Player Driven Games vs Game Master Driven Games

Player Driven vs Game Master Driven. Sandbox vs Mission-based. Freeform vs Railroaded. People separate types of campaigns or types of adventures in different language, but I think the first language set is probably most useful. We are determining who is driving the particular story beats that are central to a given setting - is this an adventure that a party is going down (a la traditional D&D)? Or is this a open world where players choose what is interesting to them to explore.

I intend to argue that most campaigns have a default state - one or the other - but most are best served by combining both. I think Vampire the Masquerade V5 tends towards Player Driven play, but I believe that Chronicles can be well served by mixing in Game Master driven play as well. 

Let's describe what each style really means.

In Player-Driven play, the Story Teller often takes a reactionary role. The Players understand their characters' motivations, missions, and intentions, and use those to drive the plot forward, making decisions about how those players affect the world. They move to interact with the world, with Storyteller Player Characters, and with plot points and stories from their backgrounds or from previous experiences. They make the decisions about what is important to them, from information agreed with the Story Teller previously. The Story Teller presents obstacles and complications and responds for the Story Teller characters. Preparation for sessions driven by players involves considering motivations for SPCs, complications from anticipated actions, story beats that might emerge from characters moving and plotting "off-screen", and considering events that come from other sources.

In Game Master-Driven play, the Story Teller takes the driver's seat. They lay out plot hooks, paths, and adventures. They offer adventures or dungeons or defined paths forward for players to follow. Story tends to be more linear, with defined story beats and an expected series of events that will occur. While players still have agency, there is an expectation they will bite on the plot hooks and grab the adventure offered. Preparation for Game Master-Driven play includes more traditional adventures, maps, scenes, specific new SPCs or adversaries, and new information. 

While I consider Vampire the Masquerade V5 to be well-served by Player-Driven play, I have realized I often start a Chronicle with Game Master-Driven play. I have found that it is an excellent way to introduce players (and their characters) to the world of the Chronicle. A mission can give reasons to interact with SPCs, with specific locations, with particular adversaries or allies. For example, in my current Chronicle, Session 1 started with each character's Sire charging their Childe with making a good impression at Elysium, as each character was introduced to the Court. This gave players a reason to go to Elysium, to interact with members of the Court, to introduce themselves to the Prince, and to acquit themselves well. From that interaction, a second mission was provided - this time from the Prince, to investigate a series of murders that seemed caused by vampires. This gave reason to interact with SPCs, to gather information, and to make themselves known at Court. Beyond the first session, it gave a reason to interact with the world, to explore new areas of the city that would become important later, and to meet new characters. This mission based gameplay gradually transitioned to player-driven play, as the characters worked to solve the mystery and as their backgrounds and back-stories began to surface.

You can also transition from one to the other repeatedly - start mission-based, for instance, to give the players a reason to interact with elements of the city and to build relationships (positive and negative) with characters in the Chronicle. Once the players have done some things, they've probably messed some things up and have some problems to solve; they've probably met some folks, and have reasons to go after some or help others; and they are able to see how their back stories will interact with the city and how they will drive more actions. Once in that mode, you are in 'sandbox' or relationship based play and very player driven.

Vampire has a 'boon economy' - which is a great reason to interject a new mission into a primarily sandbox Chronicle, to bring in new elements of the story when the ST wants to throw some wrenches in. Additionally, SPCs are plotting in the background, and events are ticking. When the players are getting too comfortable, a powerful SPC can call in a favour - or offer one - and push them in a particular direction where they will encounter something interesting to drive back to mission-focussed play. Or the City can change in ways that are not anticipated by the characters that necessitate response. Or important SPCs can plot against the players or against their allies or against their enemies. These elements present a mission for the players to accept and to drive to completion, positively or negatively. When that mission ends, the Chronicle can transition back to relationship, player-focussed play for a time, now with those new elements from that completed mission in play and changing the circumstances around the players.

Back and forth - Game Master-Driven to Player-Driven and back to Game Master-Driven. When players are comfortable or when they are uncertain of their next course of action, the Game Master can step in and provide a more focussed session of game play. When the players have a plan, the Game Master can step back and respond to those actions. To me, in Vampire the Masquerade V5, the Chronicle succeeds best when the Players drive most sessions, but the Story Teller should keep Game Master-Driven options in their toolbox to add complexity, uncertainty, interest, characters, locations, and lore to the story. 

Hopefully, this perspective will help you make decisions about how to run your games and sessions for Vampire the Masquerade V5.

Introduction to Vampire the Masquerade V5 for Dungeons and Dragons Players and Dungeon Masters

Dungeons and Dragons is the most popular table top roleplaying game in the world and that's been true as long as there has been TTRPGs. It is where most of us started. And most of us still love to play D&D. But there's a lot of other games out there - FATE, GURPS, Powered by the Apocalypse based games - and, of course, the World of Darkness.

Assuming you're a D&D 5e (2014 or 2024) interested in trying other systems, let's explore whether or not the World of Darkness - and specifically Vampire The Masquerade V5 - is the right game for you. And I'll give you some tips about making that transition, too. I've played in the World of Darkness off and on since the 1990s - and started my Dungeons and Dragons journey in the 1980s - so I'm reasonably well set up to be your guide here.

This isn't a 'how to play' - I have other articles for that - I'm trying to share some basic information and help you understand how playing Vampire feels compared with Dungeons and Dragons, so you can decide if it is a game you want to play.

The Elevator Pitch for Vampire the Masquerade V5

Vampire the Masquerade V5 is a game of personal horror set in the modern day of a version of our real world called the World of Darkness. Personal horror means that - while there are other horror elements - the key focus is on the conflict between survival and on keeping a grip on what makes you human and what makes you you. Players play vampires in V5 that are not fully in control of themselves - they have a Beast within them that tempts and draws them down into bestial ways, pulling them away from who they were when they were alive.

These conflicted characters are then placed into a complicated social setting. Vampires are predators, but they are also parasites on human society, and they have made rules, traditions, religions, and societies that allow them to keep themselves secure and powerful. In addition, vampires, especially new vampires, still have many entanglements with the mortal world. This means that relationships and social interactions are at the core of the game. Vampires are powerful creatures, although the player characters often are at the lower end of the power spectrum. They will use those powers in social and physical conflict, exploration, and social interactions over the course of the Chronicle. 

Vampire the Masquerade is a horror game. It often focuses on those personal horror tropes, but can contain elements of body horror, gore, gothic horror, existential horror, cosmic horror, political and social horror, and other disturbing elements. While I strongly recommend that any group plays with safety tools that limit the content of the game to keep the players safe, it would be difficult to play the game without horror tropes at all and the game likely isn't the right game for you if you aren't excited about playing a horror game.

