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Typo fixing, typos fixed: undergroud → underground, accross → across, intrested → interested (3), situtations → situations, suprise → surprise, aparments → apartments, so called → so-called, to to → to
We wanted to avoid a large social gathering with obvious plots happening during a fixed period of time; in other words, we wanted to simulate few days and nights of life of the characters; not the least exiting days, more like starting slow and then acclerating the pace.
We decided that we’d want to have around 60 players and that the game would be invitation only; we picked an initial list of players whom we know would have the same idea of Live-Roleplaying that we had. We also had to take into account matters like playing space (players that could provide their aparments apartments for playing) and travelling (players with cars). We drafted initial budget, calculated the participation fee and discounts for players providing apartment or a car.
We didn’t really spent a lot of time pondering on how we wanted to do things; two other writers had one similar game under their belt and we reviewed what worked in it and what did not, what to do in same way and what to improve.
Then we brainstormed the major character groups, factions and initial plot hooks that would tie these groups together; the possibility of conflicts.
And then went to to brainstorm character concepts within the groups, relationships within the groups and relationships spanning from individual character in one group to characters in other groups. We did this iteratively; sat down four or five times, tossed character concepts, possible plot hooks and relationships, took notes and at the same time pondered about what could be realisticly achieved. We had a rough estimate of playing spaces at this point, which we also included to the brainstorming; this large communal apartment could be used for this, this small city apartment for that. We also started looking at the player list and casted players to character roles.
At the end of concept design phase we had:
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 intrestedinterested. 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).
* 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 surprise 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.
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 interests 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.
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 underground 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 interest 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 across 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 -situtationssituations. For some other groups and invidual characters, it failed badly.
==What worked, what did not work and what should be improved==
