So I took everyone's advice and focused on using the Lazy GM (the book) approach (1-3 motivated antagonists, 1-3 interesting NPCs, etc.). Worked (Yay), but here are my new problems.

1. I ended up with some significant plot holes (because I made some stuff up of course) that I'm not sure how to fill. How do you handle this?

2. Because we're doing a VTM Sandbox AND one of the players knows a lot more about VtM than I ever will (running LARPs for years), all of the "plots" of the Vampire NPC's seem heavy-handed and dumb, not the kind of complex political plotting that the setting says exists.

a. is there some kind of mechanical sub-system I can use (from a supplement or something) that will let me simulate the elders being as clever as they're supposed to be. For example, I can easily simulate excellent swordsmen by giving the elder 5 dots in Melee w/ a specialty in Swords. Is there some political/scheming subsystem I can use?

b. failing 1.a, is there a generic list of cool political scheme plots I can re-skin (I've tried watching Game of Thrones and House of Cards for ideas but I'm just bad at this), e.g.,

- Make your target look bad by finding out what one of his/her plots are and "breaking" it so it achieves some other end.
- Framing your target as committing some offence

Quote from: PencilBoy99;839840So I took everyone's advice and focused on using the Lazy GM (the book) approach (1-3 motivated antagonists, 1-3 interesting NPCs, etc.). Worked (Yay), but here are my new problems.

1. I ended up with some significant plot holes (because I made some stuff up of course) that I'm not sure how to fill. How do you handle this?

2. Because we're doing a VTM Sandbox AND one of the players knows a lot more about VtM than I ever will (running LARPs for years), all of the "plots" of the Vampire NPC's seem heavy-handed and dumb, not the kind of complex political plotting that the setting says exists.

a. is there some kind of mechanical sub-system I can use (from a supplement or something) that will let me simulate the elders being as clever as they're supposed to be. For example, I can easily simulate excellent swordsmen by giving the elder 5 dots in Melee w/ a specialty in Swords. Is there some political/scheming subsystem I can use?

b. failing 1.a, is there a generic list of cool political scheme plots I can re-skin (I've tried watching Game of Thrones and House of Cards for ideas but I'm just bad at this), e.g.,

- Make your target look bad by finding out what one of his/her plots are and "breaking" it so it achieves some other end.
- Framing your target as committing some offence

Hey Pencil, I'm a longtime WoD ST of both the new and old variety, so I might have some help and wisdom to impart.

1.) Honestly, one of the best ways to handle plot holes? Let your PC's fill in the blank and take the best idea from them. I use this method myself often enough. Simply put, PC's sometimes come up with better ideas than we GM's do. Sometimes it's good to reward them by taking one of those concepts and running with it..

"Why did the Tremere Regent kill the Brujah Primogen?" Your PC's might fill in the blanks themselves here. You might have some basic motivation such as the Brujah had blackmail material on the Tremere or something akin to that... But due to some earlier RP you didn't think was anything signifigant, your PC's have latched onto the idea that the Brujah was really a Sabbat Infilitrator and the Tremere had to kill him illegally to keep the Domain safe.

Again you don't want to use this method all the time of course. PC's should be wrong now and then, but when it comes to figuring out a plot or even making it seem deeper than it is, your PC's ideas can be great for mining.

2. Honestly? You're already running a Storygame as the Pundit calls it. You're not an ancient hyper intelligent Vampire, you can't think like them...So Cheat. Don't cheat too much, but just assume some of the most potent Elders are aware of the PC's plans, ESPICALLY if they get lazy.

You can assume most Elder's worth their Salt have at least Auspex, Dominate, or Presence in the higher levels, these are plenty excuse enough for them to have learned of the plots of PC's. By mind fucking their allies, retainers, or even them without realizing it. Again as I said, you don't want to do this TOO much, and you don't want to fall into paryalsis where you start thinking the Elder is just soo potent they should be able to unravel EVERY characters plot and ideas... But sometimes it's just best to have some of the Elder's be complately aware of what the PC's are doing, or have picked up on it from their own vast network of connections..

Remember, any Elder worth their salt won't have just the mental discplinces, but also plenty of retainers and servants in the political machinery of your city.. Police, the Mayor's office, and other such things which can tip off the Elder if something funny is going on.

As for Political Schemes... don't worry about getting complicated with them, for real. You can make them dirt simple. Decide on what the motivation for a particular NPC is "I want to become Prince" or lesser "I want to become Sherrif", "I want to become Primogen", "I want X dead", "I want X as my slave"..

