Hello, everyone, and welcome to Your Worst Nightmare, another RPG actual play podcast. As if there aren't enough already. It's called Solotude, a journaling RPG podcast, and it's just me, in a room, not to brag. I've got a journal. I've got a solo RPG. I've got some damn good coffee. I play to see what happens in the story. write in my journal, and you get to hang out next to me, by the fire. So welcome, I hope you enjoy our time together. I've always considered myself to be a person who journals. I've never done it. Well, okay, actually, that's a lie. I did it for like three weeks when I was 10. And it was about week four of the process when I looked back nostalgically on what I had written and determined that it was embarrassing garbage and ended up not doing it ever again. Well, actually, that's also a lie. Not too long ago, I tried to keep, like, a sketching journal where every day I'd sketch a thing that had something to do with that particular day. It was a lot of fun. I'm not good at drawing, but I enjoyed the practice. I couldn't keep it up. So, the whole secret conceit of the show is to just get me the journal. Because I want to be a person who journals. I want to be a journaling guy. I just want to be able to justify my identity as a person who journals. So here goes. I hope people will enjoy the show. I'm just going to try to make it in a way that I'll enjoy doing it. Which leads me to the game I picked first. I have no idea how long a campaign of this will take. maybe will be done in three sessions, maybe it'll be a year, who knows. I'm just gonna enjoy the ride and who knows. Let's enjoy the fantastic, melancholic, blood-sucking joy that is a thousand-year-old vampire. In the campaign, I'll call... We do what in the shadows? I recently read Dracula, And I really enjoy the movie and the TV show What We Do in the Shadows. So let's try and mush things together. Let's try and make the most sad and depressing game of all time, A Thousand-Year-Old Vampire. Let's try making it a comedy, because I have a gut feeling it'll work. And if it doesn't, that's gonna be funny. So it's gonna be fun either way. First, let's really quickly try and get through the basic concepts. I need to play the game and you need to understand what's going on. The basic premise for the game. Yeah, and then we'll get to create a vampire and ruin their life. There's like a content warning written at the beginning, like the introduction section of the book. And it says... Your character may be injured, victimized, trapped or killed. May murder and victimize people. including children, animals, I'm not going to victimize animals, I may be a vampire, but I'm not a monster, loved ones, oh, that's easy, marginalized people, or themselves. Of course, I will do my very absolute best to make the content non-offensive for as many people as I can. And also, I'm gonna take the game seriously. It says play hard and play safe. I will play hard and I will play safe, but I'm also determined to make this a comedy. It's a melancholic game. It's a dark game. It's a sad game about forgetting who you are. But for me, it's a game about remembering who I am. A person who journals. No. No. If you're not up to character creation, you can just skip this and start from the next one. With the journal entries, you'll get up to speed and then we can figure it out from there. But if you want to create this guy with me, hang around. We'll figure it out. It's gonna be cool. Okay, the basic concepts we need to get through are memories, experiences, skills, resources, characters, and marks. We'll go through them quickly, so I really just want to get started. There's like 300 prompts in the book, and we'll not go through all of them because our vampire might die at any moment. But more importantly, there's a system based on a D10 and a D6, so a 10-sided and a 6-sided die. Once we're done with a prompt, we'll roll them and the result of the D6 will be subtracted from the result of the D10. And that's how many steps forward will progress in the book. And that's how we get to a new prompt. If we do the same prompt again, there's three different options there or three different levels. So we'll just do the second prompt of that number. Beautiful. And with every prompt, I'm not sure if the book really tells you to write a journal entry for everyone, but I'll do that because that's essentially the show. And that's what I'm really looking forward to here. Really guys, it's just an excuse to journal. I love the idea of journaling. And now I'll get to do it with a fictional person who's a lot more interesting than me. So the things I'll write down are experiences. An experience is a thing that happens to the vampire. Ooh, an experience is an experience. A memory is like a section of the vampire's life, so a longer one, that contains