Vampire The Masquerade – Chapters

I usually start my long reviews with a little atmospheric, story-like intro, and whilst this game certainly lends itself to such, I thought an explanation of what’s to come would be better suited.

You see, this didn’t go the way I though it would. I started putting down my thoughts in note form when I first opened the box. What I liked/disliked about the components as I unpacked them all. My criticisms of the rules as I learned to play the game. And, my initial euphoria as I started to play through the prologues.

First off, I should mention that I played through the game solo, using 4-characters rather than 1-character and allies as suggested in the rules. The prologues are pure solitary games anyway, as they run through the story of each character and introduce you to specific rules that would be associated with playing that character.

The prologues were excellent, short but immersive. Delving into a brief moment of the characters life and setting the scene for things to come. This, I thought, is going to be excellent and I couldn’t wait to get into the main game and, thinking further ahead, introduce the game to my daughter.

Things, however, didn’t quite go to plan.

So, read on to see what I thought about this vampirish lure of a game…

The Facts

Wanna get straight to my thoughts? Then feel free to stalk my words of wisdom, and sneak down to, ‘So, what do I think?‘

• Designer: Gary Paitre and Thomas Filippi
• Publisher: Flyos
• Year Released: 2023
• Players: 1-4
• Playing Time: 30 per player per chapter
• Ages: 18+
• Recommended Retail Price: £184.99

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What’s in the box?

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Core Concepts

In Vampire: The Masquerade – Chapters, players engage in a narrative-driven board game where they embody various vampire characters, each with unique abilities and backgrounds. The primary objective is to progress through a series of chapters, each telling pieces of a larger story filled with intrigue and conflict.

The game is designed for 1 to 4 players, and it can be played solo or cooperatively. Each player selects a character who has distinct traits representing their clan and personal history. The game is played using character boards and miniatures that represent the player’s chosen vampire, while gameplay is guided by a combination of rulebooks, storybooks, and, if you choose to, an accompanying app that streamlines the narrative.

During play, each chapter unfolds with players making choices that influence the storyline. Players must perform various actions based on skill checks that involve rolling dice. Each character has a set of attributes and skills that define their strengths. For example, during skill checks, the player’s attribute determines the number of dice rolled, while skills indicate automatic successes. This system creates a dynamic interaction, as players must strategize who to assign to specific tasks based on their character’s abilities.

Combat in the game relies on a card system where players select combat cards based on their character’s stats. Each card conveys different actions such as attack or defense, adding a layer of strategy as players must choose wisely when to engage in combat. The core mechanics emphasize narrative choices, character progression, and cooperative gameplay, encouraging players to navigate their characters’ journeys thoughtfully while exploring the dark, immersive world of vampires.

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So, what do I think?

Components

It’s a big heavy box, though when you start playing the game you do wonder exactly where all the contents have gone. By that, I mean that much of the contents aren’t used from game to game. There are a lot of chapter booklets, which is where much of the weight comes from, and there’s a lot of inlay to hold it all. Take these away and actually, there aren’t a great deal of game components left.

Playing with the App, as I did, made much of the contents defunct anyway, like the above mentioned booklets, as well as the story book; I could have gotten away with a box half the size!

What is in there, though, isn’t too bad a quality at all. The miniatures for the characters are nice, simply detailed but cleanly finished, about what you’d expect for board game miniatures. The board and card quality is good too, no complaints there.

The standees, though, aren’t so great in my opinion. The art work is dark and some images are quite poor and difficult to make out, made worse by the contrast between the image and it’s background. A lot of the standees didn’t like fitting into the stands either, with a lot being too loose and falling out every time they were moved.

My other gripe with the standees is a simple, why? There seems to be an individual standee for every character/NPC you come across in the game, however short their appearance may be. Why they didn’t use generic ones for some of the characters, such as guards, detectives, and such like is beyond me – it would have made searching through the large pile to find the specific one a lot less rigorous and reduced the cost.

The tokens are of a decent quality, but again, they are quite dark and don’t ‘pop’ on the table, though you could say that is in keeping with the dark theme of the game!

Overall, the art work was just okay, nothing to shout out about, though the graphic design was better and I found it intuitive and easy to get to grips with.

It all fits nicely into the box, as the inlays have compartments for everything, once you figure it out.

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Theme

I was eager to play this game primarily due to its theme, and at first, I wasn’t let down…

I played through several of the character prologues and my excitement grew. The theme was immersive, dark, and pulled me in to each character’s background. I was excited to discover more and progress through the chapters.

There were investigative prologues, sneaky prologues, and combat prologues, as well as mixture of many of the things the game had to offer, which certainly grabbed me by the neck and pulled me in.

Things didn’t go so well once I started the main game, however.

If you take the main story arcs as a single entity, then yes, the story is fantastic, vampirically thrilling, dark and intriguing, however, it’s the inconsistencies that keep cropping up, and some of the disjointed jumps between chapters, that soon start to grate.

For example, and this actually came up in one of the prologues – with my very first turn I scare off a ghoul that is lurking in the street, but every passage I read from there on whilst I was still in the street, started with something like, ‘You make sure the ghoul doesn’t see you’!

