Ambition and Desire

Ambition and Desire are related, but not identical. Think of Ambition as a long-term goal: an aspiration (if you still breathed), a life’s dream (if you still dreamed, or had life). By contrast, Desires are more immediate: short-term wishes for revenge, satisfaction, or satisfaction through revenge.

Ambition
A character’s Ambition keeps them acting and moving both night by night and in the chronicle. It provides motivation for the player and story hooks for the Storyteller. An Ambition must be measurable in game terms (“My Ambition is to achieve Humanity 10”) or a concrete achievement in the world of the chronicle (“My Ambition is to liberate Chicago from the Camarilla”). An Ambition is not something vague like “end racism” or “achieve world peace,” but instead focuses on something specific, like “bring True Death to (insert notably racist elder from your chronicle here)” or “end the Gehenna War in the Ukraine.” If an Ambition is unlikely to happen or would end the chronicle if achieved, it can still provide rich story juice – it only needs to be theoretically achievable. If a character achieves their Ambition and the chronicle continues,the player should decide on a new Ambition, ideally one that has emerged during play or one that follows on the realization that their first Ambition left something undone or incomplete. At the end of a session in which the character has actively worked toward their Ambition, they recover one point of Aggravated Willpower damage.

Desire
Desire reflects less than lifelong Ambition, but more than momentary wants. Each session, a character can select a Desire or keep their unfulfilled Desire from the previous session. Once per session, when the character definitively acts to further or accomplish their Desire, they may immediately recover one point of Superficial Willpower damage. Since Desires change so rapidly, you don’t need to write them on your character sheet. Just write your current Desire on an index card or Post-it Note where both you and the Storyteller can see and remember it. This mechanic intentionally provides players with an incentive for character action rather than passively waiting for the plot or turtling up defensively. Thus, a good Desire connects in some way to the outside world. One rule of thumb: if it doesn’t involve someone or something named on the Relationship Map, it’s not worth considering as a Desire. By that metric, “I want to drive a cherry Maserati” or “I want to eat a brunette” fail as Desires, but “I want to drive Cytherea’s cherry Maserati” or “I want to eat Lord Harkness’ brunette” make excellent Desires. The Storyteller should judge whether Desires involving fellow player characters fall under the spirit of encouraging meaty interaction or of just lazily trying to sponge free Willpower.