Vampire the Masquerade 3.0 - Dark Ages -> Future

[^^Truth]

Okey Dokey. Just trying to judge the amount of support for this future campaign idea. I feel that we play far too much D&D to be honest, which grows very stagnant and I know people would like a change here and there.

What I'm basically proposing is a game much like to what I'm playing on occasion IRL.

We wouldn't be using the Vampire the Masquerade rules, instead we'd be using my modified Shadowrun 4th Edition ruleset, which shouldn't be a problem anyway because basically no one knows the Vampire rules and I happen to know the SR4 rules (especially since they're modified) extremely well.

The basic idea is a game with no real end. The PCs would start as humans - exceptional or/and note worthy - in the dark ages (about 1100-1200) and the game would pass through time periods, not necessarily at any particular pace, mostly just as and when skipping time becomes appriopriate or a particular century is boring/of no interest to the PCs.

The PCs would go from being humans, to humans with knowledge of the second socieities that exist, to ghouls and you'd all hope in the end, Vampires. They would then attempt to last the ages, passing through the different centuries up until about 2070ish when the world has been majorly changed by technology and other extremely important events.

It's hard to say what will and will not occur, but the likelyhood of "Gehenna" is low.

This game I think would be nice in two ways. A gentle introduction to a new rule system (much better, you only need one dice macro in OpenR), two new games at once - but extremely slowly because it's over a long period of time - and allowing a game to be started that could potentially last for years if popular.

Anyway, I'm not saying that this will happen within the next six months at all, just trying to see what the general enthusiasm for such an idea would be.

Feel free to leave comments and ideas.

[^^Truth]

Current Game System

Attributes = 2/4/5.

There are nine attributes. Three social, three mental and three physical. Three represent "power", three "finesse" and three "resistance". If you don't know how this system works, then it's very simple. You assign 2, 4 and 5 to either social, mental or physical, based on what your character has. All statistics begin at 1. Average is 2.

Skills = 5/7/9.

Same system as attributes. You have three catagories of skills, again, mental, social and physical. You do not have to place priority the same as for attributes.

At the character generation stage, skills cannot be higher than 3.

Edge = 2.

Edge is a new stat for Vampire, based off an old version of Shadowrun. Edge is used in combat to increase dice spent on attacking or defense. Any amount of Edge can be used for either. Edge refreshes every combat turn, not for every action, so must be split between available actions, if a player has multiple actions per turn.

It's not a lot considering the amount of dice people will be rolling, but sometimes it can be the deciding factor in saving, or removing, a life.

Background Traits = 5.

Background traits I will list to reduce reading. You have 5 points to spend on them, each trait is rated from 1 to 5.

Allies. Contacts. Fame. Influence. Resources. Retainers. Status. I won't go into massive description of each one as most are relatively self-explainatory. I am also currently uploading the Vampire Dark Ages book that will we be using for this game, so anyone that wishes more information may read up on what they need within there.

Virtues and Vices = http://baatorian.ripz.org/Vampire/Virtues%20and%20Vices.pdf

Every character in Vampire Dark Ages has a Virtue and a Vice. These traits, chosen from the traditional list of seven deadly sins and corresponding virtues, help you define your character. Is he jealous but hopeful? Wrathful and just? Mechanically, Virtues and Vices are tied to Willpower. Willpower is a pool of points you can spend for bonuses and other purposes – and those points run low awfully quick.

Flaws and Merits = See Dark Ages book.

Flaws and Merits can be purchased with Freebie Points on character creation. There will however be another in game time when additional Flaws and Merits can be purchased.

These are far too numerous and ranging to list here, so if you're interested in these, you must see the Vampire Dark Ages book, which is linked below. Typically Flaws and Merits help give a character a little extra life, but are absolutely unrequired if you do not wish them.

Freebie Points = 10.

Once all of the above is done, you're basically finished. Now you recieve 10 extra freebie points to spend on your PC to increase one or two bits about your character. You can spend them anywhere you wish, as long as you have enough points (naturally). The costs for raising things are below.

