Clanbook: Malkavian

Welcome back to the continuing segment where I, someone who knows very little about the lore of Vampire: The Masquerade, reads one of the Clanbooks and tries to piece together the insane metaplot and backstory of the game and its Gothic Punk setting. This time we're singing along to Prince's "Let's Go Crazy" with the Malkavians. 

I've always thought the vampire on the cover of this book looked a bit like Weird Al. And now that I've read it, I wonder if he was a big influence on this mess because it's wacky. But ultimately it's not as cool as Weird Al.

The shtick of the Malkavian vampires is that they are, each and every one of them, insane. This has led to the meme of "fishmalks": Malkavian characters who are played as silly weirdos who act "so random," basically as Chaotic Neutral as possible. The fishmalk problem may have started earlier in the game's history, but it's hard to argue against the Clanbook being a strong jump into fishmalk territory as the clan's baseline assumption. 

The Malkavian clanbook starts off by stating that the scholars of other clans attempt to find a method to the Malkavians' madness, although no one has yet been able to untangle the web of contradictory legends about the clan and the very act of examining them seems to inspire madness. There's an interesting note that the Malkavians may be in a process of "becoming," which is tantalizingly Deleuzean at this early stage. 

This eventually morphs into the Malkavians being the clan that believes that there is more to reality that what can be conventionally perceived, making their madness a kind of "derangement of the senses" aimed at breaking through the veil of the mundane to reveal a hidden truth. This makes the Malkavians the forerunners of the "red pill/blue pill" stuff from the Matrix that would come to prominence later in the decade.

The shorter legends don't amount to much. They range from "Global iconoclasm" to "Absolute nihilism," and they're written in that very 90s way of portraying insanity. Which is to say, hip gibberish. Take this, for example: "Ride the stillness like a twilight surfer." No. Fuck off with that.

The Malkavian's history has some gems, of course. After the fall of Carthage, Malkav and his brood moved to the Middle East, where their madness infected the locals and "which continues to this day." Blaming the instability in the Middle East on the presence of insane vampires feels very "this is why the Oriental type is irrational and barbaric"; Edward Said would have had a field day with this, if it wasn't beneath him to consider.

One interesting tidbit in this Clanbook points to the expanding game lines of the World of Darkness and the efforts put into establishing cross-promotional synergy. The Clanbook: Gangrel already leaned heavily on that clan's ties to werewolves and "gypsies," and the Malkavian book ties the clan to the faerie that were to come in Changeling. In retrospect, it probably would have been more helpful to present the various elements of the World of Darkness as a buffet that individual groups could pick and choose from, but this was the 90s and the drive toward metaplot would not be denied.

Apparently the Malkavians are big on playing "pranks" (boo!) on their fellow vampires, but at least they are non-denominational and play pranks on elders and anarchs alike. This is the point where it became clear why the Malkavians never lived up to their promise, at least for me. You see, the Vampire: The Masquerade core book takes the ideas of "personal horror" and a "Gothic Punk" setting fairly seriously, but this Clanbook moves in the opposite direction--and maybe that's an indication of the mood of the entire game line.

There's certainly a lot of "personal horror" to be mined from insanity and mental illness, but to bring that to the fore would require uncomfortable imagery and themes, as well as a careful, thoughtful approach. The writers behind Vampire at this point simply weren't up to that task. Instead, Clanbook: Malkavian prefers "insanity" to be coded as madcap hijinks. It's all "reality hacking" and pranks instead of the harsh realities of mental illness and the tragedy of extreme dysfunction. The writers feel more steeped in Mondo 2000 than Propaganda, if you catch my meaning.

The feeling of not taking the premise seriously inundates the prose, and you can see it in the art chosen for this book too: Clanbook: Malkavian is full of childlike cartoon scribblings that don't genuinely feel like the product of insanity. They don't have the uncanniness of "outsider art" and they don't illustrate a skewed perception of the world. You can hardly blame the writers and designers, as a more concentrated take on mental illness in horror is asking a lot, but the approach they went with lends a palpable air of shying away from the topic that was the clan's genesis in the first place.

