8
edits
Changes
Plotlines
==Main plotlines, groups and group level plotlines==
The character groups were:
Camarilla vampires, seven or eight characters and several mortal servants
Sabbat/Anarchist vampires, three characters and several mortal assosicates
Technocracy mages, six or seven characters
Tradition mages, six or seven characters
Polices, six characters, one nonplayer character
Criminal gang, six characters
The Artist Gang, five or six mortal characters
The rest characters were mortals in different small groups or connected to other groups
The characters were divided to three writers roughly according to groups; I wrote, for example, five camarilla vampires, three sabbat vampires, five police detectives, one tradition mage and five other mortal characters (son of a detective, husband of a mage, boyfriend of a sabbat vampire and three office workers).
Main plotlines or -hooks were written in the concept creation and further detailed in the character writing. These were things we GM’s more or less set in motion in order to bump different characters and groups together and create situations. Some of these were pre-set events around which the LARP was built, happening in playing spaces. Some examples around the camarilla vampire group:
Main event for the most mortal characters and a good amount of other characters, from almost every character group, was an engagement party of a young couple; a young, talented artist and his girlfriend. The Vampire prince of the city had set his eyes on the young artist and his trusted servant had been sponsoring the artist for some time, and was now ordered to bring the boy to see his unnamed patron during the engagement party.
The camarilla vampires had received a tip of a police detective who had been spying uncomfortably close to them and been in contact with someone who obviously had knowledge of their power structure; their game started with a meeting in which they were to decide what to do with this. The detective himself was a non player character who was bound to go missing in one way or another. This would put the other detectives on the edge.
A camarilla vampire dealing with criminal underground had set his eyes on a certain statue and wanted the criminal gang to break in to the apartment where the statue was supposed to be. The owner was a retired techoncracy agent, and breaking into his apartment was bound to get that group intrested. However, the statue had accidentally been delivered to his neighbour, an outwardly normal office worker, with delusions of grandeur and international espionage business.
One camarilla vampire had found out that her childhood friend hanged out with the sabbat vampires and wanted to meet her. The sabbat vampire(s) wanted her to defect and were arriving to town both to see her and check the status of their informant (who was blackmailing the police detective).
The detectives had open cases: they had seek and detain orders for one camarilla vampire (not knowing that he was a vampire), shadowing orders for several criminals and domestic disturbance case for one of the tradition mages.
And so on. The plot hooks did not have a scripted endings; just the setup, initial directions and character goals or needs. Some of them appeared to be character level plot hooks, but with the amount of hooks they were bound to collide at some point. We wanted to set so many wheels into motion and have so many relationships that the events would drive themselves onward and in turn, create more events.
The tool for controlling the events was an simple one; we used pre-determined starting times for characters and pre-determined times for meetings. Some examples:
The Prince
Friday 19.30 – an emergency meeting called by the Sheriff (game starts)
Saturday 18.30 – Servant Blackwell brings young William Morgan to meet me at Elysium
Saturday 19.30 – Prince’s reception at the Elysium
Mike Freyd, detective
Saturday 14.30 – lunch with son Jens at the Burger Joint (game starts)
Saturday 16.00 – Work shift starts
Saturday 16.30 – Meeting of the evening shift
Sunday 03.00 – Work shift ends
Jens Freyd, detective’s son (hanging with the criminal gang who’re bound to call him at some point)
Saturday 14.30 – lunch with dad at the Burger Joint (game starts)
Saturday 18.00 – a pre-emptive beer with the work mates (the office workers) at Bar Old Hat
Saturday 19.30 – William’s and Anna’s house party (will turn into a suprise engagement party, but Jens doesen’t know that)
We used the different stating times and meeting times as a pacing tool, which both allowed us to keep track on the start of the events and gave us times when certain character groups were in certain places. Apart from that, the game was mostly out of our control.
==Characters and character level plotlines==