manycoloredkingdom
manycoloredkingdom
The Cat's Grin Tavern
18 posts
I'm really just here to follow storytellers, get inspiration, and maybe inspire a bit, myself.
Don't wanna be here? Send us removal request.
manycoloredkingdom · 3 years ago
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Well, I'm trying to be better about updating this sucker. The Changeling game ended due to the kids getting to be a bit much for the parents during play and periodically fighting.
With that, I entered a new era of searching for group since my vampire group is busy with other projects (or wants to be center stage so much that I would have to devote an entire chronicle to flutes...) I entered a new level of "searching for group".
Maybe I'm a little bitter. Whatever.
Still the best game I have ever run.
Anyhow.
I'm wrapping up the designs and such for my ghost story. I have found some people interested in playing and we will give them a shot at meeting each other through Discord and using the PSN.
One of them is out of New York and another is in East Texas... So distance is pretty much the only option.
We could have been rolling sooner with a different group but (as a healthcare worker) I am still taking Covid 19 very seriously... And there were a few in that bunch who were not. Like... At all. And I just wasn't in the mood for the added stress and they didn't want to do distance because reasons that are easily countered but by that point one of them was trying to power game and I could tell there was going to be an issue there.
ANYWAY:
I started plugging more time into the ghost story and we will try running that using the Cthulhu Hack. I'm using Deepnight RPG Map Editor 2 to design the house and surrounding buildings. It's a great little program (Also free but I encourage paying for it. The creators did a lot of good work on it.).
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My rough layout is above. I'll need to work on it a little because some. Of the assets do weird stuff and others don't exist (I have my gf working on them since she is good at digital creation).
Ultimately, I want some kind of soundscape we can use as well as the character pictures, map, and suchlike.
We'll see how it goes. For now, the WordPress I developed for the game is up here. The public history will be released soon but character sheets, hidden history, ghost sheets, and all that are going to be password locked. Once I have the game underway, I'll post links to the podcast.
It won't be anything amazing but I think it'll be a lot of fun.
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manycoloredkingdom · 3 years ago
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Oh wow. It has been a minute.
Meanwhile I actually got reblogged. Neat!
So, I'll apologize for being out for so long. The Changeling game fell through due to the kids getting upset at each other a lot. The adults decided we will just try again later.
Then my Vampire game folded.
That one hurt. A lot. But I hit a depressive episode after we managed to buy our house. It took a really long time to pass and still hasn't entirely. But the friend who was coming to live with us and help pay off the mortgage passed away.
I still haven't entirely processed it. But the game was something that he loved and trying to play without him just hurt so much.
I'm still working on ideas and getting myself back into writing.
If there is an aspect of the World of Darkness lines that any sporting storytellers want an essay on, let me know. I may not be playing right now, but I'm always thinking.
Happy holidays.
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manycoloredkingdom · 3 years ago
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And then it was 2022.
Oops.
So, let's do some catch up! This won't be game related at all so if that's all you're wanting... Um... Sorry.
So we got the house. I under bid and ended up with equity. We were set to move in with the gentleman we (Lady and I) had lived with before (Rooster) to help get him out of a really toxic living arrangement.
There's a lot of backstory to that, but none of it matters at this point.
Rooster passed away in mid-September 2021 and I lost a lot of focus on, if I'm honest, everything. I'm still recovering. This post has already sat for six months, give or take.
My game is, at this point, dead and I have acknowledged it. It's a bitter way to end one of the best games I have ever done... But I think I have an idea of what to do. I'm going to start by posting this and then getting my new project summed up.
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manycoloredkingdom · 4 years ago
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Uh... So it's been even longer this time. Sorry, fam.
I'm working on buying a house currently, so a lot of my energy has been devoted to that.
But, in between packing to move (a task and a half with my "somewhat extensive library"), working a 9-5, running a Destiny 2 clan (currently called the "Fighting Cooterpuffs"... Feel free to request), plotting out the clímax for my vampire chronicle's second act, working on that ghost story game, and reading a ton even for me), and likely half a dozen other things, I have managed to...
... Uh... Not get much writing done at all.
This is really bad. Writing is a habit that I fell out of years ago for a variety of reasons. But I'm going to get back into it. Maybe post some snippets in here, if there's any interest.
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manycoloredkingdom · 4 years ago
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Hooooooooooboy. I found something fun. I was going to promote the Story Engine today but I have had some success on the Cthulhu Hack story that I mentioned last time around.
First, a disclaimer (a couple, really):
1. The lady I am using as my example picture isn't a real person. I edited the initial photo using the Polish app and then ran the result through a zombie filter.
