[RPGs] Skype SotC planning: Party stuff

Okay, so what I'd like to do next is sort out just how the various player characters (or at least the initial group, since more might be showing up later) know each other.

Right now, the characters we've got are a gun-slinging flapper, her German archaeologist husband, an educated sasquatch, and a feral swamp boy.

My first instinct is to suggest that everybody be members of the Van Helsing Society, which I used in my last SotC game. Here's the quick summary I threw together for it probably over a year ago:

• founded by the young Quincey Abraham Harker (born between 1890 and 1897, should be in mid-40s in 1937, son of Jonathan and Mina) in honor of the late Abraham Van Helsing


• studies and hunts monsters both supernatural and human (serial killers, cultists)


• Some agents may themselves be touched by the paranormal (psychics, werewolves who've learned to control their curse, practitioners of magic, Tibetan yetis, Children of Set, etc.).


• follow Van Helsing's philosophy of understanding one's enemy


• secretive, believe the supernatural should be hidden from the public


• funded by donations from those they've helped, the personal fortunes of members, and loot taken from destroyed monsters


• recruit from talented people they seek out and from ordinary people who have had brushes with the supernatural in connection with the Society's cases


• headquarters in London, but local chapters based in many nations friendly to the British Empire

Also, H.P. Lovecraft (who officially died in 1936) is working for the Society's London chapter, researching pre-human civilizations.

I think all four PCs could easily belong to the VHS. On the other hand, maybe it's just Sul's married couple who are Van Helsing investigators, and they end up investigating stuff in Hieronymus and Gator Boy's neck of the woods (the Florida Everglades, right?). Or, for that matter, Dagmar and Lee might be investigating on their own, and we could leave the Society out of it completely.

The nice thing about having some organization behind the party, though, is that it gives us an easy way to introduce new characters and other handy stuff. Of course, if you guys want to just make up your own organization, that is totally cool.