Don't worry about trying to think about this vast deep TV show style plot.. Your PC's are going to throw a huge monkey wrench into those things anyway... Instead think about what the Particular NPC wants...and what means they have to achieve it... Then, in the background they start working toward it... This causes things to happen the PC's can get involved with.

Anyway, Hope that helps! Chicago by Night 1st edition is probably the greatest Sandbox Whitewolf ever produced for Vampire the Masquerade, get it and read it if you want to find some exellent inspiration for how Vampire can be run!

Quote from: PencilBoy99;839840So I took everyone's advice and focused on using the Lazy GM (the book) approach (1-3 motivated antagonists, 1-3 interesting NPCs, etc.). Worked (Yay), but here are my new problems.

That's a good way of doing it.

Quote from: PencilBoy99;8398401. I ended up with some significant plot holes (because I made some stuff up of course) that I'm not sure how to fill. How do you handle this?

I make more stuff up, until I contradict myself and hope the players don;t notice.

Quote from: PencilBoy99;8398402. Because we're doing a VTM Sandbox AND one of the players knows a lot more about VtM than I ever will (running LARPs for years), all of the "plots" of the Vampire NPC's seem heavy-handed and dumb, not the kind of complex political plotting that the setting says exists.

Plot-envy is a terrible thing - You always think other people's plots are better than yours.

Forget about what the setting says should exist and, instead, concentrate on what you are comfortable with.

If you don't like/can't handle/forget complex and intricate plots, then don't do them. It's far worse struggling with several intricate plots than doing one very well.

If you must have intricate plots, then put them as bullet-points for every major NPC. You can even have places where the plots intersect.

Quote from: PencilBoy99;839840a. is there some kind of mechanical sub-system I can use (from a supplement or something) that will let me simulate the elders being as clever as they're supposed to be. For example, I can easily simulate excellent swordsmen by giving the elder 5 dots in Melee w/ a specialty in Swords. Is there some political/scheming subsystem I can use?

I've never played VTM, so I can't help with this one.

Quote from: PencilBoy99;839840b. failing 1.a, is there a generic list of cool political scheme plots I can re-skin (I've tried watching Game of Thrones and House of Cards for ideas but I'm just bad at this), e.g.,

- Make your target look bad by finding out what one of his/her plots are and "breaking" it so it achieves some other end.
- Framing your target as committing some offence

Not sure about a generic lists, but there were several similar threads a while ago. I can't remember what they were, though.

Quote from: PencilBoy99;839840So I took everyone's advice and focused on using the Lazy GM (the book) approach (1-3 motivated antagonists, 1-3 interesting NPCs, etc.). Worked (Yay), but here are my new problems.

1. I ended up with some significant plot holes (because I made some stuff up of course) that I'm not sure how to fill. How do you handle this?

Write them all down.
On a big sheet of paper, maybe A3.
Then doodle on it, look for connections, keep it close when watching TV or sleeping or reading and jot down more stuff.
Don't go for 100% confirmed facts, but follow soltkass' ideas, and listen to your players, and jot them down, and pick what's cool or if the player's lead you to there, follow them and you'll stuff written down..

Quote from: PencilBoy99;8398402. Because we're doing a VTM Sandbox AND one of the players knows a lot more about VtM than I ever will (running LARPs for years), all of the "plots" of the Vampire NPC's seem heavy-handed and dumb, not the kind of complex political plotting that the setting says exists.

I just wanted to jump in on this point. No, he doesn't. He knows the VtM that he's run before; but YOUR VtM is not THAT VtM. You are free to fold, spindle, and mutilate the setting as you see fit.

Don't be intimidated by what someone else has done in the past, it never helps.

Quote from: PencilBoy99;8398401. I ended up with some significant plot holes (because I made some stuff up of course) that I'm not sure how to fill. How do you handle this?

2. Because we're doing a VTM Sandbox AND one of the players knows a lot more about VtM than I ever will (running LARPs for years), all of the "plots" of the Vampire NPC's seem heavy-handed and dumb, not the kind of complex political plotting that the setting says exists.

The best thing you can do to solve both the plot holes and the heavy-handed plotting and scheming is to keep it simple. Give NPC's goals and motivations (protecting it's child, becoming sheriff, gaining control of domain X etc.) and let them try to achieve this. Make a zero intervention plan about what would happen if the NPC's don't come in contact with the players. If your players do something that hinders the NPC, then let the NPC respond to that. This keeps things organic, let the plots flow naturally and you can pretend all the stuff happening was the plan all along.

