[7:39 PM]Falco: Hello all, I’m Chris Falco, who self-publishes under “Falconian Productions” and I’m also a lead among the Far Horizons Co-op. I’ve been playing games for over 20 years and developing them for over 5. So, today I’m here to talk about the Kickstarter for my primary game, The Blood. The base game itself is an urban fantasy game set in modern times where you play vampires (or sometimes other creatures), with a large focus on their nature as magical beings and how they interact with the magic that’s innate to the world itself. It’s a somewhat different take on vampires and a pretty unique magic system to go with it. The Kickstarter itself is to create two mini supplements for it, Atellurian Realms and Arcane Options: • Drops of The Blood: Atellurian Realms, a book that covers mechanics for otherworldly realms created from powerful convocations of Resonance and magical energy. These can be anything from a walk-in closet that was never really there, to a missing 13th floor, to an entire faerie realm. You can find an Atellurian Realm anywhere, and entrance into them might be a literal key to get through a door, closing your eyes at the wrong time in a faerie circle, or something stranger still. • Drops of The Blood: Arcane Options provides additional “complex” (and ultimately optional) systems that both give the Narrator new tools to use when running the game and provide players with more choices to develop their characters and focus their capabilities. This is where you’ll find complex stealth and infiltration rules, “politcking” rules for dealing with the supernatural underworld, and more! Including (Dis)Advantages and example spells for interacting with these systems.
[7:39 PM]Falco: You can find the Kickstarter itself here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/falconianproductions/the-blood-more-drops?ref=5z122e And you can find the existing Basic Rules (free!) and supplements for The Blood here: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/publisher/14925/falconian-productions/category/43171/the-blood?affiliate_id=259490(edited)KickstarterThe Blood: More DropsA tabletop RPG about vampires as creatures of modern magic.DriveThruRPG
[7:39 PM]Falco: (Done)
[7:41 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): Thanks, @Falco! The floor is open to questions!
[7:41 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): I suppose the elephant in the room is: How does The Blood differ from Vampire: the Masquerade?
[7:42 PM]Falco: I think I’ve answered that exact question here before in a previous interview, give me juuust a sec. lol
[7:44 PM]Falco:So, the World of Darkness is a game about a worldwide conspiracy where the player characters struggle to break through as anything more than pawns in the metaplot. The recent edition helps that a bit on some level but ultimately it still tends to feel like there’s a lot going on that can be distracting. The Blood differs in a few key areas. On the above note, the focus of vampires and their night-to-night tends to be localized to a city, and cities tend to have individualized groups that are connected to them without focusing too much on a larger picture. Yeah, they might be seeded or have sister groups elsewhere, but it’s more about surviving and empowering themselves each day than it is about some large political conspiracy. Beyond that, it’s not at all about loss of control or personal horror, per se. You don’t ever lose control of yourself like you would in those games; instead, the Blood might tempt you with the Desires it has, allowing you to use magic more easily to fulfill them, and it has a positive-feedback associated with that, but it’s still ultimately entirely up to you when you break. And of course, there’s the focus on magic and the supernatural overall. Magic in WoD, at least for vampires, is strict spell lists more or less. The Blood has a very dynamic system that integrates heavily with the systems for vampires (and will do so in very different ways with OTHER supernatural creatures). The short answer would be if you want your focus to be on magic and supernatural power and every aspect of what that implies, you’re going to want to go with The Blood. Another thing to add to that since I got those previous supplements published is that the system is more streamlined between character options, too. Everything interfaces with the magic system instead of needing to work between 10 different types of powers as a GM (even if just on the back end).
[7:45 PM]Falco: (Done)
[7:46 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): (Oh, we don’t require a (done) after every statement anymore — just after the intro. Thanks, though! )
[7:47 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): Do all of a vampire’s supernatural powers take the form of spells?
