A few days ago I saw a British mini-series called Ultraviolet. It was more or less a serious crime drama that just happened to include vampires. It wasn't really a horror story at all but rather spent its time wrapped up in all the issues related to, basically, being a member of anti-terrorist organization. The terrorists just happened to also be vampires. I really enjoyed it and it sort of sparked a bit of inspiration.

I thought what if you did the same thing but fliped the coin. What if you ran Vampire: The Masquerade like an organized crime story. Think supernatural Sopranos or Godfather. All the clans and stuff would now work and operate like crime "families."

I mulled it a bit over lunch and then came up with this:

Scratch the limitation on Vampires. Run it as a Sorcerer game.

Use the Dual Humanity Definition concepts from Sex & Sorcery.

Humanity Definition #1: Loyalty to the "family."
Humanity Definition #2: Adherence to society's laws.

This game would be fucking brutal.

Descriptors:

Stamina: More or less the same as the core book.

Will: More or less the same as the core book.

Lore: Everyone has the Coven descriptor which represents your membership in an organized crime "family." In addition to the Coven descriptor you must take one of the following.

Bloodline: You were born and raised as part of an actual crime family.

Adopted: Unless you were adopted at a very late age then literal adoption counts as Bloodline. Otherwise, this descriptor means you did something that earned you respect or favor with a given crime organization such that you are now considered a memeber of the "family."

Married: You married someone who is either a Bloodline or Adopted member of a crime "family."

As per the Sorcerer rules you may take more than one descriptor if your Lore score is five or higher. Note: Bloodline and Adopted are incompatible. Also, Insane per the core rulebook is available as a secondary descriptor.

Just thought I'd share.

Jesse

Addendum: I was also thinking about including Hired Help as a lore descriptor to represent the weakest of "family" ties. That is, you're on the payroll but are of no particular value as a "family" member. I thought that that this might correspond to the Naive descriptor for particularly low Lore scores.

Feedback on this issue would be much appreciated.

Jesse

I'm glad to see someone else discovering Ultraviolet. I think it's available as a DVD boxed set, in fact, I know it is, as I've seen it.

Anyway.

What are you thinking of doing with the whole 'demon' aspect of it? One thing I'd find quite interesting is the notion of having at least some of those 'adopted' by the family be 'demons', if only in a metaphoric/game mechanic sense - when you give that hood who tried to mug you a second chance, is he swearing loyalty to the family, or to you? That's the basis for your Humanity check for Binding, no?

Then there's the whole business of Summoning - in the above example, you're making yourself look weak - maybe by accident, maybe on purpose, but that's still something that could be capitalised upon by someone else.

I'm intrigued. Tell me more.

- drew

Hi Jesse,

To some extent, it seems pretty standard Sorcerer. By which I mean, very good, just not problematic to conceive of or get into motion.

Scrub the vampires, check. So what you're left with is "crime families" and a rockin'-perfect concept for Humanity. No problem! Watch or read The Godfather and The Sopranos, decide just how Italian-stereotype or cinema-standard you're going to be about the whole thing, come up with a notion or two about demons and sorcery, and unleash it on the players to develop further through character creation.

Here's what I suggest: read those last two pages of Demon Cops, the player handout. Then rewrite them, changing every detail to match what you want to do with this game concept. Start with that, and nothing more, for character creation.

Best,
Ron