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tahu88810
2010-06-12, 09:43 AM
Hey Playgrounders,
I've spent a lot of time reading through the various New World of Darkness books, from the core Mortals book and their supplements, Vampire, Werewolf, and so on. As my gaming groups resident GM/DM/ST/etc. I've wanted to run a World of Darkness game for quite a long time now. But, I just have one small issue.

I'm not really sure how the gameplay should work. I can not find any sample stories anywhere that would introduce a group of mortals into the secrets behind the veil, and so I find myself a bit stuck. So, I come to all of you with a few questions:

1. I've noticed that in various books, it is implied that such mundane tasks as going to the store to buy some bread are frequently played out. My instincts as a story teller say that should something interesting or important, and frightening, happen during these mundane tasks, they need to be fairly common or else the players will guess right away that the event in question is important somehow, and thus act differently. How much time should a session spend on every day errands and the like?
2. Good starting points? I can never seem to fathom a way in which a group of four or five unrelated people, or semi-related people, all could get dragged into the same supernatural horror-mystery. Hunters implies that once a mortal recognizes a threat, they might gather others to help them out, but not only does that imply that one PC is slightly more important than the others, it also makes the game more of a Hunter sort, which is not the sort of the game I'd like to go for. So how does one go about linking all 4~ characters to the same mysterious curse/monster/what-have-you?
3. Expanding on the above two questions, how common is it for entire sessions to spent without any of the PCs meeting each other, or interacting 'in person'? Is it possible to easily handle a game where the PCs don't all sleep in a barricaded church containing a secret armoury in the basement, and instead each live in their own apartments, dorms, and houses?
4. Would anyone who has successfully ST'd a mortals game of nWoD mind giving me a short run down of the first chapter of that game? What sort of notes did you need to have going into it? How did you open up the first scene? What was the mystery? Tell me about all the characters. How did you connect all the characters too it? Etc.

Thank you, Playgrounders!

Aron Times
2010-06-12, 10:29 AM
As with D&D, splitting the party has all sorts of advantages and disadvantages. If you're playing a live game, splitting the party wastes a lot of time as most of the players aren't able to do anything while you're running one player's scene. If you're playing PbP like me, it can be done, but is still not recommended unless you are willing to devote enough time to a sandbox game.

As for mundane tasks, it really depends on the ST. In my games, I don't bother with the characters' daily necessities unless it makes dramatic sense to do so. It might be fun to roleplay a vampire hunting for food in the first session, but it becomes tedious if the player has to do it every time he needs to fill up. Roleplaying mundane activities every now and then helps to reinforce the idea that our own world could very well be the World of Darkness; just don't do it too often or your players will get bored.

Fouredged Sword
2010-06-12, 10:48 AM
a nWoD game is an artwork. They require a large amount of setup to function and are beautiful of done right. Here are some suggestions

1. The game is very sandboxy. I suggest that you use mundame events to scare the living daylights out of your group. Almost every game has it's hidden horror. Read the rules carefuly and look for that threat that is not obvious. The rats and Spiders for Werewolf, Other mages for Mages, Ghouls for Vampire. Now build a world full of interesting characters. Make the guy at the grocery store a character and personality, let him interact with the party. Do this for twenty or thirty characters thaty would run into on a regular basis.

Now make 5 of them a threat to the party, secretly spying and ploting to take them out. Keep it quiet and don't hint at all. Pay attention to what NPC sees what and who they report to. Let the players track down one of the leaks. Now you have paranoid players. Good Job nWoD.

2 This one depends on your group and on your setting.
Every vampire game starts with the prince gathering a group of new vampires and telling them to solve a problem for him, and that they will be killed if they fail.
Mages works best if you have the players ether of the same order or all ether stumble into or be targeted by the same hidden group. I am always a fan of the archmage looking into the future and messing with it plotline. The part will take forever to figgure out that the villian died before the start of the plot. Your BBEG can't be killed and the players are caught in a dangerous game of cat and mouse that will give a mensa member a temporal headach of contradictions.
Werewolf makes it best for the players to be a pack together. Talk to them and let them be forming a new pack together.
Hunter needs someone to gather the players. Preferably an experenced hunter who knows all about the threat. This can be a PC, but is best left to an NPC. That way you can kill him off quickly and leave the players scared and feeling in over thier heads.

