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As an introduction I'm working on the mechanics to THIRST, a vampire RPG. I've always loved this stuff (I was a big Anne Rice fan in the day), and I want to play with a great system for it. There are certain qualities of WW's Vampire that keep it from fulfilling my desires, and I think that this is true of many of us here.

The basic design of the game supports simulationism and narrativism--much like TROS does--because that's how I like to play and it's what I'm good at writing. I have taken special care to make sure that nothing in the system promotes play issues that I don't want and that everything is very streamlined. So what I'm not looking for here is design advice per se, but rather advice for running and playing such a game.

The problem is that I'd really like to avoid the meta-plotty-stuff of WW's Vampire. I don't want a big consipiring government of Vampires, nor do I want a lot of the other video-game-esque vampire issues in the game. What I'm shooting for is a blend of Bram Stoker, Anne Rice, and Shadow of the Vampire/Nosferatu. The mechanics are great, but...

...what do the players do? There's no WW-gamist need to kill greater vampires and steal their power, there's no giant league of secret vampire hunters (Blade, Buffy, etc.)...

It's the relationships and the all the, well, cool powers, that make me want to play the game, but I'm at a loss as to what to do with a group of players especially. Hunting is fun, but pretty easy given a vampires' power and would certainly get old.

So, those of you that have had long Vampire campaigns or have had successful games of this type or that just have some insight and ideas...

Let 'em rip.

Jake

Okdoki. BOY where do I start?? When I picked up Vampire back in the days where it was new I already knew exactly how I wanted to play it. Unfortunately it turned out it was not the least what it was supposed to be played like.

I got a GNS classification for it: Exploration of Character.

Basically you more or less by accident (since you don't really go about qualifying for vampirehood:) ) get superpowers which makes you immortal and extremely powerful. The bad thing is, it also makes you inhuman with a need to potentially kill people every day to stay alive. What do you do?

A classic type of campaign would be:
"If the rules of human life was suddenly ripped from under you, how would you live? How would you live your life?"

This one can be run a lot of different ways... you can do an interpolation of the "Near Dark" setup:
"You're a bunch of vampires and you drift from place to place. Every place you can only live for a short time."
Although it sounds like doing the same thing over and over again it'll BE different because every place is a little different.

Another is
"the lone vampire (or the group of vampires) trying to fit into human society by keeping a job, having human friends and so on".
Daily life offers a lot of challenges to a vampire. What would happen if people find out or suspect you? What if one dark night your victim turned out to be a coworker?"

Yet another is:
Vampires who are in positions of power.
They are yakuza leaders, politicians or people behind politicians. However, unlike the Masquerade game there isn't a cabal of vampires. The characters are the only ones who seem to be vampires. The people who work with you don't know the boss is a vampire and so on.

Added spice to these adventures could be done by..
1) Other, unknown, vampires
Unlike Masquerade where everyone knows about other vampires, doing it more Stoker och Rice style would have vampires much more rare and unaware of the existence of others. What if you run into other vampires other than the characters who might be created by the same one who spawned you? What kind of creatures are they? Maybe they are insane killers? Or are they maybe more powerful? Are all vampires equal? Maybe not.

2) other supernatural forces.
Why are there vampires? I suggest the game doesn't say. Are there other supernatural forces than vampires? Maybe. In that case their intentions are as unknown to the vampires as they are to humans. Meeting such a creature would be akin to a human meeting an alien. They might be friendly, or maybe they just want to kill you.

3) probably more stuff as well

The above should only be spicing to the stories, not the main subject in themselves since they rely on encounters being very rare.

Jake, if I can help more let me know. I'd really like to help creating a good vampire game.

Some kind of highlanderesque flashback mechanic would rock in a relationship based vampire game. Something to help weave in how those relationships came about, but during play not in some prewritten background.

