I want you to try and think back, my little friend.
No, no, don't worry, I won't hurt you.
There's no need for me to raise a finger.
All I want to do is talk to you.
Have you ever felt sadness in your life? I'm not talking about ordinary, run of the mill sadness, like missing out on something you want. Think back, my friend, think back to a time when you were sure your life was over. Think of a time when your heart was broken, and you lay, your dreams leaking out of your eyes and pooling in empty puddles around your feet. Sadness where you were sure your soul would be scarred, this time, when you're sure that death would be better than this.
Be brave, I know you can find it.
How did you deal with it, little friend? Did you promise yourself to do better? Did you dream of a tomorrow where your life would be magically turned around? Or did you simply grit your teeth and pray with blind hope that everything would somehow be ok?
How's that working out for you?
There are gods who will preach about hope. There are gods that will speak of indulgence, or claim that passion and strength make life worth living. They're all afraid, you see. It's in the nature of all things to reject emptiness and oblivion, but I won't feed you comfortable lies. I won't deceive you to get you on my side, because, quite honestly, I don't need you. But I do care about you. I respect you enough to tell you the truth that all life is afraid to hear.
The simple fallacy we are fed from our birth to our death is that every little agony, every little loss and pain, is worth it, somehow balanced by the amount of beauty there is to be experienced in the world. Ask yourself truly, really, deep down if you think that's true. You can lie to me, and I won't blame you for it. Lie to yourself, if it makes you feel better, but when you come to me in the end, choking out your last on some god-forsaken rock, you'll know I'm right. I'm doing you a favor telling you this, because if you think that there's a happy ending to this story, you're in for a rude surprise.
Quite honestly, my little friend, it breaks my heart to see you like this. I have seen every speck of life in the cosmos, from the greatest beast to the tiniest microbe, and I have seen them waste their lives away, chasing programmed desires like propagation, assuring the curse of life will spread to the next generation. All this, just for some meaning. Just to escape the grim reality that life is a curse.
I don't blame you, really, it's difficult to accept the truth. The longer you live, the more you will suffer, it is a simple fact, and yet, an entire pantheon has risen against me, raging futilely in an uncaring cosmos. My brothers and sisters think they are separate, but in truth they are just another aspect of the great cancer of life, and they fear death as much as any being. Khorne believes he can avert death, selfishly feeding others into its maw in a hypocritical and ultimately useless attempt to escape. Slaanesh can fuck itself raw, believing that it can outrun the cold, forever to distract itself with meaningless pleasure. Tzeentch.....well, he's the worst of the lot. All he has ever done is propagate the lie. Tzeentch will tell you that there's just a little bit more, that there's always something over the horizon. I hate to burst your bubble kid, but there isn't.
So what should you do? I mean you're trapped in this prison of rotting flesh, you might as well do something. Some of my followers kill themselves. While I don't begrudge them their release, I find that attitude selfish. There are so many people that you can help while you're here, sending yourself into death's jaws prematurely just helps yourself. Still, some people can't bear the burden, so I don't hold it against them, My advice, little one? Shred all attachments. Burn all emotion. If nothing holds you to this world, nothing can ever hurt you again right? Accept that all things will go, and hell, might as well destroy them yourself before someone else takes them away right? Hurting, sadness and pain are all just symptoms of attachment, and that's what I'm here to help you let go of. Feel free to give others the release of death, but remember, there isn't any use in hating them. They're scared, just the same as you. Free them from their false lives with mercy, and know that you did the right thing.
I do my part, but in the end its up to you. I have many other lives to touch, and many other people I need to give the truth. We'll meet again, though, my little friend. Remember, in all the universe, no matter how bad things get, I will never abandon you. Love fades and rots, anger burns out, and hope is revealed for the lie it is. In despair, in the warm, dark, carrion stench, I'll be there, ready to stick to you and drag you down, where there is no light, coldness or feeling. I'll stick to your soul and weigh you down until there's nothing left, and in the end, you'll come to Papa Nurgle's embrace.
'
It's ok, little friend, I don't need you to accept any of this yet. Think about it. Wisdom comes with time, I always say, and I have all the time in the universe for you to see things my way.
In the end, everything comes to their Papa.
- Kephn
Monday, 21 April 2014
Wednesday, 9 April 2014
RPG Antagonists: The True Fae (Changeling: The Lost)
It's been months since I touched this blog, and for that, I apologize. So many hassles in life, from finding and maintaining employment to other personal issues have a habit of being in the way. Besides, for the longest time, I was completely stumped on what to write next. I couldn't find the voice for the Nurgle article, and I just haven't had the time to roleplay very much.
Still, enough with the excuses. Today we're going to dig into to a whopper of an antagonist. Changeling: The Lost has been considered one of the best RPG's to come out of White Wolf's New World of Darkness line, and I would heartily agree. I've never had a chance to play its predecessor, The Dreaming, however, after a quick couple of glances at the rulebook, I didn't think I would find it that interesting. I'm sure it's a fine game in its own right, just not really what I would think of when I hear the tagline 'a storytelling game of personal horror.' Changeling: The Lost rectifies this immediately, and does something very few other works of fiction involving fairies do: make them scary.
Faeries, in myth and legend, have always been a bit of a weird bunch. They're very alien, and in a lot of legends seem to represent otherness, whether in the form of nature or other cultures or gods or so. They're never really good or evil, just some are malicious and some are benign, just like humans, and they operate according to strange codes of law that don't make sense to people, but are as immutable to them as breathing is to us. The one common thread, however, is that you do not want to get on their bad side. Faeries are very easily offended, and take slights and minor inconveniences a lot more seriously than most humans do. The entire reason the word 'Faerie' exists is as a derivative of 'The Fair Folk.' The reason you called Faeries that was that if you called them anything else, they'd hollow your skull out and use it as a drinking cup. Changeling: The Lost harks back to these old fairy tales, of creeping dread, strange, alien powers lurking outside of civilization, but also great beauty and wonders beyond the ken of mortal men. It remembers that while the Fae may look beautiful, may seem quaint and pleasing, they come from a land of dreams and nightmares, and they're the ones in charge.
The True Fae are a strange, capricious bunch. All of them are utterly mad intellects that dwell in an alternate reality called Arcadia, accessed through a sort of 'in between' world known as the Hedge. Arcadia is an insane tapestry of dreams and nightmares, each one the domain of a different Fae, and within their domains, the Fae are gods. Stuff works because the Fae says it works. In one Faerie's domain, up could be down, and unlucky visitors could find themselves falling into the infinite blue expanse of the sky, never to return. In another, darkness could be a physical entity that hungers for life and warmth and devours anything it touches. There are no assurances within Arcadia, and human visitors` often find themselves completely lost in the mad chaos, like a lucid dream or an acid trip. The Fae are the natives of this land, and constantly fight against each other, devouring each other and making alliances as they see fit, constantly altering the size and shape of the plane. The one thing the True Fae have in common, however, is that they like mortal company. That's where you come in.
Getting selected by one of the Gentry is a harrowing feeling, and should be portrayed in a very lovecraftian way. Whether your particular Faerie is a maiden so incredibly beautiful that the very sight of her gives you a heroin high or a 15 foot tall snake made of living, stitched together dog faces, the Fae want what they want, and they're willing to do anything to get it. Imagine being stalked by a shadowy figure, always at the corner of your eye, or to go for a bathroom break in the office, and instead find yourself in an infinite garden of thorns and brambles. Worse yet, all things from Arcadia (including you, eventually), have a Mask, and no one else can see what you're so afraid of and help you. The Fae make people feel helpless, like they're lost in a waking nightmare, and worst of all, they make people feel out of control. The Fae really are lovecraftian in the truest sense of the word. They care only about their own insane whims, are bigger and more powerful than you, and don't have a care in the world about breaking your mind, body and soul.
The stay in Arcadia, for a changeling, is probably one of the most harrowing experiences a human mind can conceive of. Regardless of how comfortable the realm is, or how kindly your Fae captor treats you, it's still a prison. The Fae doesn't really love you, hate you, or even consider you very much as a person. What's happening right now is just a single whim that will inevitably fade in time. I've heard Arcadia be described as being trapped in a dream, but in reality, it's far worse. It's being trapped in someone else's dream. A dream in which you can't escape, just another little element for the mad dreamer to play with. Everything in Arcadia is vivid, colors are brighter, lines are more crisp, but also more indistinct. The more you try to comprehend a shape, the more one line blurs into another, one hallway turns into a wall, and the more the Faeries laugh. Escaping Arcadia means traveling to the very edges of the dream (if they even exist), and tearing your soul to tatters as you madly try to reach reality, and all this is if your Faerie doesn't notice you. If it does, prepare for a truly harrowing ordeal when you get back, or perhaps something as simple as the Faerie thinking it was all a game, and making you play it again and again, forever. The Fae are never predictable.
When portraying the Fae, it's important to remember one simple truth, possibly the only truth to apply to them. The Fae are CHAOTIC, and I don't mean the Warhammer style, where chaos is evil, or DnD style, where chaos is always trying to break the rules. The Fae are chaotic in the way a psychopath is chaotic, endlessly flitting from one thing to the next, never settling, or maybe settling forever. Even mad is too mortal and comprehensible a term to apply to the Fae, as madness often conforms to certain rules. The Fae can be literally anything, from towering, glorious forms, to traditional gods, to tiny insects, to even more abstract things, like a sentient color or time of day. Fae minds are fractured, broken things, and the way they manifest should reflect that. It's always good to throw the players off guard. Maybe they're accustomed to seeing Fairies in humanoid form, and are instead presented with one that literally IS the domain they're in. Likewise, a Faerie might be able to stride, laughing through a gasoline fire, but flee from the sound of laughing children. Faeries are big, scary, and incomprehensible, but they do have some rules. Granted, these rules are different for each Faerie, but no one ever said that this was easy.
