A group of people who I've never played with, and who've never played with each other, have somehow elected me to run a game of Vampire for them. No problem. What I'd like to do to check out group dynamics before we get into a long-running campaign, though, is to run a one- or two-session scenario.

I was thinking of doing a survival horror scenario set in a mental asylum. Here's what I'm worried about:

1) As initially conceived, I had some goofy metagame stuff going on in the scenario. I was going to move the group between four different rooms IRL as we played, each room representing what's going on in the mind of one of the characters (I'm running for four players), without telling them that this is the reason we're wandering around the house while we play (though they're all smart kids, and there are enough hints that they'd pick up on it sooner or later).

Just to explain the scenario a bit more: The reason I was/am going to move them from room to room to simulate each other's hallucinations (or are they?) is because the characters are all wards of the asylum. They wake up in the middle of the night to find that their rooms are unlocked, the outside doors are all locked tight, and there doesn't seem to be anyone else in the place. Various weirdness ensues, with the zombies eventually making an appearance. There is a Big Bad in the scenario, though I haven't figured out what it is yet - I'm not sure if I'm going to bother, or just go with whatever the characters come up with first as the actual answer. The moving-from-room-to-room/moving-from-one-character's-head-to-another bit simulates the Big Bad poking through their minds and finding what terrifies them the most, and then throwing that at them, either in the form of group hallucinations or as actual manifested stuff. The Big Bad is capable of raising the dead (or the dead have arisen on their own - not sure which yet), but isn't capable of manifesting actual physical harm or monsters that can harm the characters, so it's trying to freak everyone out into killing each other, which is how it's wiped out everyone else in the asylum thus far.

Is this a bit too out there for an initial session?

2) Should I use pre-gen characters? Normally for a one-shot scenario I make the characters to save time and make sure that the characters have the skills/motivations to get through the game. Since this scenario is a sort of litmus test for what my players are into before we start the real deal, am I missing out on valuable marketing research by not letting people make their own characters?

3) Should I use the Storyteller system used in Vampire, just to get us all warmed up for it, or if not, which system should I use?

Pre-emptive thanks to all you gurus out there.

I'd say that if your goal for the initial session is to gauge how people will play then you should probably stick to the ritual space you're going to use for the long-term game. Controlled experiment and all that.

But what you're thinking certainly sounds fun! Is it possible that you want to do more experimental things than run Vampire?

One of the things you have to be really careful of is - what if Big Bad succeeds? He will have set the characters against each other. That's no problem. However, in such a new group of people unknwn to each other (at least gaming-wise), you have to be really cautious that these things don't translate into player vs. player.

Of course, if you can turn this around, make the players aware that trusting each other is good even if their characters don't, then you'll have gained instead.

If you want to run more long-term vampire with the storyteller system, I'd just go with the system from the get-go. Maybe strip out some stats to make a 'light' version, if there's stuff that wouldn't really be relevant to your first double-session.

The physical nature of wandering around will probably be a good ice-breaker and draw in the players.

Instead of pre-built characters, or total character building, how about having a few building blocks ready-made? In such a way that every character is built out of 5 basic blocks? Enough customising for a 2-shot, not too much time lost.

And a side question - why would risen dead attack vampires automatically? Or is big bad's attitude-altering still present in the dead?

Have you seen the Vampire-Lite download at the WW site? If your players are new to the system, you might use those for the one-shot. Chargen is quick-n-dirty in terms of number shuffle, but the core roleplaying part of the process is intact.

Woot! Replies! :D

Okay, I'll do this post by post:

TonyLB: It's funny that you ask if I'm into more experimental stuff...not fifteen minutes after I read your post, I stumbled across Lacuna. And. WOW. This is the game I've always wanted to run. I'm so in tune with this thing that it's scary. I think I'm actually going to save the asylum scenario for that, since I'm now thinking "Screw Vampire with a splintery two-by-four." I'm running Lacuna.

Of course, now I need to come up with a different ice-breaker scenario. But running Lacuna instead of Vampire is totally worth it.

Tobias: Well, most of those concerns are out the window now. The point about the characters fighting each other in the intro scenario translating into intragroup conflict down the road is very well taken, though. And to answer your side question, the characters in that scenario weren't going to be vampires, just regular mortals.

Komradebob: The group I'm going to run for is already familiar with Vampire. Which seems like yet another reason to run something else.

So, to thread drift my own post: Has anyone out there run Lacuna? I'd be more than happy to post my games here, if there's an interest in reading how it goes. Does Jared Sorenson post/read here?

Hey, Kushiel, can you post a link to the Lacuna site?

Absolutely. Here is the site, with a totally gorgeous teaser/trailer:

http://memento-mori.com/lacuna/

The .pdf download link is on the right of the first page this link will bring you to. I very much recommend going through the trailer, though, as it's very good at evoking the atmosphere of the game and packed with hooks.