The Watch House

#RPGaDAY2021 Vampire 31V: Thank

31V: THANK

Having thanked people in my main post, I’ve had more than two months to come up with a good response for Thank for the Darkness family of games, but...

I did briefly consider an homage to the in-joke Special Thanks in early books, as getting in there is a lifelong ambition...

What do vampires have to be thankful for?

Rare is the vampire who thanks their sire for the Embrace. Even the Sabbat and the Lancea et Sanctum aren’t universally big fans of the ones who damned them. If you want gratitude from somebody you introduce to being a supernatural type I suggest you try Mages.

They also don’t generally take the time to thank the people they take blood from. It gets awkward.

If the Kindred have anything to be thankful for, it would be the small human moments when they can honestly connect with someone or even do some small good.

For all their power and longevity, we should be thankful that we are not like them.

2.21: Take The Stage

With Nocturne threatened by the Camarilla, from surprise health inspections to attacks on customers, who can the coterie ask for help?

2.22: Thank You And Good Night

One way or another, this ends tonight. With the backing of some Anarch coteries, the group plan to take on the new master of the Rack while others strike at other Camarilla leaders’ assets. They might be able to stop the attacks, or they might fail and fall, but they have to try.

#RPGaDAY2021 31: THANK

31: THANK

And thank you to...

My cousin for giving me her copy of City Of Thieves, my brother for GMing my first (and his only) session with our cousins, them for playing my first session as GM, the player I had in primary school, the players and GM I had in high school and am still in touch with some of, on into college and beyond.

The vast majority of players I’ve GMed for and GMs I’ve played with.

The writers, artists, designers and other creators who give us things to play. Not least the ones who have let me take part in that.

The organisers of societies, clubs, conventions and online spaces, as well as events like RPGaDAY.

The people I know through games who have been there when I needed help.

The readers of this blog.

Image by Ryan McGuire from Pixabay, cropped

Same time next year!

Monday, 30 August 2021

#RPGaDAY2021 Vampire 30V: Mention

30V: MENTION

As noted in my main post, RPGs often cite their influences for inspirational reading and viewing, and sometimes become influences themselves. With recommendations and quotes as well, the World Of Darkness references quite a lot. And it’s become an influence in turn. Blade basically drops the existing character into a Vampire: The Masquerade chronicle, and John Wick is a Vampire movie despite not being a vampire movie.

One reference stands out though. On the back cover of the first edition rulebook, in the same format as the real quotes:

“No one holds command over me. No man. No god. No Prince. What is a claim of age for ones who are immortal? What is a claim of power for ones who defy death? Call your damnable hunt. We shall see who I drag screaming to Hell with me.”

Günter Dörn, Das Ungeheuer Darin

This reference (translation: The Monster Inside, in apparently wonky German) is fictitious. It returns on the back cover of V5 without the reference.

A second quote appears in the second edition Players Guide:

“What are we? The Damned childer of Caine? The grotesque lords of humanity? The pitiful wretches of eternal Hell? We are the vampires, and that is enough. I am vampire, and that is more than enough. I am that which must be feared, worshipped and adored. The world is mine – now and forever!”

And as far as I know that’s all we ever got. It’s never been established what this is in the setting.

Who is Günter Dörn? What is Das Ungeheuer Darin?

From the two quotes it sounds like the manifesto of an independent vampire, possibly a philosophical Autarkis. And not one who’s separated himself from the Camarilla because he’s too humane for it. My first thought would be that it’s something he published which he knew would, or already had, made him the subject of a Blood Hunt for breaching the Masquerade. The first edition also has the opening letter from V.T. to W.H. which also has the writer knowingly sharing too many secrets, so it’s a recurring theme.

(It would later be established that Dracula was written with notes from Vlad Tepes himself. Vampires fictionalise themselves and both risk and reinforce the Masquerade.)

“Hey, this description doesn’t sound like you at all!”

It could also be a work of fiction in the setting, such as a novel or a play. It could be a dramatisation of the importance of the Masquerade for the benefit of the Camarilla judging by the second quote, but it might equally be a rousing call to freedom.

The Book Of Nod and other in-character texts optionally exist in the published form in-game. I tend to have the Book scattered and incomplete, not something you can get a complete paperback of. The Testament of Longinus in Vampire: The Requiem is well distributed, on the other hand.

Vampires are pretty theatrical, as the name of the official LARP system Mind’s Eye Theatre demonstrates. The Vampyre being dramatised led to trap doors in theatres being known as “vampire traps”. Bram Stoker put on a staged reading of Dracula, supposedly for copyright purposes but it is often suggested as an attempt to persuade his actor-managed employer Sir Henry Irving to put on a play version.

At quarter past ten on a Tuesday morning.

The most organised group in Interview With The Vampire is a theatre troupe hiding in plain sight.

Mind’s Eye Theatre LARP adventure The Elder’s Revenge features a play called The Prince about the rise and fall of a political figure being suppressed for coming too close to Camarilla reality - and comes with the complete play.

And vampires put on shows for themselves as well.

2.19: Publish And Be Damned

Shane’s broodmate brings in a translated copy of Das Ungeheuer Darin. Someone is planning to publish and distribute it.

2.20: Closing Time

A new master of the Rack wins out, and strikes against Nocturne and other rivals to his personal favourite club. The street outside is suddenly in need of new gas pipes.

