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

setting the stage chapter • building one: society the action of the • damned climax
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deeds in return. The characters learn more about the situations, including a few surprises. They
meet other characters, gather information, implement plans and face minor challenges.
Not every surprise necessarily comes because someone lied to the coterie. Storyteller characters
might be misinformed, ignorant or outright deluded themselves. Other characters
might blunder into someone’s careful plan and disrupt it. For instance, the mystery kidnapper
might demand that the coterie rob a certain art dealer in order to get the abducted brother
back safely — only when the characters open the dealer’s vault, they fi nd no trace of the art
treasure they were told to steal. Was the whole situation a complicated setup? Was the kidnapper
misinformed about the art dealer, or the item? Did someone else buy the art treasure
the day before? Whatever your devious mind has planned, the characters just experienced
a plot twist. The challenge they thought they would face (burglary) was replaced by another
challenge (where is the art treasure, and what the heck is really going on?), though the main
challenge of the plot (secure the brother’s return or rescue) still needs resolution.
When you design the middle portion of a story, you need to decide who knows what and is
doing what, but leave room for the characters to make their own decisions, including multiple
possible courses of action. Storytelling the middle of a game demands some fl exibility since
everyone is reacting to everyone else and you don’t really know what actions the characters
will choose. You can (and should) furnish hints that some courses of action are more useful
than others. Just as you should try to surprise the players at least once in a story, you can also
expect they will surprise you now and then. If you know your World of Darkness and your
Storyteller characters, however, you can work out how other people respond to unexpected
choices by the characters.
CLIMAX
At the story’s climax, all the chains of cause and effect come together. The characters face
the biggest challenge and succeed, fail or decide what, indeed, constitutes success. Their decision
and actions resolve the central confl ict. Mysteries are explained. They fi nd the missing art
treasure and exchange it for the brother. Or they go after the kidnapper directly, to succeed