Paterfamilias — A Vampire Conspiracy in Ancient Rome
Your coterie of vampires has been trapped in a burning apartment in ancient Rome, a grizzled hunter determined to take the lot of you out on a suicidal vengeance trip. Seems like a simple “Vamps versus Hunter” setup, right? Sure, until everyone figures out they aren’t really the cause of each other’s problems after all.
Paterfamilias is a module (to use the old-school term) for White Wolf’s Storyteller Adventure System. The adventure is set in ancient Rome, using the Requiem for Rome historical setting for Vampire: the Requiem as a background. It can be tied in to the adventures in Fall of the Camarilla, but also stands on its own or could easily be inserted into a homebrew Requiem for Rome chronicle.
The players are vampires, of course. A vampire hunter named Flavius Gaudens has them pegged as the group responsible for the vampiric corruption of his own daughter, so he’s lured them to an abandoned apartment building. It’s a trap! But I’m not giving anything away — the adventure starts out this way. This could play out in a fairly straightforward manner: the vampires fight Gaudens and his partner and try to escape the trap. The problem is, they never touched his daughter, and he’d love to find out who did.
I can’t discuss much more of the plot without giving away important details, but I’ll say that there is a wicked plaguelord of a villain behind the whole mess, and the entire escapade will play out over the course of several tense (and possibly bloody) encounters on the streets of Rome.
The Storyteller Adventure System lays out adventures in a very clear and organized manner. I love how each scene includes a section of storyteller goals, explaining how the action should work at all times to propel the story forward instead of acting as a time-sink or XP-font, as so many encounters do in other games. The PDF version is nicely linked. Along with the plot itself, there’s a set of new supernatural rituals that the PCs or their adversaries might use, plus an interesting new vampire hunting organization.
It should be observed that this is intended for mature players – the tortures visited on NPCs and the methods used by the villains can be quite graphic and extreme.
You can order and download Paterfamilias from RPGNow. While you’re there, you can grab Requiem for Rome and Fall of the Camarilla too.
Related posts:
March 21st, 2010 12:02 PM
This is one of mine.
I originally intended the set-up to be like “Die Hard With a Gladius”. I think it worked out OK.
March 21st, 2010 7:09 PM
This sounds pretty good. I don’t think I’d be able to get my players to be vampires to ever use it, but I do love an excuse to play an odd setting like Rome.
March 22nd, 2010 3:31 PM
We actually play in a campaign world where Rome is still the major political entity. Yet we are almost never in Rome itself. What the hell is wrong with us?
March 22nd, 2010 3:37 PM
I’d envisioned once we tied up Tlec’s storyline, we’d inevitably head there for Arkus’ and Dowsabel’s stories, though Gavin is taking us on a detour first. But it makes sense as an epic level destination for us. I wonder if we could adapt some of the Requiem for Rome stuff…
March 22nd, 2010 3:46 PM
Huzzah. Hopefully we’ll still both be alive by then. I was looking at a bunch of other sources that we could loot info from. Of course, our Rome is about 500 years older than it ever really was.
March 22nd, 2010 7:07 PM
Honestly, I was thinking of dumping you guys in Rome after I was done with you anyway.