Storytelling for Vampire By Wassail Rules for better storytelling Rule 1: Have a general vision for your world. Fortunately, at this point, you don’t have a lot of choice as a storyteller for the people, objects and props you can populate your world with - you have to make do with what you’ve got. As time goes on, however, additional maps, character models and objects will be available to your game, and you’ll be blessed with the opportunity of choice. Think of the theme that will accompany the subplots of your story - is it optimistic, or pessimistic? Angst-ridden or hopeful? Oppressive or resistant? Then link the theme to the goals of your story and subplots. If the goal of a particular story is to win the affection of an NPC, and the theme is one of oppression, then the goal will be hampered by forces which seek to put the players in their place. If the goal is obtain a particular item and the theme is one of hope and redemption, then the difficulties involved in getting that item will tests of courage and virtue.  The long and the short of it, in the most basic sense, is that the challenges your players have to overcome to achieve the goal(s) of a subplot should generally be the opposite of the theme you decide on before the chronicle begins.  Rule 2: Decide early on what the rules are going to be for your scenes. What’s allowed to enter your story? What’s not? Figure this out ahead of time and you’ll save yourself a world of aggravation. If you need a convenient source of bad guys, figure out what they will be according to the theme of your world - are they Society of Leopold soldiers? Werewolves? Gangbangers? Cappadocian ghouls? Giant rats? IRS agents? Technically, you will also want to know what models to select because some are going to be tougher than others. You might also be surprised when those models you selected to attack the characters just sit there and do nothing. What’s tolerated in your story? If your characters are vampires, figure out what level of tolerance is given to the maintenance of the masquerade - will the Prince issue a blood hunt if the characters break the masquerade, or will he look the other way if bribed effectively? If the characters are human, figure out how well the veil of the world of darkness is maintained. Will they see vampires feeding on humans in dark alleys? Do demons walk the streets? Or will they only hear about unsettling things third hand, like a friend of a friend having an unfortunate, unexplained accident? Or, perhaps, they will hear nothing at all and everything will look absolutely normal, which is guaranteed ot drive your players nuts... Whatever you decide, make a note of it and stick to it. If you decide in one scene that ghosts don’t exist in your world, don’t go back on your policy and introduce a ghost later. Of course, you can get away with this by avoiding absolutes. Definitely do not give one standard for the players and another for your NPCs - for instance, saying that a kindred PC merely walking by a fire will fall into frenzy, while your NPCs can toast marshmallows all night long. Rule 3: Have your players develop backgrounds for their characters. This one’s more for non-linear storytelling, but as a general rule, if players have a background, they will have a lot more fun than just being a collection of point values. For any kind of storytelling to work, the players must have goals for their characters. The more detail the players put into their characters, the more the storyteller has to draw upon to facilitate a story that is meaningful to the characters. If the characters are a troop of Toreadors interested in court politics, then your carefully-crafted anti-Sabbat chronicle is not going to go over well. As with any role playing game, the objective not so much to "win" but to "grow". Even a loss in battle, or of status, provided it doesn’t slay the character, can be a learning experience filled with interesting roleplay possibilities. When a character performs actions related to goals that are important to her, they grow a little more. Hopefully, the story that you craft as a storyteller will allow a character to complete current goals, develop new goals, or abandon existing goals as they develop as a character. Even pre-packaged chronicles will allow your players to make decisions about the goals of their characters. If the goal of the story is to do something for the prince, then the characters are confronted with a challenge about their loyalty to the prince, and they should respond to it based on the background they have developed for themselves. Rule 4: Develop backgrounds for your NPCs and antagonists. By the same token, you should spend some time developing the NPCs you’re going to use on a consistent basis in your chronicle. For a kindred chronicle, the most important characters are generally the Prince and the primogen (clan leaders). After that, you can develop the members of each clan. Depending on the timeline of your game (ie., dark ages or modern day), you’ll also want to think about the major antagonists involved in your story, not only against your players but against the NPCs. Who is the prince worried about? Who’s the player’s sire worried about? Are there any hunters in town? Any mages, werewolves or members of the Society of Leopold? Why are they in town, and why would they care about the players, if at all? Generally, by working out these questions, you have already answered the question of what happenswhen your group of players runs into any NPC or antagonist, and don’t have to worry about it at the spur of the moment. As a chronicle progresses, you’re going to have to re-evaluate the answers to