The setup and the payoff

We just watched the Harry Potter films on TV over a week. It's weird seeing the progression from whimsy to gloom in a matter of days rather than years. (The last two-parter is about 35% beautiful shots of people in dark clothing standing alone under leaden grey skies. It looks lovely, in a strange Ingmar Bergman way.)

And there are plenty of rousing moments of characters returning, stepping up and joining the fight.

And there are also at least two characters who pop up from out of nowhere even in the last one. Dumbledore's brother arrives a bit late to seem fair. And we could have been introduced to the two-scene magic burglar earlier as well.

So the stuff that's set up is great. The stuff that isn't... isn't.

I'm sure some of it comes from writing the books one a year with gaps, just like the tone (as well as the average length) changes drastically as it goes along.

As a Storyteller or GM, there's only so much groundwork you can lay when the players are moving in various unexpected directions. It's why my mysteries tend not to be very mysterious, or very long. I generally manage to sketch out some NPC conspiracies and enmities for overarching plots, but what they're up to might be pretty minor. Also, I tend to work in more of an episodic TV manner, with each session largely a small story and maybe a bit of an arc rather than planning a serial saga with a big smash-all-the-sets finale. Might be fun to try...

Cops and Robbers

Idle idea for solving the common "why don't we call the police?" issue in modern games:

1: You are the police. Disadvantage of this is that it still lets them call for backup. But they can be put on (and taken off) specific cases, get to crime scenes... you've seen cop shows, right?

2: You're outlaws. The only people who can stop vampires taking over the mob - are in the mob.

Which would be more fun?

Hello again!

Hope you had a good festive break thingy. Didn't get anything game-related for Christmas although almost everything non-edible was geeky. All caught up on Marvel movies and Neil Gaiman illustrated short stories.

So of course I took advantage of the Onyx Path POD sale on the brand new updated Vampire: The Requiem Second Edition rulebook.

Testing

I am now allowing anonymous comments.

I am sure this will end well.

The Nightmare Before Christmas

Other Christmas-type games.

I've been in a few long-running games that saw the year turn, so Christmas happened at least in passing, usually before the game broke for the holidays but sometimes after it resumed due to slowness. There was the odd relevant plot, but not a lot. I've been tempted to do more.

I don't think he's 100% keen.

I looked in on New Bremen at the holidays but mostly just to say hi to people, everybody was naturally a bit busy for plotting. Just working out what your PC gives other characters could be fun, though.

As my imaginary WOD online game commentary moves with the seasons (at least in theory, I only started in November) I'm dropping in the odd idea for a WOD Christmas, from hunting in cold weather to Dexterity penalties for ice to vampires having solstice parties at Elysium to angelic visitations.

This goes back to the tradition of ghost stories for Christmas. A Christmas Carol is the most famous example because it's really seasonal and upbeat, but most were just meant for a good scare around the fire in the dark. We usually have creepy one-shots around Hallowe'en and light-hearted ones around Christmas, but being creepy I'm always tempted to go the other way.

I'm dreaming of a dark Christmas

Tonight in Walking Alone...

... our Puny Mortal heroes found the student's missing brother.

He's not really sure where he's been.

Moving it from a search for a missing NPC could give the sister and roommate PCs reason to leave the game but that's not the plan for them - there's still plenty to find and plenty of trouble to get into, and now They Know Too Much - but it gives them a little hope.

Also there was a shining figure so bright no-one could look directly at it. Dunno what that was about. ;)

And now, the weather

The weather comes, the weather goes... that's why they call it "weather", I suppose.

There's nothing like potentially falling over because of ice on the street to make you think of Dexterity penalties. I suppose you'd have to apply it evenly for the players not to complain.

Random tables to decide the weather? Nah, I like my perfectly timed storms too much.

Tis the season

Christmas shopping achieved!

Apart from that one thing. Damn.

Some game-related gifts for gamers, some generally geeky things. Some game stuff and some geek stuff on my wishlists.

In tonight's violent, er, exciting episode of Walking Alone...

Those Mortals may be Puny, but they can still rescue soon-to-be sacrificial victims and kick cult leaders out of windows.

Next week, a Christmas Special.

WOD MMO ART

Ouch. So much ouch.

What to include, what to exclude

So far in Walking Alone we've had ghosts, vampires, what may have been a werewolf, cults, and I plan to feature an angel soon. What else fits? And what doesn't?