Most evil plots really are pretty simple. They usually boil down to murder, kidnapping, exortion or fraud, usually in combination with some means to hide your involvement, to make people afraid to stop you, or to persuade people this was actually a good and decent thing that your victim had coming.

Along the lines of what Jan says, what makes a plot interesting is the motivation behind it. A plot to poison the king is pretty basic, but give a real human reason why they want the king dead. That reason gives the NPC a reason to exist beyond that single plot. Having a complex plot means your NPC will spend a lot of time just to pull it off. Giving them a few simple plots means they can carry them out, making them more impressive when they are unmasked.

Also, every plot seems more complicated to the players. It's easy for you to look at your three NPCs and their various plots and see it is as simplistic. It's all laid out for you. It's going to seem far more convoluted to the players. Even when they detect a plot, they might assign it to the wrong NPC based on personal bias.

Ideally, the PCs will have plots of their own going too. They are going to tangle up with the NPCs plots and making something richer.

And, when you look at media, like Game of Thrones, each individual plot isn't that complicated. It's the accumulation of those plots over the length of the story and the ways characters react to them that matter.

Quote from: PencilBoy99;8398401. I ended up with some significant plot holes (because I made some stuff up of course) that I'm not sure how to fill. How do you handle this?

Keep in mind there are plenty of movie and books with freaking massive plot holes that become classics and make huge money. So cut yourself some slack.

When I find a plot hole, I just sit down and think it through. Maybe not to fill the hole, but to see why it exists and whether that's interesting. If its not interesting or too glaring, then I fill it.

When the players find the plot hole, I go with it. I will even tell them, "maybe you're right, or maybe you don't have all the information, or maybe you don't know all the players in this scheme?" and then I shut my pie hole and LISTEN to the players talk to each other. Its amazing how often someone will rationalize something that fits really well and then I subtly weave that into the game.

And, are they biting now?

I've run shit-tons of WoD. I've made grown men cry in my games. <--- MEGA.

So here's the key to politics. Politics only exist when two or more parties want to control the same thing. It can be as simple as turf, or as ephemeral as a narrative to a story commonly told amongst the constituents.

Vampires in WoD, if you're going from the book, should have a very stratified society. I don't know the context of your group - I've had "experienced" LARPers play with me, only to get ground into ash under the weight of nightly life in my games. You have to set the standard of how your city status-quo operates. From the TOP (the Prince) all the way down to the grovelling rat-eaters.

Status Quo
This means you have to know WHY the Prince is top dog. How does he maintain that kind of control? Who owes him their fealty directly? Why isn't he killed on the sly? Who are his direct challengers for power? What groups in the city serve him directly. To what degree? There's a LOT that you can solve just by understanding these principles.

I make players show me how they hunt. Sounds routine. Is it? If you're letting the PC's run around feeding at will you're missing some primo opportunities to flex the status-quo. Feeding is LITERALLY the basis of the game. You can dismiss it by letting them feed on the endless supply of homeless - but consider: where are they doing this? If there were a lot of homeless to feed on - why are these not claimed by someone else with the power to hold onto them? Whose territory might they be crossing to GET to those ample feeding grounds?

Until a PC can show me they can reliably hunt undetected and relatively cleanly - they will roleplay their feeding habits. Yes. They should feel paranoid until they can claim their own hunting grounds. If you cede this to them - you're missing a valid and powerful part of the first-tier of the game.

If you're players are good enough to understand this and move about with impunity - then your city-structure is too weak. The point of Vampire, generally, the elders control everything, and the scraps are left for those too insignificant to claim their own, or too timid to try.

So get your city in order. Prince, Primogen, Clan leader, clan middle-men, rank and file. Scrubs. Then the independent players. Each of these are standard categories. You can decide where the official offices are amongst these - Sheriff, Whip blah blah blah.

What's the status on the TPS reports?

Feeding time - If the PC's are reliably getting blood. MAKE IT HARD for them. Someone has claimed wherever they go. Homeless? Nosferatu. Clubs? Toreador and Brujah. Suburbs? Are you fucking crazy? They'll call the cops. Kill the cops? Prince is on your ass. Of course there's some Ghoul SWAT-team - the Prince OWNS THEM, right? Bars? Hookers? - make them work for it. Don't jack them for being clever - just let them establish their own modus operandi that works reliably.

