Hi everyone.
As we started development, one thing we kept hearing was, “we want more information on the clans!” However, we wanted to stay pretty close to the V20 model, with 2-page spreads for ease of access and reference. So, we did those spreads, and gave what we felt were iconic representations of our clans.
However, to provide a little more room for clan content, I gave each of the writers an opportunity to add a little something for their clan. This is all being compiled at the end of the book as an “esoterica of the clans”, basically a little value added content to add some expanded setting information, story hooks, and the like. For some clans, this meant a clan-specific Road. For some, it meant a piece of short fiction. For some, it meant a biased, alternate take on their history. For some, it’s Storyteller character archetypes to feature the clan in your chronicle. But it’s an appendix full of all sorts of weird, meaty stuff. It’s a sample of the kinds of added content we’d like to feature in later books if possible. We have an esoterica for all thirteen main clans, plus one for the Salubri (an excerpt of the Code of Samiel!) and the Giovani (a few members of the clan).
To provide an example of the division, here’s Malkavians. I’ve provided the clan spread in the first link, then their esoterica appendix in the second.
Here’s Clan Malkavian.
Here’s the Malkavian Esoterica.
The clan spread’s been through edits. The esoterica entry hasn’t yet.
Comments
24 responses to “V20 Dark Ages: Malkavians”
Question about the esoterica: in that letter, what happened to 5? It’s the only number missing from the Fibonacci sequence.
Copy/paste error when I was trying to format the doc. When you paste Word to Google Docs, it looks utterly atrocious, so I have to go in and speed through formatting, and I was hasty about it. I’ve since gotten it fixed.
The lack of a Five in the Esoterica’s Letter bothers me greatly.
1-1-2-3-FIVE-8… Where is the Five? Why there is no Five? Did the Character forget?
That’s so weird. I totally even recall writing it.
It’s even in the art notes for that page. Let me fix that…
Also, sorry a typo bothered you greatly. I think it was a weirdly placed highlight/enter situation as I was formatting the Google Doc version I pasted from Word.
5 – There comes a point where five have no home. The image is hazy. I apologize.
I have it pasted correctly now.
Look at this letter! How strong can be a Malkavian prediction?!
In this case, it’s an unlife’s work boiled down to a letter.
And all the accuracy in the world here doesn’t change a thing. Which is the plight of the Cassandras.
I simply loved the esoterica and mysteries. More prithee!!!
Thank you! Glad you liked it. I’ll drop another clan/esoterica combo soon.
It seems to me that sometimes writers explains the clans for those of us who know the earliers versions. The explanation of Malkavians seems focused in changing the clan stereotype, and I think a newbie would have difficulties to understand what a Malkavian is by just reading the description.
I could maybe see it?
In this case, V20 Dark Ages inhabits a kind of weird space. I don’t think we’re going to get a huge rush of people who have never seen Vampire before rushing to pick up because of it. I figure most people at least have a passing familiarity with Vampire.
That said, I did pass my clan writeups by a handful of alpha readers, many of which have never played Vampire before. I paid attention to the responses on my survey to them. With some of the clans, Malkavians being one, I got a lot of, “I want to play this! Where can I read more?” That’s enough for me.
With the Malkavians, I didn’t want to focus on what they’re not. It wasn’t about breaking stereotypes. It was more about not focusing on stereotypes, and instead, putting a group of characters into a time and place. To me, Malkavians in V20 Dark Ages aren’t about preconceptions, stereotypes, and the like. They’re a flashpoint in this setting we’re writing about. I described that flashpoint.
For what it’s worth, that reaction isn’t confined to newcomers. I’ve been collecting vampire since 1992. This is the first Malkavian write-up I’ve seen that made me interested in creating a Malkavian PC. There’s an almost Cthulhu-like feeling of sanity starting to give way under the weight of too much knowledge, too much understanding. Instead of a random and disjointed collection of the bizarre, the dysfunctional and the outright foolish, we get a clan that’s both endangered and potentially very dangerous. Even on a quick first reading, potential character concepts and plot hooks leaped out at me. For instance, “Malkavians don’t fight battles, they start battles… Cainites objectify the Children of Malkav, seeing them as seer stones, divining rods, and crystal balls”. And how might a politically savvy Malkavian exploit that? Glamis, Cawdor, and King hereafter…
New editions often just re-state what’s gone before, with minor tweaks. Seeing a genuinely fresh perspective really fired my enthusiasm. Very nice indeed.
