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

player wants to attempt to feed, he must fi nd the member of the Storytelling staff
who is in charge of the bowl. He informs this person of his desire to have his character
feed and explains the method he intends to use. The player then reaches blindly into
the bowl and draws a bead. The color will dictate how successful he is.
Red would normally be the most plentiful color in the bowl as it represents that
the feeding went as planned. That player is out of game for the appropriate amount
of time of his feeding as required as set by the Storyteller. If another color is drawn,
however, some complication arises, the degree of which is dictated by the color of
the bead drawn. These complications are worked out in advance by the Storyteller
staff so they can easily be modifi ed to fi t the appropriate circumstance of feeding.
The vampire must then resolve these issues before returning to regular game-play.
For example, if a purple bead (the second most plentiful color of bead) is drawn, then
a minor diffi culty has come up in the attempt. Perhaps the victim was on some sort
of hallucinogenic substance that now translates over to the vampire feeding from
her. If a green bead (a major diffi culty) is drawn, then a friend of the victim shows
up unexpectedly and interrupts the feeding.
If the fi nal type of bead — in our example the black bead — is drawn, then there is a
large crisis the character must deal with, which could lead to a potential breach of the
Masquerade. Perhaps a police vice raid is occurring at the location where the character
is feeding, or the character sees the fl ash of a camera at the other end of the alley then
watches as a car speeds away. (Or perhaps the feeding goes off without a hitch… as far
as the character knows.) Obviously, the black beads are to be employed sparingly.
By adding and removing different colors of beads in different amounts, the
Storyteller can simulate problems in feeding as the city dictates. If there is a police
crackdown in the city, then more red beads would be removed and replaced with more
purple and some green to simulate enforced curfews and stepped-up police patrols.
If players start to use their infl uence to reduce the police presence in the city, then
the other colors can be replaced with more red. Characters with certain backgrounds
might be able to negate or lessen a bad draw, as dictated by the Storyteller.
SETTING THE STAGE
As you pique the characters’ interest, you need to draw them into the story and set out the
challenges they face. You shouldn’t reveal everything at once, though. Give them only part of
the situation. The players need some goal for their characters to accomplish. To accomplish that
goal, however, they need to follow leads that you plant. For example, if you present them with
a mysterious death (that, for some reason, they cannot leave to the police), they can interview
people who knew the victim and search for physical clues. If they try to forge an alliance with an
infl uential Kindred, they need to fi gure out what she wants and how they can serve each other’s
interests. Clever players can look ahead and anticipate where the coterie’s actions might lead.
If they don’t, they leave their characters open to all sorts of complications and plot twists.
Early in the story, you also present the important characters, if only by implication. For
instance, if the point of the story is the search for an unknown person who kidnapped one
character’s mortal brother, the characters might never have met the kidnapper before. They
know they’re after someone, however, so the mystery kidnapper counts as “introduced.”
After the fi rst hour of play, the players should have a pretty good idea what challenge the
characters face, what confl ict awaits them, and what other characters matter for the story,
even if they haven’t met all those characters yet. They could, of course, be mistaken on several
counts. In the World of Darkness, matters are seldom how they seem. The characters have a
direction, though, and the story is well begun.
BUILDING THE ACTION
The bulk of the story consists of the characters’ initial actions to deal with the situation they
discovered in the introduction, other characters’ responses to those actions, and the coterie’s
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mind’s chapter eye four: theatre: storytelling requiem