Vampire: the Dark Ages - London After Midnight - Veterans

Creating your character

In Session 0 we'll feel out the vibe of the group and check compatibility, choose chronicle tenets and coterie type, and build a group of characters with a shared goal and mechanical rewards for working together. By all means come in with an idea, but don't come in with a completed sheet and build. Rules from the Corebook, Players' Guide and Tattered Facade are on the table. If you want to bring in powers or merits from somewhere else, we can discuss that during Session 0.

Preparing for the session

You will need a Discord account, and to join my Discord server. There'll be a link in the specific adventure to make sure you end up with the right access. I'd prefer you to play on a proper PC or laptop, but I've had players on phones before and things have worked out. If you are using a PC or laptop, you'll also need a microphone, headphones, and ideally a webcam (that's negotiable).

What Jon brings to the table

My style is theatre of the mind, guided freeform. That means roleplay heavy, but we roll out scenes at the beginning to direct our play. Task resolution is often one-and-done (with whatever abstract dice pool fits the scene), social conflict or combat are three-rounds-and-out. Basically: rules and rolls are the foundations, then we roleplay on top of that. The tone is nobledark, with characters fighting to rise above their foul and fallen world. Cainites are predators, and parasites, but they're also people, and they try to hang on to that. I do accents - you don't have to, but I'd love it if you did. I use the Inconnu dicebot for rolls, sheets and tracking.

Homebrew rules

- Skills adjusted to fit the period (Drive covers boats and carts, Firearms becomes Archery. Technology becomes Theology) - Linguistics Merits and Flaws are not in play. Characters without dots in Academics are presumed to be illiterate. - Ingrained Disciplines are not available to fledgling or neonate characters. - All Backgrounds are capped at three dots. - A character’s Road determines their Convictions - the reasons why they might violate the Chronicle Tenets, which are agreed on by the group as normal. - Characters only need to select ONE Touchstone to anchor their belief in their Road, and it may be a mortal, a place, or an object - but NOT another Cainite. - Alternate Clan Banes from the Players’ Guide are in automatic effect for ALL clans. - Generation, Blood Potency and Status are part of a preset package. - The Bagger Predator Type is not in play. - Tzimisce have alternative Clan Disciplines (Auspex, Animalism, Dominate) with easier access to Protean and Blood Sorcery. For more information, please consult the player packet at https://tinyurl.com/vtda-ldn.

How Jon creates a safe table

During Session 0, we will set lines and veils above and beyond the chronicle tenets. Tenets are boundaries you *want* your characters to test and cross: lines and veils are boundaries you want to *avoid* in play. During play, any player can hold up their hands on camera in a T shape, or say "time out" in voice chat. This is the signal that play needs to break for *any* reason, and the signal will be respected and unquestioned. Players only need to divulge what they're comfortable with divulging, and are encouraged to message me directly if that's more comfortable. Timeouts will also occur at the end of a long or fraught scene, and be followed by a debrief. At the end of a session, the table will engage in a short debrief, closing down the game and divesting from characters by describing the game as a work of fiction. I frequently use Roses & Thorns to structure this conversation, which allows for quality control as well as safety assessment.