Latest / Story Games / Episode 23: Thousand Year Old Vampire pt 1
Transcript
- Maggie Studio: Friends, and welcome back to Story Games, a podcast all about your favorite narrative-driven games. My name is Momo and I will be your host. And first off, let me say a very happy spooky season to all of you. Happy October 1st, the beginning of spooky season. I am so excited to be bringing you another solo session. This time we will be playing Thousand Year Old Vampire. I figured this game would be perfect for spooky season, perfect for the Halloween season. It's spooky, it's dark, it's creepy, it's vampires, it's perfect. I will be playing this game in its entirety, so the next few episodes of the podcast will be this playthrough. I hope you enjoy, and without further ado, let's get right into Thousand Year Old Vampire. Hello friends, and welcome back to Heart of the Dear Nicoren and happy spooky season! By the time you're watching this, spooky season is in full swing and I wanted to do something really fun to celebrate. So we're doing another solo session, and we are doing a solo session of the game Thousand Year Old Vampire. I am beyond excited to play this. I've never actually sat down and played a full game of Thousand Year Old Vampire. I've looked through it, I've read the rules, I've read some of the prompts, but I've never sat down and played it start to finish. So I am so excited to do that with you today. This is going to be another series. I do not anticipate finishing Thousand Year Old Vampire in one sitting. So today we're gonna go through the rules and character creation, and then same as Librarian's Apprentice, we will do a little series of me playing through the game. I will walk you through how I play it, I'll walk you through the things I journal about. It's gonna be very fun. So, Thousand Year Old Vampire is a solo role-playing game by Tim Hutchings. For those of you who may be unaware, solo RPGs are a game you play entirely by yourself. There are some of my favorite games to play. I really love solo RPGs. And Thousand Year Old Vampire is hugely popular in this space. It's kind of amazing that I've never actually sat down and played it, but I'm gonna remedy that today. A quick content warning. This game is intended for mature players only. They cover a lot of topics such as death, and murder, and vampire stuff, which it's not the cute Edward Cullen vampires, despite what may be on my ears right now. This is kind of hardcore nosferatu type vampires. So if you're uncomfortable with things like murder and killing and you know the things that come with being an immortal vampire alive for a thousand years, maybe skip this one. But if you're a freak like me and that interests you, then welcome. We are going to explore some dark themes today. We're gonna explore What it means to be an immortal, we're gonna explore the loneliness that comes with being alive for a thousand years. I have known this game to make people cry. I'm not going out with that intention. I do cry very easily. If I do cry during this game, I'm ready. So, with all of that preamble, let's get into the game. So, this is the cover. It is beautiful, it has this like gold kind of embossing on it. ⁓ I'm excited. I'm so excited to just jump right on in. Got thousand-year-old vampire right here. ⁓ beautiful. This is such a beautiful, beautiful game. Alright, let's get into the actual rules of how to play Thousand Year Old Vampire. Thousand Year Old Vampire is a lonely solo role-playing game in which you chronicle the unlife of a vampire over the many centuries of their existence. Beginning with the loss of mortality and ending with their inevitable destruction. This vampire will surprise you as they do things that are unexpected, unpleasant, and sometimes tragic. Making gut-churning decisions, Performing irreconcilable acts and resolving difficult narrative threads are what this game is about as you explore the vampire's human failings, villainous acts, and surprising victories. Game mechanics are simple and intuitive. Play progresses semi randomly through the prompt section of this book. Answer prompts to learn about your vampires' wants and needs, to learn what challenges they face, and to chart their decline into sense ⁓ my gosh, senescence? ⁓ god. What is that word? You know what? We're gonna look it up together. Senescence is the biological progress process of growing old or the gradual breakdown of body functions over time. Awesome! Love that. So we're gonna watch our vampire become a vampire, age through vampirism, and I do believe this game always ends with your vampire dying. So that's fun. Build up a character record of memories and then lose them to the inexorable crush of time. See everyone you've loved and hated grow old and die, then turn to dust. Like I said. This game may make me cry. Okay. While playing this game, you will encounter themes of death, selfishness, and predation. Your character may be injured, victimized, trapped, or killed. Your character will murder and victimize people of all sorts, possibly including children, animals, loved ones, marginalized people or themselves. You might find yourself exploring themes of imperialism, colonialism, or oppression. Characters might engage in self-harm or drug abuse, illness, debilitation and body horror may come into