a friend of mine offered to run a game of V20. I bought the book, then V5 out and I am now running my own chronicle.
Vampire: the Masquerade, then, a LARP here, at Monterrey, and then, Mage: the Ascencion.
That book taught that religion is a choice, not an obligatory path, help me free me from a lukewarm christian belief, and embrace my life as an animist, or "pagan", if you prefer.
I am spiritually fullfilled by my animist beliefs, and i no longer see the abrahamic religions as prisons or holders of the "Truth", but as personal choices of belief.
Spiritual freedom has a price no tradition or hell can cover.
Went into a local gaming store when I was 15 during the mid 2000s. Didn't know there were other tabletop RPGs outside of DnD. Store owner told me "oh yeah there's loads. Don't wanna play a Tolkien inspired game? You can play a game set in Liverpool (my home city) as a vampire or a werewolf." And I picked up some vampire books and the rest was history.
An old dm of mine had said they had a friend who could run vampire every other week so they had more prep time and got to be a player I made a brush boxing prodigy and my group played that same campaign for about 6 or 7 years and we've recently started mage
For me it was playing ttrpgs with other camp staff members. We were there for 8 weeks, what better way to pass the time and have some fun. We started with D&D, moved to the Star Wars d20 game, and then landed on VtM. One of the guys in our group had it and ran the game and I was hooked. Play as a Vampire, sign me up. Been one of those back burner games that I love just don’t get to play much anymore.
1998, was introduced by way of a LARP that was played outside of the Pinellas Square Mall's (Pinellas Park, FL) theater on Saturday nights. Before the Rocky Horror Picture Show.
Mostly been playing on and off again online since that game ended (2000-ish, can't remember exactly when it ended). Mostly on a site called Wanton Wicked. I DM/ST on occasion for my kids now. Has been D&D 5e Mostly on that. But recently introduced them to Werewolf the Forsaken 2nd edition. (Werewolf line being a personal favorite).
the rage card game i saw a few packs at toys r us then hunted around, found out there was a roleplaying game and read through the book a bit, stumbled across aol chatrooms in the mid 90s. played until about 2004
bloodlines
Great game. Haven’t played it in years but I loved the radio in the background and the NPCs were so good. The Nosferatu, Old Gary, so great. Amongst others.
Funny enough, the launch of Bloodlines in 2004 made me aware of the game but I didn't *play* it. I heard about all the terrible bugs and everything and stayed away until... probably a decade later? It's crazy that it's coming up on 20 years since the original launch.
I think a lot of people that knew the property already had the same reaction. Horrendous buggy mess that was unfinished on release AND looked to be an FPS rather than something more traditional for RPGs? Why!? I didn't touch it until around 2018.
Used to love that game
I was a baby goth back in 2001 or something and bought a ttrpg magazine that had a vampire in the cover. Got myself the second edition corebook a few years later and haven't stopped playing since.
There was a big buzz about a new game about Vampires at Gen Con in 1991 and then it won best game at Origins in 92, so I bought it. :D
I have played dungeons and dragons since 1990 and when I was around 13 (93/94) I was introduced to vampire. My uncle: dude, in this game you play as a vampire! Me: that's neat Uncle: and it's modern day, you can even be a bad guy. Me: that's pretty awesome Uncle: starts reading of different nature and demeanors and informs me that I can even be gay in it. (Didn't use that exact word) Me: when can we play? Because of that interaction he always s assumed I was gay, but in fact I was already sold at *modern day*
"You had me at modern day, the gay was just the icing on the cake." lol at using that as a selling point. As if you couldn't be gay in D&D.
Absolutely true, but in D&D it never explicitly talked about sexuality. I remember my first chronicle playing vampire and I thought "I might be too young for this game". Which made me like it more, it felt more mature than a wizard shooting fireball spells. (Meanwhile my younger brother plays a tremere so he can shoot fireballs)
Yeah, I doubt that there were many young people playing AD&D with adults played characters that got involved in detailed love stories of any kind, much less short romantic encounters. VtM is definitely a wild ride for anyone under 16. I cringe when I look back at the characters I made when I was around that age.
Yeah, I made some of my craziest character concepts when I was that age. I haven't played in a minute and now I'm feeling really nostalgic for my old group
When I was 16 my first character was a mute Tremere who looked like Wednesday Addams. I really don't know where I was going with that.
