For those who have heard of Vampire the Masquerade, I need some help developing my character. I'm a Malkavian, and if you could help me out with some suggestions. In the book it lists some ideas, but I want something a little more unique than an insane assylum..
thanx

Ah a fellow Malkavian! Pleased to meet you... and your large pink elephantine friend.

Malkavians generally centre around their personal dementia so any development should stem from that. My character had a sock puppet whom he constantly talked to (it was chosen for me by the GM), although I have heard better since. Split personalities are easy to come up with and roleplay, and they can be very entertaining too. I once met a son of Malkav with a second personality that was a Vampire Hunter. It really upset the rest of his party when someone in the background whistled for a taxi and he proptly began trying to kill them all!
If you want a place to set up home, think of your characters background and dementia. A security guard may have a thing for abandoned warehouses, while an ex-teacher (an excellent possibility for an insane character) would prefer to live in a school. Think about how Malkav's generally hark back to their mortality in a lot of cases.

Hope that helped.

Hehe, my friend played a Malki who was nuts before he was embraced, so there were constant questions as to whether he was really embraced or it was all a delusion.

Anyway, Her_Servant is right, focus on what happened before being embraced, particularly in the short hours before. A traffic warden would be hilarious to RP as a Malki, civil servants of any kind really, maybe a malki milk man or paper boy still making the rounds, and janitors, don't get me started. lol

cool

..happy malks suck ass imo


Things normally forgotten is that they are DERANGED VAMPIRES...

that should be scary on itself..

I play a malk who is obsessed with becoming whole again. When a malkavian is embraced..he receives the sight..forever shattering his mind under it's clarity...mine knows that..and he wants to pick up every little piece and putting it back in place.
last thing I've been busy with is getting my organs back to work. The ST is kinda new in the group and was a bit freaked when I described how I went on bathing myself in innocence (shortly: innocence is generally white, but babies too are innocent...anyway..going off topic)...

Point is as said before..take your time about the derangement you're going to give to your malkavian. And please don't fall into happiness..cause malks are not.

YEAH! in your face brujha!! Malkavians rule all!!!
hmmm. "malks aren't happy? not so say I! i once had a malkavian going for a long time who would change his mood instantaniously depending on the colours he saw around him, one moment child like and inocent (inside yellow cab) and then the next driven to animalistic murderious tendencies (those damn grey umbrella almost got us all killed about 5 times!!!! )

or she could just be delusional "I am not dev/nul I am bagger stalking its prey grrr grrrr rrrr rrrr...."

I think this thread should be in the OOC discussions forum.

Probably so....

Unless someone maybe wants to start up an actual GM'ed roleplay in here. That might be cool.

First off I gotta say that I'm with Oeze Malks should be disturbing!

My last Malk was a Vietnam veteran, who believed he had been to hell & been rescued by one of the marines who had been supposed to save him from the V.C attack that "killed" him.

Later when he returned to the "real" world he found that his wife had remarried & had a child, the Marine who had rescued him (Who incidentally noone else could see) told him that His wife & her new husband had been possesed by demons.

That these demons had followed them back from hell & found a way onto earth via the television.

Hence from then on for quite a while he went round blowing up T.Vs in order to save the earth from demons he continued in the crusade even after the marine (His "imaginary" friend embraced him).

There's of course alot more to it but I think I've taken up enough space already!!

But I think the main point to remember is that between Auspex & Eyes of chaos The Malks are the most perceptive clan!!

So who's to say that stuff they see isn't there??

Well then a new thread can get started without OOC chit-chat, no?!

i agree, too many malkavians i think are played as silly and amusing characters, while in real life insanity is rarely a source of entertainment except to those with dark senses of humor. i remember watching a video of an interview with someone with dissociative identity disorder (multiple personalities) and it was not funny in the least bit. insanity is usually a source of great pain and confusion in a person's life. i can only imagine this would be even less amusing in a vampire.

your right evan.

uhm, the problem with some/most malk characters is thier either childlike in thier innocence or completely twisted maniacs. Sard, (my current rp char, whos is still in the test phases) despite monetary lapses into extreme high's or lows is very sane, just completely incapable of diferentioating between past present and futur, so even when to himself he seems quite fluent and sane he is almost completely incomprihensible to otherr people, because to him the person he is talking to may be dead, or not even born or currently in another country or whatever, its a bit hard to do convinsingly but if i keep working on it I may be able to pull it off

Yeah. That,s my point exactly. Mlakavians can either be used as comedy relief characters (as my first was- he had a sock puppet thing going on) or very disturbing characters to bring the game into more sharp focus. I find the easiest way to run an insane character is to give them singular, independant insanities.
ie. bob has a second personality, chronic depression and a manic fear of puppies
instead of: bob is fucked in tha hed.

My current character is also a malkav purely cause I wanted to see how much I could push a serious character on my companions. He is perfectly sane at the moment except for a belief that he does not need blood. Very dangerous of course for a vampire. Whenever he reaches zero blood points he has to take a willpower test every time he sees a mortal. If he fails he drinks and forgets it afterwards, but if he fumbles... well that's a new insanity isn't it.