Theres a new tabletop game on the way thats set in the universe of Vampire: The Masquerade, but if you dont shell out money for it now, you might never get the chance to buy it at a store.
Vampire: The Masquerade - Chapters is a campaign-in-a-box in the style of Gloomhaven, a role-playing game that doesnt require a game master to run. As with many other high-concept tabletop games right now, Chapters developers say its simply too big and too expensive to ever come to retail. We sat down with Flyos Games to learn more, and to tease apart the economic realities that are changing the landscape for high-concept board games.
Chapters is the third game by Thomas Filippi and Gary Paitre, two French designers who live in Montreal. Their first two board games a fast-paced family title called Kiwetin and a card-based zombie game called Until Daylight were both modestly successful on Kickstarter. The crowdfunding platform has been the engine behind a resurgence in tabletop games over the last decade, but for Canadian game maker Flyos, the rubber really met the road when Until Daylight got picked up by a proper publisher.
We were able to get Asmodee as a distributor and they drop-shipped everything for Gen Con 2018, Filippi told Polygon during a Zoom call. We actually saw our game a tower of games disappear in less than 24 hours. So its kind of an amazing feeling.
Despite that success, Flyos decided to go in a different direction when it pitched its latest project to Paradox Interactive, which bought the Vampire: The Masquerade license in 2015.
The board game industry has a fairly traditional model when it comes to the product pipeline. Developers pitch a game to publishers, who then help fund development. Games are manufactured overseas, for the most part. When theyre ready to ship, players can order them directly from a U.S. warehouse or pick them up from their retailer of choice. That might be Amazon, or it might be a local game shop. Either way, some portion of the profit of selling board games goes to the developer, to the publisher, to the retailer, and to a middleman called the distributor, who holds the inventory and handles some of the shipping.
Filippi told Polygon its a simple question of margins. Say that the retail price for a board game is $100. Flyos in this instance acting as both the developer and the publisher would have to sell that $100 game to a distributor for $40, who marks it up to $50 and sells it to a retailer. Then the retailer turns around and gets the $50 profit or whatever fraction of that theyre willing to take after in-store discounts. Vampire: The Masquerade - Chapters starts at CA$179 (about $140), and theres an awful lot crammed into that box. Theres simply no way to accommodate the traditional path from publisher to distributor to retailer at that price.
Flyos isnt alone in this model. Many tabletop games, especially large, miniatures-heavy board games, are adopting a similar model. That has led to the emergence of a Kickstarter competitor called Gamefound, which handles both the initial crowdfunding campaign and the after-campaign sales late pledges in the parlance. But once these extended campaigns are over, there wont be any copies available in stores.
That leaves it up to developers like Flyos to drive home the value of the products that its creating, and Filipi and Paitre have a pretty good story to tell.
Vampire: The Masquerade - Chapters is designed for one to four players. Everyone at the table takes on the role of a vampire secretly trying to live their lives in modern-day Montreal. The storyline is run out of a single spiral-bound book with smaller pamphlets for each of the more than 60 encounters. Those pamphlets, combined with individual character sheets, manage the games many dialogue trees, investigations, and combat encounters.
Its closer to a video game than a TTRPG, actually, Paitre said.
When the final product begins shipping in July 2021, it will include more than 300,000 words of narrative, 20 double-sided tiles depicting real-world areas around Montreal, and miniatures to represent the playable vampire clans. There are tiles for nonplayer characters, cards for combat its a lot, the pair says. In fact, the entire box is roughly twice the size of the famously large Gloomhaven. At 25 pounds, its quite a bit heavier as well.
There are plenty of upgrades and expansions available for the base game. The all-in package runs CA$499, but again, the only way to get any of it right now is via pre-order. Delivery of the first wave of product is set for July, and Flyos says its tracking to that date fairly well.
Aside from the economics of making something so large and ambitious, the entire project has been running in the shadow of the ongoing pandemic. As with many other games, playtesting of Chapters moved from in-person to virtual, using Tabletop Simulator. Flyos made the games in-development scenarios available to potential backers during a Kickstarter campaign that ran in 2020. You can download them right now to demo for free: the first full scenario, and prologues for the Malkavian, Venture, and Gangrel factions.
