Name (guest) 31 Jul 2017 03:33
I like how you think, and would like to see you develop a few of these ideas more, but you have missed some inspiration and possibility here.
Much of the popular narratives playing with these themes lately have been "cross-over games,"…fans are STILL talking about a cable series from a few years back that focused mainly on Vampires and their mortal associates…but half of those mortals had what would be considered "minor templates" in the nWoD (in otherwords, usually a Merit, no "Power Stat.") which drew the major characters into the intrigues of the associated "Major Splat" (with its own equivalent "Power Stat." and Powers and 10 pnts. of storage capacity, etc.) who would often provide major story arcs and enemies; several "Hunters"-type series that are either still running or cast very long shadows on the genre either absorbed dubious allies and sympathetic monsters as regulars or else had most of the recurring cast pick up "Major Templates" as the seasons drew on (and starting those supposedly more powerful creatures as the sort of "true newbies" some of the "Shards" or "Guides" books touch on, rather than the only-weak-compared-to-their-elders sort of beings the default rules outline, running with very experienced "normals," did much to flatten out the power curve).
This doesn't even touch on the literature most of these stories were inspired by; Urban Fantasy is, to the shock of some aficionados, usually correctly stereotyped as hard to pick-up mid-series due to collecting new wainscot-societies of the Night each book, each with their own complex social structure (and potential lovers of the main character) making the evolving, compounded alliances and conflicts too arcane for new readers.
Some Compacts and Conspiracies, not necessarily hunters, would naturally be made up of several different "types," like the Invidicus and Arisen Houses finding long-term common purpose at Bilderburg Group meetings, or the various "types" all implied to be native to Mummy:the Arisen's Cult level play (and you could easily throw-in Second Sight and Inferno in with the living, dead, and walking-dead forms of Mummy's Cultists…maybe borrowing some rules from Giest and Damnation City to form a evocative "Cults" setting…maybe a long chronicle starting at a street-level could climax in the most epic strata of Mage).
So many alliances could either make compelling Player parties…or terrifying opponents, so many groups in need of a modular Setting book.
Not even necessarily as formal groups, either; why should the City-wide social interactions represented by Requiem Merit (Vampire Storytellers Guide) be limited to the Damned when the Lost also hide as Artistes and hunt as Beasts and must negotiate and fight for the same territories and prey (and somehow purchase the same new identities from desperate Fallen and Purified)?
At every level there are a host of opportunities, allready implied in the established default setting, even just as a minor addition to the X or Y axis of character creation, like the lich-Legacy blood-drinking ghost-Mage revenants who the Prince can see as anything but Damned, or the Forsaken's scattered envoys to other Shamans who patrol the Border-Marches, who were all taught their form of Skin-Changing by Created wanderer. It is hard to imagine that niether the Lance or some Circle is represented in the loose network of Spirt Slayers who cast their rituals by being ridden by their higher powers, so why not other overlapping groups who need an optional write- up.
What I'm saying, is, "I like your ideas, and hope you develope some, deeper."
