blo o ds pe ll

a vampire role-playing experience

 BLOODSPELL
credits
This game is based on Wolfspell by Epidiah Ravachol,
which you can find in Volume 1 Issue 2
of Worlds Without Master

It has been redeveloped, rewritten and laid out

by Jon Garrad

edited by Erin Horáková

and illustrated by Ronan Punk

acknowledgements
This game would not exist if not for :

Olivia Hill
(who convinced me that I could do this)

Alexa Thomas
(who was interested, and made all the difference)

and everyone who has, at some point in time,

sat down with me around a table
and told me about a vampire

This product has the San Jenaro Co-op Seal of Approval,

signifying that it was produced in fair conditions
by forward-thinking people.

Check out more games at san-jenaro-co-op.itch.io

 INTRODUCTION
what is this book for?
This is a book about role-playing: about pretending to be vampires, and telling the stories
of their lives.

It's inspired by Interview With The Vampire, by Only Lovers Left Alive, Let The Right One
In, Byzantium, Carmilla; hell, by What We Do In The Shadows. It’s about finding out what
you want to do with forever, and who you want to spend it with, and how you live with
yourself for all that time. It’s built for free-form role-playing - face to face, but also on
forums, text chat, blogging platforms and that sort of thing. It’s designed to tell short
stories with scenes which are pacy and powerful and directed toward an ending, to get
you playing with that vampire character you made up but never seem to do anything
with.And if you want to bolt it onto a bigger role-playing game and use it as a guide or
prompt tool, that should work just fine.

why do it like this?

Sometines things that happen to role-playing characters are emotionally charged and
intimate: not necessarily something you’d want to say out loud around a table full of people
just trying to play a game and chill after work. These scenes need you to take your time, to
think and discuss and negotiate and work out what you’re comfortable with. Role-playing
through a text medium gives you that time: you can read what your character is about to
say and do, check it, and think about it. You can talk about it in a side channel and work
out how things should happen, and produce an experience that's a bit more considered, a
bit more authored, than if you're playing in real time and having to make things up and
string together the odd things dice do when you're rolling a lot of them.
how does it all work?
Playing Bloodspell involves a series of Moments: scenes when your vampire character has
something they’re trying to do. You roll dice to see which of your vampire’s instincts - your
Desire for what you want now, your Ambition for what you want in the long eternity you
have ahead of you, and your Thirst for precious, precious blood - is strongest in the
Moment. That roll sets up how the Moment will resolve, and then you role-play your way
toward that resolution.

The idea is that you start role-playing with a clear idea of how the play is going to end, and
the act of role-playing isn't focused on simulating exact details but on consequences.
What's the price of getting what you want?

who's in charge?
Whoever has the idea for a particular thing your characters could do together could take
the lead on describing what happens in the world around the characters, and have their
own character take a back seat in the proceedings.

If a Moment is happening because something’s happened to your character, someone else

should step up and take the lead while you respond to the world and its bullshit. After all,
it's hard to do both, especially in a game that’s meant for two or more players.

The game may be started by one person, but that doesn’t mean the same person has to be
in the lead the whole way through. If their character could and should step up and be
involved in a particular Moment, or if they’re just not feeling up to it and want to respond
to the world rather than running it for a while, the responsibility could and should be taken
up by someone else.

You can even do this on a Moment-by-Moment basis - if someone’s especially good at

managing Moments of physical combat with a punchy, dynamic, action-movie descriptive
style, they should absolutely run all the combat Moments. If someone else has a wide
range of voices and mannerisms and is really good at improv, maybe they should do the
Moments where side characters need to be made up on the fly?

The point is, “running the game” is everyone’s responsibility. Some people like and thrive
on that responsibility, but in the author’s experience those people are relatively few in
number compared to the people who just want to play. Dividing that responsibility up
between players so they can share the load and do the job results in more games actually
being played, and fewer players sitting around like lemons waiting for games that never
come.
 PRINCIPLES

don't play threats: play people

Think about the big keystone vampire stories in the old literary tradition. Dracula and
Carmilla and Varney are all doing something - they’re invading a place, or a family, or
both, whether because they’re hungry or because they have other, grander ambitions.
The basic thing vampires do, in those stories, is threaten people - and that’s pretty much
all they do. They’re parasites and predators who feed on who they like and create slaves
for themselves.

