E M E R A L D  C I T Y  C H R O N I C L E S

 

Step Two: Choose a Clan (pg. 36)

• Choose a clan.

  • Remember that clan will determine your character’s initial (in-clan) disciplines.

  • Check with your Storyteller to determine if your chosen clan is currently available in our setting. Some Clans and Bloodlines are subject to caps. For more information on Clan caps, see Books and Boundaries.

  • For basic information regarding the vampire clans, refer to the V20 core book, or look at our cWoD Seattle page.

  • Your choice of clan may be impacted by your draw of Concept Rarity bead.

    • For more information about Concept Rarity, look at the Concept Rarity Guide.​

 

Step Three: Record Initial Experience Points (XP) Beads

• By now you should have drawn an XP rarity bead from a bag. You may get  randomly, 25, 75 or 125xp to start play with.

• You may also spend XP that you have banked from previous roleplay within ECC (Post-Reset earned XP only. All Pre-reset XP is gone forever, game-wide as of August 2014).

 

Step Four: Assign Initial Attributes (pg. 96)

• Rank the character’s attributes (Physical, Social, Mental) as primary, secondary, and tertiary.

  • Assign 7 dots to the character’s primary attributes.

  • Assign 5 to the character’s secondary attributes.

  • Assign 3 to the character’s tertiary attributes.

  • Select specialties for any Attributes at either the 4th or 5th dot level. (pg. 96)

  • If there are any house rules for how to use certain attributes or abilities, they'll be listed in the House Rules under Attributes and Abilities Errata.

  • Reference your Caste when assigning dots. How many you may have in each Attribute may be limited.

 

Step Five: Assign Initial Abilities (pg. 100)

• Rank the character’s abilities (Talents, Skills & Knowledges) as primary, secondary, and tertiary.

  • Assign 13 dots to the character’s primary abilities.

  • Assign 9 to the character’s secondary abilities.

  • Assign 5 to the character’s tertiary abilities.

  • Select specialties for any abilities at either the 4th or 5th dot level unless the ability specifies otherwise (such as with Crafts, for example). (pg. 96)

  • If there are any house rules for how to use certain attributes or abilities, they'll be listed in the House Rules under Attributes and Abilities Errata.

  • Reference your Caste when assigning dots. How many you may have in each Attribute may be limited.

 

Step Six: Assign Initial Backgrounds (pg. 110)

• Assign 5 dots to any of the backgrounds listed on pg. 110 with the below exceptions:

  • At ECC the Generation background is purchased at a rate of 3 Freebies per dot (and may only be purchased with Freebies).

  • We don't use the following backgrounds: Black Hand Membership, Rituals, (those are for Sabbat Ritae) or any of a number Mortal Only backgrounds unique to supernatural hunters.

  • You may not buy the Businesses, Domain, or Influence backgrounds prior to your character's arrival in the city, as they only may be earned by established denizens of Seattle.

    • Domain is granted granted by the Prince character.

    • Influence requires a Kindred to be established in the city they wish to Influence.

    • Businesses are 'locally grown' and require a Kindred to be in the city first.

  • For any background related to characters (such as Retainers, Contacts, Allies or Mentors), certain information must be predefined at character creation. For information about rules for defining and using backgrounds, check out the Background Errata.

  • Backgrounds cost the same as Abilities if purchased with XP.

 

Step Seven: Assign Initial Disciplines (pg. 127)

• Many out of Clan or rare disciplines are restricted or not used in a Camarilla Modern Nights game.

• All initial Discipline assignments (the first free dots) must be spent in-Clan.

• Caitiff disciplines are restricted to the common disciplines Animalism, Auspex, Celerity, Dominate, Fortitude, Obfuscate, Presence, or Potence.

• Some disciplines are required as prerequisites to gaining access to others (such as the Tremere required to learn Path of Blood prior to other Thaumaturgical Paths per canon.)