3 The game can be played with the characters apart, but the group need to be willing to wait as each does his own thing. I find the best aid to the game is paranoia and pressure. If the party is afraid, then they wont seperate. You need to make them feel like they need somebody they can trust with them at all times. I had a mages game that the players all went to sleep in one bed so that noone could get ambushed at night unless they all did.

4 I have never actualy ran a mortal game. They tend to be very short as mortals are not really suposed to be able to stand up to the supernatual. Go with hunter if you really want mortal players, and even then a single werewolf will eat your whole party if you are not careful.

Remember this is a sandbox like game 90% of the time. Have people for the characters to interact with all over the place. Keep th paranoia up and the pressure on. The only game that the playes should feel like the cat and not the mouse is werewolf. Then keep them thinking about the ramifications of thier actions.

The best game I ever ST was a Mages game that the players got handed an artifact that caused Wisdom damage if you used it but allowed you to bypass paradox. It only worked for one of the ten elements. There was one for each element. The part was being guided by an archmage in the past who's death caused the party to all be in one spot at one time. they spent the first half of the game learning about the 12 or so groups in and around the city and trying to determin what group was on thier side, all the while dodging covert attacks from at least 4 of the groups, and trying to piece together who was healping them from the clues left behind from when the archmage was alive.

The crowning moment of awsome in the game was when the party realised that nobdy could be trusted. Literaly everyone in the game was so caught up in inter-political struggles that all the leaders of each faction would sell thier souls for power. This lead to the party going on the run from everyone. EVERYONE. They pulled some awe inspireing political moves setting the organisations at eachother. It was good.

As a final note remember your theam. You can use whatever you want, but the games are each built with a theam.
Vampires is a game of hunting and being hunted.
Mages is a game of secrets and conspiracy
Werewolf is a game of repercusions and concequenses.

Quietus
2010-06-12, 11:07 AM
On point 2 - This is where you all start "In media res"; You have a starting point in mind for your characters, in which they're all thrust into a situation together. You lay out that starting point when they're building their characters, so they all have a reason they'd be there... for example, "I'm going to run a nWoD game, I want you all to make characters who would have a reason to be at a night club, it'll be a party for Artist X's newest CD release."

Then you have something happen; The club is set afire, they all happen to be leaving at the same time when they run across a vampire taking his nightly meal from a drunken partygoer, they all wake up the next day in the club, just the group of them, with the worst headaches they've ever felt..

The key is really to lay out a guideline that the entire group has to abide by. Have a rule that the characters all have to know each other, be part of a relevant group, cabal, clique, clan... have them build that into their characters, and you don't HAVE to have characters separate, unless you're going for the "One guy breaking off from the group and heading toward the creaky door" trope.

Aron Times
2010-06-12, 11:11 AM
It also helps if the players can trust each other. This isn't Paranoia. Although there is a lot of politicking and backstabbing in the World of Darkness, doing so among players quickly derails the plot and turns the game into a PvP gankfest.

sdream
2010-06-12, 11:31 AM
Hey Playgrounders,
I've spent a lot of time reading through the various New World of Darkness books, from the core Mortals book and their supplements, Vampire, Werewolf, and so on. As my gaming groups resident GM/DM/ST/etc. I've wanted to run a World of Darkness game for quite a long time now. But, I just have one small issue.

I'm not really sure how the gameplay should work. I can not find any sample stories anywhere that would introduce a group of mortals into the secrets behind the veil, and so I find myself a bit stuck. So, I come to all of you with a few questions:


I LOVE WoD for the freedom and flexibility and the story focus (less rolling more roling). I wouldn't KEEP playing mortals (why waste all those awesome books on a few NPCs) but starting the party out that way is a great way to get them to connect and understand the characters and their lifestyles.


