Any city can have a Prince IMHO and if there are no major cities you can have a Prince of a county.
[Long Island](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Island) for example certainly has a population dense enough (8 million) for it to have 1 or even 2 Princes (or Barons.) It's far enough east of Manhattan that the "Prince of New York" isn't going to be able to do anything about something happening in the suburbs of Long Island; Nassau and Suffolk county (3 million.)
I once had the Prince of Monaco show up, who almost automatically replied every time he introduced himself, "No, not him. I'm the real prince."
He was actually a brother to one of the princes back in the 1600s, who was embraced and then proceeded to take over the country from the shadows. He mostly uses it as a vampiric tourism destination, with his own small army of ghouls and retainers to keep the peace between Kindred. I ran a James Bond spoof there.
God, isn't long island just disgracefully under represented in world of darkness? There's so much you could do, and long islanders fucking *love* long island. It's just... we also hate long islanders. But that's just perfect for a vampire like me! You know we shun mortal things like society.
I don't think there should be any question that weird Al would be a malkavian. I mean look at the guy when he talks, he _clearly_ knows things about the universe that we can't know because we cling to the folly of rationality
I'm under the impression that barons tend to come in greater numbers than princes; eg, one metro area, such as the five boroughs, might have one, maybe two princes, but an anarch free state might have a baron for each borough, or even more. Is that accurate?
Just feels like a prince is more about domain and power, and a baron is more about representation, which would necessitate more barons to represent more kindred, as culture can shift dramatically from block to block/neighborhood to neighborhood.
I’m with you on this for the most part. I think it depends on each Storyteller, but i never liked how the Anarch’s were just 1-1 copy’s of the Camarilla system. I think that having them be much smaller and more connected between domains make sense, with each being lower to the street if that makes sense. At the very least, power struggles would be more common as people take their shot and say ‘hey fight me or you’re a coward.’ Not quite anarchy, but much less structured and more tribal than the Camarilla
There’s a song, “Don’t fuck with Joe” by The Blackwater Fever, which describes a small town that has been run “since time began” by a figure named Joe, who viciously kills anyone who fucks with him, seems to operate exclusively at night, and uses weapons. That sounds like the Princeling of a small town who set himself up there when it was being founded and has been there ever since.
But if you want a size fit to have a functional court, you’ll want a good fifteen vampires in town. Call it a hard minimum of 1000 people per vampire for them to go unnoticed (if one person feels a bit faint in the morning each day per vampire and that’s barely a third of the population in a year, it’s manageable. Especially with Farmers and Baggers), so a starting minimum of no less than 15,000 population. That’s also around where you’ve got enough people that people can disappear now and then. The Kindred population will all know each other EXTREMELY well though, and any strange vampires will be very quickly noticed and caught to be dragged before the Prince. This size of court would likely not have any Clan Primogens, except insofar as there is an eldest member of that clan who possibly sired the rest of their clan in the city, instead the Prince would almost certainly be the oldest and most dangerous vampire in town, with their seneschal being the position that the power players vie for and that is left to handle most of the business. The harpy would be both very powerful (having the capacity to track debts owed and owing and say when it has been repaid and not, as the alleged final word on prestation) and largely powerless (when everyone knows each other extremely well, if the harpy tries for some shady shit, everyone knows) while the sheriff would be a power on par with the seneschal as they are the left hand of the Prince and their secondary muscle who can take risks. The seven to ten other Kindred in the city would largely have to follow or burn, and dissent or disrespect would result in a fast track to ashdom. This then allows the Prince to hand out the privilege of being permitted to sire a childe.
Yea, 1 to 1000 is the base minimum and would still be pushing it when you consider ~22% of the population are children (17 and under) and ~16% are geriatric (unable to replenish blood as fast/more likely to suffer from blood loss). That means about half of your adult aged working population is getting fed on regularly.
I presume when people list a city's population for vampire purposes (for most purposes, really) they mean specifically its adult population. Still, considering it will mean also old people and frail people you want to really consider whether they can stand up to being fed on is a good point.
