City of the Damned

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New Orleans is an odd city. It's got Mardi Gras and debauchery; they intern their dead above ground; there's the local presence of voudoun. Oh yeah, and vampire stalk the night. The vampire prince of the city sits on his metaphorical throne, ruling over the parishes he's overseen since the days the Spanish claimed New Orleans. Every night people go about their lives, retiring to their crumbling houses, or squatting in their cheap FEMA trailers, and every night the vampires come out to feed or make what they can of their unaging undead existence.

Player Characters

Files

Vampire the Requiem

Vampire the Requiem is a game about vampires, set in the World of Darkness--basically the modern world, seen through a "dark and foreboding" lens, in which the supernatural exists. Vampire society has existed in secret for eons, with vampires preying on human blood and working their own internal politics. Short of reading the book, if you want to know more about the setting in general, let me point you to a few useful online resources:

If you're not familiar with the setting, I'd recommend talking 20 minutes or so to read up on it on the various wikis linked above, particularly the parts about what vampires are capable of, the vampire clans, covenants and a bit about vampire society.

The Mechanics

Vampire the Requiem uses the new World of Darkness ruleset, found in the World of Darkness rulebook and the Vampire the Requiem rulebook. Mechanically speaking, the World of Darkness system is more of a story-focused system than a crunchy mechanics-focused system. It uses a dice pool of d10's for just about everything. A typical pool might be four dice, but often times one might be rolling up to twelve or thirteen dice at a time, so it'd be useful to have that many d10's handy.

Themes

Vampires have to deal with what they've become. Through no choice on their own (usually) they've joined the ranks of the undead, and now have to feed on living blood to survive. Sunlight becomes deadly to them. Travel becomes risky and limited. Something as simple as a car breaking down along the roadside, or a plane being delayed afew hours, might become a deadly date with the sun. This makes vampires mostly isolated in their cities, cut off from the rest of the world. Other vampires complicate unlife. They have their neo-feudal social structure and their undead politics. Most every vampire owes fealty to another, as the feeding rights to various places are all claimed by the vampiric lords and ladies. And some of the other vampires are truly monstrous. Then, there are the other, unknown things that lurk in the night. No one knows all of what is out there, but some things are out there, watching and waiting.

New Orleans

For a much fuller view of New Orleans and Vampire, check out the New Orleans section in the Vampire the Requiem rulebook (page 267). But here's a brief overview.

The city of New Orleans sits at the heart of the New Orleans Parish (Louisiana is divided up into "parishes" rather then counties--part of its French roots). The city sits at the same latitude as Cairo, Egypt--just 30 degrees north of the Equator. It occupies the east bank of the Mississippi River, about 90 miles above the Gulf of Mexico. New Orleans is built on a swamp, with an average elevation of two feet below sea level. Because of this elevation, the water table is close enough to the surface that they need to intern their dead above the ground, in stone coffin-like structures. The Greater New Orleans Metropolitan Area ("the East Bank") is home to some 1.18 million people--down from 1.32 million pre-Katrina. As with mortals, the vampire hub of New Orleans is New Orleans proper.

Vampire Society

The vampires of New Orleans are ruled by Prince Agusto Vidal--the only vampire Prince New Orleans has ever known. Taking control of the New Orleans when the Spanish ruled the city following the Seven Years War, Prince Vidal is a strict traditionalist. It has only been in the last 30 years that Vidal has allowed discourse in his court to be spoken in English.

The Prince is a strict member of the Lancea Sanctum, and as such, that covenant is undisputedly the most powerful in New Orleans. Also prominent in New Orleans is the Invictus, the Lancea Sanctum's traditional ally. Of the other covenants, the Circle of the Crone is sometimes persecuted, but has the powerful figure of Baron Cimitiere to rally behind. The Carthian Movement has a small, but avid following, who mostly try to work within the New Orleans kindred political structure to effect change. And finally, the Ordo Dracul has a few members, but barely eking out their survival, despite the Prince's persecution and opposition.

Of the vampire clans, the Ventrue claim dominance, although how true this is and how much it is just the usual Ventrue claim to superiority is open to debate. It is true that the Prince himself is a Ventrue. In general, all of the vampire clans are readily accepted in New Orleans, although the Nosferatu are frequently discriminated against.

Prominent Personalities

The following are some of the movers and shakers within the New Orleans vampire political scene, who would probably be known to most player characters.

