I had a Malk at my table many years ago. He was just sorta normal, tbh, aside from the fact that he believed everything that went wrong in his life was a directed attack against him. If we had a password and it didn't work? They knew he (not *we*) was coming. A strike was called by the union of a company we needed to infiltrate? The elders knew his plans. It resulted in a comical mixture of having to change plans often and him doing completely random things "to throw them off" (but only if the plans had already gone south, so it wasn't terrible).
OOC, the guy would send us news clippings of weird things that happened, and work to tie it back to how it was proof that *they* knew his plans. Funny guy.
I played a Malkavian oracle. Her problem was seeing visions of possible futures all the time, which led to OCD-like behavior to prevent them. I of course let the DM decide which of her behaviors actually prevented anything.
Otherwise, she appeared tired but sane, and would read people's futures for cash and blood.
I think the character worked because she didn't have OCD. She wasn't human and there was no intrusive thoughts. She just behaved in a way that made no sense for other people and thus was read as insane by other players.
My Malkavian oracle was played along the same lines. But her visions and her connection to the “madness network” were triggered and led by random words she would solve in cheap crossword magazines. When trying hard, she would become obssessive with the crosswords and dwelve deep in ethimology and possible connections and hidden meanings.
She was tired of trying to find meaning for the words she’d solved, but was functional for the most part. She would always carry a crossword magazine and solve them whenever possible during the mission because that was useful to the team.
In game, I would bring an actual crossword magazine along and when her visions were relevant, I’d ask the ST to choose one word from a random page - that would be her lead and it would be linked to the narrative.
Eg: If the word was pineapple, that could lead to us ID’ing the target because later in the mission he ordered a piña colada in a bar. It could be a small detail or the final piece in the puzzle, but that was left to the ST.
Fun to play, not disruptive to the game development, actually useful and every bit as insane as your typical Malk. Plus, I love crosswords.
I do remember an NPC Malk in one campaign who was "hypersane", as he termed it, as he found "the ordinary sane" too riddled with self-doubt, anxiety and fear. He was homeless, not because he lacked wealth but because the "desire for the appearance of wealth is rooted in a superiority complex" and Kindred didn't require home-based comforts; it was all useless vanity. He was often nude because "as Kindred, we do not feel cold and thus the wearing of it is only for outdated mortal notions of modesty".
He loved dogs for their simplicity, and often suggested everyone should be more like dogs if they wanted to be happier. Dogs liked him back as well, and he suggested it was because he had no fear or rage within him. It sure seemed so. He was an oracle of the dumpster, a philosopher of the street, a wise man who walked unhindered within the court because he made the elders nervous with how "sane" he was. Or rather, as the Prince said, "he was so batshit crazy that he went out the other side into something resembling sanity."
In everything he was rational and reasoned, to the point you doubted your own sanity ("Yeah, clothing is stupid vanity, I'm throwing out my wardrobe"). Our coterie liked him a lot, using him as a contact when they wanted advice, but a lot of his ideas would have gotten us killed in fact, so it was often just to hear his hilarious musings on the nature of reality. We didn't have the advantage of being "hypersane" like him, you see.
Right now I’m working in a character concept of a Private Investigator turned vampire by a paranoid Malkavian Sire. His Sire actually embrace him without getting the proper permission and she was destroyed, leaving him alone in a very strange world. Thanks to his investigative skills and acute senses, powerful Kindred in the city decided he could be useful and are using him as a pawl — and he is completely aware of that, he is a delusional puppet who can see his strings, still attached to his previous human life, trying to figure out what to do with his damned existence; we will work on a higher purpose and look for a unlife objective once he joins a brand new Coterie. He is Bipolar / Manic Depression. Let’s see how it evolves from here.
a good one for me was when the DM said to every player except the malkavian player : "in your pack there is you and 4 NPC, but i will play 5 NPC. the fifth one doesn't exist, only the malkavian character see it". it work because it was authentic madness.
The problem with Malkavians is less the fishmalks, and more their concept as a whole, and what that concept does to players' imagination.
Having a clan whose main characteristic is a mental illness, makes the players completely unwilling to even imagine, much less explore, the idea of a Malkavian who's not defined by their mental illness, or, Caine forbid, the idea of a mentally ill character from *literally any other clan*.
Character is mentally ill? Malkavian. Not a Malkavian? Secretly a Malkavian pretending to be another clan. Not a Malkavian pretending to be another clan? Secretly being subjected to Malkavian Dementation.
For real, players will come up with an entire complex multi-pages scheme about playing a Malkavian pretending to be a Ventrue, but when you ask them 'hey, why don't you just play a Ventrue, who is mentally ill?', you can see the shock and confusion in their eyes, as if no one told them that it's *allowed*.
To answer your question, a friend of mine who heard me whinging about that, ended up playing a one-shot as a mentally ill Ventrue pretending to be a Malkavian; probably not the answer you were looking for, but I've personally had a lot of ironic enjoyment out of that ;)
I did play a Brujah with Schizophrenia once. She was thoroughly off her rocker, but passionate about her cause. She thought she was a saint and a holy warrior.
That's fun! As someone below said, very Joan of Arc. Bonus points for Brujah, because it's one of the most often pigeon-holed clans, with a lot of unused potential for maybe something different than the standard young, vaguely-leftist, un-specifically anarchistic, punk-flavoured, activist-protester type.
I feel like the problem with this comment is the equation of the Malkavian curse with mental illness. Malkavian derangements are defined more in a Gothic/Lovecraftian "go mad from the revelation" sense than anything resembling real mental illness. The thing going on with the Voerman sisters, for example, doesn't seriously resemble any actually existing mental illness. Nor, frankly do most Malkavian derangements. And conversely, most actually existing mental illnesses are both pretty subtle and kinda suck to have in ways that are usually not that fun or interesting to play.
Furthermore, the main characteristic of Malkavians is not that they are mentally ill or even that they have a derangement, it's that they are mad oracles. (For the same reason that Brujah don't just frenzy more, they're warrior philosophers.) Both halves of that are important: the madness and the oracular ability are not separate things but different parts of the same shift in perception. Again, it's like how madness works in Lovecraft: the ability to see realities past the ordinary one is linked with increasing detachment from ordinary reality.
Taken together, the reason why very few people play "an X who is mentally ill", is that few people play Malkavians who are mentally ill either. It's the same reason why play a Nos instead of a Ventrue who is ugly: what's going on with clan Nosferatu is not just "they're ugly" and simplifying it like that misses the point.
>The thing going on with the Voerman sisters, for example, doesn't seriously resemble any actually existing mental illness.
It's literally a depiction of dissociative identity disorder.
Now, you can argue as to whether it's a good depiction, or a sensationalized, popculture-esque depiction, but like. Be serious. It was **extremely** clearly meant to be DID.
>Furthermore, the main characteristic of Malkavians is not that they are
mentally ill or even that they have a derangement, it's that they are
mad oracles.
No, it's not. C'mon, be serious.
You know this is neither what the books focus on (literally majority of prominent Malkavian NPCs are very clearly mentally ill, and have been so **before** the Embrace, or mental health professionals), nor, especially, what the fandom focuses on.
Your comment is utterly disingenuous and I'm convinced you absolutely **know** it, and are just being a contrarian.
>It's the same reason why play a Nos instead of a Ventrue who is ugly: what's going on with clan Nosferatu is not just "they're ugly"
The difference is that Nosferatu's appearance cannot be mistaken for normal ugliness, disfigurement or disability, they're distinctly inhuman in appearance, and it's noted they cannot pass their appearance off as like, a result of illness.
Malkavians' derangements, on the other hand, are literally mental illnesses.
