Ho boy, here we go.
The Game: Vampire: The Dark Ages
The Publisher: White Wolf (but like, back in the 90s)
Degree of Familiarity: It's complicated
Books Required: Just the one
OK, it's not really that complicated. I ran a lot of World of Darkness games when I was in college, starting with Wraith: The Oblivion but quickly branching out to basically all of them. I was hired to be the developer of the Dark Ages line in 2001, which was, in retrospect, a questionable decision, as I have no background or particular interest in medieval history (which is fine, because what they really wanted was D&D with fangs, as I was told on multiple occasions). Anyway, I found a couple of old WW books in my office a few months ago, and in keeping with my "do a character for every edition" policy, it's on the list!
Time was I knew World of Darkness books basically inside and out, but it's been a number of years since I've done anything with these games and even longer since I've looked at pre-2000 WoD books. Reading Vampire: The Dark Ages now, about the best thing I can for it is that the cover looks cool and the example of play, a comic with a script written in rhyme and the game mechanics translated on the facing page, is pretty dope. It's your standard 90s WW dealie, which means a bit of fiction or in-character prose, a chapter of setting, and then into splats interspersed with various system bits that reference concepts that haven't been introduced. As far as organization of information, game rulebooks have improved considerably.
Also, this game fails the Chupp test so hard. I read through the clan write-ups, since that's usually the part of a WW book that inspires me, and it's just bland. I think what happened is that the folks who wrote it didn't know the juicy bits of the relevant history, and the result is that the book is rather blandly "medieval". That was 100% what happened when I was developing books for the line; I never had a good sense of the world because I didn't know the history and it's not like you can look up "what happened in Europe in 1230" and get an answer that makes sense (never mind that for Vampire what happened before that time is also very relevant).
Well, anyway, I'm gonna make a vampire character and get this dot off this book, which will then mean I have two more WoD or WoD-adjacent games in my list (but one of them is likely to elicit strong feelings for me so I'll probably give that one another year or two).
So first I need a concept. I...got nothing. I made a character for Dark Ages: Vampire some years back, but he was pretty bland (for reasons already discussed).
OK, well, let's approach this another way - the official time in Vampire: The Dark Ages is mid-late 12th century, so let's do a bit of light historical research and see if anything interests me. (Incidentally, this book is shit for giving any specific context or flavor. Like, different nations are mentioned but I have no idea what a game set in, say, the Holy Roman Empire would look like as compared to one set in France. Guess that's what sourcebooks are for! Gotta save space for all the crossover information, so that the developers can shit on crossover in other books/the forums!)
All right, anyway, I've always been interested in the Iberian peninsula and Al-Andalus, and I've never made an Assamite character (and yes, there's a shitload of early WW racism bound up in that clan, but I'm not going to engage with it as best I can). The 1100s were a time of tumult in the area as Christians and Muslims struggled for territory, it looks like (based on my very cursory research). I've always found the idea of the hasty Embrace interested - a vampire that needs a particular quality right goddamn now and doesn't have the luxury of watching a particular person for years before making them undead. So let's say that my character was a cutpurse on the streets of Toledo. He was a young man (maybe 16 or so) when Alfonso VI took Toledo, and knew the city and its various populations pretty well. His sire, an Assamite of some importance but with limited knowledge of the area, was betrayed by a local supposed supporter and needed local eyes and ears, and guess what, my guy just happened to be in the right place at the right time. He has no idea if his mother or father (neither of whom he ever knew) really christened him, but he goes by Trin (short for "el trinchante", the big serving fork you use to grab hunks of meat).
Pretty good start. I'll put "cutpurse" as my Concept, I know my clan, how about Nature & Demeanor? I think I want Survivor as a Demeanor - he plays heavily into the "gotta eat to live, gotta steal to eat" persona that he's cultivated, but the truth of the matter is a little darker. Trin's Nature is Rogue, and while that makes him usefully ruthless, it's gonna butt up against his clan's agenda at some point. Speaking of that, he's on the Road of Blood.
