Well, I was going to do this post-mortem on the vampire game in three parts, but then I actually found some of my pre-game prep notes that I'd typed up, as well as some of the stuff on the character scenes I mentioned in the last post. So I thought I'd post that so I can comment on how that changed later. This plays into some of the reasons I want to do these campaign PMs.
Doing these serves more than one purpose for me-- The first and obvious one is to look back at what worked and didn't work in the course of the game. While I can't point to everything in retrospect, I can at least identify some things which distinctly worked or didn't. I think only by taking a hard look at what they've run can GMs improve what they're doing. Advice only goes so far, but a GM has to understand their own style first. Without sounding too new age-y, reflectivity on one's own limitations points a path to change. OK, that did sound too new age-y. Another reason for doing this is my curiosity about how what I planned for a game actually matches up with what ended up happening. I'm a little limited in this case in that I don't have my original planning notes, but I'm trying to recreate my original expectations. Lastly, games at the table are an inherently impermanent medium. They're a storytelling system that only lives on through recollections and references in future games. It seems strange to be creating an entertainment experience that really can't be replayed or directly reconsidered. I know some game groups now record their games, but that seems like a strange exercise. The campaign really lives on the whole of the sessions combined with the high points at the table. I'd expect listening to old gaming sessions would be more a tedious exercise than anything else.
BTW, so postmortem is actually one word? (edit: nope, but let's leave this alone for the moment...)
Vampire Campaign Post-mortem Part One
Vampire Campaign Post-mortem Part Two
Vampire Campaign Post-mortem Part Three
Vampire Campaign Post-mortem Part Four
Vampire Campaign Post-mortem Part Five
From my pre-game typed up notes
What do I know about the Vampire game?
*Characters start out as humans in 1999, just before the crisis. There is a sense of tension in the air which may explain what and why people were taken indiscriminately.
*We will do preludes for the PCs. At least one will be taken by a Malkavian. He or she will then have delusions throughout the game. It will take some time for the character to realize this.
*Everyone will pay Caitiff costs for raising disciplines.
*One of the PCs will be an Assamite, likely Sherri, she will be taken to kill her spiritual avatar. This should be a moment of great tragedy.
*Another prelude will see the PC killed by a Vampire, but then saved by the intervention of Merrik and the other non-vampire PCs. They will take her to someone…first a Magi, then taken by Dave to see another.
*The city will be Chicago…a name change in honor of the millennium and an attempt to throw off the bad reputation of the city’s previous incarnation.
*Players will fill out a set of questions from 7-13 questions about their pre-embraced life (seven questions).
1.What does your character do and why does he do it?
2.Who are your character’s three closest acquaintances (friends, colleagues, family…)?
3.Who or what does your character care about?
4.When you’re not around, how do people describe your character to other people?
5.What does your character worry about?
6.Where does your character plan to be in a year? Five years?
7.What is the worst thing that ever happened to your character?
Players may veto up to two of the possible clans. I will draw/choose the actual clan. At first and possibly for some time, PCs will be unaware of the extent of their disciplines.
*The setting will be Hub City, four years after the crisis…which we need a better name for. Ninety-five percent of the supernatural creatures and beings have died. The crisis is particularly troubling for werewolves…scattered as they are. However, Vampires have new problems as well. Most importantly, it takes a significant investment of vitae and energy to make a new kindred. practical and real limits rather than social ones restrict numbers now.
*The city will be governed by parallel courts. There are essentially two “princes”. A general amnesty exists for those who wish to come into the city. Provided an oath is sworn and they are willing to give up some of their vitae, past crimes may be forgiven. This will have to be carefully thought through.
*I will have to come up with the Vampires of the city. Photos and illustrations can come from the Net and scans.
*Consider what the Victorian age segue will be. He will be an Elder, not truly ancient, but older than most. His “dreamtime” will be a Victorian setting, though that shouls not be readily apparent. This dream may also be a reflection of his attempt at Golconda.
*Consider what the roles of the Sabbat, the Anarchs and the Camarilla will be. Need to put this together.
*Characters will start out with almost no support or beginning; they should feel lost and confused. They will have to figure out what they are.
*Besides the obvious stuff, what is the larger goal?
*The character who is bitten by the Malkavian will be identified as “the Prince”? Essentially, the implications being that he is the Prince of the Fairies. There will be notes and such dropped before he is embraced; strange coincidences, etc. He will be visited later on…in secret…by the various fairies telling him to do things. Sherri has also suggested that his romantic interests, especially those who reject him or else threaten his insane reality end up dead.
*The historic background of the world: heroes, techno-heroes, vigilantes, the changes in the 1990’s. Detroit Firebomb. Recently, Gary burning. Not worrying about putting too much emphasis.
*My plan for the HCI game is to use the idea of the Unseelie Court and Autocthon as the major villains. Therefore, I don’t want to overlap with that. I don’t want to muck with the Mages or the Werewolves as major villains. That leaves few options. First, classically the Sabaat could present a serious problem. Second, Anarchs could, Third, we could do something with the Wraiths…an attempt to bring through the Dark Kingdoms, Fourth the Kuei-Ji could be the major invasion. [Or perhaps the Kuei-Ji and the Dark Kingdoms of Jade].
*The story needs to begin with them forced to rely on their own wits. They find themselves with little guidance, in a city, several years after they were taken. Events and friends have passed them by. Eventually they will find themselves encountering tangents, crossing paths with other Vampires. But…at first they need to consider the horror of their existence being the only vampiric ones.
*One of them may have briefly been to the Mage’s estate…this could given them a seed or a place to start.
*Is it some kind of mechanism which wakes them up or perhaps an accident? There has to be something to return them from their torpor and back to life.
*Once you believe sufficient time has been spent on these opening stories, then move on to the Vampiric Soap Opera.
*Romeo and Juliet stories.
*Cops and Robbers?/Addiction
*The stalker horror. Someone following them to make them a vampire…
*What are the various explanations for what happened? When I diagram the city, I need to consider what each person believes.
*I like the idea of two Vampires who have blood-bonded mutually in the past, but have slowly fallen out with one another.
*One of the sires of the PCs has been transformed into a human. He might be a prisoner of one of the Princes for experimentation. There could be a single Tremere in the city, trying to figure out what has happened to the blood.
*Something in what they find in the tombs should suggest to them that they are the only ones left.
*Need to consider what the other preludes will look like. I have Sherri and Kenny’s in mind. The idea of tying the third into the events of the previous game will work (probably) for a third. I like the idea of the stalker boyfriend/girlfriend; that could be really obnoxious, especially if the one still lives after the turning of days. Another idea has to do with the roadside awfulness…perhaps tied into Chicago’s supernatural history.
NEW MATERIAL 2/19/03
*Eliminating one of the clans. Unless someone decides to push for it, I plan to eliminate the Nosferatu. The only thing I might do with a PC is to make them one of the subtle ones, whose deformities could be hidden under clothing or through other means. As well, they might suffer from a variation of the Gangrel curse, meaning that when they rage, they would acquire a new deformity. The Nosferatu of the city could be infected/affected by something, perhaps allying themselves with the new power which is coming. They should be a shadowy threat to the city or at least to the Camarilla of the city. The Word might be the only Nosferatu unaffected.
*Part of the peace should be kept by the moderator between the Vampires and the Werewolves. This would be Merrik. He doesn’t like it, but he also has seen a lot of people die. He knows that both sides could destroy each other in a battle. Mostly he’s nervous at the loss of life among the WW should it come to that. They might not ever be able to regain their strength. This doesn’t endear him to the younger folks on either side and he doesn’t necessarily have the power to back up his position, just a title and such. Plus he’s willing to bring in the big guns.
*Eventually their patron, sponsor will be Dave’s old character. The implication being that he will protect/oversee them for their training period, but then they’ll have to make their own alliances. He will be a bearer of strangeness. He has come to realize that his role is something different than he expected as an immortal.
*Possible theories of what happened: A). Someone who knows something about Mages might believe that they did this. They would have had some contact with Edige’s organization and have come to understand something of how that operated. Most people wouldn’t understand and so they won’t talk about it much. B). It was Gehenna and the Book of Nod and all of that stuff was just metaphorical. Most died in the conflagration, but now it is a new night for Vampires. C). That was simply a prelude to what is coming. Eventually things will be very, very bad…a war is brewing and everyone is going to get embroiled in it. The ancient ones took the energy from the various supernatural creatures to feed themselves and soon they will rise. D). For a Vampire who has had contact with the Garou, he may believe that the battle with the Weaver has gone horribly badly. E). It is a punishment F). God has left the building H). God has returned I). It is the fallout from some battle in Europe between factions that no one is quite sure about…perhaps even a Tremere trick. J) They’re all dead K). Some kind of human program to eliminate the supernatural…this person would be very nervous about human agents.
*Part of the reason that HC/Chicago has gained a relatively larger population of creatures is that it was one of the last places to be hit by the accelerating wave of chaos. Those who weren’t here just before it happened didn’t see the strangeness that went on. But eventually people came here; there was a refugee situation just before the crisis, but that ended in a bloody battle and a lot of dying and dead. People look to 2000 as an especially awful time, all across the country. A number of people came here later, once things had calmed down, in an effort to find a society and companionship…or at least support. Given the new limitations of the powers of the Kindred, they were driven to. In other places, wars still break out between the handful of Cam, Sab, Anar and others that survive. Many places are entirely abandoned; the nasty people have bonded into packs.
*Part of the atmosphere should be the idea that people are actually afraid to leave the city. Many of those who left have not been seen or heard from again; the case of their one-time Leader, Amar is a case in point. Since he left for Europe and Turkey he has vanished. Some believe that he is rallying the Assamites. Some believe he died on the voyage Others believe that Europe is a place non-grata to the supernatural anymore. No undead have been heard from there in the last few years. Now, the Vampires here aren’t exactly going to offer up that knowledge, but eventually they should be able to wheedle that out. There should be rumors that particular clans: Giovanni, Ventrue, Lasombra, Tzicme, Tremere have been able to contact their peers there through certain measures which they have kept secret.
*One of the subjects of tension should be a real suspicion about the Tremere. There are several parts to this nervousness. First, a general rumor that Tremere…supposedly loyal to the Cam…were involved with something awful in Mexico City (perhaps an appeasement of an Anteduv). Second, as the youngest clan and one who created themselves, they have been viewed as upstarts. They killed off another clan and committed enough awful deeds to keep rumor mongers busy for years. Third, the incident began in Europe where they have their most secret cabals and where they might have collaborated with the Magi. Fourth, given that the present circumstances seem to point to a “curse” on their already cursed blood, it could be that the Tremere have weakened everyone, such that they find it difficult to make childer and create ghouls. The closing off of Europe could merely be stratagem in their plots. They may, in fact, have diablerized all the Kindred there and now be protecting their new territory.
*Assuming that I want to do a kind of mirror world for the lands of the dead to the real world, then it should be as solid and as real to them as this world. There should be certain rules for how they pass through. Since I have done it enough, I don’t want it to be a case of either a. randomly falling through or b. an established portal to the other side. There needs to be something in between. Perhaps there are portal keepers, something in between, a set of them (11 in number). They are Vampires that were both killed and reborn during the event…or something like that. In any case. They can serve as the door. OOH it might be that one of their group could possess the ability to see through or move through to that world. I like the idea that this particular city is built on top of or around Metropolis. It would be interesting to draw in the Abyssal stuff…so long as it doesn’t start running into the ideas for the other game. But I also like the idea that the Kingdom, whichever one, is trying to absorb the part of metropolis that is below that. The image of the city in the water…either in the Deadworld or else in the real world.
*What have we determined. First, I believe that Brandy will be the one I do the Malkavian thing to; though it would be tempting to do it to Chris instead. Between them, I believe that one will be a Nosferatu who is just beginning to change and the other will be a Malkavian. OOH, the Malkavian thing might be hard to pull off. I need to think about that. The other possibilities are someone with some kind of necromantic or at least sympathetic attachment to the other side. A Tremere would be interesting, but I like the idea of them as separate…plus to gain abilities they’d have to tie themselves to the Tremere. I’m pretty settled on Brujah for Sherri. Though the question is: do I want to do the Assamite thing? Should that be the role that the Elder played or shall I have Sharon do that?
*I like the idea that the city over there is relatively uninhabited. The
Names: Lodge and Cabal/Cable. The House of Flowers. For people: Candlestick, Mizrahi,
Notes 3/17/03:
The Elder Brujah is buried beneath the city. His dreams are powerful and some are touched by them. No one, of course, would admit to that. Most of those who are drawn into his dreams take on the personas there. The time which the Brujah draws them into is Victorian London, when he was the lieutenant to Mithras. At that time he had toured the far east with Mithras and came back with him when he returned. He was secretly following a path of humanity. What happened then, and what broke his spirit, was his betrayal of a Kindred (or other creature of the East) whom he had come to love and who ended up going to her final death and being confined to Yomi. This then, is also the source of the invasion by the Dark Kingdom of Jade…the power of an Elder, who has taken other powers upon himself, and who wrestles with his own failings, his fall from the Path of Humanity. Note that the group should also meet Palladino and Clocke here, when they were still in love with one another.
An early plot line can be hunting down a renegade “turned” thing, essentially a husk. This thing could be biting people, potentially violating the Masquerade and not being able to slake its thirst. Unclear who created it. This could be an interesting hunt down; evidence could be turned that
Twenty five Vampires: No Nosferatu Recognized,
Tremere 2
Ventrue 3
Toreador 5
Gangrel 3
Malkavian 2
Brujah 4
Lasombra 1
Ravnos 1
Giovanni (hidden) 1
Caitiff 3
Two Scripts for Preludes
Michael Adell (Chris)
I. The first is establishing the characters in the background. The last day of his life: getting up, his morning rituals, trying to practice. Doing laundry, practicing the guitar.
II. Call from foster sister (Hazel Lynch), really upset because she saw the molester guy last night (Silas Hoover)…can she come by later tonight after he gets off his shift.
III. Midday to early evening hours at the bar; buddy the producer comes in (Rick Dobyns “DJ ChromaTone”)…has some new stuff he’s putting out on the internet. Asks him if he would hold some stuff for him; play it off as much as he can. Package of things.
IV. Bartender friend comes in, nice chat with him (Keith L. Cantu). He’s having some money troubles but thinks he’s found someone to help him out. Later on, ex-girlfriend swings by to return a couple of things (Rosanna Renee Fuentes). She’s kind of a one that got away…tough little gal.
V. Get home in the evening. Stress the decay of the city, bad neighborhood. Make him think something is following him. Remind him of the memories his foster sister dredged up. He gets home; tossing things around.
VI. Eventually he gets a call… “Michael, this is your mother (Melissa Meredith Booker)” [Memory of her drifter boyfriend…a guy named Dave… her dropping him off at the theater and never coming back]. Cracked voice, *knock at the door*, if he stays on the line, it becomes clear that she needs money for a fix. If not, she holds while he gets the door.
VII. As soon as he steps up and close to the door…it explodes inward…a burst of speed…Arab man (Aman) jams stake into his heart. He drops to the ground…three people, the Arab plus a bulky guy with silver hair (Merik) and a younger man in a trench coat (Joshua). He begins to die, agony and paralyzing pain. He’ll pick up bits and pieces of conversations going on…clear that the other two are pissed at the Aman…not a Vampire…not our informant. Joshua asks Aman to do something…he declines, citing “the Prince” (which he says dismissively). Merik shakes his shoulders. Joshua tells them he’s going to do something.
VIII. Cut to the two of them alone…driving with him bleeding in the back of the car. Mention the song Wendy. They get to the estate. Bundled on to stretcher…lots of people around. Some kind of confusion. Joshua clearly doesn’t get the answer he wants. Eventually he gives up and stuff Michael back in the car.
IX. He drags Michael's near-death corpse down into the sewers, after first laying hands on him. Eventually he finds a place and Michael is left alone in the dark with rats scurrying across. Eventually he returns and sees the giant figure with the tight hood and the white cross. The smell of burnt flesh. Argument between the two. “Permission”…”Risky”…”Leave” (regarding taking the stake out)…”Yours”. The actual sizzle when the hood comes off, closing the eyes. Then the death, and the feeling of the Embrace
X. If this is the first person at the table, take the time to describe the feeling of having one’s soul killed. Dying and then getting pulled back, a feeling of utter rejection and abandonment. Afterwards, the Word ripping the heads off of rats and pouring the contents into his mouth…”Sleep”…then torpor.
II. Naomi Asterlind (Sherri)
This is more a summary, I think than a script
Naomi Asterlind, Red Cross Civil Engineer and Rescue Technician, is woken up by the call. After a trip on the “L” she finds herself in the high heat of midsummer at the scene of an old apartment block where an explosion has leveled great portions of the building. She has come because she knows that these kinds of events require skilled engineers. However, she finds herself sidelined as the police seem to be getting contradictory orders and battling over territory. The cadaver dogs are search about and Naomi can smell the smoke and rumbling fire.
As she’s getting coffee and out of eyesight of others, Naomi is approached by a man who asks her name. He, Barnaby Rostow, brandishes a gun and asks her to come with him. She stands her ground and asks why. When he tells her it is to rescue someone, she goes with no other question. Rostow across the street to an apartment which has been cleared of people. She asks why, and he leads her down through the basement, to a tunnel which apparently connects to the collapsed building. They crawl through rubble and wreakage to make their way in. Naomi can smell the fire and see that this part of the building has had makeshift power and other amenities added to it, quietly stealing from the grid.
Eventually they find their way into a collapsed sub-basement. Artwork on the walls indicates that someone lives here. She can see that the roof has collapsed in half of the room. Rostow direct her to crawl through rubble into another this collapsed area to see what can be done to stabilize and rescue the person trapped inside.
Naomi crawls through, cut and burning herself in the process. In an open space, she manages to get her mag-light around. In the beam she sees a man pinned and pierced by rubble and rocks. Some portion of the plumbing and pipes have dropped down from the floors above, driving them into him. The entire area seems ready to give up at any moment and the smell of fire is more intense. Namoi notes that the man has clearly ripped himself up and down on the poles there and blood covers everything. He has frenzied, but now seems to have submitted to the pain.Naomi continues her reassuring rescue patter, but then the man’s eyes flicker open and her ask her name. He speaks briefly, seemingly resigned. He ask her “to tell him that he was not strong enough near the end and that he is sorry for Jin Shan.” He begins to fade as Naomi see the fire drop into the room, freakishly igniting the body. As it goes up, she see a third eye appear on his forehead.
In a desperate race, she run-crawls her way out, but Rostow will be gone. She manages to escape running out through the burning tunnel. As she exits into the night, she is stopped by a police officer, (Rex Moody). He checks her ID, asks her a few quick questions and sends her on.
Some month later, late at night, she comes home to her apartment. He roommate is gone for the evening, but she finds someone there. Older looking and serious, he orders Naomi to sit as she considers escape, Unable to resist, she finds her compelled to sit and listen. He gives his name as Caleb Dusk and asks her about the incident at the apartment building some months earlier. She evades the question, but he is across the room an clearly angered. He asks again and names the man she saw in the basement, Candlemas. Naomi continues to evade, saying that what he said was meant for Rostow. Dusk corrects her and tells her that Rostow was merely a servant who sent him to her.
