[WoD 2.0] Why the Supernatural? Why Now?

[Sydney Freedberg]

Have you read much detective fiction? Not mystery novels like Agathie Christie, but the hardboiled, gnarled stuff where the issue is less "who did it" than "why" and the moral tangles turn out to connect everybody's painful pasts? I've just gotten into this myself based on Ron Edwards' recommendations in Sorcerer's Soul and read Chandler's Big Sleep and Ellroy's Black Dahlia (same author as L.A. Confidential). These are very good models for taking multiple, apparently unrelated "kickers" (clues or killings or what have you) and ultimately revealing they all stem from the same underlying moral awfulness that's been going on for a long time.

Now with your specific characters, from reading the White Wolf Forums posts, you seem to have (1) one who is none too nice to prostitutes (2) one who likes teenage girls a bit too much (3) one who's a recent immigrant from a 3rd World country. Now, since prostitutes are often underage new immigrants, you have one very, very easy way to link their personal problems together at a shot.

[Robert Bohl]

Wow, Sydney, what the hell is wrong with me that I didn't see that? :)  Thank you.  Hmm.

As to the hard-boiled fiction:  I've read Chandler's The Postman Always Rings Twice and a couple of others whose titles I can't remember.  They didn't really pop for me as novels for some reason.  I could get through them and find stuff to enjoy in them but they didn't make me want to read the next page NOW, know what I mean?  But I'm always open to new experiences.

Anyway, I take your point.  I understand the tone there and will see if it feels right to employ it.

[Sydney Freedberg]

Oh, I hadn't read any of this stuff until Ron (I genuflect thrice) Edwards put me onto it as a potential model for RPG scenarios.

And the thought that struck me just after I hit "post": Turning what other people have suggested on its head, maybe the Weird Stuff that the PCs have been researching all this time really is bullshit, and the true horror lies in their personal backstories, without them even realizing it? Maybe all the tabloid nightmares are just a smokescreen put out by the Powers That Be so we don't notice that the real monsters are out there, running 14-year-old girls across the Mexican border to be sold as sex slaves....

[Robert Bohl]

My initial gut reaction was that the magazine has been funded by The Publisher (my notes for him in my "ideas" document are:  The Publisher is a kindly, doddering and old, he's got an old-money Mid-Atlantic accent (like FDR).), who is a vampire that uses the magazine's slightly comical tone and obvious lack of journalistic thoroughness to aid the Masquerade (if they're still calling it that; I have yet to read Requiem, though I own it).

I'm a little squicked by that, because it reeks of the oWoD "Vampires control everything."

That may be mitigated somewhat by this being something that the co-executive-editors, a couple of ordinary mortal college buddies, started the magazine and run it, and The Publisher only came in after the fact and helped to upgrade the quality of the publication.

My good buddy Judd (Paka, here) was bothered by the whole "Vampires are really in control" aspect to this, too, and suggested that The Publisher might be a freaky old guy who had a caged vampire whose blood he used to power himself.  I rather like that, but then the "keeping the real supernatural world quiet" impetus is punctured.

[Lisa Padol]

My good buddy Judd (Paka, here) was bothered by the whole "Vampires are really in control" aspect to this, too, and suggested that The Publisher might be a freaky old guy who had a caged vampire whose blood he used to power himself.  I rather like that, but then the "keeping the real supernatural world quiet" impetus is punctured.

Nah, it isn't -- the Publisher still has reason to keep quite.

1. He doesn't want to share the goodies
2. He doesn't want the other vampires to kill him
3. Maybe he's in cahoots with the vampires -- they gave him his toy in return for his help, the caged vamp being on the outs with the others for some reason.

-Lisa Padol

[Robert Bohl]

Lisa, I like #3 especially.

Maybe The Publisher's victim is one who Done Wrong.  I'm thinking he's old money, and maybe the family's influence is such that it can even sway the supernatural world.  Perhaps he's the former Thrall to a vampire that was killed by his victim, and the Prince gave him this vampire as a reward.

[Sydney Freedberg]

...it reeks of the oWoD "Vampires control everything."

Yeah, that always annoyed me to. But there are two types of creature who ride a horse: Humans and fleas. One controls the direction; one just hangs on for the ride and sucks blood. If you imagine vampires and other supernatural nasties as lurking in the shadows, embodying our worst selves and the things we deny about our society -- in other words if you take them seriously not in power-political terms (Simulationist) but as walking metaphors (Narrativist) -- then they don't have to control everything. They don't even have to want to. "Go ahead, worry about your global conspiracies and your black helicopter," they say. "Here's a nice tabloid to keep you busy. Meanwhile we're happily smuggling and selling illegal immigrants, right in your neighborhood, and taking 10 percent off the top to eat."

[Lisa Padol]

Lisa, I like #3 especially.

So do I. It's nicely twisted.

