Vampire 30-Day Challenge : Best DM I've Had

Vampire 30-Day Challenge : Best DM I've Had

I have not been a player that much in my life.  From my first game under those seniors in the school bus, to my first few games with my brother Mike, and cousin Arjay, as we explored Marvel Super Heroes, and misunderstood the Dungeons and Dragons boxed sets, to eventually my games with the neighborhood friends (Oliver, Rommel, Quincy, and Ryan) who allowed me to join their ongoing Forgotten Realms campaign as Shel Downwind, female Paladin of Tymora, then the many other games using Macross, Robotech, Star Frontiers, Top Secret, and such, to the games with schoolmates that included a Legionnaires game using the D.C. Heroes MEGS system, the various White Wolf games, and those odd few LARP sessions, I actually don't have that huge a pool of Dungeon Masters to choose from as my favorite one.

I would like to say Adrian Martinez.
A great friend of mine whose passion for gaming is paralleled by only a handful of people I personally know.  He is a gifted storyteller who understands the intricacies of theater and story and yet knows how to balance drama and character with drive and passion.  Sadly, I have not had more than a single game session under him due to the fact that in many events we usually are both running games for other people.  And worse, I haven't been able to game with him again since... personal events severed some ties.  Rocky and I still hope to hear from him again someday, and hope to rekindle the gaming flames once again in some near future time.


Thus the honor goes to the GM who made a HUGE difference to my gaming life: Ryan Mendoza.    
Ryan is my childhood gaming GM, my friend, and a huge inspiration and motivator to my gaming life.  It was he who let me portray that female Paladin and break the ice with a new group of friends I did not even know back then.  He was the one who pushed me to try running games as well. He was the one who taught me to learn to just run a game as a GM and to stop getting too worried about having to know everything down to the smallest detail.  He was the guy behind me who gave me the thumbs up whenever I'd run darker games and remind me to enjoy the darkness every now and then.

Currently, Ryan is headlong in a freefall dive for his other huge love, making comic books.    If you want to check out his stuff, take a peek at Shuriken Studio and check out his comic book: Weird Cases Volume 1: Matt Loner and The Shadows of Eden.

Thank you, Ryan.

Vampire 30-Day Challenge : Favorite Supplement

Vampire 30-Day Challenge : Favorite Supplement

Without repeating stuff I've already named in previous Day Challenges, I would then cite the Days of Fire online tickler as my favorite "Supplement" to the Vampire game.  The online tickler was present on the www.white-wolf.com website way back when the game line was about to close with the Days of Judgement line of books.  I actually "saved" the tickler (and added a few of my own entries) here cause back when it came out, I ran a series of end of the World of Darkness games for various groups and used the tickler to help them feel like their actions were making a difference (or at least getting noticed).

But yeah that was a lovely add-on to the game which really helped push the immersive quality and horror of the World of Darkness to the sessions.   I am still excited to see more alternate forms of supplements that will come out to enhance games.  Hunter, for example, had a series of modules called The Collection of Horrors which included audio clips to enhance the game.  Some games like The Bell (Flying Monkeys) come with an awesome soundtrack to make the games more fun.  I feel we can say goodbye to the days when only other published books count as supplements to the games we love.

Vampire 30-Day Challenge : Character I Will Never Play Ever Again

Day 28-A character you will never play ever again

I will answer this with a very brief sentence.

I will never ever play again characters who are insulting cultural stereotypes just for laughs.

And I do hope if I do slip in this promise, since sometimes one does embrace stereotypes to make character tropes more easily identifiable, if any players feel offended or uncomfortable by that portrayal, they will tell me immediately so I make the proper corrections.

