Adding Procedures & Random Tables to Vampire: The Masquerade, Part 3: Court Creation & Faction Play

You can't have courtly intrigue without a court, and the truth is, Vampire: The Masquerade barely provides you any tools to create one. Time to change that. While part 1 of this series gave you the tools to create a city of your own and part 2 made it easier to populate it, part 3 is where your sandbox will truly come to life. We'll start from the very bottom, diving into the personal connections that weave webs of intrigue and moving up to coteries before finally exploring some procedures and mechanics for faction play.

THE TIES THAT BIND

Every important NPC should have three personal connections to other NPCs (or even the PCs): one with a powerful figure, one with a coterie-mate, and one with someone from a different faction. At least one of those relationships needs to be negative, and at least one needs to be positive. Roll or choose on the d66 table below.

Here's an example:

Vincenzo Vallone is a Hecata fledgling with the Thrill-Seeker Archetype. He is just and greedy, favouring trendy fashion, and he craves revolution. He was a disgraced gangster before the Embrace, which was an act of hate. His appearance is marked by thick hair, venomous eyes, and his friendly tone.

Figure of power: He is a thrall to his sire, Giancarlo Putanesca, entrapped by a full blood bond.
Coterie-mate: Vincenzo is indebted to Sniffer, a Nosferatu detective, who welcomed him into their Anarch coterie.
Inter-faction connection: The Toreador Prince, Alanis Whitehall, considers the fledgling an inconvenience, as his clan's very presence is unwelcome in her city.

Establishing these relationships can be tedious, but the payoff is worth it. Once you know who a character's enemies and allies are, it becomes a lot easier to involve them in your city's conflicts. If anyone threatens Sniffer, Vincenzo will be there for him. If the PCs need support against the tyrannical Prince Whitehall, the Hecata fledgling may be willing to stand with them. Instantly gameable, right?

Do note that this isn't meant to be the first step of court creation; it's better to do this once you've already generated all coteries, at the very least. The only reason we're discussing personal connections before coterie creation and faction play is scale — as in, it feels more natural to start at the personal level before moving on to the big stuff.

COTERIE CREATION

Before we start working on your city's coteries, let's get one thing out of the way: while PC coteries should always strive to have functional relationships between all members (as Vampire is still a collaborative storytelling experience, in spite of its themes), the same isn't necessarily true of NPCs. A little inner strife can do wonders for making NPC coteries feel alive and vibrant.

The first thing you should do when creating a coterie is decide its size and its political importance. Naturally, I made a table to help you out with that. Roll or choose away!

Once that's over and done with, it's a good idea to find what the coterie's purpose and focus is. The table below should help you with that, but if you want a coterie to be something else that isn't included in the table, no biggie! As long as there's common ground and/or a shared goal between the coterie's Kindred, it's all good.

And that's it! You can now start creating the individual members of each coterie. My Perchance generators can help you with that, and part 2 of this series goes more in depth into that process, too. If you're following the tables and procedures from part 1 while creating your sandbox city, it's a good idea to stay below (or at least around) the maximum number of Kindred that can be safely sustained by your city's population, but overpopulated and underpopulated cities can both be very interesting, too.

FACTIONS 101

Credit where credit is due: these mechanics were heavily inspired by Mindstorm's blogpost on the subject, as well as Remember Tomorrow's faction mechanics. It's a remix of those, really, with a bit of tailoring for Vampire. 

Now, "faction" is sort of a loaded word when it comes to Vampire: The Masquerade. It could mean anything from the sects, to blood cults and even powerful coteries. My personal definition of "faction" includes all of those things and more, as a politically-aligned group of people (or Kindred) who share the same goals. Ideally, you should only turn a group into a proper, statted out faction if they hold at least some sway over the city, or if they have the potential to. Otherwise, they're just a regular coterie or group, instead of a faction.

FACTION ANATOMY

When developing a faction, you should start by looking at your city's lore, its Domains and their rulers, the main coteries and interesting connections between NPCs. Following the procedures from part 1 will automatically give you a few factions to start with, but if you're only interested in faction creation, you can roll or pick on the faction table¹, using the Appetite table to find a goal for your faction. 

Once you have at least an idea of what the faction is and what they want, you're ready to stat it out. Giving it a cool nickname/title is always nice, but that's optional. Each faction is comprised of three Fronts: Warfare, Influence and Capital. They each have an associated d10, which is what you'll be rolling during faction play (more on that later). Faction strengths and weaknesses are represented by Assets and Flaws, respectively, which can add Advantage or Disadvantage to certain faction actions (and that works exactly like you expect it to work).

Here's an example of a faction stat block:

• The Broken Tower (Camarilla offshoot)

Members: Prince Alanis Whitehall, Paris Johnson, the Sheriff, Daisy Mae and Wilhelm, the Harpies, and Primogens Wayne, Callum and Jazz.
Goal: The complete subjugation of every other faction in the city.
Fronts: Warfare [-1] Influence [0] Capital [0]
Assets: Popular Elysium [Diplomacy], Blood Trafficking [Bribe]
Flaws: Weak Sheriff [Attack], Unlikable Prince [Recruitment]

Don't worry about balance. Kindred society is unfair by design, so why should faction play be fair? If you feel like a faction should be far stronger than the others, then give an Asset to each of their Fronts; as long as they still have a Flaw, that's peachy keen. If you feel like a faction should be weaker, stat it with several Flaws and perhaps a -1 on a Front or two. When in doubt, use the fiction to dictate the stats.

FACTION ACTIONS

Each Front can perform three distinct actions, as seen below.

 

Warfare actions are invariably offensive, representing direct attacks against enemy forces and strongholds, strategic surveillance of their movements, numbers and plans, and the underhanded destruction of their troops, equipment and bases. If the Sabbat storms an Elysium in the middle of court, they're launching an Attack against the Camarilla. When they use an infiltrator to spy on the Prince, they are engaging in Reconnaissance. If they plant explosives in the Sheriff's haven while he's out, they're partaking in Sabotage.

Influence actions cover key aspects of social maneuvering, such as forming alliances, bolstering the faction's ranks with fresh blood and spreading (mis)information through the city. If the Camarilla appoints a dissenting Toreador ancilla to the Primogen, they are using Diplomacy. If they allow each Kindred on the Primogen council to Embrace new childer, they are starting a Recruitment drive. When they spread footage of the Anarch Baron mistreating a fledgling, they are disseminating Propaganda.

Capital actions concern the management and application of a faction's resources, like investing in worthwhile endeavours, acquiring any equipment, building or services deemed useful, and buying favours, information or even loyalty. If the Anarchs offer to lend some of their guns to the local Duskborn, they're making an Investment. If they buy a huge supply of blood bags from a neighbouring city, they decided to Procure it. When they pay the neighbourhood's security firm to turn a blind eye to their comings and goings, that's obviously a Bribe.

ROLLING AND REWARDS

When one of a Front's actions is used, roll a d10. A result of 6 or above is a success, while a result below 6 is a failure (the consequences of which we will discuss in a bit). Before a faction executes an action, though, you should first determine which Reward they want, selected from the list below.

Rewards should always be rooted in the fiction. If a faction is trying to neutralize a Flaw, then that needs to be reflected in the fiction somehow. If you can't justify how a certain action results in a specific Reward, then perhaps it would be better to choose a different, more fitting reward for that action.

Failing a roll doesn't result in catastrophe; rather, the faction simply doesn't get the Reward they were looking for, and the fiction should reflect that. Sometimes, a failed attempt at assassinating the Prince's favourite childe can be even more exciting in play than a success.

GAME OVER, MAN

If one of a faction's Fronts ever falls below -3 and that Front already has a Flaw, then that faction is eliminated from faction play. That doesn't mean they simply vanish from the fiction, although that is a possibility. What this is meant to represent is that they simply don't have enough political power to keep playing with the big kids. The faction's remaining members could opt to join other factions, perhaps even becoming prime recruitment targets. 

Or, you know, they could all meet the Final Death. Whatever tickles your fancy. 

QUICK REFERENCE

• To execute a faction action, choose a Reward and roll a d10
• If the Front used for the action is damaged, subtract the modifier from the result
• If the result is below 6, the faction simply doesn't get the chosen Reward

• When a Front suffers damage, the faction adds -1 to any further rolls with that Front
• Factions can only remove damage from Fronts without Flaws
• Fronts can only be damaged up to -3
• If a faction's Front is damaged at -3 and it already has a Flaw, the faction is eliminated

• Relevant Assets grant Advantage (roll 2d10, keep the highest die) to an action type
• Each Front can only have one Asset
• Assets can only be destroyed when their associated Front is already damaged

• Relevant Flaws grant Disadvantage (roll 2d10, keep the lowest die) to an action type
• Each Front can only have one Flaw
• If a Front doesn't have a Flaw, the faction can take one to negate incoming damage
• It is impossible to remove a faction's last flaw

FACTION PLAY

There are a few ways to go about faction play, and none of them are wrong, per se. Call it a matter of taste.

The first is keeping faction play as a side activity for the Storyteller, something they do between sessions to spice things up in the city, allowing a few factions to pick an action. There shouldn't really be any hard rules to which factions should get an action, though the fiction will often inform these decisions. If the PCs are part of a faction taking an action, you can give them the option to support that action. They count as an Asset for the purposes of that roll.

The second is allowing the players to take control of a faction, while you control the others. Their PCs should ideally be part of the faction they're controlling, in order to avoid conflicts of interest. If you go with this option, you should probably engage with faction play either before or after actual play (that is, at the start or end of the session). You could do both, too. Whatever works for you and your troupe!

The third is a spin on the second; rather than controlling a single faction as a group, each player gets to pick one faction. Conflicts of interest are probably going to be inevitable, but this has the potential to be loads of fun! Other than that, this should work exactly like the alternative above.

