I've been working on Wintergris over the bachelor weekend while my wife and daughter are away, and in some of the downtime, I scribbled this together. It seems like it might be a fun thing to run as a one-on-one campaign using Pathfinder or maybe something more painterly. I liked that it mixes intrigue and "go fight stuff." In fact, I see the player in the role of the Queen's Envoy as sort of like Walsingham from Elizabeth. It's also fun to revel in the influences here. You can see obvious inflections of Gene Wolfe, Glen Cook, and a heapin' helpin' of Victoriana. Or perhaps just a less-deft Gormenghast.

Since time out of mind, the Queen has rules the City of Roses, which spans beyond the horizon in all directions. Truly, none knows what, if anything, lies beyond Roses; no once call recall ever meeting anyone from outside its walls or even how to leave its environs. So it is with the Queen, as well — it seems she has always ruled, and likely always will.

The Queen and Court

Hidden behind a curtain-veil that surrounds her throne, the Queen rules the City of Roses as its unquestioned monarch. Beneath her, her court schemes in secret after making a show of bowing to her absolute power. 

The court is very much an extension of the Queen’s will. She grants and rescinds titles with motive known only to her, and her poisonous ire one day might turn to fawning favor the next. 

At present, the courtly fashion accessories in vogue are fanciful masks, giving the impression that the whole of the aristocracy is involved in an elaborate charade. While the nobles conspire behind their stylish accouterments, the politics of the realm take shape. One is left with the impression that the ceremony is as much for protection as it is for amusement — but exactly who’s playing the joke on whom often remains unclear. 

The City of Roses

The city itself is a sprawling mystery, a vast urban dystopia, and a clash of haves and have-nots. Unseen forces plot inscrutable agendas while the Queen’s court conducts its own perilous game of power and intrigue. Things man was not meant to know prowl the City of Roses at night, while it also issues forth wonders that might be considered little less than miracles.

In the city’s wealthiest neighborhoods, towers soar skyward, pushed toward the heavens by gossamer architecture and traversed by bridges that seem to fly from structure to structure, while stained-glass windows glitter like gems when the sun strikes them. 

Not all is so beautiful or vibrant in the City of Roses, however. Much of the city is poor, filthy, underdeveloped, or industrial. The city’s mines churn out coarse ores from beneath the surface of the earth. Smithies and refineries spew impenetrable smoke. Rookeries and tenements flourish in the shadows of the wealthy districts.

Much of the city — perhaps a third or more by the reckoning of some sages — is a cyclopean ruin, a still-standing testament to forgotten times. Today these ruins house the desperate and strange, and are even whispered to be the domains of monsters and other unspeakable things. 

Matters of Faith

Officially, the religion of the City of Roses is Theosophy, a pursuit of virtues that lead men toward “the Absolute.” The Queen’s Theosophy is a civic faith, intended to promote critical thought, science, artistic expression, commerce, and a more vaguely defined “good deeds.” Understanding of universal mysteries and a study of the arcane arts are also relevant, as Theosophy maintains that the cosmos and all its attendant powers are both conscious entities and interrelated in some capacity. 

An official religion does nothing to stem the tide of the various other faiths, cults, and outright heresies that thrive in the city. Everything from veneration of obscure pantheons to nature worship to a bizarre sect claiming that the Queen herself is a god finds adherents in the City of Roses. Ancestor worship, deification of abstract concepts, the Temple of the Rat-Curse God: All of these and more find their place from the home shrines to the subterranean altars of the city.

Fundamentally, clans and traditional RPG classes do the same thing. They represent how a player wants to play the game. When you choose a clan, you’re telling your Storyteller, “I want to do the sorts of stuff my clan is known for.” You can mess with that a bit, but for the most part, a clan is what it is.

Before clans, most depictions of vampires recalled the classic, Lugosi-style revenant aristocrat.Further than that, though, the clans do something that classes don’t. They construct a social presence. They’re something to which a character belongs, and they’re a concept around which players can build a social solidarity for their characters. When combined with an illustrated, explanatory two-page spread, they enable a player to say, “My character is like that... and there are others like him, who may well have his back.” 

