They stalk in the shadows, moving gracefully and unseen among their prey. They are the blood-drinking fiends of whispered legends - Kindred, Cainites, the Damned. Above all, they are vampires. Their eternal struggle, waged since the nights of Jericho and Babylon, plays itself out among the skyscrapers and nightclubs of the modern world. But the vampires' grand Masquerade is imperiled, and the night of Gehenna draws ever closer.
In a lot of ways, storytelling resembles games such as how to host a murder. Players take the roles of characters - in this case, a denizen of the night - and engage in a form of improvisational theatre, saying what the vampire would say and acting as the vampire would act. Most people play V:tM as players. They create vampire players. In each group, however, one person must take the role of storyteller. The storyteller acts as a combination director, moderator, narrator, and referee. The storyteller invents the various situations for the players to act out. The players decide how the vampires act, but it is the storyteller who decides if the character actually succeed in their endeavours and, if so, how well. Ultimately, the storyteller is the final authority on the events that take place in the game...
Storytelling and role-playing games may feature many kinds of protagonists. In Vampire, the protagonists are, appropriately enough, Vampires - the immortal bloodsuckers of the horror genre- who live, love, fight, and hide out in the open streets and darkened parks of the world's cities. They interact with each other, mortals, and other beings, while maintaining (mostly) the tradition of the Masquerade. The Storytellers guide these characters through the world of darkness. The vampires who stalk the earth in modern times are in many ways similar to those we might expect from reading novels, comics, and watching films. However, as the intrepid Hunter soon finds out, not all the old myths are true.
The social stratification of the Kindred (Masquerade Vampires) is divided by Clan, and then Caste distinctions. Kindred or Cainites are distinguished by a combination of age and generation classifications. Follow the links above to delve further into the sphere of the Masquerade.