This brings me to my next point. An unbeatable antagonist is a boring antagonist, and the Fae certainly can be beaten. As mentioned above, the Fae have different weaknesses that can be exploited by individuals who know what they are, and as such, the Fae keep these weaknesses very close to their chests. The one universal weakness they have, however, is iron, the purer the better. No one knows why. There are theories, like the Fae breaking a deal with the concept of iron, or iron being a symbol of civilization, but ultimately, like everything about the Gentry, it is simply another fact of life. The important bit is that iron burns a Faerie like a blowtorch, and meteoric iron, stuff that has never been tainted by anything else or sullied by the touch of man can sear a True Fae away like an ice sculpture hit with a blowtorch. This is not their greatest weakness though. Their greatest weakness, is that the True Fae understand humans about as much as humans understand them. Powerful and totally batshit bonkers they may be, but they would never think of a human calling his friends for help, and perfectly normal courses of actions can seem totally alien to the Faerie in question. Clever mortals, who understand the world can outfox and beat Faeries in exactly the same way that Faeries manipulate their own plane to beat mortals.
Finally, a few example Fae of my own creation to terrorize or enchant your players with.
Dr. Knives
There's something very creepy about hospitals. Maybe it's the cold sterility contrasted with the warm guts they interact with, but Dr. Knives is all those fears embodied. Standing 15 feet tall and inhumanly slim, the doctor is a vaguely humanoid figure wrapped in white plastic, with only a pair of surgical goggles on his featureless face. From his back, like the legs of a spider, fleshy appendages loom over his victims, biomechanical tentacles tipped with scalpels, dentist drills, bone saws, and everything else that can take a man apart. Dr. Knives never speaks, but his servants know instinctively what he wants them to do. He views the world as a riddle, and is very interested in solving this riddle, piece by bloody piece. Humans kidnapped by him often never make it, as they are coldly and cruelly pulled apart, each shred of skin or piece of muscle cataloged and filed away neatly, as if he's trying to find something ephemeral, though sometimes he stops after half-flaying his victim and incinerates them. His realm is a vast, and nightmarish pastiche of hospitals, from old victorian bedlam houses to modern day emergency rooms, some cold, white and pristine, and others splattered with gore. The few mortals he decides to keep (assuming they haven't been flayed too badly) are remade into nightmarish horrors wrapped in straight jackets made of their own plastic skin, and are often made to help him perform his gruesome surgeries.
Weakness: Dr. Knives can only manifest and open portals to earth within hospitals, and his victims have to be unconscious, comatose or anesthetized when he takes them. He can never take someone while they are fully conscious, and all his intended victim has to do to escape is leave the hospital (though his changelings are able to leave hospitals)
The Socialite
She's more beautiful than any woman you've ever seen, the kind of beauty that starts wars. Her victims are often her lovers, and the road to Arcadia so subtle that very few realize they're leaving until they've already gotten there. She haunts any place where the upper class go to mingle, and when she finds someone suitably interesting, she gradually draws them into her world. The Socialite is one of the most human of the Faeries, and yearns for a true relationship, someone to be her equal and partner, and maybe give her children. She doesn't really understand love, however, and her realm is a seemingly endless array of high-class cityscapes and apartments, each room filled with the men and women she has entranced. The Socialite floats between them, visiting them, sleeping with some, breaking the hearts of others, and occasionally making them fight to the death on the empty streets for her favor. Like a classic sociopath, the Socialite thrives on conflict, and enjoys pitting one lover against the other, to see who is more worthy. Her changelings are almost invariably Fairest, and almost all hopelessly enthralled. In her true form, the Socialite looks like an impossibly beautiful woman, with subtle changes depending on the viewer. She is as capricious as the tide, and can be fawning over you one day and coldly rejecting you another. Lovers who fall too far out of her favor often find themselves with broken hearts, both metaphorically and literally.
Weakness: The Socialite cannot stand rejection. If a being can look upon her divine charms, and willingly turn away, the Socialite's illusion shatters, and she cannot influence the mind of that being ever again. Worse, looks are everything to the Socialite, and if such a being that can resist her charms brings a weapon to bear against her (though they must be physically holding it. Ranged weapons don't cut it), it will burn her like cold iron. She therefore is a very spiteful hunter of her escaped lovers, as they possess the key to destroying her.
Finally, some nice inspirations for a Gentry inspired tale of Changeling:
Pan's Labyrinth: A pretty classic example.The horrors of the fae world contrasted with the horrors of the real world always makes for a nice dichotomy, and everything in this movie feels like a bizarre dream. The horrors are real though, and the Pale Man and the Faun make excellent examples of True Fae.
Marble Hornets: THE definitive Slender-Man tale, still as effective today as it was when it first came out. Marble Hornets tells the story of a young man who is relentlessly stalked by an unseen but incredibly dangerous creature that can create other dimensions and turn people into its minions. Sound familiar? It's also just an excellent series and shows that you really don't need a big budget to make a good story.
Grave Encounters: A pretty creepy and obscure little film, I think Grave Encounters epitomizes what it's like to be trapped in a particularly inhospitable realm of Arcadia. The crew are trapped in an abandoned mental asylum that warps to prevent them from escaping and is filled with hungry ghosts. The sequel takes it up to eleven by revealing that the asylum-world covers the space of a city, and it even lets them go before drawing them right back in. Who's the True Fae here you may ask? Why, the asylum itself of course. All it wants is visitors.....
- Kephn
Still, enough with the excuses. Today we're going to dig into to a whopper of an antagonist. Changeling: The Lost has been considered one of the best RPG's to come out of White Wolf's New World of Darkness line, and I would heartily agree. I've never had a chance to play its predecessor, The Dreaming, however, after a quick couple of glances at the rulebook, I didn't think I would find it that interesting. I'm sure it's a fine game in its own right, just not really what I would think of when I hear the tagline 'a storytelling game of personal horror.' Changeling: The Lost rectifies this immediately, and does something very few other works of fiction involving fairies do: make them scary.
Faeries, in myth and legend, have always been a bit of a weird bunch. They're very alien, and in a lot of legends seem to represent otherness, whether in the form of nature or other cultures or gods or so. They're never really good or evil, just some are malicious and some are benign, just like humans, and they operate according to strange codes of law that don't make sense to people, but are as immutable to them as breathing is to us. The one common thread, however, is that you do not want to get on their bad side. Faeries are very easily offended, and take slights and minor inconveniences a lot more seriously than most humans do. The entire reason the word 'Faerie' exists is as a derivative of 'The Fair Folk.' The reason you called Faeries that was that if you called them anything else, they'd hollow your skull out and use it as a drinking cup. Changeling: The Lost harks back to these old fairy tales, of creeping dread, strange, alien powers lurking outside of civilization, but also great beauty and wonders beyond the ken of mortal men. It remembers that while the Fae may look beautiful, may seem quaint and pleasing, they come from a land of dreams and nightmares, and they're the ones in charge.
The True Fae are a strange, capricious bunch. All of them are utterly mad intellects that dwell in an alternate reality called Arcadia, accessed through a sort of 'in between' world known as the Hedge. Arcadia is an insane tapestry of dreams and nightmares, each one the domain of a different Fae, and within their domains, the Fae are gods. Stuff works because the Fae says it works. In one Faerie's domain, up could be down, and unlucky visitors could find themselves falling into the infinite blue expanse of the sky, never to return. In another, darkness could be a physical entity that hungers for life and warmth and devours anything it touches. There are no assurances within Arcadia, and human visitors` often find themselves completely lost in the mad chaos, like a lucid dream or an acid trip. The Fae are the natives of this land, and constantly fight against each other, devouring each other and making alliances as they see fit, constantly altering the size and shape of the plane. The one thing the True Fae have in common, however, is that they like mortal company. That's where you come in.
Getting selected by one of the Gentry is a harrowing feeling, and should be portrayed in a very lovecraftian way. Whether your particular Faerie is a maiden so incredibly beautiful that the very sight of her gives you a heroin high or a 15 foot tall snake made of living, stitched together dog faces, the Fae want what they want, and they're willing to do anything to get it. Imagine being stalked by a shadowy figure, always at the corner of your eye, or to go for a bathroom break in the office, and instead find yourself in an infinite garden of thorns and brambles. Worse yet, all things from Arcadia (including you, eventually), have a Mask, and no one else can see what you're so afraid of and help you. The Fae make people feel helpless, like they're lost in a waking nightmare, and worst of all, they make people feel out of control. The Fae really are lovecraftian in the truest sense of the word. They care only about their own insane whims, are bigger and more powerful than you, and don't have a care in the world about breaking your mind, body and soul.
The stay in Arcadia, for a changeling, is probably one of the most harrowing experiences a human mind can conceive of. Regardless of how comfortable the realm is, or how kindly your Fae captor treats you, it's still a prison. The Fae doesn't really love you, hate you, or even consider you very much as a person. What's happening right now is just a single whim that will inevitably fade in time. I've heard Arcadia be described as being trapped in a dream, but in reality, it's far worse. It's being trapped in someone else's dream. A dream in which you can't escape, just another little element for the mad dreamer to play with. Everything in Arcadia is vivid, colors are brighter, lines are more crisp, but also more indistinct. The more you try to comprehend a shape, the more one line blurs into another, one hallway turns into a wall, and the more the Faeries laugh. Escaping Arcadia means traveling to the very edges of the dream (if they even exist), and tearing your soul to tatters as you madly try to reach reality, and all this is if your Faerie doesn't notice you. If it does, prepare for a truly harrowing ordeal when you get back, or perhaps something as simple as the Faerie thinking it was all a game, and making you play it again and again, forever. The Fae are never predictable.
When portraying the Fae, it's important to remember one simple truth, possibly the only truth to apply to them. The Fae are CHAOTIC, and I don't mean the Warhammer style, where chaos is evil, or DnD style, where chaos is always trying to break the rules. The Fae are chaotic in the way a psychopath is chaotic, endlessly flitting from one thing to the next, never settling, or maybe settling forever. Even mad is too mortal and comprehensible a term to apply to the Fae, as madness often conforms to certain rules. The Fae can be literally anything, from towering, glorious forms, to traditional gods, to tiny insects, to even more abstract things, like a sentient color or time of day. Fae minds are fractured, broken things, and the way they manifest should reflect that. It's always good to throw the players off guard. Maybe they're accustomed to seeing Fairies in humanoid form, and are instead presented with one that literally IS the domain they're in. Likewise, a Faerie might be able to stride, laughing through a gasoline fire, but flee from the sound of laughing children. Faeries are big, scary, and incomprehensible, but they do have some rules. Granted, these rules are different for each Faerie, but no one ever said that this was easy.
