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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Graf" data-source="post: 3953114" data-attributes="member: 3087">The final word (I hope) on why certain merits are banked/freeSo 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 this0. You won't have access to them at the start of the game1. 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 choiceI 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.</blockquote>

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