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>>27686691
Oh gods yes! I am just in time!

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If anyone was able to find the WoD thread in /tg/, I promised a reader I would post there, saying I was continuing this tale, but I wasn't able to find that thread. If someone could link me to it, or post for me, I would greatly appreciate it.

>>27686739
Sadly, the thread died in the night. RIP in peace.

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My deepest apologies for the delay, the server maintenance hit just as I was starting this thread! Hopefully I can make up for lost time.

Here is the screencap of session 2 for those of you who were not here last night.

holy shit yes i fell asleep last night, and was sad when the thread had 404d and i missed some

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This next session was one of the longest yet, going on for a solid 8 hours or so. For good reason.

We last left the members of the Glass Agency private detectives as they finished loading up to head out, in the middle of the night, to head to an old lumber mill to find Professor Loditz, so they can get some answers about why all these strange things are going on with undying horrors, ninja thieves and strange alchemical runes. Given the location by the beautiful information broker, Al, the quartet of Allister, Alex, Bill and Oakley set out, loaded for bear in their own ways. Allister with his taser and his repaired shotgun, Alex with his AR-15, Bill with his mighty muscles, and Oakley with every single piece of gathered alchemical gear and notes either in a backpack, or taped to the inside of his thigh in a watertight plastic baggie.

Off into the night we drove until we came to a chainlink gate barring our way. It was a simple task of moving the chain holding the gate closed to get us in and when we approached the main structure, we turned out our lights and approached carefully, then hopped out to approach on foot. There are plenty of machines, small buildings and lots of logs and trucks, but only one big main building. Off to the side, in a mostly empty parking lot, we found two vehicles, a sedan and a white, unmarked van. We all think the same thing: The Assholes in Black are here!

We creep up on the van and examine it. Alex had written down and memorized the plates and found that they actually weren’t the same, but Oakley’s examination of the vehicle found that there were numerous 9mm bullet holes in the body. This –was- the van from earlier. In a fit of anger at the AiB, we took the liberty of slashing two of their tires so they couldn’t make another getaway like before. Oakley also took the opportunity to hide his backpack full of alchemical things in a pile of sawdust, just in case shit went south.

It should be noted again, the injury list of our party so far. Oakley was by far the worst, nursing a grade III concussion and his hands still tightly bandaged from where he had jagged, old glass shoved through them. Alex was second worst; with a nasty bite mark from what we now knew was called the Seeker. I’m pretty sure our DM threw the name out there so we would stop calling it the Vagina Monster (because of its vertically slit maw). He was now currently rocking a pimpin’ cane instead of full crutches, so he had a bit more mobility, but was still inhibited by the injury when it came to running. Allister and Bill to this point were pretty much unharmed except for little bumps and bruises that didn’t really detriment them at all.

We do a survey of the building and find only two entrances into the main lumber mill. One is through a normal door near the front with a small glass pane above it, and the other is to go through the massive cargo loading doors. Both are locked so we decide to break the window above the normal door as quietly as possible. We get Oakley through the window and he opens the door, letting us in. Just as we’re heading in, Bill turns and sees something moving in the dark of the forest around us and we all hurry our asses inside and lock the door behind us. The entire building is pitch black, but we creep along.

We soon find ourselves in a massive area, with machines a story tall, made to move entire logs. The entire facility was dark down here, but up on the second floor we could see a light, faint. Slowly our party made our way over to a spiral staircase that lead up to the second floor. Guns up, Alex and Allister took the lead. Just as the entire party was on the stairs, two spotlights switched on.

In the light of the spotlights on us, we could see numerous armed figures all around the catwalks of the second floor. “Drop your weapons!” A voice called.

We had just walked right into an ambush.

Battlestations! Nobody touch that dial!

Of course, much yelling instigated. For those of you who have seen Saving Private Ryan, the standoff scene between the Germans and Americans was pretty much this, both sides aiming guns at each other, screaming at each other to drop their weapons. Finally, the main voice of our ambushers asked us who we were and who sent us and how we found them. So we answered truthfully. We told them that we had been sent here by Al, that we were the Glass Detective Agency and we were there to find Professor Loditz to ask him some questions.

This seemed to surprise our ambushers and one man, whose name I forgot, so I’ll call him Danny, carefully approached us and verified the pins we still wore from visiting Purgatory were real. Just like that the mood changed to one of utter relief and we realized that these guys had been scared shitless of being discovered, but by who we didn’t know. When we told them about the college incident, Danny expressed surprise. “Shit, that was you guys? Man, I’m so sorry about all that…Just a big misunderstanding….here let me bring you to the boss.”

