Better Rules for Maritime Adventures

To be brutally honest, I don't think I've ever read any OSR/NSR rules for naval combat and seafaring turns that didn't feel like a) they belonged in an ancient wargame or b) the designer's heart just wasn't in it, and they just wanted to get over and done with that part of the game as soon as possible. And as a fan of vikings and pirates, I always felt like this was such a disservice to something that could be just as fun as regular overland travel or dungeon exploration, both of which have been done superbly in several OSR/NSR games. 

The great thing about the OSR and the NSR alike (I'm still trying to figure out whether there really is a need for such a distinction, but I digress), though, is that when something hasn't been made yet, there's this strong encouragement to go ahead and do it yourself. So I went and did exactly that. Now, the title is presumptuous as hell, I know, but I really do believe these rules are pretty cool. They were heavily inspired by classic dungeon crawling procedures (such as OSE's) and by Apocalypse World 2e's vehicle rules and moves — a weird combination, for sure, but then again, most of my stuff is a mix of classic OSR and PbtA anyway. 

Time to dive in, mateys.

BUILDING YOUR SHIP

All seafaring vessels are described through the following attributes: Size, Speed, Handling and Hull. By default, every vessel has a score of 0 in these attributes. A ship’s Size category also affords it with a number of Armaments and Improvements, as seen below.

Size 0: Boats or rafts, for example. 1 Improvement, no Armaments.
Size 1: Small longships or sailing ships. 2 Improvements, 1 Armament.
Size 2: Transport ships or small galleys. 3 Improvements, 1 Armament.
Size 3: Large longships or sailing ships. 4 Improvements, 2 Armaments.
Size 4: Large warships or large galleys. 4 Improvements, 3 Armaments.
Size 5: Heavy warships or longships. 5 Improvements, 3 Armaments.

Any ship larger than Size 5 gets +1 Armaments for each number above that. Armaments can always be traded for further Improvements, and vice-versa.

Improvements are used to increase the ship’s attributes (except Size). Aside from its use in naval actions, Speed is also factored as an abstraction of how many hexes (or how many increments of 6mi) a vessel can cross in a day. Much the same way, Hull can be used as an abstraction for the ship’s maximum number of passengers and its cargo limit, with each point of Hull counting as 10 to 50 passengers (crew included) and 20 to 100 tons at most.

For the purposes of naval combat, Size counts as Hit Dice and should be rolled to determine the ship’s Hit Protection. Armaments start at d6 damage, but one can spend an Improvement point to increase that damage by a step. Speed is used to determine combat Initiative, and ships with the same Speed rating act simultaneously. Speed can also be used to determine the amount of squares a ship can cross in a combat grid per turn, if one is being used.

NAVAL ACTIONS

There are a number of actions a ship’s crew can take during their turns at sea. These actions can be undertaken by any member of the crew, but it is a good idea to assign functions among the party, such as captain, boarding leader, navigator, engineer and quartermaster.

• Undertake a journey: For each six miles of travel, the crew should make the following checks: Dexterity, to deftly keeping their ship on the right path, Wisdom, to properly determine what path that is, and Charisma, to keep all spirits high.

Failing any of these checks results in a 2 in 6 chance of triggering an encounter (DEX or WIS) or an event (CHA). In addition, failing the Dexterity check also halves the distance traveled, while failing the Wisdom check has a 2 in 6 risk of leading the ship the wrong way (roll a d6 to determine direction: 1. north, 2. northeast, 3. southeast, 4. south, 5. southwest, 6. northwest). 

Encounters should be rolled on an appropriate maritime encounters table, while events function much like a normal encounter, but with a table of situations pertaining only to the ship’s crew and their circumstances.
 

• Navigate perilous seas: In order to safely navigate troubled waters or obstacles, a crew member must roll under either their Dexterity or Wisdom, whichever is higher. They subtract the ship’s Handling from the result.
 

• Attack: When naval combat is initiated, the crew can make one attack for each of their Armaments. Crew members operating ballistic weapons must succeed at a Dexterity check, while ramming requires a Constitution check from the navigator in order to prevent their own ship from suffering any damage. Unconventional weapons such as Greek fire should trigger Wisdom checks. 

Although the brunt of the damage is always suffered by the ship itself, the enemy vessel’s crew always has a 2 in 6 chance of individually suffering half of the total damage dealt to their ship.
 

• Defensive maneuvers: When trying to avoid or minimize the effects of an enemy ship’s attacks, the navigator can check Dexterity to outmaneuver the attacks, or Constitution to bear the brunt of it. Succeeding at a Dexterity check ignores the damage entirely, while succeeding at a Constitution check halves it and eliminates the possibility of damage spillover to the crew (2 in 6 chance of individually suffering half of the total damage received by the ship, as above).  

Defensive maneuvers can also be used to avoid boarding. To do this, the navigator must pass a Dexterity check.