Attributes = 5
Skills = 2
Edge = 2
Background Traits = 1

Merits may be purchased with Freebie Points
Flaws give you additional Freebie Points to spend on your character (which can directly buy merits).

Willpower = RESOLVE+COMPOSURE.

Willpower is used in many differnet fashions in Vampire Dark Ages. You can spend a point of Willpower to gain an automatic success in an action, to temporarily hold off a Frenzy or Rotshreck, minimalise a derangement for a scene or use it to overcome things that your character does beyond your control (such as fleeing in fear, or being intimidated by another).

Regaining Willpower is based upon your characters VIRTUE and VICE. When you work with your VIRTUE, you regain all lost Willpower - this can be harder than it seems. When you endulge in your character VICE, you regain a single point of Willpower. There maybe other ways of regaining Willpower which is upto the DMs discretion.

Initiative = AGLILITY+WITS.

Initiative is agility and wits combined, 3-5 would be typical for starting PCs of this power level. Initiative is fair easy to handle. When initiative is called, you roll a number of dice equal to your initiative attribute, any successes are added onto your initiative attribute and that is your final initiative score for that round.

Example Davvy the Duck and Jack Knife are kicking off outside a club. Davvy the Duck has Initiative 6, Jack Knife has initiative 4. They both roll their respective amount of dice, Davvy does poorly getting only 1 success, whilst Jack Knife is on fire getting an amazing 4 successes. Total initiatives are Daavy the Duck 7 and Jack Knife 8. Jack Knife goes first.

The last important thing to remember about initiative is this. Everyone rolls and instead of the highest initiative instantly acting, people declare their actions in advance in order from slowest, to highest. Once down, the highest goes first down to slowest. This allows quicker people to act properly before the slowest, possibly countering their actions before they even begin them.

Damage System = Physical = 8+STAMINA. Stun = 8+RESOLVE.

A rather simple damage system which I thought was worth mentioning.

Also to note is that their are three types of damage that PCs can sustain, these are aggravated damage, lethal damage and bashing damage. At current the three different types will make little to no difference upon your PCs and all you should worry about is whether you're recieving STUN or PHYSICAL damage in, or out of, combat.

Combat System = http://baatorian.ripz.org/Vampire/SR4%20-%20Custom%20Rulebook.rtf

I'm not going to go into a great deal of detail explaining the combat system, but for anyone interested the linked document may perhaps grant a little insight. The combat system however has been tested and used for a prolonged period of time and works flawlessly, but needs some minor adjusting with the new attribute/skill system I'm using (you get less dice overal I believe).

The good thing about the system is that it's as simple or complex as the player wishes it to be. Upon the various charts as so on you will see a negative or postive number, what this means is the amount of dice you GAIN or LOSE because of the modifier. An example is humans recieve -3 dice when attempting to do things in partial light (this modifier may drop to -2 though).

Dice Mechanic = D6. 5+6 are successes.

A rather simple mechanic. Everytime you roll, for everything, you roll D6s, any time you achieve a 5 or 6, you get a single success. Beware though! If half of your dice end up as 1s, then you have either a glitch or critical glitch.

A glitch occurs when you succeed, but half of your dice are 1s, a critical glitch occurs when you make no successes and half of your dice are 1s.

Karma Awards

Karma is Vampire Dark Ages form of exprience. Anyone whom has played Shadowrun will be familiar with it. It's awarded at the end of each gaming session and then a larger amount at the end of each storyline. I thought I'd write up the system for awarding karma anyway, so people knew how it was coming and why.

Gaming Session Rewards
Survival = 1 karma. Everyone gets a point of karma for playing, ain't life grand.
Concept = 1 karma. Anyone that acts out their characters concept, virtues and/or vices exceptionally well in the session will recieve a point of karma.
Participation = 1 karma. Any person not regularly AFK and actively participating will recieve a point of karma.
Role-Playing = 0-3 karma. At the end of each session there will be a secret vote by all present players for whom they thought role-played their character out really well (this means appriopriately). For every vote a person attains (each player gets 1 vote), they will recieve a single point of karma and no, you cannot vote for yourself

Storyline Finish Rewards
Success = 0-2 karma. If the group was successful, everyone recieves 1-2 points of karma depending on the level of success.
Danger = 0-2 karma. If the storyline was particularly deadly, everyone recieves 1-2 points of karma based on the difficultly level.
Smarts = 0-2 karma. Anyone showing particular smarts over the course of the storyline, perhaps foiling horrible things before they happen, or working out the plot quickly will recieve 1-2 points of karma.


