09/25/2026

Happy Friday, and welcome back to Tabletop Thoughts!

When I first looked at ShadowCity: Blood & Neon, the obvious comparison was Vampire: The Masquerade. Both games put players in the roles of vampires struggling to survive in a modern city. Both have bloodlines, supernatural powers, secret societies, territorial conflicts, and ancient vampires exerting control from the shadows.

I have already given the book a more traditional review in “ShadowCity Review: Vampires in the Streets, Blood in the Dark.” In that review, I looked at the game’s mechanics, strengths, weaknesses, and overall approach to urban vampire horror.

This time, I want to take a second look at the book—not simply as another vampire RPG, but as a toolbox for creating a particular kind of vampire campaign.

The more I read ShadowCity, the less interested I became in using it to recreate Vampire: The Masquerade. I think it would be much more fun to use it for something closer to Underworld: secretive vampire covens, human servants, ancient grudges, modern weapons, and supernatural creatures who are dangerous without feeling like invulnerable superheroes.

Vampires Who Can Still Be Killed

One of the things that has kept me from becoming deeply interested in some vampire RPGs is how quickly the supernatural powers can take over the game. The characters stop feeling like vampires operating in the modern world and start feeling like superheroes with fangs. Ordinary people, conventional weapons, and mundane problems gradually become irrelevant.

ShadowCity avoids a lot of that.

The book says that vampires are tougher than mortals, “but not by much.” Later, it explains the idea even more directly: a vampire may be able to survive more punishment than a human, but a shotgun blast to the face is still extremely dangerous.

That single idea does a lot to establish the tone of the game.

A vampire can recover from injuries by spending Blood Points, but those points are limited. Blood is also needed to activate many supernatural disciplines, and every vampire loses one Blood Point simply by rising each night. A character who continually heals wounds and throws supernatural powers around will eventually become hungry—and hunger can lead to frenzy.

The result is a good balance. Vampires can survive things that would kill an ordinary person, but they cannot treat violence casually. A group of armed humans is still dangerous. A police raid is still a problem. Getting trapped somewhere as the sun comes up is terrifying.

You feel supernatural without feeling invincible.

Guns Still Matter

One of my favorite things about Underworld is that the supernatural creatures still use modern weapons. Selene does not discard her pistols because she is a vampire. Firearms remain useful, and much of the conflict looks like a crime thriller or action movie that happens to involve vampires and werewolves.

ShadowCity works the same way.

Its vampire classes begin with familiar weapons such as handguns, knives, shotguns, submachine guns, grenades, and crossbows. A supernatural ability might help a vampire close the distance, track an enemy, survive a wound, or gain an advantage, but the actual fighting can still be done with a pistol or blade.

That keeps the game grounded in its setting. Equipment matters. Planning matters. Ammunition, vehicles, safe houses, and daylight security matter. Vampires may possess extraordinary abilities, but they still need tools and people.

It also opens the door to the kind of tactical vampire-versus-werewolf conflict seen in Underworld: hidden armories, specialized ammunition, covert raids, ambushes in subway tunnels, and teams of vampire operatives hunting enemies through the city.

Classes as Roles Within the Coven

The classes in ShadowCity can easily be interpreted as operational roles within a vampire coven.

The Butcher is the obvious combat specialist: the Death Dealer sent to eliminate a threat. The Expert can be an investigator, scientist, intelligence analyst, doctor, or armorer. The Luminary is the diplomat, recruiter, interrogator, or political manipulator. The Shadow is an infiltrator, assassin, or driver. The Medium investigates occult disturbances and supernatural phenomena. The Autarch represents a powerful enforcer, elder, or heir to an influential bloodline.

I like this approach because a new player does not need to study decades of clan history before making a character. “I am a vampire investigator who works for the coven” is enough to get started.

The class provides a role. The bloodline provides the character’s supernatural inheritance. Backgrounds, assets, touchstones, compulsions, and feeding habits fill in the rest.

That gives players plenty of material for distinctive characters without asking them to absorb an entire encyclopedia of setting lore first.