Club-hopping - The most obvious feedings grounds. WHO runs them? Are the PC's allowed there? What's the price for admission? Of COURSE there's a price. there's always a price.

Security in the City - Who is the Sheriff - and why is he/she the Sheriff? What makes them the scariest badass on the street? USE THEM. Don't forget their staff. SWAT anyone?

The Power of the Bureaucracy - This is the real power in the city. Overlook it and you'll see how fucked it is to be on the bad side of the Prince. Oh it's 5am and your building catches fire. Here comes the Fire rescue.. wtf do you do now? Police raiding your havens. Maybe your herd gets fucked because they've been set up. District Attorneys filing trumped up charges on mortals important to you. You'll do anything to get them out? right? Maybe not. Life can get very difficult assuming humans are just meatbags. You can't kill them all.

Threats
No Prince of a city goes unmolested. There is ALWAYS someone trying to pry him from the scene. There's ALWAYS some outside threat that *should* scare the holy JESUS out of him in the solitude of the long night when no one is looking. In WoD - a city is always under threat of siege either from within or without. If that's not true - then you're fucking up. If you're city is just some sleep little town with vampires that eat fava-beans and glitter in sunlight - even those assholes had werewolves to worry about. In WoD - there's the Sabbat. There's the Werewolves. There's the rest of the City. There's the damn Tremere who are always up to no good. There's the machinations of your right hand man. Everyone is ultimately out to get everyone else, because whoever isn't on top believes mistakenly that their problems will be solved once they get there.

IF your players aren't like that - the Prince will be pleased. As will all the other power-mongers in the city. Rank-and-file make good pawns for their endless backstabbing games. You did realize there are games right? And if you're not a player in the games, then you're a pawn to be moved around and used. Perhaps even part of a conspiracy to create a new social order.

Scary Shit
Sabbat - Yeah fuck it. Don't go all BLARGH!! with shovel-heads. Too obvious. Seduce them. Tickle their desires for power, make it a sexy girl/guy that knows a couple of cool tricks. Then suck the PC's in... then have the Sabbat scout's pack arrive... drag the PC's along with them in a killing spree. But don't make the Sabbat pack a bunch of wusses, let them flex. To the point where even your experienced players are scared.

Garou - Let me just say this. If you're doing classic WoD... a basic Garou - with shitty stats can kill the fuck out of most veteren Vampires. Why? fucking Claws. Fear the claw. Aggravated damage can only be soaked by Fortitude. USE THAT. If the lupines show up... any Vampire player that isn't a hell on wheels badass better be leaving... and even then, because lupines always bring friends. RIGHT? Decide WHY the lupines are in town... And let them have some fun. AROOOoooooo!!!

Something Else - Okay, I usually reserve this kinda shit for when my PC's are veteran players. Consider all the possibilities that Vampires just don't deal with normally: Fomori, Independent Ghouls, Hunters, Kuei Jin, or whatever. A little foreshadowing is always nice, but not necessarily. A good scary Hunter that always seems to be a step ahead of the PC's can be quite scary. Maybe that hunter has figured out the PC's hunting patterns, and eliminated the food. OR poisoned them. A hunter mad-scientist with some chemical that causes blood to clot on contact and lock up Bloodpoints in a PC's body. Yeah - consider shit like that.

Independent Clans - Followers of Set - c'mon. These guys are AWESOME bad guys. Establish a Setite temple in the city, let them start moving in on other Vampire's turf and spheres of control. Maybe they're up against the Tremere for thaumaturgic turf? Or Giovanni?

A Demon - Yeah, that's no Vampire, it's fucking demon. Even in Chicago By Night 1e, they have a fucking Succubus in the sewers. She's havoc on wheels. Pit the PC's AGAINST one another.

Ancients - too obvious. An ancient rolls into the city for some mysterious purpose.  

The Games
Political games are the ones where people get the most for doing the least. Those are the best ones. The currency of the realm should be territory and blood. If you like high-stakes shit, then diablerie is always a nice temptation to motivate players - but make sure you that is comes with a price.

The Game of Thrones - Everyone wants to be Prince. The Prince gets to decide who lives and dies. Who gets what territory. Who must be bound for transgressions, among many other things. There's always some asshole who thinks they can do it better. So these people manipulate the PC's into doing their dirty work. Have them knock off some of the Prince's herd, or a valuable ally. Let the PC's get into trouble, only to have the NPC's vouch for them, instant boon. Now the PC's owe the NPC. Then the real fun begins. It's a deathspiral of boons and favors and the PC's will get passed around like a hockeypuck until they realize they're in too deep.