This brings me to my next point. An unbeatable antagonist is a boring antagonist, and the Fae certainly can be beaten. As mentioned above, the Fae have different weaknesses that can be exploited by individuals who know what they are, and as such, the Fae keep these weaknesses very close to their chests. The one universal weakness they have, however, is iron, the purer the better. No one knows why. There are theories, like the Fae breaking a deal with the concept of iron, or iron being a symbol of civilization, but ultimately, like everything about the Gentry, it is simply another fact of life. The important bit is that iron burns a Faerie like a blowtorch, and meteoric iron, stuff that has never been tainted by anything else or sullied by the touch of man can sear a True Fae away like an ice sculpture hit with a blowtorch. This is not their greatest weakness though. Their greatest weakness, is that the True Fae understand humans about as much as humans understand them. Powerful and totally batshit bonkers they may be, but they would never think of a human calling his friends for help, and perfectly normal courses of actions can seem totally alien to the Faerie in question. Clever mortals, who understand the world can outfox and beat Faeries in exactly the same way that Faeries manipulate their own plane to beat mortals.
Finally, a few example Fae of my own creation to terrorize or enchant your players with.
Dr. Knives
There's something very creepy about hospitals. Maybe it's the cold sterility contrasted with the warm guts they interact with, but Dr. Knives is all those fears embodied. Standing 15 feet tall and inhumanly slim, the doctor is a vaguely humanoid figure wrapped in white plastic, with only a pair of surgical goggles on his featureless face. From his back, like the legs of a spider, fleshy appendages loom over his victims, biomechanical tentacles tipped with scalpels, dentist drills, bone saws, and everything else that can take a man apart. Dr. Knives never speaks, but his servants know instinctively what he wants them to do. He views the world as a riddle, and is very interested in solving this riddle, piece by bloody piece. Humans kidnapped by him often never make it, as they are coldly and cruelly pulled apart, each shred of skin or piece of muscle cataloged and filed away neatly, as if he's trying to find something ephemeral, though sometimes he stops after half-flaying his victim and incinerates them. His realm is a vast, and nightmarish pastiche of hospitals, from old victorian bedlam houses to modern day emergency rooms, some cold, white and pristine, and others splattered with gore. The few mortals he decides to keep (assuming they haven't been flayed too badly) are remade into nightmarish horrors wrapped in straight jackets made of their own plastic skin, and are often made to help him perform his gruesome surgeries.
Weakness: Dr. Knives can only manifest and open portals to earth within hospitals, and his victims have to be unconscious, comatose or anesthetized when he takes them. He can never take someone while they are fully conscious, and all his intended victim has to do to escape is leave the hospital (though his changelings are able to leave hospitals)
The Socialite
She's more beautiful than any woman you've ever seen, the kind of beauty that starts wars. Her victims are often her lovers, and the road to Arcadia so subtle that very few realize they're leaving until they've already gotten there. She haunts any place where the upper class go to mingle, and when she finds someone suitably interesting, she gradually draws them into her world. The Socialite is one of the most human of the Faeries, and yearns for a true relationship, someone to be her equal and partner, and maybe give her children. She doesn't really understand love, however, and her realm is a seemingly endless array of high-class cityscapes and apartments, each room filled with the men and women she has entranced. The Socialite floats between them, visiting them, sleeping with some, breaking the hearts of others, and occasionally making them fight to the death on the empty streets for her favor. Like a classic sociopath, the Socialite thrives on conflict, and enjoys pitting one lover against the other, to see who is more worthy. Her changelings are almost invariably Fairest, and almost all hopelessly enthralled. In her true form, the Socialite looks like an impossibly beautiful woman, with subtle changes depending on the viewer. She is as capricious as the tide, and can be fawning over you one day and coldly rejecting you another. Lovers who fall too far out of her favor often find themselves with broken hearts, both metaphorically and literally.
Weakness: The Socialite cannot stand rejection. If a being can look upon her divine charms, and willingly turn away, the Socialite's illusion shatters, and she cannot influence the mind of that being ever again. Worse, looks are everything to the Socialite, and if such a being that can resist her charms brings a weapon to bear against her (though they must be physically holding it. Ranged weapons don't cut it), it will burn her like cold iron. She therefore is a very spiteful hunter of her escaped lovers, as they possess the key to destroying her.
Finally, some nice inspirations for a Gentry inspired tale of Changeling:
Pan's Labyrinth: A pretty classic example.The horrors of the fae world contrasted with the horrors of the real world always makes for a nice dichotomy, and everything in this movie feels like a bizarre dream. The horrors are real though, and the Pale Man and the Faun make excellent examples of True Fae.
Marble Hornets: THE definitive Slender-Man tale, still as effective today as it was when it first came out. Marble Hornets tells the story of a young man who is relentlessly stalked by an unseen but incredibly dangerous creature that can create other dimensions and turn people into its minions. Sound familiar? It's also just an excellent series and shows that you really don't need a big budget to make a good story.
Grave Encounters: A pretty creepy and obscure little film, I think Grave Encounters epitomizes what it's like to be trapped in a particularly inhospitable realm of Arcadia. The crew are trapped in an abandoned mental asylum that warps to prevent them from escaping and is filled with hungry ghosts. The sequel takes it up to eleven by revealing that the asylum-world covers the space of a city, and it even lets them go before drawing them right back in. Who's the True Fae here you may ask? Why, the asylum itself of course. All it wants is visitors.....
- Kephn
Wednesday, 5 February 2014
Raging Against The Elders
Hello everybody, and happy new year.
It's been a long time since I've done one of these articles, and today, I'm going to write about a subject I feel rather strongly about. Now, I've been playing Vampire: The Masquerade for several years, and my favorite mode of play has always been the Sabbat. Now, I know, the Sabbat are supposed to be antagonists. They're supposed to be the 'evil' vampires that the Camarilla oppose, and I've probably made a vast number of V: tM players mad right now. But before you send me hate mail, about how I'm 'not playing it right,' or whatever else, listen to my perspective. I could have made this another RPG Antagonists article, but I like the Sabbat far too much to resign them to mere antagonists. Honestly, the Camarilla has starred more often in my game as the antagonistic force, and the Sabbat is an incredibly rich, diverse roleplaying setting. So, without further ado, let's dig into the Sword of Caine.
Now, to understand the Sabbat, you need to understand where they're coming from. It's easy to stereotype them as a horde of frenzying barbarians coming to batter down the walls of civilization, but the Sabbat have more to offer then that. The Sabbat was founded for the betterment of vampirekind. The Sabbat was founded on the basis of equality for all Cainites. The Anarch Revolt in the 1400's, the neonate revolt against the elders, that forced the elders to see neonates as a force to be reckoned with, was the revolution that spawned the Sabbat. But with the foundation of the Camarilla, the supposedly rebellious Anarchs agreed to the terms of the Camarilla. They agreed, once more to the rule of elders. The Sabbat were the vampires who stood true to their principles and said 'no.' The Sabbat, at the time, were right. If vampires had simply launched a true revolt, they could have ruled the world openly. In the dark ages, all humans had to fight them were stakes, crucifixes and fire. Vampires could have fed openly in the streets and ruled over the kine as the blood-stained gods of the night, but because of the cowardice of the Camarilla, vampires were forced to hide. They were forced to pretend to be human, and they were forced to deny their true nature. Now, can you imagine what it's like for the vampires who had lived to see the modern nights, from those ancient times? Can you imagine what it feels like to have divinity snatched so easily from you? The Sabbat are pissed off, and they have every right to be. The Camarilla have forced them into a modern dark age, allowing the humans to create weapons to destroy vampires if they were ever to show their faces. In a very real way, the Sabbat feel cheated.
Now, the Sabbat of the modern nights aren't just permanently frenzying monsters. Monsters they are, yes, but that's because they accept what they are, rather than, trying to hide behind the pathetic veneer of humanity. The Camarilla tries to pretend they are mortals, tries to pretend that they can still feel human emotions and that the thirst for blood doesn't guide their every action. Worse, the Camarilla adherence to humanity is all for show, a cheap little trick to lure neonates into the worship of the Antediluvians, because to the Sabbat, that's all the Camarilla is. The Sabbat, unlike the Camarilla, believe in the myth of Caine and his grandchilder, and rightfully fear them. They can feel the call of the ancients, and know that they sleep, waiting for the final night when they awaken and devour all their childer. The reason the Camarilla denies the existence of the Antediluvians is obviously because they work for them. The Sabbat are the sword of Caine, the last vampires on earth who still heed the words of their founder, and still fight against the foul thirteen elders, who care nothing for their broods.
The Camarilla may preach humanity, but they do not practice it.The so called 'kindred' can never feel at ease, even among their own kind. Backstabbing, untrustworthy creatures, the Sabbat knows what it means to have friendship. Unlike the Camarilla, the Sabbat understands what it means to love their own kind. The Sabbat is based upon the pack structure, where several vampires of common goal, partake among themselves the rite of the Vaulderie. The Vaulderie works by the members of the pack bleeding into a cup, and drinking from it, thereby blood bonding themselves to each other. members of a pack are closer than family, and each pack functions as a brood, a group of true companions, and a military unit. Unlike the decadent Camarilla, the Sabbat does not betray their own kind. The Sabbat are above the Jyhad, and seek their strength through unity. Even better, the power of the Vaulderie breaks all blood-bonds, preventing the foul elders from enslaving the Sabbat to their whims.
The Sabbat are vampire supremacists, and they worship Caine as an example of what a vampire should be. While (given that most players are human), it may be difficult to see this from your characters perspective, that's one of the things I think makes for such a good roleplaying experience. Look at Cainites, in all honesty. Objectively, aside from the curse of sunlight, they ARE better than humans. Cainites are undead, superhuman monsters, and because of the Camarilla, they've been denied their rightful place at the top of the food chain. The Sabbat are pissed off, and rightfully so, when you consider it.
Now, finally, I disagree with the canon interpretation of the Sabbat. Because the writers were trying to make a point of hypocrisy, they made the elders of the Sabbat and Camarilla functionally identical. I honestly think this undercuts the meaning of the Sabbat, and all the drama that they can create. The Sabbat pose a legitimate philosophical opponent to the Camarilla, and I feel that the writers felt the need to make them all a bunch of hypocrites in order to make them 'bad guys.' So, while the following isn't canon, this is how the Sabbat function in my World of Darkness.