Bear in mind one of the reasons V:TM is so popular is the conflicts built into the setting, which are easy to grasp. With a more character based, narativist game, you want to focus more on the characters, so you need to have a way of building lots of conflict into character creation.

-Matt

Quote from: MattSome kind of highlanderesque flashback mechanic would rock in a relationship based vampire game. Something to help weave in how those relationships came about, but during play not in some prewritten background.

That would be very cool. Maybe something independent of timeframe, so that it could support relationships forged over decades (or even centuries) as well as those formed months ago.

Quote from: MattBear in mind one of the reasons V:TM is so popular is the conflicts built into the setting, which are easy to grasp. With a more character based, narativist game, you want to focus more on the characters, so you need to have a way of building lots of conflict into character creation.

One of the things I added to my stripped-down version of VtM is the requirement that a player choose one or more goals that their character is actively pursuing. Then I, as the evil GM, build game elements (usually NPCs) with goals specifically tailored to run counter to those of the PCs. Blammo: conflict. And since I only detail the basic goals of the NPCs, there's no specific outcome determined beforehand, therefore, no railroading (ex: Player character is working on setting himself up in the arms-dealing business. There's a guy in the city that has already pretty much cornered the market. They're going to come across each other at some point. How it goes down is up to the player). Also, like Kickers, the players chose these goals, so theoretically, they should care about them (unlike an artificially enforced political schism like the Camarilla/Sabbat).

Of course, all this works as long as you've got people willing to play characters in motion, like Dracula. If, on the other hand, you've got people that want to play Louis, and do nothing but whine all night every night about the angst of being the walking undead (which is pefectly legitimate in a game where character-sim is a priority, but in reality gets old kinda quick), then you've got to take a different approach.

I haven't implemented it yet, but I'm thinking of adding some sort of incentive to taking on more goals. I don't want it to be something so banal as a simple experience point award. Maybe they would get some kind of currency that lets them affect the plot in certain ways. Of course, that leads to a nifty "taking too much on your plate and having it all overwhelm you" kinda vibe, which is always fun.

OK, this is a tough question. One that borders dangerously close on "Think of something for me to invent." You're not saying that, of course. You just need an angle here. You like vampires, you already have a system in mind. You've just realized that you don't have anything for the players to *do.* I recall during the creation of Orkworld, John Wick hit a similar problem, something along the line that the [warrior's] job was to protect the [mother] and all they had to do was stay home and make sure nothing happened to her. High adventure, that.

Now, you could leave it completely open-ended, which could have group not doing anything. You could give suggestions for building the world, which may or may not include the stuff you are purposefully leaving out the way Sorcerer is customizable like this (stories from Fallen to Monster Inc are possible)

I would prefer you stick to your guns, though. So, no killing other vampires a la blood-sucking Highlander, no Buffies the vampire-hunting bimbos or any of that. The problem is, what does this leave you? Nothing and everything, I imagine. You're rejecting the cliches so now you can explore the other possibilites.

At this point, I can only offer you suggestions. You may take them or leave them as you see fit.

Stripped down, the primary characters you have left are the vampires and the victems. I think you should focus on this.

How do vampires feel about their victems? Do they think of them as just cattle? I don't think so. That sort of attitude belongs in a d20 game which "Blood Points" that need to be gained to give the character the k3wl powerz. You're not going for that.

I think that vampires love their victems. Yes, love them. Why do they select one person over another? Mere opportunity? I think not. When you're immortal, you learn to have infinite patience. Why did Dracula select Lucy over Mina at first? It seems to me to be about attraction, what attracts a vampire to a possible victem, what the vampire does to lure the victem into their clutches.

This is quickly turning into an adult concept. A blood-soaked metaphor of sexual conquest. But vampires have always been about sex anyway. The question is is this the sort of thing you want to make your vampire game about? No wonder why White Wolf watered this down with vampire power games, clan wars and vampire hunters. They didn't want the parental advisory board to see what it was really about.