In retrospect, Clanbook: Malkavian really illustrates why my high school rpg group couldn't make an honest go of playing Vampire: The Masquerade. Being unserious teenagers combined with the game promising dark "personal horror" but supporting zany vampire antics instead means that the game never really had a chance. We didn't know what to do with it, didn't know how to take it seriously, but the game itself was unsure on those points. 

We might not have realized that disconnect at the time, but I believe we felt it. It's funny; indie storygamers have made a big deal about the mechanical disconnect between the game's themes and its rules, but I honestly think that's a secondary concern compared with the game's thematic inconsistencies. Also funny: a lot of long-time Vampire players don't like the changes made by the newest edition of the game, but I have a lot of respect for the way the line has so far committed to the bit of being a serious, perhaps even po-faced, game of horror.

Retuning to the book at hand, not much here does a single thing for me. It feels watered down and overly silly. Overall, I'd say the Clanbooks have been taking Vampire down a tonally less-dark alley from their outset, and Clanbook: Malkavian is the worst offender of the lot so far in that regard. At least we get ready-to-play templates though, right? Clanbook: Malkavian has the following:

• Mesmeric Manipulator: Part mesmerist, part con artist. I dated a woman who had the exact outfit in the accompanying illustration.
• The Freak: Jim Roads Circus Sideshow, but vampiric. I have an especial love for templates like this that feel hopelessly trapped in a 90s vortex.
• The Conspiracy Theorist: God, conspiracy theories were so much more fun in the 90s, weren't they? Modern stuff, like Birtherism and 9/11 Truthers, just don't compare. Note: the vampire in the illustration has a fanny pack.
• The Waking Dreamer: A kind of living sleepwalker who is not all there. Reminds me a bit of the Lost Ones from Ravenloft and a little bit of Cesare in Cabinet of Doctor Caligari.
• Raving Lunatic: Manic depression on steroids. I'm not sure that having someone at the table playing this character would be a ton of fun.
• The Crazed Monster: It's Johnny the Homicidal Maniac, but a vampire.
• The Moody Loner: Have you ever wondered what Lee Harvey Oswald would be like if he were a vampire? Wonder no further.
• Detached Scientist: If you've ever encountered one of those sociopathic "I am arguing according to the rules and without emotion, I am a machine-brained man" people, you may have encountered this archetype.
• Reality Buster: Hack the planet. I love that the opening quote for this one comes from mild-mannered comedian Lily Tomlin.
• The Mad Prophet: Crackpot religious nut is actually a pretty solid Malkavian concept.

Closing out Clanbook: Malkavian is a brief who's who of vampires from the clan. My favorite is Rasputin, who has an illustration straight out of an EC horror comic. Crazy Jane, an escapee from a Victorian asylum, is also extremely my shit. The less said about the NPC known as "Malk Content" the better.

All right, let's close the casket on this one. Next time, we're getting ugly with the Nosferatu.

Clanbook: Gangrel

Welcome back to the continuing segment where I, someone who knows very little about the lore of Vampire: The Masquerade, reads one of the Clanbooks and tries to piece together the insane metaplot and backstory of the game and its Gothic Punk setting. This time we're barking at the moon with the Gangrel. 

The Gangrel's themes are focused on the bestial nature of the vampire: they have the ability to communicate with and control animals, shapeshift into bats and wolves, and generally have an animalistic rage and predatory wanderlust.

The Clanbook jumps straight in with a crazy biblical backstory for the Gangrel. It turns out that Lilith, Adam's wife before Eve, was sent away from Eden while pregnant with four children. (She is also described here as unusually hairy.) After she gives birth, Lilith entrusts each of her infants to a different animal. The daughter entrusted to the wolves eventually reaches maturity and starts fucking wolves (!). 

Some of the children born from these instances of beastiality look human, others look like wolves, but each carries the "seed" of both man and wolf. Later, she travels to Enoch and stirs up a bunch of trouble with her good looks and licentious ways; the product of her couplings in the ancient city are the ancestors of the Romani people (!!).

Even later, she encounters one of Caine's progeny. He "couldn't satisfy her" (!!!) but he did turn her into a vampire as a consolation prize. The Gangrel vampires are descended from her after she became undead. What this means that this woman is responsible for no less than three lines of supernatural beings: werewolves, the Romani (who are magical people according to the World of Darkness), and the Gangrel clan of vampires.

