Heartland Orphans: Retrospective

Another campaign, another retrospective. With my Vampire: the Requiem Chronicle complete, it is time to look back and see what worked, what didn’t, what was my fault and what I felt the system could do better.

Retrospective: Vampire the Requiem

The System

Overall I liked the system but It felt like it was written for a younger version of me, one more interested in crunchy mechanics and less interested in streamlining the overall experience. As I get older, I increasingly feel the desire to simplify and condense rules. While the second edition of Vampire the Requiem does remove some unused parts of first edition, overall it is a step away from that. The addition of Tilts, Conditions, and new options to replace the old just makes the game feel more cluttered to me.

On the plus side, I really loved the interplay between Frenzy, Humanity and Touchstones. Avoiding Frenzy imposes of penalties to future resistance rolls to avoid it as the Beast gains strength each time it is denied. Interacting with your Touchstone can eliminate that penalty (as can giving in). Holding onto Humanity requires these mortal connections, both to avoid Frenzy and as a bulkwork when you distance yourself from normal humans (whether that be murder or simply living too long). My earlier reservations about the Humanity system were less pressing in play. I wish I could’ve done more with this system.

I found the vampiric Disciplines much stronger than first edition and that was a good thing. Even starting vampires could mesmerize mortals, shapeshift to a limited extent and otherwise exceed mortal capabilities. It made them seem powerful, even if they only had a few more dots on their sheets.

Advancement also worked out better than I expected. I gave out almost an Experience a session so by the end of the game my players were maxing out their in clan disciplines and becoming movers and shakers. And again, I feel that is a good thing.

On the negative side, Conditions feel too unnatural for me. Similar to how I felt about Fate, handing out a Condition with its carrot and stick mechanics takes me out of the game in a way that saying “you have a -2 penalty to combat rolls due to fear” doesn’t. It looks like a great system on paper but in play I find it jarring.

I also dislike the lack of player facing rolls for things like perception and stealth. The less rolling I do the better. In particular I hate rolling for NPC vs. NPC actions. I keep wanting things to work like in Apocalypse World and GUMSHOE, with the players doing most of the rolling except perhaps in cases of direct conflict (like a grapple).

The Group

The true purpose of this game however was not to evaluate Vampire: the Requiem but to recruit a new gaming group.

On that score it worked great. I have two new regulars with the flakes sifted out.

I also worked out their strengths and weaknesses which should make future games work better. They are great roleplayers and good at creating backstory. They probably need help when dealing with complicated mysteries but seem interested in them. I think tighter involvement/collaboration might fix that. For now I plan to keep the mysteries simple in terms of the numbers of clues and actors.

Personal Lessons

For me as a gamemaster, I again discovered that I need to make a tighter cast. I barely used half of my NPCs. It’s something I need to work harder on. At least I kept the characters distinctive enough this time that people remembered who was who.

My next Chronicle of Darkness game will also see some hacks to the rules. There will be more player facing rolls. Skills might be altered to follow the GUMSHOE format. Unused mechanics will be dropped (like Lashing Out which I used twice both with an NPC).