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Saturday, November 9, 2013

Vampire 30-Day Challenge: Favorite Scene/Location

Vampire 30-Day Challenge : Favorite Scene/Location
I would still have to give this to Giovanni Chronicles I, The Last Supper, when the players discover the true nature of the event they have been invited to at the Red Lamb Inn.  As Marianna is brought in with the clamp around her throat and the tap engaged, the players learn the horrific truth of what role they are to play in the dinner with the elders.

Yes, it is campy and rail-roady now.  But back then, it was a masterful stroke that caught most players off-guard.  Most vampire games would have the players start by playing what is called the "Prelude" where they meet their Sire and experience the Embrace.  In Giovanni Chronicles, what began as a Prelude turns instead into a horrible nightmare where the players realize their characters are meant to be the food for the Elders who had been given them as personalized feeding treats.  Only the timely arrival of Raphael de Corazon and the rest of the Founders forces the Conspiracy of Isaac to embrace the player characters and leave them to buy time for their escape.

So the player discover they were not meant to be embraced at all, and now are embraced with the blood of Elders in their veins, and stand before the very group that will found the Camarilla who see them as threats and tools best kept on a tight leash.

It epitomized for me the tragedy of Vampire's Dark Ages.  It was a time where great power was easier to grasp, but the social chains of prestation, status and the three pillars of society pounded the vampires down to pawns nonetheless.

I still fondly recall the players back then, using the "holes in the back of their napes" as the small means to check if the other was indeed their ally or just someone masquerading as them.  It was a detail none save them, if not the Conspiracy of Isaac would recall.


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