The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly – Vampire: The Masquerade Chapters – Montreal

Vampire: The Masquerade Chapters – Montreal was probably something I wasn’t that interested in, but during a lunchtime chat with folks from Asmodee Canada and Lion Rampant Imports, I got pretty excited about how the narrative adventure would work. Further, my father-in-law is heavily invested in the Vampire: The Masquerade world, and he was equally as excited to give this a try. Over the past few nights we have played all 8 prologues (one for each main character) and a few of the games chapters. Here are my early thoughts!

It should be noted that I have NOT played the whole game, and some things I say might change over time! These are my opinions as of this moment, with about 11 prologues/chapters under my belt!

First off, I cannot recommend playing the 8 included prologues enough. These prologues will teach you the basics of the game, and while we have been referencing the rulebook often to refresh our memories or double check things, playing these 8 scenarios sure beats reading a rulebook for an hour or two. 

I talk about it more at length in the video below, but with these prologues you will learn simple combat, advanced combat, stealth, feeding, how to perform investigations, how to work through dialogue, and so much more. They are quick and easy to play, and even though they are solo, a group can still work through them together to learn the various game elements.

The bad, with caveats – this is required game-in and game-out

One thing that became painfully obvious after playing the 8 prologues is that this game requires two things – the ability to read well and be OK with lots of dialogue and text; and the desire to setup each scenario, and potentially re-setup MID scenario, when required. Setting up each chapter can take a little bit of time. Not only do you need to find the various pieces required for each specific part of the story, but you will need to fish through a ton of standees to find the specific characters you need. The first container of standees includes #s 1-70 – that’s 70 standee figures you need to sift through to find 3 or 4 to place on the board. It takes time, so be ready for that.

Second, you will need to find specific character cards when required. At first, we were confused about which characters had cards and which did not, but we soon figured out that during setup, if it is a combat-ready NPC, it would have a card. What threw us for a loop was that the standee # does NOT match the State Card number – again, we quickly realized that the State Cards are numbered and align with where you are in the story. So earlier chapters you will find your State Cards in the front of the deck, and later in the story near the back of the deck. Again, isn’t a huge deal, but you need to be ready for that too.

Honestly, if you don’t want to do these two things, then just ignore this game altogether. While this is probably a ‘bad’ feature for me, it’s a necessity and there isn’t really any other way to do this feasibly. I enjoy the gameplay a lot, so my tolerance for this is pretty high.

Standees are not as good as I would like

The one thing I don’t like, and I might call this the Ugly of this article, is how well the standee figures push into the black and red bases. It’s just not great, and sometimes the fit isn’t tight enough so when I grab the standee to move a character on the main board, it will come off the stand. It’s not a huge problem, but with how many standees are in the game, and how often you will move them, I really hoped that these would be just a bit better.

Now onto what I like – everything!

I’m amazed time and time again when playing this game. How could a group of people put their creative minds together to build something like this. All of the dialogue and events work so well together, and they all make logical sense. The writing of each dialogue and event gives you hints about what to expect in terms of dice checks. This all takes work, dedication, and so much organization. I’m truly blown away.

I love a good story, and it is why I really like games like Journey’s in Middle Earth and Descent: Legends of the Dark. This one takes those narratives to a whole new level. There are complexities here I wasn’t expecting, and branching paths that continue to amaze me. So often I like to think I can predict what might happen next, but that isn’t the case. For example, I learned that using a low social player like Thomas isn’t great when you are trying to convince a Park Warden that you are a detective. He’ll see through your lies, and eventually run off to get the police. This triggered an authority tracker (how soon until the police arrive) which was something I wasn’t expecting. And it was thrilling!

In other situations, I love the options put forward in the game, which shows how this game can be played a second and even third time. When attempting to enter a flour mill factory, I had a number of different action points I could look into. I could attempt to distract a group of workers and sneak in behind them, sneak past a patrolman and go up a ladder, and more. Deciding which one to attempt was based on the characters we were playing with – I liked multiple options so we could think through what would be best for us. Again, I wasn’t expecting this, and it was fantastic.

I have a lot more to play, but Vampire: The Masquerade Chapters – Montreal has been a delight so far. While I loathe setting up each chapter, the next 30 – 45 minutes are truly special, and I can’t wait to dive deeper into a story I really care about. This is like a good book wrapped up in a board game, and it is worth your time.