play. Your character may have their memories altered, they will certainly forget important things. Some of this will emerge from the prompts, some will emerge from the choices you make as a player. This is a personal, challenging game for mature adults. Please play hard but stay aware of yourself and your feelings. Some good thoughts about safety in solo games can be found in Appendix 3. So like I said, ⁓ it's good they give a little kind of warning at the beginning of this game. But yes, this is going to be an intense game. There is a amount of content warnings of death, selfishness, you know, predation, victimization. This is a this is a hardcore game. I am going to keep it YouTube friendly for the sake of it being on YouTube. ⁓ yeah, this game may go some dark places and we'll see where that takes us. I won't get too heavy into describing any very mature themes, but they may come up. So again, stay safe. Okay, moving on. What is needed to play? You will need a 10-sided die, D10, which I've got right here, and a six-sided die, a d6, which I've got right here. If you lack dice, there are random number tables in appendix 2. To use them, all you need to do is drop a coin, point a finger, or use some other method to choose a random number from the table. You will also need a way to record your vampire's story. Paper and pencil is fine, though it's very convenient to use a word processing document or other digital text tool. In a quick game, you need only a few pieces of paper to maintain a character record, but in the journaling game, you might fill a whole diary. If you are brave or foolish, you can write in this book in the spaces provided. I do have a beautiful Thorny Games journal that we do sell on the Heart of the Dear Nicorn website if you would like to get one of these for yourself. It is Bullet Grid, and I've also drawn in a little title page already because I got really excited, and I love making pretty title pages. So we've got Thousand Year Old Vampire here, and then in the coming pages we will start chronicling our life as an undead vampire, which I'm so excited for. And yes, you can play a quick version of the game. That is not what we're gonna do here. We are going to play the full journaling part of the game, and we'll see how much of this I fill up. I tend to write a lot, but for these videos I try to keep it a little bit concise. But ⁓ who knows, I may get totally lost in the weeds and write a whole novel about my vampire. We're gonna see where that takes us. Moving on. In the appendix, you will also find multiplayer rules, safety tools which let you push yourself as hard as possible, alternate prompts, examples of play, and some context for the creation of the game itself. Moving on to your vampire. The vampire whose chronicles you will record in this game is represented by five different traits memories, skills, resources. Characters and marks. Almost every time you receive a prompt, one of your traits will be modified. For instance, you may be instructed to check a skill. To do so, you place a check mark next to that skill. Alternately, the prompt may cause you to lose a trait, which is indicated by striking it out with a line. Ensure that the lost trait stays readable because you may refer back to it later or even restore it. Some prompts will even give more dramatic instructions for changing your traits. At all times, Follow the instructions given by the prompt. Memories. Memories and experiences are important moments that have shaped your vampire crystallized in writing. They make up the core of the vampire's self, the things they know and care about. An experience is a particular event. A memory is an arc of experiences that are tied together by subject or theme. Experiences cover a particular event, but the amount of time represented by that event might vary dramatically. An experience might describe a few seconds of impactful events, or it might cover 200 years of lurking in an old castle. Almost every prompt will create an experience, and experiences eventually combine with another to become memories. But there is only so much your vampire can remember. To reflect this limitation, there is only a finite amount of space for memories on your record sheet. Old memories will be lost over the course of the game, making room for new ones. You will need to make difficult choices about which memories to preserve and which to forget. These hard decisions are the core of the game. In game terms, an experience is a single sentence that describes the resolution of a prompt. Memories are a collection of related experiences built up over time. Your vampire begins the game with space for five memories, each of which can contain up to three experiences. Although a prompt might ask several questions, an experience does not need to address all of them. An experience should be a single evocative sentence. An experience is the distillation of an event, a single sentence that combines what happened and why it matters to your vampire. A good format for an experience is description of an event, how I feel, or what I did about it. If necessary, you can add an M-dash at the end to include more information. Be conscious of any traits affected by the prompt, such as characters or resources, and try to incorporate them. Right in the first person from the vampire's