Writober! Blood! Shadowdark Post-a-Day In October

This month is Drawtober: 31 drawing prompts related to the Shadowdark RPG, 1 a day, throughout October. But I’m borrowing the prompts for short essays. Today’s prompt is “Blood”.

What are usual ways we can use blood in TTRPGs:

1. If a foe can get a bit of someone’s blood, they might be able to use it to send magical foes to hunt the character.
2. An enemy spellcaster could also use blood to hex the character.
3. And a spellcaster could also use blood to banish the character to an evil realm or to summon the character to a tribunal, etc.
4. Getting away from spellcasting, a GM could add a ‘bleed’ effect to an attack where a character loses health/hp until healed–or even the game’s constitution stat.
5. Like sharks that can smell blood in the water, perhaps other creatures can track injured characters.
6. Being bit by someone infected can spread a curse like vampirism or lycanthropy but something different.
7. Having an open wound can expose the character to some special effects.
8. It can be an ingredient to a puzzle or to diffuse a trap.
9. Blood could be a test of legitimacy for the heir to a throne.
10. It can be turned into a creature via dark magic.
11. Blood can bond characters together into a special order like a brotherhood or sisterhood.

Here are our previous Writober posts so far:

1. Torch – Rules for magic torch items (each is a single use magic effect spell like alarm or detect magic).
2. Skull – Goblin shaman who can turn victims’ skulls into ways to store spells.
3. Fiend – Lists of talents that Devils & Demons typically have for making your own.
4. Shadow – Easy ways to make other creatures into shadows.
5. Contagion – Discussing the purpose of diseases.
6. Valkyrie – A new 3rd party class.
7. Toadstool – A new 3rd party ancestry.
8. Witchlight – Alternate sources of “witchlight”.
9. Luck Token – Alternate ways a GM may allow a luck token to be used.
10.  Rage – The signature ability of a Barbarian class.
11. Altars – Ways to amplify priest spells into rituals when using an altar.
12. Pit Trap – Several ideas to spice up the good old pit trap.
13. Death Slug – Looking at the Death Slug’s deadliness and how that’s similar to old-school and low fantasy games.
14. Evil Eye – Various types of “Evil Eyes”: magic items, monsters, or curses.
15. Morzo Moth – A look at the Morzo Moth’s talents/actions makes one see the variety of the Western Reaches book’s monsters.
16. Diamond – Three subtopics: diamonds impacting economy; as spell components for rituals or spells not-yet-accessible; and a enhancements for magic weapons.
17. Slime – Game-able aspects of mundane slime as well as a green slime monster for Shadowdark.
18. Wyrdling – Shows how different and fun Shadowdark can be with this unusual class as an example of how much design freedom a creator of GM has.
19. Stingbat – Renaming (or even not giving creatures names) re-establishes the sense of wonder players had when fantasy was new to them.
20. Poison – A list of how poison is used in the core book, grouped by use & types of effects, plus a few new ideas.
21. Grumby Billows – A tribute to Shadowdarklings, the online free character generator (and more!) for Shadowdark.