Joe for HST !!!

[Emelian Fantana]

So here it is, my candidacy for the HST of the Vampire (Camarilla) game. Most of you know me as either Villoren or Emelian, but I have been at this game now for a bit more than nine and a half years (started in April 04). In that time I was an AST for Chris Schetzle for a year, and even did a small stint for Galen during his time. But there is a secret about me that I will share with you all right here and now, I actually don't like rules changing. It is plane as that, I like things to work the same way from month to month and day to day. So here is my pledge to you. Should you vote me and my dream team to being the next staff, I will not champion a single rules change. This is despite my levels of praise at a system or my criticism for it.

Here is what you can expect so from me and my yet to be named team...see how I am keeping that one just out of reach for the time being? My team will start to tell stories and spend staff bandwidth building up those stories instead of trying to change a mechanic. These stories will be focusing on getting players to work together. My staff will be telling stories that bring to PC's together to build up the drama rather than letting someone just walk off into the sunset to find the answers they are looking for. I am not going to tell you my plots, but rather through back story, character development, prestation, you will be telling me stories that I get to facilitate and exaggerate in some cases.

You can expect this team to really use background dots. If a situation can be dealt with background dots, then that is where it should be. The Vampire the Masquerade system is about how vampires hide from mortals and do their deals through third and fourth parties. You just can't do this without the background muscle. To do this, I want everyone to notice the section on Backgrounds on the website where it says that they always want something in return. Allies expect friendship; Mentors are building you up for a certain task; and Contacts what outright payment. All of these backgrounds have a system to help facilitate the needs of the NPC inside the scope of the relationship.

This does not mean that all stories will be nice to the PC. When NPCs find out that the special uber secret thing they taught you is being abused or passed around like a joint, that NPC will get made and make you pay them back faster. I am not going to use this part of the rules to just start stone walling people, but the other day even current and past storytellers told me that they wished they used this part more often. It would have made their lives easier. How are we going to do this as a staff for consistency?

Every NPC we come across will have triggers. These are things that will make the NPC like the PC, hate the PC, become indifferent to the PC. Here is an example. You have a mentor/ally who is path of honorable accord. He has been teaching you his path and speaks up for you regularly status wise. He finds out that you lied to him, he is now in cirsis mode and you will have to earn his trust back. The other option the PC has is to sever that tie before crisis mode becomes enemy because he lost all that hard work in training you.

Rules changing: I know I said that I will not champion a single rules change, I you will be able to hold me to that. I have already been tested by some things. But this does not mean that game is happy with rules as they are so I have a plan. The plan is simple. If you don't like a current rule get a total of ten members of game to agree with you that the rule is not working the way it should. From those ten people, chose a champion. That champion will work with the RA team to develop a new complete rule write up and how to convert the current game to it. I will then review to see how I could easily break the system. If it is acceptable, I give to you the players to change the system. The rules is addressed, created, and voted on by the players and not the staff.

Now, who is going to help me with this? Here is my dream team.

Mark Butler
Julie Norton
Sheena
Todd
Tim
Kevin Brian
Jeff Meaders

I am still in contract negotiations with a few people and are hoping they sign on the dotted line as well. But we are the crazy ones that will make your LARP lives more crazy.

Anyone and everyone send me questions, comments, or concerns about my platform here, email, or in a PM. I will answer as many questions as I can.

[user/874]

Joe is having some pretty screwed up nightmares if I am in his dreams.

As far as my part in this whole escapade goes, I have some very simple concepts I want to focus on as a story teller. The idea that everything else stems from is a critical question.

Who are you?

I don't want to know what you are, I want to know who you are. I won't be telling stories. You will. I will set up situations to test who you are and see what flows from that. I will be testing the myriad aspects that make up a character. Expect challenges to your courage, tests of willpower, trials of conviction, questions of conscience, investigations of moral fibre, deep rooted personal horror and moments of clarity. I don't want to see dots on a sheet, or roshambo for a result. I want to see the actual character the system defines. I want to provoke emotion in players through their characters. I want you to go home really thinking about the actions your character took during the night, pondering those choices and feeling something about them; maybe even a little horror at what you did. Stories should matter. Which cool power you used to solve that problem isn't really something to remember. The choices you made in that really bleak situation that changed everything for your character and shook up all the relationships you built are something to recall. Who you are and the consequences of your existence and choices should be the pivotal parts of our nights; not which flashy combo discipline took down all the faceless baddies.

