Urban Fantasy: How Many in the Conspiracy

deaddmwalking · Post by **deaddmwalking** » Mon Nov 19, 2018 6:17 pm

I don't live in Anaheim anymore, but to a point, you're right. When I try to describe living in the LA area to someone, I talk about how you can go from one city to another city without a break. But for the purpose of building a game, you are going to want your supernaturals to have a territory that they're based from. If you need a gang to show up from Santa Ana, you can do that, but if you have enough supernaturals to start with, it shouldn't have to happen all that often.

I live in Knoxville TN right now. It's not a terribly large city - 186,000. The 'Knxoville Metropolitan Statistical Area' is geographically huge - it includes 868,000 people but many of them are rural. I don't mind potentially taking all the cities with between 1k and 10k (~35) and apportioning all of their supernaturals in Knoxville. But if I don't do that, 18 vamps in Knoxville proper isn't enough.

There'd be a gang of 3-5 haunting the steam tunnels underneath the University. There would be a patriarch in Sequoyah Hills with a couple of family members and retainers. There's an abandoned warehouse on Middlebrook Pike that'd be the hangout for at least a half-dozen gangers. I haven't even gotten to the giant hotel that's stood empty for the past several years right next to a Highway Patrol station and across the street from the indoor mall. And I haven't even gotten into the Baptist splinter church that is going to be the real center of the campaign - the one who's shadowy hands are manipulating the other factions and represent a metaphor for the abuses of religion.

When you watch Blade and the first scene has a party with 20+ vampires most of whom die immediately you need more than 20 in your area to support that. If you don't have ~100 vampires, you can't effectively raise tension/stakes without adding in a fairly large number of human retainers. If you want your vampires to feature prominently in the opposition, you need a fair number of them. Because keep in mind, not every vampire is part of the opposition - they need to have other groups that they can align or support to make the whole game of thrones thing work.

Maybe my Anime Club was unusually large, but I think you want groups of at least 20 vampires in any geographic designation you choose. Using 'Anaheim' is a lot easier than using 'North Orange County' or 'a subsection of the Greater Los Angeles area'.

Slotting the supernaturals into areas you're familiar with is important. It lets you build the game with a common frame of reference - the whole point of using the modern world is that you're directly familiar with these places or you can at least wikipedia/Google Street View them to get a sense of where they are and how they will work for your game. But you need to have enough supernaturals to support those stories. 75 supernaturals might be enough for Knoxville, but 18 isn't.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Mon Nov 19, 2018 9:20 pm

DDMW wrote:I don't live in Anaheim anymore, but to a point, you're right. When I try to describe living in the LA area to someone, I talk about how you can go from one city to another city without a break. But for the purpose of building a game, you are going to want your supernaturals to have a territory that they're based from. If you need a gang to show up from Santa Ana, you can do that, but if you have enough supernaturals to start with, it shouldn't have to happen all that often.

No. It should happen constantly, because vampire gangs should have actual measurable territories. Anaheim can be crossed by driving 4.8 miles on the 57 or 9 miles on the 5. It could seriously take you longer to find a parking place than it does to go to Fullerton or Santa Ana. When I say those places are across the street, I'm not exaggerating for effect. They are literally across the street. Fullerton is on the other side of E Rosslyn Avenue. And that's not even counting the weird bullshit where you can get onto W Ball in Anaheim and drive in a straight line into Stanton and then back into Anaheim 3 blocks later without turning left or right.

If all the vampires in Los Angeles lived in the same neighborhood that would be super weird. And there's no problem at all with carving out a domain that has enough supernatural creatures in it. In fact, the problem is literally exactly the opposite of that. The Los Angeles area is a sprawling megacity with seventeen and a half million people in it. It's basically like if you took London and put it next to another London. It's "due" over one thousand, seven hundred vampires. You probably want to carve it into multiple domains, and dividing it into areas where each domain doesn't have too many Kin to keep track of and there aren't too many domains to keep track of is a delicate balancing act. Chopping it into 3 Domains with over five hundred Kin each is still probably too many Kin per domain, but dividing it into 17 domains with a bit over one hundred Kin is too many Domains.

Probably you're going to end up with a compromise where Anaheim is in the Orange County domain, which has 317 supernatural creatures. You obviously aren't going to try to limit yourself to stories about politics in a neighborhood you could drive across during a radio commercial break.

I live in Knoxville TN right now. It's not a terribly large city - 186,000. The 'Knxoville Metropolitan Statistical Area' is geographically huge - it includes 868,000 people but many of them are rural. I don't mind potentially taking all the cities with between 1k and 10k (~35) and apportioning all of their supernaturals in Knoxville. But if I don't do that, 18 vamps in Knoxville proper isn't enough.

Now Knocville is a more interesting case, certainly. As you note, Knoxville actually isn't so massively populous that you can draw a line around an entirely urban area of more than a million people. You can get pretty close, in the sense that you aren't exactly traveling through the wilderness to get to Eastwood or Mayview Heights and the metropolitan area is over eight hundred thousand, but to get the area out to a million, you'd need to add some surrounding rural areas.

But why is that a problem? You have weird shit like Powell's Valley and Sampson Mountain in East Tennessee. Those forests and stuff have to go into some Domain, why shouldn't they be under the nominal jurisdiction of the Prince of Knoxville?

You have purely urban domains in the United States. The Dominion of San Francisco is just urban area and probably its immediate neighbors are the Dominion of Oakland and the Dominion of San Jose, and those are urban areas too. New York is probably like 8 domains that are all physically small and jam packed with humanity. And then you have purely rural domains. Montana is pretty much just one thousand kilometers of wild lands. And then you have domains that are in between - an urban area that contains most of the population and an attached rural region. Places like Knoxville, where you have enough urban vampires to have political fights over who gets to be on the primogen council but still contains forests and swamps that you can go play Deliverance in if that's what you want.

