Café de Nuit

Hello,

Continuing the ideas we began in theFraternity Celebration Thread and in thiscompliation of wandering monsters and fleshed out earlier here,
I want to go on with the ideas we have gathered.

So far, our team consists of:

- Jason

- al

- Wiccy

- VAN

- Coan

- David

- Me

I hereby declare that I'll terrorize everyone who promises a submission and then doesn't send it in.

First and foremost, what will be the background for such a character collection as ours?

As I said, I'd prefer all of them to dwell in the same dungeon/be part of an common adventure hook DMs can use. Check the poll above to vote for that idea, please, so we can go on.

Yours,

Rafael

I voted "no dungeon" but that doesn't mean I don't want an adventure or something. . . just that I would prefer the characters to not dwell in the same dungeon.

I promise nothing, but if I can get an article or two done, then I will submit something

I have a few scribbled notes for one article though

Dungeon for me! I love battles...ehhhm new adventures!

So, no dungeon! Good, now, what kind of character do we want to star?

It has been revealed that S was a clone of Azalin, so I really think her personage is a bit out of place now...

I'd vote for a Barovian as the storyteller, maybe someone who fled Valaki as well and wandered the mists for a while...

http://www.fraternityofshadows.com/foru ... php?t=2423

Have a good time until I return!

I swear I checked the Ravenloft Projects board for news of this project after it was announced in the We are so lucky to have the Frat and the Kargatane! thread, but I could never find it until now!

Is it too late to jump in on the project? Here's what I can offer for sure:

Rosa Petrovich - When teenage Rosa's sorceress abilities surfaced, Nostalia Romaine kidnapped her and her younger sister Ariana, burning down their parents' home. Rosa was turned into an Emordenung, and in order to ensure her compliance, Ariana was kept an unwitting hostage. After several years of killing for Ivana Boritsi, Rosa finally found out where her sister was being kept, rescued her and escaped to Richemulot. There's much more to the story but in the interest of space that's all I'll say.

Dmitrius Blackthorne - A half-Vistani raised at a Tepestani monastery after his mother dropped him off as a newborn, Blackthorne trained as a monk, but never completely fit in. He never felt as though he belonged, and his Vistani side tugged at him, compelling him to wander. After leaving the monastery alone and friendless, an unprepared Blackthorne discovered the pleasures of drink and took his first steps on the path of the Drunken Master.

Vincent Foxgrove - Not actually a member of the Foxgrove family, Vincent is actually descended from longtime servants of the family. However, in his travels Vincent takes the Foxgrove name for the notoriety and fame it provides. Flamboyant and dashing, Vincent supports his many vices (gambling, chain-smoking, womanizing, drinking, and the list goes on) by adventuring and offering his services as a marksman, trick shooter and explosives expert. Friends and acquaintances suspect a darker motive behind his adventuring, but Vincent, ordinarily very open and friendly, becomes remarkably close-mouthed on the subject....


So there you have the three characters I know I can provide. All three have campaign stories behind them, so all that I need to do is edit them to remove some non-canon stuff and make them more palatable for the RL community as a whole.

Jinn, you and everyone who wants to contribute are very welcome, since as you might have noticed, the overall circumstances of the netbook are still pretty open. I'll count with your submission when I return from my holidays!

I would also add my vote to the "no dungeon" choice. While we can certainly add some sort of dungeon and/or adventure to the netbook, I think that it would be too much of a strain to put everyone's characters together in the same place (even if it is a group of heroes against a group of villians). I prefer allowing the netbook to have NPCs from different times and places to allow for more variety.

Having said that, however, I would like to see some sort of unifying element. And I would like to have that element be something more than just characters that were discovered by the narrator of the book. Perhaps, we would have some sort of 'six degrees of separation' angle to all of this...?

I think Jason's on to something. A simple Rogues' Gallery-style collection isn't as much fun as some sort of unifying link between the characters, but I wonder whether the dungeon thing might be a little too constraining.

Here's something to consider: what if the unifying link between all the characters is that they were all in the same place at a particular point in time, a moment when something very important happened?

For example, if any Star Wars fan out there has read Tales from the Mos Eisley Cantina, that's what I'm talking about. The book is a series of short stories starring the various people and aliens you see when Luke Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi walk into the cantina during the original Star Wars. In fact, some of the same events (the bartender ordering the droids outside, the fight in which Obi-Wan cuts off the alien's arm, Han Solo shooting Greedo) are told and retold from half a dozen or more points of view.

So we could try to do something like that, I suppose.

Desdichado wrote: I'd vote for a Barovian as the storyteller, maybe someone who fled Valaki as well and wandered the mists for a while...

Javier and Jinn: I believe the unifying element could very well be the storyteller.
Perhaps he shares info about people he met to the Frat of shadows. But certainly they could have more ties to them instead of "once upon a time a met these people".
Perhaps they are all part of a prophecy only the Fraternity knows about? Perhaps they can all be manipulated and exploited by the Frat to accomplish some goal?

alhoon wrote:I believe the unifying element could very well be the storyteller.

I completely agree that the unifying element could be the storyteller. However, as I mentioned above, I would like to have the bond between the NPCs be something more than just the "once upon a time I met these people". I like Desdichado's adventure idea and the prophecy concept is also intriguing. I'm not all that picky, honestly, but I wanted something more to pull these characters together (i.e., a reason why our narrator would be meeting and discussing these individuals).

We could combine the dungeon idea with the storyteller idea. What if the storyteller is whoever/whatever lives in the dungeon, and he/she/it is telling of the various people he's chased out of his territory over the years?

IMHO this falls under the category of the storyteller once meeting this people.

I agree with Jason that this "once upon a time I met these guys" seems a bit weak as a bond. I would prefer the prophecy quest.

If we get really ambitious, we could turn the netbook into an adventure (not necessarily in or involving a dungeon, although that is a possibility), in which the characters all play an important role.