2. That final picture is pretty fucking creepy. I'm not responsible for anyone getting upset or creeped out by a picture of a fake person morphed into a fake creature.
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Okay. So there you go.
Now, my plan is to have my players on Zoom, using their living character portrait instead of their camera. So we'll have all these vibrant, living faces to help dispel some of the disbelief.
But once someone dies (whether they are with another character or are discovered somewhere else) they will change over to the dead picture for their character (below).
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But!
This is a horror game, so death is hardly the end. Every character to die in this game will rise as either a ghost or a zombie (jury is still out) bent on revenge for their friends abandoning them to their fate.
Once the character pops up and gets spotted, they switch over to the undead picture.
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I'll also have the players mute their mics when their characters are not present to increase that sense of claustrophobia, particularly as the gallery of faces moves into blood-spattered gray... and then twists into something inhuman.
I'll be recording the sessions and maybe uploading them to YouTube. Just in case anyone wants to watch.
Further adventures in this particular idea are going to involve me learning how to compose ambient music using my girlfriend's program and doing a floorplan for the ranch house the game is set in (may take a minute there).
I also really need to figure out how much of a reward I should give to the survivors. The XP will come to them.l in my Vampire game.
I'm thinking of doing a large reward for everyone who survives and best antagonist. Everyone will. Get something, I'm just not sure what, yet.
If anyone has suggestions for anything that might make this creepier, drop me a line. I'm eager to hear what you come up with.
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manycoloredkingdom · 4 years ago
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The first vaccine made me a little blegh so nothing got done. But that's okay.
Let's talk about the Cthulhu Hack, this time around.
I love this concept. Standard Call of Cthulhu and even the D20 or 5e version are great. But it takes a lot of adjusting to get the various systems down.
And that takes a game that, frankly, makes me very happy and makes it a bit of a system slog. I have (unless I'm mistaken) standard Call of Cthulhu 5th Ed And call of Cthulhu D20 (based around the system for Dungeons and Dragons 3 and 3.5 (which I am very familiar with).
Now, before I get into the benefits of the Hack version, I want to say something that's a bit of a no brainer.
There's no wrong way to play.
As long as the players are happy, it's all good.
We all have favorites, though. Call D20 is definitely my favorite, as it was my first. But however you want to run Call, the Cthulhu Hack has you covered.
First, it's extremely minimal. This is great because getting into the tone and staying in it is really hard when you have to get into systems frequently.
The rulebook is a grand total of 85 pages. That includes the space taken up by an adventure and illustrations.
The system itself is built to emphasize horror by limiting your resources to a die type (say a d12) and reducing that die each time you roll a 1 or a 2 (from a d12 to a d10, for example) until the resource is completely depleted and you are left in the dark.
Likewise, the stats also leave you with a weaker character than most Dungeons and Dragons campaigns. That's good, from a horror perspective. I mean, how much horror can you really manage if all your stats are high?
All character types have specific abilities and there is a section on free-form characters, allowing for a looser approach to creation.
So I do really like that.
The sanity system is fairly easy. Sanity also downgrades die types on a 1 or 2. Each degradation leads to temporary insanity. The final step down ends in permenant madness.
So, I like that. I always hated the "calculate 20% of sanity". I'm a literature person. I don't know 20% of 83. Come on.
The monster section is a bit disappointing, to be honest. It's very very minimal... But maybe to its detriment. But the workaround is using the Beast Hack volumes from the Black Hack and just tweak names. So, not much of an issue.
I would like more archetypes, to be honest. Having four, plus free form and the fifth archetype they recommend not using just doesn't feel like enough.
Overall, though, I see what they did there and I do really like it. I'll be using the Cthulhu Hack for my placeholder game when I break from vampire briefly.
So, once that happens, I will update with a play by play review.
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manycoloredkingdom · 4 years ago
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Haven't run a game since early February. Everyone has been sick or insanely busy (including myself). So this is a little off the trail for this page, but...
I picked up something called The Story Engine and the World Building Toolkit by Scribe Forge.
I have also been fooling around with The Cthulhu Hack (a super minimal TTRPG designed around the Call of Cthulhu roleplaying game setting and The Black Hack system).
And I have been creating.
It's been a while since I was able to write. Life got really dark and then really busy for a while and I just stopped.
Never do that, by the way.
Normally I'm not one for tools. I just improvise and see what happens. But lately that hasn't worked. I'm likely going to do a review of all three products at some point, but I can tell you now that my attitude towards them is very positive so far.
I mean, I say down yesterday and wrote out a rough design for a world in around two hours.
Today I'll start writing my first short in it. Always assuming that my first round of vaccines doesn't knock me on my butt. We'll see.
