Roam the overworld, feasting on villagers and dodging or killing vampire hunters! Increase your unholy power, practicing your skills or cheating with stolen life force! Gain a higher goal than just eating people forever, or just do that but on a pile of gold! The choices are yours, assuming the sun doesn't annihilate you first.
Welcome, to being a vampire.
The world of the living is a paradoxical place for vampires. On the one hand, it's a wondrous place teeming with delicious morsels, a veritable feast of power and pleasure. On the other hand, many of those morsels are rather pointy or even specifically designed to kill, and it's covered with fiery death half the time. Balancing these two facets is essential to becoming a mighty vampire.
Movement
The game world is divided into a map of distinct locations connected by set pathways. Traveling between two locations requires a valid path; this means, among other things, that some areas may be reached by several different paths and others require a specific route.
Travel is generally a free action or close to it; there is no limit to the number of spaces a player may move in a given turn, but each space carries with it the risk of encountering enemies or other entanglements. This risk is especially important to keep in mind when calculating your flight from the sun- a long route may be more dangerous than keeping close to home.
Mortals and Resources
Most areas possess mortals to feed upon, though some are better for that than others. As might be expected, densely populated areas tend to have a richer assortment of defenseless peasants, while wilderness tends to be composed of empty space and more competent survivors.
Many locations also possess special features, often in the form of likelihood for special features. This might mean merchants peddling wares, training camps for your enemies, or simply rich lumber or plentiful gems. Whether a given feature is of use, or indeed any interest at all, depends on who's inspecting it and why- most vampires have no use for lumber, for instance, but a vampire in search of a new coffin or interested in crippling an enemy kingdom might find it very interesting indeed.
Hunters and Others
In addition to you and your fellow vampires, other creatures may sometimes move about the map, seeking something. Most commonly these are Hunters, humans who have specialized in killing vampires and who wish to put a stop to your reign of terror. Hunters may track you down and engage you directly, or lie in wait in a given spot hoping for an ambush. As might be expected, your actions, particularly massacring villagers, tend to tip them off to your exact whereabouts.
The Underworld is a wondrous place, dark and cool, free of a giant ball of fire that washes the land in hellish flames half of the time. Unfortunately it's also completely free of unclaimed morsels- some sustenance could be found here, were one monstrously powerful, but any blood that remains is obviously very well guarded.
Rather, the Underworld provides a place for vampires and other creatures of darkness to rest and find shelter from the day. It is a safe haven of sorts, as well as a meeting area for foul beings to conduct business. Fell merchants and vile patrons may sometimes be found here, granting advice, peddling wares, or recruiting for service- none of it pleasant.
Each night lasts 10 turns, followed by an Interlude where any business is dealt with between then and the next night. Following the Interlude, a new night dawns and turns resume as normal.
Under normal circumstances, vampires who fail to find shelter come daybreak may be assumed to burn up, or at least accomplish little other than dashing to safety. Even assuming this weakness is mitigated in some fashion, players may generally only spend 10 turns each day performing proper actions; the rest must be spent in rest, regardless of when they have been operating.
Desynched players, either humans or vampires who have been operating during the day for some reason, generally function identically to normal players, save that they tend to have more trouble interacting with each other.
In addition to delicious blood, mortals may sometimes drop currency or other valuables. Most merchants accept gold as a currency, and many will be interested in purchasing other useful odds and ends.
Useful equipment tends to be harder to come by; most mortals stock only base items, of no use to one such as you. Rarer deals may sometimes be found, however, and some vampires have found crafting their own foul artifacts to be a worthwhile, if lengthy and expensive, endeavor.
Players have a number of skills available to them. Skills gain experience by being used, and level up when enough is accrued.
Skills generally have two functions. One, they add to the magnitude of any rolls made using them, resulting in stronger effects. Secondly, they allow more complex actions to be attempted in the first place, enabling more specific or complicated results. As an example, a creature with the Swordsman 2 skill would not only deal 2 additional damage with swords, he'd be able to perform more complex attacks or maneuvers with them, relative to someone with lesser or no skill.
Known Skills Include:
Weapon Skills: +1 Attack with chosen weapon
Toughness: +10 hp
Exp Gain| Roll | Exp Gained |
| 5-6 | 2 |
| 3-4 | 1 |
| 1-2 | 0 |
Skill Levels| Level | Exp Cost | Complexity Allowed |
| 0 | 0 | ? |
| 1 | 1 | ? |
| 2 | 2 | ? |
| 3 | 3 | ? |
| 4 | 4 | ? |
| etc. |
Bloodline Talents are similar to skills, except that where skills are achieved through talent and hard work, bloodline talents are fueled by the unholy power of your damned soul.
Functionally, Bloodline Talents are identical to skills in general function, cost, etc, save for a few major differences. See the section on skills and experience for costs and general effects.
The Power
For starters, Bloodline Talents are innately supernatural in origin, allowing them to accomplish things one wouldn't dream of trying to develop a skill for. In some cases these are merely relatively mundane effects that stack with existing skills, pushing their potency to new heights; in others, they simply accomplish something a mortal skill couldn't do.
The Tell
Secondly, being unnatural in origin, all Bloodline Talents include a Tell- a sign that the user is not human. This Tell may be possible to hide or mistake for a normal variation, at least at lower levels, but it increases in magnitude along with its Bloodline Talent, and is always apparent to one versed in such things as at least a possible sign of dark powers.
The Blood
Third, Bloodline Talents do not gain experience as mortal skills do; the only way to increase their power is by blood. Draining victims of blood grants you experience that is not tied to any particular skill and may thus be spent anywhere- either to increase the unholy power of your dark gifts, or merely to advance a mundane skill without actually training it.
Unfortunately, to properly gain this experience requires killing the victim; merely snacking on them is not enough. All kills you make are generally assumed to include feeding on them, barring severe circumstances to the contrary.
The Ritual
Fourth, Bloodline Talents may not be unlocked at will. Unlike mundane skills, there are very real barriers to simply picking one up or attempting one with no training. In order to gain a completely new Bloodline Talent, the vampire in question must achieve a Major Victory.
A Major Victory is any memorable, intentional triumph over circumstances that could well have ended differently. Usually it involves destroying or turning a specific individual, but may also involve wiping out an organization or region. Completion grants its victor access to a new Bloodline Talent, which they must immediately purchase at least one rank in using blood experience gained from the victory itself. This makes Major Victories without victims impossible.
The Bloodline Talent gained from such an event must match the event itself in some fashion; that is, it must make some manner of symbolic sense that you achieved your new ability through the actions in question.
Major Victories usually require a good deal of research to pin down; entities in the Underworld may be willing to aid with this, but obviously not without a price.
The Gift
Finally, Bloodline Talents are unique in that should you create spawn, they may have access to them as well. The details of this process are shrouded in mystery, however.
To join, fill out the following:
[b]Name:[/b] Self explanatory
[b]Appearance:[/b] Self explanatory. Remember you have a slight Tell from your first Bloodline Talent
[b]Bloodline Talent:[/b] You begin with one unholy skill at Rank 1. Choose wisely, as not only will it be your only dark talent for a while, it will be a major factor in defining who you are and what further gifts you may receive. Also remember to describe your Talent's Tell.
[b]Bio:[/b] Optional.
[b]Region:[/b] You may specify one location to be included on the game map. This location needn't have anything to do with your character.
Author
Topic: Bloody Night RTD (Turn 3: Rudeness and Thugs) (Read 8114 times)