Most of all, I want to bring the sky back down and tell small scale stories that involve players. I would like the game to be less about the nebulous world that you inhabit and more about you and that guy across the table that makes you spitting mad. I want to take the threads of your background that you meticulously plotted out and tangle up other players in its skein. I want to generate conflict and cooperation between you and that new vampire that just showed up tonight. The plan that your mentor has for you should be twice as important as that sneaky power he is teaching you. You didn't think that came without a price did you? The favors your allies ask of you should balance out the favors you ask of them. Quid pro Quo. What price that juicy rumor that your contacts are ready to serve up? Will you pay it? I want Seattle to be the universe for a while. (Mad Tom's delusion as Truth!) Let us tell stories about you for a space, and less stories about some pencil whipped elder from Vienna that I made up last night to match some dots on someone's sheet. I want stories of betrayed loves, broken dreams, and that one last, desperate chance.

At it's root, in a LARP setting, vampire is about PvP. This does not mean a Brujah punching a Toreador to death. What I aim for is all of your antagonists to be other people in the room, not some cardboard cut-out NPC that, at the end of the day, no one really gives a shit about. Co-operative story telling doesn't necessarily mean that all of our characters should be cooperating. I want to set up situations where your aims cross those of that smug looking Ventrue and only one of you is going to get what you want. I want to engineer conflict that requires a pack of neonates to bargain away their souls to that Italian in the back room so they can sidestep the obstacles that creepy ass Tremere slammed in their path. You won't get stories about ravening packs of werewolves or Sabbat invasions from me. You, as players, have way too many interesting stories to tell and get tied up in for those exterior things to really matter.

[Shah-Khohr of Ventrue]

As a very polite question:

I understand there was some troubles in your and Sheena's family life recently that cause departure from the last staff. Are these issues that have resolved to some degree that being on Staff is once more an option? Or is this likely to cause some conflict in the short/long term?

[user/874]

An excellent question!

It is a combination of "not quite as scary as originally thought" and stabilised because treatment and such are underway. The prognosis is good with a positive outlook. The Seattle Cancer Care Alliance folks have been pretty goddamned amazing throughout the whole ordeal. It isnt over by a long shot, but the situation has settle into "the new normal," as it were.

[Shah-Khohr of Ventrue]

Right on; thanks for clarifying

[Katie Hester]

Bonus answer for Rob:

I've been cutting out some of the other extracurricular activities that kept me from focusing on school stuff during the week. I apparently thought I was superwoman and could balance school, two part time jobs, rugby, science club and staff all at the same time. With the family illness on top of it was way too much. I have reorganized myself with the reality of the needed commitment and Todd's dad will be done with his treatment by mid January.

I will now be able to handle what I need to without issue.

[Jeff]

Good Morning / Afternoon / Evening / Night / Timeless void of who knows when you are reading this,

Since I’m on this staff, I thought I’d post some details on stuff. For those who do not know me, I’ve been part of this game, off and on, since 2006. I’ve been a Toreador, an AST, a Giovanni, a Malkavian thin-blood, an HST, a Gangrel, an uppity ghoul, and a Brujah. And for much of that time I've been PA / RA as well. Yup, long list of things. I’m eager to join this staff under Joe as HST.

So, how do I see my time on staff? I expect to be doing a fair amount of paperwork / data entry. I’ve been vaguely working on a website for character tracking, I plan to get this up and running to allow us to replace grapevine (eventually), to allow people to view characters online, submit XP, influence, all sorts of stuff. I hope to have this ready in the March time-frame ( maybe earlier, we’ll see)

Meanwhile, I intend to assist with grapevine as is, and to make the primary focus of my time on staff the interweaving of character backstory. Who were you before you came to Seattle? What people did you know? And were known by other people? What dangling threads did you leave in your history to have fun with in the future? What does that dot of Status on your sheet actually mean? What boons do you owe? What boons are owned by you? And how do you trade those for advantage? This is what I will be focusing on as one of Joe’s ASTs.