• Board: All it takes to board a ship is being close enough to it and passing a Dexterity check (done by the navigator). Once a ship is boarded by a crew, maritime adventure rules cease to be the focus, being replaced by regular combat procedures in the case of a fight or by a diplomacy challenge.

• Emergency repairs: When plugging holes, tying ropes or putting out fires, a crew member can check Intelligence to devise a workaround for the ship’s current maladies. Succeeding at that check restores d8 HP to the ship.

• Overtake & outdistance: When trying to overtake or outdistance a ship or sea creature outside naval combat, the navigator checks Dexterity if relying on their vessel’s Speed, or Wisdom if betting on its Handling. They subtract either Speed or Handling from the result.

SAMPLE SHIPS

Below are some examples of ships built with these rules.

• Skeid longship

Size: 3
Speed: 2
Handling: 1
Hull: 2 (45 passengers, 80 tons at most)
Hit Protection: 17 (3 HD)
Armaments: Archers (d6), spearmen (d6), ram (d6)

• Man-o'-war

Size: 5
Speed: 1
Handling: 2
Hull: 3 (200 passengers, 300 tons at most)
Hit Protection: 28 (5 HD)
Armaments: Heavy ballista (d8), light ballista (d6), ram (d6)

• Trading cog

Size: 2
Speed: 2
Handling: 1
Hull: 2 (60 passengers, 240 tons at most)
Hit Protection: 10 (2 HD)
Armaments: Archers (d6)

ON ABSTRACTIONS

There are a lot of abstractions here, and that's intended. Personally, I feel like trying to simulate the exact speed with which a ship travels in a good or bad day is a losing battle. There are just too many variables, and rather than making the game feel grounded, this just grinds it to a halt. At the end of the day, those "exact" measurements are still abstractions. They're just crunchier and less intuitive than they need to be, oftentimes for the sake of appearing realistic.

And with that said, I'll leave y'all with an epiphany I had while writing this post: these rules can be just as easily used for airships, with little to no adjustments.

Fair winds and following seas to all!

Design Exorcism: DIG!, a dwarf-centric TTRPG

As the title (coined by the great @SandroMayCry) may imply, this isn't the announcement of a new project, but rather an attempt at flushing some game concepts and ideas from my head. I'm probably never gonna seriously work on DIG!, but if you'd still like to learn more about what a dwarf-centric game made by yours truly would look like, read on. 

THE PITCH

Nothing is more important to dwarvenkind than the Great Work, the sacred duty of restoring and reclaiming their long-lost Underkingdoms. Not family, not love, not wealth. Nothing. Without the Great Work, they have no future. No place to call home.

The Great Work is everything, and it is an honour to be a part of it. You shall face many a hardship during your Watch, and you may even forfeit your life while fighting for your people's future, but you will live on in each and every tunnel your company recovers, digs or improves. There is no greater legacy.

Evil hides down below, infesting and corrupting your ancestral homelands. The cruel, opportunistic and genocidal Drow seek to take every last inch of the Underkingdoms from your people, armed with weapons bought with stolen gold from the people Above who feign neutrality, and with destructive spells supplied by their High Elven brethen. Opportunistic dragons have made their lairs where your forges once burned, hoarding the wealth your ancestors left behind. Hell-spawned goblins and orcs raid your cities, dragging your young and your weak to their infernal pits.

The Dwarven Companies of the Watch are outnumbered a hundred to one, but you don't have the privilege of giving up. Your enemies will never broker a long-lasting peace, not while you're still Below. But no matter what the people Above say, yours is not a lost cause. You are living proof of that.

And so you fight. For your young. For yourself. For the chance, however small, of living to see some better days.

MECHANICS (OR LACK THEREOF)

Now, the real reason why I won't turn this into a proper project isn't the overly dramatic, clichéd and politically clumsy drivel above, but rather an unwillingness to settle on a playstyle/framework. I can't decide whether I'd want DIG! to be a more traditional thing (like a mix of Cairn and Electric Bastionland), or if I'd rather go with something akin to Forged in the Dark games. And I have a good reason for that, too.

The central procedure for DIG! involves the PC Company's Shifts — that is, the time they spend away from base, renovating tunnels, digging deeper, liberating long-forgotten outposts or simply patrolling. Each successful Shift would allow the characters to either fill a portion of a progress clock (there's that damned FitD influence again), or wipe off a portion of a threat clock. Progress clocks would be assigned to constructive Shift actions, while threat clocks would be a way to measure the rising threats to the Company's progress — which is why Shift actions like patrolling the tunnels, reinforcing an outpost's defenses and charging into enemy territory would alleviate those threats. 

At each and every Shift, the Company would have to roll a Threat die (d6, a glorified Overloaded Encounter Die). On a 1, the Foreman (aka the GM) would roll an event in the relevant table — that is, each type of Shift action would get a table for this. The Company could choose to push themselves to accomplish more during a Shift, be it by extending its duration or by working extra hard, filling/erasing another portion on the clock. Each time they did so, though, would warrant another roll of the Threat die, adding 1 to the odds of an event and increasing its severity.