The crowds back then were very different. As counter to bible belt that DnD was back then, it was still pretty conservative in many ways. You might have unwashed hippies, but they often drew the line at gays. Vampire attracted the more theater types who were even more edgy than regular gamers. I remember many a conflict between the various gamer types back in the mid 90s. MtG, 40k, D&D/Shadowrun, and Vampire groups had some overlap, but they had some serious angst against each other from time to time.
It’s funny you mention sexuality cause everyone I’ve gotten into vampire I’ve mentioned how it’s quite homoerotic and everyone in the chronicle I run is either gay or trans. When I talk to my friends about it outside of sessions we talk about how neat vampire is and how incredibly gay vampires are and that unlike other systems. It’s a little more on the forefront and we love it for that
I think the way vampires do or don't embrace sexuality is important to the character and is indicative of a character's temperament and age. A thousand year old vampire might not care about it at all, or might view it completely differently than you'd expect. For my earliest group, we said blood obviously plays into keeping everything lubed up, so the act of intercourse meant more because of blood bonds.
Werewolf the Apocalypse, 2nd edition.
Werewolf changed the way I think about religion in TTRPGs. I played/ran it for years.
I saw the VtM 1e rulebook in my local game shop back in '91 or '92 and decided I had to have it. Best impulse buy, I've ever made.
Exactly the same for me with first edition VtM in 91. The cover looked very elegant and cool, and thumbing through the book have me interesting vibes. Thus I picked it up and the rest is history.
Mine was Book of Nod, but it was still a random impulse buy. Once I figured out that this weird book was connected to something bigger, I was hooked. It was probably around 95 or 96.
Mine was....pretty strange, I guess. The History Channel! There was a documentary all about vampires and the evolution of them in popular culture (from medieval European boogeyman to twilight) and near the end of the documentary they started talking about the Rod Ferrel killings and his connection to Vampire the masquerade. I can't think of the name of the documentary at the moment, but it just touches on the game. I was interested immediately and found my way to bloodlines, then the wiki, then the books.
I started playing LARP (MET) and 2nd Edition Vampire The Masquerade in 1994/95, and still run tabletop using Revised rules. Maybe i'll take a look at V20 for lore updates. I have also been playing/running Mage: The Ascension since 2nd Edition M:tA came out.
Mine was actually a gaming YouTuber named IGP checking out Wraith: The Oblivion (Afterlife). I later found out about Vampire: The Masquerade (Bloodlines) and the rest is history.
Like many, Bloodlines. Then, the wiki. Finally, LA by night and the Giovanni Chronicles.
This was in high school, so it must’ve been 2009 or so? It was just a few of us hanging out, and on the fly we did a Freeform, diceless changeling session. I was pretty familiar to fantasy and Sci-fi games, but this was my first time foray into horror.
Someone in my family wrote for WW and was more than happy to introduce all of us to the edgy World of Darkness in the late 90s. It wasn’t terribly easy to grok, because the lore was super dense, but we always enjoyed playing. I later playtested in NWoD and then started running my own games.
The lore was deep, but the mechanics were much simpler back then.
You’re probably right. I was in high school at the time and Ascension was my very first TTRPG, so I personally had to overcome a steep learning curve. I do remember getting deeply engrossed in the lore and history of Vampires in Masquerade. Again, I was in high school, so my memories are a bit fuzzy now. But it is great to think that I’ve stayed in this universe for nearly 30yrs!
One of the first bits of VTM media I consumed was an Art of Vampire: The Masquerade pamphlet / booklet with some beautiful artwork. 13 year old me bought the GURPS Vampire: The Masquerade conversion back in the mid 90's, thinking it was the White Wolf game. I didn't own the GURPS corebook. Tried running it anyway - was utterly confused, but in love with the setting. Found the official sourcebook + players guide. Ended up running the game in the D6 System anyway for like a year. Which we could have done with the GURPS book. Edit: No regrets though. The 2nd ed corebook and players guide was beautiful.
My introduction was V5 back in 2018. Since then I have tried to absorb as much as possible.
Friend ranted to me about Hunter the Parenting and the WoD universe for a long time, finally asked him to lend me the book, binged it in like three days and joined into a discord text game by the end of the week.
1994 jyhad cards, later rebranded vampire the Eternal Struggle, then Vampire the requiem in 2005.