I would take the strengths of TRoS (combat + spiritual attributes) and apply the same kinds of rules to Thirst. Namely, focusing on hunting and feeding...which most other games gloss over to "get to the good stuff."

Ooh, I'm with Jared.

-Vincent

Quote from: Pale FireI got a GNS classification for it: Exploration of Character....

A classic type of campaign would be:
"If the rules of human life was suddenly ripped from under you, how would you live? How would you live your life?"

"You're a bunch of vampires and you drift from place to place. Every place you can only live for a short time."

"The lone vampire (or the group of vampires) trying to fit into human society by keeping a job, having human friends and so on".

Vampires who are in positions of power.

Uh...all of these would be Exploration of Situation wouldn't they?  If you take these to be Exploration of Character, then all role-playing could probably be palmed off on Exploration of Character, because (Universalis notably excluded) you play a character.

Each of these describes talks about the situations a vampire is in.  Now you could drift to Exploration of Character, but these do not seem to imply it.

Exploration of Character would be how the vampire relates to the situations it's in.  A situation is important, but it takes a back seat to 'what is going on' for the character.  Some classic Exploration of Character vampire campaigns might be:

"How can you 'give up' your life?"  A game where the contacts, loves, and hatreds of the vampire's former life intrude upon dealing with his new circumstances.  (This might require minor personality mechanics.)

"How do you deal with blood addictions, daily?"  The situations change because of "drifting from place to place" and aren't as important as the way the addict deals with them.  (This goes somewhat episodic or mission-based and probably has an addiction mechanic.)

"Can you overcome your 'Thirst' and live secretly amongst mankind?"  The constant interplay between 'the beast within' and giving no 'telltale' is the struggle.  (A mechanic focusing on pretense and the tension associated with rolling against hidden rolls might create suspense here.)

"What fools these mortals be."  If you keep putting the vampire in positions of temporal power and expose them to situations which will tempt them to use their supernatural power on top of that will force the players to explore the motivations the vampire has.  (An 'in game' reward mechanic coupled with humans who are both incredibly easy to supernaturally affect and 'on the look out' for vampires, might focus play on that spot.)[/list:u]The point is, as you put them, they allow character exploration (something like players fantasizing about what their character feels), but not much more than tools to explore the situation their in.  If you want it to go 'into character' you've got to make the choices of the vampire more important than the situations they find themselves in.

But...

Exploration of Character and Exploration of Situation are defined as Simulationist.  How to add a touch of Narrativism?

I understand Jake's sentiment about Vampire: the Masquerade's meta-plot materials.  But I think the baby might be going out with that bathwater if we are that simplistic.

Let me review what I think a vampire game thrives on.  First there's the suffering.  Without the suffering, it pretty much breaks down into variations on the superhero thing.  Heck, the name "Thirst" pretty much screams this (that's what got my attention, anyway).

Second, the way 'the value of life' is put center stage.  This has been pretty much mucked up by any game system I've seen so far.  To me, the point is that the character has to come to value humans and their humanity while being forced to crave its destruction (but that'd be more suffering).

Next you have the mystery.  Nothing is what it seems; you never know what's coming up next.  A good Vampire: the Masquerade game I ran used hidden cabals and secret conspiracies rather than 'aging targets.'  The players were thrust into a world of hidden agendas and secret power duels, never quite knowing who was tricking them to do what.  It was classic Exploration of Situation and that Situation was a tangled web of conspiracies hidden from mortal (and immortal) eyes.  It ultimately broke down when I wasn't able to solve 'what they were fighting over.'  (And trust me, elder blood wouldn't have worked).

Then there's the atmosphere.  It's moody, it's dark, everything takes place at night.  You almost don't need to write this part, it's implicit in the common understanding of vampires, but certain 'over the top' games have given the characters the powers to overcome the boundaries of this.

