Character and World Creation

Well, it's easy to find a lot of shades of grey in Jacob's schemes, so I'm open to anything here, actually. Of course, the most sensitive stuff for Jacob is anything that has to do with his liberty, so Emma could have found out about about the magical raven he's holding prisoner, and leverage that knowledge to blackmail him (althouhg I'm not sure if you want that level of confrontation, as vagueGM points out).

Other possibilities include that she knows some dirty trick that Jacob used in one of his schemes, and she used that leverage. But wait, now that I think about it, do we really need to define it? The Debt is the other way: Emma owes one to Jacob because he helps/helped her dismantling a supernatural scheme. Does it matter why Jacob got involded in the first place?

@Delirium, any thoughts about which supernatural scheme is that, and whether it's still active and we are still fighting against it?

Hmmm, mine is difficult to redirect:
You partner with someone on your schemes, both of you profiting in equal measure.

Rhiannon was protecting my business (and myself!), and I was getting weapons and stuff for her. Not sure is Emma's concept fits in here. She could be one of my providers of information, but I don't think I would be able to provide anything valuable back, as she's probably not interested in magical books and artifacts.

Which is what I mean by 'anything that could be used in a Persuade'. Enough to get him to help but she owes because it scored a 7-9.
It is up to you guys, but, since Emma seems to be a fairly new member of Mortalis, and is still learning about the world, a secret of such magnitude may be unreasonable for her to know, focused as she is on vampires.

---

I think that many of them will be hard to redirect. The game does not really cater for losing PCs a few scenes in.

We may just have to suck it up and lose the ones on Rhiannon. In the fiction she has abandoned us and left us hanging, it may be possible to try going to other members of The Society of the Morrigan with her Debts. but that is a stretch.

If any of them work for Emma, or if any of the Debts we have on any of the existing PCs make more sense for Emma then this is the time to redefine them.

Else we can make up a few that do fit, just to get her started.

---

It is also fine if she does not know some of the existing PCs, we can quickly come up with reasons to introduce her.

---

Since she is a new character, it could make a lot of sense for her Debts to be on NPCs and we focus the next stage of our game on introducing her to the three PCs. This is particularly apropos for The Aware Playbook. I can see that working and being easier than trying to get the PC-PC Debts working.

What do we think?

We deliberately picked a city none of us know. We are making liberal use of google maps and guesswork. We are also choosing to ignore facts that don't fit our image of the world since this is not exactly our world.
You could have inherited a place that you can't really afford, or live in a tiny apartment with undesirable elements. Maybe you are in a swanky area, but no one really wants to live in The West-End with all the theaters or whatever.

A brief panning over the area in satellite view shows some closely packed housing and shops [map], but that turns out to be Chinatown, which might be awkward unless you are into that or David is Asian?

I also ran into many places like this: [map] where they are surrounded on all sides and possibly don't have windows except in the roof. There are all sorts of reasons to be able to get a place in an unexpected area.

Renting a room in a posh neighbourhood can also lead to interesting tension with snooty neighbors.

Just throwing out ideas. It has been helpful to have a pin on the map to draw from, but we can also leave your exact place vague for now.
It is up to you. It can make us focus on connecting your character to the others in play rather than trying to come up with tenuous connections now.
Benji (and possibly Jacob) are about to be summoned to Elliot's place for a meeting. Possibly you are there when that happens and Elliot gets fed up and tasks Benji with getting you out of his hair?
That will make Elliot happier about dealing with you in the future, but he can still task Benji as your point of contact. We can say that you would have owed Elliot even more Debts, but this paid one of them off. You can place more than one of your Starting Debts on the same character, and this bit of fiction does not change those numbers, just adds flavour to what else may have come about.
Note that this site does not tell us if you edit a post while we are busy looking at google maps to formulate an response to what you already wrote, so unless we happen to notice a new point added the new content is likely to be missed, see Don't Edit. Rather just add a new post with the new information so we don't miss it or have to carefully scrub though the post looking for differences.

It is closer to David's work as well... or is that just an excuse. :)
Well, Elliot Parry seems to be established. If you are focused on vampires maybe oopsylon can suggest another vampire? Maybe someone who introduced you to Elliot, his 'fixer' or 'finder'?

Then again, maybe we want something outside of the vampire sphere? Maybe Mortalis? Do you want to suggest anyone? We can make any new NPCs you need, though this game can end up with an overabundance of NPCs if we are not careful and you already brought us three new ones. :)

You can also be connected to some of the PCs if you want. Maybe Mark, for instance, may well be someone you befriended and did not know he was a Wizard. If you go with that, you can work out the details between yourselves and maybe see the reveal onscreen? (For the record, Mark has an assistant, Jena. She is 24, so you could know him though her, but having Debts on her could be weird since she is part of his sheet, same way David is part of yours.)

Scanning my list (which I really should organise and post somewhere), from Mortalis we have:

• Kenedi, a police officer (desk sergeant) who knows a little about the supernatural world and has had peaceful dealings with vampires and people who voluntarily let themselves be fed upon. If you don't connect to her you will quickly do so in play. You can also know her but not have Debts.

• Bev is another interesting option... for reasons I can't go into. She is interested in vampires and let Benji be the first to feed on her just last night. She is a nurse practitioner who may have come to you for answers. I don't think she fits the wording of your Starting Debts, though, but you could have asked her questions about late-night Accident and Emergency (A&E) room visits with strange neck-wounds and found in the end that she was pumping you for information more than you were getting from her (by that time it was a mutual exchange of information, but your Debt is because you started it, and talking about this stuff can get her fired)?