Since the Gangrel don't keep a recorded history, we only get snippets of what they've been up to over the centuries. Apparently the Vikings encountered a Gangrel and noted it in their sagas. Jesus may have healed a Gangrel, at least according to a Gnostic tradition. Gangrel aided in the sack of Rome! When European colonists came to North America, they found Gangrel among the native populace!

Here's the wildest bit: apparently the Nazis made a huge mistake in putting a Gangrel into a concentration camp along with his Romani friends. While in the camp, he turned his fellow prisoners into vampires and ghouls so they could take over and feast on Nazi blood! Now that's a b-movie Eurohorror flick I would watch, no question about it.

Remember how people were upset that the new Vampire rpg tied its World of Darkness to the real-life horrors of Chechnya? Well, it turns out that Vampire has a long tradition of that. In this book the ethnic purges in Yugoslavia are vampire-related.

Here's a very funny tidbit: Euro-Disney was built on a favored Gangrel hunting ground! Apparently the French Gangrel are so upset by this development that they have turned to violence, drugs, and feeding off the insane as coping mechanisms.

Remember when I said above that Gangrel don't keep written records of their history? Well, this is because they prefer to rely on oral traditions instead. Unfortunately, given that this was the 90s, this means that when two Gangrels meet up they might rap at each other to divulge their backstories. If the sample included in the book is any indication, the Gangrel have zero flow. They do not spit hot bars.

Aside from these chance rap battles no one asked for, the Gangrel congregate in "Gathers" that are held at solstices and equinoxes. These Gathers feature storytelling events, boasting competitions, shape-changing challenges, and--according to the book--often culminate is a lot of wrestling. 

Since the Gangrel are the most likely of the clans to interact with werewolves--either by fighting them or befriending them--the Clanbook sets aside some space to detail the various werewolf tribes found in the setting. It sort of feels like an editor wanted to find a place to squeeze in some cross-promotional lore and this was where the dart landed. 

The Gangrel share a connection with the Romani, so they get a section here too; it's delivered via fiction and it is not great, being mainly constructed from negative stereotypes. The narrator laments that the Romani keep lying to him and trying to steal from him. They only begin to respect him when they see him committing crimes. Then they teach him how to steal chickens and pigs.

Time for my favorite bit: the rundown of the included ready-to-play templates! Clanbook: Gangrel has the following:

• Archon-in-Training: I gather that Archons are basically the Camarilla's equivalent of "military police." This one got into the game solely because they like getting into fights.
• Babe in the Woods: A doe-eyed ingénue who doesn't realize they've been turned into a vampire, despite the mounting evidence of what they are.
• Biologist: A vampire scientist who plans on using the vast expanse of eternity to look down the barrel of a microscope.
• Bold Urban Commando: Basically, a Gangrel playing at being a Brujah.
• Eco-guerilla: A vampire who's really into Earth Crisis. This is a great archetype that really resonates with the Gangrel clan's themes.
• Explorer: A vampire Indiana Jones or Lara Croft. I question how well this one would fit most Chronicles.
• Great White Hunter: Does what it says on the tin; fun note here about how this template views the Camarilla as a gentleman's club of sorts.
• Lupine Impersonator: When your Gangrel becomes an otaku for werewolves. This is clearly for the player who wishes they were in a Werewolf campaign instead.
• Stuntman: Since a vampire's body can take a supernatural amount of punishment, stuntman seems like a natural enough job for one. However, it's not noted how they get around daytime shoots.
• Survivalist: A perfect archetype for a Gangrel! The idea of vampirism as just another tool for personal survival is a nice note.

The Clanbook ends with some notable Gangrel NPCs. They're a mixed bag, but I like the Vampira analog who was turned into a vampire by a fanboy and the Norse women who think they've awakened just in time for Ragnarok. 

RPG Player: I'd like to play as Liz Fraser from Cocteau Twins, but as a vampire.

Vampire: The Masquerade: Not a problem.

Next time we'll take a look at Clanbook: Malkavians, which I am sure will offer a sensitive and nuanced treatment of mental illness.

Clanbook: Brujah

I bid you...welcome to a new segment where I, someone who knows very little about the lore of Vampire: The Masquerade, read one of the Clanbooks and try to piece together the insane metaplot and backstory of the game and its Gothic Punk setting. 

