New Character Exposition

While regaling a new character with the team's previous exploits can be pretty fun, in some games there are often points where new characters need to be told large amounts of world building exposition - often in a big lump sum at the start.  This is often the case with new characters in World of Darkness - new vampires or Changelings, etc.  If you skimp on this, or simply paraphrase it, the player of the new character might have difficulty figuring out their characters' own thoughts on the subject since the describer's biases aren't revealed and therefore they don't know how their character might have tilted.

So what's the best way to do it?

You could think about introducing a character who is either strongly biased or an interesting take on the situation.  That way the players can all remain interested (as can you), in seeing how this cynical elder Sheriff who desires torpor will describe all of the trouble-prone covenants.  The new slant to it all will keep people from getting bored as they're told, once more, about the basics of the game world.

Or you could contrive a way for them to be more deeply engulfed in the world.  Give them a quick run down of the covenants and then have them introduced to several single-covenant-run-soirees who can give them a pretty good feel for the groups.  Throw in a badly treated yet apparently loving it ghoul and you should be able to cover much of vampire in a nut shell.  Oh, and you can always describe the reactions of their Beast rather than having to get someone to say: "By the way, it doesn't like fire!"  I mean, any vampire passing a man lighting a cigarette gets that sneaking suspicion.

So that's just a couple ways to deal with the exposition.  Create or choose an NPC that'll make the conversation fresh and exciting (unless you have a PC who happens to make it all sound new) or simply throw them in the deep end and introduce them to as many canonical elements as you can in a quick space of time - namely one or two sessions.  Can you think of any other ideas?

Invictus Groom & The Auction House

For those who don’t know much about Vampire: the Requiem, the vampires within a particular court are generally split into five major factions (called covenants).  One of these factions, the Invictus, style themselves as nobility with extravagant titles, liege lord / vassal connections, and a focus on having lots of top quality servants.  Some of these servants are fed vampire blood to make ‘ghouls’, which has nothing to do with consuming dead flesh and everything to do with becoming besotted with the kindred that feeds them (love at third drink) and being addicted to vampire blood.

The Invictus have a covenant position called a Groom whose responsibility it is to focus on developing a good stable of humans, the same way a person might develop a stable of horses.  They might breed them over centuries, cherry pick them from the herd of humankind, or even attempt to interbreed ghouls (which is difficult) to create ghoul families who have a little of the tainted vitae as a part of their very beings.  The Invictus in a particular court might have several grooms or none at all.  Even if there is only a single groom they tend to specialise in a particular type of human flesh.

One can imagine that Invictus from other courts might even send human retainers to purchase appropriate humans for their own purposes.  Other covenants, as well, might look to the groom to purchase a human skilled in a particular manner – though this is less common for fear that the human might be Dominated or at least recognisable by the Invictus.

In my London game, James Tyler has to deal with an Invictus groom called Martha Sinclair, who was liege lord to a missing kindred.  Martha is a Ventrue ancillae of 116 and she specialises in artists, entertainers (including BBC presenters), media figures, talent scouts, agents, and the beautiful people. 

Although not a Daeva, she is close ‘friends’ with the leader of the ‘sweet salons’ held by the Daeva, Leila Grant, and has a standing invitation to attend.  She also uses the ‘sweet salons’ club, the Bright Spark, for her auctions due to the nice ambience and Leila’s impressive security.  In exchange, Leila Grant gets some of the better picks of Martha’s humans for sale as well as unwitting ‘extras’ to populate the club on ‘sweet salon’ club nights.  The two need each other and for so long as their relationship is mutually beneficial, they can remain allies.  Thus the two strive to keep the status quo working as they do enjoy each other’s company yet are old enough that they would turn on each other without some pragmatic need to bind them.

Matha’s best picks go to the elders of her covenant first, her clan second, and then the elders and older ancillae of the court third.  The better picks not yet sold (or sometimes tithed rather than sold as elders have certain expectations) are then offered to Leila Grant, then other Invictus and members of the ‘Sweet Salon’.  Finally others may purchase from the rest. 

In order to represent this, there are private offerings made to those within her covenant or clan’s elders before the auctions begin.  The first auction includes exclusive invitations to the ‘Sweet Salons’ members as well as the elders and older ancillae of the court.  The younger kindred know better than to bid against such important personages but are more than happy to bid against each other.  The second auction is for those not already sold and includes an open invitation to all members of the court – even the Carthians.