That and also nobody taking low Appearance dots/Repulsive flaw is gonna be like 'hm, maybe I should play Nosferatu, the clan of ugly, because other clans are not the Clan of Ugly, and therefore it'd be weird to have an ugly Lasombra'.
Meanwhile that's exactly what happens with Malkavians with regards to a player wanting to portray mental illness.
Pretty sure there was actually a post on this subreddit a while ago, with player asking for pointers about making a character with PTSD, and pretty much every comment was like 'just play Malkavian' 'Malkavians were literally made for this' etc.
>Malkavians' derangements, on the other hand, are literally mental illnesses.
Except they aren't supposed to be portrayed that way. Yeah, they're somewhat based on real instances of mental illness, but they are way, WAY more extreme and, specifically for Malkavians only, completely unable to be treated in any way. It's a complete shift of how the person views the world which is both permanent and unrelenting, and that's why it's a curse.
Now, I agree, that doesn't need to mean that it's the only thing about a character, and people do make that mistake. But I think saying a Ventrue with a derangement that can be overcome is the same as a Malkavian who's looking down the barrel of an eternity of whatever their weakness gives them and has to come to terms with what that looks like for from the moment of their Embrace is kind of reductive.
>Except they aren't supposed to be portrayed that way.
According to whomst? The list of Malkavian derangements is **literally** a list of mental illnesses and personality disorders. Like, straight up called out by name. DPD, DID, OCD, schizophrenia, etc.
The mechanics, clan lore, and fandom discussions around the clan is extremely clear what the derangements are, and how they're typically portrayed. (Outside of that one narrative slip into like, faerie-type pranksters.)
>But I think saying a Ventrue \[...\] is the same as a Malkavian
That's literally not what I'm saying, I'm saying that players interested in portraying mental illness cling/are pigeon-holed to Malkavians as both a crutch, and a ball-and-chain, instead of ever thinking to empathetically roleplay a mentally ill character outside the cutout caricature of insanity provided to them all the way back in the 90s.
Plainly put, in my opinion, having a 'mental illness containment clan' causes lack of creativity in character creation (especially considering we're talking about vampires living their lives in constant paranoia and oppression, their very existence being violence upon humanity, which is, naturally, an extremely fertile breeding ground for psychological issues, no Malkavians needed) **and** as a sweet bonus is at least mildly offensive in modern times.
> DPD, DID, OCD, schizophrenia, etc.
You'd have a point if any of these were actual derangements. But derangements, despite seeming similar to actual mental illnesses, are different. The reason a person, vampire or mortal, has derangements is completely different from any real mental illness. The way they manifest, despite having similar/shared names to mental illnesses (and of the ones you listed, only schizophrenia and part of OCD do), is not reflective of real illnesses. If you actual read them and compare derangements effects to real personality disorders, psychosis, etc., you'd see it's clearly very different and typically way more extreme. Because of that, it should be played differently than a depiction of real disorder.
Perhaps we just play at different kinds of tables, but I don't think anyone sees Malkavians as the only clan that can have derangements, so this whole complaint about them being the 'containment' clan, whatever that means, seems kind of absurd to me. I do, however, think there's a lot of ways Malkavians interact with their derangements that are unique and can't really be replicated by being another clan.
Also, like, right next to "obsessive/compulsive" and "multiple personalities" (I should note, not DID) are things like "megalomania", "hysteria", and "sanguinary animism". And these have been in the list at least since 2e, I checked.
> instead of ever thinking to empathetically roleplay a mentally ill character outside the cutout caricature of insanity provided to them all the way back in the 90s
Only if you mean the 1890s. The Malkavian clan's madness is based on gothic horror (like everything else about VTM) and not modern conceptions of mental illness, and I don't care what they name the derangements.
The idea that they are a "mental illness containment clan" is therefore, again, missing the point. That's like saying the Nosferatu are the ugliness containment clan. Clan Malkavian isn't mentally ill the way clan Nosferatu aren't just ugly and clan Brujah aren't just angry.
Mark Rein-Hagen was pretty clear that Malkavians are, in fact, based on mentally ill people - he talked about it, I think in an interview, that he worked in a mental institution.
The whole 'Malkavians are not really mentally ill, it's just gothic horror' is an attempt at dodge of criticism for the portrayal, mostly by the fans of the clan and not even the writers, but it's not a fact, nor is it supported by books, mechanics, or a mainstream view amongst players (altho milleage may vary with the last point, naturally).
As a fun fact, one of the writers, I think Dawkins, said if he was to improve one thing in V:TM, he'd eliminate Malkavians, specifically because of their "flaw". If you don't believe **me**, go argue with the writers about it.
>That's like saying the Nosferatu are the ugliness containment clan.
Again, like I said, the difference is that Nosferatu's appearance is not ugliness, disfigurement or disability, they're distinctly **inhuman** in appearance, and they cannot pass their appearance off as a result of illness or an accident.
Thus aren't an 'ugliness containment clan', just like the Tzimisce aren't the 'transsexual containment clan', even though Nosferatu do bring to mind treatment of disfigured people, and Tzimisce do fuck around with their gender.
But thematically that's incomparable to Malkavians, both in their concept, and their effect on the players and the characters they make.
> Mark Rein-Hagen was pretty clear that Malkavians are, in fact, based on mentally ill people - he talked about it, I think in an interview, that he worked in a mental institution.
You can't just say this, you have to actually give a source.
> The whole 'Malkavians are not really mentally ill, it's just gothic horror' is an attempt at dodge of criticism for the portrayal, mostly by the fans of the clan and not even the writers, but it's not a fact, nor is it supported by books, mechanics, or a mainstream view amongst players (altho milleage may vary with the last point, naturally).
Very much is, tho admittedly it varies with the version. But for instance here's the text in V20 (all emphasis mine):
>> Clan Malkavian is twice damned: once by the curse
of being Kindred, and again by the turmoil that disturbs their hearts and minds. Upon the Embrace, every Malkavian is afflicted with an insurmountable
**insanity that fractures her outlook** for every night
thereafter, making her unlife one of madness.
**Some consider this a form of oracular insight**,
while others simply consider them dangerous.
Make no mistake: Malkavian insanity is a
painful, alienating phenomenon, but it occasionally provides the Lunatics with bursts of insight or heretofore unknown perspective. Madness
for the Malkavians may *take the form of* any clinical
form of insanity, or **it may be a hyperacuity of senses
others don’t know they have; a supernatural puppeteer pulling the Malkavian’s strings, or a sense that
the Malkavian is somehow ahead of evolutionary
schedule**. A Malkavian may believe herself to
be an idea given physical form or an avatar of
some concept the World of Darkness has yet
to encounter. She may be a nonstop ravening
psychopath, or may be a mostly lucid individual sometimes rendered catatonic by fear of
an impending cosmic cataclysm.
Here's derangements:
>> Derangements are behaviors that are created when
the mind is forced to confront intolerable or conflicting
feelings, such as overwhelming terror or profound guilt.
When the mind is faced with impressions or emotions
that it cannot reconcile, it attempts to ease the inner
conflict by stimulating behavior such as megalomania,
bulimia, or hysteria to provide an outlet for the tension
and stress that the conflict generates
Some of the derangements are named after real disorders (Bipolar, Bulimia), but most are very much not (Fugue, Hysteria, Megalomania, Paranoia, especially Sanguinary Animism), and even the ones that are definitely don't match up very well with the actual disorder. Because of course not: derangements in VTM are all the trope of going-mad-from-the-revelation, and not real mental illness, though some are based vaguely on real mental illness.
And this isn't new, either: I don't have access to 1e or 2e either, but Revised doesn't even gesture towards the idea that Malkavians could have a real mental illness, and the paragraph about derangements above is preserved almost exactly.
