The Flavor of Blood

I want to tell you the story of how I came to write the flavor text for Fury of Dracula. In the process, I hope that I'll be able to explain to some of you (such as my mom, hi Mom!) what, exactly, flavor text is.

Now, this story dates back to the summer of 2004, when I decided to finally get around to reading Dracula. I can endorse it as an enjoyable read, with the following caveats: I majored in English Literature, and I consider Dracula quite readable by the standards of when it was written. That is to say, it is not for everyone. For those who can handle the odd convention of its writing as a series of newspaper clippings, letters, and diaries, for those who do not mind the standards of prose and pacing of the 1800s, and for those who have an admiration of the dark and gothic, it is a masterpiece of horror literature. For everyone else … well. You can guess which camp I fell into.

Fast forward to the height of development work on Fury of Dracula. Having playtested an early prototype a few times, I found myself itching to play more and more (incidentally, the sign of a good game). Being fascinated with game design in general and this game in particular, I began to find excuses to look over people's shoulders while they worked – everything about it was fascinating, from the language of the card rules to the small details of graphic design. But I did notice one thing that bothered me about the Hunter and Dracula cards … they had a lot of dead space.

Now, some of these cards had a lot of words on them, necessary for representing a fairly complex effect in the mechanics of the game. But some were quite terse, even brief, leaving a lot of empty space on the card. There was no art available, and no good way to put it in if there was. But this was Fury of Dracula! This was a game as atmospheric and ghastly and dark as one could imagine! There must be some way to utilize that space to enhance the theme and mood of the game, to tell the story that the players were wrestling with …

"Those cards could use some flavor text," I said to Andrew.

"Yes," he agreed. "They could. But I think Kevin might murder you if you suggested that to him, on top of everything else he's doing."

"He wouldn't murder me," I said, laughing. Andrew didn't laugh. "I mean … would he?"

"He's got to finish the templating on these cards, write the rulebook, finalize the character sheets, revise the rulebook, layout the rulebook, run more playtests, re-revise the rulebook-"

"Okay," I said. "I know what would happen … I say 'hey, how about some flavor text?' and he says 'hssss!' and then I say 'I could do it' and he'll say 'sure.'"

"Oh, hi Kevin," said Andrew. "You should hear what Dan has to say."

"No, I mean, hypothetical, like…"

"What's that, Dan?" said Kevin, looming above me like some sort of … thing that looms.

"Um," I said, "well, I was just looking at these cards, like, and I thought to myself –"

"He says the cards need flavor text." Andrew grinned with an evil gleam in his eye. "For atmosphere."

"No!" I tried to shout, but it was too late. Kevin's eyes lit with fire and he swelled to five times his original size. Bits of paper flew off the shelves around us in the wind of his indrawn breath. They were not words he spoke, but an animal hiss and a flexing of talons and fangs. "I … I could do it myself?"

"Oh," said Kevin, suddenly grinning. "Sure. Get it to me by Wednesday, and I'll be pretty harsh on the editing."

So, suddenly I was writing flavor text for every one of the Hunter and Dracula cards (although not the weapons and items, fortunately). In some small way, I was contributing to the telling of this story for everyone who would play this game. Wouldn't my mother (hi Mom!) be proud of me! I'd better get it right.

The first thing to do was think back to the style and tone and nature of Dracula itself. That story was told largely through newspaper clippings, diaries, and letters. That was the frame into which the narrative was set. I decided that I would do the same for my cards, having each snippet of text be a piece of a letter or other personal writing. Upon examining the story of Fury of Dracula itself and the events that have transpired between the end of the book and the beginning of the game, I felt I had my basis: Mina's letters home. Mina Harker was always the most interesting (in my opinion) character in Dracula and since she had a husband and child who she was leaving behind her, she had someone to write to.

The rest came relatively easily. For each card title and effect, I simply imagined a piece of the story that was relevant – and only pieces. This is telling a tale through snippets and tidbits, leaving the rest for the players to discover or invent themselves. As an example, there is the card "Re-Equip: You may discard 1 of your Item cards to search the Item deck and take any 1 Item card from it. Afterwards, shuffle the Item deck." Fairly straightforward, and easy to see this happening time and again for our intrepid hunters. Also, and let's be honest, not a very exciting card – useful, yes, but exciting?

"Put it away!" hissed Van Helsing. "Have you forgotten what it is that we face?"

A snippet of the story, and very much like something we could expect to see in a book. It stands alone, but when stacked up with other snippets of flavor text, we begin to see a pattern emerging. The more the player reads, the more he learns. Consider the passage found on Sense of Emergency: I rode, Darling. I rode like the Devil himself was behind me … and perhaps he was.

This is a passage with no quotes, but it is clearly directed at someone, and someone dear to the writer of these words (within the framework of the narrative, that is – we're talking about Mina, here, not me). As the reader finds and plays more cards, more clues as to the identity of the speaker are discovered, and more and more of the story is fleshed out as the game progresses – and that story will be different every time, which is where the real fun begins …