Session 0

WELCOME! to the Paint the Town Red session 0 thread.

After some consideration over the weekend, we're sticking with this core conceit:
It is modern day Phoenix. You're vampires involved in an underground racing scene in whatever way you'd like (e.g., fanatically placing bets, controlling drones that broadcast the race, are a racer yourself, etc.); the point is that you care about the race scene in general.

If this were a live, in person game, we'd be looking to do about a 2-4 session worth of material—pure judgement call from me as we post along here. Point is that this is a short run of a pbp!

I know a lot/all of the players here just got their books, or will soon get one, so of course take your time to read through it! Ask questions here, definitely talk character concepts here, and whatever else you'd like to discuss.

Shooting to start "session 1" by next Wednesday.

Now with all that preamble out of the way...here's the campaign's Banes, which are Banes true for all of the Dead. Throughout play you may accrue Banes that are personal to you. Paint the Town Red campaigns usually roll the common ones at the start, so here goes:
- [5] Drowning
- [4] Decapitation
- [63] Cutting off their hands and forcing them to drink brandy

When you are exposed to one of these Banes, you immediately become a corpse.

Howdy! I've got a bunch of SoulMuppet's games as well and also never played one. I've got Orbital Blues sittin' on my shelf staring at me judgementally. But seeing Disco Elysium and Vampire: The Requiem 2nd Edition in the Appendix N section of this game I'm incredibly excited. Also a big fan of Flux!

I've got my book and recently got the okay to go back to work but I'm gonna make a character ASAP.

Been looking through the rules and also checking out My First Dungeon's run of it, excited to start!

I've read through the character creation steps but haven't created one yet. A character concept I was thinking is a character who was involved in smuggling operations in mid-19th century Finland, but who is also "killed" as part of these activities. Of course, he goes into undeath, where first he gets a bad reputation in his hometown and is henceforth called Perkele (a Finnish word meaning "evil spirit"). This then caused him to flee and he has lived in many places since. However, a fun part I wanted to do is having him get really into heavy music (especially black metal and related genres), which he then blasts at max volume during the underground races. The thrill of the music, the thrill of the race, and the thrill of avoiding getting caught all keep him going.

I am definitely thinking this character wants to be right in the thick of racing. I'm also imagining him getting really into the classic "corpse paint" look of black metal, i.e. the white painted face and black around the eyes, which maybe he also finds a little funny as a meta thing being undead and all.

Sup to our fellow bloodsuckers!

Here's the idea that's been bouncing in my head:

Theodosia "Thessa" de Forgier. "I'll only marry you if you can beat me in a race!"

Born a few centuries back as a youngest daughter of a french count, Thessa was a little daredevil from the moment she began to walk, constantly making trouble for her nursemaids. Once she saw a horse she was awestruck and she was HOOKED after her first ever ride. She spend most of her days at the stables and learning how to ride, getting into faster and wilder styles of riding, becoming one with her horse as it galloped across the open fields.

When the time came for her to enter polite society and get married, she showed very little interest. The few young men who courted her, got their asses handed to them squarely on the racing tracks and retreated in shame. One night a young woman, a noble from unknown lands, came to her familial estate late at night. She demanded that Thessa race her the very next day, just after the sundown, and if she won, she'd wed the wild rider herself. The proposition was preposterous, but Thessa, never one to back away from a challenge, accepted.

The woman won and she took Thessa as her vampire bride that very night. Since then they had traveled the world, riding across the cities, villages and quiet hamlets. The union was perfect, right until the invention of first horseless carriages - her wife, Lianne, hated the contraptions, while Thessa saw the potential they represented. They bickered over it and finally decided to go their separate way. Since then Thessa followed the evolution of the car industry closely, championing and protecting its development in its infancy and investing in different corporations.

These days Thessa travels across the US, racing everyone she comes across, ever the endless vagabond. She falls in love with cars as fast as she loses interest in them, giving them away to promising street racers. She's in Phoenix do three things and three things only - Race Fast, Party Hard and Lay some Babes. Runnin' in the 90s!

So she'd be a adrenaline-junkie type, always looking for the next crazy thing to get her blood pumping.

We're gonna have a lot of fun since I'm considering a very similar concept. What stat are you considering making your highest? For driving it looks like Duplicity is what you want to be the highest, but I'm a huge fan of Savagery as well.

Re. Stats + Driving. If we do get into some racing shenanigans, I was thinking of handling races like how the game handles fights: you pick an approach and that approach is tied to a specific stat. So you can be an aggressive driver with Savagry, etc.

That way we avoid everyone being racers and focusing on just one stat, too.

