[Character Creation] [VtR] nWoD Vampire Game

[Graf]

Blood,

Generally the character concept sounds good to me. (i.e. a successful weapons smuggler, targeted and taken out of action).

I will say that generally speaking, what your understanding of the situation is, and what the actual situation was may be different in the details.
I'll post about torpor a bit.

Hi Graf, Ced here!
I have no experience with WoD. Hope no experience is needed! O.O"

Great to have you on board. No experience needed. With that I think we're full. I'll take an alt or two (and there's one or two people I'd probably take anyway, like Toki, since he did such a good job when he was running a game a while back) but seven is about the max I think.

Just say when to start lol.

Heh. Fair enough. Please start making your mortal characters. (I don't think we need a new thread for this, do we?).
Note: Only go up to Section 4 of the character creation process (i.e.) before you apply the vampire template. Most merits are availible but I'll make a seperate post about that.
I don't suppose someone has something like an excel spreadsheet or an online database do they?

 

[Graf]

About Torpor

To sum it up in a sentence as vampires age they grow more powerful (their blood potency rises -- it's a stat in the game similar to generation, except that it rises over time and is a broad barameter of power level) eventually they can only feed on other vampires.
The only way to reduce your blood potency is to rest in torpor, the more powerful you are the longer you need to wait before it starts to drop.

Torpor is hell.
You constantly relive your worst experiences over and over again.
If you spend any period of time in torpor when you awake your memories are different. Sometimes it's a little different. Sometimes it's not. You can't ever really tell. I mean, if you remember fighting a dragon two thousand years ago does it mean that there were dragons back then? Or was there just a dude who owned a lizard that you didn't like and time has warped your memories to make it something it wasn't.

So there are old vampires wandering around but they all have wildly different memories about what happened in the 'nights of yore'.
Even a vampire who's rested for 30 or 50 years can awake with a very different set of memories of events than someone who's stayed awake the whole time (of course, that person could just be lying to you...)

 

[Graf]

Character Creation Rules

You can take anything from the WoD Core book and the VtR book, except...

Certain merits (primarly) Vampiric ones aren't going to be allowed (or rather, you're free to take them, but they don't cost anything and you won't get to use them (initially)).
If/when the game reaches the point when you'd have them available then you either pay the points for them or your character has lost access to that resource.

A good example is Retainer, you're welcome to have a loyal manservant/killer ghouled attack dog/whatever in your back-story. You don't have access to it when the game begins. Depending on how things work you may be able to get access to the retainer and renew your relationship in the future. At that point either have to pay the points or the retainer decides they don't want to come back to you. I think it's a fair way to handle things.
The merits I think this would apply to would be Resources, Retainer, Mentor (Sire only, you can have non-Sires as mentors without restrictions) and (probably) Herd.

Also, as mentioned above, people who play Nosferatu will be asked to buy Clan Status 1.

That's it. Have fun. Don't be painfully abusive (I'm hopeful that the game isn't easily breakable but I figured I'd mention it up front).

 

[Graf]

Character Creation Guide (for people without the books)

General outline of chracter creation.

This pdf presents a more/or/less complete set of rules for character generation (albeit in a slightly different order than the books). [Here is an html verison.]

Note: For both skills and attributes the "5th dot" costs double. So Academics **** costs 4 dots but Academics ***** costs 6 dots.

For attributes you 'rank' physical mental social as primary, secondary or tertiary (urg, can't spell right now). You get 5/4/3 dots to add to your statistics in each catagory.
Each attribute starts at 1 (i.e. you get one dot free).

Skills (Physical, Mental, Social) are also ranked the same way (i.e. prioritized by catagory) but you get 11/7/4. All skills start off with 0 dots.

Generally speaking an attribute of 2 is normal, anything three or higher is good. So it's fair to call a PC with a strength 3 "strong".
And, as Only mentions in the post below skills in the 4 to 5 dot range are demonstrate a very high level of competence.
Personally I'm inclined to waive rolls for people with those skills in certain circumstances; but I don't want to set a hard and fast system for it yet.

 

[Graf]

Differences from oVampire

This section of the wiki is actually a very good summary of the differences between oVampire (or the computer game) and nVampire.

I should also stress that this game, keeping in the theme of VtR (and my own preferences) will be primarily a "local" game. [edit: I mean that there won't be much globe trotting; while the covenants and clans exist and are similar, or the same as the book, local personalities and politics will be very important as well. Just because you're Invitus and the Prince is Invitus doesn't mean he'll be having you over to nibble on his herd and talk about how he's ruling the city.]

 

[OnlytheStrong]

Was wondering about the skills and attributes. I'm not sure about the actual rules of the book (I have to borrow it from a friend), but I remember something about the use of the "dots." Basically only a certain number is allowed, given that someone with 5 in computers would be a computer genius. Since I don't have the book right now, I was wondering if you would enlighten me.

 

[Graf]

Only,

I've edited the post above to reflect. I'll keep doing that going forward as I pick up more info. I'd prefer not to type it out all by myself (especially since I'm sure it's on the net somewhere) but if that's what needs to happen that's what needs to happen.

People are also welcome to PM me stuff it they want to keep it things a suprise until the game.

And do hide things in spoiler blocks so the post doesn't become unweildy. (You can do that by typing [ sblock] and [ /sblock] without the spaces.)

For example:
See characters presented below for good examples.

 

[OnlytheStrong]

Ty kind sir. I will try to restrict myself to a 3 dot maximum I really can't see a mortal in his 20's having 5 in weaponary anyways. lol

 

[Graf]

For people without the books feel free to post character ideas and talk about things. The rules stuff, as far as I'm concerned, is secondary.

Also, while the character ideas posted so far have been rough and tumble types don't feel restricted to that. So long as you find the character interesting we'll find a way to make it work for the game.

 

[Graf]

This PDF link includes rules for character creation. Skip the parts that refer to vampires (clan, covenant, disciplines, etc) for now.