The Gaming Den

How viable would Castlevania be for a tabletop RPG?

I think the series has several elements conducive to such a goal.

- Castlevania has a lot of monsters. Both monsters that serve as mooks and ones for boss fights.
Seriously, look at all the monsters:https://castlevania.fandom.com/wiki/Category:Enemies

- Enough character diversity to make a party of different PCs. We have vampire hunters, mages, magical knights, half-vampires, glyph users, devil forge masters, soul dominance, and whatever the hell Maria Renard is.

- Killing the recent resurrected Dracula (or preventing his resurrection) is an easy plot hook that you could easily center an entire campaign around.


There are problems with this idea.

- Castlevania has a pretty weak setting outside of Drac's castle. It's basically just real world Europe.

- While you could probably borrow Witcher's "Kill the campaign monster" plot, I think that'd be less compelling. It also might be a hard sell, since I think most groups would want to kill Dracula.

- The series itself is spread throughout 1094-2036. This would make designing a TRPG based on it a lot more difficult.


As far as systems go, I was thinking d20. Partly because I'm pretty familiar with it but also because I think it would be a good fit for Castlevania.

Castlevania has superhuman characters that grow stronger over time.

In particular, I feel that d20 would work terrifically for Castlevania's tendency to make early bosses regular mooks in the late game.

With that said, I'm certain someone will suggest something better as a base system.

Or do you think that Castlevania isn't different enough from D&D and other games to warrant its own? Could you just use a preexisting game to run Castlevania-style adventures?

(Quick note: I'm mostly looking at the Metroidvania games and not the Classic ones. I think the older Castlevania games would yield naught but Gygaxian madness.)

EDIT: The Netflix series would also be a good source of inspiration.

I really don't want to be that guy, but what's stopping you from doing it in D&D or one of its many ripoffs? As you mention, Castlevania has a rather weak setting. What makes it different from your average "go to a bad dude's castle, kill him, and loot his shit" premise? I've played some of the games, but I wouldn't be surprised if there was some neat stuff hiding among some of them.

I think the major issues would be with converting a single-player game into a cooperative game, and, as you touched on, coming up with a second story to tell.

Although Ravenloft has done better than it has any right to, so what do I know?

The Adventurer's Almanac wrote:I really don't want to be that guy, but what's stopping you from doing it in D&D or one of its many ripoffs? As you mention, Castlevania has a rather weak setting. What makes it different from your average "go to a bad dude's castle, kill him, and loot his shit" premise? I've played some of the games, but I wouldn't be surprised if there was some neat stuff hiding among some of them.

That is something I thought might be a problem. The easiest way to fix this, I think, would be to make a D&D compatible Castlevania supplement (Villains and Vampires?). That way players could have characters like the ones in Castlevania, but without the drawbacks of the weak setting.

Iduno wrote:I think the major issues would be with converting a single-player game into a cooperative game, and, as you touched on, coming up with a second story to tell.

This is problem with a lot of fiction that focuses on a single protagonist.

Iduno wrote:Although Ravenloft has done better than it has any right to, so what do I know?

Ravenloft clings too hard to the old school mentality of "Fuck you for wanting nice things, you munchkin!" for my liking.

I feel like Ravenloft would work a lot better if you made it more like Castlevania.

Yeah, you'd probably be best served making a Castlevania splat for Ravenloft or something. Almost none of the games really give a shit about things happening outside of Drac's castle, so you could totally get away with "you get teleported to Ravenloft Castlevania and can't leave until you kill Strahd Dracula". This way you don't have to remake a bunch of crap that's already in D&D and you can just patch things to be Castlevania-specific as needed.

In other news, holy shit there hasn't been a real Castlevania game in over a decade. What the fucking fuck?

The Adventurer's Almanac wrote:Yeah, you'd probably be best served making a Castlevania splat for Ravenloft or something. Almost none of the games really give a shit about things happening outside of Drac's castle, so you could totally get away with "you get teleported to Ravenloft Castlevania and can't leave until you kill Strahd Dracula". This way you don't have to remake a bunch of crap that's already in D&D and you can just patch things to be Castlevania-specific as needed.

I'm inclined to agree.

The Adventurer's Almanac wrote:In other news, holy shit there hasn't been a real Castlevania game in over a decade. What the fucking fuck?

It depends on what you count as a Castlevania game.

Grimoire of Souls (an IOS game) came out last year.

Mobile games aren't real.

I've heard that Bloodstained counts (no pun intended).

Foxwarrior wrote:I've heard that Bloodstained counts (no pun intended).