So further into the building we were taken by Danny, into the abandoned mill’s offices where an absolutely massive man, a small man, and a man with a large hunting rifle waited. The men from the van we had pursued. We were introduced to them, Tree (three guesses as to which motherfucker was as big as a tree), Tavi, the speedy little bastard, and Killer, the marksman. Tree seemed sympathetic, but only shrugged, telling us he had been doing his job in them securing the research Loditz left. He wasn’t in the building anymore, but they were protecting him, working with him. Tavi just gave us a smarmy smirk at our joking frustration with the chase, and Killer stoically informed us that he missed on purpose; typical sniper pride and all that.

We continued to converse with their leader, Tree, to see if he would take us to Loditz, but as far as I remember we hit a wall, with them telling us they didn’t know where the Professor was anymore and that they didn’t trust us enough to take us to them. Not wanting to be stonewalled, we tried explaining our story even more, even going as far as recounting the things we found in the hotel, including the Seeker and pointing out that Alex had been bit by the thing.

Tree stared at us when we said that. “It bit you!?”

He then gets very, very angry at us. “You idiots! You goddamn idiots! It’s called a BLOOD-Seeker. Once it gets a taste of your blood, it will never EVER stop hunting you! It can follow you thousands of miles by your scent alone. I knows where you are. You can’t escape from this thing. And you came here!? Go! Get the fuck out of here!”

I can only think one thing.

I am completely, totally and utterly fucked.

We thank Tree for the information and start hauling our asses out of there, grabbing our shit and heading back towards the door we came in through. Danny stays with us the entire time, talking with us, getting more information, apologizing for almost riddling us with bullets and generally being an upstanding gentleman in the face of totally whackadoo circumstances and we all end up really liking the guy on our short walk back to the door.

Of course, we’re not just going to waltz right out of the door without knowing what’s out there waiting for us, so Oakley taps Bill and tells him to boost him up so he can peek out of the window he broke through. Bill does so easily and lifts Oakley up to the broken window so he can look outside.

Oakley finds himself staring into the hissing, razor-sharp teeth filled maw of the Bloodseeker, inches from his face. He does what any sane man would.

“SEEEEEEKERRRRRRR!!” He screams and flails backwards, falling in a heap on the ground. And in that moment the monstrosity from our DM’s nightmares slams into the heavy metal door, bending it inwards slightly, and the rest of us do the only thing we know how to do when faced with this monster.

We run.

Alex has the head start as we book it back inside, but limping along he’s quickly overtaken by everyone else as the Seeker smashes in the metal door and comes charging in after us, roaring in a way that makes our knees weaken and our bladders want to void. Danny especially lets out a terrified ‘what the shit!?!?’ before sprinting away with the rest of us. As we run through the main lumber processing area, screaming for the men in the catwalks to arm themselves, someone finds the breaker switch for the entire facility and switches everything on. All the lights come on an for the first time, everyone gets a very good look at the light-soaking, horse-sized abomination that is bearing down on us. Getting over their shock, the men in the above catwalks open fire on the creature, but their bullets only serve to slightly slow the creature down as we all run back up the spiral metal staircase to the second floor.

It takes a flying leap at Alex, the last person heading up, and by the luck of the dicegods the creature misses, its claws ripping right through the steel of the railings and mangling much of the staircase. The monster was probably too big to fit up the stairs anyways, but that didn’t make us feel much safer. We hurry away from the ruined stairs.

That’s when we watch the Seeker find its own way up.

Straight up through the floor of part of the catwalk, grabbing one of the mooks with a bolt-action rifle and literally ripping him in half before pulling itself up onto the catwalk with us, looking over at us and roared. We were SO fucked.

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Bit of situation report for everyone, aided by my wonderful skills in Paint, we have us on the catwalks that surround the room and run between the three massive machines that haul logs either down into pits or into a mulcher. All three conveyer belts have band saws in the middle to chop up the logs. Yes, this is probably not how a lumber mill actually functions, but you can take your elitist lumber knowledge and go fornicate with the Seeker.

The creature starts in the southwest corner and we all split up, running north, particularly the unarmed Oakley. Bill is between the left and middle conveyers, Alex and Allister between the right and middle conveyers, and we have two mooks with a shotgun and a rifle on the far right. It charges the poor saps on the far right and all of us with guns start dumping fire into the creature, hoping for a way to disable or kill it, by lucky chance. It critfails its charge and slams into the far right wall, stunning itself, while we pour more and more lead into the creature. It seems to have trouble repairing all of the damage at once, so we continue to pour it on. Allister tries to get Alex to run, but instead I stand my ground. I know that if we don’t kill this thing now, or let it kill me, it’ll just keep hunting us. This needs to end here.

Kicking on every machine, every mulcher, conveyer belt and band saw there is, we give ourselves lots of opportunities to smash and dice this ugly motherfucker. Or kill ourselves in the process…

As the mooks run away, Alex does his best to get the creatures attention and succeeds. Preparing to dive out of the way, I had hoped it would sail past me and into the mulcher. It snarls and leaps at me and then Allister does the unexpectedly awesome.

He shoots it, mid-flight, with his taser.

