Anyone else like to play this game? I love it. I met Malkavia in another thread and that gave me hope that some other dopers like this game at least half as much as I do.
I am currently STing a chronicle and it’s so far been a blast. I’ve never played with these folks before, so it’s exciting and new like the love boat.
One PC in particular is really cool. He’s a Malkavian named Mikel Iscariot who was crucified in 247 BC. Along came a Vampire, took him down from Golgotha and took him to a cave where he embraced him. He is a medium in addition to being loony as a shithouse rat, so he can’t tell when the spirits of the dead are talking to him or if it’s just the voices in his head.
I really dig this game, because all of White Worlds different games (Werewolf, Mage, Hunter, and so on) are all set in the same world. The World of Darkness is such a great idea, and I fit into it like one of them round pegs.
Another of the characters is this Gangrel who is secretly planning to kill everyone. He hates the fact that he’s a vampire and “lives” only to exterminate all vampires. No one else knows this and when the shit hits the fan, it’ll be really cool.
Yet another in the group is this Assamite who is mute and wears a necklace of ears. Wielding a big ass scimitar and sometimes a garrote wire, this dude really kicks some ass. As anyone who is into the game knows that Assamites are widely feared and respected and vicious killers.
In any case, I just wondered if anyone else likes this remarable gaming world, and if so if you would like to swap ideas and stuff like that.
But I had to quit because of transportation issues.
I loved my three characters. The one I did the best was Elspeth, the little girl Gangrel. She was only 7 and had been embraced as an “experiment” by some twisted bastards. I got tons of experience points playing her, her innocence and her sadness and her phobia of shadows. There was also Tita, who I only got to bring out once at a party. I modeled her character after “Faith” on BtVS. Tita was a Caitiff who never gave anyone a straight answer about anything and she dressed like a tart, so between her enigmatic dialectic and her push-up bras, she got alot of attention. Playing her was enormously gratifying.
And don’t even get me started on Chuckles, the Tzimisce Clown…
I used to play it (bought it back in its first year at GenCon. Got a nifty set of plastic vampire teeth from the White Wolf booth with it) but eventually it turned me off. The raising of the discipline levels reminded me too much of AD&D with its 50th level mages and it seemed that every other person I met who played the game had some 4th generation vampire. Eventually I got into Wraith instead which struck me as a much more open and rounded game without all the powergaming and pigeon-holing that V:tM had (“He’s a Gangrel, therefore he obvious has these powers!”). I bought a few supplements for V:tM, but mainly just as material for my Wraith chronicles, such as the Giovanni clanbook. It seemed a shame to me that WW coddled its V:tM cash cow with tons of materials to let the players grow more and more powerful and fill their ubervampire fantasies and let its more creative and surreal lines (namely Changling and then Wraith) drop off. I know it’s all about money, but it’s sort of hard to attract players to a game where its supplements come out at a 1:6 ratio against Vampire, Mage and Werewolf.
I’ve only done LARP, oddly. My noteable character was Alex, a minor Ventrue. At least he started out minor. By the time we’d finished, my friend and I had ruined the Storyteller’s game. Seems a Assemite had learned some powerful rituals, and had enslaved my buddy. Unfortunately, he’d told all his plans to him, while I was standing there waiting for them to finish so we could leave. Now, the problem was, the prince was in trouble (SOP for these games). Charles and I had two options either A. he tell the prince or B. I could, as I’d been standing there, and none of what he said was explicitly stated to be out of character. Needless to say, we won the day, and the bad guy lost his character. 8 real-time months, down the drain in 15 minutes.
I realized that my previous post was more dumping on V:tM than anything else, so let me back up a little. I do like the whole World of Darkness thing, and I have no gripe against the idea of V:tM as a whole. Just that in roleplaying circles, V:tM seems to be regarded with the same derision that AD&D is. It’s not that there’s no good roleplayers in either game, just that its harder to seperate the gold from the dross.
