Thousand Year Old Vampire (Part I)

I’ve always had an itch to play Role Playing Games, but the actual play has been limited to when a group can get together on a regular basis. As an adult with a job, and with my friends as adults with jobs, it’s possible to do, but never really spontaneous.

Then I heard of this game, Thousand Year Old Vampire by Tim Hutchings. Only one player needed. The idea of the game is to tell the story of the entire tragic life of a vampire. Never played it before, but it sounds like my kind of nebulous nerdiness. I also like dark stories, and this will scratch an itch.

Supplies required: a 6-sided die, a 10-sided die, the Rulebook, a pen and paper (or a word processor), and the will to perform deep dives into historical Wikipedia articles.

As I’m learning, though, this doesn’t necessarily have to be a single person game. One can collaborate with others on your vampire story, and I’m living with a person (Tara!) who seems keen to try this.

Let’s take a look at how we make our vampire, shall we?

You can choose any kind of person in any time period. Your vampire must have some kind of vampire trappings, like being affected by sunlight or garlic or a crucifix; something that wouldn’t kill or hurt a mortal will hurt or kill your vampire. Also your vampire must feed on mortals to survive.

Your vampire is defined by its memories and experiences. But your vampire lives very long, and their memories suffer the consequences. To mechanically show this in the game, there is only room for a maximum of five memories.

Each memory is made of up to three related experiences. And each turn creates an experience. As you make new memories, older ones are forgotten or transferred to a diary. Your vampire will not remember what’s in the diary, but will accept it as truth. You can only have one diary at a time, and diaries can be lost.

Okay, your vampire will begin as a mortal, will have mortal characters in their life, will begin with a set of skills learned from their mortal life, and will have some resources from their moral life.

Then they will meet the immortal that turned them, giving them a physical mark of their vampiric nature.

There are more esoteric rules, but I’ll cover them when necessary during play. Let’s make our vampire!