Be warned, this is probably going to be a long, introspective post and may not be to everyone's tastes.
My group of late has been very interested in the Classic World of Darkness, and specifically in Vampire. As a result, I've been reading through my old chronicle notes, and the various Vampire supplements I own in an attempt to wring something of quality from the whole mess.
And it is a mess. Both my notes and cWoD. For the part of my notes, you have to go back to the beginning. Back to the first time I stumbled into the position of Storyteller, having no more knowledge of the World of Darkness than what I could glean from borrowed core books and the Werewolf the Apocalypse (Revised) book I'd gotten as a 15th birthday present.
Despite not favoring the thrust of Werewolf's politics, I still adore it. There's something about the fury, the savagery, the doomed nobility, and the tragic struggles of the ill-made heroes that speaks to me, beyond the eco-terrorist, gynocentric, civilization bashing stupidity of it all. But I'm not here to talk about that, and it's going to get me off track if I let it.
My first true attempt to run my own campaign or chronicle was after our original Storyteller joined the Army, as I've mentioned before. The first time I'd run a game was for Vampire, but I hadn't done a very good job, didn't really understand what it was I needed to do, and ultimately the original ST stepped in and basically took the reigns from me in a manner that was very uncool of him in retrospect.
Speaking of retrospects, my first chronicle wasn't very good either. It was a train wreck of inexperience, spinelessness, and poor writing. Inexperience is to be expected. The poor writing was the teething period of a creative mind without much practice and a lot of investing too much of himself into the narrative and characters. A sin I no longer indulge as often nor quite so deeply.
The spinelessness was the largest problem, however. I was fifteen. Caught in the tumultuous shoals of hormonal biological change and the fumbling in the dark that is finding an identity and peers among the chaotic press that was the larger pool of young people experiencing some of the same things I was. I'm not proud of who I was then. The things you say and do when you have neither the clarity of adulthood (and its attendant evening of the hormonal and emotional keels), nor the wisdom of bitter experience...
Regardless, this isn't to wallow in self-pity or to flagellate myself for an audience. Even at my best, I'm not very good at socializing. Breaking the ice is hideously difficult for me, and small talk falls from my lips with all the elegance of a flatulent and inebriated Deacon during the Sunday sermon. Now imagine me as a gangling teenager unhappy with his home life and a tendency to fly off the handle at the slightest provocation.
Like all teenagers, I wanted to fit in somewhere, but it was not my lot. I wasn't handsome. I wasn't athletic. I wasn't academically gifted. I wasn't wealthy. I had (and still have) crooked teeth. I needed glasses and didn't know it. So, when I found roleplaying games and people to play it with, naturally, I was relieved. I had found a circle of people like me, weirdos, outcasts, socially inept people I could bond with. And I clung to that. Probably with more passion than I should have. Because people change.
So, you can imagine that I really, really, wanted to impress my newfound friends and I didn't want them to be angry with me or ostracize me. So, when it came time to take up the reigns of Vampire, I fucked up. Badly. I let them walk all over me, without realizing it. And one of the primary culprits was my oldest friend.
When our old ST left, he gave his campaign notes to one of our players, likely expecting that they either wouldn't be read, or that this person would be a good steward and take up the reigns of the chronicle where it had been left off. As it turned out, those notes proved extremely troublesome. Troublesome because they revealed the background and true scope of power that one of the characters in the chronicle, played by my oldest friend, was supposed to have. He'd taken the Amnesia flaw, likely to min-max and get as many points as possible without having to think about who his character was, and so our ST had filled in the blanks.
What came of this was munchkinry of the third degree. As I learned later from the ST in question, he'd done a lot of research at the library and had made the player's Ravnos vampire a Russian prince from around the time of the Mongol invasion. I don't now recall all the details, but this character had been a vampire of quite low generation and had a number of powers he didn't realize that he had. Worse, at some point during the chronicle, the player in question had had the opportunity to diablerize a powerful, slumbering ancient Cainite.
Instead of keeping the notes secret, the person they were entrusted to let my oldest friend read them. And thus Spade, the Monster was born. I have a feeling that my friend's obsession with the name Spade comes from the rather stringent character limits for names in the original Final Fantasy games, combined with a general interest with card games, the X-Man Gambit, and just being a dash uncreative. Many, many roleplaying characters have been named Spade, but this particular Spade was a 3rd generation vampire of the Ravnos clan.
