When I started playing role-playing games back in the 90's, The Story Telling games of White Wolf publishing came to my attention. More specifically, Vampire: The Masquerade. My gaming group at the time picked up the VtM book and quickly set our hungry fledgling vampires upon the unsuspecting world. At least that is what we thought we would do with our characters. Our Storyteller, now an old friend of mine many years later, took it upon himself to do his research and prepare a fantastic narrative.
Our story revolved around a group of vampires that were recently embraced and still learning their place in Vampire society. During our months of game play, with the help of a mystery patron, we worked to destabilize the current clan regime and coordinated with werewolves to accomplish this plan. When the dust settled, most of us were gone but the two that remained had clearly succeeded. The older generation and ruling cast of Vampires in our region where gone...with nothing to replace them but chaos and death from the anarchy of not having anyone in control. Our last scene we ever played, had a mystery patron confronted us and revealed that he had manipulated us the whole time as a power play to remove the competition! We never learned his name or background or the fate of the two surviving characters.
Now many years later, I have taken the reins and started a campaign with my wife and her friend playing to two "normal" young women. Our first adventure went well and set the mood for a short horror/haunting adventure. What the two players didn't expect was to find out they are both awakened and set on the path to become Mages. During the events of the first adventure they both experience (at different times and for different reasons) that the world isn't what they thought it was...
An older Mage is encountered during the adventure and dies shortly after meeting the players. This short encounter is enough to set the players on their journey into the word Mage: The Awakening! I am not going to reveal too much about my upcoming plans for the players since they both read this blog, but I shall say that they are in for a bumpy ride. It may even involve some Vampires... or perhaps this new God Machine thingy...