#RPGaDAY2021 30: MENTION

30: MENTION

Recommended reading and viewing in roleplaying games, and retelling staple stories.

Starting with Appendix N in Advanced Dungeons & Dragons it’s common for RPGs to list some examples of their influences and stories that could fit in the setting and tone. Vampire: The Masquerade first edition added quotes as well, from Schopenhauer to the Cure (and a surprising amount of Indigo Girls) and the original Storytellers Handbook had a piece on song choices.

You can also find references, in-jokes, expy characters and direct lifts in the public domain. Many superhero games with a new setting have “cover versions” of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Spider-Man, Iron Man and some others, with various degrees of difference, as example characters to show what they look like in the system. Given how many Superman expies there are in the DC, Marvel and other comics universes they’re in good company.

Licenced games have an obvious list of relevant works, but they can also refer to additional sources the work draws from, like Star Wars games talking about The Hero’s Journey and The One Ring discussing historical sources of stories that influenced Middle-earth and using them for artistic references.

And it goes the other way too. There’s a lot of Dungeons & Dragons in fantasy fiction created since it came out even in series that aren’t based on the creators’ campaigns, and a lot of Vampire: The Masquerade in some vampire media in the last thirty years - and John Wick is a Vampire: The Masquerade movie without being a vampire movie.

There are also well-known storylines that get regular workouts as well. It can be a lot of fun to see how these particular characters deal with a familiar plot. The trick with an RPG is to change it enough that the players don’t just go “oh, it’s this” and proceed from there.

Buy-in helps as well. “Hey, do you want to do The One Where Everybody Acts Out Of Character?”

With multiple protagonists, RPGs are more likely to do Seven Samurai / The Magnificent Seven / Battle Beyond The Stars than Red Harvest / Yojimbo / A Fistful Of Dollars / Last Man Standing (the last one taking the story back to its original milieu by accident) or its comedy subset ¡Three Amigos! / A Bug’s Life / Galaxy Quest.

I’ve seen a few adventures which fit the Die Hard In An X model too.

Buffy The Vampire Slayer has quite a few obvious influences overall and in specific episodes, doing most of the genre series staples like evil twins and What If...? parallel universes and time loops, so with The Watch House I picked up some other genre classics like “discovering you’re in a TV show” and “Days Of Future Past” and “everybody gets what they always wanted”.

The fact that Supernatural went on to do all of these as well kinda proves my point...

Sunday, 29 August 2021

#RPGaDAY2021 Vampire 29V: System

29V: SYSTEM

Having talked about the various systems in the Darkness family of games before, and the Circulatory System in Flavour, fighting the system. Playing in, around, and against the Camarilla.

The Camarilla in Vampire: The Masquerade is a pretty obvious model for a secret society of vampires who grow more powerful with age - it has a cardinal rule about secrecy and the ones in charge tend to be old. Having one vampire in charge of a city gives you a clear antagonist and/or questgiver. Since there are clans it follows that often there’s a council of clan representatives, and in turn that they’re generally old too. Yet another in-game reason for the theme of the old clashing with the new.

Some details which don’t follow as clearly from the basic setup include the Boon favour economy being heavily codified and overseen by the court gossips, and the official position of not thinking about the existence or otherwise of the ancient vampire founders established in the game backstory.

The coins in John Wick are very much Boons, but overseen by the Keeper of Elysium instead.

Some things became standard by accident, several after being established in the first big example setting Chicago By Night. It has the Primogen being largely independent, though not the quickly standardised setup where they’re representatives of their clans. It codified most cities having a Sheriff too, and this goes back to the Dark Ages setting. While a system like the Camarilla having enforcers makes sense, the original Sheriff was the nickname for one who acted like a stereotypical corrupt Western lawman. He basically existed as someone for the Anarchs to hate.

Which he did really well.

The Anarchs started as the default player position, in opposition to the Camarilla as they were generally younger and closer to Humanity and not entirely happy to lose expectations for their political systems like getting to vote. They had their share of monsters, hypocrites and potential sellouts along with sincere and idealistic heroic types, some of whom had ideas for a better system. Of course a better system doesn’t make for a great game, so when we got an Anarch city book in Los Angeles By Night it wasn’t all that different, with multiple Barons for each major centre instead of one Prince who were a little bit more accountable as a result. The Camarilla got a lot of worldbuilding and the Anarchs mostly got to be against it. So the Anarch game felt like it was trying to break the setting with nothing to replace it with.

With its formal rules and titles the Camarilla quickly became the standard for LARPs, to the extent of the first global club being called The Camarilla. This was reflected in tabletop games, with PCs more likely to quietly resent that Camarilla than try to overthrow it. Taking down the Prince remained popular, but more likely to take the throne yourself.

Before long the Sabbat became playable as well, with their goal being the defeat of the Antediluvians that the Camarilla didn’t talk about, and the conflict between the Camarilla and Sabbat moved to centre stage. The first two sourcebooks for Revised edition were for the Camarilla and Sabbat, with Anarchs getting one a couple years later.

And apart from having a goal and some cultish beliefs which both require more explanation to new players than the Camarilla, the Sabbat also didn’t look so different from them in terms of elders bossing childer around and advisers arguing about what the leader of a city should do.

Vampire: The Requiem started with five Covenants who could work together or fight each other as part of an overall loose vampire society. The closest Anarch equivalent, the Carthian Movement has a number of alternatives, some of which make for nicer cities than the Invictus and other Covenants generally offer, and some very much don’t.