different experiences that kind of paint the same picture. A memory contains up to three experiences, and a vampire is allowed five memories. When I get a sixth, then I'll have to erase older ones. So it kind of simulates the vampire being so old they forget who they were, I guess. That's a beautiful mechanic. I love that. So the vampire has skills. For example, swordplay, relaxing banter, operate heavy machinery, and I do not blink the sand away. Excellent. The only thing we need to know is checking a skill. Like, skills are stuff the vampire can do and might do. But if a prompt instructs me to check a skill, I'll make a little marky mark on it. And checked skills are, like, integral parts of the vampire's identity. For me, as a person, a checked skill would be a person who journals. There's resources... Resources means stuff. There's stationary stuff, like houses you can take with you, and stuff you can take with you, okay? And you can use them in prompts, even if the prompt doesn't say so. There's characters. Ooh, that's the good stuff. Your vampire has relationships. They come and go, they're mortal or immortal, the prompt will tell. Last thing, what do we have left? Marks. A mark is a visible indication of your vampire's undying state. Ooh, so, for example, a pair of great bat wings. Eyes are hypnotic. A dark halo I cover with tall military hats. That's my favorite. This isn't gonna be my character, but what if it was? Do you know the legend about the French guy who created the top hat? The top hat guy? Top hat François, as he's called. He made the first top hat and walked outside of his apartment and got fined because the hat was so offensive. It was the craziest hat. People were fainting. What if the vampire character was the top hat guy, but he created the top hat to hide his devil horns? Fines or not, he just had to wear it. I think that's everything we need to play the game, so please join me in creating a vampire. Start by imagining a person in the distant past. When and where they were born, who they were in life. Start with one memory that contains one experience that encapsulates their history. It's a broad summary of the vampire's life before becoming an undead thing. Okay. So, first of all, I know nothing about history. And I really don't care to try and make this historically accurate. And I really have no intention of getting this historically accurate, I don't care. I do think it would be fun to look up historical figures and stuff like that to get some inspiration, but I'm not gonna stick to dates, so just so you know. My idea is an orphan who was left at the steps of a monastery. I want it to be in Italy. I don't know why. I wanted to be an Italian monastery up in the mountain range, the Apennines. I wanted to be there. He was left there as a toddler. The monks took him in, raised him, and that's the life he knew. He lived there for like 25 years before becoming a vampire. Yeah, let's go with that. 25 is a classic age to die. He has a proficiency for music. Ooh, let's make these monks artistic. Is it weird that I'm going to be writing, like, butchered Gothic English in an Italian monastery? It's a group of British monks, for some reason. It's a monk exchange program. There's a group of British monks staying with the Italian ones, and it's a mix of cultures, yeah. That's why he speaks perfect English. Yeah, let's do it. I like a monastery because it's solitary, it's confined, but it's opinionated. I like that. What if the monks composed and copied music, hymns and all sorts of music, and traded that for food and basic supplies in a nearby town? Yeah, that's what we're gonna do. It's the amazing composing British monks of the Italian Apennines. Perfection. That's the life. That's a broad summary of the vampire's life. We need three mortals. They're relatives, friends, lovers, enemies, mentors, debtors. They should be very important for this character. Okay. First character there's... I want these to be different kinds of relationships, so obviously there should be like an abbot or like head monk. I like head monk. Chief. No, let's go with head monk. The head monk is like a father to him. He taught our character everything he knows and how the monastery life works and ethics. And how best to serve God? Maybe they're not super close. They're close in the sense of like a father and son. So cold and distant in my experience. What do we name him? Let's name him something traditional. Augusto. He's Augusto. Father Augusto. Head monk Father Augusto. Father, I want a lover. I want a hot and heavy gay romance happening in this monastery here. Let's do lover with like a big brother type. Let's do like a few years older, not like a weird thing. Just your average run-of-the-mill gay romp. in a British-Italian exchange monastery in the Apennines. His name is Garibaldi. And