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From:	Robert Nesius <nesius@******.COM>
Subject:	Re: Vampires ( & Mages )
Date:	Sat, 2 May 1998 01:17:38 -0700

Message no. 1 Hi there,
In regards to the topic of merging WOD Vampire: The Masquerade
w/ Shadowrun, this was done in a game I played in years back, and I'll
probably do something similar in my game.
Essentially:
Bagged the clans - we kept the SR vampiric origin.
Kept the traditions - Domain, etc...
Kept the ambience of White Wolfe's vampires - the goth darkness, the
cold manipulative backstabbing with political powerplays. Granted,
our "elders" were pretty recent in terms of time ,but it all worked out.

Basically, we mapped the social aspects of kindred society over into SR
vampires, but left them the same in terms of mechanics. The SR books
didn't go into the dyanmics of vampiric society much, so we borrowed
White Wolf's.

The other area I'm giving serious consideration to is mapping some of
White Wolf's mage stuff over to SR. Again, only social aspects.
ie: An initiate group of mages that has the agenda of gaining power and,
more importantly, money - a "syndicate" initiate group. Basically, I've
considered mapping some of the traditions (Technocracy and others) over as
initiate groups. As I write this, it occurred to me that an ascension war
of some sort could even be possible, but that's an idea that just occurred
to me and I haven't thought it through.

In summary, I like to borrow ideas for societal things, but I don't like
to directly map mechanics or systems.

-Rob

From:	Erik Jameson <erikj@****.COM>
Subject:	Re: Vampires ( & Mages )
Date:	Mon, 4 May 1998 18:17:41 -0400

Message no. 2 Okay, I don't know much about White Wolf's games and truthfully, don't
really care.

BUT it was mentioned by Robert Nessius earlier that he used several items
from that gaming series to provide culture references for Shadowrun,
specifically mentioning Vampire and Mage.

I'm somewhat curious to tell the truth now. If I were only to purchase one
book for Vampire info and one book for Mage info, what should I buy?
Especially if I didn't want to deal with a lot of game mechanics nonsense,
just background materials that could be mined for Shadowrun purposes.

Erik J.

"Forgive me FASA for I have sinned. It has been 6 days since I last played
Shadowrun and 15 days since I last bought a SRTCG booster pack."

From:	"Jeremy \"Bolthy\" Zimmerman" <jeremy@***********.COM>
Subject:	Re: Vampires ( & Mages )
Date:	Mon, 4 May 1998 15:45:06 -0700

Message no. 3 ----------
> From: Erik Jameson <erikj@****.COM>
> To: SHADOWRN@********.ITRIBE.NET
> Subject: Re: Vampires ( & Mages )
> Date: Monday, May 04, 1998 3:17 PM
>
> Okay, I don't know much about White Wolf's games and truthfully, don't
> really care.
>
> BUT it was mentioned by Robert Nessius earlier that he used several items
> from that gaming series to provide culture references for Shadowrun,
> specifically mentioning Vampire and Mage.
>
> I'm somewhat curious to tell the truth now. If I were only to purchase
one
> book for Vampire info and one book for Mage info, what should I buy?
> Especially if I didn't want to deal with a lot of game mechanics
nonsense,
> just background materials that could be mined for Shadowrun purposes.
>

You're going to buy one of each, right? The best thing I could recommend,
I suppose, is to just buy the main rules for each of them. You can, in
theory, get a good feel for the game universe for each of them from just
reading the core rules. It has a big section in the front with their
history. Unfortunately, they're a good 25-30 bucks a whack. Definitely
would recommend searching used book stores for a copy of them. It's
sometimes amazing what you kind find. A few weeks ago I found a hard cover
SRII in good condition for only 15 bucks. =)

From:	Paul Gettle <pgettle@********.NET>
Subject:	Re: Vampires ( & Mages )
Date:	Mon, 4 May 1998 22:29:26 -0400

Message no. 4 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

At 06:17 PM 5/4/98 -0400, Erik wrote:
>I'm somewhat curious to tell the truth now. If I were only to
purchase one
>book for Vampire info and one book for Mage info, what should I buy?
>Especially if I didn't want to deal with a lot of game mechanics
nonsense,
>just background materials that could be mined for Shadowrun purposes.