Vampire 30-Day Challenge : Character You Want to Play In the Future

Vampire 30-Day Challenge : Character You Want to Play In the Future

Hmm this is a toughie for me given as the Storyteller in practically all the White Wolf games I've been in, I get to pretty much "play" anyone I want.  But if I were, in any recent time, told to be a player and could play anyone I wanted, I would ask for the joy of having a game start in the Dark Ages, and be given the chance to actually play a character based on River Song of Doctor Who.  I would love to be a temporally displaced character who (maybe due to True Magick going awry, or some Thaumaturgical ritual going wild, or maybe even some True Brujah cursing me with Temporis) keeps appearing or coming to consciousness in various timelines of the World of Darkness and having to survive each "jump."

For that game, I would probably fashion my River Song as a Malkavian, just so she already can cope with the madness of not really having a "permanent life" to hold on to.  She's be loaded with Auspex, Dementation and a touch of Celerity to survive her jaunts and I would probably have her less concerned about her survival and more excited over the chance to see the world in so many ways because prior to what was happening to her, she was just a blue-collar worker in some city who got attacked by some hungry Kooks and left to die in the street.

River Song in the World of Darkness.
And a chance to visit all the cool metaplot moments.
To be there in the fall of Constantinople.  To see the forging of the Camarilla.  To witness the death of Cappadocious*.  To be friends with Tremere before he tries the ritual.  To bear the sight of the cause of the Week of Nightmares.  To stare back at the Red Star.   To hear the Crone whisper to Caine's ear...
That would just be wonderful.

I can imagine her appearing in 1444, at the Convention of Thorns, and as she learns of what will transpire there, Rafael de Corazon would probably notice her whimsical smile and ask her of her opinion regarding whether or not the Masquerade would work.

And she would answer one single word before vanishing to another time line.

"Spoilers..."

Vampire 30-Day Challenge : Day 26-Favorite Discipline

Vampire 30-Day Challenge : Day 26-Favorite Discipline

I will have to reply to this with two answers.  Yes, I am cheating, but hey it is my blog.

First, let me choose among the basic Disciplines available, and by basic I meant what typically is permitted during Character Creation in a Camarilla game.  If it were what I would want to play with in the game, that would be Presence.  The sheer drama of it all was just lovely.  The ability to sway people even before you speak was just delicious.  The dark touch of creating passions and bonds without even letting them taste you blood was wicked, and let's face it, few would even resist an offer to taste you blood after a few touches of Presence.    And most importantly, the "vampiric pager" called Summon.  To be able to emotionally reach out and say, "[Enter name here] come to me now." and they feel it?  Just badass and cool.  I love it!  Dominate had too many setbacks to limit it, from Generational differences to not having eye-contact or being unable to speak the target's language.  Presence achieved more with a smile.  And yes, while it could be unpredictable, it did keep your servants and pawns from becoming mindless followers.

Among all Disciplines offered, though, I would have to switch to Auspex as the most useful, most efficient, and most dangerous discipline out there.   Being able to sense, to see, to know, and at even later stages, to HURT without physically doing something was an advantage that was hard to compete against.  While Obfuscate was just as fun, Auspex was useful whether or not you were alone or with others.

Many of the more unique Disciplines like Obtenebration, Vicissitude, Daimonion, etc had nice moments, but they did not feel as comprehensively conceptualized the way Auspex was.    I loved having NPCs who used it, and I loved it when the players were able to capitalize on it to get more information and clues to have an edge over their opponents.

I would give my left kidney to have real-world Auspex powers from 1-8.

Vampire 30-Day Challenge : Favorite McGuffin

Vampire 30-Day Challenge : Favorite McGuffin

Clearly this would be the Book of Nod.  Vampire was rich in its mythology, and in my games the Book of Nod was a delicious artifact to have in the game itself for players to learn about, fight over, struggle to keep or destroy, and have present as a key point in a story arc or two.  The Book of Nod supposedly was penned to contain the very thoughts and words of Caine himself as he spoke of his experiences and visions.  It was like, the vampiric Bible so to speak.

I feel bad, however, that the actual Book of Nod published by White Wolf wasn't that intense.  Neither was the other companion piece, The Erciyes Fragments.  Both, while very nicely written, had far too many art pieces that were clearly of the modern slant.  A better approach to the book was how they did The Chronicles of the Black Labyrinth for werewolf which was written with lots of dark lore, and illustrated to look like those old wood-cut artwork as well.