The Vampire license has had a tough time over the last few years. In 2018, the 5th edition of the Vampire: The Masquerade tabletop role-playing game had a launch plagued by unforced errors in tone and content, which ultimately led to a reorganization of its development team within Paradox. The Swedish developer and publisher also made the unusual move to sideline the studio behind its highly anticipated video game set in the franchise, Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2. That project is now delayed indefinitely.
Luckily for Flyos and its backers, no such issues have cropped up in the development of the new board game. Chapters is still on target to launch in July, and Filippi and Paitre say the content of the game itself is sound.
We have a very close relationship with Paradox, Paitre said, who are reading everything that we make to make sure that weve not broken the lore, that everything makes sense, and that its feeding the overall vision of products from Paradox and from ourselves.
Consumers can expect Vampire: The Masquerade - Chapters to be a thoroughly 18-and-over experience, the pair said. Themes of sexual violence, which some games in the franchise have historically enabled, will not be a part of the final game.
Its mature in all other ways, Paitre said, but everything related to sexual assaults, or anything that can be impactful in terms of a division of, you know, how sexuality is related to violence, we avoid it at this time of the campaign, just because its something that does not resonate with us.
The final push for Vampire: The Masquerade - Chapters is taking place on crowdfunding website Crowd Ox. The campaign has so far earned more than CA$2.15 million, and runs through March 10.
Read the rest here:
Vampire: The Masquerade outdoes Gloomhaven with giant new campaign-in-a-box - Polygon
- At Least Three Women Were Infected With H.I.V. After 'Vampire Facials' - The New York Times - May 1st, 2024
- Vampire Facials Presumptively Linked to HIV Transmission - The Cut - May 1st, 2024
- Brad Pitt's 30-Year-Old Vampire Movie Was Originally A Female Story (You Won't Believe Who Almost Starred In It) - Screen Rant - May 1st, 2024
- 'Abigail' Surpasses Universal's Last Two Vampire Films at the Box Office - Collider - May 1st, 2024
- NY Premiere of Anne Rice's "Interview with the Vampire" Season 2 - Clinton Herald - May 1st, 2024
- 'Vampire facials' at unlicensed spa likely resulted in HIV infections: CDC - Fox News - May 1st, 2024
- CDC reports first cases of HIV transmission through cosmetic injection in women who received vampire facials - The Independent - May 1st, 2024
- Reginald The Vampire Season 2: Jacob Batalon Teases The Aftermath Of The Angel's Arrival In New Episodes - Screen Rant - May 1st, 2024
- May 2024 TV preview: Hacks, Interview With The Vampire, Bridgerton, and 18 other shows to watch - The A.V. Club - May 1st, 2024
- Release schedule for all 8 episodes of Interview With The Vampire season 2 - Winter is Coming - May 1st, 2024
- Vampire Weekend - Only God Was Above Us - UNCUT - May 1st, 2024
- CDC: 3 women infected with HIV through vampire facials - FOX 26 Houston - May 1st, 2024
- Abigail review: Horror comedy heist thriller is one of best vampire films in years - UNILAD - May 1st, 2024
- 'Vampire Facial' Linked To 3 HIV Cases | WOC 1420 - iHeart - May 1st, 2024
- At Least 3 Women Contracted HIV After Getting "Vampire Facial" At Spa, US Health Body Finds - NDTV - May 1st, 2024
- What Is Vampire Facial, Procedure That Led To 3 US Women Contracting HIV - NDTV - May 1st, 2024
- 5 Cases of HIV Traced to Dirty 'Vampire Facials' in New Mexico - ScienceAlert - May 1st, 2024