For a start, the Sabbat perform what they call the Reciprocum, rather than the Vinculum. A Sabbat elder who bonds a younger member, always takes at least one drink of blood as well. This ensures that, unlike the Camarilla, the Sabbat actually can act as father figures to their troops. Each elder can act as a father figure, leading his troops into battle, and actually caring about their soldiers as well. The Sabbat was built for the equality of all Cainites, and the elders aim to set a good example for their neonates.
Secondly, the Sabbat place no stigma on generation or age. Every Sabbat has the right to be heard, and all opinions are to be judged by their merit, not by who proposed them. There is no shame in being a 14th generation, or even a Pander (clanless) within the Sabbat. If anything, it's just another tool the elders use to maintain power, and even the clanless and the young can have valuable insights into the mortal world, which makes Sabbat elders more adaptable to the modern world.
Finally, while the Sabbat may reject the traditions of the Camarilla, they do admit that some of them are necessary. The biggest part of this is the Masquerade. My Sabbat oppose the Masquerade from a philosophical standpoint, reasoning that if vampires had simply crushed the kine underfoot, the Masquerade would be irrelevant. However, because of the Camarilla's foolish, spineless decision, the Masquerade is a necessity that the Sabbat grudgingly upholds. They aren't idiots, and they know that they are no match for mortals as they are. What the Sabbat oppose is the fact that the Masquerade needed to be implemented in the first place. As for the tradition of Childer, the Sabbat believe that only the worthy should be given the gift of Caine. Humans shouldn't be embraced out of love, or out of sympathy, or other emotions that speak of the weakness of humanity, but because they are warriors. With the gift of Caine, the Sabbat believe they give humans the opportunity to prove themselves. The weak shovelheads perish, and the true vampires survive. It is a boon for the childe to accept or reject, but ultimately, it's always the vampire's choice. Finally, as for the tradition of Diablerie, the most controversial aspect of the Sabbat is that they accept kinslaying as a part of their condition. Sometimes, vampires were simply not meant to be embraced. Sometimes, humans prove to be nothing more than a waste of blood, and the Sabbat see no problem with reclaiming that blood. The Sabbat are founded upon darwinian principles, and, rather than pretend to be alive, they accept that they are a race of predators, and as predators, the weak die and are devoured by the strong. It is cruel yes, but at least the prey gets to live on as part of his killer, becoming part of something bigger than himself.
The Sabbat provide a lot of roleplay opportunities for some stunningly deep drama. The Sabbat are an opportunity to truly see what it means to be a vampire, to find some kind of peace and acceptance with one's condition. It's hard to stomach for humans, but the Sabbat are just another answer to the question that Vampire asks: what does it mean to be a predator? What always appealed to me about the Sabbat is that they can love, they can feel for their friends, just as deeply as they felt for loved ones in life, and that they truly understood what it means to be a vampire. It may be hard to stomach, but ultimately, the entire reason to play Vampire is to play a morally ambiguous character, and the Sabbat are just as heroic and noble (from their own perspective) as the Camarilla, and as Vampire players, we always know how much fun it is to take a walk on the dark side.
- Kephn
It's been a long time since I've done one of these articles, and today, I'm going to write about a subject I feel rather strongly about. Now, I've been playing Vampire: The Masquerade for several years, and my favorite mode of play has always been the Sabbat. Now, I know, the Sabbat are supposed to be antagonists. They're supposed to be the 'evil' vampires that the Camarilla oppose, and I've probably made a vast number of V: tM players mad right now. But before you send me hate mail, about how I'm 'not playing it right,' or whatever else, listen to my perspective. I could have made this another RPG Antagonists article, but I like the Sabbat far too much to resign them to mere antagonists. Honestly, the Camarilla has starred more often in my game as the antagonistic force, and the Sabbat is an incredibly rich, diverse roleplaying setting. So, without further ado, let's dig into the Sword of Caine.
Now, to understand the Sabbat, you need to understand where they're coming from. It's easy to stereotype them as a horde of frenzying barbarians coming to batter down the walls of civilization, but the Sabbat have more to offer then that. The Sabbat was founded for the betterment of vampirekind. The Sabbat was founded on the basis of equality for all Cainites. The Anarch Revolt in the 1400's, the neonate revolt against the elders, that forced the elders to see neonates as a force to be reckoned with, was the revolution that spawned the Sabbat. But with the foundation of the Camarilla, the supposedly rebellious Anarchs agreed to the terms of the Camarilla. They agreed, once more to the rule of elders. The Sabbat were the vampires who stood true to their principles and said 'no.' The Sabbat, at the time, were right. If vampires had simply launched a true revolt, they could have ruled the world openly. In the dark ages, all humans had to fight them were stakes, crucifixes and fire. Vampires could have fed openly in the streets and ruled over the kine as the blood-stained gods of the night, but because of the cowardice of the Camarilla, vampires were forced to hide. They were forced to pretend to be human, and they were forced to deny their true nature. Now, can you imagine what it's like for the vampires who had lived to see the modern nights, from those ancient times? Can you imagine what it feels like to have divinity snatched so easily from you? The Sabbat are pissed off, and they have every right to be. The Camarilla have forced them into a modern dark age, allowing the humans to create weapons to destroy vampires if they were ever to show their faces. In a very real way, the Sabbat feel cheated.
Now, the Sabbat of the modern nights aren't just permanently frenzying monsters. Monsters they are, yes, but that's because they accept what they are, rather than, trying to hide behind the pathetic veneer of humanity. The Camarilla tries to pretend they are mortals, tries to pretend that they can still feel human emotions and that the thirst for blood doesn't guide their every action. Worse, the Camarilla adherence to humanity is all for show, a cheap little trick to lure neonates into the worship of the Antediluvians, because to the Sabbat, that's all the Camarilla is. The Sabbat, unlike the Camarilla, believe in the myth of Caine and his grandchilder, and rightfully fear them. They can feel the call of the ancients, and know that they sleep, waiting for the final night when they awaken and devour all their childer. The reason the Camarilla denies the existence of the Antediluvians is obviously because they work for them. The Sabbat are the sword of Caine, the last vampires on earth who still heed the words of their founder, and still fight against the foul thirteen elders, who care nothing for their broods.
The Camarilla may preach humanity, but they do not practice it.The so called 'kindred' can never feel at ease, even among their own kind. Backstabbing, untrustworthy creatures, the Sabbat knows what it means to have friendship. Unlike the Camarilla, the Sabbat understands what it means to love their own kind. The Sabbat is based upon the pack structure, where several vampires of common goal, partake among themselves the rite of the Vaulderie. The Vaulderie works by the members of the pack bleeding into a cup, and drinking from it, thereby blood bonding themselves to each other. members of a pack are closer than family, and each pack functions as a brood, a group of true companions, and a military unit. Unlike the decadent Camarilla, the Sabbat does not betray their own kind. The Sabbat are above the Jyhad, and seek their strength through unity. Even better, the power of the Vaulderie breaks all blood-bonds, preventing the foul elders from enslaving the Sabbat to their whims.
The Sabbat are vampire supremacists, and they worship Caine as an example of what a vampire should be. While (given that most players are human), it may be difficult to see this from your characters perspective, that's one of the things I think makes for such a good roleplaying experience. Look at Cainites, in all honesty. Objectively, aside from the curse of sunlight, they ARE better than humans. Cainites are undead, superhuman monsters, and because of the Camarilla, they've been denied their rightful place at the top of the food chain. The Sabbat are pissed off, and rightfully so, when you consider it.
Now, finally, I disagree with the canon interpretation of the Sabbat. Because the writers were trying to make a point of hypocrisy, they made the elders of the Sabbat and Camarilla functionally identical. I honestly think this undercuts the meaning of the Sabbat, and all the drama that they can create. The Sabbat pose a legitimate philosophical opponent to the Camarilla, and I feel that the writers felt the need to make them all a bunch of hypocrites in order to make them 'bad guys.' So, while the following isn't canon, this is how the Sabbat function in my World of Darkness.
For a start, the Sabbat perform what they call the Reciprocum, rather than the Vinculum. A Sabbat elder who bonds a younger member, always takes at least one drink of blood as well. This ensures that, unlike the Camarilla, the Sabbat actually can act as father figures to their troops. Each elder can act as a father figure, leading his troops into battle, and actually caring about their soldiers as well. The Sabbat was built for the equality of all Cainites, and the elders aim to set a good example for their neonates.
Secondly, the Sabbat place no stigma on generation or age. Every Sabbat has the right to be heard, and all opinions are to be judged by their merit, not by who proposed them. There is no shame in being a 14th generation, or even a Pander (clanless) within the Sabbat. If anything, it's just another tool the elders use to maintain power, and even the clanless and the young can have valuable insights into the mortal world, which makes Sabbat elders more adaptable to the modern world.
Finally, while the Sabbat may reject the traditions of the Camarilla, they do admit that some of them are necessary. The biggest part of this is the Masquerade. My Sabbat oppose the Masquerade from a philosophical standpoint, reasoning that if vampires had simply crushed the kine underfoot, the Masquerade would be irrelevant. However, because of the Camarilla's foolish, spineless decision, the Masquerade is a necessity that the Sabbat grudgingly upholds. They aren't idiots, and they know that they are no match for mortals as they are. What the Sabbat oppose is the fact that the Masquerade needed to be implemented in the first place. As for the tradition of Childer, the Sabbat believe that only the worthy should be given the gift of Caine. Humans shouldn't be embraced out of love, or out of sympathy, or other emotions that speak of the weakness of humanity, but because they are warriors. With the gift of Caine, the Sabbat believe they give humans the opportunity to prove themselves. The weak shovelheads perish, and the true vampires survive. It is a boon for the childe to accept or reject, but ultimately, it's always the vampire's choice. Finally, as for the tradition of Diablerie, the most controversial aspect of the Sabbat is that they accept kinslaying as a part of their condition. Sometimes, vampires were simply not meant to be embraced. Sometimes, humans prove to be nothing more than a waste of blood, and the Sabbat see no problem with reclaiming that blood. The Sabbat are founded upon darwinian principles, and, rather than pretend to be alive, they accept that they are a race of predators, and as predators, the weak die and are devoured by the strong. It is cruel yes, but at least the prey gets to live on as part of his killer, becoming part of something bigger than himself.
