Need some tips for being a Vampire: The Masquerade storyteller.

Second, don't copy the story line. Everyone running their first or for newbies does this.

Fourth, pick a group of supernaturals and ignore the rest.

First, don't open it.

Tenth, make sure you all make characters together. It scares off self inserts.

For new players, I like to bring everyone together to create their characters at the same time. I prefer to make them decide amongst themselves why they all know each other. The first session is completely dedicated to making characters and a short 'tutorial' arc where they're introduced to some of the main concepts.

How I do this tutorial depends entirely on what the story is going to be like.

>>53455202
The joke's on you, I reinstalled Bloodlines yesterday!

Limit merits and flaws - you WILL forget them
Always make them roll when they do things that their humanity says is a no-no, it keeps the murder in check
Dont expect subtlety/social maneuvering/decent scheming because they will eventually go full retard
make most of your plot retard-resistant
prepare for FULL RETARD
seriously, one player has a 50% chance of going full retard, with 3 players the change goes up to around 80%

>>53455202

My advice for running V:tM -

set up the factions - not necessarily just "cammy, anarch, sabbat," but could extend to subfactions within those groups - "anarchs who want a democratic government," "anarchs who are actual communists," etc

set up conflict between those factions

introduce some means (via mcguffin, simply political maneuvering, etc) for one faction to overcome the other

have players be forced to choose sides
OR


have your players make characters

look into their character's backstories for potential plothooks ("I was sired by Tremere X, and he is hated by Ventrue Y")

have the players call in favors from one another to deal with their various problems

Pick a city and write down a list of regions and places of interest - the docks, uptown, downtown, the abandoned hotel, the diner etcetera. Make a list of interesting things that might happen in each area. Create three or four factions such as clans, government agents, hunters etcetera. Write a few things down for how each faction conflicts with each other/what they want/etcetera.

Voila. If the players decide to ignore your story hook you can feel comfortable letting them wander the city.

What edition of V:tM is best? I've been thinking of running a game of it for a few friends.

>>53459469

I'd go with V20 - best basic ruleset, and you can just use whatever lore/disciplines/whatever from the other books with only minimal retooling, if at all.

>>53457255
Any city you'd suggest? Should I try to go with one I know fairly well?

Also anybody got any V:tM stories? I'm new to the system and would like to know what kinda shit players get up to in these games.

>>53455239
>Second, don't copy the story line. Everyone running their first or for newbies does this.

I get where you're saying, but I really feel like I can do an alright job of this, plus they're good friends and fully aware it is my first time, and one is an experienced GM who's willing to provide feedback and advice.

>Fourth, pick a group of supernaturals and ignore the rest.

I plan on it, anon. I never got into Changeling, Mage, Werewolf, etc. VtM was the only one I ever got into. I'll obviously have the 2 werewolves from the game and I'm gonna have a good amount of hunters in there, but that's it.

>First, don't open it.

I did that once.

>Tenth, make sure you all make characters together. It scares off self inserts.

Not really worried about any self inserts like that, but we definitely will.

>>53455515

That's kinda what I was thinking. Play out the opening scene just to introduce the setting and some of the characters. Then I'll let them fight a few gangsters and Sabbat mooks for a little combat before reminding them of their place by having Jack and then the Sheriff stomp some heads.

>>53455539

Any good mods for that come out in the past couple of years? Replaying soon and the last mod I played was the long awaited and vastly disappointing Antitribu mod.

>>53455756

Not entirely worried about them going full retard. There's one forever GM who's just happy to be playing and he knows what I'm doing with this and is willing to help out. The other 2 are just as green as I am, they're also players in that Only War game and they're more than happy to just run with whatever is put in front of them.

>>53460294

Have to agree with the others. Bloodlines isn't the best story to try to run. But you can definitely take inspiration from it.

