GM's Notes

This game sticks relatively closely to the original series in terms of tone, though as we are in a quite tormented period of history and we are dealing with people who are grown up adults living in an adult world, the series is perhaps closer to Angel than Buffy itself.

For the setting, my inspirations were my memories of growing up in Chelsea during the early 80's as well as works dealing with the era such as Shane Meadows' This is England and the sitcom The Young Ones (whose juxtaposition of surrealist whimsy and squallor is very fitting for a contemporary fantasy game).  Other inspirations include Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere, which does a great job at suggesting that London has a hidden geography, which turns out to be quite well explored by websites devoted to what is sometimes known as Urbex, Infiltration or reality hacking, but mostly known as trespassing.

After Series One...

Having completed a full series run, I discovered that John Kim's flat XP system actually swings the pendulum too far in the opposite direction.  Our mage initially spent all her XP on getting an occult rating of 9 because to buy a Sorcery of 2 would have cost something like 25 XP.  As a result, I've decided to take another look at the XP rules and introduce some kind of price-hike at the point whereby people's ratings go super-natural.  I'm also going to decrease the cost of improving powers and buying off drawbacks but not of buying new powers.

I've also discovered quite how powerful a warlock or witch can be when fuelled with drama-points and have decided to address the question before the next series though whether this is done through the implementation of a "to hit" roll, a change in writing style or using the dark magic rules in The Magic Box I am not yet clear upon.

Our Group's Other Games include...

Le Dernier Vin D'Ete - a game of investigation and superstition in early 20th Century France.

Te Deum For A Massacre - a game of politics and greed set during the French Wars of Religion.

In The Ocean Of Night - a game of trade and exploration using the original Traveller ruleset.

Gang Busters! - a hardboiled game of crime and corruption in 1920's Lakeside City.

The Turkhanate - an old school D&D game set in an Ottoman-style Magocracy.