Creating a Story

Hey,

Do you know of the "Requiem for Rome" series?

Thanks for the reply. I was hoping for something a little more modern times, (or easily adapted to modern times,) that they can continue their current players.  But it's a great suggestion for starting a campaign from scratch with new characters.

Van Richten's Complete Guide to Vampires might help.

Thanks. I'm looking more for actual constructed campaigns with hooks and characters and the stories than source material.

City of the Damned: New Orleans and World of Darkness: Chicago both have a host of characters, background, and story hooks in them.  Neither book presents a full-fledged campaign, but both would cut down on the work you'd have to do to prepare your own stories.

Thanks to everyone who has replied so far. I appreciate the suggestions.

Have you checked out Collection of horrors or the hunters recognition guide? Even Perverbial Monsters or Wickid Dead could jump start your imagination.  The Collection of horrors has pdf scenes- peel open a pdf, set the stage and its an instant story. The others might require more time on your end as they are mostly seeds, but they have rich stories and unusual events.

So, this thread has made me curious about how others run games.  I've never created a whole story ahead of time before  My games are usually just a short concept for a social experiment in my head when I start, and then I just build the game as I go, based on the characters' actions and the players' reactions. 
Past jumping off points include:

"Vampires run organized crime as fronts and have thus ended up more divided along racial lines (Vory vs. Mafia vs. Triads, etc.) than covenant lines."

"A Carthian regime is run by elders obsessed with the ideals of pure freedom and true democracy and modeled after the Roman Republic (so there are two "Consuls" functioning as co-Princes).  There is no restriction on siring (as that would infringe on freedom, and nobody voted one in), so many many more vampires than the city can handle have been embraced.  Because they're mostly young and stupid, they've elected a recently embraced local rock star as Consul."

Anyway, am I in the minority here, or are there a lot of other STs who just wing it?

Story Hooks are, I find, always more useful than premade stories. When I get stuck I turn to my copy of Post Mortem Studios' 100 Horror Adventure Seeds. I've adapted and run several of the seeds presented and they've worked really well.

I would have to agree with you mplindustries, I've never created an entire story line before, it doesn't really make sense to me to do so. Your players are going to do what they want when they want and if you string them along on a "rail shooter"-like game than it's just not fun for your players. I'm currently running a V:tR game for two players; the story is they have been embraced as per the Princes command and they are technically under his control, their sires have some say but they are under the hand of the Prince more so. They are his gofers, they are currently working on holding the peace with the largest werewolf pack in the city, but their are other wolves moving in that don't like the local pack. That's as far as I've got for now.

I have had some ideas as to where I want the story to go in the coming months but I haven't given any thought as to what will happen a year from now and I have no idea how to end the story. Hell most of the time I'm just reacting to what my players are doing and throwing things at them as I see fit and as long as it fits with the story. They've had fun thus far and I've almost killed one of them in the second session, over all I'd say it's turning out to be a good story.

During my first attempt at STing I had a bit of a storyline prepared. I even had little bulletins with every scene, SAS-like.
Unfortunately the group went through the prepared part in less then half an hour so I either had to suffer the humiliation of calling it a night, or wing it. I decided that winging it suited me better.

Now, I usually just prepare an environment (balance of power between the covenants, the power players and a handful of people the chars meet on a regular basis) and throw an event into it. Either the PCs are the event or it happens close to them. Add to that a few handy names and descriptions in case I have to make up someone on the spot. From then on the most difficult thing is keeping the timelines straight.

Inspiration comes from the World Of Darkness books.  Whenever I read them or re-read them ideas seem to jump off the pages, at least for me. 

Once there is an idea or theme to explore I use this as a the foundation for the story.  Anything that I'm ignorant on or sketchy on I turn to television shows, movies, fiction and non-fiction books to fill in the gaps.

With the basic idea in mind I pitch the concept to my Players and sees who is interested in giving it a go.

They pitch their characters at me, I review them.  I suggest changes where necesarry or re-writes if needed.

Using their character backgrounds for the story hooks to tie them into the story and the world.

The Preludes for each character sets the stage and there you go...

It seems like a lot of work, but it's not.

You take it upon yourself to do half of the work load, the Players collectively do the other half.

Important NPCs that the Players will interact with takes but little time to flesh out before the game, the new ones created on the fly get written up after the game.

It's not necessary to stat everything out, or all of it at once.

As the Players explore the world it will come to life one block at a time as if the story has a life all of its own.

An hour worth of prep work gets you about two to four hours of game play.

When in doubt favour the Players on game mechanics, personally I hate to interrupt the story for any reason like looking up rules in books.  If the story is interrupted it takes the Player out of the story and reminds them that they are playing a game.

With the Players driving the story forward exploring the themes and ideas you want to explore as a Storyteller the game has a more organic feel and the Players feel like they matter, that they are indeed the stars of the show.  If they come up with something better than I had planned, I go with it.

Because I let the Players have free reign in story creation as it happens in game/story, after it's there characters doing all the work, I can sit back and subtly edit the themes and ideas on the fly which makes for a better experience at my table.

This approach works when the Players are intrested in their characters and how they can make an impact in the world.

This appraoch falls to pieces when the Players simply re-act to the environment and expect to be entertained as if they are being read or told a story.

For me adapting other source material from other game means I have to read the material first, then translate it, and write it up.  Bearing in mind that I will still have to create things on the fly and try to keep it in line with what's been translated.

When I go with my method I don't have to worry about the original intent of the material, my material, well, it's mine and I can modify on a whim to fit the need of the group and the story.

I don't know if this helps but this is how I do things and for the most part it has worked more often then it hasn't.

If I can help with anything else or expand on things, you need but ask :)

possibly related, so http://watchout4snakes.com/CreativityTools/Main/Main.aspx

it has a few random word and sentence generators.  I've been using it to practice creating characters and hooks.  A few clicks, instant inspiration.  It still requires a bit of work to flesh the ideas out, but I've got some interesting things out of it.