Again and still: how is this remotely a problem?

-Username17

Orion · Post by **Orion** » Mon Nov 19, 2018 9:52 pm

I keep forgetting that we're only talking about Luminary-tier supernaturals here, which might generate a misleading picture. Many of the trash monsters are unrelated to this question, of course -- when considering how many bloodsuckers a city can support, we don't need to worry about how many zombies and piranha plants they keep in their sheds. But some trash-tier monsters do behave basically like luminaries and should factor in.

In After Sundown, a Strigoi can only make more Strigoi by infecting luminaries, but they can make spawn vampires out of anyone. One assumes that the spawn vamps prey on the same mortals and drink at the same coffee shops. Similarly, Khaibits and Cultists probably shop at the same bookstores and go to the same parties.

If your urban fantasy setting is going to have trash-tier monsters that are capable of participating in monster society, their demographcis should get pinned down, and we should ask ourselves how many *luminaries* are needed to make an organization viable, rather than how many warm bodies. The presence of minions justifies bigger hierarchies. Like, if there are only 5 Assamites in town, it would be pretty stupid to appoint one "Primogen of the Assamites." But if there are 5 Assamites with 5 thralls each, now you're getting closer to the point where it wouldn't be crazy for them to have a formal spokesperson.

deaddmwalking · Post by **deaddmwalking** » Mon Nov 19, 2018 10:00 pm

The problem:

Choosing a ratio of supernaturals to humans is just like assigning the length of the meter as 1:10,000,000 the length of the equator the North Pole - it is completely arbitrary and it turns out that it isn't even exactly right for the definition they created for it. If it turns out that the meter is a useful measure, it has NOTHING to do with the relationship between the equator and the poles.

The solution:

Choose a number that fits the stories you want to tell, and scale up.

For Knoxville, I want between 75 and 150 supernaturals. Therefore I want a ratio closer to (or between) 1:1250 and 1:2500 for 'significant' areas, however I choose to define them. I might choose to have other areas that are closer to 1:10,000, but since I don't want to limit the 'significant' areas unnecessarily. As a relatively normal person, I usually want to deal with discrete units, so having 'Anaheim' or 'Knoxville' is easy, and while I know that there are other supernaturals in surrounding areas, GENERALLY, they're not going to mix. If I set a game in New York, there might be 17 domains, and for the same reason I'm not going to worry about how domain 1 impacts domain 17 unless the PCs MAKE it matter. By reserving 'extra supernaturals' for the areas I care about, I can make sure I can keep adding interesting details to the setting without making EVERYTHING vampires, but not being completely constrained by the canon I've established initially.

Most RPGs grow by accretion. Building 'extra room' into your territories is a good thing. You recognize that WW screwed the pooch by trying to assert a ridiculous 1:100,000 ratio. Obviously 1:10,000 is a huge step in the right direction, but that number is effectively equally arbitrary and significantly limiting if you want to place your stories outside of mega-cities. While I'm sure there are a lot of players that wouldn't mind setting the game in Chicago, and most people in the upper-Midwest are familiar enough with that, you don't want to make it harder to set your story in Detroit or Milwaukee.

Rather than setting a rigid ratio, it makes more sense and is ultimately more satisfying to set a range of appropriate values. An absolute maximum of 1:300 in whatever limited area you want to define seems about right to me - anything beyond this is completely unworkable. If 1:10,000 is the WORLD TOTAL, it makes sense to me that it is not evenly distributed and you would therefore have areas with 1:1500, 1:5000, 1:10,000 and some areas with 1:150,000. Maybe there just aren't very many vampires in the hinterlands of Siberia. According to Wikipedia, there are 36 million people in Siberia. I don't think I need 3600 vampires to tell interesting Siberia stories, so I'd rather move those vampires to someplace more interesting (like Pasadena, or Columbus OH or Knoxville TN).

Edit:

To lay it out visually:

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[/img]
Uniform Distribution versus

[img]data:image/jpeg;base64,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[/img]
Chunky

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Tue Nov 20, 2018 7:05 am

Orion wrote:If your urban fantasy setting is going to have trash-tier monsters that are capable of participating in monster society, their demographcis should get pinned down, and we should ask ourselves how many *luminaries* are needed to make an organization viable, rather than how many warm bodies.

This is true. It's also true that there's more than one kind of trash-tier monster and more than one kind of minion.

Consider just Vampires. You got Vampire Spawn (Brides of Dracula) and you got Renfields (like Renfield). The first is a type of monster that vampires can make that aren't luminaries and don't get to vote on the primogen council. The aren't "named characters" in Bram Stoker's Dracula and we wouldn't include them in our primary census. But obviously they are monsters, and creating them does involve killing a dude. A supernatural society concerned with maintaining the Masquerade would obviously be harshly critical of the making of Vampire Spawn - considering it a level of rudeness virtually identical to murdering a human. but then you got human servitors like Renfields - the people Masquerade called "ghouls." They are not monsters and they can continue to work their day jobs and call their moms on Mother's Day and not get reported as missing. Renfields are still a strain on the Vow of Silence, but not nearly as big a deal as actually keeping vampire spawn in your basement as sex slaves.

I would posit that Renfields would outnumber supernatural creatures. That you'd expect a ratio somewhere between 3:1 and 10:1 for human servitors. Meaning that Renfields are more like employees of the National Guard or employees of a large but not ubiquitous corporation.

