Vampires in PnP

[Kilor Di]

How many PnP games that people are working on feature vampires?  Mine kind of does, in a half-***ed way.

[greyorm]

Greeting Kilor, and welcome to the Forge!

Please read the stickies up at the top of this section of the forum for guidelines on posting, as this is an inappropriate subject for this area. If, however, you happen to have a game you are working on which features vampires let's hear about it!

Thanks!

[Kilor Di]

Actually, my game does use vampires, but as I try not to use anything unless I can use it in an original way, it's kind of half-***ed.

In this world, vampires were created by the combined efforts of the demon lord of blood and the demon lord of the night.  Upon learning what humanity truly feared, these demons created the vampiric race.  Centuries later, as humanity was being slaughtered by the vampire menace, a qween of a famous empire took it upon herself to destroy the menace once and for all.  Through her efforts, a new race was created.  This race was made to feast on the flesh and bones of vampires.  Soon, the vampires were extinct, and humanity was left with a new nightmare.

So you see, in the world I'm making, vampires exist just long enough to prove how bad *** this other race is.  Also, I belive it's the first world where vampires are demonic in nature.

[greyorm]

Interesting. Does your game allow the play of the vampires as they are being hunted to extinction? I think such would be an interesting scenario idea and really serve to highlight the dangerous nature of these other creatures -- given that it wouldn't simply be "Oh, yeah, they killed all the vampires. Ok, they're bad," but players might gain an emotional connection to or understanding of the events and be able to say, "Yeah, those guys ARE real bad-asses! Mommy!"

[Kilor Di]

Actually, I had considered making a campaign book set during this time period.  Of course, since this occurs before the Techno races came here, you'd only have access to the magical and non-magical classes.  Who knows, the GM could allow vampiric characters in this scenario, but since all vampires become extinct...

Also, I thought of having a long lost journal of a half-vampire, Damian.  Most people in the world believe that Damian hunted down the vampires and that once every vampire was dead, he killed himself to prevent the vampire curse from spreading.  In truth, the journal would reveal that Damian's suicide was a result of his descent into madness after watching his fellow vampires being butchered alive.  The journal would also be the thing that reveals that these other creatures, whom the world believes came hundreds of years after vampires became extinct, had been the true murderers of the vampire race.

[Mike Holmes]

Hey, now that we're talking about an actual game, any references to vampire games under construction are valid cites. :-)

What's that game by Vincent (AKA Lumpley). IIRC, it's called something like Hungry, Desperate, and Alone?

Mike

[C. Edwards]

Here's the link to Vincent's game.

http://www.septemberquestion.org/lumpley/hungry.html

-Chris

[Belac]

Vampires are some of the more versatile creatures in RPGs.

In one of my games, traditional vampires are not very important (though they exist), but there is a subrace of the most important alien race that serves the same purpose.  They aren't undead, don't look like vampires at all, and they turn people into energy to absorb instead of drinking blood, but they act like vampires (that's a wide range of personalities, since there are lots of vampire archetypes, but this group can fit most of them), their place in myth and legend is the same as vampires, and they work perfectly in the same roles that vampires fill in RPGs.  (You could easily find a powerful one in an abandoned castle in the Dracula style, for instace, or find a conspiracy of them like in V:tM, or find gangs of them in bars like in the Blade movies.)

Btw, vampires-as-demons is a fairly common concept.  GURPS Bloodtypes has a lot of mythical vampires from various ancient civilizations that were demonic in nature.  Still, its definately used about a 1/100,000th as much as "vampires are undead" or "vampires are created by a virus", so its close to original.

[anonymouse]

Let's not forget Buffy the Vampire slayer - topical because there is, of course, its own brand of RPG - where vampires are basically humans reanimated by the souls of demons, and they're routinely found in the company of more traditional demons.

[Rich Stokes]

(raises hand politely and speaks up for the first time in ages...)

At risk of hijacking this thread (I was about to start one on the subject, but I saw this and it made more sense to post here for now)

My own Urban Mythos setting uses Vampires quite extensively. Like you, i've tried to have an original slant on Vampires in this setting. Short version of Urban Mythos: Magic is real and commonplace in a city which isn't modern London, honest.  Vampires, Legion (not demons, honest) and other part-humans live side by side and each has it's own place in a rich society.  If you search these forums you'll find some (mostly old) threads about the setting.

The main points are:

Vampires are born, not created. They grow up being Vampires. As far as anyone knows, there's no way for a normal human to "become" a Vampire. Vampires claim it's impossible. If a human gets bitten by a Vampire, they'll sometimes get ill though, as if infected with a bad cold or flu.

They drink blood, but there's no reason for them to drink Human blood.  I mean, humans are omnivores, but we don't go around bothering with Chimp steak.  Animal blood is just easier.

They don't like sunlight.  They don't boil and burn, but they find it really uncomfortable if it's bright. Monst are fully nocturnal, but they can operate in daylight if need be.  When they're young, they find the pain of sunlight too uncomfortable and therefore cannot attend "normal" schools, instead tending to be schooled in seperate Vampire schools or with private tutors.  Also the fact that they grow up and mature more slowly than regular humans means that they'd also be very small at school.  Imagine being in the body of an 8 year old when everone else in your class is 11-12.  This makes being schooled seperately even more essential.

Vampires claim that they don't know what their origin is any more than anyone else does. There is evidence of Vampires around before the rise of the Legion, but that doesn't mean that they aren't from the same place.  IE, Vampires might be a type of demon, nobody knows for sure and experts don't agree.

The average lifespan for Vampires is about 300 years.  At least, the oldest of them claims to be about 400 years old.  Given what records were like 50 or even 100 years ago it's not hard to believe that there are much older Vampires somewhere that just don't have an audit trail.

Most people in The City regard Vampires as aloof, arrogant and isolationist.  They think they're weirdos rather than scary monsters.

I intend to have them as being playable but slightly odd characters.  I'm aiming at something like perhaps the Orthodox Jewish community: Misunderstood, but not entirely innocent, generally people don't understand them because they can't be bothered to learn about them rather than because they keep secrets.  But at the same time they're not entirely the most approachable group in the city.

Now, if i could only find a way of explaining that elegantly in the text of the game...

Rich

[Kilor Di]

I like it.  It's an interesting idea that you can totally work with.

That being said, I still like my idea of the vampires being driven to extinction by a more powerful race.