#thousand year old vampire

[the-cypress-grove]

So, You Want To Write Vampires...

Here's a basic list of things to do/consider when approaching this creature.

Source Material

Go back to the origins. Almost every culture around the world has a story or myth containing cannibalism / blood drinking. You may want to base your origin story for vampires on one of these. This can also give you some ideas about what traits and abilities you might want to include that have been written out of modern fiction. It could help you add a unique twist.

2. Vampire Fiction

Vampires have been popping up in fiction for a very long time. Read The Vampyre by John Polidori (thought to be one of the first books written on vampires). Check out Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu (the lesbian vampire story that came out before Dracula). Speaking of, Dracula is a classic.

Look at modern fiction. Vampire Academy, Twilight, Vampire Diaries, True Blood, A Dowery of Blood, Crave. Read the good and the bad. Learn what qualities you like and which you will not use.

Make a list of things you like and things you don't.

3. Themes

Writing vampires brings a lot of themes surrounding mortality, immortality, morality, and at what point do we draw the line between what is human and what is other. These themes are integral to a vampire story whether you're writing a gothic horror, a paranormal romance, or a YA. There are a lot of links between cannibalism / blood drinking and love, vampires and LGBTQIA+ characters / coding.

4.Pick your traits

Vampires tend to be unique to the writer. The vampires in Twilight work differently to the vampires in The Vampire Diaries to the vampires in Dracula.

By this point you should have a list of possible traits and abilities you might want to give your vampires. My advice: tailor it to your genre. If you're writing a horror go with the traditional vampire abilities, give them the things that scare you. Think Nosferatu. If you're writing romance, then you might want to soften the traditional vampire traits in the way you find frequently in modern vampire media.

What you choose is up to you.

5. Origins

This is often overlooked in vampire stories but how did your vampires come into being? Who was the first vampire? Is this vampire still alive? How far back do vampires go as a species?

This could affect your vampires in terms of relationships with others of their kind, their powers, their strength.

This might not impact on your plot but, in terms of worldbuilding, if you intend to turn your book into a series then this could be very important going forward.

6. Society

Unless you're writing about the first ever vampire you're probably going to be writing about an established vampire population who will have their own laws, their own history, their own leadership, their own customs. This is an important piece of worldbuilding. It will affect your characters relationships, add conflict to the plot, create established enemies and can be used to raise the stakes.

7. Nocturnal Life

If you're following a traditional burn-in-the-sun vampire and they haven't found a way around this then you need to determine the night life of your setting. What is there for your vampires to do at night?

8. Feeding, Hunting, and Bloodlust

This will affect the level of gore in your story as a lot of the bloody parts in your story will take place through feeding and hunting. This will also determine your vampire population.

You need to decide how much your vampires need to feed, how often they need to do so, and what they can feed on. Do they drink animal blood? Is that possible? Do they drink human blood? Can they drink from blood bags? Do they need the blood fresh? If they need human blood do they need all of it?

The less a vampire feeds, the larger a population you can have in one area as it attracts less attention.

What happens when your vampires are hungry? What does their bloodlust look like? How does it affect a vampire? Is the amount of bloodlust a vampire experiences determined by how old the vampire is?

9. Threats

Unless your vampires are well and truly endless there will be ways to kill them and they will have enemies. Do these enemies take the shape of humans, of other vampires, or another species entirely? How can your vampires be killed? What other species are out there?

[vintagerpg]

An Account of the Lengthy Existence and Numerous Experiences of Ambrose Backhouse, Vampire, with Special Attention to Those Years in Which He Walked Upon This Earth Tho Dead (2022) is a lovely graphic novel by Tim Denee and published by Tim Hutchings. It is essentially a log of a playthrough of Thousand Year Old Vampire. Denee posted the initial installments on Twitter as he went, which is where I initially saw them. Around that time, I was spectating a number of TYOV playthrough logs on social media and this was by far the most engaging, because pictures. I guess Hutchings thought so too!

Ambrose it turned to undeath by the Rek, an ancient vampire bound to the sea floor by heavy chains (love this, its so wonderfully evocative). The pair foster a deadly enmity for each other over the centuries, in and out of which weave the people of Ambrose’s daily life, their schemes and his miseries. As a narrative, it jutters, which is the nature of the game, but I find this to be compelling (just as I do in the game) because real life rarely has threads and conclusions that satisfy the framework of good narrative. This feels weirdly real, and derives a power from that feeling. I don’t want to spoil the ending, but I really enjoy how the book resolves, like most lives, with much unfinished.

Denee’s approach to the art for this is perfect, very flat, highly graphical, almost as though pasted together with cut-out colored paper. It has a sense of assemblage that echoes the narrative. He is very good at pushing the style toward warmth or humor and then immediately pulling back to something horrible. The whole this is quite effective. And the book is handsome (if very oddly shaped). Treat yourself!

[maddyisabstract]

Day 7 of #RPGaDAY2024! Not sure what 'good form' means in this context so I'm just gonna share the first solo TTRPG I played, Thousand Year Old Vampire by Tim Hutchings. Excellent prompts, BEAUTIFUL book, plenty of vampire angst for this goth right here.

[kelgrid]

We talked about starting Thousand Year Old Vampire with a neolithic vampire and I got emotional 🥺

[daenysthedreamer101]

I'll just leave this here.

