First Bite Edition - August 29th Update!

Hey Bloodsuckers!

It’s been a wild week since we launched the game, and there was a lot on the list that needed doing in that time. We’ve added Printer Friendly copies of the Core Booklet and Character Sheets, and we’ve fixed and tweaked some rules based on feedback. Barring any embarrassing oversights, v3 should be the stable version of Bloodsuckers for the near future, and we’ll be moving on to making some fun adventures and side content expanding on this foundation. Stick to the end for some hints on what the near future holds for Bloodsuckers!

Changes since First Bite Edition v2:

General Changes:

• Grammar and typo pass. A couple rules that were explained poorly have been tightened up and things that were inconsistently called multiple terms should now consistently be called their proper names. For an example of this, Archetype descriptions used to say that you added ‘1 Bonus Dice’ to an Art. I used ‘Bonus Dice’ as shorthand throughout the playtesting process for any free Hunger cost and then forgot that you don’t actually roll dice at any point of this process by the time we rejigged the rules for publication. It’s been changed to “[x] adds 1 free Power to Arts when they [y]” to better reflect how it should actually work in play.
• Additionally, these Archetype-specific arts are now known as “Specialty Actions” so that they can be referred to quickly for the purpose of future rules.
• The PDF now has bookmarks???? I have no fucking clue why that setting kept turning itself off when I was exporting the project files. It should be fixed now.
• The ‘Nights We Live & Die In’ section has been renamed to ‘Allegiances of the Dead’ to better reflect what’s in it if you need to reference rules on factions in a hurry.
• We straight up forgot to put one of the enemy faction writeups in. It was in the manuscript but we accidentally used an incomplete one for layouts. You can now read about the tenuous relationship between vampires and organized crime families!
• A few oblique references to a werewolf community that was present in the playtesting campaign have been removed from the Elizavet’s letter to Rasima in order to give players more opportunities in deciding what werewolves look like in their home game. Additionally, she now correctly identifies that Cold Blood stops vampires from appearing on camera. As a vampire academic, she’s very embarrassed about this oversight.

Mechanical Changes:

• Clots have been bumped from optional rule to main rules. A Clot can be used to introduce a Complication on a Fail or a Weak Hit.
• Rolls that Burn now explicitly allow a player to introduce an Advantage to the scene.
• To add a bit more nuance to the ‘Hot Blood = More Monstrous, Cold Blood = More Human’ dichotomy, there’s a new Optional Rule that vampires with Cold Blood no longer appear in cameras or mirrors. Having your ghostly image caught on camera can now make sneaking easier, but introduces additional Complications.
• Blasphemous Rituals have also had the bump from Optional Rule to main rule. They were kept Optional during playtesting to limit the amount of fuckery players could do with them, but we’ve introduced other risks/consequences that are more fun than ‘please don’t use this cool system’
• Starving now no longer automatically immobilizes a vampire. You are now given the option to fight the Hunger and be immobilized for a short duration, or pick a target in the current Scene and chomp. As you can imagine, this makes Blasphemous Rituals much riskier if the other vampires in a scene are not to be trusted.
• Using your downtime to restore Wounds now restores -all- Wounds, not just 1. This should make it a more viable downtime action, given that you’re consciously avoiding other potential ways of indirectly restoring Wounds.

Archetype Changes:

• A few Bloodlines have had name changes and tweaks to their Bloodline Arts to better tie into their intended ‘Thing’. House Oberon and the Heralds of Vorador have had their name changed to House Cardano and Heralds of Mercator, and the Knights of De Ward are now known as the Furiae following their defection to the Bleak Chorus.
• House Vintyra have a new-old Bloodline Art: Pusher, which was formerly one of the Verses of the Bleak Chorus.
• Furiae have also taken one of the former Verses and twisted it for their own ends: they now have Oathbreaker as a Bloodline Art.
• Bloodlust, the Bloodline Art of the Reavers, now restores Psyche when killing an opponent, not Hunger. This prevents a pretty awkward overlap between them and Pact of the Soul Cage, which has revealed itself to be a… straight-up better version of their previous Oath. This also means that Reavers now gain an extra advantage in taking Soul Cage, as they circumvent the Psyche penalty for consuming souls, if they’re willing to turn their mind into a haunted house in the process. When we told the Reavers this, they defected to the Key & Labyrinth on the spot.
• Heralds of Mercator now restore all Hunger when sating their Vice (up from 1 Hunger).

Allegiance Changes:

• Law of the Land, Pact of the Inviolate Sanctum, and Pact of the Trapper-Keeper have been removed as part of a broader focus away from Location-based Oaths and towards ones that (hopefully) lead to more interesting roleplay potential.
• As mentioned above, Oathbreaker and Pusher are now tied to bloodlines. They’ve been replaced as Verses by Blood Buddies and Sleeping With The Enemy.
• Don’t Fuck Up My Favorite Bar now specifies that both Difficulties need to be higher than your current Psyche, and now requires you to spend 1 Hunger to mark the warded location with blood.
• Pact of the Soul Cage now lets you know that particularly annoying souls you devour may linger as future Complications.
• NEW LAW OF THE HOUSE UNDYING: Law of the Bitter Rivalry - Pick an adversary. Restore all Hunger when you thwart their plans, or they thwart yours.
• NEW VERSE: Blood Buddies - Pick a pack member of a different Archetype. You get to add one of their Specialty Actions, they get to add one of yours.
• NEW VERSE: Sleeping With The Enemy - Pick a vampire of a different Allegiance as your Person memory. As long as you’re both still kicking, that memory can’t be Shattered
• NEW FORBIDDEN KNOWLEDGE: - Pact of the Tireless Investigator - Roll Insight + Attunement after drinking Human Blood. On a Hit, ask three questions about the former owner of that blood.
• NEW FORBIDDEN KNOWLEDGE: Pact of the Ball of Twine - Restore/Lose 1 Psyche when you introduce a Clot or Advantage to a Scene.

Thank you all for your support! See you in Los Angeles. For real this time. Pack a shovel, and get ready to drive an heiress from Barstow to Vegas. Every vampire in the city wants her dead.

No pressure.