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evisiron
2007-10-07, 10:01 PM
I am about to introduce some friends of mine to V:TM, and was hoping for some advice.

Experience wise, one used to play DnD a few years ago, but hasn't picked up a die in a while. She is into vamp mythology, so will probably really enjoy it.

The second player is kind of quiet, but will probably enjoy it as well.

The third player is kind of cynical and might dislike it, and therefore ruin it for the others. I am predicting a 50/50 chance between him liking or hating it.

As for me, I have run a few DnD and Star Wars RPG games, so have experience there. Of course the systems and mood of the games are very different, and I have not run a Vamp game before (though have played in a few games).

I was going to keep it a bit rules light to start, maybe introduce the system through a 'mentor' in game.

So;
1. Any general advice on running a Vamp game?
2. What is a good way of introducing new players?

Clementx
2007-10-07, 10:04 PM
Teach them Requiem instead. Its much simpler, you can start them as mortals to teach them the basic systems, then apply the vampire template, and doesn't have all the metaplot overhead. Plus, they can actually find the books if they like it.

TheElfLord
2007-10-07, 10:37 PM
Don't listen to him, don't fall prey to the lure of new editions!

I played a lot of V:tM but not in what one would consider a traditional style (the one game where we actually tried to play as scheming backstabbers failed after one session). My groups mode of play is much more suited to Werewolf or Mage, so I can't be of much direct help outside of being a cheering section.

Go for it!!!

Mojo_Rat
2007-10-07, 10:44 PM
The Lure of new editions Aside. The Recommendation that you start with NWod playing mortals and then add the vampire stuff a bit later Is very good.
It will help you and them get into the game as you introduce it and basically the plot is whatever youw ant it to be without having to worry about any city other than the one your game is set into.

I really liked the new game alot over the old. Right now Were about 6 sessions in to a nWoD game that is being run by a Gm who is doing the genere for the first time and it is working really well.


However That Said if youa re going with the old edition and theya re all newbis tot he system Go with Something simple where they all wake up as 13th gen vampires for the first time in the same room and work your introductions to the world and the system from there from a mentor npc. Doing it this way should help foster some group co-ordination which may disappear in later Wod games when plyers are more experienced.

Zincorium
2007-10-07, 10:53 PM
Honestly, DMing V:tM has always kind of frustrated me. As crazy as it sounds, if your players are used to D&D where kicking in the door and killing everything in sight is a valid course of action, you may want to start them off as anarchs or even sabbat, where there's not so much of a disconnect between the two game styles.

The Requiem was honestly a lot clearer to explain to people who weren't already inculcated in the old way of doing things, if you're looking at buying new books anyway it might be a valid choice.

General advice: While there are a whole lot of older, more powerful vampires out there, keep them behind the scenes where the players don't fixate on them as targets. All it takes is one player to figure out what diablere (sp?) is and the entire campaign tends to go to hell. Treat the masquerade/humanity as serious business (which it's supposed to be).

Getting the players together: Avoid the 'your sire tells you to join these other neonates' cliche if you can. What I've found works well is if you have some sort of established Elysium where the characters can be exposed to one another, probably at some kind of undead social function, and provide an unclear threat to their unlifes that causes them to either seek protection in numbers or offer their ability to keep others safe in trade for something else.

Winterwind
2007-10-08, 12:10 AM
Haven't DMed Vampire yet, but have been playing in a rather long (freeform) campaign in the World of Darkness (crossover between Vampire, Magus and Werewolf). And what our gamemaster did was to have us all start as normal humans, with rather extensive background, hobbies, friends and so on required to be named at the beginning, and then had us all play through one or two sessions before making the transformation. And I think this is a very wise approach - that way, the human side gains much more importance. One character was a bandleader in a progressive rock band - which at first got pretty cool, when he subconciously started to add magical effects to the music (he was a Magus), but got pretty messy when things got more complicated and he had to drop the band - which was very important to him. The character who got turned into a vampire had been, ironically, some kind of New Age anarchist, a vegan who started every day with "salute to the sun" Yoga meditations. You can imagine it became... a conflict after his transformation, and a constant source of tension with the vampire who transformed him - and yet, it had been his very own choice, in order to break the tristesse of his life, so he could hardly put the full blame on the vampire.
And so on.
What I am saying is, it is easy to just be a bloodsucking vampire if that's what you design your character as. But if you start as a human, with a human life, human hobbies, human friends, human ethics... this gets much more interesting.

