VtM Help me to develop the story

[Redshark]

Hail from Portugal. I hope you guys can help me with this...
So, i'm planning on running a Vtm game (first time by the way) for a friend and my wife, and I'm thinking on getting them started as 10th generation in Lisbon 1945. The idea is for them to do a few missions/quests whatever and get them to 2013 feeling like they really have 70 years of undead life in them. The problem is, I'm having a number of problems with how to do this. So far this is what I got:
Lisbon is neutral and a haven for many people fleeing from WWII. This also brought Camarilla and Sabat cainites, and street wars ensued between them. Camarilla, loosing the war and having fewer numbers, decided that each kindred should embrace asap a person, to get their numbers up. This is how they will be embraced. Then, Luther (a Ventrue and eldest of the Camarilla in Lisbon, acting like the self-proclaimed Prince) will command them and their sires to recover a few crates of weapons supposedly stolen by Sabat agents from a Camarilla warehouse. The crates will be actually full of Nazi gold bars, and Luther will enventually flee with them. By then WWII ends and Sabat has been driven out of Lisbon. However, there will also be no self proclaimed prince to rule and this is where my problems begin. Any ideas? Should I start a war between Sires (they have different sires, one Tremere and other Toreador) to see who will rule Lisbon or what? Should i just let them decide where to go from here? should I just forget all this and start a brand new story? What do you guys think? Thanks in advance for the help and sorry for my poor English

[Thrawn4]

It probably depends on the state of the city. Nobody wants to run a pile of ashes, but if the city still has its merits there might be a struggle for power. However, this does not have to end in war as the real war just ended and they might be happy to live on (exist, whatever). There might even be some resistence against war among vampires ("We survived WWII somehow and now this *** wants to fight again? I will support someone else"). Also, resources might be rare, so the struggle for power might be about gathering resources and influence rather than actual battles. A prince has to be able to keep up the masquerade, after all.

[pife]

First of all, your English is better than you give yourself credit for. It's better than most "native" speakers that I know.

For the story.. I actually like your idea a lot. An idea popped into my head as I read it.. What if they weren't in Lisbon, but Berlin, in 1945? The city is a wreck, the Russians are coming, and they (the party) will have to find a way out, which will be complicated by any number of problems. Where do they go? How do they get there? How do they avoid all of the military patrols (German, Allies, and Russians from all directions)? With all of the bombing, both day and night, it's dangerous out there! Other Berlin vampires will either be leaving, or taking advantage of the chaos. Will there be Russian vampires sneaking in to stake their claim? There could be spies (mortal and Kindred) from all sides running all over the place.

Perhaps the party WANTS to get to Lisbon, for safety. Or perhaps Luther wants to get the gold and get out, leaving the party holding the bag? Perhaps Luther sets the party up to get caught (after he gets his gold, that is).. Maybe they have to track him to Lisbon to recover the gold?

I'm curious to hear what you end up doing with them. That's a fascinating period in history, and I don't think enough roleplaying games use it.

[Redshark]

First of all, your English is better than you give yourself credit for. It's better than most "native" speakers that I know.

For the story.. I actually like your idea a lot. An idea popped into my head as I read it.. What if they weren't in Lisbon, but Berlin, in 1945? The city is a wreck, the Russians are coming, and they (the party) will have to find a way out, which will be complicated by any number of problems. Where do they go? How do they get there? How do they avoid all of the military patrols (German, Allies, and Russians from all directions)? With all of the bombing, both day and night, it's dangerous out there! Other Berlin vampires will either be leaving, or taking advantage of the chaos. Will there be Russian vampires sneaking in to stake their claim? There could be spies (mortal and Kindred) from all sides running all over the place.

Perhaps the party WANTS to get to Lisbon, for safety. Or perhaps Luther wants to get the gold and get out, leaving the party holding the bag? Perhaps Luther sets the party up to get caught (after he gets his gold, that is).. Maybe they have to track him to Lisbon to recover the gold?