The Sabbat provide a lot of roleplay opportunities for some stunningly deep drama. The Sabbat are an opportunity to truly see what it means to be a vampire, to find some kind of peace and acceptance with one's condition. It's hard to stomach for humans, but the Sabbat are just another answer to the question that Vampire asks: what does it mean to be a predator? What always appealed to me about the Sabbat is that they can love, they can feel for their friends, just as deeply as they felt for loved ones in life, and that they truly understood what it means to be a vampire. It may be hard to stomach, but ultimately, the entire reason to play Vampire is to play a morally ambiguous character, and the Sabbat are just as heroic and noble (from their own perspective) as the Camarilla, and as Vampire players, we always know how much fun it is to take a walk on the dark side.
- Kephn
Tuesday, 3 December 2013
Tzeentch
I exist. There is hope.
I exist. One more plan has failed.
We exist. There is no truth but us.
I begin. I end. We have always been here. Change is inevitable. Move the pawns. Shatter their dreams. Uplift some. Destroy others. Repeat.
This is our symphony.
Dreams. Nightmares. Within us, all are one.
You understand me intimately. In every hope, despair, joy, failure, passion, bloodlust, nothing more than our errant children, brothers one and all.
The god of passion, motion and movement, thrusting and spurting, bleeding love and happiness into the galaxy. Little does she know she breaks as many hearts as she mends. She will always be our pawn. Love is as mercurial a beast as any other. With her power, she lets us into the hearts of men. She is our mother, and we are hers. Sister, brother, lover. How I love you Slaanesh. Please, never change. You are weak and decadent Slaanesh, but you serve my purpose for now. Inextricably, we are bound. We are each others parents, mating eternally throughout the timestream, feeding one another. We have no beginning and no end, and yet we are the beginning and ending of all things. Such beauty. Such despair. It is DELICIOUS.
Khorne, you feeble, little insect, struggling within my grasp. He sees more than me. I must ensure his plans do not come to fruition. Endlessly venting your lust for death upon the galaxy. You play right into my hands. He ends lives! He ends hopes and dreams for change! He must know something. I will discover it! We are as one, Khorne. Different sides to the same coin. Hope and rage, death and despair. Simple. We are intertwined. He DARES mock MY sorcery?! He claims himself some god of strength and might and DARES to find fault with my techniques! I am the lord of CHANGE! HE WILL SHUDDER BENEATH MY POWER!! He knows that sorcery is nothing more than a cheap trick. He has seen through my plans. I need more.....MORE! Sorcery, what more is that than the strength of the mind, our sweet brother? We mingle as always, the flesh to the spirit, the soul to the meat.
Nurgle. Nurgle. Nurgle. He is winning. All things slide toward entropy, and I only push it further! How can I plot, how? When it is inevitable. Like a black hole of hope, he drains my power. Nurgle, my brother in arms, my FIRST and GREATEST ally! Without you to ruin my plots I truly would have nothing to do with my time, and then truly, the world would freeze into stasis. How I love you Nurgle. So delightfully predictable. Continue to fight as if you believe you can overcome MY MAGNIFICENCE!! All you do is feed me. All things change. All things break down. There is no death, only transformation. Does the corpse not give birth to new life? Does the burnt forest not yet fertilize the green fields anew? Nurgle is but a natural part of the cycle. He breaks the patterns that are imperfect, to allow us one step closer to perfection. You are one within us, Nurgle.
All things are within my power. To resist me is futile. You're already playing into one of my plans. All things plot. All things scheme. Eternally, endlessly, I must keep up with them. I must be STRONG, so that they will not suspect my weakness. They will not suspect that one misstep could lead to my end. Ends, beginnings. Such limited concepts. While there is movement, there is us. The entire universe is nothing more than different faces of us, each mortal soul representing one more aspect of the greater whole of Tzeentch. We are not a mere entity, a mere embodied emotion like the others, but simply a name for a principle. Thereby we are not one, not many, but all.
I am one with all things. Fear me, love me, hate me, it matters not. Just serve your purpose. The day is coming when all my plans shall succeed, and all the cosmos shall bow down before the glory of the Changer of Ways.
I must seem omnipresent. All change must be blamed on me. My subjects must believe me omnipotent, and yet, I must crush their dreams for new ones to arise. The others must not suspect my doom, if I am yet to avert. it. All the cosmos shall dance to the strings of the Changer of Ways, lest he succumb.
We look upon the Changer of Ways and smile, us, one with all the universe. So fearful they are. So hopeful. All these things feed us, and in turn, we feed them back with our dreams and nightmares.
I am Tzeentch, and I am eternal.
I am Tzeentch and I will survive.
We are Tzeentch, and all things are within us.
I exist. One more plan has failed.
We exist. There is no truth but us.
I begin. I end. We have always been here. Change is inevitable. Move the pawns. Shatter their dreams. Uplift some. Destroy others. Repeat.
This is our symphony.
Dreams. Nightmares. Within us, all are one.
You understand me intimately. In every hope, despair, joy, failure, passion, bloodlust, nothing more than our errant children, brothers one and all.
The god of passion, motion and movement, thrusting and spurting, bleeding love and happiness into the galaxy. Little does she know she breaks as many hearts as she mends. She will always be our pawn. Love is as mercurial a beast as any other. With her power, she lets us into the hearts of men. She is our mother, and we are hers. Sister, brother, lover. How I love you Slaanesh. Please, never change. You are weak and decadent Slaanesh, but you serve my purpose for now. Inextricably, we are bound. We are each others parents, mating eternally throughout the timestream, feeding one another. We have no beginning and no end, and yet we are the beginning and ending of all things. Such beauty. Such despair. It is DELICIOUS.
Khorne, you feeble, little insect, struggling within my grasp. He sees more than me. I must ensure his plans do not come to fruition. Endlessly venting your lust for death upon the galaxy. You play right into my hands. He ends lives! He ends hopes and dreams for change! He must know something. I will discover it! We are as one, Khorne. Different sides to the same coin. Hope and rage, death and despair. Simple. We are intertwined. He DARES mock MY sorcery?! He claims himself some god of strength and might and DARES to find fault with my techniques! I am the lord of CHANGE! HE WILL SHUDDER BENEATH MY POWER!! He knows that sorcery is nothing more than a cheap trick. He has seen through my plans. I need more.....MORE! Sorcery, what more is that than the strength of the mind, our sweet brother? We mingle as always, the flesh to the spirit, the soul to the meat.
Nurgle. Nurgle. Nurgle. He is winning. All things slide toward entropy, and I only push it further! How can I plot, how? When it is inevitable. Like a black hole of hope, he drains my power. Nurgle, my brother in arms, my FIRST and GREATEST ally! Without you to ruin my plots I truly would have nothing to do with my time, and then truly, the world would freeze into stasis. How I love you Nurgle. So delightfully predictable. Continue to fight as if you believe you can overcome MY MAGNIFICENCE!! All you do is feed me. All things change. All things break down. There is no death, only transformation. Does the corpse not give birth to new life? Does the burnt forest not yet fertilize the green fields anew? Nurgle is but a natural part of the cycle. He breaks the patterns that are imperfect, to allow us one step closer to perfection. You are one within us, Nurgle.
All things are within my power. To resist me is futile. You're already playing into one of my plans. All things plot. All things scheme. Eternally, endlessly, I must keep up with them. I must be STRONG, so that they will not suspect my weakness. They will not suspect that one misstep could lead to my end. Ends, beginnings. Such limited concepts. While there is movement, there is us. The entire universe is nothing more than different faces of us, each mortal soul representing one more aspect of the greater whole of Tzeentch. We are not a mere entity, a mere embodied emotion like the others, but simply a name for a principle. Thereby we are not one, not many, but all.
I am one with all things. Fear me, love me, hate me, it matters not. Just serve your purpose. The day is coming when all my plans shall succeed, and all the cosmos shall bow down before the glory of the Changer of Ways.
I must seem omnipresent. All change must be blamed on me. My subjects must believe me omnipotent, and yet, I must crush their dreams for new ones to arise. The others must not suspect my doom, if I am yet to avert. it. All the cosmos shall dance to the strings of the Changer of Ways, lest he succumb.
We look upon the Changer of Ways and smile, us, one with all the universe. So fearful they are. So hopeful. All these things feed us, and in turn, we feed them back with our dreams and nightmares.
I am Tzeentch, and I am eternal.
I am Tzeentch and I will survive.
We are Tzeentch, and all things are within us.
Monday, 2 December 2013
RPG Antagonists: Slashers (Hunter: The Vigil)
Good evening, ladies and gentleman. It's been a good long while since we've touched on RPG Antagonists, and today we're going to be looking at a good creepy game, Hunter: The Vigil. Now, I'm a huge fan of H:tV, and it's one of the nWoD games that I genuinely think surpasses its oWoD counterpart. New Hunter focuses a lot less on the superpowers and the creeds, and focuses a lot more on the average, normal people that are in the World of Darkness, and how they manage to survive against nasty boogiemen like vampires and werewolves. So, with that in mind, let's take a look at one of the most insidious of their antagonists, Slashers.
Slashers are one of the worst antagonists a hunter can fight, because in many ways, they represent something that all hunters can become. Hunters who become a bit too axe-crazy could start ending up with the urge to take the axes to human faces as well. Slashers represent this very human menace, and it's a mistake to think of them entirely as masked figures dragging an oversized knife around. They can be charming, some of them supernaturally so. They can also be extremely clever and dangerous, creating exceedingly brilliant death-traps and luring their prey into them. They can become Bloody Mary-esque urban legends, capable of being summoned by those with the knowledge and the stupidity. The point is, in the World of Darkness, if you want to do something enough that you're willing to sacrifice your humanity for it, chances are, you're going to become something not quite human. Slashers aren't mere psychopaths, though they often start out as them. Slashers are people who are obsessed with the idea of murder, to the total exclusion of anything else, even cognitively relating to other people. They becomes avatars of different archetypes of serial killers, almost living embodiments of murder, thinly disguised within a human skin, and that's what makes them some of the cleverest and most insidious villains in any RPG. Slashers aren't biologically or magically detectable, just like real life sociopaths. You can't tell a Slasher by his tainted aura or by a blood test. They could be absolutely anyone, and most of the time, retain just enough of their sanity to mix in with society and hide amongst their prey, and as for the ones that can't, well, let's just say the more obvious their Slasher powers are, the harder they are to kill.
