Vampire: The Requiem is a role-playing game published by White Wolf, set in the World of Darkness, and the successor to the Vampire: The Masquerade line. It was first released in August 2004, together with a new core rule book for the World of Darkness. Although it is an entirely new game, rather than a continuation of the previous editions, it uses many elements from the old game in its construction, including some of the clans and their powers. The game's title is a metaphor for the way vampires within the game view their life.

Clans

Similar to the previous game, Kindred are brought into one of five clans as part of their transformation into vampires:

    * Daeva
    * Gangrel
    * Mekhet
    * Nosferatu
    * Ventrue

Each clan covers a broad range of vampiric archetypes. The Daeva, for instance, are both seductive and predatorial, evoking the image of vampires who glide through society as debonair hunters, much like Lestat in Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles. The Gangrel represent the idea of vampires as solitary, savage hunters. The Mekhet are conspiratorial occultists, vampires who hide in the shadows gathering lore and knowledge while manipulating others from afar. Nosferatu vampires are the alienated or disfigured monsters of legend (such as Count Orlok of their movie namesake), while the Ventrue represent vampires possessed of an aristocratic, "lords of the night" sensibility, like Bram Stoker's Dracula.

Within these clans are many sub-clans, known as bloodlines.

Covenants

There are also many political or religious factions, known as Covenants. These include:

    * The Carthian Movement works towards finding the best form of government for the Kindred, basing its experiments on mortal systems like Democracy, Fascism and the like. It is the only Covenant that elects leaders, and is the newest major Covenant. Members frequently argue over the best form of government and this Covenant is primarily secular in outlook and character.

    * The Circle of the Crone is considered the vampiric equivalent of neo-paganism and witchcraft, following the belief that a goddess (the Crone) was cast out from the other Gods and Goddesses. They celebrate most of the major Wiccan holidays and practice the Blood Magic known as "Crúac". Despite many differences in belief and opinion between various circles and cities of the Covenant, all generally dislike the Lancea Sanctum.

    * The Invictus (also known as the "First Estate") are mostly concerned with material gain and power and therefore heavily involved in city politics and business.

    * The Lancea Sanctum is an organization which grew parallel to Christianity, therefore commonly being mistaken for a vampiric equivalent of it. They believe Kindred (the word vampires use for themselves) have a role in the Divine Providence: that of the ultimate predators. As vampires, they're to prey upon humans, thus unleashing God's Wrath upon the unworthy and representing tests for the pious.

    * The Ordo Dracul is focused on understanding the vampiric condition, improving upon it and ultimately transcending the limitations of their condition. They practice Blood Magic known as The Coils of the Dragon and believe their line was started by Dracula.

    * The Unaligned

Powers, abilities and weaknesses

Blood Potency

A vampire's power is roughly measured by his Blood Potency. Regardless of his sire's power, all vampires start off at level 1. Blood Potency increases steadily with age, but can also be boosted by spending experience points or consuming the soul of another vampire (diablerie). As its Blood Potency increases, a vampire can store more blood points and access greater supernatural powers. However, his feeding needs became more stringent as well; the weakest vampires can live on animal blood, but the most powerful vampires can only live on the blood of other vampires. Such powerful vampires who cannot meet this need usually go into prolonged slumber to weaken themselves.

Disciplines

Kindred can use a variety of supernatural powers called Disciplines. These are special abilities associated with their curse which, like their undead bodies, are "fed" in a way by the living blood they take from mortals. Many of the Disciplines provide Kindred with preternatural means of ensuring their continued existence, or of easing the process of hunting and stealing blood from mortals.

Disciplines can be broken down into four categories: common (commonplace among the Kindred and more than one clan has an innate knack for them), uncommon (the proprietary abilities of each of the five clans), covenant (possessed only by a specific covenant and never shared with outsiders), and bloodline (known only to the members of a particular bloodline within a clan). However, each Kindred has the capability to, given a tutor and the proper amount of time (sometimes years for powerful disciplines), learn a discipline that is not natural to their clan or covenant. In game mechanics, the experience point cost for such disciplines is higher than that of a clan discipline innate to a specific Kindred, and given the amount of time in a given storyline necessary to successfully master an other-clan discipline, many players never get the chance to fully master such things. However, some storytellers (the orchestrator and judge of the game) allow certain concessions, or "house rules", that enable players to learn out-of-clan disciplines more easily than is standard in the official rulebook; this allows for more powerful characters and decreases mechanical differences between the different groups.

Common discplines

Physical disciplines can grant the ability to move at faster-than-human speeds, to withstand damaging attacks with comparatively minor injuries, or the ability to manifest supernatural strength above and beyond even a vampire's naturally superhuman capabilities.

Psychic disciplines can give the power to commune with and command animals, or the ability to prevent others from sensing one's self by clouding their minds.

Uncommon disciplines

The so-called "uncommon disciplines" include preternatural sensitivity and awareness and the ability to foresee and know things seemingly unknowable, a piercing stare that commands minds and the ability to break the will of others, or a seductive or commanding sway of emotions and the predatory manipulation of the weak. Other disciplines might give the power to evoke sheer terror by revealing one's primal nature, or an ability to assume a variety of forms such as a wolf or a mist.

Covenant disciplines

        * Coils of the Dragon: Used to cheat the Curse, stripping away limitations and negative effects of the Unliving state (practiced by the Ordo Dracul).
        * Crúac: Pagan blood sorcery (practiced by the Circle of the Crone).
        * Theban Sorcery: Miraculous magic taught by, or in some interpretations stolen from, an "avatar of God" (practiced by the Lancea Sanctum).

Bloodline (Rare) disciplines

    The various Rare Disciplines are numerous and wildly diverse. While they are generally only available to their respective bloodlines, and highly specialized, there are a few which provide significant advantages in combat (particularly some published in the antagonists book, VII, and that of the Spina Bloodline from the Invictus supplement).

Weaknesses

Unlike many fictional portrayals, vampires in Requiem are not repelled by crucifixes, garlic or running water, and they can enter any private domain without invitation. A stake through the heart merely paralyses them. Fire, sunlight and the claws and fangs of animals inflict terrible injuries that take a lot of time and blood to heal. During the daytime most vampires become catatonic and cannot operate, whether or not they are sheltered from sunlight.

Antagonists

Vampires have many enemies, most from within their own clans and covenants. There are some that stand out as being opposed to Vampire society as a whole, and some of the most prominent of these are vampires themselves. There are only two "enemy only" covenants in the core rulebook:

Belial's Brood

A loose confederation of Satanists, demon-worshippers and overt miscreants. The Covenant claims that the Damned originate from Hell itself, and exalt in the spread of misery and pain.

They are intended to be more straightforward enemies than other antagonists that might be fought against in The Requiem, as their goals (spreading wanton misery and violence, heedless of whether or not they expose the existence of vampires) are antithetical to nearly any character.

VII

A very mysterious organization, VII is dedicated to the destruction of their own species. They carry out attacks of sabotage and murder against other vampires for mysterious reasons.

In the game, they serve as the shadow antagonists - the monster's monsters. The Storyteller is encouraged to invent his own reasons for VII's agenda.