Thousand Year Old Vampire, The First Nights

Now that my character and his background are complete, I’m ready to start playing Thousand Year Old Vampire. Despite the name, there’s no official “time line” of the game, it could last several thousand years or a few decades. The rules recommend that you link various events and times based on what seems the most appropriate. I imagine the first handful of events will all be linked to Lucius’ first nights as a vampire. I open the book (well, ok, PDF) and go to Event 1 and get the following prompt:

You are overcome by blood frenzy and destroy someone close to you. Kill a Mortal Character, record an Experience about it. Make a Mortal if needed. Take the skill “Bloodthirsty”

I have three major Mortals in Lucius’ life. I’m not sure which would be the best victim for my frenzy, so I decide to roll a die. It could be Manius (1), Aurelia (2), or Marcus (3). I roll a d3 and get 1 for Manius.

I hid in the depths of my cellar, hiding from my friends, my slaves. Myself. The night after my…change, Manius came to me. Demanding I present myself to him, to account for my actions. My failures. He raged at me, calling me foolish, and shortsighted. In a fury I lept at him, and for the first time, drank deep. He was once my master, but now I had a strength he could never possess.

Now it’s time for the next event. This is randomly determined by a two dice rolls, a d10 and a d6. You subtract the d6 from the d10, and add it to your current number. In this case, I roll a (d10) 6 and (d6) 5; 6-5 gets me a 1.  I add this to my current event for a total of 2, which leads me to this prompt:

Horrified at your new nature, you withdraw from society. Where do you hide? How do you feed? Create a stationary Resource which shelters you.

I spent hours with his corpse. My patron’s corpse. My father’s corpse.  I had struck down the man who had raised me up. What if it had been Marcus? Or Aurelia? I couldn’t risk them, so I fled. It was as if the gods were guiding me, and I found myself at the Lupercal, where our divine founders had once been sheltered by their wolf-mother. Deep in the cave I found safety.

Thousand Year Old Vampire AP #1

I recently stumbled across a new Kickstarter, Thousand Year Old Vampire by Tim Hutchings. It’s a solo game in which you chronicle the millennia long story of a vampire, and their struggles to retain the memory of who they were and what they have done. As someone with a bit of a thing for Solo vampire games (like this one, or this one, or this one, or, hell, I really need to finish this one. ), this concept is pretty much the embodiment of why the hell didn’t I think of this combined with of course I’m fucking backing it. 

Seeing that it includes a playtest version of the rules, I pretty much have to try this out. So, I’m starting a new Actual Play. Of course, as I will be using the playtest rules, certain things may differ from the final version.

The game itself is something of a creative writing exercise in many ways. You create your character, as well as the circumstances which lead to your embrace as a vampire. After that, you use dice to determine what events befall your character over time, how these impact your character, and what you lose and gain as time goes by. Memories are the most important element. As the years pass, certain things are forgotten, while others remain fresh. If you are in danger of losing a Memory you can attempt to preserve them in a Diary – a physical item in which you document what has happened, though you no longer truly remember the events and simply trust that you recorded them correctly. Of course, being a physical object, a Diary is at risk of being lost, or destroyed. You also have Skills (things you have or could do), Experiences (individual events which, when combined, form Memories), Resources, Characters (others who are part of your story), and Marks (unique physical characteristics).

That is pretty much it; though more will, naturally, arise during play. So, let’s get started. To begin with,  I need to know who my character is, what his mortal life is like, and what it is that he wants. I don’t have anything in particular in mind, so I turn to Universal NPC Emulator for assistance. Rolling on that, I come up with:

Character Creation, All We Love We Leave Behind

Now that I’ve decided on what game I want to play as part of SGAM 2018, it’s time to start filling in some details for the characters. As my random rolls have left me with a “Standard Fantasy” setting, I’ve decided that I might as well go with the default setting provided with All We Love We Leave Behind, a small town called Avalon. It’s a vibrant trading community, though nothing terribly large or important. The bulk of the details will be answered as the play progresses. Though, a few of these are necessary to get the game started, so I’ll be tackling those in this post.

The first question to answer is, in many ways, the most important. Who is the Absent? Who is it that has left, and why have they left. Like almost everything in AWLWLB, this is determined by a random drawing of a card from a standard deck. So, I do that first. I have a fresh deck that I’ve shuffled quite a few times. Drawing from it I get:

Three of Clubs

Solo Gaming Month, 2018

As November approaches, we are once more coming to “SoloGaming Appreciation Month” (SGAM), an annual event where a bunch of Solo gamers come together to play a game or two with linked elements. Last year was focused on the work of Zach Best and shared Tarot Cards as story inspiration. This year, the theme is a bit more nebulous, “New & Shiny - Play a game or genre that you have never played before,” with a runner up of “Hybrid Game - take a small board game or card game and use it as driver for a solo RPG experience.” So, my challenge for this year is to play a new game or genre.

Unfortunately, every game I own I’ve actually played at some point, in some way, even if it wasn’t as a Solo game. So, I decided to branch a bit further out of my comfort zone and try a truly narrative game, specifically one of the “Letter Writing” genre. For those who aren’t aware, this is a genre of game where you take on the role of a writer, trying to communicate with a distant character. There’s a couple of these, though Quill is, justifiably, the most famous of these. Quill is great, don’t get me wrong, but it’s not quite clicking with me right now. So, instead I’m going to try a game that is heavily inspired by Quill, All We Love We Leave Behind by Adam Vass.

MoMj: The Corruption Saga - Session 20

Boldulf, along with his large wolf - Sergei, tracked his family to edge of a cliff where it appears they shuffled around for a few moments and then jumped off? He couldn't imagine them doing so on purpose, so it must've been some magical force or entity that would've caused this tragedy. In either case, it's now his duty to retrieve their bodies and give them a proper burial. Having explored this area around his home towns enough, Boldulf recalls there being a goat path a few days West that would allow him to get to the shores below. Thus, he heads that way.

Meanwhile, Deirik, Eirik, Ygvard, and Kiro finally reach the top of the goat path and rapidly survey the scene... they moved fast enough, Torvald's forces have not yet made it here. They quickly move away from the path and out further into the patchy forest to the North so they can finally rest and recuperate. Now that they're here, they'll need to work on linking back up with Boldulf and figure out what to do. First, though, they must sleep.