Borne of Blood | Player Application

This is a game about what happens when the wrong people are forced to be in the same room because leaving that room means certain death.

The bells are tolling in Yharnam and it means only one thing: a hunt has been called. The beasts are coming. Yharnam is in trouble. And you are not its savior.

In order to survive, you retreat into an abandoned manor in the center of the city. When the doors are barred shut, and the moon's color begins to shift, you realize that you are not alone.

You need to survive until the moon phase changes. Only then will the beasts go away. Until then, you're stuck here with company you'd really rather see dead.

But you can't kill them.

Dead bodies mean beasts. Spilt blood attracts beasts.

Themes

• You're trapped. This is a survival game.
• Hubris.
• Unseen horrors. There won't be big prop monsters.
• The weak majority vs. the strong minority.
• Curses, afflictions, and disease.
• Morally compromised medical systems.
• Religion, devotion, and sin.
• Motherhood, fatherhood, and family.
• Loss, death, and tragedy.

What You'll Do

You'll explore your character's relationship with the strange collection of people they're forced to survive with. You'll reckon with your character's goals, their desires, and fears, some of which contradict each other. You'll figure out how to survive the night and complete your goals. You'll play four sessions of LARP with downtime actions and optional roleplay scenes.

Game Mechanics

We will be using custom game mechanics for this game:

• Secrets & Powers
  • This game is heavily inspired by Secrets & Powers LARPs, meaning you'll have secret information and potentially powers which you can use against other players. These powers will be unique to your role at casting. For example, Hunters might be able to fight well, and members of the Healing Church can do Blood Ministrations. You will not have extensive stats or mechanical character sheets.
• Conflict
  • Every physical confrontation with another character will, by default, involve a Storyteller. You may choose to, instead, fully negotiate the outcome with the other player. You may always decline to do so and involve a Storyteller instead.
  • By default, we will utilize Fighting… and Why It is Horrible by Bully Pulpit Games to resolve any physical conflict. In short, it makes combat scary, dangerous, and bad for both sides, even if someone wins. It's great. Your character powers may influence this system. You do not need to do any pre-reading, the ST will facilitate this system.
• Going Out
  • In between sessions, you must stay inside. But Hunters can go outside, scavenge for supplies, and bring them back. Hunters are the only ones who can go outside safely.
• Spilled Blood Will Attract Beasts
  • Beasts can mean death. If your character dies, you become a spectre. You will have unique mechanics.

Timeline:

This game takes place over the course of 12 hours.

Dusk falls into Session 1: the White Moon. 3 Hours.
Then, you have an hour where things fall quiet. 1 Hour.
But the Yellow Moon comes and you return for Session 2. 3 Hours.
And things fall quiet once again. The calm before the storm. 1 Hour.
And the Red Moon comes. The worst of the moons. Session 3. 3 Hours.
And dawn comes. What remains?

If you REALLY want an extensive lore primer, you can watch this 11 minute summary of the game's lore. Or this 31 minute version. Spoilers for the video game, but not for the LARP. You do not need to read or consume anything except this application. Your character archetype one-pager will have all the lore you need. But, here's a glossery of terms:

• Yharnam: The city you live in. A city built upon Old Blood. It is viewed as degenerate and disgusting by the outside world. Old Yharnam was burned down when the first bout of Ashen Blood came around. Central Yharnam is still standing... for now.
• Old Blood: The injectable blessing controlled by the Healing Church which can solve the weaknesses of mortal flesh. You're sure it has no side effects.
• Ashen Blood: A disease. A poison? It's what's making all the monsters, you think. You're not sure. You've seen people succumb to it. It makes their flesh and bones contort into horrors which only the Hunters are adept at killing.
• Hunters: Contracted killers who specialize in monster hunting. The most common kind of beast in Yharnam are lycanthropes. Hunters have a pact, and some come from places far away. It is believed they started as a branch of the Healing Church, but splintered off some time ago. Most of them are addicted to Blood Ministrations.
• Blood Ministrations: The addictive practice of blood transfusion and blood letting which can heal wounds and fix bone. This has transformed the culture of Yharnam and caused much of the city's culture to be based around blood. Blood-based beverages have even overtaken alcoholic beverages. It is practiced and perfected by the Healing Church.
• Healing Church: The authoritarian religious order which rules Yharnam. It has two branches: its doctors, and the Choir. Most of the city interacts with its doctors who administer Blood Ministrations. Some believe the Church's healing is used as an avenue for research, not charity. The Choir, the Church's leadership, communicates with cosmic forces in an attempt to learn the Eldritch Truth. The Church is the sworn enemy of the Vilebloods.
• Vilebloods: Vampiric noble rulers of Cainhurst Castle, the Vilebloods take the tainted blood of hunters and consume it. The Vilebloods abhor beasts and may have once ruled Yharnam before the Healing Church came about. They are now a limited bloodline who are hunted down by the Healing Church's Executioners.

This game is NOT going to be lore accurate. I WILL do things different than the lore or game or world.

This is a gothic horror game. While we will absolutely do our best to ensure all players feel comfortable and safe, there are many dark themes and uncomfortable content which we are going to intentionally explore in this game; I am calling these the innate themes. 

It will be a consent based game, but there is no way to sanitize the environment to ensure you do not encounter dark subject matter.

If you do not feel comfortable with these innate themes, that is okay - you should decide how you will respond to them. That might mean not playing this game - that's okay! There will be many LARPs in the future. At the very least, I recommend having an aftercare plan, and the STs are available to help collaborate with you and determine what that might look like for you.

What content is innate:

This game will be full of spiteful relationships. Members of warring political factions, nobility and commoners resenting one another, psuedo-monsters being shamed by hunters. These relationships are a core part to this game. You will not be friends with everyone

There will be power imbalances. Other characters will be stronger than yours and you will probably lose any fair 1:1 contest with them.

There will be subterfuge. Backstabbing, lying, and more are tactics which your character has at their disposal.

Motherhood is a significant theme of Bloodborne. That includes all facets, both literal and figurative. There will be weird umbilical cords and monster babies, as well as talk of family, birth, abortion, and more. I don't intend to REALLY lean into this theme personally, but it's on the table. Some characters may engage with it.

Religion plays a huge role in this game. There will be fucked up religious organizations, mismatched levels of devotion, sin, penance, and rituals. You will have religious disagreements with other characters. Religious trauma is central.

There will be diseases. It's called Bloodborne because of a bloodborne pathogen. You might die due to a disease. However, this is NOT going to be a pandemic trauma simulator. Diseases cannot spread in the timeline of this LARP. Think cancer, not COVID.

Addiction is relevant to some characters more than others. Be sure to note whether or not you are okay with playing a character addicted to Blood Ministration.

And lastly, bad things will happen to your character. You will be able to negotiate the specifics, but not the severity; there will be times where something simply bad happens to your character and you will have to decide how they respond. This is a survival game.

There may be talk about violence against children or animals, but there won't be any real children or animals being harmed.

What content will not be featured:

There won't be any kind of explicit sexual violence. There will not be any graphic depictions of violence, though there may be some via text or spoken word. Real-life bigotry towards facets such as race, sex, and ability are off the table, though there may be bigotry towards disease status.

At the end of the day: we, the players, are not monsters. We're here to enjoy a temporary, fictional experience that might challenge us in ways that are fun. If you find that experience to be unpleasant, reach out! This game might not be for you, or we might be able to collaborate on ways to make it more enjoyable. 

If you've read this far and this all sounds reasonable to you, remember this phrase: Blood Moon. Yeah, I'm doing the stupid "put the password in the end of the form" thing. Sue me. This section's important.