Game System: The World of Darkness - all games.

Dates: 1991 - 1999

Players: Many French-speaking gamers over the years. DAL, David K., Eric M., Greg D., of course, but also Pierre E., Jean-Yves E., Sébastien C., Aurélien C., Alex V., Greg L., Craps, Hugues D., Alex Pe., Alex Pi., Veasna K. and so many, many others I wouldn't be able to count. Given that I am reaching 15 players just by this very limited count, there would be a total of 50 players or so to name in the end. At the very least.

Setting: Paris by Night, partially inspired by White Wolf WoD sources at first, with complete departures from its "canon" from the very beginning. To give an example, Francois Villon was Prince of Paris when the campaign launched, just as he was in the World of Darkness supplement from White Wolf, but he was soon killed off by his estranged Childe Adrien Villon (whom is not ever alluded to in official material), the leader of the Sabbat Cult of the Madeleine (with no parallel in official sources). Charles Baudelaire then became Prince of Paris (though Baudelaire never appeared in WW supplements), and so on, so forth. In the end, I think it's fair to call it an original setting through and through, given that all the meeting grounds were thoroughly designed, as well as over 120 fully stated NPCs with backgrounds, groups, coteries, organizations, et cetera. This setting has since been completely rebooted with the New World of Darkness and again, some major departure from the official games (see my Paris by Night blog for more about this).

Houserules: Not any that I remember right this minute. There may have been a few quick fixes here and there of the RAW, and there certainly were exotic bloodlines and disciplines we designed for play, but not much that stands out after eight years of play, oddly enough.

Inspirations: I would have to conjure a massive bibliographical list here. I thankfully already wrote a partial bibliography for my Paris by Night reboot, so you can have a look there for starters. If you need more details on how the two versions of PbN differ in terms of inspirational works, you can always drop me a line somewhere.

Memorable moments of the Campaign: Too many to list. I remember the death of one Louis Picard, staked by more than forty mechanical stakes as he sat on a chair at the invitation of the Lasombra and Malkavian player-characters who invited him to their lair. Or the rampage of Bubastis Patsis the were-feline and his brother the clown, Bozo Patsis who decided that no vampire would see the next night and proceeded to kill every other PC at the game table, nearly succeeding at it until the last surviving character besides them finished them off after a high speed chase on the net of highways surrounding downtown Paris.

Summary: Impossible to summarize so vast the Chronicle itself was. In the end, it was a very freeform reaction game on my part, as the Storyteller. I had an extremely detailed sandbox-city, and the PCs basically came and went to the city, triggering their own adventures themselves, searching to discover more about this or that place or character, trying to sell their services to this primogen or that faction of the ongoing Jyhad of the French capital, and so on, so forth. Since then, I've prominently run my WoD games in that way, rather than full scripts of adventure hooks and contingencies. I feel better when improvising.