I have a tendency to want everything to be perfect before I do it. I’ve grown to realize that nothing I do is perfect and some of it is really shit, but that doesn’t stop me from trying until I throw my hands up to the sky and say, “Fuck you”.

Which is pretty much my first introduction to vampire based role playing games. I had played a few games before that but when I found Vampire the Masquerade when I was a young teenager I thought I had found the holy grail of awesome. It combined acting with gaming, and threw vampires on top for good measure. When I read it, despite its really over the top theatrics I wanted to do the game justice and run it just right. I wouldn’t play it until my friends agreed to try to ‘keep it real’ and not goof off. It took weeks to figure out how properly I wanted to approach the game.

When I finally got it going. I failed. Of course I failed. It’s a fucking game. Not some serious thespian romantic sex ball waiting to drop god awesome awfulness into my crotch. Half the players wanted to just game, the other half wanted to explore their own teenager ideas of awesome, and I wanted to do my perfect thing. Game session imploded, and it took me a long time to come back to gaming.

In a sense it might be what made me not really enjoy gaming all that much the rest of my life. Sure I participated in some games, even ran a few, and because they have to do with vampires I kept reading the game books about them. I no longer look for perfect in games, just interesting.

I’m always on the look out for a game that would be really cool and vampire themed even if I’ll never play them.

In comes Undying.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/892039034/undying

I spent some time today glancing through the pdf. I’m one of those people that can’t really get a game until I play it so I don’t bother fully reading it until I do…which I won’t. So this really isn’t a review. Instead I just wanted to give a shout out about it since this is my blog about vampires and (what Lucy keeps pushing for), vampire things.

The art in the kickstarter is very evocative. The tone of what I read of the game is pretty spot on. The rules look solid for someone who doesn’t know much about that. I’m really thrilled about the concept of different times passing. Most vampire games don’t address that in any satisfactory way.

Lucy thinks the game is worth playing just her and I. I think that is funny. She wants to try to model her life in a game and thinks this could be a good start. Fuck. I think I’m going to need more vodka to try to model my life in a game. It’s like sucker punching yourself in both tits just for fun.

I’ll even say that the writer looks gamer enough to give him gamer cred but not bad enough to make me run screaming away (like the people in game stores make me do). Bravo for him for doing the in front of camera thing, despite the bookshelf behind him looking like a crappy set up prop. Also what is up with the crumpled piece of paper of the rules and art in the video? The prop department in that shoot needed to be fired. No I get it, style choice to blend into the pretty well done intro graphics. It is actually a really well done simple kickstarter video, compared to most I’ve seen.

I think I’m going to back this game even if I never play it. That is if Isabelle will cough up some dough before the kickstarter expires. It’s vampires and the writer seems to care… Even if he calls them Predators because of fear of being sued. Which is odd to me. Sign of the times and all that jazz.

Just do it. (can I get sued for that?)