[7:49 PM]Falco: K. Yes and no. Vampires do gain some innate benefits just by the nature of the fact that they’re undead. Harder to kill them since there are no organs to disrupt, no need to breathe, that sort of thing. From there, though, what defines vampires (and other creatures) is how they interface with magic. Vampires are unique in that the Blood that fuels them has strange Desires of its own, and vampires can use those Desires to help them cast their spells, and to fuel themselves in the long term. So, while most spellcasting involves utilizing “Resonance,” which you’d normally need to find in an appropriate form in the world, vampires can just cast a spell because some inner part of themself wants to.
[7:50 PM]Falco: They do also have a minor connection to their own Blood and Undeath, too, which they Resonate with on their own without any external help.
[7:50 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): Is the supernatural hidden in this setting, and if so, how does it stay that way?
[7:53 PM]Falco: The assumption in the game is Secrecy, but it’s a semi-ironic term and something of an inside ‘joke’ among the supernatural and those in the know. The basic idea is that humanity, on some level, knows if they don’t poke at the shadows, the shadows won’t poke back in any extreme way. Most people in the setting have some brush with the supernatural or see things that can’t be explained, but your typical person doesn’t want to deal with it, and if they don’t, they’re fine. Yeah, maybe one night they come home a pint down blood-wise, but there are worse things than that. It goes both ways, though. When supernatural creatures try to get into the spotlight, hunters tend to manifest as humanity instinctively tries to defend itself, sort of like an immune system flareup. So, they ‘behave’ or at least are very subtle about any machinations among typical humans.
[7:56 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): What other supernatural creatures exist aside from vampires?
[8:00 PM]Falco: The big ones are: -Witches/Warlocks. They’re mortals that figure out magic on a grander scale by becoming part of it. They learn to take in the Resonance of magic and direct it around themselves. They have no internal Resonance of their own but they can borrow it from elsewhere and keep it even when the source has faded. -Cambions. They’re half-spirits, or spirit-altered people. Spirits covers a large category, everything from ghosts to fae to tulpa and so on, and so Cambion as a term tends to cover a large variety. They’re shapeshifters that can take on the form of the spirit species that altered them, and they have an internal Resonance that grows with them like a spirit’s would. -Ghuls. They’re another form of undead, which become undead by basically killing themselves trying to ‘consume’ magic in some form. They might have literally swallowed something that tore them up inside or maybe they tried to be more careful and made a potion out of the magic lingering in a place of power. Regardless, they become sustained by it and need to continue eating pieces of it to survive night to night. There are also the aforementioned Hunters, which can make heavy and advanced use of antimagic, and there are Freelancers, which is a more modern term for any other sort of mortal that gets pulled into the supernatural without fully becoming it. They’re the assistants and boots ont he ground for vampires and the other creatures above. Generally they gain some benefit from it in the form of magical alterations or enchanted objects, among other possibilities, and protection against other dangers in the night. Beyond that, the Sorcerous Rivals book we already published has a full system for making new types of creatures, whether a full new ‘species’ or a one off.(edited)
[8:02 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): How powerful does magic get? What’s the most powerful magical effect that comes to mind?
[8:05 PM]Falco: Well, for a singular ritual, you’re looking at something that can affect a city if you have a potent enough Resonance to work from, and at the maximum level fo the Aevocations (the traits players actually buy for the magic system), that’s where you can flat out create/destroy/put in stasis/transform/learn everything about something. Of course it’s not exactly easy to nuke a city for various reasons, but that’s the theoretical limit. You can get more wide reaching or reliable if you put special magical projects together, and the limits there tend to be in the Narrator’s (GM’s) hands.
[8:06 PM]Falco: The sort of thing you’re doing in an instant without even a ritual tends to be things that’ll last a night and affect about a building’s worth of people, if you’re well prepped.
[8:08 PM]Falco: Just to put them there in case anyone’s curious but doesn’t have specific questions, I did larger posts ont he supplements we’re working on: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/falconianproductions/the-blood-more-drops/posts/4102404 https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/falconianproductions/the-blood-more-drops/posts/4109017
[8:08 PM]Falco: ..if Discord doesn’t want to embed, the first one is Atellurian Realms, the second is Arcane Options.(edited)
[8:09 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): What does the term “Atellurian” refer to?
