Following the basic premise of Scotland Yard, Fury of Dracula is a hidden movement game, where Dracula moves in secrecy and has only to reveal location when the hunters reach his current hideout or with event cards. While the rules of the game have been changed with new editions, the most recent rules from the fourth edition state: the hunters (who always work cooperatively) win if Dracula's hit points reach zero, Dracula wins when the influence track reaches 13.
In 2020 a digital edition was released by Nomad Games.
Provides examples of the following tropes:
- 13 Is Unlucky: Dracula wins when his influence track reaches 13. This is surely not a coincidence.
- Adventure Board Games: Combines Cooperative, Competitive and Investigative elements; the Hunters are co-operating to figure out where Dracula is hiding, while fighting minions and the Final Boss himself controlled by Dracula's player.
- Asymmetric Multiplayer: The game plays completely different for the hunters and for Dracula respectively.
- Back from the Dead: The game is set after the events of the novel, where Dracula was supposedly Killed Off for Real. Of course, he's Dracula, so it's not a huge shock that he got better.
- The Big Guy: Lord Godalming, with more Wounds than other PCs and depicted with a rifle.
- Cannot Cross Running Water: Downplayed. Dracula CAN cross running water but will lose HPs. Also he can't place any encounter card.
- Cheaters Never Prosper: Given that the Dracula player acts entirely in secret, it can be extremely hard to tell if they've (intentionally or accidentally) broken the rules, at least until long after they've benefited from it. As an incentive to be careful (or ensure you aren't caught), the penalty for performing an illegal action is punishing - dropping to 5 health, entirely clearing any encounters you still have on the track, and... revealing your current location. The only slight upside is that clearing the track drops all your Dracula Powers back into the deck without needing to complete their cooldown period, so you have a lot of options to help you run away, hide and lick your wounds.
- Cooldown: Dracula's Power Cards are placed on the trail along with his new location, providing an inbuilt six-turn cooldown period before they drop off the trail and can be re-used.
- The Corrupter: Dracula's entire goal is to spread a plague of vampiric corruption across Europe.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: A lone Hunter with no weapons against a full-strength Dracula is gonna have a bad time.
- Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: Killed Hunters are sent to the nearest hospital, lose their inventory and then waste one day recuperating and one travelling into town. On the plus side, they heal all Wounds and lose any Bite tokens they had.
- Demoted to Extra: Perhaps surprisingly, the novel's protagonist Jonathan Harker is not a playable character, although he appears as an Ally card the Hunters can draw.
- Evil Luddite: Dracula can't travel by rail. This is purely for game balance purposes but has resulted in a lot of snarky fanon about why not: is he scared of trains? So old-fashioned that he doesn't trust them? Just thinks he'd look silly sitting & reading a newspaper in first class?
- Extra Turn: Dracula can take one with his "Unearthly Swiftness" encounter card.
- Fainting Seer: Mina is one in the novel, and this is represented in-game by her Psychic Radar power requiring another player to be in the same location to tend to her and interpret her visions.
- Fight Like a Card Player: Combat is handled with a basic card battle mechanic. Hunters have a few stock combat cards like Punch, Dodge and Escape, and can supplement these by finding & exchanging weapons, talismans and special abilities in the course of the game. Dracula has a more varied range of starting cards, including most of the classic vampire powers. All combat cards have various combinations of icons that interact based on a Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors mechanic, so the Hunters' main advantage is in Dracula not knowing what other tricks they have up their sleeves, while they (usually) know exactly what he's capable of.
- Final Boss Preview: Dracula can be discovered at any point (or even deliberately ambush a lone Hunter), but the Hunters will likely have a hard time taking him down in the early game before they've acquired any weapons. Assuming they don't get lucky (or dogpile him) and finish him off to win the game, early fights will serve as this and leave inexperienced players suitably spooked about facing the rematch.
- "Get Back Here!" Boss: Dracula's default playstyle is to run away whenever possible, either staying in hiding and spawning as many minions as possible or Kiting the Hunters.
- Grave Clouds: Dracula can control both fog and storms to waylay the Hunters in various ways.