Next up you have monsters like Goblins, Hell Hounds, and Zombies. Such things are a threat to the masquerade, but they aren't powerful enough to vote on any council. Individually they are probably about as much utility as a Renfield, but as much of a strain on the Masquerade as a Werewolf. Such creatures would be hunted for sport unless they were taken under the wing of a Luminary. Like, if some mad wizard had a basement full of zombies, that's considered a valid life choice - but if there's a spontaneous zombie outbreak the Syndicate Enforcers would be sent to clean up.

As to the numbers of these true "trash tier" supernaturals, I would say that they are probably equal or less in number to the Luminaries. Obviously, individual Zombies or Goblins aren't relevant enemies - you only encounter them in packs. But they also aren't coming to all the Prince's balls or being the antagonists for every adventure. A dominion might need about 100 Luminaries to have sufficient political intrigue, but it doesn't need 100 trash tier monsters. It can easily get by with like 20 or less.

DDMW wrote:For Knoxville, I want between 75 and 150 supernaturals.

Sure. I would say you usually want that for most domains. The issue is that the Knoxville metropolitan area actually has that number if you go by the 1:10,000 rule. While in abstract there might be some domains that have slightly more or slightly less supernaturals than an exact 1:10,000 ratio, you haven't actually found any areas where that would be necessary. All the areas you've mentioned actually do work appropriately at exactly 1:10,000.

DDMW wrote:As a relatively normal person, I usually want to deal with discrete units, so having 'Anaheim' or 'Knoxville' is easy, and while I know that there are other supernaturals in surrounding areas, GENERALLY, they're not going to mix.

This is stupid and also terrible. It's your entire problem right there. If every inhabited area was a domain cut off at city limits you'd have a United States with many thousands of domains. It would be a gibberish patchwork you could never have an intelligible conversation about. If the Prince of Anaheim's authority ends where Fullerton begins, then it's less than 3 miles North or South to leave the domain from absolutely anywhere. It's never more than an hour's walk to at least three other Domains.

This sort of New World of Darkness thinking, where it's OK if everything is extremely small and bullshit because obviously no one is every going to drive a car or even interact with places that are in easy walking distance is terrible and sad. Obviously the Prince of Knoxville should have dominion over the forests of North Eastern Tennessee. Because fucking obviously. The alternative is that you have to write way too many separate domains to paint an adequate picture of the campaign area and you expect people in the era of the private car to never travel more than a few blocks. It's beyond your capacity to write, it's beyond your capacity to explain to players, and it's beyond your capacity to enforce in an actual game.

New World of Darkness asked the question of what would happen if you attempted to restrict players to incredibly tiny geographic areas. And the first answer is that you actually can't because it's the modern world and people own cars. But the second answer is that even if you could, that would be terrible. People can and will "just leave" and you can't escape writing what goes on outside the city limits.

-Username17

jadagul · Post by **jadagul** » Tue Nov 20, 2018 7:56 am

There are almost no situations where you should care about the literal city instead of the metropolitan area, unless you're worries about elections for city council. (Not a metaphorical city council. The actual political city council).

This isn't a statement about TTRPGs; this is a statement about the world. City limits are basically arbitrary borders and generally shouldn't be taken too seriously as descriptions of how things fit together. Metropolitan statistical areas and combined statistical areas reflect the actual facts on the ground, and describe the world as it exists.

Let's look at your examples. Chicago has about 10m people in its MSA, so that would be divided into like five or ten domains. Probably one or two of those domains include the 2.5m people in the city as political jurisdiction, but even there I doubt that there's a domain that's exactly the city proper.

Detroit has a city population of about 700k, but a MSA population of 4m and a CSA population of 5m. Detroit probably supports three or four domains even before you start getting into the actual rural parts of Michigan---though probably much of those rural parts "belong" to princes who live in Detroit.

Milwaukee has a city population of 600k, a MSA population of 1.5m, and a CSA population of 2m. Depending on how you want to handle things, Milwaukee is plausibly large enough to support two domains on its own, even without bending the numbers too much. (Realistically it's probably just one domain, because it's not too big for that to be practicable and that makes life easier on everyone, both in and out of character).

And Knoxville has a city population of about 200k, a MSA population of 800k, and a CSA population of about 1m. If make exactly the CSA a domain, you get 100 supernaturals. And there's no reason you wouldn't include the surrounding rural areas in that domain, because otherwise, whose domain is it? Like, I really doubt that you draw a clear line in your head between "people who live in the city" and "people who live in the suburbs, somewhere completely different from where I live." The 200k number is basically fake for anything you should care about.

As for Siberia---what that number should tell you is that Siberia is way bigger than you (and I) thought. It's 3/4 of Russia by land area and 1/4 by population. It has the population of California and more land area than Europe. Why wouldn't it have a lot of supernaturals?

Now obviously there will be some clumping. If you tell me Knoxville has 130 supernaturals even though the domain only has 1.1m people in it, that's really plausible, and doesn't violate any setting assumptions. But you're seriously suggesting that the metro area of Knoxville---which is the area you and your friends commute around---has a thousand vampires in it. And that's ridiculous.

deaddmwalking · Post by **deaddmwalking** » Tue Nov 20, 2018 1:07 pm

A vampire domain is only going to extend as far as a prince can extend his power. There's no reason for a domain to extend into rural Michigan if a Vampire prince and his posse don't personally lead a hunt every two weeks.

For vampires to claim territory at all you have to explain why it matters to them. How is it that 'running' a city appeals so frequently to vampires as opposed to buying a castle in upstate New York and becoming a recluse?

Once you leave the city proper you very well might be outside of 'normal directly ruled domain'. If you pissed off the Prince enough, he'll follow you. Maybe even into another domain where he may request permission/help or he may extrajudiciously kidnap you.

Thaluikhain · Post by **Thaluikhain** » Tue Nov 20, 2018 1:15 pm

deaddmwalking wrote:For vampires to claim territory at all you have to explain why it matters to them. How is it that 'running' a city appeals so frequently to vampires as opposed to buying a castle in upstate New York and becoming a recluse?

