Interest Check - Vampire: Dark Ages

Hello all, this is just an interest check, expect nothing of this unless I get a few nods.

I'd like to run a game of Vampire: Dark Ages with some people. For those who do not know what this is, it is a Pen & Paper roleplaying game involving character sheets, dice rolling (which I will keep to a minimum), a preset system of rules / lore / history and so on. No you won't sparkle, unless you want to!

There is a rulebook which you will need to refer to at certain times, but you do not need to learn it cover to cover, so don't feel like you have to. The rulebook is freely available online and I'll shoot everyone a link to it if something comes out of this.

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What is this game about?

I will try to summarise the game here quickly for anyone who may be interested, but may be a bit unsure what the game is actually about.

You will play as a vampire in 12th century Europe (1100's) during what is known as 'The War of Princes'. There are 13 different clans of vampire, many of whom despise each other, or tolerate each other. For centuries they have fought feuds and wars against each other in a power struggle over territory in Europe.

Territory = Blood, and blood can quite literally = Power.

The clans are all radically different, a player will have a large amount of freedom to create characters within a clan. Clans have their own hierarchies, history, abilities, tastes and flaws. Clans have leaders, but they are elusive and rarely seen, many of these are thousands of years old, so a large chunk of leadership is delegated to the princes, vassals who carve out domains amongst the mortal realms of Europe for their clan.

If people are interested in playing, the players will make characters and they will be in the service of a prince (at least at the start), no this prince won't be a pet character of mine, so feel free to plan his or her demise if you want, I don't power-trip.

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Well that's a very brief rundown of the game.
If you are interested (or just have questions) please post. It'd be nice to run a game for the community, I firmly believe in giving more than I take.

As for technical matters, the game will probably have to take place in IRC, Skype or a similar text based messaging programme. The C-box is another possibility, but I would want permission before using it and it has the possibility of interruptions.

For dice, there are plenty of dice rolling websites.

I will be more than happy to guide players that are interested through character creation and learning the basics of the game's rules. The character creation can be quite lengthy if you want it to be, so if you enjoy that, rejoice.

I will work with the players to discern the flavour of the game, how dark you want it, how much fighting, how much intrigue and diplomacy, and, where you would like it to take place.

So there you have it, if you're interested in the dark medieval populated by all sorts of supernatural beings (including more than just vampires) then let me know.

Thanks for the interest.
I'm going to wait until the site migration is complete, the possibility of multiple C-boxes means we'll be able to keep the game local rather than porting it to a third party client like Skype.

Sure:

1.) I'm going to wait, I'm just checking interest here, if I can get three or four people interested then I'll go ahead and run people through character creation. You'll be using character sheets, so as long as you have some kind of image editing software (Such as Photoshop or MS Paint) you'll be fine.

2.) No, there is a list of clans to choose from, you won't be restricted, almost any type of character can be made from them, the restrictions are often less than they appear. It depends on how imaginative you are.
You will get to decide your role however (within reason). Clans are pretty large and extensive, often spanning countries. There will be a breadth of positions to fill in your Prince's court.
That being said, I would wait until the flavour of the game is agreed on by the players and the GM before deciding roles. It's useless to be the local lord's daughter turned vampire in a game where everyone wants to play as assassins and thieves for example.

3.) You will have to play vampires, while there are other creatures with their own rule systems (such as werewolves, changelings, and so on) it will be too confusing to juggle multiple character "species" in the same game if most of the players are new.

If you would like to see the character sheets you can see them here:

http://mrgone.rocksolidshells.com/pdf/DA/DAVampire4-Page.pdf

(I'm not embedding the URL because I know some people are a bit twitchy about being redirected to nasty web pages)
While only the first page is truly necessary to play the game, you can fill in as many as you wish. I'll explain how it is filled in and how the basics of the game work later on.

if you have more questions feel free to ask, I don't plan to run this in the immediate future so there's plenty of time.

That's great, except we need 10 sided dice. I probably should have mentioned this.

I think this sounds really cool. Never played any sort of pen and paper rpg before so...yeah.

Glad to hear it, I'm waiting until the forums move to the new domain because Layne promised us multiple, or private, chatboxes where we can do this.

Which reminds me: Yes, The players will need to agree a set time, maybe once a week, when everyone can play, 1 - 2 hours preferred.

How do you want to play pen & paper, if you dont meet, does that mean that you will make out a time and then meet at an post to play ? or did I missunderstand that ?