That's right. That's not a mistake. He was 3rd generation. Somehow. The Assamites have a ritual that allows them to lower their generation by one once they've accumulated enough lower generation vitae. Diablerie also lowers generation by one (though there's a variant rule that is less stringent where you come out somewhere between your original generation and your victim's - and then there's all the evidence in canon that you instead shift to the generation of the vampire you diablerized...).
I'm not 100% certain how the hell any of this occurred, since I wasn't a regular at the time it happened, but I do remember a session where my Ventrue was strapped to one of our old ST's GMPC Mage's front and carried to the top of a skyscraper via jetpack, where they anchored down and two (three?) characters with magically enhanced sniper rifles shot an old and powerful Methuselah vampire from the top of another building.
My Ventrue was just along for the ride. You could say that about the Gangrel I'd made before that too.
So, Spade the Unconquerable came to my humble Dark Age city in Germany, and proceeded to be the most powerful being who could cure Final Death, lay waste to armies, and go toe to toe with Set himself. All of it merely an inconvenience, a slight bump on the road.
That was not the only time he got a free pass to be a completely boring badass whom nothing could challenge, but it was the most egregious.
And the worst part of it is, is that it could have been solved with a single word.
No.
But, when you're a teenager who desperately doesn't want to upset the apple cart of friendship, no doesn't come easily. When you're older, wiser, you know you can say no. Have an obligation to say no, in many cases. Saying no is sometimes the most important thing you'll ever do. Because yes can lead to misery and damnation as equally as it can to bliss and joy.
So ultimately, it's my own fault that my oldest friend ran rampant through my campaigns and chronicles with extremely powerful characters who had no business being there in the first place. And let that be a lesson to anyone all too willing to say yes. It's a fine sentiment to want to allow everyone to have a good time, and let them play whatever they want, because it's just a game, right? Except, that when someone does what my oldest friend did, they're taking advantage of you. And they know it. This isn't simply a "my Storyteller is permissive, so I'll pick something rare and different so I can be a special snowflake" it's a "my Storyteller is a fucking idiot, and I'm taking him for all he's worth" situation.
And it's on you if you allow it to happen.
As a result, my notes are a mishmash from a decade of crossovers with super powered monstrosities. Our games were very much just anti-heroes with superpowers, and well... It's not really what I want out of all this. If my current group is serious about playing the Classic World of Darkness, there's a few things we need to agree on, and they're mostly theme and tone, since on the mechanical side of the house, I'm going to be strict with the rules, and probably strict with my rulings too.
The theme really should be something along the lines of either The Slow Descent or The Long War (maybe a mix of both). The Slow Descent should be about action and consequence, and what makes one human, and the struggle to retain that humanity in the face of perverse and alien need. The Long War is something I've always wanted to deal with. At its core, it's the Jyhad. The struggle of the various factions against each other, but specifically the Elders vs. their childer, and perhaps the Antediluvians against all.
But, roleplaying games are unique in that they're a shared experience, and if my current group wants to play anti-heroes with superpowers, then I'll go along with it. Our previous conversations lead me to believe they're serious about exploring Vampire the Masquerade as it was intended though. I happen to agree with Carlos when he says that he dislikes that Flaws grant character building points, but it's the nature of the ill-conceived beast, since VtM is the granddaddy of anti-D&D games (by which I mean, explicitly designed to not be like D&D).
However, an extra seven points will make little difference in the long haul. It's enough to get one extra level of a discipline. At most, that's a single discipline with up to four points in it. Which is a bad investment, since you are required to find a teacher for new disciplines.
As I mentioned, my notes are a mess. They're a mess because of all the stuff I've mentioned, and also due to the insane dilution that crossovers cause. As a result I'm inclined to rewrite 90% of them. Which means that VtM isn't going to happen soon. But, this is also a good thing because it allows everyone to make a character they want to play, and figure out who this person was before they were born to darkness.
There's a sourcebook that gets a lot of hate (metric tons of it): Dirty Secrets of the Black Hand. I'd say most of it is deserved. It's got some real stinkers in it. Between the terrible Old Clan Tzimisce, and the Souleaters/Vicissitude thing, one might be inclined to throw the whole thing out. But, there's a little text box that explains that the book exists mostly to flesh out possibilities. The World of Darkness is not a concrete thing. None of the books is canon, aside from maybe the information thinly sketched out in the core books. And even that is suspect, since vampires are deceitful by nature. That same text box encourages the Storyteller to make up their own Truth, and that's something I've kept in mind ever since I got the book.
What is the Truth? I'm not telling. It's for my players to discover. But like the X-files was wont to say "Trust no one."
But also, "The Truth is out there."
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