Naomi tells Dusk what she saw and with each detail the man grows more and more distraught. As he holds his head in his hands, she sees blood running between his fingers as he cries tears of blood. When she mentions Jin Shan, an edge of anger grows in him. Though she doesn’t want to, Naomi tells Dusk about the third eye she saw. When he hears this, he goes mad with a screaming despair; he arm swings out to ward off the emotion. This swing connects with Naomi’s shoulder, powdering the bone, lifting her out of her chair and smashing her against a support post. Though the back of her skulls has collapsed and she can no longer feel her legs, Namoi tries to crawl away. In the fading in and out, she hears Dusk’s repeated apologies… sorry…sorry. Then there is the embrace and as she dies, she feels the pain of the moment gone and knows that see will be unable to accomplish anything she desired. She lies there, dead…hearing Dusk on the phone…and then takes the second breath. And with that her soul is destroyed.
She awakens, hungry, with Dusk gone and the door to her apartment swung open. She crawls to her feet, the hunger blotting out any realization that she can walk again. He neighbor across the hall looks in, checking on the noise and she leaps across, her new strength and desperate hunger forcing her to knock the old man down. She has no fangs, but must feed and so tears at his neck and ear with her teeth as he screams. Spitting out the gob of flesh, she drinks. And then, he is dead.
“Asterlind” she hears from the end of the hall. She looks up and see the cop from the crime scene. He speaks calmly. Hands out in front of him. She listens, more out of shock and disorientation, as he tells her to take the body back into her apartment. He shuts the door behind her, keeping a wary eye on her. He tells her to get a towel and as she turns, he drives the stake into her back. Naomi looks down at the point jutting from her chest.
“You missed” she says, hoping and praying for death, but knowing this is not it.
“No…this is torpor…you need to sleep.” Moody says.
And then there is blackness.
Vampire Campaign Post-mortem Part One
Vampire Campaign Post-mortem Part Two
Vampire Campaign Post-mortem Part Three
Vampire Campaign Post-mortem Part Four
Vampire Campaign Post-mortem Part Five
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Campaign Postmortem: Vampire (Part Two)
Vampire Campaign Post-mortem Part One
Vampire Campaign Post-mortem Part Two
Vampire Campaign Post-mortem Part Three
Vampire Campaign Post-mortem Part Four
Vampire Campaign Post-mortem Part Five
This first section should probably go in my after-thoughts comments, but I had sketched it out so I'll post it. I'll come back to these ideas in part three.
Vampire presents a challenge to the GM in the concept of Humanity for PCs. This trait measures the character's distance from the two poles of utter bestial nature and absolute moral restraint. That's an important measure for a game like this, one rife with moral dilemmas and questions. However it brings up the problem of how one manages to separate between a player's moral choices and a character's. In fact, they're inextricably linked. So when a GM reduces a player's Humanity, or makes them take a test on it, is in fact an immediate judgment on the player's actions. Add to that the question of whether certain actions have greater or lesser weight for different characters-- should you present an absolute benchmark, which eliminates some of personality of the characters, or should you present a flexible mechanic, which can make one character more potent than the others.
That's a tough call-- and I'll admit that I often steered away from those mechanics when I was running. Late in the campaign one of the player's was surprised that the stat and mechanic actually existed. I have a similar reaction to the concepts of Honor and Reputation in the Legend of the Five Rings system. Reputation's a little easier, in that you can make a clear argument about perceptions external to the player and the character, but Honor is again a moral judgment that feels applied from above. But given how necessary those concepts really are to the play, can you ignore them? Changeling has Clarity, which isn't a moral measure directly, but instead can be affected by seeing strange things and by doing things which challenge your morality. But there, the PCs have a model of what bad behavior looks like-- essentially, if they act like Keepers, the beings who took and held them, that's a challenge to their Clarity. As a side note, there's the additional problem, in some of these games, of having these traits be purchasable. That means that a loss on these scores effectively steals experience points away from that character relative to the others.
*****
For game prep, IIRC, I sketched out some of the general plot ideas I mentioned earlier. I knew a few things about what I wanted to have structurally. First, the players would early on gain a safe location to work out of. I'd give them a couple of sessions of worrying about that-- just to make clear how important it was, but then I'd give them a protected area. Second, I'd wait a few sessions before having them collide with the greater Vampire community-- not knowing if perhaps no other supernatural beings actually existed. Third, I wanted to avoid potential problems with direct inter-party conflict. I knew tensions could run high in games like these and I hadn't played all that much with a couple of the players so I opted to impose a strange magical effect (tied into the storyline) which prevented the PCs from deliberately causing harm to one another. That worked out well-- as the couple of times where it did get tense, the players couldn't actually start a fight among the group. Had I not had that, I do think one of the players would have quickly turned things into a fight for pack dominance ala Werewolf.
I had each player write up a general backstory about themselves, but stressed that there would be a break with that material. I didn't want people investing too much in that, since I knew I would flash forward a few years from the opening sequence to the beginning of the game. Once I had some notes, I asked them which Vampire Clans they preferred or hated and then I made some notes about the various NPCs they'd mentioned. I used my card generation system for NPC character traits, built up the structure of the Vampiric characters in the city (about two dozen or less) and found images for each of them. They I did some pretty thick narrative write ups for the PC's embrace-- the moment when they were turned into Vampires, as well as my first session plot mechanics. I thought originally about doing the embrace material via email, but decided to handle it at the table. That allowed all of the players to hear the events and get a sense of the characters-- despite it taking a huge amount of time at the table (between a half-hour and forty-five minutes per player). I tried to split the time in each sequence between their previous lives and the horror of their change--
Brandy-- An artist and photographer. She had a pretty good life until she was asked to temporarily look after a distant younger relative. That kid, along with an ambiguous nanny figure moved in. Brandy started seeing strange things and getting creeped out by the kid. I built up the tension until she suddenly got dragged into the middle of an Anarch party(one of the rebel factions in Vampire). Her “brother” had set her up resulting in her taking a shovel to the face and then being feasted on by the group of Anarch. Then they buried her in a pit-- a typical ritual for them, intended as a test of strength. However as they were finishing up, the Anarch's themselves got jumped by enforcers from the local regime. Even as Brandy took her second breath and tried to claw her way out, she could hear the firefight above. She broke surface and went into the fury of her new state, but then was put down by one of her would-be rescuers.
I included a couple of visions her as well—before and after her taking. I decided that Brandy would be a Malkavian, but not know it. She'd have visions of being a fairy princess throughout the game to echo this. I'd originally intended this for another player, by they opted not to join the game so I used this detail for her.
Shari-- a translator and homebody from a mixed Asian family. She discovered that she had great powers-- the ability to modify time and space. Soon after her Awakening, she was contacted by one of the Mages in the city-- explaining that this new power and her reborn Avatar could be a force for good in her life and the lives of others. Essentially, she had a bright future ahead of her. However, that night in her father's grocery store, she's attacked and bitten by a Vampire. As she lays dying she can feel her soul leave and see the Avatar, a piece of the world's soul, darken and shatter from what she's become. She's reborn, but immediately finds herself face to face with a team from the local Mages, including the recruiter who spoke to her earlier. Crying, he uses his powers to gun her down.
This was in part a reference to the previous campaign, in which a Mage had become the “Prince” of the City and kept the other magical groups in line a little. I also wanted to focus on the awfulness of having that new life torn away in an instant.
Chris-- a roughneck with anger issues. He had a shady roomate who might have been involved with drugs and a job at a bar. He came home one night and got a strange phone call. A few minutes later, he went to answer his door and suddenly found it kicked in, sending him flying across the room. A group charged in and one of them stabbed him through the heart with a stake. As he lay there dying, the trio suddenly realized that Chris' wasn't the person they were looking for-- and merely a human. The Vampire who stabbed him and the others opted to leave him to die. However, one of them after arguing something should be done, decided to take action. He kept Chris barely alive and dragged him into the sewers to a Vampiric contact who could save Chris. The Nosferatu there asked Chris if he wanted to live and he begged for another chance. He was turned, but immediately found himself turned over to the Mage Prince of the city for containment. Again, most of this passed in a blur for him-- and he's only find out the full story about this later.
This scene was a specific reference to an event in the previous game where one of the player's assumed someone they were going after was in fact a Vampire. So he busted the door down and stabbed her with a stake to keep her quiet-- only to discover she was a mortal and now dead. The other players looked on in horror-- pointing out that this person had been their only lead on the important case they were working on. I should also note that the Nosferatu character here was another version of Art's The Word character. He'd originally been a disfigured vigilante who lived in the sewers. I used that but made him a Nosferatu trying to gain some kind of redemption.
Sherri-- an EMT, she went down into a building collapsed after an explosion. Alone, she found a survivor trapped and pinned by the wooden support beams. She realized quickly this person wasn't human, but he didn't seem savage-- instead he seemed at peace. He begged Sherri to pass a message on to someone. He spoke his peace and then faded into dust. Freaked out, Sherri returned made her way out of the rubble. The image would haunt her for the next couple of weeks. Then, one night, see returned to find someone in her apartment. Apparently the intended recipient of the message he questioned her about the man in the basement's death. The stranger seemed moved but then went crazy when Sherri passed on the message which suggested that the dying man had found the peace and forgiveness that eluded him. He struck out at Sherri and broke her neck and back against the wall. Then, terrified and sorrowful, he bit and turned Sherri into a Vampire like himself. Before she could go far, he vanished and enforcers from the Prince arrived to take her away.
This would be a crucial scene for unraveling what would come later. The man in the basement had been been sired by the Stranger. They would eventually learn that the basement man had led the Stranger to betray his own chance for love and redemption in the past. They would see them at that point in Victoriana London, which that being the crucial scene the Stranger, being the Antediluvian Vampire, kept replaying in his mind. It also meant that I required Sherri to buy Generation, an advantage showing how close the character was to the oldest vampires, at a high level at the start of the game. That made for an interesting dynamic.