Vampire the Masquerade V5 is just one version of one game in a long series of games in the World of Darkness. 

What Is the World of Darkness?

The World of Darkness games, regardless of version, feature games in the modern day in a version of our world that is full of monsters, conspiracies, and horrors. Games generally allow players to take the role of one of those monsters (Vampires, Fae folks, Werewolves, and others) and focus on the conspiracies and intersections with the mortal and human world or the conflicts between the various monsters.

The World of Darkness is an old TTRPG franchise - with all the confusion about lore and versions and characters that naturally follows from decades of continuous play. And the World of Darkness complicates things even further, because in each version, there are multiple 'splats' or lines - ways to play Vampires, Werewolves, Mages, Changelings, Hunters - each of which has its own name and full gameline, just to make things extra spicy. Let's review:

• "Old" World of Darkness - the first book of the first version of the World of Darkness came out in 1991 and has gone through multiple versions. The most recent "old" version is the 20th anniversary edition, which is commonly known as V20. This version was published roughly between 2011 and 2015. This is a solid, complete version of the World of Darkness, covering most of the splats, including Changeling, Vampire, Hunter, Mage, and Werewolf. It covers play of all power levels. From a mechanics point of view, you could call it a 'resource-management' based game, in that powers use up a pool of points which the player fills up and spends. It is reasonably "crunchy", with mechanics supporting a lot of different styles of play. It has a very large collection of lore about the world and many supporting books.
• Chronicles of Darkness - published in various versions from 2004 until 2022, Chronicles of Darkness was a reboot of the World of Darkness, with different splats (including playable monsters that you could not play in any other version of the World of Darkness). It had different lore than the original World of Darkness. It is very much its own game, but provided inspiration for the new World of Darkness versions in various ways, including some mechanics.
• World of Darkness x5 - The "fifth" version of the World of Darkness is the most current (first published in 2018) and active (with books being published on a regular basis as of 2025), with three splats currently published - Vampire, Hunter, and Werewolf, with Mage and Changeling being currently teased. Splats in the this version are typically referred to as the initial and 5 - that is V5, H5, W5. Play in this version is aimed at "street-level" - newer, younger vampires, hunters, or werewolves, though later books in this edition support playing more powerful werewolves or vampires that are centuries old. Mechanics promote a 'risk-management' style of play - or 'push-your-luck', where using powers can increase the risk of allowing your Beast to temporarily take over, reinforcing the personal horror theme of Vampire V5. Lore largely continues from previous versions of the World of Darkness, with some changes and some considerable extension, bringing the world up to modern day. 

All versions of the World of Darkness use a dice pool system, where a pool of 10 sided dice are assembled based on character traits and rolled, with high dice indicating successes and low dice indicating failures. The only dice needed for World of Darkness are these D10, but ideally you'll have 10-12 of them. This is different than D&D's D20 + modifier vs DC system, but no more complicated.

Just like Dungeons and Dragons 2014 vs 2024 (or D&D 4th edition if you remember those times), there are strong opinions about versions. I have played lots of versions of lots of games and have never had much interest in arguing about versions or lore. We're going to be talking about the current version of the World of Darkness games here and focussing in on Vampire the Masquerade V5, because that's the focus of this site and my personal current favourite version of the game.

Getting Started Playing Vampire

Just like in D&D, you need a few resources to start. The equivalent of the Starter Set in Dungeons and Dragons is one of a series of 'starter' adventures that White Wolf/Paradox have released for free or cheap. I recommend 'The Monsters'  - I think it has some great flavour, some pretty good explanations of mechanics, and it is free. You'll just need some 10 sided dice in two different colours (or a virtual dice roller). There is also the 'New Blood Starter Pack', which is a different introductory adventure.

The default experience for a Chronicle (what the World of Darkness calls a campaign) in Vampire the Masquerade is a modern day city, with relatively new, young vampires that still have many connections to their mortal life. The complications of being a Vampire, with new demands, limitations, powers and expectations are often the principle theme, with a plot designed to bring the player characters together and move them in an initial direction. There are many other ways to play Vampire, but my recommendation is to start simple, with that expected way to play.

The Vibe Playing Vampire vs D&D

As a general note - there's no one way to play any role playing game. Folks use D&D to play social focussed games, to play horror games, to play science fiction games. But that's not the experience most people have with it - D&D at its core is intended for 'high fantasy' - Tolkienesque dwarves and elves with dungeons and grand quests and lots of combat. So that's the experience I'm using to compare here.

The "default" D&D experience is a party of player characters going on an adventure - a defined path forward, driven by a plot, with side quests and character driven relationships as a secondary component. In Vampire, this is flipped - the relationships and personal missions of the characters are the engine that drive the chronicle. In Dungeons and Dragons, "splitting the party" is something that is frowned upon - in Vampire, it is something that happens all the time (to the extent that I've got an article on it on this site). In D&D, the expectation is that there will be multiple physical combats a session, with players primarily gaining experience and equipment by killing monsters and taking their treasure. In a typical game of Vampire, social interactions are often more important, and characters can go multiple sessions between physical combats, with combats often being high stakes and risky and with characters gaining experience on a regular cadence. The game feels different to play, with the Storyteller (DM equivalent) reacting to player driven events and decisions and adding complications as the world plots around them.

The difference is one of tendencies and emphasis, more than pure mechanics. Vampire tends to try to make games that centre relationships - personal, political, social, positive, negative - in a (often) modern world that echoes our own. Chronicles often have themes or overall plots, but spend a lot of time on the individual concerns of the characters or the combined interests of the Coterie (party). There tends not to be 'adventures' per se - very little dungeons or exploration in the same way. They tend to stay in the same city or location and the city often seems like a character itself. There tends to be a lot of Storyteller Player Characters (SPCs - the equivalent of NPCs in D&D), with a complex web of relationships between them and the PCs that drive a lot of the story. Especially as the game gets going, many sessions are driven by player motivations and plans, with the Storyteller throwing in twists and complications more than actual planned adventure. Combat tends to be significant, but rare. Many (even most) sessions may not have any actually physical combat at all - replaced by social conflicts or skill checks or even just conversation. There is often a real element of horror and an examination of society and the nature of humanity, with many shades of gray. The tone can be paranoid, with danger lurking - combat in Vampire tends to be dangerous and it can be easy for PCs to get in over their heads.

In D&D, there tends to be more focussed adventures (go here and do find this thing, go there and slay that creature, climb the mad wizard's tower and learn this lore). While there are certainly NPCs, the web of relationships isn't nearly as central or generally well developed. Player character arcs tend to be side quests to a main quest. Combat is a common event, potentially multiple combats per session. The tone tends to be high fantasy, with epic quests and heroes and villains.

