Getting Started

Introduction

Well, this guide is written for you, and the earlier sections will be of more use.

Alternatively, you might simply see this as an expanded freeform campaign with a number of different gaming components. You're very familiar with "World of Darkness", and the website for this game either looks wrong or has some different ideas. But you'll try anything once.

Well, this guide is written for you too, but you'll need to pay more attention to the later stuff. What is it all about? Chains of Steel is a role-playing setting. It's a role-playing setting for White Wolf's game, Vampire: the Masquerade. All the tenets of role-playing hold true. You play a character, that character has hopes and dreams, has friends and enemies, strengths and weaknesses. We play a largely free form game which means that we don't do a lot with statistics, so in some ways what we do might seem artificial. However, the benefit of this is that the statistics will never get in the way of the role-playing.

Some people play in the game world as they would in any 'regular' Vampire game. That is, four or five people meet up and sit round the table, throwing dice and playing the vampire game. Some of the NPCs in their games might be important nationally, and it is possible that edicts from 'on high' will come down and affect them - and vis versa. At the end of the day though, nothing new.

Some people play in the game world 'live'. They dress up as their character and interact with the others. The same sort of challenges and problems as for a table top group, but with no dice to hide behind. As before, edicts from 'on high' can come down and effect the characters. With the live games though, we do try and put them on when there is a need for them; however, anyone can decide to run something live, feed the results back into the world, and then see how everything moves from there.

Some people play in the game world over email. They send email messages to eachother in and out of character, either directly to other characters or to a central mailing list. These mails tend to galvanise into plot that then feeds into the live games. The mailing lists provide continuity in the world. This might be something new. Experienced role-players might not have tried play by email.

Some people do all of the above, plot in the pub, have dreams in character and all sorts of other things that I don't want to consider.

The most important point to take from this section is that this game is just a role-playing setting. It does have a few more players, we do play at a 'higher' level in the main - by this I mean characters are not struggling with humanity, or hunting; they are struggling with being a Prince and dealing with other Princes. Try not to be overwhelmed by how much is going on. That part of the game comes in time.

At the end of the day, this is a game and it is for fun

Your character

Local or National?

A 'national' game, or rather 'the national' game is where this guide is aimed. It assumes that you are playing a character that is looking for influence and power nationally. In the Camarilla, you are probably a Prince. You have 'people' to worry about breaches in your Elysium; but you are looking probably to be as important nationally as you possibly can be. So, yes… topple the opposition….

The guide is not focused on local characters, although it does detail the world in which they live…

A National Character

So, you need to have a character. How do you get one. Just about all of the princes in the game world came to prominence after the great fire of London. (Read the campaign background later for why this might be!). They are all between 7th and 9th generation, with a few at 6th generation. They are from the core seven clans. [There is a writer's reason for this - I tend to bring in members of the non core clans at times of 'great change'. That's not to say that we don't allow independents, more that they are very rare indeed].

Now the most important bit. The background. For this we need two bits of prose. One is a short paragraph or two with some common knowledge on your character. This will go on the website and people will be able to look at it to get an idea of who your character is. The other is something more detailed, used by yourself and the refs. It contains details on where your character has come from, what he wants to do, how he has got to where he is, anything that would appear in a regular role-playing background. You can write as much as you like for this. Some players have fifty pages of background. Some a side or two.

Finally a few details are needed - Princes need a city to live in, Anarchs need a place to shout from. The refs will sort you out with a city. Then it's a case of looking up your status traits and away you go.

You will notice that I have not mentioned statistics. This is because we are looking to focus on the role-playing and storytelling aspects rather than who has the highest protean score. Diablerie is wrong, an abhorrence, rather than something that forces a frenzy check after stage four has completed…

Playing the Game - Your first Message

Your first message should announce to the world that you are there, and that people can send stuff to you. One thing to bear in mind is that you will be becoming active in a world that has already undergone a lot of development. Whilst we try to keep the campaign backgrounds up to date, the game is of sufficient size to make keeping all background up to date difficult. There is always the message archive though, and I'll come to that shortly. That's the game. We send speeches to eachother. We also dress up as our characters and sometimes chuck some dice. The game is big, but you can always ask the refs for help!