FINAL NOTES

On occasion, it might not be immediately clear which action fits what a faction is attempting in the fiction, and the best way to ascertain that is by looking at their desired rewards. Going back to one of the action examples, if the Anarchs wanted to Develop the Duskborn coterie as an Asset (like, say, Duskborn Shocktroops), then they wouldn't really be Investing, they'd be Recruiting. But if they wanted to Accomplish something in the fiction (like diverting the Camarilla's attention towards the well-armed Duskborn), then that's definitely an Investment.

Faction Fronts, Assets, Flaws and even goals are inevitably going to be altered in the fiction due to the PC's actions outside of faction play, and that's okay. Make any necessary adjustments and move on. Faction play is meant to be an add-on, not the main course, and anything that happens during actual play takes precedence over it.

¹ The offshoots from the faction table are meant to represent local schisms — rolling a Camarilla faction and a Camarilla offshoot, for example, could represent a city contested by two Princes. This could also be interpreted as deviations from sect norms, resulting in things like Anarchs with wildly different political structures (think a Parliament rather than a Baron) or unusual traditions.

 

Adding Procedures & Random Tables to Vampire: The Masquerade, Part 2: NPC Creation

After a brief detour through a sandbox made with my city creation procedures and tables, it's finally time to dive into NPC creation! As with part 1, this involves a lot of tables, so much so that I even made some Perchance generators to help facilitate the process. You'll find those at the end of the post, but to be honest, I feel like they might actually be the main course. That's how happy I am with them.

Without further ado, let's Embrace some Kindred!

KNOW THYSELF

I'm thoroughly biased towards Vampire: The Requiem's virtues and vices, so much so that I made a table inspired by those a big part of my city creation process. While working on NPC creation, however, I noticed 12 virtues and 12 vices weren't enough, so I added a few more and rounded both up at 20.

This part of the process is meant to imbue each character with an admirable trait and a fatal flaw, something that the players can easily pick up on, and can act as a guide when you're unsure of what a certain character would do.

So, yeah, let's start by rolling (or choosing) a virtue and a vice for your NPC!

One big complaint a lot of people had regarding virtues and vices, though, was that they were a lesser form of the Archetypes (used for Nature and Demeanor) from Vampire: The Masquerade. While I don't necessarily agree with the sentiment (as those could be quite restrictive), I think they can be complimentary to each other.

It's up to you how important these are gonna be to your NPC's personality and whether you're gonna use the Nature/Demeanor mechanics, but I'd personally rather keep Archetypes as the "face" the characters present to the world and the way they interact with it, rather than a mechanical thing or an intrinsic, deep part of who they are. Virtues and vices work better in that regard, IMO.

In any case, let's pick or roll an Archetype on the d66 table below.

You can find full descriptions for these on V20, but you don't really need to, as they're all evocative enough.

BECOMING

Virtues, vices and Archetypes are plenty useful even when you're not creating vampires, but we should get the specifics out of the way before we go any further. Two of the most important facets of Kindred existence are age and the status that comes with it, and, you guessed it, there's a table for that.

This table can also be used with a d4 or a d6, ensuring lower power levels.

Another key aspect of Kindred society is lineage, and it's time to find out what clan chose your NPC. We're gonna determine the reason behind their Embrace later on, but for now, let's roll or pick a clan. The table below can also be found in part 1 of the series, but it's included here for ease of access.

To narrow the results down to the main clans, roll a d12 instead of a d20.

So far, we know the character's biggest virtue, their darkest vice, how they present themselves outwards through their Archetype, how old they are and what clan they belong to. What we don't yet know is what their place in the world used to be before the Embrace, but we're gonna fix that. First, roll or pick a flavour for their concept.

Then, if your character is a fledgling, a fresh neonate, a neonate or a young ancilla, determine their concept with the d66 table below.

If your character is too old for those concepts (that is, if they're an older ancilla, a pretender elder, an elder or a methuselah), determine their concept with the d66 table below.

I tried to make both the flavours and the concepts as dynamic as possible, because let's face it, boring concepts aren't usually the best ingredients for cool NPCs. Stuff like a respected activist or an inexperienced assassin should be immediately gameable, and that's always the goal!

It's as good a time as any to uncover what motivated the character's Embrace, which brings us to yet another d66 table. You know the drill.

And with that, there's only one table left before we move on to the last part of this NPC creation process: appetites. These are essential for Vampire: The Masquerade, as each and every NPC needs to want something, and those needs and wants will form the crux of conflict in many a chronicle. Note that they're deliberately vague, and leaving them for last was a conscious decision, as the other results can help you interpret what exactly your NPC's appetite means for them.

STYLE WITH SUBSTANCE

At this point, you already have a pretty well rounded character, but what's substance without a little style? The fashion table below should help your NPCs stand out a bit. Some combinations can be admittedly hilarious, but the famed Banu Haqim methuselah who fancies Disco a little too much is an instantly recognizable character. It's your choice whether to lean on that or not, though, and re-rolling is always an option.

I also made some d20 appearance tables (six, in fact), but I'm not gonna plaster them here, as this blogpost is already overstuffed with images. You can find them here. Personally, though, I wouldn't use all six for every NPC. I'd roll two or three for each (which is why the tables themselves are numbered 1 to 6), so that your players will get some interesting visual cues to go with the NPC's fashion choices, but not enough to overwhelm them.

