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Innocents Musings
I’ve written my first module for World of Darkness: Innocents! I haven’t run it just yet, I’ll be doing that at RetCon on Saturday night, but if how much I’ve enjoyed writing it is any indication everyone will be pleased.
One of the things that struck me as slightly odd about Innocents is that it doesn’t use the Virtue/Vice system. Honestly, I can’t imagine why since the entire rest of the World of Darkness line does. The idea of Innocents is that the main protagonists are children (boogie man in the closet kind of stories) but it’s hardly as though children don’t have Virtues and Vices. Children can be every bit as Wrathful, Envious, Proud, Hopeful, Prudent, and Charitable as adults can. So why not Virtues and Vices? Why does Innocents switch to “Assets and Faults”?
I have no answer for that question, and here is another question I have no answer for: why wasn’t “Assets and Faults” made the universal personality trait for all of the World of Darkness instead? Now that I’ve seen the system in Innocents I can’t understand why it wasn’t used across the gamut.
I’d guess that most people are familiar with the seven deadly sins that Vices are based on, and of course the Virtues are all familiar enough as well. The thing is, while Envy is simple enough as a concept, to covet that which someone else has, it’s a little less easy to role play effectively. Envy is a subtle inner conflict that doesn’t always play well at the game table.
In contrast, the Assets and Faults of the Innocents system are all concrete and easy to communicate at the table. They are also well balanced, so that for the various positive qualities a character might have, there are opposing negative qualities: Bravery and Cowardice, Kindness and Cruelty, Generosity and Greed. As for the replenishment of Willpower Points, they work exactly the same way as their counterparts in the other systems: the indulgence of a Fault replenishes one point of Willpower, and the portrayal of an Asset replenishes Willpower to the character’s maximum.
In the Virtues and Vices system I tend to stick to a core few that I use to make pre-generated characters for convention modules because I want to be sure that players with no experience won’t have a hard time portraying the various characters as written on the sheets. I didn’t have that problem at all writing characters in Innocents. I didn’t see any particular quality that wouldn’t be fun to portray at the table. They all feel like they will work well in a group dynamic.
Of course, I’ll know more after Saturday night’s session!
I Peed My Pants!
Previously on Mage the Awakening…
The Mages tracked a Banisher to an abandoned monastery on Staten Island. How, you ask? Rex’s skill with the Matter Arcana allowed him to isolate a sliver of metal from the iron murder shovel embedded in the flesh of one of the victims. At that point Damien cast a Space spell to discover the location of the rest of the shovel, using the sliver as a focus. This particular shovel dated back to a time when the monks at the site forged their own tools, which made it different than your typical modern shovel, though they did turn up two sizable sources of the same iron at the site. One source was about 2 stories above ground, the other roughly as far below ground, and smaller than the first.
Upon arrival the Mages find all of the things you would expect to find at a long abandoned monastery. They wander through a small religious shop where they get their grubby paws on some blessed items (useful in case there might happen to be some ghosts nearby), a chapel with some blessed Bibles, and a ladder leading up to the bell tower. The bell is the first and larger source of iron at the site.
Now, being a GM I know that if I put a rope next to a bell and there are seven players at my table SOMEBODY is going to pull that rope. Who could resist? When I’m a player character, I can’t. To sweeten the temptation I made sure to point out the location of a small plaque next to the ladder that leads up to the tower which reads: “Faustus Upstairs Up Ladder In Tower.” I promise you I did not make that up. I actually found that on not one but two of the websites I visited while researching the very real abandoned monastery St Augustine’s! How could I not include it? I was obligated. It was a sacred duty. Who am I to drop the ball on the performance of sacred duty?
And so, of course, Riff-Raff pulls the rope. Good old Riff-Raff. I knew I could count on you.
Then the demon attacks. Now Nokoni had been using his Spirit sight to scrutinize the area, but Faustus (I had to name him Faustus under the circumstances) was discorporated until someone rang the bell because that is one of his abilities. So as soon as Riff-Raff pulled that rope several things happened:
- The peal of the bell nearly deafened several characters
- Faustus materialized
- Nokoni’s Spirit senses started tingling
- The party was attacked by a swarm of bats
Put another way: shit got real.