-Lisa Padol

[Lisa Padol]

Yeah, that always annoyed me to. But there are two types of creature who ride a horse: Humans and fleas. One controls the direction; one just hangs on for the ride and sucks blood. If you imagine vampires and other supernatural nasties as lurking in the shadows, embodying our worst selves and the things we deny about our society -- in other words if you take them seriously not in power-political terms (Simulationist) but as walking metaphors (Narrativist) -- then they don't have to control everything. They don't even have to want to. "Go ahead, worry about your global conspiracies and your black helicopter," they say. "Here's a nice tabloid to keep you busy. Meanwhile we're happily smuggling and selling illegal immigrants, right in your neighborhood, and taking 10 percent off the top to eat."

Or they could be part of the solution, in odd ways. Anyone catch the movie Underworld? The vampires there were heavily invested in sponsoring medical research into blood substitutes.

-Lisa Padol

[Rob Carriere]

Rob,
Mostly this is a `what Chris and Sidney said', but there's one additional point I want to sneak in: The kickers you have posted so far are "safe". They keep a clear distance between the characters' cores and the supernatural. If what you're looking for is not blood-and-gore horror but gnaws-at-your-soul horror, then you must cross that distance (Chris' Lovecraft examples all do this).

Now, if you want to tie stuff together, you've got a beautiful 1-2 setup. The characters get involved on their "safe" kickers and then later (with the revelation of the tie-together) it turns out that things aren't safe at all, that they are in beyond any hope of getting out.

Let them play for a bit in the safe mode, getting to know the PCs and geting to care about some NPCs and then reveal the tie-in. This should directly impact both the PCs and the cared-about NPCs.

Actual Play example: a PC of mine recently got to kill one of her daughters as the daughter had turned into a vampire. That daughter had been on the stage for several sessions before this happened, so not only the PCs, but the players had gotten to know her and like her. That has an impact. (and not just on me: the player of the PC who helped my character hunt down the daughter is an experienced Vampire: the Masquerade player and he said afterwards that that was easily the most horrific vampire scene he'd ever been in.) That the PCs cared about the daughter was crucial for the story, but that the players cared about her was crucial for the horror of it.

SR
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[Robert Bohl]

The kickers you have posted so far are "safe".

By "safe", do you mean that they aren't specific to the individual?  That they are things that could occur to anyone?  Or do you mean that they don't endanger the person or the people that person loves?

And do you think the solution to this is to ask for different Kickers and redefine what I want (which for this session at least, isn't going to work out, because I don't have enough time) or to take those and make the "Rob's thoughts" apply directly to their situations?

Incidentally, I take your point about involving important NPCs.  I definitely want to do that.  If I go the route of a supernatural "mentor" for Harris, I may develop his wife more, make the players kind of like her if I can, and then have the benefactor kill her to help Harris get over the relationship.

[Rob Carriere]

Rob,
By "safe" I mean that they involve the characters and force some action out of them, but they do not threaten the characters' sense of self. It doesn't really matter whether they are dangerous in an action-adventure sense, it matters that they will allow the character to resolve the kicker one way or the other and walk away the same person they were before. That's incompatible with the kind of horror I described. In that kind of horror there must be a threat to the indentity of the person. Lovecraft's heroes have the choice between walking out on the story (they hope) or going mad. That sort of thing.

And I think the kickers you have are just fine and dandy.

The reason is that unsafe kickers won't work until there's been time for the players to get attached to various characters, PC and NPC. So you need a bit a of breathing space at the start (again, read the Lovecraft stuff and look at his use of tempo). The kickers will give you that.

Then, when all is nicely in motion, you drop the safeties and show them how it all dreadfully fits together.

Technically, I suppose that would make those second-stage things Bangs, not Kickers. Whatever the name, you could ask the players to come up with the tie-in revelation(s) or you could spring them as suprise(s). Depends on the kind of game you (plural) prefer.

SR
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[Robert Bohl]

So the Kickers may be safe, but the "meaning" I impart to them can make them non-safe, yes?

[Ron Edwards]

To interject here for a moment about Kickers:

Kickers will only ever take on their meaning, which is to say their "grab" factor in the emotions/interest of everyone who's participating, during play.

How the Kicker is written should help this to happen, but the details of how it does that will vary greatly, from group to group.

The simplest cases are (a) interesting and provocative Kicker + illuminating and inspiring play; (b) boring and blah Kicker + standstill and blah play. However ...

In group #1, someone may write an astounding and fascinating Kicker and then ... nothing happens about it, or in an engaging way, during play itself. The player shot his wad in the writing and all is over.

In group #2, someone may write a boring and blah Kicker, and then during play, it takes off like a rocket with everyone all excited. Some kind of cue or input during play (sometimes I talk about "spiking" Kickers) turned it into what it was supposed be.

There is no way, just from looking at the text of Kickers, to know what will happen. I do recommend inspiring written Kickers, but there are no guarantees.

Best,
Ron

[Robert Bohl]

Ron, do you regard Kickers that involve the character's background as necessary to be inspiring?  Or do ones which are "merely" interesting although not explicitly about the character or his history have the ability to be inspiring?