1. I've noticed that in various books, it is implied that such mundane tasks as going to the store to buy some bread are frequently played out. My instincts as a story teller say that should something interesting or important, and frightening, happen during these mundane tasks, they need to be fairly common or else the players will guess right away that the event in question is important somehow, and thus act differently. How much time should a session spend on every day errands and the like?
Well, I enjoy RPGs as a tool to imagining life actually taking place, so really the more you make your characters spell out exactly what they are doing the better. Don't be afraid to gloss over some stuff, but "I go to the store and buy bread" SHOULD be explained, at least the first time... just not by you.

S: Ok, so when you try to make sandwiches in preperation for everyone coming over you find that you only have a couple heels left in your fridge.
P: I go to the store and buy bread.
S: Where is the store, and how do you get there?
P: Uh, there is a corner store two blocks over, I walk there regularly.
S: Ok, it's a (insert current weather) kind of day so the walk is (insert estimation of enjoyability). What does the front of the store look like?
P: It's a plain building with a small sign, a red door and a 3x5 window covered with signs.
S: You step inside and see that there is someone new at the counter (writes store clerk next to the next entry on the random age/sex/interesting things npc list) (describes NPC's vague appearance and generic greeting and lets the player decide if they are going to ask for more info).

This kind of thing REALLY breathes life into things, and helps spread the creative load, but it will bore folks a bit if they split the party and don't get to partake in it, so discourage splitting the party (safety in numbers often helps with that when the ball gets rolling).


2. Good starting points? I can never seem to fathom a way in which a group of four or five unrelated people, or semi-related people, all could get dragged into the same supernatural horror-mystery. Hunters implies that once a mortal recognizes a threat, they might gather others to help them out, but not only does that imply that one PC is slightly more important than the others, it also makes the game more of a Hunter sort, which is not the sort of the game I'd like to go for. So how does one go about linking all 4~ characters to the same mysterious curse/monster/what-have-you?
Take the obvious way out (never done this but it is HIGHLY appropriate for modern games), steal wholeheartedly from real life. You have in your room, the second you start doing this, four or five unrelated or semirelated people, gathering together for a purpose. Declare that your players are a group of friends or acquaintances that meet for the purpose of playing Dungeons and Dragons. (After all, such groups can be VERY varied, and playing WoD would be perhaps a bit too self-referencial). This also gives the characters a natural suspicion and interest in magic and monsters.


3. Expanding on the above two questions, how common is it for entire sessions to spent without any of the PCs meeting each other, or interacting 'in person'? Is it possible to easily handle a game where the PCs don't all sleep in a barricaded church containing a secret armoury in the basement, and instead each live in their own apartments, dorms, and houses?
Oh god. I hope that's not common, it would be the worst kind of fractured party to never have anyone together, as any time something cool goes down, everyone but one person is sidelined. I would recommend beginning game time right before everyone is gathering, letting each person briefly dialog their preparations (as above) to flesh out their life and character, then as rapidly as possible getting everyone together. Try to keep them together, and let them dialog their departure and doings after their first hint of the paranormal (but not hopefully anything serious enough to convince them to all abandon their old lives just yet.


4. Would anyone who has successfully ST'd a mortals game of nWoD mind giving me a short run down of the first chapter of that game? What sort of notes did you need to have going into it? How did you open up the first scene? What was the mystery? Tell me about all the characters. How did you connect all the characters too it? Etc.
I've never done a mortals game, the closest I got was playing d20 modern, but I have lots of advice for you anyway. :P

- Tell your players that death IS real and permanent. If they die stupidly they will get mild XP penalty for their next char, and if they sacrifice themselves smartly to save others they will get a mild reward for their replacement char.

