Facade

This is a roleplaying game. It is intended to be played by a group of 2-5 people (ideally friends), in sessions lasting as long as you would like. Players create and embody characters, defined by their reputations and skills, and use those characters to tell stories.

When an outcome is uncertain or a situation is perilous, dice are rolled and interpreted as an oracle to guide the story forward.

One player has a unique role. They are the Director, and rather than controlling a single character they bring the world around the characters to life. They describe the wonders and dangers of the universe and ask you, what do you do?

This game is one of collaborative storytelling. There is no winner, no competition between players. The Director is not the master of the game; they are just as much a player as everyone else, they just play a different role.

This is the final edition of the game, which I am noting as version 1.4.

Designer’s Notes

This game is sparked by resistance, which means that it was built with pieces from the Resistance Toolbox by Rowan, Rook and Decard. Some pieces have been altered in the interest of producing a smaller, simpler game.

Even so, I hope I was able to retain the heart of what makes the Toolbox special. Find the toolbox here.

Additionally, the text of this game is best read while listening to Ezra Furman’s album Transangelic Exodus on repeat. That’s how it was written, after all.

To play Facade, you will need one six-sided die per player, some paper and pencils or some other way of recording your character’s information, and empathy.

This is a game about vampires, but cis people are allowed to read it too.

Vampires are, classically, creatures of passion and predation. They are sexy and alluring and utilize their attractiveness (sometimes through direct, magical means) to lure in victims that they then assault, feed upon, and usually kill.

It is an easy comparison to make in 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024 2025, when voices around the world disparage trans people as dangerous or predatory, when we are so sought after for sex yet so reviled in society. Trans people, every day, are avoided and shunned as if we were demons and devils hell bent on consuming the people around us.

But vampires are also icons of empowerment. To become a vampire is to undergo a transition, to change your body from what you were given to something more. Something desirable, something to be proud of. They are strong, they are fast, they are beautiful. They do not age or fall ill.

They do not die, as we so often do.

And so this “transvampiricism” acts as a power fantasy for everyone who feels in equal measure a pride in their nature and their agency and a crushing societal pressure of exoticization.

We are held at bay by society’s cruel light, but we can rise beyond it. We can find our night. We can free ourselves of the crushing gravity of humanity.

Together.

Creating your character

Your character consists of the following factors. As the game (and your story) progresses, you will replace your Reputations with Exultations, which inform the kind of person you want to be, free of humanity’s wishes.

• A name and some pronouns.
• The four Reputations, which inform their endurance in the face of society’s shadow.
• Three skills, which inform their agency under society’s shadow.

Reputations

You have 4 Reputations: Ambassador, Beauty, Inspiration, and Predator. These represent the ways people see you, and the expectations they place on you. By failing to live up to human perceptions of what vampires should be and how they should behave, you will gain stress, tracked in separate tallies based on the relevant Reputation. By default, your stress threshold in each Reputation is 10.

Ambassador: They want you to be friendly, to smile and behave and set a good example for delinquent vampires. Take Ambassador stress when you are unruly or uncooperative, or when you make a bad name for other vampires.

Beauty: They want you to be perfect, a work of art on display for them. Take Beauty stress when you show weakness, react visibly to pain, or act in anger.

Inspiration: They want you to be invincible, to be stronger and smarter and faster than they are. Take Inspiration stress when you fail to impress, fall short, or disappoint the people around you, or when you put on a display of mundanity.

Predator: They want you to be dangerous and conniving, to be teeth in the night and sharp claws in the dark. Take Predator stress when you defuse a situation without violence, remain calm when provoked, or go out of your way to help someone without reward.

Rolling dice

When you take risky or dramatic actions in the game, roll a die. When you would roll multiple dice, take the highest result. What happens next depends on your roll:

• 1: Failure at a cost
• 2: Failure with an advantage
• 3: Failure with an advantage
• 4: Success at a cost
• 5: Success at a cost
• 6: Success with an advantage

Success means that you accomplish your goal! If you rolled a cost, something bad might still happen, but the core action you attempted succeeds.

Failure means you don’t get what you want! If you rolled an advantage, something good might still happen, but the core action you attempted fails. When you fail, you always take low stress.

Advantages are small, beneficial details that can be built upon or exploited later in a scene. You can make these up; don’t be afraid to retcon small details in the scene.

Costs are complications and threats that increase the tension or foreshadow an incoming danger. As with advantages, these can be defined out of character and, if needed, out of continuity. Just make sure it makes things harder or scarier!

Example Advantages

Some things advantages might cause include:

• Gain low healing, now
• Notice a new piece of information
• Describe a new and advantageous feature in the environment
• Give another player an extra die for one roll

Example Costs

Some things costs might cause include:

• Take low stress, now
• Become distracted or off-balance
• Describe a new and detrimental feature in the environment
• Upgrade your next incoming stress by one die

Stress

Throughout your story, things will go wrong for your character. They will stumble, hesitate, flinch, and fail. When they do, they take stress. Stress comes in three levels: low, moderate, and severe. Low stress is 1d6, moderate is 2d6, and severe is 3d6. As with action rolls, you only take the highest result when you roll multiple dice.