Examples of Vampire Sessions

To illustrate what a Vampire session can look like, I thought it would help if I shared some information here from the first few sessions in my current chronicle, along with one from months later. The characters are four young vampires, relatively new to their state as monsters, very much still entangled with their mortal existence and struggling to understand their new roles. I take fairly detailed logs from each session, covering the beats of each. Each session is a three hour play session and the chronicle takes place in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in the modern day. I'm not going to go through all the details, just talk about what the players spent their time doing. We have just completed session 46 - we aim for weekly play and have mostly succeeded in that over the last year.

In Session 1, the characters were introduced to vampire society and I gave them a mission to focus on. We started the session with the three split up - each meeting with their own Sire (the vampire that created them) and starting to flesh out that relationship. They individually made their way to the meeting spot, and they started to meet some of the Storyteller Player Characters (what Vampire calls NPCs) that made up the society of vampires in Halifax - characters that eventually come to be antagonists, lovers, allies, friends, or rivals as time goes on. And they were given a mission and started using social skills and social powers to begin finding the solution for that mission.

In Session 2, we had a new player join the chronicle late. It meant this session was a lot of bringing the characters together and bringing the new character (and player) up to speed. But they learned something about each other and progressed on their mission, meeting a key thin-blood SPC (who went on to be a significant ally early in the chronicle despite seeming like an enemy at that time). They also engaged in their first physical confrontation - beating up a ghoul (an enhanced mortal servant of a vampire) as part of an interrogation. 

In Session 3, the taps of their backgrounds opened, with one character being haunted with visions, another getting messages from someone in their past, a third getting threatened by their Sire. The group separates and starts handling some of their own stuff as their first night as independent vampires comes to an end. The group does get back together to go have a final discussion with an SPC and come up with a plan to find someone to blame their problems on. 

In those 3 sessions, there were plenty of tense situations, some difficult decisions, a whole lot of talking, a fair amount of dice rolling - but very little combat. There was a fair bit of characters going off to handle their own thing, and only some time with all four members of the group together. While you could play D&D that way - and while you could play Vampire as a dungeon crawl, I think this is pretty typical of Vampire - and pretty atypical for D&D. Let's look at a session much later on, in the beginning of what is likely the middle arc of what is likely a two year Chronicle, session 31.

In Session 31, it started with a character having a private audience with the Prince, who is probing him for loyalty. A bit of seduction, a bit of Presence, and the Prince demands the character find a particular Anarch for her. A scene between a character and the fledgling childe of a Primogen, who is now blood bonded to the character, trying to figure out that situation. The Coterie meets with the Sheriff, making it clear they will not be returning the Primogen's fledgling back to the Primogen - the Sheriff says this may cause a great deal of problems that will need to be handled at the coming Elysium. A character meets his Anarch lover and has a tiff with them about loyalty, but is introduced to the leader of the Anarchs and their inner circle anyways. The Coterie talk about their situation and one decides to take the Fledgling to talk to the ghoul of the Primogen - they find that things are even more dangerous than they feared. Another conversation with the Prince about the Anarchs, full of threats and implications. Another tense conversation between the character and his lover. And the character who had bonded the Fledgling takes her and flees to a bolthole, but the session ends with the Primogen confronting them there.

As you can see, by this time, virtually everything that is happening is a result of player choices and less is a direct result of me creating a plot point. Things are more complex, with members of the Coterie all moving in different directions, with different priorities - there were a lot of short scenes with intense conversations. My preparation for this session was almost entirely thinking about motivations and potential reactions of the SPCs.

Next Steps

I recommend taking a look at an Actual Play - I recommend Private Nightmares or LA By Night as great flavourful Actual Plays.

I have a lot of mechanical information and advice on this site, as well. I'd start here for all players and here for Storytellers in particular.

Creating Stat Sheets for your SPCs - When, Why, How

I am on record as to saying that Storyteller's should not stat all their SPCs, including very important SPCs. I talk in my article about Populating a City about how many stat blocks a Storyteller would have to come up with. I think that's a lot of busy work that will largely never come up, a lot of wasted time that could be better used creating interesting relationships, plots, personalities, twists, and problems for your players. But I still like rolling dice! So let's talk about what I do instead.

This is a frustrating article to write. I am certain I had better resources than this, but I think that the system I use is a weird amalgam of the official books, Reddit advice threads, previous systems, and homebrew, and I haven't actually formalized it until this point. In particular, I'm going to shout out this thread on Reddit by u/CharsOwnRX-78-2 which catalyzed a lot of how I do this.

I first want to say that this method - and any method I use - will violate rules in character creation. I don't care. Character creation rules are for PLAYERS - the purpose, in my opinion, of a mechanical character creation method is to balance player characters within the Coterie. That is not your priority when creating antagonists. So I don't mind pulling pools out of a very simplified system.

To be clear - I'm not saying don't stat ANY SPCs. When you start rolling a lot for a given SPC (or when you know they will be actively opposing the PCs in a session), when they start being a key antagonist or very active ally, that's a great time to stat them. You rarely know who the players will focus on as their real rival or foe, or who will be their favourite. Do the work when you have to do the work and not before. My recommendation is, even then, to stat to the level of the simplified stat blocks, such as on page 370 (Antagonists) of the Vampire the Masquerade V5 Core Book, not to write up a full player character sheet.

But, by default, I use a quick statting system, that characterizes the SPC, and lets us build up something of a stat sheet for them without doing any work. We evolve the SPC as our needs for them change. Let's look in depth at the steps we'll take and I'll break this down into a nice, easy chart at the end of the article. There feels like lots of steps here, but using this I can choose a dice pool in real time, with no break in the game at all.

1. Classify this SPC

Ok, so we're rolling for this SPC that we didn't anticipate rolling a lot for and we need a dice pool. Who is this person? Let's rank their threat level, essentially by giving them a base dice pool for their normal activities. How good are they at most things in their day-to-day, whatever that looks like. Rank them from 1-5, with some examples for each:

1. Not a threat - average mortal, just some random person
2. A bit more - a newish ghoul; a trained, capable mortal
3. Average threat - a neonate Kindred; other baseline supernaturals; Hunters; and trained SI agents
4. High threat - ancillae; newer werewolves
5. Extreme threat - elders; experienced werewolves

How much of a danger do you want this person to be? What makes sense in the world and in the story?

Take their threat level and multiply by 2 - that's their base dice pool.

