[Character Creation] [VtR] nWoD Vampire Game

[Jemal]

I made a few changes to my character to reflect his growing & Changing bio.
[sblock=New Updated Char Sheet]
Name: James Cale
Virtue: Patience
Vice: Greed

Attributes:
Int ***
Wits **
Resolve ***

Strength **
Dexterity **
Stamina **

Presence **
Manipulation ***
Composure **

Skills:

Academics *** (Law)
Computers *
Investigate **
Occult **** (Vampires)
Politics *

Brawl **
Drive *
Stealth *

Persuassion ***
Socialize **
Streetwise ** (Rumours)

Merits:
Resources ???
Status ** (Criminals)

Size: 5
Defense: 2
Initiative: +4
Speed: 9

Health: *******
Willpower *****

Humanity: 6-7
[/sblock]

I've been writing the biography on paper over the last few days, with my inability to get consistant net access, and I'm going to try to transcribe it now.
Hopefully, it'll help explain my character.

[sblock=Character biography]
WARNING: kinda dark.
My name is James Cale.
There's nothing special about how I was born or raised. I went to school like any other kid, grew up in a normal house with normal parents, didn't even loose my virginity till my graduation. But hell, what a grad... and it was worth the wait, SHE was worth the wait.

Gorgeous, Beautiful, Sexy, Smart, Funny. -PERFECT- and all mine.

By my second year of law school, we were living together. We married a month after I finished (Princeton for anyone who gives a damn). I was hired straight ouf of college by a most prestigious firm, and immediately started my climb to the top. For two years, I was the rising star, making connectiosn, making money, even ended up making a "little me" with the love of my life.
She was 8 months pregnant when she was taken from me. I knew, the instant I saw the house; cops, ambulance, everybody standing there... Some looked bored, others sickened. I had to fight my way through to see the body (God, I still can't think of that.. butchered, brutalized, mutilated corpse as the woman I'd once loved.)

I spent he next year buried in work, 20 hours a day, I cut myself off from old friends, family, and made new contacts. Ones who would help me find him, in exchange for certain favours which I happened to be in a position to grant.

My work never slipped, yet my employers became concerned with my new obsession. Hmmf, screw them and their job, it didn't matter any more. I'd found him.
The bastard thought I was his lawyer when I first approached him about being the prime suspect in the case, so I used it to my advantage. I wrung every bit of info I could out of him, and what I learned sent me into a terrifying new world...

VAMPIRES.
WEREWOLVES.
And all those other Hollywood Blockbusters and things that go bump in the night. He was a 'ghoul', sent to leave a message. I still haven't found out what the exact meaning of it is, or why his 'master' hated me so much, but in the long years since, I've found out a lot of OTHER things.

My first step was in finding her.. Or maybe she found me. For a decade, we were together, my vampiress and me, closer even than I'd been with my wife. And yet, it wasn't love that brought us together, but something else. A shared desire for power and knowledge which we both - somehow - knew could be gained by working together.
(I still search for the vampire who ended my life and started me on the path I now follow, but I no longer know exactly what I'll do if.. when... I find him. )

I've waited so long for my lady to bestow the gift(curse?) upon me, but it'll be worth the wait.

Power, Riches, Information, Beauty, Revenge. -PERFECT- and all mine.
And this time, it'll be forever.
[/sblock]

[sblock= Questiosn for Graf]
Two questions I forgot to email you:
1 - Why will he have no resources at start? Is it simply because you find it unbalancing, so I should delete it, or is there an actual reason? What's the difference between free and banking? Both mean I get it later, but one means I loose the merit points? huh?
2 - I was kinda hoping this vampire chick could play a fairly large role in my characters development (As she allready has, but continuing into him being a fellow vampiree)... Would taking points in Mentor or Allies be able to show that? If so, how many would you like me to allocate?
[/sblock]

 

[WarShrike]

Since a Katana is basically a two handed weapon (and the wakizashi isn't normally used to fight unless the Katana is lost somehow) I honestly haven't been able to imagine fighting handed with both of them.
I've just kinda assumed Biggs developed his own fighting style.

