For my Vampire Players...

I've been temporarily on hiatus, to return soon, once I finish my (seemingly endless) prep for the next installment of my ongoing Vampire (V20) campaign, "St. Louis by Night."  


In case you're interested, here's the "vampires in the city" poster we print out and hang on the wall...

And here's the second game poster, to help everyone keep track of all those pesky mortals...

Too much?  Yep, I think that's about right...

Campaign Sprawl

Fair warning:  I definitely have some sort of mild to moderate OCD, or other mental issue.  So, take anything I may write on this blog with that in mind.  Want an example?

I'm about 15 games into a Vampire the Masquerade (20th anniversary edition, or "V20") campaign.  And one of the conceits of the campaign is that we play 5-6 games in an "era," and then pick up with the characters again several decades later.  The great thing about this is that the characters really do "feel" old.  They players managed to seize control of the city back in 1863, but now, more than a century later, they still hold bitter grudges against various NPCs over things that occurred way back in 1904 and earlier.

But back to my warning.  So, at the start of our campaign, the vampires of the city looked like this...

BTW, I love, love, love making posters summarizing campaign info, that you can tack up on the wall and reference during the game.  Not only is it very helpful for the players (they can quickly recall names and other information with just a glance), but it almost inevitably leads to the players sitting around the game table, hours after the game, poring over the posters like Napoleon studying maps of battlefield topography.

But I digress again.  Back to that warning...

So, a few years later (the next era - 1904), the campaign map has gotten more complicated.  We've got a bigger, more populous, and more complicated web of vampires in the city:

I've also figured out that, gosh, the mortals are important too, so the important ones in the city get their own poster:

And don't forget those vampire diplomats that visited St. Louis (our home city) during the 1904 World's Fair:

Things keep progressing from era to era, with the game (and the ridiculous posters) growing more and more complex.  Until finally, last night, we have this:

This is our "basic" poster for 1978.  And, yes, that's every vampire in the city (or at least the vampires the players know about), along with their "registered" (with the Prince) ghouls, as of 1978, our current game era.

Have I crossed the line from "helpful player aid" to "crazy guy scribbling all over the walls of his cell"?  Only time will tell...  (But my wife is sitting behind me making fun of me already).

(More) Why You Should Be Using Powerpoints and Pictures in Your Games...

Want to run a game of immortal intrigue, with a large cast of scheming NPCs?
 

A "cast of characters" map - with memorable pictures - really helps.  This is from the "St. Louis by Night" Vampire (V20) game I'm currently running. 

Sure, you can (and should) describe the creepy, yet somehow honorable, Eastern European Gangrel Wolfgang Von Rorza.  But if you throw up a slide showing this...

...something magical happens.  I just look at that picture, and instantly know how I want to role play him.  I know how he talks.  I know how he looks at you.  And, most importantly, its memorable. 

The players - who have been deluged with literally hundreds of different NPCs over the campaign - know exactly who Wolfgang is.  We, as human beings, are hard-wired to remember faces.  Because they matter.  Why not take advantage of that?

Another crazy Malkavian?  Easy, here's Felix...

One more?  Sure, meet Bernice and (in the game at least) her incredibly life-like doll...

I can (and should) describe how the nighttime road in 1929 St. Louis looks to my players.  But throwing up a picture from that time really sets the mood in an almost indescribable way.

Google image search is an incredibly powerful tool for GMs.  And with just an old laptop and a spare computer monitor (relatively cheap these days), adding visuals to your game, and displaying them to your players, is super easy.

There are also some other incredible tools available, the kind of stuff I could only dream about when I was back in college, making handouts by drawing pictures and soaking them in tea to give them that "antique" look. 

My current favorite is a nifty set of PDFs called Mutable Deceptions, Volume I:  Jazz Age Newspapers, from Cthulhu Reborn (cthulhureborn.wordpress.com).   Go buy this right now.  Basically, an easy-to-use set of PDFs that allow you to create newspaper handouts in just minutes.  Here's one I put together for my V20 game, that took all of 5 minutes, including the time it took to find a picture of an old building burning down.

Visuals are also great for "court" or "meetings," where a lot of different NPCs are present.  Rather than force the players to keep asking "who is here?" over and over, you can just throw together a quick slide that conveys all that information at a glance.  Going to a meeting of the vampire primogen?  Who is there to talk to?  Easy, just look at the screen...

I also love visuals for the "gross out" effect.  Especially in a horror game.  My players recently began negotiating with a very sketchy Tzimisce "fleshcrafter."  And, as luck would have it, they decided to visit his house.  Well, if you've played the old Vampire: Bloodlines videogame, you know that has to lead to awfulness.  But the reaction to this was priceless...

Bonus points if you recognize the movie this is from.  In my powerpoint, it is actually an animated gif where the people writhe in unspeakable agony.  But, hey, I'm not very tech-savvy.