I don’t give a damn if it’s Jello or Cool whip, I’m just waiting for the video to be accessible.

By the way, they did expand on the covenants quite a bit since the original book. The Carthians are..essentially the old camarilla and the Lancea sanctum carries a few themes back from the old Sabbat without the low rank shovelheads. The Ordo Dracul actually now have more in common with Golconda in OwoD than anything else.

Of course I loved the old world and I can understand why spoony doesnt like Requiem, however I always liked requiem because it felt like since it was a much more open story than Masquereade it really gave you a chance to build something unique and focus on your character’s humanity than having to deal with the politics of the overarching plot

Spoony is like “UMAD vampires?”

THAT WAS FUCKING AWESOME.

Revenge always makes the best stories. Best one yet!

I believe they call it an “Elysium” … and this is me reading off of what I’ve seen in the Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines games I pulled off of Steam..

I should just go back and play the original Vampire: The Masquerade game. But still, I started out with a Nosferatu, and then got pissed because NPC’s kept running from me (I should have used Obfuscate in the hubs), and then went with an Gangrel.

the DM should have cleared it, would have made for a very easy restart and would have cleaned all the bull shit.  

All I gotta say is…BOOM BITCHES.

That Dm should have gone through with what you did, even though it would have pissed a lot of people off but at least next time they would search everyone who goes inside.

I’ve done the same when i was rp-ing with my friends, my character had connections to get military grade explosives and i made a suitcase bomb that looked like any other suitcase even if you had opened it there would have been stacks of papers and other stuff on top of the fake bottom where the bomb was. I was playing the only “good” guy and all of my friends were part of a faction that just slaughtered anyone who was stronger than a normal human or was part of a different faction.
So i contacted one of them in-game and told them that i had a treaty for our factions so they send a messenger that was my friend to take my message to them and i gave that suitcase for him showing some papers and money to him telling him to take it as fast as he can to the leader of their base.

My friend takes it to there and when he went to the bathroom i quickly gave a sticky that i had wrote earlier that i’m going to follow him stealthily and when he goes to his headquarters 30 seconds from that point i will detonate the bomb with from outside of the building.

It was glorious they were so pissed at me that they made a characters specifically to hunt me down . 

THIS is why i dont fucking roleplay. cause some ASSHOLE Dungeon Master allows the (PRINCE) to be a tyrant dick, but when you OUTSMART that tyrant dick, (I WONT ALLOW THIS) then WHY IS IT IN THE BOOK. oh its all perfectly fine when they are pushing YOU around, but when you outsmart him and all his friends then its suddenly not fair? fuck them. people are fuckin assholes, you had every right to be a dick. and you know what? its groups like that group that dwindle down into nothing cause there is never any new blood. why would anyone join a shit-fest like that?

Man, what a bunch of assholes.  Instead of telling you to leave the guy should have said, “What can we do to work this out?”

It seems like every tale of vampire LARPing I’ve heard, the guys running it are just on a power trip.

that was fantastic. 

for a dramatic re-play of the last few seconds of this story…  please spend 17 seconds with the link below.  hahaha.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Va7XUQgG52s&feature=related

Poor Bawwww-ing GM.  Found out the Spoony one isn’t just someone to take that crap lying down.

I’ve never been much into the overly emo White Wolf saga myself, but I’d totally watch the adventures of a pissed off Carthian taking out Phoenix Vamps.

Reminds me of the helicopter scene in Blade 2, except with more “U mad?”  That’s what RPGs are supposed to be about, unique characters and interesting resolutions.  And explosions.

Brilliant! Absolutely brilliant! You are my new Hero, oh Spoony One!

Had I been the DM I would have rolled with it, but I at least hope the fucker went back in after you left and told everyone what had happened even if he didn’t roll with it, so that they learned a lesson in not being such fuckin’ dicks.

A dick move for a dick move, yet yours were absolutely ingenious and still fully played by the rules. I take my hat of at you good Sir, and pray for those that end up pissing you off.

I also agree with your take on Humanity in Wod: Vampire, both the new and old versions. Though those I have played it with have never abused their “vamp” status like that cause it usually would result in them getting offed by the rest; the monsters are usually exposure waiting to happen and one must keep up “The Masquerade”.

*Salutes* I applaud thee sir.

Two things.  1) I’d love to get a game in with Spoony someday. and 2) note well taken: don’t piss off the vengeful spoony one.

Now I know the true origin of Dr Insano, you defeated thirty unsuspecting vampires with “Science”!

May I ask why it’s spelled Jyhad? Is that a V:TM thing?

That was awesome, and the GM should definitely have rolled with it (no need to even kill everyone, the closest guys to the toilets could have died and the rest sent into torpor, then, there just needs to be one powerful enough guy outside of the elyseum to wake enough vampires, and you have yourself a major bloodhunt for the Carthian terrorist, it was by no mean a game over. Hell, some vampires could even had avoided torpor, I believe explosion damage is not that horrible in the WoD book, so it could be argued, plus, Vampires don’t bleed to death or anything).

I think you’re being harsh on the “no good guys” aspect. Humanity is still there, and you lose humanity when you commit horrible acts, and if you lose everything, then you can’t even play anymore. So nobody can play a complete monster for a whole campaign. It’s actually pretty interesting, because being good is certainly hard, but being bad can destroy your character.

The covenants can be interpreted in many ways. The interesting bit is that they have pretty much no unity, vampire societies being completely different in different towns. There are huge differences of opinion within each covenant (the Lancea is a good example, they have bloodthirsty fanatics, and tolerant guys who just want to spread the good word and show other vampires a chance for redemption)

-The Lancea Sanctum can’t be that evil. They’re supposed to be monsters and scare humans away from sin. If they kill a human, that person can’t repent and change his/her way. Plus, they still have the vampiric rules, and mainly the masquerade. And I don’t know where you read that about Lancea Sanctum members being able to confess and avoid losing humanity, but if it exists (maybe in an add-on, the covenant book or something), it’s bullshit, and shouldn’t be implemented by the GM. Another role of the Lancea is to give purpose to vampires, beings that have lost everything and become monsters. The Lancea tells them : “We know it’s tough, what’s happened to you, but don’t be so sad. It wasn’t chance, you were chosen to accomplish a great task”. Lancea groups that focus more on that aspect and less on the “let’s be monsters and be as horrendous as wa can” are perfectly viable options for a campaign.

-The Invictus is generally evil, but more than that, it’s anachronistic. It’s basically the remnants of feudalism and aristocracy. Some guys there could indeed be (and often are) power hungry bastards, but some of them could simply have the nostalgia of chivalry, an ideal of nobility, or simply pride, which indeed leads to a misguided sense of superiority, but isn’t necessarily evil.

-The circle of the Crone is not at all necessarily evil. They are not satanists, they are pagans. The Lancea sees them as satanists, just as the catholic church saw every pagan religion as the work of Satan when they were converting people (by force at least half the time). In the best case, they could be sort of hippies or wicca people, or some kind of guardians of an old religion (which might have violent rituals, but that doesn’t mean the ultimate purpose is world destruction). Now, sure, in the worst case, they could be demon worshippers, but in that case, they probably would be considered too dangerous to let live by other covenants.

-The Ordo Dracul doesn’t want at all to make vampires closer to humans. They want to embrace their curse and evolve to the next stage. It could be to create daywalkers and conquer the world, but mainly, it’s a path to the discovery of the self, a quest to become something more. The possibilities for motivations of people in this group are endless. They could want to become the ultimate monster and be able to devour all that oppose them, or they could want to reinforce their humanity and push the beast away (and in fact, both tendencies exist inside the covenant). The “Let’s create super vampires so we can conquer the world” point of view could apply to some of them, but it’s simplistic to assume the whole covenant is working towards this goal.