2. Choose tracker values

By default, Willpower and Health are both 5. We'll then tweak based on the character and threat level:

1. Consider reducing trackers by 1 total point
2. Likely should remain 5/5
3. Consider increasing trackers by 1 total point
4. Consider increasing trackers by 2 total points
5. Consider increasing trackers by 4 total points

3. Choose exceptional pools

Take their threat level and choose that many pools they are good at - and that half that many things they are bad at. Add 2 dice for a pool they they are good at, subtract 2 dice (minimum of 1) for a pool they are bad at. 

4. Special Powers

Some SPCs have special powers - Disciplines, Gifts, Spells, Rites, etc. If you're on the fly, grab a power that makes sense. Make the call - do they have Heightened Senses? Potence? Dominate? Just grab and go. I've got suggested ranges for number of total dots in the chart below, but when we're doing this off the cuff, we're only 'spending' the discipline dots that we need to right now. If their exact discipline spread is important, that means this isn't the tool for this situation and we need to at least get a simplified stat block built.

5. Vibe Check

Does this feel right? Feel free to add or subtract 1 dice to any pool. Or 1 point to any tracker. This also helps keep everything from being an even number - your players don't need to know you didn't stat this SPC, that they are doing something you haven't fully planned for.

6. Make a note

Write it down. I use Kumu for my Characters and Relationships, only going to a full sheet in Foundry when I fully stat. So I put down these decisions in my session log- threat level; trackers; exceptional pools (good and bad); powers; and specific pool decisions after the vibe checks. Then after the session I transfer over those notes into my Kumu character description. This helps me be consistent between sessions and to transfer those decisions over if I fully stat the SPC. 

7. Roll Those Dice

Rolling Dice is Fun! Let's roll that pool. On Foundry, I use the Special Dice Roller plugin, that let's me do V5 style dice rolls easily, including Hunger Dice.

Summary Chart

Threat Level	Base Dice Pool	Tracker Tweak	Exceptional Pools	Maximum Dots
1	2	-1 to 0	1 good, 1 bad	0
2	4	0	2 good, 1 bad	4
3	6	0 to 1	3 good, 1 bad	7
4	8	0 to 2	4 good, 2 bad	12
5	10	0 to 4	5 good, 2 bad	20

All Trackers start at 5 Willpower, 5 Health.

You can always increase or decrease any pool or tracker by 1 based on Vibes.

Don't forget to write down your decisions.

Kindred SPCs should have Hunger appropriate to the situation.

Using Kumu for World of Darkness Relationship Maps

Relationships and Characters are the critical data for a World of Darkness Chronicle. They are the engine that makes the story run. But they are hard to keep track of at scale - Chronicles rapidly grow to dozens of SPCs when you've got a whole city to run.

I am a big proponent of Storyteller tools - I have a whole article on what I use. I started my most recent Chronicle with World Anvil, but I found keeping Storyteller Player Characters (SPCs) in World Anvil very difficult. The thing that matters most is the relationships between characters and that was hard to do in World Anvil.

So, I poked around and discovered that the standard tool people use is Kumu - https://kumu.io/ - it is free. The only thing on the paid tiers you might want is private projects, but if you don't want your players seeing your chart, just sign up with an account that isn't obviously you and name the project something you know but they don't - use a codeword or something. Then they can't accidentally run across it. I use private projects, but I don't feel they are necessary for most people.

Kumu is pretty awesome, but not exactly intuitive. It took me quite awhile to get things like I wanted them, so I'm sharing here. Let's set up a fake city's relationship chart - I'm making things up off the cuff here, so focus on the tool, not the level of creativity.

My settings are aimed at a Vampire Chronicle, but include some non-Vampire SPCs - if your Chronicle is a different splat or system, you can change or supplement this settings file to support your specific story.

Setting up your Kumu Account and a Kumu Chart

Go to Kumu.io and click Join for Free

• Register a new account - choose a Username that your players won't know. Use something like a code name generator if you want - https://www.fantasynamegenerators.com/code-names.php - this is a lot cheaper than a private account. I'm using 'FormalHercules' for this
• Create a new project - again, give it a non-obvious name - I'm using CuddlyLurker
• Choose "Public (FREE)" and create in your workspace
• Give your map a name - I just used the same one as the project - CuddlyLurker
• Choose Stakeholder as your template
• Go through the basic help popups to get to know Kumu

Installing My Map Settings

I have custom settings specifically for Vampire / World of Darkness chronicles. Click the Settings button:

Click Switch to Advanced Editor

Press the Copy button at the end of  the code below and paste it into the Advanced Editor, removing the boilerplate code that exists already. Make sure that Automatically apply changes is clicked and click Save on the You've made changes to this view.

@controls {
  top {
    filter {
      target: element;
      by: "tags";
      as: dropdown;
      placeholder: "Filter by Tags";
      multiple: true;
      default: show-all;
    }

    showcase {
      target: element;
      by: "tags";
      as: dropdown;
      placeholder: "Showcase by Tags";
      multiple: true;
      default: select-none;
      mode: normal;
    }
  }
}

@settings {
  template: custom;
  layout-gravity: 0.0003;
  layout-particle-charge: 350;
  connection-length: 150;
  connection-strength: 0.5;
  layout: force;
}

element {
  label: "{{label}}";
  size: 40;
  border-width: 4;
  shape: circle;
}

connection {
  direction: undirected;
  strength: 0.5;
}

.minor {
  size: 20;
}

.kindred {
  border-color: red;
}

.pc {
  border-color: #ff9999;
}

.mortal {
  border-color: green;
}

.warlock {
  border-color: purple;
  shape: square;
}

.werewolf {
  border-color: blue;
  shape: square;
}

.ghoul {
  border-color: #90ee90;
}

.dead {
  bullseye-color: #8B0000;
}

.ghost {
  bullseye-color: purple;
}

.camarilla {
  shape: octagon;
}

.anarch {
  shape: pentagon;
}

.sabbat {
  shape: hexagon;
}

.independent {
  shape: diamond;
}

.hunter {
  shape: square;
}

connection["label"*="Ghoul"] {
  color: #90ee90;
  strength: 0.8;
}

connection["label"*="Investig"] {
  strength: 0.2;
}

connection["label"="Coterie"] {
  color: #ff9999;
  strength: 1;
}

connection["label"*="Sire"] {
  color: #540304;
}

connection["label"*="Touchstone"] {
  color: #cc0eb9;
  strength: 1;
}

connection["label"*="Court Oath"] {
  color: #888c07;
}

If you see any red Syntax Errors, make sure that you have properly copy and pasted everything from the code - it should start with controls { and end with }. 

If everything worked correctly, you can close the Settings (by clicking the Settings button a second time) and you should see two new dropdowns at the top of the main map - "Filter by Tags" and "Showcase by Tags". Neither will do anything (until we have some data) but their presence shows that we're ready to enter some characters!