Gah. I'm somewhat familar with WoD, and you're asking for a tall
order. The core rulebooks for each game paint a broad swipe across the
particular game universe each describes. Unfortunately, the river that
runs wide does not run deep. At most, you just get surface details,
with little specifics. (That's how they hook you into buying their
sourcebooks)

Usually, to get a fairly large pile of source material, you need to
plunk down for the Core Rulebook, The Player's Handbook, and at least
a few other books.

If you're just looking for the most background/source material for
your buck, the Vampire: the Masquerade CD-ROM should be your best bet.
It contains the full texts to six important Vampire rulebooks. (Plus,
there's a 3-D mapcreator program that could make cityscapes just as
easily for SR as it does for V:tM)

It's about $50, but the Sourcebooks it contains would run you close to
$100.

Unfortunately, there's not a similar product for Mage, and the good
background material is spread between so many books, I wouldn't know
where to begin to reccomend.
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--
-- Paul Gettle (pgettle@********.net)
PGP Fingerprint, Key ID:11455339 (RSA 1024, created 97/08/08)
625A FFF0 76DC A077 D21C 556B BB58 00AA

From:	Robert Nesius <nesius@******.COM>
Subject:	Re: Vampires ( & Mages )
Date:	Tue, 5 May 1998 00:24:00 -0700

Message no. 5 At 3:17 PM -0700 5/4/98, Erik Jameson wrote
>
>BUT it was mentioned by Robert Nessius earlier that he used several items
>from that gaming series to provide culture references for Shadowrun,
>specifically mentioning Vampire and Mage.
>
>I'm somewhat curious to tell the truth now. If I were only to purchase one
>book for Vampire info and one book for Mage info, what should I buy?
>Especially if I didn't want to deal with a lot of game mechanics nonsense,
>just background materials that could be mined for Shadowrun purposes.
>

Hi Erik,

As someone mentioned earlier, the White Wolf world is spread over serveral
source books. However, I think I can give you some good pointers that will
give you the bulk of what your looking for in a short amount of time.
I'm posting this to the list for the benefit of other GM's wishing to
learn a little more about what White Wolf's world has to offer in a
complementing fashion to Shadowrun.

The biggest area where I think some of the WoD (World of Darkness) themes
can add a powerful and compelling ambience to SR is in the area of Vampires.
Vampire: The Masquerade was the first big book White Wolf put out, and I
think the vision of Kindred (vampiric) society presented in this book is
quite frankly the most cool, well thought out, gothic, angst-ridden visions
of kindred society that I've seen.

Specifically, you'll want to look at Chapter 2. 90% of what is really
useful and meaningful is in that chapter. Here's a quick run down:

Gothic theme - it's dark. there is angst. it's gothic.
Overpopulation - Strict rules govern kindred society for numerious reasons.
Making sure the heard is not culled too thin is one of them.
Attitude - Vampires are hunters. Mortals are the hunted. Mortals are
week, and flashes in the pan when compared to the lifespan of
a vampire. But in numbers, mortals are dangerous. Think Cattle.
One steer - no problem. A stampeding heard - problem. :)
The Beast - The main tenent in Vampire is the struggle between succumbing
to the beast, and maintaining one's humanity. The more bad
things you do, the more "out of touch" you get with humanity.
The more out of touch you are, the easier it is to frenzy, and
do things which lower your humanity more.
The Prince - (A very cool concept). Major cities often have a powerful
vampire who is the Prince. He is not the ruler, and resident
vampires need not swear fealty too him, but he is the final
arbiter in kindred conflicts. Think of him as a shepard who
punishes sheep that stray to far by having them for dinner. He
keeps them in line. Many princes do actually issue edicts,
and such. They are in effect as long as he can enforce them.
If he can't enforce them, he will probably lose power and status.