I'll wrap this up tomorrow with a discussion of the actual play and my after-thoughts. I'm trying to keep my entries to not much more than two pages so I don't go overboard.
Vampire Campaign Post-mortem Part One
Vampire Campaign Post-mortem Part Two
Vampire Campaign Post-mortem Part Three
Vampire Campaign Post-mortem Part Four
Vampire Campaign Post-mortem Part Five
Vampire Campaign Post-mortem Part Two
Vampire Campaign Post-mortem Part Three
Vampire Campaign Post-mortem Part Four
Vampire Campaign Post-mortem Part Five
Vampire presents a challenge to the GM in the concept of Humanity for PCs. This trait measures the character's distance from the two poles of utter bestial nature and absolute moral restraint. That's an important measure for a game like this, one rife with moral dilemmas and questions. However it brings up the problem of how one manages to separate between a player's moral choices and a character's. In fact, they're inextricably linked. So when a GM reduces a player's Humanity, or makes them take a test on it, is in fact an immediate judgment on the player's actions. Add to that the question of whether certain actions have greater or lesser weight for different characters-- should you present an absolute benchmark, which eliminates some of personality of the characters, or should you present a flexible mechanic, which can make one character more potent than the others.
That's a tough call-- and I'll admit that I often steered away from those mechanics when I was running. Late in the campaign one of the player's was surprised that the stat and mechanic actually existed. I have a similar reaction to the concepts of Honor and Reputation in the Legend of the Five Rings system. Reputation's a little easier, in that you can make a clear argument about perceptions external to the player and the character, but Honor is again a moral judgment that feels applied from above. But given how necessary those concepts really are to the play, can you ignore them? Changeling has Clarity, which isn't a moral measure directly, but instead can be affected by seeing strange things and by doing things which challenge your morality. But there, the PCs have a model of what bad behavior looks like-- essentially, if they act like Keepers, the beings who took and held them, that's a challenge to their Clarity. As a side note, there's the additional problem, in some of these games, of having these traits be purchasable. That means that a loss on these scores effectively steals experience points away from that character relative to the others.
*****
For game prep, IIRC, I sketched out some of the general plot ideas I mentioned earlier. I knew a few things about what I wanted to have structurally. First, the players would early on gain a safe location to work out of. I'd give them a couple of sessions of worrying about that-- just to make clear how important it was, but then I'd give them a protected area. Second, I'd wait a few sessions before having them collide with the greater Vampire community-- not knowing if perhaps no other supernatural beings actually existed. Third, I wanted to avoid potential problems with direct inter-party conflict. I knew tensions could run high in games like these and I hadn't played all that much with a couple of the players so I opted to impose a strange magical effect (tied into the storyline) which prevented the PCs from deliberately causing harm to one another. That worked out well-- as the couple of times where it did get tense, the players couldn't actually start a fight among the group. Had I not had that, I do think one of the players would have quickly turned things into a fight for pack dominance ala Werewolf.
I had each player write up a general backstory about themselves, but stressed that there would be a break with that material. I didn't want people investing too much in that, since I knew I would flash forward a few years from the opening sequence to the beginning of the game. Once I had some notes, I asked them which Vampire Clans they preferred or hated and then I made some notes about the various NPCs they'd mentioned. I used my card generation system for NPC character traits, built up the structure of the Vampiric characters in the city (about two dozen or less) and found images for each of them. They I did some pretty thick narrative write ups for the PC's embrace-- the moment when they were turned into Vampires, as well as my first session plot mechanics. I thought originally about doing the embrace material via email, but decided to handle it at the table. That allowed all of the players to hear the events and get a sense of the characters-- despite it taking a huge amount of time at the table (between a half-hour and forty-five minutes per player). I tried to split the time in each sequence between their previous lives and the horror of their change--
Brandy-- An artist and photographer. She had a pretty good life until she was asked to temporarily look after a distant younger relative. That kid, along with an ambiguous nanny figure moved in. Brandy started seeing strange things and getting creeped out by the kid. I built up the tension until she suddenly got dragged into the middle of an Anarch party(one of the rebel factions in Vampire). Her “brother” had set her up resulting in her taking a shovel to the face and then being feasted on by the group of Anarch. Then they buried her in a pit-- a typical ritual for them, intended as a test of strength. However as they were finishing up, the Anarch's themselves got jumped by enforcers from the local regime. Even as Brandy took her second breath and tried to claw her way out, she could hear the firefight above. She broke surface and went into the fury of her new state, but then was put down by one of her would-be rescuers.
I included a couple of visions her as well—before and after her taking. I decided that Brandy would be a Malkavian, but not know it. She'd have visions of being a fairy princess throughout the game to echo this. I'd originally intended this for another player, by they opted not to join the game so I used this detail for her.
Shari-- a translator and homebody from a mixed Asian family. She discovered that she had great powers-- the ability to modify time and space. Soon after her Awakening, she was contacted by one of the Mages in the city-- explaining that this new power and her reborn Avatar could be a force for good in her life and the lives of others. Essentially, she had a bright future ahead of her. However, that night in her father's grocery store, she's attacked and bitten by a Vampire. As she lays dying she can feel her soul leave and see the Avatar, a piece of the world's soul, darken and shatter from what she's become. She's reborn, but immediately finds herself face to face with a team from the local Mages, including the recruiter who spoke to her earlier. Crying, he uses his powers to gun her down.
This was in part a reference to the previous campaign, in which a Mage had become the “Prince” of the City and kept the other magical groups in line a little. I also wanted to focus on the awfulness of having that new life torn away in an instant.
Chris-- a roughneck with anger issues. He had a shady roomate who might have been involved with drugs and a job at a bar. He came home one night and got a strange phone call. A few minutes later, he went to answer his door and suddenly found it kicked in, sending him flying across the room. A group charged in and one of them stabbed him through the heart with a stake. As he lay there dying, the trio suddenly realized that Chris' wasn't the person they were looking for-- and merely a human. The Vampire who stabbed him and the others opted to leave him to die. However, one of them after arguing something should be done, decided to take action. He kept Chris barely alive and dragged him into the sewers to a Vampiric contact who could save Chris. The Nosferatu there asked Chris if he wanted to live and he begged for another chance. He was turned, but immediately found himself turned over to the Mage Prince of the city for containment. Again, most of this passed in a blur for him-- and he's only find out the full story about this later.
This scene was a specific reference to an event in the previous game where one of the player's assumed someone they were going after was in fact a Vampire. So he busted the door down and stabbed her with a stake to keep her quiet-- only to discover she was a mortal and now dead. The other players looked on in horror-- pointing out that this person had been their only lead on the important case they were working on. I should also note that the Nosferatu character here was another version of Art's The Word character. He'd originally been a disfigured vigilante who lived in the sewers. I used that but made him a Nosferatu trying to gain some kind of redemption.
Sherri-- an EMT, she went down into a building collapsed after an explosion. Alone, she found a survivor trapped and pinned by the wooden support beams. She realized quickly this person wasn't human, but he didn't seem savage-- instead he seemed at peace. He begged Sherri to pass a message on to someone. He spoke his peace and then faded into dust. Freaked out, Sherri returned made her way out of the rubble. The image would haunt her for the next couple of weeks. Then, one night, see returned to find someone in her apartment. Apparently the intended recipient of the message he questioned her about the man in the basement's death. The stranger seemed moved but then went crazy when Sherri passed on the message which suggested that the dying man had found the peace and forgiveness that eluded him. He struck out at Sherri and broke her neck and back against the wall. Then, terrified and sorrowful, he bit and turned Sherri into a Vampire like himself. Before she could go far, he vanished and enforcers from the Prince arrived to take her away.
This would be a crucial scene for unraveling what would come later. The man in the basement had been been sired by the Stranger. They would eventually learn that the basement man had led the Stranger to betray his own chance for love and redemption in the past. They would see them at that point in Victoriana London, which that being the crucial scene the Stranger, being the Antediluvian Vampire, kept replaying in his mind. It also meant that I required Sherri to buy Generation, an advantage showing how close the character was to the oldest vampires, at a high level at the start of the game. That made for an interesting dynamic.
I'll wrap this up tomorrow with a discussion of the actual play and my after-thoughts. I'm trying to keep my entries to not much more than two pages so I don't go overboard.
Vampire Campaign Post-mortem Part One
Vampire Campaign Post-mortem Part Two
Vampire Campaign Post-mortem Part Three
Vampire Campaign Post-mortem Part Four
Vampire Campaign Post-mortem Part Five
Monday, April 13, 2009
Campaign Postmortem: Vampire (Part One)
Vampire Campaign Post-Mortem (Part One)
Not sure I have a specific format for these campaign post-mortems, so I'll try to develop that as I go along here. I should note that this is one of those campaigns where my notebook got destroyed in the house fire, so I'm going mostly from memory.
A few years ago I was asked to run a Vampire game. I'd just come off of running a short campaign fantasy campaign which had gone pretty well-- it had been fairly anime in that it was over-the-top and I'd used a system where I asked players at the end of each session what they wanted for their character and then wrote up new abilities or powers and gave those to them. In any case, one player told me that he'd enjoyed playing in a White Wolf Vampire campaign that hadn't lasted all that long. When he described the campaign to me, it sounded like your typical Vampire/Super Powers game-- where the monsters are cool because they can do these neat things. I questioned the player about it and expressed my reservations about that approach. We talked and he said he'd really like to play in another Vampire game, especially because he liked the background and liked the idea of more interactions and social stuff. I warned him a few times that it wouldn't be like his other game, but he persisted and eventually I agreed.