- For every NPC introduced roll a die after the initial introduction to see if this NPC is their first brush with the supernatural - THEN come up with what makes them supernatural (is that pretty new store clerk a panicky fledgling vamp standing over the corpse of her prey trying to act nonchalant, or an ancient mage trying to retain her humanity by working retail in suburbia) I suggest low rolls = bad power, and high rolls = good power. I define bad and good only relative to their initial relationship to the party, as any power is first a person, and can become over time friend or foe based on circumstance and the actions of the party. Start with a very high chance for a power (but not guaranteed) and work your way down rapidly once you introduce a couple powers. The players do not need to discover the nature of the power right away. Perhaps the police sirens can draw them to the scene of the feeding, or they might notice that all their d20s are rolling 1s - and always pointing in the direction of the store.

- Let your players know they are going to run as mortals for several sessions before they get any powers, during which time they can talk and think about what kind of powers they want. If someone manages to die early, their replacement can be a relative, reporter or detective looking into what happened.

- Work with the players to let them be anything they want (eventually). Some storyline event can get them started on that path, but definitely empower the player most in the background first and let the mortal party deal with the consequences for a while.

- Don't be afraid to introduce weaknesses, perks, and unexpected side effects if an inbalance in party power or flexibility is or could be making things unfun for the players (don't be afraid to go full twilight if you have a part vamp group that does not want to become nocturnal).

- If the party are friends or helping a supernatural organization, the tendancy of mortals to freak out and gloss over supernatural events is a liability their characters will want to overcome by trying to get empowered in some way... let them work towards that as a side or co-goal for a few sessions until everyone is empowered and can help on equal footing.

- Deaths at this point can be replaced by statting out supernatural NPCs they know or introducing a peon assigned to keep the rest of the rookies from kicking the bucket early.

- Prepare a random npc list as mentioned before, and use it in order. People in the real world are NOT born appropriate for their job, name, or the place you meet them, they are randomized by life and the choices of others at their birth.

- Find and ready an npc stat generator (or prepared random sheets) to use if something comes up (have a laptop or computer nearby) adjust if need be, but don't bother optomizing. Something now is much better than perfect after a mood killing pause.

- Have a couple good ideas about ongoing events the players might get caught up in, throw them all at them at every opportunity and let them pursue the ones they find most interesting or most accessible.


Good Luck! I envy your friends.

tahu88810
2010-06-12, 12:00 PM
Thank you for the advice, everyone!
I think what I'll do now is pick a random town or city, preferably out west and away from where my friends and I live. Perhaps an entirely fictional town. Then I'll begin to create a large list of NPCs. Some of these NPCs can be specifically found at certain places, but a majority of them will simply show up and fall into various roles as the game goes along. I'll then take about 10% of these random NPCs, and make them involved with a conspiracy, power, or other supernatural event/object/person/etc. in some way.
Then I'll begin to work on deciding what sort of phenomena plague this town, be it vampires who feed at the local bar, a ghost in an abandoned hospital, your generic haunted house, or some other phenomena.
Then after that's all done with, I'll have the players create a group of people/friends who all live in the same apartment building, townhouse, or whatnot. I'll begin the first session asking what everyone is doing at, say, 3pm and how they've already spent their day. From there, I'll utilize the regular mundane tasks to slowly have them run into one of the many supernatural events. Perhaps the kid behind the counter in the supermarket where the PC is buying bread decides that, 'hey, that guy buying bread would make a good snack!' or something along those lines.

Any other advice/hints/tips? :D

Any other advice on how I might go about this?

CarpeGuitarrem
2010-06-12, 12:13 PM
As far as bringing the players, together...the key is Fate. It's okay if they "just happen" to meet up. There's a reason they've come together. Or maybe it is just an accident, depending on where you want to take it. Great stories, though, often feature characters who seem to meet by accident, but whose meetings play a grand role in a larger scheme.

Zellic Solis
2010-06-12, 12:33 PM
Believe it or not but mortals is the most challenging WoD game to run. The players are all mortal, have marginal 'powers' at best, and are completely in the dark.