- Haunted Castle: Castle Dracula is a special location that allows Dracula to recover hit points, but shows the Hunters where he is.
- Holy Burns Evil: "Heavenly Host", "Circle of Protection", "Holy Water", "Sacred Bullets", "Crucifix"... some of them deny movement to Dracula or ward him off, while some directly damage him or his minions.
- Instant-Win Condition: One for both sides. Whenever Dracula's HP reaches zero, the hunters win no matter what anybody is doing, Dracula wins whenever his influence track reaches 13.
- Magikarp Power: Aristocratic vampires have almosts zero combar value when used as trap (they cost the individual hunter exactly one turn and can be cleared out without any special items) but give Dracula 4 influence when matured.
- The Medic: Dr Seward's special ability helps other PCs recover health.
- Mooks: In addition to vampire spawn, Dracula can leave animals and human followers behind him to ambush the Hunters
- Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: One of the central and most frustrating objectives for the Hunters is finding out where Dracula is; as such, a Dracula player who deliberately ambushes a Hunter is making that part of their job a lot easier by revealing his location.
- Our Vampires Are Different: Dracula's abilities largely follow the novel; he can transform into bats, wolves and mist, is unharmed but weakened by sunlight, and vulnerable to garlic and holy objects. Drinking blood heals him. The Hunters themselves cannot be turned into vampires, but the fact that he can spawn other vampires in places he's visited suggests that The Virus is in effect offscreen. Dracula is also harmed by travelling across the sea.
- Pride: A specific rule for Dracula, requiring him to remain in combat for more rounds before misting out once the game has carried on for a certain period of time.
- Pull the Thread: Dracula's last six locations stay on the "Trail", and he ordinarily can't double back to them. The easiest means of finding him is to reveal one of these locations and then work out where he could have travelled from there. He has a few Power Cards that can obscure this, however, such as by moving more or less than one city in a turn, or removing a location from the trail.
- Scoring Points: Dracula needs 13 of them to win, gained by spawning vampires and successfully biting or killing Hunters.
- Screw the Rules, I Have Money! and Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!: Lord Godalming's two special abilities are named "Wealth" and "Privilege", and make him better at sourcing item cards and train tickets.
- Sensor Character: Mina, due to her Psychic Link with Dracula allowing her to sense if he's in the same region of Europe as her.
- Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors: A big part of the combat strategy. Dracula's "Mesmerize" ability will overcome a Hunter's will and leave them vulnerable to being bitten next round... but can be countered by punching him on the nose.
- The "The" Title Confusion: First edition was published as The Fury of Dracula, subsequent editions dropped the 'The'
- Travel Transformation: Dracula's powers include Escape as Bats and Escape as Mist, both of which are used to end combat with the vampire hunters, and Wolf Form, which lets him travel twice as quickly during the movement phase.
- Vampire Hunter: All the non-Dracula player characters. Abraham Van Helsing is of course included, but (in fitting with his The Smart Guy role in the novel) isn't notably better at it than the others apart from being able to withstand one ore Bite than anyone else. Instead he's better at researching new abilities for other Hunters.
- Vampires Sleep in Coffins: Aristocratic vampires are shown to lie in those.
- Vampiric Draining: Dracula's "Fangs" combat card allows him to drain 2 health from his opponent and recover the same amount himself.
- Villain: Exit, Stage Left: Dracula's default playstyle, unless he wants to be a Proactive Boss picking the Hunters off one by one. Specifically, the Escape As Bat card allows Dracula to fly directly out of combat to fight another night.
- We Wait: One of Dracula's main strategies is to plant a vampire card in a city. With each round, the card goes further down the trail, until it matures, in this case Dracula gains influence (based on the card 3 or 4).
- Wooden Stake: A very effective One-Hit Kill against lesser vampire encounters, though oddly enough it has absolutely no effect in a fight with Dracula.
- Wound That Will Not Heal: Mina Harker still has a vampire bite from her encounter with Dracula in the novel several years previously. It grants her a faint Psychic Link with Dracula that can be used to sense his presence.