Now in V5 the Camarilla has become more exclusive, the Sabbat has pretty much stopped running cities and the cult side has spread, and the Anarchs are one of the usual well-supported playstyles again. Can they bring down the Prince? And can they make something better?

2.17: Wake Up

Multiple Camarilla ancillae look to take the master of the Rack’s position, and neonates who have been loyal until now start to question that choice as the barbed words look set to escalate to violence.

2:18: It Has To Start Somewhere

The Sheriff knows that Alice is a dhampir. Who betrayed her? And why would another elder offer to help her escape?

#RPGaDAY2021 29: SYSTEM

29: SYSTEM

System matters. How much it matters depends how much you use it. But even if you handwave a lot, you still probably went through character generation and the like and that set up some expectations.

The first RPG I ran for more than a couple of sessions was TOON, where the system absolutely pushes the Looney Tunes playstyle to the extent that when you run out of Hit Points you Fall Down - and get back up again fully restored three minutes later.

All systems, even the simplest, have effects on playstyle whether intended or not. Generic games still have specific feels.

Some of my favourite playstyle pushing rules include Drama Points in Buffy The Vampire Slayer which balance White Hats with Heroes and give rules for moments like Giles having an Orb of Thesulah as a paperweight, Stress Dice in ALIEN to model characters getting ever jumpier and being able to lower them by looking forlornly at photos of loved ones, and the initiative system in C7’s Doctor Who where you’re ranked by what you’re doing and talking always goes first, then running, then doing anything else except fighting, and then fighting.

Saturday, 28 August 2021

#RPGaDAY2021 Vampire 28V: Solo

28V: SOLO

Whether solitary or lonely, the vampire is often alone.

Games with small player bases will naturally focus more on personal concerns, which for game like the Vampire family can add a lot and change the tone. Rose Bailey ran a Vampire: The Requiem game for two players, Never Let Go, before taking over the series.

As noted when talking about coteries in Trust, vampires in fiction and in the games generally don’t socialise well, being mostly solitary or familial. Masquerade spinoff games generally run with this, with most board and card games being competitive and most computer games so far being solo. In a call back to my gaming history, V5 has computer ‘gamebooks’ with a bigger wordcount than physical gamebooks could hold but a similar play structure. (Try the Night Road and Out For Blood sample chapters.) The biggest spinoff is LARP, where of course you’re in a large group... but usually focused on your private schemes.

And as Angel demonstrates, better for brooding.

I discussed gamebooks and one-to-one games in my main post as well. The note about the speed of going through plot still very much applies.

2:16 Solo

Paris takes a call from an old friend, a Touchstone, who needs her help. While she trusts the coterie she doesn’t think it would be safe to bring them all and risk the attention they attract.

#RPGaDAY2021 28: SOLO

28: SOLO

And this is where I came in, with gamebooks and then the next step of one-to-one games.

Yesterday was the 39th anniversary of The Warlock Of Firetop Mountain, first of the Fighting Fantasy gamebooks that started me off and led to my first sessions as player and GM. One of my small claims to fame was telling Ian Livingstone about John Robertson’s adventure game comedy show The Dark Room when both were here in Edinburgh for assorted festivals, as they’ve since gone to appear together at conventions.

And I’ve still never gotten through that maze.

One-to-one gaming allows a character focus you normally have to share. But that focus goes both ways. With very little conversation about what to do, in-character dialogue only going back and forth, and less waiting around for their turn, a single focused player will charge through plot at great speed. The obvious downside to a very small group is that if one player out of four misses a session you can go ahead, less so with one of three, two, or one.

Also, Han Solo. And Napoleon Solo. And Ksenia Solo. And Hope Solo.

Bonus round:

Dream - I use omens and portents in games but very rarely dreams, as dream logic is unreliable, the “it was all a dream” ending is pretty hard to get away with nowadays, and most of the dreams I remember are disappointingly mundane. That said, the Sandman “instant adventure” RPG series from Pacesetter never made it past set one of ten but I’ve always been curious about where it was going.

Open - After various games with players keeping secrets from each other, I prefer an open approach to this. If someone can’t separate player and character knowledge this can be an issue.

Delve - I still delve into my RPG magazine collections. I’d happily run the Golden Heroes adventures from White Dwarf, for example.

Runeslinger on Dream

Friday, 27 August 2021

#RPGaDAY2021 Vampire 27V: Fraction

27V: FRACTION

Vampires and other creatures are divided by supernatural type, political allegiance, age, power level, and by human distinctions as well.

For example, Paris is a vampire, a Toreador, an Anarch, a neonate of the Twelfth Generation, a member of Nocturne, and in life had a political affiliation, a religion she was raised in, and a favourite bamd.

Political alliances break into factions, which are basically fractions of what they were in terms of power.

And they’re usually fractious - a holdover from when fraction, which means breaking in Middle English from the Latin for fragment or portion, could also mean a break as in a disagreement. I learned something today!

Who wants to stop them working together?

2:15: Are You With Us?

With the master of the Rack dead and hunting threatened, this could the time to strike. But will Nocturne and its people be safe if the Anarchs go on the offensive?

#RPGaDAY2021 27: FRACTION

27: FRACTION

Multiplication and division and fractions are best avoided in game mechanic maths, I feel. Multiplying stake through the heart or beheading damage in Buffy is fun, but doing it for regular attacks always felt a bit fiddly.

