For those new to games I run: If I had a problem with someone's CS, their posts, or anything else...I'll let them know in private. Don't hear from Zach or I? Don't get worked up about what criticism was thrown your way, then.

Putting a spotlight on people can turn them defensive. I don't want my players feeling they have to be on the defensive, this is collaborative art we're doing here. Let's all remember that. Clearly, V:tM is INFAMOUS for it's rigid structure. Just as clearly, Zach and I are breaking down some of those rigid structures to tell a story and give this setting a fresh flavor. To give the players a bit more breathing room than the setting would allow in it's strict canon settings.

Questions, comments, concerns? My PM box is always open. =)

Myst said
I really hope Instantes is okay... :(

Sorry - I've let you down a bit here; I've been out of the loop on everything for a while due to personal reasons. I like the RP though and want to stick with it. I don't think my next post is going to be of the very highest quality, but I'll write something that meets the standards that you can work with Myst. Hopefully over the next few weeks things will get back to normal and I can dedicate more time to this.

@Instantes While I'm new to this thread I am sure the people here won't mind and will understand your posting quality/quantity until you are fully recovered from whatever has shaken you. Personally I hope things go well and I'm looking forward to your post. :)

Instantes said
Sorry - I've let you down a bit here; I've been out of the loop on everything for a while due to personal reasons. I like the RP though and want to stick with it. I don't think my next post is going to be of the very highest quality, but I'll write something that meets the standards that you can work with Myst. Hopefully over the next few weeks things will get back to normal and I can dedicate more time to this.

The fact that you're posting at all means you haven't let any of us down in anyway. I think I speak for everyone when I say that when you're ill and/or broken, not posting is not letting anyone down. IRL comes first, and recovering from stuff is a top IRL priority.

we've been making decent progress today on our sheet. the story for two of the characters is now covered well into the twentieth century. (its grown from two to three characters in the faction).

Sadly, we did lose a player in the latest 'roll call.' And a big one IC, at that.

So what happens when someone has to drop, or gets dropped due to inactivity? Usually, it means their characters die. This can be a benefit to other players in the game, in the form of everything from a shiny new hangout to a diablerie. To say nothing of the addition to renown your character will get if the offed faction is a low Generation, powerfully positioned one.

Afterall, LA is the most dangerous town for low gen Kindred around.

As is the case this time. The officially sanctioned Camarilla Prince of LA, a 6th Gen Toreador and her coterie, are on the chopping block. Interested in your character taking one of said coterie down? PM me.

Thanks!

ahh... yes... offing players is always complex... after the first four-five killed, it tends to lose the shock value.

Oh, not done for the shock value. More trying to make a silver lining out of losing a good player with a fun character. =)

True enough. Losing good players is always annoying and hard to play in a good fashion.

Sheet is currently sitting on about 5700 words and well into the 20th century.

umm... Just curious... isn't it more relevant to actually post stuff IC than to post pages worth of lore of questionable relevance?

When we get our characters finished up, we know we'd much more like to play with other players' characters than various entities that we'd have to do research to even comprehend enough to use.

In our opinion, bringing in more than the bare minimum of factions in the World of Darkness makes things extremely hard to keep track of. There's just too much lore to have everything that goes bump in the night available, wethinks...

I suppose you and I will just have to agree to disagree on certain topics, then. Please forgive my rather lengthy response. tl;dr: You will not actually lose anything in any in-game way for not feeling like reading my walls of text.

Writing is writing, a story is a story - it's all contribution to the body of content that represents the material of an RPG. If, as side material, something is of an acceptable quality and does not contradict nor intrude upon the principles, cosmology, and core focus of the RPG, I see no reason to find it unacceptable. I asked if I could produce more content on the Spectres and got the go-ahead to do so, so I did. I felt like sharing the content, even if most of it is all largely in the backdrop to the important occurrences of the RPG and events surrounding Los Angeles, which absolutely take precedence within the IC board. Frankly speaking, literally every other PC, including Mistborn's soon-to-be-dead ones, will have more impact on the RPG - this is all "well, if you want to know..." stuff. I would be happy putting a notice specifying that alongside the profiles themselves, if you'd like.