[8:10 PM]Falco: It literally just means ‘Not Earth’. It covers all sorts of supernatural realms that scale from a magic closet with a monster in it up to a faerie world, but they’re all ultimately birthed from magic (whether active or just passively existing) in our world. There’s not a vast cosmology where we’re just a speck, everything branches off of our universe, forming gateways around whatever cause it to spark into existence.
[8:11 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): So there’s no “Arcadia”, just individual faerie realms branching off from our reality?
[8:12 PM]Falco: Correct, though there are certainly some larger ones that have grown over time. Spirits ultimately start off here too, but find themselves drawn to Atellurian Realms. Since fae are a type of spirit that by nature all share similar Resonances, they do tend to come together a lot for that.(edited)
[8:15 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): Are there any non-sapient monsters in the setting, or are they all humanoid and intelligent?
[8:16 PM]Falco: Oh yeah, definitely. You aren’t likely to run into them constantly because the sapient ones know better than to let them cause trouble, but that’s the sort of thing that happens often enough you could build plots around it. Generally, they don’t have ‘full’ spellcasting and instead you give them specific spells or just permanent supernatural advantages.
[8:19 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): Can you give some examples of such creatures?
[8:22 PM]Falco: Well that sort of thing tends to be like Cryptid bait. Where it’s a normal enough creature infused with magic. So like you might end up with sea serpents when magic warps a more typical water snake with some ability to grow in size or strength (which could happen any number of ways). We don’t have a lot of specific ones already drawn up because they’re easy to put together, but it’s something I plan to have a few of in the Realms book. There are also of course more sentient but still one-off creatures that are nothing like humans, and that’s where it might take a little effort. Sorcerous Rivals has an example of one, “The Crow,” which strong arms unbalanced bargains out of those it runs into and is more or less made out of shadows.
[8:25 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): Does the setting have a defined cosmology? I’m guessing not, since it sounds like the material world is the center of reality.
[8:26 PM]Falco: Basically as I said above, it’s defined in that it’s our universe and then it branches off into countless small magical realms. Some are definitely large and notable or networked together enough that it’ll be covered in the book as an example, though. One of the larger fae realms being one of them.
[8:27 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): Well, to be more specific, I’m assuming that there’s no Heaven or Hell, for example.
[8:29 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): (brb)
[8:29 PM]Falco: Correct. Not that anyone has any knowing interaction with, at least. I’m not going to sit there and say “X religion is (entirely) wrong” at any point, but it’s not really among what characters are interacting with.(edited)
[8:34 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): Sure, I get it.
[8:35 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): Do you have a character sheet that we can see?
[8:36 PM]Falco: Sure thing. It’s due a renovation, but:
[8:37 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): Let’s have a look here…
[8:38 PM]Falco: For an actual fillable copy:The_Blood_Sheet_-_Fillable.pdf13.75 MB
[8:39 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): So it looks like rather than attributes and skills, the game uses all skills, some of which would be considered attributes in other systems.
[8:42 PM]Falco: Yep. They basically act as both. Skills are only really ‘trained’ which gets you a +2 to the roll (you add two together for your pool), but it’s expected that most of your focus will be on your Specialties, which then go up to +5. So you might have Occult Trained and then have “Cambions” at +4. Then when you’re trying to recall knowledge about how their magic works you might combine your Cambion specialty with a “Magical Theory” specialty. Which is to say, both can come from the same Skill heading or they might be from different ones.
[8:42 PM]Falco: Being Trained in a skill also acts as a defense against other people’s actions. Obvious ones there are Physique and Willpower, but anything appropriate can work in a situation.
[8:44 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): What dice rolling mechanic does the game use?
[8:45 PM]Falco: It uses a “pool” system of d10s. You form the dice pool either through the two skills or through your Refinement + Aevocation for magic, and roll to look for 7+. Each 7+ gets you a ‘hit’, and yo uneed more hits than your Threshold. The Threshold is generally defined by the opposition if there is any, otherwise the GM (usually defaulting to being low). Other things can also affect the Threshold like magic and equipment.
[8:46 PM]Falco: A lot of actions do come with ‘success at a cost’ as an assumption, though, to keep stories moving forward.
[8:46 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): Do hits in excess of the Threshold matter?