The Traditions - VERY COOL roleplay devices for kindred society. There are 6.

1st - The Masquerade - keep mortals thinking vamps are a myth.
(Probably not quite as important in the sixth world of SR)
2nd - Domain - Your domain is your turf. None may challange your word in your
domain. Naturally, the Prince's "domain" is rather broad. ;) And there
may be differing opinions about where one person's domain starts, and
another's begins. (Vampiric turf wars!)
3rd - Progeny - You can't create other vamps w/o permission (from your
elder or prince). Violation results in death of progeny and sire.
4th - The Accounting - until your progeny have been released, their screw ups
are on your head.
5th - Hospitality - Out of respect for another's domain, when you arrive at a
new city, you must present yourself (to the prince usually). If you are
not accepted/acknowledge, you are nothing.
6th - Destruction - Destroying a fellow vampire is forbidden. Only the elder
vamps may call Blood Hunts.

Along with the 6th tradition, there is something else that goes with that -
Diablerie - draining a vampire dry of all blood AND essence (which in white
wolf's world makes you more powerful. Neat concept, eh?) Diablerie is
frowned upon, and committing this heinous act will taint your aura.

Elysium - portions of the Prince's domain that are free of violence. (think
Holy Ground in Highlander) - No violence allowed. OFten times these
are art museums and such.

That's basically the fundamental concepts that can help give your kindred
society in your game world some structure. There is some more nice material
to help out with this - Some nice concepts on what ghouls are, blood bonds
(like essence drain addiction), and what RP effects they might have.
There is also more material on politcal bodies like the Primogen
Council (advisors to the Prince of a city), Justicars (Judges in the
vampiric criminal justice system), Archons (minions of the Justicars), etc..

As for the Mages, it's more difficult. However, from a cultural aspect,
here are some ideas that have influenced (or will influence our games.)
A) Initiate groups are not just magically actives - Note that it only
costs 3 points of karma to join the group. In our game, we allow mortals
who are "morally/spiritually" alligned to a group's cause to join. In the
Mage system, people like this are often considered Acolytes, or Consors -
basically servents of the mages. I think this facet is overlooked in
a lot of SR campaigns.

B) Just as the Vampires have Clans, the Mages have "Traditions (or groups.)"
Anyway, some of the groups conceptually fit very well into the SR world.
For instance - the Syndicate - a broad group of people devoted to making
money and amassing power. Several of these exist in SR - Mafia, Yakuza,
Triads, etc... In Mage, the magically actives in each of these groups
would probably all be "syndicate" mages - part of the same machine.
But in SR, I would allow "syndicate" style initate groups for each major
group - Yakuza, Mafia, etc... The point is not to map Mage's "syndicate"
into SR. Just to use the concept of it to strengthen the theme in the SR
world.

The Akashic Brotherhood (martial artists) have given me some ideas for
Physical adept initiate groups.

Overall though, SR's magic system is pretty well developed. I just don't
need as much help in this area defining a society. There are three books
on magic in SR. How many books are there on Vampires?

One other system where White Wolf's ideas can help is "Werewolf." I
actually hated Werewolf when it came out. White Wolf went from "Check out
our vampires - gothic, full of angst, a cool origin story and gameworld."
to Werewolf and said "Check out our werewolves - Nature's
immune system." After "V:tM", I could only look at Werewolf, scratch my
head,
and say "What the F?????" :) However, some of Whitewolf's ideas for werewolves
make sense.

Basically - it comes down to this. Nature is being corrupted - Gaia is
being destroyed. Werewolves are fighting a war (the Apocolypse) against
the forces destroying nature. As such, they are combat monsters. Werewolves
have different tribes, that have preferences for habitat, etc.. Another
interesting system are ideas for how the phase of a moon a were was
born under affects him. Some neat ideas there.

Take that and look at SR were's. Combat masters. Gee, there's one thing
in common. ;) The idea of phases of the moon affecting them a little more
than what it does in SR seems like a fun RP thing. I'll be looking more into
that myself.

