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→Storytellers should also monitor Merits that involve people in other places very closely. Unless the intent of the chronicle is to allow vampires contact with a wide variety of contacts all over the place (as in Nomads), Social Merits should remain local, and, as always, subject to Storyteller approval.

→Systems: Storytellers who want to highlight the inertia of Kindred technological progress may choose to charge an additional experience point cost per increased dot for technology-related Skills (Computer and Science, and possibly certain applications of Medicine and Craft). A casual nod to this idea might cost an extra experience point per dot, while a more severe gulf between vampire understanding and mortal technology might see the costs to increase these Skills double.

→Reinforce with players that this isn’t intended to punish those characters who wish to have a technological bent. It’s to emphasize that the static Kindred have difficulty keeping up to date with mortal trends. Indeed, as fewer Kindred will know the ins and outs of these particular Skills, it creates a premium on that knowledge, making those vampires who do have a contemporary grasp of the Skill in question valuable allies. As well, having vampires remain largely ignorant of technology’s function maintains that gothic distance between places. Even though the distance initially vanished only in the virtual sense anyway, the isolation is key.

→Going all the way back to the point in contention, a character who suddenly makes contact with a long-distance ally and asks for a favor is going to be considered rude or neglectful at best. At worst, the long-distance contact is going to tell someone else about him, and that someone may have a unique interest in the character. Even if the character isn’t offended at being dialed up out of nowhere, he may attempt to renew frequent contact with the character, which may encourage other, local people with whom the character has severed relationships to look him up again. Is it worth the risk?

→Storytellers can address the issue of gothic isolation by bringing into focus the peculiarities of the vampiric condition. Working backward from the point of Kindred origin, vampires don’t often maintain long-distance relationships because they rarely have chances to make them. By and large, they stay in their own cities. They don’t have the same sort of worldwide contact mortals do with the rest of the world because of the technological issues explored above. On top of it all, they’re vampires, and they have to watch out for their own interests. If they’re smart, they cut off as many ties to their living personas as they can — it’s a problem when your friends come over to watch the Cincinnati-Pittsburgh game at your place and you burst into flame because they dropped by while the sun was still up. Such being the case, long-distance relationships tend to atrophy before local ones (which is actually a blessing in disguise, because they’re also less likely to follow up on a character who suddenly drops out of contact).

→Where mobile phones become an issue is in their global utility. What’s to keep a Kindred from calling an ally in New York City or finding a place to lay low in San Diego when he finds himself in deep shit in LA? Theoretically, nothing. In practice, though, it’s much more difficult for secret societies to cold-call each other than it is for public citizens. Worse than that, the signature gothic isolation unravels a bit when help is just a phone call away.

→Before anything else, think about what the city — any city — is in the story. It’s the place where everything happens. It’s the visual, textural, sensual palette that colors the imaginary “look” of your chronicle. It’s a representation of theme, a body of moods, a thing of atmosphere. It’s the embodiment of a long history. It’s home to thousands or millions. It’s the background and the details, the satellite image seen online and the green street signs on the corner, the midnight lights of an untouchable skyline and the cracked asphalt that runs with blood. It is everything, everywhere, all the time.

→In her domain, the individual Kindred’s word is effectively law, so long as it doesn’t contradict any greater custom of the domain. Indeed, even this last is a bit flexible in most Princes’ cities. What a Kindred gets up to in his own haven is a private affair, as long as it’s not doing anyone else any harm. One example of this might be feeding in one’s haven — the Prince may have decreed it against local law to feed in certain sections of town, but a Kindred can feed in whatever part of his own haven he damn well wants to, even if his haven is located in one of the verboten parts of the city. Likewise, a city under a Sanctified Prince might outlaw diabolism, but a Kindred in the safety of her own haven can venerate all the devils she wants (though, realistically, she’s probably going to get herself into eventual trouble with the Powers That Be if she pursues faith of that nature).

→In most Princes’ cities, even the lowliest Kindred is master of her own haven. That is to say, almost every time one finds the Kindred, one finds each Kindred holding a small bit of domain, whether it’s a squalid mausoleum or a veritable palazzo.

→So there you have it: that tells you why we’ve made vampires the way they are in that sense. Now how do you use it in a story?

