La Maña | Baja California - California Sandbox | Organized Crime
The Camarilla runs California like a family business. Now you're on the payroll.
TYPE
SYSTEM
LEVELS
LANGUAGE
EXPERIENCE
AGE
$29.99
/ Session
Details
6 players following this game
Weekly / Sunday - 12:00 AM UTC
Jun 28 / Session 6
Session Duration / 3–4 hours
4 / 7 Seats Filled
Report Adventure
StartPlaying Money Back Guarantee
If your game doesn't happen, we guarantee a refund. Just reach out to StartPlaying Support. Refund Policy
Schedule
Meet your party members
4/7
About the adventure
La Maña is a Camarilla mafia chronicle set in the shadow economies of California and Baja California, where vampire syndicates operate the way the Sinaloan old guard always have: through family, loyalty, appearances, and an absolute refusal to be disrespected. Newly Embraced, players are brought into a Camarilla-aligned criminal organization with its hooks in banking, real estate, ports, and the people who run all three, stretching from Los Angeles and San Diego down through Tijuana and the wider Baja peninsula. This isn't street-level survival. It's boardrooms and quinceañeras, compound parties and quiet executions, the kind of power that gets exercised in a handshake long before it's ever exercised with a gun. Cartels, rival crime families, and federal agencies are all working this corridor from different angles, and your syndicate expects you to hold your ground in that fight while still answering to people above you who have their own ideas about what loyalty is worth. La Maña, the term itself, refers to the broader Mexican organized crime network whose influence runs through every level of society on both sides of the border, legitimate and otherwise. Surviving in it means understanding that here, business and family are the same conversation. Alliances are made over dinner tables as often as back rooms. Out here, people remember an insult a lot longer than they remember a payment. This is a campaign about ego and inheritance as much as it's about crime. Who your sire is, what house you represent, how you carry yourself in front of people who are constantly measuring you, these things matter as much as any blood sorcery or political maneuvering. The Camarilla above you wants control. The families below you want respect. Your character has to decide how much of themselves they're willing to spend holding both. Playable clans are Lasombra, Ventrue, Toreador, Malkavian, Gangrel, and Banu Haqim, each suited to a different role within the families. Ventrue and Lasombra anchor the leadership and the boardroom politics. Toreador hold the social ground, the front-facing legitimacy and influence that keeps the operation looking respectable. Malkavian bring an unpredictable edge that the organization has learned to use rather than fear. Gangrel are the muscle, but they're also the message: the ones sent when the family needs to remind a rival exactly what they're dealing with, the kind of fear that spreads through a city the next morning when word gets around. Banu Haqim are the clan's sicarios, but their value runs deeper than that reputation suggests. Through their standing alliance with the Ashirra, they keep the syndicate connected to a network of contacts spanning the Middle East and North Africa, political, financial, and otherwise, giving a regional cartel operation a genuine global reach few rivals can match.
Game style
Theater of the Mind
Sandbox / Open World
Roleplay Heavy
Game themes
Meet the Game Master
4.9
(29)
1 year on StartPlaying
142 games hosted
Highly rated for: Teacher, Creativity, Sets the Mood
About me
Storyteller specializing in grounded, character-driven narratives set in hostile, morally complex worlds. My campaigns draw from organized crime dramas and psychological thrillers, set against the Western states and Northern Mexico, regions I know firsthand and build with real geographic and cultural accuracy. I primarily run Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition. The system rewards moral ambiguity and factional tension, and that's exactly where I like to live as a GM: long campaigns where political maneuvering matters, every choice carries weight, and the cities, families, and factions you interact with keep evolving whether you're paying attention or not. I also score my own games. Original music, in-world songs, atmospheric audio, built specifically for each table, to make the setting feel less like a backdrop and more like something with a pulse. My chronicles center on cartel politics and mafia rule across the borderlands, spanning California, Baja, Nevada, Arizona, Sonora, Texas, and Tamaulipas, with every city and rural stretch in between treated as real, lived-in territory rather than a backdrop. I've also taken the Ashirra into the spiritual battlegrounds of the Sahara and Sahel, and run Tremere-focused chronicles of esoteric mage-mafia intrigue stretching across Southern Europe and the North African Mediterranean. For players who want something faster and louder, my Cyberpunk Red campaigns pull from classic sci-fi and underground rock and roll, scored with analog modular synths and distorted guitars driving every session. Whatever the setting, I run the kind of table where your decisions actually move the story. Sessions are immersive and character-first, built for players who want a world that pushes back.
View Profile →Character creation
Creating your character
Players can either pick a pre-made character or build an original one using standard VTM 5E rules, whichever fits how they want to start the campaign. Character sheets are built directly in Alchemy, so everything's ready to go in the VTT from session one. You don't need to buy the Core Rulebook or Player's Guide. A clear, detailed character creation guide is posted in the Discord, covering everything you need to build a character from scratch. Beyond that, I'm there to help, whether you need a hand shaping the initial concept or just want a few finishing touches to make sure your character fits the campaign's themes.
What to expect
Preparing for the session
Players will need an Alchemy VTT account and a Discord account. Both are free, no purchases required on either platform. You also don't need to buy the Core Rulebook or Player's Guide, every rule relevant to this campaign is already built into Alchemy and accessible for free once you've joined. Session zero covers everything else you need before play begins: campaign tone, house rules, and expectations for the table. I'll walk through anything that isn't immediately clear once we're underway.
What D'Antonio brings to the table
I run grounded, mature crime stories built around characters players don't forget, the kind of people whose motives, families, and loyalties stay with you long after the session ends. As an audio engineer, I score every game personally: original music, field recordings, and sound design built specifically for each scene rather than pulled from a generic playlist. Every location is supported by custom photography and artwork, so the world isn't just something you're told about, there plenty of visual and audio aids to make the atmosphere easy to imagine and see! Factions have real internal politics. Characters have real stakes. I put significant work into cultural accuracy and representation across every setting I run, because the world only feels tangible if it's built with care rather than shorthand. My goal is a table where the line between the fiction and the experience starts to blur, and where every session leaves you with something to think about after it's over.
Homebrew rules
Combat runs on modified damage and weapon rules, including an overhauled autofire system, built to make firefights feel weightier and more dangerous than the standard ruleset allows. Conflict resolution is also adjusted in places. Where the standard rules default to a clean defender wins outcome, I'll sometimes rule that both participants take damage instead, reflecting how messy real violence actually is. Diablerie and Hunger also run on homebrew rules, designed to make the cost of losing control feel real at the table. As Hunger climbs, your character's grip on ego and emotion erodes with it, and social scenes carry the same stakes as combat: every decision your character makes while hungry has consequences that follow them. Full details on all homebrew systems are provided before play begins.
Equipment needed to play
Computer
Internet
Microphone
Platforms used
Safety
How D'Antonio creates a safe table
Session 0 is where all of this gets handled. I walk through the setting, the system, and the mature themes the campaign is going to lean on, and players bring their character concepts and any boundaries they want the table to know about going in. We also cover scheduling, play style, and general table etiquette, so everyone's working from the same expectations before the first real session starts.
Content warnings
Safety tools used