Buffy the Vampire Slayer RPG Core Rulebook Revised

Buffy the Vampire Slayer RPG

by C.J. Carella

The graveyard is cold and still. Bright moonlight deepens the shadows. The silence is disturbed by a throaty moan. Breaking through the soft, recently packed earth, a claw extends, sharp and grasping. A sickly sweet stench rises with the corpse. Desperate hunger is etched on it s cadaverous face - a hunger for your blood!

Have you ever watched the Buffy the Vampire Slayer TV show and tried to imagine yourself in one of the roles?
Maybe you thought to yourself “I wouldn’t go up there”, “I don’t think they are telling the whole story,” or “I’ll bet someone’s hiding in that alley.”
What if you could take part in a Buffyverse storyline, and do things the way you want?
You might decide to cast yourself as Buffy or one of the Scooby Gang.
Or maybe you would like to create your own Slayer or Scooby and take the fight to the forces of evil.
Or what if what you really wanted was to direct, call the creative shots, plot the plots, and liberally mix the action, adventure, wit and maybe even romance?

What if you could do all that . . . and more?

Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a complete roleplaying game. In it, you will find:

• An introduction to roleplaying and the Buffyverse
• A roleplaying guide to all seven season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer
• Detailed character creation, including pre-constructed Heroes and White Hats, for your quick-play pleasure
• Roleplaying specifics for the entire Original Cast, from Buffy to Dawn, including their wild and wacky changes
• The Buffy Unisystem, streamlined for cinematic slayage and sneakage
• A primer on magic mojo, for those who dare
• A guide to the hotspots of Sunnydale
• The monsters of mayhem, all stat-ed out and ready-to-slay, and the skinny every season's Big Bad
• Blow-by-blow instructions for creating Buffy roleplaying Episodes, Seasons, and Series
• A complete Episode to get slaying fast and easy
• A guide to Buffyspeak to add sparkle to your dialogue

Note: What has changed from the first printing to the Revised Edition:
• Expanded to include Seasons Six and Seven.
• Revised season recaps, featuring player and Director approaches to each season, covering the entire series.
• Extensive character notes detailing the evolution of the Original Cast from Season One to Season Seven (or whenever they appeared on the show), including Faith.
• Expanded Guest Stars and Adversaries, including the Nerd Trio from Season Six, and the First, Caleb, and Principal Wood from Season Seven.
• New scintillating quotes from Seasons Six and Seven.
• Slight modifications to bring its rules into line with the updated cinematic Unisystem presented in Angel.
• Errata and typo corrections.

Genres: Role Playing Games, Gaming, Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Urban Fantasy, Fiction, Paranormal, Fantasy

288 pages, Hardcover

First published August 15, 2002

About the author

C.J. discovered his obsession with making up crap and writing it down at the age of 6, when he wrote his first short story, back in the days when the Cold War was still on and the only mobile devices were the wrist watch and the walkie-talkie. He's been making up crap and writing it down for fun and profit ever since.

Reviews

[Felicity · Rating 4 out of 5]

You'll never see a roleplaying rulebook that is easier to read. It made me laugh out loud (on public transit, no less!) and kept me buzzing along, though I don't usually enjoy reading rules. The combat system ran (oddly) quite slowly with the particular group I ran, but there is much else to recommend the system (drama points, balance mechanics) and it's a good game.

[Nori Fitchett · Rating 4 out of 5]

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
So pumped to play a game of this! It’s perfect for Buffy and TTRPG lovers!

[Christopher Preiman · Rating 4 out of 5]

i wasn't going to revue this book because being something of a buffy fan boy i would find it impossible to be objective but no one else had reviewed it so i figured someone should. first off i gave this 4 stars because i really love the idea of playing in this world and that is what this game does but honestly i think if i were not a huge buffy geek then perhaps i would have only given this book a 3 out of 5. it was good not great. the system had several little flaws that made me scratch my head and say just why. but lets be honest if you're a gamer and a buffy fan you will want to give this a look and if you aren't then nothing i say here is going to make you pick this up.

