Roleplay concept needs fleshing out.....

[Mr Mystery]

Evening all!

Being a dedicated Nerd, I soon intend to make my first attempt at running a role play game.

The system I'll be using is White Wolf's World of Darkness, as I really like both the setting and the system. Characters will be mortals, with the possibility of adding supernatural abilities as things progress.

Central concept is the London Underground, something and millions like me use on a daily basis. A truly impressive feat of engineering. If you accept the tunnnels were dug by man.

But what if they weren't? The city itself is positively riddled with tunnels, known and secret, new, old, long since forgotten. But if we simply found the network, and adapted it to our needs, what is their origin? Who, or perhaps what made them? What happened to them? Can we be sure 'they' are no more?

My main influences are my own fascination with the Underground, an old Channel 5 series called 'Urban Gothic' and Shlock Horrod such as the surprisingly good 'Midnight Meat Train'

So as you can tell, I'm 90% of the way there. But I'm stuck trying to decide the origins of the tunnels. I want this to go far, far back into the past, to the degree that the city has either been designed around their presence, or has perhaps been subject to a curiously organic evolution.

And that's where you come in, my interwebular chums. I want your suggestions!

[Tzeentch's Dark Agent]

That actually sounds pretty cool in itself dude!

I'm imagining gritty horror, a bit like Metro 2033.

White Wolf is an AMAZING system, we use it for Deathwatch.

[MaltonNecromancer]

I'm afraid White Wolf got there well before you. In the Old World of Darkness, canonically, the Nosferatu were entirely responsible for the underground systems of every city (because Vampires define cities, and the oWoD Nosferatu needed kingdoms too). If you can dig up an old copy of the 2nd Edition Nosferatu clanbook (http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/82/Clanbook%3A-Nosferatu---Revised-Edition?term=nosferatu&it=1), it's got all the details there. It was dropped for the nWoD because they wanted less "canon", and also because the Nosferatu stopped being sewer-dwellers. But why bother reinventing the wheel? It was great background.

Alternately, in nWoD, you've got one of the bloodlines, The Architects of The Monolith (http://wiki.white-wolf.com/worldofdarkness/index.php?title=Bloodlines_from_Bloodlines:_The_Hi dden#Architects_of_the_Monolith) who have powers to do with the perceptions of cities.

There's also the Badacelli (http://wiki.white-wolf.com/worldofdarkness/index.php?title=Bloodlines_from_Bloodlines:_The_Ch osen#Baddacelli), vampires who hunt via sound and as a result, tend to prowl the underground parts.

Equally, you've got the Mnemosyne (http://wiki.white-wolf.com/worldofdarkness/index.php?title=Bloodlines_from_Mekhet:_Shadows_in _the_Dark#Mnemosyne), a bloodline of vampires who protect the memories of ancient vampires - they'd definitely need a place to sleep.

That doesn't even come close to looking at things like the way the underground would interact with the Hedge (from Changeling: The Lost). I imagine there are parts of the underground that lead to nightmare kingdoms rules over by steam-powered True Fae on the lookout for new toys (i.e.: your PCs). Watch "Neverwhere (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHpYWy89yVU) for further inspiration.

The underground is also a good place for Prometheans to hide; the constant movement would ensure their levels of Disquiet remained low. If you want a particularly unpleasant and nigh-unkillable villain, you can't go too far wrong with a high-powered Golem Centimanus.

Basically, there's a huge amount of stuff you could do. I think the thing you should really bear in mind is that the WoD works best when it's not high fantasy. The more real and plausible you can make it, the better.

[White Tiger88]

Shoot your self before you ever see a video of your self L.A.R.P no really........ Watching a Larp is freaking scary. Also why not go with what gets women....make your Mortal Sparkle in the sun as a super power.

[Tzeentch's Dark Agent]

Because you'd be playing a Solar Exalted not a Mortal?

[Mr Mystery]

Interesting points. Prometheus is an incredibly cool system!

But I'm wondering if this should be some animal responsible, such as Wyrms, or keep the origin shrouded and almost Macguffin like.

Urban Gothic (hard to find, but a must watch for WoD fans!) presents the City as almost conscious. It is aware of what goes on around it, but never seems to interfere. Though if I run this into a saga, I could always use the Underground as the intro, leading the players into further intrigue. Perhaps just as mooks sent into one the disused stations to look for something...