Yeah, I'd personally like this to be expanded on, not having a firm grasp of how domains work or really why you'd want to have one.

erik · Post by **erik** » Tue Nov 20, 2018 2:06 pm

I don’t see why we keep capping the upper limit on domains. Why cannot there be a prince of Chicago that rules over the area that includes 10m people? It’s a lot but there will be more kin to fill the supernatural bureaucracy and manage it.

Reasons to not be a recluse are mostly to hold secular power which you can turn into protection and favor. Other big wigs might appreciate police escorts and seats at the finest venues.

Domains with wilderness don’t need the prince to personally patrol them. Just to have a force that can be relied upon to keep things copacetic.

To echo Orion, I too am interested in ratio of mook supers vs luminaries and how much mooks can be relied upon.

deaddmwalking · Post by **deaddmwalking** » Tue Nov 20, 2018 3:16 pm

erik wrote:I don’t see why we keep capping the upper limit on domains. Why cannot there be a prince of Chicago that rules over the area that includes 10m people? It’s a lot but there will be more kin to fill the supernatural bureaucracy and manage it.

I agree - there should be larger and smaller domains.

I'm at work but with Thanksgiving, it should be pretty quiet. So rather than trying to explain why I think a ratio of 1:10,000 is too restrictive in most of the places you'd want vampires, I thought it might be helpful if I laid out a clear vision of what I think would be cool, and therefore why my demographics differ from what is being proposed.

First off, vampire society isn't generally interested in political units as such - a band of Vampires based in Omaha are just as likely to be in Nebraska as Iowa, but that's because of geography. Vampires are constrained by political borders to a degree - they care about currency and while they can illegally cross borders easily, many of them maintain an identity where questions about their movements would not be welcome. Effectively, vampire society cares about politics to the degree that they don’t want any annoying questions. Vampires have a lot in common with the mafia – they’re probably involved in some illegal things and even if they’re not, too many questions are going to bring up things that they’d rather not deal with.

Secondly, vampires do hunt. They can feed without killing, but they don’t enjoy it as much. You can think of feeding on animals as being vegetarian – you can get all of your nutrition that way and there are a lot of good reasons why everyone should be vegetarian, but most people just like eating meat. Feeding without killing is enjoyable – think of it as spaghetti with meatballs – but sometimes you just got to have a steak. Or maybe even more exclusive. Ron White has a bit about duck pussy-lip tacos. Killing to feed is like that – it’s unbelievably decadent and just isn’t available to everybody.

Following from these, a vampire wants a territory where they can hunt (and possibly kill) without getting caught or attracting a lot of attention. The best territories are claimed by the most powerful vampires. Using their personal strength, they carve out a fiefdom for themselves. Like the leader of a pride of lions, they want enough strength to resist having their territory claimed by a stronger vampire, but more vampires in their territory reduces the amount of hunting available to each individual and creates a potential threat to their sovereignty – they can be deposed from within just as they can from without. This means vampire princes are a little paranoid – they need underlings they can trust to handle delegated tasks, but too many underlings and a faction can form that might threaten them. There are no elections or accepted legitimacy – everyone is ready to take their position at the top if they could. If nothing else, it ensures they get to feed ‘appropriately’ more often. When a vampire establishes a territory, he has to defend it from others. Usually a rival will set up a border – if the vampire prince weakens, there’s someone ready to make a play for that territory.

Since vampires like to kill, a certain number of deaths that we attribute to accidents, suicides, and murders are really due to vampire activities. The actual murder rate doesn’t change just because vampires are real. Society doesn’t like to let a murder go unprosecuted, so there really are people sitting in jail who claim they’re innocent – instead of a one-armed man it was a vampire and there’s just no proof. Having a villa in upstate New York isn’t a really attractive option – it’s rural, so people going missing is going to attract a lot of attention. You might have a few vampire wanders that show up in a town like Harmony California (population 18) and murder everyone and then disappear, but you’re not going to have vampires permanently setting up shop in a place like that in most cases. Feeding in cities is easy, so most vampires congregate in the cities. In the US, rural areas have 20% of the total population. They don’t account for 20% of the total vampire population. Vampires congregate to dense urban areas even more than normal people do.

The oldest cities in the United States tend to have older vampires who have survived centuries. The new cities in the American West like Los Angles and Seattle have a different culture because most of them are newly embraced – the vampire populations there have grown from just a few pioneers that followed the explosion of the cities from more established locations in the Mid-west and rust belt. Vampire populations in the North remain higher than in the Sunbelt – Cities like Chicago and Philadelphia have well-established regimes and a much larger supernatural population than cities of similar size like Houston. New York has the largest concentration of vampires due to both the population, length of time it has been colonized, and density of urbanization. There are additional cities that are much more densely populated by Vampires than their normal population figures would suggest – New Orleans chief among them. Vampire populations are relatively dense in the Northeast, the cities of the upper Midwest, and the west coast. In the plains, southeast, and southwest, populations of vampires are relatively new – Albuquerque, Denver, and Phoenix are newly claimed territory and no clear dominion has been established.

So if the vampire demographics of the US fit this, I have areas that are free-for-alls where PCs can establish a new dominion that didn’t previously exist; areas that really don’t have a presence that they could colonize independently, areas that have established political hierarchies with multiple factions that they can join, and for each of them I have some cultural variation.

Putting some numbers around them, I want EVERYTHING represented in New York. The city has a population that is sufficiently dense that we can have factions with extremely small geographical areas but still have plenty of resources. Every faction is going to be represented there and not with a single token member, but with a crew and hierarchy. I don’t want everyone to be named; there’s a certain amount of anonymity that comes with saying ‘I’m a vampire from New York’ – you could be anything and it’d make sense.

