Afraid Initiations ("Premonitions")

[Ludanto]

I read earlier about Vincent having the idea of letting the players play the victim during Afraid's Initiation phase and I thought I might throw some ideas out there.

First, I thought it would be cool to call them "Premonitions" since that sounds creepy and it gives the players a taste of things to come.

Here's how I'd do it...

First, since part of the idea of the initiations is that it gives the players a chance to try out the rules, the victim would need stats beyond the NPC arena pool.  These are just for the initation, though.  Afterward, the NPC has the normal arena pool.  The dice sizes and amounts can be tweaked, but the idea is to have a standard "form" to fill in.  Things in parentheses need to have descriptive names filled in.

Something like...

3d6 Acuity
3d6 Body
3d6 Heart
3d6 Will

Traits
1d4 Afraid
2d6 (Victim's "Job")
1d8 (Victim's "Strength")
1d10 (Victim's "Passion")

Relationships
1d4 (Victim's Rival)
1d6 (An Authority Figure)
2d6 (Victim's Friend)

Possessions
1d4 (Something Crappy)
1d6 (Something that lends the Victim strength)
2d6 (Something that "defines" the Victim)

As for the "Monster's" dice, I'm thinking it might be useful to just use either a standard "initiation" pool (ala Dogs) or maybe a randomly rolled NPC pool for each initiation.

I think that the Victim should suffer a circumstance in each initiation.  Either the same as the player's character (though that might be boring and might miss some of the circumstances) or one of each, in order.  The order might change, but I'm thinking Lost, Alone, Unprepared and In Trouble.  I think you should end with In Trouble, so if you only have 3 players, start with Alone.  Only 2?  Start with Unprepared.  More than 4 for some reason?  Start in the previous loop, like (for 6 players) Unprepared, In Trouble, Lost, Alone, Unprepared, In Trouble.

Lastly, what are the stakes, mechanically?

I'm thinking one of a few possibilities...

If you win, no starting circumstance for your character.  I don't know about this one, because Circumstances are cool.
If you win, monster loses 1d10 from his starting, 10d10 victim pool.
If you win, you get bonus dice like from fallout.

Depending on which reward it is, the penalty for loss could be extra d10s for the monster, or extra "bonus" dice for the GM.

What do you think?  I'd try it out myself but my local friends don't like to try anything cool.

[Valvorik]

By passions do you mean the "essential human quality" that attracts Monster?

If one of their traits was that (but not clear which one), it would be cool.

Perhaps stakes for success involve players learning which one or a fact about the Monster (that victim will recount to their characters or will be reported etc.).

I wouldn't remove circumstances, they drive story starting and I wouldn't remove anything that is "story content", so dice or something like facts could be a stake.

In campaign play, would this be a "first Monster only" thing or would it repeat?  DitV initiation isn't specifically linked to the first town.

For Victim being played, how much Monster information is it okay to have come out here for players to know that their characters don't?  My vision of game is that Monster information is released by GM aggressively, but not "freely".

Perhaps the Victim gets conflicts where the stakes relate to the backgrounds of the players.  The Victim wants to bring in a professional, someone from the "someone" list doesn't want that.  The Victim wants help from their Attached, "someone" doesn't want (rival etc.).  The Victim is more desparate (we're now at stage 2), they reach out to an Entangled, again "someone" doesn't want that.  Perhaps they even start reaching out to a Veteran (they may know or not supernatural is involved, it may just be they reach out to a PI with a reputation for handling this wierd stuff).  As many of those as there are PC's.  That can determine which backgrounds are available, or it can determine how much characters start knowing.  Success means they start knowing something about victimization, failure means they don't, etc.

That makes those "someones" more real with player characters meet them.  Some firewalls necessary as the player characters meet sweet Aunt Bea not realizing the cruel things she did to keep the fiancee (Attached) from finding out (that the players do know).

Failure also sees the Victim take fallout that weakens them, making them easier prey.

[cdr]

I like The Princes' Kingdom use of Proving.  What if each accomplishment was something a PC proved to or by way of the first victim (or failed to prove)?  The player would play their PC, the GM would get 4d6+4d10 as in Dogs, and perhaps GM fallout would be applied to the victim.  Would that be too limiting?  "Here's the most important thing that happened between you and <X> before things started" where instead of <X> being the Dog's Temple, it's the monster's first victim.

"I proved I can be trusted."

"I proved we can still be friends after."

"I proved I can give up drugs."

"I proved family is more important than work."

Bonus goodness if the GM works in the victim's passion that will later attract the monster.  Foreshadowing!