I welcome any questions you may have.

Jeff

[Just Evan]

Hi Joe!

You mentioned wanting to tell stories that will bring characters together:

These stories will be focusing on getting players to work together. My staff will be telling stories that bring to PC's together to build up the drama rather than letting someone just walk off into the sunset to find the answers they are looking for.

Without revealing your specific plot points, what does this mean? Will the PCs be encouraged to all band together against NPC antagonists? Will NPC mentors and allies be setting PCs up against each others various sects (I count 3 major sects in play right now; Camarilla, Anarch and Gangrel Great Pack) politically or physically?

What kind of feel will your plots have? Currently, game has a decidedly epic feel to it - 7th Great Maelstrom, Red Listers, Demons. Is this the vein you intend to continue in?

If so, what about those players who want more low-key political level games? It can be hard to talk politics and play at prestation when there is something threatening to destroy the city each week.

If not and you intend to cool things down a bit, what about the players who are clearly enjoying the high adventure feel of the current game? Do you have any plans to keep things spicy for them if there are not powerful threats to test their mettle?

Thanks!

Evan

[BLewis]

Given the potential staff and character/player histories therein, I'm concerned at the potential amount of "weird stuff" to come in. Among the announced staff are those who have played at least two other supernatural types in this Vampire sphere, and another two, at least, that have had heavy interaction with (and wanted more) of another two supernatural types, from my interactions. Does this mean that Cathayan, Ebony Kingdom, Mage, and Wraith PCs are going to become more common place? If so, why? If not, what assurances are there to detract away from a Vampire game being focused on Vampire? While it is a World of Darkness, this is a Vampire game and needs to focus on that accordingly, in the minds of many.

[Wolf]

+1 to Brad.

[Emelian Fantana]

Why hello there awesome question group. I will be happy to answer those questions raise. If I miss any aspect of the multi-part questions, feel free to metaphorically slap me on the wrist and tell me to answer again because the answer is not sufficient.

Evan: Have you, Evan, or anyone else out there seen a TV show where in one season the ultimate bag felt ultimate but then the next season it was not nearly as foreboding? Take 'Smallville' season 5 had brainiac in it. That was one of Superman's ultimate villains who lasted for decades in the comics. Then there was Season 6, there was no singular villain. But rather that season had a series of smaller obstacles to overcome (various luthor traps) but did not result in large shows of action. This in my mind was the best season of the Smallville show. Go Justice League

This is what I want to do. I want to bring the game back down a notch. No 7th generation power mongers, no Red Listers, no Rank 5 Pack of Garou. I won't stop if a story starts with a player and evolves this way. But my team will ask ourselves each time if this can be done mundanely. This will detract from those of you players who wish for the weekly 7th gen fight, but that is not my style.

I will use the NPCs that are CURRENTLY on people's sheets to tie them together. There will be boon brokered on the back end so that boons paid to people outside the city end up back in the city. That way you feel as though you actually paid something when that Contact gives you information. This is one of the many ways that my staff will get the PCs to rollplay together. I have no intention of doing a game wide mass combat.

Brad: The amount of weird stuff will be reduced. My staff and I are working on what would be a good 'cap' on weird things. This is one way that we can bring the game back to a Camarilla focused game. I understand that while, I am not doing a reset, I will never be able to completely be able to bring it to an only Camarilla game. I do not have all the numbers on the clans as I am not privy grapevine, but I do know that there is a disparity from the core VtM book and what we have in play.

As starters, non-Vampire characters are not allowed. I know you had a run in with a Sorcerer Ghoul that had some rather ridiculous junk on the sheet. This will not be brought into the game. The person who did that will announce himself I believe, but he did tell me that he did it to prove that the current staff has been way to lax with character approval. People such as him were given very little scrutiny and it shows on what powers – and even core race – were allowed into the game.

