A $15 PDF purchase now gets you a $15 credit toward the print book in December. See below.
Features:
• A completely new, stand-alone game with rules that will be surprising yet familiar to Thousand Year Old Vampire players
• 320ish pages of material, most of it very pretty to look at
• 400+ Prompts allow for ample replayability
• Easy, scalable rules–embrace the new rules or use the Prompts in the TYOV method
• 200+ pages of collages to accent Prompts and power surprises and disappointments
• Suggestions for multiplayer play
Note:
• You will need a six- and a ten-sided die, and a convenient way to write out your Prompt responses.
• Intended for mature players.
• This is one of TWO sequels released concurrently during October 2026. The other is So You've Met a Thousand Year Old Vampire. They are two totally separate games.
• This is book four of the TYOV series in both the Horace Schilling (H.S.) and Unknown Bookstore (U.B.) numbering systems.
What's this game about?
A tiger in a cage. An innocent helpless and oppressed. Maybe both. This is a game about conversations punctuated by moments of reflection, action, or surprise. It's about a heavy thumb of authority not knowing what it has gotten ahold of. The game is about endings that you can see coming and cannot influence.
What does the Character do?
Your Character is a somewhat regular person who has chanced into the acquaintance of a Vampire constrained by another. This might mean a sailor curious about the stowaway locked in the brig, an airline passenger chatting with their seatmate on a transPacific flight, or a curious homunculus wondering about the stranger its master has hung in the high gibbet.
Your Character will have a series of Conversations with this mysterious, possibly ancient being currently under another’s sway. The Vampire and your Character will verbally fence, collude, and betray each other. The Authority and outside forces will force their way into the small world containing the Vampire to cause problems and create opportunities.
What does the player do?
The players uses the dice to generate a semi-random series of Prompts which, along with the collages, are used to generate the world from the viewpoint of the Character. Most of those Prompts will guide Conversations between your Character and the Vampire. These Experiences are written out by the player either as long journal-type entries or short summaries.
The player builds a list of possible Outcomes during play. How will the game end? You can see it the possibilities but no one else can. Will the Vampire escape the Authority? Will it sacrifice the Character to do it? Will the Vampire be interred beneath their original tombstone? Destroyed? Elevated to godhood?
So, to put it simply: You mostly write dialogue, occasionally describe actions, and may sometimes dramatically rearrange the setting. You do this by combining the current Prompt, some collage elements, and the story-thus-far.
A PDF purchase now gets you credit toward the print book release in December.
Print books for both The Vampire Prisoner and So You've Met a Thousand Year Old Vampire will ship in December 2026. The books should arrive in time for Christmas. Everyone who buys the PDF of one of the games now will automatically get a $15 credit toward the physical book after available in December. All you'll have to do is add the $65 print book to your cart after it becomes available and you should automatically get the $15 credit.
I suggest you press the "allow email marketing" button during checkout as it will be the best way for me to keep you apprised of book availability. I promise I won't abuse your email-trust as I only send out an infrequent newsletter.
If you combine this PDF order with a physical item that is currently for sale you will pay shipping and receive your additional item now. Your later order is a distinct, separate order for which you will have to pay shipping again.
I reserve the right to cancel the extant credits at the end of January 2027. If you fuck up and miss your credit window just email me and I'll fix you up.
Also: The credit only applies to purchases of the matching book on this website.
FAQ:
I have a question that isn't covered by the FAQ. What do I do?
Email your question to tim@thousandyearoldvampire.com.
Do I need to have Thousand Year Old Vampire in order to play this game?
Nope. It is entirely standalone. You don't even have to know what TYOV is.
You gave away community copies of the Thousand Year Old Vampire PDF. Are you going to do that with this book?
Yes, but later. Give me October and some of November. Maybe December. If you are in a rush for a community copy you can email me.
Can you tell me a little about the print book?
Yeah, 320ish pages. Fancy hardcover, all color fanciness throughout. Should have ribbon page markers and pretty gold and red foil on the cover. It is made to match the handsome Thousand Year Old Vampire book in style and feel. Together the new books all make a little set.
A set? What exactly are the TYOV-series books available right now?
Using the H.S. numbering system they are:
- Thousand Year Old Vampire
- The Journaling Notebook
- So You've Met a Thousand Year Old Vampire
- The Vampire Prisoner
Is the game scary? Bloody?
Not unless you let it be. The themes can vary between game plays. The game won't break if you ignore unwanted Prompt suggestions. The Prompts themselves are less likely to lend themselves to blood and gore than the other TYOV-like books.
What this game does have, though, is a prisoner. That in itself is pretty loaded and is, I think, inextricably baked into the system. Maybe not, though? I should probably test out what happens if the Authority is made over into a non-jailer antagonist and the Vampire is free to roam.
What if I don't buy the print book? What happens to my credit? Can I transfer it to someone else?
No, you can't transfer it. Use it or lose it.
When you say "Prompts" do you mean AI prompts?
No. A Prompt, in this case, is more like a writing prompt. It is a evocative, context-shifting piece of text that you incorporate into your ongoing game.
Is this a game?
You are more likely to be able to buy this in a game store than a book store so, based on that, I'd say it is more of a game than anything else.
I have a child who reads at the college level. Would they enjoy this game?
The 'mature players' thing is not about the reading level. The games in this series allow dark and ugly things to happen and I am not sure that this is appropriate for people under 18. I tried to make your question moot by including illustrations featuring licentious behavior and pubic hair. You don't want your kid looking at that stuff, do you? I didn't think so.
Are the PDF page numbers a little wonky on my Mac?
Maybe? I'm curious if that's the case for everyone using Preview on the Mac. There is a setting in Preview that toggles between the "logical page number" and the given page number. Play with that and it might fix your problem. All that said, the page numbers shouldn't matter that much as they don't get weird until later–at least for me.
Were any animals harmed in the making of this book?
I can only imagine you are asking this because you saw a yellowjacket in one of the collages. Yes, those were real yellowjackets but, no, I didn't kill them myself. They died en masse in my basement studio after burrowing in through a gap in the brickwork. I came in one day and saw before me a field of the dead spread before the window. It was tragic, even for yellowjackets who generally deserve worse than they get.