Apparently Bloodseekers are just as susceptible to a couple thousand volts of electricity as anything else. Unfortunately it doesn’t have the momentum to go into the mulcher, so now we have a Seeker, twitching at our feet; feet which we quickly use to start running away as the thing starts to slowly recover. At this time, Oakley has run all the way around the area and is back at where the first mook was ripped in half. A composure check fail as he tries to pry the Mosin-nagant from the corpses fingers means our poor occult-lover spews his lunch all over the ground, but he does end up getting the rifle.

Bill is now on the other side if the mulcher from the beast as it gets back up and rolls an incredible number of successes on his presence check to yell and goad the creature. Ignoring us, the Seeker winds up for another leap and this time goes after the big black man who has been yelling obscenities about the accessibility of its mommy-seeker’s vaginal orifice. It lunges, but Bill is ready.

He fucking punches it in midair.

>>27686871
inb4 you manage to mulch it

Now, as big as Bill is, he was still punching a creature the size of a horse, so he unfortunately doesn’t knock it back into the mulcher. Instead it lands on the deck again, right next to Bill. And then help comes from a completely unexpected source.

Oakley, with absolutely no ranks in firearms, going only off of what he’s seen in shitty war movies, racks the bolt, aims at the Seeker and fires…and scores a critical hit. Even though the recoil almost sends the rifle flying and smacks him into the wall, the round goes right through the spinal column of the monster with a sickening crack and the whole thing slumps to the ground. But in moments it’s already starting to get back up. Bill does the only thing he can think of.

He grabs it and starts to lift it over the railing to push it into the mulcher. Alex runs over to help as the monster starts to fight back against Bill, slashing at him with its claws. Then Allister, with a new cartridge in his taser, fires at the edge of his range and nails the sucker again. Electricity makes the creature seize up and together Bill and Alex heave and shove and push the monstrosity into the running mulcher, where it shrieks and howls as its body is pulverized. The machine grinds to a halt as blood and bone gums the works, but all that remains is one last claw, sticking out from between the massive metal crushers.

We had killed it. We won.

High-fives and hugs went around the players after that. In the maybe half a dozen times that our DM had run this game (of which Allister’s player was the only one who had participated in this before, and did a great job of not spoiling anything and playing along perfectly), ours was the only party ever to successfully kill the BloodSeeker. And we didn’t even suffer a single death!! Drunk on our victory, all smiles, we guided our characters to pick up empty magazines, dropped ammunition and gather themselves back up. The members of the group in black had all disappeared in the melee, our windows or through doors while we finished up the seeker, leaving us all alone. Slowly we walked outside, smiling, ready to head back home.

We all stepped outside and before we could do anything else, our DM stopped us.

“Drop your weapons.” A voice says and we look up and find ourselves surrounded by half a dozen men in SWAT gear, body armor, helmets, MP5’s, etc. We’re too drained to resist and Alex is forced to give up his rifle (though they don’t frisk him for magazines), Allister gives up his shotgun and taser, and Oakley is relieved of his new rifle. We’re marched out into the parking lot and forced down onto our knees. We notice the car and van are still there. That’s when another armored figure walks slowly out of the darkness up to us. He’s a pale, sneering sonuvabitch. He demands to know where Loditz is. There’s no Police insignia on these guys. He places a device to his voice and we recognize the distortion we heard over the phone. These guys are Anubis.

When we can’t produce the information he wants, the man starts walking away. “Kill them.” He says and we’re left, on our knees, in the rain, about to be gunned down. It’s over.

Bang!

One of the SWAT assholes staggers, a massive hole in his chest, and then falls. The others stop, frozen like deer in the headlights and then another crack from the forest and another SWAT goes down with a bullet in his chest, dropping our weapons. As they start to scatter and shoot wildly into the forest, our party runs for the cover of the vehicles nearby, but not before Alex scoops up his trusty AR-15 and runs behind cover. It may be Deus Ex Machina, but at the time we didn’t, and still don’t, care.

*Whack* “My ass!!!” Allister cries out in pain as a 9mm bullet catches him in the left cheek just before he could dive behind cover. In response Alex dumped almost an entire magazine into one SWAT SOB, sending him down in a spray of gore. Oakley has already dived into the driver seat of the van and Alex jumps into the back. We’re not letting these motherfuckers get away.

As Bill gives aid to the wounded Allister, we notice that our friends, the AiB, reappear from the forest, firing after the retreating Anubis assholes. Oakley drives straight for a wounded Anubis member and runs his ass over, while Alex in the back seat leans out the sliding door and follows the retreating enemies with .223 justice. He even gets his sights on the pale guy we called Douchey McFuckmyasserson, but even though he thinks he scores a solid hit, the man still runs off into the darkness.

Then the last remaining Anubis mook steps out from his cover, his MP5 on rock-n-roll and we see our DM’s face look horrified as he rolls…and rerolls…and rerolls again. The mook hoses the van with automatic fire.

