💾 Archived View for ttrpgs.com › wod_contest_highlights.gmi captured on 2023-12-28 at 15:44:41. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
⬅️ Previous capture (2023-09-28)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
I've made an alternative World of Darkness system, where players enter Contests instead of Combat. Here are the highlights from a campaign.
In Belgrade (in Hungary), in the year 1130 AD, four people fell to the Cainite embrace in a church, and were forced to survive the political machinations of the existing power structures.
Fights resolved much faster than standard White Wolf battles. Almost every roll of the dice resulted in a new development - enemies would never simply dodge or soak a roll, which meant that no roll felt wasted.
The party really had no way to combat lupines. The Cainite community didn't care about their safety, so when one found out the lupines had made some investigations into them, the entire party had real reason to worry.
But then, as far as they could tell, the lupines had simply been asking about the possibility of vampires in the area, but had not confirmed them. Fenris, the former Varangian warrior, began spreading false rumours concerning vampires, or vampire-like creatures in order to throw any lupines off the case. He asked people about what other people had been saying in order to isolate who among the guards and street-sellers might have closer ties to the lupines, and focussed the nonsense he peddled straight towards them.
The fight continued for about three or four sessions. Perhaps once or twice a session, once enough time had passed, Fenris would make another roll. Sometimes he would be given misinformation, or speak to someone a little too close to the source. But eventually, the plan worked, and he had in some sense defeated the local lupines through sheer political machinations.
For the first time, I felt like I'd seen the kinds of political machinations the original rules had failed to deliver.
Of all the Cainite coterie's foes, by far the fiercest came through marriage. She fell in love with Fenris, found him continuously in the same bar, but always refused to go anywhere private with him. Being a lady of high standing, she demanded a marriage of high standing before anyone would see them going somewhere private together.
Fenris tried to disappear, but Belgrade housed fewer people back in the twelfth Century, and hiding from the gossiping lady inside the town proved almost impossible.
After enough failed rolls, Fenris ended up in an non-consensual marriage as the suitors family demanded to get rid of her demanding presence.
She ended up dead. The group made their excuses, and survived, but not before multiple near-misses where various people had almost unmasked them.
I always felt like the standard Vampire books' approach to hunters painted them as too feeble. Toe-to-toe, Cainites may have nothing to fear from a hunter, but a Cainite still cannot survive, or even think properly, in the Sunlight. Looking at this practically, a sort of game emerges. In a game of vampire-vs-hunter, whoever identifies the other first wins.
Upon finding a hunter, any Cainite could simply approach their home, move past barriers using Obfuscate, Dominate, or Potence, then kill the hunter. However, a hunter finding a vampire's lair would have little problem killing them.
If the vampire has a ghoul, it won't suffice. The ghouls must be on guard throughout the entire day, and multiple must stand watch. A single ghoul could be taken out with a determined young man with a crossbow. And ghouls, however loyal, would inevitably leave their master eventually. The only way to stop someone jumping out to the shops, or going for a quick walk would be to lock the ghoul in, and promise to unlock the door the next night.
Hiding in a house seems futile. Once someone has entered the house with a crowbar, and has eight or more hours to search through it for a person, they will inevitably succeed.
Following this logic, I fashioned a vampire hunter with realistic tactics. He taught the local population about vampires, pushing them to never shake hands with gloves on (so they could feel people's temperature), and to never go alone with people they did not know. He knew Cainites lived in the area, and hunted for any he could find, so once again, the party had entered a contest without coming face-to-face with anyone.
The hunter eventually identified a local bar the characters go to, and challenged everyone at the bar to walk out, past his wreath of garlic, and look into a mirror to see if they had a reflection. The party laughed a little, as Cainites do cast a reflection, and don't care about garlic. However, his real plan was to push the mirror up to their faces, and see if they fogged it up with their breath. They never thought to fake their breath, because they couldn't guess what the hunter wanted to look for.
The hunter had come prepared, with multiple guards. The party might have killed all of them, but not without uncovering their identities, and ruining their reputation in town for decades to come.
They escaped discovery with a distraction, but the hunter began looking for their location by inquiring with everyone in Belgrade about them, and which road they took out of town. Eventually, he found their little cottage, despite how far from town they lived.
The party had failed their roll, but not by much. They identified his tracks outside, as he was followed at all times by a great ovcharka dog. They had lost the haven, but at least took the opportunity to flee to a nearby abandoned mine, once used by bandits.
The coterie had tracked a devil-worshipping Cainite for some time, with one roll here leading to nothing, and another leading to a small clue. When they won, they won big - they arrived at and confirmed one of his many lairs. This little shack held nothing but a rotten cot, insects, and some loose-floorboards, where a Cainite could curl up in a tight, little spot, and hide from the Sunlight.
At this point, Luka pulled out a knife, and with his Celerity powers, got to work whittling a tiny hole in the ceiling, not 2 centimetres wide, then with a straight stick measured a line to the floor boards, and whittled away a smaller hole, just where a sleeping Cainite's chest might be. Having calculated just the angle where the Sun should rise and shine, once the Cainite slept he would find a miniscule lance of death shining through the little holes. He could, of course, rise and flee, but above the floorboards more Sunlight would assault him.
I wouldn't have had a system to orchestrate any of these results without the Contest system. Multiple sessions would wander by without a single Combat roll, and the players seemed fully entertained interacting with the world from a little distance.