GMS_XPLSN

A brief history of Vampirism

Vampire: the Masquerade was the first game i really ran. storytold?

i tried getting in with the moody goth crowd at university. bought myself an ankh necklace. started reading The Sandman. listened to The Cure and Nine Inch Nails. wore black.

the goths didn’t really like me. i was a first year, they were third years. i occasionally liked bright colours and didn’t want to embrace my misery as a constant. i didn’t smoke.

they played a diceless narrative game of Vampire: the Masquerade, set pre-renaissance, heavily influenced by The Vampire Lestat (which I had at least read).

they didn’t let me play. instead the Storyteller’s boyfriend let me play his game of Changeling: the Dreaming.

apparently this was quite the snub.

another first year student, also rejected from the group (even though he started smoking a fucking pipe to impress them) decided to start running a game, so I joined up.

i had no idea what I was doing. i hadn’t read the rules, or the setting, but that was ok because the Storyteller hadn’t read them either. this became apparent when Revised Edition was released and i read that.

frustrated and thinking that i could do better, i started my own game. again, i had no idea what I was doing, and just threw problems at the players, letting them solve them, then spin off more problems from those, often flawed, solutions.tThis apparently works really well in Vampire, and i’ve been doing it ever since

Fast forward an ungodly amount of years

right now i’m running Vampire 5th edition (V5) for my face to face group. it’s my first foray back into running Vampire in about 20 years.

i did use Vampire: the Requiem vampires as antagonists in Mage: the Awakening and Changeling: the Lost games, but this is my first full return.

headline: it’s great. the group have taken to it really well, better than i thought they would, and the base rules are still nicely intuitive.

What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas: The game I’m running now

let me tell you a little bit about my game.

it’s set in Las Vegas, modern day.

i sort of half planned out a vanilla Camarilla campaign:
the Prince is a liability, corrupt and harmful, and must be usurped and replaced.
the Coterie are new, useful tools, and are empowered by the scheming Seneschal to improve their skills, increase their influence, and then get in the way with the Prince. conflict ensues, the Prince flees or is killed, the regime changes but the status quo remains the same.

yada yada yada

obviously the players all create Anarch leaning criminals and/or rebels.

fine.

we start off with the Camarilla connection, introduce the Prince and the Seneschal and the Herald. give them a task, with a reward for completion.

“here are three corpses. please (i ain’t askin) remove them and dispose of them somewhere where they’ll never be found. “

Lake Mead is a short drive away. there’s a desert on the other side. mountains.sScrap yards with car crushers. crematoriums. self storage warehouses that can be anonymously hired for months at a time.

do they do any of these things? no, they do none of these things. instead they decide to feed the bodies to the wolves in the Gangrel’s zoo enclosure.
they are aware that there are bones left, and bits that the wolves won’t eat. that’s ok, my ghoul will spend literal hours boiling the bones clean and then grinding them into dust.

fine.

this is just the intro, give them a chance to stretch their legs and kick the tires of their characters.
let’s give them the rope…

they’ve disposed of the bodies and averted a potentially vexation for the Prince. there’s a reward, because vampires and player characters both never do anything out of the goodness of their own heart. they want something in return.

a Domain to call their own. an area of Las Vegas that they control, that they can hunt in, and bar other from hunting in. quite a big favour to be granted to some nobody licks from whothefuckareyouville nowhere.
Of course they do not question this at all. they did a mediocre job of a task normally given to ghoul servitors, they’ve earned this.

they are granted Lubertha Johnson Park and the blocks around it as their domain.
it’s a shithole. a shithole with an inordinately large number of small churches. like 25+ churches ranging from someone’s garage to an actual building that looks like a church.
The area itself is in one of the most deprived and run down areas of Las Vegas, West Las Vegas.

According to Casino.Org
_{“Like any city, Las Vegas can be dangerous.
You have a 1 in 187 chance of becoming a victim of a violent crime in Sin City, compared to in the whole of the United States where your odds stand at around 1 in 250.
It might sound scary but, like everywhere, crime is not evenly spread throughout Las Vegas and some neighbourhoods are a lot more dangerous than others.
And, unless you know Las Vegas well, working out which neighbourhoods to avoid can be a tricky business, so we’ve put this guide together for you.
If you’re a tourist and want to visit places other than the Strip, be sure to steer clear of these areas.
West Las Vegas
Notorious for drug and gang activity, the most dangerous neighbourhood is West Las Vegas, located northwest of the Strip.
This is one of the most deprived areas of the city, with many people living below the poverty line and where violent crime rates are a whopping 713% higher than the national average.
This translates to a 1 in 32 chance of being a victim of a violent crime. Shockingly, people in West Las Vegas are running a 1 in 7 risk of being a victim of any crime.
Homicides are frequently reported in West Las Vegas.
To put it simply, West Las Vegas is not somewhere you should go when vacationing – either after dark or during the day.“}

what does this mean in the fiction though? it’s obviously an Anarch stronghold, making it a poisoned chalice, or, in common parlance, a lemon.
the Camarilla have granted them Domain over an area that they do not control. if the Coterie want to keep it, they need to fight for it.

