Thousand Year Old Vampire (Text Only).txt

Thousand Year Old Vampire
A game by Tim Hutchings


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 vampire’s wants and needs, to learn what challenges they face, and to chart their decline into senescence. 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.


Content Warning
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 Three.


What is needed to play?
You will need a ten-sided die (d10) and a six-sided die (d6). If you lack dice, there are random number tables in Appendix II. 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. [Editor’s Note:  The random number table was removed from this version of the text.]


You will also need a way to record your vampire’s story. Paper and pencil are fine, though it is very convenient to use a word processing document or other digital text tools. In a quick game, you only need 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.


In the appendix, you will also find multiplayer rules, safety tools that let you push yourself as hard as possible, alternate Prompts, examples of play, and some context for the creation of the game itself.


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 checkmark 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 give even more dramatic instructions for changing your traits. At all times, follow the instructions given in 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 two hundred years of lurking in an old castle.


Almost every Prompt will create an Experience, and Experiences eventually combine with one 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 a description of the event that can include how you feel or what you did about it. If necessary, you can add an em 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. Write in the first-person, from the vampire’s point of view.


One vampire might have the following Experience:
“Stalking the deserts over lonely years, I watch generations of Christian knights waste themselves on the swords of the Saracen; it’s a certainty that Charles is among them—I dream of his touch as I sleep beneath the burning sand.”


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.


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:
“Stalking the deserts over lonely years, I watch generations of Christian knights waste themselves on the swords of the Saracen; it’s a certainty that Charles is among them. I dream of his touch as I sleep beneath the burning sand. I sift the bones of the dead abandoned in the wastes; I do not ?nd Charles, but I do uncover weaponry and treasures that I use to pay his debts in Haifa.”

A Memory contains up to three Experiences. Each Memory should be defined by a theme, trait, or another subject that links 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 ?ve 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, strikeout 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.


Example Experiences
With the remaining MacAllen clan in tow, I flee into China; they confiscate our arms, but I am recognized as a gentleman and made guest of a powerful bureaucrat.
In the humid jungle climate, insects burrow into my body; I coat myself in poisons to stay their feeding, this fleshy shell horrifies me.
I can ride for days in the shadow of a ferocious storm.
The youngest daughter of the Minnels, 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 Emperor Attik; I teach him the ways of the court.
Iahmesu the magician sees the demon within me and worships it; I manipulate him to my wants and claim his great house for my own.
An angel appeared in a blaze of light and glory, speaking in a tongue I could not understand; dazzled and helpless, a holy prophecy is written on my chest in words of fire.
Russian nobles bribe me to cleanse undeeded lands of freeholders; I empty the peasants’ minds and send them to work my stronghold in the East. 
Callwyn and I construct an enclosed room in the back of our motorhome; at night he does not see the Moon and during the day I do not see the Sun.
I bed soldiers as a benediction; during the day they fight my battles and at night they feed my hungers.
I adopt the life of a wandering tinker and come to find joy in this simple trade; in the shadow of Bavarian Alps, I am known by the name Hubertus and hailed as a jolly fellow.
The newspaper reporters demanded something fantastic and I gave it to them, the murderer’s head would be preserved in a jar at the university.
I can no longer easily tell humans apart, so my feeding taboos fall away with the years—all blood is wetness for my dried husk.
Diary
A Diary can hold up to four of your vampire’s ...