The Book! = http://baatorian.ripz.org/Vampire/3.0%20-%20Vampire%20-%20The%20Dark%20Ages%20-%20Core%20Rulebook.pdf

This is the Vampire Dark Ages book we will be using. Feel free to download and browse it if you wish. In the book there are several things of note you may wish to look at. BACKGROUNDs, this section will help decide which background traits belong to your character. At the back of the book are FLAWS and MERITS, see the FLAWS/MERITS section for information on them.

Easy as Pie! = http://baatorian.ripz.org/Vampire/Vamp%20nWoD%20DA-Baat.PDF

That is the PC sheet we will be using. It's an intereactive .PDF document that I stole, then edited for our own needs. Virtually all of it can automatically be selected or written over in one way or another, however several boxes (some drop down) are to be avoid and just written in, this is CLAN, GENERATION and HAVEN. Also do not bother with using BACKGROUND as a drop down box.

Some areas you may have to use the spacebar a little until getting to the clear underlined area to write in your stats, this is currently unavoidable, sorry.

What we shall do is this. Everyone downloads this .PDF. Then you make your PC. Then you upload it to whatever free space you have (remember to save it with a different name!). Thus you have one online copy and on offline copy. When you gain karma, you update your sheet and reupload it.

This way we do not have to bother with OpenR sheets really, everyone has their sheet readily accessible for everyone and from everywhere. Although more secretive people could hide their sheet from public and just give the DM the link.

I figure this is a much more user-friendly option to use and with a new game, user friendly and easy are the keywords in my opinion.

I suggest posts be made for what people wish to play in the Current PCs forum, in these posts is the picture of your PC, maybe a description, little story, background or whatever you wish to write up to let everyone else have a little idea of what your PC is about and then the link to your online sheet (if you wish to).

If anyone does not have upload space (Zert), then we'll have to work something out, but it's not hard to get a little space for free.

Any questions, or comments, please reply to the thread as normal and I'll try to reply when I can.

P.S. I would like to see, if possible, a nice selection of characters, not a big group of heartless evil vampire ninja-knights. That is all.

[^^Truth]

Reserved.

[The Dark Power]

This sounds similar to an idea we toyed with years back when we actually were playing Vampire the Masquerade, although we only did that briefly.

At the time it was proposed that we'd do a D&D campaign for the medieval stuff, use Vampire the Masquerade rules for modern day and then transfer to Shadowrun rules if the PCs ever made it to the future! The idea was that it'd be the same PCs through each age, however.

Possibly overcomplicating things for ourselves there!, but the core idea of playing a human/vampire through the ages always appealed to me. So yeah count me in.

As I said before, the Ravenloft idea is designed to be short, although there'd be room for us to continue after my chunk was done should people so wish.

This might well be an excellent thing to move to after that, if we're all still in the horror mindset.

On rules, I don't mind what set we use really, although I only really know the D&D rules so there'd be a bit of a learning curve.

Oh, and sorry to nit pick, but the dark ages were earlier than 1100, say around 500-600ish, however, if we do 500-600 that means I can play a viking

[Tromador]

We wouldn't be using the Vampire the Masquerade rules, instead we'd be using my modified Shadowrun 4th Edition ruleset, which shouldn't be a problem anyway because basically no one knows the Vampire rules and I happen to know the SR4 rules (especially since they're modified) extremely well.

Except in diametric opposite, I know the Vampire rules well and the Shadowrun rules not at all - so at least someone knows the vampire rules. It's actually pretty simple and all based on d10s.

Further to that, I know a lot of the White Wolf source material pretty well too. In contrast to Faerun, where my knowledge can be sketchy, when it comes to Vampire, I pretty well know what is what and who is who.

