It is the year 1227 in Transylvania, and the the storm of war has blown through and left devastation. The Teutonic Knights have marched up through Transylvania, claiming territory in the name of Christ from the pagan denizens of the Carpathians. Unbeknownst to all but those of the inner circle, the Order of the Black Cross, it is not Christ they serve but the whims of Lord Jürgen. A creature of the night and vassal to the powerful Lord Hardestadt, the powerful vampire of Clan Ventrue has pushed forward for several years against the Fiendish Clan Tzimisce and their serfs and servants. But with the order from the mortal King Andras for the Germanic knights to leave his lands a year ago, Lord Jürgen and his nemesis, the Voivode of Voivodes Lord Vladimir Rustovitch met for a final confrontation that devastated both forces. In what seemed an impossible chance to claim a piece of Transylvania for himself and prevent total war from rendering the land barren, a Tzimisce scholar by the name of Myca Vykos arranged for peace between the two parties. Swearing a lip-service oath of fealty to Rustovitch and preventing the demise of Lord Jürgen in the process, he established a buffer using his resources and connections between the two forces at the city of Balgrad. Both Ventrue and Tzimisce have slunk back to lick their wounds, but the retreat of both sides has left something of a vacuum amidst the Carpathians. As Vykos retreats for other ventures and leaves the city for his uninterested cousin Iszak to rule, the balance of power is shifting once again. It is here that we will begin our tale. --------------- There we are. A sufficiently dramatic opening. For those of you from the general interest thread, thank you for your patience. For anyone stumbling across this and finding themselves interested, welcome. Before beginning proper, I should make a few things known:

• This is an Old World of Darkness Vampire: The Dark Ages game in spirit. There is an existing lore surrounding the situation that is, frankly, too complicated to explain in its entirety. For veteran players this can be enticing, as it allows a great deal of intricacy--for new players this can be Hell, as it seems like everything is enmeshed. Due to my availability, I am forced to assume a degree of familiarity that may not exist with new players--I will do what I can, but I cannot be there to explain it all to you. I invite you to explore OWoD books, the White Wolf Wiki (link to come) and most importantly your knowledgeable fellow players to explain the basics of what I can't.
• As with the best of such games, I will be attempting to maintain canon background but there will be alterations. It has also been some time since I was really hardcore about the lore, and so I may not get everything precisely right. You're going to have to roll with it.
• While I will be using the character generation and progression rules as a guideline, I will not be using die rolls. I am using narrative mechanics to decide actions based on the real world comparative benchmarks that exist within the system and will arbitrate any arguments that arise if people can't place nicely. Which leads me to my next point...
• Play nicely. We're all at least some degree of adult here, which means that we're going to be civil about this. We're here to tell a cool story, not bicker and squabble and throw hissy fits. Standard roleplay etiquette applies--I trust that I don't need to explain what that means.

Now that we've got much of that out of the way, let's get the ball rolling and give you lot something you can work with: Character Generation rules. As said, we'll be using Vampire: the Dark Ages as a base. I highly recommend that you all acquire some copy of the character generation rules for it, as the starting character generation rules are what we will be using. I appreciate that you have your ancient vampire lord that you've been drooling over, but for the meantime you're going to have to suck it up as a neonate. We will be using this sheet as our basis. Please use it to get your character in order--I will have a formatted character sheet set up shortly, but in the meantime this will at least whet your whistle. As I am running this primarily by request, I will reward players that assist others and make my life easier. Help out your fellow players, do cool things that help my book-keeping, etc. and I will do my best to make sure it comes back to you. Some people have already done so without motivation, and I am deeply appreciative of that--your contributions have not been forgotten. Finally, it's late. This thread is a work in progress. I appreciate your patience.

give me 48 hours max and I'll have a CS scratch that I just reread it my necromancer is on hiatus until i can use a lower generation and make him from Rome, Marcus's character doesn't work as a neonate. okay you may have to give me between 48-72 hours. If you want a neonate

Itll take me some time till but if youll give it to me i promise you it shall be done.