The first time this happens you can forgive it because the story is impelling enough for you to want to continue. By the tenth time this happens, though, it starts to get in the way of the enjoyment, and as it happens more and more you start to get a bit fed up and, in my case, lose the will to carry on.

There is nothing built in to control the storyline based on what you may or may not do mid-chapter. It’s all narratively controlled unlike some similar games that, whilst not so deep in storytelling, use cards or checkboxes to keep the story more, shall we say, stable.

It’s obviously a fine balance between a deep and immersive role-playing kind of narrative, where consistency can be difficult to control because of the many presented options, as compared to something that keeps the story short and concise with few options that can each have their own branch.

Each to their own, but for me it didn’t quite work here and the further I got into the game the less invested in it I became.

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Rules

I found the rules well written and easy to understand with my only real criticism being the order in which they were presented.

At times I was confused because certain rules weren’t where I expected them to be and finding them not always as easy as it could have been.

But, there were plenty of examples and, actually, the game play is fairly simple and flows really well.

The prologues are essential play, as each gives a basic understanding into different rules based upon how that character plays. For example, the Tremere prologue, Jade Linh-Duplessis, introduced rules regarding investigation, as this is the character’s strength; this was also my favourite of the prologues!

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Gameplay

As usual, I’ll just be commenting on the things that stood out for me, both good and bad…

So, if you haven’t gathered by now, I used the App for my games. After hearing about the many issues with the original format, and that the majority of errors had supposedly been ironed out in the digital version, it was a no-brainer to reach for my phone.

It isn’t an App that records your journey through the game, more like a digital book that contains all the actions, dialogues, etc. pertinent to the current chapter, which is a an opportunity missed in my mind.

It isn’t the best App in the world and I found I had to jump around a bit because it appears to have been written with a set order in mind – it feels like the storyline was written and then chopped up into options that don’t always flow when taken out of order. I did, however, find that it helped more than it hindered.

I did look at the main storybook and the narrative appears to be a lot shorter in the App, at least in the introductory bits that I glanced at. That probably helps when playing anything other than solo, as there would be a lot of down time for players whilst long paragraphs were being read. The App appears to have been condensed, and in my games there was nothing too lengthy to read and it didn’t slow the pace of game.

The choice of characters, especially with their own prologue backstory, was something I really liked. They all felt different, with their own reasons for doing what they do, and their individual backstories crop up throughout the game, offering different choices depending on who’s involved.

You can form a coterie (a group of vampires) where the characters all complement one another quite easily, each picking up an area of expertise whilst also being able to fill a secondary role too. This makes for some good teamwork opportunities, thinking ahead on who takes which action, or who’s at the forefront of combat. It also adds some strategic depth.

I liked the way skill rolls were made. Characters have attributes and skills. The attribute indicates how many die you roll whilst the skill tells you how many automatic successes you have. For example – you’re asked for a Mental + Search check at difficulty 4 (you require 4 successes). Your Mental attribute may be 3 and your search skill 2. So, you roll 3 dice – certain symbols give you successes – and add 2 automatic successes to the result.

This presented me with a variety of options when approaching a skill check, as I worked out which of my four characters would have the best chance of success, especially as other factors came into play, such as items and disciplines, about which more will be discussed shortly.

On this note, gaining experience and leveling up attributes and skills was an intriguing part of the game and one I really enjoyed. I felt the decisions I made here affected my character and how they would play within the game. I mostly tried to build on their basic traits, improving the things they were already good at, but I also experimented with creating an all-rounder and a specific, combat-heavy character. I will, however, address a few issues I found in the next section.

Disciplines, the Vampiric traits of the characters, were… well, a bit disappointing!

Each character had three disciplines based upon their clan. For each of these there were three obtainable levels. For each level you gain you are given a choice of which power to take.

Now, I say given a choice, and here’s where it falls a bit flat, as the choice is very limited. On the odd occasion, you have a choice of one from three powers, but more often than not its from two, or sadly, you just have to take the single power on offer.

This is a shame, as it’s the disciplines that make your characters feel a bit different from the average Joe. I feel a chance to make the characters really shine was missed here and, though I like the character advancement, I would have liked greater choice in making my character feel a bit more like a vampire!

Combat! I’m not sure how I feel about this aspect of the game. It’s novel, I’ll give it that, but does it work? I’m not so sure.

Each character has some basic combat cards, which are further added to depending upon their skill level in Athletics, Stealth, Brawl, and Weapons. When combat begins, the player selects a number of these cards based on their Physical + Mental attributes; for the opening chapters this is going to be around 5-cards.

One card is played during a round of combat and, depending on the card, can be used for attack, defense, or, if it’s a mix card, it can be utilised for attack or defense, but not both in a round.

First up, I hated having accumulated a load of combat cards only to be limited to a choice of just a few for the actual combat. It’s like, my character can do all these wonderful things until they get into combat and then they forget everything, resorting to just a few moves however great they may be. If you have a weapon you have to take weapon combat cards to make use of it, otherwise, you may have a handy pistol but you’ll be punching, kicking and biting only during this combat – it didn’t make much sense to me.

