The hunt is on.
Vampire: The Masquerade - Out for Blood is a 455,000-word interactive horror novel by Jim Dattilo, set in the World of Darkness for Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition as part of the Vampire: The Masquerade setting, from indie game company Choice of Games. Your choices control the story. It's entirely text-based, without graphics or sound effects, and fueled by the vast, unstoppable power of your imagination.
You’ve barely settled into your new home of Jericho Heights on the outskirts of Chicago, before discovering that vampires live in town. You’re struggling to start a new life, meet new people, and maybe even find love. But when your neighbors start disappearing, you’re forced to take action.
Take on the role of a vampire hunter to save your town from the influence of Chastain, a vampire more than a century old. When a group of young thin-blood vampires start a war with Chastain, will you choose sides, or hunt them all?
This video game contains the following tropes:
- Badass Pacifist: A perfectly valid playstyle allows you to never raise a hand in anger the entire game.
- Big Bad: Chastain serves as this or the Big Good, depending on your perspective. She is the ruler of Jericho Heights and de facto Prince. Alternatively, Monroe serves as this.
- Betty and Veronica: Lacey is a uptight but responsible Vice Principal and single mother. Salem is a wild punker girl. There's also a vampire version of this with Amanda Chastain vs. Monroe and Jace.
- Big Damn Heroes:
- The first known time you meet Chastain is when she pulls this to rescue you from Perry.
- When Perry (again) arrives at your house, you'll first be aided by your cat, and then a selection of other characters depending on your choices. Jace, Monroe, Annis Kean or Chastain will show up before Perry and Kyra can kill you.
- Body Horror: The thin-blood Perry, unlike other vampires, is lacking the special something that keeps his body from decomposing, and so is a walking rotting corpse. Those more familiar with VTM lore may note that Perry shows signs of not being a Thinblood at all — the Samedi are a bloodline of Clan Hecata (of which Perry notes he shares the clan weakness of — the painful bite) who rot like corpses every night after starting it out perfectly preserved, stuck in an eternal cycle of decay and regeneration. Not a fun bloodline to be Embraced by!
- Brainwashed and Crazy: This is the fate that Amanda inflicts upon those who annoy her.
- Call to Agriculture: You can choose to live an ordinary life as a shopkeeper rather than answering the Call to Adventure.
- Childhood Friend Romance: You can hook up with your high school buddies Salem or Adam.
- Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: You can actually play your character constantly switching loyalties between Chastain, the Thin Bloods, and your fellow humans.
- Cool Old Guy: Your grandfather was considered this by virtually the entirety of Jericho Heights.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: If he bites you, Perry is quite... vocal... in how much he enjoys your blood. It doesn't help that he met you in a dark alley, overpowered you and wound up on top of you before he bit you, either.
- Face–Heel Turn:
- If your relationship values are low enough, Chastain will convince Adam to sell you out with the promise she can fix his paralysis.
- In Ending 3, where your character becomes Embraced as a full vampire, you yourself will commit a Face-Heel Turn when you arrange to have all your old friends from Jericho Heights be 'accidentally' killed in a fire to preserve the Masquerade, at Chastain's behest. The ending isn't called
"Embrace the Darkness" for nothing. Tellingly, if you check the character page after this occurs, you'll notice your character now has a 'Humanity' stat, and it's already sitting at a rather low 6 out of 10, just one month after Embrace.
- Foe Romance Subtext: Even if you're against Chastain, you can end up sleeping with her as part of the story. She considers this a form of revenge against your grandfather.
- Functional Magic: The protagonist can possess hedge magic as a defense against the forces of evil. These come in the form of protection spells and curses.
- Friendly Neighborhood Vampire: Played with as Amanda Chastain doesn't normally kill people and the Thin Bloods are fairly low-key on the viciousness scale. However, to the people of Jericho Heights, a vampire who only occasionally kills people is still an evil monster.
- Grey-and-Gray Morality: Neither Chastain nor Monroe is really good, either from a human perspective or a vampire one. For humans, they're both harming the town. Chastain is careful about feeding, but she uses her wealth and connections to manipulate everything behind the scenes and ruin anyone who stands up to her, while Monroe lets her unstable and violent associate Perry run wild and is mainly interested in getting rid of Chastain for personal reasons. For vampires, both are making a hash of the Masquerade; Chastain has gotten rumbled by multiple Jericho Heights residents despite being old enough to know much better, and the Thinbloods are responsible for the high-profile missing persons cases. Even after Perry, the member of their coterie chiefly responsible for the disappearances, is destroyed, the teenagers of the town continue to go missing.
