[RPG] What are the differences between Vampire: The Masquerade first and second edition

Mechanically, I think there are really only three big differences.

First is that spending a point of Willpower in Requiem grants you three extra dice on the roll rather than an automatic success, which is a very big deal.

Next is that botching (or "dramatic failure") just doesn't happen as often in the new World of Darkness system. Dramatic failures only occur when you are reduced to rolling a chance die (one die that only succeeds on a roll of 10) and it comes up a 1.

A relatively minor difference related to that is that success really isn't measured in degrees in the new system. You either succeed or you get an exceptional success. The Storyteller has to declare bonuses or penalties (which grant or remove dice) prior to the roll.

The third big difference is that in combat, damage is figured directly from the result of the attack roll. It's faster, but it can be a lot deadlier.

In terms of the story, the Masquerade setting is gone. Requiem focuses much more closely on local action compared to Masquerade's global tone. Clan infrastructures like the Nosferatu's intelligence network just don't exist, and most vampires align themselves with philosophically like-minded covenants.

If you never played Masquerade as anything but a city game, I don't think you'd find it much different. There are some interesting changes to how the vampiric condition works, though. They get more powerful with age thanks to Blood Potency, so lineage doesn't matter as much. Also, vampires instinctively recognize the Beast in each other using a system called the Predator's Taint.

White Wolf has published a good translation guide for playing Masquerade with Requiem or vice versa.

I'm actually using that guide to run my Masquerade game using Requiem's rules.

Hope that helps!

Attributes & Abilities

• Awareness has been added as a Talent.
• Dodge has been removed as a skill; its former functionality has been moved to Athletics.
• Security has also been removed; its former functionality has been subsumed by the Larceny skill and the Technology knowledge.
• Linguistics is no longer a skill; each language known is a 1-dot Merit instead. (p. 484)

Clans

• The Tremere have a new clan flaw; they succumb to the blood bond after only two drinks from a regnant, rather than three. (It's not made clear whether the effect of the first drink is magnified to that of the second drink, or whether the second drink is skipped.) (p.69)
• The animal features of the Gangrel that manifest after a frenzy are now temporary, and may be behavioral rather than physical. (p.55)

Character Creation and Costs

• During character creation, Humanity/Path dots costs 2 freebie points instead of 1.

Core Disciplines

• Potence and Celerity have been significantly altered. Each now adds a passive bonus (at no vitae cost) to their governing physical attribute; you add your dots as extra dice in pools using Strength and Dexterity, respectively. In addition, Potence and Celerity allow the vampire to spend vitae for effects: spending 1v allows a Potence user to add his dots in Potence as successes to all subsequent Strength rolls made during that turn--which used to be inherent to the discipline--and a Celerity user may choose to spend 1v to convert a Celerity dot into an additional physical action for that turn, which may be done multiple times, reducing the Celerity rating accordingly for the turn (Generational blood-spending maxima do not apply to these expenditures.) (pp. 142, 192)
• Dominate and Presence powers whose difficulties were once equal to the subject's permanent Willpower rating now target the subject's current Willpower.

Systems

• If "splitting one's action" in a turn, compare the dice pools for each action, find the one with the fewest dice, and then allot that number of dice among all the actions being attempted. (p.248)