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manycoloredkingdom · 4 years ago
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POWER PLAY PART TWO
So in the Vampire game, my focus was on setting a trail that would catch the players' interest and test the rough level of innovation in the party.
Because, yes, I have overestimated groups before and wound up with very frustrated players. I have also underestimated groups and run out of prepared material far too quickly.
So, when they asked for a mystery, I got tingly.
Because, let's be honest, how much more Gothic can you get than being a vampire hunting down what appeared to be a serial killer?
So I geared up for a mystery (low power level) and we got started.
And they feel in love with playing politics.
As fledgling power-level vampires.
So I said "Fuck it" and got them involved in the local political scene. It's been hilarious because they aren't strong enough to hold the positions they do. But the collective is creative enough and smart enough to do so and make it work.
So are they in over their heads?
From the point of view of Mr. I'm-A-Fucking-Vampire (where raw force is the measure of power)... Oh, totally. They're so screwed that I can't measure it or explain it with words. If they attempt to fight Morak-Sehk on its own terms, they will absolutely get murdered.
From a political stance? Ehhhh... Probably. They've broken some rules and angered a few people. If the Prince decided to cut them loose, he wouldn't lose much. Except his alibi.
From a strategic stance? Hell no. These guys have come up with some brilliant solutions that have gotten them through situations that I honestly thought I would ash them... And they may have solved the mystical disease.
-_-
I worked hard on designing that.
The lesson here is that you have to plan for what kind of story you want to tell and figure out how best to grow that flavor. And that power comes in a lot of forms. This group is largely noncombatant, but they have now upset plans for an ancient Baali.
I know. I'm proud, too.
Granted they're playing the Prince's game and he is unknowingly playing the Inquisitor Sorrow's game. Who knows what else is happening behind the scenes?
And I know that once the veils begin to fall, I'm going to see eyes widening as it turns out that the Prince they have been supporting has been using them as a smokescreen the Baali is hiding as a friend and the only ally they really have is a deranged Inquisitor who doesn't really care much about them at all. And that's really a huge part of vampire, seeing the games the elders play and thinking: "I'm glad that I'm too smart to be used like that" as you are used exactly like that.
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manycoloredkingdom · 4 years ago
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POWER PLAY PART ONE
Man, I'm lazy.
Although plotting a V20 game and a C20 game AND setting up a place holder game for when V20 takes a brief hiatus AND getting back into writing fiction.... AND working a full time job, maybe I'm not actually lazy. I dunno.
I have been enjoying writing these essays on good storytelling, though.
And examining what made the bad stuff that I have experienced so bad.
I'm not trying to say that if you don't do what I suggest that you're sorry sucks and so do you. Not at all. I'm giving examples of the things that the majority of my players have told me they liked.
So I wanted to talk about something that every Storyteller needs to consider when starting a new game: Power.
When I talk about power, as a game team, I mean both "starting power" (what the characters are at right after creation) and "final power" (how strong politically/sociallyphysically/magically they are at the end). These two ratings vary pretty widely in the World of Darkness. Werewolves start with a fast greater capacity for physical violence than a neonate Vampire who starts with fewer magical abilities but no real penalty for using them than a Mage who has a much easier time hiding what they are than either of the previous two.
But the end power levels? An Archmage against an ancient Vampire would be catastrophic and the Werewolf wouldn't stand a chance. But the vampire would likely be the least one standing in terms of sheer power. (We literally saw this play out in the Week of Nightmares where Zapathasura tore through waves of shifters, ancient Kuei-jin and who knows how many humans before the Technocrats intervened... And failed to kill it on the first try.)
With that said, I find low power stories much more interesting than the high power stuff. Knowing that the upper limit of power is nightmarishly high is fun...being on that level is also fun for a little while. But it gets old real fast.
Having it hang over you that the Ancients might or might not be out there waiting to rise up and destroy their progeny in an orgy of feeding and destruction? That adds a whole new level of horror if one of the elders were to awaken in your town and expect obedience. After all, they have the power to command it.
For the current Vampire game that I'm running, I had one player who wanted a high power campaign. That's fair. Nothing a player wants is wrong, per se. It may be wrong for the game and the tone, but wanting a particular game is fine.
It is even one of the first things that I ask when we get started: "What do you want out of this game? What kind of game are you looking for?"
The consensus, including this particular player, was that they wanted a mystery. So I started up a mystery. That evolved, once they began interacting with the Court, into a political thriller with an overarching occult doomsday plot. Tons of intrigue, lots of description and misdirection and a relatively low power level since getting tougher in the WoD takes a pretty long time and they didn't take high levels of Generation.