these questions - characters will make enemies and forge new alliances, NPCs will die and new ones will enter the game. Take note and keep track of things; the person the players help in the first scene of the game may come back and help them when they most need it. Rule 5: Get comfortable with the ST tools in Redemption. It can be a little dicey using the current set of tools in Redemption, but at the very least you should have a good working knowledge of how to move characters around, add and remove objects, actors and props, and possess NPCs. Be especially aware of setting the talk / neutral / enemy state of any new actors you create; a good practice is to disable enemy AI before you add bad guys, in case you want them to talk before instantly running out and beating on your players. That way you can add them, set their state to talk or neutral, and then enable enemy AI again. To be a good storyteller, you need to master these tools, in order to provide a seamless roleplay experience to the players. At its best, the players won’t even know you’re there - they will interact with NPCs and forget you are controlling them. At its worst, players will be confused about what’s going on, be attacked by your out-of-control enemies, and worst of all, wait for you to figure out what you’re doing. Rule 6: Populate the hub of your world based on the tone of your chronicle. Is it oppressive - are there police officers on every corner? Is it unsafe - do gang members walk the streets? Is it wealthy - are the streets littered with gold pieces? You can make your New York city hub especially seedy by adding prostitutes and gang members on every street corner, lots of broken boxes props on the sidewalks. How is your New York going to be different from every other New York chronicle being run out there? It’s a good idea to peruse the actor, object and prop lists beforehand and make a list of the objects you’ll use on a regular basis. If you have time, you can preset various hubs with items and characters and save it as a chronicle. Rule 7: Try to keep in mind what the rest of the world is doing while the players are adventuring. It’s very easy to get caught up in the effort of administering the actions taken by the player characters. But you should always keep in mind that the characters are part of a larger world, in which everyone has a life going on. As far as that affects the characters, you may want to keep track of who cares about what the characters are doing - is there anyone watching them? If the characters do something drastic, how will NPCs react? Answers to these questions may influence the course of events further down the road. If the characters do something that unbeknownst to them, accomplishes someone else’s goals, the characters may receive some aid from the unknown party when they least expect it... Rule 8: Reward the players because they deserve it, not because they need it. Stick true to the definition of reward - only give them something if they earned it. This will make your players try harder. Avoid the temptation to play with objects, and only give out powerful items when they fit the story. If you arm your evil ghoul pack with assault rifles, then when the fighting is done your players are going to be armed with assault rifles. If your evil ghoul pack has a cache of magic potions and money as treasure, then why on earth did they fight the characters in the first place? Try to make things happen for a reason. If your bad guys are equipped with lots of magic treasure, make sure they’re using it against the players. Rule 9: Be very careful about awarding experience points. If I had the choice, I wouldn’t award experience points at all - I would alter the characters sheet’s directly based on the parts of themselves that they were working on. For example, if they were actively learning a particular discipline and an aspect of the story just played involved that training, then based on the direction of that story I would just increase the discipline. If they performed lots of strength tests in a game, increase the strength attribute. If you just give them a lump sum of experience points, your players are going to surprise you by one day going from Celerity 0 to Celerity 4 without any kind of explanation. Rule 10: There are very few "mistakes" in storytelling. The great thing about being a storyteller is that you don’t always have to tell your players why something happens. The even better thing about being a storyteller is that you don’t always have to tell yourself why something happens. If the characters are walking down a hallway and you’re bored, and you think it would look pretty cool if a bunch of wraiths materialized out of the floor as they approach, heck, do it. Figure out why it happened later. Don’t concern yourself too much with consequences, unless it means severely altering the state of a player’s character (ie., killing her) or doing something against the tone or rules of your story. If you decide to bring in a flock of demons to fight the party because it would be cool, keep in mind you might kill off all the characters, and that’s probably not much fun for them (no mater how cool it looks to you). The point is, if you do something and you’re not sure if it fits, it’s probably possible to make it fit later unless it defies an "absolute rule" you’ve set down according to rule 2. In the next series of articles, we'll examine a sample chronicle and see how it's addressed differently from a linear storytelling style and a non-linear storytelling style. We'll also look into how to use the storyteller tools provided by Nihilistic to their best. Head on back to PlanetVampire.