TabletopGame Great Game. Love it deeply.
Only I have never played it as the setting dictated.
This was literally the first Tabletop I ever knew. I had all the books, spinoff and novels. I had played nearly all the clans and settings from adventure to mystery to insane pastiche with other books, being GM and player, and yet I have never entered the Gothic horror that is the setting of Vampire the Masquerade.
Honestly for my part, I simply can't do it. I can imagine the Dark, bleak world of Vampire, the Thriller horror and hopelessness that is their work of art. Im to cheery, to hopeful (even with depression), too Humans Are Special fan to take the work serious enough to desire live in there, even Vicariously.
It doesn't mean Im not intelligent enough to understand the aim or get the idea (as some Fan Dumb in the community can say), its only not my cup of tea. The entire Nihilism, cynicism and evil sneering either crack me up or make me roll my eyes. I can't simply understand the Generation X that birth it enough to be able to create and play in such a setting and neither of my player companions could for whatever reason.
Sooner it would degrade into Dark adventures, travel to redemption and kick ass battles, either physical, psychological or spiritual. I also throw away many of the rules of the setting or created my own for the game (For example, Vampires don't get tired capable of running and fighting at their peak condition as long they possesed a dot of blood, they don't have vital/deadly parts of their body except heart and head, beyond resistance to pain, control totally their sense-religion was a force to be reckoned and spirits pro-human could get very deadly with the undead and so on) that could break havoc in the original work.
So why I still loved the game?
It had great ideas, great basic worldbuilding and it was entertaining to read and learn. And that's the reason of this review. At difference of the Grimdark darkgrim blackhole that is Warhammer 40000, you can take things out of the work and use it as you desire it. Its truly an Tabletop Game in the sense that, even with the Metaplot, you could ripe appart and create your frankestein of House game with barely effort.
Take it, bought it or download it from Internet (which is embarrassing easy to get the entire line) and give it a check. Either you liked it or pirate its ideas like is Metallica.
TabletopGame Vampire: The Masquerade – Heritage
Vampire: The Masquerade – Heritage is the awkwardly titled board game based on the tabletop RPG. In it, players are asked to take on the role of a Medieval vampire Clan leaders, battling each other for power via an expanding network of followers. It's all a bit Crusader Kings in concept and execution, but without a convenient interface or variety.
Board games should be designed to use as fewer moving parts as possible to translate a concept into a novel gameplay idea. This quality is called "elegance". Chess manages to elegantly represent complex military strategy using only six kinds of pieces and one board. Monopoly elegantly puts you in the shoes of a heartless landlord, exchanging physical money for title deeds on one abstracted city map. Heritage on the other hand has four boards, six types of playing cards and twelve different types of token, all meant to represent the idea of you elbowing other vampires for control over the World. "Inelegant" doesn't sufficiently convey the problems with Heritage's design, which is obnoxious, overly complicated, and convoluted. This game covers your table in cardboard gore. It took our group about two hours to learn the rules sufficiently to even start our first game. I spent most of those two hours either tearing at my hair in frustration or fighting off the urge to sleep. The complexity is unnecessary, and it feels like a cynical attempt to justify a higher price tag by offering "more game".
Hidden underneath all the complexity, the game boils down to three simple mini-games that everyone has to play at the same time. It's a bit like Seven Wonders where you try to accumulate points within a certain number of rounds, which you do by beating your opponents at these minigames. The strategy is in deciding which of these you want to focus on and which to neglect. It takes a long time to figure out what everything does, but once you know, the game moves at a surprisingly fast rate. I've played complicated games that don't ever get any quicker, with players stumbling through multiple unintuitive phases, perpetually thumbing through the rules. Heritage on the other hand eventually becomes fun.
One feature I like is that content of previous games carries over into the next. Your vampires live forever, and each game takes place in a different year, moving inexorably up until the end of the 20th century. That said, I didn't feel like an ancient vampire clan leader. At no point are you really sucking anyone's blood or killing people; you know, actual monstrous vampire stuff. Your network of minions means you could be playing a mobster or a Borges family head and it would be the same experience.
To most people, this game isn't worth the upfront investment. Vt M fans aren't getting something like their RPG, and board game fans aren't getting anything mindblowing. Only the most patient people that will discover the fun side of this game.