>>27686891
>>27686898
dayuuuuuum

Bullets stitch the vehicle along the left side. One round smashes into Oakley’s hand and the pain instantly makes him black out, but the door frame saves his life, catching bullets that would have hit his head. Alex, completely exposed with the sliding door completely open, sitting on the left side, is not nearly as lucky.

Four bullets punch through his torso, kicking him back into the van, where he lays as in the next seconds, the rest of our guys kill the final mook. They all see that something has gone terribly wrong in the van. Bill jumps in and tries to stop the bleeding, and Killer, despite his name, shows he’s quite adept at battlefield first aid and also steps in to help try and keep Alex alive. He’s in aggravated damage now. He has 8HP that has to hang on to or else he’ll die. They transfer Alex and Oakley into the back of our van, and Allister takes the wheel, Tree providing navigation, telling us they have a place they can take us to, but we have to hurry. So they drive, all the while struggling to keep the dying accountant alive.

Each ‘round’ now consists of three main sets of rolls. Bill and Killer roll medical checks to offer assistance to Alex, giving him bonuses to his stamina roll to stay conscious and not bleed out. If they fail their medical, he bleeds out another point and the chance of staying conscious is less. And the third set is Allister, rolling to drive us closer to the safehouse in the woods.

Things aren’t going well. While Bill and Killer and almost always making their rolls, Alex quickly burns through his willpower trying to stay up. And Allister…poor Allister keeps rolling no successes. Not critfails, but not a single success. Almost four rounds in a row of nothing. The DM is playing RainyMood and the slowest, saddest piece of music he can. The whole room is quiet, but for the roll of dice and the quiet reports of players and DM.

Alex is bleeding out. And then he lapses into unconsciousness.

A very swift slap from Killer wakes him back up, but the damage is done. He only has two health left. Then one…

Finally, Allister rolls enough successes to get us to where we need to go. Tree yells into the cabin we’ve found for help, that they have wounded, and they pick Alex’s body up and quickly pull him inside, onto a table, surrounded by medicine and bandages and other medical things. An old man is there.

But there is one last roll to be made. One last roll to see if Alex succumbs to his wounds just as salvation is in reach. There are penalties for Alex’s sorry state, drenched in blood, about to pass out, but he allows an extra three dice for having a trained medical professional here to help.

We all watch as I roll. One…two…three……….four successes. We look at the DM. We knew the check to beat would be high for this one.

“You make the save, exactly.” He tells us.

Alex lives.

And as the old man shoos us away so he can work on the young accountant, Tree pulls the others away. “Come on everyone, let Dr. Loditz work.”

End of session four.

>>27686891
Beat me by one minute, yah smarmy git.

>>27686951
This is the music the GM played as we were trying to save Alex. Goddammit we were nearly in tears over this shit.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbslCO_OPlc

Please tell me that's not all for tonight!!!

Again I have caught up with the stuff I had prewritten during the website maintenance, so the rapid-fire dumping of text will now slow to a crawl as I type all of this out. I don't think I've been doing the constant moodplay of our DM justice, but it became so part of the action and adrenaline it's become a single entity within my memories.

Our next session opens three days later, after giving Alex time to be treated and start to recover from his wounds. But he's still down for the count, barely able to move around without intense pain and shortness of breath. Killer and Rifle have been teaching Bill, Allister and Oakley some firearms training, they went back to the mill the next day to collect bodies and also loot for guns, ammunition and body armor.

We also sat down and talked with Dr. Loditz, asking about what had been going on, trying to get answers and we got some. Shit like vampires were real, and we were told that even though vamps could take a lot of damage, if we blow their heads off, they should die. We found out a bit more about Anubis being horrible gits, lead by a couple of vampires. The Candlelight Vigil was the group of people banded together to stop people like Anubis. They had numerous cells around the city, seperate from one another, and the reports we heard in the backstory of gangfighting were actually fights between Anubis and the Candlelights.

The location at the hotel had actually been the Dawn Cell, but as far as anyone knew, they were all dead now. Another cell member had found them, but he was missing as well. More cells had been going dark and Loditz needed our help in the fight against Anubis. Without hesitation we agreed for our own various reasons.

Because Alex is unable to help at all, he's forced to sit out, and I'm given control of Kyle Gardell, known to everyone else as 'Killer'. He's a bit of a sociopath, and got his name for a reason. He's very good with his knife, his bolt action rifle, and even medical attention. Everything needed to be a murderer, he has it.

So, Oakley, Allister, Bill and Killer head back into the city. It's either at this point, or the last time they had some downtime that they found their firehouse ransacked, and a piece of paper slipped out of our grasp into the wind, its secrets lost. Oakley keeps his big bag of alchemical things with him at all times now, never leaving it if he can help it. We need information so we give Alex's pin to Killer and the party heads back to Purgatory to meet with Al.

