Welcome to the Hood, the heart of Newport City. The streets are clear, crime is all time low, people get some respect, and it's all thanks to you, the Neighborhood Watch. And lets face it, those getting the most respect are you, and you deserve it.

It wasn't always like this, oh no. Crimes were frequent, loitering drug dealers dealing to the youth of the neighborhood, murders, robberies, and more repulsive crimes. Did the police do anything? Not one bit. The law enforcement is all crooked, or most of it is. There are still those with a vision, those who believe the system works, those naive souls who think that putting people in prison will stop the crimes. You know better, because you've seen how things go down. It ain't a nice business, but you've done something about this.

You've cleaned the streets. You know you can't save the whole city but at least you can keep your neighborhood clean. Those punks with the drugs? They won't dare come near your hood again. Those who do sell drugs on your corners, they obviously haven't been here before.

Couple of those drug dealers opened your eyes. They didn't want to tell you at first, but you encouraged them and got the name of their boss. He wasn't exactly... normal, as you would define the term. He mixed his own blood into the drugs and sucked the blood out of thralled concubines. He didn't want to leave, but despite his speed and strength, you forced him out. When he came back a month later to restart his business, you made sure he didn't get a chance to return again. He shrugged off bullets, but you managed to subdue him and force a stake through his heart. It didn't seem to kill him, so you lit him on fire and burned down his factory.

Things are more clear to you now. You know there are more dangerous things out there than drug dealers and petty criminals. There are real monsters walking your streets, the streets of your hood, your home. It is not something you are willing to just let stand. Someone has to act, and that someone is you.
This is the suggested backstory to the game. If you had some special thoughts on how you came into the whole Hunter business, just let me know and we'll edit the intro to include it.

The standardised character sheet will follow in the next post, as well as a general guideline of how I run character creation.

Following that will be a short list of what your characters know about the Hood, who's who and monsters in general. That list will expand as you learn new things.

The general assumption is that you are not the finite number of Hunters in your Cell (group of Hunters, in this case the Neighborhood Watch) and that when one of you is mortally wounded or dead, you can call on another friend to assist.

The players, and their characters:
Player - Character name - Profession - Damage suffered / total Health
Mr.Conquest - in progress - n/a - 0B/0L/0A / 0
speeddemon - in progress - n/a - 0B/0L/0A / 0

Name: [name of your character]
Player: [your name or username]
Quote: [a quote which your character is likely to have said or will say]
Background: [a paragraph or two about where your character is from]
Description: [how your character looks]
Roleplaying: [how your character behaves]
Virtue: [choose between Charity, Faith, Fortitude, Hope, Justice, Prudence, Temperance (WoD, 101-103)]
Vice: [choose between Envy, Gluttony, Greed, Lust, Pride, Sloth, Wrath (WoD, 103-105)]
Profession: [see HtV, 74-93]
Mental Attributes: Intelligence, Wits, Resolve
Physical Attributes: Strength, Dexterity, Stamina
Social Attributes: Presence, Manipulation, Composure
Mental Skills: [write only Skills you know]
Physical Skills: Social Skills: Merits: [choose Merits (WoD, 108-117; HtV 67-74)]
Flaws: [Flaws are optional (WoD, 217-219)]
Morality: [7 for starting characters]
Willpower: [equals Resolve + Composure]
Health: [equals Size + Stamina]
Size: [5 for normal-sized humans] Speed: [equals 5 + Strength + Dexterity]
Initiative Mod: [equals Dexterity + Composure]
Defense: [lower of Dexterity or Wits] Armor: Weapons: [include name, dice modifier, range, ammunition capacity, size and required Strength, and of course any special notes]
Equipment: [recommend you see WoD, 139-141, 147, and 135-136, and HtV, 229-246]

Alright, that is the character sheet you will be using. For Attributes, you choose one group (Mental, Physical, or Social) to recieve 5 points which you can 'spend' however you like, second group to get 4 points and the third to get 3. Remember that every Attribute starts with a point already in them, in addition to the ones you are spending.
Use the same method for Skills, except you put 11 in the primary group, 7 in the secondary and 4 in the tertiary. Skills do not start with automatic point in them, they start empty.

As for special rules, there aren't many. You can reduce your starting Morality to get 5 xp for each dot (maximum 10 xp for two dots), which you can then spend.

As for equipment, it is based on your rating in Resources. You need to have Resources equal to the price-tag on the item you intend to buy. I am not going to complicate things with special rules on what you can buy and what you can't, since there are only the two of you (so far) and you're pretty new at this. There is technically no limit to how much equipment you can buy, but remember that hiding a rocket launcher in your living room is not really a good idea.

That's all I can remember for now, so if you have any questions for how to make your characters, post the question here so everyone can see.

Work in progress...

You said that we were getting the credit for cleaning up the streets. Does that mean that the public knows who we are, or do they know that they're is a mysterious orginization that has been doing what the cops havn't been.

Also the vampire that we faced (at least I'm assuming it's a vampire) did we already know he was a vampire or did we just randomly have a stake around to attack him with, and then set him on fire.

