Your Crew: Coteries and Gangs

Vampires like to act as if they are individualists who care only for themselves. After all, if you appear to care for nothing, what would your enemies be able to attack? However, many vampires desire meaning and companionship just as mortals do. Connections with other vampires and mortals keep them rooted in humanity and give them something to care about in an otherwise difficult and tragic existence. Unlife has to be more than chasing the next sip of blood, lest the vampire find themselves falling to their Beast.

Ultimately, vampires are social creatures who want to survive and thrive. Whether due to base concerns like seeking safety in numbers, a Camarilla coterie wanting to curry favor with their local Courte, or an Anarch group chasing a high ideal like overthrowing the same Camarilla Court, vampires frequently band together in small, like-minded groups. Within the Camarilla, these groups are most often called coteries. Members of the Anarch Movement refer to these groups as gangs. Even in the vicious Sabbat, vampires seek strength in numbers, gathering together in packs. (For the remainder of this section any references to coteries refer also to gangs.)

While social companionship and mutual assistance provide security, coteries and gangs tend to have a theme underpinning their association. What do they do? What are their motivations? How do they make their way through the night? Having a good theme or purpose not only allows you to make roleplaying hooks within the coterie, but it provides other players and the Storyteller an easy way to understand your group’s objectives and get them involved in stories. There are as many concepts for coteries and gangs as there are vampires to make them, but here are some examples of coterie concepts:

• Blood Cult: A crew that entices mortals to worship them and turns them into pawns. ● Champions: A group who identify as advocates and warriors for a cause. ● Cleaners: A van-full of investigators and forensic specialists who cover up Masquerade breaches.
• Commandos: An elite unit of soldiers who carry out missions for their sect.
• Lorehounds: Knowledge-chasers who will go wherever they must to learn the truth. ● Nomads: A gang of travelers burning up the interstate from domain to domain, either on the run or sowing chaos in their wake. Not infrequently both.
• Socialites: A gaggle of courtiers striving to become prominent in fashion and politics. ● Sommeliers: A coterie specializing in capturing mortals with the perfect Blood for their clients.

Members of Coteries and Gangs work together as a team, at least in theory, often sharing resources and surviving in close proximity to each other in a specific domain of their city. The following set of rules allows players to create a Coterie or Gang which gives the contributing characters certain benefits. A character may only benefit from one coterie at a time.

Territory 

The core aspect of all coteries is the territory they exist in, a physical area of the city that members hunt and hide their havens within. In cities with a Camarilla authority, a coterie's territory is granted by the Prince. In cities with an Anarch authority, territory is usually referred to as turf and is claimed by a gang.

Territory is described by three Background traits called Comfort, Connections, and Deterrents. A coterie has a free pool of dots equal to two times the number of characters within it. These dots are used only to purchase Territory traits. As characters come and go, this free pool of dots may change. Additional Territory traits may be purchased for 3 XP, just like any other Background.

If a character leaves a coterie for any reason, other members lose access to any Territory traits the departing character purchased with XP. The departing character can freely recover these at the rate of one dot per month. Once regained, she can add them to a new coterie. The free dots a departing character provided are lost until a new coterie member joins.

Coterie members must agree on all purchases and losses collectively, with a simple majority solving any disputes.

Comfort 

Comfort describes how healthy a Territory is. This includes the health and well-being of the mortals and how easy it is to feed upon them. The number of dots of a Territory’s Comfort also abstractly dictates the relative size of the Territory. Every coterie begins with one free dot of Comfort. Coterie members hunting during a game within a Territory with one dot of Comfort, making Hunting challenges at difficulty 6. For each dot of Comfort beyond the first reduce the difficulty of Hunting challenges by one. A Territory is limited to purchasing five dots of Comfort. 

Dots in Comfort need not always translate to huge sprawling Territories. The primary purpose of Comfort is the ease of feeding within that Territory. Consult the following table as a general guideline for the normal geographic size of a healthy Territory. Exceptions to this table exist. A coterie could choose a large abandoned part of the city mostly devoid of human population with a Comfort of one. Conversely, a coterie could choose a massive urban high rise with connected commercial shops that sits in a relatively small footprint with a Comfort value of five.