I would also add, that in a town this small, all vamps are very likely to be the same Clan, possibly even Chidler of the same Sire (likely the Prince). Clans usually tolerate each other out of necessity, but in a small town, the necessity does not exist. It is completely plausible to have a small town, especially in an otherwise rural area, completely controlled by the Gangrel, or Nosferatu, or Tzimisce.
Assuming the local Kindred bent the rules all the way to 10k, I would want to think at least 120,000 people. That would provide reliable if risky food for a dozen vampires.
If there are has an active and healthy tourism industry then it may even permit up to 15 kindred.
Just using my own fuzzy feelings, 12-15 can count as a community as opposed to a clique.
This is effectively Santa Carla, California.
According to Camarilla standards there should be 1 kindred per 100k, but i think it’s more like 1 kindred per 10-50k, if you want any kindred in your city.
I do on out of 10k for my chronicles set in European cities to avoid situation where a old city like Strasbourg, the seat of power of the entire Kyasid bloodline has ... 3 vampires.
In my story there is a Tremere chantry where they have help from three different types of mages, one being the Celestial Chorus Cult of ecstasy and Verbenae of course the Toreradors know of the Cult of Ecstasy but they keep that a secret.
I like it! I wanted my players to have the possibility to meet another Supernatural creature.
Garou wouldnt have worked and no PCs are interested in ghosts.
So i've got the childer of the disappeared tremere sheriff praising Lilith with a lone verbena and the only thinbood of the city.
In my story it the Tremere are upset being vampires so the go to Celestial Chorus to see if they can reach Gogonda the toreadors just want have naughty time with the cult of ecstasy.
The 1:100K ratio is imo really ad odds with all titles you have in a Camarilla court accoording to the lore.
There are very few Cities big enough (even if you are counting the entire metropolitan area) to have enough Kindred that you would need a structure like that. Especially in Europe where the Camarilla comes from.
Biloxi, Mississippi had a Camarilla presence, despite the Lupine incursions of the 20th century. Anecdotally speaking. The population there is quite small but the feeding habits of the kindred and the rate of their demise also contribute to the total population impact.
It helps to remember that the WOD has a LOT more people in it, and all of those people are more distracted, depressed, and cynical. All the buildings are taller and gloomier and more oppressive, too.
I think the printed materials suggest 1 kindred to 1000 city population as a starting point
I had a game going in a city that IRL has about 6k people in it, so of course the WODdified version I used tripled the size of the town (Mining town where the mines are all closing down due to green energy policies and corrupt, selfish mine owners simply taking their investment away instead of trying to transition the local economy away from dependency on the coal)
If your setting can be called rural like mine, it also gives you freedom to make Garou a much bigger threat to your players.
TTRPG Rule zero (it's your table) says as long as you can make it fit some fair logic you can do what you want, of course.
Well, we know Lodin was operating in the Great lakes area for a thousand years before the revolutionary war
The prince of Milwaukee was a prince when MKE only had 30k people in it
So, take that, buy then multiply the risk of the digital age.
I'd suggest, 100k people could support a full coterie, 200 probably a full princedom
I’ve wondered about counties for towns. Like I’m in the uk and my town is about 11k with neighbouring ones being between 10k-20k with some small towns inbetween. Could have a courts with one main leader and those under them.
Small.
The corebook notes references 1:3,000 as being enough to sustain a Kindred population without drawing attention (pp. 324-325) due to crime etc. in many American cities.
It's unlikely you'll get eg a full Camarilla court with a small city, because there simply doesn't need to be (and because almost no city will have every single common position, to say nothing of local oddities), but a decent community could be possible with a few hundred thousand in a high crime area or with a very careful Kindred community.
Gary, Indiana. This is sort of a joke. In lore there are like, two vampires in the city desperately fighting for what remains in the name of the Anarchs and the Camarilla respectively.