PC Companies would also get to choose a directive, like War, Engineering and Relief, and each of these would double Shift effects on certain actions, while halving them on others. Company creation would also involve choosing a Righteous Pursuit, which is a fancy way of calling a big, memorable goal, the kind of thing that only a few dwarves ever manage to achieve. Examples of Righteous Pursuits would include brokering an alliance with emissaries from Above, destroying an infernal pit, founding a new city or liberating a sacred forge. I really enjoy this aspect of DIG!, as it's a great way of letting the players signal what they're particularly interesting in doing during the campaign.

The thing about the whole spiel above is, there's nothing stopping me from merging both playstyles — that is, keeping the clocks while still following the more involved, lethal, turn-to-turn gameplay offered by OSR games like Cairn and Electric Bastionland, but I'm worried about losing what makes those different approaches tick by combining them. So, as it is, this remains just an exercise in design exorcism.

ARCHETYPES

The final bit of DIG! I need to exorcise are the archetypes, which would be structurally similar to Electric Bastionland's failed careers. I have no idea how many I'd include, but I did manage to note a few down while I was still processing this whole thing. They'd each have two questions leading to a d6 table (which is where Electric Bastionland's influence comes in), but the examples below only have the questions, as I didn't quite get to the part of this folly where I start writing tables, thankfully.

• The Noble (what is your family's claim to glory, and what privilege do you have?)
• The Miner (what are you looking for in the tunnels, and what's the strangest thing you've found down here?)
• The Outlander (where did you come from, and what made the dwarves accept you?)
• The Exile (why were you exiled, and what secret keeps you alive?)
• The Reverend (what is your faith, and what symbol do you carry?)
• The Fallen (what got you discharged, and what did they arm you with?)
• The True Believer (why do you believe in the Great Work, and what did you buy in preparation for your Watch?)
• The Canary (what are your songs about, and what instrument do you play?) 
• The Bastard (what did your noble-blooded parent promise you, and what family heirloom did you take?)
  

ALL DUG OUT

And that's all I came up for this fever dream of a game concept. Is DIG! ever going to be a thing? Probably not. But the idea of dwarves fighting to reclaim their homelands and protect their people against all odds still speaks to me. Tales of camaraderie, self-sacrifice and the hopeless struggle for a better future... that's proper V.V. bait, right there. 

Alas, this could probably be done well enough as a campaign in a variety of different games, so at this time, there's no need to reinvent the wheel.

But who knows.

Orcs and goblins as enemies: V.V. Edition

The thing about the evil "races" debate is that I actually see a lot of potential in goblins and orcs as enemies, but not with the way they are presented in most D&D settings. Those feel incredibly icky for a lot of reasons, most of which y'all are tired of reading about.

So, in the interest of keeping them as enemies while excising the ick, here's some quick lore from my campaign setting!

DROWNED IN HELL

When people are drowned in the infernal waters of the Abyss, they emerge as orcs. Well, adults do. Children emerge as goblins, instead.
The reason why both orcs and goblins are so "violent and warlike", then, isn't biological predeterminism. They're basically possessed by infernal rabies.

And the best part is, they can be cleansed. Purging the Infernal Ur (tainted magic) that corrupts orcs and goblins alike is a campaign-long goal, and not an easy task at all. But it's doable.

If/when the PCs or NPCs manage that, the untainted orcs and goblins won't be called by those names anymore. They'll cease to be driven by rage and cruelty. They'll recover a lot of their former memories and personalities, and they won't need to drown others in the Abyss to increase their population anymore. For all intents and purposes, this will be the birth of two new Lineages of the Folk, embraced and treated as such.

That won't stop new orcs and goblins from being made in the Abyss, however. Shock troops are always useful. Callously killing them, however, won't be so easy anymore. That's the power of an informed decision.

THIS POST BROUGHT TO YOU BY...

So, there are three main influences for this take on orcs: the Super Mutants from Fallout 1, zombies, and the Deadites from Evil Dead. The "dunking regular people in evil soup" aspect of it comes from the Super Mutants, obviously, and the possibility of a cure comes from zombies. Deadites were the key ingredient, though, with their penchant for self-harm, mindless abandon, gratuitous cruelty and thirst for violence being an inspiration for the infernal angle of it all, as well as a way of keeping what makes orcs cool without the offensive bits.

As for the goblins, most of the above also applies, with the addition of a wonderful blogpost by @sandromaycry. It's a must-read if you're at all interested in different interpretations of fantasy species.

 

Werewolf: The Apocalypse and the impact of flawed representation

I have conflicting feelings about Werewolf: The Apocalypse.

As a mixed-race Indigenous person who wasn't raised by their people, Werewolf was my first contact with a true attempt at representation for Indigenous cultures. It wasn't entirely positive, nor was it responsible, sensible or accurate, bordering on the noble savage racist trope, but given that everything else treated us like less-than, it mattered.

Seeing my ancestry being portrayed as this interesting, vibrant and deeply spiritual collection of cultures sparked an awakening of sorts.