I liked though the Book of Nod as a concept and I loved sharing players fragments of the actual passages in the book as we played.  Back then, players weren't quite clear how many Antedeluvians really existed, nor what Clans and Bloodlines existed during the Second City and so on.  So to share passages from the book felt awesome for the players.  It was a sense of discovery that sadly will be hard to repeat now in a time when a quick Google Search can reveal so much material that used to be stuff that was fun to learn in-game.

Vampire 30-Day Challenge : Favorite Background

Vampire 30-Day Challenge : Favorite Background
My good friend Jay Dugger got to answer this question far sooner than I did, and it probably is the only question we actually matched when it came to the answer.   The answer would be HERD.

Vampire (both Masquerade and Dark Ages) had players portraying monsters that preyed upon the living for their eternal existence.  The very act of hunting and feeding were both actions that held so much story potential and allowed a good deal of story exploration.  Simply feeding on that vagabond in the dark alley was an action that could cost you some of your dwindling humanitas.  Or perhaps challenged you to find ways to accomplish it without either killing your target, or getting noticed by others.

The Herd background offered players a respite from having to come up with ways to feed, which was important when one considered the fact that a vampire lost one Blood Point per night.  To ensure you had enough vitae in your system to fuel your Disciplines and recover from natural and supernatural injuries was paramount to extending one's unlife.  With Herd, you merely needed to come up with one reason a bunch of people were willing to let you feed, and this reason became an easy explanation to how you'd "fuel up" for the next game session.

But more than that, the Herd background meant the player had to consider what manner of preparations, lies or techniques he had embraced to create this little motley of people that were willing to let some monster drink their blood.  Were they groupies totally in love with the vampire who would fail to notice the blood loss during bouts of rough sex?  Were they religious nutcases who were misled to believe feeding from them was an act of absolving them of their sins?  Were there members of an extended family that had sworn to help the vampire for the acts of kindness the Cainite had show during the years of their great grandparents?  Herd just opened the doors to even more avenues to narrative potential and story development.

Vampire 30-Day Challenge : Least Favorite Entity Over-all

Vampire 30-Day Challenge : Least Favorite Entity Over-all

Given the various things in the World of Darkness, I think the one I should vote for my least favorite entity would be the Garou.  I really liked the idea of making werewolves something far more than just cursed victims of a werewolf attack.  But I wasn't too keen on the weird Greenpeace-sort of heroes they were made to be.    I was inspired by the idea of them being the anti-bodies of the world itself, given their duties by the Wyld to hunt down the wicked and insidious agents of the Wyrm.  I liked how the world was struggling against a supernatural disease and it had no choice but to pull unsuspecting people into the battle.

Some tribes explored the unwilling hero concept.  Others celebrated their heroic roles as a reason to be proud and focused.  The variety it offered was pretty interesting!  But when the books seems to explore the Wyrm as some kind of pollution monster, the excitement started to wane.  The animism approach was interesting for me, but to tie it into environmentalism kinda turned me off.

And I will confess to being turned off as well due to how the community approached the Garou concept.  I know I am over-generalizing, but the majority of Werewolf fans I met seemed to just see the thrill of uber violent combat as the draw of the game, instead of the meta-physical and philosophical concepts that could be explored.

So sorry, but the Garou would be the creatures that I'd ignore from the World of Darkness.  I'd actually rather explore a game with Souleaters than them.

Vampire 30-Day Challenge : Favorite Entity Over-all

Vampire 30-Day Challenge : Favorite Entity Over-all

Given the whole foray of various World of Darkness things out there that stalk mortals and seek to accomplish their own goals, if I had only one single entity to choose in the entire World of Darkness line, it would unfortunately be something that is not part of the Vampire the Masquerade line.  Instead, it is the darker opposition that exists in every Wraith: The Oblivion game:  The Shadow.

