Inspired from a thread in Actual Play:
So you want to make a Vampire game.

Start with some design goals. You’ve said you want it Narratiavist, which I’ll define here as focusing on story creation via character interaction with the premise. Important aspects of this will be mechanics which facilitate character-as-protagonist and which also make the game’s overall premise a part of character mechanics.

Now to premise: What do you want to explore here? What is the central emotional issue that grabs the players?

Arguably, the basic premise of VtM is: “How does your character deal with inevitable moral decay?” If you want to go this way, I’d suggest stealing the basic Humanity mechanics from Sorcerer.

A variation on this might be “the Temptation of Power.” You’re strong, immortal, and have snazzy magic powers. What do you do with it? Champion a cause? Acquire power? Sink into an endless, sybaritic party? And how do you deal with that irritating need to drink blood?

Or, you could go with the “Politics of the Night” premise – Machiavellian intrigue where the characters’ vampirism is really just a gimmick, and the threat of discovery/destruction is used as a “push” to get things going when they bog down. No need for a Humanity score here. Instead, detail is spent on motivations and social stuff.

How about “Vamps vs. Hunters?” More focus on combat and vampiric powers. Humanity might be a nice sideline, but you wouldn’t want to push it too hard.

You get the idea.

A few lines up, I wrote “detail is spent.” Let me expand on this. Think of detail as a game-design currency. You have a finite amount of it to use in your game, so you want to spend more detail on the important stuff and less on the less important stuff. The bits where you, the designer, spend the most detail cue your readers in to what you think are the most important parts of the system.

So where to spend this detail? Obviously, premise will dictate this to some extent. Lots of detail should be spent on the mechanics and information which promote/facilitate the premise. But what about other stuff, like vampiric powers?

Is the way various groups/bloodlines/individual vampires differ from each other going to be important to the premise? If not, don’t worry about possible differences. If you spend lots of detail on the various cool things vamps can do, your readers are going to assume that this is a main focus of the game. If you don’t want it to be, give all vamps the same basic powers. This shifts the weight away from differences in power to differences in personality. Keep in mind that most modern vampire fiction says little about differences in the kind of powers vampires have, except when such differences highlight differences in character. In Anne Rice’s work, Louis’ inability to read minds is a reflection of his disconnection from both humans and vampires, not a major point in itself.

Just something to think about.

Lon

Arguably, the basic premise of VtM is: “How does your character deal with inevitable moral decay?” If you want to go this way, I’d suggest stealing the basic Humanity mechanics from Sorcerer.

I'd go the parasite route myself, but I was trying to allow for the possibility that someone might want to write their own mechanics. You know how many system monkeys we have on the Forge.

Lon

I'll take a shot at it.

You have three human attributes:

Vitality: Physical stuff
Awareness: Mental stuff
Resolution: Force of motivation, will, and will to live (forever).

Further, you have three vampire Aspects:

Power: How physicaly supernatural you are; strength, speed, degree of immortality.

Dominance: How mentaly powerful you are; mind powers, animal control, control, predatory instincts

Occult: How magicaly potent you are; all the other assoretd vampire stuff. Each point is a specific power the vamp can use with a successful Attribute roll (based on the actual occult ability); stuff like weather control, shape shifting, shadow form, flight, fire creation... anything you can think of.


Rate attributes with d6's roll and add, margine of success is degree of success.

Each attribute gets a Description (part background, part ability). for activities within the description, roll all dice, in all others, roll half dice.



Vampire aspects are different. They represent plateus of power, and are fairly absolute. A vamp with Vitality 2 but a Power of 1 is stronger, faster, tougher, and more graceful than any mortal no matter how many dice they have. Roll Power, and this is the level of success against a lesser oponent.

Vamp to Vamp, power cancels out 1 to 1. So two Power 3 vamps go at it with their raw Vitality, but if one had 4, he would get a single die of automatic success instead.

The older the Vamp. the more Aspects he accumulates.


Points of an Aspect can be Burned temporarily to briefly boost that aspect to higher levels. This is with apropriate vampire eye-buldging, hissing, and vampin-out FX. Such a burn lasts for a scene max, and can leave a vamp depleted for days.


Aspects also represent a Vamp's supernatural weaknesses, and as they grow in power, their vulnerabilities also get worse.

Power inflicts Hunger, and a Resolution vs Hunger check is required to resist feeding or to go for long periods wihtou feeding.

Dominaince inflicts Fury, and it is resisted with Awareness when challanged or threatened.

Occult inflicts Banes, each point adding a new specific Bane with a potency based on the level of Occult. Sunlight, silver, mirror, herbs, home soil, running water, stake in the heart, poppy seeds, wild rose garland, holy symbols etc. Banes circumvent the protection conveyed by Power (the fact that no one with a lesser power can lay a damn hand on you, for example), and can allow a mortal to slay a vamp.





There you have it. A ten mintute vamp game, with power ballancing disadvantage internaly.

Nice B.

But what's the Premise, and how do the stats relate to it? Sounds lie you might get wrapped up in the terrible "machinations of the elder vamps" plots. Where is the conflict?

Mike

Good point. I'm not sure where the politics thing came from. I've read a lot of vampire fiction, and while some of it has something like prince/coven/pack sort of thing, the only place I've seen the massive political games is in White Wolf, not in fiction (movies, books, TV). All the other ideas sounded great: redemption, power (you live forever, can do cool things, what are you going to do w/ it), hunter/hunted.

On the mechanics side, I love the comment that where you spend your time = game focus. In most of the source material, Vamps are pretty much the same with age being the factor that differentiates how strong they are.

Ah Mike! So hard to please... ok. let me reread...


Premise...


Hmmmmm



Ok.... I'll try and hit it with some bullet points...

"Humanity" doesn't enter into it. What is at issue here is change, evolution, devolution, transformation. These vamps arn't human anymore... they remember being human... but after they've lived more years as undead than as mortal... well, weigh it.

Are you still a squalling infant? Do you even remember what that was like? Even if you did, weigh the squalling and pissing against every other experience you're accumulated. Hardly matters after a point.

Simply put, this isn't a game about loosing your humanity... that insignificant thing is gone. You're something different now. undead who bitch about their loss of humanity are rightly mocked and humiliated by the VERY catty undead community. Vampires treat each other like house cats; occasionaly forming very tight bonds which last forever, but generaly varying the tension from staring and pissing contests to outright savage slash and kill. These vamps all have the same social instincts as hunting creatures. To one degree or another, they are feral.

At best they can get together into pack-like covens with complex internal dynamics to ballance out the instincts of the blood drinkers. Such units when healthy are very powerful and interrelated. Out ov ballance, it can degenerate into a bloodbath. Covens are lead by a linked pair of alpha personalities; typicaly male and female, but this varies with culture. Watch the discovery channel for the Wolf shows. Vampire pack. This makes a great easy-to-run palyer group too. Already, interpersonaly dynamic becomes more importiant than actual powers and abilities.

Physicaly, even the weakest vamp is so superior to the strongest human that direct contest is impossible. Vamp graps human, it's pretzle time. Same goes for vamps with higher Power to lower power vamps (unless the weak ones Burn)... so physicaly, vamps avoid confrontation with each other, and only fear humans who know their Banes, but they keep a fairly low profile (to avoid supernatural enemies or whatever) and use their mental powers to wipe out memory of their exestence.


They party in war zones, collect the bricabrac of ages, and further their perosnal vendetas... just to pass the time. You have to do SOMETHING forever. Sometimes, high minded vamps go on world-spanning mytho-archeological raids looking for the species origins... other times, they go looking for a good time. Sometimes they get tangled up in local crime, politics, or buisness... sometimes, they just pass through like ghosts. There are highly territorial covens who guard their little patch of earth (and humanity) like junkyard dogs, and there are constant wanderers who never sit still.


What there is not is any kind of Big Explination. No creation myth, no 'mythic otherworld' filled with spiritual manifestions of great warring forces. It's just like this world, except there are monsters in it... and no one really notices.


So....




Premise- The Predatory Social Dynamic played throught the traditionaly familiar medium of the Vampire. No big politics, no kooky inquisition, no winging on about lost humanity. Just a bunch of egos cramed in a room, forced to find the ballance between them or die trying.