Prince Agusto Vidal

He's been ruling the city since the nights the Spanish dominated the land. He's a traditionalist, deeply involved in the Lancea Sanctum and rumor has it that he's reaching an age where he will retire into torpor soon, leaving a power vacuum within the city.

Lord Antoine Savy

The second most powerful vampire in New Orleans, and a rival member of the Lancea Sanctum, Lord Savy rules the French Quarter--some of the best hunting grounds in New Orleans. He is known to have connections to organized crime.

Baron Cimitiere

A powerful member of the Circle of the Crone, Baron Cimitere's power base is among the mortal population, where is is seen as a powerful houngan by voudoun circles.

Sundown

Militantly apolitical, Sundown is not a member of any of the vampiric covenants. Becoming a vampire sometime during prohibition, he's made a name for himself as running kindred-friendly clubs that act as a sort of neutral ground for vampire feeding... so long as the guest vampires pay a price.

Bloodlines

Bloodlines in New Orleans are generally small affairs, without any significant political sway in and of themselves.

Character Creation & Advancement

We will be doing a group character creation session together; this is particularly important in this campaign, as it will determine the prominence of story aspects in the campaign through Story Points (see below). In addition, since Vampire is a modern era game, PCs don't really have the traditional "we are an adventuring party" excuse to be together, and making compatible characters with a valid excuse to associate is doubly important. We will be using a hacked version of the character creation system with the following steps:

Step 1: Story Points

You, as a player, will receive a number of "Story Points." These are points you can spend to make certain elements of the game world more important to the campaign, to have certain events happen or to have certain unusual things be true for your character. In this way the players can collectively influence the direction of the game, spending points on what interests them. For example, if you as a player are interested the struggle against one's darker vampire urges to drink blood, you can spend story points to make that more significant in the story, or if you're interested in playing vampire politics, you can spend story points to make that more important in the story.

All initial Story Points are spent in Step 1, before any other part of character creation, since what looks to be important may affect the character people are interested in playing as. Story Points may also be earned later through play. How Story Points work are explained in more detail below.

Step 2: Create Your Mortal

First you ought to make your character as a mortal. Who were they? What were they good at? What did they do for a living? This will use the standard mortal character creation found in the World of Darkness rulebook, except for the house rules listed below. Of particular note is the No Merit Point house rule--characters will be 30 XP to spend as a mortal.

Step 3: The Embrace

Now you make your character into a vampire. What were the circumstances of your embrace? How did you adapt to life as a vampire? Apply the Vampire template found in the Vampire the Requiem book. You then have 20 XP to spend as a vampire on things you improved in after death. If you wish to take a Bloodline at character creation, note that you must first buy up your Blood Potency with experience in this step, then pick from the Bloodlines available to the campaign.

Character Advancement

After every session you will receive a number of experience points and a number of story points. Either kind of point may be spent between sessions unless specifically noted otherwise. All aspects purchased may only be bought up one rank at a time between sessions. Keep in mind that story points spent after character creation may take some time to work into the story.

In addition to points from sessions, players may do an optional character journal entry after every session. Doing the journal will net the player one story point an entry. Finally, writing an initial character background and posting it to the wiki will net the player three experience points and a story point.

Character Options

In addition to the default options listed in the two core books, the following are also available.

Merits

All of the merits listed in the World of Darkness rulebook and the Vampire the Requiem rulebook are available, plus:

  • Those found in Armory
  • Those found in Ghouls
  • If one, and only one, of the covenants reaches five dots of prominence through Story Point expenditure at character creation, then the merits found in that Covenant's supplement will be available.

Bloodlines

The following are the only bloodlines available to the campaign, as they are the ones found in New Orleans:

  • Daeva
    • Anvari (Bloodlines the Hidden 20)
    • Toreador (Requiem 246)
  • Gangrel
    • Bohagande (Bloodlines the Hidden 38)
    • Bruja (Requiem 235)
  • Mekhet
    • Alucinor (Bloodlines the Hidden 12)
    • Khaibit (Bloodlines the Hidden 58)
  • Nosferatu
    • Galloi (Bloodlines the Legendary 51)
    • The Unknown Bloodline (said to exist somewhere in New Orleans, see GM)
  • Ventrue
    • Malkovians (Requiem 241)
    • Macellarius (Bloodlines the Legendary 90)

Story Point Mechanic

You will have a number of Story Points to spend on the listings given below. Spending Story Points on a particular listing will influence how prominent the subject of that listing is in the campaign--the more dots that listing has, the more prominent it is. In this way you, as a player, can influence the content of the campaign to focus on the parts of the setting you find the most interesting.

