Origin session for V:tM

This was a fun one, but also a little scary with just a hint of annoying.

The first session of my old school Vampire: the Masquerade weekly home game explored the origins of these Kindred.  Each player character started out as mortal, living their everyday lives before the embrace.  Since there was six players, there were six individual storylines; however, a few intersected with each other.  More intersection would have been nice, though not necessarily realistic.

As you can imagine, players had relatively little "screen time" for their respective characters.  So, there was a lot of watching.  Hopefully, I made each individual origin scene interesting enough to sit through.  In that way, the session felt like a 2 hour pilot of a TV show.  The pilot has many jobs: introducing characters, showcasing the environment, meeting important NPCs, creating drama and tension, setting the scene for what's to come - the chronicle before us.  The pilot has to do it all.  As soon as one storyline gets going, it's replaced by another, and then another.  By the story's end, most (if not all) the main characters are in the same place at the same time, connected; ideally, working on a common goal.

As individual stories played out, each player character bumped into his or her soon-to-be sire.  A gun shot wound victim drove himself to an aged veterinarian.  I didn't actually came up with this, by the way.  The two players sitting next to each other both wanted to be nosferatu.  They concocted the setup and basically handed it over to me.  Oookkkkaaaayyyyyyy...

For a couple seconds, I had no idea where to go with this one.  Then, I had an inkling of an idea, and just told the best story I could.  Shot-up guy is bleeding all over the place, the vet (played admirably as if his characters had spent many hours in a chair having old age makeup applied) taking care of him.  Then, a man in a hat and coat, face burned and scarred with a straight-razor slash going along his neck and up his right cheek.  He came in with a little cat that was having health problems.  I had to think of something - why else would a vampire walk into a veterinarian's office?  The nosferatu, Drake, sees the dying man on the vet's table.  He finishes him off, and then offers some of his blood.  It just so happens that the vet witnesses this and instead of killing him, Drake embraces him as well.

Two birds, one stone.

The next player was a student at UW Whitewater.  BTW, this chronicle is taking place in the greater Janesville area.  He talked to his guidance counselor, a ghoul for a sadistic, psychopathic vampire, who routinely funnels aimless students into his master's hands.  The student goes over to Mark's house to set up his personal curriculum, etc.  Mark probes him with all kinds of invasive questions, leaves to go make a phone call in the kitchen, allowing the student to check out the basement (door ajar with light visible past the stairs).  Turns out, Mark has a sound-proof, human sized, glass cylinder in the basement of his old Victorian house.  There's a 21 year old blonde co-ed who trapped in there.  She pleads for him to help her escape.

Strangely, he tells her that he'll help, but doesn't.  Instead, he cozies up to Mark, even though some tough biker dude in a leather jacket tells him that Mark is bad news and he intends on killing him soon.  Instead of the biker embracing the student, Mark does once Jon's character tells Mark that he knows about the girl downstairs.

An interesting twist.  I didn't plan on Mark being the gangrel, that was supposed to be the biker Venom.  But Jon really wanted a gangrel character, so I altered Mark's clan to fit the player's concept.

A petty thief living her life on the streets.  She sleeps under a bridge.  She picks the wrong guys pocket - a tall, sinister man in a long black trench coat, receding black hair and pock-marked face.  Going through his wallet, she notices his license.  It looks like he was born in 1920.  She meets a fellow homeless person named Johnathan, though there's something noble about him.  Then, she's attacked by the guy whose wallet she stole.  He tells her she's going to suffer.  She's prepared to die.  Johnathan knocks them both over, tells "creepazoid" (that's what she started calling him) to get the fuck out of here and leave her alone.

Johnathan decides to make her a vampire since her days are numbered out on the street.

Then, an ex-military dude wanders the college campus looking for direction.  He meets a guy, the ghoul of Starker - Prince of Janesville (a dubious honor).  This guy tells military man that his services would be valuable to his boss, Starker.  Military man goes to meet Starker, they hit it off and the Prince embraces his new bodyguard.

Finally, a female student at UW-Whitewater, who occasionally does sexy cam work and has a rich, well-known family, gets picked out of a house party crowd by that creepazoid vamp.  Ousted from the bridge, he's looking for some brutal fun.  The co-ed follows him to an upstairs bedroom where he embraces her and then just leaves like a collegiate one-night stand.  She wanted to play a caitiff, and it seemed appropriate.

Unaware that she's a vampire now, the co-ed inadvertently frenzies, killing her roommate.  Starker has many connections, contacts, and ties to the police force in Janesville.  He hears about the killing and sends military dude (yeah, I know.  It's terrible that I don't know the player characters' names yet). to collect her.

Finally, every sire is required to present his new progeny to the Prince.  They do.  Yay, everyone is at the same place at the same time.  Session's almost over, but there's still time for Starker to send everyone out to get creepazoid.  He's not to be killed, though.  Just brought to the Prince for questioning.

It takes a little while, but they track creepazoid down and eventually detain him.  He's brought in so Starker can interrogate him alone.

Experience is doled out and that's where things ended.  As you can see, this is a really long fucking post.  It's no wonder that one of the players texted me the next morning complaining about the lack of playing time during the other character' origins.  Understandable, but with relatively little time to prepare I did the best I could.  Keep in mind that creepazoid will be a recurring antagonist.  So, it was important to give him plenty of "screen time".  Perhaps the origin session was biting off more than I could chew.  It certainly seemed ambitious.  At least, everyone's told me they're excited for session #2.

