THIRST: What do you do?

[Jeremy Cole]

Mike, antagonist - person who opposes protagonist.  Protagonist, central figure of the story.  It has nothing to do with good/evil, which I think you were getting at and confused me a little.

Jake, am I right in assuming this as an example campaign?

Party wanders into a small midwest American town.  Discovers there is badness afoot (or at least something these vampires don't like), and some of the towns folk are in danger.  Party moves into action, dropping blood points to fuel powers and defeat whatever it is they didn't like.  Having spent the blood, now they have to feed.  They wander off.

So the premise;
Can I solve this without having to resort to powers?
(if no) Is this worth having to end up feeding for?

Am I assuming right here?

Jeremy

[kevin671]

Sounds AWESOME!!!!  Like a Vampire game I WOULD ACTUALLY PLAY!!!!!  LIKE SOMETHING I WOULD SHELL OUT MUCHOS DINERO FOR!!!!  O.K.  now that thats out of the way...on to the suggestions.....

1.  Focus on the players.  Focus on thier own internal struggles, on the battle not to be consumed by "The Beast".  This can provide some great roleplaying.  For the record, I am not saying that you shold have some kinda rules system to decide whether or not they go bersek. What I mean is, hve players grapple with thier conscience, and that of the character.  For example:  Just how far are they willing to go to secure food?  Will they kill a pregnant woman?  A child?

2.  You can still have vampire hunters, but they should only pop up once in a while.  They should not be central to the story, but imagine the conflicts thatt'll happen when the PC's find out that someone who knows all about them is on the trail.  There doesn't even need to be a Vampire Hunter.  Just a rumor....

3.  Conflicts between vampires are a given.  Too many of them operating in an area are going to attract attention.  The kind of attention that Vampires generally don't want.....

[Unsane]

While this forum thing may have wandered a bit off topic, it has inspired me to make some of my own Vampire rules (I'm gonna see if my group will be willing to be my labrat).  Sorry.  Continue yer on topic discussion.

[Christoffer Lernö]

Jake, I'm not anti-BP, I'm against the idea of letting it fuel powers.

Um...I haven't played WW in, oh, 9 or 10 years. I'm not taking from WW here, but trying to implement a mechanic that is (1) fun and playable, (2) easy for players to grasp (3) pushes forward my premise and the issue quoted above.

That would mean you never played Werewolf and Changeling, right? Still, I maintain that no matter what, the blood points sound definately stolen right outta Vampire.

We have:

o "Blood fuels powers" which is WW style

o Blood is required at a very low rate unless you spend it, again WW style although blood requirements vary a lot in literature.
[Rice's vampires seem to go hunting every day, whereas others seem to stalk their victims for months without biting them (although it is not obvious if they are nourishing themselves on others meanwhile)]

o Finally we have the tie-in with drinking a lot of blood and being less human of WW which you "drink a lot of blood and be evil" only seems to be a variant of.

Lastly, I think that this does follow the Anne Rice tradition to some degree (remember that V:tM was almost ripped off of Anne Rice verbatim in places). When Lestat is "killed" the first time he lies in the swamp powerless until he feeds some, then he gains enough power to start moving up the food chain until he's in good enough shape to get humans again.

Errm:

On the other hand you could have blood points to work like hitpoints. As long as you had blood points you could heal any wound in a few seconds. But you'd be hungry afterwards... As a bonus that would mirror what happens in most vampire stories.

You must have missed this part. As long as blood points tracks two things: "amount of healing resources" and "hunger", you're on solid grounding. Those were there before WW and I don't contest that at all. In fact, I encourage you to use the blood points in this manner.

It's the "letting it fuel powers" such as it worked in WW with powers being "activated" with blood points which is a totally foregin element that WW introduced - seemingly only to introduce a kind of game balance. And this is what ticks me off so incredibly. I don't mind mythos changes because it makes a better or more interesting story, by I mind changes that are only because of game balancing. It doesn't add anything to the WW games.

Now you have a reason for introducing it, fine, but I don't think it's a strong one (my personal opinion) and most of all, people will see WW mythos in it which is perhaps not a good thing.

I could decide (I know I can't it's your game Jake) I'd have the blood points, but tick them off pretty quickly maybe a 1/3rd of them every day.

