[The Hunger] Zombies, Vampires, Ghouls- Help My Idea Work

[Willow]

So, with Awesome Adventures finishing up and being ready soon, I'm setting my sights on my next project: The Hunger.

The Hunger is a story-game about vampires.  The player characters are the Hungry.  They have to feed on people to survive.  The higher your Hunger score is, the more effective you are, but the more you have to feed.  Eventually, you're going to either decide to starve out, or everything about you that isn't a predatory beast is going to fade away.

So that's the kernel of the game.  I've got, maybe half of a skeleton to hang the game on.  But so far it hasn't clicked.  Things don't seem tricky enough.

What I need, is the big internal conflict.  That flag or issue I can push as a GM to make the Hungry squirm, force them to reevaluate their existence and see which way they go.

I need some help with that.  How do I pose that?  What games do a similiar thing and might be worth looking at?

[Clyde L. Rhoer]

Hey Willow,

What won't the characters feed on, and why? Why is that person or why are those people important? Those would be the first two questions I would want to ask. A blunt method would be to make answering those questions the beginning of character creation. Perhaps the character is made up some type of emotional content that is tied directly to these non-eatables? They lose this resource if they eat the non-eatables. Obviously this would need to be a resource that is used differently than Hunger. Some type of social or emotional control? This means you'd have more than one kind of efficiency which may not be something you want. This could also open up a route for player on player conflict. I would want to eat Tim's important people.

If you get too hungry can other people decide what you do sometimes? This might be a delicious way to use "my guy" to create tension, or it could just suck. *shrugs* That's all I've got at the moment.

[lumpley]

Have you read my games on the subject? If you haven't, you might find them ... uh, something. But here they are: Hungry, Desperate and Alone.

-Vincent

[GregStolze]

See also Jared's "Monster Garage" take on Vampire: the Requiem in "Requiem Storyteller's Guide."

-G.

[Willow]

Hey Clyde-

I figure during character creation you'll come up with three people you love, three you know, and three you hate.  (I want some sort of interlocking character relationships here too, like my character used to work with your character's girlfriend.)  You get some sustenance by eating people, more by eating people you know, and even more by eating those you love.

I want eating someone you love to be an agonizing decision.  I need something to make it meatier than just crossing off a name on your character sheet though.  There has to be an emotional connection there that the player is destroying.

Greg-

I've read Monster Garage, and I was fairly unimpressed.  It's trying to do something quite different than what I'm trying to do.

Vincent-

Will do.  Haven't even heard of that one before.

[masqueradeball]

In a lot of early eastern-european vampire myths vampirism is a curse that befalls suicides, normally young girls, who then kill their families. Maybe there could be something like this in the game, where your not suddenly forced to become a vampire, but people litterally drive you to it. These are the people who are supposed to love and protect you, so, from the right frame of mind the becoming part could be quite horrific. Also, maybe there's no radical transition, the process of becoming a monster is actually gradual enough that given the oppurtunity the players might accidentally lose themselves. I always thought such a mechanic would be really fun to play, like cyberpsychosis in Cyberpunk, except, you know, that it might actually happen to the PC's.

Sorry if that was just a random string of ideas. I guess my basic points, by way of advice, are this

1) Try drawing inspiration from some lesser known myths, as it will help create a more stable identity for the vampires in your game as opposed to other games/works of fiction.

and

2) Make the in-game benefits/penaties actually perilous, if you can, because it would be really fun. By perilous I mean manageable but uncertain and very potentially dangerous/deadly/whatever...

[Clyde L. Rhoer]

Hey Willow,

You should get the least from eating those you hate, and conversely those should be the most capable opponents.

[apeiron]

i daydreamed a Vampire game using a Hunger basis rather than a blood pool ala V:tM.  A hungry vamp can use their hunger to do things they normally could not, or would not.  For instance, to kick down a door or feed from a child.  When hungry they suffer penalties to doing anything humane or appearing human.  A well fed vamp suffers moral decay.  A starving vamp will eventually break.

Using V:tM mx:

Sated - All systems normal
Hungry - Mmm, her neck looks lovely
Famished - Gotta focus! Pay attention to the road!
Starving - Vitae, vitae everywhere....
Ravening - *growl* *chomp* *nom nom nom*

Each level of hunger grants one additional die to all physical actions, and +X difficulty to any social or intellectual actions.

When i get home i'll try to find my hunger system and share some of the specifics.

Oh, that means... i like the idea.  Keep it moving!

[Bret Gillan]

The internal conflict I see in this fiction, and in my daydreams about being a zombie , are that in order to stay "human" you need to maintain your human ties. You need to try and live a normal life, so you keep contact with your loved ones - family, friends, lovers. However, the same thing that makes you need them to keep you human (your Hunger) also puts them in danger and alienates you from them. That right there is the conflict and the horror of the situation.

[Grinning Moon]

I want eating someone you love to be an agonizing decision.  I need something to make it meatier than just crossing off a name on your character sheet though.  There has to be an emotional connection there that the player is destroying.

Well, why do we love other people? Why do we enjoy the company of other human beings?

Why do characters in the game love their loved ones? Are they parents? Old flames? Siblings? Romantic interests? Tutors? Players should be asked to list this information, for seeding the plot if nothing else.

I also find that there is nothing like offering a player a chance to have their character make a real betrayal to themselves or their significant social partners to make them feel a real sense of dilemma. What if their love interests did things for the character - real, significant, positive stuff - during the course of the game, at the same time that the character's hunger is tempting them to just sink their fangs into their necks? Perhaps you could reinforce this through some kind of daily monologue or something similar, like, 'What Jimmy Did For Me Today'.

Toss-in a death-spiral (hunger-spiral?), and suddenly players are forced to make some really ugly decisions that tie them emotionally to the game - it's no longer IF they eat their loved ones, it's WHICH loved ones they choose to eat first - and perhaps how this affects the rest of their relationships in the game. Nothing says 'fearsome choice' like having to decide whether to make a banquet out of the little girl who just saved your existence by convincing the vampire hunter that you're not really a monstrosity like those OTHER vampires or the really decent, loner beat cop who turns to you as something of a confident to conversate with in the middle of the night and get a heads-up on how the streets are looking right now.