That's all, folks! We're done with NPC creation.

CHANCE AND CHOICE

It's important to consider the pros and cons of manually rolling and choosing everything instead of just using the Perchance generators I came up with. If you're in a pinch and need an instant NPC, nothing beats a good generator, no doubt, and if you need to make a lot of Kindred at once, doing everything manually would be a royal pain. But there's a kind of art to curating results, one that can lead to some pretty remarkable NPCs. Personally, when time isn't of the essence, I will always choose to do everything myself. And yet, there's a certain joy to being surprised by the complete randomness created by Perchance.

VAMPIRE MAKING FACTORY 3000

So far, I have created three different Perchance generators for Vampire: The Masquerade, two to automate the process of NPC creation (one for younger vampires, one for older licks) and one for creating Domains and their rulers (a key aspect of the city creation process). You can find the NPC generator for younger NPCs here, while the one for older Kindred is available here. Lastly, the Domain generator is found here.

Fair warning: this was my first time working with Perchance, so you might stumble into some funky issues. If that happens, please let me know so I can fix it! <3

Anyway, I hope the results speak to you as much as they speak to me.

Up next: Court creation procedures and fleshing out Hallelujah's court! 

Hallelujah, TX: A VtM sandbox created with procedures

This is an unofficial sequel to my post on adding city creation procedures to Vampire: The Masquerade, a part 1.5, if you will. It features some content that should show up on part 2 (which will focus on NPC creation), but aside from that, it is mostly a showcase for the kind of sandbox one can make using the aforementioned procedures. If you're at all interested in the raw elements behind the city's flavour, they're included at the end of the post.

The map above illustrates the city's Domains, along with the location of their points of interest.

Our city's Themes are Idealism and Sloth, and its Mood is defined by Faith and Ignorance. Inspired by its Themes and Mood, I decided to call it Hallelujah, TX, also known as America's Sweetest Daughter. It was founded in 1688, and its population of 428,781 is currently facing austere times, as corporate offices are moving to brighter pastures, while its railroad yards see less and less use, and its many prestigious universities can't support the city by themselves. 

Let's take a quick look at Hallelujah's most important historic events...

• 1693: A great fire is started by a rogue vampire hunter, consuming the town of Hallelujah. [Natural Disaster]

• 1701: The city starts the process of rebuilding and expansion, funded by the surrounding ranches. [Expansion]

• 1784: As a safe port during the Revolutionary War, Hallelujah welcomed an influx of refugees. [Population Boom]

• 1837: A hateful, card-carrying KKK member is elected as mayor, shaping much of the city's history. [Rise of Historical Figure]

• 1921: During the Prohibition, bootleggers use the Redwater river to smuggle alcohol to Oklahoma. [Crimewave]

• 1925: Oil is discovered in Hallelujah's vicinities, and the city keeps on growing. [Expansion]

• 1941: Hallelujah's oil dries up, and the oil industry leaves the city behind. [Deindustrialization]

• 1983: Not even quaint (not so) little Hallelujah is safe from crack, and its arrival was unavoidable. [Drug Epidemic]

• 1994: In an effort to clean its image, the city offered heavy tax incentives to universities and companies. [Expansion]

• 2011: Although Hallelujah succeeded in becoming a college town, corporate life never thrived there, and many companies decided to cut their losses and abandon the city. [Economic Crash]

That paints an interesting picture of what the last few centuries have been like in Hallelujah, but we're not done yet, as the Kindred side of thing is just as important, if not more.

• 1693: The city's first Prince, a Malkavian, is betrayed by his childe, who uses a rogue vampire hunter to dispose of him. [Coup D'état]

• 1695:  A Malkavian Justicar calls Hallelujah's first Conclave after the current Prince's role in the city's burning is anonymously exposed. The Prince is found not guilty. [Conclave]

• 1703-1709: A cell of hunters descends upon the city, led by the hunter responsible for the events of 1693. The Prince meets his Final Death, but he is survived by the Primogen. [Vampire Hunting Season]

• 1746: The entirety of Hallelujah's Primogen Council is supposedly diablerised by Sabbat infiltrators. They are succeeded by their inexperienced childer, as no one else wants to step up. [Diablerie]

• 1810-1834: After almost a century of ruling the city like tyrants, the Primogen Council faces several riots led by the city's Brujah, Nosferatu and Malkavians. Three members of the council are killed, and, as a gesture of goodwill, their spots are offered to members of each of the clans involved in the riots. [Anarch Riots]

• 1887-1903: The Sabbat launches a siege in Hallelujah. The Primogen holds strong for far longer than most expected it to, but in the end, the Sword of Caine's might could not be opposed. The conflict ends when the oldest Primogen members use the youngest as scapegoats, hiding away while they're massacred. [Sabbat Siege]

• 1912: The last remaining members of the city's former Primogen are unrooted by the Black Hand, and they are publicly diablerised during the year's Festivo dello Estinto. [Diablerie]

