Recruitment and OOC Thread for Island City PBP

[khyron1144]

I consider the DC Heroes PBP idea to be pretty much dead until I hear something from someone one way or the other.

In the meantime, I had another idea.  It's actually one of my old high school attempts to design a setting.

The rules set is White Wolf's Original World of Drakness line:
Vampire: the Masquerade
Werewolf: the Apocalypse
Mage: the Ascension
Wraith: the Oblivion
and Changeling: the Dreaming

Full-on mechanical crossover, that is to say Changleings have Kiths and Glamour and use Cantrips and Werewolves have Auspices and Rage and use Gifts and Vampires have Clans and Blood Pools and use Disciplines, etc.

Cosmology I am not overly worried about, but the Mage-Werewolf synthesis of reality is flexible and animism is true probably works best.

I am thinking of setting the game primarily in one city, known as Island City.  It's a fictional city of my own devising, I'll get into more specifics next post.

Character creation is relatively simple: create a starting level character for one of the above-mentioned gamelines.  Starting level is a somewhat flexible concept, though: elder vampires with the Age and Elder Generation Backgrounds are permitted as are archmages created by the Horizon: Stronghold of Hope rules.  

No Nephandi, Fomori, Spectre, or Black Spiral Dancer PCs.  It's not really supposed to be an "evil campaign.  Characters need to also be team players, especially where other types of supernaturals are concerned.  This means probably no Imbued Hunters or Inquisitors and technocracy characters can't be too hard-line about the the whole kill the reality deviants thing.  

Sabbat and True Black Hand are acceptable, but Sabbat characters need an excuse to be away from their pack and in a non-Sabbat city.  Shadow Court fae are also okay.

Vampire (Camarilla) Status background is capped off at four points.  Changeling Title background is also capped off at four points.

Wraiths should either be Risen or have enough Puppetry or Embody to meaningfully interact with the rest of the group.

I don't have Demon: the Fallen, so no Demons.

That's about it other than ask me first about weird character concepts (Marauders, non-Garou changing breeds, mummies, Kindred of The East-style Asian vampires, dhampyrs, "gifted" mortals)

[khyron1144]

Island City
It's worth knowing that a good expansion of this material is available here

I'll get into details later, but here's some basic basics.

It's a place where places of power (Freeholds, Caerns, Nodes) are relatively more abundant than in the rest of the World of Darkness.  The Gauntlet/ Shroud/ Wall is lower than one would expect in an urban environment also.

It's a place where a silent majority really believe in magic or at the very least "weird shit".

A fairly large number of supernaturals (Changelings, Werewolves, Vampires, Mages) congregate here.  Also a large number of one-step-removed supernaturals (kinfolk, kinain, ghouls, dhampirs, revenants) are present.  Lesser supernaturals in terms of either numbers (mummies, non-garou shapechangers) or power (mortals with numina, gypsies) also crop up with amazing frequency.

[khyron1144]

A partial list of what I've got and thus what's acceptable for this game:

Vampire: the Masquerade second edition and revised main rulebooks
Player's Guide Second Edition
Player's Guide to the Sabbat
Storyteller's Handbook
Dirty secrets of the Black Hand
Hunters Hunted (Children of Osiris okay, but ignore the Thaumaturgy for mortals system please)
Ghouls Fatal Addiction
Time of Thin Blood
World of Darkness: Pariahs (stuff for Caitiff)
War of Ages (reprints Anarch Cookbook and Elysium)
Blood Magic
Sins of the Blood
original/ first editon Clan Books for:
Brujah
Gangrel
Giovanni
Lasombra
Malkavian
Ravnos
Toreador
Tremere
Tzimisce
Revised clan books for:
Gangrel
Giovanni
Malkavian
Tremere

Dark Ages Companion  (bought a Vampire: the Dark Ages core book on ebay yesterday [7/6/10], should be here late this week or early next)


Werewolf: the Apocalypse second edition main book
Player's Guide (first edition)
Storyteller's Handbook
Guardians of the Caerns
Axis Mundi
Project Twilight
Ways of the Wolf
Changing Breed Books for:
Corax
Gurahl
Ratkin
Ananasi



