Quote from: David R;494330How about the first two. What you wrote was good but I'd like to see how it all come about.

I came to Vampire on my own, after reading some previews and rumors about it in the magazine Casus Belli in France. My very first game was set in Canada, where I imagined Winnipeg to be a village lost in the woods (no kidding, still have the maps to prove it somewhere), and it wasn't really that great.

Then I ran my first "real games" set in LA by Night back when there was no such book published, which went on for a while, and this was basically the phase where I started reading a lot about the Anarchs, the Sabbat, I think the Player's Guide had just come out, or came out around that time. Then I basically realized that the game would be better if I had a personal connection to the city itself, and I transitioned the characters to Paris shortly after that.

Building Paris itself started with fishing for information in the supplements, which at the time was rather scarce, including details about François Villon, how this was the fief of the Toreador, etc. I looked into Chicago by Night and decided on a couple of Methuselahs I'd like to use myself to manipulate stuff in the background. I think I came up with Andromeda and Agamemnon first, being tied to the story of Helena and Menele in Chicago, then came up with Salemnus and the conspiracy surrounding him I called the Mercurialis Circus, long before there was such a thing mentioned in the Book of Nod (actually the way it turned up in the Book of Nod blew my mind away, because that was pretty close to what I had come up with myself as a young teen - I felt very proud of that at the time).

I drew some trees of genealogy of the different clans, and came up with many NPC names that way. Then I would make up stories for them, and organize them into various coteries with different goals and secrets, each members having relationships with other NPCs in town and so on. The history of Paris itself evolved from the interaction of (1) the macro ideas, Agamemnon/Andromeda, Salemnus, plus others soon, like Sulhe the Salubri child who created the dream-like "refuge" in the depths of the Catacombs, or Quintus Arius the Roman who followed Mithras in his campaigns, with (2) the NPCs coming out of the genealogy and the various coteries spawning from there, and (3) the actual history of Paris which informed all the steps of that process, from NPCs to locations to how such an event was in fact manipulated by this or that faction and so on so forth, as well as (4) personal stuff and references : private jokes, conversions of situations I've known, homages, and stuff like that.

All this formed a web of intrigue going from the every day interactions of various groups and individuals in Paris, to the most ancient mysteries that had been unsolved for ages. The structure of power helped tremendously as well, of course : I had the Prince, alright. François Villon, 5th generation Toreador, his Sire overseas for now centuries... I saw him as a very shrewd, very competent, very savvy Methuselah who managed, unlike so many others, to conduct most of his schemes and machinations from his standing right there in plain fucking sight, instead of hiding in torpor. That guy had huge undead balls of steel, and that's how I was going to play him. Then came a whole lot of questions : who are the Primogen ? What are their relationships with the Prince and between each other ? Who enforces the law of the Prince ? Who are the harpies, the movers and shackers, etc. Sometimes I would pick a name I had not fleshed out in my genealogies, and sometimes I would just make up a new character that specifically fit that role, retrofitting him or her into the background, or I would pick a known NPC of the books and come up with his recent story to justify him being around (as was the case for Antoine le Fanu, Madame Guil, Democritius and a whole lot of others over the years).

Thinking about all this is like fitting the pieces of a huge puzzle until it looks believable and alive in your head. Then you run the thing. You let the players come to town and just get interested in stuff depending on their own personalities, their characters', their background stories, and so on. And from there it just comes alive, like Frankenstein electrifying his monster. It takes a life of its own, and if you do your job right, in the end, after a while, you don't even have to come up with anything every game session. It's just a matter of making NPCs react to stuff the PCs do.

Wow ok. I wrote more than I wanted. Let's see the other questions now. We'll stick with the basic concepts for now.

Quote from: David R;494330Also, were there any limitations on what kind of characters your players could create ?

At the beginning yes for PbN, they were pretty much vampires by the book, but then I loosened that very much as we acquired different games and supplements. We started using the Elysium rules to play older vampires as well, and the power level of Paris being what it is, it seemed only fair that players would not begin with a 3-dot 13th generation something.

For the Paris Alchymique, characters created are pretty much by the book. I openly favor the choice of vampires for a first visit to the city, that makes it easier for players to interact with each other and see a lot of stuff if they want to, but I'm not adverse to other supernatural creatures or mortals being played either. I've had a mage for instance, and there's a long running character who's a Promethean in the game (Paris itself is a bit particular regarding Prometheans.. I can't get into details without going into spoilers so I prefer not to go there).

Quote from: David R;494330What aspects of the official setting info did you abandon ? Stuff like that.

