Session Zero

reversia.ch

Jul 8, 2025 4:35 am

Session Zero

Connections, character details, sheets.

reversia.ch

Jul 8, 2025 4:40 am

Session Zero

Full VTM sheets -

V20 classic sheets - WTA sheet - MTA Revised: M20 - in progress..

reversia.ch

Jul 8, 2025 4:43 am

Session Zero

Vicissitude as a disease rules -

https://i.ibb.co/BVzQmJJK/vicissititude-taint-sabbat.png

https://i.ibb.co/QvZk4m25/vicissititude-taint-sabbat2.png

reversia.ch

Jul 11, 2025 11:46 am

Session Zero

Okay, first round if invites is out. We should have:

eldarin as a parkouring, animal-whispering vampire courier

mage7 as a magic donuts baking, community involved mage

and emsquared as a trod-hunting inquisitive Orphan

Since all 3 concepts are of more positive, curious, optimistic folk, i think i've come up with a potential theme/mood for the chronicle: Light vs Darkness. You have just entered the supernatural world, fascinated by it's wonders or at least hopeful of the possibilities it presents. But a series of events forces you to look deeper and the more intently you stare into the Abyss..

Will your character be able to overcome the trials without losing themselves? Will you come up untainted by the horror of the World of Darkness? Can you protect what is truly important to you and how far are willing to go to do it? How far is too far, how much blood on your hands is too much, when the stakes are the lives of the people most precious to you? Can you keep that light of hope inside alive or will you fall to your innate Hubris or to the depredations of the Beast? As you peek behind the curtains, how deep into the rabbit hole do you really want to go? Hence - Light vs Dark.

Since all the character are street-level, i think the conflict will be more of a "save the neighborhood" level rather than attaining a Prince mantle or changing the Consensus/fighting the war for Reality, etc. The second season of Marvel/Netflix's Luke Cage series came to mind, where the title character steps into a particular role by the end. Anyway, just the first thoughts.

I've started making a sheet for Mage, will try to finish it up later.

Mage7

Jul 11, 2025 11:54 am

Session Zero

Lol my mage will definitely fit Jessica Jones vibes

reversia.ch

Jul 11, 2025 2:57 pm

Session Zero

Hopefully we'll get at least one more vampire to round us up and then we can start doing a deep dive and narrowing down the characters. One idea i had to group everyone up is to set the story in a specific neighborhood of a particular borough, with everyone having some attachment to the place - that's their stomping ground, that's where they live/their place of work/business located. The place is what will be uniting them geographically and by purpose. And by creating this neighborhood together we'll breathe some life into it, make it our own.

reversia.ch

Jul 11, 2025 6:02 pm

Session Zero

@eldarin We can move the creation discussion here now.

Expanding on the neighborhood as key place that binds everyone, i think we can add a figurehead, a leader. A vampire whose official or unofficial Domain is that same area. You all either know them, of them, or someone else who knows them. This neighborhood was a pretty stable place under their watch, but as the city's Cainite power structure plunges in chaos, so does you home. You're not in the thick of it - rather your fight is smaller and more contained and that what makes it more personal and important.

So everyone had some time to get aquatinted with their powers and weaknesses and is at least a recognizable face in the Domain. We can also place a chantry there, if our Mistress of Baking goes the Traditions route (which i believe is the case). Populating the area with other people is another good idea to make it feel like a base that is worth defending for everyone - family, friends, strays that feed, etc. Maybe other interesting places of note - leylines, forgotten sanctums, sealed chantry of Tremere Antitribu, etc.

As for our as of yet sole lick - eldarin - are you thinking just Caitiff, social Caitiff or maybe have any interest in going the thin-blood/Inceptor route?

Everyone can also start thinking more in-depth on their character history, physicality, personality, traits, etc.

eldarin

Jul 11, 2025 6:24 pm

Session Zero

Quote:

As for our as of yet sole lick - eldarin - are you thinking just Caitiff, social Caitiff or maybe have any interest in going the thin-blood/Inceptor route?

