Live long and prosper.

Walking On Sunshine

Tonight, Dr. Connelly concluded that Sarah must have been the victim of hallucinations caused by some psychic force. He didn't go full Scully on her but he did say pretty firmly that time travel is impossible. And it fits with the Terminator hypothesis since she didn't manage to bring anything back.

I think he's just jealous.

Seeing a photo of Sarah with her hosts in 1888 might help, but what are the chances of one of those turning up?

Ahem.

In other news, Doyle fought some gangsters supplying a branch of the demon cult with drugs. Naughty gangsters.

That could have been expensive...

The Dark Eras "buy a stretch goal" pledges went quickly. This is good for my bank balance.

What would I have gone for?

1890s Vampire: The Requiem of the existing pitches.

And if I'd had a spare thousand bucks to propose a whole new one...?

Probably a Roaring Twenties setting for... maybe Vampire, maybe Geist, maybe both?

Or 1930s China Hunter? Or Napoleonic Egypt for Mummy? Or Mongol Werewolf? Or...

We are the Hollow Ones

I guess if I was to do monster-of-the-week Mage, I'd go with Awakening rather than Ascension due to the smaller rules headaches. But I'm Hollow One 4 Life.

I know it was like WW going "okay, fans, have your own splat!" but it worked for me.

Shall we play a game?

My only current game as a player has come to a sort of conclusion. (Things blew up.) So I don't got game.

There'll be another one along in a few weeks, after some pitching and arguing and so on. I'm not about to offer, as it's nice to play and running two games a week can get a bit much. Even if I were, it's a pretty casual group, not a good fit for horror and vampires and angst and stuff.

Maybe one of the Mage games, where you can go a bit weirder and more monster-of-the-week and things can blow up, maybe with a very monster-of-the-week setup, but that's still STing and not playing.

Likely options from the rest of the group include Star Wars (because Star Wars is always a likely option - even I've run Star Wars) or 13th Age or something superhero-y. I wouldn't mind any of those, but I'd have to work to be The Keen Player.

Last time any of them STed a WOD game was a whole WOD ago.

Wish me luck.

Walking Alone Moving Around

Because why not...

Walking All Alone

Okay, after the dress showoff with Sarah and that gag about Jim, the whole Walking Alone crew:

Walking Back In Time

A split session of Walking Alone, with Jim and Doyle (and Amanda and Mike) looking for Sarah, and Sarah looking for a way to return home after being thrown back to 1888...

But the life she finds herself trapped in is rather appealing, as a wealthy family takes her in and the handsome son of the household takes a shine to her. Time to learn some waltz steps and to have a ballgown made for her as she tries to work out a way back... and if she wants that.

"I have to go home..."
"Must you?"
"Um... well, it's not... urgent..."

While in the present they look for a way to reopen the breach that caught Sarah, and Jim finally admits he has feelings for her, because this is the worst possible time to do so. Boys.

"Do you think I should have said something before she fell into a time vortex?"
"... Don't make me hit you, Jim."

Being a hero, Sarah prevents the murder that would create the time slip when she arrives, then catches the killer at the ball before he can try again and thus ends it, which sends her back to the present. And of course the last thing she hears is the son calling her name as the door closes...

So we have Sarah nursing a broken heart and Jim hiding his love to spare her further pain. Nice to have players who know how to make their characters suffer.

(And she didn't even get to keep the dress! She returned in her normal clothes. I'm so mean.)

Overall I'd say the session was a success. Sarah's player enjoyed playing at being a lady, and being too modern and confident and complaining about corsets. Jim's player got to top up his angst supply. Doyle's player got to knock out a murderer from a century in the past. Everybody seemed to have fun, mostly at their characters' expense.

Next week: I dunno, monsters or something.

Mardi Gras

"Popular practices on Mardi Gras include wearing masks and costumes, overturning social conventions, dancing, sports competitions, parades, debauchery, etc. "
Wikipedia - love the "debauchery, etc." at the end.

I'm thinking Mardi Gras is a more World Of Darkness version of Shrove Tuesday than Pancake Day. Pancake Day certainly never featured in a Candyman sequel.

V20 Dark Ages

The Dark Ages rulebook for Vampire: The Masquerade 20th Anniversary Edition (a year before the 20th anniversary of Vampire: The Dark Ages...) is out to Kickstarter backers.

Like V20 it tries to keep fans of both previous editions happy - in this case by moving the setting further forwards and out of the War Of Princes era, while covering everything needed for the first edition now a few decades earlier.

Liking the diversity in the clan character pictures.

Playable Nictuku are weird.

Salubri generally represented by glowing blue circles on foreheads (Caste Marks?) rather than actual 3x3 Eyes. I'm okay with this.

I want to play Crimson Peak.

Now please.

I suppose I can wait till the film comes out, but...

Planning a biggish session

Happy Friday... the Thirteenth!

So, yeah, I sent one of my Walking Alone PCs back to 1888.