I picked and chose from the supplements and came up with my own stuff for PbN. As we played and played, people started running their own by Nights, and all these cities would basically exist in the same world, so that an NPC chosen by a friend would not be used by me unless I had permission and I would not screw with his background and so on. Some official NPCs got used pretty consistently throughout the cities though, like Madame Guil, who was a dream of a bitch to throw at the players when you wanted them to really hate a Justicar.

I started with Paris. Then we had ... London, Amsterdam/Benelux, Venice, Rome, Pragues, Cardiff, Florence... and I'm forgetting tons of others I'm sure. Each with a different GM.

Basically we started with a situation in the city and would feed whatever we liked from the supplements as they were published into our campaigns. But sometimes we were just like "no, that is really fucking stupid, we won't have that." The Kuei Jin for instance. Some GMs didn't play at all with the True Black Hand. Those kinds of things.

So you had someone saying earlier they couldn't go on forever with the metaplot. I agree, not only because they'd be way too much stuff and so on, but also because each tables would have run with their own backgrounds at that point, and whatever WW would publish would sooner or later create a "WTF?" reaction on the part of the guy who was running his own game at home for years. And then suddenly this guy would stop being a customer, because all that stuff WW was printing became increasingly irrelevant for his game. Nice way to shoot yourself in the foot, guys!

For the Paris Alchymique, I discarded some aspects of some games. The one I most heavily modified was Mage. I basically came up with my own Order of Hermes based on Ars Magica, and I incorporated some aspects of Nephilim into it to create basically the background I wanted. It's more complicated than that, because you basically can play a Mage dude by the book if you want to, but you get the gist of the modifications that way I suppose.

Quote from: David R;494330And off course how it played out during the course of the campaign And I am really interested here.

Hm. Maybe I'll come back to this later, if you don't mind. Like if you want to ask me about something specific from what I just explained there, that'll provide me with something to run with. It's not that I don't want to answer or can't, but I don't want to go all over the place writing a massive post about this if I don't really answer your question in the first place!! LOL

How is it so far?

Here, have a look on the French Paris Alchymique/PbN v2 there.

La Ballade des Pendus is the game itself.
Le Livre des Damnés is a record of all the known information about all the PCs and NPCs met in the game (pinned threads are the PCs, all the others are NPCs).
Le Paris Alchymique is a record of all the places, coteries, factions and the like.
And la Fosse is the OOC stuff.

It's in French and all, but hopefully by checking out the NPCs and whatnot, you'll see some stuff that'll spark some interest.

Quote from: David R;494330Like I said, I was never never really interested in running a Vampire game, until you and The Butcher started going on about it. Then it's like, how did I miss this stuff ?

There are so many games out there. And let's face it, the disinformation about the games is pretty thick in some corners of the web plus I get the feeling that WW itself hasn't been helpful either in that regard, hugely advertising some aspects of its settings while completely ignoring others while they're there, right there in the books to play with.

Let's also not forget that this very site accuses WW of intentionally trying to destroy all roleplaying forever on a pretty regular basis.

Anyway, great thread, I like the description of your process.

I can answer some questions about Hunter: The Reckoning.

A lot of the shit this game has taken over the years (and it has taken a lot of shit) is because people didn't have a clear idea of what the game was about. They went in expecting it would just be a reboot of earlier supernatural-hunter material like the Year of the Hunter stuff. It wasn't.  What it was was an approach to supernatural-hunting stuff that had more in common with Buffy, Supernatural and other monster-hunting shows in that the characters develop supernatural abilities of their own and are caught up in conspiracies and double-crosses.  They are in the dark about a lot of stuff and their lives are often completely ruined.  If they get too involved in their crusades they may go mad with power and become problems themselves that the other heroes may have to take out.

The characters are people who undergo brushes with the supernatural and find within them strange stores of power that they unleash in various ways connected to their motivation to fight against supernatural threats. They also begin to see strange mystical sigils and signs that may be giving them supernatural information or may be leading them astray.  They join up with each other because their goals intersect and their abilities complement each other.  Of course as they become more effective, the supernatural forces of the World of Darkness begin to take notice of them.

It was a very cool game. I've run it several times.

Quote from: JDCorley;494349Nobody gives a shit about the internal decisionmaking of a small business 7 years after the fact.

Quote from: JDCorley;494349Anyway, great thread....

Imagine that.

I know! It's all because of my decisive, complete answer to the original question.  It allowed the thread to move on to other topics. You're very welcome.

Quote from: Benoist;494345How is it so far?

Brilliant ! You've given me a lot to chew on. Questions forthcoming when I've had a little more time to sniff around bit.

