Let's Play VtM: Wild Nights - Chapter 10

[laclongquan]

Who would want a regular Malkavian? What we mean playing Malk is doing a batshit insane one.

 

[ironyuri]

You left some shit out, bro.

He should have :

"Embraced by a golden retriever:

You were embraced by a rabies infested golden retriever and as such are imbued with miraculous golden retriever genes. These genes heighten your olfactory senses and increase your IQ exponentially."

"Titanium bones:
Your bones are so dense that even a garou could not snap them in half. You are preternaturally strong."

 

[Rod Rodderson]

Back to Malks, you could actually work that second one into a real derangement, where the Malk actually thinks he's preternaturally strong or tough. Of course, there's a good chance he'd just end up killing himself or otherwise underestimating something that he really shouldn't have, but... that's life for you. Certainly more interesting than a Fishmalk, at least.

I once wrote one similar to that, who thought he was much more powerful than he really was, going as far as hallucinating the use of Disciplines he thought he had. Quite something when someone just stops noticing all auditory stimuli because he thinks he's using Quietus 1. A miracle he ever survived (though he did become really good at Obfuscate and used that a whole lot to mask his inadequacies, along with some clever applications of Dominate).

 

[oscar]

Don't stop this, it's fantastic!

 

[ironyuri]

where the fuck are you grotsnik?

 

[Kz3r0]

 

[Black Bart Charley]

Ive seen the man in question posting around.

Stop avoiding the thread. Announce death or eta.

 

[ironyuri]

That's it bro.

I'm planning to be in London in late October. If there are no updates before then, there will be blood.

I will hunt you down, bro. I will cut you.

 

[Storyfag]

Esteemed colleagues and laclongquan, being all too aware what a "writer's block" can do to a man (and some say it may even change his nature!), I propose you this: until such time as the esteemed grotsnik is able to resume our chronicle, I would be willing to run a substitute one. I have no delusions of reaching grotsnik's writing quality, but, Caine willing, the project will serve to entertain us all.

Thoughts?

 

[Breaking Axe]

I'll follow if you do. WoD I assume?

 

[Gondolin]

Go ahead.

 

[Esquilax]

Esteemed colleagues and laclongquan, being all too aware what a "writer's block" can do to a man (and some say it may even change his nature!), I propose you this: until such time as the esteemed grotsnik is able to resume our chronicle, I would be willing to run a substitute one. I have no delusions of reaching grotsnik's writing quality, but, Caine willing, the project will serve to entertain us all.

Thoughts?

Cool, man. Go for it. What's it going to be about? Potato-WoD? Wild Nights: Warsaw.

We need a WH40K-WoD crossover with Warboss Bonnapartah and the Sabbat ravaging London. This will be like Ultimate Wild Nights, set in an alternate universe where Donnie Jamieson is still alive (in this set of events, the Camarilla won a Pyrrhic victory against Angelos beneath the sewers, saving Donnie's life) so him and Warboss Bonnapartah can form a bro squad of the orkiest vamps in all of London. I would suggest root, but he's probably busy writing the finale of his epic 40k saga.

I don't blame grotsnik for not updating - maybe things are busy at work or he's got writer's block. Still sucks tho - I'm still trying to come to grips with the fact that The Barbarian hasn't been able to continue his extremely promising "The Redsea Saga" for the past several months. While I'd love to see another update or a few words from the man himself, he's given me a lot of entertainment, so if this good shit sadly comes to an end, I'll at least I'll have a lot of good memories and a few laughs at laclongquan's expense. THE VASE has truly taken on a life of its own.

 

[SCO]

It's going to be about the tzimisce of course. Sigh.

 

[Kz3r0]

Esteemed colleagues and laclongquan, being all too aware what a "writer's block" can do to a man (and some say it may even change his nature!), I propose you this: until such time as the esteemed grotsnik is able to resume our chronicle, I would be willing to run a substitute one. I have no delusions of reaching grotsnik's writing quality, but, Caine willing, the project will serve to entertain us all.

Thoughts?

Go ahead.

 

[Storyfag]

What's it going to be about? Potato-WoD? Wild Nights: Warsaw.

That's what I had in mind, yes.

We need a WH40K-WoD crossover with Warboss Bonnapartah and the Sabbat [SNIP]

No. Just no. As cool as Bonnapartah was, as cool as Donnie was, just no.

THE VASE has truly taken on a life of its own.

That gave me a wicked idea.

