They are divided into two main groups, each with its own agenda. Instead, there exists a rich mythos involving various bloodlines or Clans, each having different sets of powers.

In this complex and fascinating campaign environment, they are not the stereotyped creatures familiar to B movie fans and readers of cheap fiction. White Wolf's Vampire: The Masquerade is an extremely popular pen and paper role-playing game set in its World of Darkness property, a foreboding and even sinister alternate reality based on the real world, but one in which vampires exist and wherein the threat of evil is omnipresent.