• 1945: Inspired by the Anarchs of Los Angeles, some of Hallelujah's Sabbat packs decide to rebel against the Sword of Caine, seeing it for what it is: a more extreme version of the Camarilla, where the young shall always be beneath the old. Although the city is "freed" from the Sabbat's shackles, its Anarchs haven't completely abandoned its ways. Thus, they call themselves the Unshackled. [Anarch Riots]

• 1985: Each and every Kindred of Clan Gangrel in Hallelujah is executed by the Unshackled leaders after being found guilty of trying to rejoin the Sword of Caine. To this day, Outlanders are still personae non gratae in the city, and will find it an unwelcoming place, indeed. [Clan Purge: Gangrel]

• 2008-2022: Unabashedly rowdier than most Anarchs, the Kindred of Hallelujah were sitting ducks for the Second Inquisition, but they decided to move on to more important assignments after a disastrous mission which led to the Inferno of 2022. That incident claimed the entirety of the Unshackled's leadership, but as nature abhors a power vacuum, the Anarch Free States have sent an envoy to ensure the city's freedom. That, along with the recent arrival of a powerful Brujah brood, marks the start of strange and interesting times... [Economic Crash]

I am actually surprised by how unique the city's political situation ended up becoming, considering all of these events were rolled, rather than chosen. It's not a "regular" Anarch city with Barons and so on, and it's absolutely not a Camarilla city by any means. Instead, it's a wild, dangerous and unpredictable thing. This feels like a good way to break the "mold", so to speak, and I'm quite happy with that.

DOMAINS

As with historic events, these were all rolled, rather than chosen, with a few modifications (that is, rerolls) here and there to prevent too much repetition. Most of these are actual neighbourhoods in the city claimed by Kindred, with one or two exceptions that function more like vampiric territories/political divisions.

Merry Fields

This beautiful and cheerful area has always been the city's designated fairgrounds, housing its events since the early 1700s. Due to its cultural and historic significance, openly hunting in the neighbourhood has always been discouraged. Recently, an upstart Ventrue fledgling known simply as the Maestro decided to claim Merry Fields as their Domain, settling down on an abandoned old mansion. Their theatrics have earned them a place with the Unshackled, and they've been building a cult of personality among the faction's youngest licks, much to their esteemed sire's chagrin.

Point of Interest: Maelstrom House, an abandoned old mansion where the Maestro parties with the Unshackled. The property used to belong to a disgraced politician, which is why no one ever bothered fixing it up or reclaiming it.

The Wastes

Barely anyone ever ventures into Hallelujah's abandoned oil fields, and that suits its Malkavian antitribu ruler just fine. The former Ductus of a powerful pack, Charlie Wolfram lost everything during the Anarch Uprising of 1945, but he refused to abandon the city anyway. Eeking out a pitiful existence in the Wastes, as his Domain is known, Charlie perseveres in spite of his cruelty and his sadistic appetites, preying on anyone stupid enough to wander alone through his hunting grounds, be they Kine or Kindred.
The Malkavian ancilla dresses like a fading rockstar, and the oil plant he calls his Haven has been decorated in a surreal, almost stylish fashion, with bright colours and unsettling graffiti on the walls, both of which are enhanced by Charlie's collection of interesting garbage, exhibited like museum pieces.

Point of Interest: Wolfram's Den, an abandoned oil plant where Sabbat stragglers can occasionally be found, along with the Den's owner. It is surreal and stylish.

Ashen Quarter

Once, this was a lively residential neighbourhood. Now, it's little more than burnt homes and deserted streets, where criminals and squatters make their living. Few buildings survived the Inferno of 2022, and the Hallelujah Lighthouse happens to be one of those, serving as the headquarters for an agent of the Second Inquisition.
The Lighthouse Keeper may be part of the SI, but he carries the guilt of all the lives lost and ruined during the Inferno of 2022; if the SI hadn't intervened, all those people would still be alive. As such, he keeps watch over the city's Kindred, fixing Masquerade breaches in order to prevent the SI from ever returning to Hallelujah. 

Point of Interest: The Hallelujah Lighthouse. It is welcoming yet depressing, a husk of the beautiful historic building it used to be.

Cherry Blvd.

The trendiest neighbourhood in all of Hallelujah, Cherry Blvd. is the kind of place that only truly ever comes alive at night. The city's best bars, restaurants, pubs, music venues and clubs are all located in the boulevard, drawing tourists and locals alike into the night's embrace. It is ironic, then, that such a lively Domain should be ruled by one as lifeless as Gustave de Montagne. The Ventrue ancilla is always trying to build an "empire", and its current form is a chain of upscale restaurants known as Meridian, which serves Kindred and Kine alike. As a traditionally trained chef himself, Gustave is quite proud of this project.
The Camarilla sent the Blue Blood to Hallelujah to establish a beachhead, and by claiming such an important area of the city for himself, he is doing a good enough job of that. Offering free meals to desperate Anarchs has made him some friends among the locals, and that doesn't hurt, either. Alas, his wayward childe has joined the Unshackled, but they will come to their senses soon enough. Papa Gustave will make sure of that. 

Point of Interest: The Meridian restaurant, where affluent Kindred can enjoy gourmet offerings, and destitute licks can always find a warm blood bag. It is surprisingly cheerful in its presentation, and there's a sultry, sweltering touch to the premises.