Well... Midway through Act I, this player got mad over the fact that he couldn't just tear his way through a group of hunters.
There are a couple of problems with his logic and I tried to gently point them out:
He didn't build a combat character.
His generation (13th) makes him slightly better in combat than a human... But not a group of them.
His elegant rebuttal was: "But I'm a fucking vampire!"
That's stuck with me. He dropped a while back but the argument is still there. His character was, as he noted, a fucking vampire. And I understand his frustration. The games he has played in have all been high powered murderfests.
And there's nothing wrong with that either.
But the direction of a chronicle honestly does have a lot to do with the power level.
If they had said they wanted a war story between the Camarilla and the Sabbat, I would have likely started everyone at 9th generation with more points and a huge rate of being killed to death.
But with a mystery, a sense of powerlessness and being outnumbered, outgunned, but potentially not out-maneuvered leads to a higher generation and stronger enemies to prevent them from just wading through the enemies and using violence to solve all the problems they face.
(continued next)
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manycoloredkingdom · 4 years ago
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Applying what I've said in the last two posts to Changeling is a little difficult.
For one thing, both Edlie and Autumn don't want to sit still for real long. So rewards will need to be frequent and minor for a little while to get them hooked.
How am I dealing with factions?
Given that Changeling society has a surprising number of factions (Changelings VS Prodigals, Seelie vs Unseelie vs Shadow Court vs Black Court, house vs house ad nauseum, nobles vs nobles, nobles vs commoners, commoners vs commoners, Kithain vs Thallain, Dauntain vs Kithain, Dauntain vs Thallain... And that is without bringing the Chimera and Inanimae) I have made the decision to not deal with it, particularly.
I'm taking an approach that is a little more loose. The Unseelie have a presence (and the motley is asked with part of that presence) but there is more to it.
Basically they have met Glee and they like her devil may care attitude... But they haven't met the Redcaps of the Goblin Deeps. So we'll be doing some of the horror there, very soon.
After all, it's easy to like a Pooka... But encountering a swarm of Redcaps who don't particularly care about murder is just a little different.
I'm mostly leaving nobles out of it, as well. For now, at least. I will likely bring in a Sidhe just to raise tensions, at some point.
But there was a point that I talked about "risk and reward" and how balancing is really important.
I have a five meeting rule, which is to say that I will not attempt to kill off anyone until after 5 meetings have passed. But, I always add that accidents happen.
So, with that in mind what is to stop the players from going Scarface and killing all the things?
Well... I don't stop stupid decisions but the 5 meeting rule doesn't prevent consequences.
Plus I like to get deep with stories so you aren't going to be anywhere near a resolution after 5 sessions.
But that brings us back to my question about how I'm going to balance the rewards (which, as I said, will be frequent at first) with the risk (given that only monumental carelessness or abysmal rolls will kill you in the first 5 sessions).
Let's look at where the story left off last time.
A new changeling is going through Chrysalis... And the people who were watching them somehow lost sight and they disappeared. The trail leads our motley to the local abandoned amusement park (What? You don't have one in your town?).
Spooky abandoned park? Check. It increases the sense of tension to describe the drifts of old leaves, fallen over the course of decades and left to lie. The battered and beaten horses with their cracked paint, missing heads and dented bodies sitting on the carousel stare at the characters at they walk by and a chill passes over them. The mosquitos, breeding in rainwater collected in the Tunnel of Love remind them all that there are bloodsuckers here, heightening that tension.
Anyone could be here. Anyone.
And there are rumors of vampires hiding out in the park. But...
...the sun has begun to set.
Now it is a race against time as the motley searches the park to reap the benefits of a Chrysalis before the vampires awaken and begin hunting them. But the trail grows cold at the house of mirrors...
So now I should have them wondering if vampires cast a reflection? Can they be killed with a stake through the heart? Where do you even find a stake? Should we just run? Can we talk to them? Will they eat us?
And the greatest trick is that I told them at the outset that I don't plan to crossover. They have forgotten that in the light of that blood colored sunset.
Are there vampires in the park?
Short answer: Probably not.
Long answer: My VTM game has a pack of Ravnos living in the park. But that timeline is 16 years in the past for Changeling...and hunters are very rampant at that point in the city's history. The Ravnos have moved on by now, leaving only an echo of their presence
So the level of danger is actually quite low. But the motley doesn't know that.
So we have actual risk (whatever bizarre Chimerae are leftover from all the use of Chimersty and the possibility that something else has moved in to the park)... But we have the perception of risk that is far stronger because the characters don't know what is most likely or what might happen.
As a Storyteller, we have to engage the players and the best way is that risk/reward paradigm. Even if the risk is only in their heads.