Bailywolf wrote:
Simply put, this isn't a game about loosing your humanity... that insignificant thing is gone. You're something different now. undead who bitch about their loss of humanity are rightly mocked and humiliated by the VERY catty undead community. Vampires treat each other like house cats; occasionaly forming very tight bonds which last forever, but generaly varying the tension from staring and pissing contests to outright savage slash and kill. These vamps all have the same social instincts as hunting creatures. To one degree or another, they are feral.

The Predatory Social Dynamic...

I see a R-map of elder vampires, carrying on arcane vendettas so old that even they don't know how it all started. Creatures both pathetic and powerful, clinging to vain and pointless grudges as their only touchstones in minds chaotic with the debris of centuries.

Against this background, a pack of relatively young vampires trying to work their own wills without running afoul of their elders...

Lon

P.S.
Anybody ever read the Sonja Blue novels? Vampires much like this.

What I worry about it...

- without a suitable origin myth, there is no mechanism by which to understand your own nature; this makes introspection hard.

- without the political element, your tone may go berserk and end up with vampire rockstars openly strutting the world stage. This may or may not be cool depending on your tastes.

- frankly, a bunch of predatory lunatics are not a very interesting group; this would appear to me to strongly encourage the wallow-in-orgy-of-wish-fulfillment-bloodbath pattern.

Thus, it seems to me, in the name of freeing up the vampire premise from the "burdens" imposed upon it, this has reduced the concept to what appears to me to be the very form of play that people wanted to get away from. There appears to me to be nothing about these characters which would would be interesting or catchy, apart from their vampiric status which is really just a wish-fulfillment hook. The vampiric status itself has no value, no, well, bite. IOW it seems to me to be the re-invention of the Dungeon Crawl.

Ah jeepers, now I have to use my brain (and before my first cup-o-joe too! Heartless, heartless world).

contracycle wrote:
What I worry about it...

contracycle wrote:
- without a suitable origin myth, there is no mechanism by which to understand your own nature; this makes introspection hard.

contracycle wrote:
- without the political element, your tone may go berserk and end up with vampire rockstars openly strutting the world stage. This may or may not be cool depending on your tastes.

contracycle wrote:
- frankly, a bunch of predatory lunatics are not a very interesting group; this would appear to me to strongly encourage the wallow-in-orgy-of-wish-fulfillment-bloodbath pattern.

contracycle wrote:
Thus, it seems to me, in the name of freeing up the vampire premise from the "burdens" imposed upon it, this has reduced the concept to what appears to me to be the very form of play that people wanted to get away from. There appears to me to be nothing about these characters which would would be interesting or catchy, apart from their vampiric status which is really just a wish-fulfillment hook. The vampiric status itself has no value, no, well, bite. IOW it seems to me to be the re-invention of the Dungeon Crawl.

I think that Gareth has some points. While I agree that the Humanity thing has been done to death, the Predatory Social Dynamic would probably lead to simple wish-fulfilment. In which case the original vampire game does pretty well. Not that this is bad, as Jared points out, but it might not be what a lot of players want. And in both of these cases the player fulfilment has the potential to be dampened by more powerful vampires keeping them in check. Heck, to this day the term neonate makes my skin crawl with feelings of inadequacy, impotence, and lack of control. Certainly won't work as a Narrativist premise, FWIW.

What would I like to see? Glad you asked.

What if we got rid of the whole elder vampire problem. It's an interesting concept, I'll grant you. So I'd suggest either a game that had the players as the elder vampires, or "all vampires are created equal". Let's look at each.

For the first we have a situation where there is a "community" of vampires of some size, and the players represent the top of the hierarchy. Their most important resources, then, are their relationships and controls that they have over other vampires. Which I'd think would be the way you'd generate your character, a list of these resources. At the "bottom" of your power pyramid you'd have yor newbie vampires, relatively powerless, but disposable, and renewable. At the next level would be your operative vampires, each with a primary skill. Then there would be your lieutenant vampires who would be more fleshed out like characters, with great power and whose loss would be devastating. Something like Jared's concept for Insecterotic.

Attempts to do things would be to strike from afar, and communicate through intermediaries. Resolution would be based on resources committed, and would risk loss of those resources, and exposure. Send a low level vamp and have a lesser chance of succeeding, higher chance of losing that vamp, and lower chance of exposure. Too much exposure, and even a player's elder vampire can be lost.

