Princes of the City: Anyone Want to Bite?

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radthemad4
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Post by radthemad4 »

Seth should be enroute with a rocket launcher. Could that trigger the other explosives or are video games wrong about that too? Though if she's got so much super speed that she can run around defusing bombs without us noticing, I doubt we can do much unless someone dominates her or Ia levitates her or something.
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Ancient History
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Post by Ancient History »

Seth is there. He as arrived. With rocket launcher or without, as he desires.
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Post by Ancient History »

ANybody else have something to say/an action, or are all eyes on Prak?
Nebuchadnezzar
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Post by Nebuchadnezzar »

Any more opinions on springing the Daughters of Lilith to satisfy Eris? As it stands Verge is against and Stan is for it.
hyzmarca
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Post by hyzmarca »

Nebuchadnezzar wrote:Any more opinions on springing the Daughters of Lilith to satisfy Eris? As it stands Verge is against and Stan is for it.
The charges against them are minor at best. While it's possible to throw the book at them, it's easy enough to just call it drunk and disorderly and make it a slap on the wrist.

The problem is covering up the mass disappearance of the cult, after a mysterious death. Not at all easy. It's just better, logistically, to have stay behind for a while and do all the paperwork, reassure their families, and all that. They can always meet up with Eris later.
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Post by Shady314 »

Ia is for it.
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Post by Ancient History »

Suzanne is in favor of letting the women cut town. Especially if anyone has a good cover story for the same.
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Post by Ancient History »

So...do we have consensus? Thoughts? Any thing else to cover?
radthemad4
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Post by radthemad4 »

Sorry, been (and still am) angsting over finals. I'd like to know why (if?) she killed Rosa. Also, we should probably get her to release the ghosts. Seth can't detect ghosts, but telecommuting while Verge uses telepathy on him might help find them, though I don't know if we can do anything to get them away from Eris.
Last edited by radthemad4 on Thu Aug 20, 2015 4:45 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Post by Nebuchadnezzar »

radthemad4 wrote:I'd like to know why (if?) she killed Rosa.
Ancient History wrote:Using his telepathy, Verge gets flashes from her mind - the dark saint she couldn't coerce or bluff into doing her bidding -
Whether or not that's sufficient evidence for Monster Court is up to the reader.

Rosa's death can be explained away in a couple of ways at this point. Back on page 9 Stan fed the journalist contact a ridiculous cover story implicating a desperate parent working in state government who was trying to get their child out of a cult. Additionally/instead, Kel (with possible help from Stan, Tibiru, and Andrew Vlacha, depending on the desire to foster community ties) could use Vicissitude to modify a bear or wolf to look diseased and likely to mess with people. Film of this animal roaming the city at night could be disseminated by the community watch website juneauguardian.com, as well as via the conspiracy theorist contact.

Getting the remaining Daughters of Lilith out of the state while assuaging the fears of their parents could be handled by bringing the parents into the orthodox church/herd's fold. Gather the parents so their daughters can have a heart-to-heart where they share that they're off to join a commune, offer vitae-spiked refreshments, and have Max/Verge/Stan use charm/memory alteration as needed. The local cops just get told it's a federal matter outside their jurisdiction.
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Post by Ancient History »

...and, that's the game. Sorry it dragged out a bit, I know everyone was busy, but I think it went well enough. Thanks for playing!
radthemad4
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Post by radthemad4 »

Are you going to do a sequel? That seemed kinda abrupt. We never even got to meet the mummy.

Still, I had fun. Thanks AH.
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Post by Ancient History »

You guys never asked to meet the mummy. I kept expecting y'all to say "We're going to go ask the Mummy about ___" and it never, ever happened. Don't blame me for the mummylessness of this campaign.

And if it was abrupt, it was because y'all diplomanced what was going to be the big final battle.
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Post by hyzmarca »

Ancient History wrote:You guys never asked to meet the mummy. I kept expecting y'all to say "We're going to go ask the Mummy about ___" and it never, ever happened. Don't blame me for the mummylessness of this campaign.

And if it was abrupt, it was because y'all diplomanced what was going to be the big final battle.
That's because none of us had actual combat skills.

I'm pretty sure that we all assumed that a final battle would leave most of us dead on the ground. I certainly did. Which is why Plan A was stall with MAD until the cavalry showed up.
Last edited by hyzmarca on Fri Aug 21, 2015 8:18 pm, edited 2 times in total.
radthemad4
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Post by radthemad4 »

I was expecting to either run into it, or for it to show up at Elysium like Memphis or Tibiru to be honest.