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manycoloredkingdom · 4 years ago
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Factions continued.
By now, my readers may have noticed I'm fairly detailed in my plots. I try.
After that colossal block of text, how can I possibly give an equally detailed dissection of a bad Storyteller?
Honestly?
It isn't easy.
So the Bad Storyteller had no idea of how the Sabbat should work (many Sabbat vampires are on Paths other than Humanity... Which means human emotion shouldn't be real prevalent. Marriage would be laughable. Relationships would be nearly impossibly with Vinculi.). They also didn't really understand that the Sabbat isn't just a raging horde of monstrous idiots but that they can be human in their inhumanity.
The Sabbat shouldn't be an easy roleplaying experience and Paths should never be the Path of What I Was Going to Do Anyway.
Wait, you may be saying, how is it possible to have both both of those views at the same time (both being wimpy and bloodthirsty lunatics)?
I dunno. But it was definitely how they rolled.
The Sabbat are famous for, shall we say, not playing well with others. They bait werewolves for fun. This pack were friends with werewolves. Every character in the pack had motives that were a little too human for the Sword of Caine (Sex? Really? You're a vampire and not a Twilight Sparklepire. Grow up.). They hid amongst humans (like the Camarilla) and participated heavily in a Masquerade that the Camarilla would have approved of.
They were open, kept not real secrets and any tensions were wrapped up very quickly. In five years of playing, not one of those pack members died.
Not. One.
And they saw a LOT of action against enemies strong enough that there should have been corpses.
In five years of playing, not once was I actually concerned that my PCs would be really at risk.
There were no stakes. There was no discernable difference between the Camarilla, Infernalists, and the Sabbat other than superficial ones.
THE CAMARILLA were all stuffy, effete, no combatants the Sabbat could dispatch with minimal effort. They screamed easily.
THE INFERNALISTS were the kind of satanic cult members popularized in the satanic panic of the 1980s. That is to say, shallow, motive less, and petty. They were never plotted out and were basically just bodies to put in the ground.
THE SABBAT were hardcore rebels and murderous....frilly shirt wearing...wussies. They basically rolled over when a single pack decided to go rogue.
That leaves out the Werewolves who were supercool with working with vampires who were supercool working with magi and hunters and... Demons.
Do you see the issue? We literally had Changelings helping vampires because, and I am serious and this is a direct quote, "We're all friends."
Um... No. You're not friends.
You are literally competing for limited resources and vampires are walking poison to you. A walking poison that will also eat you just to trip balls.
So, when you settle in to run a World of Darkness game, take a moment to read over the flavor of the given faction, how it tends to interact with others and ask yourself if you really think everyone can be friends.
It is simplistic and boring to have every faction working together. I had hoped that the PCs would fight (and they were my PCs!) and instead of the World of Darkness I got a really weird version of Twilight meets My Little Pony.
The key thing about storytelling is knowing how to use tension. You need to know how to balance reward and risk in such a way that finishing the quest and getting your reward feels like a real success and not a foregone conclusion.
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manycoloredkingdom · 4 years ago
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I thought about it and decided to go with factions. Don't worry. I'm not going to get into the multifaceted web of how the technocrats and certain subsidiaries of Pentex might work together given that the Technocratic Union had been heavily infiltrated by Nephandi.
That would get difficult and complicated and I'd need diagrams to illustrate it. Then afterwards, I'd have to show a counselor where the metaplot touched me, using a doll.
By and large I don't meta plot anymore. It's fun but I like doing my own thing.
So what do I mean?
The best way to put it is that I'm looking at the micro level. I'll refer primarily to my own Vampire game for examples of how politics can work (and be grateful my players don't read this) and refer to the bad Storyteller's game as a counterpoint.
When I say that I am going to focus on factions... It's a bit misleading. Because, it isn't really factions. You'll see.
So, I primarily run a Camarilla game. It's fairly standard s far as power structure goes. Elders on top, all others are servants who think they're free.
The story began with a different power structure in place. The Prince was old, but surprisingly fair and lenient. His Sheriff enforced the Traditions but never really got heavy handed as long as Kindred were willing to provide the cover up and didn't repeat too often.
Then hunters somehow figured out where Elysium was happening and firebombed it.
Now my players were originally tasked with finding out why dismembered bodies were turning up around town...in particular around areas frequented by Kindred.
Sounds easy right?
Well...
Nah.
A Sabbat Inquisitor, masquerading as an Autarkis, has offered assistance to one of the Primogen in exchange for hunting privelges in town.
But Primogen can't grant that kind of permission, I hear you gasping.
No... They can't. But a Prince may do as they like.