I have spoken to some of you in person about my personal feelings towards the weird stuff in game. I will let you rest assured that while me and my staff will be pushing the culture of the game to a more conservative approach, we will not be singling any current character or player out as someone who does this.

----

I will be talking to several of the currently 'weird' character players and discuss what we can do to work together to bring the game back to balance. I know this sounds like I will be sending characters out of play, but this is more to help you tell the story so that another new character that is within the scope of a Camarilla vampire game.

By now, most of you have seen me specifically call out Camarilla Vampire. While, I will keep the doors open to Anarch, Independant, Gangrel Pack, ect concepts, the concepts will be approached from this question. “How do you interact with and develop the story of a Camarilla Setting?” Anarchs do this, heck even the Sabbat do. But before you pitch these concepts if you win, you better be willing to interact with the Camarilla game. I will not dedicate storytellers to run plots for just those groups on a regular basis. No storyteller will be dedicated to telling the Tacoma Anarch VtM game on its own. The story will bring you back to the Camarilla.

Lastly, I will not censure my staff. My staff has been emailing me with what they would like to respond here. I want to let you the players and my staff know that we are people and not completely of one voice. They have their opinions and know what they want to do as apart of my dream team. They should feel able and encouraged to post their responses so that we all know they are genuine and not another version of what I am saying.

That being said, I have talked with my team and if we come to a consensus regarding how a rule is applied or how an NPC reacts to a situation, we will not buckle and rescind that on a whim. If my team comes to concesus about anything but you the player want a different call. We will not change our minds in that moment. We will discuss again at the storyteller meeting or online. The only way the opinion will change is if you provide new information that prevented us from make the best decision, and then we unanimously agree that we were wrong before.

ASTs: Please pounce on any question you feel you have an answer for.

[user/874]

This is specifically for Brad, as I am one of the two named in his post and I am a big fan of openness and transparency. The character I am leaving behind to serve on staff was a mortal ghoul built on the sorcerer template.
As he got murdered horribly by spectres, it isn't really a problem any more. I pitched him to staff after serving a month and getting to "see behind the curtain" a bit. The concept itself was a "keeping up with the Joneses" sort of reaction to seeing the vast and varied landscape of different concepts and types of characters in play. I will admit to a bit of "pushing the line to see what I can get away with" as well. More specifically, he was a defensively built caster with a huge focus on wards and counter-spelling. In fact, the only thing on his sheet that wasn't covered in the Vampire house rules put out under Sean's staff was the warding/counter-spelling.

I actually got the idea to pitch on the sorcerer template based on characters that were already in game. I built him as a response to and attempted protection from the proliferation of magic, custom rituals, combo-disciplines and general "weird" that has infused the game. If we hadn't entered into a "spirit apocalypse" where that exact specialty was needed, no one would have ever known he wasn't a ghoul with a bit of thaumaturgy. I would be happy to go over the sheet in point by point detail with anyone that would like to take a look at it. Catch me at this next game session

As far as my personal feelings go, please check in with the current staff on how deeply conservative I actually am. Don't take my word for it, check in with folks who know me closely, I am sure they will happily recount tales of how much I rail against the sprawling scope of what our game has become. Alternately, let us sit down and have a conversation about what I actually want for the game, face to face. I prefer it that way, since there is less likelihood of misunderstanding each other. As we bill ourselves as a "Camarilla" game, I think that we should start to swerve back to that set of roots. I would like to see a whole lot less "weird" in our game. I would like to pull the sky back down to just vampires and only vampires, with most of those vampires being Camarilla. WoD and White Wolf's printing philosophy strongly incentivize playing the outsider concept. You get all the cool powers and things that no-one has any sort of answer for. I point directly to your own Giovanni for evidence of that in action.

A cornerstone of what I believe in and would like to see happen in game is a tidal shift back to "Who" a character is not "What" he is and all the corner case niche powers on his sheet. I want to put the incentive back on being Camarilla in a Camarilla game. Joe lured me onto his staff with the idea of a year of stability and a return to a more central position on the scale of what is and isn't in game.

