Henlock Headbreaker frowned down at the missive in his thick hands. The Fall Queen had bid the ogre fulfill an errand, and send notice of her wroth to their neighbors, and it had taken him some time to complete. All he wanted now was a quiet night on his old sofa with a cold beer or three, and maybe some Netflix, but his door wouldn't open.
"Past due..." Henlock could feel his teeth grinding, and he tried to let go of the breath he'd been holding. If it wasn't one goddamn thing, it was another. He set his hands on the door, and made himself take slow, deep breaths. It was just fiberboard and paint, and he knew he wouldn't get any satisfaction of kicking it in... but it still took all his willpower not to do it.
He took out his phone, and carefully pushed the buttons with his calloused fingertip. He was sure Darlene would let him crash at her place tonight... as for clearing the balance, he had friends who owed him a few small favors. He hated to call them in over this, but sometimes you didn't have a choice when details slipped through the cracks.
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| All right, Agnes, I was out of town. Can I get you the back rent on Monday? |
The Supernatural Should Be The Spice, Not The Meat
Before we go any further, I want to make one thing clear; I love the World of Darkness and the newer Chronicles of Darkness settings. Monsters are some of my favorite things, and games where you specifically get to play vampires, werewolves, Frankenstein-like creatures, fey-touched changelings, and more will always be my cup of tea.
However, the setting and text can only go so far. Often it's the storyteller that can make or break an experience, and there is a trap that a lot of STs fall face-first into time and time again with these games. I've seen it in everything from Vampire to Mage, and from LARP to tabletop, so I wanted to talk about it this week.
In short, a lot of STs forget that all of the insane supernatural shenanigans happening only make up one half of the coin. If the mortal world isn't a factor in your game, then you're only playing with half the deck, so to speak.
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| You need contrast for these games to work. |
The first reason the mortal world needs to be an active part of your game is that it constitutes the majority of the setting. The whole conceit of every World and Chronicles of Darkness game is that you are part of the secret world. You are the things that live in the shadows, and you need to hide who you are and the things you do from the world at large. But if your werewolves spend all their time in the umbra and on werewolf territory, if your vampires only ever have scenes at Elysium and in secluded places under their control, then you are only spending time in those deep shadows rather than out in the setting at large.
The result is there's no contrast in your game; it's just the fantasy elements, which are supposed to be the marshmallows in the cereal. And while that can hurt the setting overall, it also results in players only paying attention to half their characters. Because one of the central questions that always accompanies these games is finding balance for the PCs as citizens of two worlds. If they never have to interact with the mortal world, never have to go to it, and never have to worry about it, then you end up with characters that are all fantasy, no modern.
That can lead to shallow characters, but it has another effect on the game... suddenly every challenge the PCs face (whether big or small) also has to live in those shadows.
And this can quickly cause you headaches as an ST.
You Don't Do Surgery With a Sledgehammer
Problems from the mortal side of things never seem like "real" problems to a lot of STs (and even to a lot of players). After all, if you're fighting against the supernatural engine of the apocalypse, trying to outmaneuver the political machinations of enemies you've had since Rome was pushed back across the Rhine, or if you're tooling up to hunt the creature who lurk in the darkness, dealing with purely mortal concerns can seem petty an unimportant.
When the players are faced with supernatural problems, the gloves come off. All sides know the score, they know the truth of the setting, and they can pull out all the stops. War form transformations, insane blood magic, ripping portals in reality, calling on pacts made with the elements of the world... everything is on the table!
But if players have to deal with mortal problems, they often have to do it more quietly. This means they often have to get more creative, and be more focused in their application of force/resources if they expect to succeed.
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| Perhaps an example would help? |
If you're running an old world werewolf game, and the PC garou are facing the threat of a black spiral dancer pack, there's no mystery that needs to be preserved. No code of silence that has to be observed. Both sides know what the other is, and understand what they're out for. And if they're fighting out in the wildlands with no witnesses, or throwing down in the Umbra, then there's no need for them to play it quiet. They can bring the biggest gifts, the most ridiculous weapons, and use all their abilities to go absolutely wild on one another.
And that's not a bad thing. Games should have some of those scenes from time to time. They're fun, tasty marshmallows.
But now let's take that same werewolf pack, and face them with a problem where they can't take the gloves off. Maybe there's a corporation trying to put a pipeline through their land. Maybe there's an audit of their holdings going on, and the false documents they used to legally secure the caern aren't holding up in court. Maybe the dark past of some of the members are catching up, and there's police sniffing around, or even a team of bounty hunters looking to make an impressive collar. If the latter doesn't seem like a big enough threat, add in a reality show TV crew following the bounty hunters that the pack now has to deal with.
You can apply these mortal problems to basically any sphere, too. Is the changeling singer who uses her celebrity to collect glamour from her audience being stalked by a crazed fan who, though he might not be dangerous to one of the fey-touched, is someone who might see behind the mask and find out what she truly is? Is the careless brujah leaving too many witnesses, and too many bodies, in certain districts, and now homicide detectives and tabloid journalists are out in force, which is making things harder for everyone else? Has a mage's "magic act" drawn too much curiosity, and too many witnesses, all of them digging into incidents that had been covered up and forgotten until now?
You can't just march up to those problems, fangs-bared and powers roaring (most of the time). You need to think around them, deflect them, or hush them up quietly. And generally speaking the less subtle a group is in its day-to-day doings, the more of these kinds of problems should crop up in their wake.
Don't Forget To Make It Personal
While a lot of the mortal issues that crop up in a game should be as a result of the actions of your players, as an ST you should also keep in mind that characters are supposed to exist in the mortal world, as well as the supernatural one. Often times they have jobs, homes, friends, family, and histories that exist in the mortal world... and those things are ripe for the kind of drama that can pull players deeper into the narrative.
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| A glimpse behind the mask. |
If you have a character who is a member of a police force, what does that expose them to? If they use their powers to investigate and clear cases (a changeling who talks to the dead, a werewolf who uses their enhanced senses, etc.), do they draw suspicion from internal affairs on just how they discovered certain evidence? If a character doesn't have a job, as such, then where do they live, and how do they earn money? If they don't, do they make their homes in abandoned or forgotten places? If the latter, what happens when new development comes knocking on their doors, or urban explorers find the former sewer tunnels of their lair? Do they allow other people forgotten by the modern world to live under their protection? Or have they become some kind of weird, urban legend the street people tell each other to keep newbies out of certain places?
Everything, from an enemy coming after a PC's friends (who may not realize what they truly are beneath the skin), to someone accidentally discovering the character's secret life (the roadie walks in and discovers the pale heavy metal singer is an actual blood-drinking vampire), these sorts of things can really impact the game for players... but you don't get any of these story beats in your game if you just ignore the mortal world because it isn't as much fun as all the dark, nasty, supernatural threats you've got lined up.
For folks looking for more ST advice, don't forget to check out Want To Run Better World of Darkness Games? Then Watch John Wick! And if you find yourself in need of a bunch of NPCs for a Werewolf: The Apocalypse game (or really any WoD game), you should check out my 100 Kinfolk Bundle. These NPC lists cover 13 werewolf tribes (100 NPCs each, and 200 for the Black Spiral Dancers), giving you 1,400 NPCs total... more than enough to populate any game! And if you want the encore piece that was released this year, don't forget 100 Stargazer Kinfolk as well.
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