Mage: the Ascension second edition main book
Book of Shadows: Player's Guide
Book of Crafts
Book of Madness
World of Darkness: Pariahs (stuff for Orphans/ Hollowers)
Traditions Gathered Two (Tradition Books for: Verbena, Cultists of Ecstasy and Dreamspeakers)
Traditions Gathered Three (Tradition Books for: Celestial Chorus, Euthanatos and Akashic Bortherhood)
Technocracy Assembled 2 (Syndicate and Void Engineers Convention Books)
Iteration X revised Convention Book
Cult of Ecstasy revised Tradition Book
Book of Madness revised edition
Guide to the Traditions
Horizon stronghold of Hope
Initiates of the Art
Mage Chronicles 2 (reprints Ascension's Right Hand and Halls of the Arcanum, when it comes to hedge magic for mortals and occult science Knowledges, these books are the law)
Blood Treachery
Hidden Lore



Wraith: the Oblivion second edition main book
Player's Guide
Shadow Player's Guide
Ends of Empire
Risen
Mediums: Speakers With the Dead
Guildbook Haunters
Guildbook Artificers
Guildbook Masquers
The Hierarchy
Sea of Shadows




Changeling: the Dreaming first and second edition main books
Player's Guide
Isle of the Mighty
Fool's Luck Way of the Commoner
Nobles: The Shining Host
Book of Houses 1
Book of Lost Houses
Book of Lost Dreams
Immortal Eyes: The Toybox
Immortal Eyes: Shadows on the Hill
Immortal Eyes:  Court of All Kings
Kithbook Sluagh
Kithbook Knockers
Kitthbook Redcaps
Shadow Court
Enchanted


World of Darkness: Mummy 1st edition
Mummy: the Ressurection (main book only)
(I will allow either or both sorts of mummies into my game)

Kindred of the East (main book)
Kindred of the East companion
Dharma Book Devil Tigers
Half-damned Dhampyr

World of Darkness: Gypsies (Second edition)

[khyron1144]

Since White Wolf is all about theme and mood here are some of mine:

Mood
There should be three moods to Island City:
1) Whimsy, wonder, and awe.  The fusion of these three can crop up quite a bit.  The World of Darkness is a place where magic (and magick) works and Island City is more magical (and magickal) than most.  It's also lighter on the grimness of the rest of the World of Darkness.

2) Fear and Horror.  It's still World of Darkness.  At some point something bad always happens.  Werwolves will disembowel people and vampires will drain them dry and unseely fae will ravage the creativity right out of people.  All of these can evoke fear or horror.

3) Uncertainty.  Things will shift back and forth between two ends of the emotional spectrum almost at random.  The end result will be a dominating mood of uncertainty as to which part we'll be at in the next five minutes.

Imagine for a second a movie that has on its soundtrack both Kenny Loggins's "Neve Never Land" (You'll have a treasure if you stay there/ More precious far than gold/ For once you have found your way there you need never never grow old) and Nine Inch Nails's "Head Like A Hole" (Head like a hole/ Black as your Soul/ I'd rather die than give you control).  It would be jarring.

Or remember Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory starring Gene Wilder.  That scene where everything is brightly lit and colorful and he's singing "Pure Imagination" and then almsot immediately afterward there's that bad acid trip cave sequence.


Theme
The main theme for Island City can be summed up as: "What is Reality Anyway?"

At about the same time as I was writing the first draft of this, I was reading a recently acquired back issue of White Wolf Magazine that contained a feature review of the Planescape Campaign Setting, which included a quote form David "Zeb" Cook, the desinger of the Planescape setting that sounded relevant to my ideas:
"Imagine a bunch of seminary students arguing philosophy in a bar."

That was his description of Planescape's Factions, but it also matches up with Island City's central theme.  Each kind of supernatural being has absolute certain knowledge of how the world works and thy are all contradictory and mutually exclusive and probably all simultnaeously right too.

[khyron1144]

I've got a friend somewhat interested, so I am reviving this if there are any takers.

[Nomadic]

Sounds fun but unfortunately I have only played like a single session of VtM and that was a few years ago. So I don't really have any clue what to do with this system. Best of luck though.

[thejerod]

I'm a taker!