University Hill

This is the very beating heart of Hallelujah, and without University Hill's success, the city would've been left to the flies a long, long time ago. Developed in the 90s, this neighbourhood is the very embodiment of Hallelujah's hopes and dreams, serving as the home for several renowned academic institutions. The city's administration poured everything they had left into the construction of this area, and it shows: its infrastructure is excellent, its streets are gorgeous and lined with trees, and almost every building exhudes style and class. After the Inferno of 2022 claimed several human lives and wiped out the Unshackled's leadership, though, the Anarch Free States sent an envoy to watch over Hallelujah.
Zoe Villalobos, a Banu Haqim neonate, didn't waste any time before seizing control of University Hill, from where she intends to oversee the city's future, safety and freedom. While she has yet to openly claim the title of Baron, she is the closest thing Hallelujah has ever had to one, and if not for Maxson's brood, she would be the city's uncontested ruler. The Unshackled consider Zoe a promising leader, one that seeks to preserve their way of life, but they haven't formally announced their allegiance yet.

Point of Interest: UT Hallelujah's campus, the place where Zoe conducts her meetings, choosing to hide in plain sight. The university is grandiose and awe-inspiring, with cops everywhere to keep the students "safe".

Stockington

A leftover from better, more progressive days, Stockington is the home of Hallelujah's rail yards, which are still functional to this day. Smog is a constant here, but few of the workers and residents seem to mind anymore. To them, it's just part of the area's charm. The architecture here is rich in bricks and mortar, as everything was built to last, and Hallelujah's last remaining unions still meet frequently inside quaint little gyms and pubs. This was once the bedrock of socialism in the city, and although the cops have done their best to stomp that out, a lot of the neighbourhood's friendly locals are still true believers. They're just a little less vocal about it, after decades of persecution.
The area's history and sensibilities made it a perfect match for the enigmatic Maxson, a pretender Elder and the leader of the Brujah brood who has recently arrived in Hallelujah. A veteran of several revolutions, starting with the Irish Rebellion of 1641, Maxson has fought for freedom and for the disenfranchised for almost 400 years, and although he still talks the talk, he is tired of fighting the good fight. His childer represent his hope for the future, and their presence in Hallelujah is his way of testing them.

Point of Interest: The Rails, also known as Hallelujah's last bastion of social progress. It is incredibly lively at all times, with workers chatting with the locals and among themselves, while trigger-happy cops patrol the area in search of "contraband" and subversive talk. 

Oldtown

There's a reason Oldtown has been left to rot, rather than being celebrated as an important part of the city's history. During the early 19th Century, Carter Bowman, a racist, despicable man got himself elected as mayor, and his lineage ruled Hallelujah until the 1940s, when they were forcibly ousted along with the Sabbat. Oldtown was the historic stomping ground of the Bowmans, housing Hallelujah's former City Hall and a great many monuments, landmarks and labyrinthine streets of times gone by, and better left forgotten.
Unwanted by the Unshackled, this Domain was recently claimed by Melody Adams, a young Brujah neonate who is part of Maxson's brood, one of the city's strongest coteries. She is the very picture of privilege, a proper southern lady with her head always stuck in the clouds, with idealistic dreams and designs. She wants to erase the taint left by the Bowmans on Oldtown, refusing to allow those "rat bastards" from ruining such a quaint little place. Declaring the old City Hall neutral grounds has been a choice, to be sure, but some meetings between the city's factions have already been successfully mediated there. It remains to be seem how successful one can be at rehabilitating a place with such a dark past.

Point of Interest: The Old City Hall, currently being reformed by Melody Adams and her ghouls. It's still a husk of a building, and its infamy keeps most Kine from even approaching the place, which suits its new purpose as an "embassy" of sorts just fine.  

Bright Valley

While University Hill was a big hit, Bright Valley was a huge miss. Originally meant to be Hallelujah's big foray into the corporate world, the neighbourhood was left in the dust when Bella Vista miraculously and organically developed itself into exactly what Bright Valley was meant to be. Nowadays, it's filled with vacant parking lots, dead malls, abandoned factories and rusting warehouses, and the unfortunate people who live here are just trying to get by. To make matters worse, Bright Valley has a history of police brutality and racial profiling. This is precisely the reason why Gail Williams, a black, young Brujah neonate took over the Domain, hoping she can put a stop to the horrors that plague the area.
The most outspoken and fervent member of Maxson's brood, Williams is a self-made woman, and behind her fancy clothes and plethora of degrees, she is still an idealist at heart. Only a fool could ever hope to turn a place like Bright Valley around, but that hasn't stopped Gail, whose base of operations at the abandoned Grand Hallelujah Mall (or GHM) is always open to any Kindred or Kine in need.

Point of Interest: The Grand Hallelujah Mall. Its oppressive architecture is falling apart after a decade of neglect, but Gail finds it a rather auspicious location to plot the city's future from, and a rising phoenix has been painted on its ceiling by a friend of hers. Aside from that, it's one of the few places in Bright Valley where cops refuse to go, conveniently enough.  

