[Vampire: The Requiem] Play as written?...right.

[Trevis Martin]

I decided early in 2005 that I wanted to play a game with the new Vampire: The Requiem rules.  It was pretty easy to convince the group to give it a go, the production of the new game is very sexy and fires the imagination.  Plus I was reading a lot of the Forge at the time and wanted to play the rules as written and see how they worked.  I saw some improvements that I really liked and some baggage that I still really didn't, but I was determined to see how they really worked in play.

I've always liked Vampire.  I'm a Vampire player from when the first edition of the game was published in 1991 and, of course, drifted the hell out of every game I've ever played.  Almost all the RPG's I've played in I've been the GM.  Maybe it's a power trip, I don't know.  I was always the guy with the books.  I was also one of the guys who was excited in the early days about the White Wolf emphasis on story.  It led me to participate (and instigate) a lot of illusionist/participationist play in the old WW system and to try gaming Vampire with other mechanical systems (such as Fudge and Theatrix) in the hopes that it would magically lead to the collaborative story I had been promised would occur.

Though my earliest RPG experience was with Palladium's Robotech, I fell for Vampire in a big way when it came out.  Being an angsty teenager/twentysomething in the early 90's, I was definitely caught up at just the right time in all the forces that meshed to make Vampires a cultural phenomenon.  Gamers who's impressionable age was during the Barbarian/Fantasy zeitgeist of the late 70's early 80's might roll their eyes (sidelong glance at Ron) but Vamps were it for me.
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The Group

The group at the time of playing the game consisted of Mike, a guy I work with who is two ranks higher than me at work.  We usually carefully avoid any work related stuff and act as friends when we game, and I like him a lot, but that relationship is always there.  This was his first game with the group.  Sam, another guy from work who is at the same level as me but in a different department.  Dawn, a gal from work, in my same department and same level as myself. Mike and Dawn had old RPG experience,(AD&D 1st and 2nd, Warhammer FRP)  Sam is mainly a video and miniature wargamer who didn't play RPG's before we asked him to join us, but has played a couple games with us.  Karri played some miniature wargames with her brother (my roommate) but was new to RPG's until she started playing them with us.  Joey (her son) was also a miniature gamer who didn't do RPG's before we tried them together.

This was a rough time period for us as a group.  Getting together to play seemed to be very difficult, between kids, jobs, etc and all in all, it took almost a whole year to get in a game that was maybe 10 sessions long.  Whenever someone was missing we would play a board or card game, like Risk 2210, Shadows over Camelot, or Bang. We always had a good time, but I certainly got frustrated with getting everyone to show up. Of all of us I'm probably the most into the RPG scene.  I still act as GM most of the time.  And I still am the guy who owns all the books.

During the time period of the game both Joey and Dawn dropped out of the group.  Joey because he got a girlfriend, and so wanted to hang with her.  And Dawn because she got 'too busy.'

Since this game has ended Karri has left the group for indistinct reasons about scheduling.  Sam got married and left the group also (he started missing a lot.)Mike remains and my roommate Dennis rejoined.  I suddenly realize that there are really several different groups here, only connected by the fact that they met at a similar scheduled time.

[Trevis Martin]

Setup

Since we intended to play the rules as written, of course we drifted the damn thing immediately.  We had previously played two games of Sorcerer and at least two of Inspectres, a little Donjon, a little Universalis.  In some of the between space we got in one DITV town as well.

We created characters as a group.  I borrowed elements of the Haven setting (the basic, fictional, east coast metropolis) from the Haven: City of Violence RPG which I had been given as a freebee at GenCon. (I'm pretty sure I saw Sin City in there too which was definitely an influence.)  I told them I wanted to play a Lancea Sanctum (catholic vampires) controlled city whose cardinal was revered as a Joan of Arc type prophet and which was on the verge of a coup due to  ideological and religious oppression.  I told them they could play any age of vampire they wanted and gave appropriate additional character creation points to those who were going to play older vampires.  I borrowed the idea of a Kicker from Sorcerer which most of the group had played before.  And I said that I would be playing the 'Beast,' when it took hold of them.I told them that Vampires embraced only for strong emotion, like love, or because they desperately wanted a skill-set they didn't have.  I also had them make up several related NPC's and I myself used a Relationship Map.