It was an epic battle. Aren’t they all? Faustus has the ability to instill fear in people, causing Damien to flee the area for multiple rounds almost immediately. He can not create fear in anyone who rings the bell, so Riff-Raff was off the hook on that one. Faustus can create more bats. Faustus can freeze someone in place – paralyzed with fear. All of this is pretty fun for me, but my personal favorite of Fausty-baby’s abilities is the Desiccation Numina. This particular Numina drains the fluid from its victim. Due to the nature of my dear little demon’s abilities I decided that this took on the very particular form of the character losing bladder control, and taking bashing damage in the process. And who do we think I targeted with this ability?
Some days I love this job.
Next Week on “Mage: the Awakening”:
Aenaiyah calls Damien back to the monastery with a desperate request. Damien is almost murdered by a cabal-mate when he arrives on the scene with ass-less chaps.
Session Scheming
Tonight on #RPGChat* we were discussing the virtues of session planning, and how some of us like to go about it. This feels appropriate to me for two main reasons, this first of which is that I have a new chapter starting up soon for the Mages (the blog is behind the campaign’s timeline but we’ll catch up to them eventually!), and the second being that RetCon is rapidly approaching and I’m in convention game planning hell.
For reasons too asinine to go into here I committed to running three brand new adventures this year: Innocents, Hunter, and Mage. I have a vague idea of what these sessions will be, which you can check out for yourself if you click through the links. RetCon is in two weeks.
No good can come of this.
There is a lot of flying by the seat of my pants that I do with the Mage campaign. With seven players tossing around god-like powers I’m pretty much forced to. My convention games however are much more solidly put together. There are packets with background info on the characters and their basic attitudes toward life and the current situation to be put together. Naturally the characters all need to be fully statted. The packets also include a brief explanation of certain concepts so that if I have people who are new to the system they will know how things work, for example how the Virtue/Vice selections come into play. I am absolutely a fan of having things to hand out during game sessions and that all has to be put together too.
I like to give my convention players as much of a sandbox environment as I can, but the fact is that I’m running for people I don’t know and may or may not see again. This means coming up with specific goals for them that will keep them in a reasonably predictable area, and then giving them free reign to interact with that environment. I also love to give them free reign to interact with each other. This is where those character “attitudes” come into play. I make every effort to give the PCs things to argue about. Some will totally believe in the presence of the supernatural all around them, while others are skeptics. Some will be bright eyed, bushy tailed, and enthusiastic to learn something new from their team mates; while some of those team mates are just hoping they haven’t been saddled with some brown-nosing, over achieving, suck up. of course having a “Brainey Smurf” around is always good for inter-group tensions. When folks play up those personality types hilarity is sure to ensue.
The story has to be short enough to run in the time allowed, but it can’t run too short either. To that end, I try to plan out things that will be fun for the players to do yet aren’t necessary for the storyline to make sense. I plot out filler scenes. The trick is to make sure they don’t feel like filler scenes. I always give myself a way to trigger the finale in case they don’t get through all of the ‘necessary events’ with at least 30 minutes left in the session. I don’t want things to feel forced, but more importantly I don’t want the players to leave the table feeling incomplete. That isn’t good for anybody.
So, basically, I still have a lot of writing to do, and I have a rapidly diminishing amount of time left in which to do it. It’s all good though. I have my trusty coffee and the day off. I can do this! So, if you’re in the New York area I urge you to check out RetCon this year. There will be chances for me to kill your character! There will be prizes! There will be cake!!**
*It’s a Twitter thing, and if you aren’t there at 9pm on Thursday nights then… well… you should be there is all I’m tryin’ to say!
**The cake is a lie.
The GM Knows…
One of my favorite Mage set pieces has to be an abandoned monastery in Staten Island called St Augustine’s.