The thing to remember about the classic vampire yarns is that vampires aren’t the
protagonists of those stories. Their names may be on the cover, but they’re not the people
the stories are about. They’re not the people we follow, or come to love, or understand:
they are what menaces, bullies and victimises those people. They are antagonists. They
are non-player characters.

It wasn’t until relatively recently that the vampire was reinvented into someone who could
just be living a life and trying to do something good with it, and became viable as a
protagonist, a playable character, and a person.

there are no secrets here

We live in a world where mass-market fiction means most people have some idea of what
a vampire is, even if they don't really believe in them. In that world, the idea that vampires
can keep their very existence secret is... well... it strains credulity, and that's being polite.

Anyway, from a storytelling perspective, the "no such thing as vampires" trope is a
limitation. It lends itself to a particular and finite set of problems, and steers games and
stories in a particular direction. By dispensing with it, Bloodspell is able to bring a different
set of challenges to the fore. Bloodspell isn't about keeping the existence of vampires
secret: it's about making sure people don't freak out when they find there's one living in
the flat next door.
 VAMPIRES

Blood, ideally, is taken straight from the vein. Preserved blood - whether that’s
alchemically or medically - is a thing, and they can survive that way, but it’s a bit like living
on black tea and instant noodles. Fine for a couple of weeks if your student loan hasn’t
paid out, but you wouldn’t want to do it forever, and it's probably not good for you.

Biting someone to drink their blood - or, if you want to be civilised, drawing their blood so
you can drink it nicely - isn't exactly commonplace. Some people find it deeply, deeply
erotic and a lot of people find it deeply, deeply disgusting and to do it without their
permission is a violation of their basic humanity. Consent is important.

Fortunately, getting that consent isn’t a total death sentence if the existence of vampires
is an open secret. Have you seen the number of people on Twitter who are after that
vampire sugar daddy to give them the good succ? A world which accepts vampires exist,
on the downlow at least, is a world where some of those pleas might be answered. Good
times for all.

But: vampires live a lot longer than people do. Yes, the best of them build up quite
meaningful associations with ordinary humans, but those associations are always
temporary. To stay sane demands the company of peers - people who are in more or less
the same boat as you, people who Know How It Do Be Sometimes. That means vampires
tend to seek each other out, for good or ill.

For one thing, it means they’ve someone around who understands what it’s like. For
another, it means someone can help them out. Accidents will happen. Mistakes will be
made. Even the most well-intentioned vampires will sooner or later find themselves looking
and feeling like a predator, or standing over a body. For one more thing, it stops them
going off the deep end. Vampires are their own best checks and balances; their survival
depends on them policing their own and not letting anyone decide that actually, consent is
for the living and they should just take what they want and damn the consequences.
Those are the prerequisites, but what else is going on? For instance: what’s the deal
with sunlight? There should probably be one - it’s part of every vampire story worth
hearing - but are we talking "it burns, it burns like hygiene" or "we can move around
and be awake in it but our powers only work at night?"

It can help to think about your favourite vampire media and build from there. It can
also help to think about the kind of story you want to tell and the kind of game you
want to run and what you want to be on and off the table.

Your vampires may be doomed lovers existing on the peripheries of society,

surrounded by decrepit beauty and sentimental things, living on because - well, what
choice do they have? They may be eternal, experimental teenagers, adrift among
those who might have been their peers a hundred years ago, gently preying in the
nicest and most useless possible way. They may be nocturnal nomads who chase
midnight around the Arctic Circle in an endless road movie of the damned. They might
even be elegant and beautiful creatures of the metropolitan night, playing elaborate
and secret games of sex and blood and power in the kind of nightclubs into which you
and I, dear reader, would never be invited or at home - but then again, they might not.

For instance, my vampires can see in the dark, but their eyes look strange. They can
learn to travel through and manipulate shadows, turning them into physical presences;
they can control the way their own blood moves and behaves, which helps them heal
faster (and also has cosmetic uses).

They don’t have any sort of mind control or influencing powers that help them eat
blood from people who don’t know about it, because that sort of thing is basically
magical date rape and, besides being generally monstrous and repellent, it's too easy.

None of their supernatural abilities work by day, and they’re sleepy during the daytime,
but the younger ones can handle sunlight well enough to move around in it. They can
taste ordinary food and drink, but not keep very much of it down, and they can have
sex, but it's purely for pleasure: to make a little vampire demands the Bite.
 CHARACTERS

when did you become?

