I started working on fleshing out the Clans for Night’s Black Masquerade tonight, and a strange thing occurred. I had a well-laid out path, and things appeared to be going pretty well. Enter John Adamus, an editor, writer, and game designer who I consider a good friend. He let me know that I was going about things ‘the hard way.’

It turns out the pieces I needed to make things work were already in Night’s Black Agents; I just didn’t see them. In NBA, vampires are the antagonists, so there are rules for building them and including iconic vampire abilities like turning to mist, shapeshifting, and the like. So what if I just use those for the PCs? This makes the PCs more powerful than typical Night’s Black Agents, but being one of the Kindred is supposed to make you more powerful, right?

Here’s my current thought on how this works. At character creation, a player chooses a Clan (NBA Background) and this gives him a package of abilities. Here’s an example…

Nosferatu

• Stealth mod +2
• Free 1-pt spend on Intimidation
• May not take points in High Society (optional)
• Animalism: Communicate with Animals”, Summon Animals
• Obfuscate: Cloak of Darkness”, Cloud Men’s Minds
• Potence: Damage mod +2

I don’t know if the free 1-pt spend is worth it, but it’s a starting point. Notice that I also made the original Nosferatu weakness optional. That’s up to the GM and the players to decide whether they want to use them or not. I personally like the idea.

Another potential issue I see is that of balance between the Clans. Gangrel (which I may post later) appears to be more powerful than the Nosferatu I have here. To be honest, I’m not that concerned about that for the moment (that’s what playtesting is for). I’m more concerned with retaining the feel of each Clan.

Don’t be shy (I mean it)! Have I captured the feel of a Nosferatu? Tweet at me.

Nosferatu clan symbol from flickr by user Fluffgar used under (CC BY-SA 2.0).