Now, I grew up deeply ashamed of my skin and my features, even resenting the fact that I didn't look like the White protagonists I was force-fed by Hollywood throughout my childhood. My hair didn't look like everyone else's, and no one knew how to cut it properly. My eyes were "too slanted", and I constantly had to endure jokes about Japan, a deeply racist practice here in Brazil. I was often told to avoid the sun so my skin would look whiter and I would "fit in" better.

I didn't want to be an Indigenous person. I felt Othered, alone, isolated. But Werewolf: The Apocalypse, with all its many, MANY flaws, somehow helped me see just how deep, powerful and beautiful my ancestry is.

In spite of all its faults, WtA was the push I needed to get in touch with my roots. After years of research and healing, I started to notice something funny. I no longer felt ashamed of what I looked like and of being who I am. On the contrary: I was proud. My skin is beautiful. My culture is rich, diverse and full of wonder.

Embracing the spiritual side of my heritage was an act of self-love, too. I was forcibly inducted into Christianity as a child, and that was a traumatic experience, to say the least. I closed myself off to anything that felt remotely religious due to that trauma for at least half my life. But now I know where I come from. I appreciate it. I am empowered by it. I know who's looking after me, and I trust and appreciate their protection.

And if I hadn't bought Werewolf: The Apocalypse on impulse when I was 17, I'm not sure this is where I'd be today.

But I can't talk about WtA without mentioning its recent controversies, which range from plagiarism (including the tracing of a Maōri activist's likeness and sacred Tā moko) to a toxic, oppressive work environment detailed by J.F. Sambrano in harrowing detail here. Werewolf: The Apocalypse has never been perfect, but these were brand new lows.

So, how do I reconcile WtA's issues with the massive impact it had on my life? Not easily, I suppose. I will forever be grateful for that first push, and Werewolf: The Apocalypse will always have a place on my shelf as the first TTRPG I ever bought, but I can't and won't endorse its dark side.

Still, the fact of the matter is that representation always matters, no matter how flawed.

It can save lives.

It probably saved mine.

Adding Procedures & Random Tables to Vampire: The Masquerade, Part 3: Court Creation & Faction Play

You can't have courtly intrigue without a court, and the truth is, Vampire: The Masquerade barely provides you any tools to create one. Time to change that. While part 1 of this series gave you the tools to create a city of your own and part 2 made it easier to populate it, part 3 is where your sandbox will truly come to life. We'll start from the very bottom, diving into the personal connections that weave webs of intrigue and moving up to coteries before finally exploring some procedures and mechanics for faction play.

THE TIES THAT BIND

Every important NPC should have three personal connections to other NPCs (or even the PCs): one with a powerful figure, one with a coterie-mate, and one with someone from a different faction. At least one of those relationships needs to be negative, and at least one needs to be positive. Roll or choose on the d66 table below.

Here's an example:

Vincenzo Vallone is a Hecata fledgling with the Thrill-Seeker Archetype. He is just and greedy, favouring trendy fashion, and he craves revolution. He was a disgraced gangster before the Embrace, which was an act of hate. His appearance is marked by thick hair, venomous eyes, and his friendly tone.

Figure of power: He is a thrall to his sire, Giancarlo Putanesca, entrapped by a full blood bond.
Coterie-mate: Vincenzo is indebted to Sniffer, a Nosferatu detective, who welcomed him into their Anarch coterie.
Inter-faction connection: The Toreador Prince, Alanis Whitehall, considers the fledgling an inconvenience, as his clan's very presence is unwelcome in her city.

Establishing these relationships can be tedious, but the payoff is worth it. Once you know who a character's enemies and allies are, it becomes a lot easier to involve them in your city's conflicts. If anyone threatens Sniffer, Vincenzo will be there for him. If the PCs need support against the tyrannical Prince Whitehall, the Hecata fledgling may be willing to stand with them. Instantly gameable, right?

Do note that this isn't meant to be the first step of court creation; it's better to do this once you've already generated all coteries, at the very least. The only reason we're discussing personal connections before coterie creation and faction play is scale — as in, it feels more natural to start at the personal level before moving on to the big stuff.

COTERIE CREATION

Before we start working on your city's coteries, let's get one thing out of the way: while PC coteries should always strive to have functional relationships between all members (as Vampire is still a collaborative storytelling experience, in spite of its themes), the same isn't necessarily true of NPCs. A little inner strife can do wonders for making NPC coteries feel alive and vibrant.

The first thing you should do when creating a coterie is decide its size and its political importance. Naturally, I made a table to help you out with that. Roll or choose away!

Once that's over and done with, it's a good idea to find what the coterie's purpose and focus is. The table below should help you with that, but if you want a coterie to be something else that isn't included in the table, no biggie! As long as there's common ground and/or a shared goal between the coterie's Kindred, it's all good.

