The world isn't as we know it. Monsters are everywhere, lurking in the shadows, running things behind the scenes. They're stronger than us, meaner than us, crueler, and damn it, they're hotter than us. When things go bump in the night, what is one to do? Bump back. Bump back hard. And while you're at it, why not have a little fun?
-From the introduction to
Welcome to Ashwood Abbey.
Ashwood Abbey is a secret society of creative, friendly people with a common interest: the occult. In Victorian trappings, this society recruits the wealthy, the exceptionally skilled, and the creatively deviant to assist in their quest for excitement and immortality. From their lodge in Queen Anne, Seattle, the American chapter of the Abbey plays a dark game of cat and mouse, searching for greater thrills, greater trophies, all for sexual excitement.
This game will be a hybrid of system and freeform. You'll have a character sheet, but I'll take care of all system matters behind the scenes. Therefore, the only thing you'll have to worry about is defining your character, which I can do simply by asking you a series of questions.
For those of you that do know about systems, Ashwood Abbey focuses and recruiting very skilled individuals, so your characters will each start with 35 xp and 1 dot in Status: (Ashwood Abbey). This dot also gives your characters the barfly merit, which enables you to get into any club in town.
The additions to a character with a hunter template are that the character has a profession, which enables him to choose two skills. The Hunter gains a specialty in one of these skills, and may increase his ability to use them with the professional training merit. Hunters may risk willpower once per scene to get bonuses at the risk of a dramatic failure. Additionally, Hunters gain access to the Status (Ashwood Abbey) merit, which provides various bonuses, the Signature Weapon merit, and the Safehouse merit. Dots in Safehouse may be divided between Size, Secrecy, Cache, and Traps. In this campaign, you will also have access to the sexualized merit, a two dot merit which gives your character a +2 bonus to sex appeal related rolls, and a -1 penalty to all other social rolls. Hunters receive large amounts of experience points each time they survive an encounter with a supernatural creature.
Additionally, Hunters can adopt a code, which enables them to change lines of their code of morality. Each line changed inflicts a -1 penalty on interactions with normal humans, and inflicts a special derangement called a tell, which only affects a Hunter when on the hunt. As part of the recruiting process, Ashwood Abbey dehumanized and sexualized supernatural creatures for your character. This replaces your morality 4, 3, and 2 lines "Do not kill people in anger", "do not murder", "do not murder casually for fun" to "do not kill
humans in anger" "do not murder
humans" and "do not kill
humans for fun." This inflicts a -1 penalty on your normal social rolls, and gives you the tell Sexual Deviancy: Each time you finish an encounter with a supernatural creature, your character becomes incredibly sexually excited, and suffers a -1 penalty on all rolls until your character achieves orgasm. This penalty lasts for 1 hour, and your character loses 1 willpower point every 20 minutes if he or she is not engaged in sexual activity. This penalty does not apply if your character had an orgasm during the encounter with the supernatural creature.
At your option, you may change your morality 1 line "do not commit heinous acts" to "do not commit heinous acts
against humans" This increases your social penalty with normal humans to -2, and gives your character the tell Severe Sexual Deviancy: Your character becomes sexually excited at the mere presence of a supernatural creature of the type he hunts, or even objects closely associated with the creature. Your character must make resolve + composure rolls to avoid feeling compelled to have sex with a creature she or she is hunting.
Tldr version for the non caring about systems types: Ashwood Abbey are a bunch of psychosexual deviants with lots of money. Millionaire playboys, hyperintellegent frat boys, skilled hitmen hired for an odd duty, and fencing champions are reasonable character concepts.
The game will focus mostly on hunting vampires, but other monsters are quite reasonable to go after too. If you'd like, you can also choose to play as a monster. Any creature you can imagine that street level investigators can deal with will be acceptable, although be aware your character will likely end up tied up, raped, have something cut off for a trophy, and then possibly tagged and sent back into the wild. If the players are comfortable with Necrophilia, I might open this game in the extreme section.
Character Sheet: (Warning: non savable)
http://mrgone.rocksolidshells.com/pdf/HtV/HtV1-Page_Compact_AshwoodAbbey_Editable.pdf
