# Mind's Eye Theatre: Vampire the Masquerade tags: #game/rpg/minds-eye-theatre-vampire ![[Mind's Eye Theatre - Vampire the Masquerade (cover).jpg|600]] **Mind's Eye Theatre: Vampire The Masquerade** is the live-action version of **[[Vampire - the Masquerade|Vampire: The Masquerade]]** — the LARP adaptation from By Night Studios where you actually get out of the chair, put on the trench coat, and do the vampire thing in a room full of people. This quick-start guide is the 2014 edition's free primer: a streamlined intro to the core rules, character creation, and two clans (the Ventrue and the Brujah), designed to get a troupe playing without the full rulebook. It's the hobby's way of reminding you that, yes, you can roleplay a vampire in a convention hall, and the only thing standing between you and a dramatic monologue is a round of rock-paper-scissors. ## Setting It's the same **[[World of Darkness]]** as the tabletop game — you play a Kindred hiding among mortals, balancing Humanity against the Beast, navigating the politics of the Camarilla and the Jyhad. The difference is that everything happens live: players act out their scenes in real time, the Storyteller sets the stage rather than reading boxed text, and the "table" is the whole room. It's Vampire: The Masquerade as a social sport, where a coterie of players schemes, duels, and negotiates face to face, and the fiction is carried by what you actually do and say rather than what you roll. ## Mechanics Mind's Eye Theatre resolves actions with **rock-paper-scissors** instead of dice. There are two kinds of challenges: **static** (against the Storyteller, who assigns a difficulty from 5 to 30) and **opposed** (against another player or NPC). Your **test pool** is Attribute + Skill + Wild Card, and you compare it against the difficulty or the defender's pool to see if you win. Characters use the classic three-attribute spread — **Physical, Social, and Mental** — with derived traits: nine health levels across Healthy/Injured/Incapacitated tracks, six permanent Willpower, five dots of Morality, and an Initiative equal to the higher of your Physical or Mental Attribute. Vampire powers come as **Disciplines**, and the Beast is kept at bay through frenzy and degeneration challenges, with Humanity dropping as you commit sins. It's the Storyteller System stripped of dice and rebuilt for live play. ## References - [Mind's Eye Theatre: Vampire The Masquerade Quickstart Guide - DriveThruRPG](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/132185/mind-s-eye-theatre-vampire-the-masquerade-quickstart-guide) - [Mind's Eye Theatre - By Night Studios](https://bynightstudios.com/)