The Gaming Den

I've been doing some aWoD playtesting, which I will chronicle here for your reading pleasure. Comments are welcome. The setting for the first chapter is Prague.

I threw together a basic character sheet for the occasion; anyone who wants to steal it and use it for their own nefarious ends is welcome to. This is what it looks like:

It turned out that inverting the colors on the World of Darkness logo gave me that completely normal-looking, silvery logo in the corner. It also turned the background from black to white, so really it just worked out for everybody.

Characters:

Argent
Subtype: Daeva
Origin: Central Europe
Covenant: Sabbat
Cult: Hollow Ones
Argent is aspiring to be a priest in the Sabbat. His sire, Vaclav, is a priest in the Sabbat, and checks in with everyone in the coterie about once a week. Argent is fairly active in the mortal world, and volunteers at the fire department every Sunday – since hey, he's immune to fire anyhow, and he can snack on people inside burning buildings and no one will know. Sometimes he even finds himself called upon to put out fires started by others in his coterie. Covers himself in glitter and attends Twilight parties to snack on tasty fangirls (even if they are empty calories).

Audrey Mk. III
Subtype: Android
Origin: Outer Space
Covenant: Sabbat
Cult: None
Audrey is an evil plant sleeper agent whose programming and memory got messed up when he fell to Earth from the evil plant moon base; physical damage was minimal, because he has high soak and Flesh of Marble. Once here, he met Argent and was inducted into the Flock. He took some Coil of Thorns and has spent the last decade or two patiently growing himself a treehouse fortress made from living trees and plants. Is fond of plants and doesn't know why.

Renata
Subtype: Fallen
Origin: Central Europe
Covenant: Sabbat
Cult: None
Renata hates the mortals for forgetting her and yearns for recognition from supernaturals. Upon returning to Earth, she murdered her family and burned down their house; she then ventured back into Limbo to steal a locket from the burnt copy of her house, which is now the artifact she uses to recharge. She also met Argent soon upon coming to Earth and was inducted into the Flock. She kills mortals for fun early and often, and is going to get into serious Masquerade trouble because of it probably next chapter. Also, she's a pyro; any given Sunday, Argent has about even odds on having to respond to a fire started by her.

Camille
Subtype: Bagheera
Origin: France
Covenant: Carthian Movement
Cult: None
Camille is a lycanthrope and sad about it. She hates losing control of her body and seeks a cure; every new moon for the past several months she has sat in the glow of Audrey's Light of Ennui to prevent her from frenzying uncontrollably; when a new moon comes along and Audrey isn't there, she'll be looking at a very high threshold and will probably flip out. Camille is the only member of the coterie who isn't in the Sabbat; mostly, no one minds.

Glykeria
Subtype: Khaibit
Origin: Greece
Covenant: Sabbat (Faculty of Sorcery)
Cult: None
Glykeria moved to Prague to study at the Faculty of Sorcery, and as such reports to a different person than most of the coterie. She finds Renata to be a reliable source of fresh, if somewhat scorched, corpses.

I think you might end up wanting a larger "resources and obligations" section. Like, an entire page. Also, most of the headings are unnecessary. Sorry, you probably didn't put the character sheet up for critique, but those just jumped out at me.

Also, an evil plant moon base? I'd expect the moon to be more the dominion of robots, mad scientists, and mummies. Is it possibly the dreamland's moon?

Hey, critiques of the character sheet are welcome. Don't expect me to do anything about it, but you're welcome to make suggestions that people might find handy if they make their own sheets.

As for the evil plant moon base, that was kind of a spur-of-the-moment thing. I mean, if anyone was gonna have a moon base, surely it would be those sneaky evil plants, right? Who knows what they're conniving.

EDIT: Regarding the sheets, it was hastily done and I planned to make it fit onto one page. I figured most of whatever else was needed could be written on the back of the page in whatever manner the players deem appropriate.

Persona non Grata:

Priest Vaclav
The Sabbat priest in Prague responsible for looking after most of the party and a couple other dudes. Sired Argent a couple hundred years ago. Gives the party their mission.

Akihiko
A Leviathan in the World Crime League, who also moonlights (sunlights?) a a Black Hand assassin. Starts the session's events in motion.

Milosc
A dispatcher at the fire department in Prague, who is an acquaintance of Argent's. Is mortal, and points the party's investigation in the right direction.

Edmund
A Reborn from Germany who came to town on Stellar Oracle work to investigate a connection to the growing Evil Plant base in the Black Forest Correspondence. His murder at the hands of Akihiko starts most of this.