The premise would be "How do class and power affect your relationships?" or something like that, and I envision relationship lines (ala Isolation) that determine just how tied you are to the other top vampires by hatred and trust, etc.

Second, the all vampires are equal thing would need another angle. Let's see, humanity out, wish-fulfilment out, angst out (I'm assuming, as it has really gone out of vogue). Hmmm. How about we make the players amongst a handful of vampires in the world, and make the premise "The temptation of Power vs the Risk of exposure?" Allow vampires basic bonuses to any task they like (or give them specific powers if you like the splatty stuff), but have all resolutions have a chance of causing humans do detect oddities which may lead to the vamp (very metagame, probably). The more the power used, the more likely the exposure, and problems caused. All the GM has to do is introduce situations where the vampire wants to use power, and the plot drives itself then. As the vampire gets into trouble with humans he has to think of ways to get out. Blatant uses of power will only exacerbate the problem. Sure, kill a roomful of people who know, but then the police find lots of clues that lead back to you.

Just some ideas off the top,

Mike

Bailywolf wrote:
Where did humanity come from? How many

thousands of possible origin stories have been postulated for our species? Every culture, religion, cult, and even science all seek to explain it... but rarely agree. Who's right? Who do you believe?

all you have to depend on at all are the answers drawn from introspection. And Faith.

hinges off the premise- predatory social dynamic. Gang politics, family politis, the politics of love and hate.

wacked 'in house'. Just watch the movies. Which kind of vampire lives for a long time? The crazy, seriel killer, blood-splattered loony or the fairly level headed bloke with a measure of caution and healthy relatioships with other vamps? The

Predatory Social Dynamic- the premise. Could just as easily be supported with werewolves, demons, hungry ghosts, or whatever.

Personal Stakes- not a game about warring political organizations with florid names... but about the personal grudges, rivalries, and attractions between beings who both love and hate each other; are both attracted and repelled

The Curse of Relativism- when you've been freed from morality, from material concern, and even death... how do you find meaning? The descent

Kewlness- come on, is wish fulfilment so bad? In the basic mechanics, I wanted to drop a pile of raw power in the player's laps. "here! now you

The more the power used, the more likely the exposure, and problems caused. All the GM has to do is introduce situations where the vampire wants to use power, and the plot drives itself then. As the vampire gets into trouble with humans he has to think of ways to get out. Blatant uses of power will only exacerbate the problem. Sure, kill a roomful of people who know, but then the police find lots of clues that lead back to you.

Again, Gareth has a point. In fact it's a pet peeve of mine.

(rant on)

I too often see games that fail to include important facts about the game universe under the pretext of "allowing" the GM to come up with the relevant fact, or for mood's sake. I think that these are often excuses for an unwillingness for whatever reason on the part of the designer to come up with the information. Perhaps he's not iterested enough, perhaps he can't think of anything good. Whatever. The problem is that I obtained the game for those details.

The worst example of this is statements like, "The origins of vampirism are lost in the mists of time." Yes, very nice. And I can tell my players that. But as the GM, I want to know. Why? Because it may become important at some point, and I don't want to have to make it up. If I had wanted to make something up, I would have just made my own game. What the designer is giving me is incomplete. How does not having that information improve the game? The freedom argument is silly. If I don't like what you have in the game, I'll make that decision and change it. Just becasue you have something written down as cosmology of history in the text doesn't mean that I don't have the freedom to change it. And as for the mood argument, I prefer texts to have information over trying to evoke a mood somehow. If you must evoke a mood, do it some other way, please.

In fact, in the particular case, I'd like to see not only the real reason for how vampirism got started, but the myths as well. This way the players can have access to ideas that can acctually serve to drive the game, even if they are just myths. For example, it might be interesting to have a myth about the "first vampire" being a creature that proved his mettle time and again by killing other vampires thus "proving" that vampires should be all about survival of the fittest. Only to later learn that this vampire never existed, and that vampirism is simply a complicated blood disease.

(/rant)

As Gareth said, essentially, (and I've heard Ron say frequently) setting can really drive a premise if designed to do so.

Mike

Understand.