I’d probably break down rough populations for major cities as:

New York: 8,000
Los Angeles: 4,000
Chicago: 2,000
Houston: 300
Philadelphia: 1,500
San Antonio: 150
San Diego: 400
Dallas: 250
San Jose: 400
Austin: 250
Jacksonville: 400
San Francisco: 800
Columbus: 500

That gets me close to 20,000 in the top 14 US Cities by population. I know there are more in other cities – some even quite a few relatively speaking. Some of them are going to be close – I know I’d have vampires in Oakland so I might apply them from the same pool, but I might not. That gives me an ‘average’ of 1 vampire for every 1571 people. Since lots of cities will be below ‘average’, I’m probably looking at around 1:5000, or 60,000 vampires total in the United States. Roughly 1/3 of them are accounted for here. If I were trying to make this a setting guide, I’d probably set ranges (ie, NY would be 5k-10k, LA would be 3k-5k, etc. By doing it this way, I can feel confident that if I decide that Charleston has more than 13 vampires, it’s not going to make it exceptional. Certainly Charleston, Savannah, and New Orleans are going to be well-above the 1:10,000; maybe St. Augustine. But Olathe KS might not.

Expanding on Eric's question, New York would have many domains and a lot of conflict between them. Chicago might be ruled by a single prince that really has a totalitarian rule. Los Angeles doesn't have a lot of strong rules - most vampires are associated with a smallish gang and nobody is 'in charge'.
Culturally, a game set in one city if going to be different than in another.

erik · Post by **erik** » Tue Nov 20, 2018 4:12 pm

deaddmwalking wrote: Expanding on Eric's question

I think obviously there will be outliers where 1:10k doesn’t hold out. Like if a team or even a lone supernatural goes to Antarctic to investigate some thing that blows the ratio out of the water. But it seems a very reasonable standard.

I like domains varying geographically but feel like unless it is a megacity it’s okay to run over the 1m population limit. Maybe Chicago has one prince or maybe it is split in two or even a few. But I don’t think 10 domains in the greater metro area is a good thing.

It is my presumption that these numbers include mooks. So a large number of the kin aren’t luminaries and serve in lesser roles allowing even neonate luminaries a better chance of a seat at the table.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Tue Nov 20, 2018 9:21 pm

I'm going to stop humoring DDMW about his stupid numbers. People have explained to him why city limits is a stupid and ridiculous way to divide things, and he just keeps doing it. It doesn't make any sense.

But I take it as given that myopic domains of the kinds he's talking about are terrible on multiple levels. It's hard to write the setting because things which are factually quite close and accessible are grayed out on the map with "Here Be Dragons" or some shit. It's impossible to enforce, because those unwritten sections of the map are factually extremely easy to get to because they are literally across the street and there's even a crosswalk and a button. And it completely devalues all social contracts of the setting because if domains don't have scope and reach there aren't any consequences for anything. It's just NWoD all over again - if "The Pure" rock up and try to take your territory, just fucking leave, because that territory is really small and doesn't matter.

So yeah. Bottom line is that DDMW's proposals are bad and he should feel bad and I'm not going to pretend they are worth discussing anymore. Let's go into the mail bag and discuss other things.

Thaluikhain wrote:Yeah, I'd personally like this to be expanded on, not having a firm grasp of how domains work or really why you'd want to have one.

The short version is that Dracula was Prince of Wallachia. Other domains are built on roughly that model.

Essentially Kindred society is in a constant state of emergency with vast powers ceded to the local authority, whether they are an autocrat or a council of local power players or whatever. There are constantly looming existential threats such as demonic invasion and zombie apocalypse but also simply the Masquerade itself - that humanity can indeed decide to go to war with the supernatural at any time and its weapons and numbers so unthinkably vast that the Kindred would probably lose if that were to happen. The local authority is tasked with keeping those existential threats at bay, and the fact that the sun sets each night is taken as proof that they have succeeded and their power is justified.

So being the leader of a domain is a pretty sweet deal. Your obligations are to make sure regular gifts get sent to your Syndicate representatives and that someone from your domain investigates any haunted house going on in case it's the leading edge of an interdimensional disaster and that plausible deniability gets plastered over any potentially supernatural event that makes the news. That's it. In exchange for that, you have pretty much free reign to do whatever the fuck you want in your domain including directly taxing supernatural creatures and being able to order other Kin to order their own Renfields to do shit on your behalf.

It's Feudalism, in the classic sense. Continually justified and rejustified by a constant state of emergency stemming from omnipresent existential threats.

erik wrote:To echo Orion, I too am interested in ratio of mook supers vs luminaries and how much mooks can be relied upon.

This is I think a pretty salient point, so let's go to our model domain: New Orleans. The New Orleans Combined Statistical Area includes 10 parishes in Louisiana and one county in Mississippi (Pearl River County). A lot of that is swampland and villages, and only three cities in there have more than 50,000 residents in their nominal limits. But the whole population is 1.45 million.

The expected number of Luminaries for such a region is 145, and since this is our model domain, that's exactly the number we are going with. Locally, the most common kin are Vampires and Witches (40 each), followed by Lycanthropes and Leviathan (20 each), with "others" making up the rest. With just a handful of Animates and Transhumans, you have about 10 Steves - various Demons, Ghosts, Elves, Ancient Tree Spirits, and so on.

The next important thing is what Orion calls "Trash Tier Supernaturals." These are important, because we're talking about New Orleans and obviously we want to have a significant Zombie and Fairy population. Nevertheless, there don't need to be more than twenty or thirty of any of these guys. Between Zombies, Fairies, Goblins, Haunts, and a bare handful of Vampire Spawn and cannibal Mutants, you have 50-60 of these creatures.