Gameplay:

The night opens with Argent and Audrey watching an opera, during which Argent is pinged with a Summons to come to Vaclav's office. They decide to take their time and finish watching the opera, which was probably a mistake because the opera only got one hit for performance quality. There goes eighty euros. At the same time, the girls are at a nightclub, with Renata using Camille and Glykeria as bait to lure drunk guys out into the woods and burn them alive. Because she's into that. Apparently.

The party meets up by accident (Intuition + Edge rolls are what I decided to use for whether fortunate coincidences happen) and goes to talk to Vaclav, who gives them an assignment. Turns out there's been a spike of fires this past weekend, and some mortals in Hostivice (Prague 6) have been talking about seeing Mirror Goblins and Leviathans. Go investigate, close the open portal to Limbo, find out who the Leviathan is, and stop the mortals from talking. After determining that the fires were not Renata's fault (this time), they set out.

So most of the team decides to drive around Prague 6 at random looking for burned houses, while Argent talks to Milosc at the fire department. Team Aimless Wandering comes across a burned house that they investigate; inside there's a Mirror Goblin dressed up as a cop who nevertheless is not very bright, so eventually the jig is up and Audrey crushes him with a toilet. Audrey's Light of Ennui wasn't strong enough to keep skeptical bystanders from calling the cops, and the team is forced to leave their car behind and beat feet when cops show up. Meanwhile, Argent learns that there was a major fire in an apartment building that might be worth looking into.

Renata goes looking for another car to steal, sets the former owners of the car and their five-year-old kid on fire, and drives off in her sweet new ride. At this point I began to suspect that there might be some Masquerade breaches going on, and unfortunately for Renata the family also had a daughter who is currently in basic training for the military and is also a Luminary. This is something that'll come up next time we play. At the apartment, the team busts in and looks around. The place is definitely horribly charred, and the bed contains traces of blood. And also there's a pile of dead Mirror Goblins locked inside the HVAC room. Spamming Thaumaturgical Forensics and Summon Spirit to her heart's content, Glykeria learns that the Mirror Goblins were killed by a Leviathan, who also killed the former occupant of this apartment (Edmund) and torched the place to make it look like arson instead of murder. (Question: When a Mirror Goblin dies, does its spirit go to the Gloom? Do they even have spirits?)

An attempt to summon the spirit of the guy whose blood was on the bed fails, because Edmund is a Reborn and some baby out there already has his spirit. Someone Aura Perceptions into Limbo and sees a Troll and a small army preparing to enter the mortal world through the burnt mirrors in the apartment. Before the party can do something about it, a Troll, a couple Spriggans, and a pile of Mirror Goblins rush through into the bedroom and a brawl starts. The Troll dread gazes Argent and wails on Audrey, who goes super saiyan and smacks the Troll right back. They both have a million jillion soak dice, so this is a slow process. Also, Camille is running around with three initiative passes, ripping the throats off of fools. (Fun fact: Rolling initiative, then doing movement, then doing actions, makes combat go really slow. Also, how do slow but strong things catch up with fast but squishy things? Can fast people just kite slow monsters forever?)

Afterwards the party torches the bodies while Argent and Renata go to the nearby apartments to use Dominate to make people not pay attention to the loud combat that just happened and to stop talking about the Mirror Goblins that were running around several days ago before the Leviathan rounded them up.

Some legwork around their various covenants narrows down the WCL Leviathans who have neither an alibi nor enough influence to make further investigation a hassle to a newcomer in town named Akihiko, who transferred here recently from east Asia. He has a small house outside town that the party pays a visit to. A normal-looking guy answers the door, but whoever in the party has Auspex realizes it's a Leviathan using Mask of a Thousand Faces, and after some forceful interrogation, the party learns that Akihiko is a Black Hand assassin who was hired to kill Edmund. The party turns him into a small animal and drags him in to see, Vaclav, who will administer punishment for endangering the Masquerade.


Fade to black. Roll credits. Do character advancement.

After some confusion about what symbols were what suits, we did a number of cards equal to players+1. There was a +1 Edge for Major Arcana, and then some +1 to any skill, +1 Background, +1 Stealth, +1 Bureaucracy, new Specialization, and stuff like that. Argent had the most tokens and scooped up the +1 Edge. Some people already had maxed out Stealth, and no one wanted +1 to Bureaucracy. Next session will hopefully involve sending them to investigate the base the Evil Plants are building in the Black Forest Correspondence.