Could eventually link it to another concept. That of the British Empire being primarily one of necessity. Certain locations were brought into the fold to find specific relics, or because of an area of power exists there. Shunt it beyond normal human greed, and you've got an excellent landscape to detail. What if London, literally the city itself wanted those things. Why? And who did it first speak to? And how?

[Tzeentch's Dark Agent]

I was actually working on a similar project, I've been working on it since I saw the concept art for Dishonored.

I want a gritty fantasy game that combines magic and technology. It was going to be set in England, but I'm not sure...
It's a bit of a horror RPG too, but the players won't know that. It'll be fun when the terror tests start. :p

[MaltonNecromancer]

Certain locations were brought into the fold to find specific relics, or because of an area of power exists there. Shunt it beyond normal human greed, and you've got an excellent landscape to detail. What if London, literally the city itself wanted those things. Why? And who did it first speak to? And how?

If you can find a copy, this is exactly the idea behind the RPG Kult (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kult; http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/TabletopGame/KULT) which is, without doubt, one of the most messed up games I've ever played. Whenever I run a WoD game, I tend to use the social systems from the White-Wolf books, and the background from Kult, because basically, it's utterly disturbing.

In Kult, reality is a prison designed to keep all of us down. The Demiurge (a fairly explicit rip-off of the monotheistic concept of God) was not the creator, simply one amongst many, but was the first to work out how to get power for himself - by trapping his peers (us) inside this new concept called "reality". The cycle of death and reincarnation keeps us distracted, and thus unable to achieve apotheosis. Any human can achieve enlightenment, ascend to divine power and escape the prison... but it's really difficult. Also, the game makes no distinctions about how you do it, taking the explicit view that morality is as artificial a construct as reality - as far as the rules go, there's no difference between good and evil at all. Thus you can gain power by being a truly beatific human, or through acts of ritualised cannibalism and self-mutilation. Like I said, most disturbing game I ever played.

However, the Demiurge is dead, and Astaroth (the game's version of the Devil) is long missing. Because one of the game's core themes is that of decay and abandonment. There's not going to be any great battle or war between spiritual forces because reality is slowly rotting.

Our jailors are divided into two camps: the Archons (servants of The Demiurge, representing order as a cruel and fascist concept, rather than as stability and civilisation), and the Death Angels (servants of Astaroth), embodying all that is cruel and vile about humanity).

Now, this all relates to your idea because the Archons don't appear in human form. They possess Incarnae (human avatars), and can have as many running at once as they wish: hundreds if they like. In their "true form" in the spirit world (named Metropolis), the Archons and Death Angels appear as vast, sprawling cities that best embody their core spiritual concept. So Nahemoth, Death Angel of Apathy would appear as an endless, run-down council estate, filled with junkies, alcoholics and suicides. Malkuth, Archon of the Material would appear as a more horrfying version of Aperture Laboratories, with endless chambers conducting experiments on humans.

Any and every city is an extension of Metropolis into the real world; aspects of the spiritual version bleed through. Wherever a city is most unpleasant is a potentil gateway point. Some abbatoirs you can walk into... and just keep walking.

It's a pretty dark game. I wouldn't recommend running it if your friends are religious (for obvious reasons)

As for
What if London, literally the city itself wanted those things. Why? And who did it first speak to? And how?

These are not really questions you should answer. Here's why:

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NothingIsScarier

Monstrous motivations work more effectively in a horror setting if they are genuinely weird. If you're running this as a horror game, one of the most effective things you can do is suggest to players that these things can be understood, before eventually having them realise that they can't. It's the alien thing:

1.) They are not like us.
2.) We will never truly understand them.

Read Alan Moore's "From Hell" (avoid the turd of a film) to get a really strong sense of the ways that architecture can be truly terrifying.

Now, if you're going more for an urban fantasy feel, you're probably better off over-humanising them. Though I suggest you do one borough at a time. Mayfair is not like Peckham is not like The City.

The best thing you could do would be to study your local history, and let that act as your inspiration. I would say that to treat a vast city like London as a single entity is to do it and its inhabitants a disservice.

Oh, and if you can find a copy, I cannot recommend "City of Vice" as a source material for London enough. It'll be a very easy way to quickly learn a lot of local history.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_Vice

[Psychosplodge]

Urban Gothic was awesome.


regarding the tunnels,
Maybe they were just always there?

[Mr Mystery]

That would be the MacGuffin option. Think I might run with that to start with. If they want to delve into that, I'll worry about it then!