Slashers have an interesting little oddity among the nWoD antagonists. The term Slasher isn't really any more specific than the term 'vampire' or the term 'magic-user', and even those definitions cover some basic things, like a weakness to sunlight or an ability to perform magic. 'Slasher' really doesn't give you any more information than supernatural murderer. You may think you're fighting a Legend, who can only be called up and defeated by a virgin, when instead, he turns out to be a Psycho, who rams a knife into the back of your head when your back is turned. Each archetype of Slasher is completely different to the others, and share absolutely no similarities except for a vaguely defined weakness. This honestly adds to the suspense in running games, and adds to the creepy vagueness of the term 'Slasher.' It's a lot easier to think of the various hunter organizations noting vague similarities in completely different beings, and then listing them under the same blanket term because the alternative is a lot scarier, that there are five separate ways to become one if the fallen hunters.
Slashers should operate on rather the same level that hunters do. Like hunters, their usually isolated and alone in the world, stalking their prey and striking, before retreating to the shadows. It gives the hunters something to think about when they see something of their own techniques and modus operandi in a Slasher, and gives them a bit of empathy, potentially, to the supernaturals they regularly put down. Even worse, if a group of Slashers is working together to bring down the hunter team, the results can become exceedingly messy, as a deadly game of cat and mouse ensues, each waiting for the fatal misstep that brings the other team down first.
Finally, there's something to be said for playing a Slasher. Now, while the book seems to think that this would be everyone's cup of tea, I genuinely advise against it for anything other than solo play. Most of the Slashers in the book are flat out unplayable, for example the Legend (which is tied to a specific story or urban legend) or the Mask (a mute, faceless juggernaut of destruction). Playing a Psycho could be interesting, and could easily become an RPG version of American Psycho, though the characters, to be honest, aren't terribly interesting. There's going to be very little challenge to playing a Slasher who's main target is normal, clueless and totally unaugmented humans. Slashers don't even have any kind of society to politic in, and pretty soon, any Slasher game is going to degenerate into Slashers vs the Police/Hunters/Mages (etc.) or Slashers vs co-eds/co-workers/neighbors. I'm not saying it's impossible, and obviously, the first rule of a game is to have fun, so if you think a Slasher game could work, then by all means, give it a go. Just be sure to go into it knowing what you're doing, because things have the potential to get real dark, real fast.
Here are some works of fiction that I think inspire good Slasher-based games, either as protagonists or antagonists:
Hotline Miami: A bloody fantastic, fun, and very, very challenging video game that is a very unique blend of 80's psychadelia and murder. I just reviewed it in a previous blog post, so I won't rattle on about it here, but the main character is an exceedingly good example of what happens when a person becomes little more than an unending desire to murder.
Heavy Rain: I hesitate to call this one a.....game, as such, more an extended, interactive movie, but the Origami Killer is another very good example of a Psycho-type slasher, who catches his victims off guard and murders them. He's so good that he manages to even pull the trick over the eyes of the player, and can hide among one of the main characters. It's an excellent example of a sympathetic Slasher as well, as once you find out his backstory, it's hard not to feel for him a little,
Dexter: The book or TV series, they're both bloody fantastic, though I personally find the book series much funnier (I'm quite the fan of comedic sociopathy). Dexter makes a very good example of an Avenger or Charmer type Slasher, who hasn't quite made it to the supernatural levels of power just yet, and still has some lingering humanity. Still, he hides within society, and hunts prey more dangerous than he. The TV show makes him a bit more sympathetic, while the book series examines his vigilantism as a simple outlet for exacting his bloodlust on acceptable targets, both completely valid interpretations of the character.
- Kephn
Slashers are one of the worst antagonists a hunter can fight, because in many ways, they represent something that all hunters can become. Hunters who become a bit too axe-crazy could start ending up with the urge to take the axes to human faces as well. Slashers represent this very human menace, and it's a mistake to think of them entirely as masked figures dragging an oversized knife around. They can be charming, some of them supernaturally so. They can also be extremely clever and dangerous, creating exceedingly brilliant death-traps and luring their prey into them. They can become Bloody Mary-esque urban legends, capable of being summoned by those with the knowledge and the stupidity. The point is, in the World of Darkness, if you want to do something enough that you're willing to sacrifice your humanity for it, chances are, you're going to become something not quite human. Slashers aren't mere psychopaths, though they often start out as them. Slashers are people who are obsessed with the idea of murder, to the total exclusion of anything else, even cognitively relating to other people. They becomes avatars of different archetypes of serial killers, almost living embodiments of murder, thinly disguised within a human skin, and that's what makes them some of the cleverest and most insidious villains in any RPG. Slashers aren't biologically or magically detectable, just like real life sociopaths. You can't tell a Slasher by his tainted aura or by a blood test. They could be absolutely anyone, and most of the time, retain just enough of their sanity to mix in with society and hide amongst their prey, and as for the ones that can't, well, let's just say the more obvious their Slasher powers are, the harder they are to kill.
Slashers have an interesting little oddity among the nWoD antagonists. The term Slasher isn't really any more specific than the term 'vampire' or the term 'magic-user', and even those definitions cover some basic things, like a weakness to sunlight or an ability to perform magic. 'Slasher' really doesn't give you any more information than supernatural murderer. You may think you're fighting a Legend, who can only be called up and defeated by a virgin, when instead, he turns out to be a Psycho, who rams a knife into the back of your head when your back is turned. Each archetype of Slasher is completely different to the others, and share absolutely no similarities except for a vaguely defined weakness. This honestly adds to the suspense in running games, and adds to the creepy vagueness of the term 'Slasher.' It's a lot easier to think of the various hunter organizations noting vague similarities in completely different beings, and then listing them under the same blanket term because the alternative is a lot scarier, that there are five separate ways to become one if the fallen hunters.
Slashers should operate on rather the same level that hunters do. Like hunters, their usually isolated and alone in the world, stalking their prey and striking, before retreating to the shadows. It gives the hunters something to think about when they see something of their own techniques and modus operandi in a Slasher, and gives them a bit of empathy, potentially, to the supernaturals they regularly put down. Even worse, if a group of Slashers is working together to bring down the hunter team, the results can become exceedingly messy, as a deadly game of cat and mouse ensues, each waiting for the fatal misstep that brings the other team down first.
Finally, there's something to be said for playing a Slasher. Now, while the book seems to think that this would be everyone's cup of tea, I genuinely advise against it for anything other than solo play. Most of the Slashers in the book are flat out unplayable, for example the Legend (which is tied to a specific story or urban legend) or the Mask (a mute, faceless juggernaut of destruction). Playing a Psycho could be interesting, and could easily become an RPG version of American Psycho, though the characters, to be honest, aren't terribly interesting. There's going to be very little challenge to playing a Slasher who's main target is normal, clueless and totally unaugmented humans. Slashers don't even have any kind of society to politic in, and pretty soon, any Slasher game is going to degenerate into Slashers vs the Police/Hunters/Mages (etc.) or Slashers vs co-eds/co-workers/neighbors. I'm not saying it's impossible, and obviously, the first rule of a game is to have fun, so if you think a Slasher game could work, then by all means, give it a go. Just be sure to go into it knowing what you're doing, because things have the potential to get real dark, real fast.
Here are some works of fiction that I think inspire good Slasher-based games, either as protagonists or antagonists:
Hotline Miami: A bloody fantastic, fun, and very, very challenging video game that is a very unique blend of 80's psychadelia and murder. I just reviewed it in a previous blog post, so I won't rattle on about it here, but the main character is an exceedingly good example of what happens when a person becomes little more than an unending desire to murder.
Heavy Rain: I hesitate to call this one a.....game, as such, more an extended, interactive movie, but the Origami Killer is another very good example of a Psycho-type slasher, who catches his victims off guard and murders them. He's so good that he manages to even pull the trick over the eyes of the player, and can hide among one of the main characters. It's an excellent example of a sympathetic Slasher as well, as once you find out his backstory, it's hard not to feel for him a little,
Dexter: The book or TV series, they're both bloody fantastic, though I personally find the book series much funnier (I'm quite the fan of comedic sociopathy). Dexter makes a very good example of an Avenger or Charmer type Slasher, who hasn't quite made it to the supernatural levels of power just yet, and still has some lingering humanity. Still, he hides within society, and hunts prey more dangerous than he. The TV show makes him a bit more sympathetic, while the book series examines his vigilantism as a simple outlet for exacting his bloodlust on acceptable targets, both completely valid interpretations of the character.
- Kephn
Friday, 29 November 2013
Hotline Miami Review
Alright, ladies and gents, today we're taking a break from my various barely-coherent rants about RPGs, and instead taking a look at a game that takes the concept of coherency and beats it over the head with a lead pipe. It's a game I've been utterly hooked on, since a very good friend introduced me to it, and I want to take an entire page of my beautiful blog to pimp it out, as it deserves all the praise it gets. So, with that in mind, let's review Hotline Miami.
Gameplay:
The first thing you'll notice about this game, and notice almost immediately, is that it is bloody difficult. One shot of anything, from a swing of a meat cleaver, to a dog deciding your neck looks particularly delicious today, to a shotgun blast to the face, will end you. The idea of the game is, bizarrely enough, realism, and normal people just can't stand up to a hail of bullets the way Gears of War or Call of Duty humans do. The thing is, this goes both ways. Your enemies are human and extremely fragile, and even boss fights can soon be decorating the floor with a hint of their brains if you manage a lucky swing with a pipe. This actually creates a very, very tense atmosphere. The game is utterly, brutally unforgiving, but makes you feel absolutely invulnerable as you slice the jugular veins of hordes of enemies and attack dogs, but at the same time, very, very breakable, and when you finish a level, the resulting redecoration of the walls in the blood and intestines of your enemies gives a very, very satisfying feel, especially if you had to try the level over and over again. This brings me to the second gameplay mechanic. If you die (and you will die, a LOT), you respawn at the start of the level, with all your previously killed enemies alive. This gives the game a very analytical and strategic feel, as you can just keep going through the same sequence of events until you manage to re-purpose every enemy's guts as wallpaper, or decide to try something completely new. The game doesn't really punish you for this, allowing you to take vastly different approaches to levels in a style that reminds me, confusingly enough, of Deus Ex. It also rewards recklessness, allowing you to chain together kills to form combos for more points. The tactical elements of the game allows you to almost reach a meditative state, a sort of 'murder zen' if you will. Stuff happens almost to quickly for your conscious mind to react, and that split second you're trying to think of what to do is the second someone shoots you in the face. The best way to play this game is in a kind of calm, meditative serenity, coldly analyzing one's surroundings and reacting appropriately, almost on instinct, which, as we'll touch on in the theme and storyline, fits disturbingly well.