File: Ventrue HQ.jpg (45KB, 357x500px) Image search: [Google]

45KB, 357x500px

>>53455202
Don't eat or drink anything you didn't prepare yourself.
Don't ask people their gender, if they're the kind that needs to have it specified, they'll tell you on their own.
While the Vampires are physically above common man, they are far from strongest among the supernaturals, open conflict with should be avoided.
You're very likely to have diverse, often even conflicting, character motivations - in-party conflict is part of the game, but don't let it get way too out of hand.

>running the sarcophagus/lacroix/anarchs/etc from bloodlines as a pen and paper story
Can that actually be done?
I had this idea everytime I runned a game in the last 4 years, but I always felt like it was... something really wrong and bad to do?

>>53461995
I thin it would be entirely possible, just so long as you aren't following every beat of the game, and instead just using it's plot as a skeleton for adventures would be great.

"A sarcophagus possibly containing an antediluvean ends up in the city and everybody's scrambling to gain its favour/power, wat do?" would be fantastic plot hook.

>>53460294
>Play out the opening scene just to introduce the setting and some of the characters.
What's the excuse for Lacroix bossing them around? Presumably they didn't all get embraced at once.

OP here.

>>53460397

Appreciate the advice but I think this is one of those things where I'm gonna find out why it's a bad idea on my own, though I probably will lean more towards >>53462237 with having the same basic premise but let them adventure around with a little more freedom.

>>53462299

It's only 3 people, I was thinking something like how the game actually starts out, maybe just a group of guys were out on the town in LA one night and went home with the wrong group of chicks.

>>53463140

Yeah, using the same basic premise is perfectly fine.

>>53463231
It's sort of limiting your players' backstories though. Not too much of a problem if they're okay with it.

>>53463140
You should probably think of additional plothooks relating to the major characters. A lot of them are just involved for one quest or two but in tabletop you want memorable NPCs that can potentially interact some more with the PCs outside of being questgivers.

>>53463273

A workaround might be this: each of them are fledglings who made a mistake, and while their sires are held to blame, they are given another chance (because of anarch agitation).

>>53455202

My first V:tM game (and my first proper game as a DM) went like this:

Players were newly Sired vampires. As is custom in the city all new vamps needed to present themselves to the Prince/his representatives at Elysium. Bit of a lame "you're all sat in a tavern one night when..." type introduction, but I wanted to avoid making the plot and character relationships/social heirarchies too complicated at the get-go.

They meet one representative of the Prince who asks them to do a job for the Prince ("You do want to make a good impression on the Prince now, don't you? He has quite the temper etc etc"). They are tasked with stealing something belonging to the Prince held up in shipping by customs.

At this point it didn't matter how the players approached the scenario. It was going to be basic human guards so they could kill or sneak. Either way they get to the mcguffin and it's already gone. They're now persona non grata in the city as the Prince's guy thinks they've fucked off with his magic toy or whatever, so they have to lay low and figure out who took it while avoiding any other vamps.

I wanted to make them wanted men in order to stop them murderhobo'ing their way through the campaign, and to stress the difference between V:tM and D+D. I think it worked out okay.

OP here, bumping real quick and I'll be back to read in a bit.

>>53463273
>It's sort of limiting your players' backstories though. Not too much of a problem if they're okay with it.

I don't think that'll be a problem. 2 of them have no idea how to roleplay and in our Only War campaign they're content to go along with whatever our GM throws our way. It's actually really nice, there's no group conflict or anything. GM gets to tell his story, we have fun playing it, the end. And our GM in that game is the forever GM who's joining my game as a player. He knows how green we are, he's a good teacher, he's happy he finally gets to be a player, he'll go along with it no problem.

>You should probably think of additional plothooks relating to the major characters. A lot of them are just involved for one quest or two but in tabletop you want memorable NPCs that can potentially interact some more with the PCs outside of being questgivers.

I like this. I always really liked Fat Larry, Tourette, Vandal, and of course Jack. Definitely wouldn't mind throwing in a little extra for some of them.