The Ocean House

I have always wanted a little "something" in the Ocean House Hotel. I'll refer to the Ghost (the woman in white) as "Wife" and her husband as "Husband". Again, this is Pen and Paper rules, the game itself screws a few canon rules for story's sake (which is just great !).

First, let me explain a little more about the WoD and Wraith (Ghosts). To make a long story short, there are two types of wraith, the ones still "humane" and the ones driven by their Shadow (somekind of Beast, except the Shadow speaks to the Wraith, reminding him of the bad things, tempting her with its own weakness, wanting it to give up... the shadow is the beast but crafty, sneaky and witty). A Wraith, like a Kuei-Jin except not on the same "reality plane" as "us" (this discussion deserves an essay on its own, but I'm not touching that, it's pure metaphysics Mage Umbra talk, fuck !), has goals, "stuff to do". Some believe that by resolving their Fetters (whatever ties them to the real world, like that necklace ! It also keeps the wraith from giving up to her Shadow), they might be able to reach Transcendence (which is kind of like Golconda, one can resume it as "going to heaven" ; it's a losing battle), but anyway, because they are tied to some objects, they "haunt" places, engage in wraith politics (!), try to survive the Tempest that may drive them nuts or send them to Oblivion, and they killing each other for resources (essence is used to make artifacts or guardians, so you.. well.. destroy a wraith for its essence) and basically try and do what they liked in life. They fuel themselves with Passions, which basically something they like ; if they are in presence of such feeling (Lust, "enjoys watching people having sex", or Friendship, "watch over her living friends", Hate, "see a black person being beaten up"), they gain Pathos (Blood points) to fuel their Arcanoi (Disciplines, most of them only affect themselves and their own world, but some Arcanoi affect the real world, such as possessing people, poltergeist activities, and the Wife appearing). Haunted houses is where they can use their powers better. (Teh wiki page of Wraith)

The Wife is obviously a poor Wraith who wanted nothing with nobody until she got killed. Her passion is probably Hope (to be saved, to let the truth come out), Fear (flee her husband).. She's attached to the Necklace and to the Hotel (her Fetters), but also probably to her Husband. But that necklace is more important than the rest >_>
The Husband is probably a Specter (a Wraith who gave in to his Shadow and its Dark Passions, consider a Specter like Vampire in Frenzy, but with "normal" behavior), whose passions are Vengeance (keep the 'cheating' wife with him), Lust (torture the wife).. And the necklace is also probably his Fetter. After all, he killed for it.


Now, let's talk Bloodlines !
See, Therese asks for the Necklace, to exorcise the place (obviously she's not going to do it herself, I mean, she has the necklace, now what ?). Destroying it could actually work, sending both to Oblivion and all set. Jeanette's solution of sending it to the pacific also works, actually ! She does it anyway (even if you give the pendant to Therese, when Jeanette takes over, she takes it and throws it into the pacific, like her email say to Therese which you can read after the battle between the two of them).
I always wanted to keep the necklace and give it to Strauss or the Giovanni for sale, or at least ASK Strauss. The Tremere have a Spirit Manipulation Path, and a lot of rituals can involve binding Spirits (Wraith or not). The Giovanni have also Ghost servants, as part of Necromancy (Sepulchre Path mainly, but not only ; Read up), it's their main trade tool and power. That and pasta.

Anyway, my idea is to brainstorm about the ocean house, how cool would it be that there would be somebody THERE ? I mean, every other Bloodlines player out there went through the Ocean, one hand on their backs and the other on the coffee mug. What about if they get randomly attacked ? For real ?