My bad. In other games i play, including D&D, Katanas are 1 handed, so i really inteded to fight with 2 weapons. So instead of bending the rules for me, i'll just switch to 2 Longswords once preludes are done. Longsword: Damage 3L, Size 2L, Durability 3, Cost **.

***EDIT: Are you sure Katanas are 2 handed? The Katana and Longsword have the same damage, size, and strength requirements. The Longsword is listed as a 1-hander, while nothing is said of the Katana. Also, the bigger swords (Greatsword, Zweihander) and polearms that are definately 2-handers are useable 1 handed if the character's strength is at least +1 over the base requirements (this from the Armory book).***

***EDIT #2: Also looked through the Armory book again and all the 2 handed weapons have a sort of cross at the end of their name, marking them as 2-handers. The Katana doesn't have one.***

 

[Graf]

***EDIT: Are you sure Katanas are 2 handed? The Katana and Longsword have the same damage, size, and strength requirements. The Longsword is listed as a 1-hander, while nothing is said of the Katana. Also, the bigger swords (Greatsword, Zweihander) and polearms that are definately 2-handers are useable 1 handed if the character's strength is at least +1 over the base requirements (this from the Armory book).***

Sorry, I need to be more clear when I post.

What I meant was that "in all the japanese samurai movies I've watched people fight with one hand".
[The style is similar to the sport Kendo, where you hold the sword with two hands and the lower fingers on the bottom hand are most essential. Supposidly anyway. That's where the whole Yakuza-finger-chopping thing comes from. It's not really (or not just) a painful way to humiliate someone. The more you've messed up (and the more joints you've lost) the easier prey you become if they have to kill you later.]

The katana and wakazashi were social signifiers in the country that invented them (Japan). They weren't part of a two handed fighting style.[The swords have different functions really, the longer Katana was wielded, usually two handed for actual fighting, the wakizashi was a secondary weapon and also used for certain kinds of ritual activities, committing suicide being the most famous.
Mostly though the second sword was a sign that you were a member of nobility. Nobles wanted armed servants, so having one sword couldn't be a sign of nobility. IIRC non-nobles weren't allowed to wear a second sword; I think the penalty for impersonating a noble during the "closed country period" was death.]

So all I meant was that, since my own experiences with Katana/Wakizashi (experience here being stuff I learned in Japan, not actual skill/experience of course) meant that I wasn't really able to visualize how a two weapon fighting style with those two blades works, and so my descriptions may have been a bit vague.
[I -did- try to use it in terms of descriptions in the fight with Blackcoat though.]

At your next dot (***) you'll actually have some more real combat options.
The first two dots of TWF in WoD are defensive. The next two are offensive (but losing defense is a big deal in my mind so it's not a "straight bonus").

-Personally- I could easily see someone getting dots *** and **** just with a Katana or any other agile combat weapon. I suppose they stuck it in TWF because they couldn't think of something else?
Dunno.

 

[industrygothica]

So, out of curiosity (and a good bit of boredom), I suppose I'll find out what happened to Beth at the start of the game - how she was changed, where she ran off to, etc.?

 

[Graf]

So, out of curiosity (and a good bit of boredom), I suppose I'll find out what happened to Beth at the start of the game - how she was changed, where she ran off to, etc.?

This is a very fair question.

The answer is that "Beth doesn't know". The first "arc" will include attempts by some characters to find out the "whys".

My first post indicated that there was an investigative component to the game and that's it.

You won't start off completely blind, of course.
I'll try to post Beth's starter post to give an idea about how it's going to being and we can talk about whether people feel like it's "enough" to have fun roleplaying.

 

[Graf]

Two questions I forgot to email you:
1 - Why will he have no resources at start? Is it simply because you find it unbalancing, so I should delete it, or is there an actual reason? What's the difference between free and banking? Both mean I get it later, but one means I loose the merit points? huh?

[Edit:See lower down on the thread]

2 - I was kinda hoping this vampire chick could play a fairly large role in my characters development (As she allready has, but continuing into him being a fellow vampiree)... Would taking points in Mentor or Allies be able to show that? If so, how many would you like me to allocate?
[/sblock]

Will come back to you. Soonish.

