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Going to be running a Vampire the Masquerade game. Help please.  [RSS] Share on facebook Share on Twitter Submit to Reddit
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Made in gb
Ridin' on a Snotling Pump Wagon






How do?

Having reclaimed my spare room, as I won’t be replacing my flatmate, I’ll be rejigging the furniture and getting a new sofa. Which means I’ll have a plenitude of seating in my front room. Which can only mean one thing.....

IT’S RPG O’CLOCK’

Gonna be using the super duper edition of Vampire, as it’s the game I, ahem, cut my teeth on, and a favourite in my Nerd Herd.

In terms of my troupe, I’ve dropboxed them a copy of the rules, and other than Camarilla, I’ve not set down any character restrictions. That’s because I’d rather see who and what they want to play, and then fit the plot around them.

After all, I could spend untold hours plotting out a truly and true to the term Machiavellian political story, only to find out my troupe all want to just smash face, and even all their dots in intelligence combined couldn’t open a door, let alone pick up on subtlety.

So at the moment, I’ve a blank slate of possibility, and one that won’t become at least a murky grey until I’ve seen what my troupe will be playing.

That’s where you guys come in. Throw it at me. All of it. Plots you enjoyed, plots you’d like to run or play out. I’ll take anything me. I’m a little waaaaay, little bit whooa, little shushushu. I’ll nick any plot, me.

   
Made in gb
Frenzied Berserker Terminator




Southampton, UK

Ah mate, I love me some Vampire. I always favoured the Tremere personally. Love the blood magic and the scheming! Sadly notot played for years. We're currently very much occupied with a Call Of Cthulhu campaign that's been running for over a decade now, plus a home-grown 40K campaign using the Cthulhu rules. Do want to return to the World Of Darkness though.
   
Made in us
Dakka Veteran





The very first story I ever ran was built out of Outcasts: A Players Guide to Pariahs. None of the players could decide what to play so I forced them to build humans, then dropped a template on each one of them. All in all it went pretty well. Two caitiff vampires, two outcast werewolfs, and an orphan mage.

One caitiff's discipline was absolutely overpowered and had to be retconned a little. The werewolfs decided the group had to have an alpha then threw a tantrum when the OP caitiff won. I forget what spheres the mage even had.

Not one of them took anything related to 'sense bad thing' so jerking them to the dark side was to easy.
   
Made in us
Fixture of Dakka




NE Ohio, USA

The last Vampire game I played (a long time ago now).
Overall we had twenty-some people playing. Several as Storytellers, about 1/2 as PCs, and the other half played assorted NPCs. Depending upon who all showed up for any given session play style shifted back & forth between tabletop & LARP (or near LARP).
The Storytellers knew who was a PC vs who had signed up to play NPCs for us.

It started on New Years Eve1998, at a gala hosted in the cities Elysium. (IRL we actually played on New Years Eve '98, starting around 7pm).
The first 4-5 hours were largely setting everything up for the players/NPCs (even though they were supposed to have read the pre-game documents) & the characters all interacting, etc etc etc & general RL New Years eve party of twenty some friends.
At midnight 1999 was ushered in with everything going south as the Prince* & several ranked characters (all NPCs) were killed off creating plenty of chaos & a power vacuum to be filled.
{*the prince wasn't really dead & he was never really ever not in control - but that's one of the things the players could discover through play. }

Official Game night was Friday.
But stuff could be run anytime through out the week Sat-Wed. if there were several people who wanted to play. And depending upon what it was a Storyteller didn't have to be present. But players had to be honest & they had to brief the Storytellers on Thur about what had happened. (we Storrytellers got together Thur. afternoons to prep the Fri. sessions). If we weren't involved & weren't briefed, it didn't happen.

