Well it was only a matter of time. Franky went completely bonkers over Monte’s World of Darkness d20 game and he’s bought d20 Modern, the Menace Manual and other books of the genre…
I can’t say I blame him… I mean look at my library… and those are mostly 3.5 books!
Anyhoo, while we were supposed to have Franky’s game as a filler for when we couldn’t reach Quorum for mine, Franky really really really wanted to start. He drafted his brother Mike (Kem CPU in our comments), PM and Yan as well.
Of course, with such a great opportunity to play the last 3.5 game in a world I had never touched (I’m a WoD virgin) I signed on pronto, regardless of my own misgivings about being a player.
So the 1st game is tonight. Before I tell you all about my character (Readers run away!….) here’s my understanding of McWoD’s setting.
The game is set 20 minutes in the future. Normal life was shattered by an event, centered around Chicago, called the Intrusion (or Incursion, I forget). It’s not quite known what it is, but Supernatural entities have started invading the world. Dead Spirits of the past possess normal people and turn them into Vampires. Alien entities possess other humans and makes them Werewolves. Other independent alien minds possess matter and become shape changing Demons, etc.
Our campaign is going to be a X-files-like series of episodes centered on a group of agents, both Humans (called Awakened, think Badass Normal) and Inconnu (Vampires, Werwolves, etc) hunting down whatever it is Franky want’s to spring on us poor abused PCs… (Yes Franky, I’m going to use the blog to wage a psychological war on your frail DM’s confidence… better grow a spine fast because I’M COMING FOR YOU, MWA HA HA HA!…)
Huh, sorry about that buddy…
Here’s the character concept I made:
Class: Awakened
Level: 1
Role: Investigator/Gunner
Character Elevator Pitch: James Kevin Smith (JK to frie.. well collegues, Agent Smith for all others) is an introverted, socially clumsy, ex-FBI agent whose mind shattered in 2 distinct personalities when he Awakened. Usually, he’s an agreeable, quiet little man of considerable investigative skills. However, when he puts his hands around a gun, he becomes a loud, Brash, obnoxious action-oriented extrovert with a serious case of the Darth Vader Syndrome
(No, not the “Whinny bitch to Badass” syndrome, the “babble all the time while beating the $#!t out of you” syndrome)
I hope I’m going to have fun with that one!
Now, should Franky read this post, and I know he will, eventually, here is what I expect from the game.
I expect sessions to have Investigations/Puzzle-solving in equal amounts with action scenes. I hope to explore a lot of cool consequences of the Intrusions and get involved in dark stories that force us to make difficult choices. I personally prefer a little bit of guiding by the DM than spending long periods looking for the clue that will lead us to the next scene… if we seem to hit the same wall for more than 15 minutes, please gently guide us to the next clue…. or have Ninjas attack! Fighting Ninjas is always cool.
Of course, those are expectations, not absolute requirements… I know we’ll have fun regardless… I even plan on dying pretty often so I can switch characters and explore… 🙂
Thanks for GMing this buddy.
Expect a new campaign journal…!
I just had a flash. I will type the Campaign log as a series of Case Reports.
I’ll ask my father, who was a Cop, how those were structured.
So tonight I’ll go buy myself a Notepad and I’ll keep it close during the game to take notes during the investigation… (To make writing the logs easier)
Now I don’t yet know how I’ll handle the parts where I go Postal in the reports…. but one needs a little bit of mystery in life.
I’m getting more and more hyped about this as time progresses.
:O
This is… exactly the setting that will get me excited about running again!
I love d20 Modern, but have been avoiding it while we brought new players into d20, especially since one of them has an aversion to RP with guns (can’t blame her for that one).
But that same player has a deep, deep love of the WoD settings. She and her boyfriend have even LARPed Vampire before.
This… I love it!
…
Wheeeeeee!!!
I take it this is your 2 casual players… (I forget their fake names) 🙂
Stay tuned, I’ll post the 1st Case report this weekend!
Actually, the girl I reference is my primary Storyteller.
Doh! Vampire LARPing…. I should have taken the hint… 🙂
You will enjoy Modern, the gamestyle is a little different but the most fun i have had is in this setting. My DM likes to have us run through the plots of TV shows he liked like Supernatural or Painkiller Jane to see how we react to them.
Really any plot you think of can be adapted to the D20 setting.
Though i may have to pick up WoD myself, looks like a good setting for when i pick up the DM gauntlets in January.
Character wise i have two favorites in this setting, the guy who was raised by the monsters and the ex-soldier. If you play them right then you can get some great RP moments.
Seth – one thing to note is that McWoD is a modern d20 game, but it does not use the d20 Modern ruleset. It uses slightly modified D&D 3.5e rules, with new classes.
It looks like it will work well for its setting, but I’ll have to investigate more, myself.
Phil – No worries. She’s the only female in the group besides my fiance. Her boyfriend, however, is one of the casual buttkickers. He is also a vampire/necromancer freak, so he’ll love this.
The way I see it, this type of setting gives me plenty of material to please the storyteller, running an X-Files/Dark Matter/Men In Black type of game will give me plenty to appease the buttkickers, and modern settings lend themselves more to tacticians than fantasy settings do by default.