The meeting is another exchange of valuable information, us telling her about Anubis and the safety of Loditz, and she in turn tells us that Anubis has been doing strange things in a warehouse on the waterfront. She wants us to find out what they're doing.

So off we go, down to the waterfront, ready to be the ones to take the fight to Anubis, instead of the other way around.

We find the warehouse easily and we scope the place out. There's a few people working out in the front of the place and we consider a frontal assault while we scope around the back. The fence goes all the way to the waterline, but there's a small opening we can work open so we can get in. Killer and Oakley do so, because they're the stealthiest of the team. There's a dock leading out into the water, and lots of cargo containers and boxes. Checks of the cargo containers yield nothing. We report to the others and they start trying to navigate the jagged rocks around the edge of the fence to make their way in, but Allister slips and lets out a yell before Bill catches him and hauls him back up.

Killer is pressed against the wall next to the back door, Oakley behind some crates, and we both hear someone inside going 'I swear I heard something, come on'. The door opens right next to Killer, but he's on the hinge side, so the two men who walk out don't notice him. But they will soon. So we have to act. Killer draws his knife and rushes the rear guy.

The guy hears me approach and gets a knife in the gut, cutting his diaphragm. He's unable to cry out a warning, but he's not dead, and his partner is starting to turn. It's looking very, very bad...

Bumping so that shit doesn't start auto-saging cause only one guy is posting.

That's when Oakley springs out from behind the crates. Remember that cane sword he wanted waaaay back in some of the earlier posts? He got his hands on one. And apparently he had fencing in his backstory and on his character sheet. With a slash and a thrust he cuts the other guard's throat and shoves his sword into his heart while Killer pulls his knife free of the first guy and shoves it into his ear.

All the while, Allister and Bill fumble around in the dark, trying to get past the rocks and past the fence. When they do finally get there, Oakley and Killer have looted the bodies and walk by, out onto the dock and pitch the bodies into the water.

The mood is tense, we don't know what we'll find inside, but we bust in anyways. The back rooms are empty but they're full of crates. Crates of...shoes? And shirts? some kind of bad drug smuggling ring? And why are none of these clothes by the same manufacturer or anything? We grab what data we can, and then carefully make our way into the main storage room floor. Almost immediately we find a bored Anubis guard, in all his armor, with his gun. We silently mime to each other (we actually did this IRL too, waving and gesturing and mouthing words at each other, because we're awesome dweebs like that). And then we go for it...and all hell breaks loose in that warehouse.

I won't bore you all with another recounting of every punch, bullet, manuever and near miss, and my memory isn't that good anyways. However the highlights include Oakley becoming a wizard with his old Mosin-Nagant rifle, poppin' headshots left and right, Killer tackling and repeatedly stabbing a guard, and Bill being the thing you fear in the dark. He would come out of dark corners, wrestle Anubis motherfuckers to the ground and then snap their necks. One time he even climbed up on top of a shipping container and Mario-stomped a dude on the head with 250lbs of whoop-ass before killing him as well. All in all we wrecked shit left and right and took no prisoners. When all was said and done, we were presented with two options to look for clues: The offices where the computers and file cabinets were kept, and the massive clean-room tent that had been erected to cover 1/3rd of the south end of the warehouse.

Killer, Allister and Oakley all proceed into the cleanroom. We all immediately have to roll a composure check as the smell hits us. If one took a butcher shop and a hospital and combined it into one...that's the horrific image that was presented to us. And the meat: was human bodies.

All had been flayed and opened up in new and horrific manners, and judging by their expressions, they had been alive while it all happened. Barely containing our nausea, we looked around and saw one body that we quickly recognized.

It was Danny.

Danny had been missing since the events at the Mill. When we had returned to the scene to grab loot and stuff, we had thought he had simply run off, but we couldn't find a trace of him. Now we knew where he had gone.

He lay, strapped down, eyes open, his chest opened up to the air, his ribs cracked open to expose his insides. And the closer we looked, we realized something as Danny's eyes turned towards us with agony and horror and his heart continued to beat and his lungs slowly worked. He was still alive.

That set Killer and Allister off. They puked and had to flee the stench and sight of the mutilated man. they both ran far, almost out the back of the building before composing themselves, shaken to the core. Oakley was left alone with Danny. Slowly he unsheathed his blade.

"Sleep now." he whispered, and stabbed Danny through the heart. In moments he was finally still, dead.

>>27687499
;_;7

Composing ourselves, we continued our sweep for actual evidence. Vials with strange liquids were found both in the cleanroom and in a container in the offices. We snagged all of them and also hacked into the computers and got information. they had been running experiments, the details of which escape my memory, but the jist of it was that whatever serum they were making needed the test subjects to be alive to harvest it from them and after numerous failed attempts, the serum was finally showing promise and samples had already been taken for testing. Once we got everything we could, Bill and Allister grabbed what gasoline we could scrounge and torched the place. As we escaped out the back, we could already hear sirens in the distance, heading for the warehouse, but we drove off, back to the woods, back to the cabin and Loditz, in the search of more answers.