Does that assuage some of your worries a bit? If not, toss me an email directly, or shoot me a phone call / text and I will try to answer more fully in a conversational style. You can PM me direct for addresses / numbers if you don't have them.

[Emelian Fantana]

As I am playing in the earlier game slot. Please approach me to discuss anything you want about the topics in this thread. I am much better as an in person discussion person than a text person. I am willing to be there and ready to talk shop about any topic for the half hour prior to game.

[Mike Lohmann]

I have a question.

I dont find that I have anything particularly weird on my sheet. Everything, for the most part, is fully Vampire sphere driven. Where I get strange, is the combination of disciplines and utilizing little used systems currently apart of the house rules.

What my question is, is what did I just read? Did you say that for people who have "weird" characters, you are going to approach them and try to get them to rebalance a character or play something else? And what will you do when, not if, but when they say no to giving up what they either worked hard for, or want to leave as is because its what they wanted?
Will you then forcefully take those characters out of play?

[Katie Hester]

Joe's goal (which I'm sure he will further elaborate on), is to approach those players with weird concepts to ask some of the following questions:
What was your goal for this character?
What's the story you're trying to tell and how can I help your character achieve those goals?


He does not plan to just walk up to people and say, "You're done, make a new character." Or tell people that "X" on their sheet isn't available any more and it's gone.

Rules are not being changed nor are people going to have their characters reworked by staff to be less weird.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
That all being said. If someone has received a lot from mentors, those mentors are likely to start utilizing the person they've been training. Allies will start calling in favors. Contacts will be asking for payments before they do stuff. Background dots will have consequences and will hopefully be fun ways to encourage players to interact with each other.

Example:
If Timmy the Toreador has received Thaum training from Bob the Tremere elder outside of the city, Bob is going to start asking for stuff in return. If Timmy tells Bob to shove off, there will be action that happens as a result which will likely involve the Tremere within the city.

[Mike Lohmann]

So, an attempt to rush them to the finish line, to leave no real reason to play said characters? That seems to be what is being said, as its not being done as a favor to them.

[Thornstar]

Dec 21, 2013 10:33:17 GMT -8 Mike Lohmann said:

So, an attempt to rush them to the finish line, to leave no real reason to play said characters? That seems to be what is being said, as its not being done as a favor to them.

To me, that isn't how the statement read at all. Here it is all over again:

Dec 21, 2013 9:09:04 GMT -8 Katie Hester said:

Joe's goal (which I'm sure he will further elaborate on), is to approach those players with weird concepts to ask some of the following questions:
What was your goal for this character?
What's the story you're trying to tell and how can I help your character achieve those goals?


He does not plan to just walk up to people and say, "You're done, make a new character." Or tell people that "X" on their sheet isn't available any more and it's gone.

Rules are not being changed nor are people going to have their characters reworked by staff to be less weird.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
That all being said. If someone has received a lot from mentors, those mentors are likely to start utilizing the person they've been training. Allies will start calling in favors. Contacts will be asking for payments before they do stuff. Background dots will have consequences and will hopefully be fun ways to encourage players to interact with each other.

Example:
If Timmy the Toreador has received Thaum training from Bob the Tremere elder outside of the city, Bob is going to start asking for stuff in return. If Timmy tells Bob to shove off, there will be action that happens as a result which will likely involve the Tremere within the city.

It sounds like they're going to attempt to utilize everyday logic to provide a "soft cost" to things outside the norm, IE it doesn't cost more xp or something, but what they're saying is that they'll focus on working with players to highlight the odd things on their sheets, like, if you have crazy magic you learned from a crazy mage, he might have you do a crazy quest, which is related to your background and the description of the crazy mentor, or something. What I'm reading in this text is that they're going to tailor stories for your characters based on what comprises said characters.