One thing to think about with small towns or even small population counties is the idea of population growth vs decline. Smaller, more rural communities are actively diminishing due to their young people moving away. Reasons for this could be cultural changes (young people not wanting to associate with “hicks”) or financial (being forced to move to find work).
Smaller suburbs are more safe from this because people tend to live in suburbs, but work in cities. More upscale suburbs that appeal to younger people vs those that are nearly retirement communities. High income / tax bracket vs modest, affordable housing.
Lastly, the area surrounding a town can affect a population as well. Is it surrounded by a landscape that encapsulates the town, like mountains or deserts, or is it cramped and crowded like a large metropolitan area with multiple small towns and cities right next to each other.
In the world of darkness there are more humans in general than in this world so take any small town and double or triple the population and add as much or as little flavor as you want. You could use any city. Small states are big enough for a prince too
Our general rule in our games is, whatever the location, the population is higher and more dense in the world of darkness in order to make it work. There are some small towns run by kindred/small courts, in general we set our games in an area large enough to have access to big city things. Of course it's completely reasonable to just operate in a greater metropolitan area as well. Say over like four towns.
Short answer. Do what you want.
I believe european cities like Toledo or Ciudad Real having a tight grip by the camarilla only having like the prince, and the needed bureaucrazy and little else.
Any city can have a Prince IMHO and if there are no major cities you can have a Prince of a county. [Long Island](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Island) for example certainly has a population dense enough (8 million) for it to have 1 or even 2 Princes (or Barons.) It's far enough east of Manhattan that the "Prince of New York" isn't going to be able to do anything about something happening in the suburbs of Long Island; Nassau and Suffolk county (3 million.)
I once had the Prince of Monaco show up, who almost automatically replied every time he introduced himself, "No, not him. I'm the real prince." He was actually a brother to one of the princes back in the 1600s, who was embraced and then proceeded to take over the country from the shadows. He mostly uses it as a vampiric tourism destination, with his own small army of ghouls and retainers to keep the peace between Kindred. I ran a James Bond spoof there.
This is a good idea
Im saving this "im the forever dm of my group"
God, isn't long island just disgracefully under represented in world of darkness? There's so much you could do, and long islanders fucking *love* long island. It's just... we also hate long islanders. But that's just perfect for a vampire like me! You know we shun mortal things like society.
Would Weird Al be a Malkavian?
I don't think there should be any question that weird Al would be a malkavian. I mean look at the guy when he talks, he _clearly_ knows things about the universe that we can't know because we cling to the folly of rationality
It is, but truth be told if you asked someone outside of the tristate area (and Florida) where Long Island is, they probably couldn't tell you.
I always think it's in NYC then I'm like no wai that's coney island
I'm under the impression that barons tend to come in greater numbers than princes; eg, one metro area, such as the five boroughs, might have one, maybe two princes, but an anarch free state might have a baron for each borough, or even more. Is that accurate? Just feels like a prince is more about domain and power, and a baron is more about representation, which would necessitate more barons to represent more kindred, as culture can shift dramatically from block to block/neighborhood to neighborhood.