point of view. One vampire might have the following experience, and then it gives an example. Stalking the deserts over lonely years, I watch generations of Christian knights waste themselves on the swords of the Saccharin. It's a certainty that Charles is among them. I dream of his touch as I sleep beneath the burning sand. So that is an example experience. So there's a lot going on there. ⁓ it's One sentence, but it's one very long sentence. Memories are made up of experiences. A memory is a section of the record sheet that contains up to three experiences. Memories are not necessarily linear or chronological. If a new experience clearly belongs within an existing memory, then you can add it to that memory. If not, record the experience in a new memory, which may require the forgetting of an earlier memory, a whole collection of other experiences. So if I'm picking up what this game is putting down, you're going to collect these memories and experiences, but you only have space for five memories. So if you get a new experience that goes onto this slot of a new memory, ⁓ and you don't have space for a new memory, if you've filled up those five slots, you need to cross out or erase your old memory and old experiences, and you forget all of those things. Which is a really cool mechanic for showing the passage of time, and I'm excited to see how that plays out, ⁓ during gameplay. A memory is a container for experiences that are related in some way. An experience must be placed within a memory as soon as it is created. Our earlier example might be expanded with a second experience like this, and then it gives another example. Stalking the deserts over lonely years, I watch generations of Christian knights waste themselves on the swords of the Sacaren. It's a certainty that Charles is among them. I dream of his touch as I sleep beneath the burning sand, and then it continues. I sift the bones of the dead abandoned in the wastes. I do not find Charles, but I do uncover weaponry and treasures that I use to pay his debts in Haifa. Haifa? A memory contains up to three experiences. Each memory should be defined by a theme, trait, or other subject that links to its component experiences in an intelligible way. Whenever a new experience doesn't fit into an existing memory, place it in a new memory, assuming one is available. Your vampire is allowed five memories. Older memories are lost when new experiences occur and you have no place to put them. If you have filled all five memories and need to start a new one, strike out an existing memory and all of the experiences it contains. Forgetting things is a fundamental aspect of the game, so embrace it. The decision about which memories are lost belongs to you as the player. It is not a decision that the vampire is consciously making. Unless instructed otherwise, you may strike out any memory you like to make room for a new experience. There is one way to preserve memories when you run out of space. Instead of losing an existing memory, you can move it into a diary. Okay, so here are some example experiences. So these are the things that slot into memory slots. With the remaining McCallan clan in tow, I flee to China. They confiscate our arms, but I am recognized as a gentleman and made guest of a powerful bureaucrat. Then it continues: In the humid jungle climate, insects burrow into my body. Hook, let's go. I coat myself in poisons to stay there feeding. This fleshy shell horrifies me. We're gonna have fun. We're gonna have fun. It's spooky season. I'm gonna get spooky with it. Body horror was mentioned. I like body horror. Let's get let's get weird with it. Okay. I can ride for days in the shadow of a ferocious storm. The youngest daughter of the minals, a c an accomplished duelist, now seeks me here in Istanbul. It was a mistake to tell the family that Edel is buried here. Sanso takes my place, serving the sons of the Emperor. I teach him the ways of the court. So it kinda goes on, there's a whole bunch of different experience examples. So let's continue on to diary. Okay, a diary can hold up to four of your vampire's memories. Unlike memories themselves, diaries are physical objects that are added to your resource list. You may freely create a diary whenever you need to move a memory into it. Like any other resource, a diary can be lost. When this happens, strike out the memories it held. Your vampire can have one diary at a time and it must contain at least one memory. Okay, that was gonna be my question was gonna be how many diaries can I have? one. Got it. A memory placed in the diary is no longer in the vampire's head. It exists only in the diary, and the vampire accepts whatever it is written as truth. That's interesting. So I could technically write a lie in there to try to convince myself of something. Which is an interesting thing to think about. Okay, cool. I'm getting ideas already. Okay. Once the memory has been transferred to a diary, you may not add any further experiences to that memory. Okay. To move a memory to your diary, simply indicate that the memory is now written in the diary. For example, you may write diary next to the memory or connected to the diary icon on the character sheet with a drawn arrow. When you create a diary, give it a short description and add it to the resource list. It