Gang Creation

Below you will find our guide for gang creation. Once you are ready to create a gang, you can submit the form below.

Forward from the director:

Vampire The Masquerade is a very diverse setting. There are many different ways of playing within this setting. Most games that use this setting are either a table top RPG or a parlor style larp game. Worcester 1988 will be a parlor style larp game that will be using the Anarchs faction as the main focus of the game for the players. This version of an Anarch focus, parlor style larp game will be putting a heavy focus on players working together in small groups that the Anarchs call gangs. 

In other versions of Vampire The Masquerade, player versus player conflict is much more heavily focused on compared to what we will be expecting from our players in Worcester 1988. This is an aspect of Anarch focused games in general compared to games that center on The Camarilla or The Sabbat. In some regards, the Anarchs as a faction are very counter culture in these regards! The Camarilla’s dense, internal political system often leads its players to backstab and plot against one another, while players in a Sabbat game may sometimes have personal ideologies so vastly different, that it can put them at such conflicting odds with other players that duels can be fought between them.

During this game players will be expected to work together much more closely than in most other vampire games, as this is one of the few strengths of the Anarch Movement; unity. Thanks to their mostly homogenous philosophies of ‘Humanitas and Libertas’ and being surrounded on all sides by enemies, the kindred of the Anarch movement have only themselves to depend on, and if they can’t do that, they truly have nothing. 

This game was intentionally designed to be an Anarch game to accommodate modern gaming tastes and to serve as a more palatable introduction to the setting for new players. The Anarch Movement as a whole is easier for most players to wrap their head around when compared to the other factions. Because of these notions, we are leaning in heavily on the things that make an Anarch game different from other styles of vampire games, and a central focus of that will be the PC lead gangs.

I hope that all players of this game will lean in with us on what makes an anarch game different from other vampire games. I hope we as a larping community can create a culture of working together to have a safe and fun time. The rest of the staff and I are always here to help any player of this game better understand the vibes we are going for and the community we are looking to create!

- Ronald Bruce Rose Jr 

What is a gang of Anarch vampires anyways?

In the modern Anarch Movement in the Vampire The Masquerade setting, the very decentralized Anarch Movement keeps itself together loosely as a collection of small groups called gangs. Although gangs throughout the canonical setting of Vampire The Masquerade vary in size and structure, we are going for a very streamlined approach in Worcester 1988.

Players are to organize themselves into gangs of 4 to 6 characters each. The game in most regards will be balanced around the idea of gangs being 5 players each. The game’s staff can adjust accordingly as need be. Smaller gangs may be combined and larger gangs might be broken up for the sake of game balance. All players will be part of a gang. If a player is struggling to find a gang to be part of, they should reach out to the staff for assistance. Staff may assign players to a gang if a player is completely unable to find a gang to be part of. When assigning players to a gang, personal preference for the players involved will be considered. Our goal for Worcester 1988 is to have around 5 different gangs of about 5 players each for a total of about 25 players.  

Gangs are lead by the Anarch Barony’s leadership team, which in this game will be casted by Staff members and NPCs. This is an intentional choice from the director and staff of the game to keep the players in general organized and working together. In other games of vampire where the goal is to eventually have your character become the leader in your given faction, a lot of time and effort is spent on this leadership power struggle. We have intentionally removed this aspect of the vampire experience from the game to make for a more story driven game. Simply put, if your character isn’t focusing on becoming Baron, they have far more time to go on adventures, learn more about the setting and generally speak exist in the World Of Darkness. 

How to assemble and theme a gang:

Players who are coming to our game with a group of friends will probably want to make a gang with them. Players who are coming to the game with only one friend or possibly alone, will need to shop around to existing gangs and figure out which gang their character will fit best with. Players who are building a gang together with their friends can build their characters and then theme a gang around their character concepts, or they can theme the gang, and then build characters that would suit the gang. Either way works just fine!