But disagree. My favorite games are the ones which don't presume to tell me how I want to play. Ron's Sorcerer is a perfect example. He sets up a very simple but solid scheme for characters, powers, and motivations... but leaves setting aside. The default setting is almost a guideline (again, how I like it). I never intended the initial splash to be anythng but a possible outline; I've been making up the detailed stuff when challanged to justify it (thanks, by the way, this kind of sparring is the only way I figure things out).

I prefer toolkit games which include mix-n-match setting components. There are some notable exceptions. I love the setting for Over the Edge and for Unknown Armies. Both are wide open, though, with full designer caveat to go crazy. Both are settings with plenty of room for the knees.

Basicly, I like games who's designers invite me into the sandbox to play with their Tonka trucks.

Give me an hour, and I'll give you a more solid setting.

Bailywolf wrote:
Revolution

...The young vampires rise up, slaughter the elders, and swear blood-oaths never to become like them. Oaths they almost always break.

Hmmm. Note, however, that the Setting supplements for Sorcerer all have important effects on how the game plays. Sure, they all have the same general premise, but the setting focuses it in certain ways. You had to come up with the "Revolution" setting to highlight how your general premise might be applied. Sorcerer never says anything like, "the origins of Demons are a mystery," but on the contrary points out that you must specify where demons come from. It leaves it tailorable in an open way, while still recognizing the critical importance of it.

You don't have to be encyclopedic, but just don't be evasive. Like I said it's those, "It's a mystery!" comments that really disturb me. If you don't mention it then maybe it's not really important and I'll ignore it. The mystery thing makes me feel like it might be important, but you've left it out for no good reason. It's almost like saying, "Well, this is really important, but we couldn't some up with anything good, so you do it."

If you really want to go the Sorcerer option state that the origin of vampires is very important and in coming up with a setting you must decide on what that origin is.

Mike

You know what? I just reread an old private message, and if I ever run a narativeist vampire game I'm going to do with Chris Chinn(AKA Bankuei) Persona system. This is a perfect perfect perfect match for vampire stuff. Here is a thread detailing it:

http://indie-rpgs.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=983

He hooked me up with a preliminary version of the system, and I've actualy played with it. It would excell at a vamp game. Seriously, get in touch with him and check it out. I withdraw all my system asertions... his mechanic is the way to run it.

Cop out.

Not that Persona is a bad system, but I thought we were having fun hashing out a premise specific narrativist system here. Persona is generic, and, as such, will be less than optimum for any Premise, IMO. Note I say that having devloped a generic system of my own. What generic systems are best for is running a game that you don't have a system for already.

Which is what I thought we were doing here. Come back, I still wanna play!

Mike

Mike Holmes wrote:
The worst example of this is statements like, "The origins of vampirism are lost in the mists of time."

Zak Arntson wrote:
Would you be satisfied with the presentation of multiple origin myths, and let the GM pick one or use the provided myths as inspiration for her own, if she likes? As a designer, I would probably be more comfortable with this method than saying, "Here's the absolute truth."

[gets up off couch, groans, streches]

Ok ok... er...


Ok, use my quick and dirty resolution mechanics.

Characters begin immediatly after a Revolution; still covered in the back ichor or their creator. With the characters' stats laid down (divide 10 points among attributes, and among aspects say), the Coven goes round one by one any swears an Oath. One Oath per points of Resolve.

The more Resolute the vampire, the stronger his social position in the new pack. So the more Oaths he swears, the higher his position.

Oaths can be things like "I will never betray my coven" or "I will rid the world of that bastard Flavius" or as you say "I will only feed when starving" or "Only kill when Angry".

Break and Oath with Coven witnesses, you loose both both the oath, the point of Resolve, and some status. It might be possible to recover Resolve, sweare new oaths, and recapture the esteme of your pack, but this should fairly difficult.

Break the Oath in private, and blow a certain kind of roll (such as "I Will Never Glut Again" is broken when the vampire smokes some mad weed and gets the munchies; he gorges himself at a bus station [and if he blows his Awareness vs Domination check, he looses the resolve and the respect.]. If the bus station glutton manages to beat his own Domination, he gets away with it... but should have some kind of mark against that Oath... get enough of them, and someone is bound to find out.