may be something like Diary, a sturdy leather-bound book. Diary, a collection of pentagram-adorned pots. Diary. Gold filigree signs bordering a frightening ritual mask. Diary. A password-protected forum on an archaic website. Okay, so our diary can be Diary? Our diary can be anything, princess. ⁓ our diary can be anything, so that is fun to think about. Okay, moving on to skills. Skills describe the capabilities and characteristics of your vampire. They indicate what your vampire can do and what they might do. Sword play, relaxing banter, operate heavy machinery, I do not blink the sand away, and I teach the Nanisana. ⁓ my gosh, there's many words I do not know in this book, which is very exciting. ⁓ those are all acceptable skills. When instructed to record a new skill, you should relate it to the content of the prompt. What will it feel like for a vampire to use a skill tied to a memory that has been long lost? Some prompts will instruct you to check a skill. To do this, place a check mark next to that skill on your record sheet. Mechanically, this indicates that the skill has been used. Narratively, a check skill gives you something to flavor your answers to later prompts. If unchecked skills are what your vampire is capable of, Checked skills are what they have done. They are a part of your vampire's being, they are who your vampire is. Of course, it is entirely possible that your vampire might have skills you do not want to check. Instead of fighting this, revel in the plight of your humane vampire when they go to help a friend out of bureaucratic jam and find that the only skill they can check is rage and kill. ⁓ my god. You may only check a skill once. If you are instructed to lose a skill, strike it out. It is gone and no longer influences the way your vampire moves through the world. Okay, I'm trying to put this through in my head the way that skills work. So let me try to walk it through with you guys real quick. What it sounds like to me is that you will gain skills through prompts. and you kind of, I believe, like write the skills yourself. So it may say, like, gain a skill, I'm guessing, and then you write a skill that relates to what you did in that prompt, like operate heavy machinery. If I ended up write like operating heavy machinery in the prompt, I would write that in the skill section. And then you are able to check that skill one time, and then you check a skill when the prompt prompts you to, but you can only do it one time. So, like the example said, if you're trying to do something and the only skill that you have available is something evil, you will then have to do something evil. I do wonder if you don't have a skill what like if you don't have any skills to check what that looks like. Maybe you just fail at whatever it is you're trying to do. ⁓ We'll see how that plays out in gameplay, but this is gonna be fun. This is gonna be this is gonna be fun. Okay. Moving on to resources. Resources are assets or structures that are useful to your vampire or items that they value. Nightly equipage. A loyal impai, a diamond tiara, the castle, Umbrecht, a business empire, a lucky penny, ⁓ a Roman Legion, a silvered key, a carboy of acid, a box of tallow candles, are all acceptable and engaging resources. In the prompts, there will occasionally be reference made to stationary resources. These are possessions that cannot be physically hauled away with the vampire when they leave the area. Examples might be a haunted cave, an elephant sized statue of sets, a hidden pit house, and a hereditary title to land. Okay, so stationary resources are resources that are stationary and they cannot be taken with you. Understood. When a prompt instructs you to create resources, be sure to create resources that are contextually appropriate, even if this leads to resources that aren't necessarily the most exciting or the most useful. When a prompt causes your vampire to lose a resource, strike it out. Leave the entry legible because lost things might come back in time. Let your available resources flavor how you write your experiences. Curry your horse, ply your whip, command your submarine. Let resources figure prominently when you are made to strike them out. Don't just lose your mansion but burn it to the ground, or at least describe a fierce legal battle over the deed. Ooh, okay, this is fun. So I'm feeling like loss is a huge part of this game. So the game doesn't want you to just strike something out. ⁓ no, I lost my diary. It wants you to explore how that thing is lost. ⁓ no, I was sailing across the Atlantic and a gust of wind came and blew my diary out of my hand, scattering the pages into the sea. Something like that. I'm already having fun. Okay. ⁓ Don't limit your vampire stuff to the resources listed on the record sheet when answering prompts. Of course, your rich Flemish vampire will have a fencing foil if one is needed. It's just not a resource which can be spent to satisfy the mechanical needs of the game. If tools or homes or tombs are needed for narrative color, you may create them as needed, just don't write them down. So, the way I'm picturing this is that resources are important things, but not all of your things. They are things For like mechanically, I wonder how you add a resource. I think the prompts will tell you to add a resource, ⁓ in which case you add something that happened in the prompt, but ⁓ you're not if like narratively you come across a thing where like you're dueling someone, yes, of course, you have a sword to duel with, it's just not a mechanical resource. Moving on to characters. Characters are the people with whom your vampire has a relationship. This is where it's gonna get sad. I grow attached to characters and I grow attached to people. so I have a feeling that that loss of characters and people and relationships is also gonna be a huge part of this game. So yay! Each character should be named and described in a sentence fragment, such as Lawrence Holmueller, descendant of Baron Holmmueller, or Sister Adelpho, a meddlesome man. Add more descriptures each time you interact with them. In the course of resolving a prompt. Lawrence from the previous example might become Lawrence Holmueller, descendant of Baron Holmuller. I freed him from a Turkish prison. If it makes sense to include a character when resolving a prompt, do so even if the prompt doesn't tell you to include a character. In addition, create a new character if a prompt instructs you to include one, but none are available. Okay, fun. A character can be a mortal or immortal. You will be told which type when you are instructed to create a new character. Fun. Mortals are regular human beings or other creatures that die with the passage of time. No, I don't like that other creatures was included in there. I'm gonna get like a dog and I'm gonna have to watch the dog die. Don't ⁓ no, okay. This game's gonna make me cry. ⁓ Okay, anyway, moving on. Immortals, on the other hand, are supernatural beings for whom time has little meaning. They might be other vampires, angels or demons, ghosts, scientific experiments gone wrong, forgotten deities, underground lurkers, meddlesome ancestors, invisible shamblers, softly spoken animated corpses, household gods or sprites. Disembodied heads during cursed ex enduring cursed existences under bell jars or anything else suitably bizarre. That's fun. That is fun. I love that this game is not just vampires. ⁓ we have carte blanche to include any kind of weird paranormal thing, which is very, very, very exciting to me. I cannot wait to see what kind of creatures we meet during this game. Okay. Occasionally, you will realize an immortal must have died of old age. This might happen every four to five prompts. When it does, strike out the character's name. Outside of this, characters cannot be killed unless a prompt tells you to do so, but you can otherwise narrate about them as you would like. Okay. Now we have marks. A mark is a visible indication of your vampire's undying state, or any other thing that sets them apart from mortal people. An ever-bleeding wound on their throat, eyes that are blank and white, a trailing spectre, a ferocious scar, a hollow abdomen full of rats. That's evocative. A mark is something your vampire carries for their entire existence. When creating a mark, Consider whether your vampire conceals it and how. This is fun. Okay, and example marks include a pair of great bat wings. I cut them off with the saw, but the stubs remain. That's cool. Okay. My eyes are hypnotic, so I must wear smoked glasses. A dark halo I covered with tall military hats. Ooh. Under the moon, my shadow takes the shape of a jaguar. Animals fear me. Children cry. I can become a wolf or a rat. That's cool. I have hands with the fingers bent into backwards claws. I wear long sleeves to cover them from view. Okay, that's fun. That's this is so fun. Okay. Ha ha! Okay, there's a little kind of passage here. I'm gonna read that too. It says, What is a vampire? The vampire is the character you will follow through the narrative. How they manifest their vampiric nature is up to you. But thousand-year-old vampire makes several assumptions. To get the best experience out of the game system, you're vampire. should prey on human beings for sustenance. ⁓ no vegetarian vampires here, a la Edward Cullen. I promise I'm not gonna bring up Twilight constantly. You know what? I actually can't promise that. I'm gonna promise to try not to bring up Twilight constantly. Okay, so your vampire should prey on human beings for sustenance, should seek to camouflage themselves among those which they feed, should have been a human once, and still have human needs in one sense of another. Should be susceptible to environmental dangers that regular mortals might not care about, such as sunlight, ooh, should be practically immortal, should be mostly a loner. The prompts in Thousand Year Old Vampire are not necessarily geared toward complex political machinations between factions of immortal beings. So, okay, that makes sense. ⁓ for the sake of this game. Vampires are just they're they're they're cool with each other. ⁓ there may be a little bit of that that might come up, there may be like some, but it's not gonna be this whole like warring vampiric vampires versus werewolves type, Twilight again. It's fine. Our vampires are gonna be cool. Okay, now we're getting into vampire creation, which is so exciting. Start by imagining a person in the distant past, a Roman emperor, a Mesopotamian midwife, a French knight. This person will become your vampire. Imagine when and where they were born and who they were in life. Start