And that's it! You can now start creating the individual members of each coterie. My Perchance generators can help you with that, and part 2 of this series goes more in depth into that process, too. If you're following the tables and procedures from part 1 while creating your sandbox city, it's a good idea to stay below (or at least around) the maximum number of Kindred that can be safely sustained by your city's population, but overpopulated and underpopulated cities can both be very interesting, too.

FACTIONS 101

Credit where credit is due: these mechanics were heavily inspired by Mindstorm's blogpost on the subject, as well as Remember Tomorrow's faction mechanics. It's a remix of those, really, with a bit of tailoring for Vampire. 

Now, "faction" is sort of a loaded word when it comes to Vampire: The Masquerade. It could mean anything from the sects, to blood cults and even powerful coteries. My personal definition of "faction" includes all of those things and more, as a politically-aligned group of people (or Kindred) who share the same goals. Ideally, you should only turn a group into a proper, statted out faction if they hold at least some sway over the city, or if they have the potential to. Otherwise, they're just a regular coterie or group, instead of a faction.

FACTION ANATOMY

When developing a faction, you should start by looking at your city's lore, its Domains and their rulers, the main coteries and interesting connections between NPCs. Following the procedures from part 1 will automatically give you a few factions to start with, but if you're only interested in faction creation, you can roll or pick on the faction table¹, using the Appetite table to find a goal for your faction. 

Once you have at least an idea of what the faction is and what they want, you're ready to stat it out. Giving it a cool nickname/title is always nice, but that's optional. Each faction is comprised of three Fronts: Warfare, Influence and Capital. They each have an associated d10, which is what you'll be rolling during faction play (more on that later). Faction strengths and weaknesses are represented by Assets and Flaws, respectively, which can add Advantage or Disadvantage to certain faction actions (and that works exactly like you expect it to work).

Here's an example of a faction stat block:

• The Broken Tower (Camarilla offshoot)

Members: Prince Alanis Whitehall, Paris Johnson, the Sheriff, Daisy Mae and Wilhelm, the Harpies, and Primogens Wayne, Callum and Jazz.
Goal: The complete subjugation of every other faction in the city.
Fronts: Warfare [-1] Influence [0] Capital [0]
Assets: Popular Elysium [Diplomacy], Blood Trafficking [Bribe]
Flaws: Weak Sheriff [Attack], Unlikable Prince [Recruitment]

Don't worry about balance. Kindred society is unfair by design, so why should faction play be fair? If you feel like a faction should be far stronger than the others, then give an Asset to each of their Fronts; as long as they still have a Flaw, that's peachy keen. If you feel like a faction should be weaker, stat it with several Flaws and perhaps a -1 on a Front or two. When in doubt, use the fiction to dictate the stats.

FACTION ACTIONS

Each Front can perform three distinct actions, as seen below.

 

Warfare actions are invariably offensive, representing direct attacks against enemy forces and strongholds, strategic surveillance of their movements, numbers and plans, and the underhanded destruction of their troops, equipment and bases. If the Sabbat storms an Elysium in the middle of court, they're launching an Attack against the Camarilla. When they use an infiltrator to spy on the Prince, they are engaging in Reconnaissance. If they plant explosives in the Sheriff's haven while he's out, they're partaking in Sabotage.

Influence actions cover key aspects of social maneuvering, such as forming alliances, bolstering the faction's ranks with fresh blood and spreading (mis)information through the city. If the Camarilla appoints a dissenting Toreador ancilla to the Primogen, they are using Diplomacy. If they allow each Kindred on the Primogen council to Embrace new childer, they are starting a Recruitment drive. When they spread footage of the Anarch Baron mistreating a fledgling, they are disseminating Propaganda.

Capital actions concern the management and application of a faction's resources, like investing in worthwhile endeavours, acquiring any equipment, building or services deemed useful, and buying favours, information or even loyalty. If the Anarchs offer to lend some of their guns to the local Duskborn, they're making an Investment. If they buy a huge supply of blood bags from a neighbouring city, they decided to Procure it. When they pay the neighbourhood's security firm to turn a blind eye to their comings and goings, that's obviously a Bribe.

ROLLING AND REWARDS

When one of a Front's actions is used, roll a d10. A result of 6 or above is a success, while a result below 6 is a failure (the consequences of which we will discuss in a bit). Before a faction executes an action, though, you should first determine which Reward they want, selected from the list below.

Rewards should always be rooted in the fiction. If a faction is trying to neutralize a Flaw, then that needs to be reflected in the fiction somehow. If you can't justify how a certain action results in a specific Reward, then perhaps it would be better to choose a different, more fitting reward for that action.

Failing a roll doesn't result in catastrophe; rather, the faction simply doesn't get the Reward they were looking for, and the fiction should reflect that. Sometimes, a failed attempt at assassinating the Prince's favourite childe can be even more exciting in play than a success.

GAME OVER, MAN

If one of a faction's Fronts ever falls below -3 and that Front already has a Flaw, then that faction is eliminated from faction play. That doesn't mean they simply vanish from the fiction, although that is a possibility. What this is meant to represent is that they simply don't have enough political power to keep playing with the big kids. The faction's remaining members could opt to join other factions, perhaps even becoming prime recruitment targets. 