Entering Characters into our Map
Let's add some characters. Let's consider a small Chronicle (this tool supports quite large Chronicles - my current story with this tool has nearly 100 PCs and SPCs included, but this is just a sample):

PCs (all Kindred):

Mary, Anarch, Brujah
Priya, Anarch, Tremere
Bob, Anarch,Toreador
Fred, Anarch, Malkavian
And some SPCs (Kindred with 2 Werewolves, plus some Ghouls and a few Touchstones), with some relationships:
Rocco, Camarilla Brujah, Emissary, Mary's Sire
Silas, Anarch Malkavian, Neonate, Fred's Sire
Jeremiah, Anarch Ventrue, Sweeper
Lil, Anarch Toreador, Baron, Bob's Sire
Elijah, Anarch Ministry, Cult Priest
Gutter, Anarch Nosferatu, Neonate
Bart, Anarch Banu Haqim, Neonate
Samael, Sabbat Tzimisce, Infiltrator, Targeting to assassinate Jeremiah
Saskia, Shadow Lords, Pack member, Killed by Elijah
Alistair, Bone Gnawers, Pack member
Zeke, Mary's Touchstone and Ghoul
Lisa, Bob's Touchstone
Arnold, Bob's Ghoul
We'll start with the PC Coterie, picking, arbitrarily, Mary (the order you enter characters does not matter, Kumu will arrange them based on the relationships and the tags you give them).

Click the green Plus at the bottom of the screen, then Add element. (Maps have two major components - Elements, which are the Characters, and Connections, which are the Relationships between those characters).


Type "Mary" and press Enter

Mary will open up on the left hand side of the screen. We can type a description by clicking 'Add Description' and typing it in. We can also upload a picture for her by clicking the Camera. And add Tags by choosing Add Tag. These are the three primary capabilities that we want for our Characters. 


We will give her a picture (here I've taken it from a free use image from pexels.com). We will add a description (I normally include physical descriptions, backgrounds, etc - for PCs I include all sorts of things, including their provided background.) I do not include a character sheet - I store that in Foundry, for those characters that are fully statted out. For SPCs, I will include catch phrases, things that might help bring them alive, but I don't include all their plots - I run a separate plot document for that. 

We also include Tags, which are basically the important elements of her. Her clan, her supernatural status, her Sect, whatever. Some Tags have special properties in our Kumu settings that we added, which make them show up differently. By default, characters have a black outline and their shape is a circle. The special tags are:
Minor - Indicates this is a minor character, makes the character smaller in the map
Kindred - Indicates a Kindred, makes their outline red
PC - Indicates this is a PC, makes their outline a salmon colour
Mortal - Indicates this is a Mortal, makes their outline green
Warlock - Indicates a Mage or a Sorcerer, makes their outline purple and the shape a square
Werewolf - Indicates a Werewolf or Garou, makes their outline blue and the shape a square
Ghoul - Indicates a Ghoul, makes their outline light green
Dead - Indicates the character is dead, puts a dark red 'bullseye' on the middle of their shape
Ghost - Indicates the character is dead, but is a ghost or Wraith, puts a purple 'bullseye' on the middle of their shape
Camarilla - Indicates the character is aligned with the Camarilla, makes their shape an octagon
Anarch - Indicates the character is aligned with the Anarchs, makes their shape a pentagon
Sabbat - Indicates the character is aligned with the Sabbat, makes their shape a hexagon
Independent - Indicates the character is unaligned, makes their shape a diamond
Hunter - Indicates the character is a Hunter, makes their shape a square
You can customize these tags, adding more or changing them, by editing the code in the Settings. Instructions for doings so is beyond the scope of this instructions, but the Kumu docs have information on available shapes and syntax. The key thing to remember is that the last instruction in the file takes precedence, so if multiple things are changing shape or colour, the last one prevails - that is the reason for the somewhat odd ordering of the Tags in the above list. Let's consider Mary:


She has 'Kindred', which marks her as a Vampire and makes her border colour red. This is overridden by her 'PC' tag, which turns it Salmon, instead, marking the PCs in the Chronicle as different than the other vampires. She has Anarch, which changes her shape to a Pentagon, and Brujah, which has no effect on her visually, but makes it available for filtering and makes it visible on the character information. 

You will notice when adding tags that the first time you have to type the entire tag in and that for future characters, any tags that have been assigned to previous characters are available to chose. Case does not matter with tags, but they do need to be exact. You can add any other arbitrary tags to indicate alliances, coteries, or anything else that might matter, but only the tags above currently influence appearance.

Let's add some more characters. The easiest way to add a character with a relationship to an existing character is to click on the existing character, in this case Mary, and press C. Alternatively, you can hit the Green Plus at the bottom of the screen and choose Add connection. You'll be prompted to choose the two characters you want to connect. In this case, Mary and the next PC Priya. 

 

Once we have Priya open, we'll go ahead and all her information. We then need to define the relationship for the two. We click on the line that goes between the two characters.


When we click on that line, we are presented with an edit window on the left for the relationship with those two characters. Relationships can have tags, same as Characters, but I don't use the tags. Instead, I modify the relationship based on the name. This just seems to work better for me. 


You can see that the Coterie name on the Relationship set the colour of the relationship to the same salmon colour that the PCs have. The name is searched for letters that match specific patterns. Words that have meaning are:
Ghoul - makes the connection colour light green and makes it stronger than default, which tends to keep ghouls closer to their regent
Coterie - makes the connection colour salmon and keeps the Coterie mates close together
Sire - makes the connection colour dark red
Touchstone - makes the connection colour purple and makes it even stronger, which tends to keep touchstones close to the characters they are touchstones for
I will go ahead and add the rest of the characters to the relationship map, so we can highlight various aspects of the relationship map that gets built.

The Relationship Map will jump around while connections are being built. There are random elements to the way Kumu structures and lays out the map, so refreshing the web page can update how things are laid out. The Zoom Fit button on the top right can also be helpful. After entering all the characters and their relationships (I recommend at least two relationships per character), I get the following:


Let's looked at a zoomed in section and what we can see:


We can see two members of the Coterie - whose Relationship is coloured salmon because of the Coterie name. We can see they are PCs because of their salmon coloured border. We can see that Alistair and Saskia are Werewolves, because of their blue square borders. That Zeke is a Ghoul, and that his relationship with Mary is one that is a Touchstone shown in purple (which is more important than the Ghoul relationship) that is also indicated. We see that Priya, Mary, Jememiah, Elijah are all Anarch Kindred, with Samael Sabbat and Rocco Camarilla. We see the dark red Sire relationships - Lil being Bob's sire and Rocco being Mary's. We see Saskia is dead - her face obscured by a bullseye. And we see all the other relationships between the characters that we might want to add. 
The Relationship Map In Action
Ok, so we've got all this fabulous information and all these Characters and Relationships. How do I use it?

