In which I vent (incoming wall of text)

I don't normally use my blogging for this purpose, but in the wake of Gencon taking a stance regarding SB101, I've seen a lot of just utterly asinine statements people make when taking issue with it to dance around their true motives. I'm too weary to pick an argument on Gencon's forums or wade directly into the bigotry shark tank elsewhere, but I still want to vent a bit and respond to some of the arguments I've seen out there. I'm not going to make a checklist of every one I've seen and address them all. I'm not here to present a legal case or win a debate. There will be picking and choosing of battles with this. Deal With It.

Update on Vampire

This'll be the end of my little flood, I swear. Long story short, Vampire's on hiatus. The day on which we played, Saturday, has become problematic for a couple of my players. This also screws up my friend Sean's Changeling: The Lost game.

All is not lost, though. Sometime in the near-ish future, we should be finishing up the Pathfinder adventure path we've been running on Fridays. I'm planning on proposing to the group that before jumping to the other stuff we had planned, that we move Vampire and Changeling to Fridays to at least get those games to a stopping point. The only speedbump -- and that's all it is, a speedbump -- would be working another player into those groups as the Friday game has one more player than the Saturday game (for reasons I don't feel like going into right here).

Compact: The Convoy

This is the third and final compact I came up with for the Hunter LARP I ran some years back. I never could find a good way to work it into the game, but I always had it somewhere in my own personal canon in case I wanted to play with it literally or metaphorically.

As a reminder, this is entirely unofficial and should be considered entirely fan-material unless someone with the authority to do so says otherwise (though I'm 99% sure that by posting it all I'm probably ruling it out as strictly canon, but eh). That said, feel free to swipe, fold, spindle, mutilate, and put to use in your own games.

Also, a note: While this is updated to the Mortal Remains supplement, it also incorporates systems from Compacts and Conspiracies. Neither book is strictly necessary as long as you're at least covered with the Hunter core and the GMC rules update. That said, Mortal Remains is an amazing read. Compacts and Conspiracies has its weak spots, but all in all it also has a lot of interesting and inspiring material.

And here we go:

Compact: The Asculum Consortium

This is the second of the three compacts I came up with for the Hunter LARP I ran some years back. This one's more of an 'antagonistic' organization, in line with the Hunt Club and the Promethean Brotherhood.

As a reminder, this is entirely unofficial and should be considered entirely fan-material unless someone with the authority to do so says otherwise (though I'm 99% sure that by posting it all I'm probably ruling it out as strictly canon, but eh). That said, feel free to swipe, fold, spindle, mutilate, and put to use in your own games.

Also, a note: While this is updated to the Mortal Remains supplement, it also incorporates systems from Compacts and Conspiracies. Neither book is strictly necessary as long as you're at least covered with the Hunter core and the GMC rules update. That said, Mortal Remains is an amazing read. Compacts and Conspiracies has its weak spots, but all in all it also has a lot of interesting and inspiring material.

And here we go:

Compact: The Mountain Line Preservation Society

So, as a lot of you should know from my occasional mentions of it, some years ago I ran a Hunter: The Vigil LARP. It lasted a couple of years and shared continuity with a Promethean: The Created game I ran some years ago and the Vampire: The Requiem game I've been running (which has just had to go on hiatus, which I'll explain later). For this LARP, I invented three new Hunter organizations to be part of my setting (two of which appeared in play, and the third I just liked having on the shelf but never got around to do anything with), and sometime after the LARP wrapped up I posted write-ups for the groups.

With the World of Darkness Second Edition renaissance going on, I've decided to dig up that old material, give it a quick once-over, and mechanically update it to the second edition rules (or at least to the rules patch in Mortal Remains). This is entirely unofficial and should be considered entirely fan-material unless someone with the authority to do so says otherwise (though I'm 99% sure that by posting it all I'm probably ruling it out as strictly canon, but eh). That said, feel free to swipe, fold, spindle, mutilate, and put to use in your own games.

Also, a note: While this is updated to the Mortal Remains supplement, it also incorporates systems from Compacts and Conspiracies. Neither book is strictly necessary as long as you're at least covered with the Hunter core and the GMC rules update. That said, Mortal Remains is an amazing read. Compacts and Conspiracies has its weak spots, but all in all it also has a lot of interesting and inspiring material.

