Vampire: The Requiem is a role-playing game published by White Wolf, Inc. for the Chronicles of Darkness setting, and the successor to the Vampire: The Masquerade line. Although it is an entirely new game, rather than a continuation of the previous editions, it uses many elements from the old game including some of the clans and their powers. In the first edition, it required the World of Darkness core rulebook for use, and was released alongside it in August 2004.
In December 2013 the supplement Blood and Smoke: The Strix Chronicle was released, adding a default world setting and significantly revising certain aspects of the game to bring them in line with the upcoming changes to the core rules of the new World of Darkness. At GenCon 2014, it was announced that Blood and Smoke would be re-branded as Vampire: The Requiem, Second Edition, with a new cover, index and very minor changes in November 2014. This release in both its forms was a stand-alone game, able to be played with no other books as references.
Vampire: The Requiem was released by White Wolf Publishing in August 2004 as a supplement to the simultaneously-released book The World of Darkness, giving players rules for playing as vampires. It became the publisher's flagship title, and was in turn supplemented with its own line of supplements; the line developer was initially Justin Achilli, who was succeeded by Will Hindmarch in November 2004. The first Storytelling Adventure System adventure was Hindmarch's The Resurrectionists (2007) for Vampire: The Requiem. Greg Stolze was working on Vampire: The Requiem when he developed the One-Roll Engine for Godlike (2002). In 2015, the "new" World of Darkness was rebranded as the Chronicles of Darkness by White Wolf Publishing, in an effort to further differentiate the setting from the Classic World of Darkness.
The game takes place in modern-day earth where vampires form complex societies hidden from human awareness. Vampires are unliving humans created when a vampire drains a human dry of blood and then feeds the corpse a few drops of its own vampiric blood. Vampires that have inherited common physical powers and qualities group themselves into "clans", but they also join "covenants" along religious, political or philosophical lines. These groups differ radically in purpose and outlook and are often in conflict, though they agree that they must hide their existence from humans.
Vampires generally dwell in large cities, where they can find plenty of prey and easily remain inconspicuous. Vampires do not need to kill humans to steal blood; humans go into a trance when a vampire feeds on them and do not remember the moment, and a vampire can erase the bite marks it made by licking them. While vampires use the stolen blood they call vitae to bolster their physical prowess, heal wounds, and wield Disciplines, it is also the fuel they use to arise every night; a vampire cannot awaken if it does not have any blood.