The listings given below are purchased with Story Points much like Merits are purchased with Experience Points: that is, to buy a dot in one of the listings, you must spend 2 x the new rating in Story Points. So, the first dot would be 2 SP, the next would be 4 XP, the third would be 6 SP, etc.

When determining what listings are the most prominent in the campaign, all of the dots purchased by the players will be totaled together in the given categories, after dots are purchased. It is noteworthy then that making one particular listing prominent is more cost efficient if multiple players are interested in it and buy dots in the listing. This is due to the fact that the cost of dots in a listing increases exponentially for a given player, but dots add together linearly between players. This is intentional.

The number of dots a particular listing has will correlate in the campaign, roughly, to the number of potential plot threads involving that element. For example, if there is one dot in "Police", then there will be at some point a plot thread involving the police. If there are five dots in "Vampire Politics" then there will be many plot threads throughout the campaign involving vampire politics.

After the Story Point step of character creation I will be examining where players have spend their Story Points in writing the game. If a new listings stand out as containing the bulk of the player interest, the chances are this will result in a game focused around those listings. On the other hand, if the dots purchased with Story Points are more-or-less evenly spread out, this probably lends itself to a more "smörgåsbord style" episodic game, alternately focusing on the different listings.

For example, if collective player interest ends up with Vampire Politics 4, Carthian Movement 3, Police 1 and Belial's Brood 1--it may result in a game where the Carthian Movement tries to exploit the chaos following a Belial's Brood attack on the city to their own political ends, and meanwhile a detective on the police force is investigating the player characters, slowing piecing together that they may not be human.

Another example: If the dot total after character creation is Invictus 1, Nosferatu 1, Gangs 1, Hunters 1--this may result in a game focus less on one overarching thing, where one session the player characters deal with a gang who's causing problems with their feeding ground, while the next they are invited to the Invictus court, where covenant members try to recruit them, but then hunters attack, etc.

As plot threads get resolved throughout the campaign, I will begin to, in my GM notes, cross off dots as having come to fruition. New dots may be purchased between sessions throughout the campaign. The flow of new Story Points to the players will likely wax or wane, depending on how many things I will have queued up from Story Point expenditure.

House Rules

The following house rules are in effect.

Dramatic Failures

If all dice in any dice pool come up all 1's, then that roll is considered to be a dramatic failure. This includes the first roll of a chance die, but not subsequent rolls.

Alternate Weakness Dice Pools

Sometimes dice pools--as in some vampire clan weaknesses--are said to have 1's subtract from successes (with a negative tally not resulting in a dramatic failure) and the 10 Again rule not apply. For these dice pools a negative tally will result in a dramatic failure and the 10 Again rule does apply.

Turns and Rounds in Combat

Turns in combat--as they affect mechanics such as the lowered Defense from multiple attacks--start at your last action rather than from the beginning of the round. This means, for example, that's a character's Defense lowers by 1 each time she uses it, counting from her last action rather than the beginning of the round. If a character has not yet received a turn in combat, then count from the beginning of combat rather than her last turn.

Damage Bonuses

The damage bonuses provided by weapons do not add dice to the dice pool to attack, instead they add automatic successes to the roll if the hit was otherwise successful. Weapons that grant 9 Again or 8 Again grant this to the attack's dice pool.

Called Shots to the Head

Targeting an attack to the head (which gives a -5 penalty) stages the damage the attack deals up one type if it is a hit. That is, bashing becomes lethal and lethal becomes aggravated.

No Morality Trade for XP

We are not playing with the optional rule to trade in starting Morality for experience points.

No Merit Trade for Power

Many games allow starting characters to trade their starting Merit points in for extra starting dots in their template's power attribute (Blood Potency for Vampires). This is no longer allowed, as it results in characters with unrealistically sparse background merits and no good explanation for why they somehow acquired a high power attribute in their first few nights among the supernatural.

No Merit Point Character Creation

Characters do not get merit points to distribute at character creation. Instead they get a number of experience points, which can be used to buy merits at the same usual rate they'd be purchased at after character creation or on other traits at the usual experience costs.

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