→This also makes territory an immensely valuable resource for the Kindred to manipulate. A grant of domain yields not only the right to the land (in a Kindred context) but the right to glean from it whatever that domain has to offer. That most obviously includes hunting grounds, but a domain can offer other benefits, tangible and intangible, as well. A Kindred whose domain includes the city’s most august library symbolically controls a great deal of knowledge. A Kindred whose domain includes the headquarters of the City Tribune likely has ties to the media; a vampire whose only claim is the Oldtown Barrens is probably politically on the outs, but he still has a better domain than the landless Kindred with no domain to her name.

→That trap, miserable as it is for vampires themselves, is a wonderful tool for the Storyteller’s use in creating conflict. Territory is the primary and obvious impetus by which vampires further subdivide themselves.

→That isolation is part of the point, after all. Being a vampire is a curse, and curse is no easy thing to bear. Effectively, vampires are trapped in their home domains, again similar to the protagonists of gothic fiction who find themselves kept against their ultimate wills in alien environments. If Sartre were a vampire, he’d no doubt describe hell as other Kindred.

→Vampire, though, yields a very different sort of territorial experience. Vampires can’t leave their cities. God only knows what’s out there, and the only thing that’s certain is that it’s damnably hard to find vessels once the population density decreases. Vampires are likewise threatened by the sun, so long-distance travel is precarious and requires more preparation than it’s often worth. Once the Kindred finally does manage to relocate himself to a different domain, he’s faced with an entirely new set of problems in the form of the Predator’s Taint. The vampire in question probably knew many of the other Kindred in her old domain, but when she’s faced with a burgeoning frenzy anew every time she meets someone in her adoptive new domain, the potential for disaster goes through the roof. It’s no wonder, then, that most Kindred resign themselves to playing out their Requiems in a single domain.

→The way Vampire treats territory is unique in comparison to the other World of Darkness games. Werewolf deals in broad swaths of territory, with the protagonists of the story bound by function to patrol the borders of the physical world and the spirit realm. Mage opens up the borders of space so that they’re limited only by the capacity of thought — the physical world is merely the scholar’s library, while his intellectual work is the true measure of his achievement. Promethean characters fear no boundary, as theirs is a quest of discovery, both internal and external. The grim, fairy-tale feudalism of Changeling is its own beautiful mire.

→Architecture and location also play an important part in the Haven Merit. We have no need to reiterate the system here (it appears on pp. 100–102 of Vampire: The Requiem) but remember that location is an important aspect related to a Kindred’s home. You can characterize a haven, just as any other site, but you can also use a haven to symbolize and add dimension to your character.

→While this section is too small to detail an all-inclusive list of architectural modifiers to every scene they might affect, a good collection of other examples can be found in the “Hot Pursuit” section of Chapter Two (p. 163).

→Systems: Architecture and locale don’t have a system all their own, but they certainly affect the flow of events in the story. Certain circumstance bonuses and penalties may apply to specific situations at the Storyteller’s discretion. For example, a gargoyle protruding from a rooftop might provide an extra bit of space for a character to jump to the next roof, and thus offer a +1 die bonus to that dice pool. The crumbling ruins of a murdered Kindred’s manor might hold footprints well, offering a +1 die bonus to anyone tracking intruders there, as well as a –1 die penalty to anyone attempting to obscure his passage in the area.

→As a resource, feeding grounds are perhaps the truest representation of feudal materiel in the neo-feudal social model. Land represents the ability to grow food in the feudal system, and the ability to extract that sustenance directly from granted domain is the greatest asset to a neo-feudal Kindred.

→The threat of revoking hunting grounds also serves as a strong crime deterrent for the Kindred. Since Vitae is so all-important, losing an exclusive line to that Vitae isn’t something any Kindred wants to consider, and this ensures the best behavior of the ruck and run of Kindred society. As well, a hunting ground revoked can easily be bestowed upon someone else, which is a subtle benefit to clever Princes and nobles. After all, the Kindred who lost the hunting ground is likely to bear the grudge against the Kindred who just had it bestowed upon her, rather than the Prince who took it away. That method of deferring grudges also works on ennobled Kindred, and two feuding Primogen will turn their attentions upon each other, allowing the Prince to dodge their scheming vendettas.