Technically a spiritual successor, but a damn good one.

I believe somebody here gave a Castlevania RPG a shot already.

http://www.tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?p=522637

Avoraciopoctules wrote:I believe somebody here gave a Castlevania RPG a shot already.

http://www.tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?p=522637

I saw that. I was under the impression that Castlevania merely numbered among its inspirations?

Indeed. You could probably use Cursed Moon for stuff beyond the scope of the CV games and series. I haven't actually tried playing it, but it looked like it did some nice stuff with flavor for magic and monsters.

Hunter's Moon is a monster hunting phase based tabletop RPG
https://www.tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=56491

I think it's a good start to making a Castlevania RPG.

Castlevania the game is very much about ttern recognition and then execution of precise actions. This can't quite be replicated in tabletop, but the "learning enemy's weakness/patterns" aspect is captured in Hunter's Moon

Avoraciopoctules wrote:Indeed. You could probably use Cursed Moon for stuff beyond the scope of the CV games and series. I haven't actually tried playing it, but it looked like it did some nice stuff with flavor for magic and monsters.

OgreBattle wrote:Hunter's Moon is a monster hunting phase based tabletop RPG
https://www.tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=56491

I think it's a good start to making a Castlevania RPG.

Castlevania the game is very much about ttern recognition and then execution of precise actions. This can't quite be replicated in tabletop, but the "learning enemy's weakness/patterns" aspect is captured in Hunter's Moon

Interesting. I'll check it out, thank you for the suggestion.

The Adventurer's Almanac wrote:I really don't want to be that guy, but what's stopping you from doing it in D&D or one of its many ripoffs?

The thing with Castlevania is that, barring a heavily beefed out Bo9S, the Belmonts are a line of superhuman Chosen Ones, the kind of people that go against dnd's mission and vision of Haves vs. Have Nots.

It's safe to assume everyone has watched the series by now. No, Trevor isn't a "fighter," fighters don't get to use battle axes like boomerangs or use whips like multi-tools that do competitive damage against BBEGs (those are officially canon powers in the series). Also, his superhuman strength is all him, not some Christmas Tree combo of items.

Sure, you could play Grant D'nasti, you could play Sypha, you could play Eric Lecarde or even John Morris' useless kid from Portrait of Ruin (the one without superhuman powers whom the whip won't acknowledge as legitimate owner), you can even put them in a Megadungeon that'd be the castle and put a high level vampire as BBEG, and it would be a GREAT Castlevania-esque game, just never the real thing.

PS: And let's even not go into Lords of Shadow's continuity with mr. Gabriel-I-punch-werewolves-in-the-jaw-and-do-Cleric-and-Sorcerer-Spells-while-still-being-level-relevant.

I don't really see what WotC being intentionally bad at class balance has to do with a homebrew project on the site that spawned Tome.

Yeah, what the hell, man?

Dogbert is presuming D&D hard, but I can see why he might.

In order to answer the question, you need to nail things down a bit. Castlevania is historical low fantasy - it takes place in, like, Romania, right? Vaguely in the past? You could play a Castlevania campaign in bog standard D&D, or in Mage: The Sorcerer's Crusade or any other RPG that supports 15th century Europe. "Let's kill the big foozle" isn't terribly inventive but it's fine as a campaign goal, and just telling everyone their characters are cousins and they've been called to hunt monsters by their Belmont blood line solves the "meet in the tavern" problem.

So Castlevania may not be viable as an RPG but it is certainly viable (even pretty strong) as a campaign premise.

Actually, given the strange premises of Castlevania (signature weapons, charges of holy weapons, etc.) you might want to use Fantasy Hero? It depends on how much support you the non-combat aspects of the game (which also don't work very well in the Hero system.)

I'm mostly a lurker on here, but holy shit, my obsession is briefly relevant to these forums. I've been working on a homebrew 5e campaign for Castlevania off and on for years. I know nobody likes fucking 5th, and I have plenty of gripes about it myself, but I used Vapor Edition as my base because it's what newbies want to use, and balancing simple weak crap is a lot easier than complex, powerful crap.

Dogbert is correct in saying that you have the potential problem of the Kwisatz Haderach bloodline in the Belmonts (plus a very powerful NPC) who have to do the heavy lifting to put Drac away forever. So what I did was change the playable "races" into the major clans you encounter in the games. DaNasty, Belnades, LeCarde, Renard, Morris, etc. etc. It sucks if you want to be a random dude who has had enough of the fucking Hammer Brothers monsters fucking up his town and decides to do something about it (Ash Williams archetype), but as much as I like a plucky underdog character, without proper training you're just not getting anywhere close to killing Dracula. Especially when you have at a bare minimum the Grim Reaper to dispatch first. So it's a conceit of the series that players have to buy into from the jump.