 

[Graf]

War,

You said you'd been playing around with Biggs a bit. Do you like Invisible Castle? I use it because I'm used to it.

I edited fixed my post above to get it right (sorry for the spastic posting recently. my excuse is that I have a newborn around now and I'm running on a lot less sleep that usual. I'll get more focused I think once things even out)

The bottom line is that you're free to use the Katana/Wakizashi combo. I was just making an offhand comment that you'd probably developed/adapted your own fighting style instead of using one that was traditionally associated with Kendo style. Wasn't meant to be critical of our your choices which are fine/good/groovy/work well in the game/etc.
(I do appreciate you giving it thought though, and I'm sorry I wasn't in a position to react more quickly to your comments).

 

[Graf]

Le Holidays

I am aware that it's approaching christmas/holiday time.

For some people this means no free time and lots of stress.
For some people this means lots of free time and little stress.

Hopefully everyone will have a good holiday. While I'll continue to try to push forward and I do anticipate continuing with semi-regular posting and getting the game going on the due date. Don't feel like there is any sort of 24 hour requirement.

Family time is the most important time. Live it up. Post if it works for you.
We'll be here when you get back (or you want a bit of an escape).

 

[Graf]

The final word (I hope) on why certain merits are banked/free

So as I've said before certain merits are banked/free.
(I'll find the list but it's stuff like Mentor/Resources/etc).

The reason why is basically this

0. You won't have access to them at the start of the game
1. I've never run a game before online.
2. Vampire has some unusual elements.

In online games i've played time is weird. Sometimes people post for weeks and fill up pages of threads with one conversation while nothing is happening. Since vampire has a social element this is a distinct possibility.
I'm not sure how long the start of the game will last.

It's possible people will hate that situation and we'll just blow through it. It's possible, with six PCs a bunch of NPCs and lots of questions (in and out of character) that it could take a while.
The decisions of the group, in the aggregate, will have an impact on how this affects things. So someone else's valid character decision* could wind up having and adverse impact on you're ability to use something you bought "fair and square".
*=I.e. a good, interesting in character choice

I don't want to have a situation where someone has lots of useful merits and someone else has no merits at all. I don't want to have a situation where someone's choices are effectively blocking you from enjoying the game.

Having said that, if you just want social merits, you want them soon and you want to spend xp trying to buy more social merits (or whatever) and you're willing to be "meritless" (or "partially mertiless") for the start of the game I don't want to deny people that choice.
The whole banking/free thing is just a way to let people choose and have a simple way for me to keep track of what's going on.

This may, btw, be the stupidest thing ever it's possible that we won't even be off the first page and a week of game time has passed and everyone's got most or all of their merits available to them.
I dunno.

[sblock=metadiscussion]
So at this point people may be asking "so what's with the start of the game" crap? I wanna play vampire, not DnD and I want to engage in social warfare, etc etc.

My answer basically is that with new players and a relatively inexperienced DM (that's me) I want to ease into things a bit. It's perfectly valid for a player character to have Allies (***** = My old biker gang). Then hypothetical biker mouths off to Biggs, Biggs kicks hypothetical bikers ass, hypothetical biker calls his buddies, they try to kill Biggs.

With an experienced crew I'd want to allow the first or second scene to be something like that. With newer players do I want my first fight to be a situation where someone's merit is trying to kill someone else's character?

Honestly?
No.
I don't want to deal with that initially.

I don't want people hiring bodyguards and going in hiding in some penthouse for the first character action.
I don't want someone saying "this city sucks" and hiring a private jet to leave. (And not just for the obvious reasons).

So that's the meta reason why.
I feel like giving people merits means "you can use them freely". We may debate about whether you can use resources *** to get a private jet, but saying "no you can't get to an ATM right now" is out-of-bounds.[/sblock]

Hope that makes things clearer.
If not let me know.

 

[Graf]

An addendum to the post above is that I want the game to unfold naturally.

So I don't want to feel like I need to "push the game forward" just to get everyone access to their powers (especially if it leads to some kind of choice for me like "let someone "kill" someone's merit or let a character die).

If people want to play for a few weeks in the initial situation then I want to allow that.