Now I should go back a little further to talk about my experience with Vampire as a genre that had evolved. I worked in the game store during the time when Vampire really first arrived on the scene. I saw it evolve from a basic Ann Rice adaptation into something more gamey and then into something more literate. I watch the arrival of LARPs and the eventually explosion of the “World of Darkness” metaverse, which included Werewolf and Mage. Mage I had been excited about but was initially disappointed by the execution. I didn't play in these games but I did read a great deal of the material.
Then I finally played in a Vampire game. It started as kind of BS'ing session with a GM we'll call HJ. He wanted to work through some of the themes and consequences of someone becoming a Vampire. He had me run a session where I ran myself in that situation. I normally don't like that approach to games-- in that running 'yourself' brings a lot of potential baggage and connections. In any case, he right away made apparent that doing any “Vampire-y” stuff had consequences: people's lives shattered, cleaning up the bodies, the uncertainty of life, at that stuff. I got it pretty much right away-- and we played a few more sessions with just my character. Then he decided to expand the game and bring in some other players, again playing as themselves, into things. And that's where it got really strange. I expected the others to see and be shaped by the consequences of their actions-- but they never did. I was stuck in the unenviable position of being, to my mind, the only sane person, while the others still ran their characters like they were playing in a game. That produced some of the strangest and yet most compelling sessions I've ever played in-- as I tried to extricate myself from the group and they kept pulling me back into their sociopathy. The game kind of abruptly ended and on the whole it had more problems than successes, but it really did clarify some of those issues for me.
Anyway, with that in mind, I came into the campaign with the core concept that I wanted to undercut the idea of Vampires as superbeings without a real sense of consequence to them. I had run a World of Darkness campaign that was more oriented towards supernatural super-powers before. Here I wanted to reverse that. I knew it would be tricky-- and I knew that while I wanted to undercut expectations, I also needed to provide a compelling and interesting story. If I didn't it could simply come off as a big FU to the players-- essentially mocking their own desires for the game. Early on I tried to recognize that potential issue and deal with it.
Coming into the campaign I had a number of concepts I wanted to work with:
-I had picked up some of the Victorian-Era Vampire game material, as possible source stuff for the Steampunk campaign. I hadn't used much of it for that, but I liked some of the things. I decided that there would be a portion of the game, although using a modern setting, which would be set in that period. The group would flip back there (ala Dark Shadows) and would be uncertain about what was happening. At first they might believe it to be actual time travel, but eventually I would have another reveal.
-That reveal would be based around another figure-- a sleeping very old Vampire. In the classic Vampire setting, they have these Antediluvians who are incredibly old and powerful but slumber. For reasons I'll get into in a minute, most of these would be dead. My Vampire would just be really, really old. He'd sought redemption, but hadn't found it. Now he slept and went over and over again in his mind the events of the past which had led him here. The player's experience in the Victorian era would actually be them seeing those re-creations. Eventually the players would see the whole story there reset and would have to figure out a way to change things.
-One of the McGuffins would then be that the various factions in the city would be seeking out the power of this slumbering old one, in order to make it their own. That plot, and the slumbering vampire's potential redemption, would be crucial to the story arc.
-I knew I wanted to break with the traditional Vampire structures which implied a wide network of Vampire families, a large population scattered across the globe and a good deal of baggage. Instead I wanted the situation to feel strange and threatened. In the previous World of Darkness campaign I had run, I ended the game with essentially an Apocalypse for supernaturals as the world changed. Essentially a moving effect crossed the globe destroying all of them-- which some saw as a viral effect and others as a moving shockwave of reality rewriting. I decided to base this game in that world after that event. That gave me a set of previous stories to build upon-- not that any of the players had played in that game, but it would serve as a history which could be explored. It also meant that something like 95% of the typical supernatural creatures in the world had been destroyed. Those few remaining had gathered in a few key cities, like the campaign city of Chicago/Hub City, and had lost contact with any real groups outside of that location.
-I also wanted to establish a strongly and explicitly split power structure within the campaign setting. Therefore there would be essentially two Vampiric “Princes”, each with their own set of allies and ares they controlled. My main intent was to avoid the problem of a singular authority in a role-playing game. Often when there's a single figure or force in charge, players instinctively set themselves in opposition to that force. The logic often simply reduces to “Authority=Bad”. I wanted to make that decision more complicated. If they chose to deny one person in charge, would they then be allying with the stated opposite? Or would they explore both sides and potentially find a way to use one against the other. I've used this trope-- in a very different fashion-- in the Changeling game as well.
-I also had a good deal of additional World of Darkness material that I liked. A chunk of that revolved around the various Spirit realms-- both from Wraith and Orpheus. The former had several books detailing their take on the Chinese Underworld. I knew I wanted to bring that in as a threat. Eventually I decided that one of the major threats of the campaign would be forces trying to reach here to tap the power of the sleeping Vampire to convert his dream power into a remaking of the 10,000 Hells and the Dark Kingdom of Jade-- with the plan to bring that into the real world. The later book had great concepts which I would use to create a potent set of NPCs, ghostwalkers who would at first seem to be adversaries but who would, in the course of the game, join with the PCs.
-The other meta-concept that I wanted to play with was some of the third-hand Gnosticism I'd picked up from the Kult RPG which had an awful vision of the world with the Demiurge as absent from the world, leaving horrific angels in charge and battling over the world. Or maybe it wasn't the Demiurge but God...I was never really sure. I used some of those ideas in the previous vampire game and I'd seen them executed in different ways in HJ's and Derek's games. My idea was this: in these dark games, haunted by the nihilism of post-modernism, you have an absent, corrupted or dead God-figure. You see some of this in some people's takes on the Lovecraftian mythos, particularly Dereleth's approach. Anyway, my concept would be that 'God' or the Demiurge or whatever had returned to the world and would be putting his or her house in order. Not that we'd deal really directly with this, but I wanted at the heart of the game that there could be redemption and success even in the face of an awful world. I didn't want to lose sight of the morality tale at the heart of the story.
-Finally, I knew the players would be newly made Vampires-- but that they would have an additional shift from their time of embrace to the present situation of the campaign.
Tomorrow I'll talk about the player characters, my specific prep, the flow of the game/highlight moments, and my final thoughts on the play.
Vampire Campaign Post-mortem Part One
Vampire Campaign Post-mortem Part Two
Vampire Campaign Post-mortem Part Three
Vampire Campaign Post-mortem Part Four
Vampire Campaign Post-mortem Part Five
Not sure I have a specific format for these campaign post-mortems, so I'll try to develop that as I go along here. I should note that this is one of those campaigns where my notebook got destroyed in the house fire, so I'm going mostly from memory.
A few years ago I was asked to run a Vampire game. I'd just come off of running a short campaign fantasy campaign which had gone pretty well-- it had been fairly anime in that it was over-the-top and I'd used a system where I asked players at the end of each session what they wanted for their character and then wrote up new abilities or powers and gave those to them. In any case, one player told me that he'd enjoyed playing in a White Wolf Vampire campaign that hadn't lasted all that long. When he described the campaign to me, it sounded like your typical Vampire/Super Powers game-- where the monsters are cool because they can do these neat things. I questioned the player about it and expressed my reservations about that approach. We talked and he said he'd really like to play in another Vampire game, especially because he liked the background and liked the idea of more interactions and social stuff. I warned him a few times that it wouldn't be like his other game, but he persisted and eventually I agreed.
Now I should go back a little further to talk about my experience with Vampire as a genre that had evolved. I worked in the game store during the time when Vampire really first arrived on the scene. I saw it evolve from a basic Ann Rice adaptation into something more gamey and then into something more literate. I watch the arrival of LARPs and the eventually explosion of the “World of Darkness” metaverse, which included Werewolf and Mage. Mage I had been excited about but was initially disappointed by the execution. I didn't play in these games but I did read a great deal of the material.
Then I finally played in a Vampire game. It started as kind of BS'ing session with a GM we'll call HJ. He wanted to work through some of the themes and consequences of someone becoming a Vampire. He had me run a session where I ran myself in that situation. I normally don't like that approach to games-- in that running 'yourself' brings a lot of potential baggage and connections. In any case, he right away made apparent that doing any “Vampire-y” stuff had consequences: people's lives shattered, cleaning up the bodies, the uncertainty of life, at that stuff. I got it pretty much right away-- and we played a few more sessions with just my character. Then he decided to expand the game and bring in some other players, again playing as themselves, into things. And that's where it got really strange. I expected the others to see and be shaped by the consequences of their actions-- but they never did. I was stuck in the unenviable position of being, to my mind, the only sane person, while the others still ran their characters like they were playing in a game. That produced some of the strangest and yet most compelling sessions I've ever played in-- as I tried to extricate myself from the group and they kept pulling me back into their sociopathy. The game kind of abruptly ended and on the whole it had more problems than successes, but it really did clarify some of those issues for me.
Anyway, with that in mind, I came into the campaign with the core concept that I wanted to undercut the idea of Vampires as superbeings without a real sense of consequence to them. I had run a World of Darkness campaign that was more oriented towards supernatural super-powers before. Here I wanted to reverse that. I knew it would be tricky-- and I knew that while I wanted to undercut expectations, I also needed to provide a compelling and interesting story. If I didn't it could simply come off as a big FU to the players-- essentially mocking their own desires for the game. Early on I tried to recognize that potential issue and deal with it.
Coming into the campaign I had a number of concepts I wanted to work with:
-I had picked up some of the Victorian-Era Vampire game material, as possible source stuff for the Steampunk campaign. I hadn't used much of it for that, but I liked some of the things. I decided that there would be a portion of the game, although using a modern setting, which would be set in that period. The group would flip back there (ala Dark Shadows) and would be uncertain about what was happening. At first they might believe it to be actual time travel, but eventually I would have another reveal.