- Vampire facials and the risk of HIV here's how to protect yourself - The Telegraph - May 1st, 2024
- "Vampire Facials" -And We Aint Talkin Taylor Lautner- Are Giving Spa-Goers Just A Dash of HIV According To The CDC - Barstool Sports - May 1st, 2024
- Women get HIV after getting 'vampire facial' done: All about it - The Times of India - May 1st, 2024
- What is vampire facial? 5 points on viral beauty trend that left 3 women infected with HIV - Hindustan Times - May 1st, 2024
- Every time I see him, he goes, 'Am I still a Vampire?': Alice Cooper on initiating Paul McCartney into Hollywood ... - Louder - May 1st, 2024
- Idea Was Better Than The Execution: Tom Cruise's $223M Vampire Movie Key Scene Candidly Reflected On By VFX ... - Screen Rant - May 1st, 2024
- Interview with the Vampire Season 2 Mini-Teaser Spotlights Santiago - Bleeding Cool News - May 1st, 2024
- Everything Featured in the IGN x ID@Xbox Digital Showcase: Vampire Survivors, Jackbox Naughty Pack, Palworld - mxdwn.com - May 1st, 2024
- How 'vampire facials' infected three women with HIV - BBC - May 1st, 2024
- May's TV Releases, From 'Bridgerton' to 'Interview with the Vampire' - Collider - May 1st, 2024
- 'Vampire facials' were linked to cases of HIV. Here's what to know about the beauty treatment - MSN - May 1st, 2024
- 'Vampire facials' linked to HIV cases, CDC warning - AOL - May 1st, 2024
- 'Vampire facials' likely infected 3 women with HIV. Here's what health experts want you to know about these beauty ... - Yahoo Life - May 1st, 2024
- Who Does Matt End Up With in The Vampire Diaries? - CBR - Comic Book Resources - April 21st, 2024
- Oregon Man Staked His Mother's Throat Believing She Was a Vampire [Horror IRL] - Dread Central - April 21st, 2024
- V Rising 1.0 will let you sip the blood of history's greatest vampire - PCGamesN - April 21st, 2024
- Mourning the Muse You've Never Met | Mary Boone by Vampire Weekend - Impact 89FM - April 21st, 2024
- Abigail Directors Reveal the Method to Their Vampire Madness - Syfy - April 21st, 2024
- 'Abigail' takes audiences on bloody vampire heist The Daily Texan - The Daily Texan - April 21st, 2024
- New Teaser For Anne Rice's Interview With The Vampire Reveals 'Laws Of The Vampire' - Age Of The Nerd - April 21st, 2024
- Abigail Review: The ballerina vampire film is on pointe, and its a blast - Fort Worth Report - April 21st, 2024
- Music Monday: Vampire Weekend's Fifth Studio Album, Only God Above Us Proves That The Band Was Not Just A ... - Cardinal & Cream - April 21st, 2024
- Abigail Filmmakers Radio Silence on Their Genre-Hopping Vampire Thriller and Honoring Angus Clouds Final Performance - Variety - April 21st, 2024
- Abigail Review: Dan Stevens and Melissa Barrera in an Exuberantly Over-the-Top Vampire Horror-Comedy - Hollywood Reporter - April 21st, 2024
- 'Interview With the Vampire' Season 2 Trailer Learn the Laws of the Undead - Collider - April 21st, 2024
- New Interview with the Vampire Teaser Shares the Laws of the Vampire - ComicBook.com - April 21st, 2024
- 'Abigail' Review: This Ballerina Vampire Has the Perfect Bite - The Mary Sue - April 21st, 2024
- Interview with the Vampire Season 2 to Include 'Cool Twist' Not Seen in Original Books - CBR - Comic Book Resources - April 21st, 2024
- Review: New York City is Vampire Weekend's muse on 'Only God Was Above Us' - America: The Jesuit Review - April 21st, 2024
- Ikki Unite, the Feudal Japanese Vampire Survivors-like, Arrives on Switch and Steam - Co-Optimus.com - April 21st, 2024
- 'Abigail' review: A vampire bloodbath with pools of sticky stuff - Detroit News - April 21st, 2024