Right, on to Step Two! Attributes! I think a lifetime on the street pushes him toward Physical being primary, but I'm torn between Social or Mental being secondary. I think I'll go with Social; Trin strikes me as a talker.
OK, so 7 points to divide up among Physical, 5 Social, 3 Mental. Let's just go ahead and jack Dexterity to 5, which eats 4 of my points. I'll put two into Stamina and the last one into Strength.
Social! I want Trin to have a high Manipulation, so I'll put three there and leave Charisma and Appearance at 2.
Mental! Even split, one dot in each one. Might raise Wits later.
And now, over to Abilities. This concept kinds demands Talents to be primary, but I dunno, there are a bunch of Knowledges I want, too. Let's use my tried-and-true method of putting a dot in everything I know I want and seeing where that takes us.
Well, ignoring the early-edition stupidity (why is Acting a Talent? Why is Dodge its own thing?), I definitely see that Talents is where I have the highest concentration of Abilities, so yeah, Talents/Knowledges/Skills, I think.
I already have a dot in Acting, Alertness, Athletics, Brawl, Dodge (oy), Larceny, and Subterfuge. Six more points to throw around here. Well, I'll raise Larceny to 3 and Subterfuge, Acting, Alertness, and Athletics to 2.
Now, over under Knowledges, I have a single dot in Hearth Wisdom, Investigation, Law, Linguistics, and Politics. Four more dots. I'm gonna put two into Linguistics and two into Politics. Trin has a good ear for language and the area he grew up was kind of the border of a few different territories, so he's learned a bunch of languages (he's not literate in anything, though). He's also got a good knack for social dynamics and he keeps his ear to the street on who's pissed at whom, from lowly gang leaders to nobility. It's all connected, after all.
Skillz! I have a dot in Etiquette, Melee, Stealth, and Survival, and I only have one left, so I'll put that in Stealth.
On to the fun stuff! I get four dots in Disciplines, which I have to split between Celerity, Obfuscate, and Quietus. Hmm. I think Trin's greatest aptitude is gonna be Obfuscate, so I'll put two dots there and one in the other two. Are my dice pools gonna suck? Oh, actually, none of those powers require rolls, sweet.
Backgrounds! I get five dots. Hmm. I know I want Mentor and I feel like Contacts makes sense. Let's put two in Mentor (well-respected elder but not on stable footing here), two in Contacts, and one in Generation for now.
Virtues! Seven dots to split between Conviction, Self-Control, and Courage. Hmm. I think two each and then the last one into Self-Control. That gives me a Road rating of 7 and a Willpower of 3 (boo).
Freebies! I get 15, unless I wish to take Flaws, which I do. Let's take Infamous Sire (it's only a 1-pt Flaw, after all). I'll take Second-Class Citizen (because he's a street rat). And I'll take Overconfident, seems to fit. That gives me 4 more freebies, so I have 19 to throw around.
I'll blow 7 on a dot of Auspex (I figure his sire would have taught him that post haste). I'll spend 3 to raise Willpower to 6. I'll spend 2 to buy a third dot of Stealth. That leaves me 7 more. I think I do want a third dot of Wits, so that's 5. Two left. Oh, let's put 'em into Generation, which makes me 9th generation. Nice.
So Trin got snatched up by an elder Assamite named Omar and Embraced. Omar projects this very "Sultan-from-Aladdin" vibe, but he's far from clueless. He's out of his depth because another Assamite stabbed him in the back (not literally) and cut him off from support in Al-Andalus, and Omar just needs a little help to find his feet, reestablish his power base, and then this other fucker is gonna get fed to Trin.
Trin doesn't know that, of course, and he suspects that Omar is just using him for his street and linguistics knowledge, after which he'll get turned loose or set on fire. Trin's roguish nature might just screw him long-term, here. But we'll never know 'cause I ain't never gonna play this little scamp (which is a shame, I kinda like him).
No comments:
Post a Comment