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Hello, and thank you for being part of the pre-alpha playtest for Vampire the Masquerade 5th Edition. Today you’ll be among the very first to see the shape and direction for VTM 5E (or V5). What is Vampire the Masquerade? Vampire is a storytelling game of personal and political horror. In Vampire, you are the monster; you are a vampire struggling for survival, supremacy, and your own fading humanity. You’re afraid of what you are capable of (personal), and afraid of the inhuman conspiracies and mysteries that surround you (political). Design Goals Before we wrote any rules, we spent a lot of time thinking about what we want the rules to accomplish. Some goals were clear and easy for us to describe: speed up play, make the rules easier to teach and to learn, and create options for players to customize the rules to suit their preferred styles of play. But some goals are expressed less easily in rules, and it’s these areas in which we ask for your help today. As we begin work on V5 and the next 25 years, we're inviting artists, writers, and fans to offer their views of the Vampire—to explore it through the lens of this century, to push its limits. But you, the player community, will always provide its heart and soul Development Status This pre-alpha playtest draws on 25 years of Vampire the Masquerade. We have selected some rules and concepts from different editions, choosing what we felt each edition did best to help us create this newest version of the game. Some rules, like Hunger, are completely new. Nothing here is final, and almost everything will go through several iterations of design, redesign, and testing before it’s ready for the Alpha Playtest later this year. Feedback We appreciate your help today. Please help us improve these pre-alpha rules by sharing your opinions about it with us. You can provide us with feedback as part of the playtest or immediately after, any time that you see us at the World of Darkness Berlin

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convention, or through the playtest survey that we will share with you in email after the convention.

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BASIC ACTION RESOLUTION Dice Pool Vampire is a dice pool game. This means for most actions, you’ll roll a pool of 10-sided (d10) dice that represent some combination of traits on your character sheet. The most common dice pool is Attribute + Skill. Example: Helen and Timothy are vampires who are sneaking around in a police department headquarters. They are looking for some information about a recent crime that may compromise Helen’s childe, Lucas. While Timothy keeps an eye on the lone police detective working the night shift at the front desk, Helen attempts to access the department computer files from a laptop in an adjoining room. The Storyteller sets the Difficulty at 2. Helen’s Mental Attribute is 3 and her Computer Skill is 2, so she has a dice pool of 5 (3 + 2 =5) to accomplish this task.

How to Succeed When you roll a dice pool, every die result that is 6 or higher is a success. This includes 10 (represented as “0” on most d10s).

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The Storyteller determines how many successes you need for each role, depending on the difficulty of what you’re trying to accomplish. Example difficulties:

Easy = 1 success Standard = 2 successes

Moderate = 3-4 successes Challenging = 5 successes

Hard = 6 successes Very Hard = 7-8 successes

Nearly Impossible = 9-10 successes

IMPORTANT: In V5, Difficulty means the number of successful dice required to succeed at a task, not the target number for the individual dice (which is always 6+)!

Some rolls are opposed. Instead of comparing successes to a static difficulty number, you and the Storyteller (or another player) will both roll dice pools, and compare the total number of your successes. The highest total of successes wins the contest. Note that the individual pools need not include all the same traits. The Price of Failure If your roll includes no successes, your character failed. Failure sometimes means only that your character didn’t achieve the desired result; sometimes it means dire consequences occur. The Storyteller defines what failure means according to situation and circumstances, and decides whether or not you can try again after a failure. You may spend a point of Willpower to re-roll any or all dice; see Willpower, below. Example: Timothy distracts the mortal detective at the front desk while Helen searches the files. He decides to pretend to

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be an ordinary citizen who wants to file a missing person’s report. The Storyteller decides that the officer is suspicious and that this will be an opposed roll. Timothy’s dice pool is Social 3 + Persuasion 3 = 6. The detective’s pool is Mental 2 + Subterfuge 2 = 4. Timothy rolls six dice and gets 2,3,5,5,5,9, that’s only one success. The detective rolls 1,4,8,8, that’s two successes. He’s not buying what Timothy is selling, and reacts with very open disbelief. Timothy could opt to spend Willpower and re-roll any or all of the dice in his pool. If your roll included some successes, you can try again later in the scene, but you suffer a setback. The next time you try, the task gets harder: the Difficulty increases by at least 1. The Storyteller may ask you what you do differently the next time to justify getting to retry an action. Succeed at a Cost If your roll includes any successes, but fails by one success, you may opt to “succeed at a cost.” You succeeded in your attempt, but something happened to make things worse for you anyway: you take damage, attract unfriendly (and powerful) notice, lose something you value, etc. Any player (including you) or the Storyteller can suggest the cost; if it’s too high, you can always opt to fail instead. Example: Timothy failed by one success; he suggests that he successfully pretended to file the report but left a fingerprint behind. The Storyteller thinks that’s not immediately costly enough, and counters by suggesting Timothy accidentally used Lucas’ name in the report, linking the two of them in police records. Timothy decides to take the failure rather than piss off Helen by getting her childe more heat. The Storyteller may rule that you cannot succeed at a cost in circumstances in which nobody can think of an adequate cost.

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Take Half We encourage the Storyteller to "Take Half" when making opposed rolls for Non-player characters (NPCs), to speed action resolution whenever the situation seems appropriate. To Take Half, count the number of dice in the opposed pool, divide in half, and that’s the number of successes. Round up any fractions. Example: In the previous example, the Storyteller could have chosen to Take Half instead of rolling for the police detective. The detective’s pool is 4, and so if the ST decides to Take Half the detective gets 2 successes on his roll. Basic Action Summary 1. Storyteller identifies the task or situation (throw a punch, climb a wall, intimidate an enemy, etc.) and whether the test is Static or Opposed. 2. Storyteller determines a Difficulty: that is the number of successes required if Static, or what pool to compare if Opposed. 3. Player creates a Dice Pool of d10s using a number of dice equal to the total number of appropriate traits. For vampire characters, one or more of these dice may be Hunger dice. 4. Player rolls the dice pool. Every 6+ rolled equals one Success. If the roll is opposed, Storyteller rolls dice pool or Takes Half. 5. Player needs Successes equal to or more than Difficulty, or the number of opposed Successes. 6. Only one success short = Player can opt to Succeed at a Cost

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