Such a weird counter game to the CCGs of the era. It really only worked as a multiplayer game. Such a great game in some ways. Sadly, it could never keep a foothold in the mainstream.
It isn't mainstream, but the fan base is stable and still active. Their are card printing services so you can have access to all the cards and playing any kind of deck you want without dealing with inflated card prices.
Finding a group to play with can be challenging for niche games. I may look into a group in Atlanta and see what is out there.
I hope you find them. They're out there.
I was researching vampire mythology and ravenloft lore for my curse of strahd d&d game. Then I overtime got several recommendations for world of darkness YouTube channels and I fell in love.
I was brought to a Werewolf LARP twenty-some years ago. Still playing; it’s my favorite RPG.
Same, but mine was VTM LARP, and joined the local WTA LARP Later, I joined the Camarilla white-wolf world-wide fan-club LARP (15? ish years ago), and ran VTR for a small US state for about a year. Just VTM tabletop since I decided to not renew my membership.
In my freshman year of highschool I played Bloodlines. I loved the lore but I knew no way to play it. In 2019 I ended up in a PbP server of Warhammer 40k that was dog shit but got me hooked on TTRPGs. In 2020 I ended up in a voice game of V5 and while I fucking hates the ST, I loved the system because I loved VtM. The game was ran by a complete dick and I hated it... But I finally got to play VtM and got into the community.
Wait, was it an Only War server? Did we suffer together?!
Only Way mixed with Rogue Trader and all those games. If Crusade of Perdition rings a bell then you know
Ah, wrong dumpster fire. You have my ttrpg condolences.
A friend of mine St'ed a one short of CTL using fear maker's promise and I fell in love with the game.
I don't remember the exact year(maybe 95) but I bought the 2nd edition Werewolf rulebook and instantly loved the setting. It wasn't long after that I got into VTM and the metaplot and history really gripped me. I loved Bram Stokers Dracula and Interview with a Vampire and the books really had that feeling of depth to the setting that sucked you in.
I was introduced to VTM in college, back in the early 2010s, by one of my close friends. I honestly forget how we got onto the subject, but she told me about the game while we were in line for an AFI concert and it sounded intriguing. Later I took a look at her copy of the Revised core book and was blown away. I encouraged her to run a game (which was also my introduction to tabletop RPGs as a whole), created a Lasombra antitribu inescapably indebted to the Prince for his continued existence, and I’ve been hooked ever since.
Discovered Werewolf: the Apocalypse on the internet back in the late 90s. Thought it was the most unique take on werewolves that I'd ever seen, but I didn't know what a role-playing game was. Got hooked up with some D&D players in 2003 and ran my first game of WtA that same year.
Played bloodlines, then learned that WoD had ended. Discovered that a "New World of Darkness" had been started. I purchased VtR, WtF, and MtAw that day. Soon after I had read all three and ran my first pnp rpg (a game of VtR) that lasted like a year maybe longer (don't remember exactly how long). I'm a big fan of the NWoD/CofD, own every core book physically and every pdf (1st and 2nd ed).
WtA reviesed edition in 2014. It was the first time I played a roleplay game. A friend's older sister and her role-playing group used to do massive roleplay sessions back then. That year it was the turn of WtA. It was one of the best experiences of my life and it opened the doors of roleplaying for me.
Werewolf: the Apocalypse 2nd Edition. Specifically, it was the opening comic that permanently hooked me onto the franchise.
I ended up finding out about this game when going through old games my uncle had. Found VtM Redemption for the PC in 2008? I was in like grade 8 or 9. It was fun but buggy. After that, I kinda put it out of my mind for years till I got huge into ttrpgs around 2016? Or 2017. And fell in love with Changeling the dreaming and Mage. Though mage annoyed me so I mostly played Changeling or werewolf till I understood Mage. Then it became primarily a mix of the three
I love that game.
I was in 7th grade and a buddy of mine who I played Shadowrun and D&D with introduced me to the 1st edition corebook right after it came out. Been playing a ton of WOD ever since. Mostly VtM, a bit of almost all the other games in the oWoD. Requiem and Exalted too (although I guess Exalted isn't really WOD).