Bella Vista

What is Bella Vista if not a sprawl of glass skyscrapers, sterile offices, bland luxury condos, hotels and intrusive advertising everywhere? Some may call it a corporate hellhole, but it is undoubtedly essential to the city's economy. In spite of that, when the next bubble bursts, it could very well become another Stockington — that is, if it wasn't under the watchful eye of Reinoud van Alphen. This young Tremere ancilla is charming, unassuming and filthy rich, as well as the last remaining founder of the Unshackled.
Politics aren't something the Warlock is particularly interested in, however; he'd rather keep his eyes on the bottomline, as money is what truly matters in the modern world. One can always contact him at Bella Vista's Museum of Minimalism, and if the price is right, there is nothing Reinoud can't procure. 

Point of Interest: The Museum of Minimalism, in all its boring, sterile glory. Visitors are quite rare, and if not for Reinoud's funding, it's doubtful the museum would still be open. As it is, the Tremere ancilla is very fond of the place, though no one really knows why.  

INTRIGUE

Hallelujah's Domains are currently divided between several factions: the Unshackled remnants, the Brujah brood, a representative of the Anarch Free States, the Camarilla, some Sabbat stragglers, and even a rogue SI agent. Watching all of those interact in play should be a delight!

Now, these aren't all of Hallelujah's Kindred (though they very well could be, depending on the Storyteller). They're only the big shots, the power players, the licks whose actions carry the most weight. They were all generated with my procedures for creating NPCs (coming soon!), but Hallelujah's "court" (if it can even be called that) could still be fleshed out plenty. That's something we will hopefully explore on part 3 of this series, though.

PLAYING THE NUMBERS

As promised, here's a look at what the raw results I used for creating Hallelujah were:

City founding: 1688 [late 17th century]
Population: 428,781 [300k-500k]
Kindred population: 20
City themes: Idealism and Sloth
City mood: Faith and Ignorance
Historic events: 10
Kindred events: 10
Ruling faction: The Unshackled [Anarch offshoot]
Other factions: Brujah brood, Sabbat stragglers, SI
Economy & source: Austere; corporate, transport and education (main) 

The above is what the city itself looks like once you strip the lore away. I didn't list the events because they're already clearly marked along with the lore, but that's the gist of it. Now, let's take a look at two Domains, along with their rulers.

• The Wastes    

Traits: Hideous and Lifeless
Complication: Kindred squatters
Benefit: Peaceful
Faction: Sabbat stragglers
Point of interest: Surreal and Stylish industrial building
Ruler: Charlie Wolfram, a Malkavian antitribu ancilla with the Survivor Archetype. He is cruel and persevering, dresses like a fading Rockstar and feeds his sadistic appetites on intruders.

• Cherry Blvd.

Traits: Seedy and Popular
Complication: Kindred Overpopulation
Benefit: Vibrant Nightlife
Faction: Camarilla
Point of interest: Cheerful and sweltering restaurant, the Meridian
Ruler: Gustave de Montagnac, a Ventrue ancilla with the Architect Archetype. He is tasteless and boring, is always in his chef's whites, and is trying to draw followers into his (and the Tower's) fold.

So, yeah, this is what's hiding beneath the hood! It was enough to inspire me, so I'm hoping y'all find the process just as useful as I did. 

I still have a bunch of VtM stuff in store, and part 2 of the series should be hitting the blog in a few days. As always, you can find me on Twitter as @sys.crash, and on Bluesky as @machineheart.bsky.social. 

Ta-ta!

Adding Procedures & Random Tables to Vampire: The Masquerade, Part 1: City Creation

I've been complaining about Vampire: The Masquerade's dearth of meaningful procedures for a long time, as the game (regardless of edition) sorely needs them. But rather than keep complaining, I decided to take matters into my own hands, starting with city creation. Fair warning: this might turn into a long series, or it might fizzle out after a couple of entries. 

Now, I don't know about you guys, but as a fan of sandbox campaigns, I'm severely disappointed in the tools Vampire provides for those, particularly when it comes to creating your chronicle's city. I've lost count of how many chronicles never even got off the ground because I got burned out during the prep stage. The procedures and tables we'll go through below were designed to fix that. 

Before we get started, though, credit where credit is due: d4 Caltrops made a terrific blogpost regarding city crawls, which was a huge influence on all of this. In fact, we'll even use one of the tools I found on the aforementioned blogpost. You guys should definitely check it out, as it could prove invaluable to your OSR campaigns!

Chris McDowall's amazing Electric Bastionland procedures for borough creation have also been a big inspiration here, and I consider them the gold standard when it comes to this stuff.

BLOOD RED STREETS

The first step here is finding a city map. You can generate your own easily with ProbableTrain's City Generator, and watabou's Medieval City Generator, with a few tweaks, works great for modern cities, too. Of course, you can absolutely use an actual, real world city for this, although that will have an impact on some steps. 

