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Alexander Peterhans rated Drained

A downloadable game.

Hey, it's What We Do In The Shadows the RPG!

Drained puts vampires into social situations, and it turns out vampires are quite uncomfortable in social situations. There is a constant pressure that they might lose their 'composure', and reveal themselves to be vamperinos to the normals around them. Which is bad.

A haunt, or scenario, presents a location (or locations), and the players are told what they're supposed to accomplish there (tends to be things like get access to a closed room and steal something, things like that). Overarching is always that they have to hide that they are vampires. Everytime something goes wrong, they lose some of their composure (an actual stat).

The players get to choose what kind of vamperino they are, each having a specific special power and a specific way to get some lost composure back, and what happens if their composure ever hits zero (it's not nice).

It reads like a solid system, and perfect for short sessions (although I'm sure you could create a campaign round the game) - I would personally change one rule: the rules tell you to throw a six-sided die for how much composure each character has, but I would give everyone 5 or 6 composure to start with. My feeling is that a low starting composure might stop players taking (fun) risks, and I think that taking risks is the bread and butter of this game. Players need a bit of composure spending money, so to speak.

Overall a nicely designed system, with an included haunt to start you with. I really liked the illustrations too.

I'm not always a huge fan of vampires, but I would certainly play this game.