This week's themed recommendations all have to do with those blood-hungry creatures of the night - vampires!

Vampires & Claymores, by Torthevic.

Vampires & Claymores is a pamphlet Tabletop RPG about recently turned vampires discovering more about themselves while avoiding losing their minds to the everlasting hunger. 

This game is played as a traditional RPG, in which one of the players takes the role of the Game Master (GM) while the others make their in-game characters to inhabit this world. 

This game is ideal for short campaigns or one-shots, with a dwindling availability of a resource called Insight, which Vampires will use to both flesh out their character backstory and learn Blood Spells. The dice system uses d6s, which represent both the vampires’ advantages as well as the challenges they will face. In this game your characters can’t die - however, if they lose enough Blood, they’ll go Feral, which is the first step to losing salvation. If you like the idea of a game where your character deteriorates at the same time as they advance, this might be the game for you.

Vamp Camp, by Sebastian Yue.

You’re a new vampire and it’s not quite as straightforward as you imagined. Maybe you’re struggling to accept your new form, or maybe your feeding habits are testing your roommates’ patience—it’s not your fault that you have to keep a bag of blood in the freezer! Perhaps you’ve tried to talk to your living friends about it; while they’re kind and sympathetic, there are some things they just don’t get.In your search for help, you’ve stumbled across VAMP CAMP, a local support group for vampires and the only one in your area. In this game for 2-6 players, you’re going to attend your first VAMP CAMP meeting. You’re not sure what to expect but at this point, you’ve got nothing to lose.

This game is GM-less by default, though there are alternate rules included if you prefer to play with a facilitator. Players take turns reading and responding to prompts about their experience as vampires. If you don't have your own ideas, you can use the roll tables provided to choose or randomly determine them. 

Character creation starts with a single fact about your character; as you continue playing, you will fill out more information about yourself, such as what about your body changed, and what you do to feel alive. This is a game that encourages players to dive into topics that may not be comfortable for everyone, so it is important to establish safety tools before you start play. If you have a group that is heavily interested in role-play and enjoys getting into the meat of the character, this is a game you should absolutely check out.

The Vampire Next Door, by Cat Elm.

It's the late 2000s, school's out for summer, and you're headed out of town to stay with your grandparents in the idyllic Yorkshire village of Wymton-on-Tee. Your summer plans include exploring the countryside, and most importantly enjoying Grampy's famous chocolate chip cookies.... except that you're pretty sure that Vladimir Alucard, Grommy and Grampy's new neighbour is an evil bloodsucking vampire.

And none of the adults will believe you.

The Vampire Next Door is a roleplaying game for 3-7 players, intended for single-session or short form play. It's an homage to classic shows like Scooby Doo, Mona the Vampire, and Gravity Falls, where it's down to the kids to be smarter than the adults and save the day.

Similar to Kids on Bikes, this game assigns a different-sided dice to each stat, but kids in this game only have four stats: Creativity, Physicality, Luckiness and Sociability. This means that the target numbers that you're trying to hit won't be as varied, although there will still be definite strengths and weaknesses. There’s also a Push Your Luck mechanic that players can use to attempt to re-roll a failed roll - with the caveat that a second failed roll has an especially bad consequence attached to it. It’s a great game for a first-time GM, as well as for a game group that doesn’t mind being a little bit silly.

The Vamp is Dust, by Alyssa / @adisasterqueer.

You rose – alone, confused, and hungry. The vampire found you, explained what you were, and promised to help shepherd you into this new phase of (un)life. But when you went to visit them, all you found was a pile of dust and a departing Vampire Slayer.  

Maybe you want to guarantee your safety. Maybe you’re looking for revenge. Maybe you just need to prove that you didn’t end the vampire yourself. Whatever the reason, you’re now hunting the Vampire Slayer. They’ve retreated to their Hideout; get them.

This game is a hack of Grant Howitt's The Witch is Dead. It's easy to play and run, with (optional) rollable tables for generating PCs, plot, adversaries, and setting. Characters will roll for strengths and weaknesses, assign numbers to stats, and then, with a d10, you’re ready to go!

This is a game in which the vampire is a sympathetic character, rather than a threat - and all of you are trying to wrestle with feelings of loss, grief, and revenge. The game itself is only two pages, but it’s beautifully laid out and contains the tools you need to get the game rolling. If you like minimal setting details and just enough information to start creating the story for yourself, this is a game for you.

Bloodbeam Badlands, by Viditya Voleti.

You have survived the apocalypse, and your worst nightmare has come true. The sun burns redder, brighter, and hotter, never setting - the Forever Dawn. The land has been irradiated and kissed by its strange sanguine rays, warping the world into a carnival for the strange and the supernatural.

Bloodbeam Badlands is a game for at least 2 players, including a Game Master (GM). It’s a game about vampires stuck surviving a post-apocalyptic world where the sun never sets, what it means to keep moving when the deck is stacked against you, the immortal facing mortality with every step. It’s also a game about being really cool vampires with cool vampire powers and cool magic guns going on rad adventures in a rad world filled with rad things. 

Characters in Bloodbeam Badlands have 3 Stats: Guts, Guile, and Guise that determine your capabilities and how many dice you roll, and 3 Sources: Blood, Bullets, and Burn which determine your state of being and what value you need to roll under. Managing your Sources as they fluctuate and playing to your strengths allows for a dynamic yet simple system!If you like games about survival and dread, if you like your vampires weak and vulnerable, and if you like the rough-and-tumble of a wild wasteland, you should check out this game.

Clown Helsing, by Planarian.

Dying is Easy. Comedy is Hard. 

Clowns. We've all seen them... riding their unicycles, blowing up balloons at parties, piling in garish hordes from tiny cars, waddling around in bulbous red shoes, passed out in a dumpster stinking of booze and regret. For what do these martyrs of mirth sacrifice themselves? The answer is they do it for us. Not just to fill our need for laughter and merriment, but because they defy the doom of mankind! Clowns are man's only salvation against… Vampires.

Clown Helsing is a goofy, silly game, rife with humorous imagery and a series of stellar instructions that demonstrate just how seriously you should take this game - which is, not at all. All conflict (called Throwing Hands) is solved using Rock-Paper-Scissors. Any ties are solved by whoever has the best Shtick, which is selected during character creation. If you are looking for a quick pick-up game, or if you like vampires but aren’t a fan of horror games, you might want to check out Clown Helsing!

Brinkwood, Blood of Tyrants, by Far Horizons Co-op.

The world is not as it should be. The rich feed, literally, upon the poor, as blood-sucking vampires who barely bother to conceal their horrific, parasitic nature. The downtrodden peoples of the world struggle under the burdens of rent, payable through the sweat of their labor or the blood of their veins. Evil has triumphed. Many have given in to despair. But all is not lost.

Mask up. Spill blood. Drink the Rich.

In Brinkwood, you take on the role of renegades, thieves, and rebels struggling for freedom and liberation in a castylpunk world controlled by vampires. Radicalized by tragedy, you have taken up arms and fled into the forests, where you were taken in by unlikely allies - the fae, forgotten creatures of myth - who offered a different path and the means to fight back against your oppressors.

I've been making character sheets for various roleplaying games over the past few years, and I've gotten pretty fucking good at it. I've got everything from small, simple, sheets...

...to complex beasts with clocks that tick and self-populating sections that pull from numbers you put in specific boxes.

I've got big, trad-like games with lots of pieces...

...and more abstract story-games.

And I include more than just character sheets! I include mission clocks, world-building tools...

... and safety sheets with a list of common safety tools!

Riding Habit (1939)