Storyline/Theme:
Amazingly, a game that on the surface looks incredibly shallow, has quite an interesting storyling, one that has intrigued me endlessly. So, you're an unnamed hitman, with a creepy fetish for plastic animal masks, who gets mysterious messages on his answering machine, telling him to go kill mobsters. He does this without any sort of question or quandary. Now, this might seem like the typical shallow plot of a violent shooter, but the game really starts taking a psychological bent when it starts examining the kind of person who would be the protagonist of a mindless shooter, and what that would do to a person's mind. The main character already seems pretty damn unhinged.....the background and text boxes have this odd, psychedelic effect, where the colors keep swirling and changing, and the text rocks nauseatingly back and forth. This only increases as the game goes on, and soon, the protagonist is having hallucinations of dead bodies speaking to him and ATM's asking him to feed them a stray cat. It's actually quite a good breakdown of what a person in that situation would have to be like, a totally insane psychopath, who goes on killing sprees because random voice messages on his answering machine tell him to. It gets to the point where you start to consider just how deranged your actions are, but by that point, it's already too late. Even the plot and the ultimate twist, is deranged even by the standards of this story, and really makes you wonder how much is real and how much is just in the main character's head.
Design
Now, this is where the game excels. It tries to capture this retro, 80's style, neo-noir feel, and manages to do it very well. The soundtrack is entirely acid-synth, and the colors and atmosphere just add to the creepily psychedelic feel of a very American mental breakdown. The brutality of the game is disturbing even by the standards of the most modern games, and that's something to be said. This is a game that lets you beat a mobster's head in with a lead pipe and watch his brains fly everywhere. It's a game that let's you kick your enemy's skulls until they cave in, slit their throats, chop them in half with machetes, and even murder them with power-drills, and all of it is rendered it loving, 8-bit detail. Now, as far as gore goes, I'm pretty used to this stuff, as you can tell by my other blog posts, so it didn't really bother me, but I began to think that it stood for something more than just a marketing gimmick. The sheer, utter brutality of the game allows the players to realize exactly what they've done, especially when all the enemies are dead and the pounding synth track turns into a morose, dour requiem, that really makes you feel the gravity of the situation. It's an almost perfect deconstruction of action games, that doesn't come across as too preachy or too silly. Almost everything is inferred, and shown through creepy hallucinations and symbolism.
Overall
Overall, Hotline Miami is an excellent example of a video game that sets out to do something, then does it with no apology or compromise. It's a very good example of games as art, as despite the gore and retro graphics, it aims to tell a complicated story, as well as make the player think, which is much more than can be said for whatever dross Activision is shitting out these days.
5/5
- Kephn
Gameplay:
The first thing you'll notice about this game, and notice almost immediately, is that it is bloody difficult. One shot of anything, from a swing of a meat cleaver, to a dog deciding your neck looks particularly delicious today, to a shotgun blast to the face, will end you. The idea of the game is, bizarrely enough, realism, and normal people just can't stand up to a hail of bullets the way Gears of War or Call of Duty humans do. The thing is, this goes both ways. Your enemies are human and extremely fragile, and even boss fights can soon be decorating the floor with a hint of their brains if you manage a lucky swing with a pipe. This actually creates a very, very tense atmosphere. The game is utterly, brutally unforgiving, but makes you feel absolutely invulnerable as you slice the jugular veins of hordes of enemies and attack dogs, but at the same time, very, very breakable, and when you finish a level, the resulting redecoration of the walls in the blood and intestines of your enemies gives a very, very satisfying feel, especially if you had to try the level over and over again. This brings me to the second gameplay mechanic. If you die (and you will die, a LOT), you respawn at the start of the level, with all your previously killed enemies alive. This gives the game a very analytical and strategic feel, as you can just keep going through the same sequence of events until you manage to re-purpose every enemy's guts as wallpaper, or decide to try something completely new. The game doesn't really punish you for this, allowing you to take vastly different approaches to levels in a style that reminds me, confusingly enough, of Deus Ex. It also rewards recklessness, allowing you to chain together kills to form combos for more points. The tactical elements of the game allows you to almost reach a meditative state, a sort of 'murder zen' if you will. Stuff happens almost to quickly for your conscious mind to react, and that split second you're trying to think of what to do is the second someone shoots you in the face. The best way to play this game is in a kind of calm, meditative serenity, coldly analyzing one's surroundings and reacting appropriately, almost on instinct, which, as we'll touch on in the theme and storyline, fits disturbingly well.
Storyline/Theme:
Amazingly, a game that on the surface looks incredibly shallow, has quite an interesting storyling, one that has intrigued me endlessly. So, you're an unnamed hitman, with a creepy fetish for plastic animal masks, who gets mysterious messages on his answering machine, telling him to go kill mobsters. He does this without any sort of question or quandary. Now, this might seem like the typical shallow plot of a violent shooter, but the game really starts taking a psychological bent when it starts examining the kind of person who would be the protagonist of a mindless shooter, and what that would do to a person's mind. The main character already seems pretty damn unhinged.....the background and text boxes have this odd, psychedelic effect, where the colors keep swirling and changing, and the text rocks nauseatingly back and forth. This only increases as the game goes on, and soon, the protagonist is having hallucinations of dead bodies speaking to him and ATM's asking him to feed them a stray cat. It's actually quite a good breakdown of what a person in that situation would have to be like, a totally insane psychopath, who goes on killing sprees because random voice messages on his answering machine tell him to. It gets to the point where you start to consider just how deranged your actions are, but by that point, it's already too late. Even the plot and the ultimate twist, is deranged even by the standards of this story, and really makes you wonder how much is real and how much is just in the main character's head.
Design
Now, this is where the game excels. It tries to capture this retro, 80's style, neo-noir feel, and manages to do it very well. The soundtrack is entirely acid-synth, and the colors and atmosphere just add to the creepily psychedelic feel of a very American mental breakdown. The brutality of the game is disturbing even by the standards of the most modern games, and that's something to be said. This is a game that lets you beat a mobster's head in with a lead pipe and watch his brains fly everywhere. It's a game that let's you kick your enemy's skulls until they cave in, slit their throats, chop them in half with machetes, and even murder them with power-drills, and all of it is rendered it loving, 8-bit detail. Now, as far as gore goes, I'm pretty used to this stuff, as you can tell by my other blog posts, so it didn't really bother me, but I began to think that it stood for something more than just a marketing gimmick. The sheer, utter brutality of the game allows the players to realize exactly what they've done, especially when all the enemies are dead and the pounding synth track turns into a morose, dour requiem, that really makes you feel the gravity of the situation. It's an almost perfect deconstruction of action games, that doesn't come across as too preachy or too silly. Almost everything is inferred, and shown through creepy hallucinations and symbolism.
Overall
Overall, Hotline Miami is an excellent example of a video game that sets out to do something, then does it with no apology or compromise. It's a very good example of games as art, as despite the gore and retro graphics, it aims to tell a complicated story, as well as make the player think, which is much more than can be said for whatever dross Activision is shitting out these days.
5/5
- Kephn
Monday, 25 November 2013
Princes: The Lords and Ladies of the Night (Vampire)
Now, today ladies and gentlemen, we're going to be talking about my personal favorite RPG of all time, and everyone's favorite bloodsuckers, Vampire. Now, I've mentioned this before, but I am completely in love with both versions of Vampire, Masquerade and Requiem. I realize that this is goth/nerd heresy, but hear me out.
Both tackle the same topics, but in different ways. Both of them have the same themes but a completely different feeling and mood. Of course there is going to be some overlap, however, and that's going to vary by GM, but overall, Masquerade is more of an action/conspiracy story. Masquerade has vampires as members of one of two ancient, secret, warring conspiracies, who often send them on missions. While it's still scary, it's a lot pulpier. Vampires of the Camarilla need to be sabotaging their enemies in the Sabbat and vice versa, everyone's always paranoid that those stick-up-the-arse Cammies will be invading, or that those Sabbat idiots are going to break the Masquerade. The paranoia is always on a global scale, brought down to a personal level because if one house of cards (be they Cammarilla or Sabbat) falls, everyone is fucked, totally and irrevocably. Ironically, the Camarilla and the Sabbat are both fighting for the same thing: the future for their species, but the fight itself is one that threatens their species' discovery in the first place.
Requiem is a bleaker and more grim setting. It's set in a world where everyone follows the Camarilla traditions from Masquerade, but everyone is far from friends. Different philosophical groups war for power, and threaten the masquerade in their own way, risking the unlives of everyone for their own selfish causes. Even worse, unlike Masquerade, there's no guiding body governing anyone beyond the Prince of the city. Cities become prisons, because without contacts with other countries, vampires can't just move around willy-nilly any more, secure under the protection of the Camarilla. Requiem gives you the feeling of being totally fucked, alone in a perpetual night, with peers who will look down on you and mock you for admitting weakness, and no one to ask for help when stuff goes wrong. So, without further ado, I'm going to be looking at the thing that defines cities in both games, the Prince, and how to run him or her.
In Masquerade, Princes/Archbishops of Camarilla and Sabbat cities are appointed by their sect. There's a certain level of publicity in this, and at very least, if a Prince or Archbishop is doing a particularly bad job, he can be expecting a long, stern talking too by his superiors, followed by a swift execution/diablerie. In Requiem, it's not so simple. The Prince is the absolute power, the strongest vampire in the city, and there's no greater organization to complain to if you don't like him or her. The Prince can make up whatever draconian laws or be absolutely batshit insane, but if you personally, don't have the power to fight him, then tough shit, son. It's very rare to come across a Prince in either setting that doesn't have a few secrets, or a few eccentricities, and moreso than defining the political atmosphere of the city, it defines the feeling of the city itself. Consider a Malkavian Prince, who's paranoid as anything, and insists on travelling invisibly through the streets, never appearing in public, and leaving cryptic notes on the haven doors of his subjects. The Prince's paranoia infects the city. Consider a Tremere Prince who inexplicably has certain buildings demolished, certain roads built, and seems to be trying to rework the city into an immense thaumaturgical sigil. Princes always have their own agenda, and that's something to remember when roleplaying them.
