Bloodclotte

Bloodclotte is a tabletop RPG about doctors in a world of Gothic horror, where alchemy, reanimation and medical astronomy are used to save lives every day. Player characters work in a war hospital settled inside an abandoned castle, treating the soldier and civilian casualties of a continent in violent chaos. As patients develop unusual symptoms, the war unfolds, supply lines falter, and morale breaks down, the doctors must work together to keep the hospital from being overwhelmed.

The Quickstart Edition of Bloodclotte contains the core rules, five Classes, five Callings, advice for setting up your own hospital, and the starting adventure War Drums Like Heartbeats. Bloodclotte uses the Sparked by Resistance system by Rowan, Rook & Decard, as made popular by games such as Spire and Heart. 

The Quickstart Classes are:

• DEATH PRIEST - clerics and faith healers who bring themselves close to death to control the life forces of the dying.

• IATROMATH - astrologers who study celestial movements and use the heavens as guidance to cure their patients

• METAPHYSICIAN - doctors who agreed to be neuroscience test subjects to pay their way through medical school and now have a strange connection to an alternate nightmare dimension.

• NURSETEER - head nurses who use enchanted marionettes as nursing assistants filled with useful equipment.

• SAWBONES - surgeons who have learned to graft the body parts of others onto their own body, expanding their own physical abilities.

• YELLOW CHEMIST - traditional alchemists who use the sulfur from their bodies as an elemental base to transform minerals and quickly grow herbs for potions.

• CULTIVATOR - sages who practice meditation and inner alchemy to create medicine and confront spiritual disturbances.

• SYMMETRIST - spiritualists who seek to balance the humors of their patients and cleanse the external corrupting influences in the world

Bloodclotte has a unique Patient Card system that requires you to find and create resources to overcome the Clot Boxes that are keeping the patient from recovering. Player progression comes from helping your patients through their darkest times and completing personal goals known as Beats that relate to your personal reasons for working at the war hospital.

The full release of the game will have more classes, more art, and expanded setting details with illnesses, injuries, and war events in the surrounding regions that impact the hospital.

An example of character creation and hospital setup can be heard on the Real Fantasy Encounters podcast here.

Follow the writers on Twitter for more updates and previews:

Nick Duff

Sillion L

Icon art by @viaphonized

Cover by @SiFSweetman