OWoD chronicle and chronicle plan through May 2013
Members,
After lengthy discussions with the NSTs, review of the survey and employing some of that commentary into the conversations, I am happy to announce the action plan for the chronicles through May 2013.
We will, as I have stated, continue to run all the venues we currently run in the NWoD, with Geist being our newest addition, starting fully in March. The Geist team are working diligently to bring you an exciting and vibrant world in which to explore your PC's and I'm very excited about the new game. I encourage you all to try it!
I will now be talking about the OWoD Venue, then will be covering key data on all venues.
OWoD
We will be adding OWoD Vampire to our suite of options. The tentative plan is to allow cities to decide which (if any) type of vampire game they wish to play (e.g., Camarilla only, Sabbat only, Camarilla and Anarch/Indepdendent, Anarch only, Anarch/Independent/Sabbat). A cities VSS will determine what a city wishes to play. If your city wishes to have more than one OWoD Venue (Cam/Anarch and Sabbat), you will need to have clear borders for where those games lie with the understanding that PC's will likely come to kill their own PC's and this could be a bad idea all the way around. I am not encouraging this at the start and I’m sure national affiliates will put any added restrictions they see as necessary to ensure a healthy game start as needed in their addenda.
Chronicle start OWoD Vampire - June 1, 2010
Will we have prechronicle games? - Short answer is I don’t know yet. This is a process and there is a lot to be done to get us ready (hiring AMSTs and ANSTs, figuring out where we are by Spring, getting our settings documents ready, etc.) so we don’t have all the answers yet. However, I wanted to make sure members knew what the going forward plan was as early as possible so we can put out all calls that won’t cause more questions than answers and begin the process in earnest. Just like any venue roll out, we’ll be keeping you posted as we go, getting addenda out in advance of game start, and all the things we’re doing for Geist (and have for other games).
Rules - 6.0 (revised and probably with new name). We will be adding a few changes to reflect our new continuity as well as removing much of the Camarilla custom items at venue start with the idea that we may reintroduce some items back in as needed throughout the length of the chronicle.
Custom - There will be no custom items for OWoD Vampire at this time.
Generation/MC - Will remain as handled prior to the change to the NWoD so that we may assess their relevancy over the next 3 years.
XP - 4 xp per month is where our discussion will begin and we will adjust up or down as needed before June to manage character growth with Chronicle length.
Chronicle Length - OWoD - June 1, 2010 to May 1, 2013 with planned new chronicles starting June 1, 2013.
INFORMATION FOR ALL VENUES (NWoD and OWoD)
Hard Reset - May 1, 2013. During the final 9-12 months of the OWoD Vampire and NWoD Venues, NSTs and the MST will discuss with members and with staff what venues are being supported and played by members and what other non-played venues have a strong player interest to inform our decisions on what venues we will be running (both OWoD and NWoD) come June 1, 2013. This will allow us to decide which venues are strongest and have the best chance of thriving as we move forward. At that time, all aspects of the chosen venues will be discussed by the ST staffs and with members via various media (e.g., MC, XP, custom items, approval levels, etc). We will also set a chronicle length for all games at that time as well so that everyone understands how long we will play before we repeat this review.
There is value in knowing exactly how long a game will run. We as storytellers can calculated benefits for MC, amounts of monthly XP, longevity XP, overcap XP, etc. and know exactly how much potential XP there could be in game at the end of chronicle. This knowledge allows us to eliminate Soft resets or Character rewrites, as we should have no enormous surprises or unplanned XP bloat to deal with. While this is different than we’ve ever done, there is value in knowing how to plan story arcs plotlines, character development charts and XP and MC values so there are no surprises to either the membership or the storytelling staff. As we progress with the remainder of this chronicle, we can learn much about how long our next chronicle set should be and keep all games on even footing with coordinated starting and stopping dates.
That’s a lot for many folks to absorb, but this was a lot of conversations in the making. I am very excited to see how we manage a far out, well planned reset time line as well as see how we do with the OWoD, which many of us have not played in years, and for some of us, never at all. This will be a different 3 ½ years, but I think it will be an opportunity for us as storytellers and members to build the necessary infrastructures to keep this organization and the stories we tell fresh, vibrant, ever changing and growing.
I know lots of you wanted some sort of reply from the ST chain quickly and I very much wanted to get something to you before Christmas as an early gift. We have a lot of work to do between now and June for the launch of Geist in March, OWoD Vampire in June as well as developing the 3-year story arcs for the end of our current world so we'll all be busy.
I look forward to seeing what each of us does with the time we have left in the current venues and what we learn from this shift in chronicle management style. I’m very excited to see how we do.
Happy Holidays!
Michelle Webb
MST
WW2002021096
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