Each Reputation has its own stress track. When you surpass a Reputation’s stress threshold, you trigger a fallout related to that relationship. You gain stress from failing rolls, or by failing or refusing to fit into human expectations of you. After you trigger a fallout, reduce that Reputation’s stress threshold by 2.

Healing

Healing follows the same framework as stress: it comes in three tiers (low, moderate, and major), which refer to an amount of dice (1d6, 2d6, 3d6), and you take the highest result of the lot.

You relieve stress by blending in, finding community and validation among your fellows, and finding safe places to vent. Whenever you would seek healing in a moment of intimacy with someone, upgrade your healing by one tier.

Fallouts

You will track stress on your character sheet, and when you cross your stress threshold, you’ll activate a fallout. These are the breaking points, the times when the pain is too great and your masquerade slips.

Listed below are a few examples. Most of the time, your fallout will be extremely context-sensitive, so an attempt has been made to keep these examples somewhat broad. When making up your own fallouts, keep in mind that they should always hurt you or someone nearby.

• Ascendancy. You show them just how superhuman you can be by putting on a show of your supremacy, and someone present is terrified, awed, or enthralled.
• Apex. They expected a monster, and you decide to oblige. You hurt someone, whether physically or not, badly enough that they will never be a threat to you again.
• Shift. You pass off unwanted attention, blame, or fame onto someone else, and leave them to deal with the consequences of your actions.
• Venom. You adopt a sinister aloofness and calmly pierce someone’s heart, disrupt someone else’s relationship, or deny someone pity or empathy.Skills

Skills

Skills are areas of expertise that your character has trained themself (or been trained) in. Pick three when you create your character. When you are performing an action and you have a skill that would be useful or advantageous in some way, roll an extra die.

• Awareness describes the ability to remain aware of your surroundings without becoming overstimulated or overlooking details.
• Bravado describes the ability to make yourself appear bigger or louder or more dangerous than you really are.
• Charm describes your ability to present yourself in such a way as to invite friendship or affection from other people.
• Deception describes your ability to mislead or manipulate others with information, whether true or not.
• Empathy describes your ability to recognize and understand the experiences of other people.
• Power describes your ability to enact your will on the world and people around you using brute force or direct tactics.
• Spite describes your ability and willingness to deliberately hurt other people.
• Subtlety describes your ability to keep a low profile or avoid notice.

Backgrounds

Backgrounds are anchors that root your character in the world around them. They provide context for your past, and hints about your future. When knowledge or experience given by your Background would affect an action you’re undertaking, roll an extra die.

• The Dominus Court is a loose conglomeration of wealthy and connected vampire families that trace their lineage back millennia. Their strengths are wealth, connection, and lore.
• The Nightwalkers are the fists of the Dominus Court. They enforce vampiric law and ritual, and keep sacred knowledge out of human hands (usually). Their strengths are law, magic, and terror.
• The Fangs are an amorphous movement of vampires who distrust the rule of the Dominus Court. They seek a more equitable society and an end to mistreatment from humanity. Their strengths are discretion, community, and justice.
• Newbloods are freshly turned vampires. They are those caught up in the transition from one life to another, and often face multiple simultaneous pressures. Their strengths are improvisation, determination, and dedication.
• Dhampyrs are vampires who more easily pass as human. Some claim this makes them “half” or “lesser” vampires, and because of this they often struggle to find community in either species. Their strengths are stealth, self sufficiency, and adaptability.

Exultations

Characters in Facade advance through tribulation. When you trigger a fallout, you reduce your stress threshold in that Reputation by 2. When you bring a stress threshold to 0, you will replace its Reputation with an Exultation.

Instead of humanity’s expectation, Exultations are things that your character actually is and wants to be; they are internal, not external, and no one else can choose it for you.

While their expectations for you will never vanish; replacing them with Exultations instead means that your character has found a way to transcend them. You may still take stress as you would with a Reputation, and you now also take stress when you accommodate someone else’s comfort at the expense of your Exultation.

When you would trigger a Fallout for an Exultation, describe the ways that your character might withdraw and recenter themselves in the face of the pressures they face. How do they take care of themself? How do they bring their self-image back into focus after neglecting it so long?

Once you have no Reputations, and you fully exult in your sublime self, the game can end at any point, if the story you’re telling is ready.

Directing the Game

If you are the Director, you are the person tasked with running Facade. Here are some things to keep in mind.

One of the most important things you can do to maintain a healthy and safe table is to check in before, during, and after each game. Ask the other players if they feel comfortable, if they feel safe. Ask if they are having trouble with anything.

Speak early and often about content. Everyone at the table has a responsibility to make sure it’s a safe space. This game deals in and evokes heavy themes, and it’s important to know people’s boundaries and respect them.

Assign each non-player character to a Reputation that they in particular expect out of the player characters, and use that as a hook for their behavior.

If you need to create some sort of mechanic for opposing non-player characters, give them a 10 point stress track that the players can affect through their rolls. Once the track is full, the character is defeated, gives up the information, agrees to the players’ demands, etc.

Judge stress in the moment, and decide on the most appropriate severity. Don’t think too hard about it.

Have fun. Directors are still players, and you deserve to have just as much fun as everyone else at the table.