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

technical matters • description, setting and chapter mood one: • action society of and the violence
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All this goes for characters, too. Show some detail that individualizes each Storyteller character
and suggests how the players should feel about them. You have a harder job with this
than the players do, since they have to create only one vivid character each, while you have to
manage a world (or at least a city). Minor characters who appear only once need only one or
two details to keep them from seeming like identical drones. Important Storyteller characters
should receive all the detail you can gracefully convey to the players. Get inside their heads
to work out how they talk and react to the players’ characters. Give them quirks in how they
dress or how they talk. For instance, one character might always wear immaculately polished
black shoes and tap the side of his nose whenever he makes a point.
Above all, remember that Kindred characters are vampires. Their bodies are pale and cold,
they don’t breathe except to talk, they don’t eat, and they might not have seen daylight in a
long, long time. The older a vampire is, the less contemporary — maybe even the less human
— her personality will seem. Your description can include manners of speaking, clothing or
customs that the character acquired in her mortal life and went out of fashion decades or
even centuries ago.
ACTION AND VIOLENCE
Remember that these are not the same. Do try to keep the pace fast and the characters busy
doing something, whether they are running through alleys or discussing the signifi cance of
an enigmatic postcard. You won’t achieve much horror with one fi ght scene after another,
though.
Violence is an important part of the World of Darkness. Vampires are consummate predators
in a cold and brutal world. They can’t avoid violence, whether it takes the form of grappling
with struggling mortal prey or an assassination attempt from an enemy’s hired knives.
Combat is seldom an optimum way for Kindred to resolve their differences and other
challenges. Leaving aside the game-mechanical effect of Humanity loss, fi ghting is dangerous.
Kindred can look forward to centuries of continued existence. Should they risk those
centuries and all they have built and may yet achieve? This is especially true for older Kindred
who have spent decades or centuries acquiring rank, alliances and mortal infl uence as means
to get their way.
Even in the World of Darkness, open violence also tends to attract the notice of the police.
If a vampire slaughters a punk in an alley, the cops probably shrug and put it down to gang
vendettas. If gunfi re erupts in the home of an eccentric tycoon (who doesn’t come out during
the day…) and he is never seen again, the cops ask questions. Cops asking questions can
endanger the Masquerade. Heaven help the vampire who kills a cop: The police never stop
hunting a cop-killer. Again, such a pursuit can endanger the Masquerade… and in the World
of Darkness, police who catch up to a suspected cop-killer might decide to decide to save the
taxpayers the cost of a trial by killing the quarry themselves.
Most of all, The Requiem is a game of drama. Characters face challenges that are meant
as tests of, well, character, not their ability to rack up a body count. Having someone trying
to kill you tends to inhibit moral questioning.
THE HORROR OF MANY
So how does a Storyteller convey a sense of personal horror in a chronicle that
consists of perhaps dozens of players? With so many stories, plots and people running
around, some details can be pushed to the sidelines. As the Storyteller, however, you
should defi nitely make the effort to bring home the inhuman themes of the game.
No matter how your players view the subject, their characters’ inhuman nature should
become an issue at several points.