What fraction of the games I own have I run, let alone played? Not a big one these days. The first RPG I bought and have never run was Monster Horrorshow circa age 13, but it was still rare before the era of disposable incomes. I’ve only run three of the five original World Of Darkness games, with Werewolf and Wraith for one short run each.

Bonus round:

Practice - GMing, playing, improv, systems, all get better with practice.

Kindle - I don’t know how to start a campfire for real, but I do know about dry kindling.

Group - Unless they’re specifically meant to be unique, I make sure to have a few other PC-type groups in settings besides the PCs. I talked about this with vampires here, but it also applies to adventuring parties, super teams, starship crews, bands and more. The tricky part is having multiple NPCs talking, but this also still works with individual NPCs. Having a clear signifier such as an image helps, as does switching somewhat to narrative - “Anson says to watch out in the warehouse, and Belle nods in agreement before continuing...”

CHVRCHES, Screen Violence

The fourth album by CHVRCHES, Screen Violence contains more perfect additions to a Vampire soundtrack.

“I don’t wanna say

That I’m afraid to die”

And the 70s horror deepfake advert also raises the bar for They Came From Beyond The Grave! streaming show title sequences.

Thursday, 26 August 2021

#RPGaDAY2021 Vampire 26V: Theory

26V: THEORY

Having discussed out of character theories in my main post, in-character theories. I discussed the origins of vampires in Flood, but there are plenty of other unanswered questions out there.

Masquerade has more of these with its ongoing metaplot, while Requiem still has deep mysteries but they don’t rear up anew. (See the deep dive into the Requiem Clanbooks for an example.)

Can vampires be cured?

In Masquerade this came up in the first edition fiction and was a big topic in the original Storytellers Handbook, along with Golconda and other options to fight the curse. It fell by the wayside but never quite went away, and as of V5 Thin-Bloods in particular can cure themselves taking the old method of killing the sire. The adventure for GURPS Vampire: The Masquerade had an NPC trying this with her sire, failing, and moving on to her grandsire, and so on. One of the Time Of Judgment series for the end of Revised, The Red Sign, introduced a complicated magical method. The Gehenna sourcebook is no longer canon, but are the other Time Of Judgment books? Maybe...

In Requiem, the Ordo Dracul are looking into it. The Chronicler’s Guide has a short section on Transcendence chronicles as well, with advice on adjusting the rules to focus on it. The quest to become human is a focus of Promethean: The Created and you could draw ideas from there.

Is the end really upon us?

Every generation thinks the end is upon them. With an ongoing game line Gehenna is off the table again... but it might also be going on right now.

Are Thin-Bloods a sign of the End Times?

If the End Times are here, I suppose they could be.

The ability to go out in daylight, to produce new powers that can in some cases affect other vampires, and to have children, are all pretty scary to older vampires who are used to the weaker generations being less powerful.

I ran with the latter as a plot hook for my first V5 chronicle, with a vampire scientist hunting Thin-Bloods in an attempt to study, steal and gain their power, a reverse of the practice of Diablerie where vampires of weaker generations drain the stronger. I’m not sure it could have worked, but the Thin-Blood player character didn’t want to find out.

There are many more questions out there to answer. Some games don’t really address these matters at all, but even in a night-to-night game of Anarch politics and worrying about finding blood a character might still wonder what it all means and if there’s a way out.

2:14: Children

A vampire from the Church of Caine approaches Alice during an Anarch meeting, seeking her advice. One of his flock is a Thin-Blood, and it seems she might be pregnant.

#RPGaDAY2021 26: THEORY

26: THEORY

Theory discussions cover every aspect of RPGs. One big set is looking at player styles and preferences. Eddy Webb looks at a number of these in his presentation Your Game Sucks (2012 edition) including the Gamist/Narrativist/Simulationist model and the D&D survey model, as well as his own based on large-scale games like LARPs, MMOs and chats but also applicable at the tabletop, with the proviso that players’ interests shift, sometimes in the moment. With that in mind I pitch games with what I tend to include and exclude, managing expectations from the beginning.

Bonus round:

Play - What we’re here to do. But in the context of roleplaying games play has two meanings. We play the game, and we play a role. Which takes precedent varies with players, GMs, and times.

Origin - I’ve talked about how I started with RPGs, but before that I was already primed. I had Star Wars wallpaper, I remember having Tolkien read to us, I was always more 2000 A.D. than the Beano.

Renew - A new game, edition, or group can bring a lot to the table.

Wednesday, 25 August 2021

Bloodhunt early access, September 7th

Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodhunt opens wih early access on September 7th, as revealed at GamesCon along with the clan Toreador trailer.

Maybe I can not die in the first third of a match! After a few days, at a quiet time.

Marvel Midnight Suns

Midnight Suns is a forthcoming turn-based tactical video game from Marvel, based on the Midnight Sons series from deep in the 90s where supernatural heroes came together to fight Lilith, mother of monsters.

As you can have multiple characters in play, it has a pretty big cast. It picks up some unsurprising Avengers and new characters like Nico Minoru from Runaways to go with characters who were in the comics like Doctor Strange, Blade and Ghost Rider, although it goes with Robbie Reyes rather than Danny Ketch or Johnny Blaze. And as this team concept is a 90s flashback, Wolverine.