Or, you know, they could all meet the Final Death. Whatever tickles your fancy. 

QUICK REFERENCE

• To execute a faction action, choose a Reward and roll a d10
• If the Front used for the action is damaged, subtract the modifier from the result
• If the result is below 6, the faction simply doesn't get the chosen Reward

• When a Front suffers damage, the faction adds -1 to any further rolls with that Front
• Factions can only remove damage from Fronts without Flaws
• Fronts can only be damaged up to -3
• If a faction's Front is damaged at -3 and it already has a Flaw, the faction is eliminated

• Relevant Assets grant Advantage (roll 2d10, keep the highest die) to an action type
• Each Front can only have one Asset
• Assets can only be destroyed when their associated Front is already damaged

• Relevant Flaws grant Disadvantage (roll 2d10, keep the lowest die) to an action type
• Each Front can only have one Flaw
• If a Front doesn't have a Flaw, the faction can take one to negate incoming damage
• It is impossible to remove a faction's last flaw

FACTION PLAY

There are a few ways to go about faction play, and none of them are wrong, per se. Call it a matter of taste.

The first is keeping faction play as a side activity for the Storyteller, something they do between sessions to spice things up in the city, allowing a few factions to pick an action. There shouldn't really be any hard rules to which factions should get an action, though the fiction will often inform these decisions. If the PCs are part of a faction taking an action, you can give them the option to support that action. They count as an Asset for the purposes of that roll.

The second is allowing the players to take control of a faction, while you control the others. Their PCs should ideally be part of the faction they're controlling, in order to avoid conflicts of interest. If you go with this option, you should probably engage with faction play either before or after actual play (that is, at the start or end of the session). You could do both, too. Whatever works for you and your troupe!

The third is a spin on the second; rather than controlling a single faction as a group, each player gets to pick one faction. Conflicts of interest are probably going to be inevitable, but this has the potential to be loads of fun! Other than that, this should work exactly like the alternative above.

FINAL NOTES

On occasion, it might not be immediately clear which action fits what a faction is attempting in the fiction, and the best way to ascertain that is by looking at their desired rewards. Going back to one of the action examples, if the Anarchs wanted to Develop the Duskborn coterie as an Asset (like, say, Duskborn Shocktroops), then they wouldn't really be Investing, they'd be Recruiting. But if they wanted to Accomplish something in the fiction (like diverting the Camarilla's attention towards the well-armed Duskborn), then that's definitely an Investment.

Faction Fronts, Assets, Flaws and even goals are inevitably going to be altered in the fiction due to the PC's actions outside of faction play, and that's okay. Make any necessary adjustments and move on. Faction play is meant to be an add-on, not the main course, and anything that happens during actual play takes precedence over it.

¹ The offshoots from the faction table are meant to represent local schisms — rolling a Camarilla faction and a Camarilla offshoot, for example, could represent a city contested by two Princes. This could also be interpreted as deviations from sect norms, resulting in things like Anarchs with wildly different political structures (think a Parliament rather than a Baron) or unusual traditions.

 

Adding Procedures & Random Tables to Vampire: The Masquerade, Part 2: NPC Creation

It's finally time to dive into NPC creation! As with part 1, this involves a lot of tables, so much so that I even made some Perchance generators to help facilitate the process. You'll find those at the end of the post, but to be honest, I feel like they might actually be the main course. That's how happy I am with them.

Without further ado, let's Embrace some Kindred!

KNOW THYSELF

I'm thoroughly biased towards Vampire: The Requiem's virtues and vices, so much so that I made a table inspired by those a big part of my city creation process. While working on NPC creation, however, I noticed 12 virtues and 12 vices weren't enough, so I added a few more and rounded both up at 20.

This part of the process is meant to imbue each character with an admirable trait and a fatal flaw, something that the players can easily pick up on, and can act as a guide when you're unsure of what a certain character would do.

So, yeah, let's start by rolling (or choosing) a virtue and a vice for your NPC!

One big complaint a lot of people had regarding virtues and vices, though, was that they were a lesser form of the Archetypes (used for Nature and Demeanor) from Vampire: The Masquerade. While I don't necessarily agree with the sentiment (as those could be quite restrictive), I think they can be complimentary to each other.

It's up to you how important these are gonna be to your NPC's personality and whether you're gonna use the Nature/Demeanor mechanics, but I'd personally rather keep Archetypes as the "face" the characters present to the world and the way they interact with it, rather than a mechanical thing or an intrinsic, deep part of who they are. Virtues and vices work better in that regard, IMO.

In any case, let's pick or roll an Archetype on the d66 table below.

You can find full descriptions for these on V20, but you don't really need to, as they're all evocative enough.

BECOMING

Virtues, vices and Archetypes are plenty useful even when you're not creating vampires, but we should get the specifics out of the way before we go any further. Two of the most important facets of Kindred existence are age and the status that comes with it, and, you guessed it, there's a table for that.

