Okay, here we go with the first pass at the world. Go ahead and call dibs on character concepts if you like, so we can avoid having too many of one type of thing. I'm calling dibs on a moon witch human. (Mary Sue who now?)

THE WORLD
Modern urban fantasy. Most humans don’t know about the supernatural; you do. You may be of a supernatural race, or possess some kind of magical or supernatural skill, or some other reason.

THE RACES
Witches -  While not a race in their own, they’re a distinct enough group that they bear mentioning. Witches can come from human or lycanthrope stock. In general, humans are more powerful at directly channeling magic itself, but lycanthropes have physical prowess that makes up for their weaker magics. Most witches pick a specific focus when they start practicing, such as an element they are strong in, or an animal totem they identify with. Many witches consider their craft to be spiritual or religious in nature- tapping into a natural divine power- but some simply use it as a tool, like science.

Lycanthropes – Lycanthropy is a magical disease that can be spread through bite, though not everyone who ever gets bitten contracts the disease. Lycanthropy can also be passed on genetically when a lycanthrope breeds either with another lycan or a human. (Most human mothers do not survive carrying a lycanthrope child to term, however.) There are numerous types of lycanthrope, the most numerous of which are the werewolves. Most predator-type lycans look down on the prey-types (like swan shifters) as being weak. Predators usually call themselves were-animals, prey-types go by shifter. Many Weres are part of a pack, and the packs are almost never mixed-animal. There are solitary lycans of all types however.

Faerie – The fae are mysterious and whimsical, and prone to disguising themselves and mingling with the humans. They follow two courts: the Seleigh and Unseleigh, or Light and Dark courts. Some places call them the Gold and Silver courts as well. In general, the Seleigh courts are more benevolent, and the Unseleigh are more malicious. They practice their own forms of magic, mostly in the form of charms and hexes- things that play with the mind, as opposed to things that directly harm or heal. There are a lot of part-faeries in the world: they can breed with humans pretty easily.

Demons – This is a catch-all term for all kinds of creatures from the various darker dimensions that exist alongside our own. Almost all demons are evil- they’re also usually pretty ugly in appearance and find it difficult to blend in with the humans even if they’re not total jerks. Some types of demons can breed with humans, though human women have difficulty bearing them.

Vampires – Vampires are created by other vampires by draining a human near to death and then forcing vampire blood into them. They have the usual weakness to sunlight- younger vampires can stay awake in the daytime as long as they avoid the direct burning sunlight, but older, more powerful vampires fall into a deep torpor during daylight hours. They make up for it by being ridiculously strong, fast, and vicious. Vampires are also repulsed and annoyed by garlic, and silver and holy symbols of the major religions (crosses, etc) burn them. They can heal almost anything by drinking human blood (lycan blood tastes nasty, faerie blood gets them drunk, and demon blood isn’t digestible). Witch blood is especially delicious, it gives them a druggie boost.

Dragons – A few centuries ago, dragons used to walk the world and do their hoard-collecting thing, but today they’re mostly extinct. Some types of dragons had the ability to take human form and cross-breed, and their descendants tend to be pretty hardy folk with a tendency towards collecting wealth.

Other races – I’ll add these as we go if people want to suggest races.

THE TEAM
We’re a group of… not quite friends, but occasionally allies. We’re all members of the supernatural or magical community in the Boston area. Probably some of us are more friendly than others, but each of us has a vested interest in making sure that nothing destroys the city, or reveals the supernatural community to the normal world. (These would both be bad things.) Most of us have worked together in the past- most of us met when we were cleaning out a nest of really uppity rogue vampires a few years back, and then just last year we dealt with a demon that some stupid punk kids were worshipping and making sacrifices to.

(You don’t HAVE to have known the group for that long, but I thought it’d be nice to throw in some flavor that we could build off to define our relationships to each other.)

Please don’t make a vampire character or more than a very weak part-breed demon. I want to keep these as “evil” races of the world and I feel like it’ll dilute it if there’s too much “oh but I’m a GOOD demon” about it. If you really, really can’t survive without being a vampire, toss the character concept at me and I’ll complain for a while and we’ll figure it out.

Part breed demons are okay if they can pass for human. The other half of why I want to avoid these races is to not limit our options on where and how we can go. So like, if the team needs to go somewhere in daytime, and you’re a vampire, I don’t want to hear you bitching about how there’s nothing your character can do for the next few real time days of gameplay. Or if we need to go into a public area and the team decides your demon character with the hugenormous horns and wings really shouldn’t tag along, you will be bored! Don’t be a douche, guys!

Also, if this game goes well, I was thinking we could do this again sometime- same characters, it’d be cool.

THE MISSION
The head of the local werewolf clan is a wealthy businessman named Ethan Worthington. He’s been feuding with the local vampire lord, the very sexy, very ruthless Claude Entremont. Well, Claude just took it to the next level: he had Ethan’s only child, the fifteen-year-old Jessica, kidnapped and he’s threatening to turn her if Ethan doesn’t pay a steep tribute.

Ethan is furious. From what we’ve heard, he doesn’t want to negotiate: he wants to burn Claude alive and his whole world down with him. That would be a little high-profile, so we’re thinking we should talk to Ethan, see if we can get him to back down a little, and give us a few days to try to find her and rescue her. He’s got a famous temper though…

The game will open at an emergency group meeting to get a handle on the situation.

A few last guiding thoughts before we plunge into this:

Have No Pride.

Don't fall in love with your own personal mental image of how a scene should turn out. We're all writing pieces of this, and maybe someone else is just going to do it differently. You'll get your shot, and we'll all have fun.

Be Respectful.

We all want our characters to be "cool". Well, probably many of us do. Okay, let me revise that, we all want to present our characters in a certain way. Many of us will want to look cool, or mystical, or tough, or goofy, or whatever. Keep that in mind when you write a scene piece incorporating your interactions with someone else. Your character can have their opinions about everyone else, and they really should, you know?- but you as a writer should respect everyone else's core concept.

Hmm. Seelee bat-sprite spy, or wealthy part dragon businessman. The latter would probably be a ripoff of Robert Downey JR as Iron Man, and the former could be cool.

I feel like SOMEONE might possibly MAYBE have been influenced by a certain set of books. 

Oh oh oh I want in on this! SO BAD! This is exactly the sort of thing I used to do, and I loved it.

I've got a character in mind for this, but I don't know her backstory, and I don't know what race. Most likely faerie. Think Drusilla from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, or River Tam from Firefly, but not REALLY either of them. Just... similarly whimsical/crazy/occasionally lucid.

I'm in. Working on a character sheet as we speak.

I know what -I- want to be.

Because its an awesome idea. Do it.

Does this thread need spoiler tags? 

hmm... I may possibly be interested in this.

So when its your turn you write everything, everyone elses characters included?

Nah, we're only writing our own characters. The idea seems to be kind of like Roleplaying, except without a GM.

Or at least without a rule-enforcing GM.

How much of the story are you actually gonna control, Zpies? I dunno if it'll work so well without a specific creative force behind the baddies and what-not.