Sam played an older vampire, Rene', who was a scion of the Cardinal, having had an intense romantic relationship with her that had since gone a little sour.  Now he was the head of the city's Templar (leg-breakers) and controlled a major section of the city.  He'd of course been hearing the rumblings of the coup.  In addition he had a girl ward who he'd raised from an infant and who was now about 17, who he kept secret, of course, as mixing with mortals is against Lancea belief (Don't play with your food). He'd been having serious doubts as to the morality of his state. He also has a rival, another offspring of the Cardinal who is in love with her, but is not getting the attention he wants because she has become focused on Rene again. His kicker was that his ward tells him that she is in love with him and wants to be embraced.

Mike played a newly embraced vampire who was a Shaolin monk from Hong Kong. His father had remarried and he had been sent to the monastery when he was very young.  His stepmother was connected with organized crime.  The monastery he was in has a vampire at its heart who always selects an offspring from among the monks to take his place so that he can begin some kind of religious journey walk in the world.  The present vampire master had selected before but the earlier choice had run off, and so Mike's character Fei Heung, was the last minute replacement so the master could go on his journey.  Problem was, walking in the park outside the monastery Fei Heung met and fell in love with a woman and was planning to leave the monastery.  His kicker was that his father dies and at the reading of the will, instead of leaving all his assets to the stepmother, he leaves it all to Fei Heung.  (And of course part of the business is run by his Uncle in America)

Karri played Jessie, a woman who had been turned into a vampire 10 years previous.  She had been turned for love and companionship.  About 2 years previous, she breaks up with her sire and moves back to Haven to watch out for her twin sister, her nephews and brother in law.  She is, of course, disobeying the Lancea prohibition against mortal ties.  Her family only knows that she's missing and presumed dead. Her kicker is that her sire shows back up and wants her back, and that her sister suddenly starts having an affair.

I can't remember the name of Dawn's character but she was an older vampire who had been a slave in the pre-civil war south.  She was sexually victimized and later embraced by the son of the plantation owner before she ran away.  She is a strong member of the Circle of the Crone, mortal enemies of the Lancea Sanctum who currently control the city.  The Circle has to stay concealed for survival and are also one of the major forces behind the coup.  Because of her own victimization she preys on victimizers of women, and particularly protects the streetwalkers of a part of the city.  Her kicker is also twofold in that her sire shows back up (and knows her affiliations) and she manages to catch and kill a serial murderer of her prostitutes only to find that he's a highly decorated police officer.  (And of course the city has laws against messing with law enforcement.)

Joey played Nathaniel, an older Nosferatu who was the main Keeper of Elysium in the city, and who wants to be prince. He was also a member of the Circle of the Crone.  His kicker is that he is simultaneously asked to find out about the coup and report on who belongs to it by the Cardinal, and asked to join the coup by his sire.
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The Game

As you can see, the setup was loaded as hell.  None of that was from any advice I received from the NWOD or V:TR books but rather from my exposure to techniques from other games we had recently played, particularly Sorcerer.

Unfortunately as I said earlier both Dawn and Joey dropped out of the game after about two sessions so there wasn't a lot of development from them.

Cool moments and bangs...

Through the whole game Rene' has his argument with his ward about love and why she can't be immortal with him.  She rebels of course and goes off to get some other vampire to embrace her, and he promptly kicks the ass of whoever tries.  Finally near the end they have a knock down drag out argument about it and he absolutely refuses to embrace her and tells her she can't do anything to change his mind.  She says, "oh yeah?" and she pulls out a pistol and shoots herself.  The look on Sam's face was priceless, and everyone was wrapped up in it.  He breaks down and embraces her to save her from dying.