Garibaldi has been his rival both vertically and horizontally, if you know what I mean. I want it to be like a stormy relationship. It's not like a lovey-dovey thing. They're jealous of each other and then they fuck. They fuck in the name of God. One more. What's something we don't yet have? Let's do like a clear enemy. I like the deader. I like that there's like a loan shark situation. Maybe our guy has an interest in something that monks don't usually have an interest. Gay sex isn't included in that. Instead, like fancy trinkets. Something he'd have to buy from the village or get, like contraband stuff. Beautiful jewelry. Yeah, so in order to get beautiful jewelry, he has to... He has to get it from some shady people in town. And this shady people is... Veronica. Veronica is like a smuggler, and our guy owes quite a lot of money to Veronica with no real means to pay it back, so Veronica is not blackmailing, just threatening our guy. And Veronica has connections to shady organizations and people. Perfect. Perfect, perfect, perfect, perfect, perfect. What we then need are three skills. I feel like we've kind of gotten a picture of them, but let's elaborate. So, music is composition, playing. He has a God-given talent for music. So, instrument, who cares? Medium, who cares? He knows music. That's what he knows. It's the voice of God. What other skills would monks in this situation... Is gay sex a skill? You bet your ass it is. I'm not gonna put that in. I don't know, sexual arts. Is that gonna take the game in a weird direction immediately? I'm gonna put in sexual mastery. And one more. I want there to be one more thing about the monks. Not just music composition, they have a killer volleyball team. That's it. He's a volleyball ace. The monks play volleyball against locals in the village and other monasteries in big monk tournaments called holy ball tournaments. So it's holy ball. Yeah, it's not yet. There's no volleyball yet. In the late 1500s, it's holy ball. Holy ball. It's German. And our guy can spike a holy ball like nobody's business. That's the three skills he has in life. Poor bastard. Then we need three resources. I want to tie one resource into the vanity stuff. Into... into the jewelry. So he has a huge stash of beautiful trinkets, rings, necklaces, medallions, pins, beautiful pins. He paid a huge amount for them, all of his money, and took a lot of loans. And they are virtually worthless, or at least they're not worth nearly as much as he paid for them. So he has a huge bag of golden shit. That's virtually just a big weight, but it's nice to look at, so yeah. Well, now that I think about this, A bag of stuff isn't too interesting. I'd like to make this a bit more abstract. He does have a bag of stuff, and yeah, I don't want to scratch that, but the actual resource I'm going to put down is Vanity? No. Beauty. He is a beautiful son of a bitch. He's got blonde, curly locks... Blue-green eyes. Cheekbones you could skin a gerbil with. Kind of skinny. He has this beautiful innocence to how he looks. He's not handsome, he's beautiful. And I think that counts as a resource, if anything. It's something he uses to get by in the world. and make life a little bit more manageable. What next? Like a lute? Not a guitar yet, but the whatever is before guitar. Lute. Ooh, and it's, let's make it Father Augusto's lute. Father Augusto has given him his own lute. Since our guy is such a prodigy, So, Father Augustus. Loot. Then maybe he has something from his parents. Like, something he's had since he was a little baby. Handkerchief with initials. Baby blue handkerchief with the initials ZZ. Z. Embroidered in gold detail. Magnificent. Then three more experiences. Okay, these experiences should be put into their own memories, and they should combine any of the two stuff we've already created. So like a resource with a skill, or something like that. Let's do it. I want the first experience to be the obvious one. Father Augusto teaches us how to play the lute. How to read sheet music. He... helps my fingers find the right place on the fretboard by placing them there softly and gently. It's a warm, nice experience. I mean, I kind of already wrote it in with the sexual mastery. Sexual mastery with Garibaldi. Fucking in the name of God. That should be a Judas Priest album. The experience of seeing God, or experiencing God with Garibaldi on an altar late at night in the monastery, where Garibaldi made our guy see the pearly gates of heaven drizzling down from the tip of his thing. That's what we're gonna write down. There was very little gay connotation in the preface of the book, but here we are. Yeah, maybe that, but the experience I want to write down is the big fight after that, when our guy realized that the joy and divine pleasure with Garibaldi is fickle. Fickle in deez nuts. No, it's