It also provides an excellent introduction into the world, since the characters do not know absolutely nothing about the new world they enter, either - which gets all the more interesting when they roleplay their doubts, their inability to accept that there are indeed such things as magic and vampires in the world they have lived in for so long, and only slowly discover the truth.

evisiron
2007-10-08, 12:41 PM
Looking at the replies, I see a few 'start as human' posts. I have been considering this, with its benefits and drawbacks.
On one hand, it would add greater depth and background to the characters.
On the other, it means I have to draw the mortals together and have them all get bitten together, whcih can be tricky as a few of them will be various clans. It also means they have to design characters, and that is giving new people homework before a game even starts. And finally, I might only get one shot at getting them interested, and they would be expecting vampires! I am worried that starting as mortals won't get them hooked.

However, I do like the idea of them discovering their new world. And the joy of them being new is that they wont have any prior knowledge of what vampires can do at this time. Therefore I was considering keeping the 'mentor' relatively quiet until after their powers go off a bit on their own (Gangrel popping claws, Nosferatu fading away, Toreador getting distracted by shiny things etc

The first session would probabl be them going out to find victums to feed on. Maybe when returning to the 'HQ' they get pulled over by cops. It will be ineresting to see if they use their new powers on a suspicious cop...

Kurald Galain
2007-10-08, 12:53 PM
Obviously, you don't need Requiem in order to start as mortals - Masquerade does that just as well, and in fact it has been one of the default campaign starters ever since first edition.

And neither is the Requiem system particularly simpler than Masquerade, and neither is the latter particularly hard to find on the internet or even in RPG stores.

Yes, starting as mortals is good, because the characters will know as little about what's happening to them as the players. Alternatively, you can start them as Neonates. You got bit yesterday and you just learned that sunlight hurts a lot. Now what?

In other advice, tell the mythology player that WOD vamps aren't necessarily the same as whatever else she's read about vamps. For instance, their supposed aversion to garlic is, in the WOD, an urban legend.

Give the quiet player some skills, disciplines and/or backgrounds that the others don't have; that makes it easier to draw him into the plot.

Make sure the cynical player has some cool stuff to do (or happening to him) in the first session. Depends on what the player likes, of course, but a well-described Hunt could work, or having him attacked by mafia folks with uzis (which are surprisingly ineffective against vamps, allowing him to Kick Ass).

As for yourself, rules light is good. Since vampire games tend to be highly non-linear, your best bet in preparation is not writing a storyline, but writing out a dozen or so NPCs with a few traits and plans, and have the players run into them and react. Make sure several of them contradict one another, and/or try to order the PCs around in a variety of mutually exclusive ways.

DeathQuaker
2007-10-08, 04:05 PM
The thing about Masquerade is to be very careful balancing the "Game of personal horror" that it is and making sure your players are actually having fun.

V:tM can get very politics-heavy, and it is also very easy to play the Camarilla very right and have a group of Neonates feel like they're totally tools of the Elders and are completely powerless to do anything outside what their leaders/sires tell them to do (or if they do, the punishment is so undealable with they are essentially destroyed or trapped). Perhaps this is sometimes accurate according to the game's fluff, but unless done very well or with the right players, it can be very, very frustrating for players (I speak from experience as a player and WoD GM).

The loss of humanity and such is also a delicate balance to deal with. Humanity should be more than a few dots on a character sheet (and it's a pain in the ass to lose humanity just because you rolled your dice poorly while feeding, at least without any decent accompanying roleplay, etc. You might as well play old school AD&D with your 5% chance of dying when casting Teleport). There needs to be good roleplay between players and GM involving the call of the Beast versus struggling to retain humanity. At the same time, it's too easy to get into overly angsty gameplay, or gameplay that focuses on one character's angst while everyone else gets ignored. You might want to chat with your players on how you want to play this aspect of the game and how closely you want to pay attention to it.