The Golden Handcuffs - Maybe the PC's somehow do a favor for the Prince. Princes can grant many favors. Titles. Land. Oh my. But then that also means the Prince will use the PC's for muscle when his shit is in the fire. Right? Of course.

This is all tip of the iceberg - mix and match all this shit based on what the players do. I suggest using Google Docs to keep track of your NPC's and motivations. Anything you make up - jot it down in Google Docs and you're golden. You can flesh it all out between sessions.

If you're wondering how to set your city up. I HIGHLY recommend the NWoD book - Damnation City. It will inspire you for every RPG you ever run.

Quote from: tenbones;840375I've run shit-tons of WoD. I've made grown men cry in my games. <--- MEGA.

Damn, that actually makes me want to go out and read some of the old WoD material. And that's a pretty high compliment, since most of the old VtM games I've listened in on we're either strokefests ("Remeber that time we turned Tori Amos into a vampire?" "Oh sha. That was a bitchin' game.") or just an excuse to let the inner sociopath out ("we're Sabbat! We do what we want!"). So bravo, sir!

To redirect a little, since the OP is playing DAV, are there any other...rule(?) that apply directly to that game?  I figure with most of this stuff, you can just add a twist of lime and a shot of mead and you are good to go for 14th century Florence, but maybe you have something special locked away for when some poor hapless fool says, "lets play dark ages!"

Tom

Dang, Tenbones, they should have got you to write the Storyteller advice chapter in V20 - your writeup is certainly much more useful than the ideas presented there.

To address the original post: personally, what you'd call "plot holes" I like to call "unintended adventure seeds". The established facts of the game so far have exposed a contradiction; consider how that contradiction might be explainable IC and make some brief notes on that. Then, if and when the players ever say "Hey, wait a second, isn't that a contradiction?" you can just smile and nod and say "It certainly looks like one, doesn't it?"

If they try to find out more, good for them - improv a quick investigative scenario on the fly to give them a fair chance to uncover the explanation.

If they ignore it but end up running across the explanation in the course of play (say, you had to give the Sheriff a secret twin to explain why he was able to be in two places at once, and the players then discover the existence of the twin in the course of investigating the Sheriff), then if the players spotted the contradiction earlier they can say "Oh, so that's how he pulled it off!" and if they didn't spot the contradiction it's a golden opportunity to use the classic "Ha, you fools, didn't it make you suspicious that I was able to...?" line.

If the players ignore the plot hole and never run into the underlying explanation at all, then it evidently wasn't an important enough plot point to worry about in the first place.

The big thing is that you need to be able to promise to the players that there'll be an IC explanation for any apparent contradictions or plot holes they spot. Whether or not you come up with the IC explanation before or after they spot the contradiction or plot hole is another matter; ideally you'll spot the gaps and plaster them over before the players notice them, but if not then there's no sin in saying "Oh, let me think about that for a second" before getting back to them on it.

The worst thing you can do is to say "Erm, actually that's just a plot hole, I'd prefer it if you just ignored it." You want your players to pay attention to your world and the events in it and notice small details like that, which means that whenever a player actually spots something significant you should never undermine what they've done by telling them they shouldn't be looking at it.

Dark Ages is a slightly different and hairier proposition.

I'm a history freak, in general, so I added a lot of daily- err.. nightly life stuff into the game to make the PC's really understand how different it was. The proposition of Vampire in the Dark Ages has some SERIOUS differences to consider. I've run a few Dark Ages campaigns, the last went from 1098 to the modern era. I set it in London, and essentially I wanted the PC's to have a chance to really have a part in Kindred history as well as possibly interacting with pivotal historical figures. By definition - it was Mega Storygaming... but with large swaths of sandboxy goodness.

I gave it great consideration based on the idea that history was going to largely be unchanged (either by having real history be rendered a lie by the present, or by it actually having happened. So yeah - when the PC's taught Greek philosophy to a young Thomas Aquinas as a contemporary of Albertus Magnus, it was woven into history). BUT Kindred history was on the table to be fully mutable and changeable.