I'm cool with diplomancing battles. I definitely wasn't expecting the game to end after the Eris thing.

I feel really dumb for not pursuing the 'ghost in the machine' (or ghosts as it later turned out) further when you first brought up the possibility. We could've had Amarok's blood then instead of Seth becoming a mcguffin delivery service. Sorry guys.
Last edited by radthemad4 on Fri Aug 21, 2015 8:34 pm, edited 2 times in total.
hyzmarca
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Post by hyzmarca »

radthemad4 wrote:I was expecting to either run into it, or for it to show up at Elysium like Memphis or Tibiru to be honest.

I'm cool with diplomancing battles. I definitely wasn't expecting the game to end after the Eris thing.

I feel really dumb for not pursuing the 'ghost in the machine' (or ghosts as it later turned out) further when you first brought up the possibility. We could've had Amarok's blood then instead of Seth practically becoming a mcguffin delivery system. Sorry guys.
We all made major mistakes.

I know that I screwed up and let the girls get away at the Cemetary. Bad call, there.

And exorcising the demon could have gotten us a girl to interrogate. But I figure that pissing off Susanne's contact wasn't worth it.
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radthemad4
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Post by radthemad4 »

The Ouathiel thing seemed alright since he's on our side. Though, we probably should've given him a cellphone and told him to keep in touch or something instead of just letting him run out of the game.

Stuff like Ouathiel running off and Memphis never giving the complete truth about anything, that stuff about Suzanne's sire early on, etc. gave me the impression that more stuff was coming at us (also not having met the mummy yet, which I definitely should've inquired more about the mechanics of).
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Post by Whipstitch »

hyzmarca wrote:
That's because none of us had actual combat skills.

I'm pretty sure that we all assumed that a final battle would leave most of us dead on the ground. I certainly did. Which is why Plan A was stall with MAD until the cavalry showed up.
Pretty much. I approve of such tactics though--the reward for kicking people's faces in is pretty low relative to the risk.
bears fall, everyone dies
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Post by Ancient History »

Yeah, letting the demon out of the circle resulted in a family in a cabin in the woods getting horribly mutilated and the birth of a new Baali cult. That wasn't y'all's best move.
hyzmarca
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Post by hyzmarca »

Ancient History wrote:Yeah, letting the demon out of the circle resulted in a family in a cabin in the woods getting horribly mutilated and the birth of a new Baali cult. That wasn't y'all's best move.
I was rather concerned about the possibility of an exorcism resulting in long-term group infighting. That is to say, Baali cult less dangerous than Susanne's contact wanting revenge against her allies.
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Post by Nebuchadnezzar »

Thanks for a fun game, Ancient History. Herding cats must be a bitch.

I for one would like to see the stat line for the mummy, if not their character description.

Making clear I have never before played a VtM game, I suppose that if I were to want to take part in one with a similar premise and in this system again then I would go with perhaps more initial freebie points, and minor spending guidelines. Ass pull: Pooled backgrounds would need to be a party-wide proposition, and each player writes up 15 NPCs. Whether the latter is represented as Ally5/Contact5/Retainer5 or as a bunch of minor Contacts is a question for the beancounters. It looks like players feel their characters are useful with 6+ dots in Disciplines, while scrambling for points to achieve that leaves skill gaps.

Juneau is a particularly well suited city for this sort of game, and I have now learned more about it than I would have ever anticipated. Thinking of other geographically half-isolated areas leads me to consider Balinese resort towns, or parts of Siberia, but those of course aren't primarily English-speaking, which often leads to generalized insensitivities.
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Post by Ancient History »

Juneau seemed like an interesting choice, big enough that a small cadre of vampires could dominate it, small enough that vampire murders can't be lost in the background noise - zero homicide rate, remember? - the isolation was just a bit of frosting.
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Post by Shady314 »

I recall the demon being a Suzanne choice. Ia's backstory had him having spent time fighting the Baali so I definitely wanted to kill it but I didn't want to start a fight and turn the campaign into me vs. the Prince.

Im most curious to know if it was Amarok's blood in there and what drinking it did for Eris.
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Post by Ancient History »

Old Vampire magic item - Giant's Blood permanently increases Potence.
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