Here's how I plan a WoD game. First, always start with the big bad. What's the mega evil they've got to overcome? What kind of conflicts does it generate? For instance, in one werewolf game, I thought of a wyrm spirit from deep space that hit in an asteroid and was bound by the Croatoa tribe. Now, in modern day, the bindings are breaking down and spirits like tiny intelligent black holes are escaping. I decided that the crater is on some national lands in nevada and a mining company is trying to get the rights to extract it. So at the lowest level there are human foes (cops, security specialists, miners), supernatural foes (fomori and little star wyrm spirits) and the big bad (the bound nasty spirit.)

Next I have to get the players engaged. The easy way is through the wonderful coincidental groupings all WoD games have... except mortals. Vampires have coteries. Werewolves packs. Changlings motleys. But I also try to engage them on a personal level. Maybe one of the werewolves has a kin informant who warns of something strange in the mine? Maybe a spirit begs the pack theurge to intervene? Something to make it matter on a personal level. You don't always have to make one for every player, but you should definitely think of it for your heavy roleplayers. They'll often be your story carries.

WoD games work like this: you come together for big things, you spread out for little things. For instance, the pack comes together concerned about something under the mine site. Two players go to research the geology and history at the university. Two go and talk to a native American expert on local lore. Two go to a bar to question the miners. This way you don't have six people all wanting to do things. They all go apart. They all come back together to report their success for the next big thing.

Important point: occasional fights while they're spread out can be very dramatic. They can also bore everyone else to tears if it drags out. Do it too much and your group will never separate; which is highly unrealistic and equally boring. Make sure that when they split up that everyone has a goal and some means to fulfill it.

Third point: down time. Sometimes it's good to give the players free time that isn't story driven and let them pursue what they want between big bads. Sometimes they'll invent the next big story for you. Sometimes there's some surprisingly awesome RP moments. And sometimes it just gives a player an excuse to raise their firearm skill to 4. ::shrug::

Fourth point: Allow for awesome. In one vampire game I had a player who was being harassed by the biggest, baddest vampire in the city. Not the prince. This guy was the vampire that told the prince what to do. She challenged the vampire to a duel and he, being 400 years old, loved to duel. She was just learning to fight with swords, but he offered her a free strike. She did a called shot to the neck. I had planned for her sword to just bounce right off his neck. Then he'd punt her, remind her her place, and leave the ball. Except she rolled well. Really well. In rolling 4 dice she managed to accrue 10 successes to an attack to his neck. So here I was, the ST, facing the choice of either telling her she failed and ruining her moment of awesome or giving it to her. I gave it to her and she lopped his very surprised head right off his very surprised shoulders. She picked up his head and turned to the crowd, and asked very boldly if there was anyone else who wanted to talk ****. The clincher... only ONE player in the group had a hint of what she'd just done.

Fifth point: Don't be afraid to turn awesome into suck. The sword she'd used was a gift from an unknown person. It wasn't magical, just cool looking and fitting with her concept of 'gothic swordswoman'. But when she sliced his head clean off... well... I felt the urge to get creative so next round she found her vitae replenishing. The sword was drinking the blood she spilled... and suddenly before the whole court she felt her blood potency rise as she committed diablerie accidentally. And now she gets to run for her life. The character turned her moment of badass to actually intimidate every vampire in the city to overlook her "accident." and the character was all the stronger for it... and learned to love her blood drinking sword. I eventually had to come up with where the sword came from (decided it was from the big bad she killed) and how to mess with her more (his spirit began to whisper in her head to try and direct her actions.)

White_North
2010-06-12, 02:47 PM
1. Mundane tasks are great to play out when appropriate. If you're making your players describe every minor action in excruciating detail, I imagine they'll get bored pretty fast. However, that can be used as a means of building tension, breathing life into the world and, best of all, paranoia. If you have played D&D before, this is particularly fun. D&D players typically come to associate the drawing of a battlemap and the description of minute environmental details with trouble. When they're going to buy some food and you draw the store, asking to place themselves on it and adding a detailed description of the sickly-looking clerk, they'll almost always become instantly paranoid for the rest of the scene, even if nothing happens.

