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How do!

So despite having promised/threatened a World of Darkness Game, this time I think it’s really gonna happen!

Got four excited players, and I’m officially in the Herding Cats Stage of arranging dates.

What I’m going with, at least at first, is a straight up Mortals games, set right now. An up to date modern day Mortals Game.

My players are gonna be portraying quite young humans (late teens, early 20’s), and in their first adventure they’re going to peer behind the veil. If the game is as enjoyed as their hype suggests, they’ll like mature into Hunters. Except with a YouTube channel or similar. They might be wannabe influencers, academic students, or enthusiastic ghost hunters and stuff.

Where I’m struggling is a lack of personal experience and knowledge of creatures outside of Vampires (Masquerade) and Prometheans. Now I can come up with some relatively low powered “if you want to take them on, you might get away with it, but not without some gnarly scars” examples for the two mentioned. But Mages, Werewolves and Fae I know next to nothing about.

Of course in time I can get my grubby mitts on the relevant books. But to kick off and give my players a taste of the horror to come, I’m asking, cap in hand, for assistance in generating low level example of the various other Supernatural Nasties they might come across.

Seriously though, nothing too terrifying. Nothing where a suitable solution isn’t simply “run away, and for goodness sake go and change your trousers”.

The plot itself should be fairly organic, but there will be the hook that having discovered Hunter.net, some supernatural gribblies were able to track and trap previously existing Hunters, leaving our band as The Sole Resistance, at least to start with. And in terms of gleaning information about how to defeat the nasties, they’ll have to consider troll comments and advice.

Got nothing useful to add I'm afraid, as my brother has all the books at his place, and it reads more like you are looking for literal stats rather than ideas. But will be reading with interest...

Werewolves in particular you will struggle with, as even a basic starting-character level werewolf in Crinos form is physically extremely powerful and will quite happily shred a starting-character vampire, let alone a human...

Mages would not necessarily be hostile, I would have thought. But would very much have their own agendas...

Are you generally up on the attitudes and interactions between vampires / werewolves / mages (not really sure wraiths give a damn about the mortal world other than their own fetters) and the various factions within each? Never got into Changeling, don't know much about that. Mummies? They interested me, but I don't think we ever actually played it... There's definitely scope for the players to have repeated 'oh gak' moments as they discover they're in the middle of a huge 3+ way war of the ages...

How much do the players already know about WoD? Hopefully next to nothing...

The relations or lack thereof between the critters is easily enough looked up - and I can always make that up on the fly.

But starting a creature enough to give them a scare needs multiple books, at a cost I’m not sure justify the ends.

Though if they become particularly enamoured of one, then I can buy the base book for a crash course

I’m hoping they’ll see the defence of “but we’re just simple men. Innocent men” as a fairly robust one, and that a lot of supernatural stuff will tend to keep itself to itself unless provoked.

Serious suggestion. Avoid mages.

The horror of mages is not an external conflict like most of the other games. A mage does not appear as a monster hunting you like a werewolf is. Mages horror is deeply personal. Its having the power to literally rewrite reality and the hubris to think you know how to do that best. Mages work best in a mage only game.

That being said listen to the podcast beyond the map. Especially the story The Circle. The dm runs small games using chronicles of Darkness 2e. You will get great inspiration.

One of the things I want to play around with is the cast relying on online popularity to keep them relatively safe from reprisals.

With the Masquerade, Camarilla members risk a lot of the folks making this popular YouTube channel “exposing the supernatural” turn up drained of blood, shredded or all go missing. But, they might decide to exploit this group in some way. Maybe even Ghoul one or more members etc.

There’s a lot you can do with the underlying world and the concept I’m gunning for. And I really like the idea of them having to figure out from scratch what these creatures are, how they’re organised and, in extremis, bump back against that which goes bump in the night.

Kind of a mix of the most obnoxious “influencers”, Ghostfacers from Supernatural*, and The Boys

*a major influence in my head. And the best non-licensed World of Darkness show.

This is an NPC generator with pretty much every option available:

https://perchance.org/wodnpc



The last time I played in WoD I played a mage with such disbelief in magic that reality warped around him to make other magic users incapable of casting anything, even having it backfire on them.

He was however, totally convinced of every conspiracy theory that existed...


Low level mages can be ok though.

Oh nice! Thank you for that.

IIRC Oriental vampires work differently from the regular ones and quite often still have mortal attachments/organisations that they look after in a less adversarial/immortal dictator way than normal vampires.

I'm excited to try out the new Hunter 5th edition. VTM 5th with mortal hunter is still fun though. Definitely under dog vibes during the games I have run and been a part of.