"God made our world in seven days...
We were already playing in
ours by the third..."
Faceless Role-player at Total Confusion '96
Over the years I have gamemastered and DM'd pretty much every role-playing system that counts. With few exceptions...none is as fulfilling and exciting as the Storyteller system created by Mark Rein-Hagen and co. First as a player and later as a Storyteller I journeyed down the dark paths of personal horror that make the game so intriguing. But overall one thing stood out...the amount of enjoyment derived from playing (or Storytelling) a damn good Chronicle. However, too often I have played in or heard horror stories of bad Chronicles. Let's be honest here...Vampire is not AD&D, the staple role-playing game that most players first cut their teeth on. AD&D is heavy on dice-rolling and combat, while Vampire, as Mark Rein-Hagen says in the original rulebook, is "A Storytelling game of personal horror". Vampire is perhaps the most role-playing intensive game that I have ever played or GM'd. A Vampire Chronicle is not as simple to create as your standard "dungeon-crawl". One of the beauties of the whole Storytelling system is the openness of the game. In Vampire, the players have a world of options...from building their own personal power...to plotting to overthrow the Prince. A Vampire Story is very open-ended and can be very difficult to manage for even the most experienced of gamemasters.
So have I scared everyone off yet? For all those brave souls who are still with us, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. First of all running a good Chronicle is often even more fun than playing in one. Secondly designing a good Chronicle is not the enormously daunting task that some make it out to be. To help all you aspiring (and experienced) Storytellers out there I have, in my extreme vanity, compiled a sort of "how to" list in designing a Chronicle and the Stories that make it up. ***NOTE*** I am not the world's authority on gamemastering and Storytelling and I do not pretend to be. The following methods and ideas have proven to be invaluable to me and the other budding Storytellers I have played with. Some of these ideas might not work with your group of players as each group is unique. Nor will this information make you a great Storyteller. No amount of great ideas can help if one does not possess the sufficient imagination to make it work. So suffice it to say that if you disagree with anything you read below...that's cool. But save your flames for someone who cares...
A Chronicle is a series of open ended stories that are linked together whether by the setting (whatever city you are playing in), the theme (stories on diablerie), a common enemy (a certain Elder), or the plot (investigating the disappearance of an Archon). A Chronicle can have as many or as few Stories in it as you want. I have found that 3-5 good stories in a Chronicle usually is appropriate and will provide for many months of gameplay. I do know of groups that have been playing in the same Chronicle with the same characters for over 2 years. Like I said, it is entirely up to the discretion of the Storyteller and his group.
A lot of more traditional Storytellers are probably looking for my e-mail address about now so that they can flame me back into the stone age. Why? Because of what I said a second ago about "the Group". A Chronicle's design, though mostly done by the Storyteller, should also receive a lot of input from the Group. What better way to ensure that your players enjoy themselves than to have them help in its design? That is not to say that your players should be privy to every detail concerning the Chronicles makeup. But they can (and should) contribute to some major aspects of the design. For instance, when designing my last Chronicle I asked my players what city that would like to play in...in other cases I have asked what overall theme they would enjoy playing in. Player input is a vital aspect of designing a successful Chronicle, one that I have seen many Storytellers neglect. Here are a few more crucial steps to designing a Chronicle:
Is this going to be a Chronicle for Elders? Or Neonates? It would not be appropriate to plan a Chronicle in New York if your players want to play Neonate characters from Camarilla clans (unless of course...the Sabbat have relinquished New York in your World of Darkness). This is not to say that your players have to make new characters every time they start a new Chronicle. In fact, of my current group of players one person has kept the same character throughout. This has allowed for some very interesting plot twists and developments and has allowed the player to develop his character farther than any Vampire character I have ever seen. (If you don't believe me check out Colin Macgregor from the character page and you'll see what I mean) After getting some input from your players as to what kind of characters they would like to play you can make the final determination as to what level you're going to play at. It will also allow you to choose a setting that much easier, as certain clans and organizations inhabit certain cities across the globe.
This is what I was talking about earlier. Is this going to be a Chronicle based on a common setting? A theme? Most beginning storytellers will find it easier to stick with a common setting and theme. In fact nothing says that the Chronicle cannot have several related areas. Most Chronicles I have seen have been based in a certain city, with a similar theme to each story that makes up the Chronicle. For those of you who have more experience at Storytelling I highly recommend trying a Chronicle with several settings based upon a common theme or plot device. Those Chronicles tend to be very exciting and fun to play after a Chronicle in which the players spent the whole time in the same city. The basis can be anything...but to make it work you have to understand what it does. A basis for a Chronicle is a device that ties the individual stories of a Chronicle together. A good basis can go a long way to making the design of the stories (the next step) even easier.