The next important thing are what Blade calls "Familiars" and what Masquerade called "Ghouls." That is: humans who explicitly work for supernatural society. Some of them are Fausts, people who are "in the know" and have special and marketable skills that make them valuable to the Kin. Some are Renfields, people who have been dominated by some supernatural creature and either gifted with some magic benefit or just enslaved into depravity. Maybe a bit of both. And finally, some are just fanatics - people who follow one or more supernatural because they are a bit unhinged. All in all, I see there being like 600 of these people, split between the powerful and influential and just randos that have been scooped off the street to be used as sex slaves or thug #3.

Functionally, that puts the supernatural conspiracy in the New Orleans area at roughly the size of the Matranga Crime Family at its height. Which is to say that while the New Orleans Mafia had 300 made members at its peak, over half of them were not physically based in New Orleans.

If we assume that roughly one quarter of human subordinates are armsmen, the local supernatural syndicate can field human footsoldiers roughly equal in number to a major New Orleans gang like the D-Block Boys or roughly three times the amount of foot soldiers as a strong minor gang like the Byrd Gang.

Total local conspiracy size is thus about 800.

How does that sound?

:Edit: Fixed numerical typos.

-Username17

kzt · Post by **kzt** » Tue Nov 20, 2018 10:55 pm

That sounds fine.

To make this work essentially you need everywhere where supernaturals exist to be claimed by someone, and you need someone more powerful above them to keep them from deciding "screw the masquerade, lets..." and getting away with it.

So this implies that there is an overlaying organization - whether regional, national, world level - that exists to organize stuff and occasionally to drop a piano on someone, like the dude growing his vampire army in Lawrence Massachusetts before all the buildings in town exploded and burned down on September 13th.

John Magnum · Post by **John Magnum** » Wed Nov 21, 2018 1:12 am

20 Steves? 45 + 45 + 20 + 20 = 130. That leaves 15 Luminaries who can be Animates, Transhumans, and Steves. Do we wanna bump down the Vampires and Witches to 40 each to leave room for more Miscellaneous?

tussock · Post by **tussock** » Wed Nov 21, 2018 5:07 am

A lot of your arguments there are kinda bullshit, Frank.

It's like you're saying how you can't possibly have a modern RPG at all where the PCs can live in one jurisdiction and then maybe commit crimes in another one just by walking across a legal fiction on a map because BOOM, campaign over. ??? No. It's not that there's 20 vampires here and then 20 vampires right next door following different rules, it's that there's 20,000 people here and 20,000 people right next door and those people have different bylaws regarding the sale of alcohol and yet society functions even when selling alcohol across the imaginary line, because there are rules.

The whole world is stupidly small. Around the world in 2 days would be a hugely unexceptional story now, boarded three planes, caught a taxi home. Yet the Vatican City is literally a tiny ancient country performing strange rights and ruling over a global shadow-empire while existing entirely inside another city with a totally separate legal system, language, and everything. Just down the road. Because rules.

--

And yes, this thing where you think you need to limit the number of Vampires within walking distance of a few hours, there's also driving distance of a few hours, and flying in a fucking aeroplane for a few hours. It's the same fucking limit. Private jets exist, as do Jedi mind tricks in the game.

--

What do we gain with more? Space. Space for expansion material. Space for everything that the original white wolf people published, for instance. That there are very large numbers of not-yet-detailed supernatural things pretty much right next door, and when the new sourcebook comes out for werebats and there's rules for interacting with them now, there's also a place to put them right next door and thus an instant potential for conflict with, or inclusion in the team of, current PCs.

Because despite rules, there are still crimes, and crimes against bullshit small territorial authorities where the local sheriff might struggle with jurisdictional authority in the chase, there's probably also rules for that. Maybe you could include some in a game featuring actors living in one thousand times lower densities than actual people in the real world do where those problems aren't even problems.

Or maybe just have your groups be slightly larger? Rather than 25 voting vamps in a council, just have 100, or 200. Even, I don't know, 2,000 like it's the stupidest most tiny borough seat left in all of England. Or 30,000 like some place vamps might not even bother voting because candidates are obviously both fishmalks. Because games where lots of other people exist are quite normal.

erik · Post by **erik** » Wed Nov 21, 2018 6:17 am

John Magnum wrote:20 Steves? 45 + 45 + 20 + 20 = 130. That leaves 15 Luminaries who can be Animates, Transhumans, and Steves. Do we wanna bump down the Vampires and Witches to 40 each to leave room for more Miscellaneous?

Quibbling over 5 or even 15, it doesn't really matter. My impression was that was a general picture. You can also round things out some by having some spawn tier supernaturals out of the pool of 650 or so other non luminaries. That count of 145ish is the set of major players. It's okay for some domains to have minorities of various supernatural types.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Wed Nov 21, 2018 6:34 am

John Magnum wrote:20 Steves? 45 + 45 + 20 + 20 = 130. That leaves 15 Luminaries who can be Animates, Transhumans, and Steves. Do we wanna bump down the Vampires and Witches to 40 each to leave room for more Miscellaneous?

Sorry. 40 + 40 +20 + 20 + 8 + 7 +10. Fixed in post above.

Tussock: that's fucking gibberish and you should stop talking.

You count Metairie as part of New Orleans when talking about the New Orleans area for purposes of a game set in New Orleans because factually Metairie is part of the New Orleans area! The "New Orleans Mafia" spent several years being based out of Metairie, because Metairie is and was a part of New Orleans. The alternative to discussing cities in terms of their combined statistical areas is to stick our fingers in our ears and claim that Batman isn't a Gotham City character because Wayne Manor is outside the city limits in New Jersey. It's a ludicrous premise and a fundamental failure to understand how large cities work in modern times.