We can filter or showcase - where are my Ghouls? Here I've used the 'Showcase' functionality at the top of the screen to focus on anyone with a Ghoul tag.

We can search for names:



We can focus on specific characters, by long clicking on that character. Here is a search for Lil, followed by a long click on her:
Long clicking on any person in the zoomed in map adds their relationships as well. Pressing Escape returns us to the main map. 

There is a table view of Characters that can be very useful to ensure tags are correct. Click the Table button in the bottom right.


This Table view shows all of the Elements (Characters) in the Map, with their Tags


Press Back to Map to return.
Efficiency
If you have an existing Chronicle or you have a large number of characters that already exist, you can import the basic information through Excel sheets or comma delimited files or other import capabilities. This is beyond the scope of this Article, Kumu has excellent documentation on using those capabilities.
Conclusion
Hopefully this article will help you use Kumu in your game. I depend on it to check myself, for it to be my memory, paired with my Plot document and my Session logs. Kumu makes a big difference in my game. I'm going to conclude with a overview view of my Chronicle's relationship map - at time of writing and of this image, there are 94 characters and 183 relationships shown in this map.

Populating a City with Kindred

When building a Chronicle, unless you are setting it in a City created by someone else, one of the first major jobs a Storyteller has before them is to populate that city with Storyteller Player Characters (SPCs). SPCs are the key mortals, with Kindred, with ghouls, with other supernaturals. Depending on the city size, there could be hundreds of potential Kindred - a ridiculous number. We deal with this by focussing on the characters that matter and leave others for later creation.

Population Numbers

First, consider the size of the city - the number of mortal humans that call that place home. Generally, consider the wider area - suburbs and so forth - that might be present in the downtown streets that are often prime feeding locations. We'll then take a ratio of those mortals and use that as our Kindred count.

The advice for how many mortals are needed to support a Kindred population safely varies - while you only need 30 or 60 mortals for a blood supply, V5 recommends a minimum ratio of 1 vampire to 3000 mortals to allow the vampire to remain concealed within the population. Previous editions had this number considerably higher, noting that the Camarilla insisted on ratios of 1 to 100,000 in certain instances and noting that Princes often enforced arbitrary ratios to keep control of the power to create progeny. Anarch or Sabbat domains may have a lower ratio, with more Kindred for a given city size. 

I find a 1:10,000 ratio in smaller cities and a 1:50,000 ratio in larger cities tends to give us a good number of Kindred for the player characters to interact with. In small towns, the ratio will have to be even lower - and that might flavour the campaign significantly. The PCs might be the only Kindred there in certain small towns - a very different kind of game. Being below the "concealment factor" may make the Masquerade the absolute centre of the game, similar to the situation in The Monsters, the canonical quick start for Vampire V5.

As for ghouls - each Kindred could have no ghouls or many ghouls, depending on their position, preferences, and needs. I would assume a ghoul population about twice the vampire population.

With regards to other supernaturals - we can assume there may be Werewolves on the outskirts, Mages and Warlocks of various flavours around, some Fae, some Spirits or Wraiths - the numbers don't really matter unless it is a focus on the Chronicle. If you want some of these in your game, consider ones that might interact with the Kindred and the Coterie in specific and set a number for those. This is completely up to the flavour of the game you want. Perhaps 0-6 is a good target range unless the story calls for specific numbers.

Let's look at some examples:

	Town	Small City	Mid-Sized City	Large City	Metropolis
Number of Mortals	15,000	100,000	500,000	1,000,000	8,000,000
Number of Kindred	0-5	10-15	50	70-100	160-200
Number of Ghouls	0-10	20-30	100	140-200	320-400
Number of other Supernaturals	0-6	0-6	0-6	0-6	0-6

To be clear, I am not suggesting the number of other Supernaturals in New York is the same as in Hicksville, USA. I am suggesting that the number of other Supernaturals that will impact the Chronicle, at least in the beginning, is likely to be the same, unless it matters to your Chronicle.

Creating the Population

Looking at this table, the numbers look daunting. If we were creating Amsterdam, Calgary, or Jacksonville (cities with roughly 1,000,000 mortals), we'd be creating at least 70 vampires and 140 ghouls. Are we really going to sit down and create that many stat sheets, personalities, descriptions, motivations, plots, plans, relationships and touchstones? Absolutely not. My advice, for populating out a city, for who to create and in what order:

1. Start with the Kindred on the top of the pecking order. In a Camarilla city, the Prince and Council and more powerful rivals of those Kindred. In an Anarch city, the Baron and/or Council and/or the influential Kindred. In a Sabbat City, the Archbishop and Bishops and other powerful Kindred. In a mixed city, do both.
2.  Then focus on ones who will directly interact initially with the Coterie - their potential Sires and the Sires' problems/rivalries/friends/enemies, things at the lower level of the hierarchy nearer to the Player Characters
3. Sprinkle in a few key interesting folks from the lower end of various rival groups - create some rival coteries if the city is large enough, create some individual Kindred at the Coterie power level if not. Pure rivals and enemies, frenemies, potential rivals. Don't lock these folks into specific friend/enemy roles - the players will let you know quickly who they like and don't like.
4. Pull together some oddballs - things to bring the City alive. The seers, the iconoclasts, the spies, the visitors. Some flavourful Kindred that don't necessarily fit in the power structure of the City.
5. Create key ghouls that the Coterie is likely to encounter early in the Chronicle to attach to these Kindred or to key locations, like Elysium
6. Create key mortals (or use the real ones from the real city) for some key positions - mayor, council people, police chiefs, and so forth.

After you have created these - balancing the number in each category with the number of Kindred and ghouls there are - in a mid-sized city or larger there will be plenty of Kindred left uncreated and even more ghouls. Great. Don't create them. They are your background players - or room to create the perfect SPC for the situation. They only exist when they are relevant. When you do improvise one, add them to your notes.

How to Create an SPC

I use three documents to keep track of virtually everything in my Chronicle. I use a relationship map; a plot document to set out plots; and a session log to track everything that happens in a given session. When a session concludes, I update my plot documents and relationship map as appropriate. You can use Kumu, Miro, Obsidian, Google Docs - whatever makes things clear to you. You can see my tools here.

My relationship map tracks everything about the SPCs (and PCs) except their sheet if they have one. MOST of the SPCs in my Chronicle do not have a sheet. At best, they have some notes about specific dice pools they have. They may just have a note about how powerful they are with the expectation that I'll use the SPC pools method I wrote up in an article. The relationship map entry keeps track of how they are connected to other players, and its text describes their appearance, motivation and personality. If I do end up fully creating an SPC, it will be in Foundry for dice rolls, but for most SPCs, their personal traits are the important things. To make my life easier, if I do need to stat an SPC, I may steal a stat block from a published source. 