- 'Blood Hunt' #5 Demands a Heavy Price to Bring Down the Vampire's Reign - Marvel - April 21st, 2024
- Vanpires Are Back: 17 Vampire Books to Read - The Everygirl - April 21st, 2024
- Interview with the Vampire season 2 will be bigger, and include a huge twist that's not in the books - Gamesradar - April 21st, 2024
- A vampire ballerina and hired hitman hit the screens this weekend - WDIV ClickOnDetroit - April 21st, 2024
- Abigail's Directors Tell Us Why They Included The Vampire Ballerina Twist In The Movie's Marketing, But I Still Wish It ... - CinemaBlend - April 21st, 2024
- 'I get bored easily': Jacob Anderson reveals 'worries' about Interview with the Vampire season two - El Paso Inc. - April 21st, 2024
- Interview with the Vampire Season 2 Teaser Trailer Unveils the Laws of Being a Vampire - ComingSoon.net - April 21st, 2024
- 'I get bored easily': Jacob Anderson reveals 'worries' about Interview with the Vampire season two - Yahoo New Zealand News - April 21st, 2024
- Amazingly Accurate Real-Life BG3 Astarion Shows The Vampire Ready For Combat - Screen Rant - April 21st, 2024
- Interview With the Vampire Star Teases Teases Major Season 2 Twist - ComicBook.com - April 21st, 2024
- 32 astonishing ancient burials, from 'vampire' decapitations to riches for the afterlife - Livescience.com - April 21st, 2024
- Zendaya Becomes A Kick-Ass Buffy The Vampire Slayer In Photo-Realistic Art - Screen Rant - April 21st, 2024
- Nosferatu: First Footage Shows Off Bill Skarsgard as the Vampire - TheWrap - April 12th, 2024
- Vampire Weekend and Amber Coffman Cover Grateful Dead's Peggy-O - Pitchfork - April 12th, 2024
- Watch: Goose Welcome Vampire Weekend for Half-Hour Jam on Night Four at The Capitol Theatre - jambands.com - April 12th, 2024
- Woman found dead in Italian church was dressed like vampire and looking for ghosts - Express - April 12th, 2024
- Goose Welcome Vampire Weekend for Half-Hour Jam on Night Four at The Capitol Theatre (A Gallery + Recap) - Relix - April 12th, 2024
- A Guide to Vampire Weekend's Most Jewish Songs and Lyrics - Alma - April 12th, 2024
- Review: Vampire Weekend's 'Only God Was Above Us' sinks its teeth into nihilistic perspectives - Washington Square News - April 12th, 2024
- Watch Vampire Weekend Join Goose for a 31-Minute Redition of "Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa" | Exclaim! - Exclaim! - April 12th, 2024
- Vampire Weekend's Only God Was Above Us: Review - Consequence - April 12th, 2024
- Vampire Weekend Covers The Grateful Dead's 'Peggy-O' On SiriusXM - Digg - April 12th, 2024
- Vampire Weekend Covered Grateful Dead With Amber Coffman On SiriusXMU: Watch - Stereogum - April 12th, 2024
- Savannah Basley Co-Stars in SyFy's REGINALD THE VAMPIRE Season Two - BroadwayWorld - April 12th, 2024
- Review | Vampire Weekend's 'Only God Was Above Us' is sure to get stuck in your head - UI The Daily Iowan - April 12th, 2024
- Vampire Survivors Contra Crossover DLC Will Come to PlayStation Later in the Summer - Push Square - April 12th, 2024
- OGWAU Is Vampire Weekend Keeping Things Fresh - HeadStuff.org - April 12th, 2024
- Vampire Survivors is Crossing Over With Contra - GameRant - April 12th, 2024
- Vampire Survivors Headed to PS5 and PS4 This Summer - News - VGChartz - April 12th, 2024
- Vampire Survivors teams up with Contra for new DLC and fangs its way onto PlayStation consoles this summer - VG247 - April 12th, 2024
- The face of a 500-year-old vampire with a brick between her teeth - Metro.co.uk - March 24th, 2024
- Scientists recreate face of 16th-century vampire buried with brick inside mouth - WION - March 24th, 2024
Reviewed and Recommended by Erik Baquero