What books should I buy?

We've probably now seen the last V5 book published (Courts of the Damned). I have all of them (mostly on PDF, but quite a few in hardback too). Which books you need depends on the game you want to play and your own experience with the game. Here's my opinions to try to help you decide where to invest. This list is from https://vtm.paradoxwikis.com/Official_TTRPG_sources - I'm not including most of the smaller PDFs or Stories (like the Monsters, or New Blood, etc) - I'm concentrating on the core source material, the larger traditional hardbound books, with a few exceptions where they are tightly tied to a larger book.

If you can, I find all of these books more readable in hardcover, but I picked up almost all of these in a Humble Bundle pdf sale at a fraction of the retail price. If you see that, I recommend that option.

A Sample Set of Session Notes

 A screenshot of a random set of notes from a session, given as an example.

Foundry Arbitrary Pool Dice Roller

I roll a lot of arbitrary sets of dice and use Foundry, so I want a system that lets me roll a number of Hunger and non-Hunger dice that I choose. This macro just feeds into the Foundry World of Darkness 5e system I already have installed. To use it, just create a Macro and paste this as the code. This was mostly written by Gemini and tweaked a bit by me.

I want to run a Chronicle - Where Do I Start?

For ages, I've said "Play The Monsters as your first story for Vampire the Masquerade V5." But that's out of date. There's many better options now. I've solicited opinions on Reddit and dug into Reddit posts over the past few years to help you determine the best place for you to start - for you.

I started this article intending to go through all the various paths that you could possibly try. I'm not going to do that. Instead, I'm going to give you an opinionated path to start V5.  I'm assuming sessions will be around 3 hours long - adjust based on the length of your sessions.

Playing Vampire the Masquerade V5 In Other Eras (1800-2020s)

The default experience of Vampire the Masquerade V5 is present day - that is, the 2020s. The tidal wave of Lore has moved forward - clans have shifted and changed, things have happened since previous versions set in earlier decades. The books lay out the Clans and the Sects as they exist now, which is fantastic if you want to play that default experience, but what if you want to play in an earlier time period?

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.

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.