First up: the Brujah. The Brujah are the "punk" vampires of the Gothic Punk World of Darkness. They have anger management issues as part of their specific vampire curse makes them more liable to violent frenzies. 

Brujah come in three flavors: Iconoclast, Idealist, and Individualist. The Iconoclasts are rebels to the core, favoring constant violent revolution. Idealists are more philosophical rebels, with hints of Ivory Tower nonsense. Individualists...okay, the book doesn't really give me a good sense of what their deal is; apparently they "walk the line between the Iconoclasts and the Idealists," but in practice I don't know what that is supposed to entail.

One detail that keeps coming up in this supplement is that there once was a city called Carthage that was the dream-paradise of the original vampire named Brujah. It's a bit unclear if this is supposed to be the historical Carthage. The city was betrayed by the other vampire clans and fell--since then the Brujah clan has been doing their damnedest to rebuild Carthage. The closest they've come so far is establishing the "Anarch Free State" in California. There aren't many details about the Anarch Free State here, but I bet it got its own supplement at some point.

The Brujah Clanbook also states that every revolutionary movement has proceeded under the influence of the Brujah, though the book hedges its bets and pulls them out of the limelight when it comes to the American Revolution. (That said, Crispus Attucks is a Brujah vampire!) The American Civil War did see team-up between the Brujah and the younger Ventrue against the older, plantation-owning Ventrue, though.

The section on Brujah activity in Russia is buck wild. The Russian Revolution was backed by the Brujah, but when they couldn't control Lenin they engineered his death and replacement by Trotsky (!). The Brujah would have killed Stalin had they not needed him as a bulwark against Hitler. It was the Brujah who influenced Stalin to sign the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact (!!). Apparently Stalin had ties to "mages" and the Sabbat. Oh, and Gorbachev? Totally a pawn of Baba Yaga (!!!).

One particularly silly bit here is the grand scheme of a powerful Brujah called "Smiling Jack." His plan is basically to be a vampire deadbeat dad--go city to city, creating new vampires willy-nilly, and then leaving, making them someone else's problem in hopes that they will destabilize the reign of the city's prince.

An observation: the Brujah are presented as Big Rebels, but they also seem very scared of violating the Masquerade--which makes them feel a little toothless as far as the ultimate rebellion is concerned. It might be the case that presenting them as all talk when it comes to rebellion--at least in comparison to the Sabbat--is a point being made here.

The Brujah have three types of meet-ups: Rants, Debates, and Raves. Rants are held after concerts and counter-cultural events; from the sound of it, they are an excuse for Brujah to yell at each other, making them the worst afterparties imaginable. Debates are the Q&A segment that follows any academic presentation, with people jockeying for position by asking each other asinine questions. Raves...I think are supposed to be like the blood rave in Blade, but require a scavenger hunt to find. I admit my eyes were clouding over at this point.

The Clanbook details a few special powers that Brujah might have. My favorite is Burning Wrath, which feels like a fighting game power-up: it causes a Brujah's face and hands to turn red and they deal burning damages when their V-trigger Burning Wrath is activated.

My favorite part of flipping through the Clanbooks when I was a teenager was browsing the example templates because some of the character concepts are extremely funny. I think they're useful in retrospect as a window into the kind of characters the designers had in mind. Clanbook: Brujah offers the following:

• Anarch Terrorist: your basic violent revolutionary, complete with Desert Eagle
• College Professor: Idealist in training, but with grading to do
• Computer Hacker: It was the 90s
• Elder Representative: Basically a kiss-ass who speaks for an elder vampire who can't be bothered to attend Rants in person
• European Idealist: Eurotrash vampires! This is a fuckin' perfect concept
• Fake Rapper: For when you absolutely must play a vampiric Vanilla Ice; I love how goofy this one is; this is a game of "personal horror," but you have the space to stop, collaborate, and listen
• Rapper: The real kind; the in-voice writing is pretty embarrassing, but again, it was the 90s
• Rogue Cop/Vigilante: They may bend the rules, but they get results
• Skinhead: The first line of their quote is "Hitler had it right"
• Streetwalker: Of course

All right, that's enough for now. Next time we're getting wild with the Gangrel.