It's going to be about the tzimisce of course. Sigh.

No, it's going to be about the Clan of your choice, as determined by a poll. Though, this being the Slavic heartlands, you can bet the Tzimisce will appear more often than not. As will the Nossies and the Brujah.

Anyway, thanks for the interest. Please expect a new topic, including a list of possible protagonists, by the end of this week.

 

[Gondolin]

Anyway, thanks for the interest. Please expect a new topic, including a list of possible protagonists, by the end of this week.

I am pleased.

 

[Luigi]

That experiment is gonna be abandoned after Storyfag realizes how much work it is and how little appreciation he gets.
I also doubt that he can even remotely write solid prose.

So, dont get your hopes up just yet.

 

[Esquilax]

No. Just no. As cool as Bonnapartah was, as cool as Donnie was, just no.

Heh, I meant it as a joke. The whole Bonnapartah business that I started was sort of a take-off of the whole vase and vaulderie talk we were having. I even posted an intro for it during character creation.

You are WARBOSS BONNAPARTAH

Only hushed rumors exist about this reputed 12-foot tall vampire presumed to be working for the Sabbat. The Camarilla has officially declared Bonnapartah a hoax; a mere boogeyman created by the Sabbat to panic their enemies and provide false hope to their beleaguered London branch. However, Camarilla higher-ups know better.

The origins of this mysterious stranger are unclear. What is known is that one day he simply showed up in London, where he was witnessed smashing cars, throwing them at buildings, and bludgeoning random passers-by with a haphazard club-like object. Sensing the dangerous threat to the Masquerade posed by a genocidal green-skinned brute, the Camarilla intervened immediately and sent several of the city's best agents to put down this agitator.

None returned.

Meanwhile the Sabbat saw an opportunity to gain back some of their losses in the Two-Week-War by approaching this timely newcomer. This ultimately proved fruitful when Camarilla soldiers near Peckham ran in terror at the sight of a berserking giant wielding a chainsaw in one hand and a 50. caliber gun ripped off of a Humvee on the other.

However, the Warboss' successes have incurred just as much envy and spite as they have adulation. Most controversial is his policy of ruthlessly decapitating the mostly Lasombra ruling body vying for London with his choppa and replacing them with loyal Nosferatu and Brujah. He seems particularly fond of the Sewer Rats, as "they iz propa sneaky gitz", and he considers the Brujah's unquenchable passion for battle as "roight propa orky". While his bold political moves have earned him many friends among the aforementioned clans, he has also gained the ire of a more than a few powerful Lasombra, and worse, the Inquisition.

More worryingly, Cainites within the Sabbat don't even know what Clan this mysterious arrival hails from. Some speculate that Bonnapartah is either a very old Gangrel, turned beastlike in appearance from centuries of past frenzies, others say that he bears a unique manifestation of Nosferatu hideousness. The Inquisition wonders just how old he is, and fearfully ponders whether this conveniently timely stranger isn't an ancient, monstrous Cainite who is merely a harbinger of the dreaded Antediluvians.

For his part, the Warboss remains happily ignorant of such back-room scheming, deriding it as senseless muckin' about. He has his choppa, he has a burgeoning army of boyz - let the squishy, runty gits whine as much as they want.

That gave me a wicked idea.

If the vase isn't somehow involved in your story, then I'm pretty confident in saying that nobody here will bother reading it.

No, it's going to be about the Clan of your choice, as determined by a poll. Though, this being the Slavic heartlands, you can bet the Tzimisce will appear more often than not. As will the Nossies and the Brujah.

Anyway, thanks for the interest. Please expect a new topic, including a list of possible protagonists, by the end of this week.

Sounds really fucking cool, bro. As a fellow Slav of the Balkan lands, I greatly approve of this. A WoD interactive fiction with a Slavic flair sounds great. I love grotsnik's depiction of London (in fact, it's one of the best parts of this entire chronicle), but this sounds different in a really cool way. Eastern Europe isn't really explored that in-depth in Vampire: The Masquerade, so I think this is a great opportunity. I'm psyched.

I understand why the Tzimisce are so common in Eastern Europe, but I had no idea the Nossies and Brojah had a strong presence there too.

 

[Excidium]

Cool stuff. I'll certainly follow your thread, Storyfag.

It's p. weird that grotsnik just disappeared, does anybody know what happened to him?

 

[Esquilax]

That experiment is gonna be abandoned after Storyfag realizes how much work it is and how little appreciation he gets.
I also doubt that he can even remotely write solid prose.

