This series is going to be a diary-like re-telling of the d20 World of Darkness game I’ll be playing once a month. It’s going to be GMed by my buddy Franky.
Way back when, we started the game but it was left aside for some time. We’re kick starting it again and this post is a pre-game exploration of my new character, a yet unnamed Demon recently woken up by the Nightmare Wave.
I have slept for countless eons on this inconsequential mud ball. What I am and how I got here can’t be written in that simpleton system of grunts and scribbles that you call language. In any case your fragile linear minds would crumble if I was to convey to you all this.
Suffice it to say that I am Rage and Destruction made alive through the very material that this cold moldy rock is made of. I along with my brothers were here, surfing and slumbering along the tectonic plates of Pangaea way before any amino and ribonucleic acids decided to meet up and have a party in the so called primordial soup.
Intelligent design? Pfaa! If only they knew…
Fast forward a couple of hundred million years and that thin layer of dirt and water flourished in what Humans like to selfishly call ‘higher life’. Among those finally arose Homo Sapiens, with its ideas of grandeur and obscenely naive beliefs. That’s when the awakening call, like the progressively louder buzz of an alarm clock, started to stir us.
I woke up, as luck would have it, about 2 years ago deep in the muck of the Gulf of Mexico, off the coast of Texas. The “incident” had just occured and my masters (don’t ask, really) were beckoning me to arise and act against the humans.
Chief among our ‘ennemies’ were the Awakened, a subset of humanity who are a tad bit less boring than all the billions of mind numbingly dull sheep most of that rest is.
Unable to resist their biding, I took form from the rock and seafloor sediments surrounding me and crawled to the surface.
As I stood on the shores, so many miles away from the incident that triggered all those commands screaming in my mind, my newly formed physical shell slowly dried up. As water evaporated from my body and the salt just became an inert crystal layer, I realized just how strong I was and how much more powerful my will could be.
(Aside: My character’s weakness is salt water)
As the voices were filling me with their plans and edict, I raised my head toward the heavens and let out the most liberating of howls:
FUCK YOU! THIS MOTHERFUCKING WORLD IS GOING TO BE MY PLAYGROUND’ NOT YOURS!
While the voices continued for some time, from that moment on, I didn’t feel compelled to act on them, nor even listen. They eventually stopped, writing me off as an inconsequential rogue.
How wrong they are!
I made my way to a coastal Texan community and took the appropriate shapes whenever it became necessary to avoid detection.
I started absorbing what little knowledge humans had comprehended so far and the tools and beliefs they used to keep their fragile sanity intact in this cold dark reality.
Reality that was soon to become much colder and infinitively darker unless I helped them a bit.
I learned all of this mostly on something called Wikipedia and also Fox News.
It’s during that time that I discovered this cute human habit of writing one’s private thoughts on paper. That’s why I recently got myself a notebook and started recording my antics. It’s completely useless but even Demons develop quirks I suppose.
Demon. It’s such a quaint name to wrap one’s mind around what it is that I am, but it will have to do.
Keeping a log of my daily life isn’t the only thing I put down on paper. I also translated some of the things my former masters were telling me. I choose carefully the things I decided to write so they could be conveyed to the authorities that were organizing around the Awakened humans without shattering their simple minds.
Armed with some key ‘secrets’ of the Inconnu’s plan (cute name too), I made my way to Chicago, where the “Incident” occurred and I sold them to the IDA.
I had to use a lot of my powers to persuade, charm, and convince them of my loyalty to the humans’ cause. (HA!).
It worked, I was hired to fight the Inconnu, alongside a few others of ‘my class’… That will get, interesting!
I’ll be able to monitor what the awakened do (and screw with their puny minds, just for shits and giggles) while at the same time beat back the Inconnu so I can have this world to myself afterwards.
I start tomorrow. Looking forward to see what kinds of ‘partners’ I’ll have… Apparently I’m joining a group where one of their Awakened buddy’s snapped and went off the deep end.
Hopefully I’ll be able to help the remaining one along.
You can call me… Citations Needed.
I had to go look this one up. I’m more familiar with the storyteller versions of this setting (although from what I’ve read they really aren’t the same setting at all, just same genre with some shared elements). Kind of curious how this will work out for you. Having some trouble imagining the d20 part and the setting meshing well at the moment. Probably due to playing way too many d20 D&D games at very low levels (permanent low level blues in other words) and trying to imagine someone looking at a character in that range as a dangerous threat to reality and sanity.
The story of course sounds like you’re all set to have a lot of fun being bad. That can be a blast sometimes.
Actually, I’m setting this character up for some major disappointment when it realize that although it can trash and dominate just about any normal human being, it’ll probably get the $#17 kicked out of it by the 1st Supernatural threat it meets.
So it’s completely voluntary. I aim at playing the clueless/arrogant jerk that will grow to respect and depend on his partners.
It thinks it’s really bad and evil while it completely underestimate’s humanity’s potential… (for evil and good).
I’m going for a subversion of the Picard “Humanity’s limitless potential” trope. 🙂
That being said, a 1st level d20 WoD character is actually a 4th level PC equivalent in terms of D&D.
@Chatty
What do you think about MCWOD? I keep seeing it and thinking about picking it up, but always hold back. I have zero experience with playing WOD, my interest is more along the lines of seeing neat mechanics and trying something new.
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McWod is Monte’s take on modern non-lovecraftian horror.
The supernatural classes are very fun to play both mechanically and for the fluff it promises. However, the Human class is Booooooring and weak (unless you give them automatic weapons). I used to play one and I’m glad he got mauled in the last game we played before X-mas.
Yan kept his but Franky hacked it by fusing it with the ShadowKiller from d20 Modern.
I really can’t say anything about the actualy WoD part. I never read any of WhiteWolf’s book because they were insufferable to my then crunch-only eyes.
I know McWod is a whole new spin on the WoD canon… here’s the penny tour from what I gathered (I don’t own the book and Franky prefers we stay clueless about the ‘why’ which is fine by me).
McWod’s core setting is actually about transdimensional alien incursion near Chicago. The incursion (called the Intrusion) occurs in Waves centered around the Intrusion point. The wave causes many weird effect: 1) bring back dead human souls to possess humans: Creating Vampires, 2) Transdimensional Savage Spirits possess other humans, creating Werewolves, 3) Manipulative/destructive entities animate matter and take horrific forms, creating demons. 4) Some powers are unlocked in a sub set of humans creating Mages on one side and the Awakened on the other.
The Awakened are the only non-intrusion beings that can see and understand what’s happening. They are the anchor that keeps humanity from falling completely to the Intrusion.
So it’s a Us vs Them theme… with quite a few Inconnu (the Supernatural) siding with the Humans, against the Intrusion for various reasons.
If you decide to buy it, just know that the game is not compatible with setting material of White Wolf’s WoD and that no other book exist to support it.
As you will see in my actual play post I’ll post later today, we ended up playing a horror d20 Modern Game using the McWod Classes and parts of the setting while Franky uses all the d20 Modern sourcebooks.