How long ago did it happen? Has your vampire been
around so long that they’re legally dead, or are they so
new that people may recognise them in the street? Is
their birth name an accident waiting to happen? Can
they try to hold down a “real life”? Have they had to
choose a new name, a new town, a new person to be
because their old self just wasn’t working any more?

How did they find out? Were they told, or did they have
to figure it out? How did it feel to die, and keep on
living? How do they experience their Thirst - physically,
what does it feel like to want exactly one thing that’s
such a pain in the ass to get?

how do you get blood?

Just grabbing people off the streets is unsustainable.
Breaking into houses and nibbling on a stranger’s wrist
is dangerous for everyone; tricking people into deep
hickeys is at best skeevy and at worst a violation. What
this question boils down to is who else knows? Who’s
stood in a room with a vampire and said “yes, OK, you
can do that to me?” Are they paying for it? How? Is it a
sex thing, or something clinical, or a favour for a friend
or a family member? Do they have a friend in the
hospital or the abattoir who can keep them going for a
little while if they’re struggling?
 where do you wake up?
Are we talking basement room in a house share?
Windowless van and two sleeping bags? Cosy
apartment with a suspiciously windowless bedroom?
Spooky old “abandoned” house with boarded up
windows on the ground floor and heavy shutters up
above? This sort of lifestyle question gives you an idea
of how your character lives night to night, and what
kind of resources they’re living on. The kind of person
who sleeps in the back of a van probably isn’t doing it
totally by choice; the kind of person who “inherited” a
Victorian townhouse might not have ever had to
choose.

what keeps you going?

What does your vampire do that isn’t vampirism? What
makes them want to keep on keeping on, forever? Who
are their friends? Do they try and roll with a human
crowd or have they given up and kept to their own kind
completely? What makes them a person who happens to
be a vampire, rather than a monster pretending to be a
person?
 RULES
Vampires are defined by two traits: Desire and Ambition.
Each of these traits corresponds to a six-sided die.

A Moment happens when your character's making some sort of effort to influence the
world. Mostly, vampires are trying to Perceive, Manipulate or Dominate their
environment, so those are the types of Moment you have to choose from.

So at the start of a Moment, you roll two different coloured six-sided dice: one for
Desire, one for Ambition. Roll them both and observe which one's highest This tells you
which of your driving forces - short-term Desire or long-term Ambition - is most at play in
that Moment.

desire ambition
Desire is immediate, primal, Ambition is long-term,
and a little bit savage. It’s sophisticated, elaborate
the need to feed and flout and a little bit pretentious.
5 and flaunt that seems to It’s the longing for a legacy 2
run through every vampire you'll live long enough to
to some extent or another. see.

What do you want right What do you want in a

now? hundred years' time?

To work out whether Desire or Ambition is calling the shots, subtract the lower result from
the higher one. 5 Desire minus 2 Ambition leaves you with 3 Desire, for instance.

Then look at the appropriate chart for the Moment at hand to find out how that Moment
resolves, and what the price of that resolution will be.

If the result is zero, choose between the 1 Desire or 1 Ambition result.

 THIRST

what it is
During each night of their life, your character will work
up a Thirst, especially if they’ve been in stressful or
challenging situations. Thirst is bad because, as Thirst
builds, it becomes harder and harder to resist, and to
focus on the Moment in hand.

how it works
You start the game with 1 Thirst, and you gain (or lose)
Thirst as a consequence of each Moment.

You add your Thirst to your Desire roll before you work
out whether Desire or Ambition is higher.

When your character’s Thirst passes 5, they’re too

hungry to concentrate any more. They’ll need to break
off the Moment — whether by leaving quietly, storming
out, being punched out, or losing their patience and
biting some fool who probably doesn’t deserve it — to
slake their Thirst and reset it to 0 again.

This can mean the Moment is an outright failure for your

character — if, for instance, slaking your Thirst happens
to involve biting someone who you’d prefer to leave
unbitten.

You do have an option here: you can ask another

player to support you through the Moment. They gain +1
Thirst for doing it; it’s good to look out for your friends,
but it still costs you.
 DRIVES

You will also have a +3 bonus to your Ambition roll in

certain circumstances, depending on your character’s
Drive - the specific thing that keeps them getting out of
bed night after night. Roll your dice first, then decide
whether you want to add your Drive bonus.