It also introduces a new character to play, the Hunter, a rogue child of Lilith. As the first Marvel character called Lilith was the heroic daughter of Dracula, having Lilith’s own child fight against her is kind of a deep cut.

Not 100% sold on the New Orleans Saints colour scheme.

#RPGaDAY2021 Vampire 25V: Welcome

25V: WELCOME

“Welcome to my house! Enter freely and of your own free will!”

Bram Stoker, Dracula

Vampires are territorial, but in order to have a functional society for the games they have to get together sometimes. As well as the neutral ground of Elysium and the Rack (see Safety) the Camarilla has the Tradition of Hospitality in which anyone recognised as a guest is safe in another domain. The Anarchs and Sabbat do not acknowledge it officially, but can still make agreements for safe passage.

The idea of vampires requiring invitations to enter did not become the bane of any of the clans, though it’s a popular house rule for the Tzimisce. (It would fit the Ravnos in V5 as well.)

Not today, thank you.
(I spared you the ’Salem’s Lot version.)

And a public space has its own requirements on both sides.

2:13: Willkommen, Bienvenue, Welcome

A new academic year means students away from home with spending money for the first time, the best week for nightclubs seeking new customers and vampires seeking new blood. All of the major clubs on the Rack are running promotions, as are non-Camarilla clubs like Nocturne. And the master of the Rack just turned up dead.

#RPGaDAY2021 25: WELCOME

25: WELCOME

How do you welcome new players?

Most of my experience here comes from public-facing game groups, notably GEAS (the University of Edinburgh RPG society) but also club nights, as well as conventions. For a club, start by showing inclusiveness and diversity. Have introductory events at Welcome Week for freshers, and at the starts of semesters, as well as other things like GMing workshops. Conpulsion is one of these - having games new people can come into and try helps there too.

And do try to make introductory one-shots welcoming, not just to new players to that specific game but to new players in general.

This is easier for some games than others. D&D has known expectations. Licenced RPGs have the advantage of familiarity. One-shot-friendly games naturally work well although they’re not so good if it’s all campaigns all year from then on.

Games with big and unfamiliar settings ask a bit more. There’s a reason that there have been four quickstart adventures across Vampire: The Masquerade and Requiem and three of them start with the PCs waking up after becoming vampires with no idea what happened to them. And those still aren’t great introductions to the core gameplay, where PCs are more established and expected to know the basics. Following from advice from Rose Bailey, a good tactic is to run some other kind of story such as a heist, where the PCs being vampires gives them some extra options and complications and gives them a chance to show off as well.

Bonus round:

Tradition - Don’t do something just because it’s traditional.

Fresh - Or because it isn’t. Try it, sure, but don’t drop everything old.

Box - I’m old enough to like boxed sets for core rules, but I also acknowledge that in many case they weren’t necessary and nice hardback books are generally better unless a game has a lot of specialty dice or other components. But they still give that nice “this is a game” feel, and things like separate player and GM books have their advantages.

Runeslinger on Tradition

What If... The World Lost Its Mightiest Heroes?

Marvel’s What If...?

1.03: What If... The World Lost Its Mightiest Heroes?

It still manages to keep that premise pretty fun.

Redoing a bit from The Incredible Hulk with Mark Ruffalo (though he looks even more like a young Peter Falk than he should) and various fun Coulson moments.

Tuesday, 24 August 2021

Paralympics Tokyo 2020

The opening ceremony was pretty simple, mostly one circus-y performances sequence. Nice to have Harder Than You Think back.

#RPGaDAY2021 Vampire 24V: Translate

24V: TRANSLATE

Having discussed the use of language in RPGs in my main post, how does it work for the Darkness family of games in particular?

Starting with Vampire: The Masquerade first edition, the games used a specialised lexicon with foreign and obscure English words for in-character terminology. Camarilla means “small chamber” in Spanish and in English refers to a small and possibly secret group of advisers. The Prince’s small and possibly secret group of advisers is called the Primogen. The clan names come from a variety of languages, and most of them aren’t old enough to have been in use in the Dark Ages setting. And of course there’s the question of how to pronounce Tzimisce. Which was originally Tzimisces. And indeed as a Scot I’ve always found “clan” a strange choice.

The furthest I took this myself was with a Brujah vampire from Roman Carthage, going with a possible Latin root for “Bruja” (Plusscius, “who knows a lot”) and having him use a couple of Latin terms for other clans, calling the Ventrue “Venator” and using one of the questionable bases for Nosferatu. (Which comes from the film out of character... and in-character as of V5.) Others have reverse-engineered entire collections for Clans, titles and Disciplines in historical settings, as well as examples for non-Anglophone modern groups like the Laibon.

The Vampire games don’t go as far as Blade, where vampires have their own language mixed with Russian and Czech loanwords, as well as the glyphs being drawn from an entire writing system.

Vampire: The Requiem emphasises the shifting lexicon and slang with examples of the Cacophony, codes hidden in graffiti and signage and other things people see every night.

Like RPGs in general, Vampire uses the historical and fantasy fiction approach to how its ancient characters speak to show their age, a bit more formal in many cases and often avoiding specific modern idioms, and language only comes up when it clashes. So you might have a medieval character in the present “thee” and “thou” to stand out, the trick then is not overdoing it and making them sound goofy.

Clan Booyah.

And translating ancient texts doesn’t come up as often as in Call Of Cthulhu, but the Book of Nod and others exist in-game and also as books you can buy, translated in and out of character with translation notes questioning some phrases to add some verisimilitude and options.

