Blood Money 2: Dark Territories (Part 2)

Completing the dissection of Moscow’s Vampire territories. Again the city map is here, some general notes on this Vampire: The Requiem chronicle setting are here.

Blood Money 1: Night History

With a little extra time on my hands I’ve decided to put up my notes for my Vampire: The Requiem chronicle, Blood Money. I’m starting with a short overview of the history of the city. A lot of context and information can be found in this blog already here, here, here and here. Once the notes have all gone up online, I’ll drop a complete archive of things in the Downloads section of this blog.

Vampire: 4 essential ideas, 7 great moments, 1 session

I’m preparing for the second session of Blood Money, my Vampire the Requiem Chronicle. The first session went well, I feel. It gave me an opportunity to put forward a range of ‘essential ideas’ about the game world and play up the elements I wanted emphasise about playing a vampire:

• alienation from humanity – the strangeness of being a vampire, their control over and distance from mortals
• the overwhelming desire for blood — blood is smelt in a medical waste container in a hospital and it’s enticing. The victim of a crime, bleeding to death in a bath, is first identified as a warm, wasted blood…
• the predatory nature of a vampire — the character’s smell what’s in a room, what’s coming towards them, before they see it. Mortals occasionally shirk at their presence even though they don’t know what they are.
• the arcane and medieval nature of the vampire court and its practices — the wheeling and dealing, the politics, the titles. Deliberately flooding the players with arcane names, ancient grudges and esoteric titles.

Vampires of Moscow: a map

I like handouts. They add an additional layer of immersion to a roleplaying session and can help evoke the setting and the mood. When I started thinking about my Vampire the Requiem campaign, I knew I would have to have a map of Moscow from the vampire’s perspective. With its neo-feudal political structure, its hunting grounds and subinfeudation, I wanted to give my players to get a strong sense of the various factions at work and the scope of the city.

Blood sacks! Vitae play aid for Vampire the Requiem

First session of Blood Money (Vampire the Requiem mini campaign) is tomorrow night. Madly jotting down notes to add colour to the setting and throwing together some last minute handouts. I’ve uploaded a quick reference card I made for my new players to help them get their heads around how they can spend Vitae. Thanks should go out to the VtR forum members who gave me some input into what I’d left out

Bringing it all together: the Campaign Manifesto

I’ve been busy preparing for Blood Money, my Vampire the Requiem campaign set in Moscow. One of the challenges I’ve set myself it to make it a very visceral, exciting and player character oriented campaign. One of the great things about VtR is that it’s at both an empowering game for players — they’re undead fiends of the night, mortals are but cattle to them… — and a way to tell poignant stories — they’re undead fiends of the night, they’re forgetting what it’s like to me human… I’ve made a few notes, my campaign manifesto,  to keep me on track and act as a reference not only when planning the session but also running it:

Top 5 Tips for a successful Games Master

There is a lot of advice online there on how to GM successfully. Some great examples include this, this and this. Of course, like anyone who’s spent a bit of time thinking about the hobby, I have my own take, my 5 key tips to being a good GM…