Thousand Year Old Vampire COMPANION VOLUME

Here it is, the hugely anticipated Thousand Year Old Vampire - Companion Volume. 

We can't really explain this any better than the creator himself (see below).

Personally, I love it, it's art, it's supposed to get you thinking and talking. 

So, as Jonathan says, "If you like Tim's work and you can afford £35, buy this book. If £35 is the difference between eating and not.... then don't buy it."

Here's what Tim has to say:

This is taken directly from Tim's website here.

Here you may order the unnamed companion volume to Thousand Year Old Vampire. The companion volume is physical mate to the original game book–same beautiful treatment with foil, ribbons, and all the fanciness. 188 color pages on almost-museum quality paper. 

But:

This book is not necessary to play Thousand Year Old Vampire and is, in fact, an impediment to efficiently working your way through a game session. It is not a game in any useful sense of the word. It is not a book of stories, or pretty pictures, or additional prompts.  It's not a book of character sheets, neither is it a journal.

There's not a word in the entire book. Or a drawing. Not a puzzle to be seen. 

This book, to be absolutely clear, is not useful.  It is, I believe, very worthwhile but don't forget, friends, that I am an idiot.  My worthwhile might be your bitter disappointment.  In fact, it most likely is.  

What is the companion volume? Well, I'm sticking to my guns and saying it's an experience that's best entered into without any foreknowledge. But I'll put a spoiler down below, in case you must know. 

Now I'm going to go further and say that a bunch of folks pre-ordered the companion volume when I told them, at length, not to. Some people got so, so angry about it and yelled on the internet and sent me threatening emails. Others thought the companion volume very interesting or amusing or challenging, sometimes for the wrong reason. The wildest thing, though, is that a small handful of the very angry people changed their minds about the companion volume and decided they liked it, and that, friends, is just incredible.  

But to help stave off future outrage, I'll put an explanation of what you are buying in a 'spoiler' way down below. Highlight the paragraph and it'll describe exactly what is in the book but I will not be so heavy handed as to explain the why it is what it is. I'll leave that for folks to wonder over (though you can certainly find it discussed on the internet). 

Spoiler text begins. If you are on an text-to-voice reader you might want to stop the reading!  

The companion volume is a page-for-page recreation of the original Thousand Year Old Vampire rule book. It matches the original item for items, image for image, but its...abstracted. Paragraphs of words are now blocks of color, images are reduced to primary shapes, everything is made strange. 

Just imagine what a delight that would have been to open unknowingly but, alas, you had to look at the 'spoiler text'. I understand, I would have too. I cannot bear a mystery.

Chris Bissette has a gracefully written article on the companion volume. I feel honored to have such a thoughtful thing written in response to a thing I made. Beware, there are spoilers toward the end!  

Chase Carter wrote an article for Dicebreaker. I just reread it and fear he was overkind and didn't grab the cranky social media posts and share them.  

So, you have been warned ;)