How to Make a Vampire: the Masquerade LARP Character

So you want to play a vampire. Maybe you stumbled across Vampire: the Masquerade online, maybe a friend dragged you to a game, or maybe you've been lurking in tabletop RPG spaces and finally want to try live-action. Whatever brought you here, making your first LARP character can feel overwhelming. There are clans, disciplines, predator types, merits, flaws, loresheets, and a whole political web to navigate before you even show up to your first game.

It doesn't have to be complicated. Here's how to go from zero to a character you're excited to play.

Start With a Concept, Not a Character Sheet

The biggest mistake new players make is opening the rulebook and trying to fill in every box. Instead, start with a simple question: who was this person before they were turned into a vampire?

You don't need a ten-page backstory. A sentence or two works. "A burned-out paramedic who got Embraced by a Malkavian after a particularly bad shift." "A retired con artist trying to go straight when a Ventrue decided she'd make a useful pawn." The concept gives you something to build around, and it makes every mechanical choice easier because you're picking things that fit a person, not optimizing a spreadsheet.

Choose a Clan

Your clan is the family of vampires that turned you. Each one has a distinct culture, set of supernatural powers (called Disciplines), and a built-in weakness (called a Bane). In Laws of the Night V5, the clans include:

Brujah — passionate rebels and fighters
Gangrel — feral survivors tied to the wild
Hecata — death-obsessed necromancers
Lasombra — ambitious shadow manipulators
Malkavian — cursed with fractured perception
Ministry — tempters and liberators
Nosferatu — monstrous information brokers
Ravnos — tricksters bound to personal obsessions
Salubri — rare healers and warriors
Toreador — artists and social predators
Tremere — blood sorcerers rebuilding their shattered clan
Tzimisce — territorial flesh-shapers
Ventrue — aristocratic rulers and power brokers

Not every vampire fits neatly into a clan. Two other options exist for characters whose Blood works differently:

Caitiff — the clanless. A Caitiff's Blood carries no clear lineage, no inherent Discipline affinity, and no specific Bane. This can sound like freedom, but in Kindred society, where lineage is everything, it usually means being treated as a second-class citizen. Caitiff have no elders to advocate for them, no clan structure to fall back on, and no built-in reputation to trade on. What they do have is flexibility. A Caitiff builds their identity entirely from scratch, and the ones who survive the political disadvantage often become some of the most resourceful Kindred in a domain.
Thin-Bloods — vampires whose Blood is so diluted that they exist on the very edge of what it means to be Kindred. Thin-Bloods are weaker than full-blooded vampires in many ways. Their Disciplines are limited, and they lack the raw supernatural power of the clans. But they also lack some of the curse's full weight. Some Thin-Bloods can walk in dim sunlight. Some can eat mortal food. Some can even pass medical examinations that would expose a full-blooded Kindred. They occupy a strange, liminal space in Kindred society, too vampire to live as mortals, too mortal to be accepted as true Kindred. Many vampires see them as an embarrassment or a threat. Thin-Bloods have developed their own form of supernatural practice called Thin-Blood Alchemy, a unique and unpredictable art that no other Kindred can replicate.

Pick the option that fits your concept. Your clan (or lack of one) says something about how your character sees the world and how the world sees them. Playing a Caitiff or a Thin-Blood is a very different experience from playing a clanned vampire, with its own unique challenges and story opportunities. If you're a brand-new player, starting with one of the thirteen clans is usually easier because it gives you a built-in identity and social network to work with. But if the outsider experience appeals to you, talk to your Storyteller about what Caitiff or Thin-Blood play looks like in your chronicle.

Cities of Darkness's character tools automatically fill in your clan's in-clan Disciplines and Bane once you choose a clan, so you can focus on concept rather than bookkeeping.

Pick a Predator Type

Predator types are new to V5 and they're one of the best additions to character creation. Your predator type describes how your character feeds. Do they seduce victims? Hunt on the streets? Hack blood bank databases? Feed on animals?

