Famous in the WoD

[Grumpy RPG Reviews]

I had one of those proverbial refrigerator moments today – doing something unrelated and then had a random WoD idea pop into my head.

What if some of the NPCs of VtM were famous as mortals in the WoD?

What if Horatio Ballard is known and ranked alongside George Westinghouse and John D Rockefeller? What is Lucita is a much romanticized Lost Princess? What if Theo Bell is known as a folk hero from around the American Civil War?

So maybe John Goodman played a fictional Ballard in a supporting role in some 1990s movie. Maybe legends about the “Ghost of Lucita haunting Zaragoza” have been the inspiration for several movies and TV programs. Maybe rappers drop the name Theo Bell into lyrics sometimes.

[blackshade]

I imagine a lot of the princes are famous. Vampires travel to different cities and have to present themselves to them. If the princes are worth their salt, they will be remembered. I would guess everybody knew the eternal prince of london.

[Pleiades]

well, people seem religiously opposed to recognize vampires as being mythological gods so...yeah

[Koronus]

In my round the TL of my Mage is a Vampire that is famous for how her "husband" (sire) rescued her from the Nazis during the Reichskristallnacht so yeah it could work. Though it is way better for the masquerade, if you are either famous long ago, being able to use fleshforming to change your look or able to make a famous end and then go into torpor for like a century so if someone find your body until it is just the corpse kept cool by some crazy fan and later you are just some lookalike or "Elvisdressup".

[Penelope]

That’s a great idea!!!

[Grumpy RPG Reviews]

That’s a great idea!!!

Thank you.

[Baaldam]

Must admit exploring fame pre-embrace or of past identities is not something i can remember doing, curiously.
The Lucita part - and maybe someone doing a Disney movie (that i imagine, based on her lifestory and temper, as possibly being WoD's parallel equivalent of Brave) - is an image that sends me in nonstop giggling fits. Damn, i'm half-tempted to sketch a fake summary for "Valente" just for the trolling.

[Craig Oxbrow]

Smiling Jack is often listed among notorious pirates, there's a bar named after him in Key West, and some sources cite him as an inspiration for Captain Jack Sparrow.

The Chicago By Night characters lifted from Upton Sinclair's The Jungle are semi-famous because in the setting it's a true story and perhaps has had a few more adaptations - Tamoszius resents that his role was cut down to a cameo in the HBO series in 1996.

[CTPhipps]

Victoria Ash actually was apparently a famous pop star for about a minute in the Nineties in what was something only a Toreador elder could pull off. My assumption is that she was someone who roughly paralleled Pink.

[Black Fox]

I definitely think that is the case. When I ran a chronicle in Chicago, I basically used Horatio Ballard as a replacement for Philip Danforth Armour. Armour was a meatpacking titan based out of Chicago which Ballard was as well. Armour's company was also the basis for Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, which was hugely influential inf irst edition Chicago By Night, so it was doubly appropriate.

So anything Armour did, I transferred to Ballard. That meant renaming the Armour Square neighborhood in Chicago Ballard Square, and plastering Ballard's name everywhere like at the Illinois Institute of Technology (which was originally the Armour Institute, so now it was the Ballard Institute.) I then turned Ballard up to 11 and made him as historically well known as the other famous Robber Barons - Carnegie, Rockefeller, Morgan, etc.

I can't remember emphasizing that with other characters, but I would again if it made sense to do so. The Fame background has always been part of the game, and even if certain vampires aren't famous now (since they've been dead for however long) sometimes they were previously famous and might still be considered historically relevant and known.

I've also had certain vampires be the source of certain urban legends and the like. These were mainly Nosferatu.

I like the idea that Theo Bell could be a folk hero of the Civil War era.

And along with Craig Oxbow, I added Smiling Jack up there with notorious real life pirates (isn't he a Blackbeard analogue?).

And of course some vampires are famous as being... vampires (like Dracula). Real world has vampire legends and stories, and sometimes certain vampires become "known" even if it is under some kind of pseudonym created by mortal folklore or fiction.

[CTPhipps]

I actually have Kathy Glens and Damien as two musicians a lot more famous than they really know or want to be. AC/DC basically cited Baby Chorus as their big inspiration and they also have a bunch of other bands talking about them in magazines decades after they were "big,"

This is problematic as is the fact that their music has become ubiquitous on the internet. Not just the actual songs and performances recorded secretly or from bootleg CDs but also covers. Its hard to hide, "World's Greatest Guitarist" and "World's Greatest Drummer" from your resume even if it had to have been electronically sped up.

Frankly, defacing their Wikipedia page just isn't going to cut it anymore.

[Grumpy RPG Reviews]

I definitely think that is the case. When I ran a chronicle in Chicago, I basically used Horatio Ballard as a replacement for Philip Danforth Armour. Armour was a meatpacking titan based out of Chicago which Ballard was as well. Armour's company was also the basis for Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, which was hugely influential inf irst edition Chicago By Night, so it was doubly appropriate.

So anything Armour did, I transferred to Ballard. That meant renaming the Armour Square neighborhood in Chicago Ballard Square, and plastering Ballard's name everywhere like at the Illinois Institute of Technology (which was originally the Armour Institute, so now it was the Ballard Institute.) I then turned Ballard up to 11 and made him as historically well known as the other famous Robber Barons - Carnegie, Rockefeller, Morgan, etc.

This is great and exactly the kind of thing I was think of. It gives some character to the WoD, more so than just being "our world with vampires." It also would give an odd quality to any vampire who knows history meeting Ballard, as he is a historical figure.

I like the idea that Theo Bell could be a folk hero of the Civil War era..

Thanks. I should expand on the idea....

I actually have Kathy Glens and Damien as two musicians a lot more famous than they really know or want to be. AC/DC basically cited Baby Chorus as their big inspiration....

I like that a lot. But how does this work for the time line, given AC/DC started in 1973 in Australia and Baby Chorus was not really a thing until the 1980s in Chicago.

[Black Fox]

Could easily switch AC/DC for a prominent punk bad in nineties or later.

Then again, the Chicago Punk scene has always been neglected nationally. Local Chicago favorites like Naked Raygun are practically unknown elsewhere in the US. I'd prefer that if Baby Chorus is known, it'd be among a small musical elite.

[CTPhipps]

I like that a lot. But how does this work for the time line, given AC/DC started in 1973 in Australia and Baby Chorus was not really a thing until the 1980s in Chicago.

In this case, AC/DC modified their sound and evolved in the World of Darkness but that was because I saw Baby Chorus having a harder rock than pure punk sound than a pure 90s Goth band would due to Kathy Glens influence.

[False Epiphany]

Fabrizio Ulfila was the Gothic bishop Ulfilas and Embraced in Constantinople by Antonius. Back in the day he was a lot more well-known than he is now.

While there was a lot of pushback in Revised books against the idea of "George Washington was a vampire," and rightly so (early books could be a little gonzo about it), more obscure historical figures make great vampires. I've made Barthélemy Lafon rather than Jean Lafitte a vampire, Embraced by a Toreador who didn't want to lose his talents to yellow fever. Marie Laveau wasn't a vampire, but there is an elder who claims to have been Dr. John, the houngan who taught her everything she knew. He may or may not be lying.

Beyond vampires, mages can make even better famous people. I recall some pretty recent Mage material having Queen Victoria be a Technocrat.

And of course, with wraiths, you can go all out. I recall a thread in which a poster had Julius Caesar be the Smiling Lord, which I liked. Why not, when you have Bismarck as the anacreon of Berlin and Qin Shi Huang as the ruler of Yellow Springs.