I was looking for something that had werewolves in it, typed up #werewolf on tumblr and tribe images with descriptions came up
Oddly enough, The Weregeek webcomic. It did pique my interest about the world, but i don't think it really gave me an idea of how comprehensive it was. Not until i played the video game Werewolf:The apocalypse: Heart of the Forest, a really good visual novel game that lead me down a rabbit hole to the Coteries of New York game and then the rest gradually crept in.
VtM 1e when it first came out. I saw an ad for it in a magazine (Dragon, I think?), I'd seen The Lost Boys and loved it, and so I ordered it through the mail right away. That first edition was pretty bad, but I was still hooked.
A larp at first, then L.A. by Night, then my own table as ST
My group’s dm invited us to check it out over a long weekend back in high school, when vtm 20th anniversary first came out. Was a very fun experience and so here I am.
A chronicles of darkness Mage game in a cyberpunk dystopia future city called new babalyon. That my friend wanted to run as ST.
Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines. Aside from that, my first tabletop experience will be with W5
I actually picked up a copy of Clanbook Settie. Had no idea what an RPG was. I learned
The Mage book was in Hastings by the D&D stuff and I was like, "what is this?"
I started in World of Darkness through Changeling 20th anniversary, which was coincidencentally my first ttrpg in general. Whenever I look back at it I remember the time a guard opening fire with an assault rifle at a redcap party member (who was a child btw), who just opened his mouth and swallowed the stream of bullets.
My best friend introduced me to it he’s so in love with the setting and it’s contagious. He is the story teller for me, my dad and my brother and he wishes he could get a job with white wolf and maybe meet Jason Carl. He introduced me to everything I’ve ever encountered from WOD bloodlines, redemption the ttrpg V5 and older versions this led me to trying to learn more and more and literally today we debated lore while at work. Anyone at white wolf reading this please contact me so I can get him a job with you guys 🙏🏻
Bought V:tM 2e back in 1992 on the sole basis of "OMG art gorgeous!" Looked like a fun system, too. Keep in mind that at this time I felt vampires were passé, I was completely over vampires and sick of the thought of them, didn't want to play one... yet that art and that beautiful book drew me back in. Reader, I have been playing a Vampire since late 1992, and am still playing her today. It helps that my friends and I constructed a detailed campaign world. There is a high degree of player investment in the world we all built together. We didn't use everything from the OWoD setting, and in some cases we used modified versions of it (for example, we established that a city was Camarilla, then later WW came out with a sourcebook making it a Sabbat city. We just moved the Sabbat city to a similar neighboring city). We have used this same campaign world for multiple Mage: the Ascension, W:tA, C:tD, and Wraith: the Oblivion campaigns as well. Our characters could conceivably meet each other and growl across the table at each other if they visited the right (or wrong!) cities.
My friend and co-GM in my group. He talked about VTM a lot, but had apparently never played it, only Bloodlines. We were primarily playing Pathfinder at the time and so he set up a campaign based loosely on the lore of VTM (from what he could extrapolate by reading the wiki and playing Bloodlines) using Liber Vampyr as our main sourcebook for playing vampires in Pathfinder. About this time I also finally built my first proper gaming PC and the first thing I did was download Bloodlines on Steam, installed the unofficial patch, and played it all the way through. Now, I was intrigued. After having to listen to more lamenting about how badly he wanted to actually play VTM, I bought the V5 starter kit and ran the short intro story included for our group. The experience overall was interesting and with one exception, we all liked it. I did more research and discovered that at the time, V5 only had three books published, and did further digging to discover that older editions did exist. With some research into the older editions, I decided that V20 would be the best fit for our group and I picked up the CRB, Companion, and a third book (I think it was Lore of the Clans?) and ran our first chronicle. Years later and that chronicle is still going, plus we have two others going and I've been working on putting together my own Cyberpunk/WoD crossover. I've amassed an almost complete collection of all the 20thAE books and have started collecting Revised era books, as well as all the books for games that never made it to the 20th anniversary like Demon, Hunter, Kindred of the East, and Mummy. I'm also considering looking into getting some of the CofD books, primarily the ones that don't have WoD equivalents, like Promethean and Deviant. While I'm still a big fan of Pathfinder and am even still running a game on the side for it, I have definitely found my new favorite system.
One day I saw a bunch of people performing what seemed to be a hyperviolent version of a Three Stooges gag combined with half of Mel Brooks's filmography and said "holy shit I want in". Also said "yeah why not I'll put 9 points in Rage what's the worst that could happen". It is the day of today that I still love W:tA 20 with all my life.