-The Carthians, finally, are obviously the default good guys, and they are often mocked by other covenants for being idealistic (their task is pretty hard, making vampires of all ages coexist equally, without having the situation explode) but there are ways to make them pretty evil too. A particularly motivated and amoral Carthian would try and create a vampire utopia where perfect equality is guaranteed, but at the price of free will. Or even if their intentions are good, the Carthians are one of the group that could easily degenerate into a terrorist organization trying to eradicate the other covenants because it’s the only way they’ll ever get what they want.

And don’t forget that on the other side, you have truly evil groups like Belial’s Brood, who indeed want nothing but do bloody orgies. No covenant likes them. Even the most extremist groups of the Lancea wouldn’t want anything to do with them because A) They actually are demon worshippers and B) Their violence is completely purposeless and disproportionnate compared to what the Lancea would judge necessary.

There’s an overview of the motivations as I see them in Vampire the Requiem. I played a bit of the Masquerade before, but as I discovered the new edition, it grew on me (although there are some elements I regret a little, and new elements I find stupid, but hey, if I’m the GM, and I dislike something that much, I can always change it, and if I’m not, then I can at least try to talk to the GM). I think it’s a lot more complex politically than the Masquerade, but obviously, if you’re looking for a game where you play heroes and have a tight group of loyal friends, then, it’s gonna be a little complicated (but seriously, even in Masquerade, one of the funniest parts of Vampire was to manipulate and cheat other PCs). It’s still possible though.

Personally I think Spoony should’nt have done this, he should have stuck with the campaign, slowly sabotaging it for a week or so then ending it with a big BOOM and becoming the Vampire Prince of Pheonis himself!

Still though, kudos, I’d have done the exact same thing in your shoes Spoony.

Meh i play vampires neutral… As every other char.

Awesome story. Man, I love these.

Beautiful.  Simply beautiful.  I applaud you, Spoony.

I guess the moral here is: don’t fuck with Spoony or he will blow your ass to kingdom come.
Yeah, I suppose you could call that a dickmove, but it looks like playing with those guys would not have worked out anyway, so why not quit with a bang.
However, by calling one of your videos *Spoony’s Jyhad* and talking about how you leveled a city block with homemade C4, you probably secured yourself a spot on about half a dozen government watch lists.

That guild needed to be shown actions have consequences.  Why I like Playing the Amber DRPG, which I am currently going in my forum.  The Gm should have warned you about the factions.  Instead he let your character become unplayable.  Its only right you do the same for them. 

Now I like Spoony’s response. But me I am a bit more slow and evil about things like that.

Me I would have gotten a group of those who had been forced to join like myself (Since you know it had to have happened before) and went off to grab some Invictus guys, pose as devote followers or the Prince and try to convert them, letting them escape. Slowly bringing up a resentment to the Lancea. When the Invictus grab Lancea guys as revenge a war is sparked. When the war is over and the winner is throwing a victory party, you blow up their party deep frying them. Of course you make sure you and your follow forced recruits are safely away.

Spoony. Seriously.<3. I am currently a newb in a Masquerade larp, and I'm frustrated out of my ass with being a lowly fledgeling. This made me laugh bigtime, it was a wonderful story!

Also, its called an Elysium.

More COUNTER MONKEY!!! :D <3

Ahahaha, serves them right. If you are going to allow the group to fuck over an individual because “that’s just how the world works” than you should better be prepared for the circumstance of when the individual has the ability to fuck over the group. Especially in settings where there’s some level of technology.

My only experience with Vampire has been through Requiem. I’d have to say that I disagree with the idea that everybody is evil. Every formal organization in Vampire is corrupt sure, but there is plenty of room amongst the corrupt to have good people. I LOVE settings where people are evil from our standpoint. It makes it all the more satisfying when I play a good guy. There can always be good individuals. The more corrupt the world, the more the world needs good people. The more the world needs good people the more resistance good people meet and the more resistance you meet, the more satisfying it is for when you win. Of course, most likely you don’t win but only because you stacked the deck against yourself. It is to be expected. That’s why I like the Warhammer 40k RPGs. The human race became cruel as a means of survival in a hostile universe but that cruelty needed to survive brought rise to innumerable tyrants and a despotic rule. Playing a good guy there makes the good more valuable.

Spoony you are such a bad ass, it’s a shame those guys couldn’t recognize genius when they saw it.

Props Spoony.

Nicely done Spoony. Go on, give us another one! ;)

Nice video cool dog an funny as hell you should them the mind of an every day player an i liked that but do more funny movie reviews and games. I mean come on dont get me wrong love all the videos  but just lookin forword to the to the new clone episode. Keep the good work up man.

The last 3 minutes was so awesome, I have replayed it three times…

This is pretty much what I remember the experience of playing Vampire as being, including backstabbing and needing to have a good tolerance for other people simperingly describing torture that they were doing to your character. It’s a power-and-scheming game. It was fun, but only if you can keep perspective on people being utter monsters to each other.

You should’ve gone about it more obnoxiously. maybe shout out in the middle of the church the Carthian equivalent of “ALALALALALALALALALA” and yell what you then do. Would’ve let more people know what could’ve just happened to their precious character had the DM approved it. On the other hand, it might have also increased your chances of getting the crap beat out of you for real by a bunch of angry larpers.

Reminds me of the time when I larped in some futuristic “Syndicate” style game with my friends (Cannot remember it’s name) and joined them in a corporate conference (In one of my friend’s dining halls) between board members of the area, and completely railroaded the entire moment when I opened my coat and detonated 10 pounds of C4 (They plastic bags I spray painted brown and stapled to my vest that said C4 on them) and killed almost everyone in the room, except the head honcho. Basically I pulled a Valkyrie.

Holy cow! I used to LARP back in the late 90′s and I thought it was just a local thing of Vampire LARPers being assholes. I guess it’s universal.

I play a Carthian in a Lancea controlled city where I am constantly under attack for being a “good guy”. Spoony, you are a hero.

That is the most brilliant revenge plot I have ever heard.
Ever.
Good job Spoony! XD

When I heard the word Semtex I was like “this is gonna be awesome”.

I love a good revenge story. Typical of the DM for not playing ball as soon as he was outsmarted. I like how your expression at the end, even after all this time, conveys a “take that, bitches” look. You were aggrieved, and you should feel triumphant. I wish I had seen the face of the guy who first read the notes :D

Once again, you told the story in a way that almost made me pump my fist in the air and go “yeah!” I really hope you don’t run out of these stories anytime soon.

Well, what did the DM expect you to do? You’re a disgruntled chemist with access to explosives who’s got every reason to be a tad nuts. Plus, if they’d had even a modicum of security, the plan wouldn’t have worked. There’s unfair, and then there’s asking for it. This was straight up asking for it.

But you remembered the cardinal rule of revenge…

You gotta have style.

As soon as you mentioned semtex, I started giggeling, and (honest to God) I didn’t stop until the video ended :)

So they wanted to have a game where there was no real free will, and didn’t want to go by the games rules? Sounds like a bunch of crybaby’s who want their way or the highway. I notice that BS on message boards… real life…. you name it. From halo to a fantasy wrestling fed there always seems to be the in crowd who instead of having fun and playing far want to dominate every aspect and get themselves over.

Some friends and I used to do this since we were starved for gaming, but couldn’t find anyone else to play with so we’d join VtM LARPS and play non-vampires specifically as vampire hunters. A few of the GM types actually liked things being stirred up, so they gave us their blessing and even bent the rules for us, ending up with a group made up of a couple of rogue vampires, a pack of werewolves, and my lowly human character. And by “lowly human” I mean an Akashic Brother martial artist/pyromancer from Mage: the Ascension. Good times, and lots of wonderful gothy tears were had.

Completely honest: As soon as my players (I run two old WOD games right now) start treating the newbie in such a manner, your bomb can go off and they roll new characters!
On the other hand, I have a set of great players right now, who really go against the emo-goth crap that most people would associate with Vampire (Warhammer-playing ex-princess, Rom-circus owner, 1200 year old Knight who can’t use a cell). Yeah, not much brooding, but a lot of great conversations (ever seen a former Crusader at a rave?). 
You can have a lot of fun with the old system, but the new one has lost almost all of it’s charm…

Just thought of this but love the call back to your Q&A Spoony, “The Vampire Prince of Phoenix has done more deals while sitting in a booth at Denny’s.. the fate of the world has been decided in a denny’s” or something along that line.

Man spoony, some days I just think we share the same wavelength.

The one, and ONLY Vampire/WoD game I ever played started and ended with me, as an unembraced (non-kindred) character luring the local asshole Sheriff PC and his three “war party” cronies, into a taxi cab during crowded traffic, rolling a primitive sodium-dust bomb right under their car and busting a local fire hydrant open with a wrench to set it off, all while disguised as a construction worker with a rain slicker.

The gasoline tank lit up, and despite their stacked stats, took far too much agg damage per turn to endure it; their attempts to douse themselves in the water only intensified the damage, as the base of the reaction was SODIUM. Ironically, the only one who survived did so at the expense of essentially turning into ash and being forced into recuperative torpor for the next seven sessions (one week’s LARP was one night in continuity).

Why? Because they had been hazing or “Shanghaiing” (better than I could have described it) newbies, like myself, into being basically quest-fodder for weeks (basically, they had a rotating schedule of killing the newbies after a few quests to ensure they couldn’t get enough exp to actually threaten them; it was part of the central plot, supposedly), while they got to do all the actual story and RP related stuff.

Fortunately, I knew both the lead GMs, and they thought it was hilarious. The Prince immediately sought my person for an “interview” following the death (and critical wounding) of his four best soldiers.
I turned him down flat, and didn’t return the following week because two of the four PCs I torched were being absolute bitches about it. In “canon” they used my character sheet as the basis for the new Sheriff, and I never went near WoD again (LARP or traditional tabletop).

I’ve always thought about how to make a “good” vampire character, and decided it might not be totally impossible. My idea was to have a vampire who only feeds on criminals – thieves, murderers, rapists, the kind of people that wouldn’t really be missed if they disappeared one night.
Sort of like The Punisher meets Louie from Interview with the Vampire. Though I guess that might be more Neutral than Good.

LMAO at the part about the confessions.

As soon as you brought up the chemistry, I totally imagined you loading out with DMSO squirt guns and spraying them all with morphine or holy water or something like that. XD

As for the actual revenge part, maybe you went a bit overboard trying to sabotage the entire game, but nothing was really ruined. I’m assuming they just threw out your index cards, chalked your character up for dead and carried on as normal. Perfect role-playing imo, you stayed true to your character, and managed to “beat” them within the rules of the game. A+ effort Spoony.

hahaha that’s great

Ehehehehehe. It’s a shame he didn’t clear it. If you worked within the rules he should have.

Everybody loves Tyler Durden until they get their nuts cut off.

Great story. I’m never against those who would pull a “conversion” on a fellow player making a new character. I find it funny that other players are willing to pull this stuff in games (paranoia excluded), do they think the person they are messing with will not try to even the score?

I do disagree with your stance on good guys in V:tR, but others have posted much better arguments here than I could.

Wait wait wait… i haven’t played Vampire: Requiem, but if those ultra-catholic vampires think God has made them monsters with the purpose to “scare the mortals straight”, then them blithely murdering and maiming mortals makes no sense. (In addition to the blatant hypocrisy so typical of religious nutcases anywhere, anyway. Confession of your sins without remorse and without a intent to STOP sinning and murdering is pointless. But hey, that view “Oh I can just confess afterwards” was very popular in the real Middle Ages, too…) If their goal is to scare the mortals into believing in supernatural monsters and thus seeking protection and redemption in God and the embrace of His Church, then it should logically follow that
a) they have to reveal themselves as vampires, breaking the masquerade, with all the resulting “witch hunt” reactions from Mankind,
b) killing their victims while feeding kind of defeats the whole point. I could understand if the religious vampires decided to only kill “heathens” and “disbelievers” but they don’t. And in a way killing a disbeliever would be even worse. The point is: If they kill their victim, it’s dead. A dead human cannot rekindle his lost faith. Guess what, he’s dead. He cannot find the path to God and save his immortal soul, BECAUSE YOU IDIOTS JUST KILLED HIM. He never knew what hit him, and he won’t lead a life of good works and virtue anymore, because, eh, he’s dead.

The old WoD gamelines always kept some connection to humanity. Becoming a total monster was seen as a bad thing. Characters either were human (the Awakened in Mage:tA, kinfolk in Werewolf:tA, revenants in Vampire:tM), or had at least previously lived as mortal humans prior to their transformation (vampires, werecreatures, wraith, mummies) or, in the case of Changelings, were born into mortal bodies and had their fae soul fused to a mortal human soul (except for the Sidhe who played Invasion of the Body Snatchers and simply hijacked a human body, replacing its soul with their own against their own or the human’s will instead of being born as a baby.) I much prefer the dark tragedy of Changeling: the Dreaming to the nWoD Changeling; I read the nWoD Changeling intro rules but then quit in disgust.

Of course, White Wolf threw all that in the trash when they published Demon: the Fallen. On the other hand, the oWoD ended shortly afterwards anyway, so has anyone ever actually played Demon?

Heck, even the Scandinavian KULT RPG, one of the darkest Splatterpunk Modern Urban Horror games I know, had a game mechanic whereby characters who go over to the weird side (“children of the night”, spellcasters, or characters who simply lose too much mental stability and descent into cannibalism or similar) become sociopaths, then transform into monsters and fall through the cracks of reality.

Ive never experienced any LARPing as you call it , this sub-culture isn’t all that prevalent where i live.

The only imagery in my mind i get when someone says “LARPing” is some bald 30-somethingyearold perma-virgin throwing rocks and yelling “LIGHTNING BOLT !”
—-

My view of this behavior is that people who have a hard time being respected/accepted in the real world hierarchy create their own “role-play” political vacuum where they take their frustrations on “newbies” (those who didn’t host the game) and there is really nothing he can do about it – the inner circle essentially writes the rules as it goes .

Because WHO in their right mind would PAY the escort service to recruit people for this little LARP game? unless he gets a real kick out of it.
—–

It is in a sense; the only chance for an awkward nerd to be seen as a character worthy of esteem.
.

Honestly, I want to see a movie made out of this. It’d be better then most of the shit Hollywood churns out.

Good on ya Spoony, they totally deserved that after doing that to your character and the GM letting it happen. I would have loved to see the look on all their faces if the GM had actually let it happen :P

Spoony, that was beautiful. If that had happened to me, I would have just left, but I think everyone who has ever been victimized in game by a bunch of closed-door elitist snob gamers can share in your feeling of triumph.  The story was so good, in fact, that it could be in Knights of the Dinner Table.

I also think this needs to be canon in the World of Darkness setting.

This sounds exactly what I would do. No really I kid you nor I remeber having done something exactly like this but I just can’t remeber it in exact detail, Damn it! But you know what? when I did it everyone was just in aw in the fact that I had crippled and destroyed them. Oh and if I was the DM I would totaly let this happen just for the sheer shock of everyone realizing that they are dead and the class that they hate just beat them. Yea, I’m a snarky, sarcasic, and maniacle ass but there is just something about taking the low road sometimes! MWHahahahahahaha!

*jaunty intro music*
Yakko: It’s that time again.
Wakko: To brush my teeth with potato salad?
Dot: To braid Ralph the Guard’s back hair?
Yakko: No, it’s time to learn today’s lesson; and to find out what it is, we turn to…the Wheel of Morality.
*Yakko spins the Wheel*
Yakko: Wheel of Morailty, turn, turn, turn, tell us the lesson that we should learn. Moral Number 5; and the moral of today’s story is…
Yakko Evil Demon Voice: Don’t EVER…FUCK…with the SPOONY ONE!
Wakko: Can I eat that when you’re done with it?
Dot: Boys…

so in a game about political intrige everybody had to agree and follow orders. They had it coming…

This EXACTLY….well, almost exactly happened to me in an online VtM RPG. It’s basically a bunch of self indulgent emo pansies all in one chatroom systematically tormenting other players just because they can, and they know they can’t ever ‘bully’ people like that in real life. Yeah, that game almost made me want to start a Hunter: The Reckoning game from scratch.

You’re right. The whole point of Vampire is to play the villian. But if there are no heroes, what’s the point? Villians killing villians? There has to be SOME sort of protagonist for the game to have some power behind its plot.

Well, since my character was very combat based, as was EVERYONE ELSES, when the other vamps finally put my character down after they had their fun, I basically told the GM, “hope you enjoyed hazing that guy, because I’m not rolling another character. Go fuck yourself.” 

Around that time, WoW just came out, so I gave it a go, and haven’t touched chat room RPGs….well, any RPGs, since. I’ve only just in the past week tried D&D online, since it’s free.

Spoony, Noah, I think you did the right thing. As much of a dick move as it is, they started it by letting their regular players basically kidnap and torture your character into their servitude. The Gamemaster of that Larp should have taken those players aside and cussed them out for being assholes! Or he should have at least let you re-allocate a few points into some connections to get out of it.

Honestly, if I’d been running the Larp, I’d have allowed it. But then again, I’d have never allowed such idiotic godmoding.

Kudos to you, Spoony. You’ve just shown us why you don’t fuck with The Spoony One!

As for the good Vs evil playing issue, sometimes it’s fun to blow off a little steam playing as an evil jerk. But that’s not something to do all the time. I’d much rather play the good guy most of the time and play only a little as the evil bastard.

I actually don’t like taking evil paths in games that offer the choice. I’m a good guy at heart.

Lol. This is a great story. It’s just hilarious. 

I noticed the vampire and werewolf world of darkness books at my local game store. This game does sound interesting. I’ll have to look more at it but I’d love to find out more about it. Have you played the Werewolf game of the World of Darkness or not, Spoony?

Nice! Very, very, nice. As a fellow Masquerade player
I agree with your thoughts of Requiem and I applaud you for how you proceed
after what was done to your character. A Real GM wouldn’t let something like
what those guys did to you happen.

By the way the neutral ground is called Elysium.

Long live Malkav!

You deserve five medals. First the RPGA, now this, you’re a hero to every gamer who ever had their character fucked over by asshole godmoding players and GMs. If they’re gonna take control of your character, it’s your right to be able to fuck them over back.

I have to wonder if they tightened security after that incident.  Because I would love to see someone go in, and when the Prince asks what covenant they belong to, they drop their trenchcoat, revealing an explosive vest with a dead-man switch and two FN-P90s, and answer, “VII.”

Spoony, you magnificent bastard. Honestly, I’m -damn- proud of what you did, and they all deserved to be blown to meet their maker. Railroading a new player like that was a bullshit move. Perhaps legitimate, and what would have realistically happened… but it was still bullshit.

I don’t have a lot of experience with Vampire… basically VTM: Redemption and Bloodlines. But I definitely agree that the best games are with characters who are good, or at least have a certain moral code. Even when I’ve played a chaotic neutral character who had no problem teaming up with a group of Illithids if they’re working to the same goal as my character (long story for another time), he’ll at least have some kind of moral code like “everyone deserves to have the freedom to make their own decisions,” and he’ll fight to the death to uphold that. It’s maybe not the traditional “good” moral code, but I still see it as a pro-active and mostly positive moral code (and more interesting than boring old lawful good *smirks*).

You would think they would have filled you in on the status quo and all of that when you joined up so you could plan your character accordingly…

I have this sort of overactive sympathy reaction, where when I’m told a story, I can feel the emotions of the moment, and listening to this story, from the moment you said “bathtub semtex” I was filled with an overwhelming giddy excitement at how brilliant I knew this would turn out, and by the end, I was literally clapping and cheering for how much you fucked them up (which probably isn’t a good thing, since it’s 2:40 AM XD), even if it didn’t get made cannon. I wish I had such a perfectly executed revenge story to tell, and you are a very lucky and brilliant person to have been able to do something so grand. ^^

Spoony I totally love you in a very heterosexual way! That was awesome!

I almost played a WOD game myself. A friend of mine in college tried to rope me into it. We even rolled a character for me and took me to a player meet N Greet. I kind of wish I had played, but honestly between school work and personal issues, I never got the proper chance. Still after your story, Im kind of glad I backed out. 

The one thing about WOD that rubbed me wrong was just all the etiquette and niceties you have to know. “Be respectful”, “don’t sass the prince”, etc. I even was playing around and suggested that I have this diminutive way about myself, calling another player “master”. Suddenly, my friend goes “no, don’t do that. If you refer to me as master it suggests Im responsible for everything you do. I may not want to be responsible for you.” 
I mean it just feels like there is no room for imagination when you have to stifle yourself in this rigid almost totalitarian society. Seriously, if I wanted to live in a bleak, hopeless never ending nightmare as someone’s psuedo-sexual underling, I’d just go to prison. 

That particular DM only liked to play hardball when he wasn’t up to bat.

It just occured to me. You basically made a vampire Dr. Insano and after all the brutality, just wiped out an entire 2 clans of vampires with SCIENCE!!!!!!!

Really, I would have to say, that’s exactly how I would have reacted, because that is one of the douchiest ways to greet a new player I’ve ever heard of.  Though, I actually probably would have tried to force the issue, but that’s more because of how big of an asshole I am when I get annoyed.

YES!!! ROCK ON SPOONY! OMG I would have done the same thing! 

Spoony, you brilliant man - 

As far as I’m concerned, you played dead fair. They screwed you  over and you didn’t just flip out.

You blew their asses up.

Way to use your head!

Really cool ^^ It’s not very surprising that they didn’t let your terrorist act happen. But it would have been awesome if they had ^^ I disagree with you on VtR though. Personally I just get stressed out if there’s a huge background story/world that I “have to” follow. I tend to constantly doublecheck the books just so I don’t describe anything “wrong” instead of simply improvising. So having a huge prewritten world doesn’t really work for me. I much prefer the flavour texts and suggestions that exists in NWoD. And I agree with many others here that you can play as a good character in VtR, it’s very much possible.  

Spoony you glorious bastard, that was awesome.

Oh god!  Reminds me of something I did in a Dresden Files RP.  My
characters brother got killed by a Warden and for revenge I recorded
several of the main characters, including a police officer, admitting to
the Warden killing him and agreeing with him for doing it.  I then took
all of it, plus some other evidence and sent it to the FBI and uploaded
it on to Youtube.  Ya, the reaction was pretty much the same as for yours.

That’s what I hate though, plot immunity.  All the lesser characters are
supposed to have ICA = ICC (In Character Actions = In Character
Consequences) but the main characters can do what they want with
impunity.  I say good on you Spoony.  If I’d been running that Vampire
game, I would have allowed it.  Maaaaaybe some of the characters survive
some how, but the action should have gone through. 

I am nearly on the floor laughing, that was an awesome story. I have never before heard a LARP story that ends with one character leveling all of his enemies with one detonation of plastic explosives. Brilliance.

This was one of the best stories ever.  Spoony: 1. Vampire LARP: 0.

You should’ve told people this story abit more. Like on their Forum just to give them the middle finger with a message like, “Yeah, you’re acctually all dead because you screwed with my character, have fun LARP’ing.”

Good story Spoony. I know a lot of people might disagree about the whole “No good guys in Vampire” comment, but I’m inclined to agree. In NWOD I tend to lean more toward Werewolf the Forsaken as they are(or atleast can be) legitimate good guys. Though, NWOD is really pushing the notion that nothing most players will change things on a global scale anymore, so not so much with the grand heroics anymore.

That was an epic trololololing right there. XD

best story of all time. 

We always hate when GMs and other larpers are against you at the start of the game. Good going man !

I take it you played Salubri, Noah?

I dont think you were being an asshole on that one. It was totally unfair for the prince to have 4 of his lackeys to come and convert under penalty of death, especially to a player new to the game. It takes away from players trying to create and shape their own characters if the second you come in to the game the other players forcibly take control of you character. I think you were totally justified and kudos to you for outsmarting 30 people .

I see why you got angry. Doing that to a Newbie is probably one of the worst things a serious player can do, not only because is basically bullyng but because its probably the fastest way to cut your community short and make you look like a real asshole.

While I don’t concurr with your solution 100% (seeing from the other guy poin of view, it was terrible that a new player would destroy what could probably be years of game because he got snubbed) it was probably the most well though send off I had read. You went with a bang, in character and it would pass as a reminder to the group that just because one is new, if you play hardball, be ready to screw or get screwed.

Great story.

I’ve never LARP’ed and unfortunately it’s hard getting a game of D&D going here where I live ( small town in Norway ).
But your Counter Monkey-stories are just friggin’ great.
I was laughing LOUDLY at this one. Epic story xD

Oh ho ho, this does bring back memories. I have three such tales to share with you. Judge if you will if they are as worthy as Spoony’s in epic fuck-the-prick-ness.

Tale the First: In a regular RPG WoD group I once joined, the Storyteller in charge allowed characters from all the old books (mages, werewolves, changlings, whatever), but was extremely lax on checking the character sheets or making sure she understood the rules of each system.  During the campaign, a player running a Mummy character calmly walked up to the Prince and shot him in the face…and walked out without any reaction from the crowd.
  As a ‘button man’ Bruhah named Mr. White, I took it upon myself to give the player a consequence by shooting him from a distant rooftop as he lounged on the top of his townhouse. I made the roll, got the hit and did enough damage to send his brains to Chicago when the two werewolf players perk up and say “I stop the bullet”.
  What? Apparently they both had super-rare items (and impossible to get starting out) that made them invisible…so they ‘claimed’ they heard the shot and put themselves in the way of the bullet because they just happened to be there. Despite the fact that they COULDN’T have the items and the impossibility of knowing were the shot was from, the Storyteller allowed it. She also allowed them to track the bullet’s path IN THE AIR by scent alone and run to my building in about 3 seconds…and I was half a mile away.

  So thanks to someone not checking the rules and allowed three players that claimed ‘expert’ advice, my character was badly mauled before I finished chambering the second round. They actually killed him, but I managed to get the Storyteller to allow him to live if badly hurt. So I licked my wounds, had a private talk with the ST and didn’t appear in the game for a bit…until the ST annouced that the townhouse that the werewolves and Mummy lived in suddenly exploded while they slept. Thanks to a bit of pointing out rules in the book, secret messages and planning ahead, I completely incinerated all three characters in a way that they could not survive. I basically filled the basement with gas from a nearby main and set a timer with about 10 pounds of C4. Boom.

  To this day, those three refuse to talk to me.

Thinking about it, there are two other methods of completely screwing over an entire group like this.  Both requires unfettered access to the blood source for the meetings.  One of which, if I remember the rules correctly, will give you complete control of the group.
1) Spike the blood with AIDS, HIV or some other blood pathogen.  By the rules to protect the vampires, you are not allowed to feed on the general public or you have to kill each time you feed.  You would be spreading, say AIDS, to the general populace fast and drawing too much attention.
2) Spike the blood with your blood.  If another vampire drinks your blood three times, you have permanent obedience.  Immediately give the command that they cannot plot against you.  Usually, a Prince will have an initiate drink of their blood once or twice, then hold out for the third if you need to be seriously reined in.

Regarding our hating on

Lol, the Larp I played in? Oh that shit would have been allowed. Hell, we got to a point of making the Vamps a bunch of paranoid nutters. Our Werewolf group would track vampires in the Umbra (spirit world). How? Well, blood banes follow vamps everywhere due to the corrupted blood that’s within them.  So we would have a couple of Silent Striders do recon where baneskins, an we followed the vamps… all the way to Elysium.

Now, the vamps had way more XP on them than us as their LARP had been running longer, and they were being a bunch of hooting dickholes, IC or OC, so we worked out some payback. We surrounded the main room of the Elysium in Crinos form, then popped out of the Umbra as a single force, dropping explosives, hitting them with incendiary rounds, calling pack totems, and generally just creating a massacre. The Nosferatu players all popped Obfuscate to get the fuck of dodge, and thus, when the dust settled, suddenly the city’s Vampire population was controlled by the Nos, as opposed to the strong Ventrue/Toreador line we had had up til then. The elder of the nosferatu decided it was in his best interest to make a non-aggression pact with us, and told us about these really, deeply psychotic vampries known as the Sabbat. The game was afoot….

A bunch of the older players cried fowl, but the ST looked at them and was like, “Well, next time, don’t piss off the things that can rip your faces off. Pretty simple, isn’t it?”

Holy crap. I was just giddy with excitement when I realized what you were going to do. They SHOULD have cleared that simply because of how clever that was. That was really an impressive thing you did Spoony, especially after all the times you’ve stressed that you have a bad poker face. Man that was a great video.

I couldn’t disagree with you more about there ever having been “good guys” in Vampire. While it should be every players intention to hold on to as much humanity as possible, at the end of the day, you’re still stuck with the beast, still able to lose all control and maul anything in sight, still the bastard child of beings hungry and powerful enough to unmake the world. You have to think in shades of grey, though anyone who goes for the high profile evil like paths and Sabbat are playing it completely wrong, I will agree. The players should seek to avoid their likely descent as that is a core theme of the games.

However, I’ve had LARP experiences similar to yours before, and I feel your pain. It’s sad when players do things like that in Live Action games. I had a story like that in oWoD when I played a Tremere.

*clap* Friggin brilliant! those douches deserved it!!!

The banner ad at the bottom of the screen was for, “Vampire: The Masquerade: Redemption.”

Coincidence?

I like both Requiem and Masquerade. My group prefers Requiem though so thats what I tend to run. I never played as a Sanctified member, went with the Carthians or the Circle of the Crone. My Carthian vamp was a good guy, well girl I suppose, pretty much she tried to use her money to improve the shitty neighborhood that she had her haven in, at the same time she tried to eliminate most of the gangs and controls what was left. My Crone character…owned a library. Anywho I like both Requiem and Masquerade and will be a fangirl of White Wolf for a very long time XP

Ok ummm…I’m not a player but most RPG’s are essentials co-op affairs. The players basically turned this into PVP by attacking, harming and manipulating another player, and Spoony destroyed them for it. Seems like they brought it on themselves. I’m not sure how I would have handles this as a GM…I’m not entirely sure I would have allowed it per say and let Spoony abort the entire campaign, but I would have considered it a good lessson for the other players about not being dicks. Or at least not being dicks without being prepared for predictable consequences. 

I am going to write a Vampire the Masquerade movie for my ScriptFrenzy project, and this is going to be the opening scene. By your leave, of course.

Oh, and to all people that say that the Storyteller should have allowed Spoony to “blow up” the game: sorry, but I have to disagree.

The ST job is to keep the game running. He COULD rule out Spoony’s revenge from the game, because it would fuck up the game for the other players, no matter how asshol-ish they were. In fact, he was expected to do so, even if he allowed Spoony’s gimmick of bathtub-explosives earlier.

But, of course, it was all his (ST) fault for letting the other players act like that with a new player. That is ALSO his job! He should have talked the other players from doing this, if not for some in-game excuse, for the simple fact that it was a totally dick move from them to do that, brainwashing a FELLOW PLAYER’S CHARACTER and ruining his fun. But he opted for the “Common sense? Never heard of it!” path, and that’s when shit went out.

I never played LARP (not my kind of game), but I have a bunch of friends who play a Vampire LARP every weeekend. And, let me tell you: the LARP usually bring the worst of them out of their personalities. Talking to them about the game in a normal conversation they would tell me plans to kill this or that character they personally find annoying, or bad played, just to make either the player to roll a new one or to quit the LARP completely. They would, of course, treat the girl’s characters very well and nice, because nobody wants the girls quitting the gaming group…

So I usually would suggest them for us to play a few Paranoia sessions, where they could betray each other with no qualms whatsoever (in fact, they are EXPTECTED to do that). But nobody wants to, because they only like to pick on fellow characters in games where they probably won’t be punished for it (while in Paranoia, everybody is backstabbing, and everybody is aware of it; is just that you are expected to be screwed, so just roll with it and have fun).

I had a similar experience with a similar group of LARPers.  Two major differences:  I was playing old WoD, and I was playing the oh so hated Ravnos.  Had I told them who and what I was, I would not have made it through the morning.  But alas, as I Ravnos, I was used to hiding my nature… And damned good at it.
 
Still, my plan to get them back for being douchebags was WAY long and way more involved… I didn’t destroy the Elyssium, but I did Diablerie the Prince…  And got away with it.

It appears that, in online terms, you suffered the equivalent of greifing. Even though the engine didn’t allow the ability to recompense yourself in terms of satisfaction, you got a lot further than most newbies in a game at getting a cool comeback.

This was heartwarming. A really good story, how they had this coming :) I wish the GM would at least take this as a lesson for how to welcome new players, but I guess the only lesson learned was “Spoony is an ass hole”.

seriously this is tremendous. Thank you for doing this. even if it might not have made a difference in that particular situation i feel like someone will see this video and it will make a difference. 

Roleplay needs to have variety. Its not just a black and white thing. honestly personally i feel like all those guys were a bunch of punks and geeks who needed to live out some kind of badassery to make up for the lack of it in real life. I do like playing a badass now and then but vampires and the idea of vampires is more complex than them just being evil. 

They aren’t any different then wild tigers. Tigers don’t Maul everything in sight just for the fuck of it. Yes to Maul is in their nature but so is to love and everything else. Vampires who were one of the originals maybe i can see being a little more heinous and vengeful and jaded after so many thousands of years and becoming bored, however a vampire who has been turned under a century depending on how they were turned will more than likely still have humanity in them. Besides killing machines are only interesting when there is a contrast. Back stabbers are only interesting when there is a contrast. If there is no real conflict than life and action is boring. This is the first rule of choreography (yes i’m a geek and a dancer, as rare as a Gangrel Carthian) and the first rule of drama which refers the theater which is just LARP heavily relying on script.

Hey Spoony long time listener, first time poster.

Good review Spoony, I have heard a lot of unflattering reviews about vamp larps. I’d say that from what I have heard about larps, or bad larps is that they have turned into bad caricatures of high school clicks.  This is a serious problem with the white wolf larp organization and it is giving a game I like a bad name.

I myself have played requiem in online chat (mIRC) with friends. I have heard of the same problem as you in the past, with the characters acting like they are Humanity 4 (or -37 depending on the player) when they are around 6 or 7 Humanity. That doesn’t stop me from playing a Humanist character, but it can be a pain in the ass.

Now I love the new vamp setting, the lack of end of the world met-plot is one reason. Not because it holds up the road of humanity, I use that path myself when playing characters. The lack of the world ending met-plot just isn’t an automatic concern plugged into the characters I make.

I am not going to correct you (there is no need) on any of the rundowns of the covenants you gave because those are legitimate ways to play them, and unfortunately many people default to them. The new line is supposed to be a tool box for players, not a bible.  When it comes to game mechanics the book tells you how to play. When it comes to RP you can make your character, the political organizations and how they relate to others up to you and the GM.

Finally, good job actually going through with the revenge plot. I personally hate hazing in general.

I do not like what this type of story ark does to the game line; it keeps one type of player in (the douche-bag type) and excludes all others (like path of Humanity). White Wolf has put this game out there as a game you can play however you like, but this type of jack-assery is giving a very bad reputation to the game.

There is another pod cast on the walking eye that talks about this very thing. I found it hilarious and a good warning to anyone who likes the system or either Masquerade or Requiem.

I’ll post it below, but you can remove this posting if there is some legal or other issue with posting to another site. That is not my intention.
Jen’s LARP Experience – http://www.thewalkingeye.com/?tag=vampire-the-requiem

Good review and keep killing bad game play,
Des

F Yeah
nice job sticking it to them
No Vaselined their game

I really want to say that your dog is adorable and found it hilarious that you are sitting that just going on about vampire larp and playing with the dog. Too cute.

This is great, my party has done a few things like that before, though mostly to other people.
I’ve got to say though, I think your opinion is very bi-est. Not all GM’s play the same way, mine prefers that we not kill when feeding and rarely does the majority of the group or a part of the group go out of their way to kick a little guy who just joined just because of their covent. My GM also made the Prince of our city very Justice based and never lets laws broken, even if he doesn’t like it, so there’s never any forcing to join a covent.
Another thing I feel needs to be said, is that you must not know alot about the Circle of the Crown. They are not devil worshiper, they’re Pagans who believe in the Crown, a vampire goddess who grants them their blood magic known as Cruac. The Crown is never stated to be evil or demonic and my catary have long sense gone over the details of finding out that, while demonic pacts are not all out condemned by the Crown that does not mean they smiled apoun.
The main thing most people are lost at is the Circle of the Crown’s means of teaching. They general mato is “tribulation brings enlightenment” or in simplier terms, they learn all of their Cruac though pain and torture; their own pain and torture to be exact. This makes them seem evil and sinister but in all reality they do not have to harm a single human to learn their magic. Granted I have seen some cases of human sacrifice by a member of the Crown but he was a newly awakened elder who had been worshiped as a god in ancent Aztec and was long sense used to using humans as desposible things.

awesome! ^.^ m/

Woah seriously. Never fuck with Spoony’s character or he will bomb up your ass Doctor Insano style :D Best revenge ever!

I am so with you. Vampire was always fun because you were struggling to maintain your humanity while being driven to do horrible things. That’s what makes it interesting.

Thank you so much. This, right here is exactly why I play Vampire the way I do. Because being that one light in the darkness makes things that much more interesting.

This is a really great summation of Vampire the Masquerade (go classic!) and Vampire the Requiem (which I’ve never even bothered to read).  :) 
Although, the Requiem covenant that “gets away” with doing atrocities because they go to confession afterward…. I’ve met living human Catholics who felt the same way, so not such a stretch for me.  I can’t agree with White Wolf’s establishment of them acting that way, but I can comprehend it as commentary on that aspect of Catholicism – something WW does a lot.
I agree wholeheartedly with the idea that Humanity vampires who slaughter thousands because they’re evil vampires are being played incorrectly.  Thumbs up to you there.
And bravo to you for saving the newbie.  :D
The players and ST’s in this larp were pathetic.  Sorry you had such a lousy experience.

In all honesty Spoony? I’d have probably done the same thing. Yeah, you were an asshole but you put a bunch of bullying LARPers in their place and showed that you don’t fuck with the guy who can create plastic explosives in his bathtub. Great story!

Jesse Melat: Indeed. Those who just like the powertrip and kill everyone are just living out some sort of psychotic part of themselves. A good villain is part of the story.
I played a truly evil character, so bad i had to go outside and drop character sometimes just because I was so disgusted with his actions. But it was part of a story that me and another player wanted to play out, of how the iredeemable one takes a new vampire with hopes of holding on to her human self and systematicaly destroys everything she loves, just so she will have nothing but him.
In the end, her true love has found her and forced a caitiff to turn him so he can be with her. The scene where he is beaten and she is forced to shoot him – and the way she played her as cold and full of hate after that – was really powerful.

I have used the term “Path Whoring” a few times myself.  I hated the Paths in Vampire: the Masquerade.  I loved that Vampire: the Requiem was Humanity path only.  And I agree on the most superficial viewpoints on the Covenants your dead on.  I think that, especially in a LARP the Covenants are played to superficial and stereotypical level. 

But as a person who had played in a lot of VtM LARPS that was same for the clans.I swear I never met a Sabbat guy in a LARP who wasn’t stupidly evil.  I once played in a LARP set in Casablanca during WW2 (yeah that one) as Toreador playboy.  Nazi’s brought me in for questioning.  I just acted normal and smiled and told the Nazi interrogator the truth outside of being a vampire. 

The guy playing the Nazi after the scene went, “Wow you are the first guy who hasn’t tried to use powers against me.”  I just looked at him and said, “Really?  I saw no reason to use powers.  You didn’t attack me, you barely were a threat to me. 

Why would I use powers?”This guy playing the Nazi looked at me and was in utter shock.  I found out later that nine characters had died already because they had just attacked or used Dominate or Majesty or some other such thing, and the Nazis were aware of vampires and were killing anyone who acted like one.

Honestly, the game you were in sounds like a bad LARP in general.  The worst thing to have happen is to have a bad LARP with bad storytelling staff.  Especially if the they didn’t tell you before hand that you made a character that wouldn’t fit in.  I hate games that do that.  I have no problem with a player messing up in game.  I have a serious problem with a GM who let a person make a character who doesn’t fit into the game. 

The main GM should have told you that it was an Invictius/Lancea Sanctum ONLY city, and that you’d be an outcast if you were anything else.Also, that story is so awesome I owe you a beer if I ever get to meet you.

Holy shit, guys, I just realized that Spoony has now officially done #30 on the Things Mr. Welch is No Longer Allowed to Do in an RPG list: “I am not to kill off all the vampires in the LARP, even if they are terminally stupid.”

Noah, you are the goddamn hero of roleplaying.

And it was stuff like that that kept me from messing with LARP so much. Tried to be a Followers of Set and was open about it.  I ended up getting bitched at because my “plot” my “character” wasn’t conforming to the rules of some book of Set I’d never heard of OOC. 

And I totally know it was the people I was playing with.

Spoony – 1
Pretentious LARPing Jackasses – 0

Well done sir! If I’d been the GM, I would totally have ruled it acceptable. An honorable man would have taken the loss with good graces and informed everyone that they were dead. Guess we know where that particular GM fell. Then again, if I had been the GM, I’d have offered you a form of revenge somehow. Vampire is about plotting in the darkness, after all.

This also illustrates why I stayed away from LARPing; I’ve never heard a good story about that style of RPing. It’s always been about how the “regulars” treated the newbies like sh*t and drove most of them away. I heard most of these stories from my friends here in Phoenix. Of course, that was years ago…

Yeah, I agree with you about how the vampires are trying to hold onto their humanity. The Morality code, as you said, is called Humanity, and when you hit 0 humanity, then you reach the state of no control and full instinct!
Hunt, Kill, Feed, Sleep, Repeat!!! It’s about the man containing the beast! Avoiding the state of Hunt, Kill, Feed, Sleep, Repeat!

In general, vampires don’t interest me (I prefer Werewolves {I like the idea behind the Iron Masters}, and I am getting into Sin Eaters {the Prey fascinate me}), but reading Vampire: the Requiem, I don’t find I like the vampire factions much.

I believe you are talking about Elysium, though. The neutral ground where the consequences are heavy for those who enter into a frenzy.

In terms of the nWoD, I am sure if you get a good DM, or since you often are a DM, I imagine you can ask your DM to run (or even run such yourself) a game with an interesting plot that might involve the end of the world. Include Cain and Gehenna in your game, and you can still hold onto the aspects of WoD that you enjoy.

I have looked at Path of Night recently, and it’s strange to me, considering most of the other paths are good. Even the Path of Ethics for the Orothorei in Dragon: the Embers (at least in the test version), appear to be good, even though they seem to be evil as well. It’s the idea of being a good ruler of the land you own, and loosing Ethics turns you into a dictator, and eventually a Hydra, who is mindless, and they are not allowed to hold land.

Hopefully things go better for you if you even choose to play Vampire again. I imagine that is such occurred in a real vampire story, the Lancea Sanctum Vampires would have reacted as you described from this experience. Then again, they’d all be dead after you blew up their city.

I know why the DM got pissed – some newbie just fucked up your entire campaign – but he had to have realised that if he was going to allow something like a brand new character being tortured and converted like that, then he was creating a situation where anything goes as long as its legal, player etiquette be damned, and that he hence couldn’t complain if someone played the asshole card right back. Hell no, I wouldn’t have cleared it if I was him, but he didn’t have a right to complain. If you want to set up that kind of situation, then be prepared for the possible backlash.

Honestly, though, I really don’t like LARPing, so for me this is just another victory story where it failed! YES! The only time I’ve found it acceptable to LARP was on a pub crawl, and that wasn’t exactly a LARP so much as a bunch of drunk university kids getting thrown out of bars. Or not being let in.

lol if i was the dm i’da cleared it.  very much reminds me of the Bloodlines ending.

Wow, this is the best story ever. The stories that I’ve heard about Vampire the Masquarade LARP games were along these same lines, I don’t think it has anything to do with the game’s edition, just the people who like to play vampire larp and the culture that it promotes. The stories I’ve heard about vampire larp all seem to involve domination, torture, politics and general ass-holery. I think people play that game so that they can be controlling jerks in a sanctioned setting.

Seriously. The only thing worse than a LARPer or  vampire RPG player is a vampireLARPER. They all deserve to die firey horrible deaths in the name of Gygax.

dayum that was so badass

Victory for the Carthians, bitch

 And those guys that forced your char to join the LS were being stupid.  They do not work that way.

Wow, that reminds me of one of my LARP experiences. The local OWoD group which was pretty respectably sized (about 60 players) and played on a nearby college campus, had a clique of players who abused OOC/IC privilege, LARP boundaries, and metagamed their butts off. It was a Camarilla game and the group had basically made a Sabbat pack, and was really ruining the fun for everybody else, so instead of just drop the hammer which they couldn’t do because that clique were the ones who got us basically free reign over an entire college campus, the ST’s (a couple of them I played P&P with and who knew who devious and evil I could be) contracted me to solve the problem in-character and gave me a blank check to do it.

So, I made a Malkavian (the Camarilla bloodline, so I had dominate instead of dementation) with true faith. After a few weeks in the game lowering suspicions and banking experience, I went around obfuscated blessing all the water coolers, toilets, sinks, water fountains, and unattended water bottles, dominating anyone who happened to notice me. As the centerpiece and just to be sure, I took one of the ST’s into the building’s basement and blessed the water main and heaters.

Some of the problem clique’s players were university employees and had fairly unrestricted access to the building the LARP occurred in, which they abused since the building itself was declared in bounds rather than only parts of the building. So was I. Sure a dozen or so characters died as collateral damage but I succeeded in busting up the clique, the whole thing was written off as a Malkavian prank and my character skipped town after getting a blood hunt declared on him, and I ended up getting a recurring role as an Hermetic mage after the ST’s started a running B-plot involving the city’s Tremere.

Side note, friction cursing a Brujah is just about the funniest thing you can ever possibly do in OWoD.
 

I have heard this complaint a lot in various NWOD games i have run or been in. Whether it be hunter, geist, vampire or what have you, you dont ever really feel like the good guy.

My god.  That’s glorious.

This should be canon.

I think one of the other prevalent conception of vampires is that Judas was the first vampire. I never heard the Cain idea, though.

Funny thing is, I recall a time where I saw some people LARP-ing and it ended with someone, in game, blowing everyone up, much like Vampire Spoony~

That was fucking amazing.

best story in the history of time!

Anyway, the story was awsome xD

An interesting story.Personally I think those guys were doing Lancea Sanctum the wrong way (go to confessional to avoid dealing with humanity? Bullshit!) This is probably a clear sign of favoritism on account of the established players vs the newbie.

11:52 – Admiral Ackbar: IT’S A TRAP!!!!!!!!

Having read the vampire chronicles and having played the games, some of the characters in the novels do fall into the Path of Humanity,

Mariouse De Romanous is very much like the ones the camerilla, only eating evil doers
Lestat would also fall into this as well, but he is defenitly a toreador
Armand could fall into this as he only drinks from those who wish to die
Akasha is deffently like the sabbat, as would be santino

I was with a group that did something like this, and it was totally awesome. It broke the game for dozens of people, but it was so worth it for the revenge.

Way back in the Vampire: The Masquerade days, I played occasionally in a large game that fluctuated between 40 and 50 players at this old movie theater. The guy who owned the theater was the impossibly low-generation Prince and most of the ST team were his employees. It was a mostly terrible game because of all the politics, but there wasn’t a lot else to do in the area and there were enough people playing to make it fun. As long as you didn’t want to actually influence the story, that is. And if the Prince/IRL owner of the place decided he didn’t like you or wanted to ruin your night (or any of his friends, for that matter), there was no point in even sticking around to argue with the STs. It was a circle jerk that got out of control.

I was part of a clique of players that lived RPGs. Counting fringe members and girlfriends who dabbled in the VTM game, there were maybe 15 of us. There were enough of us that we had some protection from the politics of the larger game, but we regularly saw people getting screwed over hard by the in-crowd. It sucked, and as the games kept going over the course of that summer (the game had been going on for nearly two years), it got worse. Like no-fun-to-play worse. Even our clique got messed with arbitrarily, and STs went along with whatever the Prince wanted. He wants to somehow be 4th gen? Done. Personal hit squad of werewolves? Done. It was insulting.

We decided to go to one last game. We created human hunters, and we spent days crafting characters specifically created to go out in one gigantic blaze of glory. We were pretending to be a clan passing through the city for the night, and were meeting with the Prince out of formality. I’ll spare you the details (it was my plan, and it was awesome), but just like in Spoony’s video, lazy STs and players who didn’t bother to check us out before we got into the room with the Prince and his bros club.

Unlike Spoony’s story, this played out in front of almost the entire game. Dozens of people watched as we destroyed the Prince and the entire inner circle of his fan club. All of our characters died, of course, but the larger point was that it couldn’t be undone. After the bodies were counted, the head ST called the game to a stop. He called everyone together (again, like 50 people) and said he just wanted to pretend that the evening never happened. It was all a dream. Apart from the Prince/IRL owner’s circle of friends, absolutely no one wanted that. It because a heated argument, where many of the other players vented their feelings about how crappy the game had gotten. Lots of feathers were ruffled that night.

None of my group were welcome back, and so I don’t know what happened plotwise. But the game itself died, and was a fraction of what it had been after that night. On one hand, I’m glad we did it, because it was zero fun towards the end. On the other, it’s a shame it couldn’t be saved because it was brilliant to be in that big of a group … when it worked.

Haven? is that the place the neutral ground

Now I want someone to make a TV show about vampire criminals. Something like Prison Break, or Breaking Bad, but with a Masquerade. Vampire drug dealers, vampire con men . . . Make this happen, AMC!

Thank you spoony! that was frekkin awesome! I would have done the same thing. right back at them. ps you’re awesome!/Swedish gal

As A member of the camarilla or is now know as the Minds Eye Society I want to apologize for what happened that’s not how we as a club treats new players I know we have talked via twitter Mr spoony one But I was able to help you have an better experience at a requiem game or the club its self if you gave us another shot please feel free to contact me.

*sigh* oWoD didn’t have a good guys either, although you couldn’t tell for all the trench coats and katanas. Heroic characters in WoD have always been individuals that go against the grain.

The anarchs and carthians are the most idealistic factions in both games but their idealism is tainted by naivete and the same sort of rhetoric that’s used to justify totalitarianism. They aren’t all that different from the Lancea in that regard and you can play a heroic character of either faction just as easily as the other (or any of the player factions, really, heck if you’re in the Circle you can even be The Chosen One).
The idea of Requiem isn’t replacing the threat of the Sabbath or Gehenna with politicking, it’s that when the Brood DO come around or when the Doomsday cult de jour finally succeeds it will find Vampires divided and as eager to kill each other as they are to face the latest threat.

Which is something you’d expect given what people are like even without magically induced psychopathy.

As a fan of the Lancea Sanctum, Spoony wrongly explained what they stand for.

The Sanctum are good guys, they scare “evil” people into following the right path, either through fear or death. If a member sins, they must go to confessional, “AND MEAN IT”!!!
Whats the point in confessing if you dont mean it? you still have the sin “written down on your spiritual scroll” so you still have something to wash your hands of.

But I assume that Spoony got involved with a bad group of LCs, or should i say…..HERETICS!!!

all is forgiven Spoony. If I was a player there (they would probably not mess with me cuz i would instantly become a member), then the minute i find out what happened, i would side with you man. Those guys give the Sanctum a bad name and must be purged! I would honestly help you in “cleansing their souls”. :3

the DM was a whiner also.