Being as this relates to indeterminate time in the future, I'm certainly interested, but I would MUCH rather use Vampire rules than Shadowrun. I appreciate the conversions that have been done, but it means that every time a GM might like to use something unusual, Nagaraja or a Samedi maybe, there has to be further conversion work done to balance their abilities and unique disciplines. If we just learn the system in the first place, we can simply plug in the various sources. Indeed, this would allow us to easily plug in all aspects of the WoD. Do we want a chronicle to include werewolves? mummies? wraiths? By using the standard WoD system, it's all "plug and play", whilst using a converted system it's additionally complex.

[The Dark Power]

Oh, PS, what do you mean by 'Gehenna' exactly?

Sounds nasty either way

[Tromador]

Oh, and sorry to nit pick, but the dark ages were earlier than 1100, say around 500-600ish, however, if we do 500-600 that means I can play a viking

Historically yes, however...

"Vampire: The Dark Ages is a historical setting for Vampire: The Masquerade which takes place during the Long Night begining in 1197 and continuing forward until 1204 when the Long Night comes to a crashing halt with the fall of Constantinople to the Latins. The revised edition (Dark Ages: Vampire) takes place in 1230, during the era of the War of Princes. The Dark Ages line both expanded on the history and setting of VtM by adding historical data and filling in gaps, as well as by introducing mechanisms later used in Vampire: The Masquerade Revised Edition. "

What is meant by Vampire: The Dark Ages, is not the same as what is meant by historians as what comes after Romano British until the Medieval period.

[The Dark Power]

Ah, OK, can we play in the real world instead? I'll at least know some of what's going on then

[Tromador]

Oh, PS, what do you mean by 'Gehenna' exactly?

Sounds nasty either way

Gehenna is a myth. A silly story of Vampire Armageddon to scare newly embraced childer with.

Maybe...

In these modern times it seems like a lot of the signs are pointing to it coming any time soon and you really don't want to hear what those Malkavians are whispering as they rock back and forth in semi-catatonic states. Those thin bloods too, speaking prophecy? What's that all about. Oh.. and doesn't the Book of Nod mention Thin Bloods? Maybe it's time to find a happy secure bunker somewhere and slip into torpor until it's all gone.

But no... everyone knows that Caine is just a myth and the Antediluvians aren't going to be getting up from slumber to consume all their progeny in a river of blood... are they?

Shine Black the Sun
Shine Blood the Moon
Gehenna is coming soon.
- Book of Nod

[Tromador]

Ah, OK, can we play in the real world instead? I'll at least know some of what's going on then

What skill do I use to get up on time for work?

[The Dark Power]

Ah, OK, can we play in the real world instead? I'll at least know some of what's going on then

What skill do I use to get up on time for work?

I'm not quite sure what you're getting at here, by real world, I mean real world history. I should think a game based around you getting up for work would not have the same dramatic thrust as what Iain's suggesting

Allow me to explain what I was getting at though.

You clearly know alot about the setting and the rules. I don't.

One of the things I've really noticed in coming back to D&D after a 3-4 year break is just how cumbersome it is having to plow through hundreds of pages of rules, many different settings guides, things that I used to know by heart but now don't.

I've found it a real barrier to actually getting on with and enjoying the game, which of course is what it's all about. I really don't have the time to invest that I used to.

Setting things in a real world setting with (what sounds like) a more stripped down rules set appeals to me as a newcomer and I think will benefit anyone who doesn't know much about the rules or setting. The background can always be slowly introduced by those more experienced with the setting as we progress.

[^^Truth]

It is set in the "real world" as you call it. In the time period it's known as the dark ages, or well, in the 1330's the concept of what had gone by was known as the Dark Ages, until it was changed (of late).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Ages

Anyway. Real world. Easy rules. Rules ain't even that important to be honest, only to resolve combat and that won't always apply.

Should be overal fun.

[The Dark Power]

OK cool, just don't wanna have to read a whole book to know my clan A from my clan B

So....can I have a viking?

[^^Truth]

lol.

Well yes, you can. You pick whatever character concept you like and the way I'm planning on running things, you shouldn't have to really do any reading at all. As much as you want though.