So, that Primogen traded the hunting rights in exchange for the Prince's unlife,took the throne and supported the hunt for the hunters utilizing the coterie to uphold the charade that his city is under attack.
Meanwhile, the Inquisitor militarized and funded the hunters, going so far as to ghoul the leaders and install its own people in the group to give nudges.
Then the Prince hired another group of hunters through a catspaw to gunk up the works and now the two groups are working at cross purposes.
Meanwhile, the Infernalist the Inquisitor is hunting is hiding in plain sight as the coterie's nerdy Tremere friend...with no one the wiser.
So... How do factions work in this convoluted scenario.
First of all, welcome to the Great Game (I refuse to call it the Jyhad, for reference.).
An analysis of the actions is going to get a little involved but bear with me.
NEW PRINCE: GARRICK JENNER
Jenner is very much a creation of the Camarilla. He has spent entries in the shadows of his elders and grown impatient. He was ready to launch a coup and merely waiting for a chance. His new sheriff, a low Humanity Gangrel named Reynolds, simply enjoys the bloodshed he gets to inflict now that he is Sheriff and Scourge. Plus, he owes Jenner one. This is a great way to pay him back. Additionally, all of the high status vampires killed were those who. Might have provided a challenge to the new Prince. Was it an accident?
Hell no.
Like all good Camarilla, Jenner utilizes the independent clans to great effect. Using the local Giovanni PC (who is trying really hard to be an antitribu in a clan that simply doesn't allow such things), he hired an Assamite (Banu Haqim from here on) to take out his political foes once the fire was started. Payment in blood, of course.
The fun part? The coterie has been openly praised by Jenner for their service during the Conflagration, granted territory in the city, and deputized to serve the new sheriff.
Making it impossible to turn on him without losing what they have gotten for upholding a traitor.
THE INQUISITOR: The Sorrow, as it is known, has been on the trail of an ancient Baali for quite some time, tracing the corruption from Europe and into the new world. It has taken part in a ritual freeing it of its Vinculi, on the oath that it will return once its duty is discharged to receive absolution for using... Unorthodox methodology.
Namely? It has lobotomized an Infernalist, blood bound them and now uses them as its muscle.
Another, it has tortured into deeper madness (prophetic Malkavian antitribu), mutilating him to the point that he resembles nothing so much as his namesake: "Lump".
It has also captured and bound a member of the D'Habi line of revenants... Who seems to serve of his own free will. Though with their weakness, who is to say?
With a seemingly blank check on orthodoxy, the Sorrow has broken a few rules in its execution of its duty.
The true joy is that the Sorrow may sow discord and chaos in Camarilla territory (serving the Sabbat) while also hunting the Infernal (serving the Inquisition) and exercising its own sadism (serving itself).
And... the coterie have made contact with the Sorrow, believe that it is Autarkis, and that it wants to help them. They have even received some assistance and protection as it frankly enjoys a good show. However, they cannot come out and admit to receiving help from a former Sabbat and diablerist without risking everything.
Okay... That was a lot of typing.
Local Sabbat presence consists of one pack (The Mongrels) who are held back by a legitimate former-Sabbag-gone-Anarch who is more than willing to kill them. He is allowed to remain so long as the Sabbat persist in the bad part of town.
Thereby guaranteeing that he never kills them off completely.
He knows the Sorrow and is providing cover and a place to stay in his area.
And finally....
THE BAALI: Morak-Sehk is a dangerous creature. It has, after centuries of work and Caine only. Knows how much sacrifice, created a plague capable of infecting Kindred. Its hope is to infect as many as possible so that the disease can bring their hunger to the fore. When this happens, they will frenzy and spill blood.
Essentially, they will become walking sacrificial altars and waken his dark lord.
Why ally with the party? Well...
They have the Prince's favor and openly trust their nerdy, socially awkward buddy. So... Why not ally with the party?
Plus, they provided a blood sample. For his Tremere identity to analyze, allowing him to "axcidentally" pass it along to the acting Regent of Clan Tremere...who then encouraged a blood hunt against the Sabbat (Not knowing, of course, that the disease is blood borne and highly contagious) and thereby playing into Morak-Sehk's plans, endangering the entire Camarilla power source, nearly wiping out the local Sabbat (where the plague began), and creating insane amounts of chaos in the mix.
Now, that leaves out the Salubri the party just discovered their midst, who cured one of them of the Baali's Curse Plague...but that's okay. The takeaway is that there is a lot going on. No one knows everything or even much of anything because this is how elders work.
They're kind of sects unto themselves, though they will try to uphold whatever framework gives them power.
This isn't a friendly setting. This is extremely politically charged and very dangerous to the PCs.
