Review of Thousand Year Old Vampire
Jason Mical, Contributing Editor
I was born in 343 CE in Constantinople. By age 20, I was a lover of the Emperor Julian, known as the Apostate. That is when I died and rose as a vampire. I cannot recall my original name, my family, or even the being who created me. I have crossed the world and spent five centuries living as a nun in a convent on Crete. After this time of relative safety, I met a vampire I created more than a thousand years before. Thinking him a friend, I joined him on a journey to his Sicilian estate. On the voyage he betrayed and killed me by tossing my coffin overboard and exposing me to sunlight. The year was 1660.
Credit: ThousandYearOldVampire.com.
This is my story from Thousand Year Old Vampire (TYOV), a solo journaling RPG created by Tim Hutchings. A new genre of RPG, TYOV doesn’t require a traditional game master or group to play. You simply need the book, some dice, and enough time to do some creative writing.
You start by making a character, who knows a handful of people and has a couple of valuable possessions. The entire world is your playground here (or even a fictional world if you like): you can come from any period of time in history, though the “thousand years” of the title isn’t hyperbole, so you might want to consider going at least that many years into the past. Once you’re equipped with the basics, you sharpen your fangs and go.
You guide your vampire through a series of journaling prompts, writing down their story as you go. The dice tell you which prompt to use next. It’s your job to connect the prompts together in a way that tells a meaningful story or stories; you have room for five “memories” that consist of three different related “experiences” each. Once you need room for a new memory, you strike out an old one—indicating your vampire has forgotten that part of its life. Prompts are short, inviting a good deal of interpretation. An example might be “you lose an old friend,” or “you are discovered and must flee to a far-away land.” How you connect them to your overarching tale is up to you.
Credit: ThousandYearOldVampire.com.
At first, I wasn’t sure this game qualified as an RPG, but the more I reflected on it, I realized it absolutely does, and does so in a way that may require us to fundamentally change how we view the genre. RPGs are always about storytelling. Often that storytelling is collaborative, with a GM and a group of players all creating the narrative together. TYOV and other journaling RPGs have found a way to translate that dynamic into a single-person experience. It’s ingenious and inspiring—the appeal of writing my own journaling RPG is certainly strong!
My first journey ended and within minutes I started thinking about how I could play again. It struck me: I had the perfect character already. The old vampire who killed my first character could be my second character, with me weaving the revenge plot into his own story. TYOV is a game that practically begs for a second (or third) playthrough, which I’m happy to oblige.
The game comes with nearly everything you need to play. If you want to write in your book, all you need is a pencil and some dice. I played with a computer and tracked some things I didn’t need to, like the year, just for my own historical curiosity. The computer also helped me research stuff I didn’t know offhand, like who controlled the island of Crete when. You know, just vampire things. The majority of the book are the writing prompts, which the dice guide you through (you roll and either go forward or backward, landing on a prompt and answering it). If you land on a prompt more than once, that part of the story gets more in-depth, with additional prompts that drill down into the situation.
I highly recommend TYOV for anyone looking for a guided storytelling experience and has a little bit of time to invest in the writing. The more you put into this game, the more you get out of it, and you may very well find yourself writing 10,000 words or more. It will be worth it. TYOV is highly recommended.
You can purchase Thousand Year Old Vampire at ThousandYearOldVampire.com.
