Josh's Staff: Introductions and Bio

[Josh]

Thanks for all of your questions. I am looking forward to answering many more.

A question that is often asked is who is on my Staff. I have posted and shared that info but I think it is time that they had a chance to reach out and talk to you guys themselves. I would ask that if you have questions for them Create a New Thread "Questions for Josh's Staff" so that we can create a clear separation for the topics.

My Staff is as follows:

Denise Brown
Nicole Porter
Cory Sober
Kyle Broekers
Chris Schetzle
Brad Lewis

For now I will let them introduce themselves and let it go from there.

[Blake Sterling Jr.]

Hello I'm Cory.

My credentials:

Been human for 39 years.
Been playing Table top games for 27 years.
Been LARPing for 22 years.
Been in Seattle for 14 years.
I was an Ast. Storyteller in the Camarilla for 3 years. I worked under three different head storytellers in that time. My job was City Scaping. Creating npcs and locations for the game. In time I also took over the influence system streamlining it.

History

I played back when this game was known as Red Square, 13 years ago.

I got to see Raoul run this game when he took over from Fuzzy.

Been back a couple of times sense.

When I heard it was being reset a year ago I jumped at a chance to play and I have had such a great time and I'm very glad for the Current staff and all their hard work in this game.

In that time I have not missed a game. I've been late, but to my recall never missed.

Which is why I talk about it to people every day I work. Describing how amazing it is and how inviting the players are. How with the brilliant bead system even a brand new player can hit the ground running.

I can remember a time when the game met in the Red Square because of how large it was. Hearing the Storytellers speak over a sea of players.

I want to make that happen. I'm working with the rest of the hopeful staff on ways that not only we get new players, but we reward everyone who makes an effort to recruit and retain players. New and old.

I love LARPing, it's not too hard to say gaming is my life. I want my life to be as amazing as possible with as many friends who share it with me as possible.

Vote for Josh and let's make that happen!

-Cory

[Spider]

Hey y'all,



I'm Kyle, and I've been playing in ECC for about six months now. I've been involved in White Wolf LARPing in general for roughly four years as both a storyteller and a player in a variety of venues. My areas of interest/strength within the LARP community are new player mentoring & involvement, as well as immersive "living world" storytelling.



On the area of new players, especially as a relatively new player to the ECC, I feel very strongly that new players should be given guidance when they desire it. We should work to integrate them into the game in a way that is both fun and interesting for that player as well as a positive experience for the entire group. When we master that ability, I feel that we will increase new player retention dramatically.



Regarding storytelling and my "style", I'm a firm believer in the "living world" philosophy--the world, the players, the NPCs exist, and things are always happening; seemingly insignificant effects can have ripples that become major plan-altering events weeks or months down the road; the world of the game, even just within our city, is vast and full of undiscovered things both interesting and dangerous. In short, I believe in trying to "flesh things out" around the players such that you always have the feeling of being a key player in a vast, dynamic world where you have as much opportunity as you want to discover, interact with, and enjoy the aspects of it that appeal to you and your play style.



Looking forward to working with everyone!

[Barnaby Cuthbert]

Hello dear friends!

I'm proud to be supporting Josh's candidacy for HST as his assistant storyteller this year.

What I bring to the table on Josh's behalf:

Quick background: I've been HST for Vampire at ECC twice and AST once in the last decade. I have a jack-of-all-trades knowledge of just about everything there is related to administration, webmonkeying, system and setting and telling these tales. I'm a crusty old salt, but your character's blood tears keep me young!

- Continuity of story - I've written a large number of mods from street level gangland encounters to pernicious Elders attached to PCs, to mysteries and occulty-type things to assassination plots, to simple Elysium games, to interesting one-shots with the chance to give dice a little bit of a rest for a single night. I'll be able to keep going with existing stuff and inject character backgrounds into the interesting wave nature of cause and effect. I set things up, players knock them down or re-arrange them in interesting ways. I've been voraciously reading the new canon tidbits in the recently released V20 books as well, so that will be in my toolbox to add flavor to NPC interactions and world building/interacting efforts by players. I'm looking forward to Backett's Jyhad Diary, which will update some of the metaplot of the classic world of darkness, because I think that will naturally, in a non-forced, by-the-book way, fill in some gaps in the world's exterior story and make Seattle feel a bit more connected to it.

- Continuity of rules - Last year I was pleased to assist Rob's crew in coming up with some common sense mods to rules for a LARP vs. a tabletop setting. There were also a *lot* of new rules that change how things work from Revised vs V20 that I went through line by line with the rest of the staff last year. I foresee working with Josh to standardize a few calls and maybe even trim the fat off of the few house rules we have. Other than that, my watchword is going to be 'go back to the book'. There are some grey areas here and there than I stumbled against as a storyteller last year and asked for some leeway on from players... which was not so successful in a few edge cases (two, to be precise, over the last 12 months). So that's the first fat I trim. For my improvement goals it's going to be about using the written rules even more than I had before and doing as much prep work as I can by reading a lot. That is a direct result of poll feedback, which I'm taking firmly and honestly to heart, with my humble thanks for the opportunity to continually hone that crafted experience. I do bring to the table a lot of good information that I have gathered about where to go for resources in the books, and since I physically typed up the house rules on the website, I have a muscle-memory level recall of most of that and can quickly show players that stuff on phones.

- Continuity of style - I pride myself on bringing a lot of style to the substance of the stories I'm privileged to tell. My stuff will continue to have musical accompaniment, detailed, pre-written descriptions that any ST can pick up and run with, memorable character voices (from mook to marquis) all with appropriate stats that follow the same rules as PCs and antagonists from the books. I'll be pleased to try some new things this year that I've been considering, and spreading those immersive style elements hopefully to other staffers as well, as I know that's something Josh is interested in this year.

- More openness. Want me to tell your character a custom story, or perhaps write a mod for other Staffers to tell? I'm happy to, no matter who you are or what your play-style is. Some feedback that I got from the polls was that some folks felt left out. Well that's no good and I don't like it at all. It isn't me. If there's interest, come talk to me out of game. I won't have favorites, that's not my jam. I'd be honored to tell anyone who wants one a tale, with my gratitude for joining me on the adventure. I think this is a great way to challenge myself this year, so I would very much enjoy it if you'd speak to me about your character's goals and you, the player's influences and dreams for the PC. I'm only one human of course, and I lack any dots of Celerity, (ironically the Flash is my fave superhero) so please be patient.

Thanks for considering Josh and the rest of us this year. I'd be honored to return with him and the returning and new staff and spin some dark yarns, reveal some mysteries, spelunkings, horrors, nightmares, intrigues and adventures with each of you.