Once you have a city map you're satisfied with, you'll need to run it through Cfbraz's Voronoi Diagram Creator, though one could also use Gimp's mosaic generating filter for this step, or even manually draw over the map. If you choose to use the Voronoi Diagram Generator, you'll need to upload your map to a website of your choice, and link it on the generator. Its configs should look like this:

Afterwards, you'll want to click on Clear all sites. And then it's a simple matter of clicking on different points of the map until you've generated at least 8 sections. It might be a good idea to position your clicks on buildings, streets and areas that look interesting, as the resulting dots will be an important part of your city.

Here's an example of a map generated with the process above:

With this process, we've delineated the city's most important Domains, which we will flesh out later on. At this point, you might want to add numbers, cool titles or even neighbourhood names to each Domain with an image editor of your choice, but that's completely optional.

HISTORY WRITTEN IN BLOOD

Now that the technical part is done, we can start breathing life into the city.

The first thing we'll do is pick the city's themes and mood by rolling on the tables to the right. You should roll twice on each, assigning two results to the city's theme, and two results to its mood; it's your pick, so you can choose to mix and match between virtues and vices, or double down on them.

History is a big part of what makes any city feel alive, and by rolling on the tables to the right, you'll determine when it was founded, and how many significant historic events it's been through (which we will also generate later).

With that done, it's time to roll for the city's population, both mortal and Kindred. Do note that this will inevitably result in either under or overpopulated cities, Kindred-wise, so you may opt to roll once and use the same result for both tables.

The next step involves determining how the city's doing, economically speaking, and what its main source of income is. You can diversify its income by rolling a few more times on the Source table, and I would actually recommend doing that, if your city is fairly old and/or particularly big. 

And to conclude the mundane side of things, let's take a look at the historic events table (Kindred history will be dealt with later). You should roll or pick as many events as determined by the city's age, though nothing is stopping you from rolling or picking more.

WE RULE THIS CITY

By now, you should have at least a decent foundation for your city, which means it's time to flesh it out and to explore the Kindred side of things.

The table to the right will help you determine which faction rules the city, but you may want to add a couple of enemy factions, too. Of course, if you'd rather focus your chronicle on a single faction, rolling once is enough.

The city's main historic events have already been established on the mortal side of things, and now it's time to do the same for the Kindred. The city's age will also determine the number of events you should roll for. Make sure to spread these out throughout the decades, reflecting Kindred society's stagnant longevity.

We have finally reached my favourite part of this thing: Domains! First, pick an area on your map, then roll twice on the d66 table below to establish its traits. These should help you give an identity to each Domain, which can prove invaluable to naming the area, be it with a proper neighbourhood name ("Barrowtown"), a Kindred-given title ("the Big Empty"), or an evocative nickname ("Desolation Row").

All Domains need a complication, something that gives them an edge and makes them gameable. The table to the right will give your Domains an interesting issue, something your players can interact with, and perhaps even solve. One complication is enough, but adding more can illustrate just how bad things have gotten. 

On the flipside, there needs to be a reason why someone decided to claim the area as their Domain, and that's what you'll determine with the help of the benefits table. One is enough, as with complications, but particularly desirable Domains could (and perhaps should) have more.

If your city is home to multiple factions, you can either roll on the factions table to determine which one rules each Domain, or you can simply pick one. The clan table below can be used to decide the clan of the Domain's ruler, and it may come in handy in a variety of situations. 

To narrow the results down to the main clans, roll a d12 instead of a d20.

Each Domain has a little dot, which represents its central point of interest. While it doesn't necessarily need to be important to the city's Kindred, it works well as a "seat of power" of sorts for the Domain's ruler. To create a point of interest, you should roll twice on the d66 Traits table from before, and once on the table to the right. That will give you a location for your point of interest and some much needed flavour, too.

If you rolled a landmark, fret not! Here's a table to help you with that. Landmarks tend to be particularly relevant to a city's identity and history, so tying it to historic events or even its economy could grant it more weight. 

And that's it for Domain creation. Ideally, we should also generate the bloodsucker who claims the area as his property, but I'll save NPC creation for part 2. Time for some final considerations!

LIVING IN THE REAL WORLD

It should be pretty clear by now that this process was designed with the intetion of creating fictional cities, but can it be applied to real cities? I think so, but the process is significantly different for those. Rather than rolling on the tables above, you'll be picking options that match the city in the real world. Or maybe not! It's the World of Darkness, places are allowed to be different. The Kindred side of things should be a lot more relevant, in any case.

NOTHING BUT LEFTOVERS

Two tables, Climate and Region, didn't end up making the final cut, but they can still be useful in the right circumstances. They were omitted due to being way too general to add much value to the process, and the Region table goes into a bit of a hot button issue. As in, the omission of Africa and Asia was not intended as erasure, but rather as a consequence of Vampire's deeply problematic mishandling of both regions in the lore. You can still check those tables out, but I don't consider them part of the city creation procedure we've delved into here.

I'll end the post by letting y'all know that I've already done a bunch of work on the NPC creation procedures, and that I'm considering making a "city sheet" of sorts where you can store all this stuff. 

We might take a little detour before part 2, though, as I really want to write a post about a city created following these procedures. Lemme know if you guys would be interested in that!