I once had this Tremere character very sensible to the Shadowlands (the underworld, where Wraith live), and she had a tendency to try and help wraiths act upon the real world when they couldn't. Stealing fetters, speaking to their loved ones, giving them a proper grave if they don't have one, keep their memory alive... She did so "outside" the Pyramid so the most power-hungry wouldn't use her to use the wraith for their own goals (she knows she's easy to manipulate, and she usually don't let know Wraith that she can hear and see them because she doesn't want other Mediums to know she, too, can).
I could imagine this character going after the necklace to be able to drive both wraith away to some place safer (probably a necropolis, so they would basically both be involved with Wraith politics, Tempests and else (most specters are either destroyed at best or turned into "ghost money", for their essences.. don't ask).
The idea would be a character attacking the PC before the hotel, so F. doesn't enter, but they cut the fight (or don't start fighting at all). This character would ask the PC for the necklace (and the diary ! so it would get useful ! random useless object one picks !) so she could free herself the ghost, with a random ritual, with the PC's help. Therese would be happy because the PC got rid of the ghost (extra points with Therese I guess), Jeanette would still want F. to go for Gallery Noir, and participating in the ritual could be good for XP and to learn about the WoD. Maybe a reward would be an occult book (might interest Akeem from TFN ? Childe of Malkav wants to have him in CE !), initiation to Thaumaturgy (if the character isn't Tremere), an extra dot in Auspex (those who have it, or new discipline).
This one character might also be found in the Giovanni mansion, or to ask to get rid of Pisha (since she "creates so many wraith")..

Random brainstorm was random.

I'm liking this idea -- mainly because I see a lot of ways to get around having to find a voice actor that can imitate one of the original characters. However I have two comments:

1) A bit of protest: the only problem here I see is that a lot of people are traditionalists with the ocean hotel. Some people argue that the haunted house is one of the best done and innovative parts of the game. I can attest to this a bit, as the first time I played the game, I was genuinely creeped out, and jumping at all the cheap scares. It was like a real haunted house boiled down into a video game, which is kind of epic. What to say to the people that would be upset that the experience is 'upset'.

2) Another idea to tack on. A bit of manipulation. You mentioned that in the Wraith world, these wraiths are destroyed for their essence. Whom besides other wraiths covet this essence? Surely another, yes? If so, another possibility would be that the player is approached by this person who claims to want to set the wraith free, but in actuality this person is using the amulet to manipulate the wraith for his/her own benefit. Possibly to destroy the wraith for her essence.
So then the player can choose to let this transpire for Therese's benefit, or chase after this con artist and get the amulet back.

I think I would need to know some more about Wraith to know if point 2 is plausible.

1) I don't want to change the Ocean House at all, but making people scared that something might have changed because of some unexpected encounter either at the very beginning, adding some sounds somewhere before they enter the house... You know, how much would you scream if, when you open the little guardian house (where the keys are), someone talks to you or attack you ? Like "SHITYOUSCAREDME D:"

2) The essence, plasm, thing is Soulforging ; Wraith use and kill each other to have "objects" with a little link. Consider this essence thingy as Gargoyle-making for the Tremere, but they turn them into "dogs", weapons and else, because they all live in the shadowlands, the mundane objects don't happen. Animals don't either . Unless special artefacts or rituals, of course (like objects in the astral world)... The buildings themselves are made from older wraith, sacrificed slaves, sold souls, specters.. See the horror ?
Wraith is fucked up in so many ways
It's still possible that Ocean-NPC wants to enslave either (both ?) wraith to her own goals (and if she is indeed Tremere, and if you'll ask Strauss-voice-actor to say stuff, maybe adding in a little responses from him when the PC asks about that to him..), but it's everyone's opinion to choose who to believe. I sincerely believe, with Jeanette's email, that Therese couldn't do a thing about the Wraith (if she survives as Tourette or if she kills Jeanette !), except selling it to the Giovanni. Removing the pendant is only a way of having either (both ?) wraith to follow it. Unless the Fetter is "resolved" (maybe by turning the books to the police ? you know, unsolved mysteries, "still stuff to do in the world"), having the pendant, sending it to the pacific or else doesn't do anything. The connection is not broken unless some magic (Necromancy, Thaumaturgy) is done, or the Fetter is resolved (whatever that means for either or both ghosts !)

The thing is that the Ocean and the pendant are part of the main quest, so it "blocs" the character in Santa Monica (maybe emailing the Regent ?).


Now, let's pull up a tree of options m'kay ?