In the real world St Augustine’s was abandoned some time in the mid-to-late 60’s and left to ruin. Some of the original grounds have become Wagner College, but some remained as they were. Rumors abound as to what can be found there. Some say that an insane monk set a fire that killed a number of people ranging from none to hundreds. Some say that there are at least a dozen sub-basements, but since the lower floors are flooded below the third no one can say for sure.
Many rumors warn of the cells in the lowest of levels, however deep they may actually be. Those stories say that if one were to be able to swim deep enough, or if the water were to be removed, there is a cell in the lowest level that housed the monk that went insane and set the fire. They claim that his body was never retrieved from his sleeping cell, and that his ghost lingers with it.
When the real life history of a location is this rich it’s impossible to not want to bring it into the World of Darkness. I turned up a wide variety of websites about the place during my campaign research, which means that the players can totally psych themselves out before things really get rolling! These online rumors also persist in my campaign world, and this being the World of Darkness they are not easily dismissed. There was indeed a mad monk in the basement in my world, and he may be there still. He may not be alone. Of course strong emotions attract the notice of the spirit realm, and burning alive does tend to bring on extreme fear… and pain.
I do make an effort to provide some good to go with the bad. This having been a holy place there are sanctified items to be found. The brothers earned the money necessary to sustain themselves by crafting crosses and rosary beads. They also printed bibles at a small hand-press on site, and transcribed verses onto cards and plaques. All of these items give advantage should one need to perform an exorcism, but why on earth would anyone ever feel the need to do that?
There is so much for the Mages to uncover here that I would have been remiss if I hadn’t let my Multiple Mage Murderer have found it to be a marvelous place to hide. Naturally I felt compelled to give him a good reason to feel safe here. You can file that under “The Bad”.
Who knows what the Mages might find hidden in this long forgotten place?
Two Out Of Three Ain’t Bad
One of my favorite parts of GMing at RetCon is not having to deal with having a bunch of insane, over-powered monsters at my table. I go into the convention assured that my players will indeed be insane, but at least for two out of three sessions they won’t be able to stop time, summon supernal demons, and change the laws of physics. For two out of three sessions I will be torturing mere mortal humans. It is exhilarating!
I enjoy running Mage, truly I do, but after a while it becomes difficult to find ways to challenge characters that can do pretty much anything. RetCon gives me a chance to scale back a bit. I don’t need a house filled with hundreds of zombies, and a variety of traps, and an over-powered Mage with a ridiculous familiar… a dozen or so zombies and a crazy guy trying to raise a loved one from the dead will suit my needs nicely when the protagonists are a TV Crew.
I also like setting up pre-generated characters for the story. I wouldn’t want to hand out pre-gens for a long-term campaign because I’d rather give the players in a campaign more freedom about the type of character they want to play. This often taxes my brain trying to figure out why the characters are working together. (If they are… sometimes they just try to kill each other randomly which is always fine by me!) It also vexes me when players have things in their back stories that are difficult to reconcile with the reality of the campaign world. For a convention one-shot I build the protagonists to the story that will unfold at the table. I can balance them so that each of the players has something important to do. I can give them motivations to make sure that they stay reasonably on track if they are actually trying to play the characters as written, though I must admit that it doesn’t always work out that way. For example, my previously mentioned TV Crew adventure was run twice. The first time I ran it the players saved each other from near death and walked away with some great footage! The second time around… well the character that had the keys to the van survived. The camera with what little footage they actually got… yeah not so much. Probably a good thing too, since most of that footage was of the camera person and the lighting guy trying to kill the on-screen talent for no reason whatsoever. (Somebody call TMZ!)
Of course, the third session will be Mage. I kind of feel obligated to run it, I am the Mage Mistress after all, so it’s a good thing I know how to have fun with it. I might decide to use a setting that I put my regular group through with a few tweaks to see how the convention crowd fares against my “regular” troupe. Or I may write something entirely new and different. I haven’t completely decided yet. I should probably do that soon because RetCon is less than a month away!
And be warned, pre-registration for RetCon will be closing at the end of the month. Which is to say that your last day to pre-register and save 25% is this coming Tuesday! So what are you waiting for? Run… go… now… get to the preregistration site! http://www.theretcon.com/register.htm
Mage Mistress 