That’s actually great to hear. Thank you!
Awesome! The new write-up makes the clan more interesting and will hopefully get more players to take the clan seriously. Any chance we could see Lasombra next?
Not at all out of the question. I think it’s currently in editing, so let me double check.
Very excited about this and I’m a big fan of David Hill’s work.
Any chance we can get a look at the Brujah?
Why thank you!
Let me see about Brujah as well. Malkavian’s the only clan I personally did. Renee Ritchie did Brujah. She’s a long-time friend and compatriot; she’s the editor for the book, and she’s edited my independent stuff through Machine Age Productions for years.
If you’re taking requests, I’d love a peek at the Gangrel
I totally am. It’ll probably be one of our now-frequent updates.
I love that their nickname is now “the Cassandras”, and I think that sums them up very well.
In a lot of games that I’ve played, Malkavians were banned as player characters due to the difficulty it is seriously portray a mental instability or illness; personally, I have always regarded this as a wise move, because anytime that I have played with someone that has played a Malkavian, its purpose was to be disruptive and play a “FishMalk”. That being said, the focus on the appearance of “normality” and the note that the stranger ones are targets of the Church are very nice touches, and I hope that this will encourage players that may have previously abused the Malkavians as goofballs to take them a little more seriously.
Thank you.
As someone who suffers from a severe mental illness, and someone who grew up in a household with a mother suffering from an even more severe mental illness, the Malkavians have always been a really sore point for me. I feel that I approach them from a unique perspective, and tried to reflect that in this particular writeup.
I can’t really relate to people that wear their mental illness on their sleeve. I can relate to people that try to operate under the radar, and to people that spend a lot of their time and energy dealing with methods for coping, and for proving to the world that they have value in spite of their disabilities.
That’s an attitude I can relate to, since I have Asperger syndrome myself (never formally diagnosed, but I’ve filled in questionnaires, spoken to people with experience of it, et cetera, and they all agree). I’m high-functioning enough that I can attend an office party and interact with people if I have to, but I still get a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach when someone proposes one.
IC, my objection to the more blatant Malkavian excesses of the past is that, in a society dominated by the likes of Hardestadt and Jurgen, you survive if (a) you’re too insignificant to notice, (b) you’re useful to them or (c) they’re afraid of you. Characters of the “FishMalk” stereotype are useless to them, disruptive to their domains and potentially dangerous if they attract mortal attention. They’d fall victim to Ventrue social Darwinism very quickly indeed, assuming the Inquisition didn’t get to them first.
In a couple of centuries, Hardestadt will play a role in founding the Camarilla. He brought the Malkavians into it. He did not do that out of political correctness – as far as Hardestadt’s concerned, “politically correct” means “I’m in charge”. Quite obviously, he thought they were effective enough to be useful, too powerful to ignore, or both. Your write-up makes that believable in a way that, to be honest, I’ve never found it before.
Thank you. Means a lot to hear that.
I understand all too well. I myself suffer from a few crippling mental disabilities (depression, generalized anxiety disorder, diagnosed somewhere between the autism and ADD spectrum, sensory problems, and so on), it’s always been painful to see those kinds of crippling factors mocked and toyed with for the sake of an RPG (that said, I have mostly gamed with calloused twits with no concept of empathy).
As to your second paragraph, yes 1,000 times! The only reason that I’ve managed to survive in the real world and advance in my career is to pretend that I’m perfectly normal without any accommodations whatsoever; I can’t even begin to fathom how a undead character with anything remotely related to what something like you, myself, or anyone with a disorder or disability experiences on a day-to-day basis could experience that kind of pain and isolation every single night for hundreds, if not thousands of years. The thought alone is enough to start stirring up anxious tendencies. Ugh.