(I'll refer to the NPC as Sarah, random name popped up)

PC walks in Ocean House zone and walks to the guardian house to get keys : There PC gets "attacked" by Sarah.
Sarah attacks physically ; Either her or PC are wounded enough and triggers conversation ; excuses herself [PC can chose "I don't care I'll finish you off bitch", kills NPC, quest continues as usual].
Sarah explains ; is interested in ghosts [persuasion or intimidation to get more information on Wraith, on fetters, or on her clan -either Tremere or Giovanni, or having both clans involved through two NPCs that are discussing/fighting.. ; if you want to have a "taking sides" quest like with the mafia guy and Venus-].
Tries to convince the PC she wants to save the souls lost in there [persuation/"humane" dialogue lines to know that she was the one who, alive, told the husband and the wife they should take a vacation there.. culpability ! ; accusing her of wanting to use them for her clan ; "I don't believe you'll free them so I'll kill you ; I'll give the pendant to Therese anyway so leave me alone ; what are you able to do for me if I accept ?" money/blood/objects/stats raised, maybe. Either way there is no way to know if her intentions are true.]
Option 1 : Participate in the ritual to enslave/free the soul(s) ; after all, the PC can not know, unless finds another source of wraith knowledge.. [maybe the email "a friend" ? after all, we're still "trapped" in Santa Monica ! But emailing Strauss could be.. shit, why do mobiles do not exist in Bloodlines ? They had them in MGS !]. PC can help out and learn something [maybe with Virgil Crumb's cadaver ? who knows what props we can find in Santa Monica !]. Once the ritual is complete...
Option 2 : Do not participate, just give the pendant, go make a side quest (you know, the reloads like with Isaac), come back.

-> Either option ; PC recovers the soul-less resolved pendant, and goes on with Therese as normal ; after all, now the Ocean is ghost free ! And the Malkie can't know, she'll send in another entrepreneur and "okay no problem" "oh, so retrieving the thing was enough, good !". Of course, if she survives the fight with Jeanette...

This needs some work... >_>

This seems like a fun place to have my first post ^_^

The ocean house has a alot of potential for jumping into other areas of the WOD. But I'm curious why you are assuming that they are Wraiths. Although it isn't impossible, they would have to be Proctors using the Phantasm ability right? It seems alot more likely that they would just be Spirits.

In the end though the mechanics for the Spirits and Wraiths are pretty similar so it shouldn't really matter which direction you take it. But off the top of my head I can't recall that Wraiths were actually able to get stuck on our side (unless a mage traps them or something). Usually it takes alot of work for the Wraith to get here and it doesn't stick around very long since it is more vulnerable on our side and has to constantly use its powers to stick around. In fact I don't recall that Wraiths really got much out of coming over to the Skinlands (or whatever they called it) other than getting to 'feel like they are alive again'. The Spirits on the other hand exist here naturally and seem like they get trapped at places like the Ocean House.

But anyways, regardless of which you want to use let's look at making it work. Therese's only option was to find the fetter (the necklace) and destroy it. Anything beyond that was beyond her ability to deal with them. I suppose the Giovanni could help out but I doubt she would call them. So the only others that come to mind are

1. Spirit Mages
2. The Garou
3. The Sin Eaters
4. Orpheus
5. Demons

According to Vampire the Masquerade the vampires feared the mages so I doubt Therese would try to contact them (afterall she's crazy not stupid).

The Garou seem even less likely to help out, and besides it seems like the Ocean House is pretty far from where you and Nines encounter them.

A Sin Eater showing up is a definite possibility. Heck he doesn't even need a reason to be there. He could have just been traveling around and was curious about what was calling out to him and decided to investigate. Or I guess they could have heard about the haunt through the Twilight Network if you would rather go that route. As a bonus this option wouldn't need Therese in it (so you don't have to worry about that voice actor).

Orpheus is the most likely IMO since it's existence is well known in the WOD, so it wouldn't be a surprise at all that Therese would know about them (she would just have to be willing to part with the almighty dollar for their services lol). If you decide to use Orpheus to solve the problem then you would just have to pick what kind of 'agent' you'd want to use.

Demons can cross the Gauntlet and I'd imagine they would have an interest in soulforging (a demon can't have to many weapons afterall). Plus from a design aspect demons would just be inhabiting whatever NPC's you wanted, so that would make that part easy at least. (this option also wouldn't need Therese)

Sin eaters are new WoD, not old WoD, so argument doesn't apply.