Now with several Storytellers, each with our own ideas & styles, we had quite the mix of stuff (and quality). Some was typical VTM stuff. Some was pretty good, some bad. Some just weird. One guy INSISTED that the game must include stuff from ALL the WW game lines - vampires, werewolves, wraith, changling, Mage, mummies, etc etc etc. And the one womans stuff?.... didn't even fit the genre. It was speculated that she didn't actually understand the material.
To accommodate all of this? We decided that our story was actually the dreams of a fairly powerful slumbering Malkovian{sp?}. a fact that could be discovered during play. So it was alright to have disparate styles, the kitchen sink, & even stuff that made no damned sense. Plus whatever the players got up to. Afterall, the dreamer is insane. We also decided to put more focus on whatever the players chose to interact with.
We then blocked out a rough plot outline of what was happening regardless of PC action (unless they did something waaay beyond expectation). And every month the problems/strangeness in The City {we intentionally never named it} increased.

We decided that the game would run for exactly 1 year.
It would end in one of two ways:

1) The players discover that there's a really powerful Malkovian slumbering beneath their city & that it's his insane dreaming that's the source of the growing problems.
SMART play is their character run far away to join some other city. (those players would then play NPCs & be sworn to secrecy vs the other players for the remainder of the game. But congrats on "winning".)
DUMB {and fully expected} play is that they attack/kill/destroy (and possibly diablerize) the Dreamer.
This ends the game for everyone as the Dreamer is killed & the dream ends. The characters have just been echos of some group actually hunting him in the "real world" & they finally found him.

2) If not killed during play, the Dreamer will wake up as 2000 dawns.
Game ends as he's no longer dreaming.



Some of the players (one of the Tremere, a couple of Nos, and a Malk) got close to figuring out what was really going on - but not quite.
One player managed to claim the title of Prince & hold onto it. He was mighty surprised to learn that he'd been masterfully played by several of the other players though....
There were some wonderful player based twists & turns throughout the year.

And in the end? One year later we held another New Years Eve party. NYE 1999.
No one had quite managed to solve the real problem by midnight, so....
When the Times Square ball dropped on the TV & Y2k began the Dreamer awoke & "The City" was destroyed.

Game Over.
{wich caught most of the people, PC & NPC alike, by complete surprise. }


I haven't played in, or run, a WW game since.



This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/03/20 07:20:27


 
   
Made in gb
Slaanesh Chosen Marine Riding a Fiend





Port Carmine

Have you considered running them through The Fall of London chronicle?

VAIROSEAN LIVES! 
   
Made in gb
Ridin' on a Snotling Pump Wagon






 harlokin wrote:
Have you considered running them through The Fall of London chronicle?


Not familiar with that one. Will have a poke around, see what I can find.

   
Made in gb
Slaanesh Chosen Marine Riding a Fiend





Port Carmine

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
 harlokin wrote:
Have you considered running them through The Fall of London chronicle?


Not familiar with that one. Will have a poke around, see what I can find.


Have played the game a fair bit, happy to help if I can.

VAIROSEAN LIVES! 
   
Made in gb
Ridin' on a Snotling Pump Wagon






I do want to wheel out my never really explored story hook of the various tunnels beneath London.

In the real world, there are far more than people might think, and of all different sizes. The underground network is of course real, and includes disused stations.

There are also formerly secret military stations from the Second World War (and quite possible the First World War).

But there also foot tunnels, smugglers tunnels etc.

Simple hook which I’ve shared on Dakka before is “what if the tunnels already existed, and man just co-opted them”.

   
Made in gb
Ridin' on a Snotling Pump Wagon






Oh, and if anyone would like my Dropbox, sling me a PM

   
Made in se
Fresh-Faced New User




I have quite a bit of second and third edition Vampire books, and the CCG as well starting from the Jyhad era up to the White Wolf era. Never played either (could never really figure out what the players are actually supposed to do in the RPG actually, and with the CCG we all know five players is ideal, I struggle to find one other player for these older games). That said would love to play both, so please keep us updated!
   
Made in us
Knight of the Inner Circle






We loved Vampire back in the day, I would take module ideas and maps from all over. One was a millennium ends / top secret type module from a random magazine where they cleaning up a rogue vampire crew in a countryside mansion, and as a side story they get lost coming back and the car breaks down in the middle of werewolf territory.

I don't recommend LARPing, that is the only time I have seen someone go to the Hospital over a roleplaying game.

 
   
 
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