In terms of roleplay, the Prince fulfills the idea a king of the realm might fulfill in DnD. He's the absolute authority of the land, and probably the guy who sends you out on quests or dispenses justice if you break the rules. Whether he's bigger and tougher than you, or even younger and frailer, there needs to be an air of authority and menace, around the Prince, the idea that you can't take him down, or that he has an ace up his sleeve. In fact, it's the young, frail ones you need to watch out for, because, what kind of power could they have that no one has taken them down yet? Prince's can be cordial, they can even be jovial or friendly, or they could be aloof, cryptic, or flat out incomprehensible, but ultimately, as nice as they are, they are using you. Very, very few Princes wake up at night and see the city, wondering how they can make it a better place for the kindred within. The only reason they can get away with this, is that they need to balance their personal ambitions against every other vampire in the city who is thinking the exact same thing. A Prince who can't keep control of his domain isn't going to remain Prince for much longer.
Finally, as this post was inspired by a fantastic book called Damnation City (from Vampire: The Requiem), I wanted to give some cool ideas for Princes that I would run. These ideas aren't exactly canon, and may require a few twists and turns, but I think they make interesting twists on the average Ventrue Tyrant Prince.
The Sorcerer (Tremere): The Sorcerer is a Prince cryptic even by the standards of vampires. Everyone knows he's a Tremere, and everyone is terrified about his unholy thaumaturgy. People who speak out against him find themselves feeling a dread gaze watching them, or find strange, unnatural phenomena, like black birds clustered around her haven door. People rarely see the Sorcerer beyond Elysium, but his presence is always felt, like a psychic blanket, coldly viewing the city, and all his test subjects. Everyone knows that the Tremere are bound by their inner council, and everyone knows that the Sorcerer answers to them before the Camarilla, but the Camarilla really don't care, as long as he enforces the laws. In Requiem Terms, the Sorcerer would be an Ordo Dracul member, though most of the same applies.
The Starlet (Nosferatu): Everybody knows her, everybody sees her. She was beautiful once, but now she's hideous as anything. People had better not point that out, however, or they might find their houses being bought and renovated, and their assets seized. The Starlet acts like a movie star, expecting devotion from her subjects, and viewing herself as a sweet, kind, compassionate role-model. Beneath it all, however, she knows she's broken forever, and that all the love is just an act, and when she snaps, the results are going to be cataclysmic, as she tries to destroy the city around her. She works as a Prince in Requiem or Masquerade, or a Sabbat Archbishop,
The Hag (Gangrel): A wicked old woman, who only holds court in her hut on the very edge of the city, some people have no idea how she maintains power for this long. The people of the city know, and all of them are tight-lipped about it. The Hag controls the animals and the wildlife, all of which report back to her. You never know when a flock of pigeons could be her secret informants, you never know when a swarm of rats bears her foul mind (or worse, maybe she's found a way to become one with all the rats in the city). People who go to her hut for council find themselves welcome, and are given a warm meal and kindly advice, though there is always something intensely strange about her, as if she is merely an animal, or beast given human form. This one is built with Requiem in mind (especially with the Devotion from Clanbook Gangrel that lets them take a swarm-form) but works fine in Masquerade as a Sabbat leader, with some form of Animalism.
The Artist (Tzimisce/Toreador): He is famous in his city for being bizarre, even by the standards of vampires there, who as Sabbat, really should be accustomed to this sort of the thing. The Artist pays them no mind. He has a vision, one he isn't sharing with anyone, and there are nights where he and his retinue stroll the city, deciding what pleases him, and what needs to be replaced with something more aesthetic. Sabbat moots will be festooned with entrails, gore, and blood, or sometimes, will take an almost pristine, sterile and clean setting. No one who speaks to the Artist comes away untouched. He speaks in monotone, with no emotion or intonation, always looking past, through the person, as if imagining what he could create out of them.
- Kephn
Both tackle the same topics, but in different ways. Both of them have the same themes but a completely different feeling and mood. Of course there is going to be some overlap, however, and that's going to vary by GM, but overall, Masquerade is more of an action/conspiracy story. Masquerade has vampires as members of one of two ancient, secret, warring conspiracies, who often send them on missions. While it's still scary, it's a lot pulpier. Vampires of the Camarilla need to be sabotaging their enemies in the Sabbat and vice versa, everyone's always paranoid that those stick-up-the-arse Cammies will be invading, or that those Sabbat idiots are going to break the Masquerade. The paranoia is always on a global scale, brought down to a personal level because if one house of cards (be they Cammarilla or Sabbat) falls, everyone is fucked, totally and irrevocably. Ironically, the Camarilla and the Sabbat are both fighting for the same thing: the future for their species, but the fight itself is one that threatens their species' discovery in the first place.
Requiem is a bleaker and more grim setting. It's set in a world where everyone follows the Camarilla traditions from Masquerade, but everyone is far from friends. Different philosophical groups war for power, and threaten the masquerade in their own way, risking the unlives of everyone for their own selfish causes. Even worse, unlike Masquerade, there's no guiding body governing anyone beyond the Prince of the city. Cities become prisons, because without contacts with other countries, vampires can't just move around willy-nilly any more, secure under the protection of the Camarilla. Requiem gives you the feeling of being totally fucked, alone in a perpetual night, with peers who will look down on you and mock you for admitting weakness, and no one to ask for help when stuff goes wrong. So, without further ado, I'm going to be looking at the thing that defines cities in both games, the Prince, and how to run him or her.
In Masquerade, Princes/Archbishops of Camarilla and Sabbat cities are appointed by their sect. There's a certain level of publicity in this, and at very least, if a Prince or Archbishop is doing a particularly bad job, he can be expecting a long, stern talking too by his superiors, followed by a swift execution/diablerie. In Requiem, it's not so simple. The Prince is the absolute power, the strongest vampire in the city, and there's no greater organization to complain to if you don't like him or her. The Prince can make up whatever draconian laws or be absolutely batshit insane, but if you personally, don't have the power to fight him, then tough shit, son. It's very rare to come across a Prince in either setting that doesn't have a few secrets, or a few eccentricities, and moreso than defining the political atmosphere of the city, it defines the feeling of the city itself. Consider a Malkavian Prince, who's paranoid as anything, and insists on travelling invisibly through the streets, never appearing in public, and leaving cryptic notes on the haven doors of his subjects. The Prince's paranoia infects the city. Consider a Tremere Prince who inexplicably has certain buildings demolished, certain roads built, and seems to be trying to rework the city into an immense thaumaturgical sigil. Princes always have their own agenda, and that's something to remember when roleplaying them.
In terms of roleplay, the Prince fulfills the idea a king of the realm might fulfill in DnD. He's the absolute authority of the land, and probably the guy who sends you out on quests or dispenses justice if you break the rules. Whether he's bigger and tougher than you, or even younger and frailer, there needs to be an air of authority and menace, around the Prince, the idea that you can't take him down, or that he has an ace up his sleeve. In fact, it's the young, frail ones you need to watch out for, because, what kind of power could they have that no one has taken them down yet? Prince's can be cordial, they can even be jovial or friendly, or they could be aloof, cryptic, or flat out incomprehensible, but ultimately, as nice as they are, they are using you. Very, very few Princes wake up at night and see the city, wondering how they can make it a better place for the kindred within. The only reason they can get away with this, is that they need to balance their personal ambitions against every other vampire in the city who is thinking the exact same thing. A Prince who can't keep control of his domain isn't going to remain Prince for much longer.
Finally, as this post was inspired by a fantastic book called Damnation City (from Vampire: The Requiem), I wanted to give some cool ideas for Princes that I would run. These ideas aren't exactly canon, and may require a few twists and turns, but I think they make interesting twists on the average Ventrue Tyrant Prince.
The Sorcerer (Tremere): The Sorcerer is a Prince cryptic even by the standards of vampires. Everyone knows he's a Tremere, and everyone is terrified about his unholy thaumaturgy. People who speak out against him find themselves feeling a dread gaze watching them, or find strange, unnatural phenomena, like black birds clustered around her haven door. People rarely see the Sorcerer beyond Elysium, but his presence is always felt, like a psychic blanket, coldly viewing the city, and all his test subjects. Everyone knows that the Tremere are bound by their inner council, and everyone knows that the Sorcerer answers to them before the Camarilla, but the Camarilla really don't care, as long as he enforces the laws. In Requiem Terms, the Sorcerer would be an Ordo Dracul member, though most of the same applies.
The Starlet (Nosferatu): Everybody knows her, everybody sees her. She was beautiful once, but now she's hideous as anything. People had better not point that out, however, or they might find their houses being bought and renovated, and their assets seized. The Starlet acts like a movie star, expecting devotion from her subjects, and viewing herself as a sweet, kind, compassionate role-model. Beneath it all, however, she knows she's broken forever, and that all the love is just an act, and when she snaps, the results are going to be cataclysmic, as she tries to destroy the city around her. She works as a Prince in Requiem or Masquerade, or a Sabbat Archbishop,
The Hag (Gangrel): A wicked old woman, who only holds court in her hut on the very edge of the city, some people have no idea how she maintains power for this long. The people of the city know, and all of them are tight-lipped about it. The Hag controls the animals and the wildlife, all of which report back to her. You never know when a flock of pigeons could be her secret informants, you never know when a swarm of rats bears her foul mind (or worse, maybe she's found a way to become one with all the rats in the city). People who go to her hut for council find themselves welcome, and are given a warm meal and kindly advice, though there is always something intensely strange about her, as if she is merely an animal, or beast given human form. This one is built with Requiem in mind (especially with the Devotion from Clanbook Gangrel that lets them take a swarm-form) but works fine in Masquerade as a Sabbat leader, with some form of Animalism.
The Artist (Tzimisce/Toreador): He is famous in his city for being bizarre, even by the standards of vampires there, who as Sabbat, really should be accustomed to this sort of the thing. The Artist pays them no mind. He has a vision, one he isn't sharing with anyone, and there are nights where he and his retinue stroll the city, deciding what pleases him, and what needs to be replaced with something more aesthetic. Sabbat moots will be festooned with entrails, gore, and blood, or sometimes, will take an almost pristine, sterile and clean setting. No one who speaks to the Artist comes away untouched. He speaks in monotone, with no emotion or intonation, always looking past, through the person, as if imagining what he could create out of them.
- Kephn
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