If you're worried about doing research... well, I already did all the research, didn't I? In all technicality, the Spectres and Neverborn were already accepted as aspects of the characters and all this is doing is summarizing pretty much literally all you need to know about them OOC, if you want to know about them OOC, without creating any confusion or pretense about where I was going with it. If you don't want to read it, that's perfectly fine; you don't have to. The hierarchical stuff regarding Spectres is a matter of clarification. Malfeans, Hekatonkhire, and the Neverborn themselves are fluff centered on the Underworld and largely inapplicable to the RPG beyond explaining somewhat the context in which certain entities that do matter exist. But that's okay because the game is not about Malfeans or Hekatonkhire or Neverborn (indeed, most Wraith games are not about them because they're all sleepyheads), it's about the Kindred of Los Angeles and their war. What they largely provide for the Thayne twins is bossing them around inside their heads, but that's all on them, not on anyone else.

The part on Abyssal Entities is just explaining their nature somewhat and introducing the concept of Abyssal Intruders, which are (potentially) fun little puzzles in the form of basically cool walking plot devices that exist solely to be overcome by other players if they ever come up in the course of the Los Angeles danse macabre. I suppose it's telling that the small (if reality-bending) ways in which the Neverborn are able to have an affect on the plot exist solely to aggrandize the Kindred participants. Beyond that, it helps establish an otherworldly aesthetic to Abyss Mysticism that gives it meaning beyond "darkness!" and what have you. If you don't want your character to deal with any of that, it is also perfectly fine, we can restrict interaction between our characters to more commonplace affairs. This is, after all, a collaborative work.

Besides, even if you don't read it, in all likelihood it's something your character(s) wouldn't be aware of unless they were Blood Sorcerers, particularly Necromancers, anyway. So, in a way, reading or not reading it wouldn't change much of anything for the way you play the game. Personally, however, I enjoyed reading everyone's works thus far because of the clear effort they put into it and a dedication to the enjoyable practice of storytelling. Which is all roleplaying is, in the end. For that same reason, I eagerly await the work you've been mentioning periodically within the OOC thread for some time now.

I do intend to post IC soon as well, in any case.

We love our research, as at least the silent and slightly sick Sundered Echo can testify. We spent considerable time researching WWI history just to find a place that worked for Echo's character. Initially, the plan was to use a city that was bombed to shreds in WWI, but soon enough it turned out that there were no such cities. Pesky history, eh?

However, if we're curious about something, say Wraith: the Oblivion as much of that stuff you wrote is about, we look it up at need.
First we'll look such up in the wikia, and if that doesn't answer our questions, we dig deeper. The stuff about those spirits was (in our opinion at least) much easier to read in the wiki. Same goes for abyssal beings and so forth. Considering that some of the creatures you described hold god-like power, they're not all that relevant. Its kinda like how the rules are concerning fighting Caine. Its pretty stupid to even consider it. If we players do not have enough conflict between us to have fun, we're very much certain the friendly neighborhood GMs will have no qualms about rectifying that.

Speaking of stuff to do: As lead up to the Big Rant, Zach and I will be highlighting NPCs your characters, and ours, should know. These will mostly be the 'self proclaimed' bosses of Los Angeles. Each of these is both a threat, and a target, to your own characters. No matter how minute your faction may seem to you, they're after you--not after your unlife, but after your support. And they don't like taking no for an answer.

Expect the first of these, a self styled 'Prince of Los Angeles', to be posted shortly. =)

Wonder where the GMs stand on something? Well we're all about letting intelligent folks with varying viewpoints hash things out on their own. A little more specific? Yes, we're aware of Anemones character's potential power in the IC. We knew Anenome was going to bring in some Demon and Wraith flavors, minor a presence as they are in the setting compared to the Kindred and Kuei-jin. Fun accessory to the game, I thought. And even if I don't understand all of it, turns out I don't need to just to ensure Anemone's faction doesn't break the setting or throw off balance.

Okay, with that out of the way, onto the first of the Big Pretenders!

Name: Cameron Noel
Clan: Ventrue
Generation: 8th

Noel is no novice to the unlife. Sired long ago in the Old World, Noel spent much of his unlife as a cog in the Camarilla machine of Paris. More a path of least resistance than an actual devotion, what really inspired Noel was the opera and the way art and politics mixed so frequently in the salons of Parisian nightlife. The first time he saw a motion picture, the young Kindred knew genius when he saw it. When he arrived in turn of the century Los Angeles and the neophyte Hollywod, he was devastated to learn there were already Kindred on the scene, most notably Isaac Abrams and Louis Fortier.