The Shadow is the literal darker half of every living being that existed, given strength and sentience when a mortal dies and finds himself trapped in the Shadowlands as a ghost among the Quick.  The Shadow is the side of you that you never wanted to face.  The Shadow is the part of you that you wished did not exist.  The Shadow whispers, screams, demands, pleads, seduces, tricks, depending on what archetype it is and worst of all, the Shadow cannot be severed from you for the better.  It can, however, eventually untangle itself from you, and with its full autonomy devote itself into making your life an even greater living hell.

And the best part?

The Shadow is meant to be portrayed by another player at the table.  In our few Wraith games, those who portrayed the shadow had a mask to hold up and wear when they spoke at it, so it was very clear to all those concerned if the Shadow was whispering at that time.  Man, the Shadow even had these awesome powers (called Thorns) which allowed the Shadow-player to literally throw temptation and lures at the other player.  These ranged from information, to extra dice, to new powers.

Wicked.

Vampire 30-Day Challenge : Favorite Methuselah

Vampire 30-Day Challenge : Favorite Methuselah

Among the many interesting characters that graced the various Vampire books, the Toreador Mi-ka-il was one of the elders who caught my fancy.   The vampire saw himself as a literal archangel and held a fantastic dream for the Cainites of the city of Constantinople.    This dream was a perfect paradise where vampires would gain spiritual attainment and it was a dream he did not carry alone.  The Ventrue Antonius the Gaul and the Tzimise Dracon both supported this vast dream and each of them became parts of what was to be called The Trinity (with Mi-ka-il himself being the Father, Antonius the Son and Dracon the Holy Spirit).

This was a dream that would not come to pass.

So great was the Methuselah's Presence that to all who looked, he appeared as a living being of illuminated glowing stained-glass.  A pity he was an Archangel that would fall from grace too soon.  Besther, as Mi-ka-il was once named, would find no safely in his subterranean haven (an underground copy of the dome of Hagia Sophia) and would eventually find Final Death from the fangs of a Baali called Mary the Black.

Vampire 30-Day Challenge : Favorite Other Entity (Changeling)

Vampire 30-Day Challenge : Favorite Other Entity (Changeling)

Now this is a challenge.   While in the other entries it was more of "who do I remember?" for Changeling it more a matter of who do I choose?  I loved the Changeling line so much for the characters and personalities they offered and I have to admit this question is hard for me to decide upon.   Given the need to give an answer, I will cheat and name the ones I loved in no-particular order.

Queen Mab
Oh you glamour-filled bitch.  I loved how you were such a force to be reckoned with in Changeling the Dreaming.  I loved how you watched over the Kingdom of Apples, even with Goblin Town there in its shadow.  And I love how you cared for David, regardless of how things were, and more so even after he chose an Eiluned wife and vanished.

David Ardry
A true tragic hero, with a sword that sought him out like a loyal dog.  David was wonderfully written to have just enough dimension for a Storyteller to develop into a great character.  His love for his wife, Faerylith, was commendable, and his tragic destiny under King Meilge's plan was just... such an experience to uncover as a player.

King Meilge
A fantastic villain worthy to spar with the Oathcircle.  The power of his Mask and the depth of his deception was a delicious threat to throw at the players.  His ambition was wonderfully matched with his pride and in the end, I love how his care for faerylith could lead to his undoing.

And finally, Duke Dray.
Love him.
So much.
Once I had him always quoting songs for multiple sessions.  The players thought it was some in-joke that I was doing.

Then on the following session, I sprung the reason:  the songs were an extended bunk to affect another character in the game who was the singer of the songs.  Yeah, I loved portraying his over-the-top villain antics as silly yet purposeful.

Duke Dray.