a memory with one experience that encapsulates their history. For example, I am Henry, son of John, born near the Laore Valley in the 13th century of our Lord. I am a poor knight swindled out of my inheritance. This first experience is a little different than most experiences in that it's a broad summary of the vampire's life before becoming an undead thing. This experience will be slotted into the character record's first memory. Next, create at least three mortals and add them to the vampire's record sheet. These mortals will have a relationship with your vampire, relatives, friends and lovers, enemies, mentors, debtors, or anything else appropriate for the time and place you have chosen. Describe each character in a few words. Know that these characters can and should be very important, but will not be around for long. Give your vampire to be three skills fitting for their lot in life, and three resources they obtained while still mortal. Remember, resources can be almost anything, big or small, a resource is a resource, whether it's an obsidian knife or a fleet of warships. Then create three more experiences, with one experience each being entered into a separate memory. Each of these experiences should combine two of your vampire's traits. If your vampire has the long ship, Book Sudin as a resource and the character Gundar, a Viking Jarl, like a father to me. You might write an experience like Gundar takes me on my first voyage on the longship Book Suden. His touch calms me when we first s leave Sight of Land. Lastly create an immortal. This is the creature that gifted or cursed your vampire with unlife. Create a mark and an experience that explains how your vampire became a creature of the night. One such immortal is Baron Holmueller, an Austrian noble and a vampire, he stole the deed to my land. The corresponding experience might be I duel the eerie Baron Holmuler across the roof of an abbey. He nearly cuts my head from my shoulders, but I do not die, which leads to my mark. My neck is permanently broken. I wear tight scarves and walk slowly to maintain my dignity. Once you have finished with your vampire, they will have three skills, three resources, a mark, at least three mortals, one immortal, and one experience in each of their five memories. ⁓ Okay, so that was a lot. I'm gonna take a little bit of a break and I will come right back and I'm going to cum, gonna cum, gonna get my thoughts in order. Okay, so here's the first thing I'm going to do. I'm actually gonna take some time to play around in my journal, and I'm going to come up with some organization methods because we need a place for memories, skills, resources, characters, and marks. And I want to record all of those in my journal. so to do that, I'm also a bit of a crazy person, and I have mentioned this before on this channel. But I like to make my journals very pretty, as you can see here. And I really like to take my time and make my journal a place where I'm excited to exist in. ⁓ but that does take some time. So, for the sake of this video, I am going to mark and pencil where I want to put things. So I think I'm gonna do a double-page spread for each. Hmm, I lied. I think I'm gonna do a double page spread for skills. I'm also skipping a page because I'm using this red Sharpie which bleeds horribly onto the back paper and then I'm going to glue these papers together ⁓ so I don't have that bleed-through problem. So skills, skip a page. Then I am going to have resources. Then I'm going to have characters. Then I'm going to have marks. And for memories, because we're going to be crossing them out and writing them and erasing them, I think I want a double page spread for each memory slot that we have. I think we have five memory slots. And then I think I want another double page spread for my diary. Five memories. Okay. So skip a page. Okay. Marks. Okay. So Memory one. And this may be too much space for everything, but I would rather have too much space than not enough space. Memory two. 'Cause each memory is going to have experiences and then we're going to be crossing them out and writing new stuff. Yeah. Memory three. Memory four. And man And then I'm going to have a space for my diary because we can make a diary at any time, but we can only have one. So ⁓ if there comes to a point where I lose my diary or my diary is destroyed, I will make a new one in the journal writing part because everything before that would have been lost anyway, and anything after that would be part of the journal, so that makes sense in my brain. But to start out, we're going to put diary one. Okay. So I think that is going to be it for journal setup, but let me double check. Okay, so that's gonna be it for setting up the journal for now. How I'm going to frame this whole video is I'm going to read the rest of the instructions. I think I'm going to take a break to make my journal pretty, and then I will actually come back with character creation after I do that. Okay. So to continue reading the instructions, we've got playing the game. To play Thousand Year Old Vampire, you answer a series of prompts. Answer these prompts to learn about your vampire, experience their tri travails, and be surprised by their doings. Responding to the prompts in satisfying ways is the joy of this game. After you've played