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.
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