[8:48 PM]Falco: Yeah, if you get 3 or more the success is more ‘complete’ a success and gets you some extra minor benefit. Some specific actions will give specifics about it, otherwise the player and GM can hash it out. Of course, if it ultimately doesn’t matter it can be skipped for the sake of expedience.(edited)
[8:49 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): How does combat work?
[8:53 PM]Falco: Either as a single roll or a complex action. SIngle roll is obviously for like knocking out the drunk or whatever,a nd works like anything else. When combat matters, it’s a form of popcorn initiative (wherein you usually say who goes next) but with the ability to ‘interrupt’ on either side by taking on stress or using magic. The first person to go is whoever starts the combat, basically; if two people are playing chicken you can make a contested roll. Basically, any of your typical attacks or disarming someone or whatnot works with whatever roll you cna justify with the Skill system, or of course spellcasting. Spellcasting is worth noting because combat is an emotional time by default, and so there’s almost always Resonance of ‘violence’ or ‘anger you can tap into, but neither are really good for like throwign a fireball, but rather either worsening or diffusing the situation. The Arcane Options book is going to have a whole spell section on combat spells just about anyone can use round to round. Either way, it’s designed around making sure everyone can contribute and that it has goals when you go into it to sort of define when it’s over without always being deadly. You don’t want to go killing important supernatural beings or you’ll be dealing with the backlash later.
[8:54 PM]Falco: Generally speaking, combat shouldn’t usually take more than a few rounds.
[8:55 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): How is damage figured?
[8:58 PM]Falco: You have physical and mental Stability, both of which have fleeting and severe. Fleeting tends to go away quickly, severe is what will eventually kill you when you take too much and takes longer. Vampires also can use their Vital Essence (what they get from blood) to heal faster by basically speeding up the process they use to sustain themselves, and can only be put down with antimagic or high end magic, barring extreme circumstances. Note that fire is naturally antimagical when it occurs on its own though. Anyway, you have 3-4 boxes depending on if Physique and Willpower are Trained, and a typical source of damage deals 1-2 at a time. So, a couple good hits can put someone down.
[8:59 PM]Falco: Mental Stability, to mention, is often self-inflicted by straining yourself to make rolls easier and whatnot. But ‘social combat’ is easily a thing and would likely target that.
[9:00 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): What would you consider to be a typical source of damage?
[9:03 PM]Falco: The sort of thign that normally happens in a fight or that’s otherwise severe enough to be worth marking a sheet for. A good hit with a knife or a bat is severe. Which might be the sort of thing that could take someone out in one, but it’s assumed vampires and most of who they’re actually going into combat with won’t be going down immediately.
[9:03 PM]Falco: Even if it is a mortal, if you’re in the combat system they’re probably the type to still go at you even with the knife wound slowly killing them.
[9:04 PM]Falco: (which, there are conditions to represent, someone bleeding out)
[9:05 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): Can you describe the system for spellcasting?