And here we go:

Assorted Chronicles of Darkness fiction by yours truly

Over the years, I've run several Chronicles of Darkness games, LARPs and otherwise. In the case of games I ran as LARPs, I've had message boards where I would occasionally post fictions meant to highlight particular characters and depict events that might otherwise have gone entirely off-screen. For the sake of providing a little extra content between gaming posts, I'm including here a list of those fics I've done so far, as I've archived them somewhere for the heck of it. They're meant to be fast and loose so they're not heavily edited or polished. And most of them will refer to events in the games that I don't necessarily want to get into or recall strongly enough to do justice in doing so. That said, I tried to put whatever details seemed pertinent in the description for each fiction on the DA page where I keep them archived. (Yes, that's right, a lot of my fiction is stored on DeviantArt. Don't judge.) A lot of them are meant to lead-in to plot run in sessions, or representing fallout from previous sessions.

Also, all of the events in these fictions are canon to my current Vampire: The Requiem Second Edition game, as well as the story "Legacy" in The Idigam Chronicle Fiction Anthology (I can't remember if I've mentioned explicitly yet that the 'Wrong Alley' bar and the werewolves who run it are a part of my game's landscape). If it needs to be said, however, none of them should be considered canon to the CofD at large, and none of this is official fiction in any capacity (aside from "Legacy," of course).

Collectively, I've named this continuity of games and fiction and other things the "Woodburn Chronicles" setting for the sake of having something to call it.

For the most part, these'll be in order, but sometimes I'll group them if there are multiple stories in part of a larger arc.

The Ouroboros Journals
A fiction series I threw together back when Vampire: The Requiem was brand new. Recently given a fresh editing pass and updated to match with the new edition. Some of the seams and signs of my inexperience still show, but it's still a part of this setting and will occasionally influence newer stuff.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

The Woodburn Compact

A Hunter: The Vigil game set in Morgantown, West Virginia. At first it was about a general alliance between a variety of different hunter organizations in the wake of the deaths of the hunter compact that served as the city's primary protectors (who also organized things with other hunters), the 'Mountain Line Preservation Society.' Ran from late 2008 to early 2011.

These first three involve a series of Changeling-related plots, focusing around the local Courts of the Sun and Moon (I thought they'd be more interesting with a limited Changeling population, and it let me riff on ideas and concepts from the Night Watch novels).
Longest Night of the Year
Out in the Cold
Trade Between Equals

And then the next two involve a Slasher created in a Cheiron Group-run sleep study gone horribly wrong. The Slasher, known as "The Night Terror Killer," protected himself from horrible nightmares by finding people who were asleep or otherwise unconscious and killing them to 'take their sleep' so he'd never have to sleep again.
Sleep of the Dead
Playing It By the Rules

These next three stories involve an NPC who'd caught a supernatural disease of sorts called "The False Awakening," from Night Horrors: The Unbidden (a book to which I contributed, though the False Awakening wasn't one of mine).
Flickering Light, Casting Shadows
Broken Arrow
Ominous Meetings

These next few fics are one-offs, each one tying into different story arcs. Further details are in individual stories' descriptions.
Oh Lord, Why Me? -- This one actually takes place in the middle of the earlier arc, as it was just meant to be foreshadowing.
Blood for Blood -- I'm actually pretty proud of this one, it centers around a group of Oberloch vampires who unleashed a bunch of larvae into Morgantown to get back at the Morgantown hunters for messing around in their territory. Probably the longest one of these that I did, and it features almost every NPC hunter I'd had featured up to that point.
1 Corinthians 13:11
Getting a Look at the Place

And this last story takes place after the LARP ended, showing the final stages of an off-camera conflict, to sort of emphasize that 'life' goes on even if the players aren't there to see it.
The Last Skirmishes



Child of the Machine -- A story inspired by the God-Machine Chronicle Anthology. It follows up on some stuff I established in a Promethean game I ran a long time ago.

The Morgantown Project

A Vampire: The Requiem Second Edition game I started a couple of years ago. It was originally intended as a LARP, but due to lack of interest I converted it into a tabletop with the players I could get. Still ongoing, described in other posts on this blog. Fiction details described on the info for each.

Checking In
Blackout Drinking
Aftershocks


And then, following up on events from the Vampire game but not directly tied to it -- really, more setting up possible plots and stories I'll explore later -- we've got this:

The Problem with Barbara


And since then I've introduced a Beast: The Primordial character to my Woodburn Chronicles setting, wherein I also foreshadow some stuff for an upcoming CofD game I plan to run:

Gargoyle


Prodigals of the Machine -- A sequel to Child of the Machine, wherein I correct an oversight of sorts from the original and advance the story of Evie and Richard.

I'll try to keep this post updated as I add new stuff or even write more side-stories of my own.

The Morgantown Project: Pleasant Conversations (VtR)

Apologies for the gap, there. All of the weekend tabletop gaming got put on hold for a couple of weeks while one of my players recovered from having his gallbladder removed. But this past Saturday, we finally had a proper Requiem session again.