How about this for convergence?

contracycle wrote:

I could certainly go for a model of RPG which divorced system and setting, constructed generalist system like Sorcerer and non-mechanical worlds. What I don't understand is this hesitancy to be specific, to lay out your ideas - in short, to express yourself and your vision. In this rergard I could see how systems could be constructed with ambiguous backstories, but certainbly not settings. And the problem here is that if the setting is *implicitly* the real world, you do need, IMO, to explain all the funky stuff.

So essentially, when I find designers who have chickened out on telling me the skinny on the basis that they don't want to impinge in my "freedom", I feel as I've just been suckered.

How about this for convergence?

Bailywolf wrote:
And even "There is no answer; no one knows" works for me.

Or how about a very deliberate, structured game as an optional (sort of like how most Whisperning Vault episodes are specific hunts).

Each character has a "pass" which will jump the game forward in time X number of years. This pass can be played at any time, and X represents the number of other players who agree to throw their pass into the pile.

1 pass- 1-6 years (+1 to a single Aspect)
2 passes- 10-60 years (+1 to all Aspects)
3 passes- 100-600 years (+3 to all Aspects)

Each Pass played means the current crisis / situation is delt with in retrospect through narated dialogue- Basicly, a new kicker emerges as palyers go around the table and play "remember when". Players must abide any narative declarations made by other players. This can turn into a session of back-biting and betrayal or serious camradrie building.

If the group dynamic between players is bad (as is almost always the case if group dynamic among the characters is bad) then you will get some serious f-yous here:

"I can't believe you ran from that werwolf. You know how fast those bastards are! You deserve those facial scars."
or

"Shame you lost that talisman. The immunity it granted to sunlight was great..."


but if things are good, it can turn into a bit or rip-roaring ingame character building.

"Holy shit, dude, I still can't believe we got away with all these diamonds..."






I was also thinking about some kind of 'redeclaration' where by elders who manage to successfuly get off their asses and break a revolution recover Resolve and can then lead the pack of defeated revolutionaries... for a time...

Or in the same vien, if one pack destroys another and takes it's territory (whether it actualy be real land, a buisness empire, a drug cartel, a movie studio, or whatever), they can Rededicate, swearing new oaths (to keep things fresh) and recovering some Resolve.



As for the vampire creation/depletion... How about a simple investemnt of Resolve? If you want a willing vampire servent who will not betray you, you must invest him with a portion of your will PERMENATLY. You burn a point of Resolve and get a powerful alley.

Packs can avoid this by creating new members communaly, and putting them through a ritualized version of their Oath Swearing rights; so new vampires are welcomed into the pack with revelry and declaration of Oaths... but this can be dangerous, as new members might easily have the vitality and Resolve to overpower the current Alpha's popularity... so many new vampire prospects would be put through the psychological wringer pre-transformation to ensure they fall somewhere in the center of the dynamic.

Bailywolf wrote:
Or how about a very deliberate, structured game as an optional (sort of like how most Whisperning Vault episodes are specific hunts).

Each character has a "pass" which will jump the game forward in time X number of years. This pass can be played at any time, and X represents the number of other players who agree to throw their pass into the pile.

1 pass- 1-6 years (+1 to a single Aspect)
2 passes- 10-60 years (+1 to all Aspects)
3 passes- 100-600 years (+3 to all Aspects)

Each Pass played means the current crisis / situation is delt with in retrospect through narated dialogue- Basicly, a new kicker emerges as palyers go around the table and play "remember when". Players must abide any narative declarations made by other players. This can turn into a session of back-biting and betrayal or serious camradrie building.

I was also thinking about some kind of 'redeclaration' where by elders who manage to successfuly get off their asses and break a revolution recover Resolve and can then lead the pack of defeated revolutionaries... for a time...

Or in the same vien, if one pack destroys another and takes it's territory (whether it actualy be real land, a buisness empire, a drug cartel, a movie studio, or whatever), they can Rededicate, swearing new oaths (to keep things fresh) and recovering some Resolve.

As for the vampire creation/depletion... How about a simple investemnt of Resolve? If you want a willing vampire servent who will not betray you, you must invest him with a portion of your will PERMENATLY. You burn a point of Resolve and get a powerful alley.