through a few times, you can find additional prompts in Appendix 1. You can answer prompts either in writing like a journal or just aloud to yourself. This book is designed so that you can write your responses directly onto its pages if you are brave. Number your entries to keep the chronology straight. I am not going to be writing in this book. You definitely can. There is spaces for that. ⁓ but that's not a whole lot of space for me. I'm I'm wordy. I like to write paragraphs and paragraphs and paragraphs, and these are not enough spaces. So I will be writing in a journal and talking out loud to you all as well. In the process of answering prompts, you create, lose, and alter your vampire's traits as instructed. Every time you answer a prompt, you must create an experience and add it to a memory unless instructed otherwise. So That's gonna be important. That's gonna be something to keep in mind. Every time we answer a prompt, we have to create a new experience and slot it into a memory. And if there are no additional spaces, we gotta cross stuff out. Cool. Okay. Roll your D10 and D6 and subtract the result of the D6 from that of the D10. If the result is a positive number, move forward that many prompts. If it is a negative number, move backwards instead. A zero means you encounter the same prompt a second time. Let us imagine that I have just answered prompt 11. I roll seven on the D10 and four on the D6, which means that I move forward three and end up on prompt 14. However, if I rolled a four on both die, I would answer prompt 11 again. You will notice that prompts have second and third entries. These are encountered the second and third times you land on a prompt. If you land on a prompt and have already responded to all the entries, move along to the next prompt. So yes, each prompt has like three total prompts. There are like two sub prompts, and if you land on that again, you un you just answer the second prompt. cool. If you are instructed to check a skill but have no unchecked skills available, lose a resource instead. Okay, that was a question that I had. Cool. Likewise, if you cannot lose a resource when instructed to do so, check a skill. When either of these substitutions occur, it indicates that things have gone very badly for your vampire. Narrate the worst possible outcome. Also a question I had. Perfect. Only skills and resources may be substituted for each other. You may not choose to lose characters' memories or marks in place of a skill or resource. If you must lose a skill or resource and you have none, then your game is over. Narrate your vampire's demise using the prompt for inspiration. The game ends if you are unable to check or lose a skill or resource when required to do so, or if a prompt tells you that the game has ended. So yes. That answers my last question that I had, which is what happens when you have no skill or resource? ⁓ you die. Or you die again. you die permanently. ⁓ and that is part of the game. That is how the game ends. The game the game ends with you dying. Okay, there is no other option. I think. I may be surprised, we'll see. But I think that the game ends when you die. Okay, two styles of play. There are two ways to play Thousand Year Old Vampire, as a quick game or a journaling game. In a quick game, answer the prompts entirely in the memory area of your character record. This method is fast and satisfying and gives you greater flexibility in interpreting your vampire's story. In the journaling game, you keep a diary. Answer the prompts in writing, dedicating short paragraph or so to each question. You will end up with the document that you can look back at later. In addition to a journal entry, you must add an experience for each prompt. In the case of any contradictions or complications, your memories and experiences take precedence over the detail of your journal entries in the journaling game. As you play, you will come to understand aspects of the story that may not have been clear earlier on. You can modify or ignore earlier journal entries if needed, but you may never modify memories unless instructed to do so by a prompt. So that kind of goes along with what I was thinking in that the way that you choose to document your memories. Whether in the memory slots or in the journal, once you write that down, that kind of becomes the truth. So I'm imagining a scenario where the truth and the way that my vampire interprets the truth may not add up. My vampire might very well be a very unreliable narrator, even to herself, which is really, really fun to think about. Ugh, okay, cool. Answering prompts. Answer prompts in a way that feels natural, never force things. If relationships between existing traits or past events relate to a prompt, work them in. You do not need to answer every question in prompt. Prompts will often combine to tell stories. If a helpful character was introduced in one prompt and the following prompt has the vampire acquire a new resource, find the relationship between them. Any amount of time can pass between prompts, so several prompts might join together to make a story arc that lasts days or decades. Seed control to the game. Prompts are sparks for creativity and connection. Feel free to gently reinterpret answers to earlier prompts to make sense of current situations, but you should