QuoteThere are so many games out there. And let's face it, the disinformation about the games is pretty thick in some corners of the web plus I get the feeling that WW itself hasn't been helpful either in that regard, hugely advertising some aspects of its settings while completely ignoring others while they're there, right there in the books to play with.

All this is accurate IMO but in my case it was more like, the whole vampire genre didn't interest me. I've seen some cool flicks concerning Vamps, Nosferatu, Near Dark ....Let the Right One In....shit, I might be missing a few but Vampires themselves never did anything for me. I did get the original game and thought it was great and WW games fired up my flagging interest in RPGs but I never really ever considered running a Vampire game.

Regards,
David R

Come on guys. Please don't go on with the sniping.

Btw , what did you think of Kindred of the East and all those supplements?

Regards,
David R

Quote from: David R;494373Btw , what did you think of Kindred of the East and all those supplements?

Regards,
David R

Never cared for it. On one hand it was completely clashing with Vampire from a thematic point of view, and on the other hand the Kuei Jin themselves were not operating on the same scale of powers than the Kindred at all. I liked the Bushi and Gaki. I'm still using them, as a matter of fact. And replace that by some stuff that was like anime-style proto-Exalted bullshit, instead of going back to that feodal Japan dark place vibe that was so awesome? You lost me WW guys. You fucking bastards.

At least Mage exploded the mold in style. This was weak in comparison. Oh so very weak.

So I never implemented KotE in my games.

One GM amongst us wanted to run a game, but that didn't go anywhere. I had created a character for it, but never played in the end.

Wow, interesting reading all this... so unlike my assumptions about Vampire.
I'd bought the original Masquerade books in the Wayback but never really got sucked in... borrowed bits here and there for other games... then was surrounded by a coffeehouse full of Larping goth-thespians from the college who put me off anything vampire for a good long while.
Reading this has me wanting to delve into the big stack of OWOD/NWOD books I inherited a few years back.

Quote from: JDCorley;494368I know! It's all because of my decisive, complete answer to the original question.  It allowed the thread to move on to other topics. You're very welcome.

Egad! A true pithecanthropus!

Let me get a picture of you so I can prove that you really exist.

Quote from: Benoist;494345Building Paris itself started with fishing for information in the supplements, which at the time was rather scarce, including details about François Villon, how this was the fief of the Toreador, etc. I looked into Chicago by Night and decided on a couple of Methuselahs I'd like to use myself to manipulate stuff in the background. I think I came up with Andromeda and Agamemnon first, being tied to the story of Helena and Menele in Chicago, then came up with Salemnus and the conspiracy surrounding him I called the Mercurialis Circus, long before there was such a thing mentioned in the Book of Nod (actually the way it turned up in the Book of Nod blew my mind away, because that was pretty close to what I had come up with myself as a young teen - I felt very proud of that at the time).

Ok, I'm not very familiar with the sourcebook or names but (if I'm reading this right) you created a connection between Chicago Vamps and the Undead in Paris, right ? Did you do any research on the history of Paris itself ( in terms of who built what, scandals, etc) and weave that into your campaign ? Did any real world Parisian figures play a part in your campaign ? Or was it mainly the mythos of the WoD?

The reason I ask and my question about the Kindred of the East sourcebooks, is that I've always wanted to run something based on Sterling Seagrave's Lords of the Rim. I think Vampire would be a good fit but I want to how combining real world figures and the supernatural (esp in the WoD, context) actually plays out in a campaign as opposed to just reading about people who say they do this in their games.

QuoteThinking about all this is like fitting the pieces of a huge puzzle until it looks believable and alive in your head. Then you run the thing. You let the players come to town and just get interested in stuff depending on their own personalities, their characters', their background stories, and so on. And from there it just comes alive, like Frankenstein electrifying his monster. It takes a life of its own, and if you do your job right, in the end, after a while, you don't even have to come up with anything every game session. It's just a matter of making NPCs react to stuff the PCs do.

Ok, here's where you are going to have to elaborate a bit. How exactly did they get interested in stuff. Did they know the history of some of the stuff that was going on ? Were hooks introduced during chargen ? Because it all sounds very complex and I'm trying to get a feel of how your players got involved in the web, so to speak.

Right, just this for now. More when I've had a chance to take a closer look. I have to say, this is what I really dig, seeing a game through another perspective.

Regards,
David R

It's true, I am a photogenic old man of whom a picture would be extremely valuable to all thinking persons, thank you for the compliment, I accept it in the same spirit in which it was offered.

Anyway, Kindred of the East had two big problems:

1 - It didn't fit in with the rest of the Vampire mythos, so really didn't have any place in the world of Vampire: the Masquerade. God didn't act like that, which led to the creepy conclusion that God's a racist?  This problem could be solved by making KotE a standalone game, which it worked better as anyway.