I was - for now - thinking "just Caitiff". This is the first time not going for established clan - so I am not even sure what options beyond I'd have. Thin-blood and blood alchemy was introduced only in v5, wasn't it? I won't be far off that, I don't plan to take any dots in generation - so I'd be curious what would change when adding the thin-blood notion. What is an Inceptor?

reversia.ch

Jul 11, 2025 7:06 pm

Session Zero

Thin-blooded vampires were introduced in the Revised era. They are the 14-15 Generation vampires (we'll leave the 16 Gen stuff out). Lore-wise blood weakens with Generation, making the lick of higher Gens weaker as well. Mechanically, the character creation is adjusted - less points for Abilities and Attributes, more freebies, higher costs for Disciplines, having access to special Background. You will also need to take a flaw representing your particular Generation.

The Inceptor is the old name (in lore) for a vampire who can create her own Disciplines. 14-15 can, potentially do that.

Here's the summary from "Time of Thin Blood" book. If any of this sounds interesting, i can post more from it - creation rules, Insight description, etc. Insight is essentially a Auspex-like power, where your thin-blood gets visions or flashes of things related to (only) the vampire world, Jyhad, Gehenna, etc. Dhampirs are, for the record, children of 15 Generation vampires, in practice revenant-type ghouls, only one of their parents is a lick. Here's the wiki article - Thin-Bloods.

https://i.ibb.co/9JYPM73/thin-blood-summary.png

emsquared

Jul 12, 2025 12:17 am

Session Zero

Quote:

Hopefully we'll get at least one more vampire

I'd recommend bumping your recruitment thread.

There was a ton of interest for WODa couple weeks ago. I can't imagine that's gone away. People just need to see the opportunity.

eldarin

Jul 12, 2025 10:29 am

Session Zero

I guess I'll stick to "just Caitiff". Playing someone who could hope to escape the curse and live a "normal life" was tempting - but neither 14th nor 15th generation and even not 16th seem to strike the right balance to me. Regarding Inceptor, I don't plan to invent a discipline on my own - so that doesn't strike with me either.

reversia.ch

Jul 13, 2025 8:51 am

Session Zero

Well, there doesn't seem much movement as of now, so i think we can start slowly fleshing out the characters, and i'll look out for other interested parties.

Some ideas to get your started:

1) Physical description

2) Where is your character from? What's their childhood was like? Adolescence?

3) Who are the people in their lives? Parents, friends, acquaintances?

4) What is their personality like and why is it the way it is? What shaped them?

5) What can they do? Professional skills, hobbies, natural talents, etc. What are they rubbish at?

6) What do they hope to achieve? Any goals or dreams, or are they still searching for one, trying to figure themselves out?

reversia.ch

Jul 13, 2025 2:14 pm

Session Zero

@Mage7 I was walking outside and just realized what you meant by "return of the Golden Age" when we were first chatting on reddit. I remember doing a "huh?" when i first saw an actual the list of paradigms in the book.

emsquared

Jul 14, 2025 6:01 pm

Session Zero

I worked on character creation over the weekend some, and got I think mostly done. Need to go through it all a bit to make sure the choices make sense, but... Nearly there.

RE: this stuff

Quote:

1) Physical description

2) Where is your character from? What's their childhood was like? Adolescence?

3) Who are the people in their lives? Parents, friends, acquaintances?

4) What is their personality like and why is it the way it is? What shaped them?

5) What can they do? Professional skills, hobbies, natural talents, etc. What are they rubbish at?

6) What do they hope to achieve? Any goals or dreams, or are they still searching for one, trying to figure themselves out?

Do you need those answered/written down somewhere? Or just trying to help us solidify a concept? And if you do want them written out, where; on the character sheet, or somewhere else?

reversia.ch

Jul 14, 2025 8:08 pm

Session Zero

The questions are for both you and myself - so both of us know who you're playing. Once you describe and write it down, the dots on the sheet will be easy to fill. I find this way both logical and simple - create a character first and then fill in the sheet, rather than doing the opposite and trying to come with why some dots are there. This will also help you determine narrative stuff, for mages especially - essences, paradigms, foci, etc. The list is just kickstart your creative juices. Feel free to weave your own story, but do post it here. That way we can all discuss it.

emsquared

Jul 15, 2025 12:32 am

Session Zero

I'm thinking something like...

Hurdy Gurdy, or "H.G." or "Hurdy" or "Wells" as his friends who are into brevity may call him... is the person you avoid on the street. The person you try hard to not even look at, but without looking like you're not trying to look at him.

Cuz he looks like the person that... has made some bad choices in their life (shall we start with the facial tattoos and facial piercings and hand tattoos?) and... anyway, by the looks of him, you just don't know what he's gonna do - and asking you for change looks like it would be the least of it.