And on top of all that there are language issues people have every day.

2:12: Understanding

The coterie find a vampire poaching in their territory - a refugee from a Sabbat city in Mexico who knows hardly any English.

#RPGaDAY2021 24: TRANSLATE

24: TRANSLATE

I covered switching systems in Substitute. Translate might fit as well, as it’s getting the sense of something rather than converting word for word.

Most RPGs run like fiction set somewhere else where everybody speaks the reader or viewer’s language, maybe with an accent. If everybody is speaking Latin or Cantonese or Common Tongue or Hyperlac in-character, we assume it’s “translated” at the game table, and only use specific languages when they vary. People from the Outer Rim in Star Wars sound American, people from the core worlds sound English. So no need for thee-ing and thou-ing, and it’s best not to try and improvise that anyway.

There’s a moment at the start of Pirates Of The Caribbean: The Curse Of The Black Pearl where after largely seeming like a ‘proper’ historical drama in phrasing, Elizabeth asks Will “Are you okay?” which fits the later tone of not worrying about anachronisms so much.

Multiple languages in RPGs are often yes-no skill sets for convenience, which doesn’t reflect how language learning really works. How involved the language rules are often relates to their importance. Call Of Cthulhu has them as part of its percentile skill system, suitable for rolling while reading in an emergency like trying to work out a Latin clue to a deathtrap.

Nowadays you can run text through translation systems like Google’s to present a handout in a foreign language for flavour, although they’re only so reliable.

And what about fictional languages? Most settings don’t have a fully developed language family like Tolkien’s Elvish, so have some ground rules and examples or rely on general agreement for whether names sound Elfy or Dwarfy.

Aurebesh in Star Wars (codified in the classic RPG) isn’t a language, it’s an alphabet which maps directly onto ours. It looks alien in the moment, making signs unreadable unless you’re very practiced, so it works as a visual signifier but not in worldbuilding. Also, ships are named after letters that don’t look like the Aurebesh versions - X in Aurebesh is a triangle. Elvish it ain’t.

SF often has universal translators. How do they lip sync? Don’t ask.

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay’s classic The Enemy Within campaign was set in and around the Empire, its analogue for Renaissance Germany, and had the slight dissonance of German names and terms with decidedly British cultural references. It didn’t help in my case that I was taking French in high school and my players were taking German, so I had no idea why some of the names made them laugh...

Bonus round:

Share - How much you share about your characters depends on table culture (and one’s propensity for cheating...) and separation of player and character knowledge.

Ancient - How I felt when I talked about my favourite convention game with the then Conpulsion organiser and realised it was before he was born.

Solve - Puzzles based on player skill are one of the classic breaks in player versus character ability, along with social conflict. Mysteries are like this but in the longer term, but mystery plots assume characters who are also engaged and ways to add more clues. Solutions to social conflict include boosts based on performance, sharing ideas around the table and narrating general themes. Solutions to puzzles could include those, or just not having them.

Runeslinger on Solve

Monday, 23 August 2021

#RPGaDAY2021 Vampire 23V: Memory

23V: MEMORY

Can vampires trust their memories?

Vampire: The Requiem first edition made the Fog of Eternity an issue with torpor, so you could play an ancient vampire without loading them up with knowledge and skills. This could be an intriguing setup - see Thousand Year Old Vampire (Actual Play art project, animated version) for a journal writing game expressly about this - but many players didn’t like it being the norm so it has been downplayed in the second edition.

Vampire: The Masquerade fifth edition added the Memoriam rule for sort of the reverse, playing out memories from across a vampire’s long unlife. This also includes the proviso that they might be inaccurate and shaded by emotion to allow for them to go off-script and allow for player agency in these Highlander-style flashbacks that inform their current situation.

If they got big enough, you could have a PC who only appears in flashbacks.

And as noted in the entry on Think, can any of them trust their memories in a world where mental and emotional control powers, illusions and more are widespread? I don’t make that a common thing - it should be assumed that what happened in the session happened and I’ll flag up discrepancies as this isn’t something I like myself.

Outside of questions of memory, the characters have to consider how they’re remembered.

2:11: Looking Back

Nocturne hits an anniversary, and Paris and Shane look back to the night they opened, with their partner Karin. Mercy and Jonah have never heard of her...

#RPGaDAY2021 23: MEMORY

23: MEMORY

What characters know or remember can and will be much more than players remember about their adventures. They usually had lives before the first session, and those lives go on in downtime gaps, so they will know the setting better than the players or GM or even its creators.

Do players read big chunks of source material, ask pertinent questions, or in more collaborative worldbuilding add details themselves?

This is also why many games start with the PCs arriving in a new and unfamiliar setting or situation, so they can learn along with the players and the players won’t ask so many out-of-character questions about things their characters know.

Likewise, the PCs’ adventures are often life-and-death struggles where they left the last room five minutes ago, while for the players it’s a low-stress pastime based on description with optional visual references and the scene with the last room was a week ago.

So while I like to take thorough notes myself I don’t penalise for memories being a bit hazy.

Bonus round:

Innovation - I’ve seen systems innovations develop, some developing and becoming standards, some not being picked up. For example, I remember first seeing dice pools in Ghostbusters and then Star Wars, then success counting in Shadowrun making it just that little bit faster to work out results and calculate varied success levels.