Bloodlines Without All the Baggage

ShadowCity has bloodlines, but they are much lighter than the clans in Vampire: The Masquerade. Each bloodline provides two benefits and one drawback inherited from the character’s sire.

That is enough to make different vampire lineages feel distinct without forcing the campaign to inherit an established history, ideology, hierarchy, and list of ancient enemies.

A Bestial bloodline might descend from an aggressive warrior house. Radiant vampires could belong to an aristocratic family that passes easily among humans. Monsters might be the visibly corrupted descendants of something ancient. A Vagrant lineage could be known for scouts, messengers, and operatives who move between cities.

The GM and players can decide what those lineages mean in their city. They can create their own covens, grudges, traditions, and ancient betrayals. Nothing requires them to import the Camarilla, the Sabbat, thirteen clans, or generations of metaplot.

That freedom is one of the game’s greatest strengths. I do not need ShadowCity to give me its version of every famous vampire faction. I want it to give me enough structure to build my own.

Why Would Humans Protect Vampires?

There is always a difficult question hiding beneath a modern vampire setting: if humans discovered that vampires existed, why wouldn’t they simply destroy them?

Vampires survive by feeding on people. Once the truth became known, you might expect the police, military, intelligence agencies, and general public to unite against them.

The answer is that humans are greedy creatures.

Vampires do not approach someone by showing their fangs and announcing that they drink blood. They reveal themselves slowly.

First comes the money. Then influence, protection, access, and power. A vampire helps a police officer make detective. A politician is rescued from a career-ending scandal. A failing business suddenly receives financing. A criminal’s rivals disappear. A doctor is given access to wealthy clients and research opportunities that would otherwise be impossible.

By the time these people realize what is providing the favors, they are already caught in the vampire’s net.

Then comes the final offer: immortality.

Continue cooperating. Remain useful. Protect the secret. Perhaps one night you will be rewarded.

Some servants really will be turned. Others will spend their entire lives believing their night is coming. Most will accept the possibility even if the vampire never makes a firm promise. The chance to escape age and death is enough to make otherwise sensible people overlook almost anything.

ShadowCity supports this idea particularly well through its rules for ghouls. A mortal who regularly receives vampire blood stops aging and becomes physically stronger. However, the effect must be maintained with another feeding every month. The vampire is not merely bribing that person. They have given the mortal a taste of immortality—and they control the supply.

That creates a human support network around vampire society. Police officers bury evidence. Doctors redirect blood supplies. Politicians interfere with investigations. Journalists suppress stories. Business owners launder money. Criminals provide weapons and victims. Wealthy patrons provide secure properties. Servants guard sleeping vampires during the day.

Some of these people are controlled or intimidated, but many cooperate willingly. They know what vampires are. They simply believe that the arrangement benefits them.

The conspiracy does not survive because nobody ever discovers the truth. It survives because the people who learn the truth are eliminated, discredited, or offered something they want more than justice.

That may be the vampires’ greatest defense. It is not their strength, speed, or ability to heal. It is the fact that too many powerful humans have something to lose if the truth comes out.

The Undead Aristocracy

ShadowCity already contains the beginnings of the kind of vampire society seen in Underworld. Its undead aristocracy includes Princes, elders, clans, territories, thralls, political obligations, and rival factions.

I would use those elements as the command structure behind the campaign rather than making court politics the entire campaign.

The characters belong to a coven. The coven controls property, maintains human servants, stores weapons, and claims portions of the city as its territory. Elders issue orders and expect obedience. Rival houses compete for influence while insisting that they are all working to preserve vampire society.

That politics should create missions:

• Investigate a suspected werewolf incursion.
• Recover a missing shipment of weapons.
• Find out who is stealing blood from a hospital.
• Extract a vampire scientist before a rival coven reaches them.
• Silence a mortal investigation without creating more evidence.
• Capture someone who is creating vampires without permission.
• Discover which elder is secretly working with the enemy.
• Protect the coven while its oldest member awakens from decades of sleep.

Politics still matters, but it leads to investigations, betrayals, raids, and gunfights. The players are not spending every session waiting for ancient vampires to finish arguing. They are the operatives sent into the city when those arguments turn violent.

