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Logistics, GMing
==Actual play, logistics, big picture==
We had around six designated playing areas around the city, mostly in downtown, but several places in suburbs as well. Most of the groups had a car or two in use (I just checked from a technocracy player that he drove around 170 kilometers during the game – the technocracy base was in the suburbs, and most of their missions happened in downtown).
Players used cell phones for communication; they knew the phone numbers of the characters they had relationships with, or if they had other reasons to know them. They could get more numbers from the GM’s if they had reasons and means to do that. The GM’s communicated with cell phones as well; the lead GM had a secondary phone line, so he could use one line for in-game calls, and second line for GM tasks.
Also, irc was used for communication – we had several characters who mostly participated through phones and irc; a vampire who didn’t want to socialize, a tradition mage in wheelchair, technical police officer (who spent some time online, I think), and perhaps several other players. The lead GM played several NPC’s online, the so called haXor-types in Isle of Saints. The idea looked good on the paper, and sucked in actual play, mostly because we could not focus on the online players and they were more than a bit left out, with little to do. More on this in the problems-section.
So what did the players/characters do during the game? It was mostly social roleplaying, playing a full day of life of your character, until events at some point started to accelerate and turn south, when the plot-hooks kicked in, your or your groups intrests collided with other groups, and stuff happened. This did not end the social roleplaying, though – just added some action and direction to it.
So, in essence, the whole event could be thought as several mini-games starting on their own and then colliding and expanding into a larger whole.
Examples of group-level plot-hooks kicking into effect:
The Camarilla Vampires started with the mentioned detective investigation, and kidnapped the man. This lead to police getting worried about and investigating their colleague who didn’t show up to work shift, the Sabbat controller getting this information and relaying to Sabbat pack approaching town, and possibly the tecnocracy getting hang of things via their surveillance.
The young artist was introduced to Prince, which mixed up things in the engagement party, especially when vampires later showed up in the party.
The Vampire with undergroud ties contacted the criminal group and assigned them to steal a statue, which they failed to do, but in the process accidentally killed a retired technocracy agent (accident and accident – one of the criminals was not named Pepe “Anus” Chicanez for nothing), which then triggered technocracy intrest to a whole different level. All these different things eventually led the technocracy to tail the vampires and especially the Prince. It also lead several groups to pursuit the misplaced statue and a certain codemonkey who possessed it, and was investigating international conspiracies in engagement party.
The Sabbat pack approaching town got into contact with the rebel vampire and persuaded her to switch sides. The rest of the camarilla were already a bit suspicious of her and put one of the vampires to keep company to her, which led to an excellent scene; the two vampires visiting engagement party (both had some ties to the humans there), the another vampire leaving the rebel alone just for a mere minute – which she used to sprint accross the street and into a waiting car, which then speeded away. Two minutes after this, the rest of the camarilla arrived to the scene with multiple cars, having gotten a hang of the switching attempt – and missing it by just a bit. Talking about narrow escape.
The technocracy tailing vampires eventually did find them, at Elysium, triggering the mentioned escape scene and further driving the vampires to regroup at the safe house, and planning for the future – still now knowing exactly who was after them.
So, in essence, the chaotic model of relationships and plot-hooks did generate a lot of contect and the structure worked – for most of the groups, with the bonus effect of lot of close call -situtations. For some other groups and invidual characters, it failed badly.
==What worked, what did not work and what should be improved==