Packs can avoid this by creating new members communaly, and putting them through a ritualized version of their Oath Swearing rights; so new vampires are welcomed into the pack with revelry and declaration of Oaths... but this can be dangerous, as new members might easily have the vitality and Resolve to overpower the current Alpha's popularity... so many new vampire prospects would be put through the psychological wringer pre-transformation to ensure they fall somewhere in the center of the dynamic.

I figure vamps created by individuals are basicly 'property' unless adopted by the pack. They have no Oaths (and thus, no Staus in the pack), they can expect nothing from other pack members... and this can lead to some intresting internal problems if the Alpha's uppity slave starts mouthing off to lesser pack members...

I've been reading a lot of Roman history recently, and the place in society a roman slave held was intresting. They bore a certain unoficial status based on who their owner was, and they understood the pecking order. They couldn't exactly be out-in-out hostile to citizens of lesser rank then their master... but could make life difficult in all kinds of subtle ways (I'm sorry, you don't seem to have an apointment...). This was sort of how I imagined these subordinate vamps to be. Right hand men, favorite pets, private lovers etc.

Actualy, the oportunities for internal discord make my mouth water as a GM...

"Master, we must speak with you about Demetri!"

"Not now, I'm almost to the final stage. This Metal Gear Solid rocks!"

"But master! He's been killing clergy again! The Order of St. Muerto is after us."

"Damn you fools! I'm sick of you blaming your incompetence on my Demetri! He's more loyal than the lot of you!"

"grumble grumble grumble"

"What was that!"

"Nothing... master....grumble..."




I can see the player's pack, just off a successful Coup against their territory's elders encounter what seems to be another, very tight-knit pack... but something doesn't seem right aobut them... they all seem... too focused on the master, with not enough internal dynamic...

They soon discover the Master is in fact an Elder who has created half a dozen servents instead of founding a new, healthy pack. A sick perversion on the vampire social ideal. Such a creature must pay.







As for neighboring packs fighting it out... I though it would be cool to provide a useful mechanic to explain why vamps always seem to be trying to kill each other off- it strengthens their will to live.

And it provides some nice campaign structures (waring vampire cartels/corporations/tv studions etc).

A bit of a lark, really.

Bailywolf wrote:
"Master, we must speak with you about Demetri!"

"Not now, I'm almost to the final stage. This Metal Gear Solid rocks!"

"But master! He's been killing clergy again! The Order of St. Muerto is after us."

"Damn you fools! I'm sick of you blaming your incompetence on my Demetri! He's more loyal than the lot of you!"

"grumble grumble grumble"

"What was that!"

"Nothing... master....grumble..."

As for neighboring packs fighting it out... I though it would be cool to provide a useful mechanic to explain why vamps always seem to be trying to kill each other off- it strengthens their will to live.

And it provides some nice campaign structures (waring vampire cartels/corporations/tv studions etc).

As for the Rededication...

I was thinking in terms of the whole dance of destruction...

The inital stages of counting coup, of testing, of Opening strategy.

The middle, the manipulation and hostilities, the plots and schemes gradualy bringing the two packs into tighter and tighter physical proximity... at first making eye contact across hotel lobies, high ways, pool rooms... then the first skirmishes of actual physical conflict, as the enemy pack tries to single out the weakest members of an the enemy, to test their strength, to torture or kill them to both reduce the strength of the enemy and to send a clear message: we are coming for you.

End Game. When all is said and done, vampires are physical. When the games are done, the final waltz of death must begin. Both sides will try and make this happen on their own terms, in their own territory, and against the weakest possible competition... and the tension leading up to this bloody make-or-break climax must be enormous...

I could make my players sweat bullets during this; make them curse me for ending a session before resolution, making them wait another week to play again...

Join me in my dance of death!


It isn't the actual slaughter of the elders or the destruction of the enemy pack which allows for Rededication, it is the whole dance, the whole process of dynamic destruction culminated in either death or and bloody orgasm of violence and camradrie. The blood only seals the deal.

This kind of thing is meant as the climax for a major story arc. Characters will recover Resolve, sweare new Oaths, and the netire group dynamic can change radicaly; the underdog might become the alpha wolf.

Some excellent stuff here.