-That reveal would be based around another figure-- a sleeping very old Vampire. In the classic Vampire setting, they have these Antediluvians who are incredibly old and powerful but slumber. For reasons I'll get into in a minute, most of these would be dead. My Vampire would just be really, really old. He'd sought redemption, but hadn't found it. Now he slept and went over and over again in his mind the events of the past which had led him here. The player's experience in the Victorian era would actually be them seeing those re-creations. Eventually the players would see the whole story there reset and would have to figure out a way to change things.
-One of the McGuffins would then be that the various factions in the city would be seeking out the power of this slumbering old one, in order to make it their own. That plot, and the slumbering vampire's potential redemption, would be crucial to the story arc.
-I knew I wanted to break with the traditional Vampire structures which implied a wide network of Vampire families, a large population scattered across the globe and a good deal of baggage. Instead I wanted the situation to feel strange and threatened. In the previous World of Darkness campaign I had run, I ended the game with essentially an Apocalypse for supernaturals as the world changed. Essentially a moving effect crossed the globe destroying all of them-- which some saw as a viral effect and others as a moving shockwave of reality rewriting. I decided to base this game in that world after that event. That gave me a set of previous stories to build upon-- not that any of the players had played in that game, but it would serve as a history which could be explored. It also meant that something like 95% of the typical supernatural creatures in the world had been destroyed. Those few remaining had gathered in a few key cities, like the campaign city of Chicago/Hub City, and had lost contact with any real groups outside of that location.
-I also wanted to establish a strongly and explicitly split power structure within the campaign setting. Therefore there would be essentially two Vampiric “Princes”, each with their own set of allies and ares they controlled. My main intent was to avoid the problem of a singular authority in a role-playing game. Often when there's a single figure or force in charge, players instinctively set themselves in opposition to that force. The logic often simply reduces to “Authority=Bad”. I wanted to make that decision more complicated. If they chose to deny one person in charge, would they then be allying with the stated opposite? Or would they explore both sides and potentially find a way to use one against the other. I've used this trope-- in a very different fashion-- in the Changeling game as well.
-I also had a good deal of additional World of Darkness material that I liked. A chunk of that revolved around the various Spirit realms-- both from Wraith and Orpheus. The former had several books detailing their take on the Chinese Underworld. I knew I wanted to bring that in as a threat. Eventually I decided that one of the major threats of the campaign would be forces trying to reach here to tap the power of the sleeping Vampire to convert his dream power into a remaking of the 10,000 Hells and the Dark Kingdom of Jade-- with the plan to bring that into the real world. The later book had great concepts which I would use to create a potent set of NPCs, ghostwalkers who would at first seem to be adversaries but who would, in the course of the game, join with the PCs.
-The other meta-concept that I wanted to play with was some of the third-hand Gnosticism I'd picked up from the Kult RPG which had an awful vision of the world with the Demiurge as absent from the world, leaving horrific angels in charge and battling over the world. Or maybe it wasn't the Demiurge but God...I was never really sure. I used some of those ideas in the previous vampire game and I'd seen them executed in different ways in HJ's and Derek's games. My idea was this: in these dark games, haunted by the nihilism of post-modernism, you have an absent, corrupted or dead God-figure. You see some of this in some people's takes on the Lovecraftian mythos, particularly Dereleth's approach. Anyway, my concept would be that 'God' or the Demiurge or whatever had returned to the world and would be putting his or her house in order. Not that we'd deal really directly with this, but I wanted at the heart of the game that there could be redemption and success even in the face of an awful world. I didn't want to lose sight of the morality tale at the heart of the story.
-Finally, I knew the players would be newly made Vampires-- but that they would have an additional shift from their time of embrace to the present situation of the campaign.
Tomorrow I'll talk about the player characters, my specific prep, the flow of the game/highlight moments, and my final thoughts on the play.
Vampire Campaign Post-mortem Part One
Vampire Campaign Post-mortem Part Two
Vampire Campaign Post-mortem Part Three
Vampire Campaign Post-mortem Part Four
Vampire Campaign Post-mortem Part Five
4/12/09
Food coma.
At least part of that brought on by my own bringing of mashed potatoes. I found it very strange when I talked to a couple of people a few years back and found they'd grown up on instant potatoes-- despite having other higher end foods in the house-- real mashed potatoes were apparently too much work. Anyway, I stole my recipe from Alan, and it is pretty simple.
So, a big batch, like I did today consists of an eight pound bag of potatoes. You can certainly work with less and scale it. I usually peel and slide the potatoes into half-inch segments and put them in cold, salted water. Cutting them up, rather than working with the whole potatoes makes them cook more thouroughly in my experience. The water's usually about an inch above the top of the potatoes. I also rinse them pretty well to reduce the loose starch.
Anywa, boil the potatoes until they're pretty soft. Then a minute longer. Drain them well-- I use a mesh colander. While the potatoes are still steaming hot pour them into a big mixing bowl. In the bowl you should already have about two sticks of butter-- sliced into pats and about 2/3rds of a can of your standard Kraft Parmesan cheese. The heat from the potatoes will melt these. Work the potatoes a little with a spatula to distribute the materials and break up the largest chunks. Add cream, maybe half a cup or so to start. Then go at it with a hand mixer. This is why you use a big, big mixing bowl, because it you don't, you get a nice thin line of mashed potatoes over everything. Work the material heavily, use the spatula to move anything that's on the bottom, and add cream as needed to get the creamy consistency people love. Add salt and more butter to taste.
We had Easter over at Sherri's parents where we had five more people than we were expecting. It ended up pretty packed-- the food was excellent. However, because I'm home a lot by myself, I've found being in large, packed groups of people now makes me more uncomfortable than it used to. I mean, I never liked crowds-- but clearly my wound tightedness has certainly increased over the last year. I ate and then went outside and sat and watched the birds work over Sherri's dad's feeders. A genuinely pleasant experience, but it took some time to shake my general anxiety. To tell people who know me precisely how tense I was:
I skipped the cake.
At least part of that brought on by my own bringing of mashed potatoes. I found it very strange when I talked to a couple of people a few years back and found they'd grown up on instant potatoes-- despite having other higher end foods in the house-- real mashed potatoes were apparently too much work. Anyway, I stole my recipe from Alan, and it is pretty simple.
So, a big batch, like I did today consists of an eight pound bag of potatoes. You can certainly work with less and scale it. I usually peel and slide the potatoes into half-inch segments and put them in cold, salted water. Cutting them up, rather than working with the whole potatoes makes them cook more thouroughly in my experience. The water's usually about an inch above the top of the potatoes. I also rinse them pretty well to reduce the loose starch.
Anywa, boil the potatoes until they're pretty soft. Then a minute longer. Drain them well-- I use a mesh colander. While the potatoes are still steaming hot pour them into a big mixing bowl. In the bowl you should already have about two sticks of butter-- sliced into pats and about 2/3rds of a can of your standard Kraft Parmesan cheese. The heat from the potatoes will melt these. Work the potatoes a little with a spatula to distribute the materials and break up the largest chunks. Add cream, maybe half a cup or so to start. Then go at it with a hand mixer. This is why you use a big, big mixing bowl, because it you don't, you get a nice thin line of mashed potatoes over everything. Work the material heavily, use the spatula to move anything that's on the bottom, and add cream as needed to get the creamy consistency people love. Add salt and more butter to taste.
We had Easter over at Sherri's parents where we had five more people than we were expecting. It ended up pretty packed-- the food was excellent. However, because I'm home a lot by myself, I've found being in large, packed groups of people now makes me more uncomfortable than it used to. I mean, I never liked crowds-- but clearly my wound tightedness has certainly increased over the last year. I ate and then went outside and sat and watched the birds work over Sherri's dad's feeders. A genuinely pleasant experience, but it took some time to shake my general anxiety. To tell people who know me precisely how tense I was:
I skipped the cake.
Saturday, April 11, 2009
List of Topics
So apparently my once a week day off will vary. Anyway, better bloggers than I have said that blogging about blogging is a sin-- a potentially wallowing set of commentaries. So, slightly appropriate on this holiday weekend that I indulge in that. I hit my 100th consecutive fairly full post, if I include linkdumps in that count. So, what do I think about it so far. It is more difficult than I thought, but not that much more.
My original goal was to get myself in the mode of having a single writing task each day that would push me to keep producing something. I think on that score it is successful-- it does push me to organize myself and get some material prepared each day, of varying quality. I've been able to use the blog to double up on some work-- where things I need to get done can be posted here as well. On the other hand, in some cases it has been a small wedge from doing some kinds of writing. I haven't for example, gotten much done on either of the novels. There's also some campaign development stuff that I don't want to post, in that I might use some of it at the table. I've also had a fairly rich set of player-campaign emails I've been working through, both for Libri Vidicos and Changeling. I suspect when I go to run the Sunday Third Continent campaign, I'll try to keep off-table emails to a minimum.
On the whole, though, I'm pretty pleased with it. I've recycled some material-- previously written summaries and the just I've just begun to archive from The Village board. So I'll stick with it for another hundred days, and try to get more interesting material out here.