not try to tie everything together, it's not necessary. Your vampire will live for a thousand years, and many small, unresolved events will occur during their existence. Sometimes a character will appear and then leave the game without accomplishing anything of note, or a resource will go unused, both of which are fine, that's just how life. Or unlife is. Overthinking is unhelpful. This is a good reminder to myself. Not every prompt needs to be important. You do not need to explain every decision you make while answering a prompt. You can let some of it wait until later. Let the game bring back what matters. Be uncomfortable. Your protagonist is a vampire, even if you try to keep them decent and humane. Terrible and delicious things are going to happen. You should have moments of discomfort as prompts combine with constrained resources to result in your vampire murdering loved ones and performing strange deeds. This is a strength of the game, so let the darkness fall where it may. Going back to that whole, things are gonna get weird, things are gonna get weird and dark, just let it happen. Just we're we're on, we're along for the ride. Okay. Prompts are opportunities to learn about history and the real world. Turn to Wikipedia to read about the different types of Turkish nobility if you need to. The game will wait. That's fun. I like that. I like that that's a part of it. Because, like I said before, there's lots of stuff in here that is a new new words to me, and I've already had to look up one vocabulary word, which is very fun. So this'll be a fun way to kind of do a little a little history research and some maybe some Wikipedia deep dives and explore what that looks like. Fun. The Passage of Time. This game is about the grind of centuries. Your vampire will lose their very memories to the passage of years and must pursue continuous reinvention to keep up with the evolution of society around them. Time is very loose, so imagine its progression as you like. Think about historical events and work them in when it feels right. World wars and political upheavals are hugely important events even for vampires. For general guidance, consider the first seven or eight prompts you answer to be the first busy years after your character becomes a vampire. Everyone they know is still alive and the world is still the world of their mortal life. By contrast, their final experiences might take place in the early 21st century. Don't fret about specific years, but do watch for obvious breaks in the timeline. A series of prompts might interrelate to tell a small story, only for something to interrupt that story. Take the opportunity to jump a few decades ahead. However, if you reach a game ending prompt and it's only the fifteenth century, that's fine too. The prompts. To review, start counting at prompt one on the next page. Subtract a D6 from a D10 and move that many prompts. A positive number moves you forwards, a negative number moves you backwards. You may not move backwards past prompt one, just encounter one again. A zero keeps you at the same prompt. When you land on the prompt, resolve the first entry at the top of the page. If you land on a prompt again, you resolve the next entry for that prompt. If you've landed on a prompt three times and encountered all three entries, skip to the next prompt. And then it gets into the prompts. And then that means that our little rule time is over and we can actually begin playing the game now that we have all the tools. That's really exciting. ⁓ I cannot wait to dive into this game. I'm debating on if I want to do character creation in this video or wait till next video. ⁓ but that's something I'm going to think about in my little brain up here. For now, I'm going to take a break and think about next steps. Okay, so that is it for the rules of how to play Thousand Year Old Vampire. I have a bit of journaling I have to do to set up for character creation. So I think I'm going to end this video here. And when I see you guys again, I will have my journal ready and we will jump right into character creation and jump right into play. I am beyond excited to play this game. I'm so I'm already getting so many ideas. For who I want my character to be and the kind of things I want to explore in this horrible undead life I have been cursed with. I cannot wait. If you would like to get a copy of Thousand Year Old Vampire for yourself, you may do so through our website. I will have a link in the description box below. Do be careful, this game is intense. This game is going to be intense. I know I keep telling, I keep saying that. ⁓ this is not Twilight Vampires, this is not Sheratu Vampires, and the gameplay is going to be. accordingly dark. So I'm excited for that. I love horror media. I love dark media. I love scary media. I'm excited to kind of infuse my game with some of those things that excite and interest me. But again, those things don't excite and interest you. I'll catch you after spooky season. With that being said, thank you for hanging out with me today. Please go check out all of the links below to go check out more about Thousand Year Old Vampire. ⁓ I can't wait. I'm so excited. I'm so excited that you were on this journey with me, and I will see you next time for the character creation of our vampire. Alright, bye guys.