What does it mean when you run out of blood points? Well you get hungry and can't really control yourself (but don't people come dragging with "the Beast" it's a friggin lame WW excuse of a rule).

[Interestingly, here one could use a kind of Shadow style mechanic. You get to say both what your "instincts" are telling you and what you want to do, and then you roll to see who wins]

In addition you can't heal. You can't really die either, but you could quickly be incapacitated by wounds (you'd use up blood - automatically I should add - to heal wounds if you have blood points left)

You're still strong as hell and whatever other powers one might have. If you go on minus your body starts feeding off itself, weakening you somewhat.

A lot of blood also makes the vampire look more human and healthy. The Vampire also feels more happy and content if "well fed".

This is all you need. People will go hunting, and this is actually kinda scary because I've noticed people really go about it at different ways depending on their personality (and not that of their characters).

Do you become a beast when you kill people every night? Actually you don't NEED meta-mechanics to investigate this (trust me), the players themselves will provide the necessary feedback. This occurs naturally because the subject at hand is so close to reality (and of course yet so far away).

Something I just thought of that might enhance things would be something akin to the "Regret" you suggested. A kind of "depressed - happy - extatic" kind of thing, regulated by feeding to provide some feedback on their habits. Think of feeding as a drug. It gives you a kick. You stay off it, you feel bad, get depressed. This rating would kind of be like a "drug meter". How much do you do it, how does it make you feel, how do you survive without taking it often and so on. Adding such a thing would but it more in a Anne Rice style of play.

Still, no matter what, the drinking of blood IS an extatic thing. I always thought it was weird that WW pretended that the big thing vampire life revolves around - the drinking of blood - was almost completely ignored. Someone here mentioned the adult angle on it, and that might be right on target.

[Jake Norwood]

Okay, sorry for the tone of my last post. I really was on my way out the door (I'm addicted to this thread) and I didn't take the time to craft what I had to say more elegantly.

That being said, I think the last couple of posts have been very constructive for me (and for a few others who are probably working vampire mechanics as I write this). Pale Fire's stuff is starting to gel with me as well. Some of this will require re-thinking on my part (other parts I might stubbornly hold to).

Oh, and I played Werewolf, but stopped playing right about the time Wraith came out. I think that was in 1993 or 4, so it's probably more like 8 years, but whatever.

Thanks for all of the (mostly) really fantastic feedback. If there's one thing I've learned, it's that vampire are a very personal thing to most of us, and we have *very* different ways of seeing and understanding them...which is why I think this thread has been so active (it hit 4 pages in one day, for cryin' out loud).

Jake

[Christoffer Lernö]

I already mentioned I played a really good non VtM game I'd like to share. I really ought to work on other things, so I'll trim it down to the bare story. It was a solo adventure game by the way.

I was an actor in a performance troupe. Apparently pretty good since we got invited to the Versaille to perform. The most important person to my character was a girl of the same age, also with the troupe together with whom I grew up. I cared for this girl as if she was my sister, or more - although we had a platonic relationship.

Anyway, we stay there and perform and are invited to join in some ball or something (my memory is a bit hazy since this game was like 10 years ago). We go, and here I meet a pair of aristocrats, a man and a woman, a little peculiar perhaps but the aristocracy have their own ways I think. They tell me they really liked my performance and we chat and have a good time. I visit them some more and they seem to like me. During this time I grow increasingly more aloof. The woman is a rather magnetic personality. This worries my sister.
When I get a message from the woman for a rendez-vous in the Temple of Love (not the song by Sisters of Mercy) I go there with anticipation.

What follows is one of the most dramatic scenes I've played. The woman, which of course is a vampire, drinks my blood and lets me drink of hers, finally she kills me and let me rewake as a vampire. Everything is wonderous and new, but there is a hunger unlike everything ever known. So we go out together to look for something to feed on. I'm crazed, I'm craving blood. I know I will kill the first human I meet.

And this is where my "sister" shows up. She has been worrying about me and went out to find me. I call to her to stay away, but she doesn't listen. I want to resist but she hugs me close and tells me she was so worried. And then there is nothing I can do, there is only blood. And when the storm of blood in my mind eases up and I can see again I have killed the only one I really loved in my old world.

What was old has come crashing down. The world is no more and there is only the new. That day I sleep wearily. The next day the vampires leave, without reason as to why they changed me, without telling me what to do. I am like a baby and there starts my new life.