This choice isn't just flavor. Your predator type gives you a package of mechanical benefits: Advantages (merits or backgrounds), and sometimes a flaw. It shapes who your character is in play more than almost any other single choice.

Our chronicle tools handle predator types as a grants system. When you select your predator type during character creation, all the associated bonuses, skills, and options are presented to you automatically. If a predator type gives you a choice between options, the tool walks you through it. No flipping between chapters to figure out what you get.

Spend Your Attribute and Skill Dots

Laws of the Night V5 uses a straightforward dot-allocation system for Attributes (your raw capabilities like Strength, Charisma, and Wits) and Skills (trained abilities like Firearms, Persuasion, and Occult). You distribute a set number of dots across each category.

This is where your concept really pays off. A con artist probably has high Manipulation, Subterfuge, and Persuasion. A paramedic likely has solid Composure, Medicine, and Awareness. Let the character tell you where the dots go.

Choose Disciplines, Merits, Backgrounds, and Loresheets

This is usually where new players get lost in the book, because there are a lot of options spread across multiple chapters.

Disciplines are your vampire powers. Your clan gives you access to specific Disciplines. You'll spend some of your starting XP here.

Merits and Flaws represent advantages and disadvantages. Maybe your character has a haven (a safe place to sleep during the day), or maybe they have an enemy who's hunting them. Flaws give you extra XP to spend, but they're real complications your Storyteller will use against you.

Backgrounds cover your social and material resources: allies, contacts, influence, resources, herd (a group of regular feeding victims), and more.

Loresheets are one of the coolest parts of V5. They let you tie your character to specific events, organizations, or figures from Vampire: the Masquerade lore. Taking a dot on the Loresheet for the Cobweb, for example, means your Malkavian character has a tangible connection to the psychic network that links all Malkavians.

The Cities of Darkness character tools pull all of this from a seeded game database built directly from the Laws of the Night source material. Discipline powers, merits, flaws, backgrounds, and loresheets are all browsable during character creation. You'll want a copy of the Laws of the Night book or the free SRD at lawsofthenight.com to read up on what each option does, but the character builder keeps everything organized so you're not flipping between chapters to piece your sheet together.

Write a Backstory

It doesn't need to be long. A few paragraphs covering who your character was in life, how they were Embraced, and what they want now is plenty. Good backstories give your Storyteller hooks to tie you into the chronicle's ongoing story.

Some questions worth answering:

How long have you been a vampire?
What's your relationship with your sire (the vampire who turned you)?
Do you have any ties to mortal life you haven't let go of?
What do you want, and what are you afraid of?

Submit for Approval

Most organized LARP chronicles, including Cities of Darkness, have a character approval process. A Storyteller reviews your sheet to make sure everything adds up mechanically and that your backstory fits the chronicle's setting and tone.

At Cities of Darkness, this happens entirely through the site. You build your character, submit it, and a Storyteller reviews and approves it. Once approved, your character sheet lives on citiesofdarkness.com, where you can track XP, update your sheet as you spend experience, upload a character portrait, and manage your coterie membership. Everything stays in one place, so you're not juggling PDFs or paper sheets between games.

Find a Chronicle and Show Up

If you're reading this on citiesofdarkness.com, you've already found a network of them. Cities of Darkness is a growing network of Laws of the Night V5 LARP chronicles, each running their own city with shared tools for character creation, XP tracking, discipline powers, coterie management, and more. The goal is to let you focus on playing your character instead of wrestling with paperwork, no matter which chronicle you join.

New players are always welcome. If you have questions about character creation or want help building your first character, reach out through the site or join our Discord. We'd rather help you make a character you love than have you struggle through it alone.

Cities of Darkness is a fan-run chronicle network using Laws of the Night V5 by By Night Studios.

Cities of Darkness material is not official World of Darkness material. Portions of the materials are the copyrights and trademarks of Paradox Interactive AB, and are used with permission. All rights reserved. For more information please visit worldofdarkness.com.