I'm curious to hear what you end up doing with them. That's a fascinating period in history, and I don't think enough roleplaying games use it.

Thanks! I really appreciate your compliment and I love your idea to start the game in Berlin, but the players already made a full background of their characters based in Lisbon. I am inclined to let things flow and see what they want to do and where they want to go after Luther (who was a German Luteran Priest by the way). However, if they stall or seem to have doubts on what to do, I may very well make them track Luther INTO Berlin. That part of "Bombing day and night" gave me chills. In a good way, I mean. If you like, I can keep you updated on how things went (although we had several delays to play the game, I'm hoping to play this weekend or the next).

[pife]

Definitely! I'd love to know how that game turns out, keep me informed!

[Redshark]

Definitely! I'd love to know how that game turns out, keep me informed!

Well, sad to say it didn't go well. In fact, it ended quite badly. Things started in a joyful mood (jokes, giving silly nicknames to Sires, etc) which is fine by me, as long that they stay focused in the game, but I was aiming for a darker mood. They spotted Luther's plan to trick them as soon as they found about the gold bars, and they preferred to give him the gold and kept the whole thing as a secret between them and Luther (which was a little unexpected, but hey, can't say it was a bad move). Then things started to go down the hill. I gave them a little stealth mission, nothing hard, just get in, switch some jewels by false ones and get out. Just don't kill anyone and prevent being seen. 6 guards outside (that didn't spot them going in) and 2 guards inside...but then 3 straight botches gave me no choice but to make 1 of the guards spot them and they (my wife, really) started to get annoyed, saying the game was boring, and just ruining it all. I ended the game 5 minutes later, stating that if she was getting annoyed there was no point in proceeding with it. And that was it. The other player (my friend) was enjoying it, and I'm not sure if he wants to keep playing this, but I guess that for my wife it's back to old D&D...cause vampires suck! Oh well...

[pife]

Oh, man, I hate to hear that!! I thought that game had a lot of potential. Sadly, my wife is usually the fly in the ointment too.. (Not intentionally, but the effect is still the same, lol).

And I've been trying to pull my wife from D&D also.. She just has fairies and unicorns and pseudo-dragons on the brain, and while she likes the concept of vampires... let me put it this way.. She wanted me to alter the OWoD rules to make it more like Twilight. (Strike one). She also wanted her Twilight vampire world to resemble both the Wheel of Time world by Robert Jordan, AND reflect the world of Fablehaven (a book by Robert Mull) AND have aspects of the Succubus series of books..

Ugh.. Needless to say, after spending a couple of hours trying to figure out how to reconcile those wild requests... we haven't played anything in months, lol.. It doesn't help that she's only happy if she's level 12+, with lots of extra magic items and usually servants/slaves to do her bidding.

If you ever decide to run that campaign here on PBP, I'll be interested.

And.. Is it that vampires suck, or is she just used to the mechanics of D&D? I think that's part of the problem with my wife. D&D was the first game I ever showed her, and she loooooooves rolling d20's. She even wanted me to change the dice in WOD from d10's to d20's, just because she likes the way they roll better, lol.

So I feel your pain!

[Driderman]

There's a VERY long stretch from classic D&D party-mentality, to playing Vampire. Sounds like you tried to make the game a bit more D&D-ish to make the transition easier (players are a group, have a common mission, mission is relatively straightforward) which, although commendable, was probably a mistake.
You shouldn't really try to turn Vampire into something that resembles D&D, because D&D is just better at being D&D. Instead, you should probably have made something that was a bit more iconically "Vampire" (which it sounds like your initial idea was but you never really got to) to give the players the feeling that they're not playing D&D-lite with fangs and a weird system :)

Also sounds like you might have made the classic mistake of making the players roll for something that needed to succeed, instead of just saying "yes it works".

I'd suggest that you, if you haven't already, sit down with your group and ask them what they want/expect from a Vampire game, then try and find some common ground and try again, get the story back on track, cause it sounded like a quite fun setup.