Getting Vampire players into CoC

[Kain]

As you can read at the Vampulhu topic, I'm introducing my once vampiric players into investigators.
Any ideas, suggestions or experiences that can help me?
Thanks.

[Saintgrimm]

For Vampire players, you might want to take the Hunters Hunted(One of my fav WW books) type approach. Start them out as investegators who have had a small taste of the occult. Then let them play a scenario or two where they can actually lose sanity, but whip up on the badguys. Skeletons, or zombies... something small...

Then, you introduce them to a big bad. Not a huge God or anything. Just something that they would be hard pressed or cannot take down yet. Have it whip up on them, then leave them alone..after all, it's not interested in them. Killing them was not it's goal. Let them climb back to shelter, lick their wounds, and maybe have something that suggests retreat. It'll throw them some caution, or kill them all.

It's risky, but it can work.

[OddJack]

I would suggest playing to what are strengths in both games.

Machinations, mysteries, and major baddies.

I guess it depends how they've played WW. Every game system van be taken from multiple angles. If they enjoy the mysteries and unknowns of a standard Masq game, it can be found in loads in most every CoC. If they like the backroom politics of the soceities, then it could be played on - though they would generally be on the outside trying to scrye the truth of events and motivations. Still they have to work rooms, con certain types, and keep out of too much trouble (with the law, etc.). All part of VtM. And most all of the VtM games have almost unimaginablly powerful foes to face, like CoC. Trouble is, you usually (tried to) fight them and (hope to) succeed. Without powers and intense strength, that won't be a real option. That is the (to me) real danger. Most power gamers will hate CoC, as they aren't going to have easy venues to power and super weapons to wipe out most enemies. So if they like just having the adventure, and can enjoy even a day where they lose and cuse the destruction of the world...they might grow to like it.

Really, if you've played WW you can play up its strong points, smoothing the transition. Better yet, be sure to ask them what they like best about the game (the mood, the environment, the politics, the blowing things up part). And then you know the hooks to make them salivate all the more.

[Kain]

Oh, yes. In Vampire they once played as their former player's familiars or friends once. So it wasn't difficult for them to lose so much power. Yet, it's the system the main problem. So, I'm using Vampulhu but it's designed for vampires, not for humans. And I need to work on that.
The atmosphere is already good for them.

[delrio]

I would suggest playing to what are strengths in both games.

Machinations, mysteries, and major baddies.

While I can't personally stand playing Vampire (although I think that has more to do with the kind of people who play Vampire than it does with the game system itself), I still think that the setting, as it was originally conceived in the early editions of the game, was actually pretty cool. The idea of most people living out their lives never knowing about the dark underbelly of the world... Vampires dating back to biblical times, spawning generation after generation of lesser Vampires with watered down blood; the machinations getting deeper and deeper as you dealt with the older blood; the nigh-godlike antediluvians manipulating everything from the shadows; and always the implication that somewhere in the very back of everything might be Cain himself... Pretty cool stuff, and in some ways more than a bit Lovecraftian.

Del Rio

[Lord_Summerisle]

Well - if you use Brian Lumley's Wamphyri mythos from the Necroscope books then you can have a bunch of very Lovecraftian vampires - parasitical Elder things possessing humans. One of the Necroscope books even uses the Resurrection spell from 'The Case of Charles Dexter Ward' and has a Wamphyri worshipping Yog-Sothoth!

A Wamphryi campaign would be a good halfway point between Vampire and CoC!

[OddJack]

I would suggest playing to what are strengths in both games.

Machinations, mysteries, and major baddies.

While I can't personally stand playing Vampire (although I think that has more to do with the kind of people who play Vampire than it does with the game system itself), I still think that the setting, as it was originally conceived in the early editions of the game, was actually pretty cool. The idea of most people living out their lives never knowing about the dark underbelly of the world... Vampires dating back to biblical times, spawning generation after generation of lesser Vampires with watered down blood; the machinations getting deeper and deeper as you dealt with the older blood; the nigh-godlike antediluvians manipulating everything from the shadows; and always the implication that somewhere in the very back of everything might be Cain himself... Pretty cool stuff, and in some ways more than a bit Lovecraftian.

Del Rio

True. The game can spiral out of control. But the idea at its core are ripe for good role playing. My trouble ends up being that I'm not deceptive enough (and my firends were all too...) to really play or excel at machination. But working out the conundrum is my joy. But when a game come down to a bunch of players who amp up with Potence (strength). Celerity (dexterity and turns per round), and Fortitude (stamina), you have guys running around MACH 1, tearing buildings down at high noon, while hunting for ANOTHER Methuselah to drain. That is not a fun game. I still have a good opinion of the game (when mastered well), but have no idea how it has evolved over the last several years, perhaps it is catering more exclusively. Too bad if it is so. But at least we all have CoC.

[Wood]

I seem to remember that there's a Vampire:TM book where the Tzimisce (is that how you spell that?) Vampires basically ARE the vamps from Necroscope, right down to having one of their disciplines being a symptom of a sentient parasitic infection. I think they changed it later on so it was just a disease.

Try Hunter: the Reckoning. It's the same system and game world, sort of halfway between Buffy and Lovecraft, with normal humans "imbued" with some divine power to see things as they really are (which makes them go mad). If it's done properly, the rate of death and attrition should mirror Cthulhu.

I'm going to put my arse on the line here, but I do think that notwithstanding the often hokey and utterly overpopulated game world, the Storyteller system is actually probably better than BRP. It's nuanced, subtle and what you lose in numerical size, you make up for in flexibility.

Kain, I'll have a think about turning some Mythos monsters into ST. needless to say, the ones in the link weren't very good, were they?