My first chronicle involved a brother and sister. The brother, Raphael, was embraced back in the 1700’s and later embraced his younger sister, Charlotte who was a nun. Flash forward a bunch of years and Charlotte has been slaying vampires left and right, tracking down her brother in the belief that his final death will be her ticket to Golcanda (is that right? Been a while). The players got the joy of seeing their sires killed off one by one, being warned by Raphael that Charlotte was some psycho bitch hunter and eventually learning the truth. Wonderful closing scene in a warehouse with drama, lots of fighting and an ultraviolet strobe light making all the Kindred ill with mild sun poisoning.
Next chronicle featured the players unraveling the story of one couple in crime, the Tremere Timothy and his female companion, a Giovanni named Theresa. T&T had a plan to invoke an angel, imprison it, and drink from it thus getting all sorts of powers. This involved the theft of various books from the estate of one of the character’s dead sire (see above chronicle) which would help in the ceremony and a general sense that perhaps having a couple bad-ass vampires with divine powers might be a bad thing. Charlotte assisted as a minor player and eventually T&T managed to summon up a wraithly angelic (see Wraith: the Oblivion). Players got a chance to join in, decided against it, got to help waste Timmy with the angelic’s help but Theresa managed to expulse the angelic and the characters were forced to admit partial defeat in that Theresa got away.
Starting a new chronicle in Wraith, the players start off in chains being lead through the shadowlands to the local Hierarchy citadel where they’ll live a wonderful afterlife as thralls. Luckily, they’re rescued by a group of renegades who happen to be led by the wraith of… Raphael. Raphael is having some issues in that Theresa knows who he is and is trying to get hold of his fetters so she can make use of him. Although the characters are being manipulated by Raphael again, this time they do have some real stake in the matter as if Raphael is gone, the main force keeping the Heirarchy from completely controlling the Chicago shadowlands (all these take place in Chicago. I live here so it’s easy to get maps and it’s nice to know the city) is going to lose its leader. The entire chronicle had too many plot turns to give any succinct description, but Theresa met her end, Rapahel is still around, the shadowlands fell into open civil war and when the chronicle wrapped up, Stygian forces were coming en masse to crush the uprising.
Entire thing took three years before my group broke up due to marriages, broken dating relationships and the pressures of real life.
which has character backgrounds, storyteller tips, and even a revised version of the combat rules. I’m still trying to decide if I like the way we did the combat or not. Anyway check it out if you like.
I’ve never actually LARPed, but I play internet message games using WOD rules. My favorite game is definitely Mage: the Ascension. I’m currently playing three characters in different games, set in the modern era, the 12th century, and the 3rd century.
I played a Malkavian Heavy Metal playing biker. Our campaign got sort of silly (didn’t help that I only came occasionally, living in a different town and working). We were having huge fights in the middle of streets and then blasting away at the police when htey turned up. One of our characters was ‘taken’ by the police for questioning and accidently fell out of a helicopter and dying. We killed off another character because kept trying to drive trains down the street in an ambush. We missed the target but killed him good. And I thought I was a guitar god and went into a frenzy whenever I heard top 40 shit or saw it. SO I was continually ripping up walls. Lots of fun. But not very serious.
I have never played the game because no one in my school is interested, but I’ve read all the Clan Novels and such. My favorite was Clan Novel Ventrue. I guess I want to be rich. So count me as a fan.
Mmm…White Wolf. I played Vampire for a while and then I had the misfortune to fall in love with Mage. Its so hard to go back to Vamp when all you want to do is play Balance, or Taudri, or my other happy people.
So I moved hundreds of miles away from my Mage GM. Sigh. They have a Vamp LARP here, but I would kill for a decent table top Mage game.
Maeglin, how do I get in? Where are these internet games? Please help me feed my addiction.
Oh! Quick rundown of my people. Taudri is my favorite, by far. Teenage runaway Akashic Brother, but she eventually fell out with her teacher and ran from there too. She doesn’t have the most controlled moral stance and is a manipulative, self serving whore. She’s also a party person. She’s fun.
Yes, the world of White Wolf has a lot to offer. One of my dream jobs is to write for them.
In our current chronicle, the coterie is a group of ancillae who are set with the task of travelling from Manhattan to San Francisco in order to dispatch a rouge ghoul when they get there. The local prince will instruct them from there. In any case, they have made it as far as Chicago. After an ambush by amatuer hunters, they are now about to go after the entity that set them up. I’m going to trick them up when they get there, and reward those who survive as well.