On the other hand though, it does make for some strategic play. Working out what worked best against a particular foe and then trying to align each card with what they may throw at me (NPCs use a deck of combat cards specifically for them and once you have an idea of what’s in their deck you can plan accordingly) proved to be quite enjoyable.

Overall, some will like it, others will loathe it.

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Balance and scaling

Now to address a few issues that I alluded to earlier.

I didn’t think that all the characters were equal, at least at the start, and whilst this wasn’t so much of a problem playing solo, I could see it raising its head multi-player.

For example… A character with Athletics of 0 only gets to move 1 hex, which is a major drawback, and that player will end up spending initial experience to increase this. Okay, other players will be addressing their character’s weaknesses, but few are as much of a drawback as a low athletics skill. I found it frustrating not being able to move very far and that other characters would have to make allowances for this and not rush ahead – most of the time, I rushed ahead! I can’t imagine what it would be like to be playing in a group of four, and it comes to your turn, and all you do is move 1 hex, and that’s it because you’re not near enough to do anything else – what a drag!

Some character’s are already really focused on a particular gameplay path and so spending experience is an easy decision, becoming very useful, very quickly. Others, you have to plan how you want them to progress and it can take a while before they find their niche.

Now, this isn’t a problem if you’re a veteran of the game and know which characters do what, but if you’re just starting out, you might end up with a character you don’t have an affinity with. Though to be fair, playing the prologues gives you a basic understanding of the characters, and it is easy enough to swap out between chapters.

Okay, I’ve only played it solo but I have a gut feeling that, other than playing 2-player, this is possibly the best way to experience the game.

It’s a campaign game, and you know what they can be like, right? Can everyone meet the commitment? What if someone doesn’t gel with the game and drops out? Well, it isn’t too much of an issue here because it is easy enough to add or remove players from session to session, which is a big plus in a game like this. But personally, I’d rather just make it my story than share it.

The storyline also reads better when playing solo, especially if you choose to engage with a single character and gather a few crucial allies to accompany you on your journey, rather than opting to control four full characters simultaneously, as I did during my first playthrough. A single main character allows for a more profound immersion into the narrative, letting you truly absorb the intricate plot developments and character arcs without the distraction of multiple points of view. The personal connection you build with your main character can intensify the emotional stakes, making each decision feel significantly weighty.

Combat seemed to scale reasonably well to the number of player characters, though I found a number of instances where I’d be dawdling through a chapter with very little challenge only to be thrown into a combat where the difficulty suddenly ramped way up, it then took a number of attempts to make progress (you can replay a chapter if you fail).

It can be hard to gauge just how powerful your coterie is in terms of combat until you’re actually thrown at something like a boss, which can be a little disheartening at times because, of course, you’re never quite as tough as you think you are!

The bosses were a challenge that I enjoyed. Figuring out the best way to take them on, and there’s multiple ways that this can be achieved, often meant planning out a strategy and then getting all the characters to work together to that aim – one of the best bits of the game. I did find it pushed the characters to their limits and may prove a downer to those who dislike repeating encounters over and over to make progress through the story.

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Replayability

Yes, there’s a ton of replayability here.

Taking different characters, making different choices, being forced down different paths, all lead to variation and new storylines to discover.

The only thing holding you back from playing again is, whether you’d actually want to!

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Recommended?

I really, really wanted to play this game.

I mean, Vampires! RPG in a box! Narrative play! What’s not to like?

I was drawn in by the prologues and thought, yes! This is going to be great!

However, the more I played the more my enthusiasm waned. The inconsistencies were all to frequent and annoying, some of which made me a tiny bit mad!

Take for example the chapter in which I find some silver bullets for a pistol and silver shells for a shotgun, both of which state, ‘Remains active until end of chapter then discard’. So I did!

Ah! Foolish me! My crystal ball should have told me this was wrong and not to discard them because you’ll very much need them to defeat the big bad in the next chapter – guess when I found this out?

It’s stuff like this that prevents me from recommending Vampires the Masquerade – Chapters. It happened too often and I just gave up in the end; I’ve better games to play, ones that don’t put up a fight in order to play them properly.

Then there’s the cost. A massive RRP of £185 for, and lets be honest here, not a lot. The fact that you’re better off using the App means that much of the content becomes redundant, and all those standees could have been reduced significantly by creating more generic ones for NPC types rather than an individual one for each NPC in the game! If you’re going to jump in, make sure you shop around and find a bargain like I did.

It’s truly a disappointment because this game harbored the potential for greatness. It had an ambitious vision that sparked my excitement! The character progression was undeniably the highlight for me, along with the captivating prologues. However, once I delved into the main storyline, it felt like the game’s ambition constricted rather than elevated the experience.

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My Experiences

Players: 1-4 (Me thinks best for 1-2)

Playing Time: 20 – 120 minutes per chapter (I was playing solo with 4-characters)

Age: 16/18+ Foul language & dark horror

Expansions: There’s a few out there.

Expect to Pay: £60 – £90 (I got mine for under £70!)

Extras

Official site: Vampire The Masquerade Chapters

BoardGameGeek page: Here