the Gangrel was the first to figure this out
“oh fuck, we’ve been screwed”

i finished the session grinning after that.

here’s the monkey’s paw: they ‘own’ the Domain, but the local vampires do not recognise the authority that granted them this Domain.
they can acquiesce to the Anarchs, sign up and co-exist, but if they do this, they lose their Domain and become answerable to the Anarch leaders.
they can assert their control of the Domain, which in turn asserts the Camarilla control of the area. this gives them temporal power, and very clearly places them in the Camarilla camp.

whilst they’re mulling this over, i give them a mission. two missions. ok, one mission, from two sources.
the Camarilla contact one of the Coterie Tremere and tell them about a package that’s just been shipped into the airport. pick it up, bring it to Caesar’s Palace for the Prince.
the Anarchs contact the Coterie Brujah and tell them about the exact same package, and how it needs to be brought to the Anarch HQ in WLV.
the Tremere tells the rest of the Coterie, the Brujah does not.

shenanigans ensue.

there’s also an unnamed third party who actually owns the package. and the ‘package’ is a crate about 8′ long and 3′ high.
cue multiple “what’s in the box?” jokes.

they don’t trust the Camarilla, so take it back to their Domain, a disused church they’ve dubbed ‘the temple’. once there the Brujah tries to comically steal it and take it to the Anarchs, but is foiled. the rest of the Coterie engage in debate and political wrangling, trying to negotiate the best deal.

at which point they decide to open it.
yes, it’s a coffin.
so they open the coffin. inside is a naked guy, with a giant wooden stake through his heart.
this creates more debate. should they eat him? should they give him to either sect? they all agree that they should not, under any circumstances, unstake him.

there are two Tremere in the Coterie. one is politics and power focused, the other is academic and spiritual. the more spiritual one uses his Auspex premonition power, and convinces himself that he should remove the stake.
this is another course of action that wasn’t discussed with the rest of the group. excellent.

there’s a bit of activity, a couple of extras are killed, and the Coterie are left standing face to face with a naked elder with questions.

during the shenanigans phase, our spiritual Tremere found some form of tracking device in the crate, and hid it at the Anarchs’ base – a petrol station and chop shop garage.
this act pays off, as something attacks the Anarchs.
the naked, blood stained elder introduces himself as ‘Daniel’, calls the two Tremere ‘usurpers’ then flees.

by this point the Coterie are aware of things happening in the background, but not what they mean. they’re preoccupied with the Camarilla / Anarch conflict, and playing the game to make small gains.

the Brujah, Gangrel and political Tremere go check out the Anarch gang’s HQ – they’ve been hit hard, and the assailants appear to have bone knives where their hands should be. half the gang are dead or wounded, and their leader is heavily hurt.

a decision is made – the Gangrel heads for the injured Anarch, sinks his Feral Claws into his side and drags him to their car.
the Brujah floors it.
the Tremere gets out and walks off, wanting no part of this crime.

as the Brujah accelerates into the night, the Gangrel drains the Anarch of his blood, drinks his soul, and takes his power, reducing him to ash.
it is only at this point that both player and character learn the perils of diablerie, as the Gangrel wrestles with an alien consciousness trying to take control.

the Tremere walks into the night, and ends up at The Bellagio, talking to Dover, Camarilla Seneschal and de facto #2 in the city.
Dover rarely has social calls, and is keen to impress on the Tremere just how well his master plan is playing out.
the Coterie are useful tools, driving up perceived gang violence, lowering property prices, distracting the Anarchs. there’s property and land ripe for purchase and development. dwellings to be raised, shops and offices to be built, tent city to be replaced with condos and apartments.
the real enemy here is gentrification.

the Anarchs are the rub. they’ll stand against this wave of progress washing the shit off the streets and back into the gutters where it belongs. they need fettling.
but that’s ok. hot off the press – one of the Anarch leaders has fallen, a replacement must be voted in, and Dover has a Manchurian Candidate all lined up.
here’s another job – get my candidate elected, and i will owe you a boon; a real one this time.

which brings us up to date

where are we now?

• the political Tremere does not trust the Brujah because he tried to deliver the package to the Anarchs without discussing it with the group
• the Coterie doesn’t really trust the spiritual Tremere because he unstaked the elder without discussion
• the Gangrel resents the political Tremere for not assisting in the Anarch leader take-down
• the political Tremere regards the rest of the Coterie as loose canons
• they have to fix an election, which is only happening because they killed the previous incumbent, and there’s an outside chance that the Gangrel is going to nominate himself for the position
• and i forgot to mention that there are a couple of priests burning down buildings around the Coteries Domain

next session they’re at the election, and i’ve got two new players starting….