[Bill Volk]

I'm in the same boat. I don't know the systems at all. I ran a game of Exalted once, but none of us knew what the hell we were doing rules-wise, least of all myself.

[khyron1144]

Sounds fun but unfortunately I have only played like a single session of VtM and that was a few years ago. So I don't really have any clue what to do with this system. Best of luck though.

Would you be interested, if I said I was willing to provide a bit of a tutorial, and sort of hand-hold you through the character creation process?

I'm in the same boat. I don't know the systems at all. I ran a game of Exalted once, but none of us knew what the hell we were doing rules-wise, least of all myself.

Ditto?

[Bill Volk]

Sure. I do rather like the idea of Planescape by Roald Dahl with more ghosts and mummies. Sounds like fun times. And I suppose I can just explain what I want my character to do if I don't know the rules for it.

Would all the PCs work together as a party/team/circle/cabal/whatever the appropriate poofy White Wolf name is for it? If so, is it already established why we know each other and why we're working together, or would we all have to meet in the proverbial tavern? What would our goals be? Is this setting sort of right in the modern world, like the regular World of Darkness, or is it more like Sigil, set apart and brimming with overt weirdness?

[khyron1144]

Sure. I do rather like the idea of Planescape by Roald Dahl with more ghosts and mummies. Sounds like fun times. And I suppose I can just explain what I want my character to do if I don't know the rules for it.

Would all the PCs work together as a party/team/circle/cabal/whatever the appropriate poofy White Wolf name is for it? If so, is it already established why we know each other and why we're working together, or would we all have to meet in the proverbial tavern? What would our goals be? Is this setting sort of right in the modern world, like the regular World of Darkness, or is it more like Sigil, set apart and brimming with overt weirdness?

Yes, I would hope all the PCs work together as one team.

You would probably meet up during the course of play, though.

Your goals are whatever you like.  I do have some general ideas that once things get ramped up, it's going to be a war story, so either picking a side and fighting alongside it or just trying to survive are likely to be major goals.

The setting is the modern world, yes, but it's a different piece of the modern world.  The best example, I can think of right now is Sunnydale from Buffy.  On the surface, it looks like any other modern-era suburb, but there's something coming through the Hell Mouth every so often to make life fun.

[Bill Volk]

Okay. It sounds like if I'm some kind of weird monster, I need to somehow conceal my identity from the muggles. How does that work for mummies? The idea of playing a mummy sounds kind of cool, but it might be too constraining for the setting.

Where is this city located? Is it in America?

[khyron1144]

Okay. It sounds like if I'm some kind of weird monster, I need to somehow conceal my identity from the muggles. How does that work for mummies? The idea of playing a mummy sounds kind of cool, but it might be too constraining for the setting.

Where is this city located? Is it in America?

Mummies as written, actually look like normal people.  I think they even have a heartbeat.  Their aura looks pale, if they meet anyone that reads auras, but other than that, a mummy can pass for human, as long as he avoids saying things like, "I remember when I was a lad back in Khufu's day..."

There's actually two kinds of mummies.  Old style mummies are ancient Egyptians who kind of keep getting reincarnated as themselves because spells cast over their bodies really worked.  New style mummies are modern-era humans who died and were brought back by a similar spell, but with a bit of the soul of one the old mummies stuck onto their own soul.

And a mummy works perfectly fine with the Island City setting.

Island City is located about twenty miles off of the coast of California. It might or might not belong to the United States of America, but it is not in the 48 contiguous states.

[Bill Volk]

Might or might not? Is there some kind of border dispute going on between Island City and the USA? A little civil war, perhaps? Is the island just a territory without the rights of a state, like Puerto Rico or Guam?

[khyron1144]

Might or might not? Is there some kind of border dispute going on between Island City and the USA? A little civil war, perhaps? Is the island just a territory without the rights of a state, like Puerto Rico or Guam?

As I understand it, portions of The United States, like California, Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona, used to be part of Mexico, which was at one time a Spanish colony in the new world.  As far as I'm concerned, the Spanish never claimed or settled The Island.  

Right now, I'm working from the assumption that Island City is, in fact, a separate micro-nation.  The situation is more than a little murky for a number of reasons, not the least of which is Island City never really seeking recognition as a country.


Some of this is mentioned in passing on the main thread for Island City setting development.