In theory, this is little more than faction. It’s an organization and a player belongs to it. It’s not that different from pledging fealty to the duke or enlisting in the space marines. In practice, though, it’s a much more momentous thing. It’s an automatic point of commonality with other vampires, Kindred who are not alike only in their suggested function or occupation (like a class), but who share a lineage, a supernatural proclivity, and probably even an outlook. 

It’s a social network, that is. A clan fills a game role by giving a character a function, like a class, but also a sense of belonging. It tells players, “There are others like you. Find them and do your clan shit. That strength in numbers will help you against your common enemies.” Oh, and you certainly have some common enemies. Right there in that two-page spread it told you what your clan’s prevailing attitude was toward other clans, and you can bet it isn't, “Yeah, those guys are pretty cool. You can trust them.” 

So there: All in one elegant, fun declaration of self you have:

• Function
• Image
• Attitude
• Allies (ostensibly, as this is Vampire, after all...)
• Validation
• Direction
• Plot hooks

As an added bonus, clans give you the opportunity to play against type, effectively doubling that buffet of options up there. You may want to be the rebellious Ventrue, the Gangrel in repose, the humanistic Nosferatu. All of that positive stuff, well, it’s still content if it’s a negative you want to oppose or a social more you want to flout. It’s still grist for the roleplaying mill. 

TIm Bradstreet's timeless, iconic modern vampire, which still strikes an emotional chord twenty years after its first appearance. A fine piece of work, despite being done by a Steelers fan.I remarked at a GenCon panel this year that the two-page spreads were magic, and I stand by that statement. Early drafts of Vampire didn’t have the clans. A vampire was a vampire was a vampire, and that’s all fine and good, but aside from needing to drink blood, and the assumed competition among each other for this finite (and taboo) resource, where was the conflict? With eternal life and no other inherent motivations, what did vampires do? The clans took shape in that vacuum.

Introducing clans was Chris McDonough’s idea, and it came comparatively late to the development of the game. I have to think that it was the masterstroke of the game, that one magic moment when a mostly good game suddenly had its chrysalis and became a great game. Everything else worked and then, when clans became a part of it all, they tied everything together and even provided a bit of extra dimension that grew into a part of the Vampire milieu that ultimately became inextricable from it — perhaps even its focus. What better way to illustrate the religious motif pervading Vampire than with a literal transference of the sins of the sire to the childe? This concept naturally made the transition from Masquerade to Requiem. Those other, post-Vampire elements of pop culture that borrowed from Vampire, whether the houses in the Wesley Snipes Blade movie to the different factions of Underworld to the familial groups of MySpace sparkletards in Twilight and the Camarilla-redolent societies in True Blood all bear the mark and capitalize on the gravity of Vampire's clan concept.

The clans all have distinct personalities and characters, whether from Masquerade or Requiem, and always have.The clans were bigger than any signature character, and that’s all to the good. In fact, they might be so sovereign as to eclipse the single most recognizable “character” in the World of Darkness: the world itself. 

Let’s get personal. I remember being introduced to the World of Darkness through Vampire. Although Mage was my first real love among the White Wolf games, I came back to Vampire in short order, entirely because I loved the clans, their feel, and what they represented. I knew that at one-on-one tabletop games or fifty-person live-action games, I’d have a contingent of clanmates who might well be allies or antagonists, but who would represent a specific take on the vampire myth. They were people first and foremost, but I could at the very least understand them as vampires and take it from there. 

Imagine: What would Vampire be without clans? It would certainly be personal, because the individual’s motivation would take prominence. But for those players who want a little extra guidance, some examples to follow, and some culture to be a part of... what in the game could take their place? What could accomplish what clans do as elegantly, as characteristically, and as indelibly as the clans? Without clans, Vampire certainly wouldn’t be the same game, and it’s likely that you and I wouldn’t be talking about it now.