Quick post: Blood Money non-player Characters

I haven’t forgotten about this project. At some point I do intend to finally get all my campaign notes up about this Vampire: The Requiem game I finished over six months ago now… One of the issues when faced with a political game with a number of non-player characters is providing the players with a useful way of keeping track of everyone they meet. Once the primary antagonists had been introduced (gradually over a few sessions) I knocked up this play aid to put all the character’s contacts and foes in the one place. I include it here as it a) took a hell of a long time to edit all the images until I was satisfied with them and b) because it will help act as a useful reference point when I start spelling out a few basics about each of these NPCs and how I used them in my Moscow game setting.

These images are drawn from a variety of sources, stock, screen caps, creative commons… I am asserting no ownership over them at all. In the unlikely event that an owner has a problem with my using them here for not for profit reasons, I’ll gladly take the image down.

blood_money_npcs (1.4 MB PDF)

Hiatus and assessment

I guess it’s the nature of blogs that they can slip away from you. Various events have conspired against this blog recently, pushing it to the bottom of my ‘to do’ list. A poor excuse, of course. Cracking open my analytics today I cast an eye over which pages have been getting all the hits. Which has lead me to reassess what I’m trying to achieve with this site. But I’ll get to that a little later. Let’s look at those stats.

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 2: Dark Territories (Part 1)

Before moving on to the denizens of Moscow’s vampire community, is is necessary to give some detail on the territories they control. The city itself was a central ‘character’ in my Blood Money Chronicle and as such I thought I’d share my brief notes that tend to focus on mood and atmosphere. Important in understanding what is being discussed is the Moscow city map, available here. Some general notes on the ethos behind the setting are also available here.

A city divided…

Although the Crones hold sway over Moscow, their recent ascension to power was not sweeping and the other Covenants hold on to territories of their own. The Prince, Rusalka, would hold that this is by her decree, and while this assertion is not without some authority, it is also true that the Crones had to forfeit these territories in order to secure their authority.

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.