I think the setting I've chosen has lots of story options. I'd love for it to become the setting for a series of games, possibly with the same characters.

But should I make them paramilitary, akin to a SG team going in to explore? Or start them off as joe public off on a jolly, and later drawn deeper into this particular well of mystery?

I've got an excellent range of WW books in my cabinet, including a couple of relatively rare ones. Do you reckon players would find being granted supernatural powers (psychic, shape shifting etc) later to be cool, or a bit lame?

[Up The Walls!]

But should I make them paramilitary, akin to a SG team going in to explore? Or start them off as joe public off on a jolly, and later drawn deeper into this particular well of mystery?

I've got an excellent range of WW books in my cabinet, including a couple of relatively rare ones. Do you reckon players would find being granted supernatural powers (psychic, shape shifting etc) later to be cool, or a bit lame?

First section, I'd advise something between the two. Playing as humans in a WoD analogue means that they will die quickly. There's no real way around that, you've got naff all health points and Lethal's basically Aggravated damage you might stand a chance of healing in the distant future. Giving them a bit of training and maybe some firearms experience (maybe police?) could help with that a little bit.

The second one depends entirely on how it's done, can't really help you much with that one. The difficulty is, it can feel really cheap or really well done, but which side of the line that falls on really depends on the beholder.

[MaltonNecromancer]

Playing as humans in a WoD analogue means that they will die quickly. There's no real way around that

So the ST, the person with total control of the universe the players are in is powerless to keep them from harm?

*facepalm*

Ummm, it's very, very easy to keep players alive if you treat tabletop RPGs as stories, not highly complicated wargames.

Just don't have them run into anything they can fight. My players ran into an NPC eldritch abomination with stats equal to Cthulhu. Then they had a conversation. They were terrified of saying the wrong thing because they knew the odds of their survival were slim.

Also, you can attact them on a meta level.

One of my players started talking too much about the stats he needed, and the disciplines he was going to get. So I had an NPC steal his potential. In real terms this meant he stopped earning XP. None. He was now faced with the choice of leaving the game (which he was enjoying on a social level) or learning to actually roleplay. Which he did. After six months his character was the most fleshed out and interesting one in the group.

Seriously, if I say that there is no way the characters will die, there's no way they will die, because I am the ST.

I never tell them this, because that's the end of any tension.

Tension isn't 1 or 0; it's the inbetween stage. Your characters should always feel that they stand to lose everything any second: stats, beloved family members, their posessions, their status, the goals they've worked so hard for. Their lives are possibly the worst thing I can take from them because every time a character dies and the player comes back as a new one, it just reinforces - this is not real, which makes it really hard to develop any sense of fear.

An example of how you do WoD with humans:

Your characters have been abducted by an elder vampire. There is no way you can defeat them. They have dominated all but one PC so that they cannot move, only watch.

The one PC is the one who is weakest in real-life. The one who takes the easy options.

The vampire has ten children led into the room, all blindfolded and terrified. They tell the PC that if they kill one, the rest go free. (He mentions nothing about the PCs).

Let that PC stew. How does he choose what to do? There's one bullet; if he shoots the vampire, the vampire laughs. If he shoots himself, the vampire uses Celerity to catch the bullet (reinforcing how little chance the PCs have).

He could refuse... but then what happens? Do all the children die? Are the PCs taken away never to know?

Does he kill the child, only for it to be revealed that the other nine were cardboard cutouts - hallucinations he'd been dominated to believe were real?

Does it turn out the vampire was true to his word?


But should I make them paramilitary, akin to a SG team going in to explore?

That will define the game from then on. Remember: "Aliens" was a subversion of the audience's expectations - they had all these awesome guns that turned out to be completely useless, to the point where a civilian and a child were the only survivors, and the one living marine was hideously scarred for life. If you make your players paramilitary, they will expect combat, and probably just die.

Here's the thing: WoD is a HORROR game, not an action one. If you're sending PCs into combat, maybe you should be playing D&D.

Action scenes should be short, brief, and played for keeps. I've run very successful, very long (we're talking years) human games in WoD. It's very, very doable, but you can't rely on the lessons you learned during D&D sessions. WoD is not high fantasy. It's horror, and when was the last time you saw anyone in a slasher film or a classic vampire film win through straight-up, guns out action? WoD is not Blade.

Also, if you're going to give them guns, why bother setting it in London in the first place? We don't do firearms in the UK, so your action is, by necessity, going to be very different. Why not embrace that? Give them ways around combat - a mightily powerful supernatural sponsor is a good start:

"Why do these vampires keep letting us live?" ask the players.

