Skip to content

Player Rules (Big Ol' WIP)

WHAT EVEN IS THIS?

Great question, so glad you asked. This document is the beginnings of a new Powered by the Apocalypse TTRPG called Coterie, created by Sam Atwood. It's intended as a pleasant and easy-to-grasp all-vampire game, drawing heavily from Vampire: The Masquerade V5 (and some V20), Urban Shadows 2e (plus a long-running World of Darkness conversion homebrew), Low Stakes, Blades in the Dark, and Monster of the Week. If those names don't mean anything to you, here's a simpler pitch: you roll dice, pretend to bite people, and deal with lots of consequences.

The game can be played episodically or serialized, with each session covering either part of a night (almost real-time) or a handful of nights, but rarely more than a week at a time, keeping a tight focus on the dusk-to-dawn hours of everynight unlife. It's also completely free, so if you somehow paid for this, you got scammed.

Coterie is meant to be played by 4–7 people, with one acting as the Storyteller (or GM), who maintains some semblance of control over the plot, NPCs, and game world while the rest choose a Playbook and create a single vampiric character to play until something dreadful happens to them. The Storyteller must react to the players' in-game choices, keeping the world dynamic, but it's vital to note that Coterie is not a high-level political game (like VTM), nor is it a rules-lite game where only the narrative matters (like Low Stakes). Everything happens on a small group or individual basis, with interactions with the wider world only veering into hard consequences if things get dire.

Crucially, Coterie does not rely on everyone knowing V5 lore — it should be straightforward to get anyone even remotely familiar with vampires into a game and playing within a few hours (but don't neglect Session Zero!) Once the basics of the game are built, an appendix will be included with alternatives & replacements for all the World of Darkness jargon ("Auspex" → "Scrying", "Banu Haqim" → "Judges", "Ghouls" → "Thralls", etc.) to allow people to graft the game onto their own settings. It can be played for laughs like What We Do In The Shadows, for creeping horror like Nosferatu, or oscillate between all the dramatic extremes (which is just good, messy fun). Ultimately, it's up to you and your table!

At its core, Coterie asks only one question of its players:

What do y'all wanna do tonight?

Temporary Design Notes

Important things to keep in mind:

  • Personal stats typically range from -3 to +3, reaching ±4–5 for very old/potent vampires
  • Coterie stats cap at ±3, typically start at ±1 (rarely ±2)
  • Clout and Currency are spendable resources
  • Cohesion provides direct bonuses/penalties to Coterie Moves
  • Charm and Claim fluctuate through play but aren't spent
  • Clout gambling: Spend 1 or more Clout to double Cohesion bonus + everyone gets +1 Ongoing. Win = gain Clout back +1. Lose = lose gambled Clout. Bad if negative.
  • Humanity loss is contextual, not automatic from killing. Depends on necessity, consent, circumstances, and personal Convictions.
  • Predator Types: Chosen at character creation for older vamps. Baby vamps earn them through play.
  • Advantage/Disadvantage uses 3d6 drop lowest/highest and stacks with Forward/Ongoing bonuses.
  • Hunger counts up from 0 → 5. Humanity counts down from 10 → 0. Stains are tracked in the same section as Humanity, indicating potential Humanity loss.
  • XP is tracked from 0–10 and doesn't roll over the max value, and so should be either spent in-session or saved carefully for a big upgrade.
  • There's a lot of stuff mentioned but not yet expanded upon in this document. I'll get there eventually. Please have patience!

Permanent Capitalization Standards

Game terms are always capitalized for clarity and easy recognition (which is weirdly uncommon in PbtA games):

  • Moves not moves
  • Playbook not playbook
  • Coterie not coterie
  • Hunger not hunger
  • Humanity not humanity
  • Kindred not kindred
  • Power not power
  • Perk not perk
  • Advantage/Disadvantage not advantage/disadvantage
  • Forward/Ongoing not forward/ongoing
  • Storyteller not storyteller
  • Debt not debt
  • Discipline not discipline
  • Compulsion not compulsion
  • Stain not stain
  • Touchstone not touchstone
  • Conviction not conviction
  • Blood referring to the stat and (vampiric) substance, blood for the (mortal) substance
  • And many more...