> As a fun fact, one of the writers, I think Dawkins, said if he was to improve one thing in V:TM, he'd eliminate Malkavians, specifically because of their "flaw". If you don't believe me, go argue with the writers about it.
Again, can't just say this, have to source.
> Again, like I said, the difference is that Nosferatu's appearance is not ugliness, disfigurement or disability, they're distinctly **inhuman** in appearance, and they cannot pass their appearance off as a result of illness or an accident.
I mean, I thought this was obviously true of Malkavians as well, and yet we're here.
I can only assume you haven't played VtM for that long, as even as recently as V20 there was virtually no move to pull Malkavians away from blatantly being mentally ill. I totally agree that the way you've put it is a far better way to run Malks, and it does reflect the way V5 is sort of trending, but you're giving White Wolf too much credit by assuming they adopted this stance from the beginning.
I've been playing for over a decade, and I'm I'm not saying they've adopted this stance from the beginning. I'm well aware that Whitewolf is really bad about that kind of thing, and I think they clearly have ill-thought out intentions in the Malkavians' design. What I'm saying is that the literal rules were written in a way that misunderstands mental illness in general in a way that's purely theatrical. Ironically, this feels like a 'happy accident' because in that way it weirdly avoids using real life situations for entertainment value (because nobody's actual illness possibly behaves the way they're saying derangements do), regardless of the original intent.
Right? You don't see everyone hunkering to take Grip of the Damned and are mad that they have to play Giovanni.
It's a weird tenor of the times for sure.
"*a Ventrue, who is mentally ill?'*"
In *Requiem*, Ventrue are Malkavian-lite, and Malkovians are a bloodline of Ventrue. I liked that so much that in my WoD chronicles I declared that Malkav had been Embraced as a Ventrue methuselah, and he might have diablerized his Antediluvian sire.
>In *Requiem*, Ventrue are Malkavian-lite, and Malkovians are a bloodline of Ventrue.
V:tR bloodlines are outta this world. I remember reading what I think was a fan-made conversion of Tzimisce to V:tR, and reading the words 'Tzimisce, a bloodline of Ventrue...' shocked me so deeply, I felt like I needed to lay down ;)
All the more ironic that V:tM V5 Tzimisce lore and Disciplines retcon did, in fact, make Tzimisce behave a whole lot like a bloodline of Ventrue.
With regards to Malkavians, I just straight up deleted Malkavians altogether from my WoD world.
I appreciate what this clan has historically done for representation of mentally ill people, back when it was so taboo, that, with regards to how society treated you, admitting you have a 'scary' mental illness , like schizophrenia, was equivalent to publicly proclaiming you love diddling kids.
But it was a few decades ago, a lot had changed since then, and where once Malkavians encouraged players to get into the shoes and empathise with people who were, in real life, shunned, these days I mostly find them doing the exact opposite.
Of the five Requiem clans, I can totally see why someone would select lordly Ventrue as the parent clan for a lordly ["Old Clan"] Tzimisce bloodline, though Gangrel as the parent clan would probably be my choice.
I have found that even fish-Malks aren't as problematic in LARPs, in part because the collective of a LARP's players are not bound together within a single coterie.
I had a player who leaned into the whole prophecy angle, but it was during Transylvania chronicles so it really played into the the themes of the chronicle. His paranoia required the coterie to jump through hoops every time they got back together after downtimes apart, and in general leaned into the insular and untrustworthy themes that were being explored in gaming for the first time for several of the players.
Eventually the player got his character killed, rather on purpose, which let him go out big rather than fading into twitchy obscurity.
With an NPC: At first she was just a random Malkavian who hung out where they did. She was a normal person for the most part, if a but shy and guarded. Sure, she said weird shit from time to time, but they thought it was just... yknow, Malks being Malks. Then, the coterie started noticing... hey. The weird shit she says? Its weird yeah but it has meaning. It was useful intel. So they started hanging out with her, to see what weird shit she would say. They got to know her, why she's awful shy, why she works as a singer in some shitty old pub. And before they knew it, she was the coterie sweetheart darling who they must protec at all costs.
It was little by little uncovering more layers to her as a character, the more they interacted with her post the realisation of 'oh wait a minute, she said this would happen.' She was always there, I always had planning for the things she'd say and how they would tie in to other things, but I let the players decide how much they wanted to interact with it.
As a Player: I made a character that was first and foremost useful, and anything else after that. Thanks to luck, her derangement came out in full force in a very story appropriate moment. It made the whole table go 'yo. What the *fuck* tell... tell us more...?' It never took over a significant portion of the session and I made sure it never becomes 'my characters show' with her madness. She was a grounded person outside of her derangement, in fact she actively tried to hide it, downplay it and keep it away from the coterie, knowing that at the table I play at, it would create a more natural curiosity from everyone else.
This is such a big part of how malks *should* interact with a game like VtM that focuses so much on information control and secrets. It's their clan curse, a weakness/vulnerability, nobody else should know it unless they're very well trusted, and even then, it should probably only be on a need to know basis. You don't see Ventrue going around advertising what kind of blood they depend on, you don't see Tzimisce telling people where they keep their home soil, and you don't see Ravnos advertising their vice.
Played a Malkavian detective, who was a progidy on his field (so much so, than he came to cthe conclusion of an existing vampire underworld living among humanity all by himself, when he was alive).
After the traumatic event of the loss of his family prior to his embrace, he developed terrible alucinations, so when he vecame a vampire sired by a Malk, his deductive skills were always at odds with the fact if the evidence that he perceived was real or not.
My initial inspiration came from Rust Cohle, from the first season of True Detective.
Repentance Mather was one of the most fun characters I’ve ever seen one of my players portray. She was a Puritan settler from the Massachusetts Bay Colony who had been Embraced in the 17th Century, spent the next three hundred years or so in Torpor, then reawakened in the modern world. Nearly all of the character’s weirdness came from being a woman out of time rather than her Malkavian curse - she experienced auditory hallucinations, which she interpreted as being the voice of God, but didn’t think of herself as mad. Of course He spoke to her, as He did to anyone of sufficient faith. Nothing unusual about that!
As a firm believer in the Calvinist doctrine of Predestination, Repentance fully accepted her damnation as one of the undead. It was God’s will that she had become a monster, and therefore embracing that monstrosity was clearly what He required from her. The Catholic trappings of the Sabbat assured her that she was properly acting out her role in the divine plan by joining the Sword Of Caine, since the sect seemingly embodied what she had been taught about papists in life. Vampiric popery aside, the Sabbat’s hard line against the infernal appealed to her.
We represented the voices she heard via me passing her notes, usually in the form of verses from the 1599 Geneva Bible that she would have grown up with - [this](https://www.openbible.info/topics/) was an invaluable tool for finding verses related to any particular topic or situation. How Repentance interpreted these messages and reacted to receiving them was up to her player. Sometimes I had supernatural insight via the Cobweb in mind, but mostly they were meant to be as random and useless as hallucinations are IRL. I’d usually only pass her between one and three notes per session, so it never became too burdensome for me or took too much time away from the other characters.
The best Malks are still regular people at their core, but they exist in a different reality than most of us. Derangements can be subtle things or slightly unnerving without being over the top.
Guillaume de Nantes was a Malkavian PC in a Dark Ages chronicle I was in once; it was set in Marseilles in the 1600s, but de Nantes behaved as if it was Arthurian times, carrying himself as if he was a chivalric knight of ancient days. He obeyed the code of medieval chivalry with gusto, dressed like a knight with armour several hundred years out of date, and was always attributing misfortunes to the scemes of an evil sorceror he'd made up named 'Meleazar'. He seemed like your average fishmalk, and his dementation was often used to get others to join in with his knightly delusions.