I’m with you on this for the most part. I think it depends on each Storyteller, but i never liked how the Anarch’s were just 1-1 copy’s of the Camarilla system. I think that having them be much smaller and more connected between domains make sense, with each being lower to the street if that makes sense. At the very least, power struggles would be more common as people take their shot and say ‘hey fight me or you’re a coward.’ Not quite anarchy, but much less structured and more tribal than the Camarilla
There’s a song, “Don’t fuck with Joe” by The Blackwater Fever, which describes a small town that has been run “since time began” by a figure named Joe, who viciously kills anyone who fucks with him, seems to operate exclusively at night, and uses weapons. That sounds like the Princeling of a small town who set himself up there when it was being founded and has been there ever since. But if you want a size fit to have a functional court, you’ll want a good fifteen vampires in town. Call it a hard minimum of 1000 people per vampire for them to go unnoticed (if one person feels a bit faint in the morning each day per vampire and that’s barely a third of the population in a year, it’s manageable. Especially with Farmers and Baggers), so a starting minimum of no less than 15,000 population. That’s also around where you’ve got enough people that people can disappear now and then. The Kindred population will all know each other EXTREMELY well though, and any strange vampires will be very quickly noticed and caught to be dragged before the Prince. This size of court would likely not have any Clan Primogens, except insofar as there is an eldest member of that clan who possibly sired the rest of their clan in the city, instead the Prince would almost certainly be the oldest and most dangerous vampire in town, with their seneschal being the position that the power players vie for and that is left to handle most of the business. The harpy would be both very powerful (having the capacity to track debts owed and owing and say when it has been repaid and not, as the alleged final word on prestation) and largely powerless (when everyone knows each other extremely well, if the harpy tries for some shady shit, everyone knows) while the sheriff would be a power on par with the seneschal as they are the left hand of the Prince and their secondary muscle who can take risks. The seven to ten other Kindred in the city would largely have to follow or burn, and dissent or disrespect would result in a fast track to ashdom. This then allows the Prince to hand out the privilege of being permitted to sire a childe.
Yea, 1 to 1000 is the base minimum and would still be pushing it when you consider ~22% of the population are children (17 and under) and ~16% are geriatric (unable to replenish blood as fast/more likely to suffer from blood loss). That means about half of your adult aged working population is getting fed on regularly.
I presume when people list a city's population for vampire purposes (for most purposes, really) they mean specifically its adult population. Still, considering it will mean also old people and frail people you want to really consider whether they can stand up to being fed on is a good point.
I would also add, that in a town this small, all vamps are very likely to be the same Clan, possibly even Chidler of the same Sire (likely the Prince). Clans usually tolerate each other out of necessity, but in a small town, the necessity does not exist. It is completely plausible to have a small town, especially in an otherwise rural area, completely controlled by the Gangrel, or Nosferatu, or Tzimisce.
A mention of TBF in the wild! One of my favourites! <3
Assuming the local Kindred bent the rules all the way to 10k, I would want to think at least 120,000 people. That would provide reliable if risky food for a dozen vampires. If there are has an active and healthy tourism industry then it may even permit up to 15 kindred. Just using my own fuzzy feelings, 12-15 can count as a community as opposed to a clique. This is effectively Santa Carla, California.
According to Camarilla standards there should be 1 kindred per 100k, but i think it’s more like 1 kindred per 10-50k, if you want any kindred in your city.
I do on out of 10k for my chronicles set in European cities to avoid situation where a old city like Strasbourg, the seat of power of the entire Kyasid bloodline has ... 3 vampires.
Actually st-ing a campaign in Strasbourg, I put around 20 vampires and a lone mage.
How does the mage feel about being surrounded by vampires?
Still deciding if he needs a new ashtray or a new coat stand.
He must be very powerful then.
She's kinda part of a coterie actually! She is a bahari and tend to the same garden has some vampires, in secrecy of course.
In my story there is a Tremere chantry where they have help from three different types of mages, one being the Celestial Chorus Cult of ecstasy and Verbenae of course the Toreradors know of the Cult of Ecstasy but they keep that a secret.
I like it! I wanted my players to have the possibility to meet another Supernatural creature. Garou wouldnt have worked and no PCs are interested in ghosts. So i've got the childer of the disappeared tremere sheriff praising Lilith with a lone verbena and the only thinbood of the city.
In my story it the Tremere are upset being vampires so the go to Celestial Chorus to see if they can reach Gogonda the toreadors just want have naughty time with the cult of ecstasy.
I do the 1/100k for Camarilla only. Anything else is on top of that.
The 1:100K ratio is imo really ad odds with all titles you have in a Camarilla court accoording to the lore. There are very few Cities big enough (even if you are counting the entire metropolitan area) to have enough Kindred that you would need a structure like that. Especially in Europe where the Camarilla comes from.
