Vampire the Masquerade Chronicle Starts

Here are two short texts i wrote about Vampire the Masquerade in the last couple of month. The first is mostly me writing down that i want to run Vampire to get it out of my head nut it contains a list of Chronicle ideas you might find inspiring. The second is a reflection on how I would start and design a Vampire chronicle today.

Longing for VtM:

Every so often I live through a phase of longing for games I have played a long while ago, currently it is Vampire the Masquerade. I have GMed this game for maybe 10 years on and off and played maybe 4 years in different campaigns at the table and at LARPs. This desire to rekindle my relationship with VtM would be a great feeling to sink into but currently I run, depending on how you count three to five different games and I simply do not have the time or the mental capacity for more. Would I like to run a Vampire chronicle with some of my players? Sure. Especially since I have gained a lot of new players that have hardly any experience with Vampire and I think I am better at avoiding the pitfalls of the game then when I was younger. 

What kind of ideas would I like to turn into a chronicle?

1. I have always set my stories in one city with only so little travel it basically didn’t exist. So now I want a globe trotter Vampire chronicle. A new city and a new decade every two to three sessions, spanning centuries.
2. A backwater town that turns into Buffy’s Hellmouth with the weirdest Clans and Bloodlines. With conflicts about the nature of the world. 
3. A grand conspiracy chronicle where the players are the conspirators, whether they belong to the Tal’Ma’rah or the Sons of Irad.
4. A chronicle with all players on paths of enlightenment that try to teach each other “the way” rather than kill each other as unbelievers (what is annoyingly common when people are on different paths of enlightenment)    
5. A small town with Family conflicts rather than Clan based, maybe everyone is of the same clan, with the odd Caitiff or thin blood. 
6. A Chronicle built around the NPCs from the little story snippets throughout the Vampire the Masquerade Revised Edition Rulebook. It always gripped me how the skills, attributes and backgrounds are shown in flash fiction.
7. I want morally gray characters that show different ways to see the world and still believe that you work towards a greater good.
8. I want a chronicle centered around music, every story and every scene inspired by a song, just like the chapters in early to midrange VtM books.

Starting & Designing a Vampire Chronicle

Recently i thought about starting a new VtM Chronicle or at least how i would do it. This text is the result and is here to remind me how to do it, if i find myself in the position to do it.

The most important part of the chronicle creation process is this: remember that each decision should make the chronicle more fun or at least not take fun away. That includes your fun just as well as that of every player at the table. And now the real article:

In the beginning I would start having a couple of elevator pitches for chronicles, little one to three sentence descriptions of what to expect. 

Maybe something like:

1. Family drama set in a remote location where (almost) all Vampires are part of the same bloodline. The Head of the Bloodline becomes unavailable (i.e. Torpor, destruction, vanishes etc.) and leaves his family to fill the vacancy. The chronicle covers the next 100 years in roughly 10 year increments
2. Gang war between different clans with a council of elders trying to keep the peace and an outside faction that tries to fan the flames. The chronicle focuses on the night to night action of the gang war.
3. A globe trotting hunt for information about the origin of Vampire kind against the clock of ever coming closer Gehenna. Gehenna draws nearer and might only be a year or five away, without successes every few months the planet is surely doomed.

Then I would schedule a meeting with my prospective players in which I will present my Chronicle ideas and let them elaborate on them or create their own collaborative ideas. Important here is that each player needs to define what they want from a chronicle. If one player wants the equivalent of an action flick about Vampires vs. Werewolves and the others want primarily political intrigue and familial betrayal it might not be possible to reconcile these desires in one chronicle. And while the players might find a compromise, it is important to note that a compromise is the solution that no one wanted. Compromises are fine if people want to be content with the result but a game should be exciting. If the players are not excited to play a given Chronicle in Session 0 it most likely will not excite them later on. 

After the general Chronicle idea has been agreed upon I would get to discussing the reason why the player characters are spending time together. 

In Scenario one, they might be of the same generation in the bloodline (i.e. the youngest) or they might be the adoptive ones (from different clans) and since the head vampire is gone they are being pushed out of the family or at least towards the edge.

In Scenario two they might be the agents of the elder council trying to stabilise the situation or they might be agents provocateurs on behalf of the external force. They could also be one of the vampiric gangs (either the leaders or the grunts)

In Scenario 3 they might be a coterie of archeologists and their ghouls or they might be a group with interest in keeping the archeologists in the dark, like a Gehenna Cult. 

Once this has been decided the group should discuss how well the members of their group know one another. If they know each other pretty well and implicitly trust each other you can proceed to create the characters in an open group discussion (and maybe add some secrets later one-on-one). If they want to keep a large amount of their characters secret you should at least discuss the part of their ideas that the others would know and which niche they want to have. A coterie with three surgeons might offer cool potential for roleplaying but not if it comes as a surprise to everyone. 

A thought should also be given to the level of horror and depravity that gets depicted in the Campaign, is it like a Tarantino movie and gore is everywhere but the mood is more comedic? Is it a Saw movie that pulls your guts out? How about Game of Thrones and all the sexual violence and horror that entails?

Encourage your players to state their no-gos openly, if they want, or privately if they don’t feel like sharing too much. Write a summary, read it before each session! 

If there is still Character creation left to do schedule meetings with the respective players.

Read each character and any backstory that is attached. Develop questions on how to integrate the different backstories with the chronicle and discuss these with the players. Only then start developing the NPCs and locations of your Chronicle. In the past I always used around 20 to 30 regular NPCs, of which normally about 10 became important enough to appear regularly. I would opt to create a few more characters than you would want to have, because sometimes the NPCs that seem to be the best in your head fall flat when brought to the table and fillers become player favorites. 

Then it comes time to play out the Prelude of each character, design three scenes that encapsulate who the character truly is with all its flaws. Use the backstory if given and don’t be afraid to steal from it, the player wrote it for a reason. Try to end on a scene that leads into the first scene where the players meet or incorporate individual meeting scenes between the characters. 

An important distinction to make is that prelude scenes are different then scenes in play. In play a scene can end in a multitude of ways and throw the chronicle in any direction. A prelude scene has one job and that is to get the characters to their agreed upon starting positions and give the players and you a first taste of who their character is. Don’t be afraid to redcon anything that is not working for that goal. If two characters hit it off in a way that will make them immortal enemies when they were supposed to be best friends, discuss with the players how to achieve that goal and disregard the original scene.

At last it is time to design the first actual session. Try to design a problem that takes input from each of the characters to solve, make it quick and make it exciting (though not too dangerous, no one wants to burn to ash after this much work in the first session). Let them meet the most important NPCs in one way or another, or let them hear about them. The problem should follow or at least hint at the main plot of the chronicle. End on a cliff hanger if possible.

End every Session with the next three sessions scheduled in advance. It is likely that one or two might be cancelled, if three get cancelled I would not hold much hope for the chronicle continuing. Also decide with the group what should happen if a player can not make it. Do you only play all together or is it enough if 50% of players are available? Do the players or the GM take over characters of missing players? Do they exit the stage to the left? 

So in summery:

• Present elevator pitches or let the players generate some
• Design the characters around the chronicle idea
• Build the setting around the player characters
• Do prelude and meeting scenes with the characters before the chronicle officially starts
• Make a concise introduction session in which each character fills a specific role and which ends on a cliff hanger.
• Discuss with your players how you will handle common problem situations beforehand.