Modern cities mostly came as multiple nearby chartered towns grew up and grew together. This means that for historical reasons many neighborhoods have their own defined town borders and some kind of local town council in addition to factually and structurally being a neighborhood of a larger city. That's interesting and a thing that sometimes matters for local politics or the financing of public services or whatever, but it's not something that creates edges to the sandbox for characters whose stories are set in those cities. Nothing happens when you cross East Woodbury Road and stop being in Pasadena and start being in Altadena. Santa Rosa Avenue doesn't even change names. A campaign set in North LA wouldn't stop people from crossing the street into Altadena, nor would it stop characters from having their lair be in Altadena rather than Pasadena.

-Username17

Thaluikhain · Post by **Thaluikhain** » Wed Nov 21, 2018 11:24 am

FrankTrollman wrote:The short version is that Dracula was Prince of Wallachia. Other domains are built on roughly that model.

Essentially Kindred society is in a constant state of emergency with vast powers ceded to the local authority, whether they are an autocrat or a council of local power players or whatever. There are constantly looming existential threats such as demonic invasion and zombie apocalypse but also simply the Masquerade itself - that humanity can indeed decide to go to war with the supernatural at any time and its weapons and numbers so unthinkably vast that the Kindred would probably lose if that were to happen. The local authority is tasked with keeping those existential threats at bay, and the fact that the sun sets each night is taken as proof that they have succeeded and their power is justified.

So being the leader of a domain is a pretty sweet deal. Your obligations are to make sure regular gifts get sent to your Syndicate representatives and that someone from your domain investigates any haunted house going on in case it's the leading edge of an interdimensional disaster and that plausible deniability gets plastered over any potentially supernatural event that makes the news. That's it. In exchange for that, you have pretty much free reign to do whatever the fuck you want in your domain including directly taxing supernatural creatures and being able to order other Kin to order their own Renfields to do shit on your behalf.

It's Feudalism, in the classic sense. Continually justified and rejustified by a constant state of emergency stemming from omnipresent existential threats.

So, each domain is independent, nominally equivalent, and there's not much of an established hierarchy above them? You don't' get large domains dominating nearby satellite domains (in a formal sense), or a system like the one in the Southern Vampire mysteries with (IIRC) kings and queen at the top, sheriffs at the bottom and various ranks between them?

FrankTrollman wrote:The expected number of Luminaries for such a region is 145, and since this is our model domain, that's exactly the number we are going with. Locally, the most common kin are Vampires and Witches (40 each), followed by Lycanthropes and Leviathan (20 each), with "others" making up the rest. With just a handful of Animates and Transhumans, you have about 10 Steves - various Demons, Ghosts, Elves, Ancient Tree Spirits, and so on.

The next important thing is what Orion calls "Trash Tier Supernaturals." These are important, because we're talking about New Orleans and obviously we want to have a significant Zombie and Fairy population. Nevertheless, there don't need to be more than twenty or thirty of any of these guys. Between Zombies, Fairies, Goblins, Haunts, and a bare handful of Vampire Spawn and cannibal Mutants, you have 50-60 of these creatures.

Getting a bit off-topic, but where do those creatures come from? I mean, if you have 1 vampire, they can go round making new vampires and familiars and so on from the local population. That easy to explain.

But, do elves or goblins reproduce like humans do? Because then having 5 here and 10 there in isolated groups spread out across the country seems like it'd be a real demographic problem.

deaddmwalking · Post by **deaddmwalking** » Wed Nov 21, 2018 1:14 pm

If your numbers require the vampires to hop in a car, drive for an hour, do their work, then drive another hour home, sure, that's gonna seem familiar to a lot of people who work for a living. Vampire: the Commute isn't going to be the game you want to play. A vampire in Pigeon Forge could just move to Knoxville proper if that is where the action is; why would they choose to live in podunk towns? Unless a concentration above 1:10k exceeds the blood supply, in which case you've created a hard limit for little to no purpose.

Thaluikhain · Post by **Thaluikhain** » Wed Nov 21, 2018 1:40 pm

deaddmwalking wrote:If your numbers require the vampires to hop in a car, drive for an hour, do their work, then drive another hour home, sure, that's gonna seem familiar to a lot of people who work for a living. Vampire: the Commute isn't going to be the game you want to play.

Would an hour either way really be a big deal? Now, you have to do everything at night, so 2 hours less useful time is a big chunk, but it still gives you several hours to be angsty at each other or whatever when you get there.

violence in the media · Wed Nov 21, 2018 2:13 pm

deaddmwalking wrote:If your numbers require the vampires to hop in a car, drive for an hour, do their work, then drive another hour home, sure, that's gonna seem familiar to a lot of people who work for a living. Vampire: the Commute isn't going to be the game you want to play. A vampire in Pigeon Forge could just move to Knoxville proper if that is where the action is; why would they choose to live in podunk towns? Unless a concentration above 1:10k exceeds the blood supply, in which case you've created a hard limit for little to no purpose.

I assume vampires, especially new ones, still need to interact with the economy. Maybe they don't up and move because the house in the podunk town is paid for and they don't have the right suite of knowledge and supernatural powers to leverage themselves into a more expensive place closer to the Prince's court. Maybe they have a Renfield they couch surf with when in town, but otherwise prefer living out in the sticks. Maybe they don't actually want to be up in the action and being out of sight puts them out of mind a lot of the time.