[Brian Rogers · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a good, solid piece of game tech. There are many good ideas in here in terms of using a drama point economy to balance high and low power PCs in a team, and relying on the angst generation and removal concept as a solid story reason for the "white hats" to be critical to the Slayers success. This is also one of the first places I saw mechanics for thinking of the campaign as a story arc ala the series, how to link and build up thematic elements, develop and deploy big bads, and so on. The tying of the drama economy into that structure is...questionable. it can work great or implode depending on the group.

Combat wise the game is VERY granular, which works if you really want to capture the blow by blow martial arts of the show but is very labor intensive if everyone doesn't quickly master the system. It also has (and suffers from) an initiative of declare-sequence-resolve, which has never worked for my table. YMMV.

[Chad · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nice and easy system for new players to get into. Love the quotes from the series.
There are some mistakes here and there in it, which is in the eratta. 
My main problem with the system really is that it is easy to have overlap with characters. The skill list is fairly short so you have to work with your Director on what the skill means to your character. This is more an issue for things like Art and Sports.
But over all a fun system. 1d10 plus usually stat and skill determine your level of success. Most enemies have static numbers for attack/defense, so it saves time for the Director.

[Jan-e · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Buffy RPG has got some interesting game mechanics in making the (comparatively) weak and vulnerable supporters quintessential to the sturdier heroes's success.
Weirdly enough, it seems that the authors are a lot more right-wing than the showrunners, adding some seriously tone-deaf options and commentary.

[Kasey Thacker · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really like this system. The books is a very enjoyable read too. You can tell the author is a fan of the show. I just wish I had someone who wanted to play the system with me.

[Stuart · Rating 1 out of 5]

I picked this up because I wanted to see how the Unisystem worked, how IP-licensed RPGs are written, how huge power differentials between players might be managed, and how "modern" settings might work in a game.

Also because I'm a fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

The text could come down approximately 100 pages and the "in speak" isn't as necessary to the universe as Mr. Carella thinks it is. Also the Unisystem requires some complex rolls for simple things--no wonder the book urges the Director to avoid rolling dice for most things.

The "structure" of the book doesn't make a huge amount of sense, but that may be because an IP-licensed game requires a lot of exposition interspersed with the mechanics.

That said, Mr. Carella's division of campaigns into seasons and episodes is genuinely useful, as is his exposition on why monsters are effective in the Buffy universe (and, as a consequence, how to create effective monsters). His treatment of magic is interesting and certainly more "magical" than standard 3.5/4e/pathfinder casting. The single included adventure is innovative, fun, and true to the plot and feel of an early-season Buffy episode.

I wouldn't run or re-read the Buffy the Vampire Slayer RPG, and I doubt I would ever play it, but I certainly picked up a few lessons on world building and that's got to count for something.

[Garrett Henke · Rating 3 out of 5]

Despite the 3 star rating, the Buffy RPG is an awesome game. The cinematic unisystem is a perfect fit. It’s also the only system I’ve ever encountered that handles the power differential between high-powered characters like the Slayer and everyday people like White Hats while still keeping everyone relevant. The system is a bit too crunchy for what it’s trying to simulate but that’s a ultimately a minor complaint.

The reason for the loss in stars is really that there is an enormous waste of pages in this book. Huge sections of the book are dedicated to an extensive season by season summary of the show. If you’re reading the Buffy RPG, you’ve likely seen the show. They also go through all the cast members (including minor ones like Anya) and go through their stats and how the improved season by season. Then, there is also a 20 page guide to slang in the Buffyverse. All of this stuff is essentially pointless and the section on antagonists is maybe 15 pages and they encourage you to buy the Monster Smackdown (Bestiary) Book.

[Elliot · Rating 2 out of 5]

Bland, with a Buffy twist.