fickle. It's fickle. This is when our guy saw that it's not gonna last forever and Garibaldi might end things very, very quickly. It's not a stable situation. And then maybe let's combine the hollyball spiker skill with the baby blue handkerchief. Maybe in a game far away there was somebody with the initial ZZZ? No, that's not really an experience. It's somebody recognizing the handkerchief in a game in Paris. I don't know. I didn't really think they'd be playing internationally. The monks travel to Paris. The British Italian monks in Paris. That's a fucking comedy movie right there. It's an important detail or experience for our guy, because it's the first clue to the parents or his origins. But since he's stuck in the monastery, he can't leave since there hasn't been another game in Paris. Great! Then what we still need is an immortal and a mark. So an immortal is the creature that gifted or cursed your vampire with unlife. Create a mark and an experience that explain how your vampire became a creature of the night. It's the fucking inventor of holy ball. It's an unholy sport. Unholy ball. It's a German... It's an Austrian alpha male athlete... With a handlebar mustache. Named Arnold. Arnold Weiss. Arnold Weissneger. Yes. Arnold has biceps you could land a helicopter on. He calls them the Apennines. Arnold's Apennines. The Peaks. Excellente. So Arnold was doing a seminar for our monastery's monks on holy ball. And late at night, he asked our guy, do you want to learn the secret spiking method? Do you want to spike hard, harder than anybody else? And our guy said, what? And he said, spike harder than anybody else. And our guy said, yeah. Because he was confused, he couldn't understand what Arnold was saying. So he said yes, got through with it, and wouldn't you know, the secret spiking method was two big old teeth in the neck. And thus, our guy learned the secret spike, which is full-on Haikyuu anime shit, where if... If our guy touches any... Like, he has, like, a fiery hot right hand. The palm of his right hand is hot. Even if playing the lute, he'll... In a few minutes, he'll snap the strings because it's so hot to the touch. Ooh. What do you think of that, Garibaldi? That's the mark. Yeah. Like a flaming hot right hand. If he holds on to something for a few minutes, it'll just catch fire. It's amazing. It's painful immediately. And it's flaming red. Like, really flaming red. Not just like a bad rash. It's the worst thing you ever saw. It's crumpled paper, but skin. And that's it. So the way I envision doing this show is it's going to be a bi-weekly thing. Every other week there will be an actual play thing where we go through to the next prompt, or maybe a few, I have no idea. We'll play for a while, get through a few prompts, and then on the off weeks, when we're not actually playing... I'll write a cool detailed version of the journal entry, slap some music on it, some sound effects, make it all nice and sweet. We don't have time to go to a prompt anymore, but I'm really looking forward to this. As a person who journals, I'm looking forward to writing the journal entries. And that's what I'm going to do for these experiences. So in the next episode, it's going to be those journal entries read, And after that, it's going to be playing then journal entries, playing journal entries. Yeah. I hope you enjoyed this. This was hella fun for me. I'm a little self-conscious talking on mic by myself in a room, not to brag, but this was a lot of fun. And I hope you are in for... Fuck, we need a name for the guy! His name's not gonna be my guy. Our guy. What if his name was Guy? Guy. That's his name. Is there an Italian equivalent for Guy? It's Guido, right? Is it? Guido? Guido? Guido? Guido. Guido. Yes. His name is Guido Lanzoni. Guido Lanzoni. That's it. But the monks in Paris called him Guy. And the British monks in the monastery called him Guy. So, Guy Guy Guido Lantoni. So, now we're actually wrapping up. So, this is it for tonight. Thank you, everybody. And I'll be seeing you next time. Bye.
Unknown:Bye.
Speaker 00:Thanks for listening, folks! I'm the person making this, my name is Auri Itemäki. Additional episode music courtesy of Epidemic Sound, theme song courtesy of me! And of course, the game I'm playing is called A Thousand Year Old Vampire, which was designed by the amazing Tim Hutchings. You can find Solotude on Instagram at solotudeshow. If you enjoyed the show, please rate and or review it, so people can find it a little bit easier. Solitude releases bi-weekly, but do not fret! For on the off-weeks, the previous journal readings will be back. A little more polished, a little more dramatic. So please enjoy that while you're waiting for the next episode. Thank you for listening. See you by the graveyard. You bring the shovel, and I'll bring the corpse. Bye!