[wehavekookies]

New game new game 👀👀👀

[gamesyoushouldbeplaying]

Journaling rpgs are even worse than group ttrpgs because instead of blorbo from my 5 friends imagination you have blorbo from 5 hours of playing a game alone

[breezybeej]

This is the single best page in any RPG ruebook I've ever read

[kampfhomo]

I played Thousand Year Old Vampire yesterday for the first time. It took like 2 hours (taking it really slow - my first solo ttrpg) until i had to wrestle myself into bed and GOD i love my blorbo already

[her-devils-advocate]

I think my dad saw my love for CRPGs (BG3, Divinity, etc), my love for The Wayhaven Chronicles and understood what needed to be done

It looks amazing and I can't wait to create my most obscure OC yet to annoy my friends with! Especially since they have some background knowledge for Valerie (since I got some of them into TWC) and I don't shut up about Nell at the moment, but with this one, they will have 0 clue

[dungeonofthedragon]

Ttrpg Recommendations: Vampires!

I love vampires- both silly and spooky! So I thought; well, why not make a rec post of vampire-related games this time?

Brinkwood: The Blood of Tyrants by Far Horizons Co-Op

The world is controlled by vampiric aristocrats. Fortunately for your scrappy band of rebels, you've gained the favour of the fey! Mystical masks allow you to spill the blood of your oppressors (for a price.)

I haven't had a chance to play this game, but everything I've seen about it looks amazing. Also, it uses the Forged in the Dark system, which is behind several of my existing faves!

Fanged by level2janitor

Fanged is a rules-light rpg where each player (besides the GM) creates two characters: one vampire, and one mortal. It takes some cues from Vampire: the Masquerade but is much, much easier to pick up and play. I'd planned to play this with some friends a while back and, while it never quite got off the ground, the would-be players were able to quickly create characters and develop their connections between each other in our small seaside town setting.

Reason/Run by Sam Robson

This is my own creation, but it is very much about vampires and so I wanted to include it! Reason/Run is a one-page solo rpg about an ordinary person exploring a vampire's castle to try and rescue a loved one. They cannot fight the vampire head-on, and so if they ever encounter it, they must choose to either reason with it or run away.

I barely escaped when I played this myself. Was forced into a situation where I had to make a roll with a 33% chance of success. Failing a roll means your character is killed and the game is over. I was so nervous as I was pretty close to winning at the time, and thus so relieved when the roll succeeded!

Thousand Year Old Vampire by Tim Hutchings

A solo journaling rpg where you play as the titular vampire! My manager first recommended it and, I have to say, it's so good. Dark, desperate and lonely, but amazing! Follow a vampire through their centuries of existence, up until their demise. If you're the type of person who always feels bad for monsters in the stories (I know I am!!!), this game is for you.

There are literally thousands of community copies, so if this sounds like your thing, it's so easy to nab this one!

[tehstripe]

ive been playing a few solo ttprgs in my spare time and i just got emotionally devastated by a plot beat that happened in my playthrough of thousand year old vampire.

basically my vampire character's adopted daughter ran away from home to elope with a mortal, and he was upset but happy for her. last line i wrote in the entry where that happened was "I hope she lives a long and fulfilling life."

then the very next prompt is basically "your character dissociates for 100 years. all mortal characters die." so there is absolutely NO opportunity of him ever seeing her again.

OUCH!!!

[damnicantcontroltheweather]

Thousand Year Old Vampire is so good so far. My character is a jewish woman from Rome who was expelled with her family during Claudius' reign.

She's so tragic already. Out here killing her husband and turning her father into a vampire after her evil eye necklace was broken (which is just so fjdfbfb I'm foaming at the mouth). Her father hates her now, so her and her daughter Sabbatia are living in the lower area of the Italian alps in a hut by themselves. She feasts off her daughters blood (Ohh Sabbatia, I'm sorry for giving you Mommy issues) because the deer aren't enough to satiate her hunger.

Anyway, she just got a mortal woman to clean her hut and cook for her daughter, so we'll see how that goes.

[callunas-vampires]

Memory 1: Early Life - 440 BC

My name is Phoibe. I hail from Athens, where I serve a temple of Athena as a priestess. I live quite a peaceful existence and have a few friends within the temple, who often look after me since I am one of the younger ones but this age difference also separates us. I spend most of my time sweeping and washing garments and I look up to Theokleia, who took me in when I had no one else.

I was born in the summer of 459 BC.

[cocoaberrycake]

I've always found roleplaying games quite interesting because of their storytelling capabilities but I don't have the social skills or a group of friends to consider giving it a try. So I've always stayed on the sidelines, envying the people who have a lot of friends and aren't as self-conscious as I am.

Enter a random youtube video on the youtube main page, titled along the lines: "Got no friends? Try these solo roleplaying games!"

My eyes went the widest they've ever gone. You mean to tell me there's a whole genre of games that I can try out without having to socialize and constantly scrutinice my every move and choice in front of people?? I can tell the stories on my own??? I need to get into that ASAP.

If you have suggestions on solo RPGs that a total newbie can play, feel free to tell me. I've been doing my own research so far and picked up a copy of Thousand Year Old Vampire, which is a journaling RPG in which you create a vampire character and chronicle their life during a thousand years, creating and discarding memories as time goes on. Seems to be a bit advanced for my absolute nonexistent knowledge of how roleplaying works, but that's fine. I'll do my best.

I'll be creating my character and playing with them as soon as I can. Would anyone be interested in reading a playthrough, if I post it here? Keep in mind it's not going to be a historically accurate campaign or anything, I refuse to get caught up in the tiny details (which I tend to do because of my✨crippling perfectionism✨). I just want to try this out, have as much fun as I can and see where my creativity takes me.

[zyurp]

Playing a run of Thousand Year Old Vampire!