Where ShadowCity Becomes More Fantastical

Not everything in ShadowCity fits the Underworld tone equally well.

Some disciplines are much more overtly magical. Vampires may transform into mist or liquid blood, control plants, manipulate shadows, summon animals, possess mortals, create illusions, or reshape physical objects. Those abilities push the game toward broader urban fantasy.

That broader range of powers is not a mistake. It gives ShadowCity enough supernatural variety for groups looking to use it as a lighter, faster replacement for Vampire: The Masquerade. If you want distinctive vampire bloodlines, strange disciplines, political factions, and characters who become increasingly supernatural as they gain power, the material is already here. The game can support that style without requiring players to absorb decades of established lore and metaplot.

That is not necessarily the tone I would choose, but it makes the book more versatile. For an Underworld-style campaign, I would curate the available disciplines rather than remove them from the game entirely.

I would emphasize increased strength, speed, agility, heightened senses, rapid healing, mental influence, stealth, tracking, resistance to injury, and exceptional combat ability. Stranger powers could be restricted to particularly old vampires, rare bloodlines, or experiments involving altered vampire blood.

That would make the unusual powers feel genuinely unusual. If every starting vampire can dissolve into blood or control shadows, those abilities become ordinary. If only one ancient elder can do it, that elder becomes frightening.

The Werewolves Need More Than One Stat Block

The default werewolf in ShadowCity is a monster. It is level 10, heavily resistant to ordinary attacks, attacks twice each round, and may tear limbs from its victims. That works wonderfully as a terrifying apex predator, but it is probably too powerful to serve as the standard Lycan soldier in an Underworld-style war.

I would create several versions of the creature:

• Human-form Lycan agents who rely on weapons and training.
• Newly transformed Lycans that are dangerous but inexperienced.
• Veteran Lycan soldiers capable of fighting vampires directly.
• Ancient or experimental Lycans using the full statistics from the book.

That creates room for escalation. A gunfight with Lycan operatives does not automatically become a massacre, but the arrival of an ancient werewolf can still make everyone reconsider the wisdom of continuing the fight.

It would also allow both sides to feel like real organizations instead of collections of identical monsters.

Blood, Neon, and Automatic Weapons

ShadowCity is set in 1981 by default, and that works surprisingly well for this kind of campaign. The absence of smartphones, social media, and cameras in every pocket makes it easier for vampires to control information. The neon-lit clubs, organized crime, corrupt police, analog surveillance, and Cold War paranoia all fit the mood.

You could move the setting to the modern day, but I am not sure it needs it. An early-1980s vampire war has its own identity. It also distinguishes the campaign from simply recreating the Underworld movies scene for scene.

That is ultimately what interests me about ShadowCity. I do not want to reproduce someone else’s setting exactly. I want the mood: immortal houses, covert warfare, human collaborators, old grudges, modern weapons, and vampires who are dangerous without becoming invulnerable superheroes.

The Underworld RPG I Didn’t Know I Wanted

ShadowCity gives me enough vampiric power to feel like Selene walking into a gunfight, but not so much power that the gunfight becomes meaningless.

The characters can heal, dominate mortals, stalk prey, and draw upon supernatural blood. They can also be shot, trapped, betrayed, exposed, starved, or caught in the sunlight. Their powers offer options without eliminating danger.

More importantly, the book leaves room to create my own city and my own vampire society. I can build covens instead of importing clans. I can decide who the elders are, how the war began, which humans serve the vampires, and what promises keep those servants loyal. I can make immortality the bait at the center of an enormous web of money, dependency, ambition, and fear.

That is more interesting to me than another attempt to reproduce Vampire: The Masquerade.

I want vampires with guns. I want hidden armories and blood-filled laboratories. I want ancient aristocrats protected by corrupt officials and desperate servants. I want werewolves prowling subway tunnels while vampire operatives hunt them through neon-lit streets.

I want the characters to be powerful enough to feel like monsters—but vulnerable enough that they still have to be careful.

ShadowCity looks ready to deliver exactly that.

Keep on gaming!