Some people advise starting your players as mortals. I do not. The Embrace is a personal thing, Sire to Childe (and it would be odd for a group to have the same Sire); it should be roleplayed in individual preludes with your players, not in a group gaming session. This may well be different for Requiem. I am aware of nWoD's convention that you begin the game as mortals and go from there, and while not intimately familiar with it, I assume Requiem is designed to deal with this well. VtM is not so much... most scenarios I've encountered always start with the party gathering as Vampires already (again, however, it does assume a character's mortal life and Embrace is roleplayed during a Prelude).

And I'll emphasize: character preludes are a great thing to do, and especially a nice concept introduced by the Storyteller system. I highly recommend doing them, especially with new-ish players. They alone can really help bring a player into their character and feel into the world without worrying about "performance anxiety" from starting a session in a group.

Other stuff... especially if sticking to oWod, don't crossover with other WoD games... not with players new to the world. It can get confusing, and the games don't always balance well with each other. When experienced, both players and GM, this is more doable.

Otherwise, you should be able to do this as flexibly as you like. Storyteller games are best run focusing on roleplay and not as much on system. The system's there for you when you need it but the bulk should be in interactions between you and the players.

If you go for this, I offer these as help to you players when creating characters, as it's hard to find some of the oWoD supplementary books these days:

Big List of Archetypes (Natures/Demeanors) (http://www.deathquaker.org/gaming/archetypes.html)

Big list of Merits and Flaws (http://www.deathquaker.org/gaming/meritsflaws.html)

TheElfLord
2007-10-08, 05:28 PM
And finally, I might only get one shot at getting them interested, and they would be expecting vampires! I am worried that starting as mortals won't get them hooked.


Building on someone else's comment about breaking them in with a sabbat or anarch game, one sabbot game I played in had the players who were new to vampire start as mortals who were embraced about halfway through the first session to provide troops for a sabbot crusade in the city we were in. This allowed them to experience the begginings of vamprism instead of having things described to them and cut to the action of being vamps within the first session.

(sadly the game only lasted the one session) (stupid elevator shafts)

DeathQuaker
2007-10-08, 06:16 PM
Building on someone else's comment about breaking them in with a sabbat or anarch game

I'd say that unless the players are into playing "monsters," I wouldn't recommend starting with a Sabbat campaign. An Anarch one might be interesting.

Also, it's easier on a new GM to do Camarilla or, if not, Anarchs... fewer supplements to have to read and track. How to run and play Camarilla is in the main rulebook; to do otherwise requires extra reading and supplements that both a new GM and players can probably do without, IMO.

evisiron
2007-10-12, 07:46 PM
For the start, as far as they know they are clanless. The powers will pop up a bit later.

I am trying to think of a good first session though. Likely to go:
1. Wake up. Mentor gives some facts about their new existance and an address for a safehouse. Gives advice that they feed and get to the house.
2. Feed. No idea how they will want to go about this. It could be anything from hitting a bloodback to slaughtering a group of gang members. Should be interesting.
3. On way to house, pulled over by suspicious cop. Their license plate is reported stolen. Depending on how people fed, he may see the blood stains. Dont know how players will handle this. I can assume at least one will try to kill the cop.

And thats all I have so far. I may include some kind of robbery or mugging if they go through fast. Is there any other cool stuff that could occur?

Azerian Kelimon
2007-10-12, 08:49 PM
I've got a good tip mostly no one's mentioned, and which will be a help for you: Don't make 'em players go angsty. If you've ever read an Anne Rice novel, the vampires are souls more tortured than half-emo, half-idealist teenagers. Don't do that. Make sure to emphazise the "good" aspects of Dark Immortality, and not the bad ones (we shall never be able to see the sun! We cannot meet our friends, or we'll kill them in a rush of dementia!). This might be specially critical with the cynic. An angsty vamp will drive him away. Also, the mythos player might feel this is anathema to her vampirism beliefs, so be prepped to explain how vampirism is the half filled, half empty glass of water.

PS: I agree with people who said the Embrace is a personal thing. Unless your own players approach you saying they'd prefer to begin in a mass recruitment, you should give everyone little solo adventures (say, until they are closer to hitting a new power level), and have them converge on a site (such as an abandoned factory), meet, and find a reason to bind together, like a powerful monster. This way, they'll all get accustomed to their chars, and will have a lil' teamwork thrown in too.