• Starting characters with access to magic begin play with one level one ritual, presuming they have purchased a dot of Thaumaturgy / Sorcery. All other rituals are subject to individual approval, and are purchased at the cost of 2xp times the cost of the level of the ritual. (Per v20 Rites of the the Blood book.)

• If there are any house rules for how to use certain Disciplines, they'll be listed in the House Rules under Discipline Errata.

• At character creation, you may not purchase Disciplines other than the ones that are common to your character's Clan without the Merit; Additional Clan Discipline, which is limited (subject to cap). Other Merit/Flaw restrictions are listed in the House Rules under Merits & Flaws Errata.

 

Step Eight: Assign Virtues (pg. 119)

• You have 7 dots to spread between three Virtues

• Note your starting Willpower and Humanity based on those

 

Step Nine: Spend Freebie Points (pg. 82)

• Assign Freebies based on the cost chart in the V:tM V20 core book on pg. 82.

• Freebies are the only way that the Generation background may be purchased at our game. Each dot of Generation costs 3 Freebies, and it subject to the character's Caste bead draw cap of 2/4/5 for common/uncommon/rare.

• You have 15 Freebies to spend.

• Willpower costs 2 Freebies per dot in V20

• Starting Willpower may be no higher than 8

• Social flaws that are automatically assigned to Uncommon and Rare characters don't give back freebie points. They also don't count toward your 7 points of flaws limit. You might not be aware of some of the details of your character's social flaws.

 

Step Ten: Choose Merits & Flaws (pg. 479)

• Assign as many Freebie points worth of merits to your character as you feel like you can afford. Each point of a Merit costs one Freebie. 

• Assign up to 7 points worth of flaws to your character. Each point provides one Freebie in return.

  • The Social flaws from Uncommon and Rare (5 and 10 points) do not yield ANY freebies. They are on top of whatever you choose to take and represent years of dealing with other Kindred. 

• Merits and Flaws are tracked by the STs and limited in availability so that the same merit or flaw does not appear over and over throughout the game.

  • Some Merits and Flaws have restrictions and caps, please refer to the chart for guidelines.

  • In V20, Languages are Merits. Please review the core book for more details.

  • In our game, Lores are Merits. Select 2 free Lores that are Common to your character concept. (Generally, Kindred Lore, Camarilla or Anarch Lore, or your character's Clan, most commonly). Other Lores may be purchased with a teacher after character creation.

 

Step Eleven: Spend Initial XP

• After purchasing merits and adding Freebies from flaws you may use your initial XP to:

  • Purchase more attributes, abilities or backgrounds. Backgrounds cost the same as abilities with XP.

  • Purchase additional dots of your character's in-clan disciplines.

  • Purchase common out-of clan disciplines (if applicable with the Additional Clan Discipline Merit): Animalism, Auspex, Celerity,  Dominate, Fortitude, Obfuscate, Presence, or Potence.

  • Purchase another dot of Virtues, Humanity or Willpower (still subject to starting cap). 

  • For more info on character advancement, check out the House Rules.

 

Step Twelve: Finishing Touches (pg. 85)

• Note the character’s total Blood points.

• Note the character’s total dots of Willpower

• Note the character’s total health levels.

 

Step Thirteen: Before the Game

• Email your storytellers with your completed character sheet (emailing a picture is fine!) and a list of how you spent build points, freebies and XP to create the sheet. Email your character's background, and any character questionnaire to your Storyteller for approval at storyteller@emeraldcitychronicles.com 

• Download the approved mobile dice-roller app for your mobile device (linked to the right).

• Prepare your costume, print out your sheet for easy reference, and go to game! 

 

Please Note: You must present a physical character sheet to Staff that we will provide to our electronic paper table. Without a physical sheet that is stamped a character is not valid (Effective August, 2015, previous sheets grandfathered in). If you don't have a blank one, we usually have extras, but we also love it when players bring US extra blank sheets too.:)