I was so excited when Dimension 20’s main cast announced they’d finally be branching out from D&D and playing their next campaign, City Council of Darkness, in Vampire: The Masquerade. I’m also really enjoying the season, and not just because it’s set in Oregon. I really like watching Brennan and the players come to terms with a less familiar system, and see such a great example of the fact that good storytelling doesn’t have to mean a 100% perfect grasp of the mechanics, just a willingness to learn as you go and work together. It feels like it has really refreshed their dynamic, and they seem like they’re having a lot more fun than they have in a while.
However, after a first episode that seemed like it would be leaning fully into a new aesthetic and game world, every episode since (I’m writing this after watching episode 6) has left me wondering more and more why exactly this was the system that they chose.
For a normal game, it’s fine to just pick a system because it seems cool and you want to try it out. But when you’re one of the two or three most successful Actual Play shows in existence, with an entire producing crew and creative team, the standards have to be a little bit higher. I want there to be some evidence that pre-production included conversations about storytelling, systems, and the thematic and narrative purpose behind the choice of game. Brennan is so renowned for his rich worlds and thematic storytelling, which is why I’ve been so surprised so far that nobody on the team seems to have asked basic questions about the alignment between system and story.
I’ve been posting about the idea of dramaturgy in Actual Play and fielding the usual questions about what a dramaturg is and what that means, but fundamentally I think the role of a dramaturg on these productions as I envision it would be to ask those questions. Yes, it’s probably something a GM and producer should be asking, but as Dimension 20 demonstrates this season, that doesn’t always happen. Not all GMs or producers think in those terms, or approach games from that angle—but I argue that somebody in the Actual Play production process should be doing so, and when it’s not the GM, that’s where a dramaturg can step in and support the creative decision-making.
But let’s look specifically at City Council of Darkness as an example of how to ask dramaturgical questions about gameplay.
Vampire: The Masquerade is thematically a game about how vampires lose their humanity in order to survive. It asks the characters what lengths they will go to in order to satisfy their hunger, and how far they will surrender to the ravenous monster inside of them—or if they even have a choice. It’s pretty obvious at this point that this is not a question the cast of Dimension 20 are interested in.
This is most obvious in the cast’s treatment of Hunger. This is the mechanic that reflects the vampires’—well, hunger for blood. You can risk gaining a level of Hunger in order to increase your likelihood of success on a roll, and you can only sate Hunger by feeding on someone—or clear your Hunger if you kill them. As your Hunger level rises, you become likelier to be forced, mechanically, to surrender to your most bestial nature, give into your compulsions, or take a lasting stain on your humanity.
This last mechanic is one they have never referenced and don’t seem to be using at all—they’ve made reference to compulsions, but haven’t really played into them mechanically (yet?). I think this is fine! If there’s a specific feature of a game that isn’t interesting, then there’s nothing wrong with just not using it, especially in the context of an AP where you’re trying to tell a relatively streamlined story. I actually think it’s a really good idea to soft-pedal or even ignore individual mechanics that just don’t contribute to your story, as long as you’re still aligned thematically with the system overall. But that second part is what’s not really happening.
The Hunger mechanic in City Council of Darkness is almost completely superficial. The players roll Rouse checks with abandon, because it’s clear by this point there will be no serious consequences for messy criticals, bestial failures, or reaching a peak of hunger. I think there has been one time that a character reached the maximum of 5 Hunger, and the scenes were able to proceed as normal until there was a convenient time for this character to go hunting, at which point Brennan provided a two-dimensional jerk for them to kill without moral qualms. This event has led to some knock-on problems in the story, but not in a way that ties back thematically to the excessive Hunger that caused it. It comes off as a consequences of the players being goofy and reckless, not of the character’s insatiable Hunger pushing her to that recklessness.
In the latest episode, a player got a messy critical—a critical success where your bestial nature emerges and somehow is the reason you succeed, according to the rules. Brennan narrated this as succeeding, but causing a big mess, which was actually helpful to their goals. So, later that episode, that same player did the same thing, explaining that she wanted this to be as big and messy as possible. While they are taking the phrase ‘messy critical’ literally, the mechanic has now lost any connection to moral dilemmas, humanity, or success with a cost, and instead is just a way to succeed loudly.
There have been a few other times when characters have rolled bestial failures, and Brennan has either glossed over it, made it a completely inconsequential moment, or turned it into a comedy beat. I actually like the latter, because at least it points into some form of consistent thematic engagement with one of the game’s core mechanics: we’re a comedy show, so the beast within these vampires is going to be funny. Surrendering to your bestial nature is ridiculous, a comic contrast to the arcane hierarchies and sexy personas they build.
But that is, once again, not what’s happening. Brennan has been completely unwilling to far to allow the mechanic of the bestial failure to make any kind of difference in the storytelling. It’s hard to tell if he isn’t sure what to do with them, or actively doesn’t want to risk derailing his storytelling. But what’s very obvious is that he has no interest in exploring the implications for the characters’ sense of humanity, and the players have not been told this is a theme or conflict they should consider, either.
I know I said ignoring some mechanics is fine if they don’t contribute to your storytelling… but when you are ignoring THE mechanic, the feature around which pretty much everything else is built… maybe it’s the game itself that isn’t contributing to your storytelling at that point?
It’s completely possible that Brennan has plans to marry his standard ‘the real evil is capitalism, literally’ themes with the idea of the vampires losing their own humanity, but the fact that he isn’t drawing upon the mechanics of the game to do that, the systems that were designed to support telling that story and make it dynamic and unpredictable, is really frustrating. It’s not that I think rules have to be followed… it’s that following well-designed rules makes your story better. And if you aren’t going to use that fact in your storytelling, why is this an Actual Play and not just an improv show about vampires?
So, if I were the Dimension 20 dramaturg (Sam Reich, feel free to call me), here are are a few questions I would have asked in pre-production for this season based on what I’ve seen of the actual show:
Why are we changing systems? What are you looking for that D&D can’t provide? (If it’s just a change of pace, that’s fine!)
What about VtM appeals to you? What mechanics or elements are you most excited about? Are there elements we don’t anticipate or don’t look forward to using… and if so, would another system serve our needs better?
What are the thematic functions of key mechanics in OUR story? What does taking a Stain on one’s humanity mean for us? What does Hunger mean for us? What do Compulsions mean for us?
What are the practical implications of those themes? What might a bestial failure look like? What might a messy critical look like? What does growing hunger look like?
How can we introduce these themes to the players, and help them build characters that will explore relevant questions or ideas? What will mechanics help them do, and what will we need to prepare them to bring to the table through roleplay? Are you going to impose penalties for or provide reminders of the problems with mounting Hunger, for example, or is that something they should be ready to be mindful of and incorporate into their roleplay themselves?
Ideally, dramaturgy is a conversation, not a questionnaire—but hopefully that gives a flavour of how this work can go, and also highlights ways it’s a process that could have strengthened the storytelling in City Council of Darkness specifically. I think these are cool types of questions for anyone to ask when playing games, and that any AP ought to be asking to some extent, but when you’re operating on the scale, budget, and level of professionalism that Dimension 20 is, I think considering the unity of system, story, and themes should be non-negotiable.
(No one asked, but given the shape of the season so far, I would have put this story into a Forged in the Dark hack—maybe Court of Blades as the baseline—in order to have better mechanics for tracking the characters’ gradual seizure of power over the town and the machinations of the various opposing factions. Half of the sessions have basically been a series of scores anyway! It would have worked really well, I think, and let the vices/bestiality/monstrousness be something that was more readily ignored if people aren’t interested in delving into that.)