Introducing the SPCs

Once you've got all these characters, there's a temptation to rush into explaining everything to the players and their characters. Don't. Provide some background prior to Session 1 - who the Prince is, who the key SPCs are that their characters would already know, but during the first session, limit yourself. Don't have an Elysium where you are describing dozens of characters - your players eyes will glaze over. Trickle our SPCs slowly, so they each get a chance to make an impression. Your players need that time to develop relationships and so will their characters. This game is entirely about relationships, so give them time to grow.

Final Thoughts

With these tips, you should be spending your time where it counts - creating interesting, memorable SPCs that your players will enjoy encountering. You will minimize the effort you put in up front and maximize the return on that investment, and only creating further SPCs when you need them. As an example, my Chronicle (set in a city of 500,000) started with around 45 SPCs of various types. A year later (of pretty consistent weekly play), my relationship map now has 95 entries. But 50 of those I did not create until I knew I needed them. Efficiency!

"Splitting the Party"

In a lot of game systems, "splitting the party" is considered a bad thing, setting the group up for a painful encounter. In Vampire - and most other WoD games - it is just how the game is played, given the nature of the world. Let's talk about why that is and how to handle the challenges inherent in doing so frequently. I'm concentrating on Vampire here as far as flavour, but the techniques here should work with any game.

Why Split the Party?

In Vampire, the Coterie are often thrown together - oddly matched folks brought together by circumstance, by orders, by survival. The player characters are not together by choice, and they likely don't fully trust each other. Further, they have relationships with other characters that are private - their Sires, their mortal touchstones, other remnants of their mortal lives, allies, contacts, rivals, enemies. Bringing everyone along to have a touching conversation with the romantic partner who you now must keep at a distance just doesn't work. You as a Nosferatu skulking through the Warrens with a Toreador, a Brujah, and a Ventrue in tow just because you need to have a conversation with your sire is silly. Player Characters need their private scenes. The Coterie may divide and conquer, may have chats between just two of its members, any combination of characters is possible and likely.

This is largely a game of relationships, societies, politics, hunts, stalkings, escapes, rivalries, romance, obsession, and hunger - we (probably) aren't adventurers going through a dungeon (not that there's anything wrong with that - D&D is fun, too). We expect to live our unlives and that means time apart.

The Problems with Splitting the Party

When doing a scenes that do not involve the entire Coterie, there are a number of challenges. You have players who might be bored when not involved; there will be all sorts of interesting information that players will be hearing that their characters don't know; there will need to be balancing to make sure every character gets a chance to shine; and there may be players that struggle with character agency, either in general or for that session.

Bored Players

We need to keep the players not directly involved paying attention. The game suffers when folks are not engaged, even when they aren't directly involved. Some tricks we use to keep people involved:

• Make it an expectation - this was part of the very first set of conversations I had about this game, part of the original package of documents I created for it (see Introducing a Chronicle to look at my introduction documents). Talk to players - let them know they will have more fun if they get invested in each others' stories too
• Game chat channels - we play online, talking via Discord. When a smaller group is in the spotlight, we'll get relevant memes and side commentary in that chat channel from those not involved. That may not work for everyone, but it really lets me know that folks are following the conversation and what's happening. I'd be interested to know if someone tries something similar with in person play.
• Bribe them - I expect players to take notes and one of the ways I encourage that is by having someone give the session summary at the beginning of the next session. A good summary gets a 2xp bonus - and a good session includes all the activity for all the characters
• Keep it short - get that spotlight moment to a beat or a moment, keep the light on it for a few breaths to let it shine, then jump to another player or set of players. Alternatively, switch on a cliffhanger, that can be fun, too. 20-25 minutes is probably the outer limit for any one focus on a subgroup, but bouncing back and forth between a number of player subgroups can work well
• Talk to your players - characters can bring other characters when it is plausible, even if it isn't fully realistic - hopefully they like playing together, so they can be empowered to make opportunities to do so

With these techniques, we can hopefully keep our players inspired to pay attention even when the spotlight isn't on them.

Out of Character Information

First, definitions:

• In Character - things a character knows or does
• Out of Character - things a player knows or does that their character may not

This one, to me, is simple. The World of Darkness is a game for mature players. We have an early conversation to lay out the expectation that Out of Character information is only used to make the game better for everyone, never to gain an In Character advantage. There are tons of things that players will know - there's nothing that prevents them from learning the Lore of the world or reading books or finding out advantages in other ways.

So, pay attention, challenge on motivations when characters do things when it seems not to match up with character information, and talk to your players about this expectation.

Balancing Character Spotlights

Sometimes this is difficult - it is a normal night for some players and the culmination of an arc for others. This is where you earn your stripes as a Storyteller - use the normality of another character's moments as a contrasting element. Flip from extreme danger to extreme banality - this can be very fun. Add a mysterious thing to that normality after a few flips back and forth - maybe the Malkavian gets a premonition; maybe someone seems to have been following the Ventrue's limo, but no, they are gone now; maybe the animals seem spooked where the Gangrel is hunting. Some hint of something that will come to fruition later, get that subgroup's players thinking and invested. You don't have to (and probably shouldn't) try to match the energies, but definitely give some spark to every player's scene.

Remember that things need to balance out for characters over time - you can give a little extra time at the end of a story arc for one player, and have other players get their time to shine in a later session. You still can't have folks sitting not doing things for an hour, that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about one extra spotlight moment for a given player, or lingering a bit longer when a scene is really working. Just make sure that this doesn't happen for the same player character all the time.

Reduced Agency

Sometimes you go to a player whose character didn't get brought along by another subgroup, ask what their character would be doing at that moment and they just don't have an answer. Or that answer is not very high energy and they seem uncertain about what they want for their character at that moment. There's two approaches here:

Something based on the plots and plans I have - I ask my players for the motivations, plans, plots, wishes, desires, habits of their characters. I have some notes for things that can happen to various characters - texts from touchstones, plots that SPCs are dragging them into. Often I'll pluck something from there - they want to know more about the Anarchs in the city? Well, turns out an Anarch wants to know about them. What a coincidence, they are getting approached. 

Something fundamental to the nature of the game - Do they need to feed? Actually play out a full feeding scene, give them a chance to hunt, linger over the actual monstrosity that is Kindred. Can they be tempted? Ventrue pushing to be Prince considers them a tool of the current Prince and wants to sow discord, offers a deal to this character for some information. Can some element of mundane life complicate their existence? Low resources Brujah finds a note saying they need to go down to the property office at noon tomorrow to sign a lease extension. 