This chronicle has is heavily influenced by Werewolf, as the rouge ghoul they are to kill is Kinfolk to the Garou. In any case, though he be mortal, I believe he will prove to be very hard to kill indeed.
I wish I knew a good artist who could do character sketches for me. sigh. I would pay good money for a good character sketch. I should just learn how to draw myself. Easier said than done, I may as well say “I should learh how to speak Latin,”.
In any case, I was hoping that I could fall in with a group who plays regularly in my area. I can imagine a game that gets on every Friday at dusk. That would rule.
As yet, I have been unable to find a utility that will allow me to locate such a group. Even the flunkies at the local game shop are no help.
My name, quite unsurprisingly, is Maeglin. There are plenty of WOD games: there are two or three Vamp games, three mage games, and some general WOD games.
The site is called DreamLyrics. Virtually all of us are CompuServe expatriates, who left when the gaming scene there completely imploded. Some former sysops put the site together, and it’s doing great!
Most of the games are willing to take on new players as they come. WFG is a fat load of fun: you can play a Faerie as well as a Mage. Check out MMM (Mage Milennium Madness). Ken is always looking for more players. I was supposed to join, but I just didn’t get around to it. One more WOD game that I would highly recommend is PAX: Pax Romana. It is pretty slow, but very well run. You can play any kind of WOD character or ordinary human in the reign of the emperor Elagabalus. Given your interests, you might like that one.
There are sites on the internet for both character portraits and internet games.
I have had some portraits done for some of my characters and my advice is: shop around!
I have had artists go to fantastic lengths to get my character “right”, and I haven’t heard from some that just seem to have took my money.
I suggest you test an artist by asking for their cheapest portrait (usually B&W) before you commit to a series of portraits.
I am unsure what the SD rules are regarding endorsments so I won’t mention my favorite artist (e-mail if you are interested) but you will find someone you are sympatico with, I am sure.
As far as Internet games go, try http://www.pbem.com
It’s a bad day if there are less than 300+ RPGs offered by e-mail. I would guess at least ten-to-twenty-something of those are WOD games.
Ohohoh jumps around waving her arms mememe I LOVE Vampire! Actually I have a bunch of RPG c’s but only a handful are Vampires.
I play in a couple of places online in chats… one is going downhill the only reason I stay is cuz there are some decent people there and I can’t move my c’s easily since they are involved in stuff there but there is another group who I play with (who left the place that is going to seed) and we made up our own whole new place called Acacia Um That url is gonna be cut off soon though since we finally bought our own site and stuff… if anyone wants the new url I can dig it up at home and get it to them. Oh and you don’t have to play Vampire there you can also use Mage (I know there are several Mages already there and I think even a Kindred of the East…) or you can make up a c that is reasonable and join in.
Some of my fav c’s were Chibi Moon Blackmoor (Yah I know the SM name but I do that sometimes… steal names that is) she was a Gangrel and only 9 when she died. Now I have Kay Faline Meira (who actually is Chibi but it’s complicated so I won’t go into it all) she is a Toreador and Merile who is a Caitiff aligned with the Sabbat… but only cuz her sir is if he wasn’t there she would probably be running around doing her own thing and ignoring everyone else… then I have a couple of c’s who I don’t really play anymore but were kinda fun… there was Choco Malk who was (of course) a Malkavian and Arianeira and Hericane who were Brujah. Eventually there is a possibility of me getting a Ravnos c later on whenever the child c I have grows up and if the Prince agrees to let her guardian Mythos (a Ravnos) Embrace her… The rest of my characters are a mishmash of my imagination and whatever caught my interest from books which makes me think that because of everyone just doing their own thing is why Attone is so bad.
I’m thinking of looking into an LARP here in Edmonton (I know there are one or two around here) and maybe seeing what that is like since I’ve only done it online.
Oh and Jophiel that’s almost right it’s Golconda not Golcanda
Gah! Um the url I put up is totally wrong smacks her forehead It’s actually here I muffed up and like I said I’ll try and get the other url to you peeps if you like.