"Because it's what I want." say uber-vamp who's got his eye on turning them into his newest vampire death squad. Hard to maintain your humanity when your boss is ordering you to murder people for his snuff film collection.

[Tzeentch's Dark Agent]

Malton, that was quite rude.

[Mr Mystery]

Guns don't particularly fit old Lahndahn town either. Just struggling to decide why they are down there in the first place. Perhaps a research team of some kind, either for 'Nasty Corp' or more innocent, like a University.

Being my first shot at being ST, I fancy a gradual build up. As for them gaining supernatural abilities, I could always use the Fantastic Four approach, and have them altered (probably by a self-destructing relic). In terms of who gets what, I like the idea of them rolling off, with the results determining how they are affected. Plenty of ways to run from that one!

[MaltonNecromancer]

Malton, that was quite rude.

Sorry, but I get so tired of people talking about RPGs like the ST has no control over the game, which is like saying an author has no control over their novel. I wasn't meaning to be rude, simply flabbergasted that anyone would say it.

It's like: why kill your players? If they're under attack by werewolves, come up with a plausible reason the werewolves would let them live. Anything: the werewolves get possessed by spirits friendly to the players; the werewolves have been fitted with inhibitor chips by a shadowy government/vampiric/mad scientist group; the werewolves are a violent faction within their clan, and are stopped at the last minute by their pacifist leader; the werewolves are a mass hallucination created by ghosts/mages/weaponised gas being tested by mad scientists; the werewolves take the players home, unconscious, to keep them "fresh" for escapin... sorry, feeding on later; an elder vampire shows up and uses superior levels of Dominate/Majesty to humble the werewolves...

These are the ones off the top of my head, any of which would lead to a potential story/play session. Dead PCs lead to ruined suspension of disbelief and annoyed players.

If all you've played is confrontational D&D hack/slash violence, you've really only scratched the surface of what tabletop RPGs can do. My previous game session had, over a two and a half year run time, exactly one fight. Just the one. No-one was bored, and everyone still had plenty to do. Most of my players know nowadays that if you play one of my games, firearms, weaponry and brawl are dump stats; take them and it's just wasted points.

Now, I'm not saying mine is the best way to play - simply that combat is not, and should never be seen as, the default setting for tabletop RPG.

And that it's a personal bete noire when people claim/assume it is.


I fancy a gradual build up. As for them gaining supernatural abilities, I could always use the Fantastic Four approach, and have them altered (probably by a self-destructing relic)

Have you got a copy of "Freak Legion: A Players Guide to Fomori"? That had a very nice system for powers. You had Powers and Taints. You picked Taints first (negative mutations) and then spent the points your Taints gave you on Powers (positive mutations). The two offset one another very nicely, and had a lot of scope for body horror / My God What Have I Become moments.

[Mr Mystery]

Plus, whilst they lack any supernatural advantage, mortals are immensely adaptable, and have no supernatural weakness either. Simple trick is to not dump them in a no-win situation.

Ooooh! Other idea! I have the Innocents book. Could have them starting as kids. Give the game an 'IT' vibe to begin with, then track their growth over a series of games.

[Up The Walls!]

And that it's a personal bete noire when people claim/assume it is.


And it's a personal bete noire when people claim/assume that I claim/assume that :P. I know where you're coming from, but your deconstruction of my point was quite blunt and lacking in tact, which I did feel was quite dismissive and disrespectful. TDA can vouch for me that I'm particularly fond of the not-fighty parts of our RPGs.

[Tzeentch's Dark Agent]

"I will direct this personally"

We prefer the role-playing element to our games, it'd be better if we weren't Space Marines, but y'know.

[Mr Mystery]

Yup. I think I now have the bare bones of my plot.

Start them off as school kids, exploring an abandoned Underground station. Kids find out WHY it's abandoned, and witness some freaky stuff. At the end of the game, they escape, mentally traumatised.

Next story? Wind forward a few years. Kids have become young adults, understandably troubled by what they have seen. They wind up in a mental hospital. Whatever it was they witnessed...it's not over, and it's still going on. By the end of this story, they have developed into dedicated opponents (or possibly willing accomplices, depending on how it goes!) of the MacGuffin.

After that? Ongoing series of stories charting their exploits.

So if anyone fancies it, and can get to Tunbridge Wells of a Sunday, you're welcome to join in!