Children of the Lost Eden

I. Information

Domain Name: Children of the Lost Eden
Domain Number: NY-004-D
Venue: Geist
Venue Name: Ghosts of Gotham
Lead Venue Storyteller: Matthew Horoszowski US2008092836
Storyteller Contact: NY04.VST.Geist@gmail.com
Official Mailing List: http://groups.google.com/group/nyc-geist
Official Wiki Page: http://wiki.white-wolf.com/camwiki/index.php?title=Ghosts_Of_Gotham

II. Styles of Play

Action – Combat and Challenges: 3
Character – Development: 4
Darkness – PC death and corruption: 3
Drama – Ceremony and grand story: 2
Intrigue – Politics and negotiation: 3
Manners – Social etiquette and peer pressure: 2
Mystery – Enigmas and investigation: 5
Pace – How fast stories develop: 4

Rating Description: 1 Never present, 2 Sometimes present, 3 Often present, 4 Usually present, 5 Always present

The Storytelling Staff reserves the right to ask participants of a scene to run the scene theatrically and with role playing rather than with challenges.

III. Game Schedule

Full Games:
There will be one full game every month.
These games will be traditional larp games, with a shared common space for group interaction.
If the month has a 5th Saturday, the game will be in person and on the evening of the 5th Saturday of the month.
If the month does not have a 5th Saturday, the game will be online on irc on the evening of the 3rd Thursday of the month.

Downtime Games:
There will be one downtime game every month.
These games will focus around small groups of players resolving downtime actions with the VST or AVSTs.
Downtime games will be held in person on the evening of the 2nd Thursday of the month.

IV. Venue Description

At the beginning of the new millennium, New York City was a mixed collection of different krewes and sin-eaters, with two particular krewes holding the most power.
The Warriors, based out of Coney Island, were a krewe who claimed that the movie of the same name took its basis from their mythos; though more likely their style was adapted to meet that of the movie rather than the other way around.
The Hunt’s Point krewe, located in the Bronx and northern Manhattan, were a group of sin-eaters who participated in hidden fight clubs, finding the man-on-man combat a revitalizing aspect of their second chances.
Other krewes where active in the city, but it was these two krewes that had the most influence and the most members.

All this changed on the morning of September 11th 2001 when two commercial passenger jets, hijacked by al-Queda terrorists, where intentionally crashed into the World Trade Center.
Both of the Twin Towers burned and collapsed as a result, causing the deaths of over twenty six thousand people all in one spot in one day.
This tragic event blacked the sky with a cloud of dust, left an emotional wound on the city that has yet to heal, and also ripped open a new cenote connected to a dark and dangerous part of the Underworld.
And from this tear into the Underworld escaped many vile and evil creature, horrid things called Shadow Gremlins (Grems for short) that still plague NYC to this day.

Every sin-eater in New York City went into action that day, most working to help the newly created ghosts and geists, and to deal with the spreading menace that was the Grems.
But both The Warriors and the Hunts Point Krewe had special ways in which they dealt with the crisis.

The Hunt’s point krewe, seeing a flood of Grems heading for their territory, decided on a dire course of action.
All five founders of the krewe got together and performed a massive ritual, creating a metaphysical barrier shutting of the Bronx and the northern edge of Manhattan from all Anomalies.
To fuel this ceremony the five founders gave their lives, leaving the Hunt’s point krewe, the largest krewe in all of New York, leaderless.
But as a result the barrier stood strong, and still does to this day, making the Hunt’s Point Krewe’s territory the only safe place in New York City from the Grems.

But it was the other krewe, The Warriors, who rallied themselves up and plunged into the heart of the disaster itself.
Working together they closed the Avernian Gate and stopped the flood of Anomalies pouring out.
Sadly it seems this act cost them their lives, as not a single member of that Krewe has been seen since.
In there place has risen a new krewe who have appointed themselves keepers of ground zero.
Of that Avernian Gate they make sure that no one goes in, and especially, nothing comes out.

V. Storytelling Mechanics

Proxy Rules:
All proxy requests to the venue must be received by the Venue Storyteller in writing or email no less than 48 hours in advance. Proxies fall into two categories; soft-proxies (proxies which involve no tests, and may be run by players over IRC, IM etc) and hard-proxies (which are run by the Storyteller staff). The ST determines which category a proxy falls under, and may at any time change a proxy from soft to hard.

Both soft and hard proxies require permission from the VST to be run and require the following:

• Full character sheet including current plasma total (if character’s venue uses a persistent plasma system). This includes any special approvals for items/powers/influence/merits/flaws that require special approvals. Without proof of these approvals, those special approval items will **NOT** be used in the proxy.
• VST / DST / RST contact information (e-mail & phone number when possible). The Storyteller will need to able to confirm things with them and give them the results of the proxy so they can incorporate said results into their games.
• Clearly stated goals for your character. You need to be as precise as possible when you state your character’s goals and actions for the proxy. Any information that is left out will be left up to the storyteller staff to include. Assumptions can and will be made if necessary.
• Contingency plans & exit strategy. Please include contingency plans as the best-laid plans are sometimes disrupted. Without the contingency plans, the storyteller staff will make decisions for the characters. These decisions may or may not be what the players would have done.