Later when the coup is in full swing and near the climax of the game.  Rene is rescuing Genevieve (the Cardinal) they've just escaped the burning cathedral by jumping to the next rooftop where they are confronted by the members of the coup.  They demand that Rene give Genevieve up to them for justice, and he refuses.  Genevieve goes into one of there epileptic prophecy fits and it is revealed that these are caused not because she is a prophet, but because she committed many acts of Diablerie (absorbing the soul of another vampire, a very serious crime).  In a stunning moment, Sam portrays Rene's sense of betrayal by someone who loved him (Rene as the city's main executioner of justice was earlier forced, on Genevieve's orders, to kill his friend for making a new vampire without permission.  He had the choice to let them escape but he didn't.), and leaves her to the justice of the Mob.

When Fei Heung first gets off the boat he comes upon a mean being beaten by Chinese gangsters.  He fights them off (discovering that he knows one of them from the orphanage a long time ago).  Ironically he frenzies and kills the man he tried to save.

Fei Heung's girl, Ming, follows him to America. After a reunion at the house of his Uncle, Ming (not knowing he's a vampire) suddenly holds him at gunpoint reveals herself as an assassin sent by his Stepmother.  However, she's really fallen in love with him and isn't able to shoot.  She falls to the floor and confesses her love and asks for forgiveness.  He dumps her and walks away.

Fei Heung is tracked down and confronted by the Master Vampire monk from the monastery who tells him that he has a duty to fulfill the role in the Monastery.  Fei Heung refuses so there is a climactic vampire powered kung fu fight over the issue.  Fei Heung barely wins.  (more about combat below)

At the climax of the story, he finds out that in order to make up for her betrayal Ming is meeting the Stepmother, who is flying in at a private airport, and plans to kill the Stepmother and herself in the process.  When Fei Heung arrives he finds that she is rigged with a bomb which she has just activated the dead-man switch on.  Fei Heung tells her to stop, that he will take her back, but his Stepbrother, who is with Step-mom, shoots Ming, who's hand goes limp.  Fei Heung manages to rip the bomb off her at throw it at his enemies at the last moment.

When Jessie refuses to get back with her sire, he begins to make moves on Jessies twin sister. One memorable scene she sneaks into her twin's house to find her sister in the midst of having sex with her sire. She attacks him which comes to a draw but she agrees to get back with him if he will leave her sister alone.

At another great point she hunts down and beats the crap out of the guy (a friend of Fei Heung) who her sister is having the affair with. (humanity check)

She sets up a double cross to get rid of her sire.  She finds his main enemy (another scion of the Cardinal named Artemesia) and agrees to set him up.  At the actual restaurant where they were supposed to meet her sire shows up...with Jessie's twin sister in tow.  This is the first time the sister realizes that Jessie is alive...sort of.  Then the shit hit the fan.

[Trevis Martin]

Observations

We had a rocking story-in-play
The written game system had little to do with it.
At its best, the system stayed out of our way.  At its worst it slowed things to a crawl with what felt like irrelevant crap.

I tried to scene frame pretty aggressively, and cut bob and weave etc.  It was reasonably successful but I need to get better at it.

The mechanical reward system is the same arbitrary crap thats in a lot of games.  Ooh, you get a point for the 'best role-playing.'  One automatic point for being there, one for serious danger, etc.  Since this story was self contained the whole point thing was pretty irrelevant.  There is a strong implication that characters in the game will be starting out as low level nobodies.  This game would not have been possible had we stuck to that.  Also kewl powerz became what they always should have been, interesting and complicating but not the central issue.  But this was due to the fact that there was no focus, by any of us, on character advancement as delineated by the system.

The secondary mechanical reward system is supposed to be the gain of willpower by playing out your virtue (one of the seven virtues) and vice (one of the seven mortal sins)  You get one point for indulging in vice and get them all back for demonstrating the virtue.  Willpower is of course used for mechanical augmentation, adding a die to any roll.  I found it incredibly hard to apply.  If Karri had had Wrath as her Vice I could have given her a willpower for beating up that guy, but I think she had Gluttony.  It was hard to mesh this stuff with the characters.

