Welcome to the Metropolis

Welcome to our first official blog post for Shades of Norwich: Dark Metropolis, direct from the keyboards of the ST team to you. We've put together a concept document for the setting and system of the game, described in very broad terms. You may know some of this already, whether it’s from word of mouth or our pitch at the very start of the Dark Metropolis planning process, but there’s plenty of new information in there too.

And we’re also announcing our next set of information shots: over the next two weeks, we’ll be posting the pitches for clans and covenants in Dark Metropolis on this blog, with development notes. We’re going to release these one per day for five days (we get the weekends off!), two weeks in a row. This is partly so we don’t swamp you with information in a single blog post and partly so that each clan and covenant can have the spotlight it deserves.

We’ve done some interesting things with the clans and covenants as set out in Blood and Smoke and we’re excited to see what stories you decide to tell with them. Be aware that some of these might be a little different to what you’ve come to expect from Vampire games - we wanted to really dig into what we found interesting about these groups.

Setting

“The higher the buildings the lower the morals.” – Noël Coward

Shades of Norwich: Dark Metropolis is set in an alternative history where Norwich is a thriving modern metropolis, second only to London in its population, wealth, innovation and commerce.

Throughout the Medieval period, the profitable wool trade meant that Norwich formed strong trade links with Northern Europe and the city grew almost as quickly as the rapidly expanding city of London. During the Nineteenth Century, the discovery of natural gas deposits under the Broads meant that Norwich embraced the Industrial Revolution and adapted to a rapidly changing world. The bombing raids of World War Two targeted the city and destroyed much of it, but, with a little Kindred influence, Norwich grew from the rubble into a gleaming metropolis. Adaptability and innovation became the watchwords of the city, but as the glass and steel towers rose higher, the streets grew meaner. Those who can't charm their way into penthouses fight just to survive in tenements and council estates.

The Prince, Anastasia Lockwood, took over following the death of her predecessor during the bombing raids of WWII and like the city, she is a consummate survivor, an urban predator. The covenants keep to their founding principles, but the clans take a less traditional approach. Who is up and who is down? It changes every night, but disfavour can last for decades. And some Kindred are sore losers.

There’s always the aspiration of moving from the Low Court to the High Court. The neonates don’t get to play in the High Court, but the Elders know the value of a good minion, and favour from a High Courtier can net a profit in the Low Court. Maybe someday you’ll even make it, and then it’s a whole different ball game. But for now, you’re among your own kind, the dregs and the bottom feeders, the scavengers craving the scraps from the boss’s plate. It’s not an excuse to relax, though: for a start, that snarling Beast in your blood wants out, and the Prince values self-control highly. And of course, there are plenty who want to cause trouble. Round here, you need allies to watch your back, patrons to scrape you some status, and enemies. Because what’s the point of a one-sided game?

The city is carved up into seven Regencies that are institutions in their own right, with powerful Elders controlling their human herds. It’s a hefty price to rent from the great and the good, but worth it to survive. Blood is power round here. Or you can hunt in the Rack, with the other outcasts who can’t make their own way. Of course, there are untamed areas of the city, places with lower populations or distant from the thriving commerce of the city centre, but beware of making them too appealing a prospect, or you might find yourself defending a place that wasn’t great to start with. None of them are good options but that’s how things go when you’re low on the food chain.

The countryside is a law unto itself, theoretically under the Prince’s rule but largely ignored by the Kindred of Norwich. Vampires who venture outside the bounds of the city are likely to come under scrutiny from the Sheriff or Hounds. No-one sets up house out there if they want to play in the city’s political games, and if you don’t want to play, why are you here?

System

Shades of Norwich: Dark Metropolis uses the rules from Blood and Smoke: the Strix Chronicle, part of the World of Darkness 2nd Edition. We’re going to be sticking to the rules as written in the Blood and Smoke and God Machine books, but with some minor modifications to adapt it into a live game. If you’re familiar with Vampire: the Masquerade or Vampire: the Requiem, please be aware that Blood and Smoke makes some significant changes to the setting and rules.

Dark Metropolis is designed to be a low level vampire game in which the player characters have all been Embraced within the last ten years and are still very much unknowns, interacting with vampire society through the Low Court. The Elders, on the other hand are mostly part of the High Court, which has its own rules and etiquette. The game has a city populated by NPC vampires who vie for power, meaning the player characters can make themselves useful to higher-ups to gain influence. The idea is that player characters can access low level positions of responsibility within the Low Court, but if they ever achieve the lofty heights of the High Court, the character becomes an NPC and the player starts a new story.

Norwich is a bigger city in this setting, but one of the themes of Dark Metropolis is the concept of scarcity of resources and territory. Both are vitally important in getting a foothold in the city, because blood is difficult to get in large amounts, but renting a part of someone’s Regency will cost. On the other hand, hunting in other people’s domains will be very dangerous and trying to gentrify an unclaimed bit of the city is an uphill struggle and will attract competition. Survival relies on tactics, economics, and building links with other Kindred.

We are striving to create a game founded on the principles of co-operative out of character experiences, where players discuss and negotiate what outcome of a conflict would be most fun for everyone involved. We will be encouraging out of character openness about things that might affect other player characters so that every player feels their character’s story is being told in the most interesting way. While Vampire is about predators warring over hunting grounds, whether literal or figurative, the idea is always to tell a story together. For all the talk of ‘you win or you die’, the way people win this game is by collaborating on a mutually awesome experience.