This table can also be used with a d4 or a d6, ensuring lower power levels.

Another key aspect of Kindred society is lineage, and it's time to find out what clan chose your NPC. We're gonna determine the reason behind their Embrace later on, but for now, let's roll or pick a clan. The table below can also be found in part 1 of the series, but it's included here for ease of access.

To narrow the results down to the main clans, roll a d12 instead of a d20.

So far, we know the character's biggest virtue, their darkest vice, how they present themselves outwards through their Archetype, how old they are and what clan they belong to. What we don't yet know is what their place in the world used to be before the Embrace, but we're gonna fix that. First, roll or pick a flavour for their concept.

Then, if your character is a fledgling, a fresh neonate, a neonate or a young ancilla, determine their concept with the d66 table below.

If your character is too old for those concepts (that is, if they're an older ancilla, a pretender elder, an elder or a methuselah), determine their concept with the d66 table below.

I tried to make both the flavours and the concepts as dynamic as possible, because let's face it, boring concepts aren't usually the best ingredients for cool NPCs. Stuff like a respected activist or an inexperienced assassin should be immediately gameable, and that's always the goal!

It's as good a time as any to uncover what motivated the character's Embrace, which brings us to yet another d66 table. You know the drill.

And with that, there's only one table left before we move on to the last part of this NPC creation process: appetites. These are essential for Vampire: The Masquerade, as each and every NPC needs to want something, and those needs and wants will form the crux of conflict in many a chronicle. Note that they're deliberately vague, and leaving them for last was a conscious decision, as the other results can help you interpret what exactly your NPC's appetite means for them.

STYLE WITH SUBSTANCE

At this point, you already have a pretty well rounded character, but what's substance without a little style? The fashion table below should help your NPCs stand out a bit. Some combinations can be admittedly hilarious, but the famed Banu Haqim methuselah who fancies Disco a little too much is an instantly recognizable character. It's your choice whether to lean on that or not, though, and re-rolling is always an option.

I also made some d20 appearance tables (six, in fact), but I'm not gonna plaster them here, as this blogpost is already overstuffed with images. You can find them here. Personally, though, I wouldn't use all six for every NPC. I'd roll two or three for each (which is why the tables themselves are numbered 1 to 6), so that your players will get some interesting visual cues to go with the NPC's fashion choices, but not enough to overwhelm them.

That's all, folks! We're done with NPC creation.

CHANCE AND CHOICE

It's important to consider the pros and cons of manually rolling and choosing everything instead of just using the Perchance generators I came up with. If you're in a pinch and need an instant NPC, nothing beats a good generator, no doubt, and if you need to make a lot of Kindred at once, doing everything manually would be a royal pain. But there's a kind of art to curating results, one that can lead to some pretty remarkable NPCs. Personally, when time isn't of the essence, I will always choose to do everything myself. And yet, there's a certain joy to being surprised by the complete randomness created by Perchance.

VAMPIRE MAKING FACTORY 3000

So far, I have created three different Perchance generators for Vampire: The Masquerade, two to automate the process of NPC creation (one for younger vampires, one for older licks) and one for creating Domains and their rulers (a key aspect of the city creation process). You can find the NPC generator for younger NPCs here, while the one for older Kindred is available here. Lastly, the Domain generator is found here.

Fair warning: this was my first time working with Perchance, so you might stumble into some funky issues. If that happens, please let me know so I can fix it! <3

Anyway, I hope the results speak to you as much as they speak to me.

Adding Procedures & Random Tables to Vampire: The Masquerade, Part 1: City Creation

I've been complaining about Vampire: The Masquerade's dearth of meaningful procedures for a long time, as the game (regardless of edition) sorely needs them. But rather than keep complaining, I decided to take matters into my own hands, starting with city creation. Fair warning: this might turn into a long series, or it might fizzle out after a couple of entries. 

Now, I don't know about you guys, but as a fan of sandbox campaigns, I'm severely disappointed in the tools Vampire provides for those, particularly when it comes to creating your chronicle's city. I've lost count of how many chronicles never even got off the ground because I got burned out during the prep stage. The procedures and tables we'll go through below were designed to fix that. 

Before we get started, though, credit where credit is due: d4 Caltrops made a terrific blogpost regarding city crawls, which was a huge influence on all of this. In fact, we'll even use one of the tools I found on the aforementioned blogpost. You guys should definitely check it out, as it could prove invaluable to your OSR campaigns!

Chris McDowall's amazing Electric Bastionland procedures for borough creation have also been a big inspiration here, and I consider them the gold standard when it comes to this stuff.

BLOOD RED STREETS

The first step here is finding a city map. You can generate your own easily with ProbableTrain's City Generator, and watabou's Medieval City Generator, with a few tweaks, works great for modern cities, too. Of course, you can absolutely use an actual, real world city for this, although that will have an impact on some steps. 