This is the most difficult and misunderstood part of creating a Chronicle, so much so that it merits its own section. Before we get there, however, there is a separate point that I would like to make. It is not important to script all the stories in the Chronicle at once. Often when I first sit down to create a Chronicle, after I have all the input from the players, I will script out 2-3 stories. Why so few? Well the amount of range and power that characters possess in Vampire allows stories to be incredibly open-ended. In other words if you create a story for your characters, with an incredible plot and all of a sudden your players come up with some completely unforeseen solution that allows them to skip vital parts of the plot or the story and go in different directions, well that story didn't exactly end up as you had planned did it? Believe me...if your players are anything near as clever as mine...what I described above will happen. I'll discuss what to do when this happens a little more in a later section.
Have you noticed how I use the word "scripted" when referring how to create a story rather than "write"? There is a very important reason for this. I have always viewed a story as rather like a screenplay for a movie, or the bare bones of a short story. You are the author/screenwriter while your players and their characters are your actors. I find that it helps to think of a story as if you were writing a movie screenplay. Think of all the good movies that you have seen in your life. Think of how the plot of the movie matched the theme. Think of how the characters in the movie interacted. After all this is what role-playing is all about. The characters are all actors (or actresses) on the stage that the storyteller creates. Trust me...if you think of creating a story in the same way that you would script a movie screenplay, both you and your characters will enjoy it all that much more.
The first essential step in creating a good story is the plot. Many will argue that setting and theme are more important. I disagree, without a good plot, very few players will enjoy the setting, mood, and theme that you painstakingly set up for them. Plot design is often them most difficult part of Storytelling. Plots that are too basic will be easily seen through by good players, while plots that are too complex will deny players enjoyment because they'll be constantly screaming "What the @#$% is going on?!?!?". Plot design is something that each storyteller must figure out for himself. Mainly because each playing group is unique. For a good list of the types of stories and plots read the Vampire rulebook (2nd Edition) pages 116-119. They give a pretty fair list of story ideas in that section many of which with a few alterations can be used again and again. Another good place to get story ideas is from science fiction and fantasy books and movies. I don't recommend taking plots verbatim from movies or books as your players, who have probably read at least as much as you have, might recognize them. But by changing certain aspects of the plot you can lead characters down the garden path where they think they know where they're going...and then pitch them off the side down a steep cliff when they get too comfortable. *grin*
Just think for a moment about using the plots and subplots from something as complex as "The Godfather" in a Vampire story (though in reality something like that would be several stories). Makes you grin that evil smile your players have come to hate doesn't it?
The most essential thing about designing a story is the Non Player Characters that populate your World of Darkness. Often I will have just a few pages of notes concerning my plots, themes, settings, and moods for a Story. But I will spend days coming up with original NPC's and villains for the players to converse, fight, and argue with. NPC creation is the most important part of a good story. How can your characters be pawns in the Jyhad if you haven't developed the goals and motivations of the ancient controlling them? Many of my best Chronicles have been centered around two or three important NPC's. The key to a good chronicle is your player's enjoyment...and there are few things players enjoy more than a vibrant "living" NPC with which they can talk, fight, or argue with. Virtually every NPC that appears more than once in my Chronicles has a few lines of description jotted down somewhere among my notes. Whether its just a few lines for Baltis, my distasteful Toreador Clan Leader (former) of Seattle, or damn near an entire page for Severin, a Seraphim of the Black Hand, nearly all my NPC's get developed before a Chronicle begins.
So there you have it...a little basic advice on how to create a Chronicle. Before I sign off and finish this damnable thing that Fred has been griping at me about (just remember Fred...this is taking away time that I might have used to finish the design for the new Chronicle I'm working on...) I have two last parting thoughts. The first is that if you read this section to get a better idea on how to RUN a Chronicle (or Story) then I am sorry...but Fred has (against my will) convinced me of the merit of writing a little about some good ideas for doing just that. You'll find that elsewhere on the Web page...(this is where Fred using his amazing skills at HTML inserts the mystical "link"). Lastly I'd like to leave you with just a few tips on Chronicle and Story design...