Pooling Backgrounds
Some Backgrounds lend themselves to joint ownership. Specifically, the members of a coterie may choose to pool their individual stores of Allies, Contacts, Domain, Herd, Influence, Resources and Retainers. Generation, Mentor and Status are necessarily individual matters.
- The Anchor
You and the other players choose one Background as the anchor that holds the shared assets together. In most cases, the Background is Domain, with the physical place the characters claim for hunting, which also acts as a meeting ground for the mortals they deal with, a repository for their wealth and so on. Any of the poolable Backgrounds can serve in this role, however. Mentor might be the key to wealth and connections, the willing if ignorant population on whom the characters feed a source of servants and so on.
No Backgrounds pool can have more dots assigned to it than the Anchor Background does. If it's damaged by events during play or between session, other assets drift away from the characters' control, and it takes effort to win them back.
No Background poll can have more dots assigned to it than the Anchor Background does. If it's damaged by events during play or between sessions, other assets drift away from the character's control, and it takes effort to win them back.
Any character contributing to the pool may pull his stake out at any time. The dislocations guarantee some damage: The character gets back one dot less than he put in. Making the transition more peaceably requires spending half of the time it would take to develop a new dot in the relevant Background (for each Background involved), as discussed on p. 167.
Example: The members of the coterie of the Chapel de Saint Sebastian build their Background pool around Domain. the physical territory of the chapel and its environs give them the opportunity to interact with important members of the clergy and local nobility and a pool of devout mortals whom they can cow into long-term servitude. They pay a total of four dots into Domain and three each into Influence and Retainers.
Then calamity strikes. A particularly zealous campaign against local heretics leads the authorities to seal off many of the catacombs associated with the chapel, and enthusiastic heretic-hunting guards patrol most of the ones that are left. The Domain rating drops from 4 to 2. Some of the local dignitaries take their prayers and meditations to less turbulent landmarks, so the coterie's effective Influence rating falls from 3 to 2. Scared gentry, uncertain of their own position in the doctrinal war, stay at home more often, so Retainers also falls from 3 to 2.
Sustained effort by the coterie can repair the damage. Many options are available, from intimidating the guards away with monstrous manifestations - or the appearance of saints and angels who caution away sinners from such holy ground, backed by covert use of mental Disciplines to install awe and a sense of unworthiness and guilt among those who see the sight - to straightforward political maneuvering to get the authorities concerned with some other target. As the Anchor Background score rises again, so do the scores of those anchored to it, and it takes only half the usual maturation points to restore these lost associated Backgrounds.
The coterie can also change the Anchor Background. Doing so requires double the usual maturation points to buy the next dot's worth in the new anchor, and the cap remains in effect: Any other Backgrounds rated higher than the anchor are lost. When the loss follows from a change of Anchor Background, their's no cost break in rebuilding them to their earlier levels.
- Using Pooled Backgrounds
Pooled Backgrounds are shared resources, essentially the coterie's communal property. Anyone who contributes to the pool (no matter how much he contributes) has equal access to it. Even if the character donates to only one of the pool's associated Backgrounds, he still has equal access to it. Not everyone can use the pool simultaneously, though. A Herd pool of seven dots can grant only a total of seven automatic blood points a night.to the entire coterie. Just how those points are split up depends on the circumstances and agreements between the characters.
Example: Four players decide that their characters are forming a Background pool. Their anchor is Domain (the trading villages of Andersburg), and they wish to get dots in Contacts (from traders and their gossip), Resources (money and goods from local commerce) and Retainers (a few town watchmen). Bill contributes three dots of Domain; Heather contributes another two dots of Domain and two of Resources; Lisa contributes another two dots of Domain assigned to security), two to contacts and one to Resources. Finally, Steve - who is short on dots contributes only one dot of Retainers. This makes the pool Domain 5, Contacts 2, Resources 3, Retainers 1. All the players can have their characters tap this pool equally, even bill who contributed only a single dot.
At the Storyteller's discretion, players can agree to place some limits on shared Backgrounds.
- Upper Limits
By pooling points, a coterie can get Backgrounds that surpass the normal, and it reflects the advantages of cooperation. A group can secure a larger domain or maintain a larger network of allies and contacts that a single vampire can. There is not absolute upper limit on the level to which a pooled Background can rise, but things can get downright ludicrous if you aren't careful. It's usually best for the Storyteller to impose a 10-dot limit on the anchor Background (and thus on all the others). This limit represents domain over a important trading port or center of pilgrimage or a herd that consists of much of that same center's population.