Quick - Like simple systems, I tend to like quick systems.

Surprise - An entertaining surprise is a nice effect to achieve, but consider what it takes to get it, and how much more fun it adds than knowledge - and potentially how much fun it could take away. There’s a reason that “bait and switch” campaigns are generally reviled, with only a few people talking about how one worked when the subject comes up. (I’ve also seen some blatantly obvious examples over the years.) Surprise non-standard adventures won’t draw as negative a reaction, as long as the players are in a suitable mood and the plot stays within the agreed Weird Level. To use the often cited example, I wouldn’t run a session where the PCs discover they’re fictional characters with most games.

Sunday, 22 August 2021

RRH 2.08

You can’t do it every night, but sometimes your Vampire: The Masquerade end of session needle drop has to be The Sisters Of Mercy.

Alice in her party dress

She thanks you kindly, so serene

#RPGaDAY2021 Vampire 22V: Substitute

22V: SUBSTITUTE

Vampires use proxies to influence the daylight world denied to them. Mortal agents, ghouls given a touch of their power with a taste of their addictive blood, and most recently in Masquerade we have Thin-Bloods who can go forth by day. In Requiem second edition, vampires of low enough power can withstand sunlight better. Both settings have dhampirs as well, and some things that could be called vampires but not Kindred. Being able to act when your rivals are inactive and would burn if they try to go out makes you both useful and dangerous.

Chronicles featuring mortals, ghouls, Thin-Bloods and the like give a very different perspective on the setting. See the treatment of familiars in What We Do In The Shadows for how it might go wrong and the comic series Day Men for a version where their power is given more due.

With some other assistance from mortal allies and contacts, everyone could play someone in a day scene. Troupe-style play goes back to the roots of the Darkness family of games, with Ars Magica featuring it with players asked to rotate playing their powerful Magi, capable Companions and ordinary Grogs, but has never been a common mode of play.

Last Dance has a ghoul and a dhampir working with Kindred, so there’s room for daytime scenes as I’ve done with mortals and Thin-Bloods in recent games, and the relative safety they have by day counters their vulnerability when among vampires during the night.

2.10: Brought To Light

Jonah gets a call from Alice not long after sunrise. Do the others have a day person? Because she’s across the street from the apartment building where Paris makes her haven and the fire alarm is ringing.

#RPGADAY2021 22: SUBSTITUTE

22: SUBSTITUTE

Have you switched out a system to run a game? Or if you’re reading this RPG blog, a better question might be how often?

There are a lot of RPGs out there, many systems and many more settings. Companies often use house systems, there are several games you can licence or use open-source, and the official system doesn’t always work for every table. When a game-friendly setting doesn’t have an official RPG, expect to see various versions for it too.

Switching system will naturally bring a different feel, which may or may not work, but if you’re trying it you must have a reason.

A regular question about a new action-y system is “can it do Star Wars?” And many can, and many have, though they’ll emphasise different things, as the official games and their editions have. Adventure! and Cinematic Unisystem Star Wars use the balance of Dramatic Editing and Drama Points to let normals work with Jedi, while Feng Shui and supers Star Wars work for over-the-top Prequel Era adventures.

I once got a group to substitute an unofficial CineUni Stargate SG-1 for the then official D20 after our first attempt to use automatic weapons in the system. Redoing the characters being faster than one round of D20 combat helped.

Saturday, 21 August 2021

#RPGaDAY2021 Vampire 21V: Simplicity

21V: SIMPLICITY

Existence in the Darkness settings is rarely simple. If a plan is going smoothly, you must be missing something.

I can and do run monster-of-the-week games and will put a few standalone sessions into even the most serialised game, but for games as weighted with consequences and with as much factional politics as the Vampire family I’m only happy when it’s complicated.

V5 leans into this with Hunger Dice, which replaces the Botch system with complications arising when you roll badly - or too well. And you can only get rid of them completely by killing someone.

Even the simplest slice-of-life story is complicated by what the characters are...

2.09: One Thing After Another

Paris’s sire wants to meet to discuss how Nocturne could be safer. Shane’s broodmate assures the coterie that this heist won’t go like last time. Mercy’s best friend is getting married and wants her to come. Jonah’s team report a break-in during the day. Alice’s grandsire wants her to escape the city to safety. All on the same night.

#RPGaDAY2021 21: SIMPLICITY

21: SIMPLICITY

The first RPG I played and then ran, Fighting Fantasy, had three randomly-generated statistics and two of them hardly ever came up. I’ve tended towards simple systems ever since.

This is the rules section.

These days, when GMing I’ll often take the average rather than roll for NPCs (a rule from Buffy) and guesstimate hits in combat so that three solid strikes or one clever move will take down most opponents.

Bonus round:

Special edition, all related to the same concept.

Challenge - Hey, this is a challenge! But okay. In some games I fudge, in some games I let the system take care of that, I’m not really a “let the dice fall” GM but it generally varies. I’m more likely to run games which are chances for the PCs to be awesome without that falling flat.

Fear - Which makes horror gaming tricky, so while I’m less kind than in other genres I still tend towards spooky rather than white-knuckle fear.

Motive - Because that can tip into stress.

Runeslinger on Challenge

Friday, 20 August 2021

Adventure! 20th Anniversary

Adventure! Tales Of The Aeon Society was released twenty years ago today! And you can still preoders the new Trinity Continuum edition on BackerKit!