As a ST, I always keep a Vampire the Masquerade game a Vampire one, not a WoD one. I do not wish to explain every other power of wraiths, garous, mages and else, especially to Bloodlines players that are certainly not pen and paper players. At least not the modders !
(they wish, though !)
The first reasn is that because I don't want a player going all like "oh that's an hermetic mage, so these are his powers, these are his weaknesses", while the character can't know it. My vampire PCs know other creatures exist, they know some of their capacities (like the fact that werewolves can turn into humans ; as much as my werewolf PCs know a vampire suffers badly form fire and that the sun kills them).
The second is that I don't want to go through tons of books to get canon stuff, if I want my haunting wraith to be heard by the non-wraith characters because the wraith is just an antagonist, then so it does

I'm assuming that there is a wraith (even two !) in the ocean house because you hear and see the wife who tries to guide you, and you see the husband who breaks stuff around you and tries to harm you (I do believe the hunsband became a Specter working for the Tempest, but let's not go there). Don't try and get down to the mechanics and system of the pen and paper wraith itself, it doesn't serve the story, so it gets thrown out of the window. That's also why the clan weaknesses are not the same as pen and paper.

That's why I thought about adding a NPC that would do something with the necklace, because destroying the fetter "can" help, but if the Ocean House itself is a fetter (and I bet my ass it is, considering the journal, considering wraith as antagonists or allies -I do not mean wraith as PCs !-), it's screwed.


Malkavians have regular contact with some mages, anyway, but they also have contacts with some garou (cf. clanbooks). Mages, however, know a lot about Umbra worlds, but they don't really know about ghosts (and I don't think they'll try, reality is fucked up enough already for them XD)

Orpheus is not related to Vampire in anyway, it's a separate game actually and it is only half part of the World of Darkness (it states that no other supernatural creatures exist, hence no vampires^^), but it does have ties to Wraith, and Wraith alone.

Demons are.. a mistake. I'm not going down there I'll just link you this : http://home.earthlink.net/~esasmor/blacklight/demon.htm

We could also speak Mummy and Hunter but.. fuck.
Ah, and technically speaking, Kuei Jin ARE wraith.. They just inhabit their body Their greater purpose and else.. Those are fetters (I know, I know, I'm just thinking out loud)



My very first idea was to use a NPC I have been using for my campaigns, which is a Tremere medium who is interested in the Thaumaturgical Path of Spirit Manipulation (her goal is humanist, she lost close friends and she hopes to be able to contact them ; she uses wraiths to maintain her humanity by helping out lost souls, and to be around less monstrous people than her clanmates and other kindred in general, especially Giovanni who enslave the corpses but also the wraith and specters, if you want more info, PM me ^^).

I'm kind of curious to see how this conversation plays out, but I did want to put forward one thought.

This quest / story line doesn't have to terminate before the player leaves Santa Monica. The player could have one chance encounter with 'Sarah' (I think I'll eventually go with a less generic name, but that serves us well for now) at the Ocean Hotel, make his or her decision what to do with the pendant, and then at some later point, run into Sarah again and be forced to make another decision -- presumably based on what the player chooses back in Santa Monica. In fact, that cause-effect type of game play is a core element of Vampire. But for this, it serves the purpose of relinquishing the Regent as an obtainable source of knowledge when the player needs it.

Another, random thought: if it's necessary to moving the plot forward and at the same time extending the story into the next chapter, it could be possible to change the game so that instead of returning the amulet, the player has the option to instead offer to buy the deed to the hotel from Therese (all she cares about is turning that place around), which would require the player to go into debt, and in turn make the player personally accountable for NOT getting ripped off by Sarah.

@Claudia
I'm gonna number your different comments just to make it easier for me to go back and forth, hope that's alright.