These two auctions occur twice a year.  Many of Martha’s slaves believe they are simply under contract to her as they still provide her with her revenue through perfectly mundane performances.  As part of their contract, the women must wear a fine gold necklace of interlinking hands and the men must wear large gold cuff links of a hand bound in what looks like a silk rope.  These are her symbols and woe betide any kindred who steals, ghouls, or kills a human being with such a symbol upon them. 

The Deputy Sheriff Leila Grant is Lady Sinclair’s good friend, after all.  While the elders and older ancillae will be annoyed that they might have lost the opportunity to have a good slave, they will not directly interfere.  After all, if Lady Sinclair can’t protect her humans then what good is she?  Still, they generally disapprove of such actions.

And what of the humans that are sold?

Their fates depend on their masters.  Some will become blood bonded.  Others given a ghouls’ supernatural powers.  Others will simply continue their duties, doing what they’re told according to contract and only realising their trap if ever they try to leave or start a family of their own desires.  Some will disappear, drained dry or suffering excruciating experimentations.  Perhaps one or two will even be Embraced.

If you use Martha Sinclair, or a groom like her, she could end up enemy, friend, or simply a part of an auction that they need to win on behalf of their own liege lords or mentors.

It’ll be interesting to see what James Tyler plans to do with her.  I can imagine him braving all of the issues to kill the slaver, hunter that he is.  You can read more articles from James Tyler's campaign, including a few more London NPCs and places, over here.

Flashpoint: Not One Conversation, But Two

This was another session where we didn’t have very much focus (me, particularly) so we didn’t get through very much in our two hours of gaming.  The crew returned to Rickety Squibs.  Lunjun made a Circlet of Intelligence over the journey (well, more a collar of Intelligence) that Lhye put on his giant wasp so that it was intelligent enough to be trained.  While technically a wasp normally has intelligence – rather than intelligence 0, I thought it made enough sense that it could go from being pheromonally controlled to capable of making its own animalistic decisions.

They then returned to Bloodcove.

Proteus led them to one of the fancier clubs in town which was built into a naturally occurring hole in the giant mangrove tree whose floor was sculpted red tree sap and whose furnishings had been grown from the wood.  The group split off once inside as though they didn’t know each other.

Lhye quickly met up with a few women wearing Calistrian designs in their outfits who were subtle prostitutes.  Lunjun mostly kept to himself.  Archer started up conversation with the barkeep while he looked about in search of ... well, something that might provide a clue.  It was this very perceptive mood that enabled him to hear what happened with Proteus’ conversation.

You see, Proteus insinuated himself with a group of likely lads and ladies and started chatting to them.  The conversation began well enough but then Proteus’ player rolled a 1 on his Gather Information check.  We go with botch rules for 1s on skill checks due to the sheer level of interest that such a sudden spike in bad luck can cause so we all knew something bad would happen.

I told Proteus’ player that his character spoke to them in a cheerful enough manner but that his audience began to look askance at him.  He made an effort to repair the conversation which only caused them to look deeply worried.  He tried to distract them from whatever faux pas he made with a jibe at the bartender, which led to a few of them scraping their chairs back and reaching for the pommels of their swords.

I then took Archer’s player aside and told him what had actually been said.  Proteus had been having an entirely different conversation from what he thought he had done.  He had been cheerfully mentioning his worship of Zon Kuthon and the need for non-consensual pain to enlighten the masses and bring reality’s truth to the mind’s eye of the residents here.  When he had made that jibe at the bartender, he had actually pointed out one such cruelty he could do to that man.

Archer acted quickly (remind me to give him one of the Spin Me A Yarn Cards, players-o-mine-who-read-this) and snapped at Proteus for owing him coin.  He battered Proteus about as he threw him out the pub, exacting his ten gold coins.  He then apologised to the group, stating that Proteus was a con man who would pretend at being a Kuthite to convince people to believe in certain scams.  Then Archer returned to his seat.

Lhye managed to gather a little information from the whores on Kitzy’s ex-boyfriend – Carnegie apparently took up with a Captain Sudholz of the good ship SudScraper which was apparently a merchant ship with a piratical bent. 

Lunjun had rolled a natural 20 on his Gather Information check so he overheard two Tienese women who had been eavesdropping.  The women giggled at how Carnegie was still in the city and surely would never make such a big point of joining that ship if he had really done so.  Lunjun went over to them with drinks and introduced himself – hoping to gather more information from them.  He offered a 10gp bribe.

The women laughed at him.  One declared that her shoes were worth more (they were – they were magical).  She asked to know why Lunjun wanted Carnegie.  He explained that Carnegie owed them.  She declared that anyone who would go to such effort to find someone was after a bigger slice of loot.  He offered her 100gp.  She offered him a tip per 100gp.  He agreed – but only if it were a good one.