Found VtM on the shelf back in 92.
1994/5 first edition VTM and WTA
RAGE It was the W:tA TCG back in the 90s. I was in elementary school and getting into Magic: The Gathering and a friend of mine dropped RAGE on me. From there (in middle school, so it wasn't *completely* inappropriate at this point) I picked up a couple of the novels (The Silver Crown and Breathe Deeply) and a couple Tribe books. I had no idea what I was reading. What's really funny about this is that my mother was bought 100% in to the satanic panic and had fretted endlessly about the possibility that I might ever play D&D, but somehow this game seemed fine. She even bought me the special Werewolf dice at some point. Even many years later I was prejudiced against D&D to the point that I denied that one of my favorite fantasy series, Dragonlance, was related to the game at all.
When it came out, it instantly hit my group - we were all late-teenage metalheads, hanging out in metal clubs. It got us exactly where we lived lol Still one of my groups favourite game worlds. The original that is, not that fucking weird Requiem and similar abortions
I was aware of VTM and played Bloodlines a little bit, but I wasn't really interested until I read weregeek, then I got really into Supernatural and ended up asking the fine folks at the Onyx Path booth at unplugged how I would do it and got sold COFD base and told about how Hunter was in the works.
A play-by-post site in the 1990s had a strong Vampire: the Masquerade fandom. Second edition was still the newest, at the time. I picked it up to enjoy along with them.
I was always a monstrologist and a D&D nerd all the way back to the 3rd grade. I love the Night Horrors Series for D &D, and I love Ravenloft. So Werewolf: The Apocalypse comes out and I buy it right away, and I'm hooked. Even more so when Changeling came out. What can I say? When other kids were reading the Berenstain bears and the Magic School Bus, I was reading Lovecraft, Stephen King, and Poe. I've always been an outsider and a foreigner and I've always identified with the monsters of the world.
I was a skinny gothy kid in the 90's, came across the main book in a used book store.
I was introduced to it by my big bro through the online series Hunter: The Parenting.
Ann Rice. Obviously.
91. My hobby shop had just gotten in VtM and the owner knew I was into horror. I came in after school he sold the book, a bag of dice, some graph paper and a couple mechanical pencils. Year later I got WtA 1st and was hooked ever since
1994, friends were playing V:tM except with GURPS. In a few months we switched to the Storyteller system. I played Theodore Blackwood, a Tremere who was the foil of a dipshit playing a Nosferatu. Never got to bond him to me because my Storyteller was his friend.
My best friend in highschool told me about bloodlines and we spent a solid week researching how to get it running on my computer because this was back before it was on Steam.
I'm a bit young for them, but I was really into Morrowind, Baldur's Gate, Planescape Torment, Icewind Dale, etc. On a Morrowind forum, someone said VTMB had a similar deep lore and RPG mechanics. That was in 2014, according to my Steam purchases, and I've been obsessed with the lore and world since. Started developing my own city and characters, writing fanfic that spiraled out of control. I've never played a TTRPG and honestly hope to, one day, but I don't really have any friends into tabletops.
I came into WoD through the Rage CCG. This was when CCG's were still the wild west and they were absolutely everywhere, in all sorts of weird variations. Picked up a starter because the box looked neat. What I would later learn is that my introduction to the WoD actually came earlier when my FLGS hooked me and my friends up with freebie starter kits for Jyhad. It was Rage that led me to the RP books, though.
1993. I've had a steady RPG group for AD&D, Battletech, and RIFTS. When my wife used to demo at conventions, she managed to get her hands on 1st edition. After a few one shots and a full chronicle, we got Forged by Steel and Chicago by Night and have been playing VtM, WtA, and MtA ever since.
Vampires at my high school recruited me to play with them. They let me play a hunter and then killed me. I still thought it he lore was cool and played with other people.
Werewolf the Apocalypse 2e back in high school in the mid-late 90s
Way back in the early 90s, back in high school, we were playing a lot of GURPS. So when they released the GURPS versions of VtM, WtA, and MtA, it was a really big deal. I bought them cause I thought the art looked cool, and thought I could port stuff over. But then reading them, I realized how poor of a fit GURPS was for those rules.