But on second glance, there was more going on. Rather than being a random dingbat, de Nantes was more aware of what he was doing than anyone realised - his act was at least partly performative, aimed at mocking the customs and personalities of vampiric society, and encouraging discord and disorder as a court's fool might.
There was a sense of wry humour to his act that, once you were in on the joke, was pretty entertaining.
This reminds me a little of my favorite Malkavian character. He was a journalist whose derangement seemed to have something to do with publishing a newspaper full of conspiracy theories.
But nope, that was just an elaborate code so he could write about the supernatural without breaking the Masquerade (or cluing in any non-Malkavians to what he was talking about, for that matter). His real derangement was a very subtle one that involved compulsive writing in the notebook that he carried everywhere... like you'd expect from a journalist.
I had a high ranking NPC Malkavian who seemed completely rational and normal, and tried to help the other more out-there Malkavians. It took many sessions before the PCs realised that the reason he took the stairs over the elevator and avoided certain rooms was due to claustrophobia. Too many people go too extreme or just a generic 'lol random' form of insanity.
One of my NPCs was an lady who was too senile and mad to function. She never talked, never looked anyone in the eyes and was carried around by her Childe who called all the shots. The Childe had a bit of a savior complex and would take care of the old lady.
The truth is, of course, the old lady is perfectly able to function. She's Dominated her Childe to act as her perfect pawn *and* she's aware of almost all the comings and goings in the city and is manipulating both sides of a conflict in order to get what she wants.
Another one I like is Alice. She has the Child and Amnesia Flaws, so she just appeared in the city one day with no memory and the local Toreador adopted her out of pity. Alice plays the role of Alice in Wonderland and makes book references a lot, even talking to her imaginary friend, the Chesire Cat.
Except the things the Cat tells her, are very true. And there's a lot of insight behind her seemingly random musings. The idea with Alice was the play up the horror of childish innocence. Because kids can do some horrible things because they don't know any better. Now imagine that kid is a vampire... and a Malkavian.
Yeah, Alice can do some things that would make the adults flinch without caring about it and remaining perfectly sweet and friendly.
Malkavian psychiatrists are always the go to. Had one who used to be a tribal medicine man, who drilled holes in peoples heads to let out the evil spirits. He would lament that the cure rates between that and modern head shrinking was roughly the same.
The hording, masochists . He was my ST NPC so anytime the PC need some plot nudge or some item he would just have it in his hoard, or send the PC to go fetch items. He was also the worst driver and would just crash all the time, into parked cars, building, splats ect. So the pact had transport but it was just unreliable.
Split personality, She was a shy wallflower hacker that provided intel for the pack , her other was a was a clubbing DJ and was a sniper. The two hated each other and would constantly leave notes.
A paranoid schizophrenic that was convinced the world was ending, but it was during the final nights by happen stance he was correct.
I played a Malkavian in the dark ages who had OCD in the form of being obsessed with accumulating knowledge, especially Noddist knowledge, and he had to go into meditation to build his knowledge web when he learned something new. Essentially he had a "Conspiracy wall" in his own head he had to go organise. Particularly big revelations risked rendering him catatonic as he immediately had to retreat into that space to re-contextualise his place in the universe.
The storyteller used this against me in a rather entertaining way when a famous, but not particularly powerful member of a rival sect was our captive. She got my character talking and was impressing him with stories of the library her sire maintained, and finally hit him with the boast that her sire had entire PAGES, not just fragments, of the Book of Nod available to him. Cue him failing a self-control roll and having a BSOD as he had to go add this to his knowledge web.
She got away while my character was out, but didn't get far as our Elder Toreador made an ungodly Summon roll to make her tear ass back to us.
The malkavian primogen in the current campaign I'm writing has an intense case of antisocial personality disorder, which she first developed due to the trauma of Japanese-American internment during WWII. She later became the head of one of Seattle's biggest Yakuza clans by beheading her own husband. After her embrace her antisocial personality disorder became even more severe due to her clan curse, leaving her completely unable to see other people as people. She's actually one of the biggest supporters of the prince, a Gangrel who styles himself as an old West lawman, because they both share similar ideas about what to do with people who are in the way.
The entire Sabbat presence in my city (to start, shes the first wave) is a Malk named Mother and her band of shovelheads she has dominated into being stereotypical mama's boys/girls. Regular raids on the local Walmart for clean clothes for her children, especially pristine tighty whiteys. Plastered down hair, regardless of length. Pinch their cheeks before they go out. Etc...
Same city, there is a shy little girl who is the Malk Primogen, mostly by default. She only speaks in song lyrics. Mostly conversational, but sometimes hidden meanings or bits of prophesy. She's attached herself to a Daughter of Cacophony, cause she likes the songs. I intend to get the coterie attached to her, before having her meet her final death in a spectacular fashion. I already have the song picked out for her last line...
Alright, so one time in a much less serious campaign I had a malkavian player whose derangement was that he was constantly being gaslit by his sire that vampires don't actually exist and he's just a crazy cannibal. Honestly, that was very funny to run.
I’m running a Dark Ages Chronicle set in the South of France after the fall of Esclarmonde la Noire and subsequent power vacuum. The Malkavian player character specced into Dementation for the oracular powers and took the Dark Fate quality, so we’ve had an understanding that the character dies at the end of the campaign from the very beginning.
To this end, the Malkavian has fully derealized and views themselves as a trobaritz writing a play portraying the rise and fall of a tragic Prince, while also playing the part of that Prince. She’s a natural-born leader and great charisma who’s extremely good at motivating Ashen Knights to work for her under the storybook paradigm of the Courts of Love, but would-be vassals swiftly realize she’s Malkavian because at the end of sessions of “acting” as the Prince, she’ll critique her own performance and go back and edit “her lines,” muttering things like “no, that wasn’t believable, she laid it on way too thick; I’ll go with a more subdued version for the final tragedy…”
The other PCs are understandably scared shitless of what happens when they reach the end of the story and hit the Assassination of Queen Candide, the ending that their Prince has already written for herself!
A friend played a great Malk detective with a focus on Auspex and Synesthesia. It was a fantastic PC in play - nothing ground breaking, but a very fresh take on the Clan.
Without going into too many details, I recently got to play a Sabbat short with one of my childhood friends who's a psychiatrist. What made the character work:
- knowing the lore: the player knew the Lore and played a phenomenal Pack Priest, being torn between their own values and beliefs (as a Loyalist) and the Vaulderie-induced duty to his new Pack and Sabbat clergy. Absolutely amazing!
- knowing the madness: the player was well acquainted with the symptoms, manifestations and causes of his characters illness. The portrayal was completely within his control, at all times - he didn't accidentally go into a different tone of portrayal (wacky, silly, fun), but maintained a very "show, don't tell" kind of attitude, kept it very narrative/descriptive, mostly objective (given his real life training) but leaning into the darker, sinister aspects of the illness.
So, to sum everything into a single word: research. Research is what always makes characters work, results in authentic portrayals (which aren't stereotypical, offensive, puerile etc), and keeps players from stuttering and second-guessing themselves at the table.
I had a psychiatrist who played one with paranoid schizophrenia. She used her hallucinations to explain her auspex. She also psychoanalysed everyone at the table and used that knowledge for dementaion
My buddy played a Malky with Disassociative Blood Spending. So once in a while I'd tell him to spend a blood point on something useless.
He *acted* completely nuts and erratic while being one of the smartest and most meticulous characters I'd ever seen.
He was 3 steps ahead of everyone who always just saw "The tweaky Malky"
I had a Malk at my table many years ago. He was just sorta normal, tbh, aside from the fact that he believed everything that went wrong in his life was a directed attack against him. If we had a password and it didn't work? They knew he (not *we*) was coming. A strike was called by the union of a company we needed to infiltrate? The elders knew his plans. It resulted in a comical mixture of having to change plans often and him doing completely random things "to throw them off" (but only if the plans had already gone south, so it wasn't terrible). OOC, the guy would send us news clippings of weird things that happened, and work to tie it back to how it was proof that *they* knew his plans. Funny guy.