Let me take a moment to discuss Jake's examples: Stoker's and Nosferatu are stories about vampires as 'outside' forces.  The character ideally played are the mortals, so the only thing these really offer is the tension and the atmosphere.  Rice's has the problem that it does have the "big conspiring government of Vampires" in some fashion; it belabors the idea that vampires do a lot of networking, eventually.  Now, I'm not sure I remember what Shadow of the Vampire is, but if it's that movie that keeps you on the edge of your seat showing the filming of Nosferatu, always wondering if Shreck is a vampire (I haven't seen that one yet), again the vampire falls outside of the circle of player characters.  (And while you could build a good 'gothic' game around this part of the 'gothic' literature movement, you don't get to use "cool powers.")

And then there's the restrictions Jake offers: "no...need to kill greater vampires" and "no...league of secret vampire hunters."  As a matter of fact these occur in the source material for precisely one purpose; they increase the scale.  Dracula combated just one hunter, isn't more hunters more epic?  And if they're organized?  Vampire: the Masquerade does this for similar reasons; if vampires go back, what if they go waayy back?  You can't play them because that'd take weeks to create the character's history, but they're there, all the way back to biblical times.  That's more epic right?

I consider these a somewhat failed attempt to capture the grandeur of the source material.  The difference between what we play and what we read/see/listen to, is we identify with player character much more intimately than with Rice's or Stoker's creations.  And that's where you trick the grandeur out of.  You see if you pull in the mystery, you don't need the hierarchy (that's what's really the root problem with Vampire: the Masquerade and Buffy).  Vampires have power, that's true, but what they lack (at least in a game) is knowledge.  That's where the mystery comes in.  Don't give them something so easily taken as primogen blood, but keep the conspiracies.  And how you pitch a conspiracy will create a lot of atmosphere.

To create both the suffering and the 'value of life,' I'd suggest turning the SAs in on themselves.  One set a result of humanity, you benefit from using it to 'hide' amongst the populous, the other is a result of vampirism, you benefit from using it to fuel the "cool powers."  Now place them at odds; use of one causes problems using the other.  The 'human' ones are amplified by the setting, the vampire ones are useful in piercing the mysteries and conspiracies.  Place the characters needs in the way of the player's desires and you create instant angst.

If you want to get away from White Wolf's meta-plot, then you'll pretty much have to write 'how to host a conspiracy.'  Make the customer create the mysterious web of intrigue and you won't have to worry about it suiting their play style.

Well, I gotta run.  Good luck!

Fang Langford

Quote from: Le Joueur
If you want to get away from White Wolf's meta-plot, then you'll pretty much have to write 'how to host a conspiracy.'  Make the customer create the mysterious web of intrigue and you won't have to worry about it suiting their play style.

Some friends and I once brain-stormed a vampire game.  Basically the characters began developing vampire like features, and they had no idea what triggered the change.  The campaign would be them finding out what happened, and who they were now, if they were mythical vampires or govt conspiracies or whatever silliness.  I really like the idea of the vampire being as clueless as everyone else, like Highlander having no idea what the prize is, vampires don't know why they are what they are.  I think then you could get into the angst of it a lot more.

Jeremy

QuoteNow, I'm not sure I remember what Shadow of the Vampire" is, but if it's that movie that keeps you on the edge of your seat showing the filming of Nosferatu, always wondering if Shreck is a vampire (I haven't seen that one yet)

Shadow of the Vampire was more a black comedy, and the vampire was just an outside element, the film was more about sacrifices for art, really.

Jeremy

Thanks everyone for the feedback. There's some good stuff here. A few items:

1) Flashbacks: we actually have the game worked out so that one style of play is that in one game you play in the Victorian era, in the next you play in WWI, in the next you're in 1600's Berlin, in the next you're in the 90's, etc, so that you get a semi-constant set of flashbacks. I admit that the idea of grounding the game in "right now" and flashing-back to some random time every-so-often is pretty neat, though, and might be more meaningful.