In any case, we're all set up for the next game.  Unfortunately the players of military man and female student aren't going to be at a convention.  Hopefully, my wife will decide to sit down and play Vampire with us.

VS

p.s.  I had the film Beyond the Black Rainbow playing on the TV about 15' away from the gaming table.  There's hardly any dialog, just colorful visuals and some of the best 80's inspired movie soundtrack around.  I looked, and there's no CD I can buy.  Players said it added to the game, though there were a couple moments where it became distracting.

V:tM Warm-up Part 2: the Bloodbath

Even though something unexpectedly came up for half the group last night, part 2 was pretty awesome.  The Gary/Chicago rivalry escalated when Modius and his nosferatu adviser selected a target - Lodin's right hand vampire, an enforcer with organized crime connections named Lucien.

Before seeking him out in Chicago, Blago was set upon by a mysterious woman.  She was a Kindred from Chicago, sent to recruit the European gangrel away from Modius to serve the Prince of Chicago.  She used her presence to make him come to her.  He tried to resist but felt overpowered.  Blago spent a willpower point to stay where he was, standing his ground and forcing her to come to him.  At the time, I was unsure what kind of resistance roll was required to not be in awe of her, compelled to walk towards her...

The female went up to Blago's haven, discovered he wouldn't betray Modius, wouldn't share blood with her, and then suddenly he went berserk with wolf claws thanks to his protean discipline.  Face and neck torn open, she immediately fled, using her celerity to get the fuck out of there - 3 successes of aggravated damage!  That's not going to heal right away.

This and later brawls reminded me how brutal and unforgiving combat is in V:tM.  Holy shit!  Whoever strikes first has a huge advantage.  Whoever attacks with a group has a huge advantage - especially with supernatural speed.  Whoever created their character to be a tank with plenty of strength and brawl has a huge advantage.  Whoever uses their 2 dots in protean to transform their hands into razors of goddamn fury becomes an unbelievable killing machine!

I kind of forgot how dodge worked, so I ruled that someone could try to dodge a blow but then that would take up their next attack.  Since the attack order was you go, I go, you go, I go, etc. it didn't make too much sense to dodge a blow because then you can't deal any damage next round and have 3 or 4 more attacks coming your way.  I'll have to re-think that.  Maybe dodge should be allowed (except in the case of firearms) but then your next attack (dice pool) only takes a penalty of one die per attack being dodged?

I also think it might be better to roll for initiative each round.  More surprises!  If this were D&D and each combat was expected to go 10 - 15 rounds, then that would probably be way too much rolling, but for a 3 or 4 round combat (on average), I think it'll be fine.

Soaking damage was another challenge.  Few of the opposing Kindred had fortitude, and the ones who did only had a dot or two.   So, I ruled that only fortitude alone could attempt at soaking aggravated damage, except for the very last vamp to die by the PCs' hands at the end of the night,.  I gave that dude a fighting chance, allowing him his full stamina plus fortitude dice pool to try and absorb the staggering 8 successes of wolf-claw evisceration.  I rolled well, allowing him to deal out some punishment the following turn instead of simply going down in the first six seconds of combat.  His second attempt at soaking wasn't as fruitful: 1 success out of 6 dice.  Yep, still dead - or near enough.

Instead of going either/or, just fortitude or stamina + (fortitude) for everyone, maybe I can allow just those Kindred with fortitude to roll stamina + fortitude, but those without the discipline can't attempt to soak the damage at all.  That might be a fair compromise.

I think every vampire defeated was diablerized.  Hahaha!  As soon as I mentioned drinking a fallen vamp's vitae until reaching his soul and then being able to suck that down, too... everyone wanted to try it.  Since I as using blood potency instead of generation, I allowed the soul-sucker to attain blood potency 2, instead of the 1 they started with.  Before the first session, I briefly touched on the different levels.  The greater a vampire's blood potency, the more blood he can use each turn and the less he can sustain himself on animal blood (and human blood if he reached blood potency of 5), etc.  That's why Kindred need to go into torpor after a century of stalking the night.

Another difference between the last session and this one was disciplines.  In the first, I allowed PCs to add auspex, dominate, presence, etc. to their dice pools instead of the raw attribute + ability.  So, there was less dice rolled this time and less successes, but everything seemed to go smoothly.

Back to the plot: there was a cargo shipment coming in on the docks of Gary after slaying Lucien and the scarred Evelyn.  It contained a really old dark wooden box bound in iron with Scandinavian runes on the side.  Unsurprisingly, the box contained an elder.  Modius wanted to blood-bind the elder to himself.  This, of course, is a process.  He couldn't do it in just one night.  Before his second attempt, more of Lodin's goons showed up.  These were supposed to be heavy hitters.

I finally made a decent roll for once, wounding or mauling Blago and injuring another - he had a lot of celerity.  But, in the end, the fanged NPC was toast.  The whole game was a bloody mess (in a good way).

Will have to glance at the 2nd and 3rd edition rules to see what improvements they might have made.  I vaguely remember those systems working different than 1st edition combat, but it's all pretty hazy.  For non-combat, however, I think V:tM is hard to beat.  The attribute + ability thing works really well.

The weekly home game starts tonight.  I intend on a slower pace with less emphasis on combat.  For a one-off or even two part chronicle, I think it would have been really difficult to avoid physical altercations - especially when half the troupe are noobs.  Maybe not, I'm not really sure.  At least with this new chronicle, I hope the aggravated damage doesn't go flying too quickly.

If you have any thoughts on rules, systems, mechanics, or Storytelling technique, then please feel free to comment below.  I appreciate your feedback!


VS