Things that I mentioned I wanted to write about but haven't yet-- either incomplete series of blog posts or other things mentioned in passing:
-Further discussion of the problems of rpg games in a historical setting
-Final article on authors who have influenced me
-Another piece on striking rpgs that helped shape my approach
-Campaign postmortems-- Vampire, Prophet King, Steambuckler, Bloodlines, Black Company/Planescape, Scion, HCI
-Summaries of older campaigns in the shared fantasy world I've run in
-The New Weird in rpgs
-On the beautiful ephemera of strategy guides
-Approaches to campaign length (medium and long style campaigns)
-Narrative resolution, crunch and argumentation in table play
-Player expectations, meta-discussion and shared personal maps of the campaign shape
-Consensus, player dynamics, and why I won't run for certain people anymore
-Male vs. Female tabletop dynamics
-Robot Zero
-Coming to Classical Music through perfume
-Why I hate orphans in games
-Gender, Race and Sexuality as topics in games
-Sketches for arena game-- both mechanics and setting
-Overcomplicating my plots
-Recent games I've run
-Anime/Manga structures and conventions and their application to tabletop games
My original goal was to get myself in the mode of having a single writing task each day that would push me to keep producing something. I think on that score it is successful-- it does push me to organize myself and get some material prepared each day, of varying quality. I've been able to use the blog to double up on some work-- where things I need to get done can be posted here as well. On the other hand, in some cases it has been a small wedge from doing some kinds of writing. I haven't for example, gotten much done on either of the novels. There's also some campaign development stuff that I don't want to post, in that I might use some of it at the table. I've also had a fairly rich set of player-campaign emails I've been working through, both for Libri Vidicos and Changeling. I suspect when I go to run the Sunday Third Continent campaign, I'll try to keep off-table emails to a minimum.
On the whole, though, I'm pretty pleased with it. I've recycled some material-- previously written summaries and the just I've just begun to archive from The Village board. So I'll stick with it for another hundred days, and try to get more interesting material out here.
Things that I mentioned I wanted to write about but haven't yet-- either incomplete series of blog posts or other things mentioned in passing:
-Further discussion of the problems of rpg games in a historical setting
-Final article on authors who have influenced me
-Another piece on striking rpgs that helped shape my approach
-Campaign postmortems-- Vampire, Prophet King, Steambuckler, Bloodlines, Black Company/Planescape, Scion, HCI
-Summaries of older campaigns in the shared fantasy world I've run in
-The New Weird in rpgs
-On the beautiful ephemera of strategy guides
-Approaches to campaign length (medium and long style campaigns)
-Narrative resolution, crunch and argumentation in table play
-Player expectations, meta-discussion and shared personal maps of the campaign shape
-Consensus, player dynamics, and why I won't run for certain people anymore
-Male vs. Female tabletop dynamics
-Robot Zero
-Coming to Classical Music through perfume
-Why I hate orphans in games
-Gender, Race and Sexuality as topics in games
-Sketches for arena game-- both mechanics and setting
-Overcomplicating my plots
-Recent games I've run
-Anime/Manga structures and conventions and their application to tabletop games
Thursday, April 9, 2009
Dave Arneson
A brief post today, and tomorrow I'll blog about blogging which should be a properly painful exercise.
So Dave Arneson passed away this week. Ken Hite and Robin Laws both have fairly brief and cogent comments on his importance. I started early on D&D thanks to my father's picking up a set of the first small box books for my sister on a trip to Ann Arbor. It was a long time before I really realized Arneson's contribution to establishing the ideas of rpg gaming, since the Gygax machine had been long in place to show him as the father of these games. That's not to say GG didn't do anything, but rather to say that Arneson's contribution had been eclipsed until more recent years when people started to actually compile a decent history of gaming.
I really love role-playing games, so I can only say I'm glad for his contribution and establishment of this hobby.
So Dave Arneson passed away this week. Ken Hite and Robin Laws both have fairly brief and cogent comments on his importance. I started early on D&D thanks to my father's picking up a set of the first small box books for my sister on a trip to Ann Arbor. It was a long time before I really realized Arneson's contribution to establishing the ideas of rpg gaming, since the Gygax machine had been long in place to show him as the father of these games. That's not to say GG didn't do anything, but rather to say that Arneson's contribution had been eclipsed until more recent years when people started to actually compile a decent history of gaming.
I really love role-playing games, so I can only say I'm glad for his contribution and establishment of this hobby.
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
Playing Well
Still thieving from my old board posts-- and one I thieved from before at that. I wrote out some ideas on playing well at the table some time ago and they're worth it for me to keep in mind when I play. I have to see if there's anything here that I've rethought.
Playing Well
(Related to the GM discussion in this forum, I thought I'd bring over part of the good rpg playing thread we had a while ago in the Old Village. Unfortunately, I forgot to archive that thread--maybe someone else did?-- so I brought the parts that I could find.)
Playing Advice
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Kaiju asked me what advice I had for being a good player, so I sat down and wrote out a few ideas...both from the perspective of being a GM and being a player. I thought I'd post these and get other suggestions; Steve thought they were OK. I think this is an incomplete list, but it was what popped first into my head.
OK...general pieces of advice on how to play...or things that I do that make the games generally better for me as a player (or at least more fun). As always, your results may vary.
*****************
1. I imagine lots of stories about my character...other things he does...where he goes to buy boots, what kind of food he likes, little details. Those are in my head when I'm playing...sometimes I can throw them in as details about my characters. For example, in Derek's Werewolf game, my character had "wolfed out" once at a Fast Food place...it never came up during the game and it certainly wasn't on my sheet, but I knew he would react badly if anyone ever suggested eating fast food...that got me to thinking about other things about him...like what kind of place would he ate and what kind of trash would he have in his car. As another example, I had my character be really poor in Barry's game...not that I got points for it or that it mattered, but I would mention how I had to go by used underwear...that became a running detail and people knew something distinct about my character.
2. Come into the game having imagined one cool thing your character could do during the session or else one cool thing you'd like to have happen to him. Work to get those scene to come to fruition.
3. Say things as if they are so...give the GM an excuse to help you...(this is something you already do and is big points in your favor)...say "There is this around thing X around so I can do Y" not "Is there this thing X around...?"
4. Figure out a mannerism or gesture or tone of voice or something that marks your character. use that at the table to mark when you're in character...use it on other players to demonstrate to them that you're in character...and force them to go into character.
5. On a related note: challenge other players. If they're being off topic...go into character and pull them back in. Part of the fun is to play with and against other people at the table...the worst thing that can happen is that you get a cool interaction out of it and you both get some play time. Players generally rise to the occasion when challenged.
6. On a related, related note...be willing to police other people at the table...the GM can only do so much...a good player is active and pulls other players along by example.
7. Know what your character thinks of the other characters in the group and act on that...bring that interaction and your feelings towards them to bear on your play. [That doesn’t mean be awful to them, but know how to play so that those feelings come out…you want to give the other players room to react…just being a dick to them accomplishes nothing…giving them room to respond makes for a back and forth. My second character in Barry’s CP game was Scott’s brother…we hated each other and that made for good play at the table. BUT I wouldn’t have done anything to really harm his character or limit what Scott could do].
8. In any conversation with an NPC...remember that they aren't walking clue boxes...they have something they want and you have something you want...in a story, a conversation between characters helps to illuminate those agendas. (I think I've mentioned this one before).
9. Be aware of how other people are playing at the table and try to draw them in to the game. [Additional: share and play nice is what I mean by this. Don’t get irritated if people talk to NPC’s that you consider “yours”. Be willing to partner up with people. Players should watch stepping on each other’s toes…but at the same time people shouldn’t get defensive about plots or NPCs…and if you have a problem with someone…talk to them about it].
10. JUMP.
That means go forward, take action, jump into the fray and don't worry about right or wrong, make it right by being 100% behind it...it is just as much fun to fail as it is to succeed if it looks good at the table. Don't be afraid to take risks...say what you're going to do and roll...let the GM figure out what your chance of success is. Always, though, describe your actions.
These are my general rules of playing for anyone and not specifically tuned to you...I think you do a number of these things really well. How's that?
I would say as an additional rule...this is off topic and certainly doesn't relate to you...if I'm going to cite general rules about playing...if you're not enjoying a game, don't play. If you find yourself not doing much in the game, talk to the GM, tell him what you want and if that doesn't work then bow out for someone else to have a shot. A good player participates, makes clear to the GM what he wants out of the game, and doesn't just show up as a warm body. I think there are players who don't realize how draining it is to have a non-responsive or distracting player.
Another couple of thoughts:
*Pay attention when other people are having their moments on stage. Loud cross talk makes it hard for the player and GM who are on deck to actually communicate. It also is rude to really blatantly ignore their scene and talk over them...the message sent by that is "you're not important and I don't care." Not that you can't talk when other people are interacting with the GM...but players need to be considerate. Plus if you don't listen, they can't blah and suddenly everyone gets lost or confused. By the same token, when plans are being discussed try to listen to everyone.
*Put your two cents worth in when planning. It's obnoxious to not participate in the planning and then second-guess later.
*Don't read outside junk or do other stuff at the table, it is rude to the GM and other players...hmm...wait...I guess I mean stuff that is way off topic like magazines or newspapers or playing a Game Boy or stuff like that. Looking at game stuff is ok generally.
*Help other players with the rules, but don't second-guess them.
*Love your character.
LittleDevilBird
Those are all good suggestions. I have one to add:
* Give the GM opinions and feedback. Do you like/dislike the game? Do you wish the GM would pull in other elements, NPCs, plot points, historical threads, etc.? Should there be more scene description, fewer NPCs, bigger magic, or creepier monsters? Is the game just not disturbing enough? Player interaction is key, but if the GM doesn't have a clue what you want to get out of the game, they may read you wrong and steer the overall story or mood in a direction that's just not fun for you.
Absolutely.
I forgot one because it is almost a cliche to say it:
Have Fun.
I believe you can be enthusiatic, involved and serious about a game and still have fun.
I believe you can share, interact and be considerate to other players and still have fun.
Auzumel
Here's the one that gives me the greatest pleasure:
Follow the storyline.
Really. If there's a GM busting their butt to put together a cohesive story (not just a episodic fight-of-the-week thing), take advantage of the situation and immerse yourself in at least some part of it. It's a pleasure to watch things start to click into place, to see some little incident reveal heaps of complexities you hadn't considered before, to recognize the chapter endings and the beginnings of new arcs.
