Roleplay concept needs fleshing out.....

[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!