In Los Angeles Noel finds himself not a young Kindred, but an elder. And though he has always been happy to spend all his time in the never-ending machinisms of modern Hollywood, recent chaos provided an opening for Cameron to strike out and end both Abrams and Fortier, consolidating his influence and power within Hollywood. Though he believes there are greater, older, Kindred secretly pulling the ultimate chords of power within Hollywood, Noel also believes he was allowed to put down Abrams and Fortier and gain that larger foothold in Hollywood by those secret elder Kindred he presumes exist. Secretly, this is Cameron Noel's reason for feeling bold enough and strong enough in Los Angeles to declare himself the Prince of Los Angeles.

After the fall of Crofter, many overt Camarilla supporters have begun to find themselves in Noel's camp, as Noel begins to build his power base in the city, casting one role after another in what Noel hopes will be his ultimate premiere.

(Questions about Mr. Noel? Want to know how he might see your faction? Want to have some history with him already, good or bad? Whatever questions or ideas you have regarding the first of the Big Pretenders, let us know via PMs!)

Crofter and her Coterie's doom have been claimed, sorry if you missed out on the chance! Hopefully there won't be many others of this sort, but odds are there will be at some point down the line. ^_^

I'll let those picked know over PMs so they can start hashing out details with the GMs.

Thanks!

Ellri said We love our research, as at least the silent and slightly sick Sundered Echo can testify. We spent considerable time researching WWI history just to find a place that worked for Echo's character. Initially, the plan was to use a city that was bombed to shreds in WWI, but soon enough it turned out that there were no such cities. Pesky history, eh?

However, if we're curious about something, say Wraith: the Oblivion as much of that stuff you wrote is about, we look it up at need. First we'll look such up in the wikia, and if that doesn't answer our questions, we dig deeper.

Hey, I can't help that. If you're gonna research, you're gonna research.

Ellri said The stuff about those spirits was (in our opinion at least) much easier to read in the wiki.

Well, thanks. :V

Do note regardless that the Spectral Hierarchy section was not the summary of the nature of Spectres. I'd already posted that awhile ago. Rather, it was an extrapolation of the statement from that description that they had a hierarchy/caste system. The Doppelgangers, Mortwrights, Shades, Haints, Apparitions, and Nephwracks are relevant to the game because those are the beings that the Thayne twins are capable of summoning. I saw no reason to not give a complete description of the pecking order beyond that, especially since the influence of the Malfeans helps to explain the reasons why Spectres operate in a certain way (the Spectres work with the Thaynes because the Malfeans they serve are allied with the Earthbound Demon the Thayne twins worship). It's also fun to describe their grim immensity and helps establish atmosphere.

Ellri said Same goes for abyssal beings and so forth.

Ehhh... The wiki doesn't actually really describe Abyssal "beings" to any degree of detail. There actually isn't any description of Abyssal Intruders on there despite me linking their sourcebook (which, I might add, is one of the most lauded supplements in the Awakening gameline). The wiki describes the Abyss in VTM and DTF, but in the Vampire version of the page, the only thing that's stated about denizens of the Abyss is that they're there and they're dangerous, not what they are or represent whatsoever

I'm also taking some inspiration from MTAw's portrayal of the Abyss, and while its Abyss is vaguely described on the wiki, the only entities it references in relation to it are the Acamoth, which only covers one specific type of Abyssal interaction - the actual details of Abyssal intrusion have not yet been explored whatsoever on the wiki.

Ellri said Considering that some of the creatures you described hold god-like power, they're not all that relevant.

You ask "why?," I reply, "why not?" Well, actually, I reply:

Firstly, to comprehend the nature of Abyssal Entities, which do have a chance of making an appearance, as I've portrayed them, the Neverborn and their paradoxical, alien nature must be established. This is not a mere encyclopedia entry, this is prose, so the Neverborn must be done justice - one can't just go "they're cosmic horrors that want to destroy everything." The situation is more complex than that and there's not much point in writing if you don't write.

Secondly, it establishes a theme. There is an atmosphere and bearing by which the Thaynes, their Blood Sorcery, and their context as characters is presented. The Neverborn have a specific Lovecraftian flavor they bring to the Abyss and thus contribute to the nature of Abyss Mysticism. This is a part of the spirit I want the characters to be in keeping with.

