Vampire Hunt!

Last night at the Trumpeter Society monthly game night, Corey and I playtested some rules for vampires in Sword Weirdos - part my plans for a game based on the movie Sinners.  Arthur helped to create a cozy little table for us to play the game on - a cemetery attached to an Orthodox church. The scenario I came up with had three vampire hunters (Dr Stack, and his colleagues Arthur and Quincy) moving into the cemetery to find the crypt of the vampire so they could put an end to his nocturnal activities.  Father Alexei (Alyosha), inside the church with his scholarly brother, Deacon Ivan (aka Vanya), is not going to react well to a group of ne'er-do-wells desecrating graves in his churchyard.  Alyosha's simple brother is the groundskeeper Pavel, who is in the churchyard, and dissolute brother Dmitri has appeared at the church door to harass the pious elder brother.  Meanwhile, a group of Roma are camping in the field next door. 

The vampire starts off by attacking Roma dancer Sara.  

This does not go well for the vampire!  The Roma swarm the vampire, knocking him down and terrifying him so he transforms into a cloud and flees.  This is what the young folk these days call, FAFO!

Dr Stack and his colleagues open the vampire's crypt, but find that it is empty!  Of course it is, the vampire is busy getting his ass kicked by the Roma!  Meanwhile, Pavel summons Father Alexei about the intruders in the graveyard.  Father Alexei confronts Dr Stack, but the good doctor convinces the priest that his actions are correct.  In game terms, Dr Stack and Father Alexei each rolled a will test, and Stack prevailed.

Having learnt his lesson from the Roma, the vampire takes a different approach against the hunters.  He casts Charm on Arthur, draws him away from his colleagues, and transforms Arthur into a vampiric thrall.

The vampire sends his new thrall against his former friends.  Quincy fails his test to attack his friend, but Dr Stack has no such qualms and pounds a stake into Arthur's heart.

The vampire then charms Vanya and converts him into a thrall.

Vampire thrall Vanya attacks the hunters, and decapitates Dr Stack!

Quincy attempts to attack the vampire, but is himself converted.  Meanwhile Fr Alexei and Dmitri dispatch Vanya.

Next they confront and defeat Quincy.

At this point, I stopped taking photos.  The vampire managed to convert gravedigger Pavel, the remaining brothers defeated him, and finally the vampire decided to withdraw from the cemetery.

The game was a good test of what we can expect for the next scenario. Before the next game, we will prepare profiles for all the main characters plus generic profiles for background characters.  Most characters will start the game unarmed, but they will have the option to find or fabricate weapons, and we will have cards for each useful item that players can get.  The vampire learnt a valuable lesson:  better to charm potential victims and convert them individually than to attack a group!  A change for next time, to promote safety in numbers, is that if the vampire tries to charm someone in a group, they get to use the highest Will in the group to counter the vampire's efforts.  As the next game will be a multi-player game, one of the plans is for players to change sides if their character is vampirised - we'll see how that goes!