So, dont get your hopes up just yet.

At worst, it'll be something to tide us junkies over until grot finally gets his ass back here, wherever he is. At best, it'll be pretty good and offer an interesting saga in its own right. I don't think it'll match grot's mad skillz, but I think Storyfag is the kind of dude that will take criticism well if there are faults within the writing (he is a learning animal) and he's probably put a decent amount of thought into what he wants to do here. The idea at least is pretty cool.

Besides, I think the standard for shitty writing on the 'Dex was set with Dicksmoker, and I that still isn't close to the worst writing I've ever seen.

 

[Rod Rodderson]

It's p. weird that grotsnik just disappeared, does anybody know what happened to him?

The vase ain't really my thing, but do note that grot broke it in that mini-post. Now, I'm not going to make any claims, but it's something to think about.

And, yeah, another story would be pretty cool. I'd almost think of doing something like that myself, but the very thought of writing makes me seize up. Too many ideas, not the time nor patience to put them into words. I'd make a terrible writer.

 

[Breaking Axe]

VtM: Wild Nights: Vase: Origins

The story that started it all.

 

[Storyfag]

I understand why the Tzimisce are so common in Eastern Europe, but I had no idea the Nossies and Brojah had a strong presence there too.

To my understanding it's the Brujah's fault. When they sponsored the Bolsheviks and set up their Supreme Brujah Soviet many members of most Clans fled (that's how Turcov got to London, for example), save for the obviously territorial Tzimisce. The Nosferatu stayed for similar reasons - they were loathe to abandon their fortified warrens and set everything up again from scratch somewhere else.

 

[Storyfag]

ITZ coming!

 

[grotsnik]

Fuckit - I feel like this thread deserves a post-mortem, even if it's so overdue as to be pointless. I really did enjoy writing it a hell of a lot; and I'm sorry I let it fizzle out like I did instead of killing it outright (but you keep thinking you'll come back to it, you know?). When it died, I was stressing the fuck out at work, everyone was getting laid off, and (really prissy though it sounds when you're talking about afanfiction) I just kept feeling like I couldn't face coming back to it, but I'm not sure I'd have dried up with it if I didn't feel like I'd led the story unnecessarily into a corner.

Basically, the problems I considered 'big' problems were:

-Making the choices 'real' choices. I think I got a bit better at this as it went along, but some of the bad false choices from the first part, which were these momentary reactions rather than considered actions, still really piss me off. Part of the problem was the immediate, one-night-at-a-time style I picked for the narration, which meant I couldn't really skip forward in time to get to a meaningful choice, like root or the Barbarian could in their LPs. It was a mistake.

-Hob. I didn't think him out well enough - I did have a vague idea of what I wanted him to be, but he was pretty much a plot function, a MacGuffin for the characters to fight over, and once he came out into the open I realised he completely overbalanced the narrative, making it about a big powerful bad-guy rather than vying factions, which was the exact opposite of what I'd intended. By the time he'd turned up, instead of giving him a presence and character, all I could think of was ways to kill him off so we could get back to something less 'epic' - hence the foreshadowing that the Centurion would deus ex machina him out of the story try to hunt him down. He also made too many supposedly cunning and ancient characters act like fucking idiots.

-Nature of the protagonist. Again, when root or the Barbarian did more wide-scope IFs, of if you're DMing with a group of friends, you can kill off a fuckton of characters without worrying about ruining the momentum, whereas I think with pretty much all of these 'you are collectively a single hero' LPs (at least all of the ones I've read on the Codex) killing the hero means bringing the game to a screeching halt and starting it up all over again, so you worry endlessly about killing them in an arbitrary way that feels like a shitty anticlimax, so you end up just not killing them when they deserve it. I mean, Anthony should have been whacked long ago, he really should. I'm not sure how you deal with that.

-Joan sucked, as a character concept - players playing as someone dumber and more naive than themselves is just frustrating, her motives were too pre-set, and her situation was too static (hey, let's hang around the Chantry some more!). I'd have been happy just continuing with Anthony, but I couldn't see how you'd avoid him either 1) being absurdly over-involved in everything that happens in the city over a six-month period for someone of his rank or 2) essentially stalling for time and having him accomplish relatively little, which is a shitty thing to do.

...anyway. Yeah. I just want to say thanks a lot to everyone who participated, you were all really fucking good fun to play with, and sorry again for fucking this good old thread up. to you all.

Lol blogpost.