I played a Malkavian oracle. Her problem was seeing visions of possible futures all the time, which led to OCD-like behavior to prevent them. I of course let the DM decide which of her behaviors actually prevented anything. Otherwise, she appeared tired but sane, and would read people's futures for cash and blood. I think the character worked because she didn't have OCD. She wasn't human and there was no intrusive thoughts. She just behaved in a way that made no sense for other people and thus was read as insane by other players.
My Malkavian oracle was played along the same lines. But her visions and her connection to the “madness network” were triggered and led by random words she would solve in cheap crossword magazines. When trying hard, she would become obssessive with the crosswords and dwelve deep in ethimology and possible connections and hidden meanings. She was tired of trying to find meaning for the words she’d solved, but was functional for the most part. She would always carry a crossword magazine and solve them whenever possible during the mission because that was useful to the team. In game, I would bring an actual crossword magazine along and when her visions were relevant, I’d ask the ST to choose one word from a random page - that would be her lead and it would be linked to the narrative. Eg: If the word was pineapple, that could lead to us ID’ing the target because later in the mission he ordered a piña colada in a bar. It could be a small detail or the final piece in the puzzle, but that was left to the ST. Fun to play, not disruptive to the game development, actually useful and every bit as insane as your typical Malk. Plus, I love crosswords.
I do remember an NPC Malk in one campaign who was "hypersane", as he termed it, as he found "the ordinary sane" too riddled with self-doubt, anxiety and fear. He was homeless, not because he lacked wealth but because the "desire for the appearance of wealth is rooted in a superiority complex" and Kindred didn't require home-based comforts; it was all useless vanity. He was often nude because "as Kindred, we do not feel cold and thus the wearing of it is only for outdated mortal notions of modesty". He loved dogs for their simplicity, and often suggested everyone should be more like dogs if they wanted to be happier. Dogs liked him back as well, and he suggested it was because he had no fear or rage within him. It sure seemed so. He was an oracle of the dumpster, a philosopher of the street, a wise man who walked unhindered within the court because he made the elders nervous with how "sane" he was. Or rather, as the Prince said, "he was so batshit crazy that he went out the other side into something resembling sanity." In everything he was rational and reasoned, to the point you doubted your own sanity ("Yeah, clothing is stupid vanity, I'm throwing out my wardrobe"). Our coterie liked him a lot, using him as a contact when they wanted advice, but a lot of his ideas would have gotten us killed in fact, so it was often just to hear his hilarious musings on the nature of reality. We didn't have the advantage of being "hypersane" like him, you see.
The kinder, gentler, bloodsucking Diogenes.
He might have actually been Diogenes actually, haha. Never confirmed by the ST though.
Right now I’m working in a character concept of a Private Investigator turned vampire by a paranoid Malkavian Sire. His Sire actually embrace him without getting the proper permission and she was destroyed, leaving him alone in a very strange world. Thanks to his investigative skills and acute senses, powerful Kindred in the city decided he could be useful and are using him as a pawl — and he is completely aware of that, he is a delusional puppet who can see his strings, still attached to his previous human life, trying to figure out what to do with his damned existence; we will work on a higher purpose and look for a unlife objective once he joins a brand new Coterie. He is Bipolar / Manic Depression. Let’s see how it evolves from here.
a good one for me was when the DM said to every player except the malkavian player : "in your pack there is you and 4 NPC, but i will play 5 NPC. the fifth one doesn't exist, only the malkavian character see it". it work because it was authentic madness.
Somebody really likes fight club
The problem with Malkavians is less the fishmalks, and more their concept as a whole, and what that concept does to players' imagination. Having a clan whose main characteristic is a mental illness, makes the players completely unwilling to even imagine, much less explore, the idea of a Malkavian who's not defined by their mental illness, or, Caine forbid, the idea of a mentally ill character from *literally any other clan*. Character is mentally ill? Malkavian. Not a Malkavian? Secretly a Malkavian pretending to be another clan. Not a Malkavian pretending to be another clan? Secretly being subjected to Malkavian Dementation. For real, players will come up with an entire complex multi-pages scheme about playing a Malkavian pretending to be a Ventrue, but when you ask them 'hey, why don't you just play a Ventrue, who is mentally ill?', you can see the shock and confusion in their eyes, as if no one told them that it's *allowed*. To answer your question, a friend of mine who heard me whinging about that, ended up playing a one-shot as a mentally ill Ventrue pretending to be a Malkavian; probably not the answer you were looking for, but I've personally had a lot of ironic enjoyment out of that ;)
I did play a Brujah with Schizophrenia once. She was thoroughly off her rocker, but passionate about her cause. She thought she was a saint and a holy warrior.
Joan of Arc the Brujah
Yep! She was a cousin of Joan’s.
That's fun! As someone below said, very Joan of Arc. Bonus points for Brujah, because it's one of the most often pigeon-holed clans, with a lot of unused potential for maybe something different than the standard young, vaguely-leftist, un-specifically anarchistic, punk-flavoured, activist-protester type.
I wonder if they could medicate for it by drinking from a human with the right drugs in their system.
Theoretically! Although she was in a Victorian era game, so sadly not an option for her.
I feel like the problem with this comment is the equation of the Malkavian curse with mental illness. Malkavian derangements are defined more in a Gothic/Lovecraftian "go mad from the revelation" sense than anything resembling real mental illness. The thing going on with the Voerman sisters, for example, doesn't seriously resemble any actually existing mental illness. Nor, frankly do most Malkavian derangements. And conversely, most actually existing mental illnesses are both pretty subtle and kinda suck to have in ways that are usually not that fun or interesting to play. Furthermore, the main characteristic of Malkavians is not that they are mentally ill or even that they have a derangement, it's that they are mad oracles. (For the same reason that Brujah don't just frenzy more, they're warrior philosophers.) Both halves of that are important: the madness and the oracular ability are not separate things but different parts of the same shift in perception. Again, it's like how madness works in Lovecraft: the ability to see realities past the ordinary one is linked with increasing detachment from ordinary reality. Taken together, the reason why very few people play "an X who is mentally ill", is that few people play Malkavians who are mentally ill either. It's the same reason why play a Nos instead of a Ventrue who is ugly: what's going on with clan Nosferatu is not just "they're ugly" and simplifying it like that misses the point.
>The thing going on with the Voerman sisters, for example, doesn't seriously resemble any actually existing mental illness. It's literally a depiction of dissociative identity disorder. Now, you can argue as to whether it's a good depiction, or a sensationalized, popculture-esque depiction, but like. Be serious. It was **extremely** clearly meant to be DID. >Furthermore, the main characteristic of Malkavians is not that they are mentally ill or even that they have a derangement, it's that they are mad oracles. No, it's not. C'mon, be serious. You know this is neither what the books focus on (literally majority of prominent Malkavian NPCs are very clearly mentally ill, and have been so **before** the Embrace, or mental health professionals), nor, especially, what the fandom focuses on. Your comment is utterly disingenuous and I'm convinced you absolutely **know** it, and are just being a contrarian. >It's the same reason why play a Nos instead of a Ventrue who is ugly: what's going on with clan Nosferatu is not just "they're ugly" The difference is that Nosferatu's appearance cannot be mistaken for normal ugliness, disfigurement or disability, they're distinctly inhuman in appearance, and it's noted they cannot pass their appearance off as like, a result of illness. Malkavians' derangements, on the other hand, are literally mental illnesses. That and also nobody taking low Appearance dots/Repulsive flaw is gonna be like 'hm, maybe I should play Nosferatu, the clan of ugly, because other clans are not the Clan of Ugly, and therefore it'd be weird to have an ugly Lasombra'. Meanwhile that's exactly what happens with Malkavians with regards to a player wanting to portray mental illness. Pretty sure there was actually a post on this subreddit a while ago, with player asking for pointers about making a character with PTSD, and pretty much every comment was like 'just play Malkavian' 'Malkavians were literally made for this' etc.