He's a crusty, gutter-punk. Layers of loose, ragged, filthy clothing. More than one scarf... or at least one scarf made of multiple different fabrics... Sides of his head shaved. Short, bowl-cut bangs, with a long mullet-like cascade of unwashed hair down past his shoulders.

Just about everything about him is a transgression against societal norms.

Especially the fact that he's happy. What an asshole.

Word is that he grew up in Brooklyn, Canarsie specifically, near East New York. Happy kid, happy family, some natural athleticism, smart kid, did fine in school (up until he dropped out). Just wasn't into "that kind of life". You know the one: Get a job, so that you can buy a car to get to the job, and buy a house to sleep in while you're not at the job, so that you can work at the job until you're too old to work, and hope that in the meantime you saved up enough money at that job, to not die too quickly?

Pass.

So anyway he came of age on the Street. Doesn't have too many people in his life from his past anymore. And those that are in it now are mostly transient figures. Maybe they're just on the Street for a short while. Maybe they're just some trustafarian that gets scared off when things get too real. Maybe they die.

And he's okay with all that. It's not like he doesn't like people, or doesn't make connections - he does. But... ALL of this is passing, he can SEE it. Everything. But especially people. And so he prefers to live in the Now.

He Awakened shortly after he moved out onto the Street for good (maybe 6 or 7 years ago now) - right before he almost died for the first time. What a trip that was... But despite almost dying several other times since, he's learned to survive. He's got his wits about him, streetwise, sneaky, got some survival skills. Learned some coding stuff even through a youth training program after getting arrested a few years back - trying to get kids off the street. Learned a thing or two about his rights through a streets outreach program put on by some non-profit.

Doesn't have a lot of money, but what he needs... the universe just kind of seems to provide.

He loves this city. He loves these streets. That's why This Thing that's happening makes him so upset...

reversia.ch

Jul 15, 2025 5:24 pm

Session Zero

@emsquared

I'm getting Gehngis from Chicago By Night vibes from HG. When you initially described him as gulliable, i imagined more of a young "tail" that would run around older NPCs/PCs, but this feels more mature street shaman. He listens and the streets speak. He asks and they provide. With that being said, what is his paradigm, the "belief" part of M20 Focus? Why does he believe that whatever it is that he does works?
I'm still a bit on sure on the personality - is he more on a assertive side or a bit more passive, a follower? I think we talked about him sort of searching/not fully knowing himself, but HG sound like figured his life and values more or less out, instead maybe focusing his attention on the mystical side of things.
Any thoughts on his Avatar yet?

For connective tissue we might say that the word of HG's "tricks" trickled to the Domain owner, who hired him to locate a certain building that is supposedly in the neighborhood. You've yet to find it, as it feels like it is "hiding" from you. Your partner in crime is an agreeable sort of dude, who was willing to teach you some things about the folk who run (in) the night, sometimes the hard way. You also get to peruse whatever magical goodies are in the lost house before he does whatever he plans to do with them. Mage7's baker and eldarin's Dash could be in the same boat, a little heist crew, tasked with finding a potentially dangerous spot. Or they could be involved in some other way with Domain master.

emsquared

Jul 15, 2025 5:56 pm

Session Zero

Don't know who Ghengis is but I guess I don't see where there's not room for the character I describe above to be whoever/whatever we need him to be in the story.

Gullible follower or not.

He thinks he has "everything" figured out like any young punk does, sure. That doesn't mean there's no room for growth, or especially not that he's right.

But also the game seems to have went from being a Vampire campaign with a Mage attached, to a Mage campaign with a Vampire attached.

So maybe he doesn't need to be the gullible follower if there's no Coterie to gullibly follow?

He would still take tremendous interest in a Vampire because of how they fly in the face of everything he knows/knew about Entropy.

Here's the "mechanical" selections that map to personality:

Concept:	Urban Shaman Reality Hacker
Affiliation:	Orphan
Nature:	Hacker
Demeanor:	Kid
Essence:	Questing
Sect:	None

Paradigm: Nothing is final. Everything is fungible. Perception is reality. And I will what I perceive.

Avatar: Picture sometime like this:

... Except it's all rendered in spraypaint/as urban art (on any wall or sidewalk or street, whenever he interacts with it - which is often) and the central figure is a wizened urban shaman-figure sitting in kind of a lotus position with their legs dangling.

EDIT: I should probably change my Demeanor though now that I look through it all if we're not gonna have kindred leading the way.

