The Game That Ate My Life...

Wellington by Night was a Masquerade LARP which ran in Wellington, NZ from sometime in 1996ish until it finally died in late 1999.

An early version of the game ran in 1996, when the Storytellers were living above the lockshop in Vivian St. The setting was a Wellington slowly pulling itself together after a decade of Sabbat-induced chaos, with the Tremere coming forward to declare themselves rulers. It lasted about three sessions before dying.

A few months later, one of the Storytellers - Ed Gough - talked about reviving the game. He roped a few friends into designing characters and organised a quick road trip to Hamilton to attend a conclave with the Hamilton by Night crowd. Then things were put on hold for a while, until sometime in about August - September 1997, when the game started on about a week's notice, using Ed's new flat in "The Wedge" in Newtown as a venue. The result was fairly chaotic, but enjoyable - 40 people in a room, all pretending to be vampires, with no idea who anybody else was supposed to be. A few of the characters were survivors from the early version, but the vast majority were completely new, and thus completely divorced from the game's history and setting.

After that, the game just grew. We hit 60 players, started renting Turnbull House, ran sessions on what seemed like a weekly basis, with a lot of stuff in between. We had psycho Brujah, bunny Malkavians, hidden Settites, and the obligatory Sabbat spies. Sabbat hunts, cabals of Infernalists, and people who wanted to be Primogen instead of the Primogen. Twinks, ghoulfriends, OOC knowledge, and increasingly bitter metagame politics. But it was FUN!

After about a year, Ed wrapped up his plotline - something about demon princes and Infernalism - and called it a day. Which was a shame, because some of us thought that things were just getting started. The game dribbled on under Morgan Heath for a while, but began losing players. Eventually Morgan retired and Frank Pitt took over, but WbN was for all practical purposes dead. We played the last session in September 1999, and haven't played since.

Lessons of Wellington by Night

After reading alt.games.white-wolf I've learned that WbN was pretty much par for the course for a Masquerade campaign. But it was my first glimpse of what a really big LARP campaign could be like, as well as of how the vampiric society presented in Vampire: the Masquerade could work (or fail to work). And having played in one really big game, I now have some definate lessons on what to do if I ever go crazy and decide to run one:

• Players should agree on what the game is about: Wellington by Night had a serious problem over style of play. One group of players were basicly "culture gamers" who wanted to simulate Camarilla society (to some extent), and thus saw the rules as something which should be subordinated to the setting. The second group seemed more interested in kicking arse, and took a Gamist view that if the setting wasn't supported by the rules, then it should be the setting which bent. Another way of looking at it was that the first group wanted to play, while the second group wanted to win. The fundamental incompatibility between these two styles of play made the game less fun than it could have been, and contributed to the metagame tensions that led to the game's decline.
• Characters should be designed to match the setting: Ed and the other original storytellers had developed a backstory for the city, which tied a few of the characters together, but most were developed in total isolation from the setting and each other. This meant that we didn't have a complicated web of politics, betrayal, and hatred over who killed whom's beloved sire. Instead, our city politics was essentially based on our interactions in that room during the first session - and on the metagame. The lesson from this is that design-in-play doesn't work for a game like Vampire. On the other hand, you can't prescript everything beforehand either. Probably the best solution is to engage in group design, first with those playing the Elders and Primogen, and then by clans, so that everyone starts with a skeleton of allies, enemies and past grievances to draw on.
• Politics requires some stability: Or at least a low "churn". Like many Masquerade games, WbN had a high death rate. I don't think there was a single Elysium where someone didn't get killed, and some ranked up there with the Saint Valentine's Day Massacre for death toll. This was very destructive of the political game because people couldn't make long-term plans or plays for political advantage. After all, what's the point in getting a boon over a Primogen if they'll be dust within three sessions? If you want to play politics, you need to restrain people's urge to collect frags.

Back to my role-playing page.

Back to my homepage.

Last updated: 14/11/2001.