1. I don't really see how Sin Eaters being New makes any real difference honestly. Afterall they weren't in the old version so there isn't any conflict with an Old vs New background like with the Masquerade and Requiem. And I don't recall there being conflicts with the ideas of Sin Eaters or even Promethians when compared to the old world groups. These two just happened to be added later on and follow a different gameplay build. And the differences between the two gameplay wise is irrelevant in this case since bloodlines follows its own mechanics. At least that is the way I see it.


2. I think keeping it simpler is better as well to avoid confusing players. Of course wraiths weren't mentioned in bloodlines anywhere that I remember so if you want to say they are wraiths instead of spirits then some extra info in the game might be needed. But as far as building a character for a quest goes I don't think it needs to be complicated at all since it is Bloodlines, just glancing at the wraith abilities to see what they 'might' be capable of should be enough justification for our purposes. And as you said, since a Wraith 'could' be capable of interacting and speaking to the living I wouldn't see any harm in including it to keep things simple and move on.


3. Spirits are much more known for those acts. In fact, judging from the Husbands actions he was probably a Poltergeist and the wife was probably a Wisp (she does spend her time leading you where she wants you afterall). And the husband could have become a specter just as you are guessing, since both Spirits and Wraiths are at risk of turning into one.

But considering the scope of bloodlines I don't think it would matter really which one you went with. I was mainly just curious about your reasoning was all. I remember assuming that they were simply spirits when I first played the game and I would imagine that regular players without WOD knowledge probably would have assumed the same thing. But that is just my assumption.


4. I would also bet that the house is a Fetter. I'm not sure if Therese would have known that though or if she was just too focused on the value of the property to care.


5. I sadly don't have the clan books so I didn't know the Malkavians with Mages, I just know in the Masquerade it was said that they feared them. Also I would have thought the Spirit Mages would know about Spirits 0_o it seems kinda weird otherwise since their precieved reality revolves more around Spirits and the non-material realms. But then again, maybe they just THINK they know about them, that tends to be enough for Mages anyways.


6. I think your statement might actually be backwards. The different WOD groups definitely know about Orpheus just like the mortals do since it is commonly talked about and in the media. The amusing part is just that while Orpheus believes in - and even works with Spirits, they don't acknowledge the existence of the other supernaturals. So to them Therese is just a business woman and would have no idea what she really was. So in other words Orpheus wouldn't seek out the other groups in the WOD but there isn't anything stopping them for seeking Orpheus out.


7. I guess I don't see why Demons are a mistake either. Half his rant had to do with Infernalism as a mechanic (and not actually demons), which isn't 'completely' irrelevant for bloodlines I suppose. Looking at it from a bloodlines perspective you could only use something like that for plot situations (like how you can dominate certain situations) but if I recall correctly wasn't the skill system in Bloodlines pretty temperamental when it came to changes? So unless you want to make "deals" for the sake of the plot or something I'd ignore that mechanic completely.

He also went on about Heaven and Hell, although I don't recall the Fallen book talking about that. I remember it mentioning how everything used to exist in 'layers' but doesn't anymore and they mentioned the Underworld. In fact it was the Oblivion book that talked about heaven and hell and not the Fallen as I recall. It should have been around when they introduce the Far Shores.

And he didn't like that it focused on them getting faith and that faith doesn't have to be religious. But I don't have a problem with that. Heck it really isn't different then Vampires hunting for blood really when you get down to it. But if he didn't like demons or you don't then that's cool, I don't like Hunters so I can understand


8. I haven't read about Mummies yet so I cant speak about that.....and I don't like Hunters so I'm okay with skipping them.


9. was the spirit path in the Guide to the Camarilla? I don't recall reading about that in the Masquerade so I was just curious. If you did go in that direction then you would probably have to tell the player a bit about it. Otherwise their Thaumaturgy doesn't match yours and it would probably confuse the newer players that only know bloodlines. Just a thought.


@burgermeister01

I guess it would depend on if you wanted to include Therese in the quest if you wanted to continue past Santa Monica, since she might not be around after all. Otherwise I love the cause and effect, you'd just have to decide who is going to draw the players attention back to the ocean house to have their run-in with 'Sarah'.

While I like the idea of buying it, I'm not really sure how the debt aspect affects things in the cause-effect sense. Will you have negative money throughout the rest of the game or something? 0_0