And I want to know if we can get the other people that are part of the Neighborhood watch can pay their merits towards the safehouse, caches, secrecy, any contacts in the city, allies, etc, etc.

Assuming that they can't pay their merits toward the safehouse, I can put 4 towards it and take the other two I would have put into it into will now go into the reasources merit to pay for gear that we need at the safehouse. If Mr.Conquest can put in 4 as well we can make a fairly good safehouse with 3 caches, 3 dots in secrecy, and 2 for size. The caches would probably contain all variaties of gear from armour that ranges from medival to riot gear, to blessed weapons and explosizes for dealing with the supernatural resistances, to stakeout gear and a high power rifle plus scope to deal with tricky enemies that try to hide.

My final question is why do people need morality 8 or better to exrocise ghosts? The forces you use against the ghost are neither good nor evil, just your will versus it's. So I don't get why you would need any morality score to exrocise ghosts, especially since ghosts themselves aren't inherintly evil.

Thank you for patiently answering all my questions, cause i'm new to this game so theres probably alot more questions i'm going to ask.

Also this probably won't change anything but my character has maxed out proffesion as a detective, and has the Holistic sense merit and three dots in the occult. So even though he only has a presence score of two, he is probably somewhat known in the town as a supernatural detective around town.

That is what this thread is all about; questions and answers. Ask away, my furry little friend. Ask away.

Yes, your neighbors know who you are, and chances are that other city folk from nearby neighborhoods would recognize your names through rumors and heresay. They do not, however, realize the extend of what you do. They do not know that monsters lurk in the dark corners of the city.
And yes, the police likely has heard of you, but without evidence (and as long as you don't bother them directly) they won't investigate you. I would recommend an ally in the force, though, just in case.

Yes, you faced a vampire. Yes, at the time of staking and setting on fire, you knew it was a vampire. At the time of your first confrontation, you probably figured it out when he was sucking the blood out of his thralls.

Thematically, that would make sense. But really, I only said that there were other Hunters working with you so that if your character dies, it won't be weird bringing in a new character that knows as much and is an instant ally. The same goes if a new player wants to join. They won't be paying tribute to the safehouse until they become actual characters.

The Exorcism Tactic, found on page 222 in the Hunter book, does not require Morality 8, but does require Morality 7 for the primary actor. As for why, I imagine it is because Morality actually ranks the purity of your character's heart. The purer your heart, the more faith you have in what you're doing. Seriously, though, I have no idea but we are sticking to the rule. It also does not require you to have Morality 8, but you get penalties if you don't.

Like I recommended to Mr.Conquest, do not finish or at all make your characters until I have given you the details for how I run character creation. I don't want people saying "I didn't know!" or "Why didn't you tell us while we were making the characters?" just because they didn't wait for me to post the dos and don'ts.

I don't want to get to hung up on my detective character idea, but as you said it would be good to have an inside contact with the police. I had an idea but threw it out when I saw that most of the police where bad or corupt. My idea is that my detective character would get alot of his cases from the SI (special investigations) branch of the police as they probably have the most encounters with the creatures in the darkness, and I'm one of the most knowledgable people in the area that knows about that stuff.

Just an idea I thought of, though I still don't know if it will work. One other thing though, I really don't like the fact that we're sticking to the morality system for exrocising ghosts. It's not that I have any want to create a character with a low morality score, it's just because it doesn't make sense to me, and I really don't like rules that don't make sense. If we could houserule some other restriction that would be fine, but I'd just like it if it made more sense. If you still want to keep it though I understand and will respect your decision.

I'm glad your going to post a character sheet help thing, because reading through the book is a little difficult. I'm not picking it up somehow. I'll keep looking but yes, i won't start my sheet until the help is up

Just curious, when are we going to make our characters. I'm anxious to start on mine.

Sorry for the delay. My brother was moving and I was helping, and I was preparing for my tabletop Hunter group as well as my Changeling group. I'll try to make enough time for you to at least learn how the system works (a little bit).

I've posted the character sheet. If there is something that you don't think is clear enough, just post here and let me know.

I got my character sheet done. Might still need to be changed if I forgot anything, but thats fine.

Still working on mine, my brother broke his arm and i need to help him out. I'll get it in as soon as

I've been a little distant for the past few days from this game with life and stuff. I just want to know whats currently going on.

Also Mr.Conquest if you think there's a way to make are characters work better together (from something like connecting our backstories to changing my merits so they work better with yours our vica versa) tell me so we can make our characters more compatible in the game.

My schedule is getting a bit tight. I have my bachelor thesis to write this summer, two RPG games to run, and I'm writing every now and then.

There is a possibility that I will cancel this game. If that happens, I will let you know.

As you might have figured out by now, I am cancelling this game for the reasons that are my schedule. With too many games going on, I am focusing less on what I really should be doing so I decided to cut some distractions away. Unfortunately, this was the logical choice.

I am deeply sorry for raising hopes of bringing some pain to vampires and whatnot, and I am sorry for not telling you earlier.