For this game, we’re hoping for gangs to have some sort of theme to them. In regards to themes, themes are a way for the players to signal to the staff of the game the sort of plots and story lines they are looking for in the game. If 3 out of the 5 player gangs are all interested in Occult Mysteries and only 1 of the 5 players gangs are into street crime, then we as a staff will simply write more occult mysteries themed missions than street crime themed missions. Themes are encouraged to be concise, and narrow in scale. The broader you make a gang’s interests, the harder it will be to focus your gang’s efforts on what is important to them. Having a theme such as ‘Dominating the criminal underworld to financially support the Baronry’ is far easier for the game’s staff to write content around than ‘studying the deep mysterious of the vampire condition while also establishing political inroads with the other factions and fighting werewolves wherever possible as they are a problem for our Baronry.” 

Members of a gang should work together to establish a gang’s theme and should generally be in agreement on a gang’s mission statement. If a player in a gang seems to be completely at odds with a gang’s theme, they should consider changing parts of their character, finding a different gang, or consign themselves to being the black sheep of the gang, but not in a way that hinders or hurts the gang. Maybe a gang has the theme of being ‘the strong defenders of the baronry’ and is generally speaking a bunch of fighters, but there is one member of the gang who’s the ‘brains’ of the operation and isn’t much of a fighter. That would be a fine way to be a ‘black sheep’ without hurting the theme. Maybe there’s a gang that has the theme of ‘being the magical investigators’ of the baronry and they have one person in the gang that serves as their body guard by having great combat skills but very little magical know-how.

Gangs have mechanics

When putting together a gang, remember there are several mechanics involved with gangs. These mechanics range from the hard and fast mechanics of sharing backgrounds to the more vague mechanics of picking missions and hunting grounds. Although some of these mechanics are covered in other documents, we will briefly touch on them again here to remind players what sort of mechanics they can expect to have to coordinate with other members of their gang.

Shared backgrounds: 

Gangs can share the following backgrounds between members

• Haven

• Herd

• Allies

• Contacts

Shared backgrounds cannot exceed the maximum of 5 dots for the shared group, no matter how many dots are contributed by the group’s members. Shared group backgrounds may be used by any character within the group until the background has been expended. For example, if a member of a group uses the shared Herd background and depletes it, the other members of that group can’t access Herd until it refreshes. Remember that any member of the shared group may access any background shared by the group, including the Haven background. Many Kindred have met their Final Death from the betrayal of a disgruntled former coterie-mate leading enemies through their Haven’s defenses. Characters can purchase individual levels of the above-listed backgrounds in addition to contributing to a shared group; however, each background must be purchased separately. When a group member dies or leaves the group, all contributed backgrounds are lost after 30 days or two game sessions, whichever is greater, unless other members spend XP to repurchase them.  

Gathering rumors, trading rumors and picking missions 

Whenever a PC gathers a rumor for a mission in game, that rumor is now owned by the gang they are a member of as a whole rather than them as an individual. Rumors are redeemed at the end of a session by the gang as a whole to pick a mission for the next game session. In picking a mission for the next game session, gangs will need to reach a general consensus on which rumors they want to redeem. If a gang cannot reach a general consensus, they can reach out to a titled Anarch NPC for help or advice. When trading rumors between gangs, like with picking missions, a general consensus should be reached by the gang.

Gaining and spending reputation and sharing blood

When a mission has been completed, gang members will gain reputation points that are tracked by the gang as a whole. When spending reputation points, gangs should reach a general consensus on how reputation is spent. Once reputation is spent, the gang unlocks the hunting ground and gains the blood from that hunting ground. Blood is assigned to the gang and the gang members can decide how they would like to divide up the blood amongst themselves or what blood they’d like to donate to other gangs for them to then divide up amongst themselves. 

Picking down time actions

Between each game session there will be a chance for a gang to work together to perform a down time action. A gang can only select one down time action between each game session and there should be a general consensus among the gang members on what that down time action the gang is doing. Gangs that can not gain a consensus on which down time action to do may end up forfeiting their down time action.