All proxies require the player to agree to the following conditions. If you are not comfortable with these conditions, then do **not** proxy your character.

• All proxy play is final. There are no do-overs. Death or worse are possibilities. In every proxy scene, there are inherent dangers. Players who agree to proxy are being made known these results are possibilities of proxy play.
• While in proxy play, the character will not play any place else or in other proxy scenes, or electronic forums. This includes the use of powers to move outside the body.

Character Guidelines and Mechanics:

• All new bound characters start with half their maximum pool of plasma, plus 1 for every dot of Haunt Residue they have access to.
• All purchases of the Haunt merit require prior discussion with the VST. Haunts are a controlled and limited resource and will require either in game acquisition or a detailed backstory workup. Increasing a Haunt’s traits also requires in game justification, usually involving downtime actions.
• Haunts produce X plasma every 2 weeks for up to X owners of the haunt, where X is the Haunt’s Residue. If the haunt is shared by more than the allowed number of geists, the haunt’s plasma generation is reduced by 1/2 plasma per geist over, rounded up. Ex: A residue 2 haunt produces 2 plasma every 2 weeks for up to 2 geist while that same haunt with 3 or 4 geists produces only 1 plasma each. At 5 geists and above, that haunt’s production drops to 0. Members of a shared haunt may opt out or opt in to plasma generation, effective the next plasma generation cycle.
• If a character channels their Archetype though their Virtue, they regain plasma equal to their Synergy in addition to regaining all their Willpower. This can occur once per game.

Plasma Economy:
Geists do not get a set amount of ‘starting plasma’ at the beginning of game. Instead all plasma gains and loses are tracked on the character’s sheet. Players must record with the ST the amount of plasma they come into game with, and record how much they leave with. When traveling to other games the player must send their plasma count to both their local ST and the ST whose game they are visiting. Any plasma change must be reported back to the player’s local ST. If the visiting venue does not use a persistent plasma system, the character’s plasma total remains the same coming into the game as coming out, using the locally assigned plasma at the venue’s game. Players visiting NYC who come from venues without a persistent plasma system, or without their plasma total being sent in with their sheet, will start with 5 plasma.

Experience Award Guidelines:
Each player may receive up to 4 experience points per game (in person games, online games, or downtime games). They will be awarded for the given conditions:

• 2 point for playing for at least 1 hour.
• 1 point for attendance within 30 minutes of game start.
• 1 point via Storyteller fiat (for elaborate costuming, impressive role-playing, demonstrating character development, taking part in a noteworthy action, etc…).

Experience awards for game events will be posted to the internet (via mailing list and wiki posting) generally within 48 hours of a game event. No experience awards are considered valid till this posting has occurred, though the date of the awarding remains the date of the game event. Players can also receive experience points for the following actions between games:

• 1 point for submitting a downtime action request.
• 1 point for submitting character media (a first person recording of the character’s actions, a diary/journal entry by the character reflecting on something, a drawing of the character, a video blog from the character, etc…). Worthiness of the submitted work for experience point credit is left up to the Storyteller.
• 1 point for a detailed soft role-play scene between characters. Evidence must exist (irc log, email chain, audio/video recording) and the worthiness of the submitted scene for experience point credit is left up to the Storyteller.

Experience awards for out of game actions or materials will be posted to the internet (via mailing list and wiki posting) generally about once a week. No experience awards are considered valid till this posting has occurred, with the date of the awarding remaining the date the actions or materials where submitted.

Visiting Character Guidelines:
Visiting characters will be asked about their goals when entering the city and asked to follow “big dog” guidelines (allowing lower XP characters a chance to get involved in plot before taking that plot on themselves). The Storytellers reserve the right to deny entry to characters that are deemed unsuitable for the game. The Storytellers also reserve the right to pull such a character from play.

Restricted Items:
Storytellers reserve the right to disallow the following: explosives; military weapons, munitions, equipment and vehicles; WMD and other mass casualty or instant kill devices. No Cross-venue character will be allowed without appropriate approvals and convincing roll-playing reasons. The teaching of cross venue lore’s or gifting/trading of cross venue items will be heavily scrutinized. Items with custom mechanics may not be used without the appropriate approval numbers and written explanation of those mechanics.

Visiting the World Trade Center:
The site of the former twin towers is a special and highly dangerous location in NYC for Geists. All visits to the site (including visits from local characters) will be handled as hard proxies to be ran by the storyteller staff, and might require being passed up the chain to a higher office than venue storyteller. It is noted once again that final death and worse can happen in hard proxies, so players are strongly encouraged to consider the possible repercussions of proxy play before submitting requests to visit ground zero.