The last mechanical system involved was humanity and boy, for our purposes, humanity blows in this game.  Thing is, it's explicitly linked to a hierarchy of sins.  You don't test humanity until your guy does something past his current threshold, then if you roll and lose the point your guy is supposed to degenerate, his behavior prescribed by the next lowest level.  The problem is that I think you hit a floor past premeditated murder.  After that it's pretty darn hard to slip further down the scale.  If you can't do that then there is no threat, no real mechanical risk.  So the basic question of "Can you be a Vampire and Still be a good person."  That I think the game tries to ask is effectively mechanically neutered and left entirely to the local group's implicit system.

The real payoff all of us got was the character moments and decisions.  Many of them were awesome and completely engaging.  People were paying ATTENTION at those moments.

The worst parts of play were parts where the combat mechanics came into play.  The system implies (though I suppose doesn't say outright) that when you enter a physical, combat type conflict, you pick up the combat mechanics which turns everything into a slo-mo, tactic by tactic fight.  After being annoyed by this several times in a row I house ruled a trollbabe and Burning Wheel 'bloody versus' scaling mechanic.  If the player didn't want to go blow by blow we did it all in a straight skill roll.

That said, the combat mechanic and the dice mechanics in general are better than they used to be.  Variable pools but set dice targets made the regular mechanic easier to use (they both used to be variable) however since the standard die target is 8 on a 10 sider it was remarkably easy to fail, even with a bunch o dice.  I used the general modifier option rather than specific modifiers to pools.  The combat mechanic tries to boil each action by each person down to a single roll (your dice pool + modifiers - your opponents defense) still it was pretty painful at times.

The attributes were easier to use too.  In each arena, Social, Mental, Physical  you have a Power, a Defense and a Finesse trait.  That made deciding what to roll easier.  I found the skills next to useless a lot of times.  There is also a lot of calculating involved to get the character sheets together and things (NPC's and backgrounds) that maybe should have had some mechanical weight were not easily doable with the system as written.

The new version of the setting is actually pretty cool.  The clans are basically vampiric stereotypes (sexy vampire, scary vampire) the real neat stuff was the idea of covenants or vampires that are unified by belief systems.  There was no massive weighty metaplot and no huge organization to slap you down so there was a lot of flexibility in the setting.  The setting detail is actually medium light, which given the types of heavy characters I think drive this kind of game seems appropriate.

I admit I had gotten used to using systems that were mechanically both more simple and IMO more elegant, so this was rocky for those reasons as well.
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Conclusion

I admit it was a half hearted try to play the rules as written.  Maybe it's doable but I think it would make for profoundly unsatisfying play for me and my friends.  The awesome really came from techniques I learned elsewhere and applied to this game and had very little to do with the way the game itself tells you to play.  There are definite improvements but it seems that it still can't decide on what kind of game it wants to be.  I remember saying at the time that if I ever wanted to do it again I would use something like Sorcerer or perhaps TSOY or Heroquest.

Trevis

[sirogit]

Someone more knowledgable should write an essay about the effects of "attendance/best roleplaying" xp - When I played GURPS, they had the effect of encouraging attendance(I believe at one point, many years ago, I said to myself "Wow! All that muddling around we did for four hours was roleplaying. And not only that, but the girl the GM hits on is the best at it! I had no idea.") While at the same time, not benefitting the actual playing of the game at all. Possibly a feature?

What was Virtue and Vice selection like? Paticularly, did it seem like the group tried to embrace the concept of the Virtues and Vices into their characters, or was there rejection of it as another useless hacked-on-gimmick that they're not going to pander to? (The one time I played V:tR, the general reaction to the virtue and vice system was a knee-jerk "Oh great, a guy in a mesh shirt is trying to impart clean christian living on me.")

I'm confused on what you mean by "the skills are next to useless". Elaborate?

[James_Nostack]

Hi Trevis, I keep meaning to do a "Vampire to SOY Conversion" one of these days, because I think SOY would handle the setting pretty well.  If you want, I can send you some of the notes I had via PM. 

[Simon C]

Thanks for posting this.