2 - It still had some racist/orientalist shit in it, but thankfully ignorable. In fact you can use it as a starting point to dig into a lot of interesting folkloric stuff to flesh out the world in a properly horrific manner.

Those were the two main issues I had with it. I never really had an opportunity to run more than a one-shot with it, though thinking about it for this post made me think of it fondly.

Quote from: David R;494422Ok, I'm not very familiar with the sourcebook or names but (if I'm reading this right) you created a connection between Chicago Vamps and the Undead in Paris, right ? Did you do any research on the history of Paris itself ( in terms of who built what, scandals, etc) and weave that into your campaign ? Did any real world Parisian figures play a part in your campaign ? Or was it mainly the mythos of the WoD?

I basically came up with really old Methuselah (4th generation) vampires that I could use in the background as the masterminds of the local "Jyhad", the chess game played with other vampires and factions in Paris. I took a look at Chicago, where you have Helena (of Troy) and Menele fighting a war against each other since the days of the Antiquity. I came up with my own couple, Andromeda (Toreador) and Agamemnon (can't remember the clan, I think he was Ventrue, though, not sure anymore), and that got me started on the large scale historic conspiracy angle.

Now, yes, there are actually tons of historical figures amongst the vampires of Paris. There were from the very start. For one thing, I was basically raised with a respect of history and a huge set of Encyclopedia Universalis in my hands. I can't help it. It's in my blood.

Second, let's face it, the portrayal of France in the eyes of WW people sucks ass. France for them is about Toreador harpies, fashion shows, and 15th century poet (Villon) ruling it all (I could make a case that WW's treatment of history sucked and still sucks -less though, since it went from laughable in the Masquerade days to missed opportunities in the Requiem days, though I will say this: Requiem for Rome is AWESOME- to this day but I'm going to move on). "Err... excuse me? For hipster thespian dudes you could have done better than that. It's not the baguette and beret thing, but that's not much better than that either." So that meant for me that I would use the "official" description as a front. Paris basically "looks" like this from an outsider's standpoint, but as soon as you're in, you realize that the society of the Damned there is a LOT more complicated than Villon, his harpies, and fashion shows.

Third, Vampire, the game, BEGS you to do this. I mean come on. It's a huge part of the fun in designing your own city by Night! Immortal beings going on through the ages fighting their wars in secret. How the fuck could you NOT use historical figures and go into weird what-if scenarios like "What if Charles Baudelaire hated the guts of Maximilien Robespierre? What would happen then?" And it's awesome for the players to meet these characters too, particularly when they have evolved over time and challenge their expectations, while at the same time making sense if they dig around a bit to find out about their past.

So yes, I used TONS of historical figures. From the very start (I got some of my papers from 1992 right next to me right now) I can see... Descartes (a mage who was embraced later on), Rodin, Camille Claudel, Goethe, Leonardo da Vinci, Napoléon II, Maximilien Robespierre, Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès (a genius forgotten by popular history, this man), Michel Ney, Charles Baudelaire, the Baron Haussmann, Gustave Eiffel (a mage), the Grand Condé, Quintus Arius being inspired from a real life Roman... and on.

PCs were encouraged to play historical characters too, if that's what they wanted. Stanislas de Guaita and Anton Kartachev in the Paris Alchymique are historical characters, for instance. Miyamoto Musashi as well.

In the Livre des Damnés I linked above, you can find some characters inspired by their historical equivalents. Baudouin de la Butte d'Omont and the whole gang of the Chevaliers de Saint Ladres are all historical characters, though I can't actually tell you who without going into huge spoilers, Tommy Dilward, Joseph Antoine Boullan (an insane SOB this one, in real life I mean: Catholic priest satanist and all the shebang), Antonio Mansini is a composite of several historical characters, the name itself coming from my mother misremembering the name when she was talking to me about Mazarin, Eustache Dauger is the man with the Iron Mask, Sekhmet is inspired from real life Egyptian figures, Césario Visconti is inspired from the real life Visconti family, the Marquis de Sade (actually an old player character from PbN v1), Maximilien Robespierre well... everyone knows THAT crazy son of a bitch... and on and on it goes.

Likewise the history of Paris itself, the who built what, what was the rule like in which and which period, and so on... all this stuff affected the history of the by Night, obviously, in such a way that, in play, you could basically look at the real life history as a CLUE of what might really have happened in the shadows.

