[VtM] Giovanni Chronicles

[Longes]

I've convinced a buddy of mine to PbP run me through one of the classic VtM sagas "The Giovanni Chronicles". Of which he agreed to only run the first book out of four because apparently he doesn't like the others. And also because the fourth book dumps your characters and has you play as new ghouls while your characters just get a cameo.

The story so far:

The game begins on 4.4.1444, in Hungary. The protagonist(s) are mortals invited to a feast by lord Claudius Giovanni. They all meet in an inn in the hamlet by the mansion, where they await a carriage from Giovanni. Aside from the players, the inn has a few NPCs - a beggar who is secretly a 5th generation Ravnos, a crippled 20 y.o. retired soldier, and a monk. The crippled soldier asks you to plead his case for employment with the Giovanni, which I did. You mingle among yourselves and with the NPCs, until Giovanni's seneschal arrives. The monk yells to everyone that they are doomed, and is beaten up and escorted out by the Giovanni soldiers. The Senechal (who is a ghoul) is a massive creep who gets off on the PCs being about to be eaten. He leaves a coachman and a coach and leaves. Everyone goes to sleep.

The next morning everyone loads into the coach and rides to Giovanni's mansion. Out the window they can see spooky wolves and also crucified bodies, because Claudius Giovanni is that kind of guy.

As PC arrive they are left to wait in a spooky corridor. Then they meet Claudius and 12 other vampires inconspicuous humans, one from every main clan. The vampire pair off with PCs, Claudius pairing off with a specially designated NPC. Then you go through "harrowings". Normally each player would get one, but we played through half of them for variety. The Harrowings are a mixed bag. Most involve vampire spooking you, with varying degrees of interactivity. Tzimisce harrowing has the vampire bring you to the torture dungeon to torture an alleged spy. If you agree - Tzimisce likes you but you probably lose humanity. If you disagree - Tzimisce dominates you into doing it anyway, but doesn't like you. You can distract the Tzimisce by arguing. Tremere as written throws magic powers at you until you get spooked, but my GM rewrote it, so we argued about magic and secrecy. Brujah either talks you into vandalizing the castle, or does it himself and blames you for it (which Claudius plays up in a mock trial).

After everyone has been thoroughly spooked, vampires and guests gather for the dinner. PCs feast for a bit, but then Claudius makes a speech about his evil conspiracy against the Cappadocians and blood tasting. Surprise - they are all vampires. Claudius brings the crippled soldier and tells him to put a specially designed collar on a PC. If you pleaded for his employment - the soldier will refuse and get beaten, presumably to survive and be a future ghoul for the PCs.

The real plot twist is that you aren't here to be Embraced - you are here to be eaten.
SUDDENLY, alarm rings. An enemy faction is invading the castle. Vampires argue amongst themselves blaming each other, but then Claudius takes control. PCs are embraced to be disposable fodder and vampires flee. Enemy faction breaches the feast hall and PCs surrender because obviously.
The enemy faction is known as The Founders because they are planning to found the Camarilla, and consists of 7 vampires, 1 from every Camarilla clan.

PCs are imprisoned and taken to the Founders' castle, where they are tortured as members of the evil conspiracy. No matter what you are found guilty and the Founders want to execute you, but then the Ravnos beggar from the inn shows up. She declares PCs to be part of a prophecy and suggests recruiting them as spies against the conspiracy. Remaining non-PCs are executed anyway.

And that's where I currently am.

Also if you tortured the Tzimisce's prisoner - he really was a spy and now you get to be extra tortured.
Due to PbP I can't tell how long it'd take to play through this, but I'd estimate about a session. The issue is that this whole thing is on rails, half of it has the party separated being spooked by individual vampires, and the last bit in the Founders' castle has no interactivity because you are just being tortured and all your input is ignored.

Aside from that, I guess it's an okay intro.
The book suggests having players take on the role of the Founders and roleplay torturing their own characters, but the suggestion seems dubious to me. Although torture is entirely fluff and you are fully fed and healed afterwards anyway.

In my game we packed that entire part into four posts, one of which was my demon mentor making his introduction.

This matches a scene in the book, but doesn't match the description of any of the vampires

[PrometheanVigil]

X

I read through the entire Giovanni Chronicles series back in the day and it was pretty awesome, all things considered. I had to mentally switch Clans around, convert mechanics and so on into their Requiem equivs/semi-equivs and go from there to get the most out of it from a design/scenario perspective.

Honestly, it didn't tread ground I hadn't already experimented with or surpassed in my own games. Now gore and fuckedupness-wise , yeah, some cred is defo due (like the neck tap in #1, very WOD). Sacha Vykos makes a significant appearance in #3, esp. the last third, so that was cool. Be warned, the Setities compose like most of that volume. I thought it was hilarious how the kabbalist dude can set himself on fire in #2 if you let him finish the golem even though he's an ass to you. Ah, on that note, in #2, the formation of the Sabbat happens for realz so if you're a lore buff, shit like that happens a lot during the series.

Also, the prominent Giovanni are fucked in this series -- there's a particular lunatic that runs around summoning shit from the wraith realm and I remember him getting into it with Anatole at one point. There's a nasty sideplot betrayal in #4 with some pretty on-point artwork to accompany it -- it's more suggestive of the horror than anything else but the hand one got me.

Read straight, yeah, I highly recommend it but NOT to run because honestly, it suffers from the usual OWOD canonicity probs (esp. #1 and #2, one could argue #4 but it's actually the most freeform of all entire series up until the last quarter where it's game over/gehenna time, obvs).

Shame your friend is being anal about the other volumes. There's an Eminem from Without Me/Crazy Town from Hollywood Babylon-style feel going on when your PCs from the first three novels/parts of the series are back in the game as major NPCs. There's also some really stupid shit involving True Faith abuse in the fourth volume -- made me glad they got rid of that shit for Vigil, thank God.

Also, PbP? Seriously... that said, I helped out ROM on the Codex Discourse by GM'ing PbC on there, but that yeah, if I didn't like written format before, that put me off it permanently.