Going back to what you asked me about where I live, I live in an unincorporated part of Seminole county with a population of 8300 and an area of 2.3 square miles. Sounds like I live in the middle of nowhere, right? I'm bordered on all sides by cities with 20-50K people, and all this collectively makes up the Orlando metro area. If there was a supernatural society here, the seat of power was in downtown Orlando, and I was recently turned into some supernatural creature--I'm not going to bother moving to eliminate a 20 minute drive. Moreover, to echo what Frank and others have been saying, every game set here is going to be set in "Orlando", regardless of where the action of the game is played. Nobody is running a game of Geneva, Ocoee, or Deland by Night. I don't need there to be a society of supernaturals to interact with in Casselberry that is numerous and distinct from the ones in Longwood.

Are we thinking of this game as a TTRPG or a LARP? Because, while every game of a LARP is 100+ supernatural creatures milling about for no good reason, a TTRPG session will have vary few games where most of the supernaturals in a domain are at a single location. If it's a LARP, and it's large enough, you can easily assume that the PCs are 95% of the supernatural population in the area. They are the Prince, and Sheriff, and Primogen Council, and so on. There's no need to have extra NPCs for those roles. If it's a TTRPG, the PCs aren't likely to be interacting with enough people in a given campaign to make populations relevant. The PCs aren't playing Vampire: the Commute just because they have to drive from where they live to meet the Prince and get a mission, and then drive to where the mission is. Nothing is gained from all that happening in the same high-rise apartment tower.

"Veclome to my home, Apartment 23A. I hope your travels from downstairs vere without incident. I need you to investigate the mysterious happenings in Apartment 23D."[/i]

Omegonthesane · Post by **Omegonthesane** » Wed Nov 21, 2018 2:18 pm

Vampire: the Commuting was used as an argument for why vampires can't be dusted by sunlight instead of merely depowered as I recall. Still it assumes that vampires go to their vampire 9pm-5am job instead of being assorted nobs ranging from Sycophant Extra #4 to Not-Queen-Cersei-Lannister who work flexible hours from home to decide who gets the panic keyboard for whatever area they care to control.

Also maybe some people want to be a safe distance from the action most days.

DrPraetor · Post by **DrPraetor** » Wed Nov 21, 2018 2:59 pm

I think you want some wiggle for Hellmouths, and - in After Sundown, at least - you have it, without requiring an absurd factor of 10.

So you typically have 1:100,000 supernaturals, but I propose 1:50,000 being on average *luminaries*. So in the average domain, 50% of the luminaries are supernatural and the others are just humans with an Edge statistic.

Sort-of-in-response to Thaluikhain's question - in a Hellmouth, the conversion efficiency for luminaries is higher, and you also get more spawn. So Columbus, Santa Cruz, New Orleans and Hong Kong all have somewhere from +50% to twice as many supernaturals, and a great many extra spawn besides. Not every luminary converts the same way - Dr. Frankenstein is a Luminary but so is his monster - but on a Hellmouth, that sort of thing happens more often. So Witches teach more magic, Vampires and Werewolves eat more people, scientists are more likely to go Mad and create Animates, and so forth.

deaddmwalking · Post by **deaddmwalking** » Wed Nov 21, 2018 3:09 pm

I know Frank feels his point is made and isn't going to take it up again - that's fine. I'm not trying to convince him - I'm trying to lay out a cogent argument for others to consider. In the vein, let me try it one other way.

I've lived a number of different places including Southern California, Iowa, Southern Georgia (briefly) and Knoxville. In addition to traveling throughout the the United States and Canada, I've had a couple of trips to Europe. In a lot of ways, people are the same everywhere. For example, everywhere I've lived, churches are a feature of the community. When I first moved to Knoxville, the thing that struck me as weird wasn't that they had churches, but I was surprised at the sheer number of them. Having churches isn't unusual, but a change in concentration became an immediately identifiable aspect that made Knoxville very different from Iowa City.

There are lots of ways you can differentiate one area from another. You can certainly have some areas that have more powerful supernatural creatures that make them unique - Transylvania may be the only place to have Dracula alive and well. You can also have areas that are differentiated by the variety of supernaturals. Maybe New Orleans has zombies and Houston generally doesn't. Maybe one area has Toreador and Gangrels, and another has Nosferatu and Bruhjah - with changes in the make-up of the clans, you're going to have another way of making areas feel unique. The relative concentration of vampires is one more way you can make areas feel different from each other. Why wouldn't you want to use that as a tool?

In popular movies, the default state is 'there are no vampires'. Dracula is special because he's the only one. Even in a movie that seems to accept that vampires exist like The Lost Boys, a major part of what makes Santa Clara the center of the action is that there are more vampires than normal for a given area. When you're establishing your demographics you absolutely should carve out exceptions or set variable ranges for 'normal' so you don't paint yourself into a corner. A higher or lower concentration of vampires relative to the 'normal' society impacts the way vampires interact with the surrounding culture and open up additional narrative opportunities.

Sure, you COULD make every place the same, but on first principles, why would you WANT to?

Thaluikhain · Post by **Thaluikhain** » Wed Nov 21, 2018 3:55 pm

deaddmwalking wrote:There are lots of ways you can differentiate one area from another. You can certainly have some areas that have more powerful supernatural creatures that make them unique - Transylvania may be the only place to have Dracula alive and well. You can also have areas that are differentiated by the variety of supernaturals. Maybe New Orleans has zombies and Houston generally doesn't. Maybe one area has Toreador and Gangrels, and another has Nosferatu and Bruhjah - with changes in the make-up of the clans, you're going to have another way of making areas feel unique. The relative concentration of vampires is one more way you can make areas feel different from each other. Why wouldn't you want to use that as a tool?

Surely you'd inevitably run into problems with, say, people wanting to play as Nosferatu and Brujah and wanting to play in a certain city because it's a real place, and you've gone and said it's where there are only Toreador and Gangrels?

Unless you were to, say, make up a template for what type of monsters live in a city, and make another for how many, and let individual gaming groups tack that onto whatever cities they wanted to.