It’s Monday night at the Phoenix Jazz Club and San Jose resident Brian Wilkes is thirsting for blood.
“I think I want to bleed you,” Wilkes says to Santa Cruzan Ted Trollman, who is sitting to his left around a large table.
“There’s nothing I can do to prevent you from bleeding me,” Trollman replies while making a gurgling sound of pain and dropping some smooth black chips into a box in the center of the table.
The great sucking sound that denizens of the South First Area may have been hearing the last few Mondays from 7 to 11pm has emanated from Elysium, the new weekly gathering for fans of the games Jyhad, Magic and Vampire: The Masquerade.
These contests — which are combination card games, role-playing adventures and collecting frenzy — have swept the gaming world, says young Elysium matriarch Dinah Sanders. She owns Inkspot Books, which sells science fiction, horror and mystery books and magazines in the Dohrmann Building downstairs from the jazz club.
“The atmosphere here is pretty tame — you’d think they’d all be black-clad and dreary,” says fledgling gamer Michelle Manning, whom Sanders is trying to persuade to play. “But there’re guys in ties here. I love the duality of the people who are into this. The guy in the cubicle next to you at work could be playing Vampire.”
Players buy decks of 60-80 highly detailed, colorful cards, randomly packaged out of a selection of hundreds of cards. They can trade them with other enthusiasts to fine-tune their decks with the attributes they want.
“It’s a game of brains, with a sense of humor and a heart,” Sanders says, noting that Elysium has pulled in about 20 players each week. “You can be sitting in a coffeehouse and put the deck on the table and someone will walk by and ask if you want to play.”
Tonight Sanders has plopped out her cash-register drawer onto a small table to be ready for players who want to purchase or trade cards. The theme to Twin Peaks plays in the background.
Manning helps Sanders tie her puffy black sleeve into a bow. Both of them are wearing vampire teeth. “I do recommend the Bloody Marys,” Sanders says with relish to players perusing the liquor selections at the jazz club’s bar.
During the SoFA Street Fair, Sanders donned leather biker gear to pose as a punkish Brujah, one of the vampire clans in Jyhad. Other clans include the insane Malkarians, the monstrous Nosferatu and the urbane Ventura.
Tonight she’s dressed in flowing black as a Tremere, mistress of the arcane. She’s donned several necklaces and pendants, like the chain of small black spheres that belonged to her great-great-grandmother and the “God of Happy Gardening” that F/X The Club owner Fil Maresca, Sanders’ former boss, gave to her.
Sander says she enjoys Jyhad’s atmosphere in which informal alliances may form. A typical Jyhad game can last three hours.
The complex rule book is packed with near-microscopic writing. To help the novice players, downtown San Jose resident Anton Dovydaitis is teaching a table of four how to play Jyhad. The pink light of the “Phoenix Jazz Club” neon sign shines on the group, which includes one young woman, two twentysomething guys and a fortyish man.
“When things get rolling, the cards should roll through your hands like water,” says Dovydaitis, who is wearing an ankh, the ancient Egyptian symbol for life.
Dovydaitis points to Wilkes, who is sitting to his left, and notes that Wilkes is his prey. If Wilkes is knocked out of the game, Dovydaitis benefits, lessening the chances of players ganging up on another player. A small green dragon in the center of the table is reserved for players who get “the edge.”
Nudging his friend Margarita Tilley of west San Jose, Gilroy resident Phil Pacheco points with glee to some of his uglier cards, like the one featuring the green-faced, red-eyed monster. He notes that he’s sunk $50 into his five decks and has traded with friends to get some of the best cards.
Trollman, who has enjoyed role-playing games since junior high, seems a bit overwhelmed by the labyrinthine rules but is happy to join the growing crowd of fans of the new games. “Nothing, with the exception of Dungeons and Dragons, has hit this mentality this hard and this fast,” he says.