Last edited July 15, 2025 6:05 pm

reversia.ch

Jul 15, 2025 6:27 pm

Session Zero

emsquared says:

But also the game seems to have went from being a Vampire campaign with a Mage attached, to a Mage campaign with a Vampire attached.

It does kickstart in the world of Vampire, but where it goes from there would probably depend more on you lot. There is a lot of interesting stuff to investigate in the VtM world for Mages though and that's where i'm thinking on leaning more.

emsquared says:

He thinks he has "everything" figured out like any young punk does, sure. That doesn't mean there's no room for growth, or especially not that he's right.

Okay, that makes sense.

emsquared says:

Concept: Urban Shaman Reality Hacker

Are these two not different practices? How do you see them meshing together?

emsquared says:

Paradigm: Nothing is final. Everything is fungible. My perception is reality. And I will what I perceive.

This kinda sounds like "i wish something and it happens". Can you give me a couple of examples of a task, how it is solved with magic, how did he think of this particular rote/effect and why does he believe it would work? Is it sort of like "manifesting"? "You're "manifesting" getting a promotion, and through the practice of looking good and smelling good, you adjust both probabilities and the bosses view of you in your favor (Entropy+Mind)." If that is it, how do you see it working with your "Urban Shaman Reality Hacker" concept?

So i guess going by what i described originally in the game info, we can start establishing some goals for everyone:

● the common goal for everyone could be protection of the neighborhood from vampire violence/machinations/manipulations.

● The Mages might have a vested interest in learning more about the supernatural.

● the "punks" might be united by some common street objective - kick a particular gang from the neighborhood/find what they are pushing or even something more narrative, like some art pursuits.

● the baker might want to include one of the others (like Dash the Courier) into her business expansion

emsquared

Jul 15, 2025 7:28 pm

Session Zero

I don't see it as being contradictory at all.

Shamanism is a form of animism - believing everything has a "spirit" or essence. Furthermore shamanism usually relies on mysticism - there is a reality above and beyond our experiential one.

And so being an urban shaman reality hacker means - I have access to that reality above and beyond our experiential one, which I understand through urban essences, and I can manipulate it.

And the paradigm, as you know, is just how he believes his magic happens. And that is: he can see and touch that above and beyond reality, and manipulate it through his will. Grabbed Granted it's a very generic paradigm, but he's an Orphan, he doesn't understand HOW his will changes reality, he doesn't have anyone to tell him, he just knows it does.

So, it all weaves together pretty seemlessly in my mind.

A big part of his Spheres is Correspondence. This is also a huge part of shamanism and mysticism - everything is connected. So a common example would be: doors. Particularly doors in the subway system. Or doors in a hotel. Or doors in an apartment building. Or sewer lids. They're all alike to each other. So alike that it's just a limitation of the observable human experience that they're not all connected. He sees right through that, and can travel across the city in the blink of an eye, passing into one janitor closet at one subway stop and exiting at another miles away, because they're connected at their essence. Doesn't matter if they're not connected physically, to him. He sees their essence and their connection in that way and uses THAT to pass between doors.

Or say he's finding a building that someone needs found. Such a thing would surely require someone of incredible skill, or... maybe you can just get lucky? Sometimes - maybe a lot of the time - it's better to be lucky than good. Especially when you can see the patterns on the fabric of all things, and so: their Fate. And when you can touch that Fate, and shape it? What use is skill at all? You just pull out your bottle that you picked up, years ago, after you watched this business man drop it while narrowly avoiding getting hit by a bus (what a LUCKY guy - maybe some of it rubbed off on that bottle)? You just pull out that special bottle, you look at the interconnectedness of all buildings with your Correspondence, and you tie your fate to the fate of Buildings and... you pump a shit-ton of Prime into it, spin the bottle, and then just go in the direction the bottle points when it stops.

That's his magick.

But for real, like... all of these principles are in the book.

So I'm not sure if you're just... seeing if I understand them, or if you're pushing back on my ideas/don't like i them ,or why you're getting this deep into the theory-craft?

These are all basic things talked about in the book.

And these are all concepts I've already ran by you when you accepted the character concept.

EDIT: initially left out the "spin the bottle" part, on the bottle narrative, but that would be an important part of the Practice and Focus (and Vulgarity), as "spin the bottle" is a classic implement of luck/fate/etc.

Last edited July 15, 2025 8:00 pm

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