(At this point, no one had cottoned on that anyone who would scoff at 10gp and see 100gp as only enough for a tip might be of a moderately high level.)

She told him that there was a price on Carnegie’s head and that the Mantis Assassins had been commissioned to take that price by killing Carnegie.

Lunjun stated that he already knew that and wouldn’t pay for information he already knew.  Having thought this was quite a good piece of information, the woman stated that he could say as much about any of the tips she had and refuse to pay her at all.  The two reached a stalemate and Lunjun withdrew to the counter with his gold.  He explained the situation using a whisper spell to the others.

Lhye decided to have a shot and decided to go with intimidation.  “Hello,” he said.

They pretended they couldn’t speak Common and spoke Tienese at him with blank expressions on their faces.

Lhye cast Hold Person on one of them and her friend drew a dagger.  The friend said: “Get out, before I gut you” and made an Intimidation check of 24.  Now I don’t make PCs do what NPCs tell them with successful NPC social checks.  It’s more to give an indication that a person actually is a bit scary, or not.

So Lhye cast a Sleep Hex on her and down she went.  He went to bundle the sleeping one up but the bartender ordered him to unhand her.  This was a decent establishment and he wasn’t going to have a kidnapper destroy his reputation.  Lhye tried to threaten him by stating that it was better than having the shop destroyed.  The subtle prostitutes also moved into position – leaving nine potential combatants.

Archer defused it by snarling: “What the hell are you doing off the ship?  I never gave you leave!”  He cajoled Lhye into putting the girl down and cast a curse on the sleeping girl so that she would suffer from Mania towards him.  The two of them left the club.  Lunjun followed soon after – knowing the girls would soon snap out of the spell and could identify him.

The crew returned to find Proteus at a seedy tavern not far from the ship.  Archer accused him of his Kuthite words and Proteus was genuinely confused as he didn’t remember saying that.  They thought he might be possessed so they marched him to the nearest church – rock pools held sacred to the Gozreh worshippers – and he sat in one such rock pool to prove the point that if he were possessed before he wasn’t anymore.  The animals in the pool seemed not to find him a threat.  A hermit crab even walked over his hand though he wasn’t particularly still.  A butterfly landed on his forehead.

They then left the site and purchased one of the few legitimate holy water vials from the so-called ‘priest stalls’ that lined the street near the Gozreh site.  Proteus drank it without an issue.  Proteus was then bothered by a kitten for food.  It seemed he had gone from marked by Zon Kuthon to being a friend of the animals.

Archer let the issue drop.

For now.

Evil Pathfinder Character Concept

The player of Proteus came up with an awesome evil character idea today in a conversation with Lhye's player and the two of them really built on it.  In Pathfinder, you can afflict characters with an insanity using the Bestow Curse spell.  One of the optional insanities is Psychosis which turns the victim of the spell's alignment to Chaotic Evil as well as granting a +10 bonus to Bluff checks to pretend they're not evil.  In other words, you could create an evil character that goes around with the party and does nothing wrong ... except turning the occasional random NPC into a Chaotic Evil person.

Imagine an elf going around for hundreds of years, casting the spell on humans so that they can then hunt them down while they're older with the rest of the party.  The elf could even cast it on human babies - like the paladin's son - which could create either children who grow up to be serial killers or even evil toddlers who themselves start killing the people around them.

Considering that you don't need to be insanely high level to do this, just imagine how often this could be thrown about by various evil characters in the game world.  Oh, your best friend chose to marry the love of your life?  Turn one of them Chaotic Evil!  Your boss promoted someone instead of you?  Make the new employee Chaotic Evil and then leave the area with your family.

I mean, yes, Chaotic Evil doesn't necessarily mean that they will be all that actively evil but it's bound to lead to some pretty bad acts of random violence.  Then again, Chaotic Evil that comes with a side of 'pretend to be innocent' suggests serial killing or otherwise violent sociopaths who impulsively commit evil acts according to their fantasies.

It is messed up how easy it is to be evil in roleplaying games.

I mean, sure, Remove Curse will work on them but the Bluff bonus means that years of evil deeds might pass before anyone suspects the villain.  By that time, they might believe they were born bad rather than that they were the subject of a curse.

So people, what magically evil plans have you thought up that cleverly uses certain spells?  Proteus' player (who happens to also be Leningrad's player, if you read both the Dystopic and Flashpoint Actual Plays), got any further ideas for this?

