<a href="https://app.roll20.net/lfg/listing/80430/toreador-" rel="nofollow">https://app.roll20.net/lfg/listing/80430/toreador-</a>... You just came home from your high school graduation prom... … Everything seemed sooo wonderful! You spent the night with your classmates, friends and maybe with the cute girl or guy you asked out to … And even if your evening was terrible, cause no one wanted to dance with you or because you think that all your classmates are stupid assholes, you had the hope that everything would become better soon, cause you would leave everything behind and study at a renowned university. The dreams you had after your prom´s night were so sweet and promising... … But as you woke up, your life took a – let´s say dramatically interesting - twist: You were not at home, you were somewhere in a very dark and cold place, lying on something that felt like a heavy metal desk. Your whole body was burning, your throat was aching and felt as if you were dying a thousand times over and over again... But something that felt like chains kept you fixated on the thing you were lying on. You felt such an unspeakable hunger. … You hadn´t felt this sensation before. You wanted to cry out in furious rage … but your mouth was gagged with a dry cloth. He realized that you were not alone. … You heard clattering chains from all around you, which were enriched with choked cries from people who probably were in a similar situation like you. Then, after a while some one removed the gag and fed this divine liquid into your mouth... The sweetest, best, most wonderful substance you ever tasted... It hand to be dangerous, addictive drug, … but it was the only thing that you wanted at this moment … and it made you feel SOOO GOOD!!!!! Liter after liter went down your throat... Certainly several hours must have passed by during this process. … It was the BEST TIME you had experienced so far! … Then you suddenly began to something in this thick, horrifying darkness … Two white, seductively starring eye balls, that suddenly popped up 10 centimeters in front of yours, without any sign of warmth, that a human face would naturally irradiate. Even though you feared these eyes more than anything you had ever encountered, you were so attracted to them that you were completely unable to remove your gaze from them. Then you heard a whispering, ...strangely distorted voice … You could not tell whether it was male or female, … old or young, … … it simply was the most fear inducing arrangement of acoustic waves you had ever heard. „Please excuse my rude introduction... Every good drama needs its unexpected twists. You are an artist now. A writer, … an actor, … and a contributor to a historically unique dramatic experiment! Together with the other 4 newly embraced vampires in this room you will write an exciting novel. A novel about your lives from now on in this town. This novel will completely consist of truthful diary entries from the 5 of you write about what recently happened to you and what you felt and thought about it. Every night every one of you will write a deeply personal entry in a shared Google Doc, that you will find on your smartphone and that all 5 of you can read and edit. You carefully read the entries of all of you from the perspective of a dramatic advisor, a script doctor. You will ask yourself : „What could I do to improve our story? Which actions could I undertake to improve the dramatic the quality of it?“ - And then, you will show initiative and do something that contributes to the quality of your story, as well as your private goals as a person. This brings us to the question... What kind of story will you try to create? Which attributes should it have to be considered „good“? 1. It should be dramatic, with people who pursue meaningful goals who face challenging problems and conflicts with unpredictable situations. 2. It should passionate. It should explore the great emotions and desires of our existence: Joy, pain, love, hate, lust, jealousy, romance, sex, fear, courage, doubt, hope, despair, bliss, loss, triumph, sadness, … and so on. 3. It will always play in your town. You or others can leave the town for some time. But no matter what others do, YOU WILL ALWAYS RETURN to your city within a few nights. 4. It should be sustainable. Your story will run for a very huge number of years. You will make sure that your story doesn't destroy it. You will ensure that your town as a whole won´t go down physically, socially or economically. When inhabitants of the city leave or die, you will make sure that new ones come. 5. You will keep up the masquerade. You will make sure that all mortals in your environment believe, that you are a human and that vampires don't exist in reality. So, that´s your mission. You will carry it out as I described it. If you´ll fuck up, I´ll make you trouble!