Exciting New Homebrew For Vampire: The Masquerade!
Lore By Night branching out?
Good afternoon, good morning, good evening or whatever time period it is wherever you are in the world. Happy Belated 2021 to the wonderful World of Darkness community, the Vamily. Hope things have been less shit for you so far. If not, I hope the news I am about to deliver to you will add a smile to your sullen faces.
Chances are that you have found this through my Twitter or Instagram pages, or you are one of the Loreteire, the self-dubbed title members of the Lore By Night Discord Server. Wherever you have come from, chances are there are varying degrees of uncertainty as to what I’m scheming. You may know that I have been working on a piece of homebrew, not for any Vampire: The Masquerade game that I am playing, but for the wider community to use in their own sessions.
No, it is not some mish-mashed attempt to bring in the Baali or the True Brujah into V5 (do we even need them anymore?), neither is it the constantly demanded character sheets for The Narrator (the Nosferatu Methuselah I portray in the Lore By Night podcast). It is something far more useful than these things, something that has never been done before in any VtM book, official or otherwise.
Inclusivity has always been strongly encouraged within the World of Darkness games, and that couldn’t be even more true with its most popular game, Vampire: The Masquerade. Open any of the books and find vampires of all colours, creeds and races who define themselves using many pronouns. This isn’t some ‘Millennial Invasion’. This has been the case for 30 years (at the time of writing).
One of the most popular canonical characters is Sascha Vykos of Clan Tzimisce, who is one of the vilest and twisted individuals to exist in the game, and fans young and old love them for it. Sascha has identified themselves as both male and female throughout the game’s history. Currently (as of the writing of this homebrew) Sascha is a non-binary character. Should that change, I know the fans of the game will support their decision.
As encouraging as it is to see the diversity and celebration of all these different elements throughout the years with varying degrees of success, there is one thing that has, for the most part, been remarkably absent from the game’s setting: disability. I wanted to challenge that mindset and encourage a better representation of disability in these games, both physical and neurological, so everyone can play characters that represent themselves.
So after a few months of researching, planning, organising, writing and editing, I can proudly present to you:
The Kindred Wheelchair
The Kindred Wheelchair is a Lore By Night Homebrew Supplement for Vampire: The Masquerade Fifth Edition. It aims to allow wheelchair-using players to feel more included in games of VtM, by creating characters that represent themselves. Countless hours have been spent watching various wheelchair sports (rugby, basketball etc.) and wheelchair dance, to have a feel and understanding of what is physically possible. Days have been spent studying the actual construction of these wheelchairs, from the materials used in the chassis, the angle of the wheels, and more, to better understand how much of a beating they can take when in the hands of aggressive users.
Even though I am the sole author of this homebrew, that does not mean I am the only one who has worked on this. Bear with me, this does make sense I promise!
This has been a large collaboration project with myself and different people within the community, for I am not a game developer, nor am I a wheelchair user. I have some knowledge on this line of game development, and I have quite a bit of passing knowledge on wheelchairs, having grown up with family and friends with all sorts of disabilities and learning differences, but I am certainly no expert.
If this was going to be a successful and respectful product, I would need to work with other people, to make sure that not only this felt like a legitimate World of Darkness product, but that was also respectful to those who use wheelchairs, and not some wacky unbalanced gimmick.
So, this is what I did:
- At various stages of development, I spoke to a variety of disabled sensitivity readers, each one bringing in invaluable knowledge about using wheelchairs in their day-to-day (or night-to-night if we stick with the vampire theme) life. No two people’s responses were the same, and neither were their conditions or the way said conditions affected their lives. It was important to learn and appreciate what these people went through, to portray them respectfully.
- Suggestions and input were made by different World of Darkness writers, to make some of the mechanics and ideas more grounded and balanced. Some of their most recent WoD work includes ‘Chicago By Night’, ‘Cults of The Bloods Gods’ and ‘Fall of London’. Their feedback was invaluable, as not only were they gave me helpful corrections, but they asked me questions to further improve the material, to give it more narrative, much like other WoD books.
- A small portion of VtM content creator friends of mine also helped in terms of balance and suggestions to improve the quality of the supplement.
All of these people have been credited in the supplement. And, as no money will be made from this homebrew, there has been no exchange in money either.
What Can I Expect To Find Within This Supplement?
- Mechanics that allow wheelchair users to stand a fair chance in physical combat with their own Kindred Wheelchair, via an array of upgrades
- Customisable (and optional) ‘Health’ Trackers for the Wheelchair
- 2 new Blood Sorcery Powers
- 1 new Ritual
- Easy to digest and flexible systems that are easy to reverse engineer for older editions of VtM
- Plenty of original plot hooks and narrative choices regarding the strange creation process of The Kindred Wheelchair to include in your games
- 1 Loresheet connecting players with the canonical creators of The Kindred Wheelchair, in addition to encouraging and rewarding inclusivity, if the player does not wish to create a wheelchair-using character but still wants to use the supplement
- ‘Moonlight & Blood Ties’, a short story bringing the chair into the World of Darkness
As of the writing of this article, this will not be available on the Storytellers Vault, for it currently does not support V5 material. You can find it by following the below link, in addition to a dyslexic friendly version when it goes live 13th March 2021.
Audio versions will be available anywhere you would listen to podcasts (see below link) such as YouTube & Spotify.
To be kept updated, follow the Lore by Night VtM Twitter and Instagram pages to find out when we will upload each episode. You can also find out by subscribing to this channel and clicking on the little bell, as you will be immediately notified when the latest episode is live.
Until next time, farewell.