Quote from: David R;494422The reason I ask and my question about the Kindred of the East sourcebooks, is that I've always wanted to run something based on Sterling Seagrave's Lords of the Rim. I think Vampire would be a good fit but I want to how combining real world figures and the supernatural (esp in the WoD, context) actually plays out in a campaign as opposed to just reading about people who say they do this in their games.

If you want to go for an Asian take on vampires, you basically have three choices as far as the rules are concerned: (1) you get yourself Dark Alliance: Vancouver for the Apocalypse and Masquerade which features the Bushi and Gaki (also in the World of Darkness first ed supplement), and you basically rework it to work with the Caine myth somehow (totally feasible with a little bit of research and imagination), coming up with your own bloodlines in the process, (2) you opt for Kindred of the East, which means you embrace the proto-Exalted anime-style uber-powered schtick that's going on there. Like JD said, that works best as its own game, you don't want to mix everything with that, and (3) you opt for Requiem instead, where you don't have an monolythic myth of origins and all that stuff, you basically can come up with your own answers from the start, you can hunt down all the Asian bloodlines in various supplements, invent your own as needed, and so on.

Personally, I'd go for (3).

Quote from: David R;494422Ok, here's where you are going to have to elaborate a bit. How exactly did they get interested in stuff. Did they know the history of some of the stuff that was going on ? Were hooks introduced during chargen ? Because it all sounds very complex and I'm trying to get a feel of how your players got involved in the web, so to speak.

A bit of all this. Usually when people would present themselves to the Prince or court there was something going on there. NPCs are just not waiting frozen in place to interact with a dude with a "I'm a PC" tag on his shirt. They do stuff. They have discussions, or they compete at court against each other, or they try to gain prestige by organizing events, or there's some crime committed, whatever the case may be. There is some stuff going on, and the players pick up on whatever's going on and go for what interests them the most.

There's also their backgrounds, where for instance a player might tell me "OK my Sire was a real bastard and he did this and this and this to me" and I would answer "OK. Your Sire is [name]. You haven't heard about him in a while, but you heard rumors he might be in Paris scheming something big, at least that's what a Toreador harpy told you in some evening in Amsterdam." Player: "The SOB. I'm going to catch up with him and twart his plans."

And all variations thereof.

It sounds complex, but it's very simple in practice. Players just need to know that well, they're playing characters, so they should have their own backstory, their own goals and needs and wants and personality, no matter how sketchy (a couple of paragraphs is more than enough to work with really, ask any gamer out there), and from there, on they go. I'll use what I can off their backgrounds, and stuff, and between that and what naturally goes on in the city, plus them witnessing the stuff other players are doing themselves, it just... rolls down the hill from there, so to speak. Doesn't take that much effort, seriously.

I think a lot of game companies don't really know what to do with history and WW is no exception. Even GURPS, which is widely (and rightly) regarded as the leader in historical RPGs very rarely has more than a few paragraphs about how to bring history alive and to the table, essentially assuming that GMs and players will do that themselves.  Which is fine, but I know I can always use the help.

I ran a Victorian era adventure game set in a supernaturalized Paris in the late 19th century, and even fictionalized and made larger-than-life and exaggerated, as pulp adventure should be, I really was not able to find much to use out there in RPGworld.  And this is a setting that's just so amazing for Victorian-era stuff because it avoids a lot of the costume-drama/overwhelmingly mannered shit that you get if you dump your campaign in London.  

I've always been a Francophile, though, so maybe I'm prejudiced.

Historical gaming is something I'm very interested in and have done many times. The key is immediacy.  The players need to feel that the events of the game are not happening at arms length, but instead are relevant to their characters and actions.

Maybe not super-relevant to this thread, but here's the Google Doc I wrote about the setting, and I did a timeline to try to set the events of the game in historical context - the best part about the timeline is the many links to public domain pictures and books, and links to musical performances of works popular at the time.  It's more of a pulp adventure setting than a horror one, though there were some horror elements, with a Dracula-like vampire stalking the city, and so on.  I expected them to read the first doc, but not the second, they could just page through that when bored/curious about something.

Quote from: JDCorley;494476I ran a Victorian era adventure game set in a supernaturalized Paris in the late 19th century, and even fictionalized and made larger-than-life and exaggerated, as pulp adventure should be, I really was not able to find much to use out there in RPGworld.  And this is a setting that's just so amazing for Victorian-era stuff because it avoids a lot of the costume-drama/overwhelmingly mannered shit that you get if you dump your campaign in London.

Actually, my first thoughts after hearing about the upcoming historical supplement for Changeling: The Lost were that Victorian London is getting a little overplayed by now, and that instead fin de siècle Paris could make for a more interesting change of scenery.