2. Usually, the best starting point is having a very sort solo adventure with some of the PCs before the actual session starts. Nothing very substantial should happen in it, but it should set the mood and motivate the player to be more curious about the things that happen after sunset. The curse idea is good, but be sure to make your players think that it might also simply be bad luck. Make them roll Perception + Wits to notice that their left shoe is untied as they're about to cross the street. After a car almost runs them down, have the driver come out and profusely apologize. Ambiguity is fun, and making your players draw uncertain conclusions from events adds to the dark and heavy atmosphere of the WoD.

3. Entire sessions? That'd probably be a bad idea. A lot of the payers will be excluded, and the game will run much, much slower. Ideally, you should have them meet no longer than an hour after official game start. If one character requires a solo introduction, do it before the session. It'll make the character feel more authentic (as the players won't know each other's characters, just like people who actually meet for the first time), and save a lot of time at the actual table. Having them sleep separately is very doable, as long as it doesn't take them long to meet up when they need to. However, if your players are anything like mine, expect them to turn the first indoors space they find big enough to house them all into the fortress of Helm's Deep. On the other hand, if they're that paranoid, you're also doing something very right.

4. Here's how my first session went. Spoilered for length as I tend to ramble. Also, there may be some mild gore contained inside.

So, I had three characters. James Xavier, a military scientist from Canada, Tom O'Flannagan, a paranoid, conspiracy-theorist war vet, Charles Cross, a lawyer from Montreal, and Louis Dieudonné, a Haitian Taxi driver in New Orleans. So, before the actual game started, I had a talk with each of them, separately. Charles and James knew each other, as they both went to McGill university and grew to be close friends, remaining in contact even after James had enrolled in the military. Tom, on the other hand, had grown obsessed with conspiracy theories after his service in the vietnam war. Worse than that, he had seen things in the dark corner of the jungles which caused him to go a little insane, making him believe that no human being could ever have been responsible for the death and destruction that he saw. He runs a small website in which he chronicles his attempt at discovering what monsters hide behind authority. Now, note that he doesn't outright know that real monsters hide in the World of Darkness. He just believes that there are things which have happened on earth far too horrible to have been concieved by a human mind.

Now, James worked for a high-profile legal company, in which he was the assistant to a talented attorney. Recently, his boss had been handed the task of defending a man who was part of a powerful criminal organization. Unfortunately, the prosecution managed to come up with unexpected evidence and they lost the case. When he went to the office the next morning, James found his boss strewn about the meeting room in several small pieces, along with his entire legal team. The only reason James had not been there earlier is because he had been delayed by traffic. Police investigation branded it a retaliation killing from the mob, but James could not get the gruesome picture out of his head. When he went to his friend Charles to talk about it, the military scientist managed to get ahold of some photos from the crime scene through his contacts. To his surprise, he found that the corpses had not been cut apart, as the police record indicated. Indeed, the limbs looked as if they had been torn from the body, as if by a great force, like the dismemberments they used to execute prisoners in the middle-ages. Except that, back then, it usually took several horses to pull apart bone and flesh. The week after, both James and Charles saw their lives take unexpected turns. James was transferred down to New Orleans with the order to report to the military base there. Charles was given extended vacation time on account of ''mental anguish'' and decided to go down to the Big Easy with his friend.