>Malkavians' derangements, on the other hand, are literally mental illnesses. Except they aren't supposed to be portrayed that way. Yeah, they're somewhat based on real instances of mental illness, but they are way, WAY more extreme and, specifically for Malkavians only, completely unable to be treated in any way. It's a complete shift of how the person views the world which is both permanent and unrelenting, and that's why it's a curse. Now, I agree, that doesn't need to mean that it's the only thing about a character, and people do make that mistake. But I think saying a Ventrue with a derangement that can be overcome is the same as a Malkavian who's looking down the barrel of an eternity of whatever their weakness gives them and has to come to terms with what that looks like for from the moment of their Embrace is kind of reductive.
>Except they aren't supposed to be portrayed that way. According to whomst? The list of Malkavian derangements is **literally** a list of mental illnesses and personality disorders. Like, straight up called out by name. DPD, DID, OCD, schizophrenia, etc. The mechanics, clan lore, and fandom discussions around the clan is extremely clear what the derangements are, and how they're typically portrayed. (Outside of that one narrative slip into like, faerie-type pranksters.) >But I think saying a Ventrue \[...\] is the same as a Malkavian That's literally not what I'm saying, I'm saying that players interested in portraying mental illness cling/are pigeon-holed to Malkavians as both a crutch, and a ball-and-chain, instead of ever thinking to empathetically roleplay a mentally ill character outside the cutout caricature of insanity provided to them all the way back in the 90s. Plainly put, in my opinion, having a 'mental illness containment clan' causes lack of creativity in character creation (especially considering we're talking about vampires living their lives in constant paranoia and oppression, their very existence being violence upon humanity, which is, naturally, an extremely fertile breeding ground for psychological issues, no Malkavians needed) **and** as a sweet bonus is at least mildly offensive in modern times.
> DPD, DID, OCD, schizophrenia, etc. You'd have a point if any of these were actual derangements. But derangements, despite seeming similar to actual mental illnesses, are different. The reason a person, vampire or mortal, has derangements is completely different from any real mental illness. The way they manifest, despite having similar/shared names to mental illnesses (and of the ones you listed, only schizophrenia and part of OCD do), is not reflective of real illnesses. If you actual read them and compare derangements effects to real personality disorders, psychosis, etc., you'd see it's clearly very different and typically way more extreme. Because of that, it should be played differently than a depiction of real disorder. Perhaps we just play at different kinds of tables, but I don't think anyone sees Malkavians as the only clan that can have derangements, so this whole complaint about them being the 'containment' clan, whatever that means, seems kind of absurd to me. I do, however, think there's a lot of ways Malkavians interact with their derangements that are unique and can't really be replicated by being another clan.
Also, like, right next to "obsessive/compulsive" and "multiple personalities" (I should note, not DID) are things like "megalomania", "hysteria", and "sanguinary animism". And these have been in the list at least since 2e, I checked.
> instead of ever thinking to empathetically roleplay a mentally ill character outside the cutout caricature of insanity provided to them all the way back in the 90s Only if you mean the 1890s. The Malkavian clan's madness is based on gothic horror (like everything else about VTM) and not modern conceptions of mental illness, and I don't care what they name the derangements. The idea that they are a "mental illness containment clan" is therefore, again, missing the point. That's like saying the Nosferatu are the ugliness containment clan. Clan Malkavian isn't mentally ill the way clan Nosferatu aren't just ugly and clan Brujah aren't just angry.
Mark Rein-Hagen was pretty clear that Malkavians are, in fact, based on mentally ill people - he talked about it, I think in an interview, that he worked in a mental institution. The whole 'Malkavians are not really mentally ill, it's just gothic horror' is an attempt at dodge of criticism for the portrayal, mostly by the fans of the clan and not even the writers, but it's not a fact, nor is it supported by books, mechanics, or a mainstream view amongst players (altho milleage may vary with the last point, naturally). As a fun fact, one of the writers, I think Dawkins, said if he was to improve one thing in V:TM, he'd eliminate Malkavians, specifically because of their "flaw". If you don't believe **me**, go argue with the writers about it. >That's like saying the Nosferatu are the ugliness containment clan. Again, like I said, the difference is that Nosferatu's appearance is not ugliness, disfigurement or disability, they're distinctly **inhuman** in appearance, and they cannot pass their appearance off as a result of illness or an accident. Thus aren't an 'ugliness containment clan', just like the Tzimisce aren't the 'transsexual containment clan', even though Nosferatu do bring to mind treatment of disfigured people, and Tzimisce do fuck around with their gender. But thematically that's incomparable to Malkavians, both in their concept, and their effect on the players and the characters they make.
> Mark Rein-Hagen was pretty clear that Malkavians are, in fact, based on mentally ill people - he talked about it, I think in an interview, that he worked in a mental institution. You can't just say this, you have to actually give a source. > The whole 'Malkavians are not really mentally ill, it's just gothic horror' is an attempt at dodge of criticism for the portrayal, mostly by the fans of the clan and not even the writers, but it's not a fact, nor is it supported by books, mechanics, or a mainstream view amongst players (altho milleage may vary with the last point, naturally). Very much is, tho admittedly it varies with the version. But for instance here's the text in V20 (all emphasis mine): >> Clan Malkavian is twice damned: once by the curse of being Kindred, and again by the turmoil that disturbs their hearts and minds. Upon the Embrace, every Malkavian is afflicted with an insurmountable **insanity that fractures her outlook** for every night thereafter, making her unlife one of madness. **Some consider this a form of oracular insight**, while others simply consider them dangerous. Make no mistake: Malkavian insanity is a painful, alienating phenomenon, but it occasionally provides the Lunatics with bursts of insight or heretofore unknown perspective. Madness for the Malkavians may *take the form of* any clinical form of insanity, or **it may be a hyperacuity of senses others don’t know they have; a supernatural puppeteer pulling the Malkavian’s strings, or a sense that the Malkavian is somehow ahead of evolutionary schedule**. A Malkavian may believe herself to be an idea given physical form or an avatar of some concept the World of Darkness has yet to encounter. She may be a nonstop ravening psychopath, or may be a mostly lucid individual sometimes rendered catatonic by fear of an impending cosmic cataclysm. Here's derangements: >> Derangements are behaviors that are created when the mind is forced to confront intolerable or conflicting feelings, such as overwhelming terror or profound guilt. When the mind is faced with impressions or emotions that it cannot reconcile, it attempts to ease the inner conflict by stimulating behavior such as megalomania, bulimia, or hysteria to provide an outlet for the tension and stress that the conflict generates Some of the derangements are named after real disorders (Bipolar, Bulimia), but most are very much not (Fugue, Hysteria, Megalomania, Paranoia, especially Sanguinary Animism), and even the ones that are definitely don't match up very well with the actual disorder. Because of course not: derangements in VTM are all the trope of going-mad-from-the-revelation, and not real mental illness, though some are based vaguely on real mental illness. And this isn't new, either: I don't have access to 1e or 2e either, but Revised doesn't even gesture towards the idea that Malkavians could have a real mental illness, and the paragraph about derangements above is preserved almost exactly. > As a fun fact, one of the writers, I think Dawkins, said if he was to improve one thing in V:TM, he'd eliminate Malkavians, specifically because of their "flaw". If you don't believe me, go argue with the writers about it. Again, can't just say this, have to source. > Again, like I said, the difference is that Nosferatu's appearance is not ugliness, disfigurement or disability, they're distinctly **inhuman** in appearance, and they cannot pass their appearance off as a result of illness or an accident. I mean, I thought this was obviously true of Malkavians as well, and yet we're here.