We can use the Starting Debts list as suggestions and make up our own. But maybe you are leveraging dirt on Elliot and keep the 'asking question' one for someone else? This would mean you milked Elliot for information and then turned around and 'blackmailed' him with the facts you learned after he fed on you? Depends on how antagonistic you want that relationship to go.

If you want something more exotic I have some ideas, but am not sure how to introduce them at this time. Do you want a 'museum contact' to help you with your research?

(You can go to the game's forum root and use the Search box to search for those NPCs. For instance: Kenedi or the less conveniently distinctly named Bev which will yield nothing since it can not seach for text that short.): )

I have just looked into it (to see if you may have met Kenedi while undergoing training) and it turns out that tasers are illegal in the UK (and London), only the police are allowed to carry them and only after they have undergone extensive training and evaluation. [ref]

A switchbalde is also illegal, but you can flavour that as a knife of some sort, or upgrade it to a Leatherman or multi-tool and treat it as part of your Kit?

Speaking of Your Kit. Do you carry a significant handbag with all sorts of stuff in it? This is a bit small to be your whole Kit, but I would allow you to Go to you Kit with what could reasonably be in your bag when you don't have access to your car (or wherever you keep you full Kit). Do bear in mind that carrying too much suspicious stuff in your handbag can get you 'looked at by the police'.

It is going to happen anyway, this game does suffer from it, the new book even gives advice on dealing with it (basically kill of a whole bunch or move to new city:). If you wanted an extra one it is no big deal.
Sure. Tell us about it. Particularly: Did Kenedi suit up and join the fray, or did she enlist some police help (possibly diverting a SCO19 (think SWAT) training exercise to the location)? Or was it a community effort or legal proceedings or something subtle?
Can do. If you want to 'mix things up', but might it not be tighter if your character assumed it was vampires, since that is what she knows? Kenedi is in the same boat and will make the same assumption. What was happening might not completely fit how you think vampires do things... because it was not vampires, but you don't know that? Just a thought.

When you learn about 'demons', possible after meeting Jacob, you can put two and two together and sum them to 'demon'. :)
Pronouns can get confusing (even before they made them more confusing:). It can make for clumsy sentences, but I try to avoid pronouns where they might be misconstrued. 'she owes her a debt' could be read either way, and both could 'make sense'. Which way are you seeing this? :)
Yeah, let's focus on the lower levels. You get two Debts that you owe, and one that is owed to you. Other than that, we can make up the reasons for those Debts so they fit. We can use the words on the sheet as guides to the sort of things they should be based on, but don't hobble your character idea by trying to fit the exact wording into what they did.

It looks like we have Elliot, Kenedi, and Bev. Which one do you want to owe you (or which one do you not want to owe:)? I don't think the other two make much difference, but whether you owe Elliot or he owes you will change things. Maybe focus on that one and tell us why and how.
Makes total sense. A fellow believer is not likely to report her for being crazy. Bev has seen things, but your investigations may have brought her more answers than she ultimately gave you.

Gotcha. Create a post in the Debt Ledger to keep a record of your Debts. See the Instructions spoiler and feel free to ask about it here if you have any questions.

I have added them to the top list as well.
Let's maybe leave the exact details a bit less defined than that. It is a strong element to have her 'fabricating evidence', but I also see that is is likely to be a thing that is needed in 'strange cases'.

I would actually like to see her pushed to the point of doing that, so maybe that would have been a better outcome than you got, and that is why the perpetrators 'went underground' instead of being arrested or exterminate? It was still a win, but not as decisive as it could have been? Maybe next time Kenedi's morals may be more flexible?
When did that happen? Recently? Very recently? Just now as we open?

Are you ready to start a scene with Elliot? Benji will be with you shortly.

@oopsylon: What is Elliot's place like? I believe you said something about him being into real estate? Presumably our meeting would be in his penthouse [ref]? Any salient details we should include as we set the scene?

OK. And that was also your first real encounter with vampires? Maybe the Kenedi thing happened before that, while you were still ignorant of if this was real, but you did not 'meet' those 'vampires'? Same with meeting Bev even earlier than that?

How long have you been trying to get an interview with a vampire? How long have you been what would be count as The Aware? Before you became properly aware you were a kook. :)
If a vampire is careful it seems it can be no more invasive than giving blood [ref]. Was Elliot careful? What was it like?
You can make up a lot about what Emma 'knows'...
Most of what being a vampire is like is up to the vampire player. So ask oopsylon.

The Vamp Playbook creates a certain type of vampire, not all the vampires in this world need to have the same limitations or abilities. Same way that other people who are 'aware' of the supernatural (Bev and Kenedi, for instance) are not The Aware as per your Playbook (or any of the Mortalis Playbooks), the Playbooks are purely for Player characters. They do serve as a starting point for the others of their kind, especially for the monstrous ones.

This is what’s been established so far:
I was also imagining that he probably uses the fact that he lives in the penthouse of a hotel to supply himself with as much prey as he likes ( guests occasionally go missing or wake up with headaches and strange wounds, etc). Other than that, I don't have a lot of concrete ideas, so feel free to make stuff up :)

Looking forward to it! 😊

Perfect sense. It is up to you just how 'new' you are. You could have been in the world for months —as you indicate— or days or even years.

This seems like a good timeline. We don't need to nail down the exact details, we can address any specifics if we need to in play.
Looks good. [map]

Actually, Bridle Lane does not look all that expensive: [street view]. It is in/near an expensive area, but there may be many reasons it is (barely) affordable for David and yourself. :)