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White Wolf's Vampire:the Requiem is the new version of their flagship game, set in the "rebooted" World of Darkness (meaning you'll need the World of Darkness rulebook to play, not just the Vampire book). And while there are plenty of familiar concepts and names, it's got some significant changes from the Masquerade.

First of all, just as in all their other new games, the political factions have been split from the innate ones. These days, a vampire can be a member of any of five clans (Ventrue, Gangrel and Nosferatu are holdovers from Masquerade, but Daeva and Mekhet are new), but what's really important is her covenant affiliation. The Invictus fancies itself to be in charge, the Lancea Sanctum reveres Longinus the vampiric soldier who wounded Christ on the Cross, and the Circle of the Crone thinks all vampires are descended from the Mother of Monsters. Meanwhile the Ordo Dracul are scholars of the vampiric condition and claim the most famous vampire of all as their founder, while the Carthian Movement thinks all the other four are outdated and tries to bring democracy to the Undead. Though there are a few clan/covenant associations-the Ventrue tend to be Invictus, for example-any one of the clans can belong to any of the covenants. This is handy in that it allows the player to pick clan powers (and weaknesses) she likes without committing her character to a certain social circle as well. Being a member of a covenant gives a character some social advantages she doesn't otherwise have, and access to special powers. The unhooking of clan from social ties works in the adversaries, too; Belial's Brood plays the role of the Sabbat, but its Kindred are drawn from the same five clans as the "good" vampires.

The various Disciplines have undergone some edits, but in general players of the Masquerade will find themselves on familiar ground. Where things get weird is in the covenant powers-the Circle of the Crone has Cruac, for example, while the Ordo Dracul provides access to the Coils of the Dragon-which are only available to those who have the Status Merit in the relevant covenants. They provide "special" vampiric powers, usually having to do with traditional themes like blood, death and damage, but still not things every vampire can, or should be able to, do.

Generation has been thankfully replaced, with a 1-10 scale called Blood Potency. This stat increases with age, about 1 point every 50 years, and controls such things as how much blood the vampire can have at one

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