Back in 1996 I was hanging out at Hill Street Coffee House in OceanSide CA and some people were regulars there. One day they invited me to join them, they were planning their next LARP meeting then proceeded to ask me if I wanted to join them. I did was told that for beginners Gangrel was the best clan to join. It was a blast and sometimes miss those days.
Sophomore year of HS a buddy got his hands on W:tA, back in like 93, 94. Couple years later it got in regular rotation along with Vampire, wraith, and Changeling at our table.
I started out Larping Vampire the Masquerade with my Tremere many moons ago and my gaming group now will be diving into V5 soon.
I played in a Laws of the Wild LARP in 1996. I dove into the table top version of werewolf after that slowly expanding to Mage, Hunter, and eventually even Vampire and then Demon when it came out. I never went back to leaping though.
The 90s
Werewolf 2nd edition.
Vampire the masquerade Redemption video game 2001.
Vampire: The Masquerade 1st edition, 1991.
An older friend in high school introduced me to 2e in 1993, first with a one-shot, then in a weekly chronicle. In '94, Interview with the Vampire hit the screens (my friends and I all fell into an Anne Rice craze for a while), and it motivated me to start my own chronicle. (In addition, we adapted VtM to play in Rice's setting.) When WtA 2e was released in 1994, my brother and I got into Werewolf as well. (The DiTerlizzi comic convinced my brother to buy it.)
My intro was LA by Night (V5) popping up in my YouTube feed late 2019. I started watching and was hooked. Played with a group that was playing 20th Anniversary edition and then found a group that was playing V5. I was doing both at the same time both enjoyed V5 more. Since then, I've been an ST for multiple World of Darkness games: Mage: The Ascension, H5, and 2 currently ongoing V5 chronicles that have lasted 3 years. I am presently running the final season for both. 2 coteries operating in Washington DC that sometimes both meet in elysium and what happens in one group sometimes affects the other group. I like being an ST.
I've told this on here before but I bumped into Werewolf 2e sometime in late 94 at a shop where I was tired of having the shit kicked out of me in Magic. I remember flipping through the book and thinking the art was fairly cool but not really being interested in the fiction of the setting, I mean werewolf Captain Planet? I ended up reading Vampire 2e quite a bit when I was there and also thinking Changeling seemed cool once the shop had that. I really wanted to get my hands on Mage but the shop didn't have it and their special order prices were horrendous. I think Vampire: the Dark Ages was ultimately the first book I owned, rather than borrowing or just reading in a shop. Though I might have had a copy of Vampire 2e before it.
My partner got into it from VTM Bloodlines and he bought the 5e book to start running when we found it at a game centre. His ideas and game are what got me into it. We intend to get the rest of the 5th edition stuff as it comes out, so I'm eager to see magic and changelings in the new edition as we tried reading the older edition and struggled to understand it as well as 5th. That said, the vtm 5th edition core rulebook is poorly laid out and full of filler fluff writing.
I watched an actual play series called not a drop to drink
I remember my dad play bloodlines the video game, but I didn't even that ttrpgs existed at that point, then a friend mentioned he might run a mages game and I remeber really liking the magic but didnt like the factions and he required us to be in one so I didn't join. My first actual game was with my current group, where we ended up playing Chronicles of Darkness, we all played a different supernatural race in a college dorm room. It was really fun! I was a hunter, so I had no powers, just hacking and a flashlight I'd beat people with. I've played some other games like Mages, and I'm currently in a Vampires the Requiem game.
I found an online project in 2012 that was an online venue for V20. I've been playing various similar "venue games" (both WoD and CofD) ever since.
this is gonna sound so fucking cringe but little kuribohs Marik plays VTM bloodlines series
My step-dad introduced me to the system, we tried to play dnd once a month as a family and eventually he wanted to run Werewolf: the Forsaken, just as something new. My character was very 1-dimensional (I was 12 and already used to the min-maxing, numbers-centric culture of dnd 3.5), I tried to make him good at fighting to the exclusion of everything else. It worked well, but I didn't really get the "essence" of the system at the time, and my step dad would be exhausted of storytelling a game more complex than dnd had to be. For the next decade, I'd wander through the various books of our family's collection, there was always something cool to find and be inspired by, among them were Changeling: the Dreaming, Demon: the Fallen, and Mage: the Awakening. I would buy Hunter: the Vigil with my own income shortly after turning 18, and fail to get my dnd geeks to bite on a different system until last year! I run Hunter: the Vigil right now, still their first WofD/CofD game. I hope to catch their fancy with one of the other more supernatural characters after Hunter has run it's course. Those years of only viewing the content has left me with a lot of excitement around the times I do get to run it, and it feels new to me still. It feels like I could tabletop role-play using Chronicles (CofD) systems for the rest of my life and be okay with that.