As before, with these suggestions your actual millage may vary.
Terling said:
About the only caveat I can suggest to all of that is when thinking about the stories for your character, don't make all of them make you act like a loner in game. A few loner tendencies aren't bad, a lot of loner tendencies make you hard to deal with.
Having been on the receiving end of this as both a player and a GM, I can attest to this. I’ve seen less and less of this over the last several years, but I remember a time when people made characters that seemed made just to not be able to function in a group. I’ve never been sure about what the theory was behind this…was it cool? Tweaking the other players? Or just anti-social behavior? While I think GM’s should be creatively accommodating of character ideas, players should consider that they will be playing with others. Initial character creation is crucial, but I’ve seen people make up characters just to spite other players and/or the GM. [On a side note…I’ve seen this turned around on me magnificently. I’ve only played with Mr. Fenris once, but when I heard his character concept at the beginning…I thought “Oh, God…a loner character”…by the end of that first session he had managed to use that concept and turn it around against my expectations in such a way that, quite frankly, I bow down before his skill.
I also think a good player varies the characters he or she runs. In the end, most characters are going to have some traits between them that are shared (I believe you can’t help this…something of yourself always bleeds through), I think good players try to vary the kinds of characters, personalities and roles that they take on.
As well, a good player recognizes his character isn’t static. A good character grows and evolves during the game. He or she learns something and changes…or decides not to change and has some reasons for that that are self-reflective. A good player thinks about that and wants to build that change. He doesn’t make and angst-y character and then wallow in that for the whole game…eventually something will pull him out of that or he’ll gather hope or something. By the same token, a hopeful character might lose hope or become cynical or something. I really believe that the best players I have seen have managed to develop and grow their characters from their original conception to something greater, based on their experiences. By the same token, some of the worst characters I have seen started at X and remained X by god!
Good players listen to criticism/commentary and consider it in the tone it was given.
Love your failures just as much as your successes and make them as enjoyable for yourself and other players.
Playing Well
(Related to the GM discussion in this forum, I thought I'd bring over part of the good rpg playing thread we had a while ago in the Old Village. Unfortunately, I forgot to archive that thread--maybe someone else did?-- so I brought the parts that I could find.)
Playing Advice
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Kaiju asked me what advice I had for being a good player, so I sat down and wrote out a few ideas...both from the perspective of being a GM and being a player. I thought I'd post these and get other suggestions; Steve thought they were OK. I think this is an incomplete list, but it was what popped first into my head.
OK...general pieces of advice on how to play...or things that I do that make the games generally better for me as a player (or at least more fun). As always, your results may vary.
*****************
1. I imagine lots of stories about my character...other things he does...where he goes to buy boots, what kind of food he likes, little details. Those are in my head when I'm playing...sometimes I can throw them in as details about my characters. For example, in Derek's Werewolf game, my character had "wolfed out" once at a Fast Food place...it never came up during the game and it certainly wasn't on my sheet, but I knew he would react badly if anyone ever suggested eating fast food...that got me to thinking about other things about him...like what kind of place would he ate and what kind of trash would he have in his car. As another example, I had my character be really poor in Barry's game...not that I got points for it or that it mattered, but I would mention how I had to go by used underwear...that became a running detail and people knew something distinct about my character.
2. Come into the game having imagined one cool thing your character could do during the session or else one cool thing you'd like to have happen to him. Work to get those scene to come to fruition.
3. Say things as if they are so...give the GM an excuse to help you...(this is something you already do and is big points in your favor)...say "There is this around thing X around so I can do Y" not "Is there this thing X around...?"
4. Figure out a mannerism or gesture or tone of voice or something that marks your character. use that at the table to mark when you're in character...use it on other players to demonstrate to them that you're in character...and force them to go into character.
5. On a related note: challenge other players. If they're being off topic...go into character and pull them back in. Part of the fun is to play with and against other people at the table...the worst thing that can happen is that you get a cool interaction out of it and you both get some play time. Players generally rise to the occasion when challenged.
6. On a related, related note...be willing to police other people at the table...the GM can only do so much...a good player is active and pulls other players along by example.
7. Know what your character thinks of the other characters in the group and act on that...bring that interaction and your feelings towards them to bear on your play. [That doesn’t mean be awful to them, but know how to play so that those feelings come out…you want to give the other players room to react…just being a dick to them accomplishes nothing…giving them room to respond makes for a back and forth. My second character in Barry’s CP game was Scott’s brother…we hated each other and that made for good play at the table. BUT I wouldn’t have done anything to really harm his character or limit what Scott could do].
8. In any conversation with an NPC...remember that they aren't walking clue boxes...they have something they want and you have something you want...in a story, a conversation between characters helps to illuminate those agendas. (I think I've mentioned this one before).
9. Be aware of how other people are playing at the table and try to draw them in to the game. [Additional: share and play nice is what I mean by this. Don’t get irritated if people talk to NPC’s that you consider “yours”. Be willing to partner up with people. Players should watch stepping on each other’s toes…but at the same time people shouldn’t get defensive about plots or NPCs…and if you have a problem with someone…talk to them about it].
10. JUMP.
That means go forward, take action, jump into the fray and don't worry about right or wrong, make it right by being 100% behind it...it is just as much fun to fail as it is to succeed if it looks good at the table. Don't be afraid to take risks...say what you're going to do and roll...let the GM figure out what your chance of success is. Always, though, describe your actions.
These are my general rules of playing for anyone and not specifically tuned to you...I think you do a number of these things really well. How's that?
I would say as an additional rule...this is off topic and certainly doesn't relate to you...if I'm going to cite general rules about playing...if you're not enjoying a game, don't play. If you find yourself not doing much in the game, talk to the GM, tell him what you want and if that doesn't work then bow out for someone else to have a shot. A good player participates, makes clear to the GM what he wants out of the game, and doesn't just show up as a warm body. I think there are players who don't realize how draining it is to have a non-responsive or distracting player.
Another couple of thoughts:
*Pay attention when other people are having their moments on stage. Loud cross talk makes it hard for the player and GM who are on deck to actually communicate. It also is rude to really blatantly ignore their scene and talk over them...the message sent by that is "you're not important and I don't care." Not that you can't talk when other people are interacting with the GM...but players need to be considerate. Plus if you don't listen, they can't blah and suddenly everyone gets lost or confused. By the same token, when plans are being discussed try to listen to everyone.
*Put your two cents worth in when planning. It's obnoxious to not participate in the planning and then second-guess later.
*Don't read outside junk or do other stuff at the table, it is rude to the GM and other players...hmm...wait...I guess I mean stuff that is way off topic like magazines or newspapers or playing a Game Boy or stuff like that. Looking at game stuff is ok generally.
*Help other players with the rules, but don't second-guess them.
*Love your character.
LittleDevilBird
Those are all good suggestions. I have one to add:
* Give the GM opinions and feedback. Do you like/dislike the game? Do you wish the GM would pull in other elements, NPCs, plot points, historical threads, etc.? Should there be more scene description, fewer NPCs, bigger magic, or creepier monsters? Is the game just not disturbing enough? Player interaction is key, but if the GM doesn't have a clue what you want to get out of the game, they may read you wrong and steer the overall story or mood in a direction that's just not fun for you.
Absolutely.
I forgot one because it is almost a cliche to say it:
Have Fun.
I believe you can be enthusiatic, involved and serious about a game and still have fun.
I believe you can share, interact and be considerate to other players and still have fun.
Auzumel
Here's the one that gives me the greatest pleasure:
Follow the storyline.
Really. If there's a GM busting their butt to put together a cohesive story (not just a episodic fight-of-the-week thing), take advantage of the situation and immerse yourself in at least some part of it. It's a pleasure to watch things start to click into place, to see some little incident reveal heaps of complexities you hadn't considered before, to recognize the chapter endings and the beginnings of new arcs.
As before, with these suggestions your actual millage may vary.
Terling said:
About the only caveat I can suggest to all of that is when thinking about the stories for your character, don't make all of them make you act like a loner in game. A few loner tendencies aren't bad, a lot of loner tendencies make you hard to deal with.
Having been on the receiving end of this as both a player and a GM, I can attest to this. I’ve seen less and less of this over the last several years, but I remember a time when people made characters that seemed made just to not be able to function in a group. I’ve never been sure about what the theory was behind this…was it cool? Tweaking the other players? Or just anti-social behavior? While I think GM’s should be creatively accommodating of character ideas, players should consider that they will be playing with others. Initial character creation is crucial, but I’ve seen people make up characters just to spite other players and/or the GM. [On a side note…I’ve seen this turned around on me magnificently. I’ve only played with Mr. Fenris once, but when I heard his character concept at the beginning…I thought “Oh, God…a loner character”…by the end of that first session he had managed to use that concept and turn it around against my expectations in such a way that, quite frankly, I bow down before his skill.
I also think a good player varies the characters he or she runs. In the end, most characters are going to have some traits between them that are shared (I believe you can’t help this…something of yourself always bleeds through), I think good players try to vary the kinds of characters, personalities and roles that they take on.
As well, a good player recognizes his character isn’t static. A good character grows and evolves during the game. He or she learns something and changes…or decides not to change and has some reasons for that that are self-reflective. A good player thinks about that and wants to build that change. He doesn’t make and angst-y character and then wallow in that for the whole game…eventually something will pull him out of that or he’ll gather hope or something. By the same token, a hopeful character might lose hope or become cynical or something. I really believe that the best players I have seen have managed to develop and grow their characters from their original conception to something greater, based on their experiences. By the same token, some of the worst characters I have seen started at X and remained X by god!
Good players listen to criticism/commentary and consider it in the tone it was given.
Love your failures just as much as your successes and make them as enjoyable for yourself and other players.
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