If the "Tremere" finds out that they are hiding a Salubri, they figure he will insist on capturing her and taking her to his elders (if he were really Tremere that would be a fair bet). They are convinced that the Sorrow would kill her out of hand (if they were to research its Sire's Sire, they would know that it was rumored to be friends with a Souleater and to have learned some of its ways... But they made a list of the Sorrow's forebears and kinda just moved on). They believe the Prince's story, and expect to benefit from his pleasure at their success.
So, do you see how the factions provide more of a barrier and less of a hard barrier? Could the Sorrow pass for Camarilla (without being Tzimisce)? No. Not at all. Could the Baali happily skip into town and set up shop. Without getting kinda very dead? HELL NO.
After reading all that incredible slab of text, you're probably thinking "Is he insane?"
Jury is out. But my players wanted politics. So... I am providing.
You may also be saying: Okay, but where is my feast of groaning at awful storytelling?
Don't worry. That's next. I just forgot how complicated this chronicle is.
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manycoloredkingdom · 4 years ago
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Neat! I actually have readers now.
So I'm a step away from babbling at myself!
Honestly, I ought to do a series just on that storyteller because I played with them for a while and was, honestly, pretty bored most of the time.
Which is, of course, a Bad Thing.
What can I say? Options are pretty limited out here.
So some of the ideas I have for articles would be:
Running the Sabbat
Insane power levels and player boredom
Forced romance
Player engagement
Factions in the wide World of Darkness
Fan fiction and why you shouldn't in a roleplaying game
The many uses of edginess... And how not to
These are just some ideas I've been kicking around for a couple of years and I think they could help new or struggling Storytellers. And all of them happened with that storyteller.
Literally.
If anyone is interested in this, let me know if there is an issue you have encountered as a player or a Storyteller. I've been running/playing roleplaying games since Dungeons and Dragons Second Edition Advanced so I might be able to help.
But I think that I'll take a tilt at forced romance next. Or power levels. Or the Sabbat.
Fun with ADD. Haha.
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manycoloredkingdom · 4 years ago
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I was originally going to post about books that I'm reading for Changeling. But, in the process, I realized that there was something that interested me far more.
Bad storytelling.
I was involved in a changeling game a while back that was being run by, probably, the worst storyteller I ever had.
Or maybe that isn't really fair.
They wanted an escapist fantasy rather than a story of Gothic horror and latched onto the brightly colored pages of Changeling. And, I will admit, it is hard to remember that the focus is meant to be on loss.
Loss of home.
Loss of standing.
Loss of faith.
Loss of hope.
The colors are fading and Winter is coming (oh yes... I did that. I went there.).
Granted that I think the World of Darkness is difficult for many people to run well. We have a tendency to shy away from the ugly, hurtful things.
The theme of loss is thrown stark relief while you play the game. Your character can't really fit in with humanity but they can't go home to Arcadia as they are. Going into the Far and Deep Dreaming causes your footsteps to blacken the ground because of the Banality a changeling carries with them.
There's nothing wrong with running a game how you want to. I'm not saying that. At the end of the day it's all make believe. I'm not going to push the darkness of the setting, given how young the kids are.
But, what is wrong, and something that really hurt my enjoyment of the game:
Creative snobbery.
I had and still have a difficult time understanding how Chimerical senses work in the mundane world. It's a little funky and not well explained. That's kind of on the storyteller.
My storyteller? They just gave a condescending smile and said that I just didn't get it.
Firstly, no. I didn't get it. Games like Mage, Wraith, and Changeling take a little time to wrap your head around the mechanics for something as simple as how you see the world. So, like many new players, I didn't get it.
But for a Storyteller to behave that way? I disengaged almost immediately.
It turns out that telling someone that they "just don't get it" implies that they won't get it if you tried to explain it. Top it off with the fact that there are ways to explain it.
For example: I run it sensually.
Not like that. Get your head out of the gutter.
I like to use the smells of seasons. A smell of fresh turned soil, blooms, sounds of birdsong, a feeling of safety or excitement, a sense of living pervades low Banality areas in my world. The higher ones might smell straddle or empty, like a pantry at the hardest point of winter. A sense of desperation, misery, and need would pervade a very high Banality area.
Since Chimera and other creatures of dream can't abuse these places, there's not much need to get into what they're like there. But I let the location decide what chimera there are in an area.
A mental asylum isn't likely to have happy dream bugs, or talking bunnies (for instance). Moving shadows and whispery voices? Totally. Delusions in white coats with syringes full of venom? Absolutely. And will that Dr Delusion (I am so using that name) speak in bizarre gibberish with a posh British accent? You bet.