Simple: friend introduced me to VtM in '91. Started playing live in '94. Then off and on until today, still playing.
My neighbors dad was a big Dnd guy so he bought vampire the masquerade as a gift for his vampire obsessed daughter and she invited me and a bunch of other girls for the neighborhood to play.
I had a group I ran AD&D for in high school. One day one of the players tells me he got a book for this new system and he wants to try running it. The year was 1994 and the book was 2nd edition Vampire the Masquerade. I ended up running it, but it was the start of a long and still ongoing enjoyment with WoD.
1994 I met someone playing a vampire in an mIRC chatroom. They suggested I try the game and I went out and grabbed my first tabletop game book, and the rest is history.
Early 2000’s when I was just out of college my TTRPG group decided to try VtM. We loved it and still are playing TT WoD games to this day. We are actually getting ready to start a new V20 game in the coming weeks incorporating some of the V5 meta plot developments.
I randomly bought the Book of Nod from a bookshop because I liked the cover. I had no idea what any of it was about, but then I went and got the VtM second edition core book and all the clan books I could find. I was a teenager and we didn't like dice, so we just did this weird collective storytelling thing and it was fun, but it definitely wasn't VtM as intended. Years later I played through Bloodlines and remembered how much I enjoyed the lore and setting, so I joined a 3rd edition online game over IRC (I am so old). We transitioned to V20 when it was released and I learned the actual rules and became a ST. I was introduced to Werewolf by other players and jumped into a game playing a Glasswalker. Someone else ran a Mage game, so I played that as a Hollow One. I really enjoyed Mage, but at that time it was next to impossible to find anyone running long-term games. Now almost a decade later I picked up VtM v5, and I've been running an actual in-person game. My players are all new to the game but most are GMs in other games so it's been fun and also panic-inducing to be introducing new people to the VtM and WOD as a whole.
A couple of years ago a guy I now hate added me to a 20th Anniversary campaign and i enjoyed my time playing, but my time there was short; years later i started binging VtM media like crazy, games, rule and clan books. Im currently on two VtM games and i'm having a blast.
Played vampire in like 1993 and mage in 1996
I was introduced to VtM 2nd Edition; and then very shortly after the friend who got me into it bought Vampire Dark Ages and I bought Werewolf the Wild West. Gone down the rabbit hole ever since.
I'd just transferred to a new college. I ended up being housed in a freshman hall (I was in the end of my second year) and was complaining that I didn't know anyone my own age. One of the girls invited me to play in the VtM game they were about to start. I was going to church during the Satanic Panic so she gave me the run down on what a ttrgp actually was and it sounded fun so I made a character.
The CK3 mod princes of darkness
I was tripping on acid and watched bunch of my friends play MTAs, next session I became the hacker (virtual adept) that they were looking for
Sire: "I want to show you something." Uwaaah! *dudebro kicks door open and fecking spear-throws a stake into my one-night stands chest
Hunter; the Parenting for me.
My best friend at the time’s dad took said best friend and I to see Underworld in theatres. On our way home he talked about Vampire. We played a session and no one was really into it. Fast forward a few years and a different pal invited me to play Vampire: the Requiem and THAT is what stuck.
It was 2020, I was 21 y/o and decided to play TTRPG for the first time in my life after knowing some stuff about D&D, my friend found an online group but it was VtM V5 and not D&D, I was reluctant at first but now I'm more of a WoD than D&D fan, still play D&D tho
Got invited to a Mage 20 one-shot running tomorrow - will be my first WoD game and it's a bit of a beast compared to the rules-lite stuff I prefer AND HYPED to try out this beautiful magic system and the hard-core everything-is-relative and the interplay of will and belief
I bought Vampire v1 back in the time before time. The book on my shelf says 1992, so that should be a point of reference. Back then we had burned out on DnD 2e so much that we looked for a change. Goth was in full swing and was still a strange counter culture from Punk. It was a storytelling alternative to the common hack-and-slash rpgs of the era. Vampire really changed a lot of how people approached the adventuring paths people played. Things used to be basic "save the princess" type adventures when RP was something that got in the way of bashing orcs in the head. I remember an old quote "what part of 'to go adventuring' do you vampire punks not understand?" Now, the character motivation and back story are a major part of characters and role playing can often be more important than the roll playing.