I think it's something of a common theme, almost a archetype - the tragic tale of young and impressionable gamers discovering Vampire, and excitedly trying to get to this "real" roleplaying, with "collaborative storytelling" and "personal horror" that they've been promised, only to discover that they've been given precisely the worst tools with which to achieve this.


Regarding "Roleplaying Awards":  What better incentive can there be to creating monosylabic, antisocial combat machines?  These characters will always be roleplayed flawlessly.

As someone who's been bitten by the Vampire bug on more than one occaision, I'm not willing to pan the whole thing and start over.  I, as would you, I imagine, would love to have an efficient system with which to play this setting.  I was excited by the new books, until I realised that their "doing it right this time" meant keeping the things which sucked, while losing the things I'd come to love.

I get the same feeling from Vampire as I imagine many people get from Fantasy Heartbreakers: the sense of something wonderful buried in something tired and misguided.  I imagine that there are as many ideas on how to "fix" Vampire as there are to "fix" D&D.

Let's keep dreaming.

[Trevis Martin]

There's a couple of things I missed that I would like to add.  And I will but first to respond.

Hi Sirogt

Well, the experience point thing didn't grab me. Per the rule book a character can earn about 4 points per session.

• 1 is Automatic
• 1 is for "learning Curve - "Ask the player what his character learned during the chapter's events.  If you agree with his response, award his character one point."
• 1 for Roleplaying - "The player did a good job of portraying his character entertainingly, appropriately or both.  If he veered too far from his character's concept, he might not deserve this reward, but don't be stingy here.  Indeed, superlative roleplaying might be worth two points"
• 1 for Heroism - "Characters who rise to the occasion with truly heroic actions or feats of survival and sheer resistance deserve a point.  Do not reward characters who act in stupid or suicidal ways just so they can gain the accolades of a hero."

Okay so maybe 5 if they get the extra roleplaying point.  3 more are possible at the end of the story.  First it should be noted that in all cases we are rewarding the player, not the character.  There is a difference and it's important.  I submit that given these guidelines, if your players are not earning at least three of the 4 points, something is wrong on a whole other level.  If they are veering far off their character concepts (which seems a little restrictive,) what does that mean exactly?  Who am I to determine how they concieve a character?  IF they are being asshats, I'll say so, I'm not using an xp stick to spank them with.  Learning Curve?  really?  Sounds like a gimme point to me.

But the main reasons the xp system was not useful to me was that we were starting with at least a couple pretty advanced characters, and had no intention of stretching this into a 'campaign'  We were there to tell a single story.  So if they maxed out evey single session they would have earned like 40 points over the whole thing.  Aside from being a social marker that says I approve of their play, what use does it have?  You can buy more character resources.  Some of these guys have plenty of resources, and we aren't playing over a long period so xp is pretty underwhelming.

Incidently it bothers me that the way to gain humanity back in the game is through xp.  A new humanity point costs 3 x your current level in xp.  Average humanity is 7.  So say you get knocked down to five.  It'd cost you 15 points to get to 6 and then 18 to get to seven.  The rules say you are only allowed to buy one point at a time, between sessions, and only if the GM agrees that your character has been trying to get better The XP themselves are not tied to morally good actions, except through the agency of the GM.  Weak.  Why not just allow a humanity gain roll for morally good actions?

The important things to us, the things that changed in the characters lives, have little to do with the resource sheet attached to them.

On Skills it was easy to apply some to situations and hard to apply others.  We had become accustomed to broad actions that didn't seem easily catagorized into a skill.  Plus at least two characters were over 100 years old, and one was about 200 years old.  Our skill list has some applicability problems.  I probably overstated that point as I am writing this whole account from memory.

I'd just like to say that my whole thing above sounds really negative.  I'm not out to burn down the nWOD system and say that it sucks and forge/indie/small press games rock in comparison.  Vampire is a game that I want to like.  Badly.  As much as I want to like it though, it offers little support for the play I want to get.

I'll get into the virtue/vice thing and some other details I didn't mention above a little later.  I'm tired.

James,

I would be interested in seeing what you have on that.