2) KeWl Powerz and Blood Points: The system is a little like Nobilis in the beginning, where you have a certain degree of "automatic" success that you'll always achieve. If you ever want to push yourself beyond that, though, you spend blood points and roll them (so there's both Karma and Fortune involved, if I get the lingo right). So blood points do fuel the cool powers, but they don't provide them. This makes the hunt important, because you do have to drink regularly if you're using your powers regularly...if you don't use your powers, you could go as long as 3 months without feeding, I think. That's the catch--using your powers...the "fun" part of living a vampire's life--requires that you hunt and probably kill. Introduce on top of that a Pendragon-esque scale of values with more of a vampire/SA feel and there begin to be consequenses for being good or bad. What's even more than that is that your vulnerabilities (sunlight, fire, garlic, holy things, running water, etc) are controlled by where you stand on that scale of "good" and "evil." Thus a vampire that wants to be immune to these things will be "good," but feeding itself is "evil." I've added in an element not dissimilar from Orkworld's "trouble" called "Regret" that allows you to disobey your pre-set tendencies (as found on that Pendragon-like scale) in exchange for accepting the fact that the decision will haunt you somehow later.

3) The importance of the Hunt emotionally: I agree that this is a very ripe field, and one that is often left kind of weak in what we think of as Vampire games nowadays. Vincent (Lumply) has vampire system that's almost all about this, and it has some interesting ideas. Our goals in design are better (I think I'm trying to create WW's version "the way it should be according to Jake). In short, I'm going to look into how to make the hunt carry real emotional impact for the vampire.

Okay, next question: I've got a group of 5 right now. As far as I see it, 2-3 players is ideal for this game (and most games with a strong narrativist goal), but I've got 5. Many groups have 5-ish, and I need to take something like that into consideraiton. I've started playing with the "After Dark" model of having them wander from place to place, but I'm also at a loss as how to make that emotional impact very worthwhile in such a large group.

Ideas?

Thanks for all the above.

Jake

Just a point about having 5 players. Something I learnt long ago (from running Vampire as it happens), is that if the quality of the story is good enough, players don't mind taking some time out to watch it, as long as they get their turn.

The idea of your regret affecting how much you are affected by sunlight etc is cool, and reminds me of a vampire varient I wrote up for Realms, where your closeness to the beast dictates how powerful your powers are, but also how ferally you behaive.

-Matt

Hey Jake,

I think the way to go about it is to ask yourself the question, "Who are the heroes?" Having seen your GMing style as a player in a RoS demo, I can say it's obvious that narrative is a priority to you. Despite your "kewl powers" assertion above, I think I can say confidently that you don't think, "What kind of story will emerge from the kewl fighting mechanics this time?" You think, "Which aspects of the kewl fighting mechanics will emerge as players address the conflict they are about to receive?" And based on that, I think you need to just spend a little time imagining your ideal vampire protagonist. What's he like? What kind of decisions does he make? What makes unlife difficult for him? Maybe even start very specific, actually creating characters with names and relationships, and then distill from them your more generalized answers. As a result, I think you'll find yourself designing a system that captures your ideas about what makes a character interesting in the context of a narrative.

Paul

Jake,

You might just want to forget about my suggestions. I was composing my response as you were posting:

"I've added in an element not dissimilar from Orkworld's "trouble" called "Regret" that allows you to disobey your pre-set tendencies (as found on that Pendragon-like scale) in exchange for accepting the fact that the decision will haunt you somehow later.

Paul

I am really looking forward to seeing this, Jake. Really looking forward to it. As in, it's a good thing I don't know where you live, so I can't kidnap your family members and hold them hostage until the game is finished.

Tangentially, it reminds me of an idea I had, but probably won't pursue (because I don't want to be a game designer, dammit!), for a solidly Narrativist vampire game. The Premise I had in mind was "What is the soul?", or more specifically, "What does it mean to have lost your soul?"