I'm considering how "traditional" the angel should be, if the God-Machine fits or not. It may be too big. But then, regular God is pretty big too... I guess that I'll keep it mysterious and otherworldly...

One thing I have no real plans for at the moment is magic. Partially because I don't have Mage: The Awakening but also because I don't want the PCs getting into that...

Wraith Kickstarter interview

With Richard Dansky.

At last, something they can handle.

"Oh good," said the Puny Mortal. "Cultists."

I see dead people.

IC dead people. Hopefully OOC alive people.

Wraith is back. Fully Kickstarted after an hour and nine minutes, nearly double by now, and not far from an Orpheus expansion stretch goal...

Merry Christmas, Puny Mortals!

Is it bad that I'm already planning the Christmas special for Walking Alone?

Don't answer that.

Cold weather, people loaded down with shopping, decorations heavy on the angels and wreaths... and ghosts, of course.

Tales From Black Friday

Started by Chuck Wendig, Tales From Black Friday is only a slight exaggeration of the "event". We don't even have Thanksgiving here.


"Snow falls inside Target. The eyeless angel wears BEATS BY DRE headphones. It promises you savings. You puke coins."

Star Wars

I'm of the generation that went geeky through Star Wars, so the first footage from the new sequel trilogy (by one of my generation) was always going to work on at least some level.

Spaceships and blasters and running and explosions and lightsabres and monsters and droids and snark and who'll end up with who...

And it's so very playable as well. Half a dozen characters in a broken spaceship against an endless army of supervillains and planet-busting weapons. Played it a lot, and even run it.

And then there are the prequels, which tried something different - a big sweeping epic about the central people caught up in a tragedy. They were just uneven, and weren't much fun. Still, points for trying.

Topicality

So this week we've had rioting, scandal, a national holiday in the US which we don't celebrate here and yet still Black Friday is apparently a thing here. How much would you put into a game set around the present?

The Ferguson rioting feels too close to do more than mention it. I had Occupy appear in games when that was going on - the difference being that it was peaceful, it didn't feel disrespectful to reference it.

Scandal... eh, there's always scandal.

Thanksgiving probably gets a passing mention as I'm running a US-set game for non-US gamers and not all of the PCs have homes to go to. Christmas is the big "home for the holidays" event here, and wrapped up in midwinter and rebirth and angels and stuff, so it's going to get a session to itself in a few weeks.

Black Friday invites a few jokes, nothing more.

Nosferatu!

In twenty-three years I've never seen someone create a Nosferatu in a tabletop Vampire: The Masquerade game.

It nearly happened at a recent session of an ongoing Masquerade game I hear about regularly-ish... then didn't.

The fact that I've seen one in each of the last two Requiem games I've been in - one monstrously ugly and one not ugly but still scary - makes me think the fact Masquerade Nosferatu must always be ugly could be what puts people off.

I've seen some in chats - usually "alt" secondary characters though, even there. 

Masquerade LARPS, meanwhile, have lots of Nosferatu, mostly played by people who want to show up to games in monster makeup.

Likewise, if the WOD MMO had come out, I would have at least tried out wilder options for making a character avatar. A strong visual and a virtual dressing-up box is always appealing.

It's the combover that really kills it.

Then again, nobody's played a particularly attractive character in the last couple games I've run either. That's probably stranger... The games have tended towards investigation rather than social interaction, so standing out either way wouldn't really help.

What We Do In The Shadows

... Yeah, that looks quite a lot like what we do in the shadows. Out here now, months ahead of the US.

I imagine as bands have taken to This Is Spinal Tap, WOD games and especially Vampire game groups may start dropping the odd quote. Hopefully not as many as Monty Python And The Holy Grail quotes around any game of Pendragon - no game can survive that!

"Vampire! Vampire here! Vampire! Right here!"

In last night's Walking Alone, the Puny Mortals got into that warehouse.

And soon wished they hadn't.

WOD MMO galleries, in French and Russian

When the WOD MMO shuttered, so did most of the English language fan sites, so a lot of the revealed art has become scarce...

... except in France, or Russia.

Vampire: The Requiem second edition cover

It's not as big a change as I'd expec- AAGGHHH STRIX

New Bremen memories

New Bremen, the official moderated cWOD Java chat that run from 2000 to Gehenna.

A souvenir: VTES cards. Made by Jae, TPO Claudia Welles among others:

There are only so many cool names out there.

Or: Why NB had so many guys called Marcus.

Repost from 2011: 

So I'm naming Vampire NPCs, and they generally have Anglo-Saxon names as the game's set in Britain, and they really need names the players will take seriously. Sure, the Prince could be called Fred, but no.