There is one last area where White Wolf's system helps SR in a very
positive way, and this is something I'd advise most GM's to consider. It's
the
concept of Nature and Demeanor. You're Nature is your true self. Your
Demeanor is how other's perceive you. White Wolf has a pretty comprehensive
list of these in most of their main rulebooks. What we did is we had
each person pick one of the descriptions for Nature and Demeanor that
best fit their character. Then we had a category on our Karma Sheet for
called "Demeanor." If we thought people conformed to their demeanor, they
received a Karmic reward for it. If you're looking for a mechanism to help
give people guideposts by which to rp their characters, this is an excellent
mechanism, imo. :) (This was my old GM's idea. It worked great!)

That's about it. Sorry this got long, and I hope it is of some interest
to the list. And just to make sure the message is clear, the only ideas
and concepts that I've been intersted in brining over to SR myself are
the ideas that enhance roleplay. I'm not interested in merging the
two systems from any sort of mechanics perspective. I dont want my players
looking at my game world and saying "Gee. It's World of Darkness w/
SR mechanics. If they see a few things I borrowed, that's okay. But really,
I want to play SR. But as the frequent discussions here point out often,
nothing's perfect, especially Book Rule Shadowrun. :)

To answer you original question, Erik, the two books I'd reccommend are
Vampire: The Masquerade, and Werewolf: The Apocolypse. If you'd like
to look at Mage stuff, that's a bit more difficult. The main "Mage: The
Acension"book will get you pointed in the right direction. I personally
found the various mage factions interesting, so you may want to peruse the
tradition books (short 30-50 page books that cover the various factions in
detail).

There is one last book from the World of Darkness I'd reccommend to any gamer.
Destiny's Price - it's a mage book. But it has a very gritty and raw
depiction of life on the streets. And what's more, there is a one page
RANT/DIATRIBE on "What is Street Wise?" that anyone playing a SR character
w/ Street Ettiquette should read.

Cobra had some good insights about some other things the systems can
offer as well. Paul Gettle mentioned the V:tM CD-ROM (I didn't know
about that. Thanks Paul!)

Hope this helps.

-Rob

From:	Fade <runefo@***.UIO.NO>
Subject:	Re: Vampires ( & Mages )
Date:	Tue, 5 May 1998 06:05:18 +0000

Message no. 6 > Okay, I don't know much about White Wolf's games and truthfully, don't
> really care.
The rules lend a lot from Shadowrun, in case you ever want to try.
(Shadowrun is listed among the inspirational sources).

> BUT it was mentioned by Robert Nessius earlier that he used several items
> from that gaming series to provide culture references for Shadowrun,
> specifically mentioning Vampire and Mage.
Think I remember something like that, yes.

> I'm somewhat curious to tell the truth now. If I were only to purchase one
> book for Vampire info and one book for Mage info, what should I buy?
> Especially if I didn't want to deal with a lot of game mechanics nonsense,
> just background materials that could be mined for Shadowrun purposes.

Mage is drastically different from Shadowrun - magic is hidden,
practitioners is hunted by some dark cabals, the only limit on mages'
power is Paradox. Vampire is a lot easier to incorporate into
shadowrun - it would involve little or no change in game material.
(Unless you wanted to copy the game system as well.... could be done,
as it's similar, but probably not necessary.). In either case, most
of what you need is in the main rule book(s).

The most interesting idea in Vampire, in regard to shadowrun, is that
each skill test is from a *combination* of skill and attribute.
Translated to shadowrun - weightlifting would be (str+athletics)
dice, sprinting would be quickness+athletics, a normal firearms test
would be quickness+firearms, while marksmanship/sniping might be
intelligence + firearms. It would be interesting to use something
akin to that in SR, but it would have to be a new edition - it's too
big a change for just 'modifying' the system.

--
Fade

And the Prince of Lies said:
"To reign is worth ambition, though in Hell:
Better to reign in hell than to serve in heaven."
-John Milton, Paradise Lost

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