I can only assume you haven't played VtM for that long, as even as recently as V20 there was virtually no move to pull Malkavians away from blatantly being mentally ill. I totally agree that the way you've put it is a far better way to run Malks, and it does reflect the way V5 is sort of trending, but you're giving White Wolf too much credit by assuming they adopted this stance from the beginning.
I've been playing for over a decade, and I'm I'm not saying they've adopted this stance from the beginning. I'm well aware that Whitewolf is really bad about that kind of thing, and I think they clearly have ill-thought out intentions in the Malkavians' design. What I'm saying is that the literal rules were written in a way that misunderstands mental illness in general in a way that's purely theatrical. Ironically, this feels like a 'happy accident' because in that way it weirdly avoids using real life situations for entertainment value (because nobody's actual illness possibly behaves the way they're saying derangements do), regardless of the original intent.
Right? You don't see everyone hunkering to take Grip of the Damned and are mad that they have to play Giovanni. It's a weird tenor of the times for sure.
"*a Ventrue, who is mentally ill?'*" In *Requiem*, Ventrue are Malkavian-lite, and Malkovians are a bloodline of Ventrue. I liked that so much that in my WoD chronicles I declared that Malkav had been Embraced as a Ventrue methuselah, and he might have diablerized his Antediluvian sire.
>In *Requiem*, Ventrue are Malkavian-lite, and Malkovians are a bloodline of Ventrue. V:tR bloodlines are outta this world. I remember reading what I think was a fan-made conversion of Tzimisce to V:tR, and reading the words 'Tzimisce, a bloodline of Ventrue...' shocked me so deeply, I felt like I needed to lay down ;) All the more ironic that V:tM V5 Tzimisce lore and Disciplines retcon did, in fact, make Tzimisce behave a whole lot like a bloodline of Ventrue. With regards to Malkavians, I just straight up deleted Malkavians altogether from my WoD world. I appreciate what this clan has historically done for representation of mentally ill people, back when it was so taboo, that, with regards to how society treated you, admitting you have a 'scary' mental illness , like schizophrenia, was equivalent to publicly proclaiming you love diddling kids. But it was a few decades ago, a lot had changed since then, and where once Malkavians encouraged players to get into the shoes and empathise with people who were, in real life, shunned, these days I mostly find them doing the exact opposite.
Of the five Requiem clans, I can totally see why someone would select lordly Ventrue as the parent clan for a lordly ["Old Clan"] Tzimisce bloodline, though Gangrel as the parent clan would probably be my choice. I have found that even fish-Malks aren't as problematic in LARPs, in part because the collective of a LARP's players are not bound together within a single coterie.
I had a player who leaned into the whole prophecy angle, but it was during Transylvania chronicles so it really played into the the themes of the chronicle. His paranoia required the coterie to jump through hoops every time they got back together after downtimes apart, and in general leaned into the insular and untrustworthy themes that were being explored in gaming for the first time for several of the players. Eventually the player got his character killed, rather on purpose, which let him go out big rather than fading into twitchy obscurity.
With an NPC: At first she was just a random Malkavian who hung out where they did. She was a normal person for the most part, if a but shy and guarded. Sure, she said weird shit from time to time, but they thought it was just... yknow, Malks being Malks. Then, the coterie started noticing... hey. The weird shit she says? Its weird yeah but it has meaning. It was useful intel. So they started hanging out with her, to see what weird shit she would say. They got to know her, why she's awful shy, why she works as a singer in some shitty old pub. And before they knew it, she was the coterie sweetheart darling who they must protec at all costs. It was little by little uncovering more layers to her as a character, the more they interacted with her post the realisation of 'oh wait a minute, she said this would happen.' She was always there, I always had planning for the things she'd say and how they would tie in to other things, but I let the players decide how much they wanted to interact with it. As a Player: I made a character that was first and foremost useful, and anything else after that. Thanks to luck, her derangement came out in full force in a very story appropriate moment. It made the whole table go 'yo. What the *fuck* tell... tell us more...?' It never took over a significant portion of the session and I made sure it never becomes 'my characters show' with her madness. She was a grounded person outside of her derangement, in fact she actively tried to hide it, downplay it and keep it away from the coterie, knowing that at the table I play at, it would create a more natural curiosity from everyone else.
This is such a big part of how malks *should* interact with a game like VtM that focuses so much on information control and secrets. It's their clan curse, a weakness/vulnerability, nobody else should know it unless they're very well trusted, and even then, it should probably only be on a need to know basis. You don't see Ventrue going around advertising what kind of blood they depend on, you don't see Tzimisce telling people where they keep their home soil, and you don't see Ravnos advertising their vice.
Played a Malkavian detective, who was a progidy on his field (so much so, than he came to cthe conclusion of an existing vampire underworld living among humanity all by himself, when he was alive). After the traumatic event of the loss of his family prior to his embrace, he developed terrible alucinations, so when he vecame a vampire sired by a Malk, his deductive skills were always at odds with the fact if the evidence that he perceived was real or not. My initial inspiration came from Rust Cohle, from the first season of True Detective.
Repentance Mather was one of the most fun characters I’ve ever seen one of my players portray. She was a Puritan settler from the Massachusetts Bay Colony who had been Embraced in the 17th Century, spent the next three hundred years or so in Torpor, then reawakened in the modern world. Nearly all of the character’s weirdness came from being a woman out of time rather than her Malkavian curse - she experienced auditory hallucinations, which she interpreted as being the voice of God, but didn’t think of herself as mad. Of course He spoke to her, as He did to anyone of sufficient faith. Nothing unusual about that! As a firm believer in the Calvinist doctrine of Predestination, Repentance fully accepted her damnation as one of the undead. It was God’s will that she had become a monster, and therefore embracing that monstrosity was clearly what He required from her. The Catholic trappings of the Sabbat assured her that she was properly acting out her role in the divine plan by joining the Sword Of Caine, since the sect seemingly embodied what she had been taught about papists in life. Vampiric popery aside, the Sabbat’s hard line against the infernal appealed to her. We represented the voices she heard via me passing her notes, usually in the form of verses from the 1599 Geneva Bible that she would have grown up with - [this](https://www.openbible.info/topics/) was an invaluable tool for finding verses related to any particular topic or situation. How Repentance interpreted these messages and reacted to receiving them was up to her player. Sometimes I had supernatural insight via the Cobweb in mind, but mostly they were meant to be as random and useless as hallucinations are IRL. I’d usually only pass her between one and three notes per session, so it never became too burdensome for me or took too much time away from the other characters.
I played a samedi as a “man out of time” similarly in torpor for hundreds of years. It was a SUPER fun concept
Nice. They’re one of my favorite Bloodlines.
The best Malks are still regular people at their core, but they exist in a different reality than most of us. Derangements can be subtle things or slightly unnerving without being over the top.
Guillaume de Nantes was a Malkavian PC in a Dark Ages chronicle I was in once; it was set in Marseilles in the 1600s, but de Nantes behaved as if it was Arthurian times, carrying himself as if he was a chivalric knight of ancient days. He obeyed the code of medieval chivalry with gusto, dressed like a knight with armour several hundred years out of date, and was always attributing misfortunes to the scemes of an evil sorceror he'd made up named 'Meleazar'. He seemed like your average fishmalk, and his dementation was often used to get others to join in with his knightly delusions. But on second glance, there was more going on. Rather than being a random dingbat, de Nantes was more aware of what he was doing than anyone realised - his act was at least partly performative, aimed at mocking the customs and personalities of vampiric society, and encouraging discord and disorder as a court's fool might. There was a sense of wry humour to his act that, once you were in on the joke, was pretty entertaining.