“ These strangely distorted whispers repeated exactly the same words over and over again. After 5 times you were unable to count … Then the voice muted and those pale, horrifying eyes disappeared in the darkness. A bit later you heard exactly the same words that were hammered deeply into your soul again and again mesmerizing the people around you, one after one. … After a subjectively endless eternity the voice finally stopped her activity. … Now you all lie there in the darkness. … The voice and its body are apparently gone. You are still chained on this icy cold metal desk. Your whole body hurts. … Suddenly you open your eyes... Your memories for what happened in the darkness fade away, like fine sad they leak through your opened fingers... … They disappear from your mind like one of those nightmares, that you can´t remember anymore after some minutes. ... … Now they´re gone. Instead of the horrors, you remember that you went to a spontaneous party with 4 of your class mates, … after the prom. You made a fire at a sea in the woods near Bennington. You drank a lot and you had much fun. Even though you don´t remember the details, you ´re sure it was a wonderful time. The only thing you remember for very vividly is the crazy idea to start a shared diary project. A project that would make sure you would keep in touch with each other … Wow! You like this idea! ...You´d have your own secret society... It´s already night again. You must have slept the whole day in the tents you brought. You ´d really like to leave your tent and talk to the other´s about the secret society idea. ... --- This will be a V20 game in which the GM will change every 2 sessions. Every player who applies for this game should be willing to take from time to time the role of the GM (2 out of 10 games). Between each session, every player should write diary entries for the nights that passed during the last session. All entries will be accessible for all other player and their characters. As our game progresses, we will create our own novel. :-) The venue of our story will be the small town Bennington in Vermont. Before the first ingame session, every player should write short background stories for all NPC´s, that are important for him/her. E.g. family members, friends, lovers, enemies, maybe colleague or superiors from a job or hobby he/she has, … To create a film-like look & feel, everyone should use high quality pictures from movies or qualitatively high websites as character pictures. --- Every player character will be a Toreador. He/She doesn´t need to have an artistic background. Their participation in this experiment will be artistic enough. Every character will start with 3 dots in Presence and 2 dots in Dominate. At the beginning no character will know anything about his/her disciplines. He/She will apply them intuitively in situations, where he/she becomes emotional and where they could help him to get want he/she wants. … This way, the characters will discover their abilities over time through trial and error. The same applies to their vulnerabilities for e.g. food, sunlight and fire, as well as for their Toreador clan weakness. Mesmerize (Dominate 2) will be far more powerful in this game than usual in V20: The victim has no memories to the process of being mesmerized. The suggestions enter its subconscious and will be carried out as if they were the victims own ideas. Usually the victim will make up explanations for them to integrate them into its believe system. While Mesmerize still cannot change the victims emotions directly, it can change its thoughts, beliefs, goals and values, what indirectly could influence its emotions. Strong suggestions (3+ successes), that conflict with a victims value system, can cause psychological conflicts. Suggestions with 5+ successes can make mortal victims do or believe anything, even if it absolutely defies its nature. It will be possible to implant and even stack a large number of suggestions. Every suggestion will be valid, until it is carried out or until it gets replaced by a stronger one. Almost every vampire can hammer a suggestion very deep into a victim, if he/she has enough time to repeat it over and over again. Mesmerize now can be used to accumulate successes through extended actions. --- As you probably recognized, this inspired by “The Vampire Diaries” and by its spinoff “The Originals”. Even though many teens watch these series, they contain very serious adult content like sex, lust, hedonism, sadism, manipulation, abuse, intrigues, family tragedies and complex moral dilemmas. On the hand they also explore very bright concepts like unconditional love, altruism, forgiveness and hope & meaning in the face of great horrors, I want to make clear that this game will be open to explore all these kinds of topics. I am 34 years old. I started to play pen&paper with 14. In my real life I studied acting, psychology, physics and computer science. I am simply looking for relaxed, easy going adults who will not be shocked or alienated, when a player character mesmerized a NPC to fuck or torture someone else. This is a horror game for adults and if someone does something horrible in it, this doesn´t mean that he is a horrible person. I just want to make sure, that everyone in this game will feel free to explore whatever he or she likes. --- To apply for this game, write a bit about yourself in real life. How old are you? What do you do except playing RPGs? What are your other interests? How do you wish this game to be like? What would you like your character to experience during this game? Which questions & topics would you will like to explore? Then write a bit about the character you would like to play. How is he/she like? What´s his/her family situation? What are his/her hobbies, interests, aspirations, fears, strengths, weaknesses, secret wishes, …