(For the record, the Prince is called Michael. Scary angelic reference, hard K sound in the middle. Sure, it could be shortened to Mike - or Mickey - but none of the other NPCs will do that...)

Not a problem for those I can just give nicknames to, or those who get non-Anglo-Saxon names, and less a problem for those who only really need a first or last name, but I'm already flipping back and forwards to see if I already have a Simon. And yes I do, damn it.

Playing a vampire versus playing Vampire

Repost from my LJ, 2012: 

So I'm watching Near Dark again ("Best vampire film ever." "I knew there was a reason I liked you." "That and I'm adorable when drunk.") and thinking that:

(a) this kind of thing happens in the world of Vampire all the time, having been one of its defining influences and influenced in turn by its number one source Interview With The Vampire,

and (b) unlike Interview it never connects to a wider world. And it would be very different if it did. Like Dracula they could be the only vampires out there.

Would Jesse (or indeed Dracula) be less cool if we knew his backstory? Probably a bit. Would he be a less threatening figure if he mentioned avoiding big cities because they're crawling with other vampires?

Being Human, meanwhile, has made a WoD-y Interview-y world of hidden vampire conspiracies and outcast werewolves and stuck ghosts work by making the vampire protagonists outsiders who want no part of it, at least partially defined by their enmity to the local kings and the Old Ones, and sometimes pulled in against their will. So, hmm.

When playing Vampire one's PC being a vampire is somewhat secondary because it's far from unique. So if I wanted to make a big thing of a PC being a vampire, I'd do it in something else or at least take it out of the wider milieu. (This might factor in to the old "I'm running Vampire - " "can I play a Mage?" problem, which I saw in action just a few weeks ago.)

It's certainly encouraged me to keep the number of vampires in The Centre Cannot Hold (my Vampire game at the time) down to a minimum, but the support framework of bosses and rules and clans and covenants is still there. Hmm. Maybe next time I'll go all the way. The PCs and starting NPCs are the only monsters in the whole setting. It'd be interesting to try, certainly.

Vampire LARP advice from a Vampire LARP developer

Jason Andrew, including an early version of The Economy Of Cool, an article in their new ST advice book.

Night And The City

My last game, Vampire: The Masquerade 20th Anniversary Edition. (Blood And Smoke, the new Requiem rulebook, wasn't out yet when we started.)

A Brujah, a Gangrel, a Toreador, and a Puny Mortal.

A bastard Prince. Some nice Anarchs, some stupid Anarchs, and some scary practical Anarchs.

A dangerous drug gang that isn't even backed by vampires.

Sabbat occultists who turn up to steal an artefact and that's all. Tremere looking into it.

A plan to oust the Prince. By someone the PCs don't like either.

A scary door.

Walking Alone

My current game, Puny Mortals! stumbling into the (n)WOD, using the second edition rules as previewed in The God-Machine Chronicle.

A cop, a coroner, a college girl whose brother disappeared under suspicious circumstances, and the brother's roommate. They have a few ways of looking into suspicious events, and they all have reasons to.

They looked at a weird crime scene (the brother's ID being found with the corpse, which wasn't his).

They were warned not to look too closely at a turf war between two gangs... backed by vampires.

This led to a sit-down meeting with a vampire in a dark scary nightclub - the coroner already knows about vampires.

They met the other side (and a neutral werewolf) while sneaking into a fancy Halloween party. (Other possible "Halloween special" ideas I discussed with other STs and GMs included a haunted house and a Scooby-Doo mystery, but the fourth session was a bit early for a Scooby-Doo ending.)

This led in turn to stopping blood donation thefts - good for humans who need blood, likely to annoy vampires.

And pursuing another lead, they tried to get into a warehouse. (It was a short session.)

Boo!

Hello, world.

So, yeah, RPGs, Storytelling, that kind of thing. Because I've been posting it on LiveJournal. And it's too cold to play outside.I've been into RPGs since, er, the 80s.

Why blog now? Well, it's the tenth anniversary of Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, and a couple days after I started WODhappens, a Twitter about what I'd be doing if the World Of Darkness MMORPG had come out. Which is mostly jokes about how annoying life events would be cool features in a WOD game, and jokes about crappy MMO features as well.

Currently I'm running a "new" World Of Darkness second edition game about Puny Mortals! called "Walking Alone". I'll ramble about that here sooner rather than later.

I miss New Bremen.