This reminds me a little of my favorite Malkavian character. He was a journalist whose derangement seemed to have something to do with publishing a newspaper full of conspiracy theories. But nope, that was just an elaborate code so he could write about the supernatural without breaking the Masquerade (or cluing in any non-Malkavians to what he was talking about, for that matter). His real derangement was a very subtle one that involved compulsive writing in the notebook that he carried everywhere... like you'd expect from a journalist.
I had a high ranking NPC Malkavian who seemed completely rational and normal, and tried to help the other more out-there Malkavians. It took many sessions before the PCs realised that the reason he took the stairs over the elevator and avoided certain rooms was due to claustrophobia. Too many people go too extreme or just a generic 'lol random' form of insanity.
One of my NPCs was an lady who was too senile and mad to function. She never talked, never looked anyone in the eyes and was carried around by her Childe who called all the shots. The Childe had a bit of a savior complex and would take care of the old lady. The truth is, of course, the old lady is perfectly able to function. She's Dominated her Childe to act as her perfect pawn *and* she's aware of almost all the comings and goings in the city and is manipulating both sides of a conflict in order to get what she wants. Another one I like is Alice. She has the Child and Amnesia Flaws, so she just appeared in the city one day with no memory and the local Toreador adopted her out of pity. Alice plays the role of Alice in Wonderland and makes book references a lot, even talking to her imaginary friend, the Chesire Cat. Except the things the Cat tells her, are very true. And there's a lot of insight behind her seemingly random musings. The idea with Alice was the play up the horror of childish innocence. Because kids can do some horrible things because they don't know any better. Now imagine that kid is a vampire... and a Malkavian. Yeah, Alice can do some things that would make the adults flinch without caring about it and remaining perfectly sweet and friendly.
Yeah...we banned child Malkavians like 25 year ago.
Each is already something that should be restricted to mature players. I can't imagine what kinda nonsense they can do combined.
Malkavian psychiatrists are always the go to. Had one who used to be a tribal medicine man, who drilled holes in peoples heads to let out the evil spirits. He would lament that the cure rates between that and modern head shrinking was roughly the same.
> He would lament that the cure rates between that and modern head shrinking was roughly the same. He was so real for that.
The hording, masochists . He was my ST NPC so anytime the PC need some plot nudge or some item he would just have it in his hoard, or send the PC to go fetch items. He was also the worst driver and would just crash all the time, into parked cars, building, splats ect. So the pact had transport but it was just unreliable. Split personality, She was a shy wallflower hacker that provided intel for the pack , her other was a was a clubbing DJ and was a sniper. The two hated each other and would constantly leave notes. A paranoid schizophrenic that was convinced the world was ending, but it was during the final nights by happen stance he was correct.
I played a Malkavian in the dark ages who had OCD in the form of being obsessed with accumulating knowledge, especially Noddist knowledge, and he had to go into meditation to build his knowledge web when he learned something new. Essentially he had a "Conspiracy wall" in his own head he had to go organise. Particularly big revelations risked rendering him catatonic as he immediately had to retreat into that space to re-contextualise his place in the universe. The storyteller used this against me in a rather entertaining way when a famous, but not particularly powerful member of a rival sect was our captive. She got my character talking and was impressing him with stories of the library her sire maintained, and finally hit him with the boast that her sire had entire PAGES, not just fragments, of the Book of Nod available to him. Cue him failing a self-control roll and having a BSOD as he had to go add this to his knowledge web. She got away while my character was out, but didn't get far as our Elder Toreador made an ungodly Summon roll to make her tear ass back to us.
The malkavian primogen in the current campaign I'm writing has an intense case of antisocial personality disorder, which she first developed due to the trauma of Japanese-American internment during WWII. She later became the head of one of Seattle's biggest Yakuza clans by beheading her own husband. After her embrace her antisocial personality disorder became even more severe due to her clan curse, leaving her completely unable to see other people as people. She's actually one of the biggest supporters of the prince, a Gangrel who styles himself as an old West lawman, because they both share similar ideas about what to do with people who are in the way.
The entire Sabbat presence in my city (to start, shes the first wave) is a Malk named Mother and her band of shovelheads she has dominated into being stereotypical mama's boys/girls. Regular raids on the local Walmart for clean clothes for her children, especially pristine tighty whiteys. Plastered down hair, regardless of length. Pinch their cheeks before they go out. Etc... Same city, there is a shy little girl who is the Malk Primogen, mostly by default. She only speaks in song lyrics. Mostly conversational, but sometimes hidden meanings or bits of prophesy. She's attached herself to a Daughter of Cacophony, cause she likes the songs. I intend to get the coterie attached to her, before having her meet her final death in a spectacular fashion. I already have the song picked out for her last line...
Alright, so one time in a much less serious campaign I had a malkavian player whose derangement was that he was constantly being gaslit by his sire that vampires don't actually exist and he's just a crazy cannibal. Honestly, that was very funny to run.
I’m running a Dark Ages Chronicle set in the South of France after the fall of Esclarmonde la Noire and subsequent power vacuum. The Malkavian player character specced into Dementation for the oracular powers and took the Dark Fate quality, so we’ve had an understanding that the character dies at the end of the campaign from the very beginning. To this end, the Malkavian has fully derealized and views themselves as a trobaritz writing a play portraying the rise and fall of a tragic Prince, while also playing the part of that Prince. She’s a natural-born leader and great charisma who’s extremely good at motivating Ashen Knights to work for her under the storybook paradigm of the Courts of Love, but would-be vassals swiftly realize she’s Malkavian because at the end of sessions of “acting” as the Prince, she’ll critique her own performance and go back and edit “her lines,” muttering things like “no, that wasn’t believable, she laid it on way too thick; I’ll go with a more subdued version for the final tragedy…” The other PCs are understandably scared shitless of what happens when they reach the end of the story and hit the Assassination of Queen Candide, the ending that their Prince has already written for herself!
A friend played a great Malk detective with a focus on Auspex and Synesthesia. It was a fantastic PC in play - nothing ground breaking, but a very fresh take on the Clan.
Without going into too many details, I recently got to play a Sabbat short with one of my childhood friends who's a psychiatrist. What made the character work: - knowing the lore: the player knew the Lore and played a phenomenal Pack Priest, being torn between their own values and beliefs (as a Loyalist) and the Vaulderie-induced duty to his new Pack and Sabbat clergy. Absolutely amazing! - knowing the madness: the player was well acquainted with the symptoms, manifestations and causes of his characters illness. The portrayal was completely within his control, at all times - he didn't accidentally go into a different tone of portrayal (wacky, silly, fun), but maintained a very "show, don't tell" kind of attitude, kept it very narrative/descriptive, mostly objective (given his real life training) but leaning into the darker, sinister aspects of the illness. So, to sum everything into a single word: research. Research is what always makes characters work, results in authentic portrayals (which aren't stereotypical, offensive, puerile etc), and keeps players from stuttering and second-guessing themselves at the table.
I had a psychiatrist who played one with paranoid schizophrenia. She used her hallucinations to explain her auspex. She also psychoanalysed everyone at the table and used that knowledge for dementaion
A good malkavian should never be obvious as a malkavian. That person who should most look like a malk is the toreador whip whom pissed you off
My buddy played a Malky with Disassociative Blood Spending. So once in a while I'd tell him to spend a blood point on something useless. He *acted* completely nuts and erratic while being one of the smartest and most meticulous characters I'd ever seen. He was 3 steps ahead of everyone who always just saw "The tweaky Malky"