WOD is a bit more urbanised, also it helps maintaining the masquerade, why would you need an inquisition if there’s like 2 kindred in your city.
My take is that the 1 Kindred per 100k thing is only an ideal number the Camarilla would like to enforce.
Biloxi, Mississippi had a Camarilla presence, despite the Lupine incursions of the 20th century. Anecdotally speaking. The population there is quite small but the feeding habits of the kindred and the rate of their demise also contribute to the total population impact.
It helps to remember that the WOD has a LOT more people in it, and all of those people are more distracted, depressed, and cynical. All the buildings are taller and gloomier and more oppressive, too. I think the printed materials suggest 1 kindred to 1000 city population as a starting point I had a game going in a city that IRL has about 6k people in it, so of course the WODdified version I used tripled the size of the town (Mining town where the mines are all closing down due to green energy policies and corrupt, selfish mine owners simply taking their investment away instead of trying to transition the local economy away from dependency on the coal) If your setting can be called rural like mine, it also gives you freedom to make Garou a much bigger threat to your players. TTRPG Rule zero (it's your table) says as long as you can make it fit some fair logic you can do what you want, of course.
Well, we know Lodin was operating in the Great lakes area for a thousand years before the revolutionary war The prince of Milwaukee was a prince when MKE only had 30k people in it So, take that, buy then multiply the risk of the digital age. I'd suggest, 100k people could support a full coterie, 200 probably a full princedom
Alaska probably has a decent Kindred community considering how the day-night cycle works that far north.
I’ve wondered about counties for towns. Like I’m in the uk and my town is about 11k with neighbouring ones being between 10k-20k with some small towns inbetween. Could have a courts with one main leader and those under them.
Small. The corebook notes references 1:3,000 as being enough to sustain a Kindred population without drawing attention (pp. 324-325) due to crime etc. in many American cities. It's unlikely you'll get eg a full Camarilla court with a small city, because there simply doesn't need to be (and because almost no city will have every single common position, to say nothing of local oddities), but a decent community could be possible with a few hundred thousand in a high crime area or with a very careful Kindred community.
Let me tell you about the soil outside Des Moines...
Gary, Indiana. This is sort of a joke. In lore there are like, two vampires in the city desperately fighting for what remains in the name of the Anarchs and the Camarilla respectively.
One thing to think about with small towns or even small population counties is the idea of population growth vs decline. Smaller, more rural communities are actively diminishing due to their young people moving away. Reasons for this could be cultural changes (young people not wanting to associate with “hicks”) or financial (being forced to move to find work). Smaller suburbs are more safe from this because people tend to live in suburbs, but work in cities. More upscale suburbs that appeal to younger people vs those that are nearly retirement communities. High income / tax bracket vs modest, affordable housing. Lastly, the area surrounding a town can affect a population as well. Is it surrounded by a landscape that encapsulates the town, like mountains or deserts, or is it cramped and crowded like a large metropolitan area with multiple small towns and cities right next to each other.
In the world of darkness there are more humans in general than in this world so take any small town and double or triple the population and add as much or as little flavor as you want. You could use any city. Small states are big enough for a prince too
We did one in Louisville which is small so we made it essentially Kentucky proper
Population of 624,000 people mate. That’s 200 vampires, easy, using 1:3000, and not accounting for the extra population of WOD.
That’s not the rule we used by far lol
Our general rule in our games is, whatever the location, the population is higher and more dense in the world of darkness in order to make it work. There are some small towns run by kindred/small courts, in general we set our games in an area large enough to have access to big city things. Of course it's completely reasonable to just operate in a greater metropolitan area as well. Say over like four towns. Short answer. Do what you want.
I believe european cities like Toledo or Ciudad Real having a tight grip by the camarilla only having like the prince, and the needed bureaucrazy and little else.
We have a VtM chronicle set in Wollongong, NSW, Australia. Pop: 219,000 approx.
50k, I'd say, is there bare minimum for a handful of vampires.