Wednesday 5 December, 2007: Vampire

I am slipping: I need to get these reports up quicker. For this I apologize profusely but claim work and the hectic run-up to Christmas as excuses. Anyway, without further ado let’s get to the rather exciting first week of Vampire: The Requiem.

I have played Vampire: The Masquerade before but this was my first time with the new edition of the World Of Darkness rules. After three weeks of frantic reading I felt just able to begin the game. With greatful assistance from Johnny, we began with character generation.

The two characters are Derek Merryweather, Olly’s Gangrel ex-roadie and Joseph Johnny’s Mekhet failed(ish) student. I can’t remember his surname at the moment though, sorry. The characters seemed interesting to me: nobody went for truly butt-kicking undead terror troops and social and mental attributes seemed to be the order of the day. This, in my opinion, makes for much more varied and interesting gaming. It also means that when – and it will be when – they get into a fight they are more likely to remember it. I liked the backgrounds and the players were impressively good at getting into their characters. I was privileged to witness some of the best, and most natural-sounding, in-character banter of my role-playing career to date.

We went through the preludes of the two characters focusing mainly on the night of their embraces. Looking back at the rulebook we could have spent a little more time on this and explored more rules for learning and frenzy but I think everything went well. After that, with a little XP bonus, we skipped a few months of game time and got stuck into the adventure proper.

We glossed over the kindred learning curve a little more than we should but I had a chronicle in mind in which I hadn’t really accounted for week-old neonates so perhaps that will be something to look at in the future.

The story is set in modern day Cambridge which has a diverse group of vampires numbering around two dozen at present. As per the Shadows Of The United Kingdom supplement I have made the Prince the ruler of the whole county so the vampires represent a cross-section from all across the county (this also allows me to bring in some of the more far-flung vampires as extra characters if I need to later). It also helps with Cambridge having such a huge transient student and tourist population so it is even easier to move characters around and also justify a fairly high kindred population for a city of this size.

In the game the highlights were a rather unexpected attack by a rather blood thirsty vampire who broke the masquerade with more than usual unsubtlety. He leapt from roof to roof across a street and tore the heads from innocent bystanders, showering panicked clubbers with gore and body parts. Derek and Joseph witnessed this atrocity and rushed to tell the Prince. He ordered an immediate ban on hunting for that night and a curfew of kindred to let the mortal police settle down. He involved the city’s sheriff. He sent his two hounds out on fact-finding missions but nothing could be discovered about the mysterious murderer. They did, however, see Derek and Joseph (acting against the express wishes of the Prince) making enquiries of their own.

Derek went back to his haven and found a message written on his mirror in toothpaste. It simply said “you can learn about me”. He asked Joseph to come and investigate and, while looking into the phenomenon, they received a phone call from the Sheriff.

In the meantime, Joseph had been burning the candle at both ends in order to do some research into the brutal acts of the mysterious kindred. Acting without his sire’s knowledge (tut tut) he researched into some pretty dark and occult books in his academic creator’s personal library. He did not find much conclusive evidence however, just some references to Belial’s Brood.

The Sheriff’s phone call turned out to be about their prying into the masquerade breach. He was angry at first but began to calm and recognize their keenness (bloody neonates). He sent them out on some sanctioned research of his own to meet a homeless Welsh Nosferatu named Rhodri. Apart from a lot of nonsense about a rat (which Derek couldn’t catch) Rhodri told them about something frightening – a beast he called it – which left a trail leading to the river. They got little else out of him apart from a rather emotive and garbled diatribe about the man versus the beast in the kindred psyche.

Derek decided to reply to his mirror messenger. He wrote back a single word “How?”.

He received the reply “save the date and the penny will drop”. What is going on? His little mirror is getting full now though so we will see what happens next.

That was the basic story so far. The two characters, as I said, enjoyed a little banter and have developed a grudging association. I hesitate to call it camaraderie though.

Role-playing is difficult with small groups, it is easier to focus and keep tracks but decisions tend to be made quicker and so you need to have more prepared. It will be an interesting challenge. I think it was an interesting and enjoyable evening. The rules are fairly stright forward in so much as being able to use common sense to link relevant skills and attributes in a way which suits your games. I think this was one of our more successful role-playing attempts and we are all looking forward to the next session.

Next Week, Warhammer 40,000. Olly can’t make it so 1500 points of Orks will face off against the same amount of Imperial Guard. Should be fun, check back to see how it went.

Commander Portman