Plenty of time, gentleman. If you've a character you really want to use then feel free to pm me about it and we can try to hash it out, but I do want to start us at a reasonably beginning point for the moment.

PM'ed ya, and im off to start on my neonate at the very least

well im gonna look at the details to make the character sheet and get back to you guys on my character, Adio meu Prieteni, putea noi ta în Iad împreună!Nu la fel de muritori , ci Vampiri! (Farewell my Friends, may we dine in Hell together! Not as mortals, but Vampires!) Romanian language

what generation would we be? specially if we are roman my fellow vampires

what generation would we be? specially if we are roman my fellow vampires

I'm not using my roman, he's not going to be a neonate. The character doesnt work like that

ouch, well im sticking with roman, that way i can stick to his gladiator nature, but as far as his sire though, im having a bit of trouble making that as well as his generation and demeanor, i cant choose monster which makes me kinda sad, but barbarian works too

@Thantos Starting generation in VtDA is 12th and you can lower it during character generation by adding dots to the Generation background. At five dots (the maximum trait rating for backgrounds) your character becomes 7th Generation. @Themerlinhawk Well, keep in mind that you can make a vampire who's ancient but has been sleeping the long sleep of the damned (torpor) for years if not centuries). Technically we could stick to our original concepts but have them been staked by the agents of more powerful old Roman vampires only to be awakened together by agents of some mysterious patron beckoning them to come to Balgrad. I'm sure you necromancer would have been a neonate at some point. It could be that we all met as neonates, quickly became rising stars of our locale, and then were punished for our successes by the powers that be before we could gain the skill to threaten them...

hmmmm. Yeah im sorry Marcus may have been a neonate once but the character just doesnt feel right with that. I think I'm changing characters. It just doesnt feel right to me the way it is, I may still do a Necromancer I just think I'm moving him to Constantinople and make him younger with a different background. That or perhaps a Nosferatu or Salubri. I'm still in the playing around with ideas stage. I only get one toon so i gotta make it good.

If you lot are more interested in a Roman game I could make that work, but it would take more research on my part and I'd have to make more adjustments to starting rules. The Transylvania plot was as much in response to the only suggestion I received. That being said, I am still limiting characters to one per person for sake of focus and to encourage depth. If everyone wants I could be persuaded to up the game to ancilla, but I'd prefer for advances like that to occur over time.

I'm fine with doing a neonate it's just taking me longer to find my inspiration, which is highly frustrating.

I'm fine with doing a neonate it's just taking me longer to find my inspiration, which is highly frustrating.

Well, when you and Thantos came up with your ideas, that really provided me with some inspiration, so I'll start working more aggressively on my character and hope that it provides something for you to jump off from.

okey

posting a cs today Ran out of time but the good news is I found another player

awesome

He's reading the books and it looks like he'll be playing a capadocian

no i got my character set, its just a few pieces left that i need to fix, now, can i add dots to the road of the beast or do i wait on that and second, i would need to name a sire, and it would have to be a good one, specially for a 9th generation gangrel

Hi! I found this idea strangely attractive and have since picked up the Vampire: The Dark Ages book. After going through about 150 pages of it (and getting my mind destroyed by the historical iterations that are impossible to keep track of in a first read-through) and working through the character sheet, I had an idea for an originally French neonate who would have a background like the suggested "Lady of the Night." I prefer bardlike (D&D reference, haha) characters to begin with, so a more noble, yet not ridiculously frail lady character appealed to me. I haven't put a ton of concrete character development down quite yet because I don't have a real vibe for the characters involved thus far (I also feel like I need to have some DM conversation to know the overall feel and needs of this RP). And then there's the fact that the introduction itself is going to require me doing more lore re-reading until all of the names fit into my head. All that being said, if you guys are open to that initial character concept and a new player like myself, I'd be happy to put up what I have for my character so far. Otherwise, I wish you all the best in your roleplaying endeavors! As a personal note, the wikia I found for Vampire: The Dark Ages is here. And, if you have the money and the interest, you can buy hard copies or download pdf copies of the book for the roleplay on DriveThruRPG. You can also torrent it, but... that's morally incorrect, even for a dark vampire rpg.