Chimerical Realm

So, I'm still working on the setting for my new Chronicle , and I wanted to do a quick digression on how I create NPCs, particularly for Vampire . The published sources tend to go into great detail with their tragic and horrible mortal lives, and what has made them the monsters they are today. Well, that's all well and good, but doesn't terribly help me with them in the game. So, when I create my own, I tend to focus on the now  of the character, what are they up to tonight, and how are they hoping to accomplish it. Then, I work out anything else I need from there, with particular attention to their feeding habits. Yeah, I've been accused of making my vamps be "blood addicts." Maybe, but I've also assumed that hunting and feeding are what vampires enjoy ; it's not a burden for them. Anyway, I've ranted about this before , so I won't go into it again. For my current setting, things are a bit different from how I normally setup my NPCs. Ther...

I've worked out the basic setting and ideas for my new Solo Vampire Chronicle. I talked more about it here , but in short it's going to be a geographically isolated locale, ruled by a manipulative and controlling religious fanatic. Now, I need to come up with who my main character is going to be for this world. I don't have a lot of ideas for the character yet. I know I want to play a Nosferatu. I know I want him to be a male, and of European/Christian descent. I also know I want him to "special" in some way, either a great warrior, or thief, or scholar or...something. He's cut from a different cloth, which is why he, unlike others of his generation, is given all the crappy assignments that make role playing such fun. I actually rather enjoy not knowing what I'm going to get, and a solid "random character generator" can be a delight, particularly when you don't have a really solid concept in mind. So, given that, I grab my copy of the M...

I haven't had a lot of time for Solo gaming lately. Given that what little free time I've had has been taken up with some standard gaming, this is a bit of a humble brag, but I still miss Solo gaming. Given that, and my current thoughts for how I'd like to run a Dark Ages Chronicle , I've decided to go ahead and generate a setting and get a game going. I've talked a bit before about how I generally like to get a Vampire Chronicle going, and I'm going to follow that outline in a general sense. I have a few vague ideas for a game. Part of the Long Night idea I had is to play up the isolation and ignorance of the world, and so I want the physical setting to be somewhere equally isolated. Really, any town could work for this, as I see medieval travel as being so dangerous for vampires as to be almost unheard of. But, I think I'll go with an actual island, just to emphasize this element. Secondly, I know I want to play a Nosferatu. Partly to play the "m...

In the middle of the 14th Century, the Long Night came to an end. The Black Death struck Europe, and utterly depopulated it. Best guess is that 45-50% of the population died between 1346-1351, but this is an average. Some communities were spared, while others were completely wiped out. The mortals had absolutely no understanding of what was happening, or why. The undead had even less. One night, everything was normal, and their eternal existence continued as before. The next, half their mortals were dead. They had pushed their own population to the breaking point, and could not respond to the catastrophe that was happening around them. Elders seized territory and surviving herd to support themselves and their favorites. Others were cast out to fend for themselves. Mortals began looking for scapegoats, and as the undead should have remembered from the Cultics, once mortals begin looking in the shadows, their time grows short. More childer were cast out to reduce the risk of exposu...

So, what does a world of darkness and stasis, ruled over for eternity by self-proclaimed Elders, actually mean in a game? Well, it means Ignorance, Monotony, and Obedience. Unlike a modern game, where the "truth" of Kindred existence is more or less understood, and a certain degree of toleration and independence is expected, the Long Night character is a prisoner. Not just of the Beast, and not just of geography (though travel is so perilous that few ever leave their home, and even fewer ever return), but of their own perspective and world view. It is this prison, and the tension it generates, that is the heart of a Long Night game. First up is Ignorance. A neonate in the Long Night knows nothing . They know only what their sires deign to tell them. And since they only know what their  sires told them, their knowledge is, at best, limited. Even if they choose to be honest with their childe, the knowledge they impart is most likely completely and laughably wrong. A childe ...

Before we can understand vampire society in the Long Night, we must look at how it came to be. Vampires are static, unchanging creatures, locked in place forever at the moment of their death. But even such things can be forced to change by the sweep of history, and the need for survival. In the earliest days of history, vampires ruled over the mortals as gods. Some proclaimed their divinity, and came to rule directly over the burgeoning cities that were coming into existence. Those of the most powerful blood could claim to be gods themselves, while the weaker were forced to admit they had limitations, and were merely the children of the gods or emanations.  At the time, few mortals cared for such distinctions, and gladly dedicated their lives to these mesmerizing creatures who could bend metal, catch arrows, command beast and man, and whose blood offered life itself. Inevitably, such creatures were unsatisfied with just one city or one tribe, and sought to expand their dominion...

There's something about the published historical setting for Vampire  that doesn't sit right with me. It's been bothering me for a while, but it really came home to me when I was working on my T ransylvania Chronicles series. The Dark Ages, as presented, just didn't work the way I wanted them too. Part of this is comparing what  I thought the Dark Ages were like to what Dark Ages  ultimately presented itself as. I've been a fan of Vampire  for a very long time, and when I read the few brief snippets of information presented to me, an image of the world formed itself. An isolated, benighted existence, defined by a claustrophobic entrapment in the few placed that the undead could feel safe, and lorded over by tyrannical elders whose sovereignty went unquestioned.  A world that would terrify even  the most tyrannical Camarilla Prince or violent Sabbat Ductus. I do understand why the altered this. Above all else, a game needs to be playable  and fun...