#RPGaDAY2021 Vampire 20V: Foundation

20V: FOUNDATION

What was your city built on? What lies beneath, ready to rise again?

In the Darkness family of games, foundations are likely to contain secrets. And ritual components. And the bodies of union organisers.

In V5, the Sabbat abandoned several cities and the Camarilla and Anarchs moved in... and some of them might have nests of Sabbat vampires sleeping hidden away until disturbed.

What is your building’s history?

What was Nocturne before it was a nightclub?

A popular choice for the obvious Gothic appeal is former churches. You can buy into one in Bloodlines, and there’s one in Bloodhunt based on a real club in Prague.

We have at least one former church turned club in Edinburgh as well, another turned Fringe information centre, and a student theatre too, all within ten minutes’ walk in the Old Town as a result of various denominations building their own churches in the 19th Century. The club in Glasgow where I took the intro post photo was once a church as well.

The Succubus Club was a heavy rebuild inside an old brick factory, with state-of-the-art lighting, an upstairs VIP gallery, a basement subsection with a labyrinth theme, and a secret crypt for an ancient vampire hidden under it. Not every vampire-run club has to have all of these features.

To lean in a bit less, let’s say the building that now houses Nocturne was built as a club in the 70s, and has gone through various incarnations since. So it’s seen good and bad times going back decades, and might have been haunted even before the vampires moved in...

2.08: That Old Refrain

A DJ plays an oldie by request... and it calls up a ghost who died when the song was new.

#RPGaDAY2021 20: FOUNDATION

20: FOUNDATION

The Neptune Foundation was the only existing Allegiance that I wrote up for the Trinity Continuum modern setting, an extrapolation by Ian Watson from existing groups in the Trinity Universe. Foundations are, in this definition, large charitable organisations that fund other charity initiatives as well as their own. Foundation also connotes something to build on, and also something that’s well established. In fiction there’s Asimov’s Foundation which is a very militant archiving group, but also the Foundation for Law And Government from Knight Rider which being a non-governmental crimefighting group just really wanted its initials to spell out FLAG. So they became a big international aid group with a sideline in active involvement for player characters to into danger Thunderbirds style.

Bonus round:

Peace - Peace mostly exists in RPGs to be disrupted, or at best preserved through heroic action. But there are “slice of life” games as well, and almost any game can have downtime “breather” episodes. Sometimes these are planned often after a big arc, and sometimes players make them happen.

Lineage - I like legacy heroes, though more by passing the torch than by birthright.

Ally - NPC allies are more likely to be trusted when they’re points in character backgrounds.

Runeslinger on Ally

“It isn't all over; everything has not been invented; the human adventure is just beginning.”

Tone and mood, music example

We can act if we want to

If we don’t nobody will

Angel Olsen covering Men Without Hats, Safety Dance

Thanks to the A.V. Club for reviewing her all 80s reworked EP Aisles.

Thursday, 19 August 2021

Gene Roddenberry centenary

Gene Roddenberry, creator of Star Trek, was born 100 years ago today.

#RPGaDAY2021 Vampire 19V: Theme

19V: THEME

Vampire: The Masquerade emphasised its themes from the beginning, more than many RPGs. Outsiders doing immoral things to survive in a system stacked against them. Not every subsystem or sourcebook supported the themes equally successfully, but they still count.

My current Masquerade game gained a theme because four of the five PCs are still in contact with mortal loved ones and two are staying with them while none have revealed what they are. “How long can you sustain a lie?”

Last Dance has vampires at the edge of life, taking from people trying to enjoy the night, and also on the outside of vampire society, maybe trying to make it less dangerous for the people around... maybe.

In between the political plots and personal schemes, drop in little reminders of how cut off the characters are even if they work to stay in touch with the living.

Emphasise the themes of the games with systems like Touchstones, where every personal conviction is connected to something, or someone.

I keep a list of NPC names to use on the fly. One use for them is to give names to some of the people that vampires drink from.

2.07: Playing Your Song

Kelly has been one of the bar staff at Nocturne for the last few months. About to head back to college for junior year, not really sure what to do next. And tonight the vampires in the coterie can tell she’s pregnant by the scent of her blood. And she doesn’t know.

#RPGaDAY2021 19: THEME

19: THEME

All games have themes, conscious and stated or otherwise. Like genre, mood, tone and other factors, theme will be there. I tend to start with a mood more than a theme but I’ll lean into something the game does, and with time a specific theme might emerge that wasn’t intended at the start.

The Watch House was always sort of about the core Buffy theme of responsibility versus freedom emphasised by the college setting, but came to be about growing responsibility and leadership.

Do my games have theme tunes? Usually.

Bonus round:

Storm - I don’t use the weather as much as I might considering the British preoccupation. It tends to rain in World Of Darkness cities (though not all the time) and be snowy around Christmas.

Style - Every GM, player and table has a style, which interacts with everybody else involved and with the game to some extent, in most cases anyway.

Patron - The Traveller term for ship-hiring questgiver was taken from the Renaissance term for people who pay for artists to work with or without a specific commission, now swinging back to that online. I give regular little monthly donations to a number of artists including game designers.

Wednesday, 18 August 2021

Nathan Anderson

A concept artist whose DeviantArt page could fill a Monster Manual. Thanks to bhu on RPGnet.

#RPGaDAY2021 Vampire 18V: Write