House Rules
Setting Though we use the third edition Vampire: The Masquerade rules, we do not use any of the third edition metaplot in our game. The Week of Nightmares never happened, the Ravnos, Assamites and Gangrel are unchanged from second edition, and the Malkavians do not use Dementation, or have access to the Malkavian Madness Network. Any questions on setting can be forwarded to #gamehelp.
Canon When there is no storyteller available, refer to the canon White Wolf material (especially in the 3rd edition Core Rules book) for any rules issues, except for those rules which have been modified for our game, and laid out on this page. Understand that as Storytellers we will often go outside of White Wolf cannon for rules, setting and flavor, and that nine times out of ten it is completely intentional.
Combat Combat must always be run by a storyteller. Under no circumstances may you engage in any sort of combat without the guidance of a storyteller. If no storyteller is present, a scene which involves combat must freeze and await storyteller presence. For a full list of combat rules click here.
“Fitting” the Game Our World of Darkness contains content which may be unacceptable for consumption by minors. The ESRB would likely rate our game “M”, and the MPAA “R” for it’s content. For this reason, we cannot allow any players under the age of 16 to participate. The World of Darkness that we present is a game of personal horror, violence and intrigue. In the WoD, even the most innocuous things tend to take on a somewhat more sinister shade, even if it isn’t obvious at first. When you roleplay, try to keep this in consideration as overly cheerful and happy things (or characters) tend to stand out, which is the opposite of what survival minded Vampires do.
City Lore We have an additional secondary knowledge skill which is very important to the game. New Marseilles is a city of secrets, and many elders and inquiring minds have studied this hotly contested city in the frozen corner of nowhere, wondering what the big deal is. To deal with this, we have created the ‘city lore’ knowledge, which gauges how much you know about New Marseilles. Characters who are from the greater New Marseilles metropolitan area, or who have resided in the area for a long time in their backstory may take one point in this knowledge for free upon creation, pending approval by the storytellers. Further progression in this stat will require research and uncovering the secrets of the city through roleplay.
Obfuscate You cannot use a cellular phone or similar SMS device in obfuscate. Sending a text message, or any other kind of electronic message while in obfuscate will force you to drop it, and expose yourself.
The use of personal electronic devices such as cameras to catch users in obfuscate will not work normally, if you are videotaping a room, and an individual in obfuscate is present, their mind trick will effect you while you film – you will not notice them, even through the lens of the camera. However, if you review the film later and the user of obfuscate is not present, their image will show up on film. It’s not that the camera does not see them while you film, it’s just that the mind trick causes you to overlook them while you are in their presence.
Fortitude Fortitude grants automatic successes on soak rolls for lethal and bashing equal to your fortitude rating, instead of extra dice to soak. A character with fortitude 3 will have 3 successes guaranteed against lethal and bashing attacks before he or she ever rolls stamina. Fortitude still gives you soak dice for aggravated damage. A character with fortitude 2 has 2 dice to soak aggravated damage.
Name Tags The following tags must be applied to your nick when appropriate:
player_ast: Auspex 5 – Astral form.
player_dsg: A disguise. Please have the description of your disguise ready, or alter your description file to reflect how your character looks.
player_hdn: Hidden.
player_msk: Obfuscate 3, Mask of 1000 Faces. Follow the same guidelines for disguises.
player_obf: Obfuscated individuals.
Please add the number of successes you rolled on your disguise and/or hiding roll when using the _dsg and _hdn commands. (Example: John_dsg3 – John rolled three successes on his disguise roll.)
“Netiquette” Spelling and Grammar – Always use correct spelling, punctuation and grammar to within the best of your ability while in character – if necessary lay your posts out in MS word, or another program which can check your spelling before you post.
Colors – Do not use color tags. The only colors we should see are black for plain text, and the default color your IRC client displays when the /me command is used for actions. It confuses other players, makes text impossible to read for some people with different colored backgrounds, or who use other IRC clients, and makes our logs harder to read. Please be considerate of your fellow players and staff and turn your color scripts off.
Fade to Black – While we do not deny that the content of our game is for mature players and that grotesque and/or explicit events can and will happen in the course of our game (which we will make no effort to control), there is however a limit to how much of this we, as storytellers, wish to read. Because of this, there is a simple guideline regarding the sexually explicit: Fade to Black, please. If you and another player are going to engage in a sexually explicit scene, please post ::Fade to Black:: (FtB) and take the scene to a PM — away from the ever present eyes of Myrmidon.
Travel Time and Entrance Channels Every indoor location in the game has an ‘entrance channel’. What this means is that New Marseilles’s is a real location with real paths to get places. You could not, for instance, simply join #cottonclub when you’re ready to play for the night, if that’s your chosen destination. The Cotton Club is located on George Street, and as such you have to join #georgest first, then leave and join #cottonclub to allow players to catch you going in or out. By the same token, you cannot warp around the city. When leaving one location for another, please take a short break if you are not roleplaying your trip in a private channel with a friend. A few minutes should do. Do not immediately join another channel if your character would have to drive or walk a distance beyond a block or two. Entrance channels are listed for every indoor location in their channel description, and a map is available on the (setting page) to give you a better idea of where things are located in relation to each other in the city.
Phone calls When making phone calls, you must have the other party’s phone number in character – you cannot call somebody who’s telephone number you have not gotten by some machinations in character. To place a telephone call, you must check the channel description to be sure cell phone service is available in your area (providing you aren’t using a land line). Send a query (private message) to the player you’re calling that denotes their telephone is ringing. All words spoken into the phone should be denoted with a <p> tag, for example: “<John> <p> Hey, what’s up?”. If you are in a channel with other characters in it, you must paste your half of the conversation into the channel as well, because other characters can still hear what you are saying into the phone while you are present. Calling people without knowing their telephone number, calling when you have no service, and not running your call in an IC channel while you’re present in one are all forms of cheating.
**NO CELLPHONE SERVICE** New Marseilles has notoriously inconsistent cell phone service, and to reflect that, we have a notification that the bot randomly rotates through channels which states ‘no cellphone service’, appending it to the channel topic. Before placing a phone call while in a channel, refer to the channel topic. If there is no service, you may not place a call or receive one. If you are in the middle of a call when the topic changes to reflect no service, you must inform the other party that the call has dropped, and roleplay accordingly.
Foreign Language We understand that for flavor, you may choose to say certain common phrases in the correct language they appear. (For instance, an Italian character greeting friends with ‘Ciao!’), however – anything more complex than simple greetings spoken in other languages must be posted with language tags. Example: “<John> <Irish Gaelic> Looks like rain.” You may only post in languages that are listed on your sheet with the linguistics knowledge, and you may not roleplay understanding, or use knowledge gained from reading posts made by other players in a language you do not know.
Characters with a Linguistics skill 3 or higher, or the Natural Linguist merit may make a roll of Intelligence + Linguistics difficulty 8 to understand a language that is being spoken but is not on their sheet. See a Storyteller in #gamehelp if you believe one of the languages you speak would call for a lower difficulty than 8 – for instance, understanding Spanish when you speak Italian, or Japanese and Korean. If no ST is available, default to difficulty 8 always.
Quiet Speaking To lower one’s voice, use the whisper tag “<w>”. Other characters not using Auspex, or who are too far away should react appropriately to a whispering party. Squinting, looking annoyed at the private talk and moving closer are all appropriate, acting like you heard the whisper from 20 feet away is not.