House Rules

Dice Results and Specialties
For all rolls, including Virtue checks, damage, and soak rolls, a 1 cancels a single success, and a 10 provides 2 successes. Having a Specialty relevant to a certain check reduces the DC of that check by 1. Specialties do not stack, and may not apply to damage or soak rolls, but do apply to resisted challenges.

The Generation Background
The first two dots of Generation cost (1) freebie point each. The third and fourth dots cost two (2) freebie points. The final dot costs (3) freebie points. The same cost scheme applies to the starting dots to allocate in Backgrounds.

The Herd Background
Will be handled as per the Dark Ages setting. Each dot of Herd will be added to your blood pool at the start of each in-game night, as long as your character was active for the previous in-game night. For ease of book-keeping, and so as not to punish well-prepared players, Herd may allow a character to start their game-night above the regular Generation cap on their blood pool.

Regaining Willpower
Everyone regens one quarter their Willpower at the start of every game night.
If prompted and an ST agrees to it, you can receive 1 Willpower for behavior fulfilling your nature during a scene, to a maximum of half your Willpower over the course of a game-night.

Willpower and Frenzy
While in the throes of frenzy, one Willpower may be spent to control the character's actions for a single round. This does not interrupt the frenzy or end it, it merely allows some small amount of control for a brief moment in the storm.

Avoiding Scene Lock / The 24-hours Rule
In an effort to prevent what I am calling "Scene Lock" the following house rule shall become applicable if, in your scenes, you are waiting for response from another player for the scene to progress, then, after 24 hours of no response from the player you are free to continue the scene without that player.

For example; if there is a scene where Abram and Vincent are talking but Vincent hasn't responded in 24 hours time, then Abram is free to carry on without Vincent.

This is not intended as a punishment for a player who's real life commitments have prevented him from playing, but to ensure that those players who are available to play are not stuck staring at the forum, spamming the refresh button and hoping that they can do something.  

There will be no repercussions for a player causing a scene lock, simply this as a way for a scene locked player to be able to proceed with the game.

Mortal Food and Drink
A vampire immediately rejects any form of sustenance other than blood as part of their condition - whether they believe it is part of God's curse upon Caine or a physiological intolerance, it just doesn't work. This game allows for a Willpower to be spent to keep food and drink restrained within the vampire's guts for up to an hour, or the end of the scene, whichever comes first, after which the material must be purged as normal. Additional expenditures may be chained together. If a vampire is a member of the 15th generation, they still only get one hour per Willpower spent, but may chain it onto the end of their generational time limit.

Disciplines and Bonuses
Bonuses conferred by Merits (such as Acute Sense, Bruiser, Enchanting Voice, or Natural Leader) will not be applied to the use of Disciplines. This is to counter-act the effect of the power increase gained by the changed rule regarding Specialties.

In the interest of resolving combat scenes in a manner that is more conducive to the Play-by-Post format than the rules given in the book for tabletop gaming, we are implementing the following system:

Flow
Action Declaration: All player characters will make the posts containing their actions for the round. After that, the storyteller will provide the NPC action(s) for the round.
Extra-Actions Declaration: As above, exclusively for characters with supernatural powers such as Celerity.
Round Completion: Once all actions have been declared, the ST will discern which actions actually occur. Any additional rolls that need to be made for the scene to progress (such as bonus damage dice from additional successes on the roll to hit) will happen at this point. Finally, the ST will post the description for all actions that occurred in the round at once. The information given in this post is what should be used to inform any Action Declarations for the following round, not declarations for the round that may have already been produced by other players.

Initiative
We will not be using the Initiative system in this game. We do not want to create a freeze on a scene due to waiting for players' availability to line up in just the right order, and would prefer that as many players post whenever they can and the bottleneck only occur on a single player, not multiple players in sequence. For results in which Initiative is a deciding factor (such as reducing dice pools for subsequent attackers when a target is using the Full Defense manuever), the Storyteller running the scene will apply typical Initiative rules in the scene's background.

Contingencies
When a player announces their character's intended action for the round, they are not limited to only a single action; this is our compromise between streamlining combat into a reasonable amount of posts and time taken to acquire replies, and the tactical capability of following Initiative.
Every character may declare a number of Contingencies equal to their level of Wits for a single round. Declaring a Defense maneuver does not use up a Contingency if the character succeeds in a Willpower rolls vs. Difficulty 6 (or expends a Willpower point). If a Contingency is used to declare a Defense, this roll is not required. If this roll is attempted and fails, the character continues with their originally declared action. If a character attempts to combine their defense with another action, they may not use the Willpower option.

Example Formatting
Below is an example of the posts we would like to see used in combat scenes. Please notice that the majority of relevant possible information about the character's capabilities are provided by the player making the post, reducing the time the ST has to spend looking the information up off a character sheet (time not spent writing). Please use Spoiler tags to compartmentalize the mechanics of your Contingencies to keep threads easy to read.

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(-1 Blood, buffing Dexterity)
Vicar leaps forward, aiming a strong kick at the target in front of him.
Dexterity (4) + Brawl (1) = 5
Vicar carried out 5 launched of one d10 :

7 , 3 , 1 , 8 , 1

For Damage: Strength (3) + 1 KICK = 4
Vicar carried out 4 launched of one d10 :

4 , 9 , 1 , 2

Should the target attack Vicar with fangs, he will Dodge.

Spoiler:

Wit (1): If the target attacks Vicar in a way other than claws, he will dodge out of the way and counter-attack with a kick.

Spoiler:

Wit (2): If the target strikes at Ally#1, Vicar will kick from its flank.

Spoiler:

Wit (3): If the target moves towards Ally#2, Vicar will tackle the beast.

Spoiler:

- - - - -

Soak for Lethal
Stamina (3) + Fortitude (1) = 4
Vicar carried out 4 launched of one d10 :

1 , 6 , 9 , 2

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Using Influences During Regular Game-play
The staff has decided to allow this. In terms of the source books, the pool of temporary Influence dots will be reset between Downtime and regular play. Therefore, a character with Bureaucracy 3 may use all three dots to Grow during downtime, and then trace utility bills and have a small road or park closed during the game session. Only Influence Actions, not Maneuvers, may be used during regular play.

An effect only lasts for the duration of the format it is being used in, and not all effects may be permitted under staff discretion. In both the allowing and disallowing, this is meant to keep the game fun, but balanced. Initiating a phone tap (Bureaucracy 4) normally would not be able to happen quickly, so the trade-off is to allow it, but the tap only holds up for the duration of a scene before it falls apart. However, going through proper channels in Downtime would be enough to secure the tap for the full two weeks. As always, the focus is on getting the use of Influences to enhance roleplaying, and to not replace it. The conversation behind using Street 3 to "arrange some services from street people or gangs" should still be played out, but the rolls that would introduce risk for a non-influential character in that realm would be waived for one that was leveraging his or her Influence.

"Unlocked" vs. "Activated" Actions
The following is only found in 1 book (out of the 5 that reference Influences), but I like it, so we're using it! Some Actions are so inherent to having achieved a certain level of Influence that they may be used without spending a temporary dot to do so or using a Downtime action. Rather than edit the Wikia, I am choosing to only list them here:

Bureaucracy:

Church:

Finance:

Health:

High Society:

Industry:

Legal:

Media:

Occult:

Police:

Politics:

Street:

Transport:

Underworld:

University: