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The First Taste
Tweet Topic Started: Feb 26 2008, 02:46 PM (210 Views)
kismetrose Feb 26 2008, 02:46 PM Post #1
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For those who don't know, White Wolf games often encourage the use of preludes for newly created characters. During a prelude, the Storyteller takes the player through a montage of the character's life, touching on the most important events and people, in an effort to help the player become very familiar with the character's background. The process is actually pretty helpful for shaping a character since you get some experience playing and you get to see how those dots on the sheet feel. (Some preludes will call for rolls, some won't. You have to be careful about asking for rolls during a prelude, though, because you could easily end up killing a character who's supposed to make it to later nights.) In our group, we tend to allow players to change things on their character sheet until the first official game session, and we ask questions about it after preludes, since that's an opportune time.

For the new game I've been working on, though, I've decided to do two rounds of preludes. The first round will take the idea of preludes in a slightly different direction. The setting I've been developing is Chicago, and it's been a very active place in the last couple of decades, turning the worlds of many supernaturals upside down. The most recent event that affected the greatest amount of people was a war between the vampires and the werewolves in 1993, and that was a really bad time. The thing about Chicago, though, is that it has a running history and has been the backdrop for a LOT of events, some of which the mortal world knows nothing about. I've been cultivating the setting carefully (and slowly, since I'm bogged down by school) but most of my players know very little about it. I want the city to come alive and to feel vital, hopefully to a degree I've never managed before, so I'm going to do city preludes.

Basically, each player will be given a character who is dead in present nights. I've been taking characters from several books, so they already have histories and connections. I've also been developing my own characters. I have developed several criteria for the characters that players can use for the city preludes. First, the characters can only know so many city secrets - if they know too much, then the mystery shatters. Secondly, the characters have to interact with a number of others NPCs, so that the players will get a taste of the cast. There were two characters who I thought would work and then I realized that they'd only see each other, and one or two other NPCs, since they were hermits. Boring. Thirdly, the characters have to be able to be montaged. If their histories don't have enough going on, then they won't have enough scenes to really show how the city works. Oh, and all of the prelude characters have to end up dead. That way, I don't feel bad handing out NPC stats and secrets on a platter.

The goal of city preludes is to plug the players into the setting. They'll meet multiple NPCs, hopefully some important ones, and get an idea of what's been happening. They'll get to know some NPCs and some secrets, or at least points of interest. They'll get first-hand experience with some of the city's history and important locations, as well. Then we can work at character creation, and by that point I'm hoping the preludes will give them some ideas. Once they've got their own player characters figured out, we'll do the traditional round of preludes based on those characters.

I've been wanting to share this, simply because it's a new technique for me and I haven't seen it used elsewhere. I'm really looking forward to the game and the city preludes in particular, because I think they can be incredibly useful to us.
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blufrogz37 Sep 17 2008, 09:59 PM Post #2
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City Preludes sound like a good idea...But I also use city guidebooks (like Frommers, or what have you, for inspiration). Considering I live like 45 minutes from Chicago, if you need anything setting wise, just ask. :)
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