In a funny bit of juxtaposition, when you think about the background of the Jyhad, every vampire technically gets their unique, signature powers from horrible, sleeping, god-like abominations who want to eat them. In many cases, said abominations continue to live on through these powers (Lasombra, Tzimisce, Malkav). So it's really not a thematic departure from Masquerade anyway.

Ellri said Its kinda like how the rules are concerning fighting Caine. Its pretty stupid to even consider it.

Ah, but just because Caine didn't need stats to know "you lose," doesn't mean his fluff was unnecessary or otherwise not integral to the history of the gameline.

No, you're not supposed to fight the Malfeans or the Neverborn. Fluff is fluff. The Abyssal Entities, themselves, however, are specifically intended to be within a PC's capacities to defeat. Many of the Abyssal Intruders described in Intruders: Encounters with the Abyss are written to be combatable mechanically by Vampires and the Uratha, who are weaker than their oWoD counterparts. And this being a freeform RPG means that there's no systemic limitations - your capacity to succeed is entirely based on your capacity to write.

Ellri said If we players do not have enough conflict between us to have fun, we're very much certain the friendly neighborhood GMs will have no qualms about rectifying that.

Sure. But this isn't about that.



Ulisse Samuele Giovanni and Giuliana Liboria Giovanni both have the capacity to use Necromancy. They no doubt command Wraith slaves and/or have Wraith allies in the Shadowlands. Although the Stygian Hierarchy's official stance on the Giovanni is that they're bad news and should be avoided/murdered, it doesn't keep the Necropoli, Heretics, Renegades, and Guilds from cutting deals with them anyway, which is why the Giovanni fare so much better at everything, ever, compared to the Ravnos and Salubri. This is really not too different from what the Thaynes are capable of.

Now consider the Pyromancers, who had their own Demon who was not an element of backstory, but a tangible presence. Undoubtedly she would have been more obviously, directly powerful and unassailable from a practical standpoint than the Abyssal Entities I have proposed. A shame Wernher was unable to continue in the RPG, on the note of this.

So it's not like any of this doesn't have precedence. I'm just going into extra detail about it because I can, even though I am under no obligation to do so. Regardless, if Ruby and Zach have a problem with anything I do, I have no problem deferring to their vision.

Start pulling out memes and graphs and gif charts and mfin' powerpoint presentations and I'm gonna have to ask you to take it to PMs. =p

Name: Natalia Kenroe
Clan: Tremere
Generation: 10th
Appearance:


Born in the mid 1700s to Russian colonists among the small community of Russian Alaska, Natalia was a sweet girl, achieving mascot-like status for the town growing up along with her. Her parents, owners of the town’s only ‘watering hole’ employed her as a serving girl from a young age, further cementing her position in the hearts of the local people. When she was caught in a conflict between the colonists and the Tlingit people, injured nearly unto death, it sparked one of the many localised pogroms of the native population, a fact she herself still holds some amount of regret over, even if as a kindred, her value of kine life as depreciated. Natalia was saved the cold embrace of death by the sacrifice of her true life, a Tremere, a Vizer for one of the Russian Aristocracy’s many Ventrue courts, surveying the territory for his Prince, took an interest in the sociable and bright child, resorting to the embrace to save her life. His calculation proved a fruitful one, bringing into his chantry a fledgling whose power grew radically, her mind taking well to the secrets of blood magic.

Natalia Kenroe is almost an anomaly, a Tremere turned against the order of the Camarilla and into the arms of the Anarch Free State. Her reasons are numerous, however her focus, something that she does not work to hide, is her desire to combat the Sabbat. Tired of the slow machinations of the Camarilla, Natalia has turned to the Anarchs for a more swift and decisive body to combat the Sword of Caine, a faction that her bloodline itself calls her to fight. In recent years, it has seemed that she made the right choice, as the Camarilla strongholds of the Eastern and Southern States, along with Canada, fell to the Sabbat, the Anarch Free States remained free of this enslavement, able to fight off the Sabbat for their treasured freedom. With the coming of the Kuei-Jin however, the Free States have all but crumbled, and many Kindred cities turned back to the old order to ensure their survival. This is a turn of events that Natalia cannot abide, she sees the Kuei-Jin as a deadly foe, but ultimately a distraction from the building might of the Sabbat, and those who turn to the Camarilla to seek safety from this eastern foe are fatally short sighted. Now seeking to directly lead the Anarchs of the city for the first time, she is determined to reverse this trend. To secure LA’s freedom from both, before crushing the Sabbat presence in the city and the state.