End of session five.

>>27687453
>Mario-stomped a dude on the head with 250lbs of whoop-ass
JAYSUS!

>>27687553
god i wish my group played something other than 3.5
I want to play this, DH, and CoC so bad..

That will be all for me this evening. Three more sessions are still left for the retelling. Betrayal, torture and player deaths are what fill these final sessions.

I do hope to get to this Saturday night. It seems most of the audience I had yesterday dropped out because of the maintenance, or were quietly lurking. Or the story just isn't as interesting anymore. Whatever it may be, I've enjoyed recounting more of this story. I will attempt to screencap these so I can repost them when I conclude the story Saturday night!

>>27687606
I'm confused, you mentioned playing Hunter yet it seems none of you have Edges or Vigils, I take it you were playing a pure mortal version of Hunter?

>>27687606
I was definitely in the lurking category here. Can't wait for the next installment!

>>27687646
Aye, pure mortal, run of the mill people stuck in a world where everyone and everything is bigger, better and nastier than us.

We only had our Attributes, Skills, Merits and equipment to keep us alive.

>>27687606
dammmmnnnn
i hope i don't miss the thread

>>27687682
Thread will likely go up at the same start time of around 9-10pm Pacific time

>>27687700
perfect thank you for such an interesting tale

>>27687646

GM: The options were there, but yes this was meant to be an introduction into the beginning of a Hunter Cells creation (and an introduction into the World of Darkness itself). We had the hunter book... but aside from the teamwork tactics, none of them were readily available to the characters.

The idea was that this was all a massive prologue to a larger living breathing RP world which we could choose to continue (and develop said edges, vigils, and start gaining all those nifty anti-monster and freak techs).

And I don't believe in simply "giving" away things for free. I wanted the players to earn their rewards, fight for them, loot them, and build to them.

Yes hunter eats players and spits them out, yes hunter is fucking hard, and yes hunter can be a shitty system if you don't have the gear to cope... and that's exactly what I wanted to have as part of the gameplay experience for the party.

the simple fact is that these players aren't, and couldn't have, been prepared. They're regular folks suddenly being pulled into an underground battle that's been raging for time immemorial, and they're going in underarmed, underequiped, and without any starting allies. The perfect tabula rasa set-up so the party can do what it wants, how it wants, with whom it wants (giggity).

Also, as you may or may not have noticed... there has only actually been one true-blue monster in the campaign so far... (or... at least as far as you all know =P)

>>27687817

So I take it a TPK was experienced otherwise ya'll would have continued said campaign.

>>27687880

GM: Just keep on reading. Once Charlie gets around to posting up more, you'll see what happens...

And actually, what happened is we decided to take a short break, and I've been running a D&D 3.5 campaign with this same group (plus a few more folks we picked up). We've been doing it the entire time since the end of this nWoD game.

>>27687817
>>27687937

I wasn't criticizing your decision to have them basically earn their vigils, I had a campaign that started similarly with us going against human pawns at first but as we got into more supernatural shit we actually experienced the Calling. The GM explained us not having it at first by saying that the amount of true Hunters that the Messengers can have Imbued at a time is finite, and at first we didn't even have their attention much less having proved that we were worthy of the offer.

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Shameless self bump with the compiled screencaps for future usage.

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Session 5 screencap for later usage

>>27688019

Oh, lol. don't get me wrong, I'm not angry or getting upset or anything that you're asking, and honestly I'm not that opposed to others criticizing the campaign. (this entire campaign was essentially built upon a TON of criticism. probably the only reason it's even as good as it is now).

I'm just listing down the essentially clinicial reasons why the game itself wasn't very hospitable towards those options being available. I'd have LOVED to have had them... but in lieu of keeping the game consistent, and for the sake of keeping the story exciting and mysterious, it just never was able to be an explorable option.

A large part of why that was as well had to do with the essentially the "true neutral" stance the players took towards almost all interactions with the other groups. Working for whom they wanted, but not... 100% committing to that groups ideals, or goals. Almost all alliances between the players and the NPCs were established as alliances of convenience, or necessary to continued survival of both parties. (which I don't blame them, everyone they met is pretty shady in their own way. hiding secrets and such).

So, for this campaign: if the party had early on devoted its group towards (for example) The Candlelight Vigil and George Loddits, or Al and Purgatory, or even Anubis, they would have gained access towards those hunter specialties, which would have differentiating options depending on the group in question.

But yeah dude I'm not worried about you poking at this or anything, it's what it is, and it's certainly not perfect. there are STILL more wrinkles I need to work out of it. Just trying to shed some light on the inner-workings of why the campaign worked as it did and why it ended up being essentially a pure mortal campaign with this group.

Someone archived it.