Simon,

I think there really are some improvments to this version of Vampire, and as a whole, setting and all, I like it better than the original.  It could be fatalliy flawed in terms of rules and proceedures of play.  It also probably is that I wasn't terribly good at remembering all the proceedures they did have.

[Joe Murphy (Broin)]

Hi, Trevis,

"Also kewl powerz became what they always should have been, interesting and complicating but not the central issue.  But this was due to the fact that there was no focus, by any of us, on character advancement as delineated by the system."

Heya. Could you explain this a bit more, please?

Joe.

[Lamorak33]

Hi

I got asked to run a vampire game, but I knew that the WoD mechanics are broken to a large extent, so I was going to run the game using Sorcerer. I had a hard look at it and felt that porting some rules over would work best for our group. Here's what I did.

Die System - Pretty much ported from Sorcerer. First we roll d6's. I select the resistance - the default being 2 or 3. Then we roll off. The player gets bonus die for good descriptions of their actions, -1 die for generic 'I hit him' type statements.

I have discarded the rules that govern what happens if you roll a 1 or a 10 (6 in this case). Like you say, failure or botching is far to common even with a bunch of dice. The game supposed to fun, not have the players generate these wonderful competent characters who fuck up every other die roll.

I kept the health levels thing adjusting the V:TM to resemble that which is in Requiem, with bashing damage, agravated, lethal damage.


Humanity - this uses a Sorcerer type mechanic. If you do bad shit (depending on the groups definition) we roll a humanity loss. You keep your marbles as long as you have at least one humanity point. When I played a game before we found, as you did, that unless you are murdering babies and eating their liver you are never going to lose all your humanity because of the heirarchy of sins bullshit.

I have done away with demeanor and nature. Because you get bonus die from roleplaying now, willpower just becomes just another stat which is affected by some disciplines.

Generation is gone, just like in requiem. The rule I am running is basically we you can get an extra blood point for 5 xp. The maximimum blood pool is 50 and your blood point spend is your blood pool divided by 10, rounded up. so 14 blood pool you spend 1 per round, 15 blood pool you spend 2 per round.

For character gen I have insisted that each of the players come up with 3 important relationships for their characters (including their sire) and kickers. See my thread elsewhere.

But yeah, the system as written sucks, but the setting has improved immeasurably.

Regards
Rob

 

[TJ]

The Requiem Chronicler's Guide has suggestions on how to drift V:tR in different directions.  Of particular interest to you might be the "Monster Garage" variant (page 144) by Jared Sorenson, where he streamlines the system and moves toward a narrativist agenda.

[Trevis Martin]

Hi TJ,

You're right.  I've read that variant and I think it's pretty good.  I hadn't seen that when we first started on this game.

Rob,

I'm not sure the proceedures are actually broken.  I guess I have difficulty with what that word means per a ruleset like this.  The proceedures that are there seem to function.  I don't know if they are always the best proceedures to use, and for the most part they are bog-standard for RPG's ouit there.  Its just that some of the proceedures seemed irrelevant and some seemed to get in the way.  There is a good example from this game too.  The climactic fight between Fei Heung and his Mentor.

In nWOD, when in doing physical violence you are guided to use the combat mechanics.  There aren't any other options.  So they do their kung fu at each other which mostly came down like this.  As I recall their dice pools were both pretty big as they have high Stregth and Brawl scores and both have the Kung Fu fighting style merit though the masters is at a higher level.  The master can spend more blood in a turn.  In the fight they could both only barely hurt each other.  It was a hell of a lot of Whiffing going on.  There were several turns where each side missed completely.  You're thinking to yourself, how many times do I have to roll to resolve this contest?  Each action rolled inflicted maybe, if they were lucky, one or two bashing penalties.  Now with mortal characters in nWoD they would pass out once they hit thier limit in bashing damage.  Vampires don't do that.  They get to use up all their bashing and lethal damage before going into torpor.  The fight got anticlimactic pretty fast.  I had the master give and stop fighting when it was clear Mike was going to have Fei hung fight to his last lethal level.  But at least part of that motivation is because we were both sick of the damn back and forth with not much happening.  I mean, this is fucking Vampire powered Kung Fu.  It should have been quick and bloody.