Obviously this is not the sort of thing I do to just anyone, but Sarah's player is keen and happy to bring the angst. And there will be angst to spare, methinks. There will of course be a dashing young gentleman in 1888 for her to develop feelings for even as she tries to work out her way home...

This is kind of a "setpiece" adventure to drop into the regular flow of the Puny Mortals getting in trouble in the present, so I've prepped it more than usual.

I already established plans of the house and suitably aged photos of the dashing young gentleman and some of his family in the previous session as they investigated the haunting (actually a time slip) so she has some clues about the initial murder to work with.

And we may have found an actor as the visual reference for Sarah who has done some period dramas...

Meanwhile for the boys left behind, Dr. Connelly's player will be away and Doyle's will be late, and Jim's will have spare angst to deliver. Mwahahaha.

Jim and Our Psychic Friend Amanda will be able to hear 1888 fleetingly, and interact with it a bit due to ripples in time - enough to distract a killer at a vital moment, for instance.

So we've got the angstiest players, quite a lot of visual stuff in place, and some nice dresses for our hero to wear...

Walking The Wrong Way

A call from Our Psychic Friend brings the Puny Mortals to a supposedly haunted house at the edge of town. Cue a bunch of classic ghostly things... like doors opening by themselves, mirrors showing something other than a normal reflection, glimpses of movement and whispering voices, a stopped clock striking midnight...

... and Sarah getting pulled back to the time the haunting began.

1888.

Yes, I went there.

I'd hinted that supernatural powers could affect the flow of time before - the Demon can appear and disappear at will for one, and the sorcerers can alter the speed of time for another - but going back in time is kind of a big deal. And Sarah will have to figure it out if she wants to go home.

Which might be a bit more of an "if" when she meets some of the locals.

Victorian Age Vampire Sale

There's a week-long 20% off sale on Victorian Age Vampire PDFs should you feel inspired by my interest. Give me a chance to brood by gaslight and hide my smile behind a fan...

Dark Eras I'd be up for

Besides Victorian Gothic, and the Middle Ages, Renaissance... and the 1980s...

Musketeer-type France - that's the initial Changeling Dark Era.

The Roaring 20s, but with vampires instead of Adventure! - this one's being talked up now.

The Great War is won. America is "dry" under Prohibition. Russia is locked in a grinding civil war. Weimar Germany just censored a film called Nosferatu, perhaps encouraged by a word or two from Uncle Ventrue since it gets a few too many of the facts right. But all these troubles are far from us. So tonight - and every night - we party like there's no tomorrow. There has never been a better time to be a vampire.

Caring about the game as a player

My only current game as a player is winding down. I ain't offering to take over, the group isn't very WOD-ish and I have Puny Mortals! to take care of. I would like to be fairly engaged in the next game though, not just show up and shake dice and eat snacks.

It seems that gamers generally end up GMing / STing the games we care about, and playing whatever someone else happens to be up for running. The last time I really felt keen as a player was an SF game a couple years ago, where I got to be captain of the ship and actually feel captain-y.

And the ultimate form of caring is getting emotional about a game. I haven't done that in a long while. It needs the right mix of players - unrequited love is easier to arrange than requited, for example.

(Another reason to miss New Bremen, where plenty of us cared... often slightly too much... :D )

I'd say two of my Puny Mortals! are keen - Sarah and Jim's, both pretty big WOD fans - and the other two are having fun but not as engaged. This is better than a lot of games, I guess.

Allies and Agendas

The Puny Mortals! have one real ally in the supernatural world, and he's not to be trusted. Because, hey, he's a vampire.

And not a nice conflicted high-Humanity vampire like I'd generally play, either.

(Although I have an idea for our heroes to meet a nice conflicted high-Humanity vampire... who isn't a big fan of their ally. That'll be awkward.)

Nope, Kendrick is pretty open about the fact he's using them to advance his own agenda and doesn't trust them either. But right now, their agendas parallel. More or less.

And he isn't as bad as the demon. Not quite.

I had to make it pretty clear he was withholding information, because players rely on the ST to give an accurate view of the setting and it can often bleed over into NPC dialogue - NPCs lying is actually pretty unusual...

I don't know, he seems trustworthy to me...

How much can the PCs in your games trust NPCs? Or each other?

Walking Not Quite Alone Enough

Don't you just hate it when vampires call in favors? Our Puny Mortals! sure do.

Dr. Connelly had to "misplace" a John Doe and sign a death certificate for someone he knew was walking around. While also dead. But this does mean he knows a bit more about the Mortals' shifty vampire "ally" Kendrick.

Detective Doyle checked out a crime scene with occult-type symbols on the walls. Which might just be the work of a crazy mortal. (Which is different from a puny mortal.)

Sarah and Jim spent some time hanging out with Mike. Nothing terrifying happened.

BSG LARP takes over a warship

If you're going to LARP, you may as well go all in.