Going back a little further, to what Todd said:

Dec 20, 2013 20:21:38 GMT -8 user/874 said:

A cornerstone of what I believe in and would like to see happen in game is a tidal shift back to "Who" a character is not "What" he is and all the corner case niche powers on his sheet. I want to put the incentive back on being Camarilla in a Camarilla game. Joe lured me onto his staff with the idea of a year of stability and a return to a more central position on the scale of what is and isn't in game.

Does that assuage some of your worries a bit? If not, toss me an email directly, or shoot me a phone call / text and I will try to answer more fully in a conversational style. You can PM me direct for addresses / numbers if you don't have them.

Appears to back up what I was saying above. The focus changing from "What" to "Who" and positive motivation for Cam characters, with no mention of negative repercussions for non-cam characters. Where are you getting your fears of your character being run out of game?

[Shah-Khohr of Ventrue]

I find all this talk of only camarilla to be both very threatening and unnecessary. Certainly a game of this size can support the off-shoot non-camarilla flavors that vampire offers us.

[Shah-Khohr of Ventrue]

Dec 20, 2013 20:21:38 GMT -8 user/874 said:

This is specifically for Brad, as I am one of the two named in his post and I am a big fan of openness and transparency. The character I am leaving behind to serve on staff was a mortal ghoul built on the sorcerer template.
As he got murdered horribly by spectres, it isn't really a problem any more. I pitched him to staff after serving a month and getting to "see behind the curtain" a bit. The concept itself was a "keeping up with the Joneses" sort of reaction to seeing the vast and varied landscape of different concepts and types of characters in play. I will admit to a bit of "pushing the line to see what I can get away with" as well. More specifically, he was a defensively built caster with a huge focus on wards and counter-spelling. In fact, the only thing on his sheet that wasn't covered in the Vampire house rules put out under Sean's staff was the warding/counter-spelling.

I actually got the idea to pitch on the sorcerer template based on characters that were already in game. I built him as a response to and attempted protection from the proliferation of magic, custom rituals, combo-disciplines and general "weird" that has infused the game. If we hadn't entered into a "spirit apocalypse" where that exact specialty was needed, no one would have ever known he wasn't a ghoul with a bit of thaumaturgy. I would be happy to go over the sheet in point by point detail with anyone that would like to take a look at it. Catch me at this next game session

I'm not sure it was your intention to write this the way I read this, so I'm going to post what I think you're saying and I'm just going to pray that I'm wrong.

What I read in the above is that you stepped onto staff for a month. In that month, you were privy to everyone's secret stuff. You thought a 'normal' character couldn't keep up, so you elected to bring in a Sorceror. Further, a sorceror who's concept, near as I can figure is 'I kill magic guys'. Then you linked in with a crew whose concept was 'We kill magic guys'. And all of this was done under the guise of 'well, other weird stuff is already in play'.

I'm pretty sure you don't mean this to come off this way, but when I read the above: A staff member stepping down with super weird shit on their sheet and a vendetta against other people's cookies, it makes me very nervous. While I appreciate the spirit of honesty bringing this to a public discussion (and indeed applaud the openness it takes to discuss such things), I'm kinda shocked by what you have to say.

[Shah-Khohr of Ventrue]

Dec 21, 2013 10:59:09 GMT -8 Thornstar said:

SNIP
Appears to back up what I was saying above. The focus changing from "What" to "Who" and positive motivation for Cam characters, with no mention of negative repercussions for non-cam characters. Where are you getting your fears of your character being run out of game?

It isn't the wording that some of us are feeling nervous over, it's the context and feel. Saying that you won't issue a Tacoma ST might just be saying "I won't dedicate an ST to any one groups time". Or, it might be saying "Rob, I think you're a dick and I won't run your stuff." Saying that you want to focus on Camarilla concepts might be a way of saying "My world view is closer to this set of printed materials and not that set' or it could be saying 'I feel threatened by this grouping of characters and will actively work to get them out of game'.

Ambiguous language and internet forums lead to very threatening situations. Couple that situation with players not on the proposed staff defending these statements, and you have a situation that smacks of 'THIS side will be favored and THAT side will not' mentality. I think it is perfectly understandable to have some of us very wary over what is being skirted around in the above texts.