You pick your Drive when you create your character.

nihilism
You’re a beautiful corpse, so you’ll live fast, die never,
and drink heavily. You never add to your Ambition, and
start every Moment with 2 Thirst.

aesthetic
You want to live beautifully, and you want to make art
that lives forever with you. Add +3 to your Ambition
whenever you are making a creative statement,
changing (or showing change to) the world.

legacy
You’re building a family, and an infrastructure that will
provide for them. Add +3 to your Ambition whenever
you are leaving something for those who came after
you, and are in your care.
justice
You’ll live so long that you may actually get to see
things change. Add +3 to your Ambition whenever you
are addressing injustice, putting down oppressors,
ensuring someone gets fair treatment.

security
We keep one another safe, we police our own, we don’t
let anyone bring the world down on us. Add +3 to your
Ambition whenever you are keeping your community in
line, dealing with another vampire’s mess, or handling
the damage someone else’s mistakes have done.

company
Forever is such a long long time to spend alone. Add +3
to your Ambition whenever you’re making a meaningful
connection with someone else - human, vampire,
anyone you like who likes you like you like them.
 MOMENTS
what is a moment?
A Moment is like a scene in a film or a chapter in a book; it’s a place and a time in which
something important is happening. Your characters live in the Moment, can be given a
Moment or take a Moment, they can even try to have a Moment. That’s all life is — just a
series of Moments.

what do moments mean for play?

A Moment should be about a character doing something that works toward their Drive.
Establish that first. Why is this Moment happening? Who wants something here, and
what, and from whom?

At the start of the Moment, decide how your character is approaching the task at hand.
Vampires are generally trying to Perceive, Manipulate, or Dominate. This says nothing
about the actual tone of the Moment; asking questions politely is Perception, but so is an
out and out interrogation.

Then, roll to see how the Moment turns out. This isn’t entirely about success or failure:
it’s also about deciding what the Moment should entail, whether it’s a risky Moment or a
relatively safe one, and what the consequences of the Moment will be. This gives your
role-play some direction, and avoids the meandering that free-form role-play often falls
into. You know how the scene should end: together, you as players figure out how to
get there.
perception
You attempt to understand the Moment and the people in it in more detail,
establishing how you can work to achieve your Drive. This Moment is about
finding things out, laying groundwork, teaching and learning.

You are moved to explain your goals to others and invite

1 them to work with you. Choose one question from the list
DESIRE
below and present your preferred answer.

You are moved to explain your goals to others and invite

2+ them to work with you. Choose two questions from the list
DESIRE below and present your preferred answers. If your answers
are falsehoods, gain +2 Thirst as the stress builds.

You see through the temporary illusions of the Moment to

1 deeper truths. Choose one question from the list below:
AMBITION
another character must answer it truthfully.

You see through the temporary illusions of the Moment to

deeper truths. Choose two questions from the list below:
2+ other characters must answer them truthfully. If you act on
AMBITION
this knowledge, gain +2 Thirst as the opportunity to pursue
your Drive becomes tempting.

questions:
What should I be afraid of?
What stands between me and my Drive?
What advantage do I have right now?
Who is in control here?
What is most valuable here?
manipulation
You exert a subtle influence on others, attempting to steer the Moment
toward your Drive without taking direct control. This Moment is about soft
power, appealing to emotional drives and intuition.

1 You get what you want from this Moment.

DESIRE

You get what you want from this Moment, but you are
2 OR 3 confronted with temptation along the way. You either gain or
DESIRE
lose 1 Thirst during the Moment.

You get what you want from this Moment, but you have to
4+ put yourself in harm's way. Whatever you have to do to
DESIRE protect yourself and achieve your goals means you gain 2
Thirst.

You get what you want from this Moment, but you come on
1 too strong and risk alienating a friend. You and another
AMBITION
character both gain 1 Thirst.

2+ You come on too strong. You don't get what you want from
AMBITION this Moment, and you gain 3 Thirst as your frustration rises.
domination
You step up and take control of the Moment, exerting yourself physically or
socially, imposing yourself on others to work toward your Drive. This
Moment is about dynamic, decisive action.

1 You get what you want from this Moment, but the risks
DESIRE involved mean you gain 1 Thirst.

You don't get what you want, and the resistance you face
2+ puts you in danger. You gain 3 Thirst.
DESIRE

1 You get what you want from this Moment.

AMBITION

You get what you want from this Moment, but it's more
2 OR 3 difficult than you anticipated. You either gane or lose 1 Thirst
AMBITION
during the pursuit of your Drive.