Vampire 30-Day Challenge : Favorite Other Entity (Wraith)

Vampire 30-Day Challenge : Favorite Other Entity (Wraith)

Wraith remains a "Wish I Could Play/Run It More Often" game system, but given the darkness and morbidity of it, there will always be a huge difficulty in finding players who would appreciate it.  More so the book called Charnel Houses of Europe: The Shoah, which provides a lot of heavy yet factual information as well as game-related stats for those who want to run a game based on the events of the Holocaust.  Clearly this book was controversial for most, given its subject matter, and many even felt such a serious and painful event in history should never be material for a game session.  But for me, games are not just moments to have fun.  They are also opportunities for discussion, exploration and remembrance.     As the book's dedication reads: "This book is dedicated to the survivors of the Holocaust, who have spent 50 years telling their stories. What you hold in your hands is a tribute to their perseverance, and in some small way an attempt to carry on their legacy for the sake of the generations who will never know them. Todah raba."

One character that stood out for me in this book was Nikolai Dimitrius.  Nikolai was one of the soldiers who hoped to find release from the horror of truth of Babi Yar by committing suicide.  Clearly, things would not go that easily for him.    But he was a promising character who showed even among the perpetrators, there existed the chance that some humanity resided within them.  He was a brief beacon of hope in a dark and terrible world.  But even then, he was less a beacon of hope and more a portrait of cowardice.  A display of caring for oneself more than of rising to try to make a difference.  He saved one, but killed himself rather than try to save more.   It was a great portrayal of opposing polarities for me that I wanted to explore.

Vampire 30-Day Challenge: Favorite Other Entity (Mage)

Vampire 30-Day Challenge: Favorite Other Entity (Mage)

Magic has always had its allure and the temptation for greater power will always be there.  Unfortunately, while I loved the mage, I must admit to never really finding the Mage metaplot as interesting.  So I will confess to finding this question harder to answer.

So with out much choices to really choose from there's only one I can cite to represent the Mage I liked.  This would have to be Samuel Haight.  Yes, the infamous shinning example of what ambition and power gaming can bring you is the person I will have to mention here.  Why?  Given how encompassing the Mage line is, with a cosmology that crosses over Werewolf, a vital enemy that resonates with Changelings, a Sphere which renders Wraith their plaything and a history that locks fangs with Vampire, Samuel Haight for me epitomizes the darker and brighter aspects of Mage.

Samuel Haight teaches us to never let anyone else tell you what you can and can't do, then proceeds to complete the lesson by being the universe's biggest douche bag in all of metaplot history.

Thank the gods he ended up as an ashtray in the end.

Vampire 30-Day Challenge: Favorite Other Entity (Werewolf)

Vampire 30-Day Challenge: Favorite Other Entity (Werewolf)

I will admit I was never a huge fan of Werewolf.  I liked the concept, I adored the idea of the Triat and the concept of the Fomori. But I just felt the Werewolves were less about horror and more about super heroism and that admittedly turned me off.

But if I were to choose a Werewolf entity I liked, I would have to give the vote to the Fomori.  Heck, I even ran a few games based on them!  (Sadly only one got recorded.)  But the idea of playing ordinary folks who are irrevocably changed into these disgusting horrors that have awesome abilities was just too cool a concept to ignore.  Among the many stomach-wrenching powers I loved, my first vote will have to go to Stomach Pumper which allowed the player to launch disgusting juices at opponents.    A wicked second place goes to Savage Genitalia which just really was a homage to animated classics such as Urotsukidoji: The Legend of the Overfiend.  Finally, I will always adore the concept of Brain Eating.

The Fomori were disgusting and cruel and I loved how the write ups in the book of examples on how Pentex and its affiliates lured people into the corporation worked.  Granted, there was some concern over the supposed homophobic sections of the book, I found them personally to be appropriate given the book's context and theme.

The Fomori are monsters that truly explore the idea of humanity pushed to its brink.

Vampire 30-Day Challenge: Favorite Other Entity

Vampire 30-Day Challenge: Favorite Other Entity (Mortal)

Okay, this is an interesting twist on the challenge.  My favorite mortal other entity.  By definition, mortal does include werewolves, mages, changelings and the like since they are not immortal characters (compared to mummies, vampires, etc).  However, if one were to use Mortal the way the World of Darkness refers to them, those wouldn't count as well since they are supernatural creatures.