I think contested actions work better for this type of then rather than I roll, then you roll, then I roll etc.  It would have been more interesting with a system like Dogs or Heroquest for an extended contest.  All that said, I'm intersted in hearing how your game goes when you get to play it.

Hey Joe,

That comment comes from the better part of seven years playing vampire:TM and seeing it be more about the powers the vampires have rather than the central issue of what they are and the moral problems that introduces.  The game makes only a token gesture at mechanically marking the moral issue because it neuters its humanity system.  Instead the main reward you get are points used to make your character more powerful over time so you are more able to do other stuff that makes you more powerful. Now how you spend those points may be a statement in itself, but it's generally not a powerful in-play statment.

Does that answer your question?

Sirogt,

to get back to your questions further up in the thread

"skills next to useless."  What I found is that the skill system pushed us towards cutting up the conflicts into small bits.  In general we've found that we prefer them to be a little more broad so we softballed this a little.  Saying they were useless is an overstatement really.  They aren't useless but I did find that it was hard to capture a real sense of the characters with the list of skills given.  The game assumes modern vampires for the most part for example and at least three of our vampires were not modern age beings.

Virtues and Vices

Fei Heung had Hope as his Virtue and Pride as his vice.  Jessie had Hope as her virtue and Gluttony as her vice.  Rene had Justice as his virtue and Wrath as his vice.  I don't have the info on the other two.

Here's the guidleines for it:

When a character's actions in difficult situations reflect his particular Virtue or Vice, he reinforces his fundamental sense of self. If the Storyteller judges that your character's actions during a scene reflect his Vice, he regains one Willpower point that has been spent. If the Storyteller judges that your character's actions during a chapter (a game session) reflect his Virtue, he regains all spent Willpower points. Note that these actions must be made in situations that pose some risk to your character, whereby he stands to pay a price for acting according to his Virtue or Vice. Everyday expressions of, say, Faith or Pride are not enough to reaffirm a character's determination or sense of self.

Here's the entry for Hope:

Your character regains all spent Willpower points whenever she refuses to let others give in to despair, even though doing so risks harming her own goals or wellbeing. This is similar to Fortitude, above, except that your character tries to prevent others from losing hope in their goals. She need not share those goals herself or even be successful in upholding them, but there must be a risk involved.

Here's the entry for Justice:

Your character regains all spent Willpower points whenever he does the right thing at risk of personal loss or setback. The "right thing" can be defined by the letter or spirit of a particular code of conduct, whether it be the United States penal code or a biblical Commandment.

For Pride:

Your character regains one Willpower point whenever he exerts his own wants (not needs) over others at some potential risk to himself. This is most commonly the desire for adulation, but it could be the desire to make others do as he commands.

For Gluttony:

Your character regains one spent Willpower point whenever he indulges in his addiction or appetites at some risk to himself or a loved one.

and For Wrath:

Your character regains one spent Willpower point whenever he unleashes his anger in a situation where doing so is dangerous. If the fight has already begun, no Willpower points are regained. It must take place in a situation where anger is unwarranted or inappropriate.

I think it was pretty hard for the players to keep track of all this.  And I had a hard time remembering it too.  Maybe, also, I should have been forcing more wilpower point expenditure.  I can think of situations for most of these.  I have a hard time imagining how to apply the Hope one.  I mean I guess you have to analyze after the game session to decide on weather the character attempted to keep people from loosing hope to evaluate for the willpower point gain.  I don't know that I really saw these as flags, though I should have, or I would have built more bangs around them.

snip...  or was there rejection of it as another useless hacked-on-gimmick that they're not going to pander to? (The one time I played V:tR, the general reaction to the virtue and vice system was a knee-jerk "Oh great, a guy in a mesh shirt is trying to impart clean christian living on me.")

I guess the answer is no, we had a hard time parsing the system at the time so we largly ignored it in play.  It wasn't kneejerk.  We weren't sneering at it.  It was just kinda hard to see how to sort it out during play.