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>>27688247
>it's what it is
Regardless of how it plays, it makes for wonderful storytime.

The fact that the first thread linked to Awake and his spoopy shenanigans just served to remind us all that /tg/ can be not shit at times.

>>27688200
>>27688243
As the screencapper from the last thread, you've gone and made me feel redundant. But it's much appreciated regardless!

Also, getting this back on the front page. It needs to stick around for a while.

>>27689284
Nonesense, I only tried to do it myself since I wasn't sure how long this thread would last without bumping. You did a much cleaner, speedy job than me and I hope I can count on you on Saturday!

>Go to sleep at 0045 when 4chan nearly killed the thread
>Wake up to all this progress

Hell fucking yeah.

>>27689336
Oh, you flatter me. I may not be there for the start of storytime but I'll definitely look for it that night.

I almost missed this!

Damn, saturday I will play RPG, lets hope I dont miss.

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Aww yeee caught the thread before it died.

This sealed the deal for me on nWoD - I've been reading through the book and I -think- I can get my group to run a game or two.

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>Danny

Damn, this progressed a lot while I slept

>>27687022
That is entirely too perfect.

>>27687499
Godspeed, Danny.

Bumping this to keep it alive a little longer!

>>27694431
Capper also keeping an eye out, cap'n. I won't let this die until the evening crowd's seen it!

>>27694431
You've got a second watching out for the thread, cap'n. After all, the evening crowd still has to see it.

bumping for great justice

>>27688200
>>27688243
You cut the part where Alex survives and we meet Dr. Loditz.

>>27689284
You could fix it, Mr. Amazballs Screencapper

>>27695949
Did someone say Screencapper?!

Good catch, man. Will post fixed version momentarily.

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>>27695987
Aaand fix'd Session 4.

>captcha: perfectly oosy

>>27696059
Yay!!!

>captcha: called gookmng

>"Perfectly oosy!" called Gookmng.

>>27696059
Ah, thank you. This is why I shouldn't do screencapping...

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>>27696300
Hey, I goofed on the first one in the last thread. We all start our screencapping careers somewhere!

Yay story!

>>27696300
I have sushi and fleece pants and music playing and I'm ALL READY for storytime, Mr. Delta sir

>>27687606

Oh the story is interesting. I've just been taking midterms all day.

>>27687679
>We only had our Attributes, Skills, Merits and equipment to keep us alive.

That never goes well.

>>27687817
>Also, as you may or may not have noticed... there has only actually been one true-blue monster in the campaign so far...

I've counted 3 definates and 2 possibles.

This should be shown to people who are thinking about playing WoD.

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Charlie GM and anyone else from this game, I got a request.


got any advice for someone who is thinking about running a nWoD game online or in person?
I've never run anything before but I have played some V:tR via IRC and have the Core, armory, gmcRules, and V:tR books on pdf on both desktop, laptop, and flashdrive.

>>27697742
I'd say that mood is key in these kinds of games and fear of the unknown. I encourage you to do things that aren't in the books. Throw situations and clues and items that aren't necessarily statted out.

And also give your players situations where they can improvise and try different things, be very flexible, both in the situations you put them in, and even in your plot and your players will do all kinds of crazy ass shit.

>>27698449

how do you do mood if your running the game via IRC chat?

>>27699241
That's very difficult. one thing would be to be very good in your descriptions and in what information you give to your players. If you can, share music with them. I would even suggest using Roll20 for maps and stuff. Since your on IRC, i would say try to keep the party small, four max, so you can be more personalized for each character.

>>27699289
Just descriptions. Music is pretty useless, since your players are going to be checking out news and webcomics and chatting in the other window.

>>27699241

GM: The problem with an online game (and the reason I don't typically do them for horror), is that unless you're using some program in which you can control the music, sounds, and atmosphere (usually MUCH easier if you have a group together and in-person somewhere), it's almost impossible to set a continuous mood with the wide distraction of the entire internet at their disposal.

First and foremost I'm gonna tell you that you need to be a damn good story teller for online. and when I say that, I don't mean writing paragraphs upon paragraphs of exposition (which is good, but it gets boring).
In fact, I mean nearly the opposite. For horror, it's not always (or even usually) about how much you give the players, it's all about how little you give them...

Make them work to figure out more, make it an actual GOAL for them to figure out your insane plot and plans. and if they don't? well then it's going to come back to bite them in the ass...
(literally, in the case of this campaign with the Blood Seeker coming to kill them again since it's essentially a supernatural hound)

If you can do music and stuff man, then go for it. But personally, I used a lot of music cues, sound effects, and other tiny atmospheric effects such as physically slamming my hand against the wall in the room we were playing to simulate the creature smashing through the wall, actually getting ambient soundtracks of city noises, rain falling, water on a car roof while they were driving, etc.

If you make it so your players are rewarded for their hard work and dedication to the story by slowly unraveling the plot, then I think you'll fine an online game can still work wonderfully.