1) Depending on what time period you set things - remember, the Antediluvians ARE STILL ALIVE AND WALKING AROUND. This is pre-Camarilla, Pre-Sabbat. And the power-structures are radically more lethal. And it *should* feel that way. There's a reason the Anarch revolt started - the elders were too dug-in. So the rulers of a given region were probably a lot more powerful than their modern era counterparts. And who knows who was pulling their strings? Did I mention the *fucking Antediluvians* are walking around? (Some of them anyhow). Vampire enclaves were as likely to have mixed clan courts that you'd *never* see in the modern nights. Pedigree among those with power is a far bigger deal. It's the difference between being recognized by the powers-that-be, or being ostracized and having to fend for themselves.

2) Consider several pivotal Kindred events and how they're chained together. Each of them can be gigantic impacts on your campaign if you choose so:

a) The creation of the Tremere. Remember, these guys killed not just the Salubri, but they were experimenting on Tzimisce and Gangrel in order to create the Gargoyle bloodline. Three clans wanted these bastards dead. Likewise the Tremere recognize their position and as a policy tried unsuccessfully to ingratiate themselves to the Vampiric culture. They had no choice - their former Mages brethren were onto them. So you have a LOT of Mage-crossover potential here. The Tremere don't become legit until AFTER the Anarch revolt because they help being down the Assamites.

b) Anarch revolt. There is a leadup to this event that needs to be understood in context. It was very common as a punishment (or as a matter of course) to bloodbind childer to their elders, as part of the law as handed down by Caine himself. Childer were under the iron boots of their elders for millennia up until this point.  Consider this for a moment. You have an entire population of vampires in varying degrees of mind-control, or at the minimum deep emotional coercion, unable to even understand their condition objectively. The first vampires to say "fuck this" and decide to fight for their indepedence kicks off the Anarch revolt a with the events of Tyler Bolingbroke and her assassination of the Ventrue elder, Hardestadt the Elder.

This also brought the idea of Diablerie full on into the picture. Something not commonly well known or understood by the rank and file of Kindred society. By the time the Anarch revolt makes it to Eastern Europe - a couple of young Tzimisce discover the vaulderie and break their bloodbonds. This is a monumental event. These young Tzimisce spread this practice... leading to the rise of the Sabbat.

c)Consider your PC's place in these pivotal times. For me - my players came to know Tyler, and even the Tzimisce responsible for the first Vaulderie, among others central to the Anarch/Sabbat/Camarilla establishment - They got to choose their sides (they chose the Sabbat). It's dramatic shit that you shouldn't sell yourself short on. Keep in mind - three Antediluvians died during this period (possibly others), how involved might the PC's be in these events?

d) The Inquisition and Black Plague - consider that 75% of the Kindred population died during these times. Between the Anarch Revolution, Sabbat uprising, and the Inquisition - the ultimate assault on the Kindred food supply withered the Vampire population down to a mere quarter. PUH-LENTY of scary shit to bring up here.

e) The Giovanni Chronicle... The books are excellent. I won't give it away, but it's worth reading for inspiration and possible use.

Dark Ages derives its power from the conceit that you're playing with a shadow-history. The politics of the PC's are tied up directly with the secret and most pivotal history of the Kindred and the PC's get the privilege to be a part of it. It's not the same as the modern era where you're on a highway to some murky destination with the possible End Times.

I think Dark Ages is harder to run than modern Vampire. Let me rephrase that - I think it's harder to pull off. Most Dark Ages games I've played in turned into D&D with Fangs. Just like most noob Vampire GM's inadvertantly turn Vampire into superheroes with fangs. That's up to you, of course.

For me - Vampire Dark Ages is like the movie Byzantium, Name of the Rose,  a dash of Rome, and 13th Warrior. It's hard. Really hard. I let my PC start at 8th Gen, and they can buy up to 6th gen. (Yeah think about that. Even as a new 6th - you're strong, but not *powerful*.) Did I mention the Prince of London is Mithras - a 4th Gen Ventrue? Yeah. That kinda shit is going on. And most of these guys DIE (or go into torpor). A lot of GM's can't handle that kinda power-level.

So if you're doing DA - I suggest once you pick your timeperiod, really read up on that location and time, and flesh it out. Then do all the shit I recommended about fleshing out the powerstructure of your city.

Two excellent posts by tenbones. Great advice in one and a good comparison between masquerade and dark ages.

Did you play requiem as well or requiem for Rome? How do you think that differs from masquerade/dark ages?

Most of the games of WoD happen to become stroke fests and cliche clubs.  It never gets into hard politics.  Then again I just avoid the shit and just focus on my campy side ideas.