Unspeakable Promise & the Unspeakable Possessor

This article is all about running a Call of Cthulhu game involving the Unspeakable Promise in the World of Darkness system, though there's some advice here that's good for people running the game with the BRP or Trail of Cthulhu system.  If you'd like to read more articles where this came from, you can find them over here.

The Unspeakable Promise

Some people are foolish enough to make bargains with Hastur in the vain hope that what they gain will be more than what they will lose.  In the fabulous Tatters of the King campaign (by Chaosium), your characters not only get the chance to deal with Hastur but also have the opportunity to learn the spell themselves and could be foolish enough to make the promise.  How do you deal with that?

Firstly, try not to be too much of an evil genie about the promise.  Hastur is far more insidious than that.  The promise will work.  The characters will get what they asked for.  After all, there wouldn't be so many Hastur cultists willing to make the deal if it never worked out.  Just look at Edwards and Bacon who both seem pretty happy with what they've gotten.  If an investigator makes a deal to become an epic marksman, they really should have spells or skill buffs that make them a better gunman.

Secondly, be a bit of an evil genie about the promise.  Whose to say that Edwards' homicidal sadistic / masochistic tendencies weren't a byproduct of his deal for the ability to regenerate himself?  Whose to say that the cost for Bacon's power and knowledge isn't the need to drain life from victims (despite regular usage he's still not all *that* young) or that he wasn't turned into a sociopath from the sudden insight?  Have a think about what the cost will be for the deal made.

Let's return to the marksman idea.  Perhaps the character becomes increasingly fixated on figuring out ways to kill the people around them.  You don't need to tell the player to become fixated.  You could simply start describing good sniper placements, fields of view, possible exits, alongside lovingly described depictions of their enemies dying and just how easy it would be.  It might begin with villains but then expand to include police officers who give them speeding tickets and then annoying waitresses. 

In the Storyteller system, you could use the vice mechanic to highlight the descent into the darkness.  Treat killing someone with a gun as an extra vice for the character.  Remove the ability to make Morality rolls to avoid losing Morality when the character murders someone with a gun.  They should automatically lose it.  In the BRP system, you might give them a 1/1d6 sanity check whenever they fire their gun due to the shocks of pleasure and joy it gives them.

Hastur is all about madness, after all.  Drive the characters mad but do it through temptation.

The Unspeakable Possessor 

When a character who has made the Unspeakable Promise finally dies, they are possessed by Hastur itself (or perhaps some sort of lesser aspect of Hastur) which causes the victim's body to twist into a boneless giant humanoid with an overwhelming desire to kill others with its draining touch though it is capable of animalistic cunning.  This isn't an entity that you would want to face lightly.

Strength: 6
Dexterity: 2
Stamina: 9

Intelligence: 4
Wits: 3
Resolve: 5

Presence: 2
Manipulation: 1
Composure: 5

Athletics: 3
Brawl: 5
Occult: 5
Stealth: 1
Additional skills may be retained from the original host at the Storyteller's discretion.

Size: 8
Health: 17
Initiative: 8
Defence: 2
Willpower: 10

Le Parkeur: 4
Spelunking: 4

Armor: 3/3 (scales and rubbery flesh)

Attacks
Draining Slam.  On a successful touch attack, the Unspeakable Possessor rolls Resolve + Occult versus the target's Stamina + Supernatural Potency.  If the target fails this roll, they die.  If the target succeeds on this roll, rather than dying outright they take aggravated damage equivalent to the successes made on the original Resolve + Occult roll.

More Links for Tatters of the King

Don't worry, this isn't the main article today but merely a little teaser with a few cool web-sites that I recently found for the Tatters of the King campaign.  We have a tatters wikispaces that is quite useful for those people trying to keep to the timeline (which is one of the strictest parts of this campaign) and an invitation to an online game that might be interesting for some folk.  I don't know if all of the places are filled but I do know that it isn't set to start for another month or so.

Nautical Campaign Worthy Links

Loading That Ship

A look at why so many resource books for different games vary so much when reporting on how many tons can be kept in the cargo holds of the ships.  It's a rather specific little article but still an interesting read for those wanting to learn a little more about ships.

Sea Dogs, Buccaneers, and Pirates

A Game Master muses on historical piracy and privateering as he tries to figure out what would be the right era for his own game of piracy.

Everything You Know About The Map Is Wrong and More Reasons Why You Shouldn't Believe Maps

This is mostly about in-game maps in general but as maps are such a big part of nautical campaigns, I feel like it works here as well.  These two blog posts talk about reasons why players shouldn't be so certain of the maps they receive, even if they are sanctioned by their characters' in-game governments.