[RPG] Quick & Dirty Fate Accelerated rules for Vampire

A friend of ours is coming down for the weekend and is now arriving a bit earlier that planned, quick randomly she mentioned to me that although she’s done a bit of fantasy and superhero tabletop RPGing that she’d actually like to try something a little bit darker than that; having noticed a picture of a recent vampire book sent to me by a friend she fancied giving something similar a go. Now I’m currently on a bit of a hiatus from WOD (although most of games tend towards the dark in tone), love the background, however the number of sub-systems and varying mechanics in the rules don’t really light my fire, I’m more a fan of having systems with a strong core mechanic that everything else hangs off.

Given that this is liable to be a short game and that my friend isn’t very experienced with TT RPGs I don’t want to get bogged down in lengthy character generation and explaining loads of different rules, what I want is an exciting game where character gen time is minimal and we can jump straight into telling an interesting story. So, as I find myself doing an awful lot these days, I’m planning to try and keep the background feel of the NWOD whilst jettisoning the mechanics and going for a simpler system; I’m sure it will come as no surprise to those who know me that I’ve decided to go with the Fate Accelerated system. Accelerated is very easy to create characters for, has a fairly easy learning curve and is one of my go to systems these days when it comes to running a quick game or something on the fly.

So without further ado below are the quick and dirty vampire rules that I intend to be trialling:

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Aspects

• High concept (as per the book, must mention that character is a vampire)
• Trouble (as per the book)
• Occupation (what job the character held prior to their embrace)
• First Victim (who was the first person they killed following their embrace)
• Friend/contact (the name of one friend or contact that has stood by them or that they have managed to keep from their mortal days)

Stunts

• As per the book.

Vampire Edge

• At any time (where it makes sense within the game fiction) the player can choose to increase the bonus they would normally receive from a stunt/invoking an aspect from +2 to +4 by using their vampiric powers. When this is done the GM takes a red fate chip that may only be used for that character.
• Characters can also call on their vampiric nature to perform tasks that might otherwise seem impossible (not appearing on a CCTV camera or automatically escaping from a scene by either becoming invisible, transforming to mist or using supernatural speed) but doing so also results in the GM drawing a red fate chip.

Red Fate Chips

• A GM may spend a red fate chip to issue a compel to a character, this compel may not be bought off with fate points as per a standard compel since it represents the vampires own innate nature overcoming their human side and reason.

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I’m under no illusion that these rules are anywhere near perfect, in fact I’m pretty sure that they’re not, but it should hopefully allow us to jump into a game fairly quickly without worrying about a lot of rules and (I hope) will manage to capture that feeling that a character sacrifices a bit of themselves every time they give into their beast.

I’ll do a report for the blog on how it went after the weekend :)

(picture by Sam Briggs - used for non-profit purposes only, no challenge intended to copyright)