[Christoffer Lernö]

Oh, just wanted to add something which your comment on "vampires being personal stuff" since you brought it up Jake

I was thinking of how "I would do it" a little. Since I know that pretty much everyone has their own prefered take - I was thinking that ideally you would let the group themselves define what a vampire was in terms of powers and weaknesses.

I think one might throw off a whole lot of people deciding on a mythos to follow. This echoes Sorcerer a little I guess. What you'd start doing in a game like the one I suggest would be to first decide what a vampire IS. The game is then flexible and open for different suggestions. The premise is "how does it feel to be a vampire" but "what a vampire is" would be pluggable.

It's maybe very far off from what you were thinking about Jake. But maybe it's something to keep in mind. People take this vampire thing very personally, maybe at least allow some customization would be a good thing? I don't have the answer but it's worth considering.

[kevin671]

You don't need to use BP to activate powers.....you could simply say that certain powers(the really cool ones) require that you have BP remaining to use.  The BP could be spent on applications like rapid healing, rather than on the ability to move faster, be stronger, or read minds.  You could even state that a character need to have a certain number of points (or higher) of BP to use certain abilities.

[lumpley]

I think the struggle to repair what you've done and try to save your soul can be the greatest of stories... Harnessing that is hard, though.

Good stuff.

Have you read Tim Denee's game Our Frustration?  Its Hell-shift is maybe the great unsung mechanic of our age.

-Vincent

[Jared A. Sorensen]

Random musings:


Blood Points to fuel powers is...well, it is what it is.

I would use Hunger as a kind of scale. The thirstier your character is, the less capable he becomes (ie: effectiveness, control*) but the less he becomes incapable of doing (in a moral sense).

So the ravenous vampire freak is a blood-thirsty maniac that will do anything to get a fix. The well-fed vamp is moral (aware of what he's doing and its repercussions) but can actually *do* stuff.

Like I said earlier. I'd make this a hunting game with consequences.

* Yeah, you could tie this into a "Who gets to decide what happens?" mechanic.

[Valamir]

* Yeah, you could tie this into a "Who gets to decide what happens?" mechanic.

Oh wow...thats AWESOME.

Your hunger level could be tied into the roll as a fluctuating threshold.  So unlike, Inspectres where the control threshold is fixed, with this it would vary by level of hunger.  

So the starving vampire would be more likely to not have narrative control...meaning the GM is free to narrate his out of control bestial behavior that ends up in the slaughter of innocent people...while the satiated vampire would be more likely to get narrative control, meaning he can be just as smooth and "normal" or whatever as he wishes.

When the character is "in control", the player is "in control"
When the character loses control, the player loses control.

Damn.  If Jake doesn't use that idea...somebody needs to because that's just incredible.

[lumpley]

I'm posting vampire game things not directly related to Jake's Thirst over here, in Theory.

-Vincent

[Christoffer Lernö]

Ralph, I think the best result would actually be to not necessarily let the GM narrate your behaviour. I'd like to see a Shadows-like version (as I already said) otherwise the GM will actually play the most dramatic part of the game for you... the part when you have to do something which is contrary to what you want to do. In the story I was relating, we ran free form so there was no system to support it, however I distinctly remember how I actively helped moving the story to the climax, I was very much playing Narrativist at that time. In doing so I helped giving my character much more conflicting emotions to play out in actor stance.

I think that if the GM would have forced the decision upon me by effectively taking control of the character it would have been easier to distance myself from the act "it wasn't me who killed that person, it was the GM"

So I propose to keep the player still "responsible" for the character's actions (both the desired and the "shadow" desires of the character is decided by the player), even though the player loses control over the character's actions.
That way the player's situation would indeed mirror that of the character. I think that's a good thing.

[Jake Norwood]

RE: Ralph and Pale Fire

I agree that it's an awesome mechanic, and it should be done, even though it isn't within the realm of what I'm trying to do.

Pale Fire's approach is, however, within the range of what I want, and he's really got me turning gears now. Dammit...

Jake

[Christoffer Lernö]

I just hope I'm not confusing you here though Jake. I don't want to make you lose your gut feeling on this one. (I know it's might be unnecessary to add, but) you have to feel that this is still exactly what you feel like doing. (And not because my arguments happen to be persuasive)