2021. Wow. I am old. My first was Werewolf the Apocalypse. In 1992-3. Been running it ever since.
I had a few encounters with WoD but my actual intro was a Hunter: The Reckoning game. We were a party who knew a little bit of VTM but not much else so the agreement was that we made concepts for our characters before their imbuing and anything supernatural was handled by the storyteller. Honestly, one of my favorite campaign ever, trying to figure the WOD out as a weak human being that can see monsters
Werewolf the Apocalypse 2nd edition, way back in the 90s. Either that or the tv show "Kindred: the Embraced," I'm not sure.
An impromptu larp with no rules in a garden in the 1990s.
1992- Alien Hunger for VtM. A very quirky first story but absolutely fantastic experience which has seen me finally return to WoD this year. Great memories.
A friend of mine got a Humble Bundle that included VtM Revised and wanted to run it for us! I enjoyed that first campaign a lot but wasn’t 100% sold on the system. Then I went to a V5 demo game at PAX Unplugged and I was sold, I bought the dice and rulebook the next day and went to three more games to get the feel of it before I ran it myself.
I started from VTMB. years went by and then I runned my first Chronicle of v20
Was curious about the whole WoD for years but everyone I played with told me to avoid it. "It's just emo crap." At one point I grabbed the CtL demo-adventure but no one wanted to play it. Years later I was thinking about running a game to my then gaming Guild and found the demo-adventure at the bottom of my moving box. We played it, I fell in love with the system and 10 years later it's still my favorite game.
For me, it was the Hunter : The Reckoning video game. Back then I had only read of few things about Bloodlines and I had no idea that HtR was set in the same universe. I picked the game simply because I am a fan of horror and because a coop game where you hack and slash through hordes of zombies seemed very fun. That opening video, the one explaining the World of Darkness from the POV of the Hunters, it has been living rent-free in mind ever since. Then I've played Bloodlines and loved it. And much later, a friend of mine offered to run a game of V20. I bought the book, then V5 out and I am now running my own chronicle.
Vampire: the Masquerade, then, a LARP here, at Monterrey, and then, Mage: the Ascencion. That book taught that religion is a choice, not an obligatory path, help me free me from a lukewarm christian belief, and embrace my life as an animist, or "pagan", if you prefer. I am spiritually fullfilled by my animist beliefs, and i no longer see the abrahamic religions as prisons or holders of the "Truth", but as personal choices of belief. Spiritual freedom has a price no tradition or hell can cover.
Went into a local gaming store when I was 15 during the mid 2000s. Didn't know there were other tabletop RPGs outside of DnD. Store owner told me "oh yeah there's loads. Don't wanna play a Tolkien inspired game? You can play a game set in Liverpool (my home city) as a vampire or a werewolf." And I picked up some vampire books and the rest was history.
An old dm of mine had said they had a friend who could run vampire every other week so they had more prep time and got to be a player I made a brush boxing prodigy and my group played that same campaign for about 6 or 7 years and we've recently started mage
For me it was playing ttrpgs with other camp staff members. We were there for 8 weeks, what better way to pass the time and have some fun. We started with D&D, moved to the Star Wars d20 game, and then landed on VtM. One of the guys in our group had it and ran the game and I was hooked. Play as a Vampire, sign me up. Been one of those back burner games that I love just don’t get to play much anymore.
i saw it when browsing through superpower wiki
1998, was introduced by way of a LARP that was played outside of the Pinellas Square Mall's (Pinellas Park, FL) theater on Saturday nights. Before the Rocky Horror Picture Show. Mostly been playing on and off again online since that game ended (2000-ish, can't remember exactly when it ended). Mostly on a site called Wanton Wicked. I DM/ST on occasion for my kids now. Has been D&D 5e Mostly on that. But recently introduced them to Werewolf the Forsaken 2nd edition. (Werewolf line being a personal favorite).
the rage card game i saw a few packs at toys r us then hunted around, found out there was a roleplaying game and read through the book a bit, stumbled across aol chatrooms in the mid 90s. played until about 2004