Now, I'm gonna try to cut this as short as possible. Using Dieudonné as a way of travelling aorund town, charles and James tracked down Tom, hwo they found while looking for answers as to what they had seen. After finally meeting with him, Charles found a note in his appartment, written in red ink, and saying ''There is a church in the French Quarter where children cry at night. Signed, A. B.''. After a bit of investigation, the gang found a church in the French Quarter which had been abandonned twenty years prior. Apparently, there were dissapearances, the police failed to uncover anything and people stopped coming, until the church was nothing but a refuge for various rodents. They then decided to spend the night in the church. That's when strange things started happening. Apparritions, footsteps, dors swinging close, but never anything that could not have been a trick of the shadows and the imagination of the characters. Frightened and confused, the group decided to go see a relative of Louis': an old, blind Haitian man named Samuel who owned a restaurant to which no one ever went. Louis had heard famiy talk about how, back in Haiti, he had been considered a sorcerer of sorts, well versed in the occult. after conversing with him, the group deduced that, if ghosts were real, there would be something which kept them here and prevented them to go into the afterlife. A force powerful enough to root them in place.

Then, they decided to spend a second night at the hotel, this time bringing cameras, suveillance equipment, and basically a host of things that they thought would allow them to understand better what they were dealing with. However, this night was not like the other. As the clock neared the hour of 3:33, strange things began happening. Violent knocking noises, wails coming from inside the walls, and, at one point, Tom separated from the group and started playing a haunting melody on the organ, despite never having played it before in his life. Then, as the disturbances almost grew intolerable in intensity, the clock struck 3:33 and all fell silent. That's when the singing started. Along with a soft grinding noise, the players heard a choir song being sung by an almost broken voice. And that's when the noticed that the life-sized statue of the Christ, crucified upon a silver cross, that they had seen in a closed room on the second level, was no longer to be seen on the cameras. as they all turned to face the stairs, they saw the Christs, stigmata still open, slowly descending the spiraling staircase, dragging the immense cross behind him like an executionner's axe. But he no longer had the fair face of the Christ. Instead, there was an old man's face, half of it weeping, and the other half distorted in a maddned grin. Most of them started fleeing, except James, who stayed behind. He insisted that this was impossible, that the laws of science he had dedicated his life to would not allow such a thing to haapen, and that it was therefore nothing but a bad dream. Unfortunately for him, it wasn't. The apparition almost killed him, along with knocking Louis unconscious as he tried to drag his comrade out. They finally managed to escape the church, and ran to the nearest hospital, still reeling from their experience.

When James and Louis finally came to, two days later, they went to Samuel's house, looking for answers. After some research in Samuel's own library and the cit records, they came to the conclusion that the face of the apparition was the one of father Thomas, who was in charge of the church before its closing. Apparently, he had commited scuicide when the church closed, hanging himself in a hotel appartment. They also deduced that he must be the thing keeping in place all the spirits of the children that they had seen before, as he had probably killed them in a bout of madness. Finally, they also discovered that particularly vicious ghosts were anchored in this world by objects closely tied to their deaths, and that they could never venture very far from such objects, as they drew their power from them. They thus decided that the silver cross was Thomas' anchor and that it must be destroyed.

Now, I'm gonna try to abbreviate the last part as much as possible. By using thermite (which I never saw coming), two of them melted down the cross while the others desperatly tried to keep the ghost at bay, mainly by acting as bait, evoking scenes from the priest's life that were bound to attract the ghost's attention. They succeeded in destrying the anchor, thus banishing the ghost and freeing the spirits of the children he had killed. Further investigation into the priest's journal (which they found buried under the cross) revealed that Thomas had been recieving visits from a being he called ''The god below'', who had apparently driven him to insanity, telling him that the world was full of sin and that the only way that those children would stay pure would be by expediting them into the waiting arms of the Lord. He had used the silver cross to grind the children's bones and flesh into dust and paste, melting the remains into the great bronze casts of the new bells of the church-tower.

So, I hope that was helpful. Apologies for the wall of text. I tried to be as thorough as possible. I hope you'll get to run your chronicle soon. The WoD is a lot of fun.

tahu88810
2010-06-12, 03:01 PM
Ok, thanks for the help everyone! I think I've got most of the information I need, and I can successfully start a chronicle now.

White_North, thanks for the example of play. It really helped.