[9:11 PM]Falco: Of course. So, to keep it as basic as I can in interview format, spellcasting is defined by your Refinement, your Aevocations, and the Resonance that you probably find out in the world, but there are exceptions there. Refinement is your grasp on your own power. Most supernatural beings already have as much power inside them or at a grasp taht they ever will, but Refinement represents how much control you have over it, how it’s shaped, basically anything that defines you have more of it at the ready and able to direct. Because of that, it can also resist magic, in addition to being part of the dice pool for casting it. Anyone capable of casting spells that aren’t just a singular “Innate Spell” or the like has Refinement. Aevocations are the ‘verb’ of the noun-verb style of casting. Control is for commanding and directing things, Degrading weakens or removes aspects of them, Enhancement strengthens or adds aspects of them, Insight lets you learn about them, Protection lets you keep them the same or keep them from interacting with others. They’re rated 1-3, with the low levels being effectively nudging in whatever way, stuff that’s basically altering Thresholds on rolls most of the time, whereas 3 is complete ability to do it. Resonance is the magical reflection of a concept. It’s most often found by there basically being ‘a lot’ of something or it being a perfect example of that. Fights to the death will almost always contain ‘violence’ as a Resonance, for instance. There are other ways to build it up, though, like using magical materials or enhancing mundane materials that connect to another concept for reasons other than what it is, or finding raw Essence in the wild that has that Resonance. You can also make pacts with spirits, or use whatever your own supernatural type may or may not provide. (Continued)
[9:12 PM]Falco: So, the dice pool is Refinement + Aevocation, and the latter is determining to what extent you can affect something. The Resonance, then, defines What you can affect and also the ‘scale’ of it, which is everything from the range to the duration to how larghe an area. It’s rated 1-5, with anything more than 2 almost never happening on its own without something wild going on (like a powerful magical nexus).(edited)
[9:15 PM]Falco: So, for a real quick example. You want a spell to look super edgy and cool in the darkness. You have Refinement 2 and Enhancement 1. You manage to find a Resonance of darkness at 2 by finding a cavern that never has light touching it. You can use a ritual to make it count as 3. That can let you cast a spell to make your own shadows and lighting play off all perfectly broody for up to a week or so, or it could let you do it to anything you can perceive, up to even a full building or so. Anything within the ‘3 or less’ Scale that your effective Resonance can cover.
[9:16 PM]Falco: You roll 3 dice and even a single Hit is enough, but even if you fail, Success with a Cost is always an option for casting spells uncontested. So, it’s less about getting t he spell going and more if it works exactly how you want/expect.
[9:16 PM]Falco: (Mechanically, it probably lowers the Threshold to look cool or be intimidating)
[9:17 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): So in your example, the caster went to a place that had the right Resonance and cast the spell there?
[9:18 PM]Falco: That, or spent a significant period of time interacting with it and then immediately cast it in the next scene they’re in. It does linger for a little bit.
[9:18 PM]Falco: Like if they went spelunking in it and then went outside and crossed the street back to their home to do the ritual, that’s fine.
[9:22 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): Aside from needing the right Resonance, are there any other limits on spellcasting?
[9:23 PM]Falco: Well, you’re limited by your Aevocations. At the maximum level, there’s a lot you can do but there are a handful of things magic can’t manage
[9:25 PM]Falco: The three main limits of magic are that it’s not Self-Sustaining (you can’t create Essence to cast more spells with, for instance, or create blood that’s cheaper to make than the Essence you’d gain from it). It can’t alter fundamental nature (so when you transform something, they always become what they were again if the spelle nds or gets dispelled somehow). And it’s always subject to antimagic (which is what it sounds like). There’s also a note that basically anything that players try to do to “ah-ha!” the game and break it gets ended byt he rules of magic cus it’s like trying to be smarter than physics. lol1
[9:27 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): In the time remaining, is there anything we haven’t covered that you’d like to bring up?
[9:29 PM]Falco: Well, I’d like to mention that the Kickstarter is also going to have a Print on Demand compilation book of the supplements with the basic rules attached. Which will get expanded if stretch goals are reached. Also that it’s worth reading the updates I talked about to get more information on the supplements past the little blurbs. And also that if anyone wants to follow it all on Twitter (or help share stuff), you can go here: https://x.com/FalconianP/status/1790350550862643400Falconian Productions (@FalconianP) on XWe’ve just launched the newest #Kickstarter for The Blood, #TTRPG folx! The next set of Drops of The Blood is in production, covering Atellurian Realms and Arcane Options (advanced systems for Narrators and players alike). (Lnk in )Twitter•05/14/2024 6:56 AM
[9:30 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): Cool!
[9:30 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): Thanks very much for joining us, @Falco!
[9:30 PM]Falco: Thanks for having me!
[9:30 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): Usual reminder: If you’ve enjoyed this Q&A and would like to treat me to a coffee or two, you can do so at https://www.ko-fi.com/gmshoe. Anything’s appreciated! Ko-fiBuy Dan Davenport a Coffee. ko-fi.com/gmshoeBecome a supporter of Dan Davenport today! ❤️ Ko-fi lets you support the creators you love with no fees on donations.
[9:31 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): If you’ll give me a minute, I’ll get the log posted and link you!