PSS: Oh, and if you DO create solo adventures, make sure you run them all at once. It might get taxing and a bit difficult to conduct, but it REALLY pays off in the end.

Winterwind
2007-10-12, 09:01 PM
For the start, as far as they know they are clanless. The powers will pop up a bit later.

I am trying to think of a good first session though. Likely to go:
1. Wake up. Mentor gives some facts about their new existance and an address for a safehouse. Gives advice that they feed and get to the house.
2. Feed. No idea how they will want to go about this. It could be anything from hitting a bloodback to slaughtering a group of gang members. Should be interesting.
3. On way to house, pulled over by suspicious cop. Their license plate is reported stolen. Depending on how people fed, he may see the blood stains. Dont know how players will handle this. I can assume at least one will try to kill the cop.

And thats all I have so far. I may include some kind of robbery or mugging if they go through fast. Is there any other cool stuff that could occur?Assuming you have some sort of campaign planned, I would already start dropping hints towards that. Strange events happening around the PCs - they see someone being mugged in an alley, yet when they arrive everything is gone, save for strange symbols on the wall. They see strangers who behave kinda like police officers, yet are none, hang around in their neighbourhood and observe everything - maybe with the aid of strange technological gadgets they have never seen the like before. They meet some vampire(ss) who drops a few mysterious remarks, and vanishes. Basically, events which might either get their interest or make them uneasy, but for which they get no explanation - yet. Something around which you will be able to construct your campaign. The earlier you start and the more threads you lay, the more complex will the campaign become, and the more will the players get that feeling of mystery and something greater happening all around them. Also, your scheme will seem all the more impressive. :smallwink:

That you expect a player to try to kill one of the cops is somewhat scary though. I mean, these cops are human beings who did nothing wrong and are just doing their job! :smalleek:


PS: I agree with people who said the Embrace is a personal thing. Unless your own players approach you saying they'd prefer to begin in a mass recruitment, you should give everyone little solo adventures [...]

PSS: Oh, and if you DO create solo adventures, make sure you run them all at once. It might get taxing and a bit difficult to conduct, but it REALLY pays off in the end.Agreed, on both accounts.

Archpaladin Zousha
2007-10-12, 09:05 PM
What exactly is V:tM and V:tR like? A friend of mine is part of a LARP for the former in the area and has invited me to join in, but I'm having reservations, both about learning a new system and about LARPing, having only ever played table-top 3.5e D&D and badly at that.:smallfrown:

Azerian Kelimon
2007-10-12, 09:07 PM
Nice. Agreement. Feeling. Glow. Inside.

That aside, I REALLY would no-no killing humans as an introduction. Not only is that veeeery evil, it's a lousy baptism by fire. If you're gonna do that, at least drop hints for the players about being able to tell him a yarn or point him to another person, or...etc. (As for clues for alternate solutions, you could say he looks like he's hellbent on taking SOMEONE to jail, that he seems pretty absentminded, or that he looks like someone who would be willing to fall for a white lie, and who wouldn't like to take you to jail).

evisiron
2007-10-13, 12:37 PM
As for the 'cop killing', I am not certain. I have only been friends with this group for just over a month, but that 1 guy strikes me as someone who, if in a hypothetical situation was granted vampiric powers, would try and take out a cop who crossed them.

Thankfully, the other two would probably try some other method to slip through the net. One already knows she is playing Toreador, so persuasion or clever talking is an option. The third would probably try to talk their way out, but knock the cop out (but not kill him). I think this might create an interesting group dynamic.

Also, the prelude games sound cool, but everyone want to play together, I will likely keep them quite short. I was considering maybe a 10 minute lead up to the embrace itself. Since most of them do not know what clan they are, the vampire will display some powers that they can expect to get in the future. I think that will be a cool bit of foreshadowing, if they figure it out.
Is this a good idea?

[Btw - for the guy asking about LARP, I am discussing the tabletop system. I have not tried Vamp LARP, so cant advise on that. The combat LARPs are great though!]

Azerian Kelimon - Thanks for the heads up about not being too angsty. I almost did slip into the 'normal routine' there.
Winterwind - Oh, cool idea. That makes me want to develop it into a whole 'group has almost figured out vampires' plot. Gives the players a nice chance to work against mortals for a bit!