One thing that really has good legs with table top Castlevania is the amazing loot that the characters can find in their adventures in the Giant Spooky Castle TM and/or having a road trip in Europe in the past or far future. Castlevania shamelessly grabs legendary weapons from every mythos you can think of. Even Tolkien magic swag is in there. So having excalibur, masamune, gungnir, durendal, and the mablung all on the table to have in your swag bag might strike some as Monty Haul, but I would hope they could at least see the appeal of having the finest mythical weapons in literature decorating your trophy room.

I apologize for rambling. Running on fumes for sleep but I simply HAD to say something about this actual four-leaf clover topic.

Sir Aubergine wrote:I'm mostly a lurker on here, but holy shit, my obsession is briefly relevant to these forums. I've been working on a homebrew 5e campaign for Castlevania off and on for years. I know nobody likes fucking 5th, and I have plenty of gripes about it myself, but I used Vapor Edition as my base because it's what newbies want to use, and balancing simple weak crap is a lot easier than complex, powerful crap.

My primary concern with using 5e is that (aside from being ass) 5e doesn't handle multiple weaker enemies VS a couple stronger PCs.

You try to fight 20 Orcs, you get your ass handed to you. That seems a poor fit for a series with a propensity for groups of Medusa Heads.

Sir Aubergine wrote:Dogbert is correct in saying that you have the potential problem of the Kwisatz Haderach bloodline in the Belmonts (plus a very powerful NPC) who have to do the heavy lifting to put Drac away forever. So what I did was change the playable "races" into the major clans you encounter in the games. DaNasty, Belnades, LeCarde, Renard, Morris, etc. etc.

That's a good way to go about that, actually.

Sir Aubergine wrote:It sucks if you want to be a random dude who has had enough of the fucking Hammer Brothers monsters fucking up his town and decides to do something about it (Ash Williams archetype), but as much as I like a plucky underdog character, without proper training you're just not getting anywhere close to killing Dracula. Especially when you have at a bare minimum the Grim Reaper to dispatch first. So it's a conceit of the series that players have to buy into from the jump.

Yeah, Castlevania is one of those series where normal people are virtually helpless.

Sir Aubergine wrote:One thing that really has good legs with table top Castlevania is the amazing loot that the characters can find in their adventures in the Giant Spooky Castle TM and/or having a road trip in Europe in the past or far future. Castlevania shamelessly grabs legendary weapons from every mythos you can think of. Even Tolkien magic swag is in there. So having excalibur, masamune, gungnir, durendal, and the mablung all on the table to have in your swag bag might strike some as Monty Haul, but I would hope they could at least see the appeal of having the finest mythical weapons in literature decorating your trophy room.

That's another plus for the series. Players love getting fancy loot.

You try to fight 20 Orcs, you get your ass handed to you. That seems a poor fit for a series with a propensity for groups of Medusa Heads.

You're right of course. I don't know if it will be enough, but I added in a cleave mechanic and several other combat options to try and make your average fighting wo/man able to kill zombies and bats and unes and skellies faster and safer with dreams of mountains of monsters for the vampire hunters to kill.

With medusa heads (and flying skeletons), I've been considering making them a room hazard as opposed to a swarm of weak monsters. The way they are set up in the games are more akin to an electric fence than active sentries.

One thing that I have almost not idea about is making good boss encounters. If anyone has ideas on getting the mega man boss closet w/deadly patterns feeling translated from screen to paper I'm all ears.

Sir Aubergine wrote: the fucking Hammer Brothers monsters

Is this a reference to the critters from Mario or is it a reference to the Hammer/Shaw Brothers classic Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires?

I'm fine with it either way.

JigokuBosatsu wrote:

Sir Aubergine wrote: the fucking Hammer Brothers monsters

Is this a reference to the critters from Mario or is it a reference to the Hammer/Shaw Brothers classic Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires?

I'm fine with it either way.

Mea Culpa. I meant Hammer Film Productions Ltd.

The film company that made the likenesses of movie monsters many people would draw on if you asked them to describe Frankenstein's monster, mummies, werewolves, fish men, and even Dracula himself.

They've all been bosses or standard enemies in the Castlevania games.

That's the Hammer I was referring to... I'm guessing you haven't seen the majestic glory that is Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires?