Mind's Eye Theatre - Vampire The Requiem.pdf - RoseRed

chapter getting one: society started of the • personas
damned 301
PERSONAS — WHO WILL JOIN THE DANCE?
Your players’ characters are the most important part of the chronicle. What sorts of characters
do they want to play? How can you assist them in polishing their ideas? How do they
relate to the ideas you have percolating?
As an example, let’s suppose you want to build your chronicle around the meteoric rise
and equally spectacular fall of a vampire Prince in a large city. You envision the characters as
hip-deep in the political intrigue surrounding the Prince’s career, with themes of treachery
and the corruption of power. One of your players, however, has her heart set on playing a
member of the clan of Nosferatu who’s chiefl y interested in protecting his mortal family
(without letting them see him, no less), while another player wants to play an apolitical Mekhet
who seeks mystical enlightenment through the Circle of the Crone. Neither seems very
compatible with your concept. So what is to be done?
First, you shouldn’t force the players to abandon characters they love and play characters
they don’t want. This statement certainly ties into the earlier topics of polling your players
for their thoughts during the planning stages of your chronicle. You want players to become
your co-creators, not passive or resentful spectators.
So negotiate. Maybe you can shift the emphasis of your chronicle, so the Prince’s rise and
fall plays out in the background and the characters deal with its side effects. Perhaps the
central challenge that faces the characters is to avoid the machinations of the elders so they
can pursue their personal goals. Maybe, however, the players hadn’t fully considered how
their characters could become involved in politics, and they’ll adjust their characters to suit
the chronicle idea. The Nosferatu could be interested in the Prince’s rise if he sees a chance
to help his family through his political connections. The Mekhet could sympathize with a
Prince who is also involved in the membership to the Circle of the Crone. Mature players
usually want some notion of a chronicle’s premise so they can create characters that are suited
for the story. This sort of give-and-take helps both sides, as players and Storyteller get a better
idea of who will take part in the chronicle and what they will do.
This process of cross-fertilizing ideas continues as the players write up their characters and
fl esh out the details of their personalities, backgrounds and social connections. As they build
characters, you build a world the characters can inhabit. At the same time, you can help suggest
ways the characters might fi t into your world.
For instance, suppose one of your players wants her character to have been some sort of
government agent before his Embrace — something in law enforcement, but maybe espionage.
As you bounce ideas back and forth, you agree that an FBI agent in an organized crime task
force could fi ll the bill: law enforcement, but with espionage too, thanks to undercover and
surveillance work. The player gives her character Allies and Contacts in the form of other FBI
agents, snitches and criminals who never knew he was really a G-man. The G-man character
also receives suitable Skills, such as Streetwise, Larceny, Subterfuge, Firearms, Academics (for
law) and Crafts (to use electronic surveillance gear).
You, meanwhile, ponder how to fi t an Embraced G-man into your chronicle. Perhaps one
of the city’s Primogen has secretly placed a mole inside the FBI task force and uses her to
gain information about a rival’s mob allies. That Primogen could be the character’s sire, using
him as part of his schemes to manipulate the task force. Or perhaps the character doesn’t
know about the Primogen’s subversion, and is in for a nasty shock when the elder Kindred
turns his ally against him! Perhaps the Primogen, or some other Kindred, plans to Embrace
another person on the task force, a friend from the character’s mortal days. Maybe someone
plans to Embrace a mobster who hates the character for sending him to jail.