This is tricky for Storytellers - the World of Darkness are collaborative storytelling games and this player is pushing more of that work towards you. Have conversations with them and prep for this situation. I keep some generic situations in my plot document that I have at the ready to spring on a character that needs some motivation. Weird occult happenings, annoying mundane things, strange mysteries. The World of Darkness is limitless in its weirdness, so you can improv something and figure out what it means later.

Getting the Group Back Together

The game should be a mix of spotlights on individual characters, small subgroups doing things together, and the entire Coterie all together. The same tricks you use to give folks things to do apart work just as well for things to do together. Hopefully, the Coterie feels stronger as a group, so "main plot" (whatever that means in a World of Darkness game) advancements happen often with the group all together. They became a Coterie for some reason, after all. 

Give them missions from the Prince/Baron/Pack Priest that they need everyone together to do. Host an Elysium and make it clear that the entire Kindred population is expected to attend. Give fragments of information to each that they will need to work together to combine and make sense of.

And work with the players, too, to have this balance. Again, this is a collaborative, storytelling experience - they have work to do here, too, to make sure everyone gets time to shine and everyone gets back together too.

Advice for New Storytellers

I answer quite a few Reddit posts about how to get started in Storytelling in the World of Darkness. Here's some advice that may help new Storytellers in general. This advice is biased towards Vampire, biased towards V5, but is largely version agnostic or even system agnostic. It is a list of 15 things. They could probably each be an article by themselves, but I tried to keep things short and sweet.

1. Have a conversation with your players. You are new to this system. You are doing your best. If they aren't willing to be patient and give you a chance, the Chronicle isn't going to work.
2. Talk about Consent. Use Lines and Veils or an equivalent system to set out what is and is not acceptable in the game. The World of Darkness is a game about terrible things, but don't let that be an excuse to be terrible to each other. People matter more than games.
3. Talk with your Players about the theme. Make sure that they know the sort of story you want to tell and are into it. If you want gritty street gang level conflicts in an Anarch run city and they want glittering Camarilla Courts, there is going to be a disconnect. You don't need to give things away, but talk about the themes and flavours you are looking to invoke.
4. Don't sweat about humour. Players will make jokes that break the tension. You can make jokes. Have the laugh. Then go back to building that atmosphere. We are here to have fun with friends, so don't police the mood. But see point 3 - if you are trying to build a tense environment, make sure your players are in for that and will co-operate.
5. Run a one-shot. The Monsters is a pretty decent start - the official Kickstart for Vampire V5 - don't try to create everything for your first go at the World of Darkness. That's doing things on Hard Mode and you really don't need to do that. There are lots of one-shots on Storyteller's Vault, too, if you don't like The Monsters or you are running a different system.
6. You do need to know how to call for a roll and the basics of the systems. The Monsters One-Shot has a good start, I also have my guides on this site if you are playing V5 - for other systems, see if you can find a good intro guide or a quick start.
7. When you call for a roll, do allow your players to suggest a substitute roll - but you don't have to accept it. For example, if you call for a Persuasion roll, a player might argue for Intimidation if they described their character's dialogue as being particularly threatening. Also - players don't call for rolls, you do. Call for a roll when things would be interesting if things go sideways.
8. Own your Lore. The World of Darkness has decades of Lore. You will not get it all right, even if you've been doing this for decades. If you are new, you have absolutely no chance. And that's fine. Embrace the unreliable narrator. Make it clear to your players that this is YOUR World of Darkness. The Lore in the World of Darkness comes from characters - they all have reasons to lie, be wrong, be deceived, be of unsound mind, be broken. That means that the Lore as printed can be just rumours in your game. If you contradict the written lore, you are right. Especially if you are a newer Storyteller playing with more experienced players, make sure your players understand this.
9. I have been heavily influenced by Jason Carl and Alexander Ward in my recent Storytelling of the Vampire world - consider checking out their work, but don't feel you have to copy it. Be your own version of a Storyteller. That said, here are some things that work for me - in Vampire, be the Beast - your players' characters are inhabited by an inhuman thing, a seething mess of survival and Hunger that seeks to drive them to abandon who they were and give in to simply being the instinctive predator. In Werewolf - be the wolf, be the Rage that boils in the character. In Hunter, be the fear and Despair and paranoia that drips through those stories. I love giving asides like "Do you really believe that?" when players are talking and asserting their character's humanity. "You could just kill him. Drink him dry. Nobody will miss them and you'll feel so much better." "They are corrupting things, tear them apart." "Is it worthwhile? Everyone dies sometime."  Remind your players how different yet eerily familiar the World of Darkness is. Their characters are inhabiting a world where things seem the same as our world but where things actually do go bump in the night.
10. You don't have to run every feeding scene. You don't have to even roll for every feeding scene. Sometimes you can just gloss over it and get to the meat of the session. But still - feeding is part of Vampire. Give it attention when you get the opportunity to and remind your players of the otherness of using a person as a food source.
11. Minimize combat - combat often reduces tension. The fear of it, the potential for violence ratchets up tension, and that means it always needs to be an option, something that can happen or the threats around the players start to fall flat. But once we're focussed on mechanics and dice and all the machinery of combat, you can lose hard-won fear and paranoia. Don't let combat linger too long, either - three rounds and out is a common idea. Base what happens next on those three rounds. I'll sometimes extend it a round or two if it looks like that will wrap things up appropriately, but combat in WoD isn't sufficiently tactical to be worth lingering on. That said, learn how combat works - there's a great guide on the V5 Homebrew site which I really like.
12. Don't feel you have to stat out every character.  Use difficulty levels rather than dice pools sometimes - see the Antagonists info from the Wiki. Use my SPC system to avoid statting SPCs. Use SPC stat blocks when you do stat out a character, not a full character sheet. Steal SPC stat blocks from published material. You don't have to do all this yourself.
13. Take really good notes (or record your sessions and take notes after). Keep track of the relationships and the plots that develop. I use three main documents - Kumu for a relationship map / character info, a plot document, and session notes. I've got an article on the tools I use for Storytelling on this site.
14. Use Stars and Wishes or a similar system to learn what is working for your players (and you) and what isn't. Feedback is so helpful and Storytellers often feel like they have no idea if people are enjoying what they are doing. Ask.
15. Relax and remember this is supposed to be fun for everyone, including you. This is a game. Nobody will die if you mess up a rule or forget a character or miss a story beat. Pause. Reflect. Fix things the best you can. And carry on. Or start over. Or whatever you need to do. This is a game. Have fun with it.

Hope this is helpful! Go run an awesome game!