To choose someone who fits BOTH definitions then, I would have to say my choice would be Sullivan Dane.  The vampire hunter featured in the back of Vampire: The Masquerade.  He was classy and dangerous and always wore gloves.  He understood vampires and knew how to use their weaknesses against them.   He was calculating and calm and I liked how he looked.

And you can never go wrong with giving them gloves.

He was like the Terminator when we had him show up in our games.  He understood how to use the environment against the kindred and had immense senses to find advantages where we thought none existed.  He was truly an antagonist worth remembering.

I feel sad he never got transported to the Vampire: The Eternal Struggle.  It would have been cool to have had a Sullivan Dane card, perhaps one who had better abilities than the Muddled Vampire Hunter or Millicent Smith.

Vampire 30-Day Challenge: Favorite Enemy

Vampire 30-Day Challenge: Favorite Enemy
And again, I wrote a post answering a question that had not yet been posted.  So here I go repeating what I wrote previously:

My favorite enemy would be Jadviga Almanov of Bohemia.  The woman is cruel, selfish, devious and deadly.  The woman lies the way humans breathe.  The woman spins facts around with the ease of a potter and concocts plots with the ease of a storyteller (ahem ahem).  I have portrayed her in three different ways given the multiple times we have played Giovanni Chronicles in our group.

The most memorable one that I recall would be when I based her on Anne Bancroft's portrayal of Ms. Dinsmoor in the 1998 Alfonso Cuaron film adaptation of Charles Dickens' Great Expectations with a dash of my favorite Judi Dench.  She was seemingly lost in her thoughts and tended to move into weird tangents while talking to others, but without warning would snap into full predatory focus and remind the vampire of who was the teacher and who was the student in the scenario.

She challenged the players to truly prove their loyalties to their sect, forcing them to turn a blind eye towards their sect's horrible skeletons or challenging them to speak up and take action against their self-appointed leaders.

My personal favorite moment with her, was when she eventually wrapped her strings around a player character so well, he could not help but admit to caring about her as she was the closest thing in the World of Darkness he ever had to a mother.  A true mother.  After all, "She watches and waits, and knows my every moves.  And yet, she berates and insults my every attempt to break free from her.  She is the deepest hatred and the source of my wrath, but without her I would have never been reborn."

He still killed her.  He held her close, kissed her and told her it will all be okay, then held her in place as the sun rose past the horizon and began to burn them both.  And in the tiniest of moments remaining before Final Death came to claim them both, he willed the Earth below him to swallow him up and left her to burn alone in the unforgiving heat.

"Goodbye mother.  Today, I have shown you.  I am no longer the student."

He rises at the return of night and finds her ashes on the ground, near the remains of her darkened ring are scratches on the ground.  He blows against the ashes and they reveal the markings she had left before the flames consumed her completely:   You taught me well today.

Vampire 30-day Challenge: Favorite NPC

Vampire 30-day Challenge: Favorite NPC
Hmm this is a tough one.  There are just so many good characters in the game to choose from.  Then again, we are talking about a game line which has spanned from prehistory to the modern times.   Do I choose Saulot himself, an Antedeluvian whose actions in the past linger all the way to the present and whose machinations unfold to cause terrible things at the dawn of Gehenna?  Do I choose Ambrogino Giovanni whose ambition and tenacity far outweigh those of his contemporaries?  The man who sought to devour God himself and become an omnipotent force in the World of Darkness itself?

What about the ladies?  There's Fatima al Faqadi, the Assamite who breaks the all-male tradition of the Assamite Clan, or Lucita Aragon, Fatima's lover, and the "daughter" of the infamous Ambrosio Moncada who eventually work together to kill the Archbishop for all he had done.

So many to choose from.  So many awesome characters to cite.

