Welcome to Lake Harmony

Welcome to Lake Harmony, a model community in which humans and supernatural entities live as equals. What could possibly go wrong?

Lake Harmony is currently hosted via a closed Facebook group called Lake Harmony, as well as on Facebook Messenger and Lab Arc's Discord server.

This game takes place in current time, in a world where vampires have just come out of the fang closet and are seeking equal rights. Werewolves, fae and other supernatural communities are staying in the shadows for now waiting to see how things work out for the vamps.

The progressive city of Lake Harmony, Iowa in which our game takes place has just elected Martin Grayson, its first openly vampiric mayor. He pledges to make this a model city, where humans and vampires can live and work together in harmony.

Of course, there are many who don't want to see this Utopian experiment succeed. From conservative humans who would like to see all vampires deported to the country they were sired in, to traditional vampires who don't agree with the great reveal, to supernatural punks who just want to do their thing and to hell with getting along. This will be where a lot of the games plot and conflict come in.

Players will be able to play a vampire, human, or any other supernatural creature. Feel free to play multiple characters as long as you keep up with them, and each has a character profile.

Play takes place primarily over Facebook, with some live adventures being hosted in a chat platform such as Discord or Facebook Messenger. An option will be given for players to make a secondary character sheet for adventures, with statistics and dice. The main game, however, is freeform.

Rules:

1. Don't be a dick to your fellow players.

2. Keep player and character knowledge separate.

3. Post a charter sheet as a reply to the Characters post and have it okayed befire starting to play.

4. You control your character(s) only. No auto hits on other players chars unless discussed first.

5. Play as many characters as you like as long as you are active with them. Retire any chars you are done with.

6. Adult situations (sex, extreme violence, etc) can be played elsewhere and alluded to in a thread if players desire. Do not post sexually explicit or graphically violent content on the Facebook group. This is against Facebook's terms of service, not to mention may squick out fellow players.

7. If a plot affects only your character, feel free to run it. If it affects more characters, it must be cleared with all those involved. Plots that will radically change the game world must have admin approval.

8. Investigation, exploration, forming alliances, etc are greatly encouraged. Get to know your world, as it may not be everything you believe it is.

9. Play in posts should contain some sort of header as follows:

Character:

Location:

Time:

Open to:

Another style, for those who

Who:

What:

Where:

When:

This will help keep the timeline straight. Other options might include a closed post intended for solo character development, or a post like an email or text exchange open to a recipient only.

Please mark any out of character posts (game questions, a meme you find relates to the game, plot requests etc) with an OOC header.

10. To join the game:

- be accepted into group

- read rules and plot

- create character and post profile

An admin will welcome you to the game, and then you may feel free to start posting, either by creating your own post or replying to an existing one.

Please note that we may ask you to modify a character profile if something is unclear, vastly overpowered, or just won't work in this setting before you are cleared to start posting. Having your rewrite of the Incredible Hulk show up and start punching his way through the wooden walls of a church may become awkward if it turns out that the church is made of very solid stone, nobody really wants to play with an obvious Hulk expy, and there's already six other things that have a trademark behavior of punching through random buildings.

2000-2014 With the advent of modern video technology and video share sites, unexplained phenomena starts to be captured on video. A concerted attempt at dismissal of cryptozoology and the supernatural begins, with reality shows such as Bigfoot Stalker, Vampire Among Us, and Make It or Fake it being popular entertainments.

Vampires in film are shown as sparkly and defanged, and the popular sitcom My Boyfriend the Vampire is played for laughs.

Some conspiracy theorists postulate that the government is responsible for making these shows, appeasing the public by making those in the know who have personally witnessed the supernatural seem less than credible, and making vampires seem like harmless pop culture jokes.

2014 All hell breaks loose when at the Excellence In Film awards, a popular celebrity named Mari Morrow flashes fang while receiving her award for the movie Nightstalking. From the crowd, another celebrity, John van Johnson leaps up, brandishing a wooden stake.

What at first seems like a harmless publicity stunt ends in Mari being staked and turning to dust on live television.

Rioting! Looting! Tabloids! The government makes an official statement that they are looking into what medical condition Mari had that led to her decimation to dust. Meanwhile, vampires across the world start coming out and saying that they have hidden for too long.

2015 A time of turmoil, politically and socially, follows. Churches decry vampires as a sign of the end times, that Satan is walking among us. American politicians begin to run their campaigns based upon 'the supernatural threat' and what they will do about it. Democratic candidates tend towards treating it like a disease and calling for funding to study and help those afflicted. Republican candidates tend towards calling for the expulsion of all foreign born vampires, and a national vampire registry.

2016 Arguments over whether undead citizens can hold property, vote, marry, and be part of society continue through the 2016 election. The Republican who won the presidency is the popular TV mogul Don Hopkins, whose show So You Want to Be Rich made contestants go through a series of challenges (some controversially degrading) to be the winner of a business grant to set up their company.

Don ran on a platform called Make America Human Again that called for the immediate deportation of illegally immigrated vampires to their country of siring, and a registry for American sired vampires that would deny them the right to vote, marry, and hold property. He also advocates the detaining of vampires without a trial in criminal cases, stating that only citizens hold the right to a fair trial.

Whether or not he will be able to pass these extremist laws is a matter of conjecture, and cause for concern among the supernatural community in some cases. Some foreign born vampires have already started leaving the country voluntarily while they they still have a choice in the matter.

Young vampires are especially vocal, advocating against the registry and trying to secure the right to the vote and property for themselves and future generations. They work together with their human allies to make this a fair and equal country for all.

2017 The first openly vampiric mayor, Martin Grayson, has just taken office. His campaign promises included making the small city of Lake Harmony, Iowa into an model of how humans and vampires can live in - well, Harmony. Many would love to see this succeed! They are hopeful, and willing to do all they can to ensure this will be the utopia that will lead the nation by example.

Many however, would like to see it fail. From the newly sworn-in president (who is calling for a recount of votes as part of his insistence that Grayson was never legally elected in the first place), to vampires who don't want to live with humans and humans who don't want to live with vampires, to all sorts of other forces that would prefer things get worse or go back to how they were.

There are also other supernatural creatures - werewolves, fae, etc. - who are watching this carefully and wondering what side of the conflict to take. For now, their communities are trying to remain in the shadows until they see how the vampire's plight goes, but they too are being dredged into the light as more of them begin showing up in Lake Harmony.

• Lake Harmony: The primary game location is the fictional city of Lake Harmony, Iowa, a short distance from Iowa City and Davenport (Independence, Iowa, is used when attempting to use real-world weather information, etc, to back up in-game events for the most part, as it occupies roughly the spot Lake Harmony would exist in.) This small but prosperous city has urban life as well as a lakefront that draws some tourism during the warmer months, and offers some wooded areas surrounding that are great for hiking and nature trails. Click for more information on the area and on businesses and important locations within it.

• Humans: The most populous species on the planet, with roughly 7.5 billion living humans on the planet.
• Vampires: The second most populous species on the planet. It's unclear how many vampires exist without proper censuses, but estimates range between 200 million and 1 billion, or between 2% and 12% of the global population.
• Werewolves: The third most populous species on the planet, with between 40 million and 200 million in existence, or between 0.5% and 2% of the global population.
• Other Entities: Many other mysterious creatures lurk on the fringes of knowledge.

• Template: The profile template. Copy its contents and you'll have a form you can use to build your character on.

• PC Roster: Current list of active player characters.
• NPC Roster: Current list of non-player characters.

• Magic the Gathering Cards: Because we're all nerds here.