"Can you maintain your principles in the face of meaninglessness?"

furashgf wrote:

"Can you maintain your principles in the face of meaninglessness?"

I think this, from an earlier post, may have been meant humorously, but it's a pretty sweet way of handling the whole Vampire/Humanity/Angst thing w/ a Narritivist premise.

Yep, actually that premise is very similar to my tweak of the standard Sorcerer premise for Sorcerer & Space (which I continue to make slow progress on).

Well, Mr. Wolf? Got enough for a write up? Something you can slap in the library so we can all have a reference to play? Your description of the rededication rationale convinced me, at least. Sounds like a great game. No longer is the killing just for wish-fulfilment, now it has a much deeper meaning. It steels your resolve, and gives meaning through Oaths. I wanna play!

Or is something still missing? Ah, yes, title again. I like your phrase "Waltz of Death". Evokes the Revolution, the waltz indicated repeating cycles. Death for destruction and vampires. Very evocative. Very Austrian Counts. The wheels go around; time to kill again. Anybody else like that? Or have a better idea?

Mike

I was monkeying around with titles...

'Oaths' (with variations; 'Blood Oaths' etc)

'The Politics of Wolves' (or PoW to the net-savy game crowd... problem is that, while it sounds cool, it evokes werewolves...)

Shame 'Endless Waltz' is taken up by that Gundum movie... that is one of my favorite titles I wish I'd come up with.

Or something a bit pretentious... like 'bloody revolution' in latin or something (or 'Blood Oaths' in latin perhaps? let me grab my dictionary...).

Ok, how about Iuro Cruentus... I'm not sure about the grammer, but basicly it's "To Make a Bloody Oath".

Is latin too hokey?



Let me hit you with some simple mechanical refinements; nothing thematic, just system monkey stuff.


> Traits are rated with d6's. Roll em and add.
> Successes are determined by the margine by which a roll beats the oposing roll (or fixed difficulty) as follows:

Greater = 1 success
Double = 2 successes
Tripple = 3 successes
etc.

I roll a 12, my oponent rolls a 4, this is a tripple success.

> When vampire aspects enhance mundane actions, they simply provide an automatic level of success based on the difference in the oposing aspects. A vampire with a Power of 3 has an automatic tripple success against any human in a physical contest. Against another vampire with power 3, he must make normal Vitality rolls.

> In combat, Vitality is lost based on the number of successes scored. Vamps can make short work of humans, but fight one another on more even terms. Combat tends to be fast and deadly. The type of damage determines how long it takes to recover from it. A punch in the gut might be overcome by stumbling back out of combat for a round or two and making a Recovery roll, while gunshot wounds will take months for a mortal to recover from (if at all). Weapons don't inflict any more damage; they just inflict a different, more persistent injury.

Vamps get to laugh at most injury; mortals have sod all chance to actualy hurt a vamp unless they can bring one of his Banes into play. Vamp to Vamp, things even out or one vamp gets bitch slapped. But no one said you had to fight fair, right?



I'll hammer out a basic system, theme, and premise document this weekend. Work out the internal conflict mechanics, Oaths, Pack Status and metagame structures.

It won't be terribly pretty, but then neither am I.

First, as always, I am a fan of the "all opposed rolls" rule. Then, even if you're just rolling one die on each side, you still get a curve. I can explain why I like it more, if need be, but consider it.

Anyhow, what happens on a tie? I like narration of continuing action and rolling again, but there are other options.

I like keeping successes rolled as rolling bonuses to your die roll. So, instead of cashing in on a single success, I can just roll another die next "round". So, for instance in combat, a success can be used to add one die to your combat pool, narrated as getting the better of the opponent positionally, or whatever. Perhaps you have to get a triple success to take out an opponent, or you can wound him for a double. Then it becomes very important to continue to accumulate successes in order to get the desired wounds of finishing blows. This gives you dramatic combat that builds to the sudden kill. Not short, but not boring. I'm stealing this concept from Paul Elliot's (Mithras) Zenobia combat.

So, instead of one success, two successes, etc. have Incremental Success, Sucess, and Complete Success, all which can be recognized as bonus dice.

Just some ideas.

Mike

Consider that stolen!

I love it... and allows for each die throw to be narrated