My group's favorite would be the infamous Lady Jadviga Almanov of Bohemia, who became even more reviled to the players than Claudius Giovanni himself.  Boy was she a thorn on their side, double crossing the Conspiracy and then double-double crossing the Founders when she had the chance.  She was a Blueblood in more ways than the Ventrue would ever admit, and she was a wicked vile thing that knew how to manipulate even the best Cainite out there.

But I guess I would have to admit that my personal favorite would have to be Anatole.  The Malkavian from the Dark Ages who finds himself glimpsing the machinations of the Antedeluvians long before the rest of the World of Darkness learns to believe in their existence.  His rants and ravings do not go completely unheard of, thankfully, and many Noddists even seek him out for guidance and information.

He eventually pours out everything he could of his visions as a stream-of-consciousness record that covers the walls, floors and ceiling of what will become the location of his Final Death.  This happens at the turn of the millennium just as the coming of Gehenna begins.

Vampire 30-Day Challenge: Favorite Alternate Setting

Vampire 30-Day Challenge: Favorite Alternate Setting
I find this topic to be a bit confusing, since Vampire's line-up was mostly a singular metaplot save for the Gehenna book which offered alternate scenarios.  Unless one takes into account the hint of a cyberpunk Vampire setting hinted at White Wolf's magazine (named White Wolf Magazine).  I suspect, however, the question is intended to suggest that Camarilla is the main setting, then Sabbat, Inconnu, Tal'mahe'Ra and probably even the option to play Ghouls, Gargoyles, minor Bloodlines (Blood Brothers, etc) and Revenant families are the Alternate Settings.

Given that possibility, I will have to say the Sabbat.

I always celebrated the freedom that Sabbat offered, whether it was potential for stories that explored the fine limits of morality, or games that allowed the cathartic release of frustration and anger.  The option for Sabbat games allowed players to be the monsters in the game, or alternately portray the dark heroes that the Camarilla will never truly understand.

Of course, the Sabbat were very broad strokes of the monster spectrum, with selfish demons like Sascha Vykos to the calculating Ambrosio Luis Moncada to the truly monstrous ones like the Little Tailor of Prague.  So players were given a very wide berth of options to explore.

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.

Vampire 30-Day Challenge : Favorite Adventure You Have Ran

Vampire 30-Day Challenge :  Favorite Adventure You Have Ran
Hmm... another challenging post.  Given the many games I've run, if I were to stick to White Wolf, it would be the Changeling multi-chronicle game I had (It spanned three generations of characters).  Some would feel the best adventure I ever ran would be Sacrament, that had four players, and around 13 Lurkers who were non-players but were given information on the game's plot and the freedom to contact the players "in character" whenever they wanted to.  It was a meta-fest that really hit awesome moments. ("Tobie, can I help the players in the scene?  One is texting me to help out."  Me: "Sure, we're playing at [name of venue]. If you can get here in thirty minutes, you're in the game.")

But again, I have to keep the answer Vampire-centric to match the 30-Day challenge theme, so with that in mind, I think I would have to choose:

Giovanni Chronicles.

We just can't get enough of this adventure.  Yes, lots of naysayers out there will cite how rail-roady it is, with unbalanced characters and insane scenes, but in many ways those are the things that make us love it.  The rail-road allows us to explore other avenues without leaving the plot.  The unbalanced characters tells us to stop thinking about "defeating them" and instead allows us to explore interacting with them in various ways.  It is like enjoying a movie you've seen over and over again.  There's always some new angle to discover.  Some new scene to appreciate.  Some new line to throw.

And yes, we do twist things around.  I've had games were Marianna DIES during the Last Supper, and all Marianna scenes later on are attributed to the actions of a player.  I've had a version were all save for three Conspirators were destroyed by the Founders.  This lead to the Conspiracy of Isaac being more ruthless and cruel in their later actions.  I've even had a game where one player ends up the Childe of Ambrogino Giovanni.  Oh yes.  That child would, in the end of that game, diablerize his very own Sire in a bid to claim the Tetragrammaton for himself.

Giovanni Chronicles are such a delight to run.