4+ You get what you want from this Moment, but not without
AMBITION resistance or danger. You gain 3 Thirst.
 YOUR LAST SUNRISE
how you make another vampire
Why are you doing it? Work that out, then roll as normal. Remember, your Drive will
modify the result of your Ambition die and your Thirst will modify the result of your
Desire die, as usual. There are also other modifiers in play, depending on the
circumstances and the history behind your character.

Remember what these rolls represent. Ambition is long-term, Desire is short-term. So

while little-d desire is certainly part of little-r romance, to act on your Desire in rules
terms means a quick shag and bite up against the wall. A viable relationship (which
might be romantic) is a longer term bond that’s more in the territory of Ambition.

motivations
REVENGE - you will show them the meaning of pain. This is a curse,
and you’re determined to share it. Add 3 to your Desire die if
vampirism is your idea of a punishment.

REGRET - you didn’t mean to take so much blood, but you did, and
now the only way to save them is to make them like you. Double your
Thirst modifier for this roll only, and reset your Thirst to 1 afterwards.

RESPECT - they’ve done good things, and they deserve eternity to do

more. They’re a good person, and a good friend. Add 3 to your
Ambition die if you can bring up a Moment where your vampire-to-be
has earned it.

ROMANCE - you and they belong together, and the thought of

forever without them doesn’t deserve thinking about. Intense
friendship — a kind of Platonic romance — belongs here too. Add 3 to
your Ambition die if a series of Moments have bound you together.
what comes of this
As long as you're together, all will be well. Your progeny is
1 enthralled by you and you by them: your codependence means
DESIRE you need to watch over and take care of each other, lest you
be lost forever.

You've made them like you, and they love you for what
2 OR 3 you've done, but the sheen will wear off soon enough. Once
DESIRE they gain their first Thirst, your new friend begins to regret
what you've made them. You will drift apart in time.

Your selfishness is recognised. The vampire you've made may

4+ forgive you in time, but they'll never love you. What you've
DESIRE
made here, darling, is an enemy.

You've made a vampire, but they aren't exactly comfortable

1 with the change. They recognise you had the best of
AMBITION intentions, and once they've reached (and slaked) 5 Thirst,
you might still be friends.

You've done more than make a vampire. You've made a

2+ friend and ally. They get it. In time, they'll become
AMBITION comfortable with what they are. They may even come to like
it.
 WORLD HACK

dead blood
still tastes sweet
If your vampires can feed on preserved blood forever,
rather than as a temporary solution that’ll make them
sick eventually, that opens up a wealth of different
ethical and personal questions around ways of life.
These questions involve food and food preparation;
they highlight the material realities of consumption and
production and the cultural (or in this case subcultural)
outcomes that exist around those realities.

In that world, vampires become parasites, and their

stories are about black marketeering and theft, often
from well-meaning institutions who are trying to save
human lives. The vampire culture is one of making do,
scrounging and scrimping; animal blood might be a go-
to, synthetic blood might be a massive game-changer;
vampirism here will feel much more like a medical
condition and less like a mystical, predatory curse.
 DICE HACKS
we are creatures
of extremes
Ten-sided dice are iconic for vampire roleplaying.
They're also the freaky-deaky die type that isn't a
Platonic solid, so they feel suitably eldritch and
otherworldly, which is a nice touch.

If you use ten-sided dice instead of six-sided dice, the

outcomes of your rolls will be so far apart that Ambition
and Thirst modifiers don't close the gap. This makes the
extreme results of Moments more likely, and for a more
perilous roleplaying experience.

our humours are

out of balance
If you’re more a 30 Days Of Night person and you want
to emphasise the role of moment by moment Thirst for
vampires who are driven by the temptation to
monstrous acts, you might want to make the Desire die
bigger than the Ambition die. If you’re feeling a bit
Only Lovers Left Alive and you want your vampires to
be more mellow, long-term and humane, you might
prefer Ambition to use a bigger die.

Maybe the “bigger” die means you roll twice and pick
the highest result, or you could experiment with some of
the other dice out there. Just remember, bigger ranges
of numbers mean more extreme results. If you pick a
four-sided die for Desire and a twelve-sided die for
Ambition then don’t be surprised if you never end up
biting anyone.
 Encumbered forever by desire and ambition
Running before time took our dreams away

PINK FLOYD
'HIGH HOPES'

Maybe they were just like us. Maybe they

did what they had to do to live, and tried to
get a little love and have a little fun before
the darkness took them.

POPPY Z. BRITE
LOST SOULS

p r o p e r g o ffic. itch. i o