I feel fortunate enough to be able to dedicate my time to doing what I love the most. Helping writers finish and edit their stories, sometimes also beta reading them. Helping authors by reading and reviewing their books, as ARC or Sensitivity reader. Helping creators design and edit their TTRPG games. Now I can also hype published games thanks to this amazing opportunity called #HypeSwap.

I like to be as transparent as life allows me to be (some things are not meant to be shared), so I will start with how I got this great game.

I’m fairly new to the TTRPG space, just all the months that have passed by on this 2024 year, and I really don’t have much knowledge about anything. Thanks to a TTRPG Game Jam that ended on January 15th, I met my partner. He’s a Game Master / Dungeon Master with six years in the belt, some games published, some in the way, lots of ideas, tons of contacts, and just anything that can go in the mix. He brought back this #HypeSwap on Twitter and BlueSky, which consists of game creators offering their games to swap with ones (sometimes of their choice) from the poster to try them out, hype about them, write reviews, and mostly whatever they want. But if you don’t have something nice to say, better say nothing at all. ‘Hype’ goes first in the word for a reason. I found it cool to try games I had never heard of (the vast majority, hence my novelty) and meet cool people, so I followed along. That’s basically how this happened.

Julia Kartes-Jagolkowska emailed me wanting to swap. I don’t have that many games yet, just a silly one and the one I did with my partner for the Game Jam, but Julia was up to swap me A Rush of Blood for Uncharted Hearts.

A Rush of Blood

Usually, I create new characters for each story I make—unless it is a very particular Alternative Universe, of course. But when I saw this Sapphic vampire setting, I knew which characters I wanted to reuse.

The game suggests you create a female x female situationship, but you’re free to do whatever you want—your game, your rules. I have representations of those relationships in all my novels, but I have never tried one with the main characters. The ones that came to mind are not in a romantic relationship in any of the alternative universes I have put them through, but the possibility has been in my mind for years. And I was finally able to test it out, even though I never could have imagined doing so with vampires involved.

I love vampires. I may not love bloody or violent situations, but they are chef kiss.

The game is really simple and so well made. As I knew my characters, which one was the Lady, and the setting, I don’t have much to say about that particular part apart from that I’m dying to go through it with new characters on my second campaign, whenever it comes to be.

The rules are few and pointed. I wanted to try the extra options because harder situations are always the funniest, but they didn’t play out –on my first go.

🩸 It was easy to imagine a tarot deck with the art of this game, and every game with a tarot deck I find is awakening my desire to own more than one.

I absolutely adore mystic stuff—horoscope, tarot, palm reading, and the like. I’m a sucker for it. I don’t religiously follow it nor let it guide my life, but it’s fun, some times can help you to ground certain stuff or to understand a particular something, and there’s this greatest being called universe that may be held accountable, but I like to feel wonder, stupefied and flabbergasted when they’re right. Or when they make sense.

I have used tarot before in my writing, like eight years ago or so, and it left me a great impression of how much sense it made with what I was writing. I was excited to repeat the experience—I still want to do it again, and that time I will do it differently.

For the game, you just have to journal the prompts you go through, depending on how you do it you may be able to finish the session in a few hours, but I’m a writer and I take every opportunity to write, journaling wasn’t going to be enough for me. And with that, I knew I wasn’t going to do my campaign in one sitting.

The tarot cards are divided into certain groups, but there is one capable of ending the game: the Skull cards. You could follow the prompt or use one of your possible tokens to skip it—once (maybe more, I wasn’t going to do that ‘cause I believed in the rhythm of my session, so I didn’t take that system to heart a.k.a. I may be remembering the amount wrong).

The difficult part was deciding what to do: I could draw all the cards until a Skull one appeared to end the game or I could draw one at a time while I was writing. I went with the first one, I believed the flow would be smoother than with interrupted sessions. And it was. I’m still awed about that.

So, after writing down the setting as it came to me, I drew my cards. Eleven in total before the first Skull card appeared. It was going to be a rather short game. I didn’t know what each card meant, I still don’t, I just remembered which ones the Skull were to know when to stop drawing. I prefer the mystery a hundred percent, I went blindly without knowing what the possible other paths could be (and I will keep doing it this way ‘cause it’s more fun and exciting). It was so damn fun.

And, uh… Honestly, it could have been even more spicy. The game, in fact, leads you toward that path, but I’m rather… light (I know of someone who wouldn’t agree with this, but I’m not fond of smut and it has to be of real importance to the story for me to consider going through it explicitly, and in this game it was one of the important factors). So, exactly as it came to me, I wrote just the minimum necessary. And it was rather poetic at times. (If you are one of the blessed people willing to follow the story on Patreon, you will see what I’m talking about.)

About my characters (you can find something from their original setting here), I didn’t know who were going to appear apart from the main ones and I have to admit I was blatantly surprised. As they were coming by, their roles were easing themselves into the narrative without a fight. And who doesn’t love when a story just fits in? That’s one of my favorite moments while writing.

What I can say I wasn’t satisfied with is the ending, but I’m one of those writers who respect the story above everything else, and that’s how it had to end. Nothing from the game, it was marvelous through and through, and if you’re interested, I already know my second campaign will involve a London setting from the 1500s or 1600s approximately, and I will follow all the instructions to create characters from scratch and everything, so stay tuned~.