Once you have a city map you're satisfied with, you'll need to run it through Cfbraz's Voronoi Diagram Creator, though one could also use Gimp's mosaic generating filter for this step, or even manually draw over the map. If you choose to use the Voronoi Diagram Generator, you'll need to upload your map to a website of your choice, and link it on the generator. Its configs should look like this:

Afterwards, you'll want to click on Clear all sites. And then it's a simple matter of clicking on different points of the map until you've generated at least 8 sections. It might be a good idea to position your clicks on buildings, streets and areas that look interesting, as the resulting dots will be an important part of your city.

Here's an example of a map generated with the process above:

With this process, we've delineated the city's most important Domains, which we will flesh out later on. At this point, you might want to add numbers, cool titles or even neighbourhood names to each Domain with an image editor of your choice, but that's completely optional.

HISTORY WRITTEN IN BLOOD

Now that the technical part is done, we can start breathing life into the city.

The first thing we'll do is pick the city's themes and mood by rolling on the tables to the right. You should roll twice on each, assigning two results to the city's theme, and two results to its mood; it's your pick, so you can choose to mix and match between virtues and vices, or double down on them.

History is a big part of what makes any city feel alive, and by rolling on the tables to the right, you'll determine when it was founded, and how many significant historic events it's been through (which we will also generate later).

With that done, it's time to roll for the city's population, both mortal and Kindred. Do note that this will inevitably result in either under or overpopulated cities, Kindred-wise, so you may opt to roll once and use the same result for both tables.

The next step involves determining how the city's doing, economically speaking, and what its main source of income is. You can diversify its income by rolling a few more times on the Source table, and I would actually recommend doing that, if your city is fairly old and/or particularly big. 

And to conclude the mundane side of things, let's take a look at the historic events table (Kindred history will be dealt with later). You should roll or pick as many events as determined by the city's age, though nothing is stopping you from rolling or picking more.

WE RULE THIS CITY

By now, you should have at least a decent foundation for your city, which means it's time to flesh it out and to explore the Kindred side of things.

The table to the right will help you determine which faction rules the city, but you may want to add a couple of enemy factions, too. Of course, if you'd rather focus your chronicle on a single faction, rolling once is enough.

The city's main historic events have already been established on the mortal side of things, and now it's time to do the same for the Kindred. The city's age will also determine the number of events you should roll for. Make sure to spread these out throughout the decades, reflecting Kindred society's stagnant longevity.

We have finally reached my favourite part of this thing: Domains! First, pick an area on your map, then roll twice on the d66 table below to establish its traits. These should help you give an identity to each Domain, which can prove invaluable to naming the area, be it with a proper neighbourhood name ("Barrowtown"), a Kindred-given title ("the Big Empty"), or an evocative nickname ("Desolation Row").

All Domains need a complication, something that gives them an edge and makes them gameable. The table to the right will give your Domains an interesting issue, something your players can interact with, and perhaps even solve. One complication is enough, but adding more can illustrate just how bad things have gotten. 

On the flipside, there needs to be a reason why someone decided to claim the area as their Domain, and that's what you'll determine with the help of the benefits table. One is enough, as with complications, but particularly desirable Domains could (and perhaps should) have more.

If your city is home to multiple factions, you can either roll on the factions table to determine which one rules each Domain, or you can simply pick one. The clan table below can be used to decide the clan of the Domain's ruler, and it may come in handy in a variety of situations. 

To narrow the results down to the main clans, roll a d12 instead of a d20.

Each Domain has a little dot, which represents its central point of interest. While it doesn't necessarily need to be important to the city's Kindred, it works well as a "seat of power" of sorts for the Domain's ruler. To create a point of interest, you should roll twice on the d66 Traits table from before, and once on the table to the right. That will give you a location for your point of interest and some much needed flavour, too.

If you rolled a landmark, fret not! Here's a table to help you with that. Landmarks tend to be particularly relevant to a city's identity and history, so tying it to historic events or even its economy could grant it more weight. 

And that's it for Domain creation. Ideally, we should also generate the bloodsucker who claims the area as his property, but I'll save NPC creation for part 2. Time for some final considerations!

LIVING IN THE REAL WORLD

It should be pretty clear by now that this process was designed with the intetion of creating fictional cities, but can it be applied to real cities? I think so, but the process is significantly different for those. Rather than rolling on the tables above, you'll be picking options that match the city in the real world. Or maybe not! It's the World of Darkness, places are allowed to be different. The Kindred side of things should be a lot more relevant, in any case.

NOTHING BUT LEFTOVERS

Two tables, Climate and Region, didn't end up making the final cut, but they can still be useful in the right circumstances. They were omitted due to being way too general to add much value to the process, and the Region table goes into a bit of a hot button issue. As in, the omission of Africa and Asia was not intended as erasure, but rather as a consequence of Vampire's deeply problematic mishandling of both regions in the lore. You can still check those tables out, but I don't consider them part of the city creation procedure we've delved into here.

I'll end the post by letting y'all know that I've already done a bunch of work on the NPC creation procedures, and that I'm considering making a "city sheet" of sorts where you can store all this stuff.