Horror is all about mood. and whether you physically have to fool your players into getting into it, or just write them into it, then that's what you have to do. Identify the strengths of whatever you're going to be using to play your own game, and exploit it to your full and creative benefit.

>>27686909
>High-fives and hugs went around the players after that. In the maybe half a dozen times that our DM had run this game (of which Allister’s player was the only one who had participated in this before, and did a great job of not spoiling anything and playing along perfectly), ours was the only party ever to successfully kill the BloodSeeker.

Er... do you mean the DM has run this before? Same plot and stuff...?

Or he's just used the Seeker as a monster before, maybe in some other campaign? If yes, where did he use it before - was it a good story?

Or, is this actually a premade or module? I ask because in the first thread you started off by saying this:
>Of our four players, including myself, only one of the others has played WoD before, so when the DM tells us we're playing Hunter, I assume it's just some premade module.
>Boy was I wrong.

I took that to mean that it was a completely original thing. But then here you say that the DM had run this game a half dozen times?

Sorry, I'm just a bit confused here.

bumping to keep this alive til tonight

>>27701199
What I meant to say is that this DM has made this game, from the ground up, by himself. He's altered and perfected over the course of running it about half a dozen times with different players. Most got bogged down, usually for IRL reasons, but as far as I remember, the game had run all the way through twice before this party. He's made adjustments, tweaks, additions and subtractions as he's refined this game of his.

Allister's player is the only one who had played through this DM's game before and after we would get through certain points, he would share with us the differences in how parties reacted and how they fared, etc. For me, Bill, and Oakley, this was all completely new and original, and even Allister was surprised at certain points because the DM made changes from the last time. The entirety of the next session was new for Allister, in fact.

>>27701199
>>27703320
And, bit of clarification, when I say premade module, I meant from an actual publisher. When I started out he just said we were playing 'Hunter'. So I assumed that was kind of like playing a certain kind of module that the publishers made for newer players. When I told other gamers who had played WoD, they all reacted with 'haha, yeah, you're all fucked'. It didn't help that the DM was very, very good what he does and it felt like something you'd have to pay to get.

>>27703320

good explanation.

>>27700097

>>27700097

you have run multiple games and have also run the same game several times refining it each time. How do you deal with your own mess ups and how do you move on when a game falls apart?
>>27700097
>actually getting ambient soundtracks of city noises, rain falling, water on a car roof while they were driving, etc.

What do you use to play those and how do you keep track of and organize them so you can start and stop the ones you want on demand instead of having to stop for a moment to do that?

Iwillsaveyoufrompage7

>>27703856

GM: Practice. a LOT of practice. Past games gave me a really good idea of when, and when not, to use music cues and certain songs. For example, when the seeker first came up the stairs, I didn't tell the players what it was, I just started playing this:

(Seeker music - from FEAR OST: Interception)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOkK7DqQNkE

and how I worked it was I'd start it out exceedingly quiet. and players would be like "uh... what's going on?" I'd shrug, tell them to do something else. Next turn, I'd make the music a little louder. As the creature got closer, the music would get louder. As you can imagine, your players start to shit themselves when they KNOW something bad is coming, but their characters don't.

I pre-set myself up with youtube playlists. I literally just make youtube playlists of things like "Ambient horror" which is full of nearly a straight hour of just scary sounded but backgroundy horror music. I have a "fight" playlists, for fights and encounters. I do this for typically everything I need, and have it pre-set up for the chapters. (typically I would spend one of my days before the next game a week later completely re-organizing or making music lists).

Example of a quick playlist for a chapter (combined from my lists).

I'll give an example next post.

>>27703856

GM: Example of play (The Seeker's apperance)

(The Hotel monster and hidden room sequence)
1: Atmospheric music inside the hotel was all like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFDag_Wtx14&list=PL098B6AABD0AB66BD&index=11 (FTL OST - Void)

2: as the seeker approaches, start cuing its music. slowly getting louder as it gets closer. give some hints as to its whereabouts "something big coming up the stairs..."

3). Then play this while they're hiding from the Seeker in the hidden room:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z06AH8i12A0 (Only play until about 37=39 seconds in, in which quickly but slowly cut sound. Tell plays "The heavy footfalls slowly crunch from the room. it's gone..."

4: (Begin music for the discovered safe house) "As you wander out into the next rooms... blah blah blah"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4sI_15sNrc (A Stream with Bright Fish, by Harold Budd & Brian Eno)

When it really comes down to it, the music was a HUGE side project that I put for myself. It was a lot of work, I had to find a LOT of new music since this was my first WoD campaign. Essentialy, you have to have a good sense for how long your music goes for, what you're using it for, and how it should transition and change from one scene to the next.

It's only as much work as you want to make it, but I REALLY wanted music to be a big part of the campaign, so I sorta obsessed about it. But in the end, it definetly payed off.