But I think the thing to remember is that storytelling is about half improvisation and when you improvise the answer is never, ever "no".
The answer should always be "yes, and". Or "yes, but". A yes is an open door to more interaction. A no slams that same door shut.
Open doors for your players. Don't close them.
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manycoloredkingdom · 4 years ago
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See? I forgot it existed for, uh, a month? Ish? I dunno.
I'm pleased to say that we have now had our session zero and the first actual game.
Session zero was, too put it bluntly, a complete nightmare. The kids didn't want to focus at all.
At
All
I have ADD, so I get it. Focusing on things is really hard when your attention span is jacked. College was incredibly difficult for me (particularly if it was outside my major). So teaching the basics of the system to the kids (the eldest will be Autumn, the youngest Edlie) was a new level of frustrating.
So when we got to session one, I won't lie to you. I had an oilcan (Foster's) on hand and one in the fridge and I may (MAY!) have puffed a bowl of green stuff to mellow my nerves a bit before hand.
And it went pretty well, actually.
Autumn got grouchy at one point but Edlie is showing a good deal of promise as a future storyteller of I can help him learn to slow down and focus a little better.
Multiple times during the session, I found myself sitting back and smiling in bemused curiosity as Edlie stole the narrative and took off running.
Rose had to rein him in a couple of times so that we could talk about how the storyteller system works. I did make sure to tell him that I'm glad he's so into it.
And I am. Because it is a challenging thing and, typically, I am a challenging Storyteller. I like getting drawings of characters/props/locations, actual props, discussions of books or movies or music that the players have used as inspiration. I love it all.
So I'm actually fairly hopeful about the game and had some revelations about a character while playing him.
I'll write up a little on that next, I think.
Keep dreaming.
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manycoloredkingdom · 5 years ago
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I'm writing a lot today.
Don't worry, I will 100% forget I have this thing in a week.
I have been using a lot of online tools since Covid 19 hit and essentially killed our meetings.
My current favorite is Jamboard since it allows me to color code sticky notes for various plot lines and interactions as well as create a fairly coherent time ine of events.
So I am setting up a Jamboard for the current Changeling game and picking out colors. I have the stepfather (Mule) and the mother (Rose), the two boys (nicknames to be determined), my old roommate (Jaden), and my own brother (Whisper). Pretty good sized group and evenly split between newbies (Jaden and the boys, which sounds for all the world like a band) and the veteran players (Mule, Rose, Whisper and myself. Though I don't suppose I count.)
Likely the next entry I post up will be what I consider a good session zero since ours is coming next week and I find it helpful to organize my thoughts in writing.
Keep dreaming.
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manycoloredkingdom · 5 years ago
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Okay, first real entry.
The title for this Tumblr comes from the primary Freehold the players will hang around (hopefully, I have three ready but they will only have a choice between the Cats' Grin Tavern and the Oak's Rest since the Goblin Deeps are an unhealthy place to go unless you are a relatively anarchistic Redcap).
The Tavern is run by a Pooka who has at least fifty stories for how she got it. I actually based the Pooka off of a client's pet cat so she's kind of a stereotypical catgirl.
I don't like stereotypical.
So this character Glenda (Glee to her friends) is a bit fiendish. She is Unseelie and embraces the trickster archetype, with a particular love of punishing abusive father figures. She isn't evil, but her sense of justice is colder than it is fair.
Then I wanted to add a little bit of backstory, determined that she grew up in an abusive household (hence the fixation on punishment and her own Unseelie bend) and that she was discovered by a Satyr who helped shown her the ropes. (I wanted to give him a catchy name since he is a folk singing guitarist so I went with William Sweet... The downside was that his nickname is Sweet Willie that was not intentional!) she wound up driving her father insane and running off with Willie.
Now, I rarely play female characters but the Vampire game I've been running for the last few years has really helped get me comfortable with playing women. But I have never played a character who is gay before.
And the more I wrote up on Glee, the more I realized that she is a lesbian.
For those who are familiar with Changeling, you know that Pooka are often treated as the child in any given group. Glee fell for an Eshu woman in her motley. The group settling down in my fictional city and took control of the Freehold Glee still holds. The Eshu would go off on adventures as they do and leave one of her mates holding the oath to the Hold. The last time she left, Glee got the oath.
She never came back.
So now I have a Pooka with a tragic backstory, a bit of a sadistic bend, a lost love and more responsibility than a reasonably kind universe would ever give to a Pooka.
To be honest, I am going to gave entirely too much fun playing her. I'm just trying to decide what mode of lying she should take. I'm leaning towards either extraneous, incorrect details, or exaggeration.
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