I like that approach for handling races! I was thinking probably going +2 Savagery, +1 Allure. Leaning towards either Hideous Beast or Beast Shape for the Power of Undeath.

I think my character, Perkele, likes playing with that balance of being terrifying but also being able to navigate scenes socially, again going with that feeling of always teetering on a thrilling edge of being found out or making people afraid. But, in fitting with some of the themes in the game, also always being a little outside of the reach or the care of others, always being sort of unknowable and unable to create lasting connections.

I was thinking +2 Duplicity, +1 Allure. In my mind she is more of a creative daredevil, always egging people on for a challenge or a bet. Using more trickery, guile and skill while driving. Not very intimidating with her driving, more just crazy, using dangerous maneuvers and unorthodox approaches.

I also don't see anything particularly wrong with having multiple people having same stat at +2. There are only 3 of them after all..

Hey all, had a bit of a blip, but I’m back for this game! My book came in on Monday, earlier than expected. It’s Easter break here in Ireland, so finding time is a little hard these days! I like the race car angle, so I’ll just have to think of my angle on that!

Welcome back!

I'll still hold until next week to get adequately started. Reversia did us a big solid by already doing up a character sheet (see recruitment thread) if people want to start throwing together their character that way. I'm digging all the ideas so far! It sounds like everyone's racing their own rides?

I think I'm going to muse over some ideas for Phoenix here, some of which we might not ever get to! It's a slow Friday, however, and I've got time to kill:

I think this version Phoenix is bloated with the Dead in a way that surprises anyone in the know. The majority of the Dead are faithful (willing or otherwise) to the Convent (pg. 163). Maybe in a weird sort of footloose way, the Convent wholly condemns Dead races: it's an affront their values as if it would leave tread marks on the road to heaven, as if the roar of the engines would drown out the choir of the angels. Every week their midnight masses thin little by little as more Dead flock to the streets, to the live streams of the races, to the chopshops where they might secure their own ride.

It might become obvious, if I had had an opportunity to read the book fully, but are we operating on the idea that we are a pre-established group? We know each other, we work together etc.

Or are we all connected to the racing aspect separately?

My preference is for the lot of us blowing into town with the heady scent of petrichor and exhaust fumes, thundering across the desert like an electrical storm. Phoenix is where the Dead race? Hell yeah, let's show those townies what real racing is.

Yeah, I think my default would be new arrivals as a group together, but definitely down to workshop other ideas.

Yeah, I think my default would be new arrivals as a group together, but definitely down to workshop other ideas.

Interesting, I thought we'd be arriving separately. If we're going in as group - what the dynamics are like? I thought I can be a sort-of sponsor of the group, providing funds for the exceedingly wild escapades. Would fit with Thessa's financial interests in automotive industry and be a good fit for "Old Money" Power.

Also, what's a Convent? Is it like a VtM Cam/Anarchs? I don't think the setting stuff was mentioned in the Quick Start much.

A somewhat decent compromise might be to say that y'all sorta ran into each other, one-by-one, on your way to Phoenix, maybe?
Religious fanatics Dead. They're a vaguely defined faction (as are the other ones), so at the end of the day they're whatever we make them out to be—the lore here isn't that deep. I'm probably going to run them like the Lancea et Sanctum from Vampire the Requiem, but it's not wholly important to know deep lore details about that.

I don't mind being an established group, I just think it'd be nice to maybe create some background - where we met and how fell in with each other, what do we usually do, who does what within the group, stuff like that.

Edit: here's an idea - one of us - perhaps the oldest - slowly gathered around them a dysfunctional family of sorts. Sometimes we like each other and sometimes we hate each other guts - but we just can't stay away. The interest in cars and racing could've been the attraction factor in the beginning, but now it's more personal connection.

I like this idea! Gives the band of misfits vibe where people aren’t sure how we fit together but WE know, even if we don’t always agree on what we do. Especially in the world of underground racing, better to stick with those you know than those you don’t.

Which Power of Undeath appeals to people? That might tell us something about each other along with the stats. I lean towards the Manipulative powers most. But then there is always that idea of transforming into a beast…

I think for the group workings it'd be nice to hear more about your - KKC and ClericalError87 - concepts, before jumping into the Powers. We know that my girl is a genuine racing fanatic and haditbeenwater's Perkele is black metal loving, savage charisma spitting, Finnish racer/smuggler. What about you two?
Yeah, I was thinking Thessa can potentially be a "matriarch" type - both in terms of overall finance and in terms of constantly egging her "children" on to do crazy things. "What? You're not just gonna take it, right? You gotta race him to the mountain top! The first one to fall of the mountain loses!"
..or be a wild youngest child type, constantly getting into trouble and dragging the rest of the "family" into her messes.