[ossadagowah]

the Storyteller system is actually probably better than BRP. It's nuanced, subtle and what you lose in numerical size, you make up for in flexibility.

You may not have seen the dot-flexing that happens at most LARP games. In the words of one of my online buddies from his own experience:


Take a GM with no speaking presence,

a one-shot with insufficient time for consequences to come back to haunt people,

add way too many inexperienced players just itching to show off their dots,

stew for about eight hours.

You may hear a popping sound every hour or so. This is a major blood vessel in my body bursting as the GM drifts back and forth, narrating a scene with enough gusto to make Keanu Reeves look like Gary Oldman, and arbitrating the non-stop dot flexing. I didn't even know the system we were using; I didn't want to use it because every time something involved a game mechanic, the whole show had to grind to a halt. If I'd been using a watch, I probably would have found that it wasn't taking very long, but it was all gibberish.


and the follow-up's even worse:


My favorite part of that game (next to the Killer Green Cloud that everyone just ignored) had to be the guy who came up to me saying:

"I Manipulation + Subterfuge Bid 12 am now Manipulation + Subterfuge Bid 12 going to Manipulation + Subterfuge Bid 12 tell you Manipulation + Subterfuge Bid 12 something Manipulation + Subterfuge Bid 12 interesting Manipulation + Subterfuge Bid 12."

"I sense you're lying to me somehow..."



It's still a matter of preference, I guess. Storyteller can be a bit of a pain because of how many books you need to get to obtain the entire World of Dogness.

[Wood]

You've got a point with the books.Although anyone with a lot of time and creativity can get round that.

Cthulhu is better in that you only ever really need the rule book and a few books of horror stories. And one of the campaign books will keep you in games for months and months. It certainly wins on cheapness. And while the ST system may be nuanced, BRP is actually quicker to learn, and nearly every game I've played over the last three years has been with BRP. It's just less hassle to get people's heads round it.

Having said that, when I used to run Vampire, I - apart from priding myself on being able to instil FEAR into the heads of the most ardent wannabe Vampire powergamer - never ever had a problem with mechanics. I think that if you stick to the special cases in the rulebooks, you're doomed, but if you're confident enough to say "close enough" and wing it, it worked just fine. So, nope - never had a problem with the mechanics.

Still, I guess it's about what you're happy with. There's nothing to stop Kain using the ST system for his Cthulhu games. If you take a fairly abstract approach to conversion, it's fairly straightforward to make CoC adventures fit it, especially once you've hacked together some decent sanity rules.

[Kain]

Kain, I'll have a think about turning some Mythos monsters into ST. needless to say, the ones in the link weren't very good, were they?

Definetly not. But it'll take some time to for my players to face Gods.

the Storyteller system is actually probably better than BRP. It's nuanced, subtle and what you lose in numerical size, you make up for in flexibility.

You may not have seen the dot-flexing that happens at most LARP games. In the words of one of my online buddies from his own experience:


Take a GM with no speaking presence,

a one-shot with insufficient time for consequences to come back to haunt people,

add way too many inexperienced players just itching to show off their dots,

stew for about eight hours.

You may hear a popping sound every hour or so. This is a major blood vessel in my body bursting as the GM drifts back and forth, narrating a scene with enough gusto to make Keanu Reeves look like Gary Oldman, and arbitrating the non-stop dot flexing. I didn't even know the system we were using; I didn't want to use it because every time something involved a game mechanic, the whole show had to grind to a halt. If I'd been using a watch, I probably would have found that it wasn't taking very long, but it was all gibberish.


and the follow-up's even worse:


My favorite part of that game (next to the Killer Green Cloud that everyone just ignored) had to be the guy who came up to me saying:

"I Manipulation + Subterfuge Bid 12 am now Manipulation + Subterfuge Bid 12 going to Manipulation + Subterfuge Bid 12 tell you Manipulation + Subterfuge Bid 12 something Manipulation + Subterfuge Bid 12 interesting Manipulation + Subterfuge Bid 12."

"I sense you're lying to me somehow..."



It's still a matter of preference, I guess. Storyteller can be a bit of a pain because of how many books you need to get to obtain the entire World of Dogness.

Awful experience, poor guy.
But you're supposed to describe things, after all, you're a storyteller not a damn computer.

[Kain]

My players are ready for CoC. The campaign I created is about Nyralthotep pulling their strings so they won't miss the machinations found in Vampire.
But they are afraid fo the system, particularly of the character sheets and rolling for points. That terrifies them. That's why I need to use the Vampire system but with Mythos Sanity system.

[GHill]

My players are ready for CoC. The campaign I created is about Nyralthotep pulling their strings so they won't miss the machinations found in Vampire.
But they are afraid fo the system, particularly of the character sheets and rolling for points. That terrifies them. That's why I need to use the Vampire system but with Mythos Sanity system.

I find the fact that your players are afraid of the sytem absolutely astonishing, it has to be the most simple system in the world. I mean its not called "Basic Role Playing" for nothing.

Why not create some pregenerated characters for them using something like Byakhee software http://www.geocities.com/SiliconVall...3/byakhee.html and put the charactes through a one off adventure.

That way they get tyo rty out the game system, genre and character sheets without investing any time or effort (nor for that matter do you )

If after that they turn around and still say they're afraid of the system and character sheets then by all means use the Vampire system with a bolted on Insanity system, but wehy reinvent the wheel.

[ossadagowah]

But they are afraid fo the system, particularly of the character sheets and rolling for points. That terrifies them.

What's so scary about BRP?

[cynick]

"It became clear that if I was to continue playing Vampire, that would require hanging around with the sort of people who played Vampire, which is something I think we all want to avoid. "

-Tycho, www.penny-arcade.com