Btw how are the VtM rules? I'm thinking of giving them a try. However, with carefully picked players. I seem to be getting the worst luck with players, whether in vidya or ttrpgs.
Different is the best way I can describe them. Haven't had a chance to properly play it in years, and this is a different version of the WoD rules than I have played with before, so I'm going to be making a bunch of vampire/ghoul/mortal NPCs using the PC creation rules to get back to grips with it.
Lots of mechanics to do with not being entirely in control of the characters, and accompanying mechanics to encourage players to go with the flow of their inner beast from time to time.
It's very much a game about playing psychologically damaged people with super powers and a vulnerability to addiction.
Sorry to hear about your troubles with games by the way. I've been lucky to not have to deal with drama in any of the groups I've been in, just scheduling problems.
Btw how are the VtM rules? I'm thinking of giving them a try. However, with carefully picked players.
Ooh ooh pick me pick me!
TBH there's probably enough RPers on the forum that we could try to arrange a group and run games using Discord.
If anyone's interested I did three pitches to my group for VtM games and had them vote.
Pitch 1 was a game set in the Great Heathen Army invasion of the British Isles. They would be vampires allied to the Norse, specifically Bjorn Ironside, helping invade Northumbria to avenge the death of Ragnarr Lodbrok, helping to fight the native mortals, vampires and werewolves and plunder the lands for their own purposes.
Pitch 2 was them being Byzantine vampires in the lead up to the Fall of Constantinople, facing the approach of the Ottoman army and the vampires of the Ashirra (Muslim vampire organisation essentially, as opposed to the more Christian Camarilla.) Idea was more of a focus on politics, looking for ways to assure their own survival and the safety of their assets and freedoms in the event the city falls, but without looking like traitors in the event that the city doesn't fall.
Pitch 3, the winning one, was them being underlings to a freshly returned openly vampiric Dracula.* Full kingdom of evil, open war with mortals rather than hiding as was the norm for the time. Initial enemy being the Ottomans, as they were Vlad's enemy at the time he died with the Holy Roman Empire being tentative allies. As things progress though the Inquisition, Camarilla, Ashirra, rogue vampires, other supernatural beings are all going to show up to try and quash this flagrant breach of the normal status quo, and the PCs are going to be tasked with convincing the HRE to maintain prior friendship with Wallachia as a buffer state against the Ottomans.
My brother is the only person who's shared a PC idea with me so far, he's thinking of being an Ottoman assassin who was sent to Wallachia to kill Vlad, who went and died in battle before he got a chance to try, and then jumped ship when Vlad strode back into Wallachia as a freaking vampire and claimed the throne from his cousin. Summed it up as him going 'Well the devil is real, hail Satan I guess,' and swearing loyalty to the returned Dracula.
*Canon WoD Dracula has two versions, the Old WoD and the New WoD versions. The game is in the OWoD, but Dracula's canon for the OWoD isn't of use to me, so I threw it away and decided to go with a version inspired by various pop-culture versions of him. Going to give him the powers and weaknesses of Bram Stoker's Dracula, which among other things means he doesn't die in sunlight, which is a power no other vampire has. In a way it's a power even Caine, the first vampire, does not possess, as while he cannot die the sun still causes him great pain. Dracula in the campaign is going to be something new, something scary.