There maybe two pages you will have to read at a particular point in the game. The rest I will be covering myself. Basically, I'm learning it all and that should be good enough.

As people gain powers, or become vampires and such, it would be likely benefical to do a little reading (2 pages for a clan in general, few paragraphs for powers).

The game system is easy and set, so you never have to bust your brain. An example would be like.

You want to stab someone. I say difficultly 6.

You roll dexterity+melee @ 6 on D10s. Number of successes = result. Very easy, single macro for the entire game.

It's likely we'll be going for the actual Vampire the Masquerade rules, I'm going to be learning them over the coming months and see how they smooth out for myself.

Important is that, you can just buy successes as well, as it were, which totally removes dice rolling so everyone can just get on with the story and phun.

[The Dark Power]

Oh, OK, sounds cool to me. Happy to read up on the game, it's just often alot to take in all at once.

Were you not just talking about using the shadowrun rules though?

[^^Truth]

Yes. I was. But, there are small problems with using the SR4 converted system. Problems that could be fixed by using the vampire the masquerade rules.

I've been playing "vampire" for about 3-4 months now and I've been considering switching over to the vampire ruleset because it irons out a lot of problems.

Doesn't really matter either way, cos no one else knows the SR4 rules either

Either way, once I'm done with them all, whichever system I end up on, it should be stream-lined and easy.

[Tromador]

The World of Darkness is a mirror of our real world, but darker in many respects and gothic-punk in style.

Simple stuff like, modern cities are dirtier, there's more litter. Hospitals are run down, there's more unemployment. The Rich-Poor divide is much greater, so on and so forth... and beneath it all, if you know where to look, are horrors and wonders beyond the imagination and understanding of ordinary mortals.

[The Dark Power]

Yeah fair enough, I dunno either rule set. Reckon we can do it without any rules?

OK, you're selling me Trom, you're selling me.... ;0)

[^^Truth]

Heh, no, I think we're going to need a rule system.

In theory you could do it without rules, but that would be kinda boring because the players would typically never over - or under - achieve.

There's not a lot of dice rolling to be honest. Most things are self-explainatory and outcomes obvious.

Attempting to wrestle a Garou to the floor (unless your PC is amazingly strong) is an automatic fail =)

[The Dark Power]

Damn them Garoos.

Is that like a kan-garoo?

[^^Truth]

Yes, yes. A little bit. As in it's furry =)

More like a Loup Garou mind you.

[The Dark Power]

Ah, course makes sense now, I thought Garou was a clan of vampire for some reason.

Yeah not quite the same as skippy eh?

[Tromador]

Much as vampires call themselves 'The Kindred', werewolves call themselves 'Garou'.

The Kindred and the Garou do not (generally) get along. The Garou believe that all kindred are tainted by the evil that they call "The Worm".

1 on 1 the average Garou will tear the average Kindred to pieces. Easily. Without raising a sweat. With one clawed arm tied behind their backs.

Garou are mortal, however... an ELDER Kindred may well give the Garou more of a fight. In general, however, steer clear of them.

The cities belong to Kindred, close to their herds, where food is plentiful.

The wilds belong to the Garou and Kindred are well advised to steer clear of the remote countryside.

Of course, that any given player knows nothing of this is not a disadvantage particularly. So you just got made into a Vampire? Congratulations. Yesterday you didn't know they even existed, much less any of their history. Today your unlife begins and there's a whole new world to learn about.

[The Dark Power]

Yeah I think ignorance of the set up generally does help in a way. Say for example someone or something powerful gets mentioned, or shows up. An experienced player will be wary of it even if his character knows nothing of it, whereas an inexperienced player won't know any better either way and maybe start a ruck with an elder vampire or something.

Hell of a learning curve, but fun nonetheless ;0)

[^^Truth]

Yes.

This game and the way I'm running it is newbie friendly. Because you will all know as much as your characters (when we begin). Absolutley nothing.

Which also means no reading required =)

Everything should be explained slowly in game. So you (the player) will learn it all as your PC learns it all.

Nice setup, eh?

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