- Here We Go Again!: If Chastain dies then a new vampire or other supernatural takes up residence in her mansion.
- Hotter and Sexier: You can sleep with multiple partners in the game. Including Chastain, your best friend, and the Vice Principal of the local elementary school. The sex scenes are also much more explicit than in Night Road.
- Humanity Ensues: If Monroe successfully kills Chastain then she will return to being human.
- Ignored Enamored Underling: Both of Chastain's ghouls are hopelessly in love with her, while she views them as useful tools as best.
- I Hate You, Vampire Dad:
- Monroe was created by Chastain—and, it is strongly implied, cast off when she turned out a thin-blood instead of a proper Toreador—and wants to destroy her in hopes of becoming human again. With your help, she can succeed.
- Jace has no warm feelings towards his sire, given that he was nonconsensually fed on and then abandoned.
- In a vision the player character can have, Perry is noted to be feeding on what the player is certain is a corpse. One that starts moving. Given Perry's appearance, the player's certainty that it was an actual corpse he was feeding on, and the fact he may be of the Samedi bloodline, this might be his sire.
- Killed to Uphold the Masquerade: It is in the title, after all.
- Too many indiscretions on the parts of the vampires will eventually draw the ire of the Camarilla. They'll kill Chastain if you ask about vampires or try to warn people about them repeatedly. If Perry survives the game, he'll also end up on the wrong end of a Blood Hunt because he's too violent and sloppy.
- Fans familiar with the more obscure parts of VTM lore will note that Chicago is already investigating Chastain and/or the Thinbloods — Makayla describes a friend of hers that perfectly fits the Chicago Camarilla's Sheriff.
- If you become a vampire Chastain will kill all of your friends.
- Lighter and Softer: This is a significantly less violent and gritty game than Night Road with a much lower body count.
- Mayfly–December Romance:
- Averted with Amanda Chastain as she's going to make you a ghoul or vampire in her service.
- Downplayed if you get together with Jace. Thin-bloods do age, but he's still going to live a lot longer than you.
- Refusal of the Call: If you successfully survive the events of the game and acquire enough points in the appropriate Path, then the Second Inquisition or Arcanum can try to recruit you. You can instead choose to stay in Jericho Heights as its defender.
- It's implied that Chastain wanted to Embrace the player's grandfather, but he refused.
- Revealing Cover Up: It's not clear if Chastain asked for this and is just too unfamiliar with the internet to realize how weird it is, or if her ghoul is just getting overzealous because of his crush, but her having every single photo and video of her removed from anything connected to the internet, immediately, regardless of whether it was posted or not, actually makes it rather obvious she has something to hide. For instance, one of the reasons Makayla's been investigating is that the pictures she took of Chastain disappeared straight off her phone, confirming she was right to be suspicious.
- Too Dumb to Live: Chastain regularly flouts the Masquerade and lets you potentially spread news of the undead everywhere. It will get her killed by Chicago's Sheriff, Damien, in at least one of the endings.
- Sleazy Politician: Mayor Bumpley is entirely in Amanda Chastain's pocket and exploits the townsfolk mercilessly. In addition to covering up for her various crimes, he also runs an extensive real estate scam that makes you liable for your grandfather's debts. If Amanda is taken down, he's arrested for his corruption.
- The Smart Guy: Well, smart person. Eric is the member of the thin-bloods who seems to know the most about how vampires work, and they're skilled in Thin-Blood Alchemy, which allows them to make potions that grant them a variety of powers.
- Vampire Hunter: You are turned into one of these by circumstances. You can subvert it, though, by becoming one yourself.
- One of the endings lets you become apprenticed to professional vampire hunter, Annis Kean.
- We ARE Struggling Together: The thin-bloods